Chapter Text
Harry Potter aged… something, he didn’t really know any more, crouched in the corner of his prison cell and sang his favourite song.
“Kill the toad and murder the Rat,” sang Harry,
“Strangle the annoying bat,”
“Smash the face in of the prat,”
“Kill the toad and murder the rat.”
“OH SHUT UP WON’T YOU!” shouted someone in the distance “YOU’RE OFF KEY!”
Harry ignored them. There were so many more verses in the song.
With a bit of luck, one of the rats would be attracted by the song, and Harry would get an extra meal. Mmm. Rat. Dumbledore had even hinted that there was magic in music.
Harry was interrupted in his… absolutely insane singing by a tugging feeling behind his navel.
Harry remembered the feeling. It led to something bad, he was quite sure. In the before time, there’d been a day where that feeling had happened. Then the bad things happened. Harry’s left hand slid up his dirty right arm to his elbow, and rubbed the scar there. The tattered fragments of his Azkaban uniform sleeve tore a little more. Harry… stopped singing, and the tugging, magical wave covered him again – the deep, icy cold water that he couldn’t swim in. Again. The darkness of his cell got deeper, the tugging feeling more insistent.
All over Harry’s skin, a burning, itching feeling started. Harry, naturally scratched feverishly, writhing around. His fleas and lice did not appreciate the extra attention.
And just like that, the anti-transportation protections of Her Majesty’s Magical Prison, Azkaban Island, were overwhelmed and Harry vanished with a cloud of sickly smelling spiralling black mist, and a pop.
The round stone room was open to the cool, moonless night sky – and had crenellations and machinations, so really, it was the top of a castle tower.
In the precise centre of the flagstone floor, a dark brown magical circle, well, pentacle fizzed and the markings started to boil, releasing a smell like roast beef. The chemistry of the ink used for the markings won’t be discussed further. The twelve robed figures kept their wands pointed at the pentacle, most wavering slightly, with the exception of the white wand held by the oldest man in the group, his half-moon spectacles glinting in the light of Hogwarts.
“Keep concentrating!” urged Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts.
With a crack, the centre of the pentacle went from empty to filled with… a filthy, black haired man in tattered black rags, crouched on his haunches. He rolled backwards, falling onto his back, his bare feet falling, his legs akimbo…. And his remaining fragmentary pants not covering all that they should.
“Merlins Balls!” exclaimed the youngest red-haired man “You can see his – “
Albus quickly summoned a Hogwarts bedsheet, which covered the semi-conscious man, who lay sprawled on the stones.
“Pretty,” said someone who was supposed to be Harry Potter.
Albus looked around, and saw nothing obvious.
“Twinkles,” croaked the man, “Twinkle Twinkle.” he said, and giggled. A mad, insane giggle.
One of the younger women looked up. “He’s looking at the stars,” she said breathlessly.
“All of us are lying in the gutter but some of us – ” quoted a brown-haired middle-aged man with scars all over his face.
“Yes quite,” interrupted Albus tiredly, who was quite sick of muggle literary references.
The oldest woman in the group, a short, plump woman with red hair, wiggled her wand about, silently casting charms on the man who’d just arrived. The dirt on his face vanished, his hair wiggled about a little but resisted being groomed, and his scraggly black beard got tidier.
“Hello,” said Albus to the recent arrival, “This will have come as a bit of a shock, I know.”
The man, who could possibly be Harry Potter, as he quite resembled the late James Potter, apart from not being dead, turned his head to Albus, and squinted, mostly hiding his almond-shaped green eyes, and showing off masses of ‘smile lines’ on his pasty white skin. His eyes did rather resemble his mother’s eyes, apart from the vacant look. (Though Lily Potter nee Evans had a vacant look on her face post-mortem, but that was almost certainly just a side-effect of the Killing curse that had killed her.)
“You’re dead,” he croaked, and blinked, “I saw you die. You had a funeral and everything.”
“Ah,” said Albus, frowning, “Well, perhaps in your history you did. Sadly in mine, I saw you dead in your cot, Mr Potter. You were… you were only one.”
“Oh,” said the dirty, dishevelled man, sitting up a little. The cleaning charm had exposed the broad vertical purple stripes on his tattered black top. A top that looked awfully much like an Azkaban inmate’s uniform blouse.
“May I ask…” asked Albus very politely, “Why you appear to be wearing an Azkaban Inmate’s uniform?”
Harry Potter, if that was who he was, frowned. “Azkaban” he said, the repeated the word a few times faster, and faster. “Azkaban, Azkaban, Azkaban!” He frowned, “I think I’m in Azkaban,” he said, remarkably cogently, then fainted.
“Oh dear,” said the older witch with red hair, “He’s fainted.”
“I think,” said Albus, frowning and running his hand through his very long beard; “That things are not exactly as I had hoped.” He was actually quite wrong, while also being somewhat right. The difference between needed and wanted was going to really pain him later.
“Why on earth would Harry Potter be in Azkaban, I mean, this one, the one we summoned, he’s defeated his dark lord,” said a brown-haired witch, rearranging her scrunchie to get her frizzy hair back under some semblance of control.
“Well, I think we should take him to Madam Pimpernel,” said Albus, “He seems… emaciated.”
“Looks,” said the youngest red haired man, “A lot like a long-term Azkaban inmate, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this” said Albus. He was right, for certain values of right.
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