So, after posting few chapter in French, I have decided to give it a try in English. I hope y'all like this whole mess, can wait to read what you guys thought about.

Summary : Darius Carter is at first glance an ordinary muggle. At least, until a gang of Death Eaters show up at his door, wands out. So Darius Carter is revealed to be a great wizard, or rather: Darius Carter was actually the wizard Harry Potter all along. You still with me? Okay then, because Darius Carter has amnesia, and since he has amnesia then technically the wizard called Harry Potter never existed. Darius doesn't know of the magical world or the great war that awaits him, or even the crowds of people he left behind. Did he go willingly, or was he forced? Without his memories, that is the big question.

Pairing : Somehow Harry will ended up with Severus. It's gonna take time, probably an entire life lmao.

Disclaimer : I own nothing but my own characters you'll meet soon enough.

A/N : shout out to accidentalparadox who was patient enough to correct this whole thing, without her, know that you would have read some weird stuff about people shitting in some cowboy boots. Thanks for everything.

PROLOGUE

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:

— Ulalume, Edgar Allan Poe.

— 2004, Outback, The O'Hara, Australia.

The man uttered a muffled groan, crushing his face further into a pillow already covered with sweat. It would no doubt be given as a tribute to the next washing machine cycle. The owner of the house might have been a great friend of his, but her love of cleanliness was even stronger than the affection she bore to the young O'Hara workers. She always said a clean home was the first step towards a clean soul; whatever that meant.

Abandoned to Morpheus's arms, the sleeping man was unable to linger on thoughts of his boss' wife; he was far too preoccupied by a bright green light that made him squint in pain.

He wanted to scream and ask for help. Ask: 'What's going on? Is there someone there? Where am I?' but even if he managed to open his mouth when he tried to speak, no sound was ever heard. Then, he had the feeling of choking, of drowning; somewhere in the jumbled ruins of his surroundings, he heard the echoing laughter of another person. It wasn't a joyful sound - nothing to show that the person was having fun. It was like a knife on china, or nails on a chalkboard. An unpleasant sound that made him shudder.

He wanted to hide, to flee into a mouse hole in the walls and never come out; to never have to see the fire spread, again and again. The bodies fell by the dozens, blood watered the earth and coloured the grass that characteristic carmine red.

"Leave me." He breathed, without the slightest sound escaping from his lips. "Leave me, please. Make it stop. Make it stop."

His fingers wrapped around a piece of wood, but the feeling of security he expected never came. Instead, his bowels froze as if steeped in icy water. He inhaled.

He exhaled.

A human shape cloaked in shadow formed suddenly before him as if it were a ghost and the dreamer jumped, brandishing his improvised wooden weapon in fear. His mouth was open and he tried to shout something, only words once again failed him and he panicked, a silent sob shaking his shoulders.

"..ar .. tter." The figure said, kneeling in front of him.

Though he could focus on the shadow, he was unable to see its face. Or rather, looking closely, it was so covered with dried mud and blood that it was unrecognizable. The distorted features frowned and the shadow shook him roughly, hard hands on his shoulders.

"...hear ...? ...tter! ...otter! ...ot the moment fo..."

A flash of light pierced the figure's body, and it collapsed heavily against him like a puppet with cut strings. The weight against his chest made him panic, even more when he realized that no matter how much he struggled, the body would not move again.

Dead. Whispered a voice in the back of his head. More dead. Countless dead, and yet even more dead because of you. Always for you.

He screamed, but there was no sound.

He cried, but nobody cared.

He called for help, but no one heard him.

He…

"...Hey, you hear me? Carter, wake up!"

The man forced himself to open his eyes, his face bloodless and his breathing ragged. At his bedside, a boy between fourteen and sixteen looked him with a concerned frown before handing him a glass of fresh water, which was greeted with a watery smile.

"Sorry." Whispered Carter, bringing the water to his lips. "Did I wake you?"

"I wish! Mum got me up at dawn; it's been a while."

The teenager had blond hair bleached by his time in the sun, a scattering of freckles on a small upturned nose and large blue-gray eyes. He smiled, showing a row of white teeth almost perfectly aligned except for a single canine crossed over its neighbour.

