you raise me up || harry potter (revamped)

A Fairy Tale Prologue

Snape would never admit that he had been counting the years until Harini Potter would finally come to Hogwarts, but it was July 31st and Snape stared bitterly at the calendar. She would be turning eleven.

He sat down heavily in his sofa and reached for his cup of tea. He hadn't seen any trace of the girl in eleven years. He had no idea what she looked like, save for, of course, the scar. That wretched scar. Did she have her mother's eyes? Or James Potter's?

As the burning hot liquid scorched his throat, Snape wondered if she had her mother's fiery hair as well, or her inherent compassion.

He doubted it.

♢ ♢ ♢

Only a few miles away in a dingy miserable hotel was the child, grabbing at letters written in ink the same color as her eyes, hope never dimming because she had never felt it before and never wanted to let it go. She spent her days weeding and washing dishes and cooking and washing the windows outside.

But now she had something to live for.

Choppy dark hair and emerald green eyes waited in the dark, barely feeling the chill of the draft or the pressing darkness, an isolated island within herself.

When a giant of a man squeezed himself into the hut and said warmly, "An' here's Harini!" the child raised a pair of solemn green eyes and said, "Don't you mean Harry?" For she had been told all her life that her name was Harriet, and all her life she had written Harry at the tops of assignments and birthday cakes drawn in the sand. She wasn't sure what to make of this strange name, with the name lengthened and vowels shortened and unfamiliar on her tongue, because Harry was what she took comfort in. Harry was her name.

But her young ears listened anyway, to a fantastical tale of magical slain heroes and evil wizards, of a wondrous new world.

Somewhere deep within in the dungeons of the isolated island, Harry wondered if magical slain heroes might have loved a freak like her.

⊱ ─── A Fairy Tale Narration For Your Perusal ─── ⊰
⊱ ─── As We Set The Stage ─── ⊰

Once upon a time, there was a boy and his mother. His father was a well-meaning man but could be quite unkind, and often left the two alone. This they found quite agreeable for the boy and his mother loved each other very much, though love is fickle and can take many forms. Sometimes love does not look like love at all when it turns bitter and cold. But that is another story.

The boy was bright and somber, quick and quiet, dark eyes and hair the color of coal. He was born in the dead of winter and some of the frost must have nipped him in the nose and the eyes and the soul, for he tended to have a frosty stare and glacial disposition. This was not to say that he did not love, or could not be loved, for he did love, and he was loved, though that love would one day turn bitter and cold and would not look like love at all.

"Tell me a story, Mother," the boy said to his mother as he nestled himself into his threadbare bed (for his family was very poor, and they had no money for warm duvets).

"It's late, darling. Perhaps another time." The mother, though strong in the brow and soft in the voice, was not beautiful. There are only good beautiful women who live happily ever after and beautiful wicked witches who are always punished in magical fairy tales.

The mother was not wicked (though she was a witch), but she did not live happily ever after. Because real life, though a fairy tale itself in many ways, is unfair.

But that is another story.

"Please?"

So the mother piled into bed with her son.