Chapter 1: Black Dragon

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or this chapter's namesake.

A/N: So for anyone who comes back to this story, I've taken down all the old chapters, and I am off on a very familiar but expanded adventure. I hope you all enjoy the revisions and rewrites. The core of the story will remain the same, and most of it will follow an almost identical path to the old one, but of a higher quality. So let's all take a moment and examine the Potence of Destiny.

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Harry tried to fight off the feeling of rising depression and shame and anger. His hands worked the now familiar duty he was employed to do, and he tried to focus on the mere motion of the fingers as he listened to the voice of the old man beside him. He was acting as what muggles called a Ghost Writer.

He had been home at Privet Drive for less than a week, now and had found within the first day that closed eyes or an idle mind lead back to the veil, back to the gracefully falling form of a gaunt hero. An idle mind lead back to his memories of the end of his school year. That was why he thanked Mr. Kelly at the end of each day for the employment. Focusing on the man's voice and translating it into text put his mind into a relatively calm state. Today was being a hard one, though.

He listened to the elderly man paint a picture of a battlefield, bodies strewn about in various states of dismemberment and death, and it was enough to tear him to shreds. The veteran of the Second World War could speak so calmly of this, describe it in such minute detail without a pause that Harry wondered what this man was made of. Professor Lupin did not speak of the war. Professor Dumbledore did not speak of either war he had participated in, save for delivering a lesson. In his world, the only war veteran who ever spoke of war around him was Mad-Eye Moody, and he wasn't exactly what most blokes would call normal.

"Harry?" Harry had been focused so intently on putting into text what the man was saying that he felt snapped out of a daze when Mr. Kelly spoke his name.

"Yes, Mr. Kelly?" he asked turning. The man was dressed casually enough, not enough to be considered a slob by any means, but surely not what his uncle would call 'proper.' Peppered grey and black hair rested in a thin mass atop his head. His face was drawn with age and a weight that sometimes Harry could almost feel in his presence.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, Mr. Kelly," he lied, in as convincing a voice as he considered possible. There were of course, several things wrong. For one, the acrid smoke of the man's cigars was almost choking him at times, and for another the man was making him think subconsciously of Dumbledore, which set him to feeling uncomfortable. Neither of those began to touch what was truly going on at the forefront of his mind.

"Then please read to me the last line?" Harry responded without puzzlement. Sometimes the man just needed to hear his words spat back to him to know what worked or didn't. Harry's eyes took in the beginning of the paragraph on the glowing computer screen. His hands rested on the keyboard calmly.

"When I rode east from Berlin to England, three Nazis at my side, I met a soldier named Patton who introduced me to a new creation of his, an automatic sword swinging robot." Harry realized two things at once. While he had been caught being relatively distracted, his employer had just played the first practical joke Harry had ever experienced from him.

"So, Harry, is something wrong?" The man's whole body was strong for a man of eighty, but his voice was the strongest of all. It commanded attention without insisting on it. This was another place where Harry drew the parallel with Albus Dumbledore. When Dumbledore spoke, he commanded attention, but he did not yell like Alastor Moody.

Harry erased the last line, rereading to make sure the line before that had not been farce as well. While he contemplated how to respond, he reached over and seized the glass of water Mr. Kelly had sat down beside the computer for a quick drink. The inviting but cluttered office seemed to hold its breath. There was only one way to answer that question when a muggle asked it. That was through the employment of a half-lie.

"My father and my mother were killed in a war… elsewhere. Years ago. That's why I live with my aunt and uncle. My Godfather was hunted down and killed a few days ago by someone who was on the other side of the same war. I guess I was just focusing on not thinking about it. Everything went in one ear and out through my hands, but it must not have registered very well." He looked back at the man, who was leaned partially forward, gripping the notebook in his hands painfully hard. "Sorry, I'll pay closer attention."

The man nodded, as if to give an answer so he could go back to examining Harry. Almost as if planned, a beep emitted from the man's watch, and he looked down, squinting even with the employment of his glasses—not quite as thick-framed as Harry's but in a similar style—to check the time. The steady click of the clock on the wall drew Harry's eyes to it.

"Seven," they said in unison. This brought forth two very different courses of action on each side. Harry set about tidying up the papers on the desk, wiping down the keyboard and checking for typing errors on the page he was on. Mr. Kelly closed his notebook, grabbed a stack of papers Harry had been tidying up and began to put them away on the shelf beside him, a shelf littered with books on the first two world wars.

"Save it and go home," Mr. Kelly said as he stood up to take his and Harry's drinking glasses out of the room. "But stop by the kitchen first." Harry nodded at the order and went about obeying. As soon as the file was secure, he stood up, stretching. The crick of his back signalled that he much needed to stretch his legs. Harry followed the now familiar route from the upstairs office to the downstairs kitchen, where Mr. Kelly had set a kettle on the stove.

