Harry Potter and the Freedom of Apathy
nonjon
Author of 24 Stories
Rated: M - English - Drama/Angst - Reviews: 251 - Published: 03-30-05 - Complete - id:2329599
Disclaimer: I own nothing; it all belongs to J.. I’m just borrowing the characters to play with for a while. This is for pleasure only, no profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
PROLOGUE – Imprisonment
Harry Potter sat still in his cell. He remembered how his time in Azkaban began. How he never cried out loud, but he had completely irritated his eyes unable to stem the flow of tears. Having the only memory of your parents, be that of their murder is not a good thing. But it was the betrayals and pain he felt at people he had been foolish enough to trust before. The double standards the world had applied to the Boy-Who-Lived had disgusted him. He had used an unforgivable on a deranged lunatic escaped murderer who had just killed his godfather. And for that the Wizarding World condemned their savior as a traitor. As a Dark Lord in training. As a sympathizer of Voldemort. As evil.
It was two years into his ten year sentence when Harry made a startling discovery that changed his life. One of the age old debates was solved in Harry’s head. Magic was sentient. It was not merely a force that existed and could be utilized. It was essentially alive. Harry wasn’t sure it would be fair to call it truly alive, because if that were the case then magic could die. And Harry was pretty sure it couldn’t die. You can fight it, you can resist it, you can block it or even negate it. But magic would still exist. And it had a mind of its own.
After two and a half years of struggling under the effects of the dementors, Harry was slowly building a resistance and his thoughts and understanding were becoming much clearer. When Harry realized Magic was sentient, he finally figured out it was trying to communicate with him. Knowledge he had never had before became instinctual to him. He understood his connection to Voldemort and was able to control it at will. Concepts and the ability to manipulate magic in ways he had never thought possible was at his complete command. He realized immediately he could break out with relative ease. He had enough understanding of magic, that his quantity of power was irrelevant. Even if it hadn’t been, Harry was pretty sure he was really powerful. He suspected Dumbledore, Voldemort, and himself were all three in a class of their own. Exactly where among them he wasn’t sure. But he had complete certainty that not only could he control and manipulate magic better than them, but that in fact Magic liked him better than either of them. And that was a pretty much insurmountable advantage.
Only very briefly did he toy with the idea of breaking out. Living a life as a fugitive would not have been ideal, but he wasn’t opposed to it. But if he escaped, he would just be doing exactly what they expected of him. Vilified even more and appearing the traitor they believed him to be. That he could not stand for. He wanted to serve his sentence and leave. He was absolutely certain he didn’t need any of them. Just as he was certain, that unless you supported Voldemort, then you definitely needed Harry. The community and Wizarding World offered him nothing and he would have no part in its society. He wasn’t going to abandon magic, just the people who decided he deserved to rot in prison. He daydreamed of perhaps settling into a magical town outside of Europe. Or even just somewhere private on his own. Perhaps claim his own island as a secluded home and sanctuary. He had time to decide his own future once he had served his sentence.
Harry never had any visitors in the following seven and a half years. Dumbledore had only come to him once. Shortly after the first anniversary of his imprisonment. The old man wanted to see how he’d respond to the knowledge that Remus Lupin had been killed. The one man who had been trying to get Harry freed and believed the rest of the world was nuts for locking him up. Harry had been unsurprised at the knowledge of Moony’s demise and had no reaction to Dumbledore at all. This was because three nights ago he had seen Remus die through Voldemort’s eyes. It saddened him and hurt him, but there was the wonderful fact that he had taken Peter Pettigrew with him. Remus got some of the revenge he was owed and did his part to appease the spirits of Prongs, Padfoot, and Lily. Remus’s life had not been very good at all. But his death had been spectacular. Wormtail had his silver hand squeezing Remus’s neck. It was actually burning and sizzling on contact eating the flesh away, but Remus’s instincts and werewolf strength snapped Wormtail’s arm like a toothpick. Wormtail transformed to get away and Moony’s dying action had been to grab the rat forcefully and bite his head off. Even Voldemort got a kick out of the scene.
