Hi everyone! Story I've been kicking around for a long time, working on when I have the time. The updates won't be super frequent, but I have a bit of this story written already so I have a few chapters to post while I work on the rest.

This is set a month into the summer after Harry's fifth year. A lot of it is AU, but I tried to keep with the canon events as much as possible up until this point.

Hope you enjoy!

Drazzah.

P.S. - As always, not mine! Can't hope to match the beautiful J.K. Rowling.

Harry Potter had always known he was odd.

Not only because his relatives had called him a freak since he'd been small, hating him for reasons unknown. Or because of the curious incidents that always happened around him. Not even because he had somehow defeated the most evil wizard in the world when he'd been a baby. As he'd grown up and learned most the answers to all of these questions, he'd still known.

Something was wrong with him.

Even compared to all of the strangeness that permeated the wizarding world, this was something.. different. Unique even. Which was saying something after the past five years at Hogwarts.

It was more unique than being a Parseltongue, or about having a prophecy that stated he was meant to kill Voldemort and return peace to the magical world – or die trying.

Harry couldn't deny that he seemed to attract trouble. Bravery, Dumbledore had called it more than once. His annoying Gryffindor tendencies, as Professor Snape would scathingly term it. Hermione had once said that he had a saving people thing, that he played the hero. They were all somewhat correct in their own ways, if he was being honest.

But he also knew it wasn't completely his fault: there was an evil wizard trying to kill him, along with his many loyal followers. That did complicate a teenagers life quite a bit.

Harry smiled humorlessly. He refocused his eyes, staring at the cold steel bars that filled his vision. He was locked up again this summer.. except he wasn't in his gloomy bedroom at Privet Drive. No, he was in a much more dangerous position at the moment. But even through the waves of agony and extreme tiredness he couldn't bring himself to care much. There wasn't anything he could do at the moment except to lay here and wait for an opening anyways. He didn't really feel he had much of a chance to escape.. this was a very bad situation to be in, being Voldemort's prisoner and all.

Harry had been in a state of lethargy and weary numbness in the first month of summer, and despite his circumstances right now, it hadn't changed all that much. At least it made it easier to mentally escape the ministrations of the Death Eaters. Voldemort was apparently saving his own finale - meaning Harry's murder - for later on.

He should be very concerned at the moment, with his demise imminent. He should be a mess of nerves and panic. But he didn't care.

Not since Sirius.

He had to swallow around the lump forming in his throat, but he refused to cry. More accurately, he couldn't cry, and he hadn't since that whirlwind of anger and destruction and revelations in Dumbledore's office at the end of term. He'd released a few tears at the overwhelming torment of the Crucio's and other pain-inducing spells and hexes, but they didn't cause any relief. Quite the opposite.

His emotions seemed to settle like a weight within his stomach, underneath a blanket of numbness. He wanted to let it all out, to get rid of the terrible suffocating press of his own feelings, but he couldn't bring himself to. Or just plain couldn't. Certainly not here, surrounded by his enemies. Nor at Privet Drive, the short month he'd been there. His relatives had, after all, punished him simply for being apathetic and lethargic.

It was hard to get the reaction you wanted when your target didn't care. It was hard to imagine what they would have done if he'd been carrying on.

His blank eyes tracked the bright crimson drop that landed on the dull concrete floor from his split lip, joining the small puddle underneath where his face was pressed to the stone. He was laying on his side, doing what he always did: waiting for some sign to act. Trying to collect some energy to do it when the time came.

It was the sight of his blood that had sent him on these musings while he was enduring his enforced stay in the abandoned manor where Voldemort was holding court at the moment.

Because blood was exactly his problem.

Somehow, it called to him.

He'd noticed it for the first time when he'd placed his hands on Quirrell's face when he'd gone to save the Philosopher's stone. Instead of being morbidly focused on the skin that burned and crumbled at his touch, he'd felt the blood underneath that skin. He'd connected to the beat of the man's panicked heart, to the blood boiling underneath the pressure of his fingertips. It had scared him silly. In fact, he'd convinced himself that he had imagined it. When Dumbledore had explained to him about his mother's sacrifice and the protection she'd given him, he'd been relieved. Of course that was it. The rest of it was just a coincidence. He'd killed a man, after all. He was bound to be a little messed up.

But then in the Chamber of Secrets, when he'd been fatally wounded by the basilisk, he'd felt the call of blood once again.. except inside of himself. His blood had been contaminated, and he had felt the spread of the poison as it leached through his veins. He could have counted the exact seconds that it would have taken for it to reach his heart. He'd even had an odd instinct to cleanse himself, to filter out the venom of the ancient serpent, but he'd been unable to when he'd tried.

But Fawkes had healed him, and he'd found himself caught up with killing Riddle's memory, checking on Ginny, and gathering up the sword and hat to flee for safety, so he'd put the odd reaction aside.

