Authors Note: One reviewer pointed out that this wasn't technically a Wrong-boy-who-lived story, so I quickly changed some words around in the previous chapter and in a similar vein of thought- it is now a Wrong-chosen-one story. Similar ideas drive both, but it is more logical for Dumbledore to focus on the explicit words of the prophecy and who defeated Voldemort than the fact that they survived the attack.

Please ask if you have any further questions, or corrections. I do not have a Beta.

Also, the chapters should start becoming more upbeat after this one.

Warnings: Alluded death. Abuse.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

An excerpt from 'Heirs and their duties' written by Rudolph Samson, 1989

It is not unheard of for an heir to be magically disinherited, but not common. A magical disinheritance does not remove the person from the family tree or alter them physically in any way; the disinheritance involves a ritual that cuts them from the family magic, and makes them reliant on their own core. Upon their coming of age, they will receive no hereditary traits or gifts.

In the past heirs have been disinherited for various reasons, listed below:

Actions that bring shame or unwelcome attention upon the family

Incidents that cripple or disrupt their magic

Infertility

Being a squib, or below-par in magic

In the case of squibs, the only magic they possess is the link to their family's magic, which they cannot access. The magical disinheritance cuts them completely from this link, and renders them a muggle.

In contrast, the 'Binding of the Blood' is a form of inheritance that requires a great breach in conduct against the family code to perform. Unlike a magical disinheritance, the 'Binding of the Blood' has a high chance of death and carries a much greater stigma. The person accused must be judged before the law before action can be taken.

A Binding can only occur once a family member has been magically cast out, and involves seven lengthy rituals used to purge the person of their blood. If the guilty is alone in his trials, and has no donor, they will die.

In extremely rare instances, a child can divorce themselves from their family. Because of its scarcity, no laws surround this phenomena, which is not borne of ritual or spell. It has happened twice in the history of our kind, and one of the people- a child- died. It is assumed a surrogate family is needed to complete the process.

XxX

It had been three years since Harry had turned Six. In that time, several things had happened.

Three weeks after Harry met Marrow, the ritual that the Potter's had commissioned the Goblins to do finished. Harry was still a Potter by blood, but he had been cut from the family magic and could no longer inherit his right as heir.

He hadn't been told the details of what would happen. One day his mother had taken his blood, the next day his father had shouted Charles's upcoming elevation from the hallway, and then a few weeks later he had been struck with a headache that took a month to leave. It hadn't hurt terribly, but it had left him cold and sore and cursed with an unnameable sadness.

Marrow had sat with him and comforted him as needed, and listened to his grief and anger.

Soon afterwards, Hadrian requested that Marrow bring him books from the library that he had never properly understood before. She brought him textbooks and essays, fiction and biographies; together they sat side by side at night and read them, and little by little began to understand the world beyond the attic.

Initially, nothing interested Harry beyond a general drive to be better (better than what, or whom- he didn't know), but his father's texts on dark wizards seemed particularly biased to Harry, especially considering the comfort his shadows provided. He knew that his father was not an open-minded or generous man, and it made him itch to read a more accurate account of his abilities; he had only found a vague reference, and what it had said was not comforting, or even informative.

Similarly, after reading about the willing servitude of house elves and watching Marrow burst into angry tears, he learnt about the various types of creatures the Wizarding world harboured, light and dark all. He had no doubt that there was some truth to the discrimination spread throughout the books, but he refused to believe anything that held wizards above everything else with such vigour.

The shadows he appeared to be born with were controlled instinctively. He could move and manipulate them as he wished, but they grew in strength and size every few months and he spent a good portion of his time ensuring he could still control it.

Once, about a year after the ritual, he had felt a surge of anger burn through his scar so hot and fierce, the shadows he had been manipulating had burnt vivid rope-like scars into his hands, and had lashed out at him for months afterwards. He had taken the pain and used it as motivation to once again dominate the power, ignoring the fear that sat heavily in the back of his mind. Eventually, it had descended from its mindless fury and settled back into its general state of warm serenity. Every now and then the darkness would seep from his fingertips and stroke the scars with sad remorse, but the scars he bore reminded him daily of the other side to his darkness.

