Categories > Books > Harry Potter
Rescue from Azkaban
1 reviewOne-shot! What happened to Harry after "Zero" broke him out of Azkaban? See it from the point of view of the people who rescued him!
1Exciting
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anyone, anything, or any part of the Harry Potter or X-Men: Evolution universes. The X-Men characters Ana ("Zero") and her younger sister Moyra ("Medusa") are The Original Pe's own creations from her story "Of Slings and Arrows".
SUMMARY: Here, I write what happened while Harry was out cold, from the perspectives of Ana ("Zero") and her superiors. Takes place between when Zero broke him out of Azkaban and when he recovers back at the Xavier Institute. (Just read up to chapter 8 in The Original Pe's fic, and you'll be all set.)
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an edited version from the first time I wrote it, with corrections made.
/"Rescue from Azkaban,"/
By Quillian
Ana ("Zero") was feeling elated as she and Harry soared through the air in a wide arc. She had done it! She broke the innocent Harry Potter out of Azkaban!
Concentrating now, she slowly and carefully brought them down out of the night sky and through the fog. She couldn't avoid to going crashing into any trees or anything, not with her invaluable cargo in tow.
In a fog-filled field sat the Blackbird, the X-Mens' vehicle. The fog was being generated by Ororo Munroe ("Storm") to prevent the Blackbird from being spotted by anyone. Logan ("Wolverine") was merely hanging out, waiting for Ana and her companion to come.
"So, exactly why are we here again?" Logan said. He wasn't in such a good mood, between the jet lag and lack of coffee.
"Xavier and Cerebro picked up a mutant who was in that prison of theirs. One who was /innocent/. The rest of his kind thought he murdered his relatives whom he was living with."
Logan bristled a little. "And the rest of the details?"
"According to Ana," Ororo said a little heavily, "The prisoners are guarded by these foul creatures that can make prisoners relieve their worst memories. Add that to the little food the prisoners receive and the unsanitary conditions..." She sighed, awful thoughts filling her head. "Apparently, these wizards haven't heard the concept of police brutality."
Ororo could have sworn she heard a growl coming from Logan. She knew that for his moody and quick personality, he hated cruelty and injustice.
A few minutes later, a voice overhead called, "Storm! Wolverine!"
It was Ana, slowly descending through the fog with a limp body in her arms.
"Made it in and out quicker than we thought, kid," Logan commented. "Good work."
"Thanks," Ana said with a smile. "Those monsters didn't like vertigo very much," she then smirked.
"Oh God," Ororo breathed as Ana came closer for them to see.
The boy was rather small and short for a sixteen-year-old. Some grime covered his filthy prisoner's robes and pallid skin. The same grime was in his otherwise untidy hair. At an angle, Ororo could see a curious lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.
"That him?" Logan asked, a little nauseated by the mistreatment (although he didn't show it).
"Yes," Ana said with a sigh. "Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. Or, as he's now not-so-affectionately known as, The Boy Who Killed."
Ororo opened one of his eyelids, and an unfocused green eye stared back at her. "Why's he unconscious?" she asked Ana.
"He lost consciousness as we were jumping off the island," Ana explained. "He must have really gone through hell in there..."
"We need to get him on board and get him out of here, now," Logan said, going back inside with Ana, Ororo and Harry right behind him.
A few minutes later, the Blackbird was back in the sky and en route back to the Xavier Institute.
As Logan was piloting, Ana and Ororo checked Harry over and were horrified at his horrible state of health, between the dirt and malnutrition. Ororo's heart went out to this boy, who according to Ana, lost his parents to the same evil wizard who tried to kill him but only succeeding in giving him that unusual curse scar on his forehead.
Back in the cockpit, Logan was talking to Professor Xavier ("Professor X") through the communication channels after putting the Blackbird on autopilot. "We got him out of there, Charles," Logan said heavily. "It was horrible... dirty, malnourished, traumatized... /Ooh/, it's a good thing it was Ana who broke him out of there and not me, otherwise the people and monsters in charge there would not have been so lucky..."
"Easy, Logan," came Xavier's cool reply, not unused to Logan's semi-aggressive personality. "We can get him cleaned up back at the Institute. How did Ana's rescue mission go overall?"
"She was in and out. Quick work. The training must have really paid off for her," Logan mused.
"I'm getting a room ready in the infirmary. Just make sure he's okay until then."
"Of course, Charles. Wolverine over and out."
Just as Logan logged off the communicator, there was a scream of anguish from the medical room on board. The burly mutant immediately jumped out of seat and hurried to see the problem.
Harry was currently thrashing on the medical table as Ororo and Ana tried to hold him down; he was moaning in pain, and from the looks of things, he was suffering from some sort of nightmare or dementia.
"Logan, hold him down," Ororo said as she got a tranquilizer from the storage area. Pinned down by a man with an adamantium skeleton, Harry wasn't thrashing as much, although his moaning could still be heard.
"Mom, Dad, please, I'm sorry, please, /no/..."
Harry winced and hissed in pain as Ororo used the tranquilizer on him, but began to calm down.
"That should be enough to keep him relaxed for the rest of the flight," Logan said as he released him. As he and Ororo returned to the cockpit, neither of them noticed Ana sitting next to Harry, watching him as he rested.
"I'll do whatever it takes to help you, Harry," Ana whispered. "I may have gotten you out of the prison, but I still want to help you get out of this whole problem. I promise."
