The Dementor Blues
Two hands were wrapped painfully around his arms as he got tugged through the Ministry halls by the bastards who’d arrested him. He was led through the atrium, into a lift, and through quite a few side-halls until he ended up at the holding cells. It was cold, dark, and musty back here, and he assumed that was by choice. The aurors pulled him over to a cell door and wrenched it open, throwing him inside to fall on the stone floor as the door slammed shut behind him.
Slowly dragging himself to his feet, he limped over to the wooden board that was apparently meant to act as his mattress. Sitting on its rough surface, he scooched over to the wall and curled into himself, trying his best to keep his body heat in.
Oddly enough, this situation wasn’t all that foreign to him.
During the winter months, his cupboard felt much the same. The mattresses were comparable too. Of course, he’d never been stuck in his cupboard while afflicted with cursed wounds before, so that was all new. Unfortunately for him, he found that it made things quite a bit worse.
He sat there for a while, unsuccessfully trying to keep the shivers from showing until someone finally approached his cell. He was expecting someone like Moody, a grizzled, hardened warrior with no time or patience to take anybody’s shit. Instead, he got an old, short woman wearing an obnoxious amount of vibrant pink.
He would’ve preferred Moody.
"Hello, Mister Potter," she said with a simper that looked about as innocent as a dementor without a hood. “Your injuries look absolutely ghastly. I can’t imagine the horrors you had to go through to get them.”
“If your stupid aurors would’ve listened for a second instead of attacking me, you’d know that I went through a fight with a werewolf pack.”
Daintily covering her mouth with a gloved hand, she let out a high-pitched, girlish giggle that was somehow more agonizing than her fashion sense. “I’m sure you were, Mister Potter. It must’ve been a terrifying experience. There was so much violent magic used around your hometown. I can’t believe the Supreme Mugwump was so irresponsible.”
“Supreme Mugwump? What does Professor Dumbledore have to do with this?”
“Why, everything, dear child. We, here at the Ministry, are appalled that such an accomplished wizard was so flippant with the magic he taught to such an inexperienced student. It’s no wonder at all that you were caught up in such a dangerous training accident when your teacher was so reckless. Of course, we wouldn’t even think of blaming you for your mentor’s mistakes,” she told him, her hand slipping into the pocket of her long, pink coat to pull out a vial of exactly what he’d been trying to brew at his relative’s house.
“Did you listen to nothing I just said!?” Harry asked through clenched teeth. “There was a pack of werewolves right in the middle of a muggle suburb! I’m pretty sure they were cursed too. You need to get on this before the people behind it get away!”
“Now, now, there’s no need to lie,” the woman gently, consolingly chided him. “I know how hard it is to defy a person with so much power over you, but you don’t need to protect your headmaster. We already know he’s behind this. All we need is your honest confession to seal the deal. The Ministry can keep you safe, Mister Potter. I give you my word.”
… Just what the fuck was going on here?
“I’m not lying! I haven’t seen Professor Dumbledore since the end of term! I was attacked by werewolves! Do you really not understand how serious this is!?”
“Oh, I’m very aware of how serious this is.” The woman gave a sad, disappointed shake of her head as she put the vial back into her pocket. “But there isn’t much I can do as long as you keep pushing your silly narrative. Perhaps I can help if you decide to start speaking truths. Until then, we’ll just have to wait until your trial to find out what really happened.”
He was so shocked that he didn’t have anything to say. He had no clue who this bitch was, but he knew a threat when he heard one. For whatever reason, she was determined to pin this on Dumbledore, and she wanted him to back her up. He didn’t know if that was allowed or how he was supposed to play this senseless game, but he was sure that giving her what she wanted was out of the fucking question.
In the absence of anything intelligent to say, Harry was about to go with a comment that was equal parts sarcastic and biting when a deep, gut-wrenching cold gathered in his core and spread throughout his body. He involuntarily gasped as he inched even further away from the bars of his cell, and he shivered as his exhale came out in a thick cloud of mist. He looked at the woman with wide, panicked eyes, and the kind, sweet smile she gave him in return was something he’d never be able to forget.
“W-What the hell?” he stammered as the scream of his dying mother shot back and forth around his head like a never-ending echo.
