Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters or material, they are all copywritted by J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers and Scholastic and Bloomsbury and whoever JK's sold rights to. I can't keep track anymore. So please don't sue me, this is just for fun and is making no profit. All characters not made by J.K. Rowling are mine, so please don't use them without my permission, but if you'd like to use any of my characters, just e-mail me. But remember that I OWN NOTHING (of real importance)!
Note to readers: Original character story. Takes place during Harry's fifth year (after "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and taking the place of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"). The story has been recently updated due to the release of Book V to suit some of the "facts" (spells and the like).
Harry Potter and the Red ShadowChapter 1: English Rain
It started with rain.
To be precise, rain that fell on a small town, just on the northwest outskirts of Newcastle, England, falling from dark and nebulous clouds and from behind which peeked out an inky black sky. Rain that fell on the graveyard by the old church, on the sea of lights from the town below that could be seen through the fog and falling crystal-like droplets. The rain shrouded the little village like a veil, concealing the scene in the graveyard from the rest of the world. Rain that fell on a circle of cloaked and masked figures among the quiet graves and dripping yew trees; rain that fell on a figure shorter than the rest, a French girl of fifteen.
And it just so happened that she didn't like rain. It's cold, wet, and relentless. There were thousands, maybe even millions of different kinds of rain, and in some form or another, it always seemed to be there, a drizzling mist that clings to your skin, or knives of water that slice down upon you by unseen hands. There was far too much rain in England for her taste, since there was hardly this much rain in France or in her beloved Beauxbatons. But she was away from France, from Beauxbatons, from her mother, and everything else that she loved. She was with her father, in England, in the rain.
She had been in England for just over a month, but she looked as though she had been lost in the sempiternal rain for much longer. The color had been drained from her face until her skin was as white as alabaster. The vivid chroma had been washed from her hair with never-ceasing rain until it was a pale blonde that lay wet and frayed on her shoulders beneath the drenched hood of her cloak. But the red streaks in the hair that framed her face remained bright as blood freshly spilled. And her eyes were still the same endless shade of dark cobalt blue that was like staring down into the cold still darkness at the bottom of the sea, never touched or stirred by the warmth of light.
The girl pulled her cloak tightly around herself, the heavy wool fabric soaked and weighed down with water. Even though it was August, it was terribly cold, and she shivered in the freezing wind.
Will it rain this at Hogwarts? she thought, but the trail of thought got no farther – derailed, crashed, burning, several victims.
"Rouge!"
The girl snapped to attention at the call of her name and forced down a shudder at the high-pitched tone of her father's voice, a voice colder than the rain.
"Yes, Papa?" she answered.
"Would you kindly pay attention, Rouge?"
"Yes, Papa."
As the tall, cloaked figure turned his attention away from Rouge, she shuddered. If there was anything she hated more than the rain, more than England, even more than being taken from her mother, it was her father and his horrible voice. She heard his voice in her nightmares. She swore she could even remember hearing it as a child.
It hadn't been raining then, but the night was still dark, cold, and quiet. But not all was quiet in the house of a witch in France.
A woman with golden blonde hair like rays of aurora, that first light of each day captured and woven in her hair, and eyes of the clearest and brightest crystal blue was standing, blue eyes down, in the shadow of a tall man cloaked in black. If given the chance for a closer look, tears would have been visible in the woman's lucid eyes. She was small, weak, and afraid beside the man, for his quiet anger seemed to fill the entire room.
"What do you mean I have a daughter," he asked the woman in the all too familiar, high-pitched tone, but his voice so quiet and so filled with venom that volume was not needed to make him any more frightening.
"I apologize, your lordship. I deedn't mean for zis to 'appen—" her trembling voice made her seem even smaller, but she was spared an explanation as the man cut off her off.
"I won't take this bastard child. A girl cannot become a proper heir."
"I'm sure she'll manage when she's oldair—"
"Age means nothing. She's a worthless. She's a girl. I have no use for her. ...You've failed me, dear."
The woman shivered. She had so willingly run to him in search of power, for she was timid, mild, and powerless. But just to be near him gave her a sense of power, to know she belonged to the most feared man in the world. Yet without another thought he'd throw her away if she no longer suited his needs.
