In the beginning there was Nothing, the measureless, colourless void.
Nobody knows how much time has passed like this as Time hasn't existed. Yet, at a certain moment, a mighty vortex stormed through the Nothing disturbing its balance, and in the eye of the vortex a white orb appeared. The humming of the orb, a bearer of immense energies, filled the Nothing and from the orb He willed Himself into existence. With His divine will He named Himself Ea, the Creator.
Opening His eye, Ea looked around in what He could call His universe at this point. He sensed Nothing, so He created Space to shape the Void and Time to measure the length of its existence. Still, His new world was uninteresting. Its emptiness disturbed His senses and its darkness filled Him with cold. So Ea closed His eye and when He opened it again, a faint spot of light appeared in the void, shining onto Him. Now Ea could see the form He had taken but He didn't like it, so He decided to create Himself a new body. His first attempt, a green, slimy, jellyfish-shaped creature with 10 legs disgusted Him, so He destroyed it, giving Himself a second name, Carnair, the Destroyer.
So worked the god on His new form, creating numerous bodies and destroying them afterwards, as the first aeons of Time were ticking away. Suddenly, the orb emitted a high-pitch hum, which could have been interpreted as an equivalent to satisfaction. His latest invention was a human body, the body of a young male, just about seven feet tall, well-shaped and broad-shouldered, with crystal blue eyes and long, curly, blond hair. The hum turned into an excited trill as the orb carrying the god's essence smashed into the chest of the human shape. At first, nothing happened. Then, the body opened his eyes, slowly raised his hands and examined them. The mouth opened and emitted the first words in the existence of the universe in a language, which, translated into English, would mean "This is what I, Ea, am and this is what I will be, from now on." The pleasant bariton of the god filled all corners of Space.
Ea then summoned all His divine powers as He had a tiring task to do. His universe was still empty. So, at first He created the skies and set different celestial shapes into motion on their eternal ways. One of these shapes was particularly dear to His heart, and He named it "Ionúin" or "Beloved". On this orb He created waters and earth and hills and fire, and populated it with vegetation and animals of different sizes and shapes and powers. Tired of His work, he sat down and watched His child for a while, giving it a new name, "Domhan" or "Earth". He watched the tidal waves of the seas, the winds blowing through the hills; he watched the animals hunting, mating and bringing forth new generations as He willed. His heart suddenly filled with loneliness and sadness; He wanted himself a pair, a mate to stand by Him and rule His universe together with Him.
Once again He summoned His powers and shaped a body for His mate, a body of a curvacious red-headed woman with emerald-green eyes and blood-red lips. Then, He tore His chest open and took half of His essence, and, shaping it into an orb, cast it into the body. The eyes of the woman opened, She sat up and in a ringing voice She asked, "Who am I?"
Ea saw the perfection of His creation and fell in love with Her beauty. In a voice, trembling with excitement, He answered.
"You are the half of my soul, the half of my powers, my bride, designated to me by powers above us." Pointing at the globe of Earth, untiredly circling on its eternal path around the Sun, He continued. "This is my dearest child, my most beautiful creation and I give it to you as a wedding gift, to become your kingdom to rule and to protect and I name you 'Gaia' or 'Mother Earth' and I wed you to be my wife, to stand at my side and to rule together with me until the end of Times. So be it!"
"So be it, until the end of Times!" Gaia answered and suddenly a gong sounded high above them and the two were encircled by a ring of fire as their souls and bodies united.
From their love Gaia bore numerous children: human souls, whom She destined to be the true Rulers of the Earth, as she saw that the plants and animals her husband had created had no intelligence. They had the same form Ea was born into, opaque white orbs, humming in unison, as they were of the same size and colour.
When the time was ripe, Ea and Gaia collected their children before their throne and asked for their attention. The souls turned towards their parents and Ea spoke.
"Children! Your Mother, in her Divine wisdom, had decided to give birth to you and destined you to live your lives on Earth, the most beautiful of all things that had existed since the beginning of Time and will cease to exist only when Time does. Listen to us now and heed our words!"
Making two swishing movements with His right hand, He looked at His wife with expectation.
"When your time comes, you will be sent down to the World of Living from here, the Plane of Souls, and you will start to live your life on Earth. I will give you a body of a small child," Gaia continued, "and you will be born of a mother in pain. You will grow and learn and produce children of your own, and when you grow old enough, you will leave the Earth to continue your lives in the Land of the Shadows."
