I write this and the following chapter on a school night where I have a test in the morning, jacked up on Monster, Mountain Dew, Sunkist orange soda, and Tropican smoking Camel lights, listening to Metallica, and texting a girl I don't really like. Uh... hit it?

Haha, It may be 276 some odd miles to Chicago, but I am nowhere near as awesome as Belushi. This is an idea I had after hearing a story from a friend of my mine from Last Chance(my school, Lewis and Clark Community College), where his mother and father were mugged and almost killed in London. Someone came across them and took Li(let us just say thats his name) and left his parents and twin sister to die.

This is my first Harry Potter fic, so please, feel free to read, critique, and enjoy what I have written. Oh, and by the way, reviews are love. Spread the world with it!

-enjoi.

"The first casualty of war is always the truth."

-9:30 p.m

The cold autumn wind blew silently across the streets of Godric's Hollow upon the late hours of October 31st, 1981. Most of the younger children celebrating Hallowe'en had long left the cooling streets in favor of warm beds and various free treats. The cloaked man walked down those streets at a stride, with purpose.

Two birds, one stone. The prophecy claimed that the one with the power to destroy him was born at the end of July, and both the Longbottom child and Potter twins were thusly born at the end of July. He would kill the Potter boys first; he already knew their location due to the treachery of one who they considered a "friend".

What an ignorant social concept, friends. What were they good for? They did nothing but betray you in the end; it was inevitable. Love and friendship were not power, as that old fool Dumbledore claimed. They hurt, they betrayed, they killed.

A straggler from the trick-or-treating passed him on the road and turned back.

"Nice outfit, Mister!" the child exclaimed. Tom Marvolo Riddle turned and gave the boy a blank, indifferent look from beneath his cloak. Upon seeing his face, the little boy gasped in terror and ran away, slipping on the leaf-covered road as he retreated.

Tom Riddle. The very name he had tried to leave behind. Yes, he was Lord Voldemort now, the greatest of all Dark Lords. Greater than Grindelwald, more feared than Emeric the Evil, more powerful than Godelot, more talented than Herpo the Foul, more dedicated than Vladislav. Yes, he would be more renowned than even Vlad the Impaler; that foul, half-human, half vampire that killed so many wizards and Muggles alike.

He wouldn't have been surprised if he already was. He already had turned his very name, Voldemort, into a sound that was to be feared; a Taboo. His Dark Mark invoked desperation and terror into the hearts of the wizarding families who found them hovering over their once "happy" homes.

He was immortal! He had conquered death but still things had come his way; testing him, stretching him and challenging him to live true to his calling card. This prophesied child, this "one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord" was just another barrier between him and his ultimate quest to leave the name "Riddle" behind. And like any other barrier he encountered, he would shatter it, no matter how much the two infant rats cried.

"If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything."

James Ignotus Potter laughed along with his beautiful wife Lily as their twin sons, Harry James and James Dean played with their parents' wands. This, James felt, was a miracle, as his parents died at the hands of some Death Eaters only one week earlier. He and his parents were very close, and their deaths came like a shock to the system, but not a surprise. Dumbledore ordered them into hiding, and Voldemort wanted James and his wife dead. What better way to get him to come running from the under the blanket than a chance for revenge?

James felt a wave of sickness and hatred as he thought of how his beloved parents died. Potter Manor's wards shattered. Fleamont and Euphemia Potter tortured, stripped naked, and hung by their ankles outside of Hogsmeade… his mother and father publicly humiliated in death.

He was thankful that Lily had talked him down. He'd always known that she was the "one" for him, but it somehow still amazed him how the woman could be his everlasting voice of reason. In fact, the night she gave birth to not the expected one son, but the twins, he swore she never looked more beautiful. After seven hours of despair, pain, worry, and her threatening to use certain spells to cut off his "little boys," with her hair wild and tangled, her face relaxed and exhausted from pain, covered in sweat, she looked less like a woman who just pushed two six pound babies out of her stomach and more like an angel sent from heaven.

She gave him something he felt he couldn't give her back- a family, eternal love, and a purpose to live; despite the loss of the two most influential people in his life. Lily's soft giggle pulled James out of his reverie and back to his two handsome young sons.

By some stroke of luck, Harry had made his small, stuffed toy duck orbit around his head with his mother's wand. He giggled and tried to grab it with his chubby little fist as it soared around the crown of his head. Meanwhile James had managed to transfigure his father's shot glass into a bouncy ball and was dribbling it off his brothers back.

