Welcome, dear readers, to my new story! It follows the plot of the movie so be warned of that first and foremost and second, the celebrities I chose to 'play' my characters will be posted on my profile for those who wish to get an idea of what they look like. Riley's parents will be posted at a later date. Enjoy and don't forget to R&R!
Prelude~ A Beginning
Every story supposedly starts with a beginning—but this one begins with only tragic ending. On the night of All Hallows Eve 1981, a lone figure stood outside of a home in misty Godric's Hollows. Clad in all black, the figure stared for several long moments in silences at the seemingly empty house where lights flickered from within and not a single noise could be heard before making their way inside. The front door had been blasted so that it hung sideways on its hinges and the figure entered into a once warm inviting family room. Everything was shattered or blasted as if a great battle had taken place as their eyes of onyx scanned about before darting to the staircase where they noticed a light on. As they slowly made their way towards the stairs they noticed halfway up the feet of a limp figure and upon reaching the landing of the staircase found the body of a man wearing glasses staring blankly up at the ceiling. Hollow and empty, the eyes were once filled with taunting jeers and daring rude remarks only now they lay soulless. Suddenly this made the figure turn to look farther down the hallway to see a single flickering lamplight and continue onwards heart hardly beating in case their worse fear might have come true. Hesitantly they entered a baby's nursery and came upon a sight that had them doubling over and leaning heavily against a wall for support, for their knees had gone out. There lying just as limp as the man in the outer hallway was a woman with scarlet hair lying on her stomach with the same hollow and empty eyes. Letting out a sob, the figure knelt down to take the woman up into their arms and hold her impossibly tight as they cried for their lost beloved. It was only when the figure couldn't cry another tear that they turned to the cradle where they expected to see a baby—but no! They saw not one baby—but two! Gasping in horror, he swallowed back his surprised cry of alarm and stared at the two babies both crying from whatever they had witness before the figure had arrived. One was a boy with the same eyes of his mother with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. The other a girl with lavender eyes and on her collarbone a crescent moon scar. The figure upon meeting the baby girl's gaze realized something, and felt dread drench them unlike anything they'd experienced before. It was around the same moment, somewhere far off and at a distant location where a magnificently spectacular castle stood just beside a crystal clear seemingly solid lake. Inside a room where pictures were snoring as if alive yet asleep and strange whimsical sorts of items ticked away, an elderly man sat behind a desk next to a golden fiery crimson bird. He was casually reading from a large texted book when from an open archway appeared a woman looking right out of her bed dressed in a long forest green robe with dark graying chestnut hair and green eyes behind spectacles, holding a letter as she said,
"Forgive me Albus, but there is horribly urgent news that you must be aware of."
"It is alright Minerva, I am pretty sure that though I do not want to know what you are speaking of—that I am certain of which the matter is." the man replied only the woman shook her head saying,
"This is a letter from Severus himself, he says that he's at the Potter house and has discovered both James and Lily dead. But that's not the troubling thing Albus—there was another baby sharing little Potter's cradle!" at this the elderly man looked up over his own spectacles before his normally twinkling eyes now turned serious and upon seeing the parchment reached for it to read it himself. After finishing the letter he stiffened in his seat alerting the woman to the fact that this wasn't a positive thing—let alone any sort of good thing.
"What do we do Albus? And who is the other child?" she asked tentatively as the man slowly began to stand from his chair, the bird next to him turning his golden head to watch as he speak,
"The child, is Lily and James goddaughter. Her parents you may or may not have heard of yet that does not matter, what matters is that we make sure that both young Potter and she are put somewhere safe until they come of age."
"But Albus, just exactly WHO is she?" the woman wondered having never knew that the Potters even had a goddaughter. She watched him move to a small staircase that lead to an upper part of the office where he began to explain,
"When young Lily first arrived at Hogwarts, she only knew one person in the school—a young boy. Then in her second year she meet a girl in her year named Jessica Warring who took Lily under her wing. The two became closest of friends and though the two went their separate ways when they graduated they stayed in contact. When Jessica found out she was pregnant she told Lily and low and behold so was Lily. At the time the two thought it was funny coincidence that they'd have their children around the same time. Little would they suspect," here the man came back down the stairs with a rolled up seemingly ancient looking chart in his hands that was on the top most shelf that he had had to summon to get.
