Mind Harry furiously strained himself shifting around all the memories he had carved around the mindscape haphazardly. All his true secrets and secret knowledge he had read about in the chamber’s Sanctum were shifted to the largest unfinished city surrounded by the highest concentration of Coatl spawners. Hermione’s secrets regarding Dobby went there too.
Mind Harry hesitated, but after a moment he began copying all of his memories and engraving them on the walls of the city. It was just barely big enough, but Harry needed a backup in case they tried to obliviate him. Mental Harry also used another advanced technique to partition himself from the main mindscape and compartmentalize himself from the main consciousness. The bridges and connections to the largest city groaned and shattered as it vanished in a flash of light alongside Mental Harry, leaving a gaping hole behind.
Mind Harry made the now hidden mountain float away slightly from the rest and with one final strain of his will erased all of Harry’s important secrets from Body Harry. The invisibility effect was incredibly weak over such a large structure, but given the size of the rest of his mindscape, Mind Harry thought he might still be able to hide successfully. The larger Harry shifted to inhabit mental Harry fully so it wouldn’t accidentally ruin the effect and make Body Harry remember what had been deleted.
Harry had to act naturally if they erased or altered his memory for a little while at least. He was sure they would be more cautious this time, and he couldn’t be hasty. He pulled back a majority of the coatls to the hidden city. Hopefully any intruders would miss their scattered spawn points and mistake them for another memory. Mental Harry didn’t think he was good enough to defend against a full mental assault by a full grown wizard.
— — —
Harry opened his eyes, saw the roof to the cupboard under the stairs and sighed. Another day at the Dursleys. Everyone at school still hated him, the Dursleys still hated him too. He felt terrible and his head was pounding. At least he had started to catch up on his reading and writing recently. Something had just clicked for him and everything had felt so easy. Why did he feel so terrible then? Why was his head pounding like a drum? Things were better than they ever had been, but that didn’t feel right.
Harry knew that there was something better out there for him.
“Make me some sausages, will you boy?” Uncle Vernon barked, eying Harry with a strange amount of suspicion.
“Yes, Uncle,” Harry said flatly as he started to work.
— — —
Harry stared at a specific spot on the ceiling of his bedroom under the stairs and frowned slightly. What was about it that was drawing his attention? It was the same as the rest, but as Harry stared at it something tickled at the back of his mind.
He stared long and hard at it and then with a click a rush of memories washed over him. All the time he had spent at wizarding school and making friends. All the advanced spells he had learned at the Hogwarts library. And his new family. All his false memories of the last few years suddenly revealed themselves as the shallow things they had been. He could tell that the new ones were real. Harry was a wizard and he had to escape. It was time to escape.
Harry stood up and wandered outside where Aunt Petunia was gardening. He stared at her for a long moment. He wondered if they knew. After a moment he turned back around and looked at his uncle.
“Can I go help Aunt Petunia go grocery shopping? I’m sure she would like help with lifting things,” Harry asked him.
Uncle Vernon opened his mouth and closed it several times, his eyes skittering wildly over everything but Harry.
“Fine,” he eventually spat out, “Help her. At the store. Do that. Go.”
Harry nodded and went into the kitchen to grab some aluminum foil. Despite being only a little effective compared to other methods it was known to repel magic in some cases. It was better than nothing.
A few hours later, Aunt Petunia got in the car with Harry sitting in the back. She was completely silent as she drove down the street. Harry took out the large cobbled together thick helmet made of aluminum foil and fit it tightly over his skull. It had taken three rolls of foil and lots of duct tape to make this thing. Hopefully it would protect Harry from the knockout ward.
They passed the barrier where the ward had been last year. Harry felt his skull tingle slightly and he slumped slightly as his muscles unconsciously relaxed. But he made it through without falling asleep.
Then he hit the second ward a second later. A massive wail broke out as Harry felt a web of magic cling to him. Aunt Petunia swerved and in a loss of control crashed the car into a telephone pole. Harry lurched forward, but his seatbelt stopped him from getting too injured.
Harry shook his head as the second ward kept wailing around him. He got out of the car and took one last look at Aunt Petunia who was bloodied and slumped over the wheel unconscious. The whole front of the car had crumbled inwards and crunched directly into her torso. Harry started running away down the street. She would be fine, a wizard could heal things like that with a few flicks of their wand. He ran towards the nearest police station. Just before he reached it, the same blonde wizard apparated in front of Harry and pointed his wand at his head.
