Serpentine Shadow

Prologue: The Old World is Ending…

You are a mere child. One pre-destined to hold the fate of more worlds than any ought, yet you do not know it yet. A giant of a man, in both height and girth, tells you that you are special, and tells you of your parents. You look in awe and wonder at the sights around you when he takes you shopping – your first time doing something for yourself. You are eleven years old. You are a child.

You are a child. The new world is starting to annoy you – the constant whispering, the international fame and attention, the scrutiny of your peers and the worship of the public – this all bores you and irritates you. If your raising by your relatives taught you anything, it was that try to be judged for your own merit, and that you should be humble to survive.
Apparently, you are extremely special, even for a wizarding child, as the sole survivor in recorded history of the Killing Curse, among a handful of people who have taken more than five minutes to sort, to have one of a only a handful of brother wands, and to be the youngest Hogwarts Quidditch player in a century, all in the span of two months. Though the public love you now, you realise that they could easily turn on you. Your thoughts are broken by the voices that taunt you with whispers of deceit and yet love, pain and yet joy. They confuse you, just as your new world does. You are a child.

You are a child. Although you are getting used to the oddities of your new-found knowledge, you still find yourself curious of a great many things. Most potent of these curiosities is that of a mirror you have found – who tempts you with pictures of your family, and then pictures of a land you do not know, one that reasonably you shall never know. A land which calls out to you, to touch the mirror with warm skin and gain entrance to it. But a familiar voice speaks to you, and the temptation is broken from you. You are eleven years old, and this is your first Christmas. You are a child.

A man stands before you, though a man with two faces. Like many, almost all who you surround yourself with, though he seems to be the literal thing, a voice whispers to you, ever tempting, ever seductive. Ever cruel, ever hateful. You shake your head of such thoughts, focus on the situation. The mirror shows you that land once more, before an image of yourself holding a red stone, like that of an uncut ruby, appears in it. You are confused, as you now know the mirror shows your hearts desire, and you certainly do not desire a ruby. The spectral image of yourself pats his pocket after placing said stone there, and a weight settles on you in the exact same place. The man of two faces talks to you, first with one face, then the other, though both say the same thing. Give me the stone, and you shall live. The man waits for an answer, though you remain silent. You remain silent through-out the short-lived battle that ensues, only letting out a gasp of pain as a wisp of a wraith flees straight through your body. You are eleven years old. You are no longer a child, but starting to grow.

An eventful summer has just passed you by – with a furious foster-family hating you and then being rescued by your friend’s family. Acquaintance, nothing more – you dare not share all knowledge of yourself with him, the snide, ever tempting voice whispers to you, but you ignore it. For now. Now a way to your school is blocked. You suggest you wait, but your friend decides to steal his parents’ flying car. Sighing, you follow, though you do send word towards the school. You are growing up, swiftly it seems.

Once at school, your friend decides that the best thing to do is to crash said car into a tree. You are irritated, and your appearance darkens for a split-second. Your companion fails to note this though, and the moment passes. The pair of you walk towards the castle-school you both attend, and it seems your missive was intercepted by one Professor Snape – Greasy, vengeful git with a strange love-hate complex the voices utter, louder and more compulsive than before. You nod your head slowly, before blinking. The man has a loud outburst and defecates using his mouth, though you ignore it like the last several times he has done so. The mess attracts both your headmaster and the deputy – old depraved shrivelled up has-been and his loyal c*nt – who swiftly sort out the mess. You are annoyed, mentally of age.

You are at the fork in the path, about to make a key decision to your fate, though this you know not. After many attacks this school year, which has been most trying of your patience, you are now saving your male friend’s younger sister. Stupid bint, allowing herself to be possessed, ever sycophantic but not wishing to actually know you. You agree with the voices, now downright annoyed at the lack of intelligence that these… peasants, these mongrels seem to avoid at all costs. Nonetheless, the wraith from last year has reappeared, and summons a gigantic serpent from ages past to kill you. Calmly you look the serpent in the eyes, without care for the fact it can kill through a single gaze into a man’s eyes, for they are the doorways of the soul. The serpentine being gazes back, before bowing its head in subservience.

