Harry Potter and the Dark Sigil
Chapter Three: The Prophecy of Godric Gryffindor
By: Harry's Mum Lily
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this just the plot. I'm also not making any money from this story so don't sue me. I just want to thank all of you who have been reviewing this and sorry this part wasn't up sooner but I've broken my wrist so typing is a real chore now. Hope you enjoy this one.
You will know one day…put it from your mind for now, Harry. When you are older…I know you hate to hear this…when you are ready, you will know.
Albus Dumbledore
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Chapter 17
The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.
Albus Dumbledore
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Chapter 17
Ron and Hermione looked at Dumbledore expectantly and inwardly he sighed. Everything they thought they knew about Harry was about to be turned upside down by what he was about to tell them.
"In order to understand what I'm about to tell you I must start with the founding of Hogwarts and a book of prophecy written by Godric Gryffindor concerning the future that has been handed down to every Hogwarts Head since the beginning."
Ron and Hermione looked puzzled by this.
"There is nothing about a prophecy in Hogwarts: A History." Dumbledore heard Hermione mutter.
"Not everything about the school and its founders is written in that book, Miss Granger."
Hermione blushed but continued to look at Dumbledore.
"Least of all the information I'm about to pass on to you," Dumbledore looked at them and Ron and Hermione felt as though he was looking right through them.
"You know all about the founding of Hogwarts, so I needn't tell the whole story to you again. There are, however, things that have been left out of that story, like Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. What is not too well known though is that Godric Gryffindor had many very rare gifts, gifts that have been passed down through the ages to those who carry his blood. One of these gifts was the gift of Prophecy. He was a true Seer and he could see into the future, not just hours or days but years into it."
Hermione looked at Dumbledore for a moment, shock and disbelief in her eyes.
"Sir, you must forgive me but divination is a very imprecise branch of magic…"
"You sound like Professor McGonagall," Dumbledore smiled at Hermione before continuing. "And under ordinary circumstances that may be true. True seers are very rare but Gryffindor's gift was a very powerful one and all that he has predicted thus far has come to pass."
Ron looked as if he was going to ask about these predictions but Dumbledore stopped him with a raised hand.
"There is only one set of Gryffindor's prophecies that are relevant at the moment, however, " Dumbledore continued gravely, looking at them both sharply.
Ron and Hermione closed their mouths on whatever questions they were about to ask. Dumbledore got up from his desk and walked to an ornately carved shelf that held some ancient leather bound books, the Sorting Hat and a silver and ruby sword in a glass case. He skimmed the titles and then finally pulled a book bound in faded red leather with gold writing on the spine. He returned to the desk and they saw the title glimmering in the candlelight.
Signs and Portents of the Future: The Prophecies of G.Gryffindor, First Hogwarts Headmaster.
Dumbledore turned the ancient pages carefully until he reached the middle of the book. A scent of dust, old leather and ink hovered over the desk were the three of them sat. Dumbledore sighed and began to read from the yellowed and faded pages.
"In the Year of Our Lord 1926 will two Heirs be born at the same hour of the same day. One will be the heir to Darkness for the blood of the Snake shall run through his veins; the other will be heir to the Light and in him shall run the blood of the Lion. These two will be twins in power and be much alike in situation. Both are destined to lose their parents and to be forever marked by tragedy. The one of Darkness will forever be turned to evil by this loss while the other will "die" and then be reborn, taken out of time to fight again. Ever and anon the Twain shall meet and the Darkness will be held at bay until the day two shall be made one. The past and future at last shall meet, the Dark and Light shall merge as was foretold and then will Darkness rule the day. The Heir of Light will face great danger and death will rise to claim him yet be denied. Like a phoenix he will rise from the ashes to live again. Many shall question his trustworthiness for he too holds powers Dark, gifted him on a day of sacrifice. Endless years of sorrow and pain will then be the Heir's as friends around him fall yet his will remains strong in the time of testing. Three years will pass and Darkness will grow stronger but so to will the Phoenix, his many gifts made manifest. The years will pass and on the Day of Death, at very hour of his parents sacrifice, will the Heir at last complete the spell begun long before to insure final victory for the Light. By his blood it shall then be forever sealed; a sacrifice renewed and when next the two foes meet the Darkness then will Gryffindor's Heir defeat."
There was a deep silence in the room as Dumbledore finished reading. Ron's freckles stood out in his pale face and Hermione's eyes were rounded with shock. Then she shook her head and looked at Dumbledore with questioning eyes.
"The prophecy runs several lines more but these are the lines that matter…" began Dumbledore.
"Professor, there is just one thing. Gryffindor seems to have gotten the dates mixed up…" Hermione trailed off when she noticed Dumbledore looking at her.
