Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in any shape or form.

This is my new story and it really is soo much better than my first. I got the idea for this fic from another I have read called 'light up the sky' by 'troublemaker-in-chief' read it. It is amazing. Things you might want to know about this story. It is very AU. It has no slash. It has some coarse language (in later chapters) but I while raise the rating when that happens. I really hope you like it. Reviews really help me discover the way the story will go. I also have to apologize in advance for any grammatical, spelling errors. I also will attempt to update fast. Now, go ahead and read.

Harry heard Rowena yelling at her parents, but this time it sounded far more serious than ever before.

Just 5 minutes ago, she had sashayed down the stairs in the best of high spirits, clutching something to her chest. Harry heard her excited voice from in the kitchen. "Mother, Father, I was accepted!" Harry saw her hold out her bundle, a black mask, and twist her face in a smirk of triumph and haughty disdain.

Harry had felt a shudder run through him. Rowena was a Death Eater. After that, the conversation started to go downhill.

Emilia and Dean Wealthlock were evil people no doubt, but they weren't powerful. They were sneaky and sly and they always admired the Death Eaters, but they were intimidated and terrified by them too. Their daughter was one now, and even though they kept such a pretense of loving the Death Eaters, they cried at the fate of their daughter.

"Why are you not proud of me!" Rowena shrieked, snatching up her wand. "I thought you would be proud! This! This is my destiny, my service to the Dark Lord!" Rowena waved her mask madly above her head. Harry heard Emilia pleading with her daughter. "Please… Rowena! They are killers! They kill and torture… They can hurt you! They will come after our family... Your life of comfort is gone! For all of us!" The Wealthlock's were all about comfort and living an easy simple life.

Rowena snarled at her mother, sending her cringing on the tiles of the kitchen. She barred her teeth at her parents. "I DON'T NEED YOU ANYWAY!" Rowena heard crashes sounding like broken china and crashes of falling furniture. This had never happened before.

"ROWENA! Please… stop…we are so sorry!" Harry heard Rowena laugh evilly, and Harry shivered. He had lived with Rowena for all his life and she had never been more frightening than this. He used to put pranks in her room and make her hair turn blue every time she walked past his room and she would chase him around the house. Now she was a killer, a Death Eater.

"They accept me, mother! I'm never coming back to this dump, a brighter future awaits me!" She turned from the kitchen abruptly, and Harry scrambled behind the door to stay hidden. Rowena looked haggard, with sunken, bloodshot eyes glinting madly. Her short pixie hair was red like fire.

Mrs. and Mr. Wealthlock were evil, but they were nowhere as near as evil as their daughter.

Emilia rushed out of the kitchen. She was a chubby woman and her cheeks were flushed and stained with tears.

"ROWENA! Rowena!" She called to her daughter, desperately. Rowena spared a last sadistic glance at her mother before spitting at her face, and disappearing with a crack.

Harry watched Emilia, comforted by her well-rounded, balding husband, cry for most of the evening. Yes, the Wealthlock's were evil, but they were weak and powerless and had no desire to fight for any war or for anything.

While Harry stayed in their house as an unwanted surplus to the Wealthlock family, Rowena had disapparated to the Bellatrix Mansion, for her first Death eater meeting.

James had lost his son while he was 4.

The fact that his body had not been found kept James searching obsessively, and praying, for two years after. Then he came to realize that Lilly needed him and the probability that his beautiful son was dead was to great to ignore. He didn't have the strength to stay away from his wife just after she had lost her son.

The first year after he stopped searching was the hardest.

James knew he had failed his son, and he found his Bogart to be Harry shouting at him, blaming him, for not protecting him like he promised. It didn't really get better, but it didn't get worse either.

James changed and was slowly more able to handle the pain. Like a lizard, growing tougher skin in summer time. He was slowly able to think of Harry without feeling the familiar pangs in his chest. He was slowly able to picture how perfect he would be if he was alive, without breaking down. He saw Lily changing too. Becoming a stronger woman. James loved her more each day for her strength, her power, and how she had helped him pull through. If Lilly had gone on that awful night too… James doubted he would have found much to live for.