“I think that should be obvious,” she told him in a peppy, amicable tone that raised the hairs on the back of his neck even further. “If Dumbledore wasn’t there to teach you all of those spells, then you were the one using all of them, right? We can’t have someone so dangerous left unguarded until their trial. You’d be a risk to everyone’s safety.”
Harry didn’t know if he’d ever wanted to curse someone more than he did at that very moment when a tall, lanky figure in a black, tattered cloak glided in front of his cell with an icy aura following in its wake. The woman looked up at the monster, her friendly smile not fading even a bit. He would’ve been impressed if she wasn’t about to leave its presence for the foreseeable future.
“Stay in front of his cell and keep an eye on him.”
Harry’s venomous glare followed her as she walked away. Only once she was gone did he allow himself to tumble off of the bed frame and into the corner of his cell. He’d faced dementors many times before, and he’d honestly never understood why they were so terrifying to people. Even before he’d learned the patronus, they were still just like any other dangerous creature. The rotting bastards actually weren’t top 3 among the creatures he never wanted to face again.
He understood now.
It was different when the things were out in the wild. It was a fight, nothing more or less. They wanted to eat him, and he wanted to live. Here, there was no fight. The monster was feeding on him bit by bit, gently unraveling his mind as it took its fill, and he could do little more than cower on the stone floor and try to pretend that his soul wasn't slowly leaking through his pores. It was a torture unlike anything he’d ever imagined, and all the while, his mind assaulted itself with every terrible thing that it could possibly recall.
Eventually, almost blessedly, it got to the point that he went disturbingly numb. The cold was so intense that it managed to swipe away his ability to feel completely, and the constant barrage of fear, regret, and pain began to warp his place in reality. Time as a construct broke, and things started to bleed together until he couldn’t properly discern what was going on around him.
Seconds, minutes, and hours lost all meaning, and he found himself drifting for an indeterminate amount of time as he slowly withered away. He was floating in a sensationless abyss until the uncomfortable sound of metal scraping against stone disturbed the surface of an ocean of suffering. The reintroduction of something real made everything collapse around him like a line of dominoes.
The feeling in his hands came back first, and the light reaching his eyes came last. Violently shivering as he absentmindedly rocked back and forth in the corner of his cell, he gave a few nondescript blinks until things came as far into focus as they could when he didn’t have his glasses. The joy of having company that wasn’t a soul sucking demon disappeared when he saw the head of long , perfectly groomed, blond hair somewhere near the open cell door.
“Oh, Christ,” Harry croaked through his dry throat, trying and failing to hold back a little cough. “Just when I thought the dementors couldn’t get any worse, they somehow managed to drag you out of my head.”
The man made what he assumed to be a sneer, and Harry was supremely glad that he couldn’t see Malfoy’s face well enough to lay eyes on the damn thing. “I assure you, Potter, I am not the creation of a dementor. If it would make you happier, I could ask the guard to bring it back in my stead. It'd certainly make my day.”
“And it even managed to get your annoying drawl too,” Harry mocked with a weak smirk, thinking that the depressing amount of time he’d spent with Voldemort was having an effect on his attitude. “Why’re you here?”
“I’m part of the Ministry,” Lucius Malfoy said as he stepped further into the cell, talking like he was happily educating a poor, stupid child. “I’d be remiss in my duties to not make sure the ones I serve are treated fairly, no matter how much I detest them.”
Translation: Master tugged the leash.
The fact that Voldemort had apparently decided to step in and help when a dementor was assigned to him, well, he wasn’t in any condition to think about how that made him feel. Instead, he allowed himself to find amusement in the fact that Malfoy was in his cell, forced into helping him against his will. Oh, if only he could see the look on Malfoy’s smug, prick face when he eventually finds out what his precious daddy was up to.
“So I’m guessing a dementor guarding a holding cell like this isn’t the norm?”
“Not unless you’re a risk to the safety of everyone around you. Your spell record wasn't splendid for a minor, but they wouldn't have come close to assigning a dementor guard on anyone else for the past two days.”
Two days!?
“Small wins,” Harry whispered, pushing that information to the side and trying to sound sarcastically cheerful. “What about after the trial?”
