CH 1

Harry looked around at the cramped cupboard and laughed bitterly. Who ever knew that this place would become his haven? The place where he felt most safe. Harry knew he had not had the most normal of conditions under which he lived, but even so he often found himself wondering what it might be like to be someone else. What it might have been like if another had occupied the role as the "ignored", the "forgotten", the "uncared for" in this family.

Family! Hah. Harry let out another bitter bark of laughter that shook his body and made his eyes water from a combination of rage and sadness. Harry made a fist, his body shaking with the tears and the anger. His disgust and ire becoming dark, angry clouds over a deep sea... and no matter how hot or hard the lightning struck the water and what it may have been able to boil, the sea that represented the intense longing Harry had for a real family barely moved. But every time he tried to divert those waters, send them to a nice idyllic lake or maybe a nice tributary, to think about "what ifs" and "if only's" he just ended up dipping into such cold waters that everything else became numb. And when you go numb and slowly warm up, what happens? Pain.

Harry wiped away his tears and tried to cheer himself up, "Aren't you a little young to be suffering from depression?" he whispered to himself, staring at his little plastic figurines, or, at least, where he knew they were. The cupboard was dark at this time of night; his "parents" were not very loose with the electric bill. And years before he had learned any discrepancies in the bill would be his fault, regardless of cause. Harry's hand stretched out, grabbing one of the figurines that was exaclty where he knew it would be. The smooth plastic felt calming in a hand that seemed too hot for a child. He had had the figurines ever since Dursley had decided that they were too uninteresting, sometime around Harry's 8th birthday. Harry had thought that they were wonderful, and they became even more precious whenever Harry felt especially torn apart. Their smooth, blank expressions allowed him to easily escape into their world. A world of Indians and Cowboys, a place where the good guy simply existed, won, and did everything right. He would charge ahead, guns a-blazing towards those who would rob, steal, or hurt people for no good reason. Their arrows would inevitabley miss, their aim as skewed as their morals, as Harry charged, dirty from a previous escapade, taking each and everyone of them down.

Harry's hand tightened on the plastic figure as his eyes grew heavy, and he whispered to himself, "Happy Birthday Harry. Tomorrow is your 11th birthday, and you are just 7 short years from going on your own adventure."

Quirinus stared up at the troll that loomed above him, his blood a dark red splatter on the club that it carried. The pain had been crushing at first, the entirety of a sun rammed into his right side. He knew that his lungs had been punctured and with his wand somewhere towards the East Quirinus was quickly trying to make sure that his last thoughts in this world were not of a great enough magnitude to cause him to be a ghost. Quirinus had always thought that the ghosts that roamed the halls of Hogwarts should have been pitied; their lack of progress, of forward motion, of living had been too terrible to behold sometimes.

It was why Quirinus was here, in these northern forests (look up where Voldermort was); he had needed to get out once again. The need to overcome his anxiety, to prove himself a human being was what got Quirinus out of his bed in the mornings. He had spent years forcing himself into situations that he felt uncomfortable in, and it, occasionally, had paid off. He remembered his first time studying Muggles, a world that had been so remarkable and scary in comparison to his sheltered years with his magick prone family. He had been one of the forerunners in finally understanding the differences in Muggle undergarments, which had long mystified the greatest mages. He remembered the speech he had given, the applause, the praise, the conquering of his own fears and worries and the unbelievable feeling of pride that had accompanied that. His wand had glowed for several days afterwards, and the majority of spells he had casted for the remaining week had had the addition of tassles and glitter. It had been embarassing in public, but in private Quirinus had done all manner of spells by himself, revelling in his accomplishment and the manifestation of his happiness... and now this.

The sun in his ribs flared again, his breath coming ragged, hot, and pained. His vision was blurring. The pain, while terrible and intense, was magnificent in its own way. It was a pain that he could die from, not the slow and comfortable death of an old man sinking into his beloved chair never to rise again, but a death that clearly signaled a taste for adventure; a taste that Quirinus had acquired through hard work, sweat, blood, tears, nail-biting, criticisms, and the destructive whispers of his colleagues, who had doubted him.

The star in his side seemed to spread, the vision of the troll above him becoming a halo of pure light that emeneated from all around Quirinus. He could accept this. A death that had come from his pursuit of further knowledge in a world that Quirinus needed to explore. Quirinus would not become a ghost, he decided, he would not live some kind of half life. He would die here, the light of the sun in his face, as the troll above him recovered from the wounds that Quirinus had inflicted. The wound he had inflicted, against a troll! Quirinus tried to laugh, the sound reverberating in his collasped lungs and coming out in a hot hiss of satisfaction.

The sun was getting brighter, the troll no longer a figure of solid flesh and terrible weight, but a creature of ethereal beauty, as the sun washed through it, the warmth of it on Quirinus's face. Quirinus made one last grab at the world, his hands closing in on the grass beneath him, wet with his own blood. And as Quirinus smiled and felt the sun on his teeth, on his eyes, and on his heart, something else came, something that was dark, that ate up the warmth and light that beckoned to Quirinus. Something hissed, and spat, and forced itself into Quirinus's vision. He heard a WHUMP that shook the earth around his body, sounding suspiciously like a falling troll. And then from above, from all sides, drilling into Quirinus was the cold of something worse than death, the cold of an icy hatred, the cold of frozen wastelands that dwell in darkness eternal, and to whom the sun is enemy, the moon too bright. Quirinus felt the sun retreat, the light that had haloed his world disappear and be replaced with the deep shadows of his own blood; he felt the star of pain that resided in his side become numb, an empty echo of what his flesh had felt like, and he knew that something had gone wrong. That this was wrong, and that the light was gone, and he cried, the first tears he had shed since the troll had mangled his body, as the light went away, and cruel laughter froze in the air.

Albus Dumbledore studied the list in front of him carefully. The names of young wizards and witches staring back at him. His eyes rested on one in particular, Harry Potter. No letter of acceptance had been sent to Mr. Potter, for fear of interception. Voldermort had no trouble torturing animals, even as a small boy, if the stories were true, and at this point, Albus was pretty sure that every story about Tom had been true...

Another cruel lesson in cynicism, humanity, and darkness, Albus had thought his will and eye had been properly tempered by Grindewald. And yet here they were once again, the old scars aching, the more recent ones less dull, an immediate sense of what was coming. Albus sighed, the roster disappearing from his hands as if it had apparated. Leaning back in his chair, Albus thought about Harry Potter, Wars, Suffering, Scars, and the common, indestructible threads that connected them all.

Author's Notes:

Very First Chapter. Review, Message me,

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