Wings of Freedom

By TciddaEmina
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Pay attention here because I won't repeat this!

Disclaimer: I don't own either Harry Potter or Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin, otherwise I wouldn't be writing Fanfiction. Get it?

Warning: SLASH, Possible Gore, Mild Violence and Torture

Also thank you to my Beta IsabelleXO and to TooLazyToLogin, Aria the Scribe, Mordollwen Castiel, Silvermane1, LadyKarma18 and Darkhybrid for their reviews - you guys rock!

Chapter I

Harry couldn't believe he hadn't seen this coming.

Barely an hour passed since the defeat of Lord Voldemort and his wand was being ripped from him as he was bundled to the Ministry of Magic, down into the depths of the Department of Mysteries.

Empty faces watched him from open doorways as he was dragged past, not a single one of them raising a hand to help him. Instead they stood silent and complacent, blindly obeying the Ministry as they always had.

His protests were ignored as rough hands seized him, gripping him by his robes and tugging him towards the death room. His captors ignored the blood that covered his robes and stained their hands a sickening red. Nevermind that a majority of the blood was actually his, wet and flowing from unhealed wounds that continued to bleed sluggishly even now. They would continue to do so without treatment, mixing with the sickly warmth of his enemy's lifeblood. Friend or foe, light or dark, it was all just blood in the end. Lives wasted fighting a war instigated by a madman.

Exhaustion clawed at him, but Harry was only spurred on by each drop of blood that marred the Ministry's pristine marble floor. Endless hours of violent dueling for his life in the chaos of battle making his resistance feeble and weak. The haunting months of his search for Horcruxes taking their toll on him.

Harry was tired of war. He was tired of killing and fighting and killing some more just to try and stop the horrifying flow of casualties. Tired of slaughtering people because they followed ideals different than his own.

The red robes of the Auror uniform a vivid glare against his weary eyes, his mind whirried with fading adrenaline as the situation became all the more dire with the realization of what this meant.

Aurors. Ministry. Official. Department of Mysteries. Death Room. Veil.

He remembered something someone had once told him about the veil, but in his fatigued state he couldn't place who exactly it had been. Faceless voices drifted through his head, repeating information he could hardly remember learning.

The veil. Some people think its a gate to death itself, others that its a portal to another world. Nobody knows where it leads for sure, just that if someone goes through then they never come back. They used to send criminals through, probably so that they wouldn't have to do their own dirty work and deal with the bodies afterwards.

They were going to get rid of him. Throw him through the veil like some antediluvian criminal.

Harry thinks the thought may have made him struggle harder if his vision weren't already beginning to go dark around the edge, unconsciousness already beginning to sink its claws into him. Instead it just made him bitter, giving up his useless resistance and turning his remaining energy inwards, letting himself hang limp in the Auror's grip as they dragged him on regardless.

When you thought about it logically, it was obvious, Harry noted sadly.

He had just killed Lord Voldemort, the strongest wizard of their age with Dumbledore gone, and now came the consequences. With Voldemort defeated people would have only one person to fear: Him. He was powerful, more powerful than the Dark Lord he had just proved, and that meant he was dangerous in the eyes of the British Wizarding World and their fickle opinions.

The Ministry, eager to be seen doing something and courting public support, would have seen it as an opportunity. Killing two birds with one stone as they disposed of the public's greatest fear and the one man powerful enough to oppose their racist, hypocritical regime.

This had been coming for some time, at least since fifth year with the Prophet's claim of his madness and growing lust for power and attention. People had lapped that up as if it were cast iron truth, a simple way of fixing all their problems. Allowing them to return to their blissful blind ignorance. Their crusades to spread scandal and slander continuing until it became almost physically painful to bear the hateful glares and shouted whispers.

He had been stupid, a naïve child believing all he was told. The Wizarding World had always painted him with their own opinion's, seeing him as what they thought he should be rather than who, and what, he really was.

To them he was first a savior. Then a liar. Madman. Savior. Enemy. Fugitive and now a threat. Perhaps he would be remembered alongside Voldemort as a great villain rather than the boy, now man, that had saved them from their real enemy.

The marble was replaced by sandstone as he was heaved up the uneven platform in the centre of the Death Room. Standing now before the veil, its wispy movements not a foot in front him and its rasping voices whispering in his ear, firm hands turned him to face his captors.

Two men. One lightly tanned, the other pale. Both had similar shades of brown hair and both wore the battle ready robes of the Wizarding Ministry's Law Enforcement Department.

The man to his left, the paler one, raised his wand to Harry's neck. The hard wood pressed sharply against his jugular as the man looked at Harry with an amalgamation of hate and pity.

"Harry Potter" The man stated, his face almost bare of emotion save for those all too expressive eyes.

Beside him his tan colleague stood silent with restrained anger, exaggerated to mask the irrational fear he felt in his prisoner's presence. Potter looked normal enough, he thought, but there was something about the kid that raised his hackles. He was too powerful to live, especially since he could revolt like You-Know-Who at any moment and go on a killing spree.

"Harry Potter" The man repeated before continuing. "You have been sentenced to the Veil by order of the Minister of Magic, for the use of illegal curses and offensive magics against your fellow wizard; the murder of the Half-Blood Tom Riddle; and finally for being an unregistered animagus. Do you have anything to say in your defense, noting that your sentence is irrefutable and will not be lightened, removed or otherwise changed now or in future?"

Harry glared back at them but did not respond, defiant in his silence. Gathering his weakened body as best he could he held himself straight, his head high and his posture proud. He was betrayed by those he had saved and about to be thrown through the Veil, but he would not cower and beg before these two men. Nor would he scorn them with petty words. It wouldn't do any good and they weren't worth his breath, especially since he had no idea what he would be met with on the other side of the Veil.

The second Auror sneered at him, pulling Harry's wand from his pocket. It wasn't his Holly wand or the Elder wand, both having already been destroyed, instead it was the Hawthorn wand he had won from Malfoy. As he watched the dark wood strained and snapped in the mans hands, exposing the silver strands of Unicorn hair within.

Harry flinched at the cracking noise and the outward rush of magic that accompanied the sound from the area of the break. It was a shame, Harry supposed, to see the wand snapped. He had intended to return it to Malfoy and hopefully see about getting another wand, because although the wand suited him well enough, using it had always left him with a nagging feeling of displacement, as if the wand knew he was not its original owner and it wished to return to its true master.

The next thing Harry knew a wand was pointed at his face and a red spell flying towards him with the sharp incantation of Stupify. The darkness that had already been bleeding into the edges of his sight filled his vision in an instant, tugging his mind from awareness as the spell worked towards its purpose.

Perhaps the spell had just been weak, or perhaps the destruction of the Horcrux in Harry's scar had changed something within him. Either way the spell took a second longer than its usual instantaneousness to take hold, leaving Harry to feel the icy touch of the Veil's phantom fabrics against his back as he fell into its frigid space.

Just as he sank into unconsciousness he could have sworn he heard a voice whisper in his ear. It was a soft overlapping of tones, a thousand voices speaking the same words at once, but the words were not muffled. Rather they were clear to his ears, the words burning themselves irrevocably into his mind before fading into the recesses of memory, hiding behind foggy clouds of swirling emotion and whirling hurricanes of thought.

'Welcome, Harry Potter... We've been waiting for you.'

AN: Had it in my computer for a while (am up to chapter 4) but hadn't posted it earlier for reasons unknown - seriously I don't really know why I didn't feel like posting this earlier. Anyway hope you like it and promise to have the next chap up at some point within the next... month? ^^; I suck at keeping on track, probably end up working on another fic *sigh*

Love TciddaEmina