"Right now, my children, you are nothing more than a droplet of water among million other, completely identical ones, making up the oceans and rivers of the Earth," Ea took over. "In order to live proper lives, you will have to change," he mused. Then, raising His voice, he said, "You will have to be different." The humming of the souls amplified in exasperation.
Very slowly, the two gods raised their hands, pointing with their spread fingers towards their children. Colourful rays of light appeared from the tip of their fingers, randomly hitting the souls; where the orbs were touched, a coloured spot appeared beneath the opaque surface. The orbs changed their sizes: some grew bigger, some shrank. The unison humming changed into a polyphonic cavalcade of voices. When the noise became unbearable for the two gods, Ea raised His voice.
"SILENCE!" He commanded and the cacophony was replaced with silence He'd heard only at the beginning of His existence.
"You are all different now, we gave you different feelings, different knowledge and different powers. We shared some of our powers with you: some of the powers of creation and destruction. You will be able to give life to children. You will be able to create hitherto unknown and non-existing things. You've been given emotions. Love, hate, happiness, despair, joy and grief will accompany you throughout your lives."
"You will shape the world you will be living in to your needs, but beware!" warned Gaia. "Take good care of everything you've been given. Don't destroy Earth, otherwise you will destroy yourselves! Every form of life is sacred. Do not take lives unless necessary. "
Suddenly, a purple ray of light appeared from Ea's third eye and hit five orbs. The god was somewhat taken aback, but then summoned the orbs to Himself and examined them, missing a smaller purple ray hitting several other orbs.
"Peculiar!" He thought. "They've been given Magic." His attention was drawn to the formation of the five orbs. The biggest of them, a black one with purple spots, hang unmoving in thin air. The other four, each of different colour: a red, a green, a yellow and a blue, all bearing the same purple spots, chased each other around the bigger, black one.
"So be it," He decided. "A gift can't be taken back. You five will possess Magic. You," he turned to the black one, "will be the Keeper of Balance and Wisdom. You will be born first to Earth and your generation and all generations after you will know you by the name 'Merlin'. After the aeons of your life on Earth have ticked away, you will be the ruler of the Land of the Shadows. Use your wisdom to judge the souls who come down to you after they leave Earth." He nodded, acknowledging the sound emitted by the orb, which could have been translated as a respectful bow.
"And you," He continued, looking at the four other orbs in front of Him, "you will be the forefathers of Magic on Earth. You will father children and some of them will carry Magic which they will pass down to some of their children, and so on, until the end of Time. Use my gift at your will, but wisely."
Three of the four souls bowed before the Creator, only the fourth one, the green orb emitted a sound, similar to an ironic laughter. Ea studied the soul for a while, then turned away from it. "No, unfortunately I can't take my gift away, even if I wanted to, even if I could. It's very much needed for the sake of the Balance," He muttered under His nose, catching a questioning glance of Gaia.
"Now go and wait for your time," She commanded and raised Her hands to dismiss the souls. A sudden movement caught Her eyes. Several of the souls left the spot they were patiently waiting at and moved closer to other souls until the orbs touched. These pairs were - for a brief moment - encapsulated in a golden glow and joy filled the air around them. A huge book and a quill appeared in thin air, the book flipped open on the first page and the quill started writing in the book.
"I see some of you have already found each other," smiled Gaia, "go with my blessing and wait patiently for your time when you can unite with your beloved one on Earth, until Death do you part."
---
Luna woke in a cold sweat, her cry still echoing in the girls' dormitory. Carefully, so that not to wake her mates, she sat up in her four-poster and lit her wand. By the dim light she checked her tiny silver, forget-me-not-shaped watch, a gift from her father for her eleventh birthday. It was a little over half past three in the morning and the rain was still pouring from the heaves just like it started in the evening.
With an angry snort, Luna lay back and tried to fall asleep again, to no avail. No matter what she tried, sleep wouldn't come. After half an hour she gave up, lay comfortably on her back, and tried recall her dream, one of the few dreams which had been regularly chasing her in the last couple of weeks. As she mentally played back the film of her dream, she started to smile at the last scene. Now she understood all signs; now all her questions got finally answered.
She slipped into her slippers and against the chill of the night she put on her robe above her pyjamas. With a silent "Alohomora" she opened the door of the dormitory. Once in the corridor, she disillusioned herself with a few feather-light wand movements, and, with a huge grin on her face, took off towards the Gryffindor tower, dancing all the way.