A few hours later, the Blackbird touched down in its hanger at the Xavier Institute in the middle of the night. Quickly and quietly, the three X-Men moved Harry Potter from the vehicle to the infirmary (they didn't want any of the other students at the institute to see this).
Two men were already waiting in the infirmary: Professor Xavier himself and his associate, Hank McCoy ("Beast").
"How is Mr. Potter now?" the professor asked.
"Slightly better," Logan said with a half-growl. As Hank moved Harry onto the medical table, Harry twitched and shivered again.
"It could be the after-effects from the dementors," Ana supplied for her instructors, unconsciously shivering a little. "Reliving worst memories and all that."
"I'd go through his memories now, but I may want to give it a day or so until after the dementia fades away," Xavier said.
"I want to help," Ana told the professor. "He trusts me, since I broke him out, and since I also know about the wizarding world, I can help explain some things you might not understand. Besides, their press will undoubtedly have a field day when they realize he's escaped; my pen pal back across the pond agreed to send me articles if anything happened."
"Agreed," Xavier confirmed. "In the meantime, Ana, get some sleep, it's quite later... or is it early now?"
"See you in the morning, Professor." With that, she left as her superiors tended to Harry's medical needs.
Back in her room, she was just crawling into bed when a voice asked, "Where were you, Ana?"
She turned around to see her younger sister Moyra ("Medusa") standing there in her night robe, her short curly hair askew.
"I told you, Moyra," Ana said with a smile, "I was on a mission for them."
"I know that/," she said, rolling her eyes, "but /where were you?"
Ana sighed. "I can't say anything, okay?"
"Fine," Moyra said, sounding a little disappointed as she went back to her own bed. "You make it sound like you were breaking out Harry Potter or something."
Ana's eyes widened before she covered it up. "Interesting guess."
There were rumors at breakfast the next morning about a new arrival at the Institute, ranging from surprisingly accurate to downright absurd. Ana kept quiet and looked uninterested in the rumors to make it look as though she knew nothing.
"Well, I wouldn't mind meeting this new person... if he even exists," Bobby ("Iceman") commented.
"Hey, I can always add a new person to this place," Jamie ("Multiple") responded, half-joking.
"Har har," Jean commented. "Very funny, both of you. I hope for this supposed new person's sake he doesn't meet you, Bobby. Not with all the pranks you might pull on him."
"Who? Me?" Bobby said, with mock innocence. "Pull a prank?"
"Yes, you, Bobby. We all still remember what happened last month. You slipped Scott some laxative in his food, forcing him to run to the nearest bathroom, whose toilet seat you had already frozen over. Sometimes, I can still hear Scott muttering about it."
A few students quietly snickered and chuckled at that memory, while Bobby merely shrugged it off. "Man, he really ought to let it go. I mean, he did manage to blast the ice off of the toilet in time, didn't he?"
More chuckling ensued, and Kurt ("Nightcrawler") even banged his head on the table from laughing so hard. Jean smirked before calmly responding. "Yes, Bobby, he /did/... which caused the ice to melt, leak through the floor, and fall onto Logan's face as he was drinking his /coffee/."
The other students laughed harder as Bobby looked down, shamefaced and defeated. He forced himself not to shudder, since he still remembered the workout Logan put him through as punishment. Being yelled at by Scott ("Cyclops") after that for half an hour was a painful bonus.
Satisfied that the conversation had drifted far away enough from the topic of a new arrival, Ana finished her breakfast and left the table, secretly sneaking off to the medical room where Harry was being kept.
Xavier, Logan, Ororo and Hank were all there talking and waiting for Ana, who walked in to join them shortly.
"Welcome, Ana," Xavier said. "Since we'll be instructing Mr. Potter, we'll need to go through his memories to know what he's been through. Like you said last night, you can help explain certain aspects of the wizarding world."
Ana nodded, and Xavier rolled his chair up to Harry. Gazing down at the teenager's face, he concentrated.
A sort of mental web was formed, and all five conscious people in the room found themselves standing in a blackened space... that is, until they could see the memories as bystanders to the boy's past.
They jumped through the first memories, ones of him as a small boy being forced to work as a servant for his relatives. "They're all like that," Xavier said, stopping for a moment while his colleagues and student were shocked by the neglect Harry had been put through by his relatives.
Moving on, the professor and the others flashed through important memories of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, with Ana giving an occasional commentary...
The onslaught of Hogwarts letters at Number 4, Privet Drive...
...Hagrid's entrance and explanation...
...shopping at Diagon Alley...
...making friends and enemies on the train...
...The Sorting Hat singing its song...
...Professor Snape's antipathy toward Harry...
...rescuing Hermione from an armed troll...
...Suspicions of Snape's loyalty...
...seeing his family in the Mirror of Erised...
...discovering Nicolas Flamel...
...seeing a dark figure drink blood from a slain unicorn...
...getting past the various obstacles to the Stone itself...
...battling Quirrel/Voldemort, burning the traitor's skin to protect the Philosopher's Stone at all costs...
...Dumbledore's explanation in the hospital wing.
"That's a lot for an eleven-year-old," Logan commented, sounding a little impressed.
"Too much alone," Xavier commented, moving into second year...
Dobby's strange warning...
...breaking out with the help of Ron and his twin brothers...
...the brawl between Malfoy and Weasley senior in the bookshop...
...having to commandeer the car to get to the school...
