Disclaimer: Harry Potter, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. and Scholastic Inc. All rights to Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. and their affiliations. No Copyright infringement is intended, nor is any money being made through this.

Rating: T: mild language and mentions of violence

Summary: AU Eleven years ago, Albus Dumbledore managed to bring Harry Potter back to life after a house fire killed the boy and his relatives. Albus and Harry lived for years at Hogwarts together, savouring their statuses as saviours of the Wizarding World. But then Harry Potter came along and ruined everything. Harry James Potter never died, and he wants his life back.

Date posted: December 28, 2012

A/N: Here's Chapter 1 of A Shot in the Dark! A big thank you to everyone who favorited, followed, and/or reviewed the story! Anyway, as usual, this is un-beta'd, but hopefully it isn't too much of a mess :) Without further ado, enjoy!

He'd done it again.

He shook his head in irritation; how could he be so stupid? They'd warned him time and time again; hell he'd even warned himself! He should have known better, should have listened to his gut rather than the voice in his mind. Maybe then he wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe-

"Ah, I see you are awake," a voice hissed from the shadows. He had been too busy mentally berating himself to notice anyone walking into the room with him. Or maybe he (she?) had entered while he was still unconscious.

"Who are you?" He cringed at the harsh rasping of his voice.

The hidden figure chuckled lightly, giving off the charade that they were old chums playing a game. "Oh Harry," he said, his smirk evident in his voice. "I must say I'm slightly disappointed. You do not remember me? And we've had so many lovely chats, haven't we…?"

Harry froze, recognizing the voice. It was the voice of his nightmares – both at night and during the day. His eyes narrowed considerably, the pure loathing evident on his face, and bile rising up into his throat. "Lord Voldemort," he spat. "I'd say that it's been too long, but that would be lying. Not long enough is more like it."

Voldemort simply chuckled at the amount of venom in the boy's words. "You have not learned respect, have you Harry Potter?" He sighed in mock concern. "I suppose it is up to me to teach you before you die..."

He waved a wooden rod over Harry, murmuring some barely audible incantation. Harry made a move to stand in front of him in an act of rebellion, only to realize that he could not move. From under the ground, thick black vines covered in blood red thorns had sprouted, latching onto his limbs and clothing, holding him down on the ground, helpless and powerless to Voldemort. A position of total submission to the Dark Lord.

Voldemort leaned down; his lips mere centimetres from Harry's ear, hissing in their shared language that was forgotten or tabooed by the magical population. "The inferior population", as Voldemort liked to refer to it as.

"You are weak, Harry Potter," he hissed in Parseltongue, all pretences of amusement or friendship forgone. "And you will do the world a great service by remembering that. There is only one man worthy of the language of the snakes, and it is not you. You are a fool, Harry Potter, and you will not be missed."

Harry thrashed in place as the Dark Lord spoke to him, desperate to escape. Voldemort smiled at his attempts, knowing that they were in vain. He rose to stand directly in front of Harry, a sneer of pleasure at what he was about to do growing on his face. "There is no escape, no one to die for you, now. You have lost everything, Potter."

He pressed the tip of the same rod against the boy's forehead, brushing aside his tangled, sweaty bangs to the side to reveal the unsightly blemish that had marred his skin for as long as he could remember. A thin lightning bolt-shaped scar. Voldemort appreciated the irony of their situation, the irony that Harry didn't yet realize. Harry closed his eyes, hoping he would die quickly.

"Avada Ke-"

"No!"

Harry Miles launched into an upright position on his cot, ear-shattering screams falling from his lips, unable to stop. His arms flailed blindly in the cool early morning air, trying to attack the enemy that was no longer there. His heart was racing, pounding hard against the cage of bones it was trapped in; the small, conscious side of his brain wondered if it would rip of out his chest with the force of its beats. His breathing was ragged with fear and exhaustion. He was panicked, frantic almost, fear coursing through his veins like fire, fuelling his weak struggles. Voldemort was going to kill him; he couldn't stop, not for anything; he was so close-

"Harry!" A new voice called from behind him, softer with concern ringing in every letter spoken. A hand calmly, yet firmly, grasped his shoulder. "Calm down, Harry," the voice cooed softly. "It was just a dream. It's not real..."

