Here I am with another story, my first HP one, though. Hope you like this one and R&R!

Warning: Don't read this if you haven't read HBP, contains major spoilers

Disclaimer: Don't own any Harry Potter stuff, except for my copies of the books.

A Fresh Start

In the town in the middle of nowhere, known as Little Hangleton, everything seemed peaceful and quiet.

In the forest on the outside of the town, however, things were far from peaceful.

The place: Slytherin's castle, the mansion that was once owned by the Gaunt family, now the base of operations for Lord Voldemort. But now the place counted with several renovations courtesy of the Lord Voldemort himself, who had decorated everything to his liking: first he cleaned out the outside of the house by using a few spells to remove all the weeds that had grown along the walls, given it a new paint job and created a few gardens full of flowers and trees around the house. Anyone who looked at it would have seen the house of some king of old, which was the exact effect that Voldemort had been seeking; after all, he was soon to be the king of the wizarding and muggle worlds.

On the inside, however, the place was dark and desolate. Old suits of armor and banners sporting Salazar Slytherin's crest and colors decked the hallways and torches lined up the walls while blood-red carpets paved the floors. All the windows had been blocked off or charmed so it would look as if it was night the entire time. The walls had a dark, musty paint and every floor was always patrolled by Death Eaters, Voldemort's servants. Not only had he changed the decorations, but he had also gone a step further and added many rooms magically and expanded its already large dungeons and its armories and treasuries to put his newly found treasures, his dark artifacts and potions and why not use the remaining rooms as torture chambers or simply cells for all those he or his "troops" captured. He had also taken the precaution of greatly improving the mansion's defense system -which was obviously not a task he was going to leave to those imbeciles that worked for him-, including a Fidelius charm with him as the secret keeper and some unplotting devices and a muggle repellent, which his troops had resented since they loved to toy around with the muggles that wandered off into the Dark Lord's domain.

One could have thought that this is a job that the Dark Lord would have rather left to his lesser servants, but not only did he loathe the idea of letting those mindless, incompetent brutes change the smallest tapestries on the bathrooms, but he also derived a certain pleasure from making all these arrangements himself.After all, it was nothing but a bunch of simple spells to bring his designs to life. And it was the ancestral house that saw many a generation of Slytherin's descendants. He found it only fitting that the greatest one of them all would bring it back to its glory and turn it into the great palace it had been while the line of Slytherin was still great and powerful.

Right now, they were at one of the manor's greatest halls. It was about the size of Hogwarts' Great Hall, except that where staff table was on Hogwarts' room, there was a huge throne made of a black metal embedded with emeralds and diamonds which was lined up in front of huge oaken double doors.

The rest of the room was practically empty except for a blood-red carpet that led from the doors towards Voldemort's throne and rather evil-looking suits of armor that lined up the walls in front of every pillar and sported Slytherin's crest on each breastplate and shield and held vicious-looking weapons. The rest of the space was empty except for the two Death Eaters that guarded the doors and the other two that stood on both sides of the throne and guarded Voldemort in the more than unlikely event of an attack on him (A/N: Voldemort just had them there for show so he would look like a badass having guards next to him every minute of the day).

In the dark throne, sat the most powerful dark wizard of the last century: Lord Voldemort. In front of Voldemort, there was a dark figure kneeled down.

"Rise, Lord Snape." Uttered the cold voice of Lord Voldemort towards the figure before him. Severus Snape, England's potions eminence and considered as one of the most brilliant potion brewers of the last century, rose to his feet and looked at his master.

After a short pause, Lord Voldemort spoke: "You have done well, Snape. You killed Albus Dumbledore, one of the biggest threats to my plans, not an easy task, I should say. No, not an easy task at all." Was the only thing he said.

"Well, it was not so hard when I followed the great plan that you devised, my lord." Was Snape's response. He looked dead into the Dark Lord's eyes but quickly looked down and bowed his head.

"Now, Snape, you have told me that the old man left with Harry Potter somewhere during the afternoon. Can you tell me what it is?"

