Well, that was the first chapter, or more like the prologue. Things will now slow down; the writing style will change, and the perspective will probably change to first person. This is my first story and fanfiction and just a thought written down without any planning beforehand. English also isn't my first language so don't expect a good quality. I did try my best though, or at least a good enough effort. Pairings are still open, though I lean toward either Daphne or Fleur. As you may have realized, the events written in this prologue differ from the canon and therefore characters will be a bit different. How? Still haven't got a clue myself, though I'll try my best. Lastly, feedback is always welcome, especially as this is my first ever work not written for school, but please let it be constructive.
Disclaimer - J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, I am just using her world as a playground, since I have nothing better to do
ooooOoooo
Walk the halls of Hogwarts long enough and you'll get this feeling. It's not always there. Like a fleeting thought. At one moment there and then gone.
Walking down the stairs and seeing a shadow at the edge of your eyes. Your neck hair is standing, without you knowing why.
Like someone is watching you. Looking at your every move. Judging but with a hint of mischievousness. Try to feel it. Remember it when it happens and contribute it to memory. Slowly learn to recognize it. Trust your instincts on this one.
And slowly you'll feel it wherever you go. Eyes watching you. You start to see shadows moving, the eyes of portraits lingering on you more than should be normal. You feel life from the walls. Pulsing like a heartbeat, sounding like a hypnotizing melody.
Don't get lost, keep your eyes open, and don't listen. For it tests you. Feels for you, and only by facing it with a straight back and a head held high will it open its secrets for you. It doesn't differentiate between blood, looks, or talents. But by character.
No matter if you are a snake, a raven, a badger, or a lion, it will test you in its own way. Never the same, never comprehensible in its thinking.
Is it truly alive? Sentient? Or, just like wands acting on instinct and a feeling we can't understand, magic so old and pure, not even the best of wizards were able to understand.
What is it then?
Just a castle, I guess. A castle visited by magic. Experiencing it for a millennium and more. Having seen thousands upon thousands of students and teachers alike walking its halls and climbing its towers. Performing feats of magic both lost and improved as time passed. All while slowly changing. Growing.
I wonder. What came first, magic or life? Is life not magic in its own way? Or does it need magic to create one of the most beautiful and complex things known to men?
Questions. But no answers. Alas, it seems our time has run out. The castle has decided. What will it be I wonder. Worthy or not, that is the question.
oooooOoooo
There comes a time in the life of a muggle-born wizard when they will walk upon a scene so utterly bonkers and ridiculous that it shatters all their before-known knowledge and understanding of the universe and life itself.
A room full of armours dancing to the beat of the Sorting hat, singing jazz, saxophones, and pianos floating in the air, seemingly played by invisible hands.
It is a time of trial, for everyone. One which will start their true beginning of magic. I for one simply bat an eye, walked up to a freshly polished garment of armour, glamoured with carvings and rings of gold on its gauntlets and asked for a dance.
Walk away or advance? Flight or fight? Accept or go crazy.
Swaying to the music and awkwardly stepping on metal shoes, all while having my first dance since my feet graced this planet. Laughing and amused at the moments you're having, but not wanting to stop.
A fever dream worth remembering. A single decision that has since then shaped my life and set its original path in mayhem. For what is life but a cross of paths so randomly stretched out and often intervening with you standing at its beginning?
There's a painting in this castle. Perhaps the only one that doesn't move, besides the founders found within the common rooms.
Supposedly brought in by a previous headmaster and never taken down. It details two paths. One worn, with flowers and grass circling it and a beautiful house at the end of it. The second one, on the other hand, is a mess. Dark trees spread shadows and block any light which could give you a glimpse as to what awaits you. The unasked question is, which path will you tread?
So, cheers, to not a life of predictability and repetitiveness, so common and treaded that nothing would distinguish you from the other travellers having crossed it and instead to a life of adventure, excitement and mystery.
I think I will grow to love this castle of unpredictability, with always a new secret to discover and its timeless charm. You truly are my first-ever home, Hogwarts.
ooooOoooo
When life gives you lemons you make lemonade. A favourite quote from my uncle. Certainly, didn't help him with his, though. But maybe that's just me speaking without considering it from his perspective.
A wife, a son you love and pamper dearly and a house with a garden, three bedrooms and one guestroom, two bathrooms and a medium kitchen, add to that a higher-than-average position in a Drilling Company and it sounds quite good.
