Chapter 1: Prologue



One dark, blustery Halloween night in the year of 1981 in a little cottage just inside the limits of Godric’s Hollow, there was a burst of laughter and clapping. If you happened to look through the window, you would see a man of twenty-one with an unruly mop of black hair and clear hazel eyes. He was waving a wand in the air, creating puffs of delicate smoke rings puff out of it.

A woman sat on the couch opposite him with a baby on her knee. She had coat of red hair that flowed down her back and unusually vivid emerald green eyes that twinkled in the firelight. The baby had inherited his father’s hair, and that he had his mother’s eyes. This baby boy’s name was Harry, and his parents were James and Lily.

They had been sent into hiding fearing that Voldemort would find them and kill them. Albus Dumbledore had told them of a prophecy and stated that the whole family needed to go into hiding. They had, to date, been living in Godric’s Hollow for a week with the Fidelius Charm over their house.

James’ friend, Peter Pettigrew, was their Secret-Keeper. Sirius Black, one of James’ best friends, had been their original choice but Sirius had begged them to reconsider.

“They’ll automatically go for me because I’m obviously your friend, and am like your brother,” James remembered Sirius saying. “They’ll never think to go after Peter.”

So, after much begging and arguing, Peter became the Potters’ Secret-Keeper.

On that chilly Halloween night, the Potters were trying to keep Harry entertained while they waited anxiously for news. The Order was unable to communicate with them without fear of being intercepted, so the Potters were desperate for new information. Sirius and Peter stopped by every once in a while to check up on them.

Lily was unusually apprehensive that night, and even she couldn’t explain why.

“I just feel like something bad is going to happen,” she told James. James hardly reacted, but she saw emotion flicker over his face while he watched Harry trying to grab the smoke between his fists.

“Aw, see the purple smoke? Harry like purple smoke?” he asked, teasing the young boy.

“Honestly, James, stop encouraging him. Little Harry needs his rest,” Lily said, scooping Harry into her arms as he yawned sleepily.

“You’ve been teasing and spoiling him lately, not tonight maybe, but you have been spoiling him like you won’t be there tomorrow. If you keep doing that he’ll be as bad as you were when he goes to Hogwarts!”

“My dear Lily, according to you, no one on this earth could be more of a prat than I was.”

“True,” she sighed, looking bemused. Outside, they heard the gate creak open. “Did you invite someone over?” Lily asked tensely, afraid of the answer.

“No,” he replied, a confused look on his face. Lily noticed that he actually looked scared. She could only remember him being scared twice, once when he had proposed to her, and once when she was in the hospital giving birth to Harry.

This unnerved Lily more than even she knew, watching him try to control his emotions, trying to be strong for her. It’s odd that when someone you trust is scared they try to hide it. Them having trouble with it tends to make you even more frightened.

They shivered simultaneously. James slinked over to the window, trying to see who or what was outside. All he saw was a black robed figure, but that was enough. He knew that none of the Order members, nor Sirius or Peter would wear black robes covering their faces to the Potter’s house. It had to be a Death Eater.

James silently cursed Peter, vowing that if he ever got a hold of Peter, he’d die the most painful death possible. He couldn’t believe that Peter had sold them out to Voldemort. James hoped that Peter was enjoying himself wherever he was, because if he ever saw Peter again, James was going to give him hell. He turned back around to tell Lily what he had seen and to figure out an escape plan quickly.

Meanwhile, Lily was hoping that the creaking gate was just one of the Order members coming to check up on them, or it creaking in the wind. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but one could never be too careful.

As a mother, she knew that she would do anything to keep Harry safe. Therefore, when Sirius had pleaded with them, telling them that Peter would be the perfect bluff for being their Secret-Keeper, they had switched. As she stood there, straining to hear another sound, she realized that he was also the perfect bluff for being a Death Eater.

For who would suspect loyal Peter Pettigrew as a Death Eater? Certainly not James, Lily, or Sirius, who had thought, however grudgingly, that Remus would have been the perfect spy. It was Peter, she remembered, that had convinced them it was Remus. It all made sense now.

Peter had betrayed them, simple as that. He had given their location to Voldemort, and had sealed their fates.

Suddenly, they heard a high, cruel laugh, and Lily’s heart sunk lower than her toes and she sent a look of sheer terror at James as she knew. It was him. Voldemort.

They heard the front door explode, Voldemort not wanting to toy around.

Lily watched as her husband sprinted out into the hallway. She looked around hastily for their wands, quickly searching the room, but she couldn’t find them. She thought she had left hers upstairs, but where was James’?