"You dreamed again? One of those ones you don't want to talk about, right ?"

He slipped his hands into the pockets of his time-worn blue overalls, knowing that the man his mother had been sheltering for years now was hardly an open book. In fact, he was so guarded that the kid suspected him of outright lying about certain aspects of his life. He'd mentioned it to his parents many times, but they just ordered him to leave their poor guest/employee alone.

The man named Carter shrugged.

"Something like that." He replied evasively.

It could just be a nightmare. Carter wasn't convinced that revealing he regularly dreamed of war, death and weird flashes of light was a wise decision. He loved his freedom and wasn't eager to end his days in a mental institution. Or to put it another way, he didn't want to reveal these details to a teenage boy infamous for his love of gossip. Seth O'Hara was a good boy, but a boy who often talked too much.

"Yeah, I see." The boy pouted as he picked up his drink.

He turned to leave without asking for the rest, although he paused on the threshold, as he remembered why he had come in the first place:

"Before I forget, dad said that Mrs Lowe is on her way; her ugly kid wrote off his bike again. I suppose you don't need the details."

"Again? I thought his old man was supposed to keep an eye on him." Grumbled Carter as he finally decided to get out of bed.

Seth nearly fell when his shoulder made contact with the doorframe, trying to leave the room without looking. What could he say? It was always difficult to walk and pay attention at the same time. Carter, of course, never missed an opportunity to tease the young man. He said things like "It's adorable!" and "Are you blushing, Mr O'Hara?" and again: "Get out of here before your boyfriend comes to give me shit. Children get jealous; you know what I mean."

Of course, he had to respond with a particularly obscene gesture (which made Carter die laughing), the usual insults ("Jealous of what? You're an old man anyway, nobody likes them old!") and a door that slammed a little too loudly. No doubt if he had been insulting another person, his bosses (and parents) would soon be coming to make their feelings known; only it was only Darius Carter, and Darius Carter was a good man. He was gentle and a little shy at first, honest and playful. He liked to tease his peers, and God knows the idea of looking at a younger kid as anything other than as a brother, a cousin or a simple friend, would never have crossed his mind. Seth was exactly that: a little brother that he liked to tease. Because, well, it was his job, after all. They had no blood ties and had only known each other for a few years, but God knew - God knew that Darius would have given everything to keep fueling the rumours, laughing, playing and enjoying life.

####

Distractedly, the man who had been picked up by the O'Hara's nearly eight years before led his sleepy body into the adjoining bathroom. He didn't bother to take a look at the reflection that turned its back on the big mirror: he knew it by heart. He knew that lingering on it, he would see only an average frame carved tough like an oak. Although he was no longer as thin as when he was found, he was nothing like his giant colleagues: all muscle. He, though fit, usually hid his strength under the long sleeves that he wore at all times, even when the heat threatened to incinerate him on the spot. His shoulders were wide and his arms strong enough to lift a bike laid out on the ground without any help. His skin had eventually lost that its shade of alabaster - that pallid, cadaverous complexion - after months spent riding in the red expanse of the Australian desert, and adulthood had given him a dark trail of hair from his chest down to the line below his navel, and more. Even his face had finally agreed to let go of its puppy fat. He thanked the stars every night for giving him a square jaw and a beard, because with this he resembled his boss, guardian, and savior - just as they both had black hair.

His introspection would probably have dragged out a little longer if the water from the shower had not suddenly cooled. Swearing at the boiler, which was apparently not in a good enough mood this morning, Darius cut his routine short, shut off the water supply, and exited the shower stall. With mechanical gestures he wiped the fog from the wide mirror and exhaled deeply when he met his own green eyes, so similar to the flashes of color in the dreams that haunted his waking mind. With a rueful smile, Darius Carter knew it was going to be a long day.

####

"Mrs. Lowe," He said soon after, his deep voice dangerously soft. "I'm curious to know what brings you to me again."