She summoned all of what little courage she had and, keeping her head down, she spoke quietly, "Please... just... just see 'er."
The woman's eyes flickered up to the man's face in search of a reply, but nothing came. She took his silence optimistically, and with a simple gesture she led him up the marble staircase and into a room that was filled with sweetly fragrant and beautifully colored roses. They practically covered the room; some enchanted to be unearthly in color and scent or bewitched to give a faint glow, dimly lighting the nursery. A bassinet sat in the middle of the room, draped in colorful silks where a sleeping infant lay.
The cloaked man stood silhouetted in the doorway with narrowed eyes beneath his hood, nostrils flaring. The woman approached the bassinet and smiled warmly down at her daughter. She stroked the side of her daughter's innocent, sleeping face, but a cold hand was placed on the woman's shoulder. She pulled her hand away and tore her eyes from her daughter. She stepped away, leaving room for the father to step in.
A shadow was cast over the sleeping child's face as he leaned over the bassinet, and his expression became one of disgust.
"Filthy brat," he spat with a look of revulsion. He began to turn to leave, but the baby stirred. Across the man's face a wicked smirk spread slowly as the baby awoke with a quiet yawn and he pulled out his wand, twirling it between his long fingers with an air of amusement.
The woman's crystalline eyes suddenly went wide as she saw the gentle twirl of the man's wand. She reached out to grab the baby, to hold him back, to do anything, but he simply held out a hand and stopped her, still twirling his wand with the other. She reached out hopelessly to her daughter, pleading for her infant daughter's forgiveness. She couldn't help her now.
The man dug his wand into the baby's inner forearm with a shout, "Morsmordre!" and glittering green light filled the room, casting shadows on every rose. The baby screamed. Her mother sobbed, and her father laughed that horrible high-pitched laugh. As the baby screamed, trickles of blood seemed to drip down the sides of her face, staining her hair in streaks. The baby girl's mother watched the sudden burst of pigment in her daughter's downy-like, baby hair with a mixture of shock and fear. Let it end, she hoped, oh please let it end.
That spell left more of a mark than red streaks in the infant girl's hair. A mark that branded who she was and who she was meant to be. It was a mark that lasted the rest of her life.
The man pulled his wand away and the woman ran to her daughter who lay screaming and crying with pain. She held her daughter in her arms, sobbing with her. And the cloaked man left for England, leaving them crying among their roses.
Rouge shuddered and shook her head. She had seen that night before in her dreams— no, her nightmares. They were memories of her father abandoning her and her mother when Rouge was only an infant. She hated the cloaked man who stood beside her, her father. She hated the irony that she was with him again after all these years of exile, and she hated the rain he had dragged her into.
It was in fact, on that early summer night, raining. Moisture seemed to just hang in the air, laced with the heat. The summer holidays had begun, ending Rouge's fourth year at Beauxbatons and she and her mother sat in the parlor. Rouge chatted obliviously, but her mother was quieter than usual, and afraid. She kept glancing expectantly at the clock on the mantelpiece and over to the front door. Rouge noticed nothing, but her mother trembled with rising fear.
Simultaneously, like wheels in motion lining up, a clap of thunder echoed through the halls, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the late hour, and the front door swung open wide, letting in the rain that rode on a gust, bursting open as though thrown by the violent winds outside. Rouge leapt to her feet and looked frantically from the swaying door to her mother, who still sat in her armchair, her crystal blue eyes wide with terror.
Rouge stared with bewilderment at her mother, but her attention was drawn back to the door as someone stepped inside. He strode into the parlor as another clap of thunder rang and Rouge's mother averted her eyes to the floor, avoiding his gaze in subordinate reverence. Rouge stood rooted to the spot, glaring at the cloaked intruder with enraged defiance.
"Get up," he snapped the command at Rouge's mother, who rose quickly to her feet. "Pack her things. She's coming with me to England." Rouge's mother made no argument and obeyed.
"I will do no such zing!" Rouge shouted boldly, and a little louder than she intended, nearing hysteria with confusion. "And 'oo do you zink you are?! Barging in 'ere—"
"Rouge, chérie," her mother cut-in quietly, "you shouldan't talk to your fazzer zat way..."
