Chapter 2 – Discussions and Choices

Amy looked over at the man who, should he agree to this insanity, could become her brother. "Do you want to start, or should I?"

"You first," Xanxus replied.

Amy sighed, "Fair enough, since it's my fault you're getting dragged into this. We need to be completely honest with each other before we decide whether to agree with the plan, since we'll be trying to fix our mistakes.

"First off, I'm a witch. Magic is real and can do everything the stories say and more. My parents were magical as well. There's a whole secret society of witches and wizards that keep themselves separate from the rest of the world; it's been that way since the late 1600's. Before that, magicals and non-magicals lived side by side peacefully enough, but when the witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition started it became necessary to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. As a result, we have an entirely different society than the non-magical world, but I can go into that later should you agree to the plan.

"I was born Amaryllis Polaris Potter, the only child of Lord James Potter and Lady Lily Potter. Not long after I was born, a prophecy was made concerning a child born at the end of July and the Dark Lord that was running around causing mayhem at the time. Now, most prophecies are self-fulfilling, so everything would have been fine had everyone just left well enough alone. Instead, an interfering old coot by the name of Albus Dumbledore, who to my great misfortune was the one who heard the prophecy, let the damned thing leak back to said Dark Twat. He then told my parents about the damned thing and sent them off into hiding.

"My parents concealed themselves under the Fidelius Charm, a powerful charm that hides a place so thoroughly that only one person can tell others where it is. My parents chose my father's friend Peter Pettigrew as Secret Keeper and my godfather Sirius Black offered to act as bait to keep Peter safe. Peter, being a cowardly traitorous little rat, was actually working for the Dark Twat and betrayed my parents to him at the first available opportunity – exactly as Dumbledore had planned. On October 31st, 1981, the Dark Lord Voldemort broke into our hiding place and murdered my parents. As she died, my mother activated some sort of Ward or spell, which protected me when Voldemort tried to finish the job. He died instead of me.

"Dumbledore had my parent's wills sealed and shipped me off to live with my non-magical maternal aunt and her husband and son. The Dursleys hated magic and anything to do with it. As you can imagine, hatred and raising a child don't work well together. Physical and mental abuse, verbal abuse, basically being used as a slave… yeah, it wasn't fun.

"Anyway, ten years later I find out I'm not a freak but a witch, and there's a whole society of people like me. What nobody told me was I was famous for surviving an un-survivable curse, never mind that it was something Mum did that saved me. As far as the sheeple of magical Britain were concerned, a baby defeated one of the most feared Dark Lords in history. I had hoped, upon discovering the magical world, I would find acceptance; instead I was hailed and hated for who and what I was, hounded for something I could barely remember, praised for something that left me an orphan. And that's without going into the mess of dangerous 'adventures' I was forced into by Albus bloody Dumbledore to make sure I would 'face my destiny'. I think he actually wanted me to die during one of those adventures so he could step in and kill Voldemort himself, making him the only man to have killed two Dark Lords."

Amy had to stop and take several deep breaths. The whole situation aggravated her. With no one to help her, she had been little more than a puppet for Dumbledore's manipulations, and it had taken the man's death for her to finally see the truth. By that point she had been in too deep.

"Was that how you died?" Xanxus asked almost… gently.

Amy smiled bitterly. "Strangely enough, it was facing my destiny that got me killed. I spent the last year of my life running around Britain, dodging Voldemort's lackies as I hunted down and destroyed the bits of his soul he had snipped off using black magic and bound to anchors to ensure he could never leave the mortal plane. The last one I knew about required me to break back into Hogwarts – the British school of magic – to find and destroy the thing, which ended up bringing the Dark Twat and his army down on everyone. I led a bunch of schoolchildren to war, Xanxus. I led them into a fight we couldn't win, because our opponents were adult, fully trained terrorists. When the battle paused and Voldemort offered to let the survivors live in exchange for my life, I went and let him kill me. I was a bit surprised to wake up here and find out, no, I wasn't properly dead; I actually had a piece of Voldemort's soul stuck in my scar since that Halloween night and it had taken the hit for me. I wasn't too happy with Dumbledore when he met me here and told me he knew about the damned thing and did nothing. Then I came back to life, restarted the battle, and was duelling Voldemort to the death when someone cursed me in the back. I woke up here again."

Amy wiped away the tears she could feel trickling down her cheeks. "Anyway, that's a short summary of my life. Your turn. What did Fate mean by Dying Will Flames?"

Xanxus sat silently as he listened to Amaryllis' tale. Her life had certainly not been easy by any stretch of the imagination. No wonder she needed help to try again; bearing the weight of that alone the first time around would have crushed most people.

"Your turn. What did Fate mean by Dying Will Flames?" she asked. A question he could easily answer and a good place to start.

