Betrayal of the Best Kind
Soar
By Draco664
Soar
Harry felt the wind whip past his face as he fell from the top of the cliff. He would have to time this very well. Failure was not an acceptable option. The ground was coming up towards him very, very fast.
In a split second, Harry changed. Continuing the dive, he flared his wings at the last possible moment, slowed enough to land and changed back. Flopping down on the uncomfortable rocks, he lay his head on its side, so he could view the top of the cliff. He needed to know when no one was watching.
Looking out the side of his glasses, he couldn't make out the identity of the individuals staring down at his 'corpse'. More and more blurs appeared at the edge of the cliff, looking down.
Long minutes passed. Now the danger of dying was past, Harry could feel the cold, bitter sting of betrayal. Cho had lied to him. She had tried to get him captured. She hated him. The euphoric feelings of holding her evaporated, like water on a hot stove. The ache in his heart drew his attention away from the pain of the rocks he was lying on. One rock was jabbing into his ribs, another particularly sharp one, was sticking in just below his bladder. Harry didn't notice. A wave crashed into the rocks chilling Harry, and knocking his glasses almost off his nose.
A faint howl of anguish reached Harry. Almost immediately, the people at the cliff's edge vanished. Harry stiffened. Sirius was there. The one person he trusted was there. Did he have anything to do with this trap? A single blurred shape appeared at the cliff top. A few seconds later, it disappeared. Harry fancied he could hear a faint whining.
The pain could no longer be contained. That Sirius knew and helped to try and capture Harry made his stomach churn violently. Harry got to his hands and knees and vomited the meager contents of his belly. His heart felt as though a huge fist was squeezing it, crushing the life out of him.
Gritting his teeth, Harry leapt into the air and flew as fast as he could along the coastline. He had to get away, away from the awful heartache threatening to overwhelm him.
Hermione ran to the edge of the cliff and looked over. The rest of the group caught up and followed suit. They all stared down at the sharp, wave ravaged rocks below, noticeably lacking the corpse of a young man.
"Harry!" shouted Hermione down the cliff. "You almost gave me a heart attack you bastard! I thought you were dead! I'm going to kill you!"
The others looked at her in astonishment. A stray thought at the back of Ron's stunned and bewildered mind suggested he not make a comment about the hypocricy of Hermione's last statement. "He's not dead?" was all he could manage.
Hermione turned to look at him. "No, Ron, he is still alive." She sadly looked out to sea. "And probably in more pain than we can imagine."
All but one of the rest of the group stared out into the sunset stained sea, searching for any sign of, as Hermione now thought of him, The-Boy-Who-Lived-Yet-Again. Perhaps, she thought, he should be called The-Boy-Who-Just-Won't-Bloody-Die.
Sirius was looking surreptitiously to the sky, silently echoing Hermione's hypocritical and homicidal thoughts.
The aurors that had taken part in the operation had left to report on the failure to capture Harry. The rest of the participants in the failed mission sat dejected in Dumbledore's office. Cho was still in the hospital wing; Sirius was still in canine form, and whining.
Hermione and Ron sat close together, arm in arm, as they listened in horror to the real events of that fateful day. Guilt surrounded them, as they realised they had believed that a true friend and hero of the wizarding world was a murderer. Understanding of the desperation of their friend to prefer to almost end his life, rather than be captured, drove home the self-loathing they now felt.
Snape looked down at the pair. He too felt shame that he had believed Potter capable of killing Crabbe. Vincent had been a member of his own house, he thought, he should have done his own investigation, rather than rely on others. One thing gnawed at him though.
"Miss Granger?" He asked softly.
Hermione looked up at him questioningly.
"How did you know that Pott-, Harry was still alive?"
"I'd be interested to discover the answer to that mystery too, Severus," said Dumbledore.
Dumbledore looked as though he'd aged fifty years. No matter the length of his white hair and beard, he had always possessed a vitality that put younger wizards to shame. Now, he looked tired, and weak.
"Harry's glasses were still intact on his face. After a fall of that distance, they should have shattered. It was Professor Dumbledore's inadvertent use of the phrase 'short-sighted' that triggered the realisation."
