Chapter Text
AZKABAN
(Time unknown, Day unknown, Month May, Location a random slab of stone in the middle of the sea)
"Thuuuuuuuu, sun will come out, tooomorroooow," Harry took a deep breath to bellow out the next line, "BET your bottom dollar that-"
"Shut the fuck up!" Fenrir Greyback snarled. Heh, snarled. Like the dog he is. "Motherfucker, I swear to Merlin-" Fenrir reminded himself to curse whoever had decided to put him on the same floor as Potter.
Oops. Harry must have said that out loud. Oh well, shame, Greyback probably won't play fetch with him now. He pouted at that thought. Some might say that Harry James Potter may have officially lost the plot. Harry would argue that he lost any sense of sanity many months ago and was simply too polite to announce it to the class.
"Oh my God, does this kid just not die? Like seriously, how is this kid not dead yet?" a new inmate groaned as Harry blathered out his thoughts while fixating on this particularly damp spot on the ceiling and watching water gather, only to fall in single drip, drip, drips, each one slow and fat and awful in a way that made it impossible to look away once he'd started.
The other inmates just laughed.
"Ittle bittle Potter can't die. No soul. Traded our Master's soul, he did, all gone." Bellatrix cackled.
Harry watched the water purse its lips before allowing a single drop of fresh water to fall, which he caught on his dry lips. Bellatrix was crazy. Harry was fine. He was not crazy. He wasn't... or had he just accepted he was? There was a rather unpleasantly philosophical question for a damp prison cell full of terrorists.
"Wait, that's Harry Potter?" Newbie exclaimed in shock.
Fenrir tapped the bars of his cell. "Yes. Yes, he is."
"The boy who lived, come to die a slow agonising death," Rabastan Lestrange murmured from his cell.
"That sounds like sympathy," Newbie said in disbelief.
"We're terrorists, Dave, not fucking psychopaths." Fenrir rolled his eyes.
Bella raised her hand.
"You're a sociopath, Bella."
The hand lowered.
Dave nervously raised his.
"My name isn't Dave," he stuttered.
Fenrir glared at him. "What did you just say, Dave?"
"Nothing, nothing. Dave is cool. I love Dave."
Silence tried to settle.
But nothing settled here. The waves were constantly angry, the wind howled and wept, the sky screamed its rage, and the inmates... well, the inmates wavered on death and life, sanity and insanity, until their soul was taken from them. It was a blessing, in a way. To be kissed. At least then the misery would end. And so that uneasy, never permanent silence stayed until Dave erupted.
"How have you not killed him?" It was a lively question, the question of an inmate who had just been brought in this morning and therefore had not yet learned that Azkaban ran on strange rules and stranger loyalties.
"I'd love to kill him," Bella mumbled from her cell. "I'd skin his bones and wear them like that beautiful minx scarf Mother used to drape across her neck. Oh, Rab, wasn't it wonderful..."
Rabastan sneered. "He was arrested for supposedly breaking and entering the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry and using an Unforgivable. Some of us think the balls it takes to do that should give him some leeway. Others still hate him for what he did as a babe."
"So he didn't do that?" Dave questioned.
"Oh no, the pup totally did," Fenrir cut in proudly.
"Fenrir, am I telling the story or you?" Rabastan snapped.
The werewolf stayed quiet.
"That's what I thought. As I was saying, the kid came alone, from what he told us later. He'd been so scared of what was happening to his godfather-"
"His godfather?"
"Yes, Sirius Black. Merlin, keep up," Rodolphus said in an off-hand way, startling those who weren't aware of his proclivity to just speak randomly before fading into the shadows of his cell.
"The fuck are you?!" Dave shouted in surprise.
Everyone ignored him.
"-that he managed a rather powerful bout of accidental magic, which landed him in the Ministry. He duelled us all, doing quite well for himself if I do say so myself, and making a large mess, when he dropped the one thing we wanted. We knew the Dark Lord wanted to kill him himself, and so with no one else to fight, we left. Unfortunately, we'd been using Unforgivables against each other. It's quite easy to make him do so, just threaten his friends," he mentioned in a side-note kind of way. "That boy has no impulse control, more reckless than Godric himself with none of the knowledge of how not to get caught like the rest of us."
"But because he was in that mindset, when the Minister of Magic entered, to see why the alarms went off, Harry used Cruciatus instead of a softer option. Dumbledore didn't defend him, called him another Dark Lord in the making, I believe, and no one else had the power to do anything about it," he said quietly.
Oddly enough, conversation didn't seem to come after that and, for Dave, also known as Auror Williamson, sleep didn't either.
Dave got moved three days after they all had their bonding session. Five days later a gaggle of Aurors all arrived on the island.
