Harry:

The cell was dark and gloomy. The floor and the walls were lined with filth and the bed he was sitting upon was made of some kind of metal and was hard and unforgivingly cold. A single thin mattress, dirty and lined with holes served as meager protection against the cold. On the bed lay a man who looked about 25 years old. His dark hair were rumpled carelessly and his green almond shaped eyes seemingly glinted in the darkness of the damp cell. His face was a pale white and His leg was bent in a way it shouldn't be, most assuredly broken. Jagged bones formed tents in his skin piercing it in some places so a whiteness was exposed to the environment, almost like the tip of an iceberg in the Antarctic ocean.

Despite the obvious discomfort Harry must have been in, he was humming a merry tune under his breath. His plan had worked as perfectly as one could hope for.

When he'd designed the ritual, he knew that his muscles would atrophy and he would be a weakling upon awakening. This could only be rectified if a runic spell was placed upon him. The problem with this was that some runes could be activated only when they received a signal from the magical signature of the person who had created them and the ritual required him to use these runes. As Nathaniel had been the one to draw them, only he would have been able to activate the spell that returned his former strength and form. The only problem was that Nathaniel would be dead when he woke up. So he had to tinkered with the specifics of the ritual and modified it so the muscle replenishing runes thought the dropping of Nathaniel's ward was the signal from his magical signature to begin restoring his health.

It had been an unpleasant prospect, being exposed like that when he was weak. They had considered using two wards, one he could drop and gain strength while the other still functioned but that was risky. Ward maintaining used his magic and if he used a lot of magic, then chances were he would wake up earlier and still be insane so he needed all his magic to be focused upon his occlumency for his healing. So they'd finally settled on one ward. Durza's attack, howevever unpleasant, brought about only a slight glitch in his plans. And even that had worked in his favour. He was now alone in a cell, undisturbed while he regained his physical strength and began looking years younger.

Harry sighed as his knee suddenly popped back into place and bone shards were fused back together with the main piece and stopped humming. The runic magic had taken approximately 16 hours to complete its work. It's job being to return him to exactly the same physical condition he'd been in when he was in his prime. He'd used this runic sequence plenty of times whenever his bones became weak and his joints annoyed him.

Harry knew he was the greatest master of magic alive. He had performed magics of the sort no living soul had even dreamed about, he'd created whole fields of magic and extensively studied everything about wand magic, soul magic, voice magics, animagus magic and even expanded the ridiculously arcane and difficult fields. He'd even performed every ritual for physical enhancement that was ever created. He was many times faster than a vampire now, his skin couldn't be cut by anything from the outside nor could he be burnt, his spinal cord was unbreakable as was his skull. The same magic however would not work on his limbs or rib cage unfortunately. His eyesight was so sharp that he could count the individual legs of a caterpillar that was 10 meters away from him and his night vision was better than an owls. His body was impervious to poison, he'd had to use the blood from a phoenix for that particular ritual, his reflexes were so fast it was ridiculous. His hearing was so good, he could hear the wings of a fly beating on the other side of a wall. His eyes and earbuds were undamagable. His nose was so enhanced by his rituals, he could smell heat. He could tell the ingredients of most potions by sniffing them once or if the postion was too complicated, then by drinking a spoonful. The taste and smell helping him. He'd performed so many rituals upon himself that he didn't even remember all of them.

And this, was exactly the reason why he'd gone mad, doing these rituals required a person to cut runes into his own body, the rituals could last for hours on end and could drive you insane. Some of them were so dark even Voldemort wouldn't have performed them. Blood Rituals had existed since before wand magic and they were the oldest form of magic known to wizards after normal runic magic.

He sat up in his cell and walked a few steps towards the cell door, his thoughts shifting to the woman they'd brought in after him.

She was carried between two burly men, unconscious. Her midnight black hair covering her face shifted every time the men took a step forward and revealed a heart wrenchingly beautiful face. His blood burned feverishly and he felt a strange emotion bubble in his throat. Harry's mind registered it faintly as a mixture of possessiveness and protectiveness.

She was dressed in dark leather pants and a shirt that was torn and showed dark wounds underneath. Wrapped around her waist was a leather belt from which hung an empty sheath on her right hip. Knee high boots covered her calves and her small feet.

Harry knew that he was going to take the woman with him when he left. Maybe it was an impulsive, irrational decision but he didn't care.

