3,399Hello all!
This is FANFICTION. This means that I, the author, have expanded on certain ideas and knowledge to make it fit MY plot. This will differ from JK Rowlings, AS IT SHOULD, as a Fanfiction.
In addition, if you don't find interest in any story that you're reading, or disagree vehemently with characters' actions - please take a look at a different fanfic rather than spewing toxic language.
(I can't believe I even have to explain this.)
Thank you, and enjoy!
~ Missmusicluver
OoOoO Chapter 1 - Out of the Ordinary OoOoO
It was the beginning of another blissfully mundane day for Harry.
He was walking out of the newly built Grimmauld Place with several ministry letters in his hands and a piece of toast caught between his teeth when his peripherals caught sight of a not-so-inconspicuous reporter flashing a camera from the other side of the street. Harry ducked his head of messy hair but didn't engage the trespasser.
It was four months after the fall of Voldemort, and still, witches and wizards alike mobbed Harry as their 'hero' and 'savior'. He couldn't go to the ministry, Hogwarts, or even step out of his own home without being stopped at least five times in the street by those wanting to congratulate him.
To ask his opinion.
To apologize for doubting him a few years back.
To shake his hand.
To make sure he knew how proud of him they all were.
Hermione had warned Harry the fame and lack of privacy wouldn't go away for a while, if not ever, and with every passing day it seemed that as inevitably, she was right.
When Harry had rebuilt Grimmauld Place from the smoldering ashes the war had left it in, he had also bought out the rest of the muggle buildings on each side of his home, effectively purchasing the entirety of the muggle block. Now no muggles could accidently either get caught up in Magical London or witness the people that now seemed to stalk him every minute of every day.
So Harry ignored the usual displays of flashing photos and focused on the several pale sheets of parchment between his fingers with furrowing brows. Poor Neville, he thought to himself as he read the last line of the letter from St. Mungos. I ought to stop by afterward. See if he's alright.
It wasn't every day someone's parents died.
Not that Neville had ever really had a proper relationship with them, true, but they were still his parents.
Harry reread the letter, committing the words to memory. "No dark magic signatures or evidence of foul play were found within or around the bodies. Both had been observed only hours before for midnight vitals. Attached rolls are copies of normal exhibited.." Harry skipped a bit, going through medical words and magic he didn't understand, and focused farther down the letter. "...believed that Alice Longbottom was the first to sustain irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, which resulted then in heart failure. Frank Longbottom followed his wife's pattern not thirty minutes later while Medical Staff tried to resuscitate Mrs. Longbottom..." Harry looked up and munched on his toast.
And then dead. Both. In one night, not an hour apart.
Harry sighed, filed the St. Mungos update, and attached paperwork to the back of his stack. Perhaps he'd leave the interview with Kingsley and the Muggle Relations Office early tonight so he could drop by and see his friend. Hermione could and would handle most of the important bits without him at the meeting, she was already leading the charge on reintegration between New Bloods and the Wizgamont.
"Mr. Potter!" A reporter called across the street, edging the line between his property and public magical land.
Harry disregarded the wizard entirely. His eyes narrowed at the fresh letter in front of him, reading slowly and taking in Azkaban's seal at the top right corner.
"...escaped. A total of four inmates counted as three additional convicted members..." Harry's jaw rotated backward slowly and he tried not to let the parchment crumple in his hands. Another Death Eater breakout, not two hours before the deaths of the Longbottoms. His eyes lingered on the last line."...believe to have been possible with outside help..."
Merlin. He was going to see Neville right away, forget the meetings.
"Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter!" the reporter from earlier yelled again. "Mr. Potter! Do you have any comments on the Minister's newest announcement this morning from Azkaban? Are you worried there might be more Death Eaters left? Do you have a plan of action?"
Harry glanced at the darkly robed man. Other reporters revealing themselves from the morning shadows of the buildings seemed to gather courage from the first and began shouting at Harry as he walked farther down the otherwise empty street. Ten more meters until the disapparation perimeter, Harry thought to himself.
He really needed to get back to The Magical Zoning Department and work out new restrictions on his perimeters for the new Black Family Block.
