Prologue: The Boy


"Come now Pet, anyone who would ring the doorbell at 3am is probably lost or more likely drunk. No one decent people need to deal with. They only rang once and now they are gone".

Vernon paused to let the weight of his words settle, then patted his wife on the shoulder as if to say 'back to bed' before he closed his tired eyes.

She curled up beside him, a warm spot against the cool november air that had seeped inside their very normal, very ordinary house at #4 of Pivet Drive.

Neither heard the sniffles of a child outside as a warming charm failed. Neither heard the wail muffled to a murmur by the still active silencing charm. Neither knew when the child expired, early in the morning just before sunrise.

By the time the sun moved to illuminate a blue cheeked face, under messy hair, the green eyes within that face were cold and dead. The fingers of that small body were stiff as wood. Though the boy gone, inside him pulsating beneath his forehead something still lived, and raged against the inexorable tug of Death. It knew not what it was, but it desired to still be and its will was absolute.

The thing without a name strained to escape its death and flared its magic. The fresh red scar on the child's forehead burbled with power, and then split open sending two rivers of blood down either cheek. The boy awoke for a moment. His tongue licked out towards his cheek, and stretched serpentine long to lick at the iron-taste of blood. His eyes blinked, and though still cold held a glimmered with lively calculation before closing from exhaustion. Then all was quiet and normal once more on #4 Pivet Drive.

Later that morning, Petunia opened the door on her way for her regular morning job. With a gasp, she saw the blue faced, cold bodied boy, and picked him up. Holding his tiny body to her chest, she felt the thud of a heart beat and relaxed. Still alive, she thought, thank god. What kind of monsters would leave a boy to die on a doorstep like this? The note crimped within the boys tiny fisted grasp told her exactly whom—Dumbledore, Wizards—and why: her now dead sister, and her nearly dead nephew who was still being hunted.

As for the child within her thin arms, she thought his name was Harry Potter, soon to be famed as the Boy-Who-Lived, but she was wrong.

Harry Potter was already dead.