Chapter One: Daddy's Gone Away
Lily Potter pushed herself up from the floor. Her head was pounding; she must have hit it on something. As she looked around, she was puzzled by the disaster the nursery had become. She couldn't figure out what had happened. Next, she heard Harry crying. As she sat up, she must have caught his attention, because he started saying, "Mama, mama!" over and over.
She carefully stood up, knowing a sudden movement would cause her head to come off. As she turned toward the crib, she noticed Harry had blood on his face. It seemed to be coming from a cut on his forehead, shaped like the rune "Sowilo". Her protection charm had worked! It hadn't been meant to reflect an Avada Kedavra, but it apparently had.
Lily had seen Lord Voldemort aim his wand at Harry as Harry shifted out from behind her, and speak the hated spell. She had tried to move over in front of her son, but had tripped on a toy that Harry had thrown out of his crib as she was trying to get him to lay down and sleep. She had fallen, and had hit her head on the very sturdy crib that Harry was standing in.
Lily picked Harry up, and shushed him. He was making her head pound more. She pulled out her handkerchief and wiped the blood off his face. The cut seemed to have stopped bleeding on its own. She turned to move out the door, and noticed empty robes lying on the floor, along with a wand. The robes she recognized as having been worn by Voldemort. She assumed the wand was his, so she picked it up, and put it in her wand holder. Her own wand was in her hand.
Walking down the stairs was an exercise in pain tolerance. If she could get to the kitchen, she could get to her stock of potions, and take one for pain relief. She also needed to find James, to see if he was unconscious. Why hadn't he come upstairs to help?
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw James' body lying on the floor. She fell to her knees next to his body, her legs going out from under her. She bent over him and checked for a pulse, just in case. There was no obvious injury, and there was an expression of determination frozen on his face.
There was no pulse. Lily hadn't really expected one.
How long Lily sat beside the body, crying, mourning, she didn't know. Eventually, Harry brought her out of it by patting her face.
"Mama, Daddy up?"
"No, baby, Daddy's not getting up. Not ever again." Lily's voice choked in her throat.
"Why?"
"Daddy's gone away. His body is here, but the rest of Daddy has gone to be with Nana and Poppa." 'And Granny and Gramps', Lily continued in her mind. Harry never met her parents. They died when he was a baby, before she had a chance to take him to meet them.
"All gone?"
"Yes, Harry baby, Daddy's all gone."
"Lily! James! Are you all right?" Dumbledore's voice came from outside the cottage.
Lily got up from the floor, and almost fell. Her legs had gone to sleep, and didn't want to hold her up. She hobbled to the door, and went outside. Dumbledore wouldn't be able to see her until she moved beyond the picket fence. He had a general idea of where they were in Godric's Hollow, but couldn't actually find the house.
As she opened the gate, Dumbledore moved toward her.
"The alarm in my office went off about half an hour ago, but only the alarm on James. What happened?"
"Voldemort came. He killed James, then came upstairs where I was trying to apparate out. He must have put up an anti-apparation ward. I tried to stop him, but he fired an AK at Harry. I tried to get in front of him, but I tripped and fell and hit my head. I knocked myself out. When I woke up, Harry was crying, and had this cut on his head." She showed the cut, shaped like a backward lightning bolt, to the Headmaster. As long as she stuck to a listing of facts, she wouldn't collapse in grief in the middle of the street.
"Would you be better inside?" Dumbledore was worried that someone might come along and hear what Lily was saying. He didn't need to have to bring an obliviation squad out to deal with something that they could prevent by moving.
"We can go inside. We need to take care of James. Voldemort killed him." Lily paused, then dug a paper out of her pocket. "Read this."
Dumbledore read, "The Potters live at 35 Godric Lane, Godric's Hollow". Immediately, he could see the cottage as it appeared. There appeared to be no damage to the structure.
Lily led him up the walk toward the front door. Harry had fallen asleep on her shoulder.
Once they got inside, Lily moved to put Harry down on the couch, but he had a firm grasp of a lock of her hair, and it would involve removing some of her hair by the roots to get him to let go. She simply sat down on the couch herself, and shifted him to her lap.
"Why would Sirius tell Voldemort where you were? Did you suspect that he might be a Death Eater?"
"Headmaster, Sirius wasn't our Secret Keeper. James and I switched to Peter, because Sirius and James thought he was too obvious a choice. Peter was supposed to be safer, because he was so unobtrusive, so quiet. Well, I guess his animagus form was more prophetic than we knew." Lily's voice had taken on some venom as she finished talking.
"Peter is a Death Eater?" Dumbledore was shocked. Who would have guessed that Peter would turn like that?
"He must be. He had to tell Voldemort where we were himself."
Just then, a buzzing was heard, coming from James' direction. Harry's grasp on Lily's hair had loosened by this time, so Lily was able to put him down on the couch. She moved over to James, and hunted around in his robe pockets until she found a small mirror. She pulled it out of James' pocket, and activated it. "Padfoot".
