Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 4: The Flames of Rebirth
Previously on The Honour of Peverell…
"See you soon Mum, Dad, Sirius…"
As his vision faded to black, Harry had a final epiphany, the warmth he felt was not dissimilar to the warmth he felt when petting Fawkes, Dumbledore's beautiful phoenix. As a matter of fact, Harry realized, it was the exact same warmth.
Fire.
He was surrounded by fire.
How did this happen? His memories were fuzzy, and nothing was coming to the forefront of his mind.
Cold.
Even surrounded by fire, he was cold. An unshakable, unnatural feeling of cold. It encompassed him and didn't allow the touch of the fire to burn him. Unnatural.
Darkness.
His vision started to fade away as the fire grew, never touching or burning him.
Darkness.
Harry Potter awoke to a loud slam that reverbed in his body and gave life to a nasty headache. It was dark around him with only a small glass pane allowing a little moonlight to shine into the room. He was laying on a ground of hay that tempted itchiness to spread about his nerves. He attempted to stand but, due to a lack of strength, he fell to the ground.
With a sigh, Harry, once again, looked around the foreign room he found himself in. Several stacks of hay surrounded the back wall of the room. He spied a door, in the darkness, that led out of the room. Crawling his way over he attempted to shake the knob of the door, but to no avail. He was locked in.
In confusion, he attempted to remember how he had gotten here. He remembered fighting in the Department of Mysteries against the Death Eaters to protect the prophecy concerning himself and the dark Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard of almost unmatched power. He recalled the chaos that erupted in the Death Chamber when the Order of the Phoenix came to save the day and rescue him and his closest friends from certain death or capture. Then he remember the tragedy that had befallen one of the most powerful wizards in the Order of the Phoenix and his beloved godfather, Sirius Black.
Sirius had died by being spelled through the Veil, a passageway to assumedly led to certain death. The evil witch that had cast the spell that killed his godfather, Bellatrix Lestrange, had laughed manically as the only family that Harry had ever remembered passed on from this life.
In his shock and desperation, Harry had stuck his hand into the Veil where he was greeted by the most chilling and unnatural feeling of sheer cold. A cold that whispered the kiss of death by all of those that had the misfortune of feeling it. In a classic Harry Potter twist, he was able to wretch his hand free from the Veil and came out relatively unscathed. Well, relatively might be a strong word. It had taken the life of his left hand.
Harry gazed down upon the shriveled and blacked hand that had reached into a magical curiosity virtually unknown. Before the incident, the hand was unmarked except for an ugly scar reading 'I must not tell lies', curtesy of the Ministry of Magic's Minister's lackey, Dolores Umbridge. Unfortunately for Harry, that hand was so longer alive. He had no feeling in it except for the unwavering chill that permeated the hand and up into his arm. It had blacked and shriveled as it passed into the Veil unto to point in which it was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Tracing his memory forward a little, Harry remembered his using of an Unforgivable Curse, the Cruciatus Crurse, on Bellatrix Lestrange. He had chased after her, throwing destructive magic in her wake in an attempt to subdue her. As she passed into the revolving doors, Harry, in his rage, destroyed the doors with a powerful Blasting Curse. He chased after her into another room and after a brief fight that included him inhaling immense amounts of sand, a curse hit Harry's wand, which had exploded into him.
His wand had exploded! With eyes wide in shock, it dawned on him that his faithful holly and phoenix feather want was no more. The wand had seen him through very tough times and it always served him well. Looking at his torso, he could see the holes in his shirt where the shrapnel from the wand had entered into his skin.
To his great surprise, no wounds still existed where the pieces of the wand had stabbed into his body. He touched the unblemished skin to make sure his already poor eyesight wasn't deceiving him. Smooth as the day he was born.
"Unbelievable," Harry spoke softly to himself.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Harry allowed his memory to wander back to after his wand had exploded. Bellatrix had apparated the two of them to this unknown region that Harry found himself in. They had gone to battle once again, and Harry had employed some impressive accidental magic in his emotional state to block a lightning blast back at the evil witch. In her surprise, Bellatrix was hit by the lightning and knocked backward, injured.
And then the muggles came. They swarmed to the fight and Bellatrix disapparated away to nurse her crave injuries. Harry had attempted negotiating with them to say she attacked him, but they did not listen. As he did not have a wand, nor the intricacies of the Memory Charm, obliviate, he could not use that as a last resort. He only hoped that the Ministry's Obliviation Squad was removing the memories of his and Bellatrix's duel. Even more than that, he hoped that Albus Dumbledore or someone from the Order of the Phoenix would come to rescue him before Lord Voldemort could find him.
A rattling of the door knob shook him from his thoughts and he backed away from the door and prepared to greet whoever was opening the door with fists.
A tall, dark-robed figure stepped through the door. His face was masked in shadows so Harry could not ascertain who the mysterious figure was.
"Professor?" Harry inquired of the figure.
A belly laugh erupted from the mysterious figure.
"Me? A professor? You make me laugh, wizard" answered the person.
"Identify yourself! I won't hesitate to attack!" Harry responded as he raised his fists.
Another belly laugh.
"Wizard, you wouldn't be able to get within five feet of me before I transfigure your boots to stone".