** “Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! I’ll hold him off!”**

She scooped Harry up into her arms, knowing that she had to protect him at all costs. Lily immediately tried to Apparate, but panicking slightly when she realized that someone, probably Voldemort, had put up Anti-Apparation wards. So she did the only thing she could think of; she bolted into the hallway and up the stairs. She barely got as far as the fifth stair, however, when a curse flew past her head. She turned around, all the while backing up rapidly, trying to determine the source of the curse.

James was now in front of Lily’s eyes, trying to dodge the curse that was sent at him. She continued to climb backwards up the stairs, not taking her eyes off of James. Suddenly, as though in slow motion, Voldemort cast the Killing Curse towards James.

“Avada Kedavra!” She saw, as if in slow motion, James fall to the ground. Her husband was lying spread-eagled on the ground, his last scream still fixed upon his face.

Jolted into the harsh reality that James Harold Potter, the man she had vowed to love all of her life was dead. She screamed, a breathtaking, ear-shattering scream, and then started sobbing more hysterically than before. Suddenly, an emotion filled her. It was more overpowering than any emotion she’d ever felt in her life. It was pure rage.

“YOU BASTARD!” she screamed, adrenaline and rage still pumping through her body. Almost immediately following her statement, she realized that she had just given away that she was still here, and fear rushed through her and replaced the adrenaline. This man would kill her, just like he had killed James.

She scrambled up the final step and into Harry’s nursery, where she barricaded the door feebly with a chair. She tried to move the heavy dresser, but could only move it a few inches.

She swiftly set Harry in the crib, giving him one last hug, trying to save him from the death that was certain to come. She couldn’t find her wand; she knew she had left it in the den. She couldn’t believe she had been so reckless as to assume that she had left it upstairs.

Tears still streamed down her blotchy face, and she whispered hurriedly, knowing that there wasn’t much time for either of them.

“No matter where you are or what you do, I’ll always be with you. I’ll always love you. Just remember that. James and I will always love you.” She hugged Harry fiercely and kissed his forehead, not exactly sure why she said that, as he was almost certainly going to die too.

She swayed slightly on the spot, the enormity of the situation pressing fully down upon her. James was dead, and she and Harry were in a room with only two ways out- the door and the window. As they were on the second story, the jump would most likely injure or kill them.

Lily heard a slight creak as Voldemort ascended the first stair. She darted over to the window, only to have her suspicions confirmed. A drop from that window would either break someone’s neck or kill them. She shivered. More thuds, then a creak as Voldemort climbed up the remaining stairs.

Silence.

Then the door was shattered by a Blasting Curse, and Lily ducked while she stepped in front of the crib, shielding Harry from the flying remains of the door. She gasped as Voldemort entered the room. His wand was trained on Harry, his slit cat-like eyes fixed on Lily, and she knew she was going to die. But if she could help it, she would die defending Harry.

She threw her arms wide in front of the crib in which she had placed Harry.

Hysteria was bubbling up inside of her, and she knew it was hopeless. She would beg him if needed.

** “Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!” **

She couldn’t believe she was reduced to begging, but at this point, it looked as if she didn’t have a choice.

**“Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside now,” **he hissed, his snake-like voice even more apparent.

** “Not Harry, please no, take me, and kill me instead-” **

She pleaded with him, not expecting it to work but desperate enough to believe anything at that point. She lifted Harry out of the crib, hugging him close to her body, as if that would save him from the man - no, monster - that was currently standing about fifteen feet in front of her.

** “This is my last warning!”**

Voldemort’s wand hand was twitching now, almost daring her to go on with her desperate begging.

** “Not Harry! Please…have mercy…have mercy…Not Harry! Not Harry! Please- I’ll do anything-”**

Lily’s voice was up to a scream now, and desperately searching for a way out of her current predicament, holding on to Harry as she had never done before, knowing that she was going to die even if he had mercy on her precious Harry.

** “Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”**

Lily did not move. She didn’t waver or think about it for the slightest moment. She had vowed to protect Harry, and that was what she was going to do. She stood firm, waiting, wanting it to all be over. Then, as if Voldemort had read her mind, he hissed the deadly words, and they echoed eerily throughout the room.

“Avada Kedavra!” She saw the electric neon-green light leave his wand and thought with all her heart, ‘James, if you can hear me, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to die. But at least we’ll be together, you and me.’