"The prophecy is quite accurate, Miss Granger, just as all the others have been
Ron shook himself out of his stupor and glanced at Hermione before speaking.
"How can this be, sir? I mean the prophecy is about Harry and You-Know-Who isn't it? Well, Harry can't have been born in 1926…he's our age."
Hermione nodded her head vigorously and stared at Dumbledore. Dumbledore looked at them gravely and they stared solemnly back at him.
" Harry is Voldmort's twin, the one born in the same hour of the same day and that day was July 31, 1926," said Dumbledore calmly, though his insides were trembling.
Dumbledore looked at their shocked faces and inwardly he sighed. This was turning out to be harder than he thought. The two students sat mute, clearly unable to say anything. Finally, Ron's mouth began to move, trying to say something.
"How…Why?" he finally managed to sputter, utterly flabbergasted by the news.
Hermione sat with her mouth opening and closing but no sound came out of it. She looked at Dumbledore with wide eyes and a look of disbelief.
"It was my doing. I brought the then infant Harry to this time from the past. As for why… that will take some explaining…"
*
Harry was tossing and turning on his bed in the grips of another nightmare. There was death and chaos all around him and his scar felt as if it was on fire. He put a hand over it and tried to see what was happening more clearly. He tried to block out the screams he could hear echoing inside his mind and the pain in his head long enough to get a good look around. There were people running and the smell of smoke was heavy in the air around him. Everything seemed to be cast in an eerie green glow that filtered through the clouds of smoke that hung before him. The smoke and the green light distorted objects and all sound, giving the dream a surreal quality and making everything seem misty and blurred. Angrily, he brushed the smoke aside and for an instant it cleared to reveal another Dark Mark hovering just inches above him. It still bore the strange lightening bolt across its forehead. He could hear people screaming…no calling out his name, their voices filled with hatred, fear and infinite sorrow. He tried to listen, to hear what they were saying but all he could hear was his name echoing around as if a chorus of phantoms were calling him from their graves. He closed his eyes and willed everything around him to fall silent so that he could hear what the distant voices were saying but still he only caught one thing:
"belongs to the Dark Lord".
"Harry Potter… belongs to the Dark Lord," the wind seemed to echo and then he heard Voldemort's ringing laughter and saw his eyes glowing in the distance. His scar flared with blinding pain at the sight of them.
"Nice of you to join me here, brother," Voldemort said scathingly. "See what your insolent refusal to my demands has wrought!"
For just a moment the smoke around him cleared and Harry could see for a minute a wide cobblestone street littered with glass, debris and bodies of the dead and dying. He could still hear their screams of anguish and the Death Eaters laughter. He also saw the name of the town and hung his head in despair, for this time the name of the town was as familiar to him as Hogwarts.
"Your spirit shall belong to me as it was always meant to be. You will become mine."
Voldemort's laughter echoed inside Harry's mind and he's scar began to burn worse then ever until he found that he was screaming because of the pain. Voldemort pointed his long wand at Harry and uttered a spell but what it was Harry never found out because at that moment he jerked awake. His scar was burning under his hand and he was shaking. His breath was coming in short gasps and he could feel cold sweat on his face. He looked around the Hospital Wing and was relieved to find that it was empty. He took several deep, calming breaths and wiped the sweat from his face. He then poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside table and drank it in one swallow. He stared out the nearby window at the gathering darkness, not really thinking of anything, trying to calm himself and after several minutes his heart stopped pounding so hard and he managed to stop shaking.
He ran a hand through his hair, his scar still throbbing with pain. He ran a finger over it hoping to stop the stinging, all the while knowing that another town had fallen and that Voldemort was getting closer to his ultimate target: him. Harry picked up a roll of parchment, a bottle of ink and his eagle feather quill from the table and began to note down everything he could remember about his dream. Sirius had advised him to do this so that he would have a written record of all his dreams that he could look back over later when he was in a better mind to deal with the meanings behind those dreams. As he finished writing down all he could remember up to the point he'd awakened, he wondered what all his dreams meant.
"They are all so vivid, like the two dreams I had last year," he thought, glancing through the two rolls of parchment he'd already filled with his dreams.
There seemed to be two types of dreams he was experiencing. One set was about events happening in the past and in them he saw his parents and himself as they had been before Voldemort's attack.
"These must be memories of my own past, " he thought, looking back over them and reading some of what he'd written down. "But what do the nightmares mean?"
Harry glared down at the parchment and frowned at the words there. These nightmares all had three things in common: the strangely altered Dark Mark, Voldemort speaking gloatingly of Harry's downfall and cities that were attacked in the night but whose names Harry had never heard of.
"Except for the town in tonight's nightmare," he thought as a cold shiver ran down his spine.
