The house was on fire, and nobody had noticed.
In the air hung the cloying scent of smoke and ash. Timbers creaked and grumbled as they were immolated, their insides giving out and sending burning white fragments flying. Inside, over the crackle of the fire and the rumbling of falling beams, a child's desperate wails could be heard.
On the street, a harried woman with grocery bags slung all along both arms passed within inches of a lick of flame and felt nothing. Had she been a little more curious and perceptive, she might have wondered why the night air was so hot in late October, or why the pavement seemed to dance with lights that came from nowhere.
But she was wondering about tomorrow's tea and whether she should call her estranged brother, despite it having been years since she had had a single thought for him. The muggle-repelling charm remained, miraculously, still intact. She walked on.
Behind her, there was a pop of displaced air and a handsome young man with a long mane of shaggy, dark hair appeared out of nowhere. A moment later, his horrified visage and cloaked body had disappeared from sight. But the woman was not looking anyway.
Sirius Black stared, slack-jawed, at the conflagration for several very long seconds. He had a right to be shocked, for nothing about the situation would have made any sense to him at all. Then he seemed to regain his senses and whipped his wand out of his pocket, running into the house and shouting, "Aguamenti! Aguamenti!"
Water spilled out in a flood around him, fuelled by his desperation, but it had little effect. The fire sprang up eagerly to consume the liquid, and Sirius Black found himself engulfed in a cloud of steam. "Damn it. Damn it all! Aguamenti! James? Lily?"
At this point, Albus Dumbledore woke up from his deep sleep as if from a dream, despite having taken a potion for dreamless sleep. But the dream did not end. It was loud and involved many curses of the furious sort, and the sizzling of flames as they met torrents of water.
Albus's eyes widened and he toppled out of his bed as he turned to the mirror surface of his modified foe-glass. It showed the target of the enemy instead of the enemy itself, and right now it was showing a very detailed, very fiery rendition of that house in Godric's Hollow, or at least, what remained of it.
Transfiguring his nightgown into a woollen outdoor robe, Albus stuck his hand into the jar of floo powder and tossed nearly an entire fistful into the fireplace, heedless of the spray of clear crystals that scattered across the floor at his inelegant motion. Taking a step into the roaring green flames, he called out, "The Hog's Head" and disappeared in a whirlwind of sparks.
As soon as he was spat out of the fireplace, he disapparated with nary a sound, before appearing in the very spot Sirius Black had occupied but minutes ago. The sound of the fire was deafening, and the sight blinding. Albus cast a protective spell on his eyes and then a bubble-head charm for safe breathing.
Then he transfigured. Vanishing spell after vanishing spell was shot at the fire; one could not vanish the flames themselves, but the air that sustained them was fair game. In short order, the house had been put out.
Sirius Black shot out of the front door.
"Professor Dumbledore—thank Merlin you're here! Lily and James," he choked up, and shook his head.
"Show me," Albus said, injecting much urgency into his tone. This seemed to rouse Sirius from his horror and the young man nodded.
Upon entering the house, Albus spotted the body of James Potter. It was half crushed with debris, and the sight made him wince. Surveying the smouldering timbers dubiously, he raised his wand and drew it in a wide arc. The room restored itself to order before his eyes. Even James's body returned to a more pristine state—the state it had been in at the moment of death. Undoubtedly, he had been struck by the killing curse.
Young Sirius Black suddenly burst into tears.
"Wait," Albus murmured, glancing up at the newly repaired staircase. He thought he heard something more than Sirius's wails. Could Tom still be here? His grip on the Elder Wand tightened.
The sound came from the second upstairs room on the left. Albus wasted no time in traversing the stairs and throwing open the door.
The roof was missing, and scorch marks still pockmarked the walls. Albus frowned. His repairing spell had easily been powerful enough to restore the entire house, at least temporarily. A great amount of magic must have been discharged in this room to disrupt his spell. Something had happened here. Something undoubtedly dark.
A high-pitched cry drew his attention to the cot at the centre of the room. Albus hurried over. A little boy with black hair lay there, bawling his eyes out. It was the infant Harry Potter. But where was Lily?
Harry Potter lowered his little fists and turned his head around to gaze up at Albus, and suddenly he knew what had happened.
A bit above Harry's right eye was a livid wound, red and inflamed but not bleeding, in the shape of the common representation of a lightning bolt. Albus did not care much what it looked like—the wound was oozing tainted magic, pulsing like a beacon. And to what, Albus had a fairly good idea.
His wand was in his hand, a detection spell on his lips. The last spells that had been cast in this room: two killing curses. Killing curses did not leave wounds. His eyes trailed the path of the residues. He found a particularly deep scorch mark.
"Lily," he murmured, turning back to the sniffling baby, "What have you done?"
Lowering his wand, Albus stepped forward slowly, closer to the cot. Harry was looking at him now, no longer crying, but curious. Gritting his teeth at the unsettling sensation of pressure that struck him every few seconds, a by-product of the strong dark magic, he cast a diagnostic spell at the boy.
Albus relaxed slightly. Harry was unharmed, but for the cursed mark on his forehead. And there was nothing he could do about that.
Although, perhaps not absolutely nothing. Albus raised his wand again, narrowing his gaze at the unnatural cut.
"Show yourself," he murmured, waving his wand to give off a slight discharge of magic. A faint spark crackled in the air before disappearing. Harry reached an arm up curiously.
Albus looked all around the room, but found no sign of what he searched for. For a moment, he felt doubt, but he crushed it down. He did not often guess wrongly, and it would not do to second-guess himself at such a time.
"Show yourself, demon," he commanded more firmly.
There was a loud caw with a distinctly mocking tone to it, and a large crow barrelled through the shattered window.
"Aw! Aw!" it cried, shedding an abnormal volume of black feathers with a violent flap of its wings before it settled down on the railing of the cot, cocking is head to peer curiously at Albus.
Its eyes were a burning red, like fire.
Albus gave a heavy sigh as his fears were confirmed. Still, he supposed, as he glanced back down at the burnt gouges in the flooring, things could have been worse.
If, ten minutes ago, someone had told Albus that he would be face to face with a demon and be able to reassure himself that there were worse things, he would have laughed, patted the person gently on the shoulder and offered him a sherbet lemon.
"What was the deal you made?" Albus asked, addressing the crow. It cawed again, as if chortling at him. "I see. It's none of my business, is it?"
Albus sighed again. He reached into his pocket slowly. The demon did not seem even remotely alarmed; Albus supposed it could sense his intentions. He brought out a little sack. Peering inside, he saw that it was nearly empty. He repressed the urge to sigh another time. He really ought not to act so morose, whatever he felt. It impacted everyone else's disposition.
He popped a sweet into his mouth before he took out the last one and held his hand out to the crow demon.
"Sherbet lemon?" he inquired.
Author's Note: I've been ridiculously blocked up on my main fic, so here's something else to chew on... The Kuroshitsuji content is only going off of the first season of the anime. In that respect, the story is AU in both worlds. So Ciel has been consumed.