Prologue
A hooded figure was making its way across the small village of Godric's Hollow in Wales on the Halloween night of 1981. His features would have easily won him any good prize for costumes, were it not for the fact that it wasn't a costume. This was the result of the great evil that Tom Marvolo Riddle had sunken himself into on his way to immortality and to the persona that was Lord Voldemort. He was a wizard, once a role model to his fellows during his school days. Yet that had been a mask, just as his ideals for a world where purebloods had enforced all other humans into subservience were a mask that had found eager servants- Death Eaters- who deluded themselves into thinking of themselves as his friends. The monster's true ambition was immortality, and tonight he had come to eliminate a prophesied foe- but a baby- aided by the betrayal of the family by a friend who was considered as close as a brother.
With as much compunction as an idle man with a fly-swatter, he murdered the parents of his foe. Had he stopped to think and controlled his bloodlust, he would have found himself incapable of harming the child, courtesy the sacrifice of the mother. But as the frenzy possessed him, and he took aim at the now bawling and frightened baby- which was thinking of the animals that would come to play with him and did not like this new creature- he was struck by the intensity of the of the teary green-eyed gaze and felt for a second as if his very magic and soul were being judged. He cocked his neck to a side, and then with a mirthless smile of his lipless mouth, he drew aim again. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" the curse came. Only, he knew pain as his body smouldered to nothingness, leaving the intended victim with a distinctive scar.
As the explosion rocked the small cottage, a small, blue eyed man watching with building anticipation, transformed into a rat and scampered of. Little did he know, that the two last, seemingly disjointed thoughts of the two adversaries would mean far too much in the future, including the rat's own.
Sirius Black was looking at the devastation in front of him with a sense of desolation that he could not shake. He had checked with Peter Pettigrew's hiding place after salvaging whatever was left of the house, and rescuing his godson (who he had to hand over to the gentle half-giant, Hagrid on his headmaster's orders); he had come to the one conclusion that he had desperately hoped was untrue- Peter was the spy that Dumbledore had spoken of, and Sirius had unwittingly handed his true family, his brother in all but blood to the self-same spy. His grey eyes glinted with the hatred and grief that pulsed through him, and in his rage he left behind all his sanity and reason and pursued Peter Pettigrew. That turned out to be the last thing he would do for ten years, besides cringing with mind-numbing cold and fear in the wizard prison- Azkaban.
In Devon, a precocious five year old boy picked up a slightly squirming grey rat with a scar across its back and a toe missing. Oddly enough, it had watery blue eyes. Shrugging, he carried it home.