Chapter 5

Harry knew he should have been expecting things to go wrong. He was Harry Potter, something always went wrong somehow.

It began in Diagon Alley.

He was at Fortescue's, enjoying an ice cream while waiting for Ron to arrive, when he felt the weak pull on his sternum. The spoon digging around in his small bowl of firewhiskey-flavored frozen condition (New Special Flavor - Ogden's Approved! - Proof of Age Required) immediately froze in place.

Then set in motion again with a slow, automatic motion while he scanned his surroundings. He was outside, so there were a lot of people around, with any number of them shooting glances his direction, but that was normal. No one stood out that he could see.

Yet the pull was there. Not against his sternum exactly, he realized, but on something behind it and in his chest, on—

Cold, dark magic swirled within the confines he imposed upon it, trying to tease free. The dementor magic.

He tightened his grip on it, double-checked the glamouring spells (intact), and tried to find out where the pull was coming from.

It intensified, knocking the breath from his lungs in a freezing gust with the abrupt force of it. It tried to drag him out of his seat but couldn't when he resisted. He stood up instead, abandoning the ice cream in front of him without a thought, and locked eyes with the source that the stronger exertion allowed him to pinpoint from the crowd.

He was disillusioned in an alley, but that didn't matter any longer with a dementor's attention. They didn't use eyes to see, after all.

The summons increased again, but not as violently, and carried a command: come here.

His eyes narrowed a bare fraction.

It was too late to pretend ignorance. He had a feeling it wouldn't have worked anyway. Instead, he threaded through the crowds to the person hidden from human sight, following the trail of the command and his own alternate senses.

He could taste fear, hatred, shock, and greed as he left the main street for the narrow alley between storefronts. It was the greed that took precedence, and the upsurge in that feeling was followed with a voice that scratched at his ears and tried to twist through his magic and into his mind. "Find the owner of this object." A glass sphere, mostly transparent but containing colorful flames that swayed in slow motion and changed from red to purple as he looked at it, was presented. "Find him and take him."

The thing didn't seem to be cursed in any way, but Harry didn't take it from the mostly invisible person. Based on the memories attached to it that he could only faintly taste without a more serious exertion of power, the glass was a lightly enchanted simple decoration, one that the current possessor hadn't left an impression on yet and that the true owner hadn't had for long. A stolen object, likely from a desk.

"Who does this belong to?" Harry asked, keeping most of the chill back. Not all of it, though; he wouldn't be able to get a read on this man's state of mind if he contained his magic thoroughly enough not to emit cold even with his breath.

His greed wavered under an increase in fear, but a burst of confidence stabilized it. "That doesn't matter. Go find him and take his soul!"

It was not entirely unlike the imperius curse, that feeling the would-be murderer was trying to impose upon him harder than ever. He slapped it aside.

This man was trying to make him kill someone, and he was trying to do it by commanding his dementor magic. He had somehow learned to control dementors before they'd all disappeared after Harry, had perhaps used dementors...

That hatred he tasted, he was its focus.

"You tried to kill me," he hissed, fury in his voice and memories in his mind of the night he woke up in his own home cornered by three dementors.

The confidence shattered and the greed faded in an instant, both replaced by unbridled terror. Harry lunged, intending to tackle the person to the ground and capture him, one hand going for the wand holstered on his belt at the same time, but his attempt was aborted with a reflexive knockback jinx.

Disillusionment had prevented Harry from seeing that a wand was already out and ready, but he didn't have the time to curse himself for not expecting that. The jinx was weak, only shoving him back a step, and it didn't stop his hand from reaching his wand. Swift fingers flicked it out and forward—there was a swell of hatred—and cast a shield charm just in time to block—

The bright green light shot through it like tissue paper and hit him in the stomach.

His natural-born magic vanished, scattered to the four winds, and his soul lurched as the dementor magic, the magic he'd so painstakingly integrated with his own over months to balance and control it, flooded him like a tsunami. It grounded his soul in his body and filled the void left by his human magic. It kept him alive in the wake of the Killing Curse.

It also forced his complete transformation.

And, because no magic could block the Killing Curse (no magic except for whatever his parents had done to him as an infant, which was still an inscrutable mystery), his disguise was erased just as utterly as the shield charm he'd cast, and his terrible new form was revealed.

The person who'd just tried to kill him again was horrified.

It was so clear, he could breathe it in, breathe it and taste it, and so much more. He could taste this man's every emotion, pick and choose from them like a buffet. Behind him was a street full of happiness.

For the barest moment, nothing happened.

A crack as loud as a gunshot was made as the center of his focus apparated away, splinching himself and leaving behind the glass decoration and half of the hand holding it. Behind him fear and panic spread like ripples as they noticed the dementor in the alley.