“If you’re deemed guilty, you’ll probably find yourself near the same wing your dear Godfather escaped from.” Lucius seemed to enjoy imagining that scenario. “Of course, whether or not you’re found guilty will depend on how much I have to work with.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the Minister is currently out for blood. If it were a harmless charm or two, I’m sure Dumbledore could make a case with all of his reputation and power, but you gave them a long list of combat magic to use. He’s trying to bury you.”
“Some old bitch in pink who acts like a bubbly teenager from hell came here before the dementor and asked me to pin it all on Dumbledore.”
“Umbridge,” Lucius informed him with a distasteful frown. “She’s the Minister's number two, a conniving and vicious woman.”
“Yeah, I think I got that when she sicked a dementor on me for not lying in her favor.”
“So I take it you turned her down?”
He couldn’t hold back a scoff. “What the hell do you think?”
“Of course,” Malfoy drawled. “Why would I ever expect you to use your brain? Was there anything important that you noticed about the night beyond the obvious?”
“I was attacked by a pack of werewolves. I’m pretty sure there were four of them.”
“You’re certain it was four? A pack of them would be closer to eleven or twelve.” Despite the fact that Malfoy apparently found it strange, he didn’t seem surprised.
“Well, I think they were under an imperius curse, but they were acting off, so I’m not sure. I thought it was one of you guys at first.”
“Off? How so?”
“I only saw one of them before they shifted, but he was weird, hobbling around and staring at nothing. His head was dangling off to the side like he couldn’t hold it up, and his face was sagging too.”
Lucius hummed, his brow scrunching in a way that was very uncouth for a Malfoy. “It’s a sign of inexperience with the curse. A practiced caster can take control so seamlessly that the victim’s eyes would show hardly a glimpse of mist. An amateurish curse results in what you saw at the park. There were four of them though, which would make it considerably harder. It was either a fairly competent individual or duo who pushed their limits with the curse too far, or a group of novices.”
“Does any of that help me?”
“It could, but trials here are never won with evidence anyway. What matters more is whether or not the subpar black magic left anything to find. Do you know if any of the wolves were left alive?”
“One was killed by the wards around my house, and one got its head popped by an exploding curse. The other two should still be alive… although one of them isn’t going to be very useful with the state it’s in.”
“Whoever planned this did a very good job of covering it up. The aurors on the scene reported doing a cursory sweep, and the follow-up investigation afterward found nothing out of the ordinary, so I’m assuming at least one auror in the group that arrested you made sure to clean up the town, either that or every auror from top to bottom was in on it too. Whether that involved handling the living werewolves or not remains to be seen. I can probably keep them from bringing the dementor around until your trial. Dumbledore, I suspect, will try to act as your legal council. You would be wise to allow this. It’s him the Ministry wants to hang; you’re only the most convenient way to tie the noose at the moment. Let them fight among themselves, and I will do my best to nudge things in your favor.”
Harry gave a small nod, and the man got up to leave. Right before he got through the cell door, though, there was just one more thing on his mind.
“Wait!” Harry called out, and Lucius stopped to look over his shoulder. “Why is she making you do this?”
“I would assume, Mister Potter, because she prefers you outside of Azkaban.” Lucius slowly shut the cell door, leaving him with the most unhelpful answer he could’ve given.
He was about to lay down and stew in his thoughts when his eyes caught something on the edge of his bed. Reaching out for it, his still shaky hands wrapped around the neck of a vial, and he examined the silvery liquid within. He recognized it as the potion he needed for his festering wounds, the very same one that Umbridge had offered him before taking it away and replacing it with the presence of an Azkaban guard.
Trying not to question it or examine it too deeply, he uncorked the potion and began to rub it onto the open, leaking wounds given to him by the claws of the now brain dead werewolf. For all of the shit going on around him right now, at least he could say that he wasn’t dying from cursed wounds anymore.
At this point, he was just taking what he could get. That Lucius Malfoy’s help was the only thing for him to grab was depressing, but his vast experience with grasping for straws taught him to never shy away from scraping the bottom of the barrel. Hopefully, it was enough to get him out.
He was exhausted to the point of near-delirium by the time the guards came for him. Malfoy had apparently made sure the dementor didn’t come back, but its work was already done. The energy it took for the potion to heal his multiple day stint with cursed injuries compounded with what the cloaked fucks took from him until he almost literally had nothing left. The meager meals they’d provided did nothing for him, and he wasn’t even sure if they’d bothered to feed him while the dementor was keeping him company.
