Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Coven of the Rose ❯ Chapter 00 ( Prologue )

[ A - All Readers ]

DO NOT IN ANY WAY TAKE THIS STORY SERIOUSLY, IT'LL GIVE YOU A HEADACHE AND CAUSE SQUIRLS TO SPONTANIOUSLY CUMBUST.

This is my version of a Harry Potter revenge fic, but after a couple of years in Azkaban he's not quite sane anymore. He has some sanity left, but it doesn't really affect him anymore. I'm not to sure what all I'll do with story, right now I'm just writing it for fun and to get my mind off of my other fic for a while.

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Coven of the Rose
Chapter 00
By CRose
© 2006
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Groaning in pain, Harry Potter lay in his cell at Azkaban and tried to breathe as his thoughts struggled to move about his mind. He couldn't really recall just how long it had been since he was dragged here. If the visits by various people were anything to go by, then it was just over two years.

He didn't really care anymore. Every now and then he would find himself wondering just what he did to make people even think he could kill someone, but he realized that people judged others by their own point of view. This meant that they themselves unconsciously thought if they could murder, then he could as well.

Long nights at the Dursley's had taught him a lot of life lessons like that. Like, he's a freak, don't show him kindness. Or, if you tell people about this, then you will be thrown in an orphanage and forgotten about, abused worse than ever.

Harry had really wondered Vernon came up with that kind of crap, but eventually shrugged it off. Star Wars had shown him that fear led to hate, and from hate came violence. Of course he could have that wrong, Dudley had fallen asleep on the couch trying to watch all nine hours of it at once. Harry had watched from his hiding place behind the couch and missed some of the speeches.

He giggled a little; his thoughts were a bit random. Then a Dementor glided past the cell and Harry was treated to the sounds of his parents being killed, dark laughter, and everybody he knew turning their backs on him. Then the day that got him into this mess flashed in front of his eyes, Cedric dying, the connected wands, phantoms of dead people, and his daring escape.

With Cedric Diggory's dead body. Those articles from Rita Skitter were the primary cause of his arrest. People knew that the Daily Prophet lied about a lot of things, but somehow those lies became truth when it applied to him. Harry Potter was arrested the same night of his arrest and accused of killing Cedric.

What was even funnier was that when the Prophet said he brought the body back to gloat about it, everyone believed it. The Golden Boy had turned. Logic and Magic never did work very well together.

Harry giggled again, rather high pitched and with an annoying quality about it. Several of the prisoners yelled for him to shut up, but Harry didn't really hear them. His parents were being murdered again.

Maybe someone would save them this time? He wasn't as horrified by the visions as he used to be, even seeing and hearing them being murdered didn't cause him problems. He seen it thousands of times and he was right bored with it and wanted Dudley to change the ruddy channel. Even the Smurfs and Gargamel would be a welcome change.

He yawned as Voldemort laughed manically and thought the man was really over acting his part. It suddenly occurred to Harry that he wasn't wailing in grief anymore. Or completely catatonic from reliving his worst nightmares. That's why he lay there on the floor blinking for a couple of hours trying to figure out why.

Sometime during that time he slept, but he really didn't pay any attention to that. When he woke up he took a deep breath and sat up slowly. Looking around the tiny cell and dragged himself over to the wall. He noticed that his clothing, what was left of his Hogwarts robes, were in rather bad shape. Of course he hadn't taken a bath in two years, prisoners had no rights once they entered Azkaban, so no one bothered. The smell, oh god smell!

He giggled again, people yelled, and he told them to go bugger themselves. It was dead quiet after that and Harry grinned. He knew he wasn't quite the person he had been when they brought him here. Sometimes lessons were hard to learn, but the Wizarding world made sure he wouldn’t ever forget this lesson.

Good deeds brought pain. Rescuing people only brought ridicule, hate, and useless gratitude from the very people you tried to help. Yes, that seemed right. His ability to trust was gone he realized. Friends betrayed you when it was convenient, yes. Promises were just bluffs until it was no longer useful, then they were written off as a waste of time.

He nodded to himself. It made perfect sense. Now he only had one question he had to ask himself. Why did he have a migraine? Opening his eyes he looked around and gasped. He seemed to be sitting in an endless dark void of some kind. Way off in the distance was a barely noticeable light.

Glancing around, he sensed something coming and turned just to see the darkness fold in on itself and a man in dark gray robes suddenly stood in front of him. He had long dark grey hair, wrinkled face, and using a staff to walk. Harry noted the horned skull on top of the staff and it reminded him of the last time he saw Mrs. Weasley.

