Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I make any claim of ownership. All rights belong to the copyright holders and J.K. Rowling.

A/N

Welcome all, to my first foray into the wide world of Harry Potter Fanfiction! I hope you enjoy this first chapter, and please feel free to follow, favourite or post a review, I welcome any response from readers!

Now, just a few notes to get through before you begin:

Firstly, I write with British English, so please excuse the different suffixes and extra u's here or there! Also, I prefer to use capital letters for some magical terminology (Quidditch, Sneakoscope, etc.), along similar lines to the actual HP books.

Second - and foremost! - this fic is rated M for a reason, and will feature such things as violence, death, and emotional trauma moving forward. I understand content warnings, but I will not place them at the start of each chapter. The content warnings are here once, and once only. Please read with this in consideration for your appropriate circumstances, and enjoy!

- JudgeKnox

"Tamper with the deepest mysteries ― the source of life, the essence of self ― only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind."

Adalbert Waffling's first Fundamental Law of Magic.

The roiling grey clouds above churned like a maelstrom, the driving rain tossed about by the gale-force winds. The dark forest that spread into the distance crackled and heaved against the onslaught, shifting and moving as if it were a turbulent sea.

On the sodden hillside, there stood a man.

He stood quite still, unaffected even, his coat flapping uncontrollably and doing little to stop the downpour. Droplets ran in an endless steam down his face, falling off of the frames of his round glasses only to be whisked away by the storm's howling gusts.

To the layman, it seemed that his left hand tightly gripped a simple stick of wood, but to those of the magical world – witches, wizards and all sorts of magical creatures – they knew it to be a magic wand, the essential tool for any witch or wizard, capable of both wondrous creation and appalling destruction alike.

Where his left arm hung at his side, his hand clenched around the wand as if it would disappear should he not hold it tight enough, his right sleeve flapped uselessly in the wind, the jacket appearing oddly lopsided without a second arm to fill it.

A sudden flash of lightning shot across the sky above, plunging the hillside into a blinding spotlight and, for a moment, throwing the man's face into sudden, awful relief.

Whilst it could have been considered handsome long ago, the man's features were marred by a multitude of scars and burns. His mouth was disfigured by a single jagged scar that ran up the left side of his cheek. Angry burn marks crisscrossed upwards from his neck and onto his jaw, the skin malformed and leathery. His eyes, once a bright green, seemed almost dulled behind his glasses as they stared out, unfocused and withdrawn. Numerous scratches and cuts were dotted all over his face, some were old and faded, others were scabbed over and a few were still open, lazily dripping blood that swiftly mixed with the streams of rain, and ran down into his clothes.

Above his brow sat one last scar – it seemed small, particularly when compared to the rest, but it was perhaps the deepest and most damaging of them all. A single, thin scar, stretched into the symbol of a lightning bolt.

Harry Potter stood still on the hillside, gazing out over the Forbidden Forest and onwards to the horizon. Behind him stood the darkened ruins of what was once Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Gone were its illustrious towers, innumerable classrooms, hallways and secret passages. Gone was the large Quidditch pitch on the grounds and greenhouses that gleamed in sunlight. Gone were the ghosts, the portraits and even the suits of armour that clanked, wheezed and sometimes told jokes to passing students.

Hogwarts was dead. There was nothing left except for ruined archways, piles of rubble and broken timber. Only a few of the dungeon floors remained standing, buried deep into the bedrock. The grounds were a blasted wasteland, the grass of the once-neat lawns growing wildly, tall and filled with weeds and thorns. Even the old gamekeeper's hut was destroyed, leaving behind only its burned wooden skeleton.

Harry simply stood, and before he knew it, those thoughts that whispered to him in his endless nightmares began to creep forth from where he'd held them. Before he could stop himself, he was considering all that happened, and all that was left, the events of his life and future laid bare before his eyes.

What do I do?

The one question that Harry could never answer for himself when he needed to.

How did it all go so wrong?

After Voldemort regained physical form in Harry's fourth year, things had rapidly turned from bad to worse. Whereas in the last war Voldemort had been dangerous, but somewhat careless and too quick to anger, he returned to the land of the living with a renewed sense of purpose, coupled with a well of patience and deliberation.

