Chapter Text
Rain lashes against groaning brick houses, wind shrieking through ancient stone walls and crashing through gnarled trees. Faint moonlight manages to wrench its way through gruesome storm clouds, falling onto a tall, thin form striding through the chaos, its shadowy figure seemingly sucking in the light around it.
The shadow comes to a halt before a plain wooden fence, its rotten frame trembling in meagre protection of an overgrown field. Its old white paint is slowly ripping off of its frame, flakes whipping through the air as the storm rages around it. Just behind it, a faintly shimmering barrier. Its smooth surface nearly completely unnoticeable, if not for the strange way the pelting rain bounced against it. The barrier seems agitated, the panicked magic it originated from rippling across its invisibility — straining against its restrictions as if crying to get away from the fount of darkness in front of it.
The figure raises a twisted, unnaturally-pale hand, and reaches out with long, steady fingers. Dark shadows surround the figure's cloaked arm, their gnarled forms seem to jump and lunge with malevolent anticipation as ripping gales of wind scream about. Too-smooth fingertips gently press against the trembling barrier —
A moment passes, the world pauses.
A bright, brilliant light sears the very air itself, and the barrier explodes into fractals that scream and wail as they’re ripped apart. Darkness shreds the old, sodden fence, and the Dark Lord Voldemort steps through the newfound destruction; he glides across the cracked stone pathway and approaches the dilapidated Tudor manor that has appeared with the dissolution of safety. The house is silent — its windows dark and empty — and with every step Voldemort takes up the old porch steps, low whines and strained groans cry from the broken wood. Its once great magnificence is decaying, broken–down, battered and left to fester in the elements an eternity ago.
The Dark Lord ignores the crumbling facade and stands before the bent, trembling door. The wild, screaming wind stills as he reaches into his dark robes, and the harsh lashes of rain halt as he pulls out a warped, gnarled wand. Fate herself stops to observe as he raises his arm, and the world watches, motionless, as the pale, twisted visage of a man smiles — a cruel, repulsive thing. And then the world explodes in sound and colour and pain as the front wall of the house explodes. Deranged, cackling laughter rings out and the sound of wand fire shatters the air. Shouts echo and the loud bangs and crashes thunder out from the parlour. The air is thick with smoke and bright, venomous colours burst sporadically throughout the tight space. Chaos revels in the destruction until, suddenly, a sharp scream tears through and the hollow sound of a body hits the rough wooden floors.
The smoke clears, and the pale, hollow corpse of James Fleamont Potter lays — twisted, mutilated, mangled, his crumpled form nearly beyond recognition — on the bloodstained, beautifully varnished wooden floors of the Potter Manor. The destroyed front parlour gradually appears, its elegant furnishing shot through and splintered. Its magnificent tapestries and ancient, revered heirlooms lay rent and crushed, old magic now stripped from its vessels. Shreds of horrified ancestors litter the once proud space — long since dead, but whose portraits always stood to gift wisdom and lay scoldings to the new generations who come and go.
A slight shifting of fabric, and the creaking of footsteps on unfamiliar stairs can be heard. A giddy, maniacal laughter reverberates through the dusty air; the sound distinctly mocking in the wake of fresh slaughter. Voldemort seemingly glides up the stairs and into a long, darkened hallway on the second floor. His figure slips in and out of shadows as he moves, moonlight sporadically lights the maniacal joy spread horrifyingly across his face. It’s then, right as he passes a seemingly innocuous closet door, that a small cry rings out. It’s quickly followed by a frantic shushing noise but it’s already too late; the Dark Lord has come to a stop before the closed doorway.
There is a strange, almost peaceful, quiet that rests thickly through the air. An odd sense of finality swirls through the estate, in the few moments before Voldemort gently opens the darkened room's door; and then the door is opened, and the flickering warmth of a soft night light spills into the hall. There is a shout, and a bang, and the thump of a body falling, and then there is only the soft whimpering of a small, beautiful baby boy. It is there, under the magisterial beauty of shining stars, and the careful caress of gentle constellations, that Hadrian James Potter dies. He has barely made it a few months past a year old when the Dark Lord Voldemort gazes into his wide, tearful, shining emerald eyes, and utters one of the darkest curses known to common wizardkind. A sickly green light bursts forth from the Dark Lord’s gnarled old wand, and strikes him in his still-soft skull.
