Chapter Eight: Antonius Arcturus Malfoy

So, turns out I literally forgot that I had Barty Crouch Jr. captured last chapter, so here is the fix for that..really sorry guys. Please read and review, hope you enjoy.

Most people would normally consider a life on the run with a fugitive, and no life to return to a morbid concept, but Harry Potter was having the time of his life. It had been almost seven months after leaving Hogwarts and the 'Boy-Who-Lived' namesake behind, and Harry was happier than he had ever been before. Of course, this might have had to do with the fact that once Sirius found out about the cupboard under the stairs he began to spoil Harry with gifts, trying to make up for the neglect of the Dursleys.

Luckily, Sirius did not let Harry get away with everything. There were a few ground rules, including having to complete all his homework. Remus had put together a very strict set of exercises and textbooks that Harry had to do to be kept caught up in his schoolwork.

Of course, with so much free time, Harry ended up a little bit ahead of the others at Hogwarts. He wasn't at Hermione's level, but he did occasionally firecall her and Ron to check up on them. Whenever they did talk, Hermione always made sure Harry was keeping up on his subjects, and Ron made sure he was still having fun.

Near the end of the school year Dumbledore had dropped by unexpectedly and Harry had to hide quickly to stop his presence from being revealed. The less people that knew he was alive the better. The headmaster had asked Sirius if he could perchance use his ancestral home for the Order of the Phoenix, which Sirius later explained to Harry was a vigilante group dedicated to fighting Voldemort.

Sirius agreed, but told Dumbledore that he didn't want anything to do with the Order this time around, because he was still grieving over the loss of his godson. Dumbledore implored Sirius to go the house, 12 Grimmauld Place, for protection, but Sirius said he was fine in France. Sirius hadn't seen Dumbledore since.

Now it was almost the end date for the potion, Harry was more tense than ever. They had come up with a plan, but that didn't make Harry any less nervous about it.

Then the worst began to happen. Harry woke up on June 5th in one of the bedrooms in the house he and Sirius were currently renting in France, and expected the day to be much like the others. Some schoolwork, some exploring and a lot of magic. He walked into the bathroom to get ready for the day, but saw his reflection and screamed.

Sirius expected to wake up to birds chirping and the sun shining through his window. What he heard instead were the screams of his godson. Sirius raced towards the bathroom a disarming spell on the tip of his tongue, but then he stopped cold when he saw Harry.

He scowled at his godson, "This is what you woke me up for?" He pointed at Harry again, "You knew this was going to happen, and you are still surprised about it."

Sirius turned around and started shambling back in the direction of his bedroom, "I'm going to go back to sleep," he said, "stop waking me up with your identity crisis."

Most people would be surprised at how casual Sirius had acted about the whole situation, but truthfully Harry had been fussing about his appearance a little too much. Every day he would look in the mirror and inspect every inch of his face, trying to spot any differences. Sirius had actually grown annoyed with the whole deal, and as a result had stopped caring as much. And granted he was always there to lend a hand if Harry truly needed help, but this was a matter of vanity.

Harry pulled at parts of his hair, scowling at it. Sometime during the night parts of his hair had turned a platinum blonde color, and as such he now resembled some sort of zebra. His skin had also grown a shade or two lighter, but because of the amount of time he had spent in the sun his skin had a mild tan to it.

About two hours later, Harry was seated at the breakfast table with Sirius, who kept looking up at him and snickering. Finally Harry had enough.

"What's so funny?" Harry asked, glaring at Sirius,

His godfather laughed and said, "It's just…" He paused, probably trying not to insult his godson, "You look like some strange magical creature."

At Harry's angry glare Sirius conjured up a mirror and told Harry to look for himself. Harry glanced in the mirror and saw that his eyes how had silver swirls to them, and although his hair remained unchanged from earlier that morning his skin was now lightly dotted with freckles. He sighed again, this was going to be a long couple of days.

And it was, turns out blood potions were illegal for a reason. They hurt like hell as they wore off. His bones kept aching as they slowly shifted to other positions and lengths, and he couldn't get a good night's sleep for the life of him. Luckily he had Sirius there to help him along, otherwise things could have been much worse. Truly though, he was miserable.

He stood in front of the full length mirror in his room on June 10th, his original birth date, and sighed. He looked so much like Malfoy...Draco….that he felt physically ill. It wasn't like he was horrible deformed or some other such nonsense, but he certainly looked quite different from how he had looked before.

For one thing, his features were in general much sharper than they had been before. His nose more upturned and his chin more pointed. Granted, his hair was much longer than he had ever seen Draco's, it went to his chin, and hung shaggy and unbrushed. He did this both out of habit and out of defiance. Just because he looked like a Malfoy didn't mean he had to keep his hair gelled back like some plastic doll. Luckily his hair covered his scar completely.

He wasn't much taller than he had been before, at least not by more than an inch or two. Harry had been growing through the year, after all. And now reached around 5' 8'', and was happy enough with his height. His eyes were molten silver and he had quite a few freckles from spending so much time in the sun. He now knew why Malfoy was so pale, because he didn't want to look anything less than perfect, and freckles would ruin that.

All in all, he wasn't Harry Potter anymore.

Harry shook his head and asked into the living room, today he was finally going to see Ron and Hermione. After so long long apart he could hardly wait, but he was quite a bit worried about Ron's reaction to his new look. He smiled, well this was his lasts day in 'hiding' before their final plan was executed, and he was happy that his friends would be there with him.