He had a relationship with his magic beyond words and emotions, and he knew that pain or not- scars or not- they were intrinsically bound together. Sometimes it would test its boundaries and lick at his skin with more fire than smoke, but he had learnt to keep a tight reign over it. It was more of a child than he was sometimes, with all the curiosity and simple cruelty they possessed. Despite that, at the end of the day it had a depth and age to it that comforted him.

Marrow assured him it was normal, and that it was still attempting to gain its bearings now that it had been reawakened; when asked how she knew, she replied that many years ago another Potter had been marked like him, and her grandmother had attended him.

Hadrian had been surprised, and then ecstatic. He requested of Marrow that she tell him all she knew of him.

Roman Potter had been an oddity from birth, just like he had been. He had rejected the Potter genes completely and inherited his mother's blond hair and golden skin. He had grown into a tall and handsome young man, and was murdered at the age of 23 by his brother. It was his brother that James was descended from.

Roman had been marked by Sowali as well, and unlike Hadrian, was as golden and bright as the side he supported. He had suppressed the powers his mark brought out of fear; and he was right to fear.

His mother accepted the unavoidable emergence of his powers on his 16th birthday, as did his father; his brother, and the world- did not. Unlike Hadrian, his magic had been more static than fire and more smoke than shadow, but it had intimidated the world enough that when his parents died, and his brother killed him, minimal action was taken.

The world had lost a great man before he had become one, and nobody knew.

Except for Mimsy, Marrow's grandmother.

Mimsy had spent her remaining time on earth telling her son about Roman, and his treacherous brother. She educated him on Roman's Powers and his purpose, and told him everything she knew about it in the hopes that one day another Potter would be born to right the universal wrong that had been made.

Moot, Marrow's father, had taught her the same.

So now, several hundred years later, Marrow was teaching Hadrian.

XxX

Among things that had changed was the Potter's treatment of Hadrian.

They let him visit the library, observation room and towers with no restrictions, but he still was not allowed outside, and had now been forbidden from venturing from his room on special days like his brother's birthday.

He was a ghost. He hadn't seen his mother in person since the day she had taken his blood, and he only saw his brother in passing, whereupon his brother would stare at him like he was an alien, then scowl and run away.

On the other hand, his father visited him in the attic at least once a week. When he left, Hadrian's ears rang with his father's hate filled words and his arms ached from where he had been held and bruised. James became frustrated very quickly, with politics, work, and life in general and Hadrian was a safe, family friendly outlet. Every now and then he would slap Hadrian, or push him into a wall, but he only managed it once or twice each time before something in Hadrian's eyes stopped him.

Hadrian could see the anger that built in his eyes when he became physical, and knew that eventually whatever had been stopping him would fail to do so. He took a morbid curiosity in predicting the day it would happen, and why. Marrow didn't like it, but at his insistence, she placed a bet on the year of his sorting. They had no doubt he wouldn't be a Gryffindor.

Hadrian thought it would be sooner- within the year even- and didn't bother to think of what would set it off. His father was subconsciously looking for a reason to take it further anyway.

Currently, Hadrian was in the tallest tower, looking out over the gardens. It was lunchtime, and his family were outside having a picnic near the roses. Marrow sat beside him, leaning against him tiredly; despite her clear mind and steady hands, she was still very old.

She was humming a song she would have sung to her child had she been able to have one, and it settled sweetly around their shoulders.

"Is it nice outside Ms Marrow?" whispered Hadrian. He was looking at the grass that his brother ran on, trying to imagine what it would feel like under his feet.

Marrow stopped humming and looked at him sadly.

"Very much so, Master Hadrian. You've never known happiness until wind brushes your hair, or the sun blesses your skin. It's like your body is taking its first breath, and the air holds the secrets of the entire world.

