Author Note: This is a new story I'm trying. If I get some positive feedback during the first few chapters, I'll give it a solid run. Let me know what you think. This is set in the Marauder's era, as it is a personal favorite of mine.
Prologue: June 19th, 1970
Albus Dumbledore was no fool. Then why was it that he felt he was repeating a dire mistake?
"Fool me onceā¦" he mumbled into his beard.
He pressed his forehead against the smooth grain of his desk, his old hands beneath the desk toying with a small vial. The vial, it seemed, was the source of his frustration; or rather it's contents. For it contained a silvery swirling matter: memories. These particular memories were Albus's own.
He rose from the desk in his office and approached an ornate cabinet with open doors. Inside was a large stone basin. For what seemed like the hundredth time that night Albus poured the contents of the vial into the basin. His hands clutched the stone rim and he leaned into the pensieve.
Instantly Albus was transported into a bar in west London. The same he had visited not more than twenty-four hours ago. The headmaster found himself sitting in the far corner of the dingy bar. The establishment was not one he would frequent, to put it lightly. It's characters and cleanliness were equally questionable. It was a large tavern with three rows of long skinny table that ran the length of the room. The tables and floors were stained with beer, and it's patrons were as questionable as the neighborhood within which the bar stood. Painted women wandered around the room carousing drunken men upstairs. Albus had seen a brothel before, that was not why he was shocked. No, he was shocked by the small shadow of a child crawling quietly beneath the tables, occasionally running his finger across the seam of someone's back pocket, freeing its contents. A sort of wandless, controlled reducto spell. The boy seemed to be working in collusion with the young prostitutes. The women would talk and search for the drunkest patron, then signal the boy usually by ordering the man a specific drink, or by certain code phrases. Then the boy would creep beneath the table while the man was distracted and release his wallet.
Albus sighed and rubbed his eyes. He felt so tired. This boy- Kale Bastion, had shown incredible magical potential, the kind of magical potential born every odd generation. One of his unusual sources, Rudolph Fletcher, had claimed he'd seen the boy perform controlled magic. That in itself seemed strange. Most underage wizards tended to release bouts of accidental magic. It is how young witches and wizards are found every year, and then eventually attend Hogwarts. Only in rare cases do children realize early on how to harness those powers. Powers that seemed all too familiar to Tom Riddle's. In fact, the situation itself seemed to remind Albus to well of Tom; a young boy with incredible magical capacity born into an undesirable environment. Albus's frustration came from the choice he had to make: was this boy another Lord Voldemort in the making? And if he didn't invite him to Hogwarts, what would become of him?
"He seems so harmless," Albus thought aloud. He was a small child, about ten years old, essentially a tuft of brown dusty hair with dark smudges on his olive cheeks. He had dark eyes, set beneath serious eyebrows.
"No, no- its better this way. At least you will have him under your scrutiny at Hogwarts," Minerva had told him earlier. He was inclined to agree with the young professor. Besides, why punish the boy for something he might do?
Albus walked across the memory of the bar and crouched low beneath the table bench. The boy had fallen asleep seemingly in the middle of stealing someone's wallet.
"How strange," Albus mused to himself. His resources told him the boy had a habit of falling asleep under duress or anxiety. He looked at the small sleeping figure and his heart nearly melted at the sight. He made up his mind then and there, "How would you like to come to Hogwarts, Kale?"
Author's Note: What did you think? Love it? Hate it? Are you confused? Are you intrigued? I've been wanting to do a powerful OC character for a while without letting it get out of hand. Please REVIEW.
