A/N: Hey, I got this stuck in my head, and decided to throw it out there. I don't own Harry Potter or the Codex Alera Series, but I love both a lot. If you've never read the CA series, it's by Jim Butcher, I suggest you go and check it out because, let me just say, AWESOME! 3
R&R plz!
Cursor's Canim
Prologue
"Harry James Potter, you are hereby sentenced to death via the Vale of Death, for the murders of Hermione Jane Granger, Ronald Bilious Weasley, Ginerva Rose Weasley, Auror Nymphadora Mariah Tonks, Kingsley Michael Shacklebolt, and countless others through negligence and recklessness in the place of command," Cornelius Fudge, once more the Minister thanks to the convenient deaths of all those suitable to command, jeered from his place not thirty feet from me as I stood, silently, in the grips of the two Dementors. I felt myself smile thinly, but didn't make any noise.
They had tossed me straight into Azkaban, nearly before Voldemort's ashes had settled into the ground. No "Thank you for saving our sorry arses again, Harry" or even a "Good job, Potter". But what else could I expect from the turncoats and imbecile's that made up what remained of the Wizarding World, which had been fickle and tactless before hundreds had died in the Dark Wizarding War. And now, nearly thirty years later, I stood unaged and unburdened for the first time in my life, sentenced to walk into the thing that had killed my Godfather all those years ago. I would forever look seventeen, unless some serious magic was done…
Or, at least, that's what the Dementor Queen told me once she had commanded her children to never feed from me. You see, Dementors themselves are beings of Death, and must bow down to its Master as every other being must, eventually bow down. I really don't like being bowed to, though, and as Master of Death, thanks to the Deathly Hallows, I could keep them from doing it.
"You may enter the Vale on your own power, or be forced into it," Fudge called to me, sneering; I cocked my head and watched him with my glowing green eyes. I knew they glowed, because when you spent three decades in a pitch-black cell, you tended to notice the green light coming from your face.
"My own feet, thank you," I said hoarsely, smiling coldly. "You people have helped quite enough." Immediately, without being ordered, the Dementors released me. I murmured a farewell to them in Parsletongue, and I loped slowly up the steps, pausing momentarily to close my eyes and listen to the whispers…
They sounded so pretty… And they told such fantastical stories as well… Smiling, I turned, waved at a much-aged Luna and Neville, and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Harriet, named after me, who was crying. I smiled softly at them, blew them a kiss, turned, and stepped into the Vale, falling forward into darkness…
(()_(() PAGE BREAK! ())_())
There was warmth, in the beginning, and an embracing darkness that enveloped and held me close. Whispers flew past ears, and Harry Potter ceased to exist for a time. There was only my magic and the Darkness. It was not Death, merely a… pause. A moment when nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing happened.
It was a moment that ended too soon for me, but, then, all moments come to an end too soon. All the goods ones, at least…
I could suddenly feel myself, my seventeen-year-old body. I felt it… Change. It roiled and shifted and shrunk to the will of Magic and Fate, and I shifted with it. My body became younger and younger, until I was once more an infant, though not as I had been all those years ago when Voldemort first came for me in Godric's Hollow. This was different. Better in some ways, as well.
And during all this, the Whispers sang to me their stories, and my new destiny was touched upon, briefly. I saw pictures of battle with people controlling elemental creatures called Furies. A battle between people with Furies, and savages with alien eyes and white hair, called the Marat. I saw hulking wolf-men and women, fighting, killing, mating, raising their pups. Canim. They fascinated me more then the others, and I felt a sort of kinship with them. Siri and Remus, they were like these seven-foot-and-bigger beings in a way. Remus, with his wolf, would have understood them better, I suppose, then Sirius and Snuffles could, but the sense of… Understanding, we'll call it, between these wolf-people, and myself, was strong, and growing stronger with my body's constant shifting.
Suddenly, the time came to leave the Darkness and the Whispers, and my Magic curled inside my new body, waiting patiently, and I reluctantly agreed. I was needed elsewhere now, for my future was carefully entwined with another's of this new world, this new land where I was being sent. This land of Furies and Cursor's and war and intrigue.
This world of Alera.
It was waiting for me, and I hoped that it was prepared, because it was going to get one hell of a surprise when I got there.
A/N: So, what's the verdict? I'll have the first chapter up in a bit, but, for now, this is just a teaser. R&R!