He couldn't escape as easily—he tried to apparate, tried and failed (apparently dementors couldn't apparate, which was honestly probably a very good thing even if it was bad for him right this moment)—but he fled further from the main street of Diagon anyway, leaving the spliched hand and object behind. The road backing the shops was much thinner, meant only for service entrances, and bordered by a long brick wall matching the one behind the Leaky Cauldron that opened onto Diagon Alley proper.

He wasn't going to try to find another secret entrance by tapping at the wall randomly with a wand that wouldn't even respond to him right now, so he flew along the wall instead, hoping that either he would find a way out or that his magic that had been blasted away by the Killing Curse would return to him quickly.

Neither happened before the Aurors arrived.

Within a minute of a staccato of apparation pops, he was cornered by a handful of patroni, bright shining creatures that burned him with their nearness. There were six of them, enough to represent two full response teams, and they were around and above him, cutting off any chances of further flight. He tried to muster the will to barrel through them and onwards, but it was getting so hard to focus...

The Aurors followed their patroni, and they came bearing chains.

He caught sight of Ron among the gawkers as he was dragged forth and loaded into a creature transport vehicle. His friend, face pale but set with determination, nodded at him and disapparated.

He was chained in an isolated Ministry holding cell when Hermione found him. He was stuck in the middle of the spacious room, unable to move more than halfway from the back wall to the wooden, iron-banded door. There was a crusting of ice over everything.

His long-time friend walked in with a patronus at her side, melting a path through the ice. She insisted on the guards flanking the door to stay where they were, listened very seriously to their warnings about exhaustion from keeping up her patronus for too long and about not getting within reach of the dangerous creature, and then politely closed the door and cast an auditory privacy ward. The patronus stayed near the door.

Hermione double-checked her work on the door and then turned to face him, composed expression cracking. "Harry! Oh Harry, what happened, are you okay, are you—"

She halted in her rush forward when he lifted his hands to ward her away. "Don't come closer."

"But Harry—"

"No. Not... like this. I can't hold back from..."

Her shoulders shuddered when she couldn't control a shiver. It was probably just from the temperature in the room. (But he could hear his voice.) "What happened? Ron told me he saw you in Diagon Alley."

"I was waiting for Ron when I felt a weird pull on my magic. This magic." A skeletal hand with too-long fingers gestured at the cloaked, chilling form. "There was a wizard there. Disillusioned. It was him doing it. It was almost like the imperious. I went over to figure out who it was..."

"Someone was able to... influence the dementor magic in you?" Hermione offered.

He drew a rattling breath and tried not to taste the worry/sadness/fear/comfort— "I think he could control dementors. Before. No, I'm sure of it. He sent the first dementors after me, that night. He tried to kill me!"

Hermione seemed lost for words. A rare situation for the knowledgeable witch. "How...?"

Harry turned his head away. Not that she could see his face. "Tasted it. His hatred. And his fear. He tried to kill me with the dementors. But I didn't realize that right away. Not until he told me to kill someone."

"What!?"

"There was this glass thing he had, from the person he wanted me to kill. He knew I could find its owner somehow. He was too confident not to have done it before."

"I remember you saying you could track memories." She stared at him, silently demanding he look at her.

"Yes," he confirmed. "He tried to command me with that strange imperius."

"Well," Hermione scoffed, "I'm sure that went as expected."

His shoulders shook with silent laughter, rattling his chains. "Not at all. I ignored it, of course. That's when he tried to kill me again."

"Why am I not surprised. So is that how you ended up like this?"

"He used the Killing Curse." His tone was flat. "When it hit, all my regular magic disappeared and this took over. It protected my soul, so I'm still alive, but..."

"But?"

"My magic hasn't come back yet. And until it does..."

"Until it does, you'll be stuck this way." The sickly sound of him breathing was the only thing to be heard in the room for several seconds. "Back to the man who tried to kill you?"

"When he saw what the Killing Curse did to me, he disapparated. Pretty sure he splinched, too, and left behind some of his hand. And the glass thing, I remember seeing that."

"I didn't hear any Aurors talking about a spliching incident, but they have been all abuzz about you." She sighed heavily. "I don't know how to get you out of here. We are working on a plan. It's part of why I came, so I could see how they were holding you. For now... I think they believe you're just a normal dementor. As long as that remains true, you should be... safer..."

"And the splincher? Who tried to kill me twice and wanted me to kill someone else? He saw me."

"I don't know." Hermione rubbed her temples with her free hand. "I don't know, Harry. I'll do everything I can to help you, we all will. We'll get you free, I promise."

