Just a note, dates in the storyline are moved a decade ahead, so what took place in 1981 in canon takes place in 1991 here.

-Break-

Some wizards say that blood runs true in a family. Muggle scientists also talk about traits skipping a generation. If that is the case, then perhaps it is ironic that while my parents were both hard core Gryffindors, supporters of the "Light", I took more after my paternal grandparents, Charlus Potter and Dorea Black: spouses who took interest in that grey area between the Dark Arts and Light Arts. They had died shortly after I was done from magical illness, and while little personal effects remained in the Potter household, they had left behind their own personal diaries. My father, James, never went into his parents' old bedroom – it was only by an accident I stumbled into the room when I was five, and out of curiosity took to reading the journals.

Of course, at the time, I had to hide my interest in the 'neutral' magic that the Grey Arts offered. In the dusk of the twentieth century, Wizarding Britain had become fervently anti-Dark, such that one of the family friends had to turn to the Muggle world for employment because he was a 'Dark creature'. Additionally, there was also the part I played in the fabric of society to consider, as I was very closely related to a 'hero' of the Light.

Back in 1990, you see, there was this prophecy made about my younger brother. Apparently the person who made the prophecy was an utter whack, but one of the people who the prophecy was about decided that it must be true. Unfortunately, that man was a megalomaniac, who had gathered around him a retinue of like-minded men, with the intention of purging 'bad blood' from the world: muggles and the weaker muggleborns. His reign of terror had been out in the open for nearly a half a decade, and the build-up to war had been going on for over two decades before that.

The specifics were known only to a few people at the time, but the megalomaniac was finally defeated for the first time when he fell prey to a vicious, ruthless Russian roulette of a gambit. Later, I would learn that another family friend had been masquerading as an ally for over a year, while in reality he served the megalomaniac, who preferred to be known as the Dark Lord Voldemort. The family friend had finally been disgusted with his situation, having been coerced by force into becoming a Death Eater, one of Voldemort's loyal followers, but otherwise staying with the madman. When he had finally decided to become a turncoat and make his return to the Light was when the gambit was devised. It had worked, but even that had consequences, and Voldemort was not killed, but merely exorcised from his body. Ironic, really, that the one time Dumbledore did not try to take the most passive action possible, the war ended.

However, even though Voldemort had fallen into the trap, he was no fool. The prophecy had named that only one of two boys could 'kill' him, and he decided that if Matt should die before he did, it was no problem. Even though he had been set upon in a four-on-one duel, he was able to think fast enough to cast a spell at the one-year-old Matthew.

In the wizarding world, there are thousands of spells in the public domain, not counting those made by families or individuals and kept secret. I have come up with more than a few of those in my own time, after all, and I know just how powerful magic can be when bent to a specific purpose. Many of these spells are designed to kill: to sever through a body with the sharpness of a guillotine, to cook one's organs from the inside out, or even shoot a hole through a body much like a bullet from muggle weaponry. However, even with the hundreds of spells that can deal harm, there is only one that is capable of making a clean kill, with absolutely no evidence left behind to identify it but for the lack of any other spell that can do the same.

That spell is known as the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, two words that over time have mutated into the first two of three words of a silly incantation that muggles often use when they describe their ideas of a fantastical form of magic, abracadabraalakazam. Over the years, I have performed my own research on the spell, and came to an astonishing conclusion: the Killing Curse has two different forms to it.

Back in the early era of mankind, when a select few found they had a special power, they were more concerned with how best to use this power to survive, as opposed to killing other members of the human species. Their instinctual desire to kill manifested itself in a wordless form of emerald green light that killed instantly, stopping predators from killing them first, and being able to hunt prey more easily.

When man evolved and became more spread out, however, things changed, and soon a vocal command was needed for the Killing Curse. Man began fighting man for territory and woman, and men and sentient magical creatures began to encounter each other. There was a difference in the intent to kill then: before, man had killed, yes, but it had killed non-sentient life forms. Knowing that the person or creature you were about to kill was able to think and rationalise, that was different. The magic would not respond as well, and so man was forced to twist his emotions to perform a successful Avada Kedavra, or else the spell would fall short of its intended effect.

Tit for tat, man had an ugly coming-of-age, and now the Killing Curse was only used to kill other sapient beings. The few occasions where somebody used one against a non-thinking being, they were unaware of how much easier the magic flowed for them, harkening back to the early days of the curse.

However, if someone had sufficiently twisted their soul enough, they could kill anything, outside of certain magical creatures that either had highly magically-resistant skin, or creatures that had special properties, such as a phoenix in a death and rebirth cycle. Lord Voldemort was one of those men. He succeeded every time he used the Killing Curse, up until that fateful night, Halloween of 1991.

Even the old man Dumbledore was not truly sure of what protected Matthew from the spell, but I would later find out that it was a piece of old magic that had bounced the Killing Curse off of Matthew, ripping Voldemort's soul from his vessel. If Voldemort had been a user of the Darkest of spells and rituals, then it would only be fitting for him to be felled by the Lightest of ye olde magicks.

Of course, it was only a temporary victory, though it would bring peace for nearly a decade and a half. Then Lord Voldemort returned from the dead, his soul having been anchored to this earth by several Horcruxes. Even though I had not yet graduated at that time, even though the expectations of Wizarding Britain fell upon my brother's shoulders, I still helped in my own way.

But you see, that is where my troubles came in. My brother had, at the age of one, 'defeated' the Dark Lord. He was a symbol of the 'Light', with a fanatical devotion to his name and legend. It scared him for many years to see the sort of fervor people had with their faith and trust in him. It's a good thing the purebloods and most magically-raised halfbloods in Britain adhered to Earthly religions, or else the coincidence of his sharing the name of one of the four authors of the Gospels might have driven him crazy.

And that was precisely the problem: anything that was not totally light was said to be Dark, with little understanding for just what it truly was. It was only a short step from a temporary petrification spell to the three Unforgivables in their mind, and any open practitioner of the Dark Arts was heavily persecuted, again, never mind the 'Dark Creatures'.

As a result, I had to hide my skills for quite some time, up until shortly before I hit the age of majority. When I finally made my power known to the world, it was with the backings of allies, friends, like-minded people who also appreciated the full spectrum of magic instead of being polarised by the false notion of black and white. We were six in the beginning, true, but we managed to disrupt the game of war in such a way that nobody could deny the entry of a new faction into the war. It was there that I would finally rise to true greatness.

My name is Harry James Potter. History originally saw fit to mention me in the footnotes as the elder brother of the Boy-Who-Lived, Matthew Potter, but as I rose in prominence in the Wizarding World, our roles reversed in that matter. This is my life story, about my ascension to becoming a Grey Lord.

-Break-

So as you can see, a few AU changes already. Harry is two years older, taking the place of the elder brother to the Boy Who Lived. This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a Wrong Boy Who Lived story. Additionally, you will see in a while that the events of Halloween of 1991 took place differently than in 1981 in canon. Harry is, of course, being rather vague in the events here, but a few of you might be able to pick up a general idea.

Yes, following chapters should be significantly longer.