The familiarity of the voice was enough to shock him out of his delusions and bring him almost, if not completely, back to reality. He turned his head to meet barely masked apprehension on the face of a young girl, probably around his age. His vivid green eyes lifted to meet her blue ones, a silent confirmation that he was okay passing between the two.

"Elisabeth?" Harry asked, still disoriented from his nightmare.

She nodded and crawled over so she was sitting in front of him. After living with Harry for so many years she knew without thinking how to take care of her brother when he had his nightmares (Which, not surprisingly, occurred quite often). "Yes Harry," Elisabeth said softly, running her fingers through his hair; it was tangled and sweaty and gross to feel at the moment, but she knew that it helped calm him down. "It's me; it's Elisabeth. Do you remember where we are?"

Harry nodded. "Delamere forest, right? In the little cottage."

"That's right." Elisabeth eyeballed him for a moment, making sure that he wasn't still asleep, before pulling him into lung-crushing hug. "You are alright, aren't you? This one sounded bad, Harry. Did you want to talk about it?"

Harry rolled his eyes before returning the embrace. "Yeah, Elisabeth, I'm fine. It was just another bloody nightmare. No need to get worked up about it."

She pulled back, giving him a full view of the sceptical look on her face.

"Elisabeth, I'm fine." He stared her in the eyes as he spoke, making sure that she didn't think that he was lying.

He was lying.

He most certainly was not fine, and had the pain that was scorching the lines of his scar to prove it. His nightmares were getting worse, more realistic, harder to realize that he was dreaming while in them, and longer to snap out of them once he woke up. Frankly, it scared him. Terrified him, actually.

His head was pounding and his hands just barely trembling from the Cruciatus curse sessions from the early stages from his dream. All he wanted was to take a pain-relief potion (and maybe a Dreamless Sleep potion or two) and crawl back into his makeshift bed of worn, moth-ridden blankets and sleep for the rest of his life.

Not that he was going to tell his sister that. She would worry, and dote on him, and treat him like an infant rather than the sixteen-year-old man that he was. No, it was best not to worry her any more than needed. Anyway, Harry could take care of himself. He didn't need his big sister to take care of him.

They weren't even true siblings. No, they were outcasts, orphans that found each other when they needed company most. However, they had been together for so long, been through so much together that their bond couldn't be anything weaker than that between siblings. The only thing stronger than that would be, maybe, lovers, but there was no way in Hell that either of them would willingly tread those waters. After all, they were siblings in all but blood; that would practically be incest.

However, because the two were so close, Elisabeth knew him far too well to swallow his lies. She glared lightly at him in annoyance. "No brother," she fired back. "You're not 'fine' and you know it." She sighed heavily. "Please Harry, talk to me."

Harry stared up at his sister-for-all-intents-and-purposes who was, no doubt, mentally cursing his stubbornness. He stood up, knowing that, if he did not move, Elisabeth would try to force him to talk about his dreams and feelings (basically a conversation about everything that Harry did not want to talk about) and strode to the other side of the pitifully small two-roomed house (if it could even be called that).

Elisabeth, who had stood up around the same time as Harry, watched her brother in slight curiosity. "What are you doing now?" she asked as he began picking at random items throughout the front room. He seemed to be looking for something. For what, Elisabeth was not sure.

"I'm going out," was his reply.

"Out? Where? And why? It's barely four in the morning."

He nodded absently. "Yes, that means that there won't be as many people out. I'm just going for a walk, possibly to Flintsworth," the nearby town. "I just…need to clear my head?" He hadn't meant for it to come out as a question, but Harry supposed it was a little more appropriate, considering the amount of confusion surrounding everything.

Elisabeth grumbled in obvious disagreement, but otherwise did not object.

Harry shuffled around the cabin, the soft glow of the fire flickering a few feet from him, his only light source. He continued searching for a few moments before crying out in triumph, holding up what looked to be no more than a nicely-polished stick.

It wasn't just a stick, however. It was his treasured wand, the one piece of equipment that he nearly depended on every day. For unlike his sister, Harry was a wizard. A wand-waving, spell-casting, potion-brewing, broom-riding wizard.