"Thank you, Hermione."

The guards started knocking on the door after that, so she had to leave him, leave the dementor that her friend had become chained and alone in that room, but not before sealing her promise by gripping his hand tightly, the closest to a hug he would allow.

When her patronus looked back at him, it seemed sad.

The waiting wasn't the worst, he thought. Dementors could be patient, and so could he.

The isolation wasn't the worst either. He knew how the deal with extended periods of isolation.

No, the worst thing was the hunger.

As the days passed, it grew slowly, but it was there. It wasn't a human hunter that made the stomach clench with pain and the body faint. He would have preferred that. It was a deep, hollowing hunger that he felt in his bones, that made his paralyzed jaw ache.

Even the thinnest traces of fear/joy/revulsion/satisfaction were like nectar. Happiness may have been the sweetest, but now he could imagine—could understand—how the dementors of Azkaban would take anything they could get from the prisoners they 'guarded'.

He hadn't seen Hermione again, hadn't seen anyone really, but he believed in his friends. If anyone could get him out of this, the brilliant bookworm could. Until his magic returned to him, all he had was that hope.

(He wasn't sure how long it had been.)

(He was so hungry.)

When the door next opened, he was greeted with multiple patroni and wizards and witches with their faces concealed in deep hoods. There was a badge on the right side of each person's chest, one he recognized from when the Unspeakables were trying to figure out his immunity to the Dementors' Kiss. The Unspeakables had come for him again.

Hermione hadn't been fast enough.

The chains were unbound from the wall, the patroni escorted him out of the holding cell, and the Unspeakables formed up before and behind him at a safer distance.

No one spoke as he was moved deeper into the Ministry, to the lower levels that he and his friends had invaded at the end of his fifth year, but everyone stared and whispered in their wake. Through the room of spinning doors, through a hallway he didn't recognize, his destination was another cell.

This one was larger, and not completely empty. Tables lined three walls, high ones at standing height. A large ring was carved into the center of the floor, broad and perfectly flat, with three equally spaced lines extending from the inner edge to intersect at the center. That's where he was re-chained.

One Unspeakable remained behind when the others left the room.

"Welcome back, Mr. Potter."

Did Hermione know where he was now? Or had they kept it secret?

They ran tests on him to start. Innumerable tests that were only mostly harmless. Tests for his nature, his abilities, his tolerances, more than he knew was possible. The tests with patroni were the worst.

They filled the room with the guardians of light, directed them as close to him as possible until he strained against his chains trying to put more distance between them and himself, made them touch him...

It burned his black mouth and lungs, burned his mind, burned his skin until it felt like nothing covered his bones but ash. The patroni couldn't withstand his touch either, at least, and collapsed when they touched him, costing the caster more magic than if the patronus had been dispelled or allowed to fade naturally.

When that started becoming repetitive, they began to bring him prisoners. He refused them, taking nothing more from them than he did by merely breathing, refused his own gnawing hunger and steeling his will against this newest test, but they had an answer to that before long.

The first ritual undermined his will, compromised it in favor of his base needs. He took of the next prisoner eagerly, drank deep of all the happiness he could find, then the sadness, regret and fear, consumed it until the witch was nearly comatose and her mind overwhelmed with nightmares.

His hunger abated only slightly.

More prisoners followed, and that meant more tests. Before the victims were brought in to his cell, while he fed upon them, and after they were taken away. With patroni and without, sometimes with more than one prisoner at once.

The escalation was expected, so he was only mildly surprised when the latest test subject was bound within easy reach of him. He retreated away from the offered meal, as far as his chains would allow, held himself so still he barely breathed, and he cursed the Unspeakables in his mind. A second ritual was performed, trying to break his will, but it had little influence. He drained the emotions of those brought to him but he would not touch them, would not wrap his fingers around their necks, bring his mouth to theirs and delve his cold magic down their throats to tangle up their souls and pull them out for himself.

(He liked their relief the best, as they were taken away and realized they were still alive.)

They tried to force it, pushing the prisoners as close to him as they could, but he just pushed them carefully back out, much to the Unspeakables consternation.

No rituals could force him to take a soul, no matter what they tried or how long they withheld 'food' from him, but they didn't give up trying.

It was much more complex than what they tried previously. That weird metallic chalk they used was all over the floor this time, well beyond the boundaries of the ring, and a full seven Unspeakables were involved. His chains were shortened until he was forced to kneel in the center, palms flat and long fingers splayed against the stone. They checked over their setup three times before they were satisfied with it.

