What Carina Saw

What Carina Saw: Year One

Chapter One

I remember my parents telling me a story. It is crucial that you know this story before I tell you my own. It took place several years ago, when I was only about a year old.

There used to be this dark lord. He had turned viciously evil, killing people off one by one. Sometimes he would execute whole groups of people at once. The sick part was that he thought it was all great fun. This dark lord did not all of a sudden go *poof* and start killing people. No, it started way back when he was just a boy.

His mother had a secret, and his father left her for it. Then, tragically, his mother died and he was sent to live in an orphanage. Eventually when he was about eleven years old he started going to a boarding school. This boy dreaded the summer holidays, for that was when he was sent back to the orphanage. He pleaded withe the current headmaster to let him stay at the school, but is was never arranged.

He began to be a little resentful and started turning towards dark things. His friends did little but egg him on.

Around his fifth or sixth year at the school, he discovered a secret. A secret chamber that one of the old school founders had built. Inside it contained a horrid creature. The boy became, if you would, 'friends' with the creature. He had some sort of power to set the creature on people and attack them. It was not your ordinary attack though. The people who were attacked simply froze. Nothing else. Except one girl who died from an attack. To this day, nobody is entirely sure why she was attacked, and what the monster was that attacked her. The attacks stopped with the girl's death.

The boy who sent that monster on his enemies did far more terrible things. He eventually left the school and set out to make his own life. Slowly, but surely, he began to gather people he could trust and called them his followers. He converted them to terrible dark things.

You have to admit that this was not simply a little boy anymore. So he took on the title of a dark lord. It was a day and age where people had to choose a path for their life to follow. Were they going to support this man, or try their hardest to stop him? Many people took into account of how powerful this man was becoming. Some were a bit greedy and wanted a bit of power themselves. However, there were still the few who could see through the evil of it all, and chose good over bad. Those few did everything in their power to stop the dark lord and his followers. They were quite unsuccessful.

The dark lord became very powerful. It began to be so that anyone he decided to kill would surely die. And they would. It was like this for several years. Nobody survived his deadly curse. Not one.

The dark lord's name is Lord Voldemort.

***

Not one, that is, until a boy, a certain boy came along. Voldemort had picked out what was to be his last target of the time. This little boy's parents were against Voldemort. They had been for a very long time. Voldemort, naturally, wanted all of his enemies out of the way. So it was only a matter of time when he and his followers reached this small family.

He began with the father. The father put up a courageous fight, defending his family. But in the end he too, failed. One deadly curse and a lot of green light, and he was dead.

Next came the mother. Actually, it was really the small boy's turn, only a year old at the time. That was the real target. After killing the small child's father, Voldemort rounded on the boy. They say his mother needn't have died, but she did. She died trying to save her only child. She did not succeed.

For a second time, Voldemort rounded on the boy. He raised his wand, muttered that deadly curse and, as always, there was the green flashing light. Then it stopped.

The boy lay in his bed crying softly. He must have had a terrible headache. No, he was not dead. The house was in ruins, his parents dead. Many before them dead, also. But this boy, no. He was alive and healthy, besides that headache. All he was left with was a thin scar. Oddly shaped like a lightning bolt. It was just above his right eyebrow on his forehead. This boy did not stay there. No, he was taken away to live with his aunt and uncle and a cousin, who was about his age.

This boy has become very famous. It is not exactly known why. Somehow, when that dark lord killed so many people and everyone lived in fear for eleven long years, the dark lord did not manage to kill such a little boy. Instead he disappeared. Some say he died. Codswalloped, in my opinion. That little boy who survived that deadly curse is famous for diminishing that dark lord.

That boy's name, is Harry Potter. The boy who lived.

***

That is the end of my parent's story. Now I will tell you how my parents came about half of that knowledge, and my own story. I leave for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry tomorrow at eleven o'clock in the morning. I will be starting school with Harry Potter, at the very same school where Voldemort went. Wish me luck.