The ground is not like the stone we rest on. It warms and cools, and moulds around you.

The earth is full of magic. I have no doubts that were you to go outside, you would feel it."

Hadrian nodded slightly, and went back to staring at his brother.

Marrow felt something tighten in her chest, and she reached out a gentle hand to touch the boy's cheek, where a yellow bruise was just visible.

"One day, Master Hadrian, you'll hear the earth sing to you. When that happens, all creatures born of it will know you, and you will forever be loved. You will never be alone."

She held him as he sat stiffly, looking blankly at the sky; he cried silently as he shook in her arms, and she felt her heart break as he reached a tiny hand over to grasp her tunic with white knuckles.

Shadows circled them, brushing tears away with invisible fingers, crooning with invisible voices. The air was thick with pain and longing, and outside, three figures paused as a feeling of sorrow echoed briefly in their minds.

Hadrian bit his tongue, trying to stop the unpleasant emotions from overtaking him, and tried to refocus his mind on pleasant things. He swept his vision over to the roses, and found himself caught by his father's stare.

There was something strange about his father. Hadrian couldn't understand what was causing the chill that raced up his spine, but his shadows spiked and licked hotly at his skin. He knew his father couldn't see them- they had retreated when he attempted to calm down, and now circled his wrist tightly- but he felt uneasy.

His father lifted a hand to wave, and all at once Hadrian knew what was making him ill.

His father was smiling at him.

Far below James Potter laughed as his oldest son led the house elf out of the tower and left without looking back. He waved off his wife's curious expression and his son's increasing questions, and continued laughing loudly, long after Hadrian had made it back to his room.

XxX

Hadrian hadn't seen Marrow all day.

It had been a week since that day in the tower, and James hadn't been up to visit him once. Hadrian watched him leave the house nearly every day, apparating as soon as he reached the end of the drive with a sickening wave at Harry, who he somehow knew would be watching.

It drove Hadrian mad to see it, and only Marrow's constant calm words and warm smile kept him from doing something foolish.

And now he couldn't find her.

He had gone to the kitchens and asked for Nap- his old elf.

Nap had come at once, and told him in a voice laden with fear that no elf had seen hide or hair of her since the day before. Nap's mate came forward as she started crying, and led her away to sit down, content that he could do so in the presence of this Potter in particular. He whispered to her in a surprisingly low voice, and accepted the rag another elf brought him to wipe her eyes. Marrow had been a mother to all of them, and the worry was obviously affecting them. If ever Harry noticed a difference between how an elf acted alone, and how they acted with wizards- now was it.

Every elf agreed with Nap's statement, and so Harry had left with no new information and something horrible that pressed heavily against his heart, and crawled with sharpened fingers in his throat.

He had walked every corridor and asked every portrait, and not a one could help him. One with blonde hair and a handsome face had watched him with sad eyes, but his mouth was melted in a mess of reds and pinks that dripped down his neck and collar, and he could offer no comfort.

It took all Hadrian had to breathe normally and walk at a decent pace, but his mind was screaming at him to panic- to run and scream and cry, and do all sorts of things that Marrow had accepted in him, that he had tried to repress.

He eventually made his way back to the attic, walking down the empty corridor with small steps. It was raining, and dark, and he had a lonely night ahead of him with no Marrow to sing to him, or read with him.

He reached the end of the hall, and looked at the string dangling from the ceiling with the greatest reluctance. He pulled it and the stairs swung down.

Something was bothering him. Something that burrowed within his fear and made it spike and grow. He looked about the corridor, but nothing was out of place; the walls were grey and barren- empty of any portraits. There was no furniture on the floor, which was as miserable and cold as ever.

He shivered, and placed a foot on the bottom rung, before freezing in fear.

Each step was covered in dirt. Dirt that had not been there when he had left.

He took shallow breaths and climbed up the ladder, keeping his shoulders hunched and his head down. It was dark when he finally emerged in his room, but a horrible blow to his head let him know that his father was there.