Ron stood. "Professor Dumbledore?"
"Yes, Mr. Weasley?"
"May I use your fire?"
"Be my guest."
Ron walked over to the ornamental fireplace, took a pinch of powder from a small pouch and threw it in the fire. "Arthur Weasley," he said.
It was almost a full minute later that Arthur's face appear in the fire. "Ron! Where are you calling from?"
"Professor Dumbledore's office. Dad, we tried to catch Harry today."
"Yes, I know. I organised the invisibility cloaks. How did it go."
"Not good. Harry somehow managed to escape."
Mr. Weasley frowned. "How on earth did he manage that? I authorised the use of a full squad of aurors."
Ron tried to hold back tears. "He jumped off the cliff."
Mr. Weasley sighed deeply. "That is unfortunate. I would have preferred him to have been taken alive."
Dumbledore spoke up, his voice raspy. "It is more unfortunate than you believe, Arthur. I'm sorry to have to tell you now, but information has come to my attention, suggesting that Harry is in fact innocent."
Mr. Weasley stared at the headmaster with a shocked expression. "Enough to bring before a court?"
"Yes, and exonerate him. One piece of news that would have been considered good under any other circumstances, is that there is now enough evidence to arrest Lucius Malfoy for murder."
Mr. Weasley closed his eyes. "Hardly a consolation, if an innocent boy has died."
Ron shook his head. "Harry isn't called The-Boy-Who-Lived for nothing. He somehow managed to save himself, trick us into thinking he was dead, and escape while we weren't watching."
Mr. Weasley looked at his son. He again sighed deeply, this time in relief. "Molly will be pleased. I don't think she ever really believed he killed that boy."
Professor Snape coughed. "There's more. The reason he ran. He realised it was a trap. He won't trust anyone. Even if you issue a press release proclaiming his innocence, it's unlikely that he'll give himself up. Ms. Chang broke down, and essentially accused Potter of killing Cedric Diggory for his own gain. I doubt he is thinking clearly at present."
The enormous grim's head snapped around and stared at Snape. With a bound he was out the door and into the Hogwart's corridors.
"Just a moment, gentlemen." Mr. Weasley said. His head disappeared briefly, before returning with a determined expression. "Harry has been found. At Privet Drive."
Sirius bolted through the corridors. Groups of students watched him with open mouths as he speed past. Two girls dropped their bags and screamed at the top of their lungs as he loped past. He ignored them. That bitch, the Chang girl was in the hospital wing. He wanted to have a nice long chat with her.
Lavender Brown and Pavati Patil had just finished their revision in the library for the upcoming Divination OWLs. They'd both studied death omens extensively, being one of Professor Trewlaney's favourite subjects. Giggling about her recent prediction (a student would die at the hand of a former student), they turned the corner on their way back to Gryffindor Tower.
Both stopped and stared in shock at the appearance of a Grim. Massive, black, and moving fast, it came straight at them. Both let out a scream. Then fainted.
Sirius stuck his large head through the gap in the door to the hospital wing. Sniffing deeply, he could tell there were three distinct individuals in the room. Two of them female. He sniffed again, recognising Madam Pomfrey's scent. Well that left one.
Shouldering the door open further, he trotted in. Madam Pomfrey was in her office, her two charges sleeping. Sirius padded past a short wizard with blond hair and his arm in a sling. The other patient was lying closest to Pomfrey's office. She was lying on her side, quivering slightly in her slumber. Sirius could smell the residue of the sleeping draught on her breath. He transformed, and reached into his pocket, extracting an intricately carved lion. Grabbing her with his left hand he twisted the lion's head with the fingers on his right, activating the portkey.
In quarter of an hour, Madam Pomfrey would raise the alarm, but for now, she worked in her office, blissfully unaware that one of the most wanted men in the world had just kidnapped one of her patients.
A scarlet blur sped the length of the United Kingdom in only a few minutes. Unthinking, Harry sped towards the place that he had lived for his first decade of life. He had never considered the place home, but at least there he was only treated badly. At least they had never held him in a place guarded by his worst fear.
