As promised, here is the new rendition of this story, complete with ritual disclaimer. I won't delay you any further than that .


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. That enviable right belongs to J.K. Rowling. I also do not own any references made to Lord of the Rings or Anne McCaffery's Pern novels. The things in this story that are mine are the non-HP and non-LOTR events you'll hear about, most of the minor (and some of the not-so-minor) characters, and maybe the plot (but I could be wrong). As a final warning in case you didn't read the summary (or I've changed it since writing this disclaimer), this story will eventually have slash of the HD and GS variety and maybe some others. It will also be heavily AU, so don't expect to understand everything you read right off and don't get mad if I do something you don't agree with.


Harry Potter and the Avatar of Balance

Prologue

It was a perfectly normal night on Privet Drive in Little Whinging. Nothing was out and about moving that late at night, as all the residents were too busy sleeping after spending the day at their jobs. If any of them had been looking out their windows, they would have seen nothing but the empty street full of the fog that had been plaguing most of England in recent months. It was a perfectly normal night after all. Not a soul in the neighborhood was awake, not even a young black haired boy who was as abnormal as it was possible to be.

The normal night ticked away, the hands on the boy's watch approaching midnight. As the last seconds marched past, the neighborhood lay still.

If the residents had been awake when their clocks began chiming, they would have had a very rude shock indeed. Upon the twelfth toll of the bell, the moon, just peaking in its arc across the sky and just a sliver past new, suddenly waxed to full and filled the street with shafts of soft silver light, dispersing the fog and leaving the entire neighborhood clearly visible. In an instant, the street was lit so completely that the street lights seemed useless. The perfect normal night on Privet Drive had just been shattered. Harry Potter woke up.

At first, he just stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out why he was awake. He felt none of the usual alarm signs that meant the Dark Lord Voldemort was feeling particularly strongly about something. Nor could he hear any sounds that might have roused him. He didn't notice that the moonlight shining through his window was brighter than it should have been.

As he lay there wondering what could have woken him, a sound reached his ears that made him dart to the window grabbing his wand from the bedside table. Galloping hooves were approaching quickly. Nearer and nearer they came. Harry held his breath.

Did Voldemort have centaurs on his side? That was stupid, Harry told himself. Centaurs were neutral by nature he knew; the one centaur at Hogwarts that had decided to join Dumbledore had been severely beaten by his fellows. What could it be then?

The hooves slowed to a trot, ringing loudly on the pavement as the pace slowed to a walk, until finally they stopped at the foot of the path leading to the doorway of Number 4. Though nothing was visible Harry stared at the spot where the sound had stopped, searching for some sign of the invisible creature. The minutes ticked by, and such was the effect of the being at the front walk, that Harry soon wondered if he had heard the hoof beats at all, or if it had just been the sleep muddled remnants of a dream. Yawning mightily, Harry returned to his bed, wand still in hand, and drifted back to sleep.

Down on the street, the mounted figure lowered his gaze from Harry's window where he had been starring into the boy's eyes. Slowly, his horse stepped forward onto the grass, careful to keep its foot falls muffled. If anyone on the street had been able to see the stranger through his cloak of moonlight, they would have thought they were losing their minds. If Harry Potter was as different as his family thought he could be, the man now riding next to their house, dragging his gauntleted hand lightly along the wall, would have struck them as completely impossible.

The Dursley's did not care for anything that wasn't completely and entirely ordinary. They loathed Harry for his special powers, and they would have loathed their strange visitor just as much, if not more. He wore a full length traveling cloak that hung down low enough to drag on the ground slightly when he walked. The cowl was raised and nothing could be seen of his face except for two shining points of blue light, the moonlight reflected in his eyes no matter where he looked. The hand that extended from the cloak to touch the walls of Number 4 was gloved in a fine armor that seemed to be more like a second skin with the ease with which it moved.

His mount was just as spectacular. Completely silver, it seemed to glow and reflect the moonlight even when in shadows. He stood as high in the shoulder as the roof of a car, though his hooves touched the earth but lightly.

The stranger walked around Number 4 for a little more than an hour, the hoof falls of his horse thudding dully in the earth around the house. Occasionally, the horse would snort softly, and the man would nod, as if carrying on with a private conversation. When the clocks began to strike again, the horse moved back out onto the pavement, his hooves making sharp staccato beats as he gathered speed. Just as the clocks struck the twelfth tone, the horse and rider were gone, vanished between rays of moonlight.

Up in his room, Harry bolted upright once more. He had definitely heard hoof beats, and this time there was no enchanted gaze to make him forget it. It took Harry Potter a long time after that to fall back asleep.

Chapter 1

A few hours of sleep was all Harry managed to get after that nighttime occurrence. His fitful dreams of lockets, cups, snakes, and an indistinct shadow were shattered by the screeching of his Aunt. It took Harry a minute to realize what it was he was hearing.

"DESTROYED!" Came the shriek from downstairs. "ALL OF IT'S BEEN TRAMPLED!"