The wraith, outraged, uses a spell of compulsion on the beast, causing it to go against its very nature and kill you. A song call erupts from nowhere, and a bird of orange, yellow, red and gold – phoenix – lands and drops you a tattered hat. Perfect, a useless item in said situation. You place your hand inside the fabric nonetheless, as if possessed, and pull out a glittering sword, which you calmly clip to your belt, before pulling out a jagged dagger, which you grasp tightly. Both are beautiful in different ways to you, though you do not ponder this, as you dodge a strike from deadly serpent, before deftly stabbing dagger into it’s right eye, using it as a climbing tool as said beast rears back in agony. You drive the sword into the eye, pushing further, before piercing its brain. Out of sentimentality, you break off a tooth of this creature, before using the dagger to pierce the wraith’s chest. It screeches, but you after you are at peace for a time.

It has been a few hours since your fight. The family of the girl you saved are hugging each other and yourself, to your slight revulsion, with tears in their eyes. An old man, your headmaster, takes both blades from your person, though you are called to them like a parched man to a cup of water. You resist the urge to take them by force, but the voices in your head grow stronger yet. You growl softly at the old fool before you, a look of hatred upon your face, hating him with a force of emotion you did not know you possessed. The newfound knowledge of your emotion wipes the look from your face. You have grown up slightly, not completely.

It has been many years since your fight with your serpentine friend, though you do not forget it. Noble creature, tainted by foul magicks and fouler sorcery, the voices whisper, though you know not of whom they speak, serpent or yourself. The Old Man – torturer of pure souls, tainted among the devilry that resides in these dank halls of this bitter realm – is dead, to the obvious sorrow of many. You have no opinion on the matter outwardly, but upon the acknowledgement of the regaining of your beautiful blades, the smallest trace of a truthful smile deigns your face. Fortunately, no-one sees this. You quickly excuse yourself from the proceedings, much to many peoples’ shock, and make for the old man’s office. There, you pick up the two objects you have desired for so long, making sure to stab the dagger into the painted face of the now ex-headmaster. You have grown, in the only way you were taught. Through pain.

You are now seventeen, and far wiser to the ways of the world than you ought to be, but it has always been such. You continue to travel with the fair-weather friends, traitors who wish to use you, you obtained when you were small, curious and more innocent to the world’s ways, though only for their usefulness. This has, as of late, become vaguer than ever, though the two weren’t too useful in the first place. The visions of fields of green, tempered with the redness of both sunrise and fresh blood, clouds your mind every hour of every day now; even now the visions of the mirror haunt you. You have a mission of sorts – to hunt down the last vessels of your enemy’s soul, though you find yourself unable to care any longer. In this mission, you have carved through many an opponent with your blades, though the sword seems to be crack-ing, though it is apparently impossible. The red-haired one bellows something in irritation, no doubt thinking of its’ stomach. You silence it with a stab of your deadly dagger, the blade now encrystalled with the rubies of human life, the hilt engraved in the lifeblood of its target. You then silence the bushy-haired waste of air with a slash of your sword, the head rolling off in mid-tantrum. The blade of the sword shatters in your face, the hilt breaking in half. You shudder, for it was both yours, and a beautiful treasure. You detach the filthy corpse from your remaining treasure. You cradle it, fondle it, for it is precious to you in ways you don’t understand nor wish to. You sheathe the dagger blade once more, before setting out for that beloved and accursedly bewitching mirror and the images it holds. You are adult now, in both stature and mentality.

After many long years, you have found your prize, though it took you to your once-proud enemy along the way. The voices have quietened now, though you do not know why. The caress of their ways still strokes your mind though, so you know they are not gone. Your enemy’s treasured weapon is now yours, a long piece of wood used for channelling your large power through, wrenched from his quickly-cooling fingers, the corpse chilling at your feet. The mirror is here, in front of you, tempting you once more. You brush your fingers upon it, before it quickly ripples before you. You make a decision. Then thrust your hand into the rippling mirror, stepping into it as you journey towards the land promised to you by its reflection. The room darkens, the only occupants a corpse of a once-powerful man and a mirror, in which a fiery eye of molten reds and oranges looks through…