More than five years ago, Harry Potter had been sentenced to a life sentence in Azkaban Prison for the death of Cedric Diggory. He knew of these charges only because of a visit from the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement herself, one Amelia Bones. Though it hadn't taken long for Harry to connect Susan Bones to this older woman, he had quickly learned that mentioning the young woman was not a good idea - Madame Bones had seemed to take personal affront to the very mention of her niece, and had turned from cold to downright scary.

He would receive no trial, just like Sirius. The evidence was clear, and his lies would do him no good - all this was said with a matter of factness that left Harry frozen in shock. Even when he had attempted to open his mouth to refute such claims, he had found himself under a silencing spell before he could utter a single word.

His sentence might not have been so harsh, he had been informed, if not for his claims that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was truly responsible for the boy's death. The impersonation of a Dark Lord - particularly one who had caused so much death and destruction - was a serious crime indeed, and one that 'could not be overlooked'.

After the older woman had left, and the spells holding him in place and silent had finally worn off, Harry had still found himself unable to move. The cot in his tiny cell had been hard and lumpy, but no worse than the one he had suffered through every summer at the Dursley's, and he had ignored the protests of his body as easily then as he ever had during those helling weeks with his aunt, uncle and cousin.

How long before the numbness had worn off? He couldn't be certain, just like he couldn't be certain how long he had been unconscious before his 'meeting' with Madame Bones. had they planned it that way? To keep him confused, disoriented, unable to center himself or find some kind of common ground?

Madame Bones truly believed what she had been saying - of that Harry had no doubt. But then, The Wizarding World had always been very sure of themselves - sure of his guilt, of his need to seek attention, of the fact that he had been pampered all his life. It seemed that everything that was taken as common knowledge, everything that was accepted as cold hard truth ... all of these things were lies, dressed up and paraded around until nobody even thought to question them.

They certainly hadn't thought to question him - about this childhood, or about this culpability in the death of Cedric Diggory.

Hands balling into fists, Harry had shoved himself away from the cot and began pacing from one end of his tiny cell to another, shoving his hands through his hair and holding it in place, back away from his forehead. He had been anxious, unsure of himself, unsure what he could do - if there was anything. It had taken his godfather over a decade to bust free of this place - and then he had only managed it because of his hidden talent as an animagus.

They had already decided on his guilt - Harry had known that. He had never been able to lie to himself - not for long, anyway. Even his childhood fantasies of having a family who loved him had been short lived - everybody else around him lied and played games, but he had never managed it quite as well as the Dursleys. Perhaps it was because so much of his life was made up out of lies that he was unable to do the same - the reason why he was always honest with himself, even with it hurt too much to contemplate.

Harry had no way of knowing that nearly a week had already passed before he had initially re-gained consciousness; a week during which Hermione Granger had stayed steadfast in her belief that her best friend was not a murderer, that he had not lied. A week during which Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonnogal, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and even the loyal Hagrid had turned their backs on The Boy Who Lived and refused to offer the smallest of help. In that first week that he had spent unconscious, even the smallest of voices might have done wonders toward seeing him released, toward seeing Harry Potter receiving even the smallest shred of decency from the Wizarding World.

But fear ran deep in this world of secrets and hidden shame, and it dwelt within the hearts of even the most steadfast of Gryffindors.

It resided in Ron Weasley - a fear of Lord Voldemort, a figure whose name he could not even utter. Fear that he would end up just like Cedric Diggory. Fear that everything he had gone through with Harry and Hermione would be for naught, for how could he - the least impressive of all his siblings - hope to stand against that sort of evil? Better to send Harry away . . . better to have a best friend alive and in prison, than dead at the hands of a man who frightened the entirety of his world.

Ron would have fought, if he thought he had a chance. He would have fought, it somebody had given him the chance. It was not cowardice that held him back, but ignorance. His family, his friends, the people he had looked up to his entire life . . . every single one had turned their backs on Harry. To fight for his release would be to take resources that would be put to better use against the newly resurrected Voldemort - Ron understood this. At his core he was a strategist, but it was only in recent times that he had come to understand that the strategies he used in chess could be applied to the real world, as well. This understanding had begun in first year, when he had sacrificed himself in order to ensure that Harry and Hermione could continue on, ever closer to the Philosopher's Stone.

And now, he was being forced to sacrifice his best friend, so that the war could continue. So that Harry might survive a war that no teenager could ever hope to fight by themselves. Harry was brave, and strong, and intelligent - but he was only one person. It wasn't cowardice that held Ron back, but bravery.

Or at least that was what he kept telling himself.

The fear existed in Albus Dumbledore, as well. His fear did not dwell with Lord Voldemort - known to him in the privacy of his own mind as Tom Riddle - but rather it dwelt with the young Harry Potter.