With blurry, unfocused eyes, he was dragged off of his bed and onto the floor before they yanked him to his feet and bound his arms behind his back with a spell. He was pulled from his cell with the toes of his shoes dragging behind him, only really held up by the painful grip the two aurors had under his arms. He barely even noticed that they’d made it to the lift, but he was more than aware of when they finally got off at the Ministry atrium.
He was paraded through the place like a dog. Jeers and whispers came from all sides as the employees watched him go, pitiful, listless, and dirty. At least Dark Wizards had the luxury of being respected when they were pulled from their cells. Even when they were looking like death as they were pulled across the Ministry, they knew that everyone there was terrified of them.
He was just a joke.
Harry ignored the stares, the insults, and the laughs, just like he did during his worst years of Hogwarts… or every day he’d ever spent with the Dursleys. He had a lot of practice with holding onto whatever shreds of dignity he had left when he was dealt a shitty hand, but he had to admit that this one was the toughest to handle. At least he was barely coherent through most of it.
Harry was pulled into the courtroom to meet a mass of people wearing very ornate, regal-looking robes with strangely shaped hats. They completely surrounded him in a circular room with a chair sitting in the very center like some fucked up stadium with himself in the spotlight. He was tossed unceremoniously into the chair, and he fought to keep his head from going slack against his chest. As he sat in the middle of the circling witches and wizards, he recognized the room for what it was.
This was where they’d tried the fucking Death Eaters!
He remembered seeing Karkaroff chained up in a dome cage right in the middle of this room, and now he was sitting in the very same spot. Iron bars snaked around his arms and trapped him against the chair with a grip strength that was already starting to cut off his circulation. He didn’t even have enough left in him to struggle, but he definitely had enough to glare, so that was what he did.
To the man’s credit, Fudge met his eyes, giving him a subtle, easy grin in return for his disdain. Harry, admittedly, had never been good when it came to planning. It didn’t matter whether he was making one himself or trying to discover someone else’s, he just didn’t have the gift for it. He wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good thing that he knew he was exactly where Fudge wanted him, but he did.
“Well then, I believe that’s everyone.” Fudge’s eyes roamed the stands, and they flashed with something resembling satisfaction. “If you could all take your seats, we can get started.”
Harry’s eyes tiredly searched the stands too, and his shitty eyesight was unfortunately not bad enough to miss the one man he wanted, no, needed to see right now. When a look around the room for as far as his head could turn yielded no favorable results, he glanced at the long blob of hair that had to be Malfoy before falling back to staring at Fudge. Lucius was his only support, but he wasn’t going to give the Minister the satisfaction of watching him wilt.
Just before the aurors could lock the doors though, the sound of roaring, spiraling flame seeped through the cracks and into the room. Relief flooded through him at the same rate that he suspected Fudge’s complacency disappeared. After the chamber, he’d never forget a sound like that again. A few seconds of complete silence swept through the court until the doors flew open to let Albus Dumbledore in.
The residual light of dying flames tickled the edges of his horrifyingly purple robes, and it was a testament to the power he held that not a single person in the room even considered giving it a second glance. Flickering embers floated around the hall outside as the mythical bird on his shoulder gave the court a predatorial glare before flashing away in a burst of fire. A vague gesture of his hand had the doors slamming shut without a sound, and he smiled genially to the members of their government, undoubtedly sending a chill through each and every one of their spines.
“My apologies, Minister Fudge, but it appears that not quite everyone was here,” Dumbledore responded like he’d heard Fudge word for word despite only just now entering the building. “It was a surprise to hear that Mister Potter’s trial was starting just moments before my conference with the ICW was about to begin, but not to worry. I quite coincidentally managed to arrange a replacement for my position five days ago, so I was able to miss it for today.”
“Of course,” Fudge drawled as if it didn’t matter in the slightest what Dumbledore was trying to imply, and, to be fair, it didn’t seem like anybody in the stands was surprised, so maybe it actually didn’t. “How fortunate for all of us.”
Not seeming surprised either, Dumbledore stared at the Minister for a few seconds with a smile before breaking the silence. “What are the charges?”