It wasn't until later in Dumbledore's study, when the old wizard had given him a curious look after he'd described being bitten and healed by the phoenix, that it came back to him. In the following days he'd learned why Dumbledore had looked at him so, by asking Hermione and consulting a few choice books. Apparently he should have had some adverse affects to being poisoned, despite Fawkes' healing him with his tears. Phoenix tears may be a cure, but they apparently did not instantly render their recipient perfectly healthy, as Harry had been when they'd finally emerged from the legendary Chamber.

That was the first time he'd really known something was different. And worse, Dumbledore had sensed it as well. Maybe everything would have been different if he'd confided in the wizard that day; he'd never know now. But he'd instinctively kept it to himself. He'd had a bad track record when it came to revealing information about himself.

As in, he tended to get punished in some way.

Harry knew that people kept secrets from him, obviously, if this past year was any indication. He was young, he had Voldemort in his head; whatever the reason, the adults in his life had always kept important information from him. Him being a wizard. How James and Lily had died. The reason why he'd needed those disastrous Occlumency lessons. Why he was forced to return to the Dursley's every summer, despite asking not to go.

The prophecy.

So he'd begun taking it upon himself to fill the gaps this past year. He'd begun reading, a lot. Used his cloak to enter the restricted section over and over again. Raided Sirius' library when he was at Grimmauld Place, before the events at the Ministry. When he'd started Occlumency, he'd read about that as well, hoping to find a way he could learn it since Snape's teachings had been nothing short of disastrous.. for all the good that had done him in the end. There was apparently a trick he wasn't picking up, but damned if he'd been able to ask Snape candidly about it. Bloody git that he was.

He'd used the library so much that even Hermione had become concerned for him. Between visions and nightmares, Umbridge's detentions, and the DA, he'd spent all of his free time this past school year on homework and reading. It wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be; there was a lot of peace of mind to be had when you knew things, and felt prepared for whatever might happen. And apparently when you were The-Boy-Who-Lived, too much happened to you out of your control.

He was sure Ron thought it was odd as well, but they'd had quite the falling-out, so he wasn't exactly speaking to his best friend. The tensions that had risen last year during the Tri-Wizard Tournament had never really gone away, and then this year things had come to a head with another silly argument. The vision he'd had of Mr. Weasley had been the proverbial straw. The Weasley's, despite being ridiculously pleased that Arthur hadn't died, had pulled back from him. With Percy spouting his nonsense, and the friction between him and Ron, it shouldn't have surprised Harry as much as it had. He'd thought of them as a second family.. but of course their family came first. He knew that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley weren't OK with abandoning Harry, but if they had to choose between his happiness and their children's.. well, Harry already knew what they'd chosen, didn't he?

Especially after that fiasco at the Department of Mysteries. Ron had come along, as part of that core of the DA. But it had nearly cost the Weasley's two of their children. Harry thought about that a lot when he was feeling upset over the loneliness he was experiencing.

Sometimes, when he met Ron's eye in the Great Hall or in their dorm, he could see regret and something like longing in his expression. He probably did want to make up with Harry, and Harry could feel that same yearning within himself. But they were both too stubborn to sit down and make up, despite Hermione prompting and nudging them both constantly throughout the last half of the year. At least Ginny and the Twins had outright refused to abandon Harry; they made a point to speak to Harry and sit with him every chance they got, much to Ron's embarrassed anger. He felt a twinge at knowing the two troublemakers were finished with Hogwarts once and for all – not that he blamed them. If Harry could have left in such a spectacular fashion and humiliated Umbridge in the process he would have in a heartbeat.

Despite Ginny assuring him that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley still considered Harry part of the family, he didn't feel it was right to barge in without Ron's approval.. he was only close to them because of his long-time friend, after all. He just wished things were different. But another part of him was sort of.. relieved.

With Voldemort being able to look through Harry's eyes, he was a danger to all of his friends and to the Headmaster. And to the war. Voldemort would just love to get his hands on the Weasley's, and he could do it through Harry. He'd learned how much they meant to him, after all. He knew quite a lot about Harry.

Although Harry had managed – somehow - to keep this one secret from everyone. He still had no idea how he'd lucked out with Snape digging around in his mind, but he was glad. Maybe he'd had more talent with Occlumency than either of them had realized.

So in a way, he was glad the Weasley's had pulled back from him for now. He sometimes believed that it was better to be alone. At least until the prophecy came to pass. Harry didn't want to lose anyone else. Sirius' death had almost broken him, if his emotional state was any indicator. Or maybe it was the combination of loss and the great stress that year after year brought as he clashed with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. It could damn bloody-well be anything, but Harry knew he wasn't coping properly. Or maybe the word was 'normally'.

He snorted weakly. Normal was relative, wasn't it? Harry would never be normal, until the day he died.

And then, well, everyone was equal in death.