Volucres Os

Prologue

A/N: I saw this in my binder of fanfic ideas and I couldn't resist starting it because I'm an idiot. My writing is terrible, I have no idea how to write fiction. Anyway, I don't own Harry Potter, because J K the terf owns it. I do however own my own original characters who make appearances in this fic, like Kuviste, for example. Oh, and the s in Kuviste is pronounced like an sh.

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The night the five year old called Freak ran away from Number Four Privet Drive was dark, still, and quiet. The deep black-blue velvet of the sky was almost entirely covered in dark grey clouds. The child was scrawny, wearing clothes too big for his small frame, wild dark hair, and round glasses. The eyes behind the glasses seemed made from pine needles, a green so dark they were almost black in the dim light of the night.

The child ran, ran, ran, turning random corners, trailing a small bag like a strange ribbon. He would not – could not – stop, nor did he want to. He would run forever, he was consumed by his own light steps like falling rocks on the pavement, all pain, fear, and feeling washed away as if by the cold rain that would come tumbling down from the clouds any moment now.

Hours, minutes, days of running and the small child collapsed, exhausted, as the bone-pale haze of dawn crept into the corners of the sky. The rain fell, softly at first, and then faster, faster, soaking the child to the bone in minutes. He  welcomed it. Rain was an old friend.

The night that had been dark and still changed to dark and stormy in a matter of minutes, cold, strong wind joining the rain and pushing, playing, driving the water forwards. The small boy stood slowly. This child thrived in storms, they invigorated him, elated him even. Filled with a dark, cold, wild excitement, the child pushed on.

He walked, walked, walked until he found himself surrounded by tall, dark, hazy trees, pine and oak and ash. He paused, looking about him, smelling, tasting the air full of needles and rain. The air itself, a haze of blue, purple, green, and so much darkness, was filled with the whispering roaring sounds of the strong wind in the trees.

He loved it.

The child walked on, stepping and then leaping over the fallen branches as he picked up his pace and started running, an urge to howl and yet to keep silent welling up in his chest. He felt as if he was already howling.

He stopped. There was something different in the air now, and a shadow beneath a tree that looked too deep, too dark, almost like a void. The child was curious now. He stepped quietly forward, towards the shadow, and touched it with his small, pale hand...

He blinked in mild confusion as his fingers entered the shadow, deep and cool like a pool of water. His hand slid through the darkness, continuing past the point where he expected the ground to be. With a birdlike tilt of his head, the child let himself drop into the pool of darkness.

The shadow was exhilaratingly cold and hazy, like water but not quite. He drifted through it, falling, falling, until he felt a change around him, as if he was in the air again.

He landed.

Tall trees, mostly pine and a few spruce, dark as the child's eyes, and lost in low hanging mist. The snow covered the rocks, dirt, needles, anything it could get it's hands on. The air was thick with eerie quiet. No birds, no squirrels, nothing. This was a forest, and a different one.

The child picked himself up from the ground and walked in the direction he happened to be facing, barely leaving an imprint in the snow behind him.

Stepping through fog and snow, he ascended the gradual hill. The hill became a steep mountainlike thing, mostly invisible, hidden behind a hazy white curtain of vapour. The child climbed the cliffs into the haze of pearly fog, up and up and up –