"James Dean, that's not nice," James Sr. jokingly admonished. The boy grinned a gap-toothed smile and threw the ball at his father, who was surprised that upon skillfully catching it, it was already turned back into the shot glass. He turned the tumbler around his hands, admiring the moving text of Ogden's Firewhiskey. "It looks like we have a future Chaser in the making!"

"And if Harry can learn how to catch that damnable duck, maybe we'll have a seeker too!" Lily laughed.

"Oh, not the whole, 'I'm a Chaser, I'm more important-No, I was a seeker, I'm more important' talk again…"

Lily's soft, wholehearted laugh filled his heart with joy as she shifted to better watch James and Harry.

"I still don't understand why you wanted to name him James Dean." Lily asked, trying, and failing, to reconcile that, while she had named their younger twin Harry James, her husband, in another room, named the other James Dean. It was unintentional byproduct of them making an exhausted decision to each name one and not running the chosen names by the other. By the time the ink was dried on the parchment, it was too late; they boys were both legally named after their father.

"I told you, Lils, I thought it was cool. I know I've heard it before, and I thought the name sounded rad."

"Rad? What are you, twelve?"

"Ye-"James affirmative was cut off by a crash and a flash of light outside the front door. Quickly getting off the couch and looking out the window, what he saw made his heart stop. "Lily, he's here."

"Who, Sirius? Well, James, let him in, it's not the end of the world!" Lily joked.

"No, Lil, it isn't Sirius, it's him. HIM! Take James and Harry, run! Don't look back! I'll hold him off!"

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

~German Proverb

If Voldemort had a sense of humor, he would have smiled, maybe even laughed at the Potters' attempts to save themselves. The father stood at the base of the stairs, wandless. A look of determination laced with fear crossed his face.

"You'll never get away with this. Someday, someone will make you pay for all the lives you've taken. The lives you have ruined," the father spat.

"Shut up," Voldemort replied as he raised his wand. Potter let out an enraged roar and charged. He tackled the Dark Lord as a flash of green light struck him in the chest, freezing the look of rage on the man's face as he fell to the floor atop the Dark Lord.

Voldemort regained his footing and looked down at Potter. Taking his foot and rolling the dead man's face back and forth, he growled, "So weak." Voldemort never heard the groan escape James mouth, and without a second glance, he trekked up the stairs Potter had so pathetically attempted to guard. He glided through an open door and into the lighted room. The two boys were on the floor, looking confusedly between the cloaked man and their wailing mother. "Please don't kill them, please, I'll do anything!"

"Step aside, girl! Step aside and I'll let you live!"

The twins obviously thought that this was a practical joke, something they sub-consciously knew their humor-loving father loved to do. They laughed and screamed "Dada!" At any moment the man would take off the black hood, and their father and mother would share a laugh and sing them to sleep. Or so they thought…

"Please, take me instead, just leave them alone. Leave them alone, you monster!"

His high, cold voice broke the first impression that the two boys had upon the situation. Their mother in distress caused the twins to lose it; soon their wails filled the house as Voldemort raised his wand and issued his final warning; "Move or die!"

"NO! LEAVE THEM ALONE!"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" With a flash of green light, Voldemort watched what he thought was the life leave Lily Potter's body as quickly and surely as it did her husband's. With a triumphant air he strode to the boys and pointed his wand at the first. This was his defining moment; this so called prophecy, this goblin on his back, would be negated. And with this act of murder, no one would dare question his authority again.

The tip of his wand glowed green; the curse sailed the two feet of distance between it and the boy's forehead in an almost slow motion sequence. Voldemort let loose a cry of victory that quickly turned into a roar of pain.

An inch, a mere inch of distance away from the child's face the curse rebounded upon Voldemort and exploded. The roof blew away in a storm of shingle, plank and toothpick. The boy who was targeted, Harry, was blown across the room as a lightning bolt-shaped cut bled profusely.

Voldemort could feel nothing but pain. He watched in terror as his body disintegrated before his very eyes. With naught but his soul, Voldemort blindly and thoughtlessly flew into the night.

Meanwhile the explosion caused the floor to fall out from underneath James. With a cry he fell to the ground floor and the only thing that kept him from crushed on the floor or skewered upon a rogue plank was his father's wand, which, held tightly in his hands, had turned said plank into a mass of soft, warm blankets.

"To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic."
-Alphonse de Lamartine

The fact that only she saw the house explode in a dazzling display of venomously green, electric light caused Sister Agnes Fishburne much distress. Well, she wasn't the only one, but the ones that did ran back to their homes screaming at the top off their lungs, wanting nothing to do with this most unfortunate event.