What followed that question was the most egregious, crooked trial he’d ever witnessed in his entire life, and Petunia was unhealthily obsessed with shitty courtroom dramas, so he had a plethora of examples to choose from. He was so out of it that most of the damn thing was a blur of garbage, but he managed to catch enough to get the gist of things. How the Minister of Magic was somehow allowed to act as both the prosecutor and the judge for a criminal case that he was personally invested in was far beyond him, but he had to admit that it made things incredibly difficult for even Albus Dumbledore to do anything for him.
Even with his headmaster putting in some serious work, things were looking bleak for a long while. Oddly enough, it was difficult to call out the Ministry for using excessive force or improperly conducting an investigation when the one presenting the arguments against him also got to decide what was legally relevant to the case and which subjects were important for the jury of Wizengamot members to consider. The wounds on his shoulders were the only thing that he had going for him, and that was almost shoved under the rug until Malfoy mentioned that he’d decided to provide him with Essence of Dittany just in case his asinine story about werewolves happened to be true.
Dumbledore’s expression of disturbed shock at Malfoy’s interference aside, that was the only reason his case was even allowed to live long enough for an auror to request a recess to discuss things with Madam Bones, whoever the hell she was. Apparently, someone in the auror department approached his case with some skepticism and decided to do a search of his own, revealing the residual magic of werewolf blood on the outskirts of the forest, coincidentally right next to the park where everything had started. Upon further investigation, other incidents of magical residue were found around the town too, backing up his story at every turn.
Considering Malfoy’s almost unnoticeable smirk as the entire trial was flipped on its head, the auror’s search probably had less to do with skepticism and a bit more to do with a fat stack of gold appearing on his office desk a few hours ago. Malfoy was apparently only halfway right about his claim that evidence didn’t win trials here; they did, but they had to be accompanied by enough money, political clout, or magical prestige to force it past Fudge’s fat fucking head.
The feeling of his restraints retreating back into the chair was divine, better than almost anything he’d felt before. He groaned as Dumbledore snaked his arm around him and hoisted him to his feet. The man was hunched to stay level with him while they slowly made their way from the room. Limping along with his Headmaster, Harry’s eyes found Fudge talking among the members who’d voted to clear him of all charges, and their eyes met when the man noticed his gaze.
Something about the Minister’s lack of a frown made his skin itch.
He didn’t seem particularly upset about losing the chance to chuck him in a cell. His undersecretary, though, she was positively giddy. A shiver worked its way up his spine at the sight of her sharp grin, and he leaned closer to Dumbledore.
“Why… do they look like they just won, Professor?”
“It’s rare to win anything at the Ministry without giving up something in return,” was Dumbledore’s cryptic yet telling response. “There’s a reason I always tried to stay away. Now, I’m going to send you somewhere safe while I finish things here, but I need you to read this first.”
A paper was placed in his hands, and he raised it high enough toward his face that he could actually make out the words. It was declaring some random address as the headquarters of what he assumed had to be Dumbledore’s secret group. Giving a nod to tell the headmaster that he’d read it, the paper disintegrated in his hand, and Fawkes flashed right onto his shoulder, its flames warming him and sapping some of the pain from his sore muscles.
“Go now, and rest,” Harry heard Dumbledore tell him before he was whisked away in a spiral of sentient fire.
When the swathes of flame disappeared along with the soothing warmth they provided, he was met with a dark, dreary room in an obvious state of disrepair. It was cold and dusty, as if nobody had lived here in a very long time. Tiredly glancing around him, he saw that he was alone in the room. Well, he was alone, at least, until the door flung open to let somebody in. Harry didn’t recognize the blob, especially not in the room’s impressive darkness, but the voice was all he really needed.
“... Harry?” Sirius Black asked as the two stared at each other from across the room.
Seeing the man who was assigned the role of his Godfather standing in front of him, after everything he’d been through this summer, made something within him relax that had been tense to the point of snapping for weeks. It was more than the Ministry or the dementors; it was more than Voldemort too. This right here was all he really wanted, all he’d ever wanted if he was going to be honest. Unfortunately, the removal of the edge that’d been keeping him alert and chugging for the entirety of his summer vacation thus far took literally everything else he had with it.
“Harry!”
Thankfully, Sirius was fast enough to catch him because his encounter with the floor would’ve been legendary. With his Godfather holding him up, he lost the ability to keep his mind in the waking world. It was about damn time that he got some proper sleep.