Um. Disclaimer. It's disclaiming. Woo.
Prologue
It was a cheery, sunny afternoon the day everything ended, and it had no business being so. One would expect it to be miserably cloudy and gray, rain drizzling down on everyone and generally magnifying the misery of it all.
Young Raïk Callahan would have expected it to be so. But, like so many of his expectations in life, this was proven not to be so. What a lovely couple of days.
Raïk usually enjoyed Halloween. That may have been because of the tradition of small children dressing up as witches and mummies and zombies. He'd always get an extra bit of enjoyment out of their innocent misconceptions. Because Raïk knew. He knew what magic-users were really like.
Not that he was too happy about that at the moment.
He stood, in the irrtatingly bright, happy sunshine, staring down a country lane at the ruined hulk of what used to be a cheerful home. However briefly.
"You know there was nothing you could have done."
The voice was deep, resonant, and Raïk was, on any given day, alternately soothed and cowed by it. Today, it just made him want to break things.
"Do I?" Raïk asked, his voice mocking. "Because it seems to me like I wasn't there. So how could I know if a difference could have been made?" He turned to face the owner of the voice, an old man, his close-cropped hair and beared stark white. The man was dressed rather smartly, in a clean, crisp black suit, brown coat and accompanying black gloves. Raïk briefly entertained thoughts of flinging mud at him and his annoyingly immaculate clothes.
"You're right. I apologize." The old man's stern gaze and sharp tones contradicted the words he spoke. "There would have indeed been a difference. You would be dead, along with the Potters."
Raïk snorted in derision, and turned back to the remains of James and Lily Potter's cottage in Godric's Hollow. "At least I would have done something. Which is more than can be said of you."
"My responsibilities begin and end with you." The old man moved forward and stood at Raïk's side. "You are my apprentice. I am your master."
The young man's voice rose sharply. "Who needs to be your apprentice!?" He spund and fixed his master with a heated glare. "You left two good people to die. You could have stood up to that- that creature! I've seen the power you hold at your very fingertips!"
"Raïk, my dear boy... I thought you had changed. I thought you had learned." The master closed his eyes, his heart heavy. "I fear you have not learned anything I have tried to teach you."
Raïk scowled and turned. "I don't want to learn anything from someone who abandons people who need help."
The master watched as his apprentice began to walk away. "Raïk, if you abandon your training now, there will be naught but hardship in your future."
The young man didn't pause or turn. "I'll take my chances. I'll be better off than I would be with you."
The old man watched, silent, as his apprentice walked up the lane, and then simply vanished. He then sighed, and turned his gaze back to the ruined cottage. "You're a fool." He gazed for a period of time longer, then spoke again, his voice quiet. "Perhaps even I have not learned."
A moment later, the lane was devoid of life.
Hm. Well, here's the prologue. It's short, which is kind of how I like prologues. And I do like me some prologues. Dunno why. They're just fun. Anyway. Kind of depressing. Especially since I've put this into the 'Humor' category. But hey, any story that starts off with two young parents getting murdered has got to be kind of depressing, right? But it gets funnier, I swear. Really.
Well, this is my new start. As you can see, the actual point of deviation is now well into the past, though everything up to the end of Harry's fourth year remains the same. Also, I kind of hope to avoid all of the obvious Raïk-the-meddler stuff that I ended up having in the previous incarnation... Well, we'll see how it turns out.
Keep an eye out for next time.