Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter. I just own this story.

My thanks to White Angel of Auralon for his idea in dealing with Horcruxes.

Please let me know what you think.

The Exterminator.

He'd had enough. He had seriously had ENOUGH!

It was bad enough that he'd been incarcerated in Privet Drive, exiled to the muggle world with his disgusting muggle relatives. Again. But what made the whole thing worse was he hadn't heard anything from his so-called friends and his godfather. It was alright for them, telling him what to do with his life. Lord Voldemort was back. The genocidal war he'd waged against the magical world the first time around against anyone whom he didn't like was on the brink of happening again.

Harry would be the first to admit he had little knowledge beyond the hints he'd picked up on over the years he'd spent at Hogwarts, but he knew the magical world was completely unprepared for the upcoming war, especially since Fudge was being a moron and was sticking his head in the sand like the useless ostrich he was, but Harry knew Voldemort would come out of hiding, and he would launch his war on the unprepared magical world.

Harry had never particularly liked Fudge.

The man was a useless, posturing buffoon, a joke. Hagrid had called him a bungler, but when Harry had seen the foolish Minister of Magic underneath his invisibility cloak during that mess in his second year, he had been furious the politician had just taken one look at the official record and believed the same culprit was behind the petrifications. Harry would have loved to have seen Fudge's face when he discovered the culprit wasn't Hagrid, but now he had no reason to hide his instinctive disdain for the man, not now he was running this smear campaign against him.

He had to hand it to the Wizarding world. They really knew how to persuade their heroes how to help them, and now this mess. He hadn't expected Fudge to be as petty to use a smear campaign, but he could see the resemblance between what was being written to what Rita Skeeter had written for a whole year during the Tri-wizard tournament.

Harry shook his head. Thinking about the past was not going to help him during this current mess. No, he would have to think about he was going to do in the future. He had no desire to spend an entire year at Hogwarts, having to deal with the stupidity of the magical world during a difficult year with the OWLs, but as he thought it through he realised his mind was a blank because there were so many options.

He spent his time reading some of the comics Dudley had left by accident in the bedroom. All of them were in poor condition since Dudley didn't take care of anything within his paw-like hands, and he tended to destroy everything he had in his possession. Harry had sometimes wondered why Dudley bothered shoving all of his broken junk in the spare bedroom. He never played with it again, and he always lashed out with a temper tantrum which he only caused to get attention or force his parents to get him something new to smash in the long run. And on and on it went.

As he read through the Spider-Man comics, although he wasn't really interested in the story even if he and Peter Parker had a few things in common since they were both reluctant heroes, although in his case he had only saved the day simply to save his own neck since no-one else would, Harry couldn't help but think about what he had discovered the other day.

He had learnt he was being watched.

For some time since his return to Little Whinging, Harry had been hearing sounds and voices near him, but each time he heard them there was no-one near him, no sign of what could have explained the sounds. It wasn't until he had left Number 4 to walk about the town he had come across the sound of someone snoring in the front lawn. Harry had found another wizard snoring there away, not even considering the fact he was snoring loudly in a muggle neighbourhood underneath an invisibility cloak. At first he had wondered if they were Death Eaters, but he hadn't seen any sign of the Dark Mark on the forearm. It had taken Harry the best part of a week, but he had overheard these "guards" following him around, and he had recognised the voices of Alastor Moody, and Remus Lupin.

Dumbledore was having him watched. It was bad enough the old wizard was placing an information embargo on him and making Ron and Hermione and Sirius be very guarded about what information they wrote to him as if fearing too much would tip Voldemort's hand, but surely it wouldn't have been too much to ask if he honestly cared, then Dumbledore would have his watchers give him letters. Still, he wasn't expecting much.

He had no doubts about his relationships with his friends and his godfather.

Harry knew Ron and Hermione were deliberately hindering his education at Hogwarts. He had worked that out very quickly, and since Ron had the subtle approach of an elephant in a china shop, it hadn't been difficult to work out. Every time he had wanted to get some work done, Ron would whine and drag him away. Harry had capitulated and pretended to go along with it, but inwardly he would go off on his own at the first opportunity to get some work done. He never made it apparent with his written and classroom work. He didn't care what the teachers thought of him, and besides, he had some doubts about Dumbledore. Doubts which refused to go away.