Harry grabbed at a portion of thin air and pulled. Suddenly his lightspeed 2000(his broomstick), his wand, the stone and his invisibility cloak became visible. He had wrapped his invisibility cloak around them and then charmed it to follow him before dropping the wards.

He put on the ring and then shrunk his broomstick and pocketed it. He put on his cloak and pointed his wand at the cell door.

"Alohomora"

The door refused to budge.

He tried again but the door stubbornly stayed put. Frowning, he sent tendrils of magic towards the door and saw strange strings of energy binding the door shut, he focused on them and sent a cutting charm at it. It passed through harmlessly. Whatever magic they used, it was apparently different from his own brand of magic. He sighed, sending forth a magical probe, he tried to untie the knots of energy. His effort failed.

Four hours later, harry still stood in front of the door, everything he tried had failed. He could, of course apparate out, but he didn't want to. Every time he looked at the cell door, he felt as if it was mocking him. To him, this door was a challenge.

He imagined the door speaking.

"Hah, so powerful! But can't undo a simple spell. Take that you stupid wizard."

In his imagination the door was sticking its tongue out at doors words were ringing in his head. Undo a simple spell?

He sighed, if this worked, then it didn't matter because the door would still win. The sheer stupidity of him working for four hours trying to get it open when such a simple spell would have sufficed showed that the blasted door had fooled him utterly.

"Finite."

The ward dropped.

"You've got to be kidding me. Really? A simple finite?"

The door smirked at him smugly.

He pushed it open and began searching for the woman.

An imaginary voice inside his head started singing.

Harry's in love, Harry's in love. Tra LA LA LA LA.

Shut up will you? We just saw her. We can't be in love with her already.

Why?

Because I said so.

The voice fell silent. Harry was puzzled, his thoughts were organised, he was no longer insane, but now he was capable of carrying out conversations with himself inside his head?

Magic sometimes had side effects.

The corridors of the prison were dark and gloomy, he began sending out legilimency probes to see if someone knew where the woman was. He turned right as corridor split in two and continued his search. A door at the opposite end of the corridor he was in opened opened and a soldier walked out. He had a bottle of beer in one hand and was clearly intoxicated. He attacked the soldiers mind, searching for the cell of the woman.

What he learnt terrified him to the core of his very being. According to the soldier, she was the shades personal plaything. Normally this would disgust a person, but Harry knew that shades had no interest in sex but they loved giving pain. She would be going through hell right now.

Quickly he noted that the shade was in deepest part of the dungeons. He cast an imperius on the man, followed by an extremely over-powered notice-me-not charm on both of them and forced him to lead him all the way to the chamber where the shade was "playing" with her. They passed a few people, mostly soldiers but none of them took notice of them.

Screams rent the air and cut off suddenly, then a gurgling sounds like someone forced to drink something they'd rather not. The smell of burnt flesh followed immediately after.

Not needing the soldier anymore, he stunned him and followed the smell.

He was in front of the four doored room again. This time 2 women and 2 men stood guard around it. Harry knew that the notice-me-not was not going to fool them. His fears were confirmed as they promptly attacked him on the mental plane, he deflected their probes aside with sharp jabs of his own legilimency, and they fell unconcious, their minds turned to mush. What happens when a fly hits the windshield of a car going at 80? Splat!

He entered the room. The woman was laid on a red glowing table naked. Her entire torso covered with burns and claw marks. Red hot knives pierced her hands and feet, holding her down. Her eyes and ears were both missing. The shades mouth was dripping with blackish liquid.

"The venom" he thought despairingly. The spirits of his time had known no cure. He hoped people belonging to the present time would know. The woman was awake and fully conscious. Something was being poured into her mouth, something hot that glowed orange. A gurgle issued, she was blowing air out, as if trying to cool the liquid but then she inhaled... And harry winced.

He pointed his wand at the shade and threw a bludgeoning curse.

The shade flew away from the woman and hit the opposite wall but he got up immediately, snarling.

A ball of menacing red light was thrown at him. He dodged. He conjured a block of glass banishing it towards the shade. The shade dropped to the ground and the glass burst into tiny shards hitting the wall behind him. Harry smiled, his plan was going to work.

Durza stared at him in disbelief, "is that the best you've got? Surely you didn't think you'd be able to kill me so easily?"