The crowd mobbed together in front of Harry, yelling and shoving in a vain attempt to get closer to The-Boy-Who-Conquered. Harry clenched his jaw and continued forward.
"Mr. Pott-"
"-any leads on Lucius Malfoy's escape-"
"-Hogwarts opening again-"
"-New Blood policies for upcoming students-"
Eight.
"Lord Potter, is it true you're being considered for the new Head Auror position?" a short witch called from his left.
"No," Harry answered the question solely. Gods no. He'd rather cast fiendfyre on himself than deal with that knot of bureaucracy.
Also, Lord Potter?
Five.
"Sir, do you plan on-"
The air around Harry went dark like sunglass lenses had blocked the incoming sunlight, and suddenly, the very oxygen around him seemed to get heavier.
Harry twirled and pointed his wand up into the rapidly chilling autumn air on instinct. He scanned the skies, several spells ready on his fingertips, but found nothing in the graying wind.
He turned again, sweeping his surroundings and ducking low on the balls of his feet.
What sort of Death Eater assault was this?
"Run!" panicked reporters yelled, splitting like bowling pins and sprinting towards the dissaperation perimeters.
"Praesidia invocamus. Fortissimum. Qui iam victi mors, et ita fac iterum," a soft, whispered voice chanted through the darkness. It was childlike, soft but chilling, sending shivers down Harry's back. He had never heard anything like it.
Death Eaters had never done something like this before. It threw him off kilter. What was this?
"Harry Potter!" the first reporter from earlier yelled desperately across the street.
Harry turned at the call and then watched as the wizard's eyes locked onto something behind Harry. His mouth dropped open in horror. The camera that he'd been using fell limply from his hands. Harry's stomach dropped. Past experiences had forced him to understand that expression all too well.
"Run!" he shouted at the reporter, throwing himself as fast as he could across the street. "Move! Get up! RUN!"
The air condensed around Harry, becoming smoke-like, and followed him as he ran. It became thicker, faster, and more cloying with every step he took like it was growing more powerful. Harry didn't want to know what would occur when that happened. Or what that would mean for him and the remaining reporter.
Within a meter of the man, the smoke-air grew a personality of its own and gripped Harry's legs sharply, yanking him to the ground.
Gravel embedded his knees. His hands caught himself before his glasses took the brunt of his fall, but his phoenix wand slipped from his fingers on impact. It rolled forward, away.
The reporter tripped backward, falling over his own feet, and struck his equipment as he landed on the ground. The camera flashed.
Harry reached for his wand desperately, missed, and then landed on his stomach. He scrambled forward, his fingertips ghosting the edge of the slender wood.
The smoke-mist pulled him back sharply against the pavement, burning across his stomach and elbows as if it sensed the danger it was about to encounter.
Harry's outstretched fingers slid further away from his wand and then was lost to him in the next moment as he was yanked up off the ground and into the air like he was lifting off on a broom.
He kicked and squirmed with everything he had, trying to free himself, but the mist was shapeless and formfitting over the entirety of Harry's body now. It had him, whatever this mist-smoke-wind was. It was winning and Harry didn't have his wand.
He looked down desperately for something to hold on to, something to do-only to find himself staring into the eyes of the horrified reporter.
The wizard's own wand was up, but loose in his hand. He gaped at Harry, wordless and frozen. His eyes were wide and blank.
"Run!" Harry choked out in a scream. He thrashed at his bounds, desperate for anything to give. The wizard would be no help to him. "RUN!"
The wizard took a step forward but tripped again at the leash of his equipment and fell to his knees.
The forgotten camera at the reporter's feet flashed again. With its lens pointed up at the sky, it nearly blinded Harry, but it also captured everything, sealing the frightful moment forever.
Horror stole over Harry. This was it, wasn't it?
Run, Harry thought as the dark smoke enveloped itself around his body and over his head. Darkness took over his vision.
Run.
Cold chills seeped through his robes and embedded itself into his skin and bones. The wind rushed around him. He was flying. Up. Far up into the air.
A rush of wind flew through his hair, and Harry's stomach swooped as gravity lessened. His glasses slipped off his nose, and the thin wiring tumbled. Harry could not move his arms to reach for them, and they fell away into the darkness.