There was a knock on the door, and Harry smiled, racing to open in up. There Ron and Hermione stood in regular muggle clothing looking not much different from the last time he saw them. They hadn't been able to write for fear of a letter being intercepted, so he couldn't wait to talk about everything he had missed.

For a second they stared at his new appearance, but then Hermione said, "Harry, I've missed you so much!" Suddenly Harry found himself with an armful of Hermione and he smiled.

Ron looked at Harry at said, "It's bloody good thing we came to see, otherwise we wouldn't have recognized you!"

The three of them moved into the sitting room, and Sirius poked his head in saying, "Hello Hermione, Ron, spend as long as you need talking. I'll be going to the market to get some more food for us. I've decided to try making spaghetti for dinner."

The three said goodbye to Sirius, and then Harry turned towards his two friend, "So," he said, "what's been happening at Hogwarts?"

Hermione began, " Everyone took your death very hard. The ministry has made you out to be some kind of martyr. Harry Potter is being immortalized as a hero. And do you remember the twi-wizard tournament? Turns out Cedric Diggory got to the cup first, but he came back dead." She lowered her voice to a whisper even though no one was around to eavesdrop, "I saw his body for a mere moment, and it had...words carved into it. They said 'Lord Voldemort has returned'. Of course, the Ministry tried to cover this up and say the portkey had malfunctioned and killed the boy, but no one truly believed that."

She stopped, and Ron picked up the story, "Dumbledore gave a speech and told everyone that Lord Voldemort had returned. He looked older than ever, and warned us that we must stand together. You should have seen it. Everyone looked shaken. They later found Delacour and Krum in the maze unconscious. When Krum aimed consciousness he told them Barty Crouch Jr. had cast the imperious on him, and forced him to torture Fleur. Turns out he had escaped Ministry custody soon after being captured, but the ministry had refused to tell anyone about the escape. When Dumbledore discovered this he was furious. I wasn't there, but I heard he really gave one to Fudge for not informing him about the escape of a very dangerous fugitive. Unfortunately, Crouch was never caught, he fled from Hogwarts right after the tournament was over."

Harry gasped. Barty Crouch Jr. had escaped. The man who he had been having dreams about all summer, gone. The dreams had stopped after Sirius taught Harry some rudimentary Occlumency, but he remembered the ones he'd had. He was the one who put his name in the goblet. Harry probably been the sacrifice intended for Lord Voldemort. That's why Crouch had tried to help him win, he needed Harry to win, so he could take him to Voldemort. They had probably had to make due with Cedric.

Never before had Harry been more glad that he'd left Hogwarts. They began talking about more trivial things, and soon they were eating. The four of them sat around the table and began discussing what they needed for the plot they were planning to pull.

"Do you have the potion," Hermione asked, "It's essential we have that potion otherwise this whole plan is for nothing."

This statement was quite true. Their entire plan revolved around this potion. It was a potion created to imitate memory loss, but still have a way to recover those memories for sure. It was often used for very deep undercover missions for the department of mysteries. The only way to recover these lost memories was to take another dose of the same potion again, but it had to be from the same batch or the potion wouldn't work.

They were planning on having Harry take the potion thereby losing all of his memories, but keeping knowledge of skills he'd learned. The potion only took memories of personal moments, and your identity. The person who took the potion was supposed to still be competent. He would then be dropped off in Diagon Alley near St. Mungos where he would be taken in. Whenever a wizard in child is left alone the details are headliners in the Daily Prophet so Lucius Malfoy would soon recognize the facial features to at the very least be curious about an unknown wizard with amnesia.

Ron and Hermione would stay low and pretend to keep grieving over their friend while Harry would be taken in by his family. It would be for less than a month, and Ron and Hermione could slip him the antidote at Hogwarts.

The plan seemed about as good an idea as anyone could come up with, after all, it would be difficult to introduce any new member of a wizard in family to the public eye casually. And almost a year after the death of Harry Potter, there is no reason for anyone to be suspicious.

After they made sure everything was in place for the plan and finished eating they retired to the sitting room to talk.

"Are you sure you want to do this mate?" Ron asked Harry.

Harry nodded, determination marring his features, "I am."

Sirius looked at his godson, "I believe in you pup," he aside, "And the second you get your own memories back you'd better send me a letter to let me know you are all right. Remus as well, God only knows how much he worries."

Harry smiled, he knew he could do this. It gave him a chance to assimilate to his new identity and there was no chance anyone would recognize him or glean any information from his mind. They had also found a way to hide the lightning bolt scar. And tonight was the night, his final night before going into this mess. That was the only reason Hermione and Ron had managed to sneak out to do this.

They had snuck out of the order's headquarters for the day and would most likely be punished for it later, but they would give some lame excuse about wanting to see muggle London. It's not like Ron or Hermione knew anything what went on in the Order, they were considered too young. They were both only there because ron's family was helping to clean up the place, and his parents were in the Order.

Soon it was time to take the potion, he was going to be dropped off in the Alley quite early in the day, so there weren't as many witnesses around.

Sirius, Ron, and Hermione all stood around Harry as he stood in the living room, holding the potion in his hand, prepared to take the potion.

He smiled nervously, "Well then, bottoms up," he said and then took the Potion.

Harry felt his identity, who he was slip away from his grasp and he let out a gasp, the last thing he remembered as Harry Potter was falling unconscious in a parlor in France.

...

Author's Note: I wanted to say I'm quite guilty for not updating this much, much sooner, but everything has been so cray with finals and such...but worry not! They are finally over! I finally have more time for fanfic a now, so worry not my readers updates shall come quicker.

As always please envies It makes my day. No, seriously, every time I see a review I get a burst of complete and utter happiness. :)