With a flannel shirt wrapped snugly around her waist, skinny jeans tucked into shiny leather boots and thick blond hair cascading over a generous bosom, all topped with an akubra (Australian cowboy hat): Mrs Lowe did not pretend to look embarrassed or at best even contrite.

"You know how it is with children." She said, rolling her eyes. "They destroy everything they touch."

Okay. Darius could perhaps concede that point. What he couldn't agree with was this mother putting her ugly offspring's life in danger by allowing him to regularly ride a bike he was far too small to handle. Sighing, he gestured to two guys in the garage to bring the victim of a family's stupidity inside so he could take a closer look at it.

"When will there will be nothing left for him to destroy?" He groaned, without addressing anyone in particular.

The two men dragging the wreck of the 1949 Triumph Tiger behind them stifled their laughter; but there was no doubt that when good old Darius was no longer able to repair the bike, the father of the awful kid would simply find him a new and more dangerous toy. It broke their hearts to see it in pieces every time.

"So?" Said Mrs. Lowe, impatient. "Is it repairable?"

Darius sighed heavily, his torso bent double over the machine. He ran a hand over his shaved head (A gift from Seth, who had assured him that this style looked awesome, and no, keeping it long on top isn't weird - you're just really old, Carter!) before turning to his client.

"Yeah, but it's going to cost you an arm and a leg, as usual; it'd be easier to buy a new one, to be honest."

He spared a thought for the neighbouring bike shops who must surely make a fortune from these people.

####

At six o'clock sharp, Darius left Alice (The city was actually named Alice Springs, but only visitors called it that) and set off in the direction of the O'Hara house in the outback. This was a soothing routine: getting up, going to work, taking a lunch break around noon then back to work, and going home to dinner with the people he had come to consider as his family after all these years.

This life - this routine - required years of effort. Darius could easily remember the condition in which he had been discovered with terrible injuries many years earlier. Nobody knew how he had come to be in the middle of the desert. Just sixteen or seventeen years old, and he had almost died due to blood loss and a catalogue of wounds enough to make even the most battle-hardened soldiers pale. On top of that, he'd been unable to remember his own name, age and date of birth; or indeed any details at all about his life before. Even his native language or accent gave them no clues, since for a year after being found he had been unable to speak at all. The doctors had been blunt about it - it was abnormal, but trauma always left its mark - whether physical or psychological.

When he had finally spoken - a year to the day after being found - he was already used to the voices of those surrounding him, and enforced mimicry quickly allowed him to pass for a local.

In other words, his voice couldn't help the authorities or anyone else.

The only remnant of his old life found with him was a letter written on strange, thick paper - parchment, they had been told - whose ink had, unfortunately, been too smudged to be readable. Only the letters 'A, R, I' and 'T, E, R' had been readable at the top of the page, and after consulting the registry of first names in the area, they all agreed that Darius Carter was what was probably as close to the secret name of the young amnesiac as they were going to get. (and with more ties to the area than they first thought, since it turned out that Darius was actually the name of Charles O'Hara's father.). Since he hadn't had any opinions either way and it was as good a name as any other, Mrs. and Mr. O'Hara with his agreement had baptised him and registered his new identity, becoming his legal guardians at the same time.

This story had swept the country like wildfire, and along with it came the headlines: Amnesiac Boy Found! The Child-who-forgot! The Scarred Boy - because, well, he had one scar in particular that no one could ignore since it was on his forehead, and formed the strange shape of a lightning strike.

Fortunately after the first year, his celebrity status had faded. Today, Darius Carter was a man like any other. He had a job, a family, friends, girlfriends - not all at once, let it be said - and Darius Carter was a happy man - barring the small matter of the missing three-quarters of his life beforehand, of course - but he was happy.

So much for the longing he always felt.

So much for the hollow space in his chest.

So much for the nightmares.

So much for the war that he knew was only in his dreams - a war that he tried to convince himself was just a dream. A nightmare.

Fingers clenching around the steering wheel, Darius emptied his mind, as he forced himself to do each time his thoughts turned to ugly things. He stared at the red sand road, letting mind drift to the stew that his mum was preparing instead.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, oblivious to the shadow hovering above him.