Is This Love?

Prologue

The rain dropped with such a force, it made a loud thunk on the roof of the small house at number 4 privet drive. The obsidian sky brightened every so often as lightning bolts danced on their black canvas. The light show was shortly followed by the sky's heartbeat which crackled directly overhead.

Harry was drenched seconds after being kicked out of his aunt and uncle's home. He wandered the streets of London unsure of where to go. He had very little time before being dragged down the stairs and forced out the front door but he did have enough time to open the window for Hedwig to fly out. He had no idea where she was. He had nothing. None of his clothes or books or any other belongings. Nor did he believe he would ever see them again. Vernon had said he would have to live without his stuff. 

"And besides!" Vernon had complained, "We have raised you so everything you own is really ours!"

Of course that wasn't true. Most of what he owned now he had bought with his own money. Wizard money that his parents had left him. But everything he owned still belonged to him. He knew however, that now he could never go back. Who knew what they would do to him if he returned to gather his things. Maybe Dumbledore would go with him, or maybe Hagrid. 

Harry closed his eyes. He remembered the night he had first met Hagrid. It had been raining then too. Hagrid had saved him from the Dursleys and told him all about his parents. Their real lives not the one that his Aunt had always told him. 

Harry, who was now on some unknown street in Muggle London, needed to get out of the rain soon or he would catch pneumonia. He turned on the corner of the street and looked up at the street sign. He read the street name hoping it would mean something, hoping he wasn't completely lost. 

The sign read Spinner's End  he knew that from somewhere but he couldn't quite place it.He read it over and over until he figured it out. Then he remembered. It had been on the back of a photo belonging to his mother.

An address on Spinner's end in muggle London. The photo was of his mother, aunt, and a little boy his mother's age. The boy and his mother were in Hogwarts uniforms and his aunt looked...well sad, but Lily and the boy with the raven hair were smiling. There was something strange about the boy but Harry didn't know what it was. Something familiar about him but also very strange that he couldn't quite put his finger on. 

 He had found the picture with a box of other photos in his Gringotts vault. He had kept the picture with him in his pocket. When Harry returned to Hogwarts that fall he had asked Professor McGonagall if she knew who the boy had been. 

McGonagall smiled the second she has seen the image. Her smile quickly faded and she shed a tear. She did tell Harry who the boy was however and he was shocked when the head of Gryffindor house had told Harry it was the dungeon bat potions professor, Severus Snape.