"Where do you go, Harry?" This question was so out of place that he paused in the doorway and leaned against the frame, waiting to understand before stepping any further into the kitchen. When people asked him odd questions, he usually highly regretted being in the same room with them.

"When you leave for the night your eyes glaze over. Your mouth clamps shut, your hands slide into your pockets and you hunch. I've now seen this six times, and before I see it a seventh, I wish to know where it is you go. I've seen this before in the form of a man whom I served with." Mr. Kelly set a plate of biscuits down on the table. "I have seen it in a tired man who once told me his only wish as a reward for fighting was to be able to close his eyes for an hour, so he could cease to be, even for a little while."

Harry took a couple of steps into the kitchen and sat down at one side of the table. He wasn't sure what exactly he was being asked. What did he think about, maybe? Where he went was plain to him, he went to Number Four Privet Drive. He went to his bedroom and pretended to have eaten dinner already, something not questioned by the Dursleys. He went to sleep and had nightmares.

What did he think about during those trips home? There were really only two places his mind went on those trips. Two places he was unable to keep from revisiting every night, throughout most of the night. And of those, he could only really tell the man a bit about even one.

"I go to a graveyard," he finally settled on answering. "It's cold there. I can see the man who killed my parents. I've met him, you know? He kidnapped me a year or so ago. But even before that… I found him twice. But a year ago, he brought me to the graveyard. There was a gathering of his old guard, those still loyal. Not the soldiers he once had, but the inner circle. It was so much luck that I survived, that I got away from him. Everyone thinks I did some amazing thing. I could only run." Harry looked up at Mr. Kelly. "If I told you that telling you anything else was dangerous to you, would you believe me?"

"Yes," the man muttered. "Whatever you are, you're not like any modern teenager I've encountered." He paused. "The man I spoke of before, he told me the same thing once. That telling me anything about him would be dangerous for me. I met his son once, this man. Quite a strange name the boy had… something from Roman mythology. A gaunt lad, but he seemed to carry his father's sadness, and he was covered in cuts and bruises, as if he fought his own war." Harry nodded appreciatively.

"I never heard from my war buddy after the day I met his boy. We had officially retired, you see, and our squad decided we would go out in style. By this time, the boy was nearly grown, and we were old men. I went to my friend and comrade, and I said to him, "John, what are you?"" The man paused as the tea kettle began to whistle. "He said to me," Mr. Kelly continued. "'I told you once, and I'll tell you again, you just can't know.'" The man set the kettle back down on a different part of the stove. "He died a few weeks later, and his wife and son buried him. After that, I know nothing."

Harry frowned at the story. What type of resolution was that? A death and unanswered questions seemed to go hand in hand.

"There's always more questions than answers when someone dies," Harry muttered bitterly, looking down at his hands on the table.

"Go on home," Mr. Kelly finally said. "An old man's ramblings are for another day. I'll see you tomorrow, Harry."

~PoD~

Harry felt the cool air around him. His feet stepped on pavement, but he saw earth. Houses lined the road he walked on, but he saw tombstones and statues. It was as he had told his employer. Sometimes he went to the graveyard. Harry shook his head, and allowed the proper sight of Privet Drive to fill his eyes as he rounded the corner. Though he walked in relative silence, he knew something was wrong.

There was far too much silence. The sound of televisions should be coming from open windows on a summer evening. He should hear laughter from the family next to Number Four. He should, he realized as he stepped onto the doorstep of the Dursleys' house, hear Vernon's booming voice even from there. Instead he heard nothing but the rustle of grass behind him on this windless night. Windless.

Harry spun around on instinct, wand coming from his pocket without a second of hesitation. As he spun he saw just barely a strange shift in the air, like heat rising from hot pavement. It was coming, however, from the perfectly manicured front lawn of his relatives' house. Disillusionment charm.

When the first charm flew, Harry felt his blood rush. When it connected, he hurt throughout his whole arm. He ducked low to retrieve his wand, using his other arm as his right seemed to hate the thought of moving an inch. By the time that he rose, disillusionments had been removed, and Harry knew he was surrounded. As the pain passed from his right arm, he switched his wand back to the proper hand and readied himself.

This was how it was going to end, then? And what of this blasted blood protection Dumbledore liked to babble about? A lot of good it was doing him now.

Harry spun to avoid a spell which blew the Dursley's door of its hinges, and cast the spell he'd been reading about the night prior.

"Humo!" The dirt rose from the ground around one of the men and encircled him, pulling him down to a burial. This was magic most commonly used to make the process of burials easier, but had seen some use in the war against Grindelwald as an offensive technique. The problem was that it left one very open. Harry Potter turned back to the remaining group of Death Eaters with a grim sense of satisfaction. He could only hope the man had issues digging himself out. That's when the next spell came at him, and Harry was once again resigned to fighting for his life.