Second Chance Chapter 2

This one is going to have a lot more plot than Growth Spurt, although it will still have a lot of smut. With Growth Spurt and doing a sex scene every chapter it started to feel like I was running out of ideas and every scene was beginning to feel the same, so I'm leaning into more plot this time around.

The first thing Harry tried to do was stand up. 

It proved to be a challenge.

As soon as he attempted to feed strength into his legs, they buckled. His knees shook. Problematic.

Harry didn’t get as far as he had in life by being weak willed. He forced himself up anyway.

Putting his hands on the bars of his cell, Harry stuck his head between them and looked at the cell next to his own.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Harry asked. “I’ve just gotten here, so I’ve got questions. This IS Azkaban, right?”

There were apparently two people in the cell next to his. One of them was just laughing. They had been since Harry first reincarnated her. Or time-traveled, or whatever it was that had happened to him. Harry didn’t recognize that voice.

The second person in the neighboring cell was totally silent.

Harry decided to ask again. “Are we in Azkaban?”

This time he got a response. It was very quiet. 

“Please don’t go crazy,” whispered a woman. “If you go crazy, I… I will too…”

Harry had been in a great mood ever since Hogwarts helped him dodge death by granting him a second chance in a world that wasn’t ruined. All of a sudden though, hearing this voice—familiar and unfamiliar at once—he came close to frowning.

“I promise, I’m not crazy,” he said. “Hermione, is that you?”

The voice of his first wife was ingrained in him. It was the sound he cherished most.

This was an echo of it. There was no strength left in this voice, rendering it nothing but an echo.

Chains rattled in that cell as the one they were tethered to shifted.

“We’ve been here for years, Harry,” Hermione said. “Please, you didn’t just get here. We’ve been hanging on. We’ll keep hanging on… until we can’t anymore. So don’t talk like this. I’ll—” her voice lowered. “I’ll break.”

Harry WAS frowning now. This wouldn’t do.

“Should we get out of here?” he asked.

The chains rattled more loudly, insinuating that Hermione had thrashed her limbs.

“We CAN’T,” she croaked. “We aren’t like Sirius. And even Sirius they caught. All we can do is w-w-withstand.”

Harry thought that the body he arrived in had done withstood as much as it could. Looking at himself, he had been starved beyond what was normal for Azkaban Prisoners. He looked like a corpse.

If he had to guess, he had been one.

It seemed like Hogwarts had sent his consciousness to a body in some other dimension. For him to be here, he suspected that this version of Harry Potter had died just prior to his arrival. 

He had been starved to death in an Azkaban cell with Hermione on the other side of one wall, unaware that Harry’s life was fading right next to her. 

It was an even sadder end than mutual destruction against Voldemort.

“You’ve been through so much, Hermione,” Harry said. “I’m going to come to you now.”

This body could barely walk. Its functions had ceased, but Harry’s magic was pumping through it, forcing it into action. All the strength he had died with was still at his fingertips. His magic had followed his soul.

He didn’t have a wand…

But he surpassed the need for one a long time ago.

Harry touched the bars of his cell and watched them fall apart. They collapsed into hunks of metal. He staggered out of his cell, walking in front of Hermione’s.

She was sharing her cell with a man that Harry didn’t recognize. The man clearly had a Dark Mark on his arm, which made Harry’s temper boil.

Someone had put a Death Eater into a cell with Hermione Granger. They were both chained up, but they could have reached the other one if they tried.

Luckily, the man had been rendered insane by dementor influence before he could do anything. If he hadn’t been…

Someone had clearly tried to cause Hermione harm. Someone out there wasn’t satisfied that her and Harry were in Azkaban, they were trying to make them even more miserable.

What had happened in this world?

“Harry?” Hermione asked. “How are you out of your chains?”

Her appearance was a wreck. Her hair was grimy, her cheeks were dirty, there were smudges under her eyes, and her eyes were sunken. She was almost as skinny as Harry’s body was.

He didn’t give a shit. The moment he saw her, her beauty robbed him of his breath.

“Come on,” Harry said. “Let’s go and live, Hermione.”

He made the bars between them collapse just as easily as he handled his own cell. Hermione must have thought she was dreaming.

The man she shared a cell with started to struggle up. It seemed like he thought he was going to get out. Harry looked at the skull mark tattooed on his arm. From this close, he could sense the familiar and foul magic that lurked within the mark.

“Stop intruding,” Harry said. “We’re having a moment.”

He lifted his hand. All the metal poles from the cell door fired at the man, puncturing his body and limbs, instantly killing him.

Hermione didn’t outwardly react. She was probably struggling to believe that this was real. Azkaban also had a way of desensitizing you.

You had to see the worst things you could remember on repeat over and over again. After a while, things like death in front of your eyes just didn’t faze you the way they would a normal person.

Harry reached his hand out to help Hermione up before deciding that was a bad idea. He was liable to fall on top of her. He used his magic to give her a boost instead.

She was able to stand on her own without as much trouble as he was having. She definitely hadn’t been starved like Harry had been.

He was grateful for that.

“This… is a dream,” Hermione said. “It has to be. But that’s strange. There are only supposed to be nightmares in Azkaban. You’re not about to die, are you?”

She squinted at Harry.

“Never again,” Harry promised.

“What a strange way of saying it,” Hermione said.

She and Harry walked down the hallway of Azkaban’s most secure wing. This was a place for those who had received life sentences. Harry was growing more curious about what this version of himself had been put through.

He started to notice cracks in the floor and walls along with other signs of damage. A battle had occurred here. Maybe a prison break? Despite Azkaban’s reputation, Harry had seen a lot of those during the war.