So the mysterious figure is a wizard. Was he from Voldemort's posse coming to capture Harry?
"Are you one of Voldemort's lackeys?" inquired Harry.
The figure's body language changed to one of befuddlement.
"Who?"
Harry's features immediately took upon those of shock.
How could this wizard not know who Voldemort is? He was clearly English and a wizard.
"How do you not know who Lord Voldemort is? He is the darkest wizard perhaps of all time".
"Do not speak so lightly of dark forces, wizard. They are growing stronger by the minute"
"Obviously! Has the Ministry still denied the return of Voldemort and his Death Eaters, yet? Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix captured several Death Eaters just last night".
Suddenly, Harry accosted and thrust against the side of the stone dirt wall.
"How do you know of that name?" demanded the wizard.
"Voldemort? I just asked you abo-"
"No, you fool. The Order of the Phoenix!" spoke the wizard as he cut Harry off.
"Albus Dumbledore is the leader of the Order and a sort-of mentor of mine".
The wizard let go of Harry and turned around, rubbing his hidden face with a gloved hand.
"I know not of this Albus Dumbledore you continually mention".
"Are you playing stupid with me? Who are you, really?"
"William, of House Potter".
Harry and William quietly ascended the steps leading out of the wooden structure that Harry had just previously been held captive in, as Harry reeled in his thoughts.
Another Potter? Impossible! His entire family line was wiped out. He was the last of the Potters. Voldemort had made sure of this.
William grabbed Harry's arm and led them away from the wooden structure and the scattering of other wooden buildings that seemingly made up a small town. It felt very out of place and ancient.
As Harry and William made their way from the town, the dirt road grew thinner and William pulled them off the path and into a small, wooded area. He preceded to sit down against a tree and stuck out a hand to invite Harry to do the same.
"Do you know why I came here, wizard?" inquired William.
Harry remained silent, still reeling from the fact that there was another Potter.
William gave a sigh.
"There was a magical anomaly of grand proportions in the town we just vacated. I was tasked to go an investigate and report back quickly and without interfering".
Harry offered no response.
Sigh.
"From where I was observing, I saw a great commotion coming from that church there," William stated while pointing at a stone spire in the distance, clearly visible from the light from the moon above. "Outside of it was a vast fire and people crowded around it veraciously cheering. Would you like to deduce as to why they were cheering?"
Silence.
"You are absolutely correct!" said William sarcastically. "They were burning someone alive".
Harry whipped his head up to stare at the mysterious Potter.
Fire.
"Wha-"
"It was you, wizard. You were being burned alive".
Memories.
The cobwebs cleared from Harry's head and the memories came rushing back: looking up at the muggle and seeing him raise his fishing spear, looking down and feeling the warm blood rushing down his neck…
Harry gasped.
"I died!" exclaimed Harry.
William elicited a bellow laugh.
"Yes, wizard, you died. Impossible as it may seem, it is also the most likely scenario".
"How is that possible? You cannot die and come back to life?"
"Quite so. Alas, it is a most curious mystery that I am sure will be investigated further".
Harry proceeded to stare off into space. How is it possible that he died?
Wait… he did not die just once though…
"William, I didn't die only a single time. I was stabbed by one of the townspeople and then burned alive. How is this possible?"
"Ah, I believe you only died once, due to the fire. As I was entering town, you were being dragged to the church to be set aflame. From my position, I could see no large wound on your body save some died cuts on your chest".
Wounds that had, mysteriously, disappeared.
"It is more probable that you were knocked out before your burning," William continued. "As they were preparing the pyre, I retraced the route of which the townspeople took you from and could find large no traces of blood, just minimal amount, thus concluding that you were just knocked out and the resulting wound probably bleed a little, but not enough to kill you".
Harry pondered over this new piece of information. He had only died once then. Still, it was an impossible feat and there was no explanation or extraordinary magic at work.
"Say, wizard, what did you say your name was?" asked William.
Harry responded with silence as he was too deep in his thoughts.
"Mysterious, aren't we?" William said with a laugh. "I shall dub you Ignotus, after your fiery doom and temper, and considering the place we find ourselves in, the Honour of Peverell, your surname shall be the same!"
William gave another deep belly laugh.
"Come along, Ignotus Peverell, let us venture to the greatest collection of magical minds in the world, Hogwarts!"
Next up on The Honour of Peverell…
"Peverell, I repeat, how is it that you know of our Order?" questioned the wizard.
"I once knew a man, named Dumbledore, who was the leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He was a great and powerful mage who sought to use his Order to find the forces of darkness," replied Harry with a sad tone.
"We know of no Dumbledore," indignantly replied the man.
"I know".
Author's Note: The title of this story, and Harry's new last name, derives from the Honour of Peverel (only one 'L'), an area of land in the north of England, near Sheffield, compromising part of the feudal barony held by the Norman Peverel family, which was granted to the family by William the Conqueror, of whose name I gave to William Potter. Ironically enough, the specific Peverel William the Conqueror gave the honour to was William Peverel. More of the story, there's a lot of people named William.
Author's Note II: Chapters are starting to get longer, which is to my liking, and the next few should be inching closer to 3,000 - 4,000 words each.