“Obliviate,” the man said and the last thing Harry remembered was the bright glow of his wand filling his vision.
— — —
Harry opened his eyes, saw the roof to the cupboard under the stairs and sighed. Another day at the Dursleys. Everyone at school still hated him, the Dursleys still hated him too. He felt terrible and his head was pounding. At least he had started to catch up on his reading and writing recently. Something had just clicked for him and everything had felt so easy. Why did he feel so terrible then? Why was his head pounding like a drum? Things were better than they ever had been, but that didn’t feel right.
Harry knew that there was something better out there for him.
He walked outside and looked at Uncle Vernon’s brand new car. Aunt Petunia had crashed hers a few days ago, coming out completely unscathed afterwards. She had claimed that it was miracle that she had come out without even a scratch. Aunt Petunia was calling for Harry in the house. It was probably time for him to dust the curtains again. Harry sighed and walked over to her to receive his assignment.
— — —
Harry stared at the crack at the ceiling of the cupboard under the stairs and in a rush he remembered. They had caught him again. He looked around and found that there was no aluminum foil in the house anymore. When he asked about helping with the groceries, Aunt Petunia screamed at him and said she could lift her own groceries without little freaks such as himself getting in the way.
Harry thought about how he could escape. He had almost made it to the police station before, hadn’t he? But he remembered how long it had taken last time for him to call the ministry after dealing with the muggle officers last time. His captors might ambush and obliviate everyone before Harry could do anything.
Harry walked outside and tried to look natural as he walked to the end of the street to inspect the ward. Surely there must be a way to defeat it?
But he wasn’t as subtle as he thought. He heard a voice behind him,
“Obliviate,”
And then the world flashed with white light and Harry forgot again.
— — —
Harry opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling of his new room and sighed. It was nearly the end of July and even rereading his favorite books wasn’t doing it for him anymore.
Without any clear purpose, Harry wandered downstairs and opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and looked inside. It was now filled with all sorts of junk piled high. Storage space where Harry had slept for all those years.
Harry glanced up and his eyes caught on a certain part of the ceiling. He stared at it for a moment in a trance. The crack there. It reminded him...
Then with a click as the memories came back. It had been longer this time, Harry had gone nearly a week without recovering his memories. He was sure that next the wizards would lock the closet, then who knows how long it would be before he recovered his memories if he didn't get inside? How had he not triggered the blood ward to their satisfaction yet?
Harry thought about how he had felt in his altered state. Even when he believed he had never left the Dursleys he had never considered this place his home. He had known deep down that there was a better place out there from him so he hadn’t accepted his place in the world like he had growing up. He would never accept it anymore, he could see that now.
Not now that he knew there was something better.
But no matter how he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of a way to escape. Theoretically he could learn wandless magic, but he thought even that would lead his memory to be erased again if his watchers noticed. And they were definitely watching him directly this time. He hadn’t even reached the boundary of the wards before his captor apparated in and obliviated him.
After not being able to think of anything helpful to help him escape for over ten minutes, Harry closed the door to the cupboard and went back to his new room. As he kept trying and failing to think of something new that would help him escape, there was suddenly a deeper click in his mind and even more memories came rushing back.
Harry sat there stiff as a board for over five minutes as the limited Body Harry synced with Mind Harry. In his mind scape, the hidden city flickered back into existence and reintegrated into the other two. The bridges and connections between the three cities healed. A wave of Coatls poured out of the rock like a swarm of locusts blotting out the skies to absolutely coat Harry’s mindspace. His mental Harry had been busy filling all available space on the final city with all the Coatl spawners he could. There were even several larger Coatls that emerged, over fifteen meters long and so big that they could only fly in the spaces inbetween or around the cities rather than directly inside.
Harry took a deep breath. With all his memories available to him, the solution was rather simple. Mind Harry was worried about revealing his other form while he was being directly watched. And he had wanted to make sure Harry’s mindspace was fully secure before taking action.
But Harry was ready. It didn’t matter if they knew about his other form. What was important was that Harry escaped. And if they tried stop him again… then he wouldn’t be merciful this time.
He had been told that the blonde wizard was at Azkaban. Clearly that was not the case, and Harry wasn’t confident that they couldn’t escape again if the ministry caught them. He wasn’t going to hold back with them this time. He wasn’t going through this crap again next summer.
