Chapter 1
June 13, 1999
It was the beginning of the end and both of them knew it.
Their lips met and melded, in a fusion of undying love.
Oh, Harry, she whispered. And then she was screaming. Screaming? But, this was all wrong. Then came the colors, the red, the yellow, the blue. And finally, the one shred of normalcy in this unending nightmare. The blackness came, and it was sweet.
***
July 24, 1996
A girl sat on a train, writing. To any curious passerby who might sneak a look, she was writing a love letter to her boyfriend, Samuel. But, if they looked closer, if they were powerful enough to break the glamour charm upon her, they would have been horrified. The girl's long golden tresses would have faded and shriveled, to become a thick mat of dirty gray hair. Her porcelain smooth skin would have cracked and darkened, and become a series of scars and wrinkles. And if this innocent managed to tear their eyes away from her ugliness and glanced down at her paper, they would have lost all self control and run away in terror.
The girl, person, thing was an amazing artist, it was true, but this talent made her drawings all the more disturbing. Hideously lifelike pictures of young boys being tortured in any number of gruesome ways stared up from the paper with haunted eyes of pain. Then, the watcher would begin to notice that the tortured boys were all the same boy. A teenaged boy with dark hair and glasses. Lastly, they would look at the bottom of the page and read the name surrounded with bloody knives and loops of rope. Harry Potter.
***
I can't breathe. I'll never make it. I'm going to die. And as his head broke through the surface of the water, Harry Potter gasped for breath. He rested for a moment and then slowly paddled over to the metal stepladder at the edge of the pool. Wearily he climbed out and collapsed onto a nearby deck chair.
Swimming is a lot harder without gillyweed, he decided. He hadn't wanted to come, but he'd had no choice. Today was his cousin Dudley's fifteenth birthday and he'd told his parents that he wanted to go to the new water park they'd recently built outside of town. As per usual, his parents had agreed without protest. Harry smiled wryly to himself, thinking what his aunt and uncle would have said if he'd told them that next week, for his own fifteenth birthday, he'd wanted to come to the water park, as well. They would have probably locked him in the cupboard and thrown away the key.
The thing is, thought Harry, I don't like water parks. I didn't even want to come today. Unfortunately, for Harry, his usual baby sitter, Mrs. Figg, was away at a cat show and couldn't take care of him. Harry had offered to stay home alone, but gave up on that after Uncle Vernon gave him a long lecture on how he'd wreck the house if he was alone and then sent him to his cupboard. Harry had had to stay in there until the Dursleys were finally asleep, so he could sneak up to his room and go to bed.
A cold splash of water quickly shook him from his reverie and he put on his glasses and looked around. It was Dudley. Of course. Harry had nearly exploded, holding in his laughter, when he first saw Dudley in his bathing suit. When Dudley had dived into the pool, he had expected him to sink like a rock. To Harry's amazement, Dudley had turned out to be an exceptional swimmer. The water's buoyancy made him much lighter and faster, causing him to zip through the water like a minnow. A rather large minnow, but still a speedy one.
Harry on the other hand, had never swum a stroke in his life, excepting the second task last year. That hadn't really counted, as the gillyweed had made him able to concentrate more on movement and less on breathing. Now, he discovered that without gillyweed, swimming like that just doesn't work. His first time in the water, he'd swum forward, opened his mouth to take a breath, and shot out of the water, choking. Dudley had thought it was hilarious and had spent the entire day showing off and mocking Harry.
Is baby Harry afraid of the water? he shouted, laughing. Harry turned beet red as several people turned to stare.
Go away, Dudley, he said, gritting his teeth.
I can't believe you're nearly fifteen and you still can't swim! Dudley shouted back. A group of teenaged girls nearby started giggling. Harry wished he was back in his cupboard. Dudley opened his mouth to shout yet another insult, and then snapped it shut, his eyes widening with shock. He was staring at someone behind Harry. Harry looked down and saw two shadows. Two someones, then. Harry turned around to look and vertigo flooded his senses.
There were two, but then one, or was it two? The person (persons?) looked at him strangely. He shook his head. He could see now. It was one person, a girl. There couldn't have been two shadows. He glanced over his shoulder. Yes, there was one shadow now. He must have just imagined the shadow or it must have been a trick of the light. He looked back at the girl and froze. He could see now why Dudley had looked so stunned. The girl looked about his age, with long golden hair, cornflower blue eyes, and porcelain smooth skin.
she said, with a beautiful smile, I'm Miranda.