1. Chapter 1 by Kedavra
“Come on now Harry, stop crying,” James urged. He waved a stuffed Hippogriff in his son’s face. “Look here, it’s your favorite toy!” He pointed his wand at the stuffed animal, and floated it whimsically around Harry’s head.
With one angry swipe of his chubby wrist, Harry batted the toy out of the air. He let out a screeching wail, as if to say that the very idea of being bought off with a mere parlor trick was insulting to him.
James sighed. “Look here, kid. You have toys. You have food. You have a loving father who has not hesitated to tend to your every need for the past four hours. What more could a kid like you possibly need?”
“Maybe he just needs his mother,” said a voice from the doorway. “Maybe he’s gotten tired of looking at messy hair that sticks up in the back and listening to endless prattle about Quidditch.”
“Rubbish,” James said, turning around to face his wife. “NO ONE gets tired of listening to endless prattle from the mouth of James Potter. You certainly don’t.”
“Ha ha,” Lily laughed dryly. “Why don’t you go downstairs and check on dinner. I’ll see what I can do here.”
Grateful to be granted a rest from the choked little sobs coming from his son’s direction, James slipped by Lily, planting a light kiss on her cheek as he left the room. Lily strode over to Harry and leaned over him.
“Hi there you little rascal,” she said brightly. “Been giving your dad trouble, eh?”
In response, Harry gave an affirmative wail.
“How bout if Mummy plays with you a bit? Want to play with your hippogriff?”
As soon as the stuffed toy was in her hand, Harry swatted it away again.
“Guess not,” Lily muttered to herself. “Want to be picked up?” She reached her hands into the cot and extracted her son. The crying did not subside.
“How about a song?”
More crying.
“A nice walk downstairs to check on Daddy then?”
Louder crying.
“A story?”
Hiccup. Then silence.
“Really?” Lily asked, surprised. “A story?”
“’Tooory,” Harry echoed uncertainly, gazing at her curiously through tear-filled eyes.
“Ok,” she replied. She sat down and placed her son on her lap.
“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess,” she invented. The crying had completely subsided now, so Lily continued, making the story up as she went.
“The princess was a muggle princess, or so she thought. She lived happily in her castle with her mother and father and sister. One day, an owl flew through the princess’s window carrying a letter.
“The princess thought this was very strange. Owls do not usually carry letters in the muggle world, you see. When she opened the letter to read it, she found that it told her about a land beyond her home country. A land that was full of fantastic creatures, extraordinary people and magic.”
Harry was now staring at her, his watery green eyes fixed on hers, completely transfixed. Encouraged, Lily kept going.
“Now the princess did not believe in magic, but the letter was from a wise old wizard. The wizard said that she was magic as well and that he could teach her to use her magical skills. Although she was a little bit scared, the princess left her castle and journeyed to the magical land to find the wizard.
“As it turns out, the wizard had been telling the truth. The princess was magical, and so were all the students that the wizard taught. The princess’s fellow students taught her all about how people lived in the land of magic, and the wizard taught her how to use a wand to do magic herself. The princess really liked school. She had lots of friends that and most of the people were really nice.
“But there were a few people that she really didn’t like, and one of them was a big, ugly troll.”
Lily pulled her face into an ugly grimace to imitate the troll. Harry gurgled happily.
“Unfortunately for the princess, the big ugly troll was magical too, and he learned magic from the same old wizard that she did. She did not like the troll because he was very very selfish and very mean. He and his equally stupid friends liked to bully the other students in the school, and the princess did not think he was very nice.
“Unlike the princess, many of the other girls in the land really liked the big ugly troll and his best friend. The princess could not understand why, they were the meanest boys in the land. After a while, the princess was disgusted to find out that the big ugly troll liked her! Many of her friends told her that she should marry him, but she would not. He was stinky and mean.”
Harry smiled widely at this, and tugged Lily’s hair insistently, as if urging her to continue.
“One day, just when the princess thought the troll was so insufferable that she could not even stand to be in the same land as him, something strange happened. The troll did something completely un-troll-like. He risked his life to help someone else, someone who the princess knew he did not like.
“When the princess found out that the troll had risked his life to save someone who he hated, she was very confused. She had thought the troll was very selfish and mean, but saving someone else’s life was not selfish or mean at all. Maybe the big ugly troll wasn’t so bad after all, and maybe he did not deserve to be rejected every time he told the princess that he liked her.
“The more she thought about it, the more the princess came to like the troll. He was very funny, and he was always very nice and thoughtful to her. That day, the princess saw the troll sitting alone under a tree, looking very sad.
“ ‘What’s wrong?’ the princess asked.
“ ‘I’ve fallen in love with a princess,’ the troll replied. ‘And she doesn’t love me back. She thinks I’m repulsive.’
“ ‘I think you might be wrong about that last part,’ the princess said.
“And with that she kissed the troll. She knew right then that she loved the troll back. He may have been a bit mean to others, but he was young and he was learning. He may have been a little selfish, but he always thought of her before he thought of himself. When the kiss ended she pulled away and opened here eyes to stare into the face of the troll.
“But what she saw was not a troll face at all, but the face of a handsome prince. She gasped in surprise. The prince only grinned back at her and said, ‘I’m not really a troll, princess, you just convinced yourself that I was. You can only see me for what I truly am when you let me into your heart.’
Harry’s eyelids were starting to droop sleepily as he sat in his mother’s lap. Lily gently gathered him in her arms and laid him down in his cot. He yawned widely, and stirred a little. Lily continued the story in a quiet whisper.
“The princess and the prince knew that they were very much in love with each other, and soon, they were married. They even had a little baby boy and together the whole family live happily ever””
CRASH!!
A flash of red light streaked past the window. A loud bang issued from downstairs as the front door was blown off his hinges. Instantly, Harry started crying again. Horror and dread seeped into Lily’s thoughts. Peter couldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have. He was their friend.
From downstairs, James’s voice called, “Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!”
Lily pulled Harry up and cradled him close to her body.
“AVADA KEDAVRA”
She saw in her mind’s eye her husband’s lifeless body hit the floor downstairs.
The unthinkable had happened. Death was coming, but Lily Potter was no coward, and she would be damned if it claimed the life of her son tonight.
The next morning, the wizarding community awoke to find the morning newspaper carrying a giant headline:
“The Daily Prophet
November 1, 1981
YOU KNOW WHO GONE, VANQUISHED BY THE BOY WHO LIVED”
And underneath, a smaller subhead:
“No Happy Ending for James and Lily Potter”