Screw this blood ward, and screw Dumbledore, however he was doing all of this from within prison. Screw these people keeping him here. Harry was getting out. He walked to the front porch and began his transformation into his soul eater form. His clothes shredded as he grew and the wood of the porch below his feet cracked. The wailing alarm ward immediately started shrieking and the blonde wizard apparated onto the street. Harry jumped forward and kicked him hard. The wizard’s chest caved in and he went flying back and crashed through the house of the house on the opposite side of the street.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Harry ran off through the wards at top speed. A web of magic wrapped around him and started shrieking even as he ran. With his gray magical resistant skin, it couldn’t fully sink in and even as Harry ran the spell structure started to crumble around him. But it seemed to alert the other wizards that something was wrong.
Ten wizards apparated in a perfect circle around Harry, he could feel their glowing souls around him. He continued charging forward towards the police station. If he caused enough chaos then the ministry would be forced to come.
— — —
Steven readied his wand and cursed as he saw the lanky beast continuing its charge forward. How in the world did this creature find this place again? How had Harry Potter disappeared so thoroughly from their detection spells as soon as this thing arrived?
“Lumos Obretio,” Steven shouted along with his nine comrades and brilliant white glowing ropes shot from their wands and bound the creature tightly, sending it sprawling to the ground in a heap. It thrashed and struggled and ineffectually bit at its bindings for a few seconds. Where the glowing ropes touched the creature its gray skin sizzled and burned.
The creature went still and Steven let out a sigh of relief. It appeared to be a dark creature, frightening but easily countered if one knew the proper…
“Grrrrrrrrr”
Steven winced as the creature began growling low in its throat. The woman to his left faltered slightly and her spell flickered for a moment.
“GRRRRRRRRRRR”
Steven’s head was pounding as the vibration from the sound seemed to shake something deep within him. His wand hand began trembling slightly but he kept his focus on keeping the spell stable. He could see the deep marks all over the creatures skin where the ropes had started pressing deeper into its body.
The sound stopped for a moment and Steven let out a breath in relief. They had…
“GRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
The creature roared and the world around Steven suddenly began twisting and warping around him. He felt sick and fell to his knees, unconsciously dropping his wand from limp fingers. Something… something deep within him was wrong. He… the roaring stopped and Steven saw that two of his companions were dead. The creature was approaching him rapidly. He raised his hand to cast a spell, only to realize that it wasn’t holding his wand. The creature stood above him with its jaws wide open. The last thing Steven felt was the jaws clamping around his torso and beginning to slice through his spine as it whipped its head to the side...
— — —
Harry finished his bite and swallowed the upper half of the man. The man's soul followed the flesh down Harry’s throat and into his stomach. Harry’s own soul swallowed it, but instead of his own soul growing bigger, some of the burns from the glowing ropes started healing. Harry could feel some of the burns searing down to the bone in places on his arms. He didn't feel pain exactly, but an uncomfortable pressure on the damaged spots. Harry moved to the next witch who had recovered from his roar. She pointed her wand at him and started casting something.
Harry hunched over and opened his mouth wide to roar,
“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
The woman went cross eyed and collapsed to the ground. Harry was lucky his desperate ploy was turning out to be so effective. It must be another quirk of this form that was making his roars so much more effective on them than when he was in his human form.
He turned and started running towards the muggle police station. Hopefully after losing three of their number they would back off. Harry reached up and wiped some of the blood that was spilling down below his mouth with his forearm. His wounds were still being slowly healed as Harry’s soul seemed to slowly shrink in order to heal the damage. Only the consumption of the third wizard's soul was offsetting the loss as it slowly began to be absorbed by Harry.
Harry reached the muggle police station and with a quick glance saw that the seven remaining wizards and witches had recovered. Several were gathered around on nearby roofs of buildings, watching him from a distance.
Harry reached over and ripped off a nearby car door and threw it hard at one of the watchers like a frisbee. The person apparated before they were hit, the car door blasting into and shattering the tile roof of one of the nearby houses.
Harry turned and leapt forward and began collapsing walls, destroying cars, and generally damaging as much as he could around the police station. Using his soul sight he made sure to avoid areas where there were actual people, they were innocent and had nothing to do with this. For a minute or two the watchers didn't do anything seemingly intent to simply observe. Harry could see the souls in the police station gathering together in the building, seemingly frightened by Harry's rampage.
One of the witches apparated behind Harry seemingly hoping to surprise him. But he simply kicked backwards directly into the witches skull, sending her slumping limp to the ground. Harry kept an eye on her soul out of the corner of his vision and it remained in place in her body. It seems that she was still alive.