Hermione was worse with her nagging, overachieving personality. She was a hypocrite of the worst kind, although Sirius seemed to top her arrogant attitude. She constantly hounded all the others in their year group to study, and yet whenever they achieved a score higher than her, she would throw herself into a tantrum, and go off and study. Harry had learnt the easy way he couldn't really trust Hermione of Ron, and when the end of their first year had come, he had thought it was a bit too convenient the traps which were so pathetically simple for a Dark Lord like Voldemort to get through, never mind three first-year students, were tailored for their strengths. It was just another notch of distrust as far as he was concerned.

Well, after this last year he didn't truly trust them anymore. He had seen the way Ron had turned his back, and even Hermione had been considering doing the same. Why she stayed, he had no idea.

As he read through the last X-men comic he had in his collection, Harry turned his thoughts over to Sirius. Honestly, he had no idea why his parents had bothered with the man since Harry had never been in the man's priorities. All Sirius wanted was revenge on Pettigrew. He had spent twelve years in prison even though his dog form was slim enough to slide through the bars. Harry had often wondered why the moron had never thought of coming out to him in the past, but he had bitterly accepted Sirius didn't care about him any more than anyone else. He also had no idea if his parents were indifferent to him as a baby, they might have saved his life but what if they had done it for some other reason?

He didn't care what Dumbledore had said about his mother's protection. He just could not get rid of those doubts especially after Voldemort had taken some of his blood to return, and the more time he spent in this muggle shithole by himself, Harry felt those doubts get worse.

When he opened the Batman comics, he sat up intrigued. He felt more in common with Bruce Wayne than any other superhero barring the X-Men who were misunderstood even if they tried to do some good in a world that would never accept them. But as he read how Wayne had left Gotham and travelled the world to pick up different fighting styles, Harry's mind began to wonder. He had originally planned to leave Britain at the end of his fifth year and let them sort out their own problems without him being there to hold their hands because they were so pathetic to do it themselves, but now a new idea came to mind.

He could leave the magical world, come back in a few years. He had no doubt when news got to Voldemort he was gone, the bastard would feel pleased and would go out of his way to unleash his war. Harry knew it would sign the death warrants of dozens of people, but in truth, he didn't really feel much sympathy for the magical world; they had seen the rise of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and they had refused to take it seriously, so why should he care now? Voldemort had been a problem long before he'd been born, so it wasn't really his problem, was it?

Okay, so he knew the dark bastard would be trying to get to him and finish what he had started years ago, but Harry was hoping if he left now, then he could train himself up. The days where Hogwarts was the best magical school in the world seemed to be a thing of the past, and with Dumbledore refusing to be straight with him, and letting him know what was going on since Voldemort was after him, Harry honestly saw little reason to stay here at all. Oh, he was sure Dumbledore would offer some moronic excuse about what he was doing, but he decided it made little difference to him.

He put down the comic and he looked around the ramshackle toilet which was his bedroom. He had to work fast on finding the right means of getting away from here, and he would need to get the Dursleys to give him some cover. It shouldn't be difficult if he told them he was leaving….

XXX

Four Years Later.

XXX

It had been supposed to be an easy attack.

The Death Eaters apparated onto a muggle street in the middle of the night where their spies had discovered not one, not two, but five Mudbloods were residing The Dark Lord had ordered the Death Eaters to assemble a team to wipe them out, although the two girls who were there were to be brought back with any other young teenage girls for entertainment purposes. The Death Eaters had jumped at the chance, although they all knew the Dark Lord had reminded them of the standing order simply because the imitation ceremony demanded the sacrifice of a muggle or a muggle-born to ensure the marking went smoothly, but the chance to rape and torture muggles and muggle-borns whenever they wished was a bonus.

The Death Eaters hadn't bothered to truly plan their attack since they knew they would succeed, but as soon as they arrived on the street they were stopped by a tall figure standing in front of them wearing a black coat. They couldn't see his face, but they knew he was a man.

"You're not going anywhere near the muggle-borns on this street," he said.

Bellatrix strode forward, a mocking smile on her face. "Looky here, boys," she sneered. "We have a Blood Traitor telling his betters what to do."

The man chuckled. "You see, this is what I despise about the magical world. You have so many names to describe those you hate; Mudblood for muggle-born, Blood Traitor for those who have pureblood like you, only in that case its levelled against those you simply don't like. What, can't you just find a better way of letting people know you dislike them without falling into the pattern of a schoolyard bully who just sounds stupid."

