Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series; it is the prosperity of the J. K. Rowling, the publishers Bloomsbury Publishing, and Arthur A. Levine Books. All that I own are the original characters introduced and the plot of this fanfic story that you are about to read.
Prologue :
Through the Phoenix's Gate
"Mischief night, Mischief night," the rowdy and drunken chant rose up into the dark and stormy October night from the bright red sports car. It sped through the dark and rain slicked streets of the medium sized town of Devon, Britain. The noise emitting from the passenger side window extended a short distance before being than swallowed up in the howl of the fierce wind. Rain poured in sheets from overhead as the car fishtailed from one street to another. The yellow light from the headlamps shimmered through the heavy sheets of rain. Torrents poured down upon the roofs of both houses and shops that lined the streets in the small town of Godric's Hollow. The car sped along one of the oldest streets in town, the passenger side window slid down slowly. A large, black, and long cylinder protruded out of the window as the car passed a church adjacent to a cemetery on the left hand side.
With a boom that echoed like the rumbles of thunder, a rocket lunched itself out of the cylinder and zoomed through the wild and howling winds of the storm. The rocket swiftly sailed a good ten feet over the eight-foot high, wrought iron fence of the cemetery. It then exploded with colorful sparks that lit up the dark sky in the center of the cemetery briefly before than being wiped away by the howling wind. The blaze from the rocket's fireworks amused the passengers. They began to laugh loudly as the car continued rapidly cruising down the rain-slicked street in front of the cemetery. As the sports car reached the far end of the cemetery, the spent shell was than shoved out of the passenger side window and clattered against the tarmac before it rolled up against the corner of the cemetery's wrought iron fence.
The car then sped off about twenty yards along the street to the end, which opened up into the old village square of the town - when it had still been a village seventy-five years ago. Briefly, the yellow glow from the headlamps swept over a street sign that read 'Hollow Lane', just as the car turned onto the street heading northward out of the town of Godric's Hollow. The entrance of the lane was lined by three William styled terrace houses, that ended on either side by wrought iron enclosed properties. On the left hand, side the hedges grew wild as high behind a wrought iron fence and were only parted by the cracked and ruined driveway. The front garden consisted of high grass and weeds with a few old and rotten trees. Where a house and other structures that had stood sixty years before had vanished abruptly in one night's time and almost all the villagers didn't know how that had happened. Only a few town people from a secret portion who remained knew what had happened to the house in Godric's Hollow.
The owner, a Mr. Harry Potter was a mystery in and of himself. None of the residents either they be normal or odd had personally seen him again since the disappearance of Number seven Hollow Lane. Everyone in the town did know that he continued to own the property, but he did not put it to any use or even rebuild the house that had once stood upon the grounds of the property. On the right side beyond the fence, was a well-kept front garden, with low trimmed hedges that stretched along the length of the fence and flanked the driveway that lead up to the Renaissance Revival styled mansion. The mansion had been, owned and continued being, occupied by the wealthy Roden family for four generations. Now only the grandfather Daniel, son Simon and grandson Nigel shared the mansion currently however, in a short while, only the son and grandson would be the last of the Roden family living in the mansion. Nigel's sports car accelerated past the terraced houses and drew near to his family's mansion.
"Oy mate, Alasdair, launch another one of those rockets," barked an Irish voice from the back seat of the sports car. Nigel glanced into the review mirror briefly and looked over both the dark and red headed friends seated in the backseat, who were more piss-drunk than him or Stevie who sat in the passenger seat to his left. "No it's Stevie's turn Breandán," said a voice with a Scottish bur to it. The dark haired twenty-something hoisted a cylinder up from the floor of the backseat. He and the redhead then began to hand it forward to Stevie in the passenger seat of the sports car while Nigel spared a glance across the road and in the direction of his family's mansion.
Nigel's eyes caught sight the figure of his father lit by a bright yellow light in one of the upper story windows of the mansion. By the rigid stance of his father, Nigel was sure the hell rising caused by his friends and himself, His father would be than look down upon by Simon Roden. Suddenly, his attention was than drawn away from his father in the window of his family's home with the boom that signaled the launch of another rocket. It skirted the wrought iron fence of the abandoned Potter family property, and soared through the air before exploding into a flare of colorful fireworks in the center of the over grown lot. The display of fireworks brought chuckles and another round of rowdy and loud chants of mischief night. Nigel then pressed down on the accelerator and the car sped up faster down the street and into the stormy night.
Simon Roden watched as his son's sports car picked up speed until the car was out of sight and far from the scene of the mischief. Simon shook his head in disgust and then slowly closed the curtains of the window from which he observed the unruly behavior of his son. Now with the curtains drawn over the window of the Roden mansion, a second observer gradually appeared from within one of the wild and overgrown hedges of the Potter family's property: a ghostly, silvery white face of a woman in her late forties or early fifties. She looked down the street after the car. Her face melted back into the dark brambles and branches of the wild hedge.