"Hello boy."

"Yo."

"You, of course, know who I am?"

"Not a fucken clue."

The old man bonked him over the head with the staff. "I am…"

"Gandolf the Grey?"

"No."

"Merlin?"

"No."

Harry frowned. "I'm running out of names of old geezers here."

Bonk!

"Ow!"

"I'm, Agrippa!"

Harry stared at him blankly. "Yeah right."

The old man grumbled and coughed. "Nicolas Flamel, or his astral projection anyway."

"Now that I can believe. I knew I was forgetting some old geezer. Aren't you dead?"

"I'm over six hundred years old, do you think losing one little stone would be enough to make me give up on life?"

Harry shrugged. "Knowing the world of magic? Hell yeah, blasted sheep waiting for someone to tell them what to do."

"True enough." The old man nodded.

"So you're dead?" Harry insisted.

Bonk! "Now do you know the prophecy?"

"Nope!"

"Syble Trellaway…"

Harry fell over laughing.

The old man glared at him. "The woman is a seer."

Harry just laughed harder. "The woman is a complete fraud!"

"The Trellaway family has produced some of the finest seers…will you stop laughing!"

"S-stop making up jokes!"

Bonk!

"Ow."

Flamel nodded as if he just solved a problem. "Now listen, the woman is a bit scatter brained, but she is a seer. She just…"

"Sucks."

"Whatever, now she have a prophesy just before you were born. She gave it to Albus during her interview actually."

"What did it say?"

"Basically, and I don't know the exact wording, that someone would be born that could kill Voldemort and that they would be born at the end of July."

Harry shrugged. "The poor bugger."

"Albus thinks it's you."

Now Harry snorted. "Yeah right, I'm famous for something I barely remember unless a dementor is around. I probably shit my nappy and screamed for a couple of hours till my Aunt Petunia kicked me unconscious."

"You were cleaned up before you arrived at your Aunts house. Now, while that was going on, you had a major bout of accidental magic and leveled half your house."

"Ah…really?"

"Really." Flamel confirmed. "This wasn't a good thing, but it proved that you did confirm for Albus that you were the one that would defeat Voldemort. He didn't think a rebound killing curse would be enough to stop old boy, so he set up the wards at your Aunt's place to keep you safe from Voldemort until you were old enough to come to Hogwarts."

"Where he didn't even bother to train me."

Bonk!

"Ow!"

"Foolish boy, an adolescent can't be trained to use their magic till they are at least ten years old. That's when your magic core begins to stabilize enough for you to use it properly."

"I know that, but he could have trained me during the summers."

"Albus wanted you to have a childhood."

"Right, being beat up, starved, and worked to death sure preserved my childhood didn't it?"

"Albus has his blind spots."

"Feh." Harry huffed.

"Now, remember that I mentioned your magic? Albus blocked it with a spell that is used on a lot of children if they cause too much damage. It wears off sometime during your sixteenth year."

"So?"

"You block unlocked itself yesterday."

Harry blinked. "So the reason the dementors are…"

"Wasting their time, is because your magic is fighting against the wards of Azkaban that are sapping your magic."

"…okay…"

"It's going to take you a few days for your magic to settle down, but during that time, if you wanted to escape…"

Harry grinned and blinked as he found himself in his cell again. He glanced at his hand and focused. Red energy began to crackle around his fingertips and he started to laugh as he felt his magic core surge. Before Azkaban his well had been kind of big, about the size of a pond, but now it felt almost endless. He stood up let the magic fill his body.

Giggling, Harry threw his hand out and the back wall of his cell exploded outward. The fact that he had his hand pointed at the door of his cell confused him for a few seconds before shrugging and turning around. He poked his head out the hole and looked out over Azkaban Island.

"How convenient, they have me on the first floor." Harry chuckled as he stepped out on the ground outside his cell. No wonder he hadn't been given a window in his cell. It was dark outside so he wasn't too worried about people seeing him leave, but someone had to have heard the noise.

He started jogging; working his muscles with magic other wise he would have had trouble keeping up a slow walk. Azkaban Island was a lot bigger than people thought it was. The actual castle was situated on the side of a mountain, nearly twenty miles from the edge of the island and surrounded by black rock and no vegetation.

The dementors that populated the island weren't exactly good for flora and fauna, so nothing lived on the island. Which was part of why they guarded the worst prisoners. One can't have anyone actually having fun in prison after all. It took several hours, but Harry reached one of the beaches around the island.

