THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO: LoveHP,wolfawaken, shrivelledshrimp, ALittleinlove : thanks for all your comments, they inspired me for this!
Reflecting on What Has Been
Detective Chief Inspector Harry Potter sat straight on his chair, rigid with fear and anticipation at the Superintendent's decision. It had been eleven long and lonely years of hiding, and every year, on this day, he sat in this same chair, in this same office. The walls were a pale, eggshell blue, empty besides two straight-backed office chairs and a desk. And every year he sat full of hope, and yet fear too. He waited for the go-ahead, the permission. And every year the Superintendent would come and sit down and proceed to tell him that the remaining Cult in his home country of the UK were still rampant and could be after him.
The Cult had surfaced eleven years ago in London when Inspector HP was yet still the celebrity teenager, Harry Potter, with an unusually huge and dangerous burden on his shoulders that he was training to remove. At the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts he had been informed by the Headmaster that he and he alone had the power to kill Voldemort and that neither he, nor Voldemort could live whilst the other survived. In the end one was going to, and had to kill the other. But if Harry failed, Dark would rule the world for eternity. In later years, many would gasp in shock and horror at the utter weightiness and burden the Boy-Who-Lived must have felt at first hearing the prophecy. Harry had been given the choice of enlightening one person only about this prophecy and the choice that he had made had surprised many.
Harry vowed to train and beat his nemesis if it took the rest of his life. He was not going to be taken as a fool again as he had been in the Department Of Mysteries at the end of his fifth year. Then, he had been young, foolish and very naïve to believe and run straight into the trap Voldemort had so carefully laid for him in his vision. His carelessness had cost him his Godfather that day, and Harry promised himself once and for all that not one more body would be sacrificed for him and not one more innocent soul would be brutally killed by the Dark Lord because of his own Gryffindor recklessness.
He practised long and hard with his once hated and now very much respected Professor, Severus Snape. The two had formed a friendship of sorts in a way that can only be called a cliché among a pair that had so loathed and detested each other for many a year before. They resolved their differences, swallowed their harsh words and - to the surprise of Headmaster Dumbledore - got along quite well. Of course, Professor Snape's dry, sarcastic humour and derogatory vocabulary was still alive and well, and was instead used as a weapon against the son of Lord Voldemort's former right-hand man: Draco Malfoy, who had fallen, in the eyes of his peers, along with his father Lucius who had been found to be hording a group of his very own Death Eaters to fight against both Harry potter and the Dark Lord.
Lucius Malfoy's downfall had resulted in the humiliation and degradation of his wife Narcissa and also upon the heir of the family: Draco. His father and his associates had been brutally tortured, beaten and tormented at the hands of his fellow Death Eaters and Voldemort himself, but had escaped by means of a portkey that had been tampered into with modern Muggle technology: the Technokey. It had surprisingly resisted all magical wards put up by the Dark Lord himself, allowing Lucius to escape whilst taking advantage of his former Master's surprise, shock and confusion.
Nevertheless, one's downfall can feed another, and Severus Snape, the Dark Lord's most precious Potions Master also became his right-hand man, his confidant in all the ghastly plans to destroy, attack, capture and torture the Muggles and Muggleborn's in the Wizarding World. Unbeknownst to him, Voldemort was selling his own life by doing this, handing over all information of the up coming raids to the one that could do serious damage to him and his troops of Death Eaters. Severus belayed all that he discovered during his meetings with the Dark Lord to Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter, much to Dumbledore's displeasure. Snape had given his word to Harry that he would never keep him in the dark again about anything, no matter what the Headmaster said. And so, ironically, Severus Snape became Voldemort's sounding board and also Harry Potter's personal trainer in D.A.D.A., Potions, Charms and Transfigurations, and sometimes even chuckled to himself at this thought.
It was whilst training with Severus in the Forbidden Forest for 'The Final Battle' as it had been dubbed that Harry had seen a sparkling silver key embedded with diamonds that lay in the overgrown weeds and magical herbs of the Forest. Without further thought or consideration, he had made his way over to it, and had been bending over to pick it up when he had heard Severus' shout of warning at what he was doing. For years to come, Harry would remember that shout, its following echo in the Forest and his own cry of alarm as his feet were unceremoniously swept out from under him…
A/N: Phew! Just finished writing that, sorry for the delay, I had exams but I was on a roll there!
Well, I hope you like it, and please review.
At the request of my above mentioned reviewers, I am splitting the story up into chapters, oh, and the story ISN'T slash. I wonder, was there any thing in the first chapter that made you think it might be?
Coming up: What happened to Harry by touching the key
Severus' own reaction (shall I write it in his POV?)
The consequences of Harry's actions