...Lockhart's first lesson gone amok with pixies tearing the place up...
...the writing on the wall spelling out a dire threat...
...a Petrified fellow classmate being taken into the hospital wing...
...communicating to the snake at the Dueling Club and witnessing the school's shocked reaction...
...another classmate Petrified...
...witnessing Fawkes on his Burning Day...
...having to deal with the rumors and suspicions of other students...
...impersonating another student to get information from the rival student...
...discovering Riddle's diary...
...Hermione and another student Petrified...
...the quest into the forest and meeting the acromantulas...
...hearing of Ginny's abduction...
...finding Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets itself...
...the words TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE rearranging themselves into the anagram I AM LORD VOLDEMORT...
...ramming the sword into the roof of the basilisk's mouth...
..."killing" the preserved memory of Riddle...
...Dumbledore's accolades back in the office...
...tricking Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby.
"This has happened before," Hank muttered. "What with being suspected, I mean."
"Unfortunately, some wizards aren't as broad-minded as they should be," Ana sighed.
"Moving on," Xavier said, and they saw the more pertinent points of his third year...
Having to escape from Privet Drive after having blown up a mean relative...
...The journey on the Knight Bus and learning about Sirius Black...
...staying in Diagon Alley for the remainder of the summer...
...meeting the dementor on the train...
...the Divination professor warning him about his impending death...
...Malfoy provoking the hippogriff into attacking him to get Hagrid sacked as professor...
...Lupin's first class about the boggart...
...Black's break-in on Halloween...
...Snape taking over for Lupin's class...
...the Quidditch match in the storm...
...dwelling on the memories of his mother's last moments, defending him against Voldemort...
...Lupin's explanation about dementors...
...the twins giving him the Marauder's Map...
...eavesdropping on the conversation in the Three Broomsticks...
...McGonagall confiscating the Firebolt, based on suspicions...
...the defense lessons with Lupin...
...Scabbers' "death"...
...Black's second break-in...
...the Map insulting Snape...
...Hermione smacking Malfoy for gloating over Buckbeak's impending death...
...Trelawny's prophecy...
...the confrontations, explanations and revelations in the Shrieking Shack...
...Lupin transforming under the full moon and Pettigrew escaping...
...Harry and Hermione going back in time to rescue Sirius...
...Snape raving in the hospital wing, shrieking that Harry must have done it...
...Sirius' letter to Harry on the train back.
"Well, it seems Mr. Potter wasn't the first person to have been put in there unjustly," Xavier said coldly.
"Unfortunately, most of the people at the Ministry of Magic are greedy politicians more concerned about punishing someone to look good rather than doing the right thing," Ana said disgusted. "I doubt their policy has changed much in the past couple of decades, if at all.
"They also suspected his godfather right away because he came from one of the Darker families of purebloods who supported Voldemort; his younger brother was even one of his early followers."
"What happened to him?" Logan asked.
"From what I've heard, he tried backing out of Voldemort's ranks of followers after being ordered to do more atrocious things, so they killed him for his disloyalty."
As Xavier concentrated, Harry's fourth year started to be replayed...
The Weasleys taking him from Privet Drive, but not before the twins managed to cause some calamity...
...Watching the World Cup...
...chaos later that night, Harry's wand stolen to fire the Dark Mark into the sky...
...the announcement at that year's Welcoming Feast of the rebirth of the Triwizard Tournament...
...welcoming the students from the other schools...
...Harry somehow being chosen as a fourth champion, and the argument in the other room about whether he could compete or not...
...the mistrust and suspicions of other students while having to deal with Ron's lack of loyalty...
...speaking to Sirius through the fireplace...
...trying to steal the golden egg from the deadly dragon...
...being asked to find a dance partner for the Yule Ball...
...overhearing Hagrid's conversation with the Beauxbatons Headmistress...
...seething over Rita Skeeter's latest garbage...
...the near run-in with Snape, Filch and Moody all at the same time in the middle of the night...
...swimming in the lake and finding his friends tied to a statue...
...Snape humiliating him in class and threatening him with Veritaserum...
...Sirius explaining what happened to Crouch and his family...
...finding a deranged Crouch in the forest...
...the dream of Voldemort in the old, crumbling manor...
...seeing the memories of old trials in Dumbledore's Pensieve...
...learning the horrifying truth about Neville's parents...
...the events in the maze...
...the Portkey to the graveyard...
...Cedric Diggory's murder...
...Voldemort's gruesome rebirth...
...summoning and greeting his old Death Eaters...
...giving Wormtail the new silver hand...
...dueling Harry, with both combatants in a deadlock and shades of Voldemort's past victims helping Harry...
...the escape back to Hogwarts with Cedric's body in tow...
...Crouch, Jr.'s confession under Veritaserum...
...Dumbledore's explanation in his office...
...Fudge's denial of Voldemort's return in the hospital wing...
...the train ride back with the events on board.
"So Voldemort's returned," Xavier summed up, "and now he has new advantages."
The others could only nod, shocked by the events they had just witnessed.
When Xavier tried to see the memory of the Dursleys' murders, he just kept getting a blur over and over again. "For some reason, I can't access that particular memory," Xavier told the others. "I'll have to ask him about it when he recovers."
Moving on, Xavier and the others witnessed the corrupt trial, which in reality was more of an excuse to find Harry guilty as quickly as possible. They put a spell on them to prevent him from talking, had other classmates (thankfully, not including his friends) give false testimonies to put him away faster, and used excuses saying he had immunity to Veritaserum, the most powerful truth potion known to wizards.
