Author's Note: I am really hoping that this story will get some reviews, seeing as my other three lack something to be desired in that area. This is an AU crossover with the TV show Guiding Light. You do not have to have ever watched or even heard of the show to understand, as everything is explained in context and it is AU for the GL world as well. It might even be better if you haven't ever seen Guiding Light, so you don't get mixed up. I know the Marauder's and co. are a lot older here than they actually were, but it works best with the story. More will be told about Wright Interprises and the 'brand of magic' mentioned by Dumbledore later.

Augusta

Summary: James Potter has a charmed life, on the surface. He has a beautiful wife, a healthy son, is CEO of Wright Interprises(a family business left to him by his mother), and a close-knit group of family and friends. Then on Halloween, while he's away on a business trip, everything changes when his wife, Lily, is murdered, his mistress, Morgan, has been murdered, his son Harry has been sent away, and Albus Dumbledore, Morgan's meddling father, has simulated his death. He's forced to leave Britain and everything he's ever known, ending up in the American city of Springfield, Illinois(the GL version) with false citizenship papers prepared by Dumbledore, living in a boardinghouse over a restraunt called Company. It seems like it doesn't get any worse than this until he meets the extraordinary people who make up Springfield- the haughty Spauldings, the clannish Coopers, the fun-loving Lewises, the inbred Winslows, the feuding Marlers, and all the rest of the GL gang- who make a place for him in Springfield and Springfielder society, but before he can be truly happy in his new home, he has to face his past and his powers for what they are...

Disclaimer for ch. 1: I don't own James, Dumbledore, Rosmerta, the Three Broomsticks, the Marauders, the Marauder's Map, Lily, Petunia, Vernon, Muggles, Voldemort, Harry, Sirius, Remus, the prophecy, the Order, house-elves, Apparition/Disapparition, or any of the spells mentioned. If you recognize anything else, then let me know and I'll put it in the disclaimer. Otherwise, in this chapter it's mine, except the summary.

Chapter One: Dumbledore's Plans

Madam Haldanski smiled and extended her hand. " I approve of Sah-renna's choice," she said, her English heavy and choppy. "It is a pleasure to vork vith you."

James smiled back politely and shook hands. " And with you," he responded, careful to enunciate perfectly. He only had the advantage over the woman while they spoke English; he spoke Hungarian, but not much or well. " May I hope that the Hungarian division will answer to me as it did to my mother?" He saw that Madam Haldanski looked confused, mouthing his last words uncertainly. " As you answered to Serena," he clarified. Madam Haldanski wasn't able to pronounce his dead mother's name correctly, but that was one English word she knew without question.

Madam Haldanski grinned in sudden comprehension. " Yes, alvays." She bowed from her chair. " I vork for Vright Interprises. You are the new chairman. I vill do vot you say."

James barely kept his relief from showing in his face. Wright Interprises was one of the most important companies in the Wizarding World, and he had feared that the transfer of power to him after his mother's murder a month earlier would not be as smooth as he had hoped. So far, there had been no problems with any of the divisions. He bent over to close his briefcase. His hand slipped off the handle as a flash of the Sight took him for a moment, just long enough for him to see a man poking around some ruins, then standing at the foot of two graves, before he managed to fight it back. Visions of death and destruction were all too common these days, with Lord Voldemort rising. James could remember when they had all disregarded Voldemort. They were learning the price of that now. He snapped the clasps to and looked back to Madam Haldanski, hoping she hadn't noticed anything. " I believe that concludes our business for now, Madam. I will be in touch soon." He stood just as the door opened, admitting a house-elf.

" A message for you, Mr. Potter," it squeaked, holding out a sealed parchment. James took it and looked at the seal. A phoenix surrounded by roses. Dumbledore. If it had been Order business, it would have had two crossed wands behind it. James thought it was rather arrogant of Dumbledore to have his personal crest be so close to that of the Potter family, but it would have been inexcusable to adknowledge the insult. Breaking the seal, he read the short message.

James,

I fear that events have gotten well out of hand here. DO NOT return home. Apparate to our merry sister's and take the road fromher ale roomto my house. I will be able to answer your questions about our money-hungry cousin there.