Even the sand on the island was black. As fascinating as that was;
Harry really didn't pay to much attention to it. He just wanted to make it out of the anti-apparition field around the island, which reached across the waters to the beach on the land on the others side. Harry could hear Hermione in his head telling him in her rather bossy voice that Azkaban had some of the most complex wards on the planet, except for Hogwarts.

His eyes gleamed a little as he placed his foot on the water and stood on the surface. Once he got used to the pitch and roll of the waters he slowly started to walk across the water and to the land on the other side. It would be daylight before he reached the other side, but by then it would be to late for them to recapture him.

Giggling, he adjusted his focus as an idea surfaced and for the next several hours he skated across the water at a slight angle. After all he didn't want them to think he would just go straight to the other side. A burst of water off to the side caught his attention and he spotted several Dolphins playing around in the water around him.

Laughing, he skated around, over and over them for the next hour or so. Surprisingly his energy reserves, though low, would hold out for a while yet. The Dolphins seemed to have fun flipping over him every now and then. His eyes twinkled brightly as he watched.

Eventually though the dolphins swam off as he neared land. The first thing he saw was a green haze, but that quickly turned into trees. He looked over the area he was making for and didn't spot anyone that could rat him out and made landfall at just around two in the afternoon.

He checked his magic and found that he didn’t have too much left. Shrugging it off, he stalked up the small rocky beach and into the trees before anyone could spot him. Looking ahead had never been one of Harry's abilities so he wasn't sure where to go from here, but he wasn't helpless either.

Those in the magical world were Muggle ignorant, even a good number of the Muggle born students stopped paying attention to the muggle world. Harry wondered if it was some kind of peer pressure, as one of his early schoolteachers had taught him?

Nodding to himself, he glanced around and figured he would need to find a place to rest for a day or two so he could recover. They wouldn't expect him to stay in one place after escaping. Smirking just like Snape about to insult a Gryffindor, Harry considered the problem and came up with several quick ideas.

His first action would be rest, even if he had to dig a hole and sleep under the never-ending layer of leaves all around him. Once the aurors got wind of his escape they would cast some spells to track him, but those were easy to evade. After spending several months preparing for the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Harry knew all kinds of spells.

Even Hermione wasn't aware of just how many he had studied up for the tournament. He remembered the scene well. "Why yes Professor Dumbledore, I'm only a fourth year after all, so I need access to the restricted section if I'm going to be able to compete at all."

He giggled, scaring a couple of birds into flight. At first he hadn't really seen why some books were in that particular part of the library, but after several nights of study he realized that a good portion of the books were about dangerous magic, like those little rituals he did. Those came in so handy.

After that his abilities had skyrocketed, but luckily he was a good actor after surviving ten years with the Dursleys abuse. One learns how to lie with a straight face in that household. None ever considered that when they found out about his childhood.

Oh no, he was abused. He must be and idiot! Boo Hoo. He wiped a fake tear away and smirked a little more. Then if that wasn't bad enough, he learned just how much Ron's friendship really meant. Not very much, even in the end Harry noticed that Ron hadn't really wanted to apologize for his actions during the year.

Typical pureblood idiot. Harry really wondered if everyone in the wizarding world would ever take responsibility for their actions. He really doubted it and figured hell would freeze over before any of them even tried to learn the truth about anything. Read the paper, it never lies.

"Pathetic worms." He hissed out in parsletounge.

"A ssspeaker!" Hissed several voices.

Harry stopped moving and looked around to see half a dozen snake heads sticking out of a nearby bush. A few in the center, a couple at the bottom, and one from the side. They were various sizes and he had no clue what kind they were. "Hello." He hisses.

"Masster." They chorus.

"None of that Master crap, call me Harry."

They slither out of the bush and make their way over to him. They were beautiful snakes, though he wasn't sure what the red and yellow bands meant. "Hello Harry."

"So what are you doing around here? I figured the dementors would have run off all the wildlife around here."

"Dementorss are far away."

Harry nodded as he knelt down and scratched one of them under its chin. For some reason he expected its tail to start thumping on the ground, but was disappointed when it didn’t. The snake giggled instead, a sound that couldn’t even be translated into parsletounge.

Grinning a little, he stood back up and looked around. "Would any of you know of a nearby cave where I can spend the night without anyone finding me."

"Big cave is nearby, but hidden by trees and leaves." A shy snake answered, and then hid behind one of the larger ones.

"Could one of you show me, I need a couple days of rest before I move on."

