Time had passed from the end of December to the end of March, and the world was in the midst of a blossoming spring. Many diagnostic spells showed that Harry's body was gradually recovering, and the anxiety that had been hanging over him was finally easing.
He began to reflect on himself, wondering what had happened to him. He couldn't explain why he had been so out of control, so frantic.
Of course, the Dark Lord had told himself that Harry was still useful, with that mysterious power that would enable him to achieve immortality. What was it? He still didn't have an answer. So how could Harry die? He couldn't tolerate this loss of control.
And those Death Eaters, Voldemort was truly furious. He hadn't been this angry in decades. Is this how they completed their master's tasks? He specifically ordered, "Don't play it to death, he still has use." Yet those Death Eaters resorted to torturous methods to prolong their lives, literally fulfilling the "don't play it to death" instruction. They were quite something! He was determined to make those Death Eaters pay with their lives.
Recently, Harry had finally shown signs of life instead of the previous lifelessness. He seemed to be trapped in a long nightmare. He trembled, struggled, and groaned in pain, sometimes murmuring a few words in his sleep, "No," "I'm sorry" - those were his common utterances. But Harry had never said "Save me" in his sleep, which Voldemort had expected to hear. He sat by the bedside, holding Harry's hand, but couldn't utter the words "I'll save you."
Then, on this day, Harry woke up. He saw Voldemort and reacted strongly, almost with a teary voice, trembling all over as he apologized, "I was wrong! I won't dare again-"
"It's good that you won't dare-" Voldemort didn't finish his sentence.
"Father... please, just kill me directly..."
Voldemort was almost furious. He had put in so much effort to wake him up, not for Harry to wake up and seek death.
Harry visibly recoiled due to Voldemort's anger. He had to suppress the fire and soften his voice a bit. "Don't think about anything else, focus on healing first." He lightly patted Harry's shoulder, attempting to comfort the child. But the moment he touched him, Harry trembled violently, muscles tensed, and even his breath held. His emerald green eyes looked at him in fear, like a startled little creature.
He reluctantly let go of Harry, feeling bored.
Then he saw Harry reach for the wand on the pillow. The movement was swift, without hesitation, as he aimed the wand at himself. "Avada Kedavra." The tip of the wand emitted a flash of green light.
Voldemort had not anticipated that Harry would want to commit suicide, so he quickly cast a barrier spell to block it, narrowly avoiding the curse. His heart raced.
"What are you doing?!"
"..." Harry didn't speak but shrank back because of Voldemort's voice.
"How dare you try to die without my permission?" Voldemort angrily questioned.
After speaking, Voldemort immediately used the Sleeping Curse to make Harry fall asleep again. Harry wanted to die? He would never allow such a thing to happen. So he cast a curse that prohibited any action from Harry with the purpose of "killing himself."
Then he realized that, given Harry's current condition, it was impossible for him to wake up. He was awakened by the lingering effects of the excruciating pain. He quickly fell back into unconsciousness, then woke up in pain again, and the cycle repeated. The young boy's thin body appeared pale and cold, trembling with agony, looking so fragile. Yet whenever he was asked, Harry would always say, "I'm fine."
Afterward, Harry had more moments of clarity. He asked the house-elf to bring him lunch, although he had no appetite and just stared fixedly at the silver fork. Through Legilimency, Voldemort discovered that Harry was imagining himself thrusting the fork into his own neck. But he couldn't do it. The curse that prohibited suicide prevented Harry from carrying out any actions aimed at "killing oneself." In fact, with Harry's magical ability, he had the power to lift the curse. However, the purpose of Harry lifting the curse was to be able to kill himself, so the act of "lifting the curse" itself was also forbidden by the curse and impossible to perform from the beginning. Voldemort cunningly tied a knot around Harry's suicide attempt.
"..." Seeing Harry fixated on the dining fork, imagining using it to end his own life, staring at the window with thoughts of jumping out, seemingly contemplating ways to use anything to kill himself, Voldemort remained annoyed but restrained himself from erupting again. Harry's current condition was truly terrible—extremely weak, his body showing no signs of improvement. Every time Voldemort saw him, his spirits would plummet, his condition would worsen, and he would tremble, unable to sustain himself for long before slipping into unconsciousness again. Voldemort felt some resentment, but ultimately, he couldn't further provoke Harry. He knew that many of the magic he used to heal Harry required the cooperation of Harry's own mental state. If Harry continued like this, he wouldn't survive.
