Harry potter and the descent into darkness

Chapter 1

Harry was alone. He'd never felt so lost and alone in his life. Even when at the Dursley's when he was a young child, he hadn't felt this alone. At least then, alone was all he had ever experienced. He didn't have anything to compare it to. Now he had known friendship and knew what it felt like to have friends and confidants with whom he could trust. Having it all ripped away from him, and being submerged back into that abyss of solitude was crushing.

It was now November 3rd, but his problems had really started on October 31st. Terrible things always happened on Halloween. So of course, he had been wary. Experience had taught Harry to dread this day each year, but he had not seen this coming. Not by a long shot.

He was in his 4th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and things had started out fine enough. Granted, the attack by Death Eaters at the Quidditch World Cup several weeks before the start of term had been a rather terrible experience, and then there were the foreboding dreams Harry had been having... but actual school had been great, so far. Even their Defense teacher was brilliant. Mad. But brilliant.

So when Harry's name had come shooting out of the Goblet of Fire, naming him one of the Tri-Wizard Champions, he had been stunned into a dumbfounded silence.

The entire school was convinced that he had cheated somehow. That he'd managed to find some way around Dumbledore's age line and had entered his name into the cup. More than that, his cheat had somehow screwed things up so badly that there were two champions chosen to represent Hogwarts when there was only supposed to be one.

The day after the champions were chosen, a reporter from the Daily Prophet named Rita Skeeter had come to interview the four of them. Her article was like a nuke of horror and embarrassment upon his life. It was utter rubbish and gossip drivel, of course, but that didn't stop people from believing it.

The entire school was against him. He was the attention seeking, cheating, liar, who still cried about his parents death sometimes at night, and had serious mental stability issues. But all of this would probably be within his ability to cope with – if it weren't for the abandonment of the two people he had trusted he could trust to always believe him.

Ron was angry. He didn't believe Harry for one minute when he told the redhead that he hadn't put his name into that cup. He was convinced that Harry had found a way around the age line and had entered his name without sharing the information with Ron. That Harry didn't want the added competition. That he didn't want to risk giving Ron the chance for glory of his own.

The stupid sodding git was just so jealous of Harry's fame that he was blind to the truth. The fact that he could honestly believe that Harry would want anything to do with 'eternal glory' stung hard. It showed that his friend really didn't know him much at all.

And then there was Hermione. Even she didn't believe him! She was angry at him for cheating. For doing something that had screwed up the tournament to make four champions instead of three, and she was angry at him for being so reckless that he would do something to put his life in danger. She was so angry that she couldn't see past the fury to listen to his insistence that he hadn't done it in the first place.

It was Saturday and he was hiding away in his dormitory. All of his dorm mates had left for breakfast. None of them bothering to 'wake' him, since none of them were speaking to him. Not that he wanted to go to breakfast anyway. He was sick of the stares and the whispers, and the open mocking from every damn Slytherin in the school.

He lay down in his bed, buried deep within the red quilts and shadowed beneath the heavy drawn curtains that surrounded his four-poster bed. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of all the pain and loneliness he felt. The sense of utter abandonment filled him and he clenched his jaw, taking in sharp breaths through his nose as he tried to push it all away. Turn everything off. Shut everything out.