Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

He was inside something, some cage or cell. It was too dark for him to see it, but he could sense the walls around him, feel them curving close. It was wrong, and he was sure the walls of his prison were growing nearer in the gloom, but he couldn't seem to move to escape.

His magic moved in frustration, pulsing, pushing at the closeness containing him.

It shattered.

Harry found himself staring at a line under his hands, a divide between black and white. Slowly he pulled back his hands, staring at the grey prints he left behind across the line. Around him the fragments of his prison disintegrated into nothing.

The marks of his hands spread, turning both the dark and the light on either side of the line to grey.

Harry rose to his feet, and found himself standing on the chessboard from beneath the third corridor.

The pieces were not as they had left them, but frozen in the midway into the beginning of a new game, with different figures than before. The white king had no crown or sword, but he stood, regal, righteous and powerful, his hands clasped humbly over his great beard.

Harry eyed the other pieces, they were all still, the only piece missing was the white king's pawn, the piece that should have been occupying his square.

My prison.

He stepped from his square, leaving grey footprints across the board as wandered. The marks swiftly swelled to swallow their squares.

The white king looked down on him with pride and benevolence, but there was no understanding in his blank eyes and Harry felt nothing as he gazed at the sculpted figure.

The black king's eyes tracked him too, staring with cold, apathetic curiosity as he traced his fingers over the surface of the nearest white pawn. It too, turned to grey.

Fascinated, Harry reached out to the next white pieces, to the white knight that stood beside the changed queen's pawn and the rook beyond it.

They changed too, but not as he expected.

Instead of leaving his grey finger marks upon them, they crumbled away into nothing, leaving piles of dust on their greying squares.

The black king looked on unaffected, even as resigned, stone tears fell from the eyes of the white king. The black pieces changed too, some crumbled, the black queen and the two knights, but others were consumed by his handprints, coloured grey as the squares he strode across.

In curiosity he turned, covering the board, brushing past the white queen, who collapsed into dust at his trailing finger tips, and placed his hands firmly upon the white king's chest.

He too, crumbled into nothing, and Harry flinched back, slipping on the squares and falling.

The jerk dragged him awake.

'Mr Potter.' Harry had never heard anything so sweet as the stern tone of Madam Pomfrey. There was no way she would ever be working for Voldemort, he didn't have the authority to coerce her, nobody did, not in her ward. 'I'm awake,' Harry smiled at her, 'and perfectly fine,' he could see the steaming goblet of whatever that was in her hand and really didn't want to have to drink it. It was fine when he was unconscious; he couldn't taste it then.

'You are not perfectly fine, Mr Potter,' she snapped, placing the goblet next to his bed. 'I am going to permanently label this bed as yours for next year.'

'I feel fine?' Harry attempted, eyeing the thick, chalky looking liquid with some distaste.

'You are the second student I have had in this wing in the last week suffering from the effects of the Cruciatus Curse, and yes,' she caught him looking at the goblet, 'you will be drinking that down to the last drop!' Harry barely registered her last words.

Fleur. He immediately looked up and down the length of the ward, but the curtains were all drawn back against the walls and the beds were empty. He was Madam Pomfrey's only victim.

'What's it for?' Harry asked, resignedly reaching for the potion.

'It's everything your body needed the last week it spent sleeping off the effects of bouncing off the anti-apparition wands,' she informed in a surprisingly mild tone.

'Will it taste as bad as it looks?' he questioned cheekily, then gulped it down before she could force it into his throat in revenge.

'Yes,' she answered sweetly, as something akin to burning liquorice coated the inside of his mouth, 'yes it will.' She pulled her wand from her uniform pocket, and traced it over his torso lightly.

'You seem to be perfectly fine, Mr Potter,' she told him with a small smile. 'Except for another scar, you've come away unscathed.'

She handed him a very small mirror and Harry stared at the small mark on his cheek. It was a small triangular nick on the edge of his cheekbone.

'I couldn't get rid of the deepest part of the cut,' Madam Pomfrey explained, 'whatever was used had some enchantment to seal the wound up and I was not able to fully undo the effects.'

'It's barely noticeable,' Harry shrugged, and handed her back the mirror. It was hardly going to drag the eye away from his other scar. 'I-er-I don't suppose you'd tell me what's happened since the tournament ended?' 'You won,' Madam Pomfrey told him, 'but it was a mess after Bagman's involvement came to light.'

'Bagman?' Harry kept his tone innocent.

'He was the one who put your name in,' the nurse sniffed angrily, 'the whole tournament was rigged so you'd get there first and disappear off to You-Know-Who. He confessed to everything immediately once the Imperius Curse was lifted and spouted the whole story to the headmaster and the minister.'

'Where is he?' Harry felt the buffoon deserved some punishment for his role in everything. Krum was dead and Fleur had been tortured because of his weakness.

'The minister carted him off to Azkaban immediately,' Madam Pomfrey shook her head in disbelief, 'no trial, no nothing, just gone, and all for things done under the Imperius Curse. If that was the done thing half of wizarding society would be there after the last war.'

Harry felt a small flicker of pity for the former Wasps player. He had allowed himself be manipulated and tricked, and because of it people had been hurt and killed, but Azkaban was a step too far. Fudge was clearly just sweeping things under the rug.

No doubt Lucius Malfoy was advising him.

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