Sirius Black's face appeared in the mirror. "Lily! Where's Prongs? I went to Peter's house to check on him, but he's not there! He was supposed to stay hidden. Something's wrong!"
Lily moved back over to the couch. Her legs were shaky, and she didn't know how much longer she could stay upright.
"Sirius, Peter betrayed us. Voldemort came here. James is dead. I would be too, but I tripped. The protection worked! Harry's okay, but he has a cut on his forehead. I don't know what happened, but he's okay."
Rage filled Sirius' face. "That RAT! I am going to hunt him down and kill him!"
"Sirius! I need you here. Let the DMLE hunt him down. I need you to help me with everything. You know what hoops we have to jump through to get everything straightened out."
Sirius visibly pulled himself together, letting the anger drain away. Lils was right. She would need him to help her take care of everything.
"Where are you?"
"Godric's Hollow. Get as close as you can, and I will come out and get you."
"Okay. I will be there as quick as I can. Remus is still out of the country."
"I know. See you soon." Lily put the mirror down, and looked up to see Dumbledore with a twinkle in his eye, nodding toward the mirror.
"May I presume that is part of the reason The Marauders were so successful in their pranking?"
Despite everything, Lily smiled faintly. "Part of the reason."
Sirius was there within 15 minutes. Lily heard the roar of his motorcycle, and went out to meet him. She and Dumbledore had moved James to the side of the room, and covered him with a spare sheet. They had also called Amelia Bones, who had been James' boss until he had to quit when they went into hiding. They didn't want to do anything else until the DMLE had a chance to examine the scene.
As she went out to meet Sirius, she heard the pop of apparation. When she moved to the front porch, still safe behind the Fidelius, she saw Amelia and Sirius standing in the street talking. She went to the gate and opened it.
At the sound of the gate opening, the newcomers turned and saw Lily. Sirius moved to her quickly, and pulled her into a hug. She buried her face in his chest, and started crying.
"He's gone, Sirius! What am I supposed to do?"
Sirius hugged her closer and talked to her softly. He was fighting back tears of his own.
"I will help you. Remus will help you. Dumbledore will help you. You are not alone in this."
Amelia spoke up at this point. "We will help you also. James was one of our own. We will do all we can."
Lily pulled away from Sirius, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She didn't have a handkerchief on her. She had used hers to wipe the blood from Harry's face. After she mopped her face a little, she pulled the paper out of her pocket. Amelia and Sirius read the message, then followed Lily through the gate and into the front garden.
As they stepped onto the front porch, Dumbledore moved toward the door.
"Lily, I must be going. I need to notify the Minister that Voldemort is gone, at least for now."
"He's gone, permanently. His body was incinerated, there is nothing there but ashes. I have his wand. There is nothing the Death Eaters can use to bring him back." Lily's voice was flat, unemotional.
"I fear he might have used some dark ritual or another to make sure he could come back. Voldemort was determined to not be permanently defeated, not even by death." Dumbledore was using his "kindly Headmaster" voice.
"You don't understand. I found a ritual of my own. It rebounded any evil used on Harry, and magnified the return. I used runes and charms together. Voldemort's own curse is what killed him. That totally annihilates the body and soul, as Magic assumes the person meant to take their own life, and accommodates that by totally destroying them."
Dumbledore was speechless. He had never considered that way of dealing with the problem of the Dark Lord. "Could I see the ritual you used?"
"You will need Flitwick to help you, as well as your Runes professor. Both parts are very advanced, beyond Master level. It took me from just after Harry was born until about a month ago to put everything together."
"I will talk to Flitwick tomorrow, as well as Professor Dunwood."
"I will owl you with my writeup within the next few days."
Dumbledore walked toward the street. Once he got out to the street, he apparated away.
Sirius and Amelia entered the house, and Amelia immediately started looking around at the burn marks on the walls, and the broken items on the floor, mostly knick-knacks that had been knocked over during the fight. Lily indicated where James' body was, and told Amelia that they had moved it from where he had fallen to keep them from accidently stepping on it or kicking it.
When Amelia was finished downstairs, she asked Lily to take her upstairs. Lily took her up to the nursery, and handed over Voldemort's wand. She had tucked hers up her sleeve earlier.
Amelia made the same keen observation of the nursery, and carefully moved the robes on the floor, confirming there was simply ash there.
"May I use your fireplace to call a forensics team here?"
"Certainly, the floo powder is on the mantel, in the gold box. Tell them to apparate to Godric's Hollow Chapel. They can walk from there. Here's the paper, so they can see the house."
Amelia left, leaving Sirius and Lily standing in the nursery.
"Let's go into the kitchen. It's the only place I can't see him killing James or Harry in my mind, and I need a cup of tea."