Voldemort summoned a chief healer responsible for critical care from St. Mungo's Hospital, known as the "Dark Prince." He ordered her to take good care of Harry. Meanwhile, he avoided meeting Harry himself, hoping that Harry's mental state would improve slightly. The healer had heard of the Dark Prince's reputation and initially refused to treat him, vowing that she would rather die than attend to him. However, Voldemort used her family and friends as leverage, and she had no choice but to comply. Voldemort inwardly mocked, for those who had loved ones were weak and easily manipulated.
"Please... kill me..." Harry almost pleaded with the healer.
"Don't talk nonsense. You're still a child. How can you die like this?" The healer's tone softened. Ever since she discovered that the patient was a tortured fourteen-year-old child, she had ceased to harbor any hostility. Voldemort knew he could temporarily leave without worry, though he would continue to monitor the place with magic.
After a few days, Harry's body finally slowly recovered enough for him to get out of bed and move around, without constantly falling into unconsciousness. However, his condition didn't continue to improve. The healer had tried her best, but Harry's mental state was severely affecting his physical health. Voldemort knew that the healer was no longer of any use. He returned to the room, intending to kill the healer.
"Father, please don't..." Harry's weak voice trailed off but sounded resolute. "I beg you, don't kill her..."
Neither of them realized that Harry's words were almost identical to their previous confrontation. Who remember the promised "I was wrong, I won't dare again"?
Thankfully, Voldemort considered Harry's physical condition and didn't argue further. He simply asked, "She knows too many of our secrets now. How can we spare her?"
"Use magic to forbid her from revealing anything... but please don't kill her..." Harry pleaded softly.
"..." Voldemort grunted but ultimately refrained from uttering the Killing Curse.
In the following days, Harry's body showed no signs of improvement and occasionally even worsened. Voldemort knew it was related to Harry's mental state. In the end, even he felt that Harry wouldn't survive like this. Voldemort squinted his eyes, observing the disobedient boy. Did he really just want to escape from him? Escape to the depths of death, a place Voldemort couldn't follow.
With a tone of impeccable goodwill, Voldemort offered Harry a choice, "Harry, I'll give you a chance to choose a side in this war. Stay and continue serving me or go help the Order of the Phoenix." Of course, deep down, the Dark Lord had already made up his mind. If Harry chose the latter, he would imprison Harry for eternity.
However, Harry didn't choose either. "Can I... remain neutral? I want to leave the magical world." The boy's voice was devoid of emotion, calm and indifferent.
Voldemort's anger flared again—Harry indeed wanted to leave him. This boy simply enjoyed defying his authority, freeing himself from his control, and challenging his plans.
"Sure." But he still agreed to the boy's request. What difference would it make if Harry left the magical world? Harry had always been nothing more than his guinea pig, running through the maze, all within his control.
Only death, the one place Harry could escape to and he couldn't find, remained. Harry's current state of mind was a direct path to death, a place he couldn't reach. Letting his little pet go out and relax would actually benefit them both. Yes, he wouldn't make the same mistake again. He wouldn't neglect Harry, this boy, this convenient tool, this eternal secret. He was worth his closer attention.
For a moment, he thought of that prophecy, then he mocked his own caution—after all, he had already achieved eternity. No one could kill him now, and with Harry's magic core injured and not yet fully recovered, he couldn't use any complicated and advanced magic. Setting Harry free posed no threat. The prophecy spoke of one defeating the other, and if it came to that, it could only be him defeating Harry.
"But, considering your current physical condition, is it really okay for you to leave home alone?" The Dark Lord raised an eyebrow, intentionally using phrasing he thought Harry would appreciate.
"It will be fine. I'm already okay!" Harry's eyes pleaded like he had caught a lifeline, and Voldemort saw it.
"Alright then, if you encounter any difficulties, you can come back anytime." Voldemort felt like he was the epitome of a textbook-perfect father.
After dealing with Harry's minor emotions, he had another matter to attend to—it had been three months, and he finally had some free time. He would go and kill those who tortured Harry, torment them to death! Every Death Eater who had laid a hand on Harry! Not one would be spared!
Meanwhile, Harry hastily left the Slytherin castle, even leaving the magical world altogether. He wanted to escape the past so desperately that he didn't even bring his wand.
It was like the mockery of fate. After enduring ten nightmare-filled years he didn't want to look back upon, he found himself wandering the streets of the Muggle world once again.