Now, Harry would have been 13, It had been 9 years since he had been taken from their lives, ripped away from them, and James still felt the places where his heart had been torn.

Every time he told Lily he loved her he added on in his head, Harry I love you too. James missed him like Hell.

Harry, His beautiful baby boy. He would give anything to see his face again.

He had to be strong for Lily. She had slowly gotten better. They could laugh, prank and host parties like normal people, but when they crawled in to bed, a dark shadow followed.

Harry… James could be fine one minute and then suddenly his mind would remind him. Remind him that the son he loved so much was gone, remind him that he had failed him, remind him that Harry would never grow up.

The smallest most inconsequential things would set it off.

The sight of the Auror offices stuck with photo's of daughters… and sons would send him back to when his world shattered, became darker and utterly incomplete.

It would be back to the days he would cry drunkenly, the broken glass of beer bottles around the legs of the chair he was slumped in.

Sirius and Remus' hands warm on his shoulder.

James would smile when he thought of his best friends, they had helped him so much.

When he couldn't be strong anymore, when he wanted to shriek and swear and run… His friends were there for him.

The next morning, Harry woke up in his makeshift bedroom in the attic to find Emilia and Dean yelling at him to get his lazy rear to the kitchen.

It wasn't surprising, Emilia and Dean had always resented him, treated him awfully. Rowena leaving wouldn't change that deep-set routine.

Harry dragged himself downstairs. Harry half expected to see Rowena at the table, but she wasn't there.

Harry looked at the seat she usually occupied.

He hated Death Eaters and how they treated people. He hated Voldermort and everything he stood for, however he wasn't stupid enough to show it. If he did, he would be kicked out of the house, or worse, killed.

As much as he hated living with Emilia and Dean, it was better than the streets or dead. Harry knew that they weren't his parents and for almost all his life he had longed for his real parents to take him away, to a better, brighter place.

As he grew he realized that it was an almost certain face that his parents were Death Eaters. Harry didn't want anything to do with his parents if they were evil. That was, if, they were alive. There was also a very good chance that his parents were dead. Harry grew and realized all of these things.

He also realized that if his parents weren't dead, they mustn't love him very much to give him away.

So Harry invented a new fantasy, that he could have a friend.

A year ago, he had run away from the Wealthlock's. He had been on the streets cold and hungry, but he had been free, and he had made a friend. Having a friend was the best. Someone to look out for you. Someone to be there, not to tell you what to do, but just to care about you and enjoy spending time with you.

He had met a boy called Nick who was 2 years older than him and Nick was like a protective older brother. Nick had run away from the orphanage he had lived in. Also, Nick was a muggle.

He missed Nick so much and often wondered what happened to him. For a couple of months, Nick had been his best friend, they had worked together to get jobs and bring food and stay hidden. Then, Harry had been found, and taken back to the Wealthlock's and he never saw Nick again.

Harry slumped into the kitchen stool, yawning. Emilia spooned a bowl of porridge and poured him orange juice, all the while giving him a glare of resentment. The small overly-white kitchen seemed empty without Rowena, and Harry momentarily wished she hadn't been accepted, so he wouldn't be the only one living in misery inside the house.

It was raining outside, so that would mean that Harry couldn't wander up and down the dull street, which was, his main way of killing time.

Harry reached for his spoon and accidentally knocked over his glass full of orange juice. It shattered onto the floor.

"HARRY BLACK!" Emilia shouted his name reproachfully and Harry rolled his eyes.

"FIX THAT RIGHT NOW!"

"At your service." Harry mocked a bow.

They would have thought him to be sweet and genuinely sorry, if they hadn't known him at all.

Harry muttered Reparo and cast a cleaning spell on the orange juice. Dean narrowed his eyes at the 13 year old boy.

"I'm sick of your smart retorts, Black. You think you're so clever, boy! I've had enough of your disobedience. When I was your age…"

Harry interrupted.