The snakes nodded and started slithering through the leaves. They actually moved faster than Harry expected and he struggled to keep up. He was just glad the leaves moved as the snakes went under them. Several minutes later, after about half a mile, Harry entered a small clearing almost completely obscured by trees.

"This place." A snake said.

Harry glanced around. "I don't see it?"

The shy one's tail lifted up and pointed at a pair of large trees almost over taken by a large bush. "Behind there, Harry."

He made his way over and poked around a little. At first he didn't see it, but then he realized that he was looking a large pile of leaves. He wiggled around the bush and dug through about three feet of leaves and found a hole leading into the ground just big enough for him to crawl into.

"Looks a little cramped for me."

"Getss lotss bigger on insside."

Shrugging, Harry plowed his way inside and felt something give eventually and he found himself sliding forward. Several feet later he tumbled into a bit and landed with a grunt. Groaning, he sat up just as the six snakes entered the hole, falling lightly to the floor.

"Wee wee!"

Sighing, Harry turned around and looked over the cave. To his surprise he found himself looking at a furnished room. To the back was a small ratty cot, a broken desk with a dirt covered mirror, small table, and a couple of old chairs. It kind of reminded him of his room at the Dursleys.

"Well I'll be damned." He muttered. "This is a great place to hide, but what is all this stuff?"

"Ussed to belong to an old wizard, but he left a long time ago. According to great great grandma."

"Do you know where he went?"

"He laid down for several days, then started to shrivel up, then bugs come and fill cave for weeks. Bones of wizard eventually turned to dust and after that he vanished for good."

Harry choked. "So, he died."

"He went away."

"Died."

"He might come back, you never know."

"Uh, right."

One of the snakes pointed with its tail. "Next room through there."

"That's a wall."

"Fake wall." The snake said, and then to prove it, slithered through the wall.

Harry blinked. "Oh, an illusion."

"Fake wall, no need for complicated names."

Harry stepped through the wall just like he would have the entrance at Kings Cross. He was only a little surprised to find that the area beyond the cave was actually more civilized. Several torches were already lighting up as he stood there.

He was standing in an archway that led deeper into the hill behind the trees. His magic senses were telling him to be cautious as he explored. Danger seemed to permeate the very air. The snakes themselves were making their way down the short hallway. They entered another hidden door.

It only took him a second catch up and he was amazed at what he found on the other side. He'd never seen one before, but it was quite obviously a master bathroom. The floor was tiled, the walls mirrored, and polished slate covered everything else. At the back of the room a large basin bubbled with hot water.

The snakes were swimming around in the water happily. Smirking, he found a very old looking hamper. He hadn't seen anything like this since he visited the Weasleys several years before the great betrayal. He stripped his clothes off and tossed the ratty looking things in the hamper.

Then pulled a fluffy red towel off a nearby bench and made his way over to the basin. He climbed in and sighed loudly as he felt the dirt and grime being removed from his skin. Whole sections seemed to be flaking off and floating in the water.

The tub kept the water clean and hot though, so the dirt quickly vanished. He ducked down below the water and let the water soak his hair and washed it as best he could. He hadn't spotted any shampoo, but he wanted to get his hair as clean as possible.

He wasn't surprised to find that his hair was matted to his head and it took him nearly an hour and dozens of dunkings to get it to the point where it he could brush it again. It came as quite a shock to find that his pure black hair now had streaks of grey in it as it streamed down his back.

The snakes just continued to swim around the other end of the large tub, enjoying the hot water. They didn’t seem to mind that his hair was the wrong color. Then again, they were only snakes.

It was hard to tell where the grey came from and chalked it up to two years of mental torture with the dementors as well as his growing magic power. As he stood up he saw a mirror swinging open and a couple of hairbrushes flying out. They instantly took to combing his hair.

At the same time a warm breeze filled the bathroom to help dry him off faster. The place amazed him and he really wondered just who created it. This couldn't be the only room though. He was willing to bet that there was going to be a kitchen around somewhere and with any luck, a library.

That would help him date the place. He finished drying off with the towel and moved over to the hamper. His robes were cleaned, pressed, and all the rips and tears fixed. The snakes, which had continued to swim with him in the bath, finally got out and slithered across the floor.

He was starting to wonder about the snakes. They didn’t act like the others he'd met over the years. Well, other than that Boa Constrictor from the zoo. He shrugged his suspicions off as he finished dressing and glanced down at the Hogwarts symbol on the robes.

Reaching up, he ripped it off the robe and stuffed in one of his pockets. He glanced at the snakes. "Where are you going?"

"More rooms to show, Masster."

"Now, now, call me Harry. None of this Master crap."