Harry aimed at the open kitchen window, and flew into the house. He transformed back in the living room and looked around. The house appeared empty. A short scream sounded from the stairway. Harry spun and looked at his Aunt, her horse-like features fixed into an expression of extreme fright, her bony hand covering her mouth in fear.
"It's just me, Aunt Petunia." he said.
His Aunt blinked. The shabby, painfully thin wretch in front of her was her nephew? She lowered her trembling hand. "What, what are you doing here?"
Harry shrugged, not knowing exactly what to tell her. He heard some thumping from upstairs, and then his Uncle's voice shouted, "Who's there, Petunia?"
His Uncle appeared at the top of the stairs, behind his Aunt. "You!" he bellowed, storming past his wife.
"Yes, me." Harry said in a deadly calm voice. His green eyes glittered with contempt for the couple who raised him. "Touch me, and you'll regret it."
Vernon Dursley stopped his charge at the boy. Never had he seen Harry so intense. "You can't do magic out of school boy, you'd be expelled."
The feral smile that appeared on Harry's face chilled him. Always before, his nephew had been afraid, or at least timid, in his presence. Now, the shabby creature before him obviously held no such feelings.
"I was expelled last August." he said, his chilling smile still in place. "Now, I'm a fugitive, just like my godfather."
Vernon heard his wife sigh, and then faint to the floor. Summoning his courage, he shouted, "Get out, before I call the police!"
If anything, his nephew's smile grew even more evil. "Go ahead. You can try to explain to them that I have escaped from prison, but I doubt they'd believe you, since I've never been arrested in the muggle world. They may arrest you though." His eyes glittered with glee.
Vernon's brave mask was cracking. "W... w... why would they arrest me?" he stammered.
"You are my legal guardian. They'd take one look at me and arrest you for child abuse. I look like I've been abused for years, don't I?"
Mr. Vernon Dursley, director of Grunnings, joined his wife on the floor in a dead faint.
Harry looked down at the pair of them. "Well that was fun." he said to no one in particular.
Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs, of number six, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
Mind you, strange and mysterious voices could be heard next door. A scream had caught their attention earlier. The voice of their neighbor, Vernon, had been heard shouting at someone to leave or the police would be called.
Well, that was enough for Mrs. Jacobs. "They'll thank me, they really will," she said to herself, as she dialed 999.
Harry had just stepped out of the shower, when he heard the front door of Privet Drive crash open. Wrapping a towel around himself, he ran to his room. Concerned voices drifted up the stairs. Looking out the window, he could see an empty police car sitting on the road in front of the house.
Harry quickly dried himself and threw on some of Dudley's cast off clothes. One of the policemen came up the stairs, and opened his door. "Is any- Dear God!"
The two of them stared in shock at the other. The policeman recovered first. "Who did this to you? Are you alright?" Harry scooted away out of his reach.
"It's OK, son, I'm not going to hurt you."
Harry relaxed. His inner Slytherin told him that this was too good an opportunity to pass up.
The policeman continued. "Why didn't you answer the door when we knocked? We had to break in when we saw your parents were lying on the floor."
"They're not my parents, they're my Aunt and Uncle. They don't like it when I leave my room."
The policeman's eyes widened. He took in Harry's appearance, long wet hair, skeletal frame and pale skin. "Don't they feed you?" he asked.
Harry nodded. "They pass me a tin of soup through the door sometimes."
"I'm Carter. My friend Barry is downstairs looking after your relatives. Can you come downstairs with me?"
Harry nodded. He got up and followed Carter down to the living room.
"How long have you been in that room?"
Harry smiled. "Just on five years." He watched as two pairs of eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "The moved me in there after I got too big for the cupboard under the stairs." he continued.
Barry and Carter exchanged a look. It was obvious to them that Harry wasn't lying. Just one look at the haggard boy would make anyone believe he had been abused for a long period.
Barry spoke for the first time, "What's your name, son?"
"Harry. Harry Potter."
Barry turned and nodded to his partner. "Come on, Harry. Let's get you something to eat." He led to boy to the kitchen.
Carter turned a look of disgust on the unconscious Dursleys. He walked out the door and out to the car. He radioed the station to report the suspected child abuse of one Harry Potter.
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