Harry ripped off another car door and tossed it at another of the watchers. They were multiplying, there were at least fifteen now. Were this many people involved in kidnapping Harry?
“GRAAAA-ahh?”
Harry roared again but stopped immediately noticing the violently trembling of the souls inside the police station. They were smaller than the wizards souls and Harry was afraid that he might kill them if he roared full force again.
Harry started ripping off all the remaining car doors from the vehicles and stacked them on the roof of the police station with light tosses upward. Several bright spells lashed at Harry from the watchers, but he ignored them. He had almost fully healed from the wounds from the burning ropes and these spells were damaging but not overly so.
After Harry had gathered enough chunks of metal, he climbed onto the flat roof of the police station and in a few seconds stomped a hole in the roof in one corner of it. Then returning to the large stack of twisted metal he started tossing the hunks at the watchers as quickly as he could, rapid fire.
They apparated away as Harry threw, tossing stinging light spells back at him. But Harry managed to catch a few off guard with his rapid throws. When he scored a direct hit, one of the others would grab the injured and apparate them away. Harry managed to thin them out to only eight remaining and his skin was beginning to be become pockmarked from all the damage he had taken. The healing from the wizards soul that Harry had consumed was beginning to run out.
Harry threw the last chunk of metal and before his captors could react he dived into the building through the hole in the roof, and transformed back to a human as he did so. He hit the ground hard in his human form completely naked. He started running deeper inside the building, leaping over the rubble scattered all over the floor.
A wizard apparated in front of Harry looking upwards at an angle while crouching down. His eyes widened as he saw a naked Harry charging him.
Harry’s heart raced and his breathing hitched as the wizard started bringing his wand downwards to point at him. If Harry was stunned then it was all over and it would all be for nothing. His hand grew cold and he leapt forward and punched the wizard in the gut. Harry’s hand became warm and the man grunted before slumping to the ground, barely conscious. Harry bent down and roughly ripped the wizards wand from his hand as he lay there stunned.
The wand felt terrible, like he was breathing through a small tube while he casted his magic. But it would work. Harry cast a silent stupify and stunned the wizard below him.
All Harry had to do was stay away from them until the ministry came to investigate the chaos. Where were they? Harry had been going at it for at least ten minutes, and they still hadn’t responded yet? Had they been paid off? Harry hoped he didn’t have to transform again. He was taking a big risk turning back into a human, hoping the Aurors would arrive in time to save him.
A wizard apparated in front of Harry and turned to him with wide eyes. Harry nearly cast a spell at him before he noticed the man's blue Auror robes.
“Apparate me back to the Ministry!” Harry demanded as he ran forward. The man's eyes went to Harry's naked form briefly then to Harry's wand hand as Harry ran towards him.
“What’s going on? Stay back, kid!” he shouted a little overwhelmed and fearful while brandishing his wand at Harry.
Someone apparated behind the Auror and Harry recognized the blonde wizard that had first captured Harry. The man's wand was pointed toward the Auror's head.
“Watch Out! Aguamenti!” Harry shouted as a jet of water shot out of the wand and knocked the blonde man’s arm out of the way. His wand glowed with the bright white of an obliviation charm before dissipating harmlessly without a proper target
The Auror crouched and cast a bubble shield charm as Harry shouted. Looking behind himself, the Auror stepped to the side for a clear shot of the attacker and cast a stunner at the blonde man, but the blonde man blocked the spell silently without a second thought.
Before Harry knew what was happening, the man had sent a flurry of stunners at Harry, ignoring the Auror for now. Harry only dodged them by diving to the side so he was hidden in the shadow of the Auror’s bubble shield.
“Stop it! What in Merlin is going on here!” the Auror shouted, staring at the blonde wizard, “You are under arrest for…”
The man turned to look at the Auror and whatever the Auror saw in the others eyes made him stop speaking.
“Reducto!” the blonde wizard chanted and the curse blasted into the Aurors shield with a heavy impact. The Auror let out a heavy grunt and he took a step back to absorb the impact.
Harry ran forward until he was right behind the Auror, his ears still ringing from the sound of the impact.
“APPARATE US! YOU CAN’T MATCH THEM!” Harry shouted at the Auror through the shield.
The Auror looked back and hesitated as he registered Harry's words, but the blonde haired wizard capitalized on the Auror's distraction. Another blasting curse slammed into his shield and barely made it through, shattering the bubble shield into pieces. The Auror was launched backwards into Harry, sending the both of them slamming into a wall. Harry was slammed from both sides as he was sandwiched between the wall and the Auror laying on top of him.
