✔️ 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐆𝐎 → ℎ. 𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑤𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦

00 | B E G I N N I N G S

help me, it's like the walls are
caving in. sometimes I feel like
giving up, but I just can't;
it isn't in my blood.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

A BABY CRIED out into the night. Of course it wasn't Ember Potter, as I promised you a cliché free story. It was the annoying neighbours brat, giving a concert to the whole neighbourhood of Little Whinging every night about two a.m. in the damn morning, and Ember Potter groaned, pulling the blanket over her head to muffle the infant's disturbing sound.

"Can they for just once close their goddamn child's window at night?", Ember growled, getting out of bed to close her own window.

Turning around, her gaze fell on Harry, her brother, who was still sound asleep. Ember was near jealousy for his tight sleep. She herself awoke easily on the smallest of noise. And this crying infant was like a bomb dropping next to her bed.

She was about to head back over to her bed, still the screams of that baby in her ears, when her eyes once more swayed to her brother. He was breathing heavy, and the pale moon light shining through the window reflected the sweat covering his face. And now Ember was wide awake, all signs of tiredness shoved aside. She took the one step that separated her bed from Harry's, harshly grabbing his shoulders.

"Harry!", she hissed, not wanting to wake her aunt and uncle or her cousin, who were sleeping down the corridor, Uncle Vernon's snores mixing with Dudley's to a monotone thunder in the small house. "Harry, wake up!"

Harry started throwing his head from right to left, his body trembling.

"Harry!" She slapped him straight across the face and his eyes flung open, as he gasped for air, jerking up into a sitting position. "Are you okay?"

All the color head left Harry's sweaty face, as he stared back into his sister's eyes.

"Nightmare", he pressed out. "Why are you awake?"

"The freaking neighbour's brat", Ember snorted, sinking down on Harry's bed. "Sure you're alright? You look startled."

"I -", he hesitated, drawing his eyes at the window, before they swayed back on Ember. "It was a weird dream. Like ... like I was actually there."

"Fire away", Ember said patiently.

"There was Voldemort. But he wasn't alone, someone was with him ... A man. And Wormtail. And he was holding a wand. Voldemort I mean ..."

"Okay, calm down, Harry. He's no body", Ember said, wrinkling her forehead.

"I know", Harry replied, rubbing his scar, and under Ember's asking gaze he added: "It hurts."

In that moment Ember was highly alarmed. Harry's scar used to hurt only when Voldemort was around. She glared out of the window, half expecting to see a pale figure standing there gazing back. Of course there was nothing.

Harry's eyes wore fear as they again locked with Ember's. And she couldn't blame him. Last time his scar hurt, Voldemort was up to regain his power by stealing the Philosopher's Stone. Harry almost died while trying to hind him.

How amazing it would be for Ember to help her brother, to have to say something to calm him down. Gratefully she would have taken anything coming to her mind that she could tell him everything is fine. But unfortunately in Harry's life, and so in her own, fine things came kinda rare. Being orphans since that dreadful night on Halloween thirteen years ago, the only good thing ever happening to the twins was their Hogwarts letters; their ticket to leave the unpleasant home the Dursley's had given to them ever since Lily and James Potter has given their lives to safe their children.

Vernon and Petunia might opened their home to Harry and Ember, but so often Ember had wondered why they even did, because they were all but happy to have the two kids around. The twins felt it from the very start, having to sleep in an old cupboard under the stairs, until they grew to large to both fit in. That was when Ember moved in the basement, while Harry stayed in the cupboard. Not until they turned eleven they got a proper room. But when the spam of owls back then drove Uncle Vernon nuts, Harry and Ember moved into Dudley's second room, leaving a angry uncle Vernon's hope the owls might won't find them in their disappointed.

Ember thought about everything with a bitter feeling, wondering how nice it would be to have parents to run to in moments like these. The Dursleys couldn't care less, freaking out about everything containing magic at all. Ember remembered perfectly the day when she was six years old and Dudley and his friends were after her, so little Ember disappeared into nothingness, just to suddenly reappear in the middle of the Dursleys' kitchen while Petunia's nosy friends were around. Her meals from this point on was a disgusting onion soup two weeks straight. Ember hated onions.

What would be nice now was someone to rely on; an adult. A caring aunt, a loving uncle. Anything. And it hit her like a lightning bolt. Sirius! Sirius Black, the man from heaven sent - well, from prison escaped if you want so. Harry's godfather. Exactly what her brother needed now.

"Better write Sirius ...", she excitedly said. "He might knows something about ... well, scar pain or stuff like that."

Harry's face lightened up. Obviously he himself hadn't Sirius on his mind either. But who could blame them? It was not even two full months ago that they found out he even existed. Unfortunately Sirius was on the run, hiding from the Ministry until his innocence could be proven, what was a bit difficult, as the real traitor of Lily and James Potter was hiding somewhere as a filthy rat. But when Harry's dream wasn't just a dream ... That would have to mean that Wormtail found his master.

Ember shook her head to get rid of that frightening thought. She gazed at the watch. It was quarter past two. In a couple of hours Harry and her would head of to the Burrow. She didn't want to think about the consequences of that dream, or whatever it was, right now. All Ember now wanted was to leave Privet Drive for another year and have a wonderful, carefree time at the Quidditch World Cup with her favourite red headed family.

But watching Harry now bowed over a piece of parchment, she had the feeling that carefree was a long way gone.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·