Prologue
"Sir, do you have your ticket?"
Blinking, the young man turned in his seat towards the voice. "Excuse me?"
The woman sighed and asked gently, "Do you have your ticket?"
"Oh, yes." The young man reached for the bag on the ground by his feet and started to shuffle through numerous papers, muttering to himself all the while. "I know it is in here. Maybe..." He stuck his hand deep into the bag, deeper than the woman thought was possible, before he smiled and pulled his arm out the bag with his ticket clasped in his hand. "I knew I had it."
The woman smiled gently and took the ticket. The young man turned back to look out the window of the train. The sky was clear and the sun shone almost too brightly for his liking. He tried to look for something interesting in the fields that they were passing, but all he could see where herds of sheep and cows and a few houses here and there. Overall it was a rather boring trip.
The young man turned his attention to those around him. Two rows behind him was a lady sleeping whose snores were so loud he fancied he could feel them vibrating through his seat. There was a tall skinny man sitting in the seat in front of him who kept tapping his pen on the arm of his seat as he read "How Not to Lose The Spice in Your Life" by R.P. Rynolds. At the front of his car was a family of three, a wife, a husband, and a little girl who couldn't have been more than six years old. The girl kept on telling her mother that there was a monster in the toilet, while both of her parents tried to reassure her that there were no such things as monsters.
The young man smiled slightly. A boring trip indeed.
"Sir, your ticket." The woman said, holding out the ticket towards him.
"Thank you," he replied, smiling slightly as he took the ticket from her. The woman nodded and moved to the man in front of him.
Alone once more, or alone as one can be with other people around him, he closed his eyes. Sleep had escaped him for the past few nights and he could feel exhaustion creeping in on him. He couldn't fall asleep, though, not where other people could see him. Not so they could see him when he thrashed around and screamed from the dreams of blood, death, torture...
No, best not to think of that.
He opened his eyes. He couldn't fall asleep here. Who knew what might escape.
So, the young man turned his thoughts to other things, random things, like how warm it would be tomorrow or when the next eclipse would be. But these thoughts didn't entertain him for long, just a few minutes until his mind wandered to what was about to occur.
He was returning. After seven years he was returning to a place he thought he would never see again... or better yet never wanted to see again. He didn't know why he was going 'home'. He had only received an urgent message stating, 'We need you--now. -AD'. Memories of times past flashed in his eyes, memories of smiling faces, of joyous laughter, of painful tears, and of sweet decline.
Shaking his head the young man pushed those thoughts from his mind.
'Stop thinking about it. You have a least two more hours of peace, of normalcy, don't get hasty and throw it away,' he thought.
He pushed his hair behind his ears, revealing a faded lightening bolt scar across his forehead.
Harry Potter was returning home, for better or for worse.
'I only wish I new what I was getting myself into,' he thought, before he let his mind wander as he watched the passing fields outside his window.