Authors Note: This is my baby, and it will probably take a long time for me to finish since I'm a perfectionist when it comes to this story. This is the third time I'm updating this prologue, Harry decided he didn't want to be gothic anymore.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, but I do own the OC-characters and some new ideas that I'll put poor Harry through.
Warnings: Slash/Yaoi, vampirism, smoking, abuse, bloodplay (sounds worse than it will be) and some other things, will update warnings.
Vita, Sanguis et Anima - A Harry Potter Fanficton
by Vaettr
That night, the sky was as clear as a mountain stream, filtered through rock and free of sediment. Even though there were no clouds, the stars seemed dim in the dark of night, barely visible. It was as if something had dulled their shining bodies from sight. Even though it was a summer night in the middle of July, the air was freezing cold. When your breath formed small white clouds, you could almost start to believe that you were in Antarctica instead of Surrey, on the outskirts of London. The silent street was lit up by the harsh white-blue light of the streetlamps, giving it an eerie and almost depressing gloom. This was not a happy neighbourhood.
All of the houses looked exactly the same, a stereotype British neighbourhood you could call it. Identical traditional-looking house with four bedrooms, identical pitched roofs with identical grey tiles. Neat gardens with green, groomed grass; pink and yellow flowerbeds and perfectly trimmed hedges. In this small collection of suburban streets it was all about the perfect outside. On the low wall that separated number 4, Privet Drive from the pavement, sat a skinny boy, about five and a half feet tall. His raven black hair almost reached his shoulders in a disarray of waves. He was wearing over-sized clothes and a pair of what were once white trainers, now grey from years of dirt.
As the cold wind blew, strands of hair blew away from his face and revealed a pair of stunningly green eyes, almost the colour of absinthe. Above his eyes was a pair of sculpted black eyebrows, surprisingly rather feminine in appearance. A jagged scar was also revealed during the gust of wind, travelling down the slope of the boy's forehead like a muddy country road, or as other people would tell him, like a lightning bolt. This scar revealed him to be Harry Potter, home for the summer break between his sixth and seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
An icy breeze blew by him and he shuddered. He glared up at the dark windows of the house he was sitting outside of. He had yet again been locked out by his relatives. His aunt, the horse-faced Petunia Dursley, had sent him out on a shopping trip just half an hour before all the stores closed, knowing he couldn't possibly make it. As punishment for his failure in doing the chore, he had been locked out. So now here he was sitting on a cold stone wall in the middle of a chilly night, with just a t-shirt on.
Harry glared up at the house, before snorting in disgust at the thought of relatives. Selfish pigs, that's what they all were. Well, except for Petunia, she was a selfish horse. He jumped off the low wall and sneaked across the yard. Wouldn't do to let the neighbours see him now would it? He went to the little wooden lean-to shed behind the garage, where he had hidden some belongings of his that he couldn't store in the house. He went inside and locked the door behind him, sinking down to the floor beside the lawnmower.
His hands started to automatically search for his hidden treasures behind some loose bricks in the garage wall, which the shed was leaning on. Harry's eyes glowed when his fingers found what he was looking for. A packet of cigarettes. This wasn't normally his thing, but he really needed something relaxing so that he could take his mind of everything happening to him. He lit one with a squat little lighter with a pinup-girl displayed on the yellow plastic. He had taken it from Dudley earlier during that week. His fat cousin still believed that it was his friend Polkiss who had stolen it.
"Stupid, fat tub of lard…" Harry muttered to himself, sneering at the thought of his over-sized cousin before taking a drag of the cigarette. The cousin who took every open chance to make his life as miserable as possible and worse.
He sighed, he really hated it here. But according to Dumbledore, he would have to stay here all summer. Never mind all the bruises he would be sporting when he came back and him losing about a stone in weight. Which no one ever noticed, of course.
"I'm getting too bloody good at hiding this shit," He mumbled tiredly, blearily staring at the smoke curling up from the red-hot end of the cigarette. It was almost finished.
He held up the lighter in the pale moonlight that came down on him from the tiny window. The pinup-girl had a red and white striped bikini, showing off more curves than Harry was sure was physically possible. Harry stared unimpressed at the little picture and sighed, before dropping the lighter into his trouser pocket. Why couldn't he ever be normal?
Not only was he supposed to be some kind of saviour of the wizarding world, he also had to play a role that was almost the opposite of his true self, just to please others. He had to hide his bitter attitude and bad habits. Those were too bad-boy associated for the poster boy of the Light side to have. And just as he had to hide all these aspects of his true self, he couldn't reveal the other sides of himself which couldn't possibly be associated with the Boy-Who-Lived persona. Being a Parselmouth was out of the question, a Slytherin trait if nothing else. He couldn't be angry either, as a true hero never loses his temper.
He couldn't even reveal that he was gay to anyone, for fear of what they would do to him if he did. He didn't even dare tell the Weasleys or Hermione, as they all thought that he would get together with Ginny in the end. Everyone knew that. Except for Harry and Ginny themselves, as Harry was gay and Ginny was dating Neville Longbottom, who really was only a cover to hide her forbidden relationship with the Slytherin Blaise Zabini, which Neville was nevertheless aware of.
The shed went dark, breaking his depressing train of thought. A shadow had flickered by the window, for only a second, hiding the moonlight from sight. Harry tensed, slowly reaching for his wand. The light in the room flickered again, making him grasp the wand tightly, and he almost had it out of its holster before he heard a soft hoot sounding from the window.
He relaxed, sliding the wand back into the leather holster strapped around his right calf. It was Hedwig, his owl. She had been out hunting when had went to buy the supplies for his aunt. She was locked out of the house just as he was, making him relieved. Who knew what the Dursleys would have done to her if he hadn't been there.
He rose slowly, almost not having to crouch at all, damn his height, to let her in through the door as the window was far too small. She flew inside, landing on the handle of the red, rusty lawnmower. She hooted contentedly, before burrowing her face beneath one of her wings, showing demonstratively that she was going to sleep. While watching her taking delicate little sleeping breaths, Harry decided that he might as well join her in the land of dreams, as there was no point to sit up all night brooding.
His head softly hit the brick wall behind as he relaxed into sleep, not noticing a second shadow flickering in the shed and the slight creaking of the door he had forgotten to lock after letting Hedwig in. The last thing he heard was what he thought was the imagined the softly whispered words:
"Vai a dormire il mio amore. Guarderò sopra voi."*
End of Prologue
Translation:
*Go to sleep, my love. I will watch over you. (This, I hope, is Italian)
Update: 02-05-12 So this is another update of the prologue, the third I think, Chapter 1 will be uploaded within a week. Thank you for your patience!