Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. JKRowling does. This disclaimer counts for every chapter. Please review!
Her cries carrying loudly through the early-morning misty silence, a girl with pale white skin framed by brown – almost black – hair knelt on the wet, dewy grass, crying wretchedly, as if her world had just ended. Impenetrable cold white mist enclosed the property so completely that it did indeed look like the world just slammed to a stop.
Behind the girl, lay a Tudor house that must have once been beautiful, for now it was in smouldering ruins. Red glowing embers and fine ash made was all that was left of the relic, with the occasional stump of wall left, blackened and charred. Only a single wall still stood proudly, with two windows grinning like empty eye sockets remaining on the top floor. The earth around the house was black, marking an explosion, spiking chaotically out from the centre of the ruin.
But the girl only had eyes for the empty ones lying a few meters away from her, hollow and vacant. They belonged to the body of a young girl, which if it had not been lying sprawled at such a horrific angle, could have easily been a lifeless shop dummy.
Through her warm, salty tears, she reached a shaking hand forward... and slowly touched the girl. She was cold.
With a final cry of anguish, she curled into a foetal position, ignoring the damp and cold. In her line of sight now were two other figures, that of a man and a woman, not moving.
Their blank eyes betrayed them. They were dead too.
Her grief and anguish was quickly replaced by anger.
In the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a tall black silhouette gliding towards her, and felt the raw, hungry anger inside her grow. He had done this; he had murdered this innocent family, purely out of spite. Behind him were foggy grey figures. She glared. Death Eaters.
And he was there, leering over her shoulder, snake-like slits for a nose, evil red eyes, grinning at her sorrow. He was straight out of her darkest nightmares.
Slowly, as though she was in a trance, she watched a ghostly skeletal hand, reached out of his black cloak, clawing towards her... resting ominously on her shoulder.
Instinctively she flinched, and was rewarded by a cruel, cold smile.
A furious red rage let lose inside her, thrashing against the pain in her ribcage, breathing fire in her heart, clawing, groping for him who had taken everything from her.
She would kill him. She would break him, break him into a thousand pieces of glass, and scatter him across the four corners of the earth. She would make him feel her unendurable grief; she would make him feel the pain of what he had done...
And that would not happen while she wallowed here on the grass.
She staggered to her feet, barely contained from screaming, and drew her wand.
He laughed loudly, his wand hanging limply from his side, like she was no threat to him.
"Wasn't it enough to destroy my past?" she spat like a cat, "Do you now have to murder everything I care about?"
He laughed again. She seethed, and then froze.
She looked at the dead young girl. She could take revenge – and she would take revenge – later. But first she had to make sure this family were always remembered.
To the amused looks of the man, she knelt again on the grass, and drew a small silver dagger from her robes. In a swift motion, she slashed a cut into her left hand, from the base of her thumb across her palm to the bottom of her little finger. Biting her lip, she squeezed her left hand and let three drops of scarlet blood drip onto the moist earth. Stretching out her right hand, she hummed "ferrum lignum," and slowly dragged it upwards, like she was pulling something. Around her the earth rumbled, and a tiny silver shoot appeared out of the ground.
She raised both her hands, drawing a pattern only she could see. The silver seedling grew in front of her, grew to mirror her movements. First she circled and twisted her hands clockwise around each other, entwining and crisscrossing. She spiralled them out, continuously reaching and spreading, swaying with the movement, eyes closed.
Breathless, she raised her head. The Death Eaters had fallen silent.
Imbedded in the ground in front of her, grew a rowan tree, made of curving, twisting iron, gleaming like silver. Above her, its trunk fanned out into numerous, sinewy branches, and each had sprouted elegant iron leaves, smaller than her hand, creating an eerily beautiful iron canopy. Twinkling among these leaves were small red berries – like drops of blood.
It contrasted perfectly with the garden, so all eyes were drawn to it. It sang of loss and melancholy, grief and anguish.
But it was not quite finished.
Her heart breaking as she did so, for this was a final, definite, sign that they were dead, she carefully traced three names into the iron of the tree. As she traced the letters, they appeared engraved in the tree.
