Chapter 1
Chapter One (Prologue)
At one point or another everyone thinks the world is conspiring against them. One teenager more than most. Our young hero contemplated this as he listened to the two students bickering in his compartment. If you had asked him last year who those people in his compartment were, he'd have said the people who sat there were his best friends. But that was then and he wasn't as callow as he was then. Our young hero, though, really isn't that young at all, he's sixteen years old.
He knew now that his 'friends' were merely people who'd go to any length, hurt any person, it took to get what they wanted. The innocent, naivety they had tried to force him into was long gone. Any shred of innocence or naivety he'd had was lost after being shoved to the forefront of a war that had nothing to do with him. He'd been shoved onto a pedestal when he was a baby. Then he'd been heartlessly thrown to wolves below, just waiting to rip him to shreds when he fell from their graces, only to be pushed back onto the pedestal, still bleeding.
He was nothing more than a symbol; a symbol of a world too afraid to do anything for themselves. A world content to stick their heads in the ground like ostrich. A world he'd known nothing about until he was eleven. He was a symbol for what they wanted him to do; what they wanted him to be. They never realized that by leaving him bleeding with the feeling of the teeth still there, that he'd start to despise those who refused to sew his wounds back up, those who saw him as a symbol.
A symbol.
You may ask, what kind of symbol is a broken boy? But nobody ever saw the broken boy. They saw what they wanted to see, which was a spoiled, attention seeking brat, who would be their hero, and save them all because they were too scared to save themselves.
It was last year that he'd finally had the blinders and rose-colored glasses removed. It had been last year when the last person in his life who saw him, not a hero or savior, had been killed. Murdered by someone he had trusted with his life. His mentor, his pseudo-grandfather. Of course if you asked who had murdered his godfather the murderer would say in his fake grandfatherly voice that his godfather's cousin had killed him.
Our hero knew differently now. It had taken the death of his godfather to see it. Nothing was ever black or white, no matter what anyone claimed. There was no such thing as good or evil. There were only shades of gray between the black and white. There were people who claimed to be good, but did horrible things. Nothing was ever like it seemed.
He had thought in vain that the people, who's company he now had to endure, were his friends. That they would do anything for him. That they would love him as he so desperately needed to be.
But no.
They had been like all the others. They forced him back onto the pedestal again and again. He'd always wondered, what would happen if he'd died on that pedestal? What would this ungrateful world do if they killed him before he could save their pathetic lives? They wouldn't be able to do a damned thing.
They were all pathetic. They were rallying behind a child. They rallied because of a fluke, a quirk of fate, when he'd been a babe. They ignored him until they needed him, then when he needed them, they abandoned him. Even those who'd sworn to be there, those that had been his first friends in this new world.
Our young hero was by no means a naïve, innocent little boy anymore. The teeth of those wolves had seen to that. Those teeth had sunk deep into him, to his heart, and showed him the truth of the world. They had changed his mind about everything. One look into his cold, calculating emerald eyes could show you that if you cared enough to look. Those once bright eyes had lost all warmth as he gazed at the mindless puppets around him. The mindless puppets that looked to him to save their lives because it was his destiny.
Well not anymore.
He wouldn't stand for it anymore. He knew the world was going to change, and he'd be the one to initiate it. But he also knew he couldn't do it alone. He also knew the way he changed it would be far from expected. He would change it, but it would be a world where he could be himself, not a lost sixteen year old boy, without any hope to live.
He knew what he was doing would get him labeled as dark, evil. He would be called a traitor, but he knew that wasn't true. The world was the traitor. They had betrayed him the first chance they got. He knew that if they had not needed him, he'd have been dead a long time ago.
But they lost their chance. He'd be their savior as the prophecy dictated, but he'd do it his way. He would be seen as a destroyer.
Who is this young hero?
Well, he was none other than the infamous Harry James Potter, the boy-who-lived.