All five mutants were revolted by the lack of justice, and Logan even involuntarily extended this adamantium claws out of anger.
"Somehow, that Minister of theirs - what was his name, Fudgeface? - doesn't strike me as the best leader in the world," the burly mutant growled.
"Infinitus est numerus stultorum," Hank muttered, more to himself. At the looks of confusion on the other faces, he elaborated, "Seneca. 'The number of fools is infinite.'"
"Either Fudge is a Death Eater working for Voldemort, or he's a fool just trying to make things easier for himself, which is also making things easier for Voldemort," Ana hypothesized. "Either way, he obviously wanted Harry out of the picture for his own benefit."
"Wouldn't have been the first time in history someone has tried to have others removed for their own security," Hank commented.
"I doubt we may ever be able to find evidence to prove his innocence," Ororo stated, "So he may have to go under false identities, even for the rest of his life, unless we're fortunate enough to find something."
"Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?" Hank asked half-jokingly, half-poetic, quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Ana laughed. After getting a confused look from hank, she said, "Sorry, Dr. McCoy... back in Azkaban, I saw all this random stuff he scratched onto the cell wall. Including the famous speech from Hamlet about the 'slings and arrows.'"
"He has good taste," Hank mused, ever the literature-lover.
A moment later, however, amusement was replaced by concern. "Wait a minute..." Hank muttered. "At the end of his first year... his school's headmaster said he couldn't explain why Voldemort wanted to kill him. Although I wonder..."
Turning to Ana, Hank asked, "Wizards have things like Divination and prophecies, right?"
"Yeah," Ana responded.
"Well," Hank began to hypothesize, "Call it a hunch, but perhaps Voldemort wanted to kill our young friend here because of some sort of prophecy?"
After being met with four blank looks, Hank elaborated. "Think about it. Why else would such a feared, evil wizard be so desperate to get a one-year-old boy out of the way? I really can't think of any explanations, other than something happening that would make Voldemort perceive Mr. Potter as a threat. There's also the fact that Mr. Potter always fought Voldemort on those separate occasions, instead of his powerful headmaster."
Ana felt a slight chill run down her spine. "Do you mean, Dr. McCoy... that for all we know, Harry may be the only one who could kill Voldemort?"
Hank merely shrugged his massive shoulders. "I'm only hypothesizing based on what I know."
"So now," Xavier said, getting back to the topic at hand, "He'll have to recuperate, and need to know what his powers are."
"What powers are those, Charles?" Logan asked. Truth be told, he was looking forward to seeing Harry in action in the training room, especially after seeing the feats he performed as a student back at Hogwarts.
Contemplating that, Xavier told them, "Whereas Ana's and Moyra's mutant powers to manipulate gravity and petrify people are separate from their magic, Harry's magic and mutant powers are symbiotic... they work together, and one depends on the other."
"What are you saying, Professor? He can perform spells even without a wand?" Ana asked.
"From what you've told me about wandless magic, Ana, I'd say it's like that... but I don't even know if there's a definition for what our friend here was able to do back in that prison. For all we know, this could be the first known time something like this has ever happened."
The ramifications of this swiftly sunk in, mainly for Ana, who saw magic from a different perspective than the others because she had it and they didn't.
"Ever after he recuperates, some interaction would do him some good," Xavier continued. "He needs to be able to trust people again, especially after he was betrayed like that." Turning back to Ana, he asked, "You and Moyra in the particular share some common ground with him. Would you be willing to help him."
With a glint of determination in her eye, Ana told her professor, "I swore I would, Professor."
"Good. Anyway, we ought to leave before anymore rumors fly." Turning to Hank, he said, "Hank, please run a few blood tests to determine what sort of nutrients he could use, among other information we may need."
"I'm ahead of you, Charles," his big blue friend responded as he took out a syringe to draw some blood. With that, the others left.
Later that day, Xavier called Ana and Moyra to his office. Together, Ana and the professor told Moyra about being innocent, and asked her if she would be willing to help. Glad that one of her heroes was indeed innocent, Moyra enthusiastically agreed.
For the next two weeks, Ana, Hank and Ororo all took shifts watching over Harry as the medicine and machinery did their work. If another student was in the infirmary for some reason, the person watching over Harry would simply close the curtains around his bed, and no questions were asked.
There were times when Harry would get close to regaining consciousness, only to fall back into unconsciousness. A couple of times, Ana could have sworn that he opened those green eyes of his, even for a second, before passing out again.
Whenever it was Ana's turn to watch over him, she couldn't help but contemplate his experiences. Harry did not deserve all the pain and suffering he had gone through. Especially not the betrayal.
'What goes around comes around, right?' she thought to herself. 'He'll get to face everyone who screwed him over and put them in their place. I just hope to see photographic evidence of that when it happens. Or, even better,' she now thought with a wicked grin, 'front-row seats.'
A couple of weeks after Harry arrived at the Institute, she was reading some literary material Dr. McCoy loaned her when she heard some movement from Harry's bed.
Whipping her head around, Ana could see him moving a little, and a small moan escaped him.
Trying her best not to dance with joy, she immediately set her book aside and rushed to the professor's office, where he was talking to Ororo.
"Good news, Ana?" Xavier said with a small grin, guessing what news Ana may have had, judging from the ecstatic look on her face.