No doubt you have too seen how I ignored the rotten apple. The mould, that infests this happy little dream life. Simply by existing I have destroyed their life, though they have more than made up for this unfairness of life. Mainly by taking it out on me.
Being called a freak till seven and only finding out your true name on your first elementary school day is quite a revenge. But not enough, never enough.
Maybe life in its infinite cruelty and wisdom has simply tried to prepare me for the future. After all one doesn't simply walk out of situations like I have experienced since my first day of school in this castle without understanding pain, loneliness, and weakness.
The trick is to never bow. Literally.
Don't give up, never let others ridicule get to you, for you have already experienced eleven gruelling years and what are a few more, right?
Use every advantage you have and pursue your own dreams. For only the foolish and unintelligent let the opinions of the mass dictate their lives. Though never forget about them either. For masses are often the downfall of those too swept up in their pride and confidence.
You are in the house of cunning and ambition. Use those traits and forge your own path. Don't let dreams remain dreams, but instead, force them to become reality. You have magic now; nothing will remain impossible anymore.
Always remember that and you shall succeed, just like the Mirror showed you.
ooooOoooo
Forget about the pain. Ignore the betrayal and stand up. You have killed, for it was either him or you and I will not fall this easily. Will not be faltered from my path by something like this.
ooooOoooo
Did you know that throughout my magical schooling, I've never had a Defence teacher stay for more than a year? A curse they say. Placed by Voldemort they whisper. So powerful even Dumbledore can't remove it, they think.
The first one betrayed me, the second one...well let's forget him, shall we. Not like I have truly known him. After all, when there is an entire castle filled with mysteries and forgotten knowledge just waiting for you, how can you spend time on homework and sitting in lessons? Not like they help me anyway.
So, on the day of Hallow Eve. The day when the worlds between death and life are meant to be the closest, I find myself talking in front of a bunch of ghosts, armours, portraits, and house elves about the mysteries of magic and my albeit shallow understanding of it. With a drink in hand and words building sentences and knowledge, for the first time spoken out loud, and a large portion of Fat Friar's death party paying apt attention to my words. Often times releasing murmurs of their own, stating approval and other times voicing their own questions and opinions.
There's something funny about how this has been one of my most favourite discussions since coming here, and certainly since before being made aware of magic, where the days were still dark and the bruises still aching.
An audience pertaining to beings of magic and understanding of it in their own way. Worthy of such a discussion. And oh so awing and eye-opening.
One I would have quite surely never been able to have with my fellow schoolmates. Sad, that in a world full of magic and wonder they choose to ignore the things that are perhaps the most magical. Treading the same path, all the while ignoring the beauty of the unknown.
But like so common in my life, good things don't last, and the shadows swallow the light and whisper threats and schemes and leave behind victims.
Sad, I quite liked Mrs. Norris.
ooooOoooo
Tom Marvello Riddle, aka Voldemort. A name now forever sketched into my mind.
The man who began it all and with whom it will all end. Quite the charmer back then, compared to the hideous thing he had seen on the Night-Not-Talked-About.
Like always where he walked, pain followed. He didn't truly care about the girl. Instinct and magic had made him come here. Oaths made him kill the basilisk and survive it. And oaths made him enjoy killing whatever Riddle was.
For what is a man, if you can't count on his words?
ooooOoooo
He had finally been accepted. Funny that all you needed to do was safe the school and the headmaster from being thrown out. The house elves sure like the old man.
But never mind the past, the present is more important. His lessons were to apparently begin right away. He had experience of course. Eight years of doing chores and making life for the Dursleys even more comfortable made him learn a lot.
Yet Nitwit didn't care about any of those, or at least seemed to want to forget about those in his words pathetic attempts. He didn't truly understand what he did wrong, but knew to shut his mouth up, lest he anger him more.
For Nitwit certainly wasn't like any other house elves he had ever met before. He was grumpy, harsh, and old. Perhaps older than even Dumbledore, if the way he called the headmaster and breathing fossil 'boy' indicated anything.
Still, he was here to learn the art of cooking from the very best. And who else was better than the Head House Elves of Hogwarts? What he didn't expect though were all the other tasks and chores he had to do, like cleaning, gardening, serving and so many more, and all without any magic.
But he would learn, he would improve, and he would come one step closer to his dream.
But first, he needed to clean the floor again, oh well at least now it'll truly shine like a mirror. Even Nitwit won't be able to say anything against it, right?
ooooOoooo
As he lay on his bed, holding a letter addressed to him from Sirius, his new… old or ever godfather? Anyway, as he lay there thinking of the past few days, his thoughts drifted, like whenever he discovered a new piece of magic or stumbled upon yet another secret of Hogwarts.