He ran a hand through his hair again. He'd been unable to find anything in the Daily Prophet about any of the attacks he'd seen in his dreams. There was still no indication that Voldemort had made any kind of move at all. In desperation, Harry had begun to search the archives of the Daily Prophet back to beginning of Voldemort's previous bid for power and had looked in every book that he thought might have any information on the subject. He had hoped to run across one or more of the names he'd written down but none of the towns attacked in his dreams were listed in the paper nor did they appear in any of the books on the subject.
Harry lent back onto his pillow and closed his eyes for a moment, lost in thought. Voldemort was going to move against him again and soon. He was as sure of this as of the names of the six fallen cities. He felt himself slipping back into slumber with another dream hovering like a shadow at the very edges of his mind.
"How can I know about something that has not even happened yet?" he thought sleepily.
At the question his eyes flew open and he came instantly awake again. He grabbed the rolls of parchment again and stared at them. It couldn't be and yet…Harry scanned the names of the towns again, each name causing a memory from the associated dream to surface. He looked at the very last one from the dream he'd just awoken from and knew, with certainty, what his dreams meant. Hogsmeade had never to his knowledge been attacked and if it had been attacked recently everyone in the school would surely have known about it. That could mean only one thing…Harry Potter shivered as he lay back down and stared at the ceiling.
"I am dreaming about the future."
*
"Professor, I don't think I understand, " Hermione said with a bewildered look on her face that was being mirrored by Ron. "This is something that is virtually impossible to accomplish and is not altogether legal either."
"It was necessary."
Hermione looked at Dumbledore in surprise and Ron simply stared as if deception and deceit were something that he'd never thought to catch Dumbledore involved in.
"Let me explain. I was a young wizard in 1926 and I awoke on the last night of July of that year to find that Fawkes was piping a strange song I had never heard before and had only read of in books. Then two of his tail feathers fell to floor of my bedroom in a shower of scarlet and gold sparks. They lay there shimmering on the floor, casting a pale glow around the room. Fawkes looked meaningfully at me and let out one long note before going back to sleep. Now as far as you two are in your studies you must realize how rare it is for a phoenix to drop one feather much less two without going through a Burning Day. "
Ron and Hermione nodded and waited for him to continue.
"I knew something special had happened for a phoenix only drops its feathers intact when a powerful wizard or witch is born and the feathers that are dropped are destined to be the cores of that wizard or witch's wand. That Fawkes had dropped two meant that two powerful wizards had just been born somewhere. I had heard of this legend, of course, but the thing that confused me was the song that I had heard. Phoenix's are very loyal to their owners and almost never turn from them. Godric Gryffindor once owned Fawkes, at least that was the rumor, but I had never placed much trust in that rumor until that night. The only time Fawkes would ever sing the Song of the Coming of the Heir was if the true heir of Gryffindor was among us. Therefore, the only conclusion I could come too was that of the two wizards born this night one had to be Gryffindor's Heir and where his heir was so to would be the Heir of Slytherin. My suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later when I looked at the book all magical children's names are written in at birth and saw two new names written within it in shimmering silver ink. One was Tom Marvolo Riddle and the other Harry James Potter."
Dumbledore paused a moment, looking at Fawkes for a moment and then out at the clear blue sky. Ron and Hermione shifted slightly in there seats. After a few moments Dumbledore continued his tale.
"I knew the instant that I read the two names which one was the Lion and which the Snake. It was obvious to me because the Potters were direct line descendants of Gryffindor and the intermarriages between them and magically talented Muggles couldn't change that. I resolved to send the feathers to Ollivander's in the morning and to keep a close watch on both Harry and Tom. Little did I know that I would be called to aid Harry much sooner then I thought."
"I had not yet even completely fallen back into my interrupted slumber when Fawkes made a horrible piercing call and began to throw himself at the narrow windows of my room. He started to sound a high, keening wail and to make gagging noises, all the while desperately throwing himself at the glass panes of the southeast windows. I rushed to one of the windows and saw in the distance a shower of red sparks, signifying that someone was in trouble. Without understanding why I was doing so, I Apparated to the spot where the trouble was. Fawkes, who was caught in my spell, was with me. He flew toward a house that was glowing like a torch and pointed his shining beak at one of the upper story windows where curtains were fluttering in the air currents made be the magical fire that was now enveloping the house. Then, over the roar of the flames I heard it…a baby's cries of terror and pain. He was trapped in the burning building and there seemed to be no one around to save him. I stretched out a part of my mind to touch his and I learned two things: he was the long expected Heir of Gryffindor and that if I didn't do something fast the world would loose him for all time."
Ron and Hermione were sitting, still and silent with their whole attention fixed on Dumbledore and their confused expression was beginning to smooth out. He should have known that any friend of Harry's was strong. He needn't have been concerned that they would turn on him just because he was basically Voldemort's twin. Of course there was much more to the story then the bare facts he was relating, a much darker secret that he was keeping but it had to remain a secret for a little while longer.