Screams of light and fire erupt from the impact and a twisted, repulsive green crack of energy flails wildly throughout the room. It crashes into walls, chunks of brick and paint exploding with the force as shrill screeches burst from the destruction. The not-quite-toddler’s head is knocked back as another arc bashes into him, and his small, underdeveloped body tumbles forward at the same time as the old, twisted husk of a man crumples to the ground.
The screeching furore abruptly falls still.
All that can be heard are the soft whimpers of a young woman, her bruised body sprawled in between the babe and the Dark Lord. Blood drips steadily from innumerable gashes gouged into her skin. Her breathing is faint, almost non-existent, and is only growing shallower as her blood leaves her body. Her pupils pulse and her jaw is tense as she tries to focus on the two bodies on either side of her. Almost immediately, her eyes screw up and a hoarse, gut-wrenching sob forces its way out of her throat when she focuses on the lifeless body of the boy. He tries to take a breath but all that comes is a shuddering, agonising pain. Her eyes well with tears she tries desperately not to shed, and she opens her mouth, trying to speak. All that comes out is gasps and flecks of blood when she hacks out a cough. She stops, eyes not leaving the boy’s body in front of her. Her boy’s body. Harry’s body.
The gashes and cuts all over her body seem to pulse in beat with the all-consuming grief strangling her. And then, they start to swirl. One cut stretches and bleeds into another. A different one closes and moves, gouging new blood from her skin. Faster and faster they move, until not one part of her skin isn’t being rewritten in new wounds and fresh gore. Her vision dims, her hearing goes silent. The gashes on her skin start to glow. And then, with a blank, almost trance-like expression settling on her face, her dry lips open, and words pour out of her. Her tongue twists and spits in an incomprehensible script, and she whispers prayers not uttered since the primeval times of Morgan LeFay.
Her wounds pulse in time with the rhythms of her strained chants. As her lungs start to struggle, as her heart slows its beating, her vision expands and then contracts, narrowing into a pinpoint focused solely on the small corpse in front of her. Her chants continue, the swirling, pulsing lacerations covering her body slowly start to move. Start to drift and bundle until ragged, blood-laden strings of skin and muscle start to tear away. Slowly, agonisingly, the mangled, pitted, weak pumps of her heart are revealed, until, with what seems is an indefinite amount of pain, the wet glisten of her very life force is laid bare to the cold air of the nursery.
Her chanting continues, raspy and strained as incomprehensible agony rips and tears its way through her. Blood trickles down, followed swiftly by chunks of flesh. They move quickly across the ravaged floors and pool into a large puddle of blood and viscera. The spill of blood starts churning, steadily at first and then faster and faster as the thick liquid pulses and bubbles, sticking and solidifying until a grotesque parody of life starts to form. The chunks of gore start taking shape, its crimson colour starts to pulse and writhe until, with a final burst of magic, an immense snake — its scales glimmering with the colours of hellfire and swirling blood — whips free from the carnage and collapses heavily to the floor. Its body lays still and limp.
The chanting stops, a moment passes, and the woman utters a soft, desperate cry at the lifeless form of the snake. Her exposed heart beats once, twice, three times, and the final traces of life leaves her eyes, their bright green dulling with the emptiness of death. She breathes out a final rattling breath and her body arches into the air before heavily falling, her strained limbs finally letting themselves relax into the plush carpeting.
Silence falls, and all stills for a single heartbeat.