Bellatrix howled with rage, making some of her Death Eater team shift uncomfortably even if they yelled angrily at how the man had described them. "You dare mock us, you-!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up!" the man snapped, clicking his fingers. The Death Eaters screamed in agony before there was silence. As he looked down at the corpses, the man sighed and hoped the little task he was going to work on with the goblin allies he'd made worked. While it was fun being able to end the Death Eaters in this manner, he didn't want to keep doing it otherwise he would be discovered.

Still, it was a victory. Bellatrix Lestrange had been a mad dog, and he simply did not understand why on Earth she had been allowed to live. Surely it had occurred to the Ministry to show some common sense, and simply end the woman's life. The man shrugged. It meant nothing to him, and it made no difference; Bellatrix was dead, and she was not going to come back, and with the loss of one of his more powerful followers, it would be a decisive blow against Voldemort.

The man looked around the muggle street, waving his hand and taking down the wards he had placed on the street to prevent anyone from witnessing or overhearing the exchange in case it had gotten nasty, and he thanked the lucky stars he had managed to prevent a terrible night from occurring.

He pulled a metal nail from his pocket and he closed his eyes in concentration while he visualised what he wanted the metal to become, and he opened them again and smirked. He loved wand-less magic, and he wondered if it was another act to bring the magical world down on Dumbledore's part so they would continue looking up to him for help which was the reason it wasn't even taught in the basic stage at Hogwarts, but he decided it didn't matter.

He lifted the chain he had conjured, and he spent the next few minutes joining the Death Eaters to the chain before he stood up when he was finished, and he waved his hand, and the chain glowed and trembled as the portkey spell was applied. A second later, the chained Death Eaters were gone, leaving the man behind to clean up the mess.

XXX

"Bellatrix is dead?" Neville whispered as he sat with the rest of the Order of the Phoenix during the latest meeting. "How? Why?"

The Longbottom heir had always had mixed feelings about the Order. He knew from his now-deceased grandmother his parents had been members, but their membership had gotten them tortured so badly they had become living vegetables. Neville had only joined because truthfully there was nowhere else for him to go since he wanted You-Know-Who gone for good.

"We don't know how it was done," Tonks replied grimly, her eyes dark; those in the know who knew she was Bellatrix's niece had no idea what this news was doing to her. "We only know her chest was split open while her ribcage was torn to pieces. We don't even know where it was done since the initial analysis makes it clear the chain that bound the Death Eaters was a portkey. It could have been originated from anywhere."

"What is Voldemort doing?" Dumbledore whispered to Snape.

"The Dark Lord is furious. The Death Eaters had been sent to a random muggle street, although Bellatrix and the rest of the team were the only ones who know what was so special about the street," Snape answered in his usual calm and oily manner. "He is becoming paranoid, Dumbledore. He refuses to let anyone truly know what the rest of his teams are doing. He has ordered everyone to alert their spies and agents to find the identity of whoever killed Bellatrix."

Dumbledore nodded. That made sense. Bellatrix was one of Voldemort's most powerful followers, and she had been in charge of many of the terror missions. "We're going to do the same thing. We cannot allow a rogue element in a critical situation."

Some of the Order exchanged looks at that.

They weren't entirely happy with the manner in which Dumbledore was handling the war, and they definitely did not like it when the old wizard continuously preached about mercy and forgiveness, since it didn't stop the Death Eaters coming back and killing more people.

"Any news from Mr Potter?" Dumbledore asked, looking around the room.

Some of the Order sneered. They were still unhappy with how their saviour had just run off like a coward, but they had been searching for him for so long their dislike for him had increased.

"No, Albus," Hermione Granger replied, the light of her wedding ring glinting. She was engaged to Percy Weasley, although they still had to set the date, they were hoping to marry after the war. If it ever did. "There's still no sign of him."

"We can't just give up," Sirius snapped desperately. He wasn't stupid. He had the horrible feeling Harry had left because he was tired of being lied to, and the information embargo had not helped matters at all.

"We are not going to," Dumbledore reassured him while he kept his innermost feelings to himself. "Continue the search, but I also want any information concerning this new group who went after Bellatrix. For those who work in the Ministry, trying to find out if there is any intelligence of bounty hunters who have come into Britain, tasked with killing the Death Eaters."

"You suspect it was a hired job?" Moody growled, nodding as he saw the logic.

"I don't know. But I know one thing; Voldemort won't take this lying down, and he will definitely make sure whoever was behind this is dealt with, but not before many others pay the price."