“What year is it?” Harry asked.

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. “They stopped giving prisoners newspapers after Sirius broke out.”

Harry clicked his tongue. “Damn. When were we put here?”

“1995,” Hermione said. “They locked you in here a few months before they got me.”

Harry’s body seemed to be at least eighteen. He’d been fifteen in 1995. So he had been here for three years at least, he decided. It could be even more. This body might have been as old as 23. 

It was hard to tell when it was so skinny and frail.

“This has been a good dream,” Hermione said. “I’m glad I got to have it. Even if it will be terrible to wake up back in my cell.”

Harry chuckled.

“I don’t think it’s very funny,” Hermione said.

“Sorry, of course not,” Harry said. “When you wake up, I’ll apologize.”

“You feel more like your old self right now,” Hermione said. “I like that even more than escaping.”

Harry’s chest felt warm. When his joy immediately got cold and distant a second later, rage gripped him. There was only one thing that could cause this feeling.

He’d been thrilled to be talking to Hermione again like this. Who did the dementors think they were, trying to take that away from him?

“Oh. OH. Now it feels like a nightmare,” Hermione said. She shivered. “The dementors are finally here. They feel so real.”

Azkaban’s old stone hallways were full of dripping water and small stray puddles from all the rain that the island got. The water froze around Harry and Hermione as a wraith glided toward them.

It was like half a corpse wrapped in a cloak with only its big ugly mouth sticking out. The dementor was an embodiment of nastiness more than it was a living thing. They could only reproduce when they found sufficient human suffering in an area, at which point a new one would be spawned. It was purely for sustenance that they agreed to guard the ministry’s worst prisoners.

“I— I— I feel like it’s really here,” Hermione said, her skin pale and her eyes getting larger. 

The dementor flew closer to them. If prisoners escaped their cells, dementors were allowed to consume their souls whole. That was a special treat to these monsters.

“You,” Harry said. “Leave. You’re making her uncomfortable.”

Dementors didn’t understand human speech. They could figure out the intentions behind words by reading a person’s emotions. This one could sense that Harry was ordering it around.

That made it pause. It wasn’t expecting that response.

“Leave,” Harry said.

The dementor made a hissing groan. It ghosted over to them. Hermione started to shake.

“NO! NOT HARRY!” she screamed.

She was lost in a memory already, forgetting what was going on here. What was she seeing?

It didn’t matter, frankly. Harry could ask later. Right now, this THING was making Hermione uncomfortable.

“I’m glad you didn’t listen to my warning,” Harry said. “I didn’t want to let you go.”

As the dementor flew at him, he walked toward it.

There were other cells filled with prisoners around them. The ones that were partially lucid cheered and made noise as they watched what was happening.

They thought Harry was committing suicide. As twisted as they were, both as horrible criminals and because of the prison’s influence, they thought this was the best show imaginable.

The water that had frozen liquified again. The puddles that were big enough started to ripple.

Translucent magic covered Harry’s hands and drove away the dementor’s chill.

The dementor had gotten close enough to start sucking his soul out. Its mouth had opened to begin the process.

When Harry’s hands became shrouded in magic, the monster tried to run away. It spun around and flew in the opposite direction.

Harry grabbed the back of its head. 

The prisoners that were watching didn’t sound the same anymore. Hermione had stopped shaking. The dementor’s aura was being combated.

“You dementors think that you’re invincible,” Harry said. “Everything you do comes from that misconception. I believed it too, once. The truth is, dementors aren’t indestructible. It’s just that nobody tried hard enough to find a way to end you. Until I came along.”

It had been impossible to turn the tide against Voldemort as long as he had Dementors flying around unopposed. They became priority number one for Harry’s side, with everyone putting their heads together to come up with a method against them. 

In the end, Harry’s mastery of the Patronus Charm was combined with the combat magic expertise of his third wife. Together, they came up with the spell he was currently using.

“It’s extremely magically draining,” Harry said. “And extremely effective against demons like you.”

The dementor screamed in pain. Its head was smoking like it was being burned. What it was being subjected to was called a Fusion Spell.

Hermione was the one who made the term. With a lot of work (and often the help of Harry’s magical genius) they had been able to make spells that mixed the effects of two different ones. There was a spell that gave the light of a Lumos spell and also blocked out bad odors. That had been useful while living on the run.

Then, there was the spell Harry was using now. One half of it was the Patronus Charm that dementors fled from, and the other half was Incendio, the fire incantation.

It was a flame of happiness, if you will. Harry powered it by thinking of his wives on the day of their union. His magical joy took on the characteristics of a violent and consuming flame, burning through the dementor’s darkness.

The dementor’s arms flailed. Its legs kicked out.

It screamed and screamed. Other dementors came toward the noise, saw what was happening, and fled the opposite direction.

Harry didn’t let go of the monster until it went silent. Then he let go of it. An empty husk hit the floor.

The back of the dementor’s head was warped and indented in the shape of a human palm. Even the craziest of the prisoners were quiet now. 

The evil feeling that permeated Azkaban disappeared as all the guards took flight and abandoned the island, running away from Harry Potter and their brother that had just been destroyed.

“Shall we leave?” Harry asked.

Hermione was staring at him with big eyes. Tears started to run from them.

“What’s wrong!?” Harry asked. “Are you hurt somewhere—”

Hermione hugged him. He was surprised in a good way, standing there and accepting the gesture.

“You’re real,” Hermione said. “This… it’s actually real.”

Harry patted her back.

“That’s right,” he said. “And starting now, I’m going to fix everything.”

Both his life, and the lives of every one of his wives. The rest of the world be damned.

Harry was going to do right by himself and his own.