Slowly, ever so achingly slowly, the stiffened body of the giant snake starts to relax. Its twisted form inches out of its curled bearing until it lies heavy and limp, and then its lungs abruptly inflate as it takes its first breath. Reddened membranes blink open, and a forked tongue flicks out, tasting the horror in the air. Beady black eyes gaze steadily at the lifeless form of the young woman, before turning to the small body its existence was made for. It slithers forward slowly, reaching the young boy’s bloody head, and stares into the wound. It inches closer, tongue out to smell the fresh blood, and then it dips the forked muscle into his wound. It raises its head and flicks the newly blood-drenched tongue out into the air, rapidly cooling the liquid. Quickly, it rears back, and lean, deadly muscles tower over the boy, swaying back and forth as it stares at the corpse below it. It seems to pause in its assessment, head tilted in a distinctly human way. Seems to take in the small body below it, and then it strikes; so quickly a small flash of smoke strikes the air from the contact. Its fangs sink into the babe’s skull, and it releases the venom, the poison, of its creation into the body’s bloodstream. The brute force of it drives the blood to pump through weak veins and damaged arteries, and, with every gruesome, horror-filled second that passes, his heart starts to beat.
The two creatures — one a small, pure soul, the other made of all that is mutilated and dark — seem to mould together, the snake latched onto the boy’s corpse and the boy’s lifeless eyes staring back at the snake. Bit by bit, the snake slowly lets the boy go, a small hiss leaving its body as it does. It stares at the boy. And then, with a shriek, something neither human nor animal, it twists and curls and writhes on the floor. It smashes its head into the ground and bites the wooden floorboards, shrieking and wailing in an altogether un-snakelike way. Black goo oozes from its orifices along with the blood streaming from its scales. With a final, tortured twist and a piercing scream, the snake finally collapses onto the blood-slick floor; body twitching and jerking as it falls.
Minutes drag by.
The snake eventually stops convulsing.
The boy eventually starts.
Screams erupt from the once-still corpse, shrill shrieking that tears through vocal cords and echoes loudly into the strikingly silent room. The boy’s eyes open wide and once brilliant emerald dulls and fades into terrifyingly pale, clouded green. Blood vessels pop in his flashing whites, turning the once colourless sclera's bloody and bruised. The baby’s muscles tense and lock only to pop and rip with the strain. His screams racket up until nothing can be understood but the wailing of a soul wrenching itself apart. A mass of zigzagging scar tissue erupts from the point of the snake’s bite, twisting and carving its way through the boy’s forehead. There is nothing but pain, no feeling but torture, no sound except for the babes increased agony. The very air itself reeks of death and bloodshed.
Eventually, amidst the torment, the thick chunk of wiggling scars stops its wild spread. Its jagged, angry-red lines seem to pulse and contort in place until, suddenly, it bursts open in a violent spray of oozing, pitch-black liquid. The viscous goo splatters across the room, coating nearly everything in a thin layer of gore. A strange fizzing, spitting noise erupts upon its contact with the bodies of the snake and the Dark Lord, although it doesn’t touch the — now cooling — corpse of the red-haired woman. Loud, anguished screams ring out from the boy, but the room is — finally, blessedly — still. The veins of scars have stopped their writhing and the room is awash in a morbid silence as the boy’s wails eventually turn into whimpers that turn into a quiet crying.
In the ensuing quiet, the world seems to slowly become aware of time again, and a rapid succession of acute torment and fresh grief warps its way through the mutilated house. Time rushes into a bleary warp of regret and pain and murder that blurs and twists until the rush of a cool night's air ruffles the hair on the baby boy’s head, and rough, whiskery kisses scratch his freshly scarred forehead. Until, finally, Hadrian James Potter’s body is lowered gently, smoothly — almost in a mockery of love — on the stoop of two distinctly foul creatures masquerading as people. He is left with nothing but distant hope and unwise decisions, and the particularly grating screech of a tall, abnormally thin woman to startle him awake in the morning.
In the mad rush of a world turned on its head, no one quite notices the slight cracking of a small, unassuming prophecy that had once depicted the fate of the entire wizarding world. Nobody is there to watch as the glowing swirls of fate dissipate into nothing but an empty, broken glass ball.
No one notices the crumpled body of a grotesquely blood-red snake that lay beside the two bodies in the Potter Manor’s nursery, no, absolutely no one at all.