"Milord, I'm sorry, but Dumbledore didn't tell anyone where he was going, I don't even think that the Potter boy knew where they where going when they left since Dumbledore appareated them to wherever it was."

"But what about before that? Had he told you that he was searching for something? Maybe an artifact of sorts that would help him vanquish me, silly as it sounds?"

"No, Milord, I'm sorry."

"Liar!" and the dark Lord drew his wand, aimed it at Snape and yelled "Crucio!" Snape fell to his knees and tried as hard as he could not to scream, but, in the end his efforts were useless as he let out a loud, piercing scream that tore through the night as he fell to the ground. After a few minutes, Voldemort walked up to him, kneeled down before him and asked again, this time in a cold, deadly tone "What did Dumbledore and Potter set out for the day we attacked Hogwarts?"

"Milord, please, believe me! I don't know anything except that Dumbledore was looking for something, but he never told any of his staff or the Order! Only the Potter boy knows!" and with that, the Dark Lord waved his wand and the pain stopped for Severus.

As Snape felt the pain take the better of him, he felt himself feint while he heard Voldemort say to his bodyguards "Take him out, and bring in Draco Malfoy."

As the crowd left the Hogwarts grounds and went their different ways, the lone figure of a young man stood before the tombstone while reading the scripture:

Rest in Peace

Albus Dumbledore

1846-1996

Beloved teacher, brother and guide.

May the wings of phoenixes carry

you to your final resting place

"I can't believe you're dead" was the only thing that came from the young man's lips. That young man had jet-black hair, round glasses and a lighting-shaped scar in his forehead. That young man was Harry Potter. As he stood in front of Dumbledore's grave, Harry thought of everything that needed to be done, everything that Dumbledore thought him, and everything that he didn't. He thought of everything that he had experienced with the old man and as he remembered all this, a single tear ran down his cheek.

He was so mesmerized by these thoughts that he didn't feel the man that came to him and laid his hand on his shoulder. It was Remus Lupin, the only true Marauder that was still alive and one of Harry's only two father figures remaining.

"Harry, you must come with me." He said, Harry didn't say anything but let the old werewolf lead him to wherever it was they had to go. During the entire walk Harry was looking down, he saw underneath him many flights of stairs and the stone floors of Hogwart's hallways but, despite the fact that he didn't see where they were headed, he knew it perfectly well: Dumbledore's office. All of this was confirmed when he heard Lupin say "sherbet lemon" and then the gargoyle moving from its resting place guarding the door to the former Principal's office. He climbed into the staircase and let it carry him towards the office door and walked in for what felt like the last time, yet the first time.

He did not know why he had been brought in there, and when he looked up his doubts increased as he saw Professor Slughorn, Alastor Moody, Professor McGonagall, the bartender of the Hog's Head, Professor Flitwick, Hagrid and Mr. Weasly (to whom he nodded as a greeting) and some irish guy that seemed to be from the Ministry of Magic standing around Dumbledore's desk, in which the pensieve lay open, the silver memories whirling around it. Everyone was either crying or about to, but they all remained strong: for Dumbledore.

As it seemed that they were not waiting for anybody else, the ministry guy drew his wand and a scroll of parchment; he unrolled the parchment and read:

"We are here today to read the last will of Albus Dumbledore. Mr. Dumbledore recorded his last will in a memory which he registered to the Ministry of Magic at 13:00 of yesterday. He has asked that it be viewed in his pensieve and it will be done according to his wishes under the supervision of Ministry Lawyer Patrick McCullim, this day, at the hour of 14:30."

And with that he put the pensieve in the floor and touched the swirling memories with the tip of his wand and then lifted his wand which was quickly followed by the silver memories. He raised his wand until it was about six feet from the ground and the memories then shaped into the figure of Albus Dumbledore, hat and everything else. The silver memory looked around the room, as if he was giving them a good-bye look then stepped down from the pensieve and started walking around towards the window, apparently it had been recorded to start from there. When it reached the window, the memory of Dumbledore "looked" outside and stayed like that for a short while before giving a sigh of resignation and starting to speak:

"My dear friends, today, me and Harry are about to embark to a mission from which either me or Harry may not return alive, and if you're all listening to this is because at least I didn't make it, I hope that you Harry, are present here and did not join me in the after life. In case of that awful event, I'm sure that Harry would want all of his belongings, including the ones that I'll leave him here to go to the Weasly family and Hermione Granger, which shall be part of this my last will and should be treated as such. And if you're in this room right now, I think you should be the first one that I will address, since I already mentioned you.

