Prologue
Prologue
It was dark when Sirius found the twins.
He had raced to Godric’s Hollow the moment he heard the news. Dead. His best friends—dead. Cold. Pale. Unmoving.
His chest clenched. He swore, right then and there, that he would kill Albus Dumbledore. Tear him down with his bare hands if he had to. Albus. Even the name made him gag.
Then—movement. His eyes dropped to the cribs. Two infants. Tiny, quiet, untouched by the destruction around them.
The twins.
Footsteps echoed behind him. There wasn’t time. Sirius lunged forward, scooping the child closest to him—he didn’t stop to look, didn’t even breathe.
And then he ran.
He didn’t stop until he reached the towering, iron-wrought gates of the Gaunt mansion.
“Tom!” he shouted, pounding through the doors.
Tom Riddle appeared at the top of the stairs, pale and still as moonlight.
“They’re dead,” Sirius rasped, voice cracking. “I have one of their children. Harry, I think—”
A choked sob tore through him.
Tom didn’t move at first.
His expression remained unreadable, but something flickered behind his eyes—something sharp, ancient, and unexpectedly soft. He descended the stairs with the grace of a predator, silent and sure, until he stood before Sirius.
The infant in Sirius’s arms let out a soft whimper.
Tom’s gaze dropped to the child. He tilted his head. “Harry Potter.”
There was a note of curiosity in his voice, but not surprise.
Sirius held the baby tighter, as if he could shield him from everything—the war, the prophecy, the blood-soaked legacy that clung to their names.
“I couldn’t save them,” Sirius whispered, voice cracking under the weight of guilt. “James. Lily. I wasn’t fast enough.”
Tom reached out and, with surprising gentleness, brushed a dark curl from the baby's forehead. The lightning bolt scar was already beginning to scab.
“You did save someone,” Tom said quietly.
Sirius blinked at him, stunned.
Tom’s crimson eyes—no longer red, not truly—softened. “And that matters more than you think.”
For a moment, the world stood still.
Then the baby—Harry, though that name would soon be buried—opened his eyes.
Emerald green.
Tom inhaled sharply, then turned on his heel.
“Come,” he said. “The world believes this child is dead. Let us keep it that way.”
Sirius followed Tom down the grand corridor of the Gaunt mansion, every step echoing like a drumbeat in his chest. The baby had quieted, nestled against him, impossibly small.
Tom led him to a sitting room unlike any Sirius had expected—warm, with flickering green fire in the hearth and velvet drapes that muted the storm outside. A place that looked nothing like the man who ruled it.
Tom waved his hand, summoning a crib from nothing. The magic crackled around them, ancient and deep.
Sirius hesitated, then laid the child down. For the first time since Godric’s Hollow, he exhaled.
“He’ll be safe here?” Sirius asked, voice low.
Tom turned to him. “I do not lie to children, Sirius. Nor about them.”
There was something final in his tone—something sacred.
Sirius nodded, rubbing his face with both hands. “The world knows him as Harry Potter. But he can’t keep that name.”
“No,” Tom agreed. “He’ll be hunted for it. Trapped by it.”
They stood in silence for a long moment, watching the sleeping infant.
“Hadrian,” Sirius said finally. “Hadrian Arcturus Potter-Black.”
Tom’s mouth curled in the faintest smile. “A name with teeth.”
Sirius huffed a quiet laugh. “He’ll need them.”
Just then, a chill crept through the room. As if the world beyond the manor remembered something Sirius had tried to forget.
“There was another,” he whispered. “The other twin. Onyx.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
“I left him behind.” Sirius’s voice cracked again. “I didn’t have time. I didn’t even think. Merlin, I—”
Tom placed a hand on his shoulder, firm and grounding.
“The world will raise Onyx,” Tom said. “Let us raise Hadrian.”
Sirius looked down at the baby in the crib—the child he saved, the child no one would ever find again.
The boy who would never be the Boy Who Lived.
Just Hadrian.
Hadrian Potter-Black.
And somewhere, far away, under a different sky, his twin opened his eyes to a world that would never tell him the truth.
Not yet.