"He's waking up now."
/FIN/
A/N: So, how was this?
Also, this is the last I'll be able to post before I go away on vacation for Dec. 24-27, so this ought to hold you until I return! -Quillian
SUMMARY: Here, I write what happened while Harry was out cold, from the perspectives of Ana ("Zero") and her superiors. Takes place between when Zero broke him out of Azkaban and when he recovers back at the Xavier Institute. (Just read up to chapter 8 in The Original Pe's fic, and you'll be all set.)
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an edited version from the first time I wrote it, with corrections made.
/"Rescue from Azkaban,"/
By Quillian
Ana ("Zero") was feeling elated as she and Harry soared through the air in a wide arc. She had done it! She broke the innocent Harry Potter out of Azkaban!
Concentrating now, she slowly and carefully brought them down out of the night sky and through the fog. She couldn't avoid to going crashing into any trees or anything, not with her invaluable cargo in tow.
In a fog-filled field sat the Blackbird, the X-Mens' vehicle. The fog was being generated by Ororo Munroe ("Storm") to prevent the Blackbird from being spotted by anyone. Logan ("Wolverine") was merely hanging out, waiting for Ana and her companion to come.
"So, exactly why are we here again?" Logan said. He wasn't in such a good mood, between the jet lag and lack of coffee.
"Xavier and Cerebro picked up a mutant who was in that prison of theirs. One who was /innocent/. The rest of his kind thought he murdered his relatives whom he was living with."
Logan bristled a little. "And the rest of the details?"
"According to Ana," Ororo said a little heavily, "The prisoners are guarded by these foul creatures that can make prisoners relieve their worst memories. Add that to the little food the prisoners receive and the unsanitary conditions..." She sighed, awful thoughts filling her head. "Apparently, these wizards haven't heard the concept of police brutality."
Ororo could have sworn she heard a growl coming from Logan. She knew that for his moody and quick personality, he hated cruelty and injustice.
A few minutes later, a voice overhead called, "Storm! Wolverine!"
It was Ana, slowly descending through the fog with a limp body in her arms.
"Made it in and out quicker than we thought, kid," Logan commented. "Good work."
"Thanks," Ana said with a smile. "Those monsters didn't like vertigo very much," she then smirked.
"Oh God," Ororo breathed as Ana came closer for them to see.
The boy was rather small and short for a sixteen-year-old. Some grime covered his filthy prisoner's robes and pallid skin. The same grime was in his otherwise untidy hair. At an angle, Ororo could see a curious lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.
"That him?" Logan asked, a little nauseated by the mistreatment (although he didn't show it).
"Yes," Ana said with a sigh. "Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. Or, as he's now not-so-affectionately known as, The Boy Who Killed."
Ororo opened one of his eyelids, and an unfocused green eye stared back at her. "Why's he unconscious?" she asked Ana.
"He lost consciousness as we were jumping off the island," Ana explained. "He must have really gone through hell in there..."
"We need to get him on board and get him out of here, now," Logan said, going back inside with Ana, Ororo and Harry right behind him.
A few minutes later, the Blackbird was back in the sky and en route back to the Xavier Institute.
As Logan was piloting, Ana and Ororo checked Harry over and were horrified at his horrible state of health, between the dirt and malnutrition. Ororo's heart went out to this boy, who according to Ana, lost his parents to the same evil wizard who tried to kill him but only succeeding in giving him that unusual curse scar on his forehead.
Back in the cockpit, Logan was talking to Professor Xavier ("Professor X") through the communication channels after putting the Blackbird on autopilot. "We got him out of there, Charles," Logan said heavily. "It was horrible... dirty, malnourished, traumatized... /Ooh/, it's a good thing it was Ana who broke him out of there and not me, otherwise the people and monsters in charge there would not have been so lucky..."
"Easy, Logan," came Xavier's cool reply, not unused to Logan's semi-aggressive personality. "We can get him cleaned up back at the Institute. How did Ana's rescue mission go overall?"
"She was in and out. Quick work. The training must have really paid off for her," Logan mused.
"I'm getting a room ready in the infirmary. Just make sure he's okay until then."
"Of course, Charles. Wolverine over and out."
Just as Logan logged off the communicator, there was a scream of anguish from the medical room on board. The burly mutant immediately jumped out of seat and hurried to see the problem.
Harry was currently thrashing on the medical table as Ororo and Ana tried to hold him down; he was moaning in pain, and from the looks of things, he was suffering from some sort of nightmare or dementia.
"Logan, hold him down," Ororo said as she got a tranquilizer from the storage area. Pinned down by a man with an adamantium skeleton, Harry wasn't thrashing as much, although his moaning could still be heard.
"Mom, Dad, please, I'm sorry, please, /no/..."
Harry winced and hissed in pain as Ororo used the tranquilizer on him, but began to calm down.
"That should be enough to keep him relaxed for the rest of the flight," Logan said as he released him. As he and Ororo returned to the cockpit, neither of them noticed Ana sitting next to Harry, watching him as he rested.
"I'll do whatever it takes to help you, Harry," Ana whispered. "I may have gotten you out of the prison, but I still want to help you get out of this whole problem. I promise."
A few hours later, the Blackbird touched down in its hanger at the Xavier Institute in the middle of the night. Quickly and quietly, the three X-Men moved Harry Potter from the vehicle to the infirmary (they didn't want any of the other students at the institute to see this).