"Dying Will Flames are a manifestation of the soul. The ability is best known in the Italian Mafia, though there are a variety of Underworld organisations that can use it. There are seven different types of Flames, each with different properties: Storm Disintegrates everything it touches; Sun can be used for healing and boosting the body; Lightning's main property is Hardness, but it also has electrical properties too; Rain has the property of Tranquillity; Cloud Multiplies things in different ways, such as copies, size, or strength; Mist can affect the physical and the mental plane to alter reality; and Sky is a composite of those six with the property of Harmony. I was born a powerful Sky with an extra ability called Wrath Flames, which basically acts like strong Storm Flames mixed into the Sky.

"I was born in the slums of Palermo. My mother was a whore, paranoid, and off her face on drugs half the time. I Activated my Flames when I was about five. Not long after, my mother handed me over to the man she thought was my father – the ninth Don of the Vongola Famiglia, Timoteo Vongola. I spent eleven years believing I was his son, doing everything I could to make him proud and become the best Boss candidate. When I was sixteen I discovered my entire life was a lie. Don Vongola wasn't my father and I couldn't ever be Don. I… I went off the deep end a bit. It wasn't immediate. I needed time to plan my revenge and hurt him the way he hurt me.

"Skies collect six Guardians as part of their Harmony, one for each of the six pure Flame types. It's basically a soul-deep connection based on things you have in common. My Rain Guardian, Squalo, defeated the head of the Vongola's independent assassination division and immediately turned over the position to me. Over the next five months I plotted my revenge while shaping the Varia into something I was prepared to be associated with. I eventually settled on faking a coup while confronting the old fart about the ways the Family was falling apart. Not the best idea in hindsight but like I said, I went a bit off the deep end. One of my Officers, Ottabio, betrayed me. Don Vongola knew I was coming, lead me down into the catacombs beneath the mansion and froze me solid using a technique called Zero Point Breakthrough. He kept me like that for eight years."

Xanxus heard the gasp but didn't dare look at her as he continued. Now he had started he wasn't stopping. "Eight years later he woke me up, threatened to kill my Sun and Rain Guardians if I didn't do as he said, then sent me off to purposely lose to his chosen heir in a battle to inherit the Vongola. Looking back, I can see I was having a mental breakdown at the time. The stress of being frozen for eight years, finding out my grandmother and foster brothers were dead, my Guardians all being noticeably older than they were when I was frozen, the old fart's threats, dealing with my injuries from being frozen…"

A small hand covered his own. Xanxus didn't look up from his boots and Amaryllis didn't speak as he collected his thoughts. "Needless to say, I lost. I didn't have Vongola blood, so I couldn't win in the first place. Not long after there was a mess involving a load of fake memories from ten years in the future getting shoved into our heads, then another mess not long after that where the spineless little shit I had no choice but to serve nearly got me and Squalo killed to buy time, just so his precious friends didn't have to. After that I stopped dealing with Vongola shit and just dealt with the Varia. I don't actually remember how I got here."

He looked up, expecting pity in her eyes. Instead he found understanding.

"Neither of us has had it easy, huh? Now we need to decide if we're going back and what to do. Well, you need to decide; I don't really get a choice, but that's pretty much par for the course with me," she said with a small sad smile

"How long will it take to sort your prophecy issues out?" Xanxus asked, changing the topic. He really didn't want to reminisce about his old life right now.

"Hogwarts doesn't start until age 11, so I can't do anything earlier than then. If we attend then we have to stay for a minimum of five years. Those five years would give us plenty of time to deal with with my issues and we'd able to leave Hogwarts before our sixteenth birthday. I refuse to live with the Dursleys a second time though. I can't live through that a second time, even with someone beside me," Amaryllis said. Xanxus nodded, understanding where she was coming from. He wouldn't want to live through an abusive situation again either.

"We could bargain to make sure one of us goes Active early on. Then we could leave," he suggested.

"But who to go to? It can't be anyone on my side. Sirius would be in prison and anyone else in the magical world would give us straight back to Dumbledore. The non-magical authorities wouldn't be any good either. I've got no proof, but I'm convinced Dumbledore did something to prevent them taking me away; I'm fairly sure a couple of my primary school teachers called social services about my obvious malnutrition, but nothing ever came of it," Amaryllis told him.

"Nonna. We go to Nonna. She would protect us and raise us properly," Xanxus said. His Nonna had been the one who taught and encouraged him. Without her influence he wouldn't have gotten as far as he had. Amaryllis nodded thoughtfully.

"So, if we do this, we bargain for early Flame Activation for one of us and to end up with your Nonna after we leave the Dursleys?" Amaryllis asked.

Xanxus' expression was stern. "There is no if. I'm in."

Amaryllis smiled gratefully. "Thank you Xanxus. I don't think I'd be able to do this alone"

"I'm getting a chance to do things right because of you," Xanxus replied as she got up to let Fate and Death come back in.

Both Fate and Death quickly agreed to their terms, though stressed that they couldn't tell anyone they were reliving their lives. Both humans agreed and they began to glow.

"See you soon, brother."

"See you soon, sorella."