Slowly the ghost floated away from the hedge and gave a sigh as she tilted her transparent head back to stare up at the dark clouds as the rain continued to pour and the wind howled madly. With another much louder and somber sigh the female ghost, slowly drops her head back down and turned about where she floated. Her gaze swept over ruins that stood of her family's once comfortable and beautiful summer home. At that moment, the house stood half destroyed from the great battle that had been the reason to conceal the house from the Muggle gaze from beyond the iron fence. As the ghost's eyes swept over the ivy that stretched up over the face of the house's ground floor and partly over the first floor on the right hand side.
The female ghost began gliding through the air towards her old summerhouse, still bristling slightly from the actions of the young men in the sports car. The thought that they would dare launch a rocket of fireworks at the place where her family had spent such wonderful summer days at in the distant past. The ghost proceeded to melt slowly through the front door that hung off its hinges. Flashes of images streamed through her thoughts as though they were the ghosts of her past, come to haunt her at this hour of her undead life, as it were. Slowly the ghost emerged from the front door and floated into the medium sized foyer, once had been clean and bright but now was filthy and dark from decades of neglect.
The hard wood floorboards and rugs covered in the decay of rotten leaves that had blown in through the opening on the left hand side. The ghost quickly swept her eyes over the foyer and the doors that led to rooms and closets from the foyer. The ghost's eyes then locked onto the double set doors that lead into the dining room at the rear of the house. She then floated down the center of the foyer and passed the charred remains of a staircase that lead up to the first floor. She smiled weakly at it before her eyes dropped and she floated over the rectangle hole in the floor and stairs that lead down into the house's cellar.
"I can't believe what I just saw Nigel Roden and his accomplices do." The ghost murmured aloud, while she turned at the far end of the foyer and glided through another set doors in the right side wall of the foyer. She turned and glided through a set of heavy doors and into a spacious, two story high library lit by two dozen candles. "Harry do you know what Nigel Roden and his friends have done tonight while chanting mischief night?" The ghost inquired sharply as she swept her silvery white hands and arms through the air. She stared across the room at the elderly man who sat in a high backed velvet armchair before a roaring fire in the library's fireplace. Harry lifted his gaze from the blue stone badge bordered in with a golden band that held it in a shiny silver vise that rested its base upon an elegantly engraved, cherry wood table in front of the armchair. His right hand holding securely a pair of silver tweezers in which a golden feather held securely.
Harry chuckled softly and grinned merrily as his dark green eyes stared at the ghost from behind the lens of his silvery-spindled spectacles. "You are truly something, my dear Ginny and you're a ghost and still care what the living do," Harry replied, back before he bowed his head and resumed his work upon the badge in the vise. Harry delicately eased the feather into a hole, in the golden ring that bordered the blue stone badge, engraved with a red and gold bird emblem, embedded in the center of the blue stone. The bird's fiery wings spread wide at its side and the head tilted back with an open beak as if about to sing. "Well you are truly something as well, my dear Harry, you're alive and yet you don't care what is going on around you," Ginny shot back sternly while she glided further into the library and passed the stairs that lead up to the first floor section of the library. "They are even shouting out Mischief night of all things. Everyone knows that Mischief night isn't for another five days and celebrated before Guy Fawkes Day." Harry listened while he finished his work and then reached down to pull a flask from the pocket of his black robes trimmed in crimsons at the hem and sleeves.
"First off, it is not that I don't care what is happening around me Ginny, but I have little time to care about it. I have more important things to change!" Harry responded back, than quickly took a swig from the glass that rested on the table beside the vise. Harry coughed before he rose from the high backed armchair. He looked to be an old man of a very slender build, with very white hair and a short beard. He was dressed in fine black robes trimmed with crimson at its ends and tucked into his knee high, black, leathery, dragon scaled boots. Harry responded back while he briefly glanced to the badge in the vise and then up to the ghost of his long dead wife. "Secondly, I believe Nigel Roden and his friends have spent two years in America. There they celebrate Mischief night the night before Halloween, though of course he has only come back to Britain, because his Grandfather, Daniel Roden, is dying."
"Yes I know that is the reason Nigel Roden has returned. I also know that it will be a good ridden when that old, snobbish git Daniel Roden dies. The whole lot of Roden family, have been that way for decades ever since Edmond Roden passed away," Ginny, remarked back while she turned about within the air. "Though now, I want to know why you wish to save your parents rather than kill Nisha Kaur before she can seduce and corrupt our son James. I don't understand," she said in a slightly irritated tone that was than filled with venom when she said the witch's name. Ginny then swept her ghostly gaze about the library to the books and scrolls piled up on the long tables that flanked the table Harry had been working at and to the two stairs on either side of the library that led up to a second floor balcony.