"I did the only thing I could think of at the time and Apparated Harry out of the burning building and into my arms. The child stopped crying and took a deep breath of fresh air then he cried out as if in pain. I heard footfalls behind me and turned hoping to see the child's parents. Instead, I saw a Dark wizard robed in dark red velvet robes with the hood up, casting the face into shadows and he was carrying a wand, which was pointed at the child and me.
'Give him to me if you value your life stranger,' he hissed at me.
'I will not!' I replied defiantly, holding the child closer to my body.
'He is the one destined to bring about the downfall of all evil. He cannot be allowed to live. You will give me the child or face my wrath!' the wizard glared balefully at the child.
I refused again and pointed my own wand at the wizard and readied the first spell that came to mind. The Dark wizard, whose name I later learned was Grindelwald, laughed and aimed his wand at the child and shouted a curse. Before I could do or say anything to block the curse that was winging its way toward us, a woman ran out in front of the spell and took the bolt with an incoherent cry. The spell hit her instead of the child and it splintered into a thousand beams of bright light. One of the beams hit Grindelwald and he was forced to flee, severely wounded but not dead.
The child in my arms began to cry and I carried him to his dying mother's side. The woman's spirit was ready to leave and yet she still clung stubbornly to life. She appeared to be waiting for both of us as if she had a message for us.
'Take…my Harry…to safety… the future?' she asked so quietly that I had to bend down close to hear her faded voice.
'I promise, I will do all in my power to protect him.'
She smiled and reached up to touch Harry one last time before she died. Their eyes locked for a moment and then the light within her green eyes faded to darkness and Harry began to cry."
There were tears in Hermione's eyes and Ron's bottom lip was trembling.
"How awful to loss two families in one lifetime…" Hermione trailed off as she tried to wipe the tears from her face.
"I took Harry away from the scene and did as his mother requested. For his own protection, I risked a dangerous, highly complicated and very illegal Timeportal Spell, which allowed me to bring him forward through time to a year of my choosing. I chose 1980 as the target year with July 31 as the date, hoping that Grindelwald would have been defeated by that year and that Harry would then be able to grew up in safety. My plan was only partially successful, for though Grindelwald was no longer a threat there was another Dark wizard who had risen in his place~ Lord Voldemort."
"Tom Riddle had come back to haunt you…" Ron muttered.
Dumbledore shook his head ruefully in response and sighed before continuing his story.
There were descendants of this child's family still living and I though he would be safe enough with them. Their child had been still born so I gave Harry to them and put a memory charm on the doctors and nurses to make them forget that the child had not lived.
"The Potters…" Ron choked out.
"Yes. They never knew that the child was not theirs though they did notice that he was special. The James and Lily Potter of this decade loved Harry as much as Harry's parents in the 1920s had loved him. Ironically, James and Lily had named the child Harry James Potter in memory of James's uncle who had died as an infant in a terrible and mysterious house fire. They loved Harry with all their hearts and souls because they knew that he was to be their only child. James and Lily both knew that they would never get to see him grow up. Voldemort had been after the Potters for years because of the Prophecy written here and they knew it was a matter of time before they might be killed. They made me promise to watch over their son, to protect him and this I have done. But with every passing year the protections around him grow weaker. Voldmort has already broken through one of them. Now I fear for his safety, even within these walls where he should be safest. I fear I will not be able to protect him much longer and I now ask you to watch over him."
He looked into the eyes of the two students before him and their tear-streaked faces looked back.
"We will," they both replied solemnly.
For several minutes they sat in silence, which was broken only by the persistence howling of the wind.
Finally, Hermione found her voice and said: " So that must be why Voldemort wants Harry dead. He's the Heir to Gryffindor and Voldemort's twin."
"Yes, but this information must not leave this room. It must remain a secret even from Harry for the time being," Dumbledore fixed them with a grave stare and they nodded in agreement.
Several hundred miles away in a tower room of a castle on an island that now held their foes, Voldemort sat watching and overheard everything that was said. An evil grin spread across his gaunt white face and the red eyes glowed for a moment.
"So the old fool lets the Potters secret out at last. Ah, but you have forgotten the best part of the secret…Soon young Potter will learn the truth but it will be I who will tell him, not you."
The surface of the mirror grew smoky and the images in it dissolved, reforming itself into the image of Harry sleeping fitfully in the Hospital Wing.
"Keep dreaming, Potter though it will do you no good. No one will heed your warnings; they will be blind to them as they were blind to your message about my rebirth. Do not worry though. You will fall and soon all will feel the full extent of Lord Voldemort's wrath!"
A cold, evil and high laugh echoed throughout the wizard prison known to the world as Azkaban and even the Dementors shivered to hear it.