The Ministry of Magic's refusal to acknowledge Voldemort's return aided his efforts immeasurably, and he began moving with precision against both the Ministry and Albus Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix. Death Eaters used intermediaries and mercenaries from abroad to spread fear and disorder in both the muggle and magical worlds. Influential members such as Lucius Malfoy used their connections to thoroughly infiltrate agents into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Auror Office and other senior ministerial departments. Voldemort operated firmly in the shadows and with great care, establishing networks and meetings with the magical beasts that made his nominal allies, as well as drawing in powerful support from magicals on the continent. At the same time, Dumbledore was hamstrung by the Ministry at every move he made, and the Order of the Phoenix could not hope to grow at the same rate as Voldemort's ranks.

It was only in Harry's fifth year that Voldemort personally infiltrated the Ministry at Christmas and retrieved the full contents of the Prophecy – killing Arthur Weasley, who was on guard that night. Careful to act on his new information, Voldemort poured his resources into investigating the 'Power the Dark Lord knows not' and how he could have 'marked' Harry as his equal. Before, the war had sat somewhat uneasily in the background of Harry's mind, his preoccupation with schoolwork and day-to-day goings on keeping him focused on the present. That all changed after the death of kind, bumbling Mr. Weasley. After Cedric, he was the first true casualty of the Second Wizarding War, and his loss was one of the most profound.

Immediately, Harry's life had been turned upside-down. Ron, on whose friendship and support Harry had thrived, became deeply withdrawn and threw himself into training – both magical and physical – in a drive to avenge his father. Fred and George, the habitual jokers, stopped laughing and pranking the other students, their plans for a joke shop forgotten. Ginny became volatile and unbalanced, passionate and strong in one instance and then frail and despondent the next. Even poor Molly, who had acted the role of a parent for Harry since his first year, became lost and distraught at her husband's death. Harry could only watch as yet another family was torn apart by Voldemort. His family.

The war was now on his doorstep, in the very halls of Hogwarts itself. Harry often wondered after the events of that Christmas how he could ever have been concerned with trivial things like not getting a 'T' on his potions assignments or if he could get Cho Chang to go on a date. When his friend's dad was murdered in cold blood, Harry had done nothing to stop it. If he hadn't fallen into the trap during the Triwizard Tournament, none of these awful things would have happened. The thought ate at him until one evening he found himself in Professor Dumbledore's office, sobbing and broken under the weight of his mistakes.

Harry cried into his hands, his shoulders heaving as he wept. Across the ornate desk, Albus Dumbledore watched, his own eyes brimming with tears behind his half-moon spectacles.

"…it's all my fault!" Harry choked through his sobs, "if I had been faster, if I'd not let Wormtail escape two years ago, Cedric would still be alive! Mr. Weasley would still be alive! If I'd been ready, I'd-"

"No, Harry!" Dumbledore cried, the desperation in his tone startling him. "Oh, my dear boy, you mustn't blame yourself! Your love for your friends and family is your most powerful strength. Do not let your love for them be buried in guilt!

"Please, listen to me carefully Harry. The pain of our perspective is to think of what could have been. We have seen true evil with our own eyes and have both faced it down. We have both felt the pain and destruction it can bring to our lives and those around us, but for the sake of the future we must continue on.

"I know his death pains you greatly, Harry, but Arthur Weasley was not killed because of you. He was killed because Voldemort wanted to – not to hurt you, but simply because he stood between him and the Prophecy. You know now of the weight fate has placed on you, and believe me, I understand that you want no one else to be hurt by this conflict, and I sorely wish that you would have been spared… all of this. But you must not treat their lives as your responsibility!

"Do you remember in your first year, you encountered the Mirror of Erised?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

Harry sat up a little, sniffling as he replied. "Yes sir, but what does that have to do with-"

Dumbledore held up his hand. "Please, allow me to explain. You saw in the mirror, as any who look upon it, your heart's desire made manifest. You drank it in, feeling it fill a void in your heart you never knew could grow so large. But each time you left, you came back, hungry to see your family once more.

"Right now you probably want nothing more than a second chance, an opportunity to change what happened to poor Arthur, to Cedric, to your parents or to anyone else whose lives Voldemort has destroyed. But if you remember what I said to you all those years ago, you know that you cannot punish yourself with these thoughts. It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live."

Harry paused, considering the Headmaster's words. Dumbledore took this as an opportunity to continue.

"War and violence end lives, Harry, on a scale that it is awful to comprehend. The burden of being a leader is knowing that people you know will die in your strategies. People with families, friends and a future are taken away without fairness or mercy. But these same people will stand by a cause because they believe in it, not because you ordered them to be there. As long as I lead the Order of the Phoenix, their actions are not your burden to bear, Harry, and although their loss is a wrong that may not ever be right again, you honour their memory and their sacrifice by continuing their fight."