But what alarmed her most was the large, sparkling green skull and snake hovering above the homes' rooftops.

Convinced though she was that the devil himself had tarnished the residents of this particular house, and she was by far not the most trained in exorcism, she knew she had to help somehow. Agnes stumbled up the walk and gasped at the way the wrought-iron gates were blown away. It was odd, she thought, that it was smashed towards the house, rather than away.

The cries of a child lured her from further investigation and she quickly ran towards the source. There, huddled no more than a few steps from what had to be the body of his father was an infant boy huddled into a soft pile of blankets. Agnes grasped the crucifix at her neck and whispered a grateful prayer to Christ that the boy miraculously survived. She carefully took the child in her hands, looked him over for injury, and noticed him holding a stick of wood firmly in his right hand and a name tag on his sleeping shirt; James Dean Potter, Jr.

"Oh, you poor thing," she crooned. His black hair was tussled and his face was all red from crying. Agnes wiped the tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose on her habit as she whispered to him soothingly. "Hush now, little Jimmy, you're all fine, hm?"

Almost as if he understood what she said, his face broke its frown and he grabbed the silver crucifix around her neck.

"Do you like it? It's a sign of our Lord and savior, he must have saved you! Are you thanking Christ?"

The answer came when he yanked hard on the chain and blew a raspberry. "Oh, well you saved yourself then? With what, a fancy stick of wood?"

Then she a closer look at it. "My word, is this a wand? What the devil…" Upon trying to get a hold of it to observe it closer, his little fist gripped it as if his life depended on it.

Giving up trying to look at the supposed wand, Agnes took a look out the window, and, noticing that no one else was coming to this desecrated home to help, she took the boy and left, before any more demons could come and finish the job.

"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope"

-Author Unknown

-two hours later, 11:37…

James came to as he felt a hand pushing his shoulder, dragging him out of unconsciousness. His whole body felt like it'd been ran over by the Hogwarts Express and his vision blurred, intensifying his headache. 'What did I drink and how much?'

"Dada," the voice of the hand-shaker babbled.

"Five more minutes, mum…"

"Dada!"

"Wah…?"

"DADA!"

"AAAHHH! I'm up, I'm- Harry?" James looked around confusedly, but when he noticed half his house blown away and the bleeding, lightning bolt cut on his son's forehead, it all flooded back. Voldemort, dying, Lily…

"Oh Merlin…" He scooped Harry into his arms and scrambled up the staircase. "LILY!"

Flying into the twins room, his Auror-trained eye scanned every inch, analyzing and criticizing every inch in the whole of three seconds. His other son was gone, most like fallen through the wide hole in the flooring. His wife was on the floor, impaled by a plank of wood, moaning in pain.

"LILY!"

On a sunny day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight.

With their backs turned they faced each other, drew their swords and shot one another.

A deaf cop heard the noise, came running and killed the two dead boys…

"LILY!?"

"Uhn… what?" Lily Potter' head swam as she opened her eyes. Her blurry vision cleared and faded to the drum beats her heart was pounding in her skull and with each thump her headache worsened. She rubbed her temples and forced herself to sit up, but collapsed as she felt pain searing through her abdomen. "James? What happened?"

Over the muted snare drum pounding her brain she heard James stumble through the door way, a strangely quiet Harry on his hip, or was it her Jammie? Her vision blurred to almost black, but she was certain that she had not closed her eyes.

"Oh- oh Merlin's beard, Lily! Oh God, oh no… where's James? James! JAMIE! Lily, where is James!?"

"James? What is wrong?"

"What's going on? James? Lily!?"

"Sirius?"

"Yeah!"

"Sirius, help me!"

"Prongs, what's- oh, Merlin's beard."

Somehow, Lily managed to move her arm across her stomach, and almost threw up when she felt something warm, wet, and sticky coming out of her navel. She didn't need eyesight to know it was blood, and her own at that, and something sharp. "Why am I bleeding?"

"Siri, take Harry, look for Jamie. He's missing! Ask around town, search the woods, call the cops! Owl Mad-Eye! And Dumbledore! I'm taking Lily to Mungo's! Got that?"

"James! Why am I bleeding? Where is Jamie! Answer me!"

"Shh, sweetie, don't talk. I'm taking you to St. Mungo's. Just hold on, Lily. Please hold on."

And with the words of comfort from James, her entire world went black…