Disclaimer: I own the plot, though I apologize if it's been done before. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling.

AN: Hi! Real AN at the end! Enjoy!

Rated: PG-13

Summary: Fifteen years ago, more than one tragic mistake was made. Will its undoing help or hinder the Wizarding World and it's young as they enter another Dark Age?

Consanguina

by Jess S

Prologue: Memories and Emerald Eyes

It was dark and eerily silent across the Wizarding World that night, and even more so on the Muggle street known as Privet Drive. This was a street full of people that would be the last to welcome the people of that aberrant world into their lives, although there was a member of that very world living amongst them now. He had been for the past fifteen years.

Harry Potter was quite out of place in the household of number four Privet Drive. For he was certainly no ordinary boy. Unlike his relatives, who strove to be as ordinary as ordinary could be, though some might doubt if they had succeeded...

Harry was in fact a wizard, with four years of schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry supporting him. Even more peculiar than that, Harry was not even considered ordinary among his own kind. He wasn't quite a child celebrity, no, he was more then that, but just as famous within the Wizarding World, being the Boy-Who-Lived.

Nonetheless, he did not live within the world that was his home for nearly the whole of the year. For ten years of his life, from when his aunt had found him on their doorstep to when Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts Groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures Professor had brought him his admissions letter, making him aware of his heritage. Or, at least what everyone else knew about him. Almost everyone.

From that day forward, Harry had spent the majority of the past four years at Hogwarts, developing his magical abilities and continuing to fight against evil. Each summer, which his birthday was a part of, he would spend with his Muggle relatives, the Dursleys.

But, for some reason, Harry felt that this summer was different... he couldn't explain why...

It hadn't been a spectacular summer thus far. He had been out of school for one week, and all the days of that week were filled with chores, while the nights haunted by memories.

Harry's fourth school year had not gone overly well. The Goblet of Fire had selected him as the second Hogwarts Champion, a scandal that few, least of all Harry himself, had been overly pleased with. After struggling through the three tasks, Harry found himself tied with the other Hogwarts Champion, Cedric Diggory. The two of them had, subsequent to some debate, decided to take the Triwizard Cup together, for Hogwarts.

Mystery and deception had come to be a part of the young wizard's life from the moment he'd entered the world of his birth.... And the Triwizard Tournament was no exception...

For what the two boys did not know, was that things were most certainly not what they seemed, in more ways than one. They had found Triwizard Cup, which they'd expected to be a triumphant end to a difficult challenge, was instead a doorway to a far more malignant trial. And the Hufflepuff Champion had lost his life the night Lord Voldemort was reborn...

After briefly dueling with the Dark Lord, Harry had managed to escape, only to find himself trapped by the wizard who had caused him to fall into Voldemort's clutches, and then, at the last possible moment, rescued by Professor Dumbledore himself.

A year full of jeopardy, indeed...

And it was the events of that school year that now haunted the young wizard's nights.

It was unlikely that anyone who looked upon this boy would see anything but a near-fifteen-year-old boy plagued by nightmares, 'though few could imagine how dreadful those nightmares were... But then again, his aunt and uncle were not sleeping to soundly either...

~ * ~

"Kill the spare..." A high, cold voice commanded, and a second voice complied.

"Avada Kedavra!"

And he could hear that high, cold voice... laughing... a sound that would terrify the bravest of beings for it was a laugh of pure evil...

Once again, a blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and again, he heard something-heavy fall to the ground beside him. He didn't have to open his eyes to know that he would undoubtedly see Cedric Diggory, lying spread eagle on the ground beside him... Dead.

And the laughing went on...

Dead...

And on...

Dead... because he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And on...

Dead... because he had agreed to Harry's own idea that they take the cup together, which in turn brought both of them here to Voldemort's hands... but Voldemort had no use for Cedric...

And on...

Dead... and Harry knew, it was his fault...

And the laughter went on, growing louder... echoing inside his head...

"No." A feminine voice insisted firmly, breaking through his thoughts.

Suddenly the evil laughter that had been taunting him vanished.

Harry opened his eyes, to see that he was no longer in the graveyard, nor in any place he ever remembered seeing before. This place felt safe, what he thought true home might feel like... even more so then Hogwarts...

He looked around, seeing that he was in a large house... or perhaps it was a castle, or manor... which oddly resembled Hogwarts. The wall looked to be of the same style architecture. Persian carpets lined the finely waxed oak floors.

He looked around attempting to find the person that had ended his nightmare...

His eyes fell on a large portrait, which looked oddly familiar.

His eyes widened as he realized where he'd seen it before... it was a rococo style painting, almost identical to one of the photographs in the album that Hagrid had given him at the end of his fourth year. However, there were a few things that Harry found odd about the painting. For one, the people within it were not moving. In the photograph, his mother and father were always waving out at him, while playing with his smiling infant self. Secondly, there was a fourth person in the painting. A young girl of about six-years-old, with long black hair and emerald green eyes, smiling out of the painting, while apparently playing with his former self just as his parents were, though it was harder to tell, as they weren't moving.

Harry gave a start as the young girls eyes turned from his infant self to meet his own.

"Don't blame yourself, Harry."

"Who..."

~ * ~

Two different pairs of eyes of the same emerald shade snapped open in two very different places across Europe.

The set that belonged to the young wizard in the second bedroom of number 4 Privet Drive, blinked in confusion. "...are you?" he finished.

The other pair widened in realization. "Finally..." A lilting, feminine voice breathed.

~ * ~

The dull blue eyes of a thin woman with blonde hair and an unusually long neck snapped open, widening with horror as memories of incidents that took place years past rushed back to her...

End of Prologue.

AN: Well, that's it for the Prologue! What'd you think? Please REVIEW! As I recall another author saying once, "it makes me type faster!" LOL, well, please, reviews are important to many fan fic authors, as they gage the readers reaction, and if a lot of people review, the author know they're story is liked, and will want to write more.

Warning: A friend of mine continually warns me about using original characters too much, because readers generally HATE them, but I myself usually enjoy original characters, so long as their being in the story makes sense and they themselves are interesting enough to draw attention. If you don't like original characters, then you probably don't want to read this, because while all of the gang from Harry Potter will still be in this story as the major characters, the main OC for this story is the basis of the plot. I don't mean to sound harsh, but I figured you have a right to be warned.

To those reading "Lady Serenity" – the next chapter (23) is almost ready to be posted. It should be up at some point tonight.

Bye! ^_^