To you, I leave you, first of all, my deepest apologies for everything what I've put you trough and I'm about to since I'm no longer to complete the task we set out to do the night of my death. Which leads me to the second article I leave to you: complete our mission, you'll find a way. All the things that I think will be useful to you in completing such difficult task are in a magical chest inside the closet where I used to keep my pensieve and are all yours to keep, as well as the chest.

And my last two items for you're my boy, are by blessing, which in this dark hour will seem insignificant and last but not least and if you will take each other, my beloved phoenix: Fawkes. He will be your most loyal partner and, if you act the way I think you will, the only one. All those items are the only thing this old man can do for you now, use them well.

To my brother, Aberforth Dumbledore, I leave to you one fourth of the money in my Gringotts savings account and everything in the family vault along with mom's recepy for pumpkin cookies and dad's butter-beer recepy, which are in the left drawer in my desk and for you to take in name of the remainder of our family, also for your personal keeping, every item (magical and non-magical) inside my room, as well as my wand, if it's ever retrieved from my dead self.

To the Weasly family, I leave you one fourth of the money in my Gringotts savings account, may it will bring you some form of relief in this dark times.

To my good friend Alastor Moody: I leave you my darkness detecting devices and my personal potions supply which you have wanted so much.

To Hagrid, I leave you the item that is hidden in the cave by the old river in the Dark Forest and one fourth of my Gringotts money so it may help you overcome your multiple needs.

To my dear Minerva McGonagall, I leave the position of Hogwarts Headmistress, along with my pensieve, which you will greatly need once you take your charge.

To Fidelius Flitwick, I leave you the entire collection of magical books on the east side of my library, the muggle books in said place I leave to Mr. Arthur Weasly.

To another friend, Horace Slughorn I leave my potion making items, my supply of dragon blood, and the books on the west side of my library.

To Severus Snape, assuming he does not have anything to do with my dead, I leave you everything inside my desk and my office that has not been given up to someone else or belongs to the school.

And assuming he does have something to do in my death, I leave everything that I previously granted him to Mr. Remus Lupin, to whom also go the last fourth of my Gringotts savings account to help you palliate the pain your situation in society has caused you, the guardianship of Harry Potter until he becomes of age, and everything on the northern side of my library.

And to all of you, my friends, I leave you my sincere apologies for leaving you in this time of dire need and also give you my blessing so you can overcome Lord Voldemort (shivers through most of those present) and the evil he has caused and are able to have a fresh start one this whole mess is over.

Good-bye, and may the wings of phoenixes carry you to safety trough the perilous fight against darkness."

And with that, the silvery memory turned from the window, walked back towards the pensieve and stepped inside it. Everyone then left the office or went to take their new belongings. Harry was the first one to do so and left, although he still had to fix the issue of Fawkes, but he figured that the phoenix will come to him when it's ready since Harry was more than ready to take him, he figured that the bird needed time to mourn its former master. The last thing he heard from the people in the office was Hagrid weeping and say "Great man, Dumbledore, great man."

He then went to the room of requirement and looked at what was inside the chest that Dumbledore had left him, it was like the seven compartment one Moody had, and in the first one he found only a note that said "This chest is designed to keep all your belongings in order, in this first compartment you can put personal items; on the second, some darkness-detecting devices; on the third, potions; on the fourth you will find documents that I used on my serach for you know what; on the fifth, books that will teach you powerful magic; in the sixth, a few items that belonged to some powerful wizards and withches, and on the seventh, you'll know what to do. All of the items in this chest will help you on your quest, some belonged to your parents, other to powerful wizards, others to me… Use them well"

There it is! The first chapter! Hope you liked it. Please R¡R and tell me what you though. Should I keep up the story+