Harry nearly fell out of bed as these words finally penetrated his sleep muddled mind. He groped for his wand and then scrambled to the window. It was immediately apparent what had upset his aunt. The ground under Harry's window was covered in hoof prints. Harry looked to either side and saw that the track went around the corner of the house, as if a heard of horses had circled the house once in the night, and then vanished.

Or, thought Harry remembering the sounds he had heard, as if one horse had circled over and over again looking for something it couldn't find. Harry swallowed nervously. Was it possible for one of Voldemort's servants to have gotten that close and, not being able to find the house, just circled it for hours? He didn't know exactly how the enchantment worked after all. The only specific thing he knew of the enchantment was that he and the Dursley's had to live in the same house.

He mulled it all over as he showered and dressed. If there were hoof prints around the house, then he definitely hadn't imagined what he'd heard last night. But what could have made those prints? And more importantly, who did, whatever it was, serve?

Harry managed to make it all the way to the kitchen and start in on breakfast before his Aunt and Uncle came back into the house and spotted him. "Explain this!" shouted his Uncle without preamble. Harry, his mouth full of toast, nearly choked as his Uncle dragged him out the back door. Harry stared at the back yard as his aunt and uncle stood fuming in the doorway.

In a giant ring around the house, there was a trampled path running along the wall about a meter away. Harry walked up to it and knelt down. The tracks looked like a regular horse's hooves, though that didn't mean much. He looked up at the sky half expecting to see Death Eaters descending on him in broad daylight. He shook that thought away; the protective enchantment would last until the following evening, when members of the Order would arrive to move Harry and the Dursley's to safe locations.

As he brought his gaze back to the ground, something caught Harry's eye on the wall. He walked over to it, fighting his way through the half trampled hydrangea bush, and found that it was a band of silvery dust that seemed to be clinging to the wall of the house. He reached up and tried to rub it off, but not even a spec came away on his finger. Wondering what could have left it there, Harry finally turned back to his Aunt and Uncle.

"Well?" Aunt Petunia said, sounding nervous. Harry shrugged.

"I have no idea," he said blandly, knowing that his Uncle wouldn't believe him for a minute.

"No idea, do you?" Uncle Vernon said, his face turning the predictable shade of purple, "Well boy, I'll have you know we expect to come back to this house when all this is over. We didn't agree to leave and let your freaky little friends wreck the place!"

"The Order already did everything they needed to last week when I got home," Harry said, shrugging again. "Whatever did this," and he gestured at the hoof prints, "wasn't any of the Order." He watched as his Uncle's face turned from purple to white as he made the same conclusion that Harry had made.

"Then it's that other lot," Vernon whispered, his eyes darting around checking for any neighbors within ear shot, "the ones who are out to get you."

"It may have been," Harry said, looking around the back yard again. Something didn't fit with that though. Why, if it had been one of Voldemort's servants, had it just left? Why not lie in wait for him to show himself?

"Right," Said Vernon, jarring Harry out of his thoughts, "Come on then Petunia, we're leaving."

"You- you can't leave yet!" Harry spluttered, following his Uncle back into the house, "If you leave now, then Voldemort would kill all of us or worse!"

"I'm not staying here waiting for some ruddy freak to walk through my door and blow my head off, you hear?!" Vernon shouted at him.

"Look," said Harry, trying a last ditch attempt, "Voldemort can't attack us here as long as we all stay put. That will hold until one of us moves out or I turn seventeen, and that's not until the end of the month."

"He's right, Vernon," Petunia said shakily from the doorway. Harry and Uncle Vernon fell silent in surprise. "We'll have to wait here until tomorrow night. It'll be far safer leaving with some…" she swallowed, "wizards… than on our own." Harry sighed in relief; his Uncle wouldn't contradict his Aunt when she used that tone.

The rest of that day the Dursley's and Harry avoided each other, all of them going about and finishing their packing. Harry had cleaned out his school trunk and packed everything into a small pouch that he looped around his belt medieval style. Hermione had sent it to him the week before via the muggle post. Enchanted as it was, everything he wanted to take with him fit easily inside.

He walked over to the window where his owl, Hedwig, was sitting on top of her cage. "Are you ready?" He asked her. Hedwig nipped him lightly on the finger and hopped onto his arm. Harry removed the vial of potion that had been inside the pouch when Hermione sent it to him and emptied it onto Hedwig. The owl immediately became chameleon like, her feathers turning the color of the wall behind her.

"Fly low, and safe journey," Harry whispered, then launched her out the window. The disillusioned owl disappeared quickly from site and Harry went to bed, though he didn't sleep much. His dreams were once more troubled by the images of the Horcruxes, only now they were surrounded by faceless hoofed creatures that pranced in circles and drew silver lines on walls.


I know it's a little shorter than what some of you might expect from my previous work, but it gets longer, I promise. Please review, and I'll see you again next week. Ciao.