“Apparate us!” Harry shouted again into the ear of the man lying in a heap above him, the man seemed dazed by the impact.
“Incendio Diabolica!” Harry shouted, pointing the wand around the Aurors body beneath the Auror's armpit at the attacker. Everything felt weaker and slower than it did with Harry's own wand.
Black flames leapt from Harry's wand towards the blonde haired man who disappeared, apparating away from the path of Harry's spell. Harry rolled out from underneath the Auror and grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him lightly. The man's eyes focused slightly and the Auror reached up and gripped Harry’s arms as he seemed to come back to awareness of the situation.
“Apparate us!” Harry shouted again, hoping the Auror could understand him, “Before he comes back!”
The Auror blinked, but weakly nodded in response. There was another crack as the blonde wizard returned to the room and prepared to cast a spell. But Harry let out a sigh of relief as he felt something tug at his gut, and then he was in the Auror department of the ministry. There was a circle of brightly colored stone below them that was the designated location for apparition.
Everyone doing their business paused and stared in shock at the naked Harry and the dust covered and shell shocked Auror who was still laying out on the floor breathing heavily. Harry quickly cast a quick spell to create a sort of magical cloud to cover himself up so he wouldn’t be flashing the crowd.
“A…Attacked,” the dust coated Auror said as he sat up in the sudden silence in the office.
“N-Need, B-Backup…” he said weakly. All the blue robed Aurors stared at him for a long moment before they all exploded into motion all at once. After getting a stilted description of the situation, dozens of Aurors began rushing into the apparition platforms to swarm the area en masse. Apparently the man's partner was still back there and hadn’t reported back to the Ministry yet, so they were in a rush to support him before anything bad happened.
And someone finally brought Harry some clothes to change into. The cloud spell was exhausting to maintain, and it was a relief when he could finally let it drop.
Harry turned around when he heard someone standing behind him.
“Harry Potter?” Amelia Bones asked, “Is that you?”
Harry nodded.
“We should not know each other as well as we do,” she grumbled after letting out a sigh of apparent relief.
“Come up to my office,” she said, “I’m sure you have a lot to tell me.”
Harry nodded and followed her.
— — —
“And you are absolutely sure that it was the same wizard as last time? He is registered as being in Azkaban right now.” Amelia Bones asked Harry with concern. He nodded.
“Absolutely. The Auror that brought me here saw him too,” Harry said, “You can ask him. That jerk that attacked us ambushed me right after I saved those muggles too. I bet he was just going to sit there and watch it happen if I didn’t intervene...”
“Indeed, this is concerning…” she said, “There is one more thing you should know before I let you go though…”
“What?” Harry asked.
“Everyone included your new family thought you were dead,” she replied heavily, “Someone cast the dark mark in the sky right after you disappeared. Voldemort used to place it above the houses of his victims back during the war against him. Most assumed that it was referring to you after you couldn’t be found… Alice and Frank were well aware of what it meant.”
“Well, I’m going right back to tell them that I’m fine then,” Harry said, “It was only a kidnapping. Although the mind altering spells were very unpleasant. I’m lucky I’ve started practicing occlumency or I might really been stuck there all summer. Or forever. I’m not sure what goes through Dumbledore’s mind anymore.”
“Yes, Auror Doudna will escort you back to your family.”
“No,” Harry said, “Screw Doudna. I don’t want to deal with him right now. Tell him I’ll tell him about it next time something happens.”
Madame Bones scrunched her brow at Harry’s response but eventually shrugged, “Very well. I didn’t think you disliked him that much, but I’ll tell him. I’ll take you there myself then. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
So after taking him to one of the apparition platforms she apparated them both to the front stoop of the Longbottom residence.
Madame Bones knocked on the door and Alice answered. Her eyes zeroed in on Harry in an instant as he stepped out from behind Madame Bones.
“Harry! You’re alive!” Alice said as she wrapped him in a bone breaking hug. Madame Bones seemed a little nonplussed at being totally ignored. Harry was sure that wasn’t something that happened to her often given how important she was in the ministry.
Harry hugged Alice back. He remembered how he had felt in his altered state. How his life might have been if he had stayed at the Dursleys. How miserable he would have been.
“I’m glad to be back,” Harry said, “I’ve really missed you guys.”