PROLOGUE
Author's Note: I have finally embarked upon my own Odyssey (not that my writing is up to the standard of Homer, nor in Ancient Greek). After years of reading fanfiction, largely on this website, I have decided to contribute to the community with this, my first piece of fanfiction based in the Harry Potter universe (although please bear in mind this is most certainly AU). This story is rated M for a reason, however please do note that this probably will not show for a while yet. Please note also that this is merely a hobby, and that I will most likely be unable to update regularly. Please do forgive me, and stick with it!
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing of either Harry Potter, the Royal Family, any family within the peerage of the United Kingdom, and any other real-life references you may see in this fanfiction including the Cheam School. I am merely an amateur writer writing for pleasure, not profit.
The bright green flash. The high pitched cackles and subsequent scream, cut short. The flash of red hair, falling, and the pained face, turning toward the infant in its richly decorated crib and becoming sad and accepting. The continued cackling as the dark figure turned itself toward the infant as well. A glint of malevolence in glittering ruby eyes. Another flash of sickly green - stopped short. The infant plays with a strange green ball, looking content. The ball, however, pulses, growing, until it is abruptly launched back at the mysterious figure. A horrifying, bloodcurdling scream rents the thick, still night air of the nursery.
It is with that horrifying noise still ringing in his ears that Hadrian Potter regularly wakes from his restless night of nightmare. This same dream, plaguing his thoughts and subconscious for so long now. As he grew older, Hadrian, having heard the stories and anecdotes from both his godfather and honourary uncles about his parents, eventually understood the dream. Sporadically, whenever this selfsame dream returned, Hadrian felt the wrenching pain of loss on his gut. His own parents, murdered in cold blood before his very eyes.
That old lie:
Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.
Thos hauntingly beautiful lines from Wilfred Owen always rang through Hadrian's thoughts in relation to his parents. Why must they have been taken? For what reason were they there to be killed? More often than not, the hot tears of anger and pain would flow, the sacred blood of at least five noble families, aristocrats in both the wizarding and muggle worlds would be drawn forth from the palms of his clenched hands.
From at least the time at which Hadrian was speaking fluently, he could remember this awful dream. These thoughts about magic and such would now have to be stored privately - for Harry was now seven years old, and expected to behave as the scion of his noble families and attend a respectable muggle preparatory school. His own second cousin, Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II had seen fit to intervene in his primary education, deciding upon the school which his third and fourth cousins (His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh) attended: Cheam School, in Headley, near the border between the English counties of Berkshire and Hampshire. This school had, since the 17th Century, been a favourite institution to which politicians, aristocrats, and even royalty would send their sons, and later daughters. Hadrian, although his family had impressed upon him the need for primary education for such a powerful scion, realised the deception, and discovered that his attending this school was merely for appearance's sake. Hadrian certainly did not need further education in muggle subjects. After all, why should Hadrian James Louis Philip Nicholas Gryffindor (also heir to the Peverell, Potter, Black, and Prewett families and their titles and estates) attend a meaningless institution for any other reason than to increase his network?
Hadrian, it seemed, would decide to make his magical adopted family's lives somewhat more difficult than it ought. His relatively high levels of power for his age gave Hadrian a base for his not wholly unfounded arrogance; Hadrian liked to flaunt his magic and power. After all, both power and money speak, and Hadrian held both in spades. Yet this caused such huge problems for his guardians. The indomitable Sirius Orion Altair Black and the cool Remus Jalo Lupin felt themselves going grey lonf before their time in attempting to have some semblance of control over Hadrian. Thus, when it was announced to the family that Hadrian should be packed off to muggle prep school, both Black and Lupin felt the years speed up. Hadrian had to at least attempt to keep his magical thoughts, experiments, and ideas away from the fore. It simply would not do to have such a scion embarass himself and his families in public with the breaking of the Statute of Secrecy, let alone the potential for a muggle political fallout and conflict that would inevitably spill into the magical world.