Steven Cotton, a physics teacher at a secondary school, always paid special attention to teenagers in their early teens. So when he and his wife went out on a date and saw someone clearly underage working at the restaurant, he couldn't help but speak up, "How old are you? At your age, you should be in school."
The boy's hand froze halfway up, and he paused, not expecting him to say that. "School?" He blinked his emerald eyes, as if he had never even considered the question.
"Is there some difficulty?" Mr. Cotton only then noticed that the young man was extremely thin and frail. He wondered why he hadn't immediately noticed such an obvious thing. The boy was abnormally thin.
"I don't have any money." The boy's voice was soft and pleasant.
But Mr. Cotton wanted to say that this shouldn't be a problem. Both he and his wife were in the education industry and happened to be familiar with the situation. They knew there were many public funds and scholarships available to help him. This was Oxfordshire, the most academically oriented place in the UK. How could they let a child who wanted to go to school but couldn't attend?
So the kind-hearted Mr. Cotton inquired about the boy's basic situation and learned that he was an orphan who had been wandering and out of school. He then explained how to apply for scholarships, the compulsory education system in the UK, and how to apply for admission. "In this way... like this... you can apply to our school."
After the conversation ended and the polite boy thanked them and left, Claire Byran, Mr. Cotton's wife, who had been silently eating next to him, looked at the boy's figure and wondered, "It's really strange. He seems to know nothing about this society. Normally, homeless children should be more aware."
Mr. Cotton frowned, "Now that you mention it, it is a bit stran - But in the end, Asimov ended up with theology. How can he use 'let there be light' to conclude a problem of entropy increase?"
"I actually find this ending beautiful. The pursuit of science leads to the same kind of artistic conception, the path of human civilization towards divinity~" Claire laughed. They seemed to have completely missed the fact that their conversation had suddenly shifted.
Not far away, the boy with green eyes finished casting a silent and wandless Confundus Charm and continued to carry his tray.
Jess Scott thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention. All of his classmates loved listening to his stories, which were about magic, war, and justice. It was a long-lasting war with a wicked Dark Lord, accompanied by a malevolent Dark Prince and a group of followers called Death Eaters, wreaking havoc in the world. There were also wise and mighty headmasters, powerful Aurors, protecting world peace as the forces of light.
Everyone thought his stories were fantastic, but only he knew that he was simply retelling daily news from The Prophet and other tabloids. However, storytelling required skills, and he was adept at creating a captivating atmosphere. That was his talent.
Oh, what about Wizardry Confidentiality Act? It's just storytelling, none of his classmates took it seriously, so how could it be considered a breach of secrecy? Moreover, the war was ongoing, and as a Muggle-born who was already unwelcome in the wizarding world, having dropped out of Hogwarts to study in the Muggle world, he had no intention of returning to the magical realm. He could do as he pleased.
The best part was the feeling of being adored by everyone. His classmates loved listening to his stories, except... except for the newcomer.
Jess's gaze fell on the back of the student's head in front of him. The new transfer student. Harry Vance, a handsome but excessively thin boy with worrying health conditions and a peculiar personality. He didn't speak and had no friends. Every day, he seemed solely focused on reading and studying, as if nothing else could pique his interest. What a dull person. Jess usually paid close attention to the gossip in the class. When Harry first arrived, many boys and girls were attracted to him, but the overly dull nature of his personality discouraged them before they even delivered their love letters. Such a character might become a target for bullying. The bullies in school loved to target students who only cared about studying, or so Jess thought.
At that moment, Mr. Cotton, the science teacher, posed a question for the students to answer. Jess lowered his head, hoping he wouldn't be called upon. But he heard Mr. Cotton say, "Harry, what do you think?"
Harry calmly provided the correct answer.
Jess was puzzled once again. Harry had initially performed poorly and didn't know anything when he first arrived. How could he suddenly answer correctly in such a short time?
And why didn't he enjoy listening to Jess's stories? Every time Jess started telling a story, Harry would immediately leave. Why? Did Harry dislike him? What had he done to offend him?
These were the questions occupying Jess Scott's mind in today's class.
Harry felt that his luck was truly terrible.
He only wanted to escape his past, to distance himself from it as far as possible. Yet his new classmates constantly brought it to life, vividly reminding him of it. Whenever Harry thought of his father and those suffocatingly dark memories, his face would turn pale.
Harry had no choice but to run away.
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