Harry should not have survived his duel with Riddle. Albus knew this; he himself would be hard pressed to survive in a battle one-on-one against Tom, particularly this new and improved version who had managed to return to life through very old, and very powerful magics. The kind of magic that had been banned for centuries - the kind whose very existence could shatter the Wizarding World. The very thought that such magic existed had been suppressed for so long, that to study them never even registered as a possibility in the minds of Wizarding Folk; one could not bring the dead back to life, just as one could not travel into the future, or even very far into the past. These were accepted truths, never questioned by the public or even the the researchers who dedicated their lives to finding new and improved ways of using magic to help in the everyday lives of their peers. Such 'researchers', after all, were only working with spells and incantations which had already been around since well before they had been born - they were simply finding new ways to combine them for the most mundane of actions. Cleaning, healing, even pranks and jokes - these were the limits of the field of 'research' in the Wizarding World.

Albus knew, however, just what could be done if one truly threw off the chains of political correctness, if one could truly move past their fear and see the depths into which one could reach for magical understanding. He had been tempted, once upon a time, by the ideas of the former Dark Lord Grindewald. But in the end, he had come to his senses, as the young Tom Riddle had not.

And, it seemed, the young Harry Potter did not understand just what he had done when he had survived this particular encounter with 'Voldemort'. His survival at the hands of Voldemort as a baby had only been accepted by the public at large because he was a -baby- . . . if his parents had survived instead of him, they would have been shunned and feared, questioned at every turn. Azkaban would have been two good for them. The sentence of Dementors would have been too good for ones such as they.

But Harry wasn't a baby any longer - and the public would be much less forgiving of one as old as he having such power - and being willing to use it.

Albus had hoped to protect Harry from the horror of his own power - he had hoped to protect him from his own ability to use that power. If Harry had shied away from it, if he had shown the proper respect for his magic, Albus might have been able to save him.

Then again, to do so would have meant that he never would have survived even one encounter with Tom Riddle.

It was Harry's own willingness to go farther than any sane person - to reach into the depths of his magic as far as he could ... this was what truly frightened him. It had frightened him in the young Tom Riddle, as well, and it was that comparison which led to his inability to help the young man. If he was willing to go down that path - if was willing to seek forbidden knowledge, to take advantage of magic in such forbidden ways ... there was nothing Albus could do, then.

Fear resided in Molly and Arthur Weasley in a way wholly different from that of their son, or even the aged Headmaster Dumbledore, however. Their fear was much more common, much more mundane - and much easier to understand.

Their fear lay in the direction of their children. Human beings are primarily selfish creatures, after all - we look after our own, above and beyond the health and wellbeing of strangers. They may have loved Harry, and they may have cared for Hermione a great deal. But neither of these two were their children, and their love for their own kin had quickly turned to fear at the thought of what could happen to Ron, or Ginny, or even Fred or George. What could Harry's revelations that awful night over a week ago, now, mean? What would it mean for their children, their home, all the people they loved?

So they went to Albus Dumbledore, leader of the light, asking the same question that so many were asking - the same question that Harry would later ask upon his awakening. What do we do? What can we do?

Do nothing, they were told. Disavow any knowledge of Lord Voldemort's return. Do not even hint that you might believe Mr. Potter, whether you do or not. Protect your family, hold them close, and await further instructions from The Order of the Phoenix.

And so the cycle of fear continued. Even Harry was not immune to it, upon his awakening. How could one not be frightened, faced with Azkaban Prison and the horrors that awaited there?

The longer Harry paced, the more the fear grew. It came with the screams and moans of the other prisoners, it came with the chill and the despair of the Dementors. They never passed too close, but even with the distance between them he could feel their presence.

The fear grew with the knowledge that he held no wand, no ability to cast even the simplest of spells. It grew with the realization that he would never again hold his wand - had it been snapped? Had somebody saved it? He was inclined to believe the former before the latter.

That night, he spent curled up in his cot, shivering in the cold and trying valiantly to conserve what little body heat he had. He had always been a thin child, and in his teenage years he had fared no better; he was still skinny, still underfed, still too thin to be considered healthy.

The thin, threadbare blanket was his only source of warmth, but even that did little good. So The Boy Who Lived spent the first of many nights curled up with his knees pressed almost to his chest, arms wrapped around himself in a futile attempt to keep warm.

Harry wasn't sure how long he stayed in that position, for there was no window in his tiny cell, and the screams of his neighbors never really abated; the voices changed slightly, but as one began to quiet, another would take it's place.