Harry didn't notice when he had stopped crying, or when Dumbledore had started. Streams of tears ran gently down the old man's face, fading into his long beard as he suddenly smiled gently at the teenager in front of him, his blue eyes boring into Harry's green ones. When he spoke, his voice regained some strength, conviction and kindness feeding into his words in equal measure.

"Remember, my boy, you are a good person. You will always have that which Voldemort does not. Love. You can do yourself no better turn than to live, laugh and love in the face of his evil. For when there is no love left in this world, evil will have won, regardless of the face it wears."

Dumbledore looked away for a moment, collecting himself. "Now, I'm afraid I will have to bid you goodnight for tonight, Harry. Do be careful on your way back to Gryffindor Tower, and please know that you can call on me anytime, to talk about anything at all that's on your mind. Your welfare is very important to me, Harry, and I will not fail you."

Harry remembered how he had felt after that meeting, about how Dumbledore's words did little to fix the hole left by Arthur's death. But at the same time, Harry's perspective began to change, and with more than a few conversations with Hermione Granger and his godfather Sirius Black, he started feeling just a little bit better at each passing day. He and Hermione – the latter ever eager to learn new magic – joined Ron in studying and training, who was actually very grateful for the company, and hadn't realised how much he'd missed his two friends. Slowly, the three moved forward, Harry and Ron's friendship running deeper than ever, even though neither was the same as before.

The memory of his best friends' faces, laughing in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room at some joke he'd long since forgotten, pulled him out of his reminiscing.

Not now, he thought, closing himself off from the memories and returning to the present. Suddenly realising how cold and wet he was, he cast a quick Impervius Charm to stop the rain soaking him further, and then a few simple warming and drying charms to sort out his current state. Turning away from the forest, he began to walk up the hill towards the remains of the castle, and more specifically, to his makeshift home in one of the dungeons.

His right shoulder twinged with pain, as it often did when it was cold, as Harry trudged through the ruined stonework of the castle to a small, well-hidden staircase that led to his part of the dungeons. Descending the stairs, torch sconces flared to life in the subterranean corridor ahead, as if they sensed the presence of the castle's lone resident.

At the end of the corridor there sat a solitary door. Harry waved his wand and the door opened slowly, the hinges creaking, the door swinging wide to reveal a collection of rooms. The rooms, which had once been one of Hogwarts' potions classrooms and its store cupboards, had since been roughly converted by Harry into a small living space. Where there had once been a teacher's desk there instead sat a single, worn couch with a ratty sleeping bag draped across it. The centre of the room was mostly clear of classroom furniture, all except for a single desk on which sat Harry's meagre potion-making kit. The rear wall, whose shelves had housed glass specimen jars and boxes of ingredients now sat generally bare, save for a small number of books and potion vials.

Sitting down wearily on the sofa, Harry glanced at small table in front of him, on which were a few trinkets – the last remnants of his possessions. A damaged Sneakoscope lay on the table next to Harry's two-way mirror, silent and unmoving. A frayed Gryffindor Quidditch scarf, the red and gold long since faded into brown and pale yellow, sat in a small bundle. In the centre of the table, there sat one other item. A simple, unmarked book. Harry's prized possession, his photo album. With reverence he gently picked it up, and opened the worn cover to gaze at its contents again.

Given to him at the end of his first year by Hagrid, the half-giant gamekeeper of Hogwarts, it had originally held a number of photographs of Harry's parents, James and Lily Potter. Others, like Sirius and the rest of the Marauders also appeared, but Harry's parents were always the centrepiece. Now, though, it held far more. The empty pages that were left for Harry to fill with new photographs were practically overflowing with them, the moving pictures made into small collages and overlapping one another. On each one, by themselves or in groups, there featured the same people: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred & George, Arthur and Molly, Sirius, Remus, Hagrid and even Dumbledore smiled up at Harry with kindness and laughter on their faces. He gazed fondly down at them, once again feeling the tug of longing left by their absence.

They are all gone, and I'm still here. I have to carry on. Their lives were for nothing if I can't finish this.

Harry carefully closed the book, making sure not to fold the corners of the pages or leave any loose photos poking out, and laid it back down onto the table. Twisting and falling back along the couch, Harry drifted into a troubled sleep.