He lay curled on the floor where he had been thrown, shaking from the pain in his head. The room faded in and out of view, shrinking and growing in size as he tried to focus his eyes. He watched as his father closed the hatch and silenced the room. Slowly and deliberately, his father walked towards him, serenaded by the thunder that shook his room and the lightening that split the sky.

He tried to move, but his limbs were too weak. He tried to call for help, but his tongue was too heavy. He tried to draw from the shadows, but he was too confused- too dizzy and sick. Everything he had relied on before was out of his reach, and all he could do was hang limply as his father picked him up and shook him.

"I knew you were worthless from the moment of your birth. You were the oldest- my heir- and yet it was your brother that took the extra magic for himself. Something an older twin has never failed at before- you managed.

And then Snape- that bastard- took a liking to you; you had Sirius acting civil to Snivellous- civil!

You were strange and pale and had those freakish eyes, and they only got worse. No boy of mine should be pretty! No boy of mine should be little better than a squib!

There is nothing redeeming about you, but bless her heart- your mother tried. She tried so hard to love you, but it's impossible to love something unlovable."

James threw Hadrian into the wall, and trod deliberately on his hand as he stood in front of him to lift him up again. The child let out a high pitched noise of pain, and James squeezed the hand as punishment.

"Your mother doesn't love you. I don't love you. To your brother, you're nothing more than a bad memory of something he wants to forget."

Hadrian slipped briefly into darkness, before a slap from James woke him up.

"Don't ignore me!" James roared. "You don't have the right to dismiss me! You took everything from me- my friends, my dreams, my perfect life. Do you know what it's like to go out in public and have the reporters always ask where you are? What does it matter!"

A scream ripped from Hadrian as his father smashed his head into the wall and left him in a crumbled heap at his feet.

"Despite all of that- despite the pain and irritation you have caused me- you walk around here like nothing is wrong; like you're innocent.

"Let me tell you something boy," James hissed, bending down to look straight in Hadrian's clouded eyes, "there has never been, and never will be anything innocent about you. As soon as you slip up- just the tiniest mistake- you will be completely removed from any Potter ancestry you possess.

How does Hadrian no-name sound?

How does death?"

He laughed a terrible, harrowing laugh, and kicked the sobbing nine year old in his ribs, before moving back slightly and staring at him venomously.

"Nobodies have nothing boy; nowhere to live, nowhere to go and definitely, no one to love.

I thought I'd be kind and take the first step in your long journey of solitude."

He reached into his robes and pulled out a small sack. It was common and brown, but even through his pain and delusions, Hadrian didn't want to touch it.

He watched as his father opened it, and plucked a large gold coin from its seemingly endless depths.

He flinched as it was flicked at him, hitting him in the shoulder and rolling away to clatter somewhere in the dark.

"I thought long and hard about it, but it seemed the fair thing to do. One gallon out of fifty-three boy, and it's all yours."

Harry said nothing; his father loomed over him a terrifying, wavering giant of shadow, and he was trying not to slip away into sleep, where he was completely defenceless. He tried again to do something-anything- but got nothing more than a vague answer in the back of his head where his shadows rested. He could feel them, struggling to even trickle to his aid- but the pain in his head was rattling his teeth and dimming his thoughts

"You've got no manners. Where's my 'thank-you sir'? Where's my 'I'm not worth it sir'? Well I'm telling you, I did this all with you in mind. It's nothing more than you deserve."

James bent down and leant in to the crumbled heap on the floor, pushing his mouth close to his child's ear.

"Where's your elf boy?"

Harry froze. He turned his head to look at his father, and whispered with soundless lips the denials he could not stop.

His father smiled, and Harry broke.

All of the pain he was feeling- all of the heartache and battered bones- exploded outwards. James was thrown backwards to the far end of the room, where he hit his head on Hadrian's bed post, and was knocked unconscious.

