The dark windowpanes of the Hogwarts Express were beaten mercilessly by the near tidal levels of rain pouring from the sky like an upended bucket. The storm above the train was truly mythic in proportion. No normal locomotive could have ever been able to traverse the drowned land, but then again the Hogwarts Express could never have been called normal.

In the very last compartment of the train sat a wholly unremarkable boy. Dressed in black robes and a foppish hat, which easily obscured the fact that his head was near-shaved, he stared out, unblinkingly, into the swamped lands beyond the thin magicked glass. His pale, near glowingly white, contrasted his clothing so sharply, it almost hurt the eyes to look at him.

Across the compartment sat a near-mirror image of the boy, sitting in the exact same position, glaring broodingly out of the window. The second seemed insubstantial and ethereal as every few seconds he would meld and fade out of existence only to snap back into a full corporeal form not a second later. Really he seemed as if he was made of twisting shadows. The Shadow Harry turned to the 'Real' Harry and impassively regarded him with ruby eyes, as many shards of said stone as the original's were of emerald. "Well now, what hath you wrought upon thyself, Harry?"

Harry Potter's face, for indeed he was the legendary boy, twisted into a mockingly similar grimace worn by a certain Potion's Professor. Never taking his cold eyes away from the scene outside, he replied. "Leave me be, Specter. You hold no sway over me anymore. Return to the black depths of my soul from whence you came." The boy's voice was monotonous and low, an undertone of gravelly scratching revealed the fact that his voice was seldom used if at all.

¡°Ah, but if only it were that simple, no my dear fool, I do not leave by your command like some sort of lackey or servant; I am much more, and you know it." The Shade turned his sight back out to the blurred glass, seemingly contemplating something for a moment. "Not a month without my help and look at the proverbial Hell you've fallen flat-face into. A great fine mess you've stumbled into, isn't it?" The shade laughed contemptuously at the boy. "All hail the Master Magus, Harry Potter! Vanquisher of Evil! Killer of Parents! The Bladed Spade!"

The Shade's laughter cut off as the original leveled his new wand, Ebony and Basilisk Fang, at the shade's face without looking away from the windowpane. "I said leave, Specter."

Said shade snorted and disregarded the stick of wood in front of his face, instead looking into the corner of Harry's side-turned eyes. "Don't act as if you don't need my help with this, especially after how you faired last time without my help. Do you really want that to happen again?" Shadow Harry winked out of existence as a black bolt shot forth from the equally black wand. It struck the seat opposite to Harry and started to eat away at the surrounding seat. You could literally see the magic of the decaying spell battle with the repairing charm that was ingrained to the train. Eventually the Decaying spell ran out of juice and the seat was fully mended. Sitting next to the Real Harry was Shadow Harry, having re-materialized after blinking out of the seat. "Really now, Harry, that wasn't a nice thing to do; I was only stating a fact. You know you could never have survived the past eleven years without my help, so why do you act as if I'm nothing more than a bothersome spirit?"

"Because that's what you are, a spirit, a vengeful, vindictive bastard of a spirit who derives pleasure from my pain, when I needed you the most, you abandoned me, and over what? A few harsh words which we bandy around nearly every day? If you weren't the bastard you are, Emily would have--" Harry chocked off the last words with a repressed sob, his arm fell until it hung limply at his side. Tears brimmed in the boy's eyes. "Their blood is on my hands, Specter. There's nothing that an change that, nothing that can make up for it. You've burned a bridge that can never be rebuilt. It's your fault and yours alone."

The Shade calmly watched the boy. "I never pushed you farther than you could go, I never made you do anything quite as dangerous as that stunt you pulled, I never made you say those words, and I damn well didn't make a promise I couldn't keep; unlike you. That was all your doing, your sense of 'justice', your actions, your life. You wanted me gone and I left, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you really want me gone again, you've got it. Good Luck with an entire new fucking world." With that, the Shadowed boy began to quickly dissipate into nothingness.

Harry grit his teeth and chocked back his remaining tears, growling out his consent. "Fine, Specter. It was my fault and I need your help. What do you propose?"