Excitement, restlessness, and disappointment all turned to melancholy. Yet another year at Hogwarts and what a year it had been, oh boy.
First, the strange Hogwarts train ride, where he met for the first and sadly not last time the foul creatures called Dementors. Horrifying beings clothed and hidden from a cloak blacker than the blackest of nights and a face straight out of horror movies. They seemed to like him it seemed. Or maybe they just enjoyed torturing him? Wouldn't be the first to do so.
Then his new and surprisingly good Defence teacher for the year, clad in worn robes and with a messy stubbled chin and overall unkept appearance, which later seemed to be the result of his monthly disease making it hard for him to find a job and overall live a happy life. His name, Remus, original I know, was apparently a friend of my parents.
Weird, how this whole year seemed to revolve around a special night thirteen years ago and the people involved around it. With my parents right in the middle.
My parents… truth be told, he hadn't really thought much about them. Besides the occasional glance at the photobook Hagrid had gifted him in his first year and the few times the man told him some story about them, he had forgotten about them. Well, not really forgotten, just ignored.
He wasn't one to think too much about what has been, always one to live in the present. Neither in the past where regrets and what-ifs plagued one's mind, nor the future and the unknown and uncertainty it brought with him. For he often thought that those who dwelled on such things forgot about the present and the wonders and beauty it brought, and of course don't forget the miseries.
It was overall, a year filled with terror, with Dementors looming around, ready to strike and supposedly mass murders on the loose just waiting for the chance to kill him. Not that he noticed most of those things or cared that much about them.
From the few times Sirius Black struck he could gather that the man had no interest in him or was just so mad that he didn't even realise that he was a Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. And with his own skills in Defence and a castle which he knew better than anyone else he wasn't really that scared.
He just went on with his usual exploring's within the castle, making it a goal to find the last two Founder rooms. The Chamber of Secrets, created by Salazar himself and the Come and Go Room, named by Nitwit, or as he liked to call it the Room of Requirements by Rowenda had already been found and explored. The former proving to be quite disappointing for a name that entailed multiple secrets all he found were bones and wet and broken tiles from his fight with the basilisk. The Room of Requirements though, made up for all the disappointment Salazar had given him. It was magic so complex and advanced that he knew he could study it for years and still not finish learning its secrets.
The last two were Helga's Gallery and Godric's Hall of the Brave and Worthy said to house the Sword of Gryffindor. The former he still had not found, though he did find a portrait of Godric on the seventh floor, which was the entrance and the first challenge to pass. He still hadn't convinced the portrait to tell him the password, but Harry was nothing but convicted. Even Nitwit broke under his pleadings, Godric wasn't a challenge after that.
As the year progressed so did the glooming confrontation between all the assembled pieces. And oh, what a night it was. Teachers, Prisoners and Cowards all in one room, revelations, promises, and old friendships restored at the cost of others broken. It all seemed to go well. They had the rat. Sirius made him a promise, he accepted and then came the bat. From then on it was total mayhem.
Werewolves, giant dogs, and bats all attacked each other, while the rat escaped. But he didn't let it go easily. He made Pettigrew lose a lot of body parts before the Dementors distracted him enough for the rat to flee.
There had been hundreds. Like a hive mind, they moved. Swarming him, excited about the seemingly free and quite tasty food provided to them after a year of hungering and being left traversing the woods in search of souls resembling men.
Almost bested him, they had. But he never bowed to anyone. Not even after the harshest of beatings from his uncle or the cruelest of spells directed at him. His body refused to do it; his mind didn't even think about it.
He remembered reading about a spell, the Patronus it was called. It was his last chance, the Dementors were immune against everything else he threw their way. And it worked. He still remembered how his Patronus had driven them away, so bright and solid it rammed straight against them, making the Dementors scream in anguish and pain.
He would always remember this moment. For it was the testament to his progress, one step closer to his goal, he mused. One more year completed.
And now, now it was time for a little summer break. He always wanted to visit Greece, he thought, the founders of Arithmancy and the organized and structured use of magic, which the Romans had later copied and improved and built with it perhaps the greatest magical Empire since Atlantis.
After all, gone were the times spent doing chores for people with special places waiting for them in hell. Now was the time of magic, adventure, and exploring. The Golden Age of Harry Potter had arrived.