Prologue

A crack, like a gunshot, rang through the night as a dark figure appeared on the pavement that ran between two rows of tract houses. A few doves startled from their perch in a tree at the sound and flew off with a whirring of wings, but otherwise no creature stirred at its appearance. Had any prying eyes turned towards the sound they would have seen nothing but a shadow, for the night was dark and the streetlights granted no substantial glow to light any features it might possess on a face obscured by the heavy cloak it wore.

It moved not a foot from where it had landed, simply standing and observing. The air shimmered around it. A long pale finger reached from inside deep sleeves and touched the disturbance, the contact sending ripples of violent energy surging every which way with enough power to set a nearby cat's hair on end and send the animal scampering away with a pained yowl. The finger was drawn back into the sleeve, smoking faintly.

For a moment the figure seemed to consider its injury, but moments later it moved again to draw a long, pale stick from its sleeve.

"Peremptorius." The words were whispered, no more than a gust of air from concealed lips, but they bore with them a powerful intent. With a whooshing growl, flames in the shape of beasts shot forth from the tip of a bone white wand and went where the figure itself could not. They surged across the lawn of the one of the two story homes in a torrent, and in seconds, they had reached its walls as a mass of twisting and writhing creatures; morphing from the gaping maws of dragons to the growling and spitting heads of chimeras. Around the chimney, a monstrous snake twined once before it descended into the interior with not a brick left in its wake.

The light the malicious flames produced cast eerie shadows on their cloaked summoner, illuminating the bone white mask it wore when the moon and streetlamps could not. Had there been anyone to view the figure on the street below, they would have been presented with the gruesome visage of a skeleton grinning up from below the cowl of the dark hood; where its eyes should be, shadows dwelled instead.

Content that it had completed its business, the arsonist flicked its wrist, sending one final flame in the shape of a massive serpent free, and turned on its heel. With another crack it vanished from the night, but not before it sent a grinning skull and snake to shimmer in the sky above Number Four Privet Drive to mark its task complete.

Inside the house, only a few hours before his fifteenth birthday, Harry Potter lay awake in the smallest bedroom of Number Four, Privet drive. In sleep, he had been haunted by Cedric's dead eyes glaring at him accusingly, and now, awake, felt stifled by the late July heat wave that had lain over Surrey for the past week and a half. On his desk lay a stack of letters, unsent, addressed to his friends and an empty owl cage.

A sudden pain shot from Harry's scar and down his spine, stinging his nerve endings. With a muffled groan he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to sooth the stabbing pain that throbbed behind his eyes with every beat of his heart. Harry writhed, his muscles spasming with sharp contractions and his ears rang as a deafening roar sounded just outside his window, shattering the glass. Fragments pelted down all around him, each one that pierced his skin was a distinct sting even over the pain he already was suffering from.

He was vaguely aware of screams of pain resonating from down the hall, drawing forth memories of a flash of green and his mother's voice.

Voldemort's here, he thought dimly as the pain in his skull subsided a bit and he was able to regain some of his thought power. Dumbledore said he couldn't reach me here, but he's here.

Harry dragged himself from where he lay on the bed and tumbled onto the floor, landing prostrate just as the door, aflame, was blown off of its hinges, all seven padlocks having melted.

There was not time for other coherent thought before a serpent of flame descended upon the boy on the floor. The last sensation he felt consciously was a strange peace as the stinging pain he felt throughout his body was numbed. Where once his veins had been flooded with pain now a sense of warmth filled them, growing hotter and hotter until, with a flash of brilliant white light, the flames consumed him.

The Boy Who Lived, lived no more.

Is Harry dead? Perhaps. He certainly is to the wizarding world of Britain, if you catch my gist.

Peremptorius means destructive fire. I thought it fitting for Fiendfyre's incantation because it's one word and rolls nicely off of the tongue

Thank you for reading! I hope this prologue didn't scare you away- it's rather violent for my taste but I felt it was necessary to set the story on the track I want it to take. All of my other stories are on the back burner for now, but this one should be updated rather frequently because I'm taking a creative writing course starting in a few weeks and I personally do most of my writing for fanfictions when I am procrastinating on some other essay or another.

Cheers!