In the corner, Harry saw the liquid fire burning its way slowly Into the woman's throat and lungs. Judging from the coughing and wheezing, she wouldn't last long.

He turned his attention back to the shade, who was attacking his mind with abandon. It was annoying to say the least.

He had to end this fight and he had to end it now.

He called upon every little bit of legilimency he possessed. Refining it into a sharp point, he attacked Durza with everything he had. 100,000 years of refinement and practice and Durza was driven to the knee trying to hold back the onslaught. Harry doubled his effort and Durza's defenses split apart. He dove into his mind and copied every single memory into his mind. He was done within seconds, spirits couldn't die and were immortal. So if he absorbed their memories, he could learn about centuries of history.

He knew that Durza was only momentarily overwhelmed, shades were resilient to the extreme. Harry had been able to rip his mind open so easily only because the shade wasn't expecting it.

"Jierda"

Harry saw as energy left Durza's body. Be threw up a protego shield and grunted. His skull felt like someone had tried to break it open with a sledgehammer. His shield charm hadn't worked as well as he'd hoped but his runes worked perfectly. Something strange, however, was happening to Durza. He had dropped suddenly and was lying gasping on the floor. Like someone had literally sapped all energy out of him.

"How?" He said between panted breaths, "this should not BE possible."

"Do you know the story of the cat who was curious?"

Durza got up warily, shaking his head.

Harry pointed his wand at durza summoning the broken glass behind him. Durza went into a crouch expecting an attack from in front. Literally a thousand shards of glass pierced the unsuspecting man in his back and then came out the other side.

He let out a terrifying scream and began smoking and abruptly vanished.

Softly Harry whispered, "It died."

Harry turned towards the woman. The fighting hadn't even lasted a minute. He moved closer to her and saw that the table she was laid upon wasn't coloured red. It was actually grey coloured iron heated until it glowed red. He was amazed, no human could have survived something like this! He tried levitating her off, but something blocked him.

Someone had cast a tricky ward on this bed, it wouldn't let an occupant leave unless someone else took her place. It wasn't simple enough to be finite'd.

Grunting he cast a switching spell on her. Now she rested on the floor but he was on the bed.

To be honest, it HURT! He couldn't be burnt, but he could feel the pain. He shut down the part of his brain that screamed at him to get out and focused on the woman. He cast a diagnostic charm on her, she was barely alive! Swearing, he cast a few healing spells on her, until her body was in a more or less survivable shape.

He looked around for an object to transfigure, into the shape of a human.

The room was littered with torture devices but none of them reacted to his magic, they were warded against magic! Durza was good, even with his victim tied on a torture bed, he still wasn't going to risk being attacked by a transfigured or charmed object.

He began a conjuration frustrated. He had never before conjured a human being. This would take a brief while, he considered breaking the ward, but discarded the thought. He didn't know enough about their magics. He could brute force it and break it of course, but it could result in the destruction of the whole building. He wasn't going to risk it.

About 15 minutes later, Harry stood beside the woman, the body he'd conjured hadn't burnt to a crisp like he'd thought it would. Some magic on that bed kept people alive while burning them.

He picked her up. The easiest way of getting out of here would be an apparition. To do that, he would need a location. He couldn't view the shades memories now as they were locked away in his head and if he opened them, he'd have to see through all of them in one sitting or risk losing them altogether.

He nudged at the woman's mind. She had strong shields! He nudged a little harder and then grimaced. She was conscious inside her mind and was sending vicious probes from her mind into his own.

Unwilling to harm her, he let her think she'd won and she entered the outermost section of his mind. He threw up his shields once more, trapping her inside his mind.

She was panicking but harry sent calming energy towards her using his occlumency. She was in his mind and could be influenced by his occlumency now.

"I am not your enemy, the shade is dead and you are weak. We need to escape from here as soon as we can. I have a spell that can take us wherever it is you want to go."

Her presence in his mind blinked.

"I don't believe you nor do I trust you. Your words are sweet, but this prison is not."

She gestured towards the walls around his mind.

Harry sighed. He pushed the memory of his encounter with Durza to the forefront of his mind. What was it with everything going absurdly wrong this day?

He knew the second she gained a measure of trust in him.

"Only a fool would kill a person he saved. I have neither a reason nor any irrational inclination to harm you. We must leave, you are weaker than you can imagine. The shades poison-" Harry said.