The Killing Curse hit her. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear. Everything went black for Lily Marie Evans-Potter, who had done what she had meant to do. She had sacrificed her life for her only son, Harry James Potter, so lovingly cared for, and therefore had unknowingly given him the protection he needed to survive the Killing Curse that came at him only about half a minute later, which rebounded onto its caster.

Voldemort was ripped from his body, and barely alive, and merely part of a soul, he fled into the night, leaving behind a screaming and crying one year-old black-haired boy, who now had a peculiar lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead.

Then, an unusual thing happened, though no one but Harry was around to witness it. Out of Lily and James’s bodies, a white light rose and floated out of the house, intertwined with each other, and settled into the base of a tree trunk at the edge of the property. At the same time, the bodies of Lily and James Potter disappeared. When Rubeus Hagrid and Sirius Black arrived, they couldn’t find Lily and James, no matter where they looked. At first, Sirius refused to believe that they were dead, but finally agreed, however heartbrokenly, that Lily and James were gone.

It was assumed that when Voldemort was destroyed, their bodies had been destroyed as well, as no one ever found their bodies. Over time, the parts of the house that hadn’t been damaged and the grounds around the house were destroyed, but there was one tree on the property that didn’t die, an Oak tree on the very edge. It stayed alive throughout the years, and the in the spring of 1982, for the first time since it was a seedling, blossoms appeared on the tree’s lower branches.

Chapter 2: The Awakening



James slowly awoke, wondering when he had fallen asleep. Even with his eyes closed, he noticed with confusion that he was lying on a hard surface, instead of his bed. The floor perhaps?

After a moment, he managed to open his eyes. He groaned as his body gave a wrenching protest, his chest screaming in pain. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember why his whole body hurt like that. He tried to recall what had happened, but the only thing he could remember was a flash of green light, then darkness.

Everything that had happened the previous night hit him like a bolt of lightning.

The laughter, the screams, and the Curse were swirling around in his head, trying to make him understand what had happened. How in Merlin’s name did I survive the Killing Curse? He wondered confusedly because, really, that was the only logical explanation. He was standing here, in the torn apart house, so of course he was alive. His body gave another protest as he scrambled to his feet.

He was standing on a bare wooden floor at the bottom of a scorched and caving in staircase. As James stood there, pondering his predicament, he heard a small movement upstairs. He discarded it as a random noise, probably just the wind rattling against the windows.

James wandered into the sitting room, which had surprisingly come through the attack with barely a scratch. He saw his wand lying underneath the padded sofa he had been sitting on that night. He snatched up Lily’s as well, which had rolled further under the couch and was propped up against the wall, thinking to give it to her when he saw her.

Then he froze. Lily! What had happened to Lily and Harry? He had told Lily take Harry and go, hadn’t he? Lily had taken Harry upstairs whilst he had tried unsuccessfully to lure Voldemort away from his wife and child. James’s heart sunk as fear and dread replaced his previous confusion. He looked at the crumbling staircase and bolted up it without a second thought.
James looked for where his wife and child might have hidden. “Lily?” he called softly, unable to think that they might somehow be…dead.

His breath caught and his heart started thudding painfully in his chest. The door on the end of the row, Harry’s nursery, had been blown off by what looked like an extremely powerful Blasting Charm. James cautiously stuck his head into Harry’s nursery, not knowing what to expect. What he did find made him stop short.

There, in the middle of the room, right in front of the blackened and scorched cradle, his beloved wife, the woman to whom he had pledged his eternal love, Lily, was lying on the ground. Her form looked peaceful, if you didn’t look at the panic frozen on her face.

Her hair stretched outwards from her head in a kind of halo, framing her beautiful face. Her hands were hugging something invisible as though it had been snatched from her grasp. There were tear tracks running down her dirty, smudged face, and her mouth was open in an endless, silent scream. Her vivid green eyes were hidden under long, slightly curled eyelashes.

James looked at her in disbelief for a moment, and then broke his stance and hurtled across the room towards her. He knelt gently beside his wife and took her in his arms, stroking her hair, torn between total shock and overwhelming grief. He finally settled somewhere in the middle as he let out an agonized scream then let the tears fall, not caring if anyone heard him, not caring that he had survived the Killing Curse, forgetting that Harry was nowhere to be found.

He didn’t want to live without Lily, he couldn’t. James knew that she would want him to continue living, for her sake, but he didn’t know if he could do it. However, he would try, in memory of Lily.