"Father?!" Rouge practically screamed. Her father smirked in a satisfied sort of way. Rouge decided then that she hated that smug look and held this opinion for a long time.
"That's right, Rouge," he said lazily, his tone dripping with mock sincerity. "And as my heir, it's your duty to come to England with me."
"You can't make me do anyzing," she snarled viciously.
"Oh, I can't, can I?" he asked, blinking those cat-like eyes in mock innocent curiosity. He stepped closer to Rouge, threateningly, but she stood her ground. "Indeed, we shall see about that... Imperio!"
Blissful, blank, emptiness filled Rouge's mind and she could nothing but obey. She was led from her home in France by her father's wand with only the last sight of her mother's tear-stained face, miserable but accepting, as she watched her daughter be steered away. The memory seemed so obscured now; the phantasmagoria of it being played over in her mind was much to fast for reality. The entrance, the exit, and all in between much to fast, and yet she could remember it as nothing else but this rapid exchange of words and tutelage. But still Rouge's father dragged his cobalt-eyed daughter from town to town, gathering old followers until she wound up in the cemetery by the hill, just on the northwest outskirts of Newcastle. And all she could really say positively about the experience was that her English accent had improved.
Rouge stood beside her father that night, just as she had done all summer, until all the other cloaked and masked figures disapperated, leaving only the two. It was still raining when the sun began to rise in the gray sky as Rouge and her father trudged through the mud and mire. She guessed that they were heading somewhere that they could use a portkey. Rouge's inability to apperate hindered and obviously annoyed her father. That's all she seemed to be – an annoyance and a burden. She didn't know what their destination was this time just yet, she rarely did.
"You'll be going to Diagon Ally today," her father informed her suddenly, breaking their accustomed silence. "You'll be getting your school supplies."
"Where I'll be getting my school supplies?" she inquired, clearly feeling anxiety about the idea. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"No," he answered flatly. There was no doubt he'd rather do anything else than take his daughter shopping. He stopped walking. "This'll do."
Rouge followed his gaze. He was surveying one of the statues of the graveyard, a marble angel that towered over them. Stone wings spread grandly, though the tips of her wings were broken, her hair and maiden robes floated about her divine figure by an unseen wind, arms opened lovingly to the father and daughter at her feet as she smiled. But the marble of the angel was darker with the moisture that coated it and the nocturnal darkness all around it, and the rain that poured down her sinless face collected in her pupil-less yet smiling eyes and trickled from the corners, as though she were crying.
"Portus," Rouge's father muttered, wand pointed to the statue, and Rouge watched the statue glow blue, as though an inner light were shining through those outspread arms, the light reaching even the tips of her fingers as the angel trembled for a few seconds, then became still again. Rouge's father reached up and touched the hand of the statue, and, following his example, Rouge reached up and touched the angel's other hand, fingers barely reaching the angel's hand that was held palm-up in silent offering.
Just before Rouge felt the expected tug behind her navel as she heard her father whisper, 'one... two... three...' she threw back her head, letting her hood fall. She stared pitifully at the sky, as though asking the heavens, 'Why me?' She let the rain roll down her face—the angel's tears—indistinguishable from her own.
'Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary...' she quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in her pathetic though hopeful thoughts as she was pulled through the portkey.
She was right. Longfellow was right. Longfellow was always right.
But the rain hadn't yet come to a boy in Little Whinging, Surrey.
Note to readers: Now for some instructions for you folks who are new to these wonders of Believe it or not, you new people, you, there are more chapters to this fiction than this! To get to the next chapter, first you must notice the drop bar menu on the bottom of this page to the right (it reads "1. English Rain" or whatever the chapter-number and name happens to be). Then, notice the small arrow button to the right of the drop bar menu. To get to the next chapter, just click that nice, little, arrow button, and to skip to another chapter, just click the drop bar menu and select the chapter. Thanks for reading! Oh! And you might want go to that drop bar to your left, too, and leave me a review just to make me happy. I'd really appreciate some feedback! I always do!