It was a joy yet a horror every time a troop of Aurors entered the prison. Torture, freedom, a kiss, blissful death, all were options. All were desired secretly but hated out loud. Those wizards who had fight hissed as they walked past their cells, spitting curses without wands, sparks but nothing more flying from their fingers. Others hid, rocking back and forth in their cells, crying, trying to bring some warmth back to their bodies.
Bellatrix started swaying, an almost manic look in her eyes. "Again they try, to feed those who fly, and the living corpse lies, lies, lies..." she started repeating in a singsong tone.
Fenrir screamed obscenities at the guards, but when they turned left, left and down to where Potter, that blasted boy's cell was, his rage picked up.
The guards reached the cell and unlocked it. Two stepped inside and were immediately flung out by raw magic, Harry unconsciously feeling the threat and reacting with the kind of instinct that came from too long having no one enter your space for a good reason. The aforementioned child slowly came to consciousness and when he realised he'd harmed two guards muttered only one word.
"Fuck," he whispered.
He slowly forced himself to a sitting position and started shuffling back to the wall. "If you think for one fucking second I'm going through that again, you're mistaken. I will kill you. Every damned one of you. I'll kill myself and take you all down with me. So help me God, you don't want to know the skills I learnt the last time you made me leave this cell," he stated angrily, eyes not moving from the group of people.
"I thought you never left this cell?" a random Auror said, obviously Gryffindor. The lack of self-preservation was familiar at least, Harry thought.
He didn't dignify the question with an answer. The Minister and a select few were probably the only ones who knew what had happened and he'd like to keep it that way. There was a moment of silence before a man with dark hair stepped forwards.
Dave?
Huh, at least he'd see someone familiar before they tried to off him again.
His prison mates did not have the same idea.
"Dave?" Fenrir bellowed. "Oh, I will kill you so bad! I know they used to tell stories about what I've done in the Auror Academy and let me tell you, I'll do fucking worse if you touch one hair on his head, you traitor!" he seethed.
The other inmates who could see started picking up on the energy and the Aurors visibly curled into their group as the screaming and pure hatred started filtering through the walls, the Dementors circling closer as emotions grew stronger.
"Inmate Potter, turn around," Auror Williamson demanded.
Harry hissed something in Parseltongue, a threat of anger, and immediately all wands were faced at him.
"Stand down! He is not a prisoner anymore!"
The voices went quiet.
"Potter, turn around," Auror Williamson said, the weight in his voice taking all the fight out of Harry.
He did so.
Harry stood, slowly. His knees protested, and his muscles begged for mercy, but he stood, leaning heavily on the wall, the cold damp bite of the stone reminding him that he could feel this pain because he was alive and in this cell. He was still in his cell. Harry started to slowly loosen the fighting stance he'd been holding against the wall and slowly edged forwards.
"So you're finally going to kill me for good?" Harry said with a dark hope.
Slowly, he turned around, placing his dirty hair against the wall, his shackles tearing the skin that had started to heal over, the cold metal cuffs ripping open old damage again. No one answered. Harry closed his eyes, enjoying the silence.
The nervous silence.
He felt a warmth come up behind him.
A body. A man.
He entered into his own mind. Not thinking. Occlumency.
He stood in the darkness of his own mind, sat on a platform of his own making and prepared to jump into the coldest part of his mind, the place where Voldemort's soul used to live, where nothing grows and he doesn't feel, for Voldemort and his soul were dead. And much like after a war, nothing grows where destruction reigned. Not yet. It was too soon. And oh, that cold dead wasteland was so inviting, a wasteland where a man might be behind him but he would not be there. He would not feel it.
He prepared himself to jump.
And then-
Clink.
Harry's eyes shot open. His pupils dilated, his heart pumped blood back into his corpse of a body, his magic sparked against his soul as he felt a manacle loosen.
Then drop to the floor.
His feet shifted. He prepared to run. He could feel the warmth from the Auror's robe and he knew should he reach, the man's wand would be his. And his life would be in Harry's hands. He felt his knees relax, his body become pliable and just as he went for his suicidal claim to freedom-
"Harry James Potter, on May 11th, your case was tried again due to new evidence coming to light. With this new evidence, the terms of your sentence and the outcome of the original trial have been reviewed," he said, his voice even.
Harry paused.
"On May 12, today that is," he elaborated, dropping the official tone he'd been using, before carrying on in a proper one, "all previous charges issued have been dropped. With removal from Azkaban to be carried out immediately."
He finished.
Auror Williamson continued speaking, talking about the galleons that were being transferred to his account as reparations for any mental issues this may have caused and so forth, but Harry couldn't tell you what he said. Everything became white noise.
He was free.
But Harry didn't believe that such a thing came without a price.
The walk out was slow.
It was brutal.
His legs didn't want to cooperate, the wind made each breath feel like he was swallowing glass, but it was okay.
Because he would be free.
He would be away from the cold.
And so, Harry Potter left Azkaban to re-enter the world and find happiness-
"The fuck do you mean I have to go back to the Dursleys!"