Lily shifted suddenly, but he quickly dismissed that thought. He looked down into her angelic face and cursed Peter with the minute part of his brain that wasn’t focused on Lily. Then he gasped, and an unbidden smile trailed across his face as he thought the impossible. She was alive!

There, her eyelid twitched! And she was breathing!
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Lily awoke in stages. First there was complete darkness. She heard a scream, then sobs as she struggled to wake up. Then the darkness lifted a bit and she could move. She tried to sit up, but was only strong enough to manage a slight shift of her body. It apparently was enough. She heard a sigh, then a quiet yell of relief. Lily tried to order herself to open her oh-so-heavy eyes, as the darkness lifted a little more and faded to light grey as a voice encouraged her further to wake up.

“Lily? Lily love, if you can hear me, wake up. Wake up, love. It’s all right.”

She struggled to open her eyes and see the speaker, for she was sure of only one thing: The person that spoke in that voice was dead, killed in front of her very eyes.

Finally, and to her immense relief, she was able to open her eyes, with the feeling of walking through a cloud of mist. Lily winced at the harsh, bright light that immediately burned her eyes as she tried to orient herself. There, leaning down and looking into her face was… James! She tried to speak, but a strangled sob was all that came out as James adjusted her more comfortably in his arms; tears of joy poured down both of their faces.

She slowly looked up into his handsome face, memorizing every aspect of his countenance as if she was never going to see him again. He smiled down at her, still trying to process that she was alive. Finally, Lily spoke, praying that this wasn’t just some strange dream.

“James? Am I dead?”

He laughed, a genuine laugh, not those forced laughs he had made before the incident.

“No Lily, you’re no deader than I am.”

“Somehow that doesn’t really reassure me, seeing as how I watched you get killed right before my eyes.”

James’s eyes clouded over with pain and anger.

“I’m sorry, Lils, so sorry.”

She was struck with a thought.

“James, if you ‘died,’ and I ‘died,’ what happened to Harry? Where is he, James?”

Panic blazed through her like fire as she thought of her son. James looked at Lily, who had tried to stand up in a valiant effort to get to the crib, but was too weak to walk. He stood and supported her to the scorched side of the nursery, where they stared blankly into Harry’s partly disintegrated crib. “James! WHERE IS HARRY?”

James looked at her sadly. “I think that he’s…dead. I think that Harry’s dead.”

“He can’t be dead, he just can’t! HE WAS ONLY A YEAR OLD!” He had so much life to live! she added silently.

Lily broke into fresh, loud sobs while James took her into his arms and stood there, both looking into Harry’s crib, wondering what had happened to him. Even though all evidence pointed to Harry being dead, James couldn’t help but wonder if he was still alive, somewhere. But even as the thought crossed his mind, questions about his supposed death ran across it.

Did Voldemort kill Harry quickly, so that he could get it over with? Had he tortured him, and then killed him? Had he just killed him and threw him away, like he was as worthless as any of the other men he had murdered?

Lily was the first one to come out of her trance. She nudged James and led him out into the hallway. He looked at her with pain-filled eyes, unable to comprehend what he had seen. Harry had been only one year old, and he was killed by the wizard- no, the monster- who had torn the Wizarding World to shreds and had murdered many of their friends and family. Lily’s eyes stung with tears, and James held her in his arms as they each grieved for the son they would never know.

Lily shuddered for a moment when she felt hot tears slide through her hair. James was crying. She had only seen him really cry once, and that was when his both of his parents had died from heart attacks three months apart when he was seventeen.

James had let her see the sensitive side of him, and that was part of the reason she loved James so much. Seeing him so depressed and serious had forced her to admit to herself that he wasn’t all bad, and she had comforted him in the first few months following his parents’ deaths. Lily and James were no strangers to death, but it didn’t make it any easier when they lost someone.

They simply stood in each other’s arms, tears stinging their eyes. After a while, they let go of one another and Lily followed James down the stairs to the kitchen where they discussed what they would do now.

“We can’t stay here for obvious reasons, Lily. One, this house is totally dilapidated. Two, it holds too many memories,” he stated, feeling dreadful that he had to leave, but at the same time happy that he would be away from all of the memories. She just sat there with her hands interlaced on the table, staring off into space.

James looked at Lily and sighed. He knew that they would be staggering under the weight and pain of Harry’s death for the rest of their lives, and for now, they grieved together. But James, grieved internally, locking his grief into one small, raging piece of his heart while Lily exploded in tears and memories. He would do anything to help her, he knew, but he didn’t know how. So he simply crossed over to Lily and hugged her tight.