"Yes well it is doubtful that I could find her before James and her paths cross. Since the only name we know her by is a fake and no one knows truly who she was or of her true past." Harry, replied back as he moved to pick up the long slender wand that rested against one of the arms of the chair he had than been seated in. He then briefly stared at the remains of two other wands both broken at their handles before he moved to remove the badge from the vise upon the table. "Besides, even if I knew her true name Ginny, I don't wish my last act upon this world to be the act of murder."
"Murder, it is justifiable homicide if anything in our son's case!" shrieked the ghost of Ginny Weasley-Potter and she seemed to zoom through the air back to where Harry stood. "That witch turned our eldest son into a Dark Wizard who rivaled even Voldemort in his evil ways!" Ginny stared at the elderly and frail old wizard with a look of intense rage that blazed within her silvery, transparent eyes. Harry, who had been her husband for many years ago before her death, gave a soft sighed and then slowly stepped around the ghost. He then began to make his way to the double doors. He opened them and then glanced back over his shoulder as he spoke than in a very calm yet very stern and low voice. "She may have planted the seed in James my dear Ginny, but we nurtured that soil for many years."
Harry paused and sighed after his words and slipped the badge into one of the pockets of his robe before he spoke again, "After all, James continued to kill for seven more years after Nisha died in the duel with our daughter Lily. He rose to be a great Dark Wizard only a year after he she met her, Ginny." Harry paused and glanced towards the ghost of Ginny Weasley-Potter than gave the briefest of weary smiles, "It was at that moment he turned his wand on his sister and tried to kill her and you sacrificed yourself to save her. Then I knew I had failed to raise our eldest son as a good wizard, Ginny. So it is my fault since I allowed him and his siblings to get almost everything they ever wanted."
Harry gave a deep and tired sigh as he exited the library followed by the ghost of his wife. "Also, I let them get away with a great deal, simply because I wanted them to have a better childhood than I did," Harry continued as he walked slowly towards the front door on the far end of the foyer. His boot-clad feet marched over the decay of leaves that littered the floorboards. "I treated them much like the way my Aunt and Uncle treated Dudley and that was the reason you had to sacrifice yourself to save our daughter, Ginny." "Stop it Harry you're not to blame for James! It is that witch Nisha who is to blame!" Ginny shrieked again but much louder than before at Harry as she soared after him into the foyer. Harry then stopped to lean up against the wallpaper that had peeled down on the wall of the foyer just beyond the last step of the staircase that remained upright in the foyer.
"You can continue to blame it all on Nisha my dear Ginny, but she played only a small part in creating the monster James became. We raised him with our values and my indulgence in the hope to make up for my bad childhood," Harry replied as he took the blue stone badge from his robe. He then swept the wand in his other hand towards the floor. Silently a gust of violent wind cleared the rotten and decayed leaves from the floor of the foyer, which exposed a moldy old Axminster rug on the weathered floorboards. The act of the spell Harry performed caused his body to tremble terribly. He then coughed and wheezed up a bit of blood from his mouth. Harry's old, wrinkled left hand rose up to wipe the blood on his sleeve as he held tighter onto the badge in his left hand.
"Now it is my chance to rectify my mistake and wash the blood of all of James's countless victims. From your brothers Bill, Charlie, Percy, George and especially Ron who was also one of my best friends. He even went after his Aunt Hermione and her children, his cousins and killed them and their families long after Nisha died, Ginny." Ginny opened her ghostly silver lips to speak but fell silent as Harry held up his wand hand and then tossed the stone badge onto the wooden floor before the front door. The badge had barely settled on the warped and weathered wood when Harry began to chant a spell in a very ancient language. His voice echoed loudly and confidently, and the storm seemed to abate from the hidden house of number seven Hollow Lane.
Then a swish of the elder wand in his hand and two balls of fire soared out of the wand's tip to ignite the ends of the feathers within the badge's golden ring. Violent tumors shook through Harry's body while he coughed and wheezed up blood. The golden ring began to expel a bright golden light that slowly swirled into the blue stone of the badge and caused it to emit a bright blue light. As Harry recovered from his fit, the light had swirled into the red bird emblem of the badge that rested on the foyer floor. Suddenly music of the phoenix song began to fill the room while red, gold and blue fire erupted from the badge like a geyser within the foyer. The fire spread out like a curtain over the width of the foyer while it rose up from the floor to the half ceiling above.