Two men were already waiting in the infirmary: Professor Xavier himself and his associate, Hank McCoy ("Beast").
"How is Mr. Potter now?" the professor asked.
"Slightly better," Logan said with a half-growl. As Hank moved Harry onto the medical table, Harry twitched and shivered again.
"It could be the after-effects from the dementors," Ana supplied for her instructors, unconsciously shivering a little. "Reliving worst memories and all that."
"I'd go through his memories now, but I may want to give it a day or so until after the dementia fades away," Xavier said.
"I want to help," Ana told the professor. "He trusts me, since I broke him out, and since I also know about the wizarding world, I can help explain some things you might not understand. Besides, their press will undoubtedly have a field day when they realize he's escaped; my pen pal back across the pond agreed to send me articles if anything happened."
"Agreed," Xavier confirmed. "In the meantime, Ana, get some sleep, it's quite later... or is it early now?"
"See you in the morning, Professor." With that, she left as her superiors tended to Harry's medical needs.
Back in her room, she was just crawling into bed when a voice asked, "Where were you, Ana?"
She turned around to see her younger sister Moyra ("Medusa") standing there in her night robe, her short curly hair askew.
"I told you, Moyra," Ana said with a smile, "I was on a mission for them."
"I know that/," she said, rolling her eyes, "but /where were you?"
Ana sighed. "I can't say anything, okay?"
"Fine," Moyra said, sounding a little disappointed as she went back to her own bed. "You make it sound like you were breaking out Harry Potter or something."
Ana's eyes widened before she covered it up. "Interesting guess."
There were rumors at breakfast the next morning about a new arrival at the Institute, ranging from surprisingly accurate to downright absurd. Ana kept quiet and looked uninterested in the rumors to make it look as though she knew nothing.
"Well, I wouldn't mind meeting this new person... if he even exists," Bobby ("Iceman") commented.
"Hey, I can always add a new person to this place," Jamie ("Multiple") responded, half-joking.
"Har har," Jean commented. "Very funny, both of you. I hope for this supposed new person's sake he doesn't meet you, Bobby. Not with all the pranks you might pull on him."
"Who? Me?" Bobby said, with mock innocence. "Pull a prank?"
"Yes, you, Bobby. We all still remember what happened last month. You slipped Scott some laxative in his food, forcing him to run to the nearest bathroom, whose toilet seat you had already frozen over. Sometimes, I can still hear Scott muttering about it."
A few students quietly snickered and chuckled at that memory, while Bobby merely shrugged it off. "Man, he really ought to let it go. I mean, he did manage to blast the ice off of the toilet in time, didn't he?"
More chuckling ensued, and Kurt ("Nightcrawler") even banged his head on the table from laughing so hard. Jean smirked before calmly responding. "Yes, Bobby, he /did/... which caused the ice to melt, leak through the floor, and fall onto Logan's face as he was drinking his /coffee/."
The other students laughed harder as Bobby looked down, shamefaced and defeated. He forced himself not to shudder, since he still remembered the workout Logan put him through as punishment. Being yelled at by Scott ("Cyclops") after that for half an hour was a painful bonus.
Satisfied that the conversation had drifted far away enough from the topic of a new arrival, Ana finished her breakfast and left the table, secretly sneaking off to the medical room where Harry was being kept.
Xavier, Logan, Ororo and Hank were all there talking and waiting for Ana, who walked in to join them shortly.
"Welcome, Ana," Xavier said. "Since we'll be instructing Mr. Potter, we'll need to go through his memories to know what he's been through. Like you said last night, you can help explain certain aspects of the wizarding world."
Ana nodded, and Xavier rolled his chair up to Harry. Gazing down at the teenager's face, he concentrated.
A sort of mental web was formed, and all five conscious people in the room found themselves standing in a blackened space... that is, until they could see the memories as bystanders to the boy's past.
They jumped through the first memories, ones of him as a small boy being forced to work as a servant for his relatives. "They're all like that," Xavier said, stopping for a moment while his colleagues and student were shocked by the neglect Harry had been put through by his relatives.
Moving on, the professor and the others flashed through important memories of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, with Ana giving an occasional commentary...
The onslaught of Hogwarts letters at Number 4, Privet Drive...
...Hagrid's entrance and explanation...
...shopping at Diagon Alley...
...making friends and enemies on the train...
...The Sorting Hat singing its song...
...Professor Snape's antipathy toward Harry...
...rescuing Hermione from an armed troll...
...Suspicions of Snape's loyalty...
...seeing his family in the Mirror of Erised...
...discovering Nicolas Flamel...
...seeing a dark figure drink blood from a slain unicorn...
...getting past the various obstacles to the Stone itself...
...battling Quirrel/Voldemort, burning the traitor's skin to protect the Philosopher's Stone at all costs...
...Dumbledore's explanation in the hospital wing.
"That's a lot for an eleven-year-old," Logan commented, sounding a little impressed.
"Too much alone," Xavier commented, moving into second year...
Dobby's strange warning...
...breaking out with the help of Ron and his twin brothers...
...the brawl between Malfoy and Weasley senior in the bookshop...
...having to commandeer the car to get to the school...
...Lockhart's first lesson gone amok with pixies tearing the place up...
...the writing on the wall spelling out a dire threat...
...a Petrified fellow classmate being taken into the hospital wing...
...communicating to the snake at the Dueling Club and witnessing the school's shocked reaction...