"I am well aware of what a shades poison- is capable of doing sir but there is something in this city that I need and I would ask for your help in retrieving it.

There was a sense of urgency about her mind that made harry believe this was important.

Well, he'd made so many foolish decisions today, he could make one more.

He nodded at her presence.

"Tell me more."

"There's a dragons egg, hidden somewhere in the city. The shade-Durza, he was the one protecting it. He's gone now but he'll come back in a day or two. I need to find it and take it with me."

"Madam." Harry forced the word through his throat, it sounded wrong. "You're being unreasonable, surely, a dragon egg is not worth so much trouble?"

Why did she want a dragons egg?

"Maybe she's one of Hagrids distant relatives" the voice inside his head suggested.

Harry nodded to himself. That would make sense. God if Hagrid's madness ran in blood, then half the world would be infected by now.

"You fool, dont you understand the importance of this matter? It's a rider egg. We must take it with us!"

Harry sighed, nothing the woman said was making sense.

"At least Show me what it looks like madam."

She sent 4 pictures, one each of a red, green, brown and grey egg.

"It could be any of them."

Harry gave her a mental nod.

"I need a picture of a deserted street in this city."

A hesitance, then a picture was forwarded.

Harry lowered the walls around his mind and the woman escaped back to her body.

He had an object to find. He cast a disillusionment charm on himself, the feeling of sticky liquids flowing down his body never failed to unnerve him. Charming his cloak to wrap around her, he grabbed her and apparated to the city above.

The first thing he noticed was the heat. By the gods, it was hot. The next thing he noticed was the air, it was so much cleaner than the air in the past. The third thing he noticed was how medieval everything looked.

The building's looked like they belonged to the 1200's. He peeked out of the alley he was standing in and was surprised to see that people were using horses. There were no cars or motorcycles anywhere.

This was troublesome. It seemed like he was back in the past instead of the future.

He shrugged it off and took out his wand. Placing it on his palm he whispered, "point me"

The wand tipped towards the right, harry followed while wandlessly levitating the woman behind him.

The spell fizzled out when he reached a decrepit looking building on the outskirts of the city in the middle of a barren field. He knew this was only an attempt to hide the building for what it truly was. A fortress, it emananted so much magic, he felt like he was drowning in it. He knocked on the woman's mind.

"Yes?"

"I've found the place."

"So soon?" Surprise emanated from her.

"Yes, I'm more than a 100% sure that we will be attacked as soon as I step through that gate. Can you become conscious for an hour. I cannot levitate you now, and I'd like to use your experience, do you know anything about wards?

He felt her mind edge towards the building. She gave a mental gasp when she saw it. Followed by a feeling of intense despair.

"We shan't be able to enter, sir, its too extensive, I'd thought the wards were tied to the shade himself but they aren't. They're tied to other people. I can't risk capture again. We need to leave."

Harry frowned. The woman hadn't meant to offend him, he knew that, but he was offended. In his mind he considered this a challenge and he never backed down from one.

"I am not accustomed to leaving a job half done. Rest if you will, I shall retrieve the blasted egg."

He withdrew from her mind despite her frantic calls, staring at the building. A look of intense concentration in his eyes.

He recognised a few of the wards or rather the purpose behind them. Rather nasty wards. They wouldn't just try to kill him but destroy his very soul and use the soul energy to make the wards stronger. He knew what to do.

Raising his wand, he sent a supercharged bolt of magic into the building. He was going to overload the death wards. If enough energy was sent into them, they would explode. A few seconds later a sharp crack tore through the quiet air. The death wards were down. He transfigured a rock into a dog and threw it over the gates. The wards reacted immediately, the dog was burnt to a crisp, but harry wasn't concerned with that. The air had rippled when he'd tossed the dog in. There were living people behind the gates and all of them were hiding behind an illusion. He wasn't able to sense their minds but that didn't concern him. Many potions were capable of reproducing the same effect in his time. This fight was going to turn into a bloodbath as soon as he brought down the wards. They wanted him to be as drained as possible before attacking and overwhelming him.

Harry grinned, the prospect of the upcoming fight sending adrenaline through his body.

"Finite"

The illusion fell and Harry stared surprised. There were atleast 50 magicians behind the gates. A slow smile crept onto his face. They hadn't realised he had removed their spell.