He stored his wand in the makeshift holster underneath his pant leg and walked into the other room to change into his warmest clothes. After dressing, he re-entered the front of the cottage and turned back to face his sister. Her arms were crossed across her chest and she was lightly glaring at him in an obvious show of annoyance. Harry merely smirked and saluted her before walking over to the door. She followed him.

He opened the door quickly and stepped out into the piercing winter air. Snow covered the forest around their cottage – everything was blanketed in a thick, never-ending layer of white. The only blemish on the pristine white of the snow was the occasional rock or leaf that was blown and tossed around with the wind that blew around him, rustling his hair – occasionally whipping him in the face.

It truly was beautiful. But Merlin! It was cold. Had anyone asked, Harry would have sworn that he felt himself getting frostbite from the thirty seconds he had been standing there. Already, he was regretting his decision to go out this early.

Deciding that it simply wasn't worth it, Harry turned around, hoping to sit by the fire and maybe, just maybe, catch a few more hours of sleep.

He was met by the sound and sight of the front door slamming and locking. On the previously bare door, a hastily torn piece of paper was now tacked on, familiar writing hurriedly scrawled on it.

H, it read

Hope you've been practicing your warming charms!

-E

A smiley face and heart were drawn on the bottom, where she obviously ran out of room and began to go over the edge of the ripped scrap.

Harry started at the note for a long moment before sighing, crumpling it up and sticking it in his pocket. Bitch, he thought as he began his way through the wet slush, attempting to remember any scrap of information he'd read on warming charms.

xxxxxx

Ten Kilometres and several warming charms later, Harry finally made it to Flintsworth.

For what it was worth, Harry could have apparated to the village. He was perfectly capable of doing so – in fact, he side-along apparated with Elisabeth to work practically every day. But where was the fun in that?

Despite what he had hoped, even though he knew that it had been a blind hope, the Flintsworth Market place was just as Harry had expected it to be: crowded and chaotic. It was still rather early in the morning (the sun had barely risen in the sky), but the little town was already bustlingly with people – men, women, children. Honestly, with the amount of people walking around, he wouldn't have been surprised if the entire Flintsworth population was in the area.

However, despite its busy, overwhelming nature, Harry truly loved the marketplace, and he knew that Elisabeth did as well. He walked through the streets slowly, relishing the warm aroma of Monsieur Pâte's freshly baked bread, and the sweet sound of the wind chimes on Mrs. Ozean's door as a customer pushed it open and walked inside.

Most people didn't notice him as he made his way through the sea of shoppers; those who did smiled and gave him a slight nod before turning back to their previous activity.

Harry watched as they all walked, ran, talked, or yelled. Each in their own little world that made up Harry's world. He weaved his way through the crowds, watching kids scream and run in between people's legs, too caught up in their game to care about the outside world. Watching vendors call after potential customers as they walked by. Watching wizards and muggles walk alongside each other (albeit the muggles unknowingly).

Harry stopped in the middle of it all, ignoring the cries of indignation as they nearly crashed into him. He looked around and smiled.

Today would be a good day – he could feel it.

And there you have it :) Shout out to all who favorited/followed: Abbey333, BlueSammi, Cartman1701, DawnBlazeAbigail99, Mark Wink, Michaelf, Shamrock Holmes, Sibling Creature, Spilled INK.v2, Tennisismyracket, aslan333, cc4s, chriswmclark, crazy james, geetac, jeff64108, karmenraider, los-diablo, mdauben, nesciamema, required-field, sapphyreddragon-m, vestrit, willy008, Aurantiaco, Ceti H. Black, Oops I forgot my name, Trilonias, Tronishere, WinchesterGrl09, funky hunky vampo monkey, nicsav, sunshiniite.

Thank you to all who review: nesciamema, DawnBlazeAbigail99, Sirip, Sibling Creature, Cartman1701, Lord Jawblinneron (Thank you for the suggestion, but the title does have some meaning, regardless of its presence in other fics), cc4s, Guest (I'm not entirely sure if there'll be an actual romance - right now, they're just the main characters :)), and mdauben!

Thanks for reading!

Nox,

LaughWhileCrying