...another classmate Petrified...
...witnessing Fawkes on his Burning Day...
...having to deal with the rumors and suspicions of other students...
...impersonating another student to get information from the rival student...
...discovering Riddle's diary...
...Hermione and another student Petrified...
...the quest into the forest and meeting the acromantulas...
...hearing of Ginny's abduction...
...finding Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets itself...
...the words TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE rearranging themselves into the anagram I AM LORD VOLDEMORT...
...ramming the sword into the roof of the basilisk's mouth...
..."killing" the preserved memory of Riddle...
...Dumbledore's accolades back in the office...
...tricking Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby.
"This has happened before," Hank muttered. "What with being suspected, I mean."
"Unfortunately, some wizards aren't as broad-minded as they should be," Ana sighed.
"Moving on," Xavier said, and they saw the more pertinent points of his third year...
Having to escape from Privet Drive after having blown up a mean relative...
...The journey on the Knight Bus and learning about Sirius Black...
...staying in Diagon Alley for the remainder of the summer...
...meeting the dementor on the train...
...the Divination professor warning him about his impending death...
...Malfoy provoking the hippogriff into attacking him to get Hagrid sacked as professor...
...Lupin's first class about the boggart...
...Black's break-in on Halloween...
...Snape taking over for Lupin's class...
...the Quidditch match in the storm...
...dwelling on the memories of his mother's last moments, defending him against Voldemort...
...Lupin's explanation about dementors...
...the twins giving him the Marauder's Map...
...eavesdropping on the conversation in the Three Broomsticks...
...McGonagall confiscating the Firebolt, based on suspicions...
...the defense lessons with Lupin...
...Scabbers' "death"...
...Black's second break-in...
...the Map insulting Snape...
...Hermione smacking Malfoy for gloating over Buckbeak's impending death...
...Trelawny's prophecy...
...the confrontations, explanations and revelations in the Shrieking Shack...
...Lupin transforming under the full moon and Pettigrew escaping...
...Harry and Hermione going back in time to rescue Sirius...
...Snape raving in the hospital wing, shrieking that Harry must have done it...
...Sirius' letter to Harry on the train back.
"Well, it seems Mr. Potter wasn't the first person to have been put in there unjustly," Xavier said coldly.
"Unfortunately, most of the people at the Ministry of Magic are greedy politicians more concerned about punishing someone to look good rather than doing the right thing," Ana said disgusted. "I doubt their policy has changed much in the past couple of decades, if at all.
"They also suspected his godfather right away because he came from one of the Darker families of purebloods who supported Voldemort; his younger brother was even one of his early followers."
"What happened to him?" Logan asked.
"From what I've heard, he tried backing out of Voldemort's ranks of followers after being ordered to do more atrocious things, so they killed him for his disloyalty."
As Xavier concentrated, Harry's fourth year started to be replayed...
The Weasleys taking him from Privet Drive, but not before the twins managed to cause some calamity...
...Watching the World Cup...
...chaos later that night, Harry's wand stolen to fire the Dark Mark into the sky...
...the announcement at that year's Welcoming Feast of the rebirth of the Triwizard Tournament...
...welcoming the students from the other schools...
...Harry somehow being chosen as a fourth champion, and the argument in the other room about whether he could compete or not...
...the mistrust and suspicions of other students while having to deal with Ron's lack of loyalty...
...speaking to Sirius through the fireplace...
...trying to steal the golden egg from the deadly dragon...
...being asked to find a dance partner for the Yule Ball...
...overhearing Hagrid's conversation with the Beauxbatons Headmistress...
...seething over Rita Skeeter's latest garbage...
...the near run-in with Snape, Filch and Moody all at the same time in the middle of the night...
...swimming in the lake and finding his friends tied to a statue...
...Snape humiliating him in class and threatening him with Veritaserum...
...Sirius explaining what happened to Crouch and his family...
...finding a deranged Crouch in the forest...
...the dream of Voldemort in the old, crumbling manor...
...seeing the memories of old trials in Dumbledore's Pensieve...
...learning the horrifying truth about Neville's parents...
...the events in the maze...
...the Portkey to the graveyard...
...Cedric Diggory's murder...
...Voldemort's gruesome rebirth...
...summoning and greeting his old Death Eaters...
...giving Wormtail the new silver hand...
...dueling Harry, with both combatants in a deadlock and shades of Voldemort's past victims helping Harry...
...the escape back to Hogwarts with Cedric's body in tow...
...Crouch, Jr.'s confession under Veritaserum...
...Dumbledore's explanation in his office...
...Fudge's denial of Voldemort's return in the hospital wing...
...the train ride back with the events on board.
"So Voldemort's returned," Xavier summed up, "and now he has new advantages."
The others could only nod, shocked by the events they had just witnessed.
When Xavier tried to see the memory of the Dursleys' murders, he just kept getting a blur over and over again. "For some reason, I can't access that particular memory," Xavier told the others. "I'll have to ask him about it when he recovers."
Moving on, Xavier and the others witnessed the corrupt trial, which in reality was more of an excuse to find Harry guilty as quickly as possible. They put a spell on them to prevent him from talking, had other classmates (thankfully, not including his friends) give false testimonies to put him away faster, and used excuses saying he had immunity to Veritaserum, the most powerful truth potion known to wizards.
All five mutants were revolted by the lack of justice, and Logan even involuntarily extended this adamantium claws out of anger.