The veil that had muffled and tangled Hadrian's thoughts had been lit aflame, and shadows burst from his skin in black ropes of fire, wrapping around him and pulling him to his feet. He stumbled, and a shadow caught him. He screamed, and a shadow howled with him.

He stalked towards his father with limbs of smoke and hatred.

He wanted to burn the man; to pour shadows down his throat until his teeth sunk into a puddle of white.

If he could have, he would have turned him into an elf, and gutted him.

But Hadrian did none of those things. He reached with trembling hands to the the sack that lay so innocently beside his father, and put it in his own pocket.

His shadows writhed and struggled, furious at the man for what he had done, but could not move beyond the hold Hadrian had on them.

"One day," Hadrian rasped, and the shadows flickered in hunger.

He limped to his cupboard and picked up his only item of value- a key- and turned back towards his father.

He couldn't leave without some form of harm befalling the man- some partial type of retribution, but he had a thousand ideas and too much pain to pay back.

He looked at the man's face and felt disgust course through him. He was related to this man; he was of his blood.

Something stirred in the back of his mind, old and sympathetic, and words trickled into his mouth like spring water.

"You are not my father." He hissed. "I have no mother, no brother, and nothing that ties me to you.

I am not of your heart. I am not of your soul. I am not of your magic.

Let me not be of your blood."

Light burst from him, and he thought for a moment it would hurt, but his shadows twirled around it, embracing the light like a friend and lover. Neither cancelled the other out, and his breath caught in his throat at the beauty of it.

The light struck his father, and streaked through the floor to the house below.

He saw James tremor and wake, arching off the floor with wide eyes.

Hadrian was terrified, and horribly fascinated, but hurried painfully to the trap door in lieu of watching. He could hear screaming coming from the floor below, but didn't satisfy his curiosity; his shadows were padding his steps with quickened motions, and he felt the urgent need to leave.

He stumbled through the corridors, knocking vases from tables and tumbling into portraits. A few yelled at him, but some of the older ones- the ones like the blond man with the strange mouth- watched him with silent smiles.

He reached the front door, clutching at his chest and head desperately. His vision was darkening again, and he felt dizzy; his face was sticky with blood. The light he had been following- one his shadows were pulling him towards- went directly through the door, which was locked. He tugged at the door with trembling hands, but nothing happened. He couldn't breathe, it hurt to move, and his heart was cutting at him with its broken shards, trembling at his feet.

Suddenly, Nap popped up beside him, eyeing him with wide, watery eyes. She looked at the pulsing light and his beaten appearance, and let out a sound of disbelief.

"Map be wondering why she can't feel young Master anymore. Map was worried Master had gone with…Marrow. Map's Finny be telling Map to check why Master is not Master anymore."

She was looking at the door and speaking to the wood, but every now and then she would flick her eyes towards Hadrian or the light.

"Map can see now; map has not seen Master. Map needs fresh air to calm down from her mistake."

She flicked her finger, and the door creaked open.

"If Map still had Master, she would have told him Map loved Master too, like Marrow."

She hiccupped and scrubbed tears from her face with the hem of her uniform.

Hadrian wanted to reach out to her, or tell her something that could ease her thoughts, but he could barely keep himself from breaking down.

He staggered through the door, pausing to briefly rest his hand on her shoulder, and tumbled out into the night as she burst into sobs and popped away.

The light in front of him was flickering, and dimming, and something squeezed at his chest, propelling him forward. He pushed through his agony and heartache, and stumbled forward with desperate, reaching footsteps.

He could see the end of the driveway where the wards ended, and the shimmering ball of light that shone there, illuminating the yard that he had never set foot in in his life. Memories and pain flashed through his head, and he swam through them as he struggled onwards.

He reached the boundary at last, and fell with leaden limbs into the light; the light flared blue and sparked, and with no other fanfare, he disappeared.

XxX

All over the world, creatures of earth and shadow paused. The earth throbbed and sung, and somehow, hope crept into the hearts of those listening.

Somewhere out there, a Lord had been found.

The earth had her new champion.