When they took position around him, they withdrew small knives from hidden pockets. The knives shone with unnatural brightness, reflecting light that had no source within the room, but he didn't have long to look at them. Each knife sliced into the palm of the opposite hand, splitting skin and spilling blood. The whetted blades were touched to the runes, the circle lit in seven places, the blades and blood dissolved as the light spread to fill all the meticulously drawn lines—

Talons of power dug in and twisted.

He knew what they were doing now, trying to change and bind him, strip him utterly of his humanity. He felt the changes working through him, trying to subvert and subdue his spirit. Shackles grew in his mind, locking him away in pieces, and he could not struggle against it.

Reality faded. (Or was that him?)

Too lost in the darkness, he didn't notice when the ritual truly ended. His soul was hidden, his mind asleep.

The warmth failed to rouse him.

The star, so radiant, also passed by, going to a place beyond him. He paid it no mind. The warmth and light left behind in its path faded quickly.

The sensations came intermittently and went ignored.

A pull. It was familiar, but he couldn't remember. He didn't care.

But it was insistent, and with it—

Not me not me stay away

That was curious.

Not me please no, them not me, them, take them

What was it? It was making him... annoyed?

Not ME NOT ME

It was getting louder. Definitely he felt annoyed. Maybe if he went and found the source, he could shut it up and go back to sleep.

He felt the warmth again and reached for it this time, took hold and pulled himself to the source.

NO STOP LET GO

He found a star. It was bright, and warm, and loud. He began to wrap himself around it, cover it with his own darkness, and he made sure to get every last shining ray that reached out to spread the light.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Completely encased, the star suffused him with warmth, and it's voice was finally silenced. He retreated with his prize, pulling it back into his own darkness where he could sleep—

There was a yawning void beneath him, cold and bottomless, and it wanted the star. But the star was his, and so warm, and he wanted to keep it to himself. He rose away from it, flying upwards against its gravity—

And woke up.

For a second, he didn't understand. The void was still there, but inside him now instead of beneath him. The star was inside him also, but high in the back of his throat. Magic coated his tongue. His left hand was wrapped around the neck of a limp man with dull eyes. His face was unfamiliar, which was weird because he knew—

His magic, his words, were not.

He remembered.

The soul in his throat (a soul, not a star at all) was the man who tried to kill him twice.

He lost his grip on it and it fell, pulled straight through the Resurrection Stone, and was gone. Harry looked at the face before him, uncurled his fingers and opened his hand, and the breathing dead man dropped to the floor with a thud.

The Unspeakables carried him out.

Left alone again, he breathed in the traces of magic left in his mouth and felt them kindle in his chest. He remembered everything again, and the chains had lost their grip upon his mind. His soul was his own, they could not take that from him either, never had, never could, never would.

He could not put words to his anger. The chains rattled like snakes as he shook with broken, dead laughter.

There was a little spark of human magic in his chest.

All he had to do was wait.

Taking souls was all too easy with the Stone helping him. He hardly had to think about it. Instead, he focused on nurturing his seed of magic, helping it take root and grow just a little more with the remnants of magic left behind by every soul he lifted.

Not that there were many. Consuming emotions wasn't enough, though.

The Unspeakables tested him less now that he was acting like a normal dementor. He hid his magic carefully.

The day finally came. The wait finally ended.

The wand at his belt that no one thought to search him for warmed beneath his fingers.

His chains fell away.

He couldn't transform, but that didn't stop him. Every Unspeakable he encountered was left a husk as he escaped. (Rose, whose patronus was a small bird that always went for the face; Vermillion, the meticulous note-taker that attended nearly every test but rarely conducted them; Gold, who hummed under his breath; Rust, with hands and robes dusted with chalk from her rune work; there were many more, but none he relished taking more than Auburn, the man who always addressed him as Mr. Potter.) He covered himself in one of their robes (Teal's, he thinks)—the things were long and covered him head to toe—and the misleading clothing helped.

Finding his way out of the spinning room took the most time, but few enough Unspeakables arrived attempting to stop him and every door they opened was one less for him to check.

No one was in the elevator. When it opened on the highest floor, the main floor, he left it cautiously. It was nearly deserted. The middle of the night, probably. He bound up his chill as tightly as possible and swept out. The wizards at the entrance desk, where non-employees had to check their wands, eyed him but didn't move to block his way.

The elevator at the end of the arrival hall brought him to street level.

It was night, just as he'd guessed. The air was cool and stank vaguely of smog.

He was free.

He discarded the stolen robes and lifted high into the sky, quickly enfolded by the obscuring darkness. Far below him, in the magically hidden complex beneath London, alarms began to scream their warnings too late.

He was free.

Alternate chapter title/terrible joke: Skittles

(It was entirely an accident, I swear)

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