The snake nodded. "Follow."

Harry noticed at he exited the bathroom that he could see the archway now and the spot where he entered. At the same times the snakes made their way about ten feet down the hallway and entered another room. This room was a den and library combined into one.

The biggest difference was that the room was domed, as it was half a sphere. Off to the left was a fireplace, comfy looking chair, and a small table. Set in the middle of the room was a small dais. Upon this stood a small podium of some kind with a large closed book sitting under a blue barrier of light. The walls were covered in books, nearly to the ceiling.

He figured there had to be about three thousand books in the room. "What is this place?"

"Bookss."

"Yeah, but what kind of person used to live here? This place is amazing."

"Old wizard." The snakes hissed.

Harry shook his head and stepped out of the room. Once more he was able to see the entrance. He felt like he was being tested by some kind of force, but he couldn't really focus on it. "How many more rooms?"

"Three M…Harry."

The hallway started to circle around after that. Door three was about twenty feet down and turned out to be the kitchen. Like the bathroom, it seemed to have quite a few oddities. One wall was covered in cookbooks. Whoever this old man guy was, he knew how to live well.

It only took him a few seconds to spot the cooler and pantry; both were full of preserved food. He stared at enough food to feed five hundred people, eyes wide, and his stomach growled at him.

"Good idea."

He took several minutes to make a large sandwich. The snakes sat in the corner and looked rather sick as he ate and downed several glasses of water. His body thanked him for the food by giving him a stomachache. As he stood up from the table he belched.

"Much better, now, on with the fun."

From there Harry checked out the next room, which turned out to be a small potions lab. He took several minutes to examine the large island in the middle of the room. It had several different cauldrons hanging from the ceiling above it. The room was like a one giant storage space.

The cupboards were full of preserved potions ingredients. Except for one section near the back where the spell had failed and several items had expired or turned to dust. He would have to come back and clean the cabinet out at some point.

"Any other rooms?"

One of the snakes nodded while the others shook their heads. They started arguing with each other, hissing so fast that Harry had trouble following the conversation, but eventually the one that nodded looked back at Harry. "Follow me."

Harry nodded and followed the snakes out of the room. It moved down the hall, almost to the end. "Here is room."

Glancing at the wall, Harry stepped forward and ran right into the wall. He grabbed his nose. "Oooow!"

The snakes snickered. "Room can not be entered master." The snake told him. "No one knows what's in there."

"Yob ould ave old meh eforie." Harry mumbled out as he held his nose. It was throbbing painfully.

"But not as much fun Masster Harry."

"Own all meh aster."

Harry could tell that his nose wasn't hurt that bad, maybe a little bruised, so he settled on glaring at the snakes for a second. This, of course, didn't faze them in the slightest way. So he walked back down the hall found himself near where here started.

It only took a second for him to reach the library again. The snakes had gone off to explore the small house again as Harry started looking through the books and wondering if wizards had ever heard of the Dewy Decimal system. The library didn’t' seem to have any system in place at all and the blasted walls were covered with books.

Thousands of the little suckers. Harry was only seventeen years old and really didn't want to spend the next twenty years reading every book in the room. There had to be a faster way to get the knowledge he needed. That, and he was lazy, but wouldn't admit, even under vertasium.

Then he spotted two books as they started to glow. He walked over and noticed that they were books on absorbsion rituals. Rituals he didn't know. Even back at Hogwarts he had resisted the urge to perform some of the darker, though relatively safe, rituals he came across.

Frowning a little, he pulled the book off the shelf and began to read. It only took him a few minutes to get an idea what the book was about and he started to laugh. It was as if the author had him in mind when it was written. He could perform these rituals without having to bleed or kill anything.

He just needed to increase his Occlumancy abilities and he was set. He moved over to the chair and sat down. The fireplace lit up automatically and he relaxed even more. It only took him about ten minutes to get lost in the book and two hours to read it. By the time he was finished his aches and pains were gone and he was ready for a little work.

Albus Dumbledore, the Ministry, and a few others were about to feel his wrath. Back in the kitchen the snakes were feasting on rats when they heard Harry start cackling insanely.

"Our master in insane."

"So what, he's funny and hasn't tried to kill us yet."

"I want to be his familiar."

The others just shrugged. Can a snake shrug? Hmm…

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To Be Continued...

Note: I'm not sure where the name of this came from, but I'm pretty sure the name may morph into something else eventually. Coming up in the next chapter is a bit of shopping and Harry 'I'm not quite sane anymore and filled with teenage hormones' Potter finds his first victim.