Shadow Harry regained his form, definition and depth in the opposite seat, a tight grin worn as a mask. "Very well, first things first, out of my list of useful items, what did you actually buy?"

Harry closed his eyes, recalling his trip to Diagon Alley not a few days previously. "The dagger, the whistle, the books on Bone Magic, Wards, and Minor Summoning."

¡°Well damn, you don't make anything easy, do you Harry? Why so little?"

"Because half of that crap wasn't even remotely useful! Really, sterility, virility, and anti-pregnancy charms at my age?"

¡°Yes, for quite a few reasons, one of them being preventing another Emily situation." The compartment became quite cold and silent. The only sound came from the sloshing water pounding against the roof of the train. "Not to mention you'll be almost guaranteed to be invited to most upperclassman parties if you do a few, ahem, prevention favors for the hosts."

"There won't be another Emily situation, not on my watch."

¡°Not to mention it's a boarding school."

"You're not helping, Specter."

¡°Whatever. As I thought you wouldn't buy that particular book, whether out of age concerns or otherwise, I managed to...acquire it while you were shopping." With a snap of the Shade's fingers, a black clothbound book appeared in the Real Harry's lap. The symbols for male and female stood out on the cover in gold lief, intertwined at the circles. Harry just treated it as if it were a diseased animal. "Take it, you ponce, and put it away before some comes in and questions why you have such a book."

Harry took the book immediately and stuffed it into his trunk overhead. Sitting back down after locking the trunk, Harry half-turned to the Shadowed him and asked, "Now what?"

The Shadow sat back and seemingly got comfy. "Now we decide on our House. As we've heard from the blond git there are four Houses: Griffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw. If you've noticed I've placed them in order of where we'll probably be placed, from least to greatest. Griffindor at this point is a joke, as is Hufflepuff. Slytherin and Ravenclaw are a tie for first really. Ambition or Intelligence, which do you more resemble? Anyway I wouldn't worry about it too much, try to go for Ravenclaw if you have a choice though; I'd like to stay away from the blond one as much as possible."

Harry snorted as he crossed him arms and looked back out the window. "It seems we can finally agree on something."

Dark Harry chuckled for a moment. "At any rate, try and keep a low profile. Have others do any dirty work that might need doing, that sort of things. Study the tomes you've bought, at least. Especially Bone Magic, it's a precursor to Blood and Flesh and Spirit Magics. Powerful on their own, but when used in unison, God help us all."

Before Harry could snap back with a sneering jest, the compartment door opened suddenly, surprising both Real and Shadow Harry enough to look at the disturbance in unison towards the disturbance, an eyebrow automatically quirked. In the doorway stood a girl around Harry's age, frizzy brown hair, slightly bucked teeth, and a determined expression firmly set upon her face, she looked at Harry for a moment before time seemed to freeze.

Slowly, the Dark Potter got up from his seat and drifted around the girl, observing her from all angles. Harry himself looked at her as if he'd seen the dead walk. "Amazing, it's as if she were a clone. Even the facial structure is near-identical. She looks exactly like Emily...well, before the incident at least."

Harry didn't respond, so amazed by the vision before him...it was like repeating your worst nightmare. Time began again, those beautiful lips formed words, words that never registered in his dazed mind. Harry shook his head softly, refocusing on the girl in front of him. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

The Emily look-alike looked confused for a moment before repeating a bit slower, "Have you seen a toad anywhere around here?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, can't say I have. Then again I wasn't looking for one."

The girl's head dropped momentarily in defeat. "Oh well, thank you for not laughing at me like the others. My name's Hermione Granger by the way. I'll see you at the sorting. Come on, Neville; let's go back to the front of the train." She quickly, but respectfully, closed the door and moved back towards the front of the train, a pasty boy following docilely behind her.

There was a great silence, a silence that became a void that underlined all though, sound and action; a great nothingness that prevails only in the hearts of the war-torn and disturbed.

"Looks like we've been given a second chance...and a reason to practice those preventative charms, wouldn't you agree?"