"Here we go again. 'When I was your age I followed Death Eaters around like a lost puppy.' Yeah, I've heard it before."

Dean looked furious, face turning splotchy red.

"GO TO YOUR ROOM!"

"I'll be happy to."

And he made sure to slam the attic door after he went in.

Later that day Harry was lying on his thin mattress and using his wand to direct a ball to bounce rhythmically on the floor.

Bounce, bounce, bounce.

His main objective was to annoy Emilia and Dean who would hear it clearly from the room below.

Bounce, bounce…

He was mid-bounce when a loud smattering of cracks were heard in the kitchen, downstairs, and he heard Emilia and Dean scream, and the sound of their stunned bodies fall to the floor.

Harry jumped up, snatching up his wand. His immediate thought was that Death Eaters were inside his house. His ball rolled off under the bed. Poised and ready, Harry slinked out onto the landing, his heart hammering wildly.

He peered over the banister into the kitchen and his fears were confirmed.

The kitchen was full of black cloaked Death Eaters.

Harry crouched down, trying to hear what they were saying. He could hear a woman's husky voice.

"Come on Rowena… It's your first task… You don't want to prove the Dark Lord wrong about you."

Harry snuck another glance downstairs and saw Rowena closest to him, pale with an indiscernible emotion on her face.

Was it fear? Or horror? Or shock? She looked shaken, like someone had just delivered her news that her family and died.

"Yes Bella… Of course…" She said numbly.

A man's voice spoke.

"They won't be able to feel anything while they are stunned, you might want to hurry before they wake up. We don't have all day."

Harry was confused. What were they talking about? What were they making Rowena do?

Then he heard Rowena's unsteady voice echo through the house.

"Avada Kedavra!"

And Harry saw a jet of blinding green light shoot from her wand and connect with her father, Dean Wealthlock, in the chest. The words she said sounded familiar.

Then Harry remembered when he had heard something like them, it was the night he met Nick.

Nick had shown Harry to the small room at the back of the abandoned bookshop where he slept. He gave Harry a blanket and laid it down in the room, making sure it was out of sight from the half boarded front windows. "You can sleep here." It was Harry shivered. It was dark and cold and the walls of the shop had a musty smell about them. He smiled in gratitude at the boy he had just met, but he wasn't sure if Nick saw it. "Hey, Nick can you heat up the blankets?" Harry's wand was in his backpack on the other side of the bookshop and he couldn't be bothered to get it. Nick snorted. "I wish." Harry was confused. What did Nick mean? The heating charm was beyond basic, It was one of the first Harry learnt. "Don't you have a wand?" Harry would hate it if his wand went missing, his wand was his protection. Nick sat up and looked across at Harry. It was just light enough to see his eyes looking at him as though he was insane. "What are you talking about?" Harry looked back at Nick. "Your wand. Did someone take it?" Nick's eyes questioned his sanity now. "A wand? I don't have a wand? If I did I would make myself rich and never have to worry again, Abracadabra! And I would be a billionaire." Harry crinkled his brow. "I've never heard of that spell before. What does that do?" Obviously, money couldn't be conjured because its metal was magically infused. Didn't Nick know that? Then Harry remembered what Emilia and Dean used to say about people that didn't know magic. Was Nick one of these people? Harry always thought that the Wizards to muggle ratio was a hundred people the one, now he was realizing that maybe there were more muggles than Wizards. Harry tried to change the subject. It was ingrained in him never to tell non-magical people about magic. He tried to change the subject, but Nick cut across him. "Abracadabra!" Nick shouted jumping up, making Harry laugh. "Abracadabra!" Harry smiled, Happy that his parents had been proved wrong. Muggles were just as nice as Wizards. They were clueless about magic but they were just as important.

The spell was slightly different and Harry wondered what it did, he leant over the railing just in time to see Rowena aiming her wand at Emilia Wealthlock.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry watched carefully for any changes in her body and saw, to his horror, her chest stop rising.

Please tell me what you think. Just a tiny review makes so much of a difference to me. Thanks for reading!

Xx

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