1 the end before the start

Darkness, my old friend.

You greet me again, basking me in your calming embrace, as I feel my soul wandering, exiting my mortal shell toward a new horizon. For most, complete and utter darkness would be frightening, no sound, no sight, no sensation, exposed to the vastness of the universe in our barest apparel.

But not for me, it was like finally being one again, like the grains of sand in the desert, insignificant, but yet giving it all its meaning. Drifting among the vast immensity of the territory of death, I let all go, my past grief, joy, anger, sentiments that have made me, me. They are of no use there, thus they simply cease to be.

While all was fading, a single one persists, from the deepest part of the instinct that had made the primate he was a conqueror of his land, race, world. Survive! I will survive! Prevail over this trial, survive this barren land, and I will grow stronger yet again, raising from my ashes, like the blazing phoenix, transcending all my previous weakness. Again! Higher! Stronger! Ever, always!

While this primal cry resounds inside me the void ripped apart, letting this insignificant thing that shouldn't amount of anything against it, win. As my soul vanishes from this land, a pure sensation of elation overtaken me. Again, I prevail, but at what price? I'm not the one I was before, once again losing the last shred of my latest existence, I brace myself to encounter my new me, the one that was no more, leaving only his fleshy shell for me while his soul ascends to a better place, his very heaven.

It has always been so, all those that were promised to greatness, only to face only the worst horrors before even being able to rise of greatness, leaving the living for the promised eternal rest. As it should, those pure souls always know violence, torture, jeers but never tainting their pureness.

Since they weren't being able to smear them of their colors, always they send them to eternal rest, the last attempts to corrupts them to their way. It's never been, they always accept their end, joining those long departed to receive the love, care, and live they should have.

Is it where I enter, Long ago. I was too, once of them, but like all, their always a price to pay. I choose to forgo my own happy end, only to ensure that all of them could have theirs. As I was about to exit the void, into my new life, the one I would replace.

The sight of him was truly a heart-rending one. Bruises, scars, famished, rachitic, but always this pure innocence burning brightly in those childish eyes. The boy shouldn't be older than nine. He was scared, not understanding what was happening to him. So I do the only possible thing, I take hold of him, slowly, carefully, always full of warm, doing my best to calm him down and ease his travel to the other side.

"Shhh, it alright, I here." Pouring all the warmth I could in my voice while lightly hugging his shaking form. "I know it's hurt, but it will soon be alright. Shhh, there."

Thankfully, he rapidly calms down before, like all other before him before, broke in tear, hugging me with all his strength and venting all his griefs.

"It will be alright, the worst has passed, everything will be alright."

His grief taking end, I saw what I was aiming for, this instant of bliss granted to me each time one of them is ready to pass on, only a smile gratifying their face. As the first to pass on, I never had someone to guide me, to calm me down, so I took on this very role, never for them to face this emptiness alone.

Another ripple, an instant of pure whiteness, the other land. On the edge that separate, the complete darkness to the pure white, stood his intended. Seeing them, that smile full of brightness, warmth, and love. The emotion in their eyes, parents.

The poor kid was orphaned, for his younger age, it seems, for how youngs those two where. Looking at him, only too see confusion, wariness, and a bit of fear. He must never have known or remember them, the orphan one is always the saddest, condemned to the worst.

I didn't have a lot of them during my eons, but it was always the hardest life to fulfill, but so much worth it. With a little push, he takes the first step, then the second, third and start to increase his pace, trotting out, lightly run, full one, before the jump, landing in those awaiting arms as tears run out of all of their eyes.

Another one family finally reunite, a little more of happiness banishing a little of the emptiness in this barren land of death. Looking at them, I could see him smile at me, another little one they weren't able to taint, another happy ending.

As they retreat, their son never exiting their arms, this paradise shut again, protecting forever this fragment of pure happiness into safety.

There I stood, at the border of this new land, between two-state. Once again, I would become a child, perhaps this time I would experience a full life? Finally exiting teenage into adulthood, or perhaps it was written this way, always to be the 'big brother' for the little one, leaving me in an incomplete mental state. Was it for me to never forgot what it was once, to never stray away from what it was to be them, to understand them, to guide them?

If this was the price, so be it, a little of immaturity was nothing to trade for their happiness. Taking the last gaze again to this comfortable darkness, I take a step forward, crossing the line that should never be crossed, inhabiting the flesh of the freshly departed young soul.

For most, the possession of another being is a crime against mother nature, that the dead should rest with their own, but should I really be considerate like them? After all, I always make sure that the previous owner chose to pass on before taking the place that was once is.

The last step, the first of my new life as the tear starts to repair itself, closing more and more. In the last second, before it ends, I could feel something impact me from behind, melting inside my soul, fusing with it.

Looking back, I can only see the half down of it face, a warm and relieved smile as if sending me off, telling me that everything will be alright, while the tear finally closed. As the feeling starts to fade, I could feel something trying to overtake me, dominate my mind, and took possession of my new body.

Regrettably, for it, he was never to be. Like an annoying fly, I swat it to the confinement of my being and further. Pain! As soon as I did a nerve-rending pain split my head, making me clutch it hard, muffling the cries of agony, down.

While I could feel a hot, wet, and viscous liquid drip of busted fleshes on my forehead, I hear a ghostly scream wheezing into nothingness. Immediately, an unknown burden was lifted off my shoulder, my mind gaining a clearness like never, sharpening, opening until then closed door.