"When I show you this, I will have to destroy it Minerva, for no one else afterwards can know." he said eerily soft and low, a ghostly whisper under his breath.
"I understand Albus." she said with a stern nod so that he unraveled the chart to reveal a moon chart that had every star, constellation and phase of the moon all of them moving in time to the ticking of the clocks on the wall.
"There was a Prophecy made—it involved someone born at the end of July, whose parents would thrice defied the Dark Lord and lived to tell, would have a power the Dark Lord would not or could not comprehend, and if more than one was born under these requirements than the Dark Lord himself would mark His equal. Both young Potter and Jessica Warring's daughter meet these requirements Minerva. And now both—have been marked as the Dark Lords equal—undoubtedly without Him knowing he's done so. He has unknowingly changed the fate of two children not even old enough to talk on their own behalf." and here the man put a finger on the chart where two full moons at their highest peak were in-line to overlap each other.
"But whatever does that mean Albus? Surly both cannot be the true one the Prophecy calls for." the woman said gasping slightly as she watched the chart speed up several years until the double eclipse met and the two full moons caused an explosion on the chart.
"No—no that is true. Yet for now that is not the problem, for you see we must get young Potter to a safer location. His Aunt and Uncle in Little Whinging will have to do—you shall have to scout it out first before we bring him there. As for young Warring, I shall see to where she goes as her parents are no longer with us." the man said, going over to the fireplace and tossing the chart into the flames that instantly licked and ensnared the chart into fiery ash.
"But Albus, I thought the Prophecy said that their parent's had had to have defied the Dark Lord three times and lived?" the woman wondered watching him summon a robe of deep maroon with stars of pale silver that he wrapped himself into as he corrected himself,
"True, and they had in fact done so. They were alive until just last week when I should have known that He'd be in search of their daughter. But little did I surmise that the Potters would have her—and now she's been Marked." here the man paused and with his back to the woman his shoulders slumped, as if he knew he had failed in stopping whatever horrid fate was to happen—for both babies. With a heavy exhale, the man stepped over to his fireplace and took a handful of powder from a bowl before turning back to the woman to say,
"Go to Little Whinging and find Number 4 Privet Drive and watch the Dursley's all day before I arrive. I have to retrieve young Warring and find a suitable home for her myself." then he stepped into the fireplace and said in a clear booming voice,
"Godric's Hollow." before he was gone from sight. When he appeared in the darkened fireplace of the seemingly broken abandoned home of the Potters to discover the figure from earlier waiting for him holding the baby in question in their arms. Wrapped in a blanket and asleep, the figure said,
"Glad you could make it."
"Where is the boy Potter?" the elderly man Albus asked in worry but the man snorted saying,
"Asleep upstairs with full charms and wards on the nursery bedroom. If even a mouse tries to enter it will be fried and electrocuted to nothing but bones." the elderly man raised an eyebrow before noticing the crescent moon scar on the babies collarbone and frowned deeply muttering something to himself before saying,
"I'll take her from here Severus."
"She's going to be a handful just like the boy Potter—isn't she?" the man asked so that he turned back around saying,
"You have no idea." before he was gone back through the fireplace leaving the man Severus alone in the house. It was the next evening near ten pm that the elderly man stood just outside an iron fence where within was a garden nearly organized and trimmed. Beyond it was a manor house with a large wrap around porch that had a hanging sign over it reading 'Mrs. Eleanor Dames Orphanage'. Only a few lights were on and as he waved his hand to allow the iron fence gate to open he noticed that the air hanging around the manor was similar to a place he had been to—long, long ago. With that sad memory and realization he set the sleeping baby down, the child who strangely hadn't woken since he had begun the journey here, he placed the addressed envelope onto the baby's blanketed body whispering,
"Good luck, Riley Warring." then he was watching from a safe distance in the shadows as the door opened to reveal the owner Mrs. Dames herself who picked up the baby and in a clear state of confusion and shock bring her in—but not before looking around several times to try and find who had brought her. With one final parting glance, Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—vanished into the night—and so did Riley Warring from magical history.