“It’s alright Lils; we’ll get through this together. For now, let’s figure out what exactly happened, and how we managed to survive the Killing Curse.” She simply nodded her head and flicked her eyes over to James. “James,” she said haltingly. “How do you think we survived the Killing Curse when no one else has? I mean, Gideon and Fabian Prewett were exceptional wizards, it took five Death Eaters to kill them, but they didn’t survive. Neither did the McKinnon’s or the Walkers. I just don’t get it.”

“I don’t know either, Lils. The best thing I can think of would be that the spell backfired for some reason. In any case, let’s see if we can salvage anything from this wreck.”

Just then, they noticed just how cold it was. “It wasn’t this cold last night was it?” Lily asked, confused as to why there was a chilly draft flowing through the house.
“I know for a fact that it wasn’t.” He stuck his head out of the shattered window.

“Well would you look at that. It’s snowing! We must have been out longer than we thought!” James said in bewilderment.

“That must mean it’s somewhere around mid-December, possibly January.” They both then realized what had just been said.

“We’ve been unconscious for two months! That’s… That’s impossible James! James, everyone must think we’re dead! How will we find someone who can tell us what happened and where everybody is? What do you think happened to Sirius and Remus?”

James stared at her for a moment, and then smacked his head. “Oh Merlin, Sirius! Everyone thought he was our Secret-Keeper! He’s probably in Azkaban right now! Stupid mutt probably went after Peter and did something to land himself in trouble instead of going to Dumbledore!”

He tried not to think about Harry, who would never get to live his life because of Voldemort, the man that had ripped apart so many lives. Sirius, who was Harry’s godfather, would never get to know his godson. He mentally cursed Peter into oblivion, little rat that he was, and his hand unconsciously twitched towards his wand.

Lily was thinking sadly of Harry and how she would never get to know her son. How she would never be able to spoil him, see him off to Hogwarts, buy his books and countless other things. She looked at James worriedly as he paced about the room, muttering curses under his breath. Her guess was that he was cursing Peter, trying to think of where he could be. Lily herself knew that once her head caught up with her heart, she’d be beside herself with rage. For now though, she was numb. Utterly and totally numb.

As they were lost in their own thoughts, they did not hear the soft popping of a person Apparating in the distance, and then the faint yelling that took place. No, they were lost in their own grieving and planning, plotting how to find Peter, how to repair their lives, how to evade Voldemort if they ever saw him, and many other things.

Little did they know, their answers were only about half a mile away, yelling at a boy with fiery red hair as he appeared out of thin air with a soft pop.
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It all started with a faint pop. Nothing seemed to be out of place in the field in question, and yet, there was a slight disturbance in the center. There was a shuffling, and then seemingly out of nothing at all, two boys and a girl appeared.

“Ron! I told you not to lift the cloak until we’d put the charm on ourselves!” The speaker was a brown, bushy-haired girl who was snapping at a tall, gangly boy with freckles and violently red hair.

“Well I can’t help it if I’m not patient, Hermione. Not all people follow the rules down to the last word like you do!”

“Well, pardon me for not wanting us to get caught!”

“If you don’t lower your tones you are going to get us caught. So shut up! And Ron mate, you really shouldn’t have lifted the cloak so soon, seeing as we’re numbers one, two, and three on Voldemort’s hit list right now.”

The speaker was a tall, skinny, bespectacled, raven-haired boy that had an unusual lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. This boy’s name was Harry Potter, and his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were helping him on a dangerous mission. They were trying to destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes, or parts of his soul, and defeat him. This had proved no easy task, for even though they had Slytherin’s locket, they had no idea about how to go about destroying it.

The other Horcruxes save for the diary and the ring, which had already been destroyed, were remaining elusive, even though they had been searching for over five months as of late.

Hermione shivered. “Come on. We’d better get to Godric’s Hollow. I’d love to be in front of a fire right about now.”

So they trudged cautiously and slowly along the road that would lead them to the place that was important not only to Harry, but also to the mission. For, in a secluded part of this small, dilapidated town, Harry’s parents had died saving him from Voldemort.

Here in this decrepit little village he had survived the Killing Curse and “defeated” Voldemort for a short while. Also, here in this village, they believed that a Horcrux was stored, locked away, probably in Harry’s parent’s house.

The friends continued down the long, dusty trail until the unmistakable sound of Apparition startled them. “Pop!” Everyone jumped, looking frantically for the source. They soon found it. Or rather, Harry did.

“Ginny?!”