With them, memories return, the shaggy black dog, the wolfie plushy, the broom, the stag, that fiery red. Memories no more than a year old trickle in my mind. The joy, the laugher, the love, the warmness, family.

But the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. I hear again the cries of his father, warning his wife of the threat that just intrudes in their haven. The door blasted to smithereens, the laughs, the same wheezing voice demanding for her to let him kill me.

Even in that darkness, I could see nothing more than the love she had for her son, unflinching as the green light strike her back, banishing this wonderful light in the limbo, along with her husband below.

Once again the laughs of that pathetic parasite unable to face his victim in the eye before bringing an end to their life. Again, the green light, seeming sick against the deep emerald of her that forever lost their light.

I could experience the feeling of the spell striking him, the disgusting feeling of it, creeping up in my veins. As it strikes me I could also feel something deep inside being awoken, the last-ditch of rebellion from the fallen woman to protect the light of her life.

That creepy magic immediately ate away, the feeling of mercury flowing through my veins. His rent came to a halt as his spell rebound off the baby, striking him and claiming it price with vengeance.

Then came the gorry sight, the man blowing like an inflated balloon, taking with him a part of the ceiling, leaving behind, a dark-green mist, his black robe, white mask, his wand, and shrapnel flying everywhere. It was those very same that gouge out into my flesh this lighting bolt-like wound, opening a channel between the outside world and my inner one.

He also saw it, as his remaining self flies to me, trying to enter a new container. Regretfully for him, the magic of Lily was still present, warding him off, tearing alongside a piece of his mutilated soul, in.

His attempts thwarted for the second time in a single night, he gives up, flying away in the night. I could feel the body starting to lose strength, slowly slumbering into darkness, but not his mind, never. I hear the hurried footstep outside the house before yelps of agony.

Nothing but sobs for few seconds before he tumbles in the staircase into the room. Once again the man cries for his departed and lost a friend before we hear him.

I could tell he was old, his voice full of deceit and sugarcoated poisonous tongue. In only a few words, he makes Sirius forget about me, to go chase after the traitor. He drinks those words like a thirsty man in the desert, taking them as the providence, before bolting out, away.

I could have been enraged after Sirius to leave the baby behind, but the old man hadn't been subtle when casting magic at Sirius, thinking the man to distress to ever feel it, not knowing that the other here did.

It was soon my turn to feel his magic in me, principally the open wound.

"Finally, the prophecy has been enacted, all that leaves is to wait for Tom to return. As for you young Harry, life in your aunt and uncle should make you malleable enough for me when you arrive at Hogwarts."

Those were his last words before silence return. It was only after I hear the loud sound of a bike, the heavy stepping of something approaching that I understand that he was the origin of the 'pop' before.

I feel the body held in a single thing that seems a hand. Young Harry was briefly awoken by the hairy mountain bowling his eyes out, tear and snort running down his face.

The next time Harry awoke, he was in another place, and happily claps as a cat turn into a human, or was it a human that has change into a cat? Nevermind, the witch hastily came looking for a second, pursing her lips at the still open wound on the baby head.

She rapidly exits the place, returning with the old goat, seemingly distress before being sent to spy on a couple of muggles, surely the aunt and the uncle. Once alone, the old fart starts to cast spell after spell, and I can physically feel something inside me dim, constricted and sealed away, stirring the shard on its way, who start to hammer at his mind.

The hostile strike rapidly became a burden for his young mind to bear, monopolizing a great deal of his subconscious processing to oppose. This was the origin of the mental burden I was relieved after banishing the shard, so I can only conclude that what he bound was my magic.

After that everything goes down to hell. The giraffe and the walrus were quite unhappy with the arrival of Harry, only for it to degenerate to hatred when, even mentally disabled, he was doing greater than Dudders. The poor child was dumber than a doorpost. It was the root of his agony, his plight. The man didn't have any scruples to abuse a young child, verbally, physically, mentally. Even then, he didn't say a word bearing his burden inside his heart.

Ever bounded his magic had shown its might, healing him when need, bringing him to safety in dire time, but forever unable to totally free him.

With my mind finally free, I was able to process every past memory, socking in the knowledge that had escaped Harry at this time, now completely assimilated. Magic wasn't an exception, every accidental magic was there for me to pick, understand what triggered them, leading to that precise response. The easiest was those teleportation act, surely what the old goat has done to vanish out of the house.

Every time Harry's mind has only two triggers, the need to be somewhere else and the will to be. Seeing the random apparition, a location component could surely be added. Another case of minor magic was the change of color of the wig of his professor. Against, the will for change, the intent of doing something.

Every time, there was a need for intent to change a situation, and the will to go through such length. Those were always followed by exhaustion, so another variable was power, the very same that was sealed away.

All of those must be the base of magic, but they're a lack of something a lack... of... Imagination! Of course, how could once intent and will change without imagining it?

Four primary rules, but all of this could not be applied without control. Control was at the base of every skill, without control, one would waste is potential, the only way for me to control my magic was to have it unbound, and the only place would be St.Mungo.

Harry hadn't many memories of it, but he does have some from the magical district in London, Diagon Alley. I need to go there! Pooling all my concentration, I visualize the park not far from here, near the tree shades. Holding on this faint feeling that was my magic, I pull, vanishing in a loud crack.