A pile of rags sat in the far corner of a high security Azkaban prison cell. The moon shifted a fraction through the window bars and the pile slowly showed itself to be the curled up, skin and bones form of Harry James Potter, the True-Boy-Who-Lived.
Things had gotten a bit better since the Dark Lord had taken over Magical Britain, but not by much. On the plus side, there were fewer dementors around, but on the negative side, Voldemort was now devoting more and more time to torturing him through the mental link they shared. The raids on muggles were increasing, and the viciousness of the treatment of the victims would've made him heave, if he'd had any food to speak of in him. The muggle raids were increasing because all the muggleborns had already been exterminated.
He'd been in here for just over ten years now. This year marked the point when his stay in this prison would overtake his stay in the last one, those miserable excuses for human beings that called themselves the Dursleys.
It made no sense. Why had his parents dumped him there? The official reason was that he'd been mistaken for a squib, but that didn't explain why they refused to speak to him after he came to Hogwarts.
His brother, John Potter, was believed by all to be The-Boy-Who-Lived, but Harry knew that wasn't true. He also knew the Headmaster knew it wasn't true.
For some reason, the headmaster really didn't like him. When the chamber of secrets had been opened in his second year, and a girl killed, Dumbledore had convinced the world that he was the culprit.
Everyone in the wizarding world, even his fellow Slytherins, blamed him, and they'd never liked him much to begin with. In fact, no one much liked him. In his two years at Hogwarts he'd never made a single friend. The Slytherins all hated that he was a Potter, everyone else hated him because he was a Slytherin, the teachers hated him for some unknown reason, and his parents hated him because… he didn't know.
He'd been shipped off to Azkaban screaming for someone, anyone, to believe him.
No one did.
The look of disgust and revulsion on his parents faces, fuelled his dementor nightmares for years, until he stopped caring what the dicks thought of him, and Azkaban merely became an edited highlights reel of Durskaban.
And then Voldemort had risen again, and started sending him those thrice-damned visions.
He'd made as much use of the connection as he could, sifting through the Dark Lord's head and grabbing all the knowledge he'd accumulated over his long life. Harry couldn't hope that he'd be able to escape from here to use it—such a happy thought would've been stripped away—but it was the only thing to do and, as messed up as it sounded, spending time in the Dark Lord's head was preferable to his own when the dementors were on the prowl.
Voldemort seemed to find his rummagings amusing, as though he were an over-eager student.
The bastard would grab his consciousness, show him a fortified building the Death Eaters were about to storm, explain the attack plan to him at great length, gloat a bit that he, Harry, was the only one who could warn the defenders, then force him to watch his followers torture, and kill the helpless victims, once they'd broken through.
Years ago, he'd even seen his own brother killed in this way. The arrogant tosser had just walked right up to Voldemort and invited him to kill him.
The Dark Lord would do this with everything, all his political games, all his strategy sessions, each and every one of his recruitment and training drives.
It was getting to be more than he could take, and the darkness of his cell seemed to be getting darker every day.
The sounds of someone clinking and moving penetrated the fog of Harry's mind. Someone was here. That wasn't normal.
"Oi. Potter. Get up. You've been requested."
There were boots where before there was just floor. That also wasn't normal.
"Oh, for crying out loud. He's out of it. Let's get him up."
Pain shot through his shoulders as two pairs of hands grabbed his arms and lifted him from the floor. It was the first time someone had touched him in ten years.
"Can you walk or are we going to have to drag you?"
He tried to put one foot forward, towards the cell door, and every muscle in his atrophied lower body screamed in protest. Eventually, with the support of the men, he managed to get a rhythm going, and Harry Potter, The-True-Boy-Who-Lived, walked out of Azkaban, and into a world ruled by the Dark Lord.