She stood back from the tree and read what she had carved.
'Emily Walle - 1953 – 1990
John Walle - 1949 – 1990'
And finally,
'Helen Walle - 1982 – 1990'
The whole earth was silent.
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK.
The Death Eaters whipped around to face the noise, wands poised, in a tense arrow formation with Lord Voldemort at the head, scowling. Directly mirroring them across the garden were several toughened Aurors, grimacing, at their head a stout man in a bowler hat and smart suit, standing nervously next to a tall, bright blue eyed wizard with a length of sliver beard, dressed in typical wizarding robes, eyes locked on Voldemort.
The girl looked from the black Death Eaters to the Ministry formation, and slowly stumbled to her feet. Every eye followed her movements.
"Rowan... " hissed Voldemort in Parseltongue. Death Eaters and Aurors alike blinked, confused.
"Rowan... come heeeere..."
But the girl simply shook her head, and raised her eyes to meet the sky-blue ones of the old wizard at the head of the Aurors.
When Dumbledore looked into her eyes, he didn't see a wiry girl of ten years, he saw a talented individual whose eyes betrayed her. She was scared. She had seen too much.
A curios vibrating sound, so low it seemed to be coming from the earth itself filled the air. A beat pulsed, like the hum of a heart. The majestic sound of an entire orchestra swept suddenly through the cold air, growing louder and louder, until it seemed to be coming from inside your mind. The beat grew quicker. The music reached a crescendo until it was an almost unbearable pitch, screaming, crying.
The girl did not blink.
Slowly, she twisted her arms above her head into an arch, fingers clawing outwards.
From seemingly nowhere, numerous shards of silver glass, some the size of a head, others the length of a fingernail, poured in, flew in, from every direction, to form a swirling, humming mass behind her.
The glass pulsed electric blue, pearly white and pure silver as the swarm behind her sifted through itself, bending, doubling back, all around her.
The cloud of glass suddenly flew to one spot, liquidising into flowing molten silver, speckled with blue and white, with flecks of green. Now the sphere was like the sea, swimming one direction before changing its mind and turning back the other way, constantly throbbing.
And then even as the Death Eaters and Aurors watched, the sphere began to shed layers of glass, each layer evaporating into tiny pieces of crystal. The glittering specks flew in torrents to a place directly above the girl.
Finally she moved, sweeping her arms downward and up, like wings of a bird.
Above her, the sparkles of glass had moved together again, to form a glowing, beautiful, majestic silver phoenix, with eyes of pure sea green, feathers flecked with ice-blue and snow white. It hovered in midair; regal wings controlling the wind, pushing it down and up, in perfect time to the girl's movements.
All the while, the sound of the orchestra had been blowing across the garden, and now it built up and up, the beat grew louder, the pitch dropped up and down; the background thrum of the bass instruments became thunderous, and surged up to the peculiar music.
With a final mourning note, the music stopped. The girl folded her arms back into herself and the magnificent phoenix; it seemed, flew into the girl and disappeared.
Three slow claps broke the stunned silence.
Voldemort turned leisurely to the girl and said "Very impressive... you've been practicing. Now, come here, my Rowan..." in the same snake-like hiss.
The girl stood a little straighter and replied "Never."
Proudly, the little girl walked towards Dumbledore.
"Please help me," she whispered, in English this time.
Smiling kindly, Dumbledore took her small pale hand in his wrinkled one and she stood beside him.
"Have you ever Apperated before?" he asked. She shook her head.
"Then on the count of one, two, and three!" said Dumbledore, spinning on the spot, holding firmly onto the arm of the girl.
At the last moment the girl waved goodbye to Voldemort, wand ready to cast a spell, but they both knew he was too late.
"Bye, father," she whispered, as Voldemort's howls of rage vanished in the distant.
Only Dumbledore heard her. He gave a little start of surprise, chuckled "Well, well!" and peered curiously down at the little girl he had just rescued. She smiled nervously up at him and he winked.
"Up there," he said, pointing to a humungous castle sprawled at the top of a hill, partly surrounded by a dense forest. Hand in hand, they set off towards the castle, grinning shyly at each other.