Still, the eerie chant continued.
"Praesidia invocamus."
"...victi mors, et ita fac iterum.."
The child-like voice of the repeated chant deepened into a man's low timber, and it echoed in the blackness before it multiplied into more than one. Several voices, men and women alike, and more joining in at every second.
This isn't right, Harry thought, his mind racing. This wasn't the type of Death Eater magic he'd come to know and recognize. This was... it's different.
Not dark, exactly. But heavy. The echoes of the chanted words boiled in his veins, and tugged at him as if it was apart of him. It seemed to almost call to Harry. To his very soul.
Then like a crescendoing choir, the chanted spell started to become louder in his ears. The pull stronger, and Harry felt all the air leave his body as if someone had taken a vacuum to his lungs.
His insides twisted, his bones compacted, and a fiery shot of pain flashed across his head, over his scar.
No.
No, this wasn't right at all. His scar hadn't hurt him since Voldemort's death. It wasn't possible. He'd seen him fall. The whole school had. Voldemortwasn't-
And then a familiar hot flash of burning pain set his scar aflame like a whip to wet skin. The pain was unimaginable. Like a steel bar thrust into his brain, like someone had poured acid into his head.
Harry gasped at the unbelievable agony driving into his skull. Unable to breathe, to move, or even to scream, he choked.
His stomach heaved. His eyes burned. His chest tightened- and then like he had passed through an invisible barrier, the air suddenly thinned, his ears popped, and his back slammed against cold concrete.
"Holy shi-" A young man's voice screeched somewhere on Harry's left.
"Jonathan, what are you doing here?" A woman's sharp voice echoed through Harry's ears.
"I-" the young man stammered.
Air forced its way into Harry's chest, and his eyes flew open. His stomach recoiled inside of him, but he sucked in as much air as could through his gagging mouth and heaving chest. White blurry dots and a familiar black haze of unconsciousness crept along the sides of his eyes.
"Wha-" Harry managed to spit out angrily. The room spun like a toy top, and he choked on his words. He closed his eyes forcefully and tried to breathe through his mouth.
He couldn't move to defend himself, he couldn't even breathe right.
Around him, he heard men and women shouting at each other. In anger. Surprise. Anxiety. He recognized those tones, but none of the voices.
"Get Minerva, he just passed through," the first woman shouted at someone.
Professor McGonagall? What-Harry thought in a daze, groggily catching bits and pieces of the shouting around him. Unconsciousness was close.
"-oks like a child!"
"It wasn't like I could choose who came through the-"
"-on't understand, we've kidnapped someone's chi-"
"-didn't I tell you this was a bad idea?" hissed a soft, familiar, female's voice.Who-
"He looks like-"
"-irius back down here, the portal has to be reclos-"Mrs. Weasley?
"Jonathan, you get to your room this instant! Your father and-" Maybe Tonks?
No. No that can't be right, Tonks was dead. He'd seen the body. Who then-
Harry forced his eyes open, trying to raise the hundred-pound weights that felt like they were firmly over the catches of his eyes. He fought the drowsiness, blinked rapidly to focus on the blurred, spinning world, and concentrated on relearning how to breathe by himself.
A curtain of dark red hair framed by a pale thin face hovered above Harry's vision. He couldn't see the details very clearly, but he could see that it was a woman, middle-aged, with laugh lines around the mouth, but deeper aged lines between her brows like she'd been frowning often. She studied him, searching his face with her eyes.
Her eyes-
Harry gasped at the woman, and his heart seemed to come to a crashing stop in his chest. Her eyes. His vision might have been blurry, but he could see the color of her eyes perfectly, and they were green. Bright green, like the reflection he saw in himself every morning even under the shadow of her red hair. Red hair.
Pictures hidden in a scrapbook under Harry's bed flashed through his mind. Stones of pressure seemed to crack Harry's ribs. "You-" he spluttered.
That's not-
"Lily, love, I've just heard. Did it-" A man's voice came from behind her.
The woman over Harry tipped her head sideways. "James… look at him. He's-"
Harry's mind shut down like blinders at a window. His eyes rolled back, a flash of heat washed over his forehead, and suddenly, Harry saw comforting blackness.