"Who summons me from my ancient prison with the feathers of one of my children?" an ethereal voice spoke from the curtain of fire as it slowly began to take on the shape of a giant bird that was composed of fiery gold, red and blue feathers. "I, Harry James Potter, am the one who has summoned you eternal great phoenix," harry replied back firmly. He slowly stepped forward, his features composed in a stony expression upon his wrinkled face. His eyes stared up towards the golden eyes of the phoenix near the ceiling of the ruined foyer. "In order to seek your aid as you have given to others of my kind." "And what do you offer in exchange for my aid young and dying wizard?" the phoenix asked in its ethereal voice that caused a shiver to run down the spine of the ghost of Ginny Weasley-Potter. "For you can't offer me either your life which is short or your magic, which dwindles even faster from you then your life," the phoenix added before it fell silent and gazed steadily its bright and fiery eyes at Harry where he stood.
"I come offering the key to your prison oh eternal great phoenix," Harry said loudly and confidently as he strolled fearlessly towards the large fiery bird that seemed to hover in mid-air within the foyer. "That is if the legends about you are completely accurate great eternal phoenix." "Do you doubt my powers young wizard?" the phoenix's ethereal voice inquired louder than before and caused the foyer's walls to tremble more violently with each word. "No of course not, oh great eternal phoenix." Harry silkily responded as he glanced casually down to the wand in his right hand. "I ask only if the legends surrounding you are true, for my wand and I myself are considered legendary among my people oh great eternal phoenix." Harry lifted his gaze and then locked his eyes intensely with those of the phoenix again.
"I can burn down the walls of space and time and transport one of your kind a thousand years forward or backwards through time young dying wizard." the phoenix spoke in its usual ethereal voice, though with a slight sign of boredom, as if it had answered the same question many times before. "I am glad to hear that you can burn down the walls of space and time, oh great eternal phoenix, for I need to travel backwards one hundred and nineteen years back into this very spot within the ruins of this home." Harry replied as his lips turned up into a content smile as he stepped forward to than stand directly in front of the badge upon the floor of the foyer.
"Then the bargain is made you-," The phoenix's words trailed as it was interrupted by the shrieking voice of the ghost of Ginny Weasley-Potter. "Stop, Harry if you're traveling back in time, why not then go back and simply teach yourself to be a better parent to our children rather than save your own parents?" A weak and mirthless chuckle rose up from Harry as he glanced behind him at the ghost who had once been his wife. "It is simple Ginny, as the great eternal phoenix said, that my life is short," Harry murmured in a calm and even voice while he turned to face the bared wall of the foyer. "You see, the Healers say I have a week left at the best, and to travel through time will shorten that further. So you see I won't have the time to gain my younger self's trust and teach him how to be a good parent to our children."
Harry paused as he coughed and inclined his head slightly down so he stared at the floorboards of the foyer beneath his booted foot. "Besides, I don't know how to be that sort of parent, but if a younger me can be raised by his loving parents, well that will give any child of mine a better chance to not turn into a Dark Wizard. Like James did, Ginny dear," Harry said and with that he turned back to face the fiery bird who had remained silent during the exchange. "Now then let us get on with it and rewrite my history, oh great eternal phoenix." In the silence that followed Harry's announcement, the phoenix tilted its' head back while both the tail feather and wings flared out along the floor and walls of the foyer.
The phoenix song poured out of it as its beak opened wide and caused the very air to vibrate until it burst into flames and began to set fire to the walls of the foyer. Just as the phoenix's song reached such a high level, that than seemed to swallow up the rumble of the stormy night both within and outside the remains of the ruined house of number seven Hollow Lane. Abruptly the phoenix song ended while it lowered its' head and began to fold it's wings to encircle Harry Potter before they began to close in behind him and forced the elderly wizard to step towards the giant, fiery body of the phoenix within the foyer.
Just as one of Harry's booted feet touched the phoenix's tail feathers upon the floor, its' upper body lunged forward and suddenly engulfed the elderly Harry Potter in a giant man size sphere composed of its body. While the gold red and blue fiery colors started to ripple rapidly over the surface of the phoenix's body beneath the firebird's feathers. The sphere then rose up into the air and hovered in the center of the foyer while it gradually began to shrink in size around Harry Potter. The ripples increased speed with every minute that passed and sphere shrink further and caused Harry then slowly curl his long slender legs up and towards his body.
When the ripples of color began become a blinding blur there came an echo of phoenix song. Followed by a fiery explosion that ripped through the walls of the house's foyer, the fiery explosion expanded to every corner of the already unstable remains of the house and caused the high weeds and grass around the house to ignite even as rainwater poured down over the front and back gardens. As the charred remains of the house soared through the air and beyond the enclosure of the iron wrought fence, the explosion that had hurled it there began swiftly to implode upon itself in a powerful vortex of fire and smoke.