"Somehow, that Minister of theirs - what was his name, Fudgeface? - doesn't strike me as the best leader in the world," the burly mutant growled.
"Infinitus est numerus stultorum," Hank muttered, more to himself. At the looks of confusion on the other faces, he elaborated, "Seneca. 'The number of fools is infinite.'"
"Either Fudge is a Death Eater working for Voldemort, or he's a fool just trying to make things easier for himself, which is also making things easier for Voldemort," Ana hypothesized. "Either way, he obviously wanted Harry out of the picture for his own benefit."
"Wouldn't have been the first time in history someone has tried to have others removed for their own security," Hank commented.
"I doubt we may ever be able to find evidence to prove his innocence," Ororo stated, "So he may have to go under false identities, even for the rest of his life, unless we're fortunate enough to find something."
"Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?" Hank asked half-jokingly, half-poetic, quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Ana laughed. After getting a confused look from hank, she said, "Sorry, Dr. McCoy... back in Azkaban, I saw all this random stuff he scratched onto the cell wall. Including the famous speech from Hamlet about the 'slings and arrows.'"
"He has good taste," Hank mused, ever the literature-lover.
A moment later, however, amusement was replaced by concern. "Wait a minute..." Hank muttered. "At the end of his first year... his school's headmaster said he couldn't explain why Voldemort wanted to kill him. Although I wonder..."
Turning to Ana, Hank asked, "Wizards have things like Divination and prophecies, right?"
"Yeah," Ana responded.
"Well," Hank began to hypothesize, "Call it a hunch, but perhaps Voldemort wanted to kill our young friend here because of some sort of prophecy?"
After being met with four blank looks, Hank elaborated. "Think about it. Why else would such a feared, evil wizard be so desperate to get a one-year-old boy out of the way? I really can't think of any explanations, other than something happening that would make Voldemort perceive Mr. Potter as a threat. There's also the fact that Mr. Potter always fought Voldemort on those separate occasions, instead of his powerful headmaster."
Ana felt a slight chill run down her spine. "Do you mean, Dr. McCoy... that for all we know, Harry may be the only one who could kill Voldemort?"
Hank merely shrugged his massive shoulders. "I'm only hypothesizing based on what I know."
"So now," Xavier said, getting back to the topic at hand, "He'll have to recuperate, and need to know what his powers are."
"What powers are those, Charles?" Logan asked. Truth be told, he was looking forward to seeing Harry in action in the training room, especially after seeing the feats he performed as a student back at Hogwarts.
Contemplating that, Xavier told them, "Whereas Ana's and Moyra's mutant powers to manipulate gravity and petrify people are separate from their magic, Harry's magic and mutant powers are symbiotic... they work together, and one depends on the other."
"What are you saying, Professor? He can perform spells even without a wand?" Ana asked.
"From what you've told me about wandless magic, Ana, I'd say it's like that... but I don't even know if there's a definition for what our friend here was able to do back in that prison. For all we know, this could be the first known time something like this has ever happened."
The ramifications of this swiftly sunk in, mainly for Ana, who saw magic from a different perspective than the others because she had it and they didn't.
"Ever after he recuperates, some interaction would do him some good," Xavier continued. "He needs to be able to trust people again, especially after he was betrayed like that." Turning back to Ana, he asked, "You and Moyra in the particular share some common ground with him. Would you be willing to help him."
With a glint of determination in her eye, Ana told her professor, "I swore I would, Professor."
"Good. Anyway, we ought to leave before anymore rumors fly." Turning to Hank, he said, "Hank, please run a few blood tests to determine what sort of nutrients he could use, among other information we may need."
"I'm ahead of you, Charles," his big blue friend responded as he took out a syringe to draw some blood. With that, the others left.
Later that day, Xavier called Ana and Moyra to his office. Together, Ana and the professor told Moyra about being innocent, and asked her if she would be willing to help. Glad that one of her heroes was indeed innocent, Moyra enthusiastically agreed.
For the next two weeks, Ana, Hank and Ororo all took shifts watching over Harry as the medicine and machinery did their work. If another student was in the infirmary for some reason, the person watching over Harry would simply close the curtains around his bed, and no questions were asked.
There were times when Harry would get close to regaining consciousness, only to fall back into unconsciousness. A couple of times, Ana could have sworn that he opened those green eyes of his, even for a second, before passing out again.
Whenever it was Ana's turn to watch over him, she couldn't help but contemplate his experiences. Harry did not deserve all the pain and suffering he had gone through. Especially not the betrayal.
'What goes around comes around, right?' she thought to herself. 'He'll get to face everyone who screwed him over and put them in their place. I just hope to see photographic evidence of that when it happens. Or, even better,' she now thought with a wicked grin, 'front-row seats.'
A couple of weeks after Harry arrived at the Institute, she was reading some literary material Dr. McCoy loaned her when she heard some movement from Harry's bed.
Whipping her head around, Ana could see him moving a little, and a small moan escaped him.
Trying her best not to dance with joy, she immediately set her book aside and rushed to the professor's office, where he was talking to Ororo.
"Good news, Ana?" Xavier said with a small grin, guessing what news Ana may have had, judging from the ecstatic look on her face.
"He's waking up now."
/FIN/
A/N: So, how was this?
Also, this is the last I'll be able to post before I go away on vacation for Dec. 24-27, so this ought to hold you until I return! -Quillian
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