"Bombarda" the reddish spell flew from his wand, he'd massively over-powered it to compensate for the wards on the gate itself.

The spell hit the gate and it fell backward onto the lawn.

The magicians attacked his mind but the probes were deflected by his occlumency.

Two Huge gouts of flames were thrown at him. The searing heat burned him and he was blinded by the light. He couldn't burn, but feel the pain, he did. He shrugged it off. The pain was bothersome but not major. An arrow flew through the air, aimed right at his heart. He reached out and caught it, before sending it back with a flick of his wrist. A piercing scream rent the air and a figure fell, he grinned, satisfied. His magic was reacting to the adrenaline now and there was an aura of power about him. The wards protested against his continued advance and he let out a massive wave of magical energy, an almost translucent shield of energy surrounding him and protecting him from the wards onslaught.

Suddenly the world shifted and a pit opened in front of him and behind him. There was a second illusion which he hadn't dispelled! He was trapped! The magicians were standing around him in a circle. They attacked his mind again, trying to overwhelm him but he flicked them aside, exasperated. His mind was impregnable and his opponents knew it.

"They won't learn will they?" The voice in his head piped up.

"No they most certainly won't." Harry replied.

"Operation "I kill them now" is a go?" It said.

"Yes buddy, lets kill them now."

He grinned, the magicians were in strategically excellent places around him. 15 in front of him, 15 behind him and 10 to each side. When they attacked his mind, all of his occlumency barriers were engaged in defending him, disabling him from sending forward an attacking probe from anywhere. It would have been effective on anyone else.

Harry realised that they thought he was cornered. Hah! He let his barriers break down slightly towards the front of his mind. The magicians were in for a surprise.

Immediately the ones in front of him began attacking the spot with renewed fervour while the others intensified their attacks so he wouldn't be able to concentrate enough.

Harry let the 15 of them enter the front part of his mind before throwing up his occlumency barriers, trapping them inside just like he'd done to the woman. He raised his wand, ignoring their frightened thoughts inside his head. And swiped it in an arc, lazily.

"Sectumsempra"

Fifteen heads dropped to the ground and the presences in his head vanished, dying a sudden but quick death.

The other magicians were now desperately throwing spells at him. Strange words were issuing from there mouths, his head was pounding, someone had tried to break it again. A rather sinister, invisible spell headed towards him, he moved out of the way, but the spell followed him. That was the problem with their magic, it couldn't be dodged! He was reading the intentions of the people who were casting spells. This spell would melt his brain, another man cast a spell to turn and another magician, this time a woman, cast a spell to remove all water from his body.

He couldn't let those spells touch him. He quickly transfigured himself into a stone, the spells washing over him harmlessly. He hadnt put a lot of power into the spell, so the transfiguration would barely last a second at most.

He couldn't risk fighting for any longer. Their magic was too unorthodox and unpredictable.

Raising his wand he unleashed fiend fire. Great swirling flames incinerated every single one of the magicians around him. Instead of putting out the flames, he directed them towards the building's walls, the burning magical energy, weakening the remaining wards on it first then breaking them altogether. He raised his wand and summoned the troublesome dragons egg.

Suddenly Harry had a deep sense of foreboding. He had experimented with seers for a few centuries trying to learn the art himself. There had been a small problem. Becoming a seer was literally impossible. Seers were born, not made, but he hadn't given up and after centuries of testing, he'd given himself the ability to predict when he'd be in a truly life and death situation.

His "sixth sense" was now blinking like crazy in his head, like an aeroplane radar, except instead of small spots, the whole screen was covered.

He had triggered one of the defensive wards on the building. How a ward could still be standing, he didn't know. The amount of magical energy he'd released today was spectacular. The danger was not apparent, but his sixth sense had never failed him yet, neither had it ever malfunctioned. He was a 100% sure that his very existence was at a threat right now.

After a few moments, he noticed the eluding ward and cursed. The ward came up only if all the others were disabled and It was rigged. As soon as it was triggered, it would gain energy until it had enough to level the entire city and then explode. He knocked on the womans mind.

Something came flying out of one of the windows.

The egg!

He caught it and turned on the spot apparating beside the woman. The ward was almost charged. Not having any time, he cut through her lowered shields like knife through butter and retrieved one single image before grabbing her and turning on the spot, his mind faintly registering a roaring sound and the savage burning on his left arm.