He came to measure time over the next several days by the arrival of the single, small meal that he was given. Was it noon? Night? Morning? He had no way of knowing. He did know that attempting to speak to the guard that carried it, or even attempting to approach the door to his cell, would not be tolerated. The first time he attempted it, a stinging hex lashed across his chest, more forceful than anything he had experienced in school yard fights with Malfoy or the other Slytherins. Certainly, it wasn't worse than the pain of the Cruciatus . . . but it was more unexpected.

He hadn't tried it again, after that.

Now, he waited until he heard the guard's steps retreating down the hall before he made his way to retrieve his meal, not even bothering to take notice of what he was eating. He was eating to keep his body alive now, not to enjoy anything he was forcing down his throat.

By this measurement of time, it had been nearly a month since he first began to take notice of the days - certainly there had been days before this that he had not bothered with. But he had been here for a month, of this he was certain.

The guards of Azkaban were a surly lot, watching him with dark gazes no matter how careful he was to remain as still and quiet as possible when they came with his single, solitary meal. They believed him to be a liar, a traitor - a felon who was willing to prey upon the most basic of fears in order to see a personal gain.

He should have known that their restraint wouldn't last.

The first time a guard entered his cell, he was asleep. He slept fitfully, nearly always in that place between sleeping and waking where everything took on a hazy quality - as though reality were far away, a dream that would pass away and leave naught but a passing feeling of unease.

This was real. He knew that - his mind had not snapped so early under the weight of the horrors of this place. But that sense of a dream, of the world being far away . . . the only times he truly shook it were when he first woke.

He much preferred the sense of surrealness.

But that day, when the guard slipped into his room, he had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, curled up on his tiny cot to preserve what little warmth he had managed to gather.

He hadn't learned the art of sleeping with his back to the wall quiet yet - hadn't learned that he had anything to fear from the men and women who guarded this prison.

He didn't like to think of that first day - the first time he had learned just how much hate these guards harbored for him, and his supposed lies.

The beatings came regularly, after that day. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for when they came to his cell. But they came every day. There was only one guard a day, and for that he was thankful. And they were always men who came - physically fit, their blows reigning down on him no matter how he begged them to stop. He learned early on that such pleas not only fell on deaf ears, but also angered the guards.

He didn't fight back after those first few visits. He was a fast learner - he always had been - and it did not take a genius to understand that making any attempt to defend himself only angered them more.

They never broke bones, or caused any permanent damage. But still, the pain had yet to subside by the time they came around the next day. Pain was his constant companion. Pain, and cold, and misery.

Two weeks after the beatings began, they became sexual in nature. It was always the same guard to made the advances, never any of the others. Did they know that he had taken things to this new level? Harry dared not ask, for he had learned long ago that any attempt at communication on his part would not be well received.

Three days after that he made his bid for freedom.

To say that he fought back, or attempted to escape would not be an accurate representation of the events that unfolded that day. Harry was, after all, an adolescent who had not managed to complete his magical schooling. His magic, like the magic of all wizarding children, was wild and in need of tempering - something he would have received at any number of Wizarding Schools.

Since he had first woken in Azkaban, Harry had found his emotions oddly flat - as though nothing mattered any more. He had been branded a criminal, and a traitor. His continued survival was naught but habit at this point. Death would take too much effort - it was, quite simply, easier to continue the habit of sleeping, eating, and just generally surviving.

But that day, as rough hands moved down to grip his hips, his magic finally reacted to the desperation of his thoughts. He knew what was coming - pain, humiliation, and degradation. His body used, against his will, for the sick pleasure of another.

When his magic finally burst forward to protect him, it did so in a dazzling display of power. The auror was thrown across the room to slam into the far wall, and Harry found himself facing an open jail cell - and the knowledge that none of the other guards were expected for quite some time.

These "sessions" normally lasted for at least an hour, if not longer. During that time, both dementors and aurors were nowhere to be found. This was largely do the fact that they happened in the middle of the night shift, though Harry had no way of knowing that at the time.

The stone hallway was cold against his bare feet, but Harry dared not slow down - not even when his feet began to ache, or sharp pains began to travel up his legs. Corridor after corridor he raced down, taking one sharp turn after another - utterly lost and with no hope of finding his way back to his cell.

Where was he running to? The question never crossed his mind. He was running on instinct and adrenaline now, and it wasn't long before his body began to protest, his energy and will to continue fleeing draining away.

He was still wearing his school robes, and as his hand reached up to press against his rapidly beating heart, his fingers brushed against the Gryffindor crest that still rested there.

Features twisting into an expression of rage, he gripped the crest tightly and flung it away from himself, hardly even noticing when the cloth of his robes ripped. His other hand reached over to steady himself on the cool stone of the wall for support.