AN: I do not own anything from the Harry Potter series. It all belongs to JK Rowling. I am in your debt for creating such a wonderful series. Please don't sue me!!!!

AN: (2/24) Yes, I'm sorry, I rewrote this chapter. I was disappointed at the lack of reviews and decided to read the story myself. Honestly, I didn't like it, and since I received a review saying the details I would add would not bore them I decided to go for the gusto and redo the first 4 chapters. Content has not changed (or at least very much.) I hope this is more enjoyable to read. I will redo chapters 2-4 over the course of the week. Please be patient. Hope you guys like the story better now.

Chapter 1: Father

I remember all those hours my father spent behind the closed door of the study. When I was little and couldn't reach the silver door handle I would often wonder what was behind the dark mahogany door, carved ivy regally placed near the top of the door and draping the sides. He only emerged when it was absolutely necessary. Meals were often sent to him in the room. At that age most of my memories of my father were of the house elf sending in a sandwich to my father at lunch and returning the plate with a few crumbs hours later. I believed him to be some sort of silent beast that needed to be fed three meals a day, or else would come out of the room and eat myself and my mother. My mother couldn't reach him. She tried to ignore his absence from our everyday lives, but you could see the sadness in those beautiful gray eyes. When she thought she was all alone you could hear her talking to my father, reciting the day as if it were a journal entry or a letter to a far away friend. Often, I would find her thin frame, bent with depression and lost hopes, standing by the large king sized bed, a bed for two that rarely held that number of people, whispering quietly, her lips quivering. I don't remember her crying though, I think she ran out of tears years ago.... If only my father could have heard her voice, like a caged canary's, through those plastered walls.

When I was older, I sometimes wandered into his study. He knew I was there but would ignore me, busily scratching words over parchment, writing his newest book. Books scattered his desk, but the study was neat as a pin. It was dimly lit and filled with a sea of books and bookshelves. There was a leather armchair in the corner with a small table and a gas lamp, there was a chaise-long on the other side of the room, usually with a crumpled wool blanket and white feather pillow, showing his troubled and sporadic sleeping. Sometimes I would sit in the armchair and read quietly, learning about ancient civilizations and beasts. I would travel to the golden city of El Dorado, submerge myself into the deep seas to Atlantis, and wander the Silk Road in search of wizarding treasures. But, I mostly read about potions. Potions held my interest the longest; I was fascinated at the fact that they could change the entire chemistry of the body in an instant. I would stare at the pictures of fluxweed, ashwinder eggs, Abyssinian shrivelfigs, among other things, memorizing every detail, finding out about all their uses, some common, some not so common. I sometimes held one of those books open over my lap and stared at my father's hunched figure, wondering if a potion could bring him back from his secluded world.

Other times I would sit on the dark green carpet that covered the floor and lay my head back against the side of his oak desk, I never dared to look over his shoulder, afraid of his anger or frustration of my presence and intruding his work. I would close my eyes, the ceiling not being an interesting thing to look at, and spend hours just listening to him scrawl across pages and pages. Scratch, blot, dip, the shuffle of parchment, the turning of pages of the book he had opened... it was the closest to spoken words between us for years.

Perhaps my mother saw the same distant look in my eyes as my father's. Perhaps it was because I started to look like him, act like him. I would rarely speak, unseeing of what was in front of me. She was afraid to call me, to look at me. She lost her little boy she could hold onto. I was now her little man and followed my father's foot steps with the small pitter patter of my feet, my shoes no where the size of his large foot prints he had left behind for me. I could barely see him in the distance, and I was afraid that I had lost my mother and dared not turn back to confirm it.

She died when I was eight. She was only thirty two, I remember her gray hair cascading down her shoulders and crowning her face as they closed the coffin shut, a corner of her Victorian gray dress and starchy white lace getting caught in the corner. My father just stood over the coffin when she was buried deep into the ground, just staring, the warm sun beating down his back, the warm spring winds making the grass at his feet dance around his black shoes, and myself at his side. He never said a word during the funeral. But then again, neither did I.

If it was bad before, now my father buried himself in work trying to forget everything. Books were pilled high around him at his desk, parchment scattered the green carpet. He would take his meals in the study and a house elf would run errands for him. I noticed, a few weeks after my last visit that he had locked the heavy study door, like the ivy covered brick buildings, this door separated myself from its inhabiter.

With nothing else to do, the grim and old house elf that had taught me math and English when I was young having nothing left to teach me, I took to exploring the large and empty mansion. I found my own little secluded corner a little while later. It was a small laboratory that was dry and well lit on the sunny day, dust particles slowly flittering around the room, the floors bare with shined wooden planks, silent when I walked into the room. The walls were filled with books, instruments, and in one corner an oak cabinet with double doors held potion ingredients from every corner of the earth, some I had read of, others bottles and jars held mysteries waiting to be solved in my small mind. I had no doubt the bookshelves would hold the answers I sought. I had never seen this room filled with such items until now; when I came to this wing of the house last time it was empty, dark with the lack of light from the drizzle and gray clouds that day, and the floor boards creaked under my feet.

I wandered to the work bench, set up with beakers, vials, burners, and cauldrons. There, on the bench was a small slip of parchment with three words, written with the blackest ink, in my father's scrawl: To my son.

AN: Reviews are very much appreciated. Actually... PLEASE REVIEW!!!! (NOW, if at all possible~) ^_^
Credits to the Harry Potter Lexicon! What would I ever do without you~? I'm not one to skimmer through the books looking for every single detail of what has happened. At least... not yet.