Brian

James looked to Madam Haldanski. " Will it offend you if I use magic to test this? " he asked. She shook her head no, and he waved his wand over the parchment. Nothing happened. It was real, not a forgery. He touched the tip of his wand to the bottom left hand corner and let it burn until it reached his fingers, and then threw it in the fireplace. " I fear I will have to be gone at once, Madam. My uncle isn't well. "

" Thot is all vight," Madam Haldanski reassured him. " Ven can I exvect to hear vrom you?"

" No more than two weeks," he said, bowed courteously, and disapparated.

The Three Broomsticks was empty and silent when James arrived. Frowning slightly, he pulled out his wand. Something wasn't right. The pub should have been bustling at this hour, not abandoned. He moved over to the wall and touched the correct points in the paneling, and a portion of the wall slid back to reveal a secret tunnel to Dumbledore's private quarters-the one hidden passage he hadn't told his fellow Marauder's about when they were making the Map.

He thought about Dumbledore's cryptic message as he hurried along the tunnel. Clever of the old man, to use one of his middle names instead of his distinctive first. Brian was an ordinary name. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Brians in the world. Their ' merry sister' was Rosmerta, the owner of the Three Broomsticks, of course, and herale room the Broomsticks itself. 'The road' was the very passage he was in now. As for the 'money-hungry cousin'...James repressed a shudder. Only one person that could be- Voldemort. Voldemort was somehow linked to him not being able to go home, but having to go to Dumbledore first. I fear that events have gotten well out of hand here. That didn't sound promising. James resolved not to think the worst until he had some kind of proof.

Dumbledore wasn't alone when James reached his sitting room-not exactly. The old man was bent over a cradle, making soothing sounds. He straightened almost immediatly, though. " Ah, James," he said. He looked exhausted. " Your son is as temperamental as you. I've had a rather harrowing expirience trying to get him to sleep. I suppose he doesn't like being taken out of his nursery in the middle of the night by a stranger."

" What's going on, Dumbledore?"

" I believe you'll be thirty-five in a few weeks, won't you?"

James gaped at Dumbledore. " What does that have to do with anything?"

" That would make Morgan and Lily both thirty-four...not even middle-aged, as we count time..." Dumbledore looked as if he were musing for a moment. Then he sighed, passed a hand over his eyes, and sat. "Sit down, James," he said, indicating the desired spot. James did as he was told warily; the habit of obeying Dumbledore was strong and the habit of not trusting him stronger. For once, Dumbledore went straight to the point. " Lily and Morgan are both dead." James felt all the blood leave his head, and Dumbledore thrust a shot of Bourbon into his hand that he drank gratefully. Dumbledore went on without waiting for him to reply. " I have arranged for it to appear that it was you who died instead of Morgan-even up to modifying little Harry's memory, a process I think might have frightened him rather badly."

" What happened?" he managed.

" Voldemort," Dumbledore said simply. " I managed to retrive Harry from the house, and I have Hagrid remembering doing it. A useful trick. He will pick Harry up from Nicolas and Perenelle's tomorrow and take him to his aunt and uncle."

James felt as if he had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Morgan and Lily, dead. Lily Evans Potter was his faithful and trusted wife, the mother of his only living son. Morgan Dumbledore was the one great love of his life, the woman he couldn't marry but could never give up. Lily and Morgan, Morgan and Lily. Those two and Harry were at the center of his whole world. And now he had lost all three. Desperate, he called mentally, Annamaria! If anyone could help now, it would be his twin sister, Anne. The barrier between their minds thinned, but she couldn't hear him and all he could get from her was an outpouring of grief so wild it frightened him. Dumbledore had to be blocking him, somehow. Anne had been able to reach him when she had been trapped in her own villa in France and he had been being held prisoner by Teresa in a Swiss mental hospital.

He had to think rationally. Harry took first priority at the moment- you could care for the living or weep for the dead. Anne wasn't capable of doing anything besides indulging in maddening grief for him at the moment. There was his half-sister Teresa and half-brother Phillip, but he wasn't sure if either of them would willingly take in a child they would consider a half-blood and inferior and raise him as their own. That left his younger sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth had married Remus, and his lycanthropy did present...problems, but they had a daughter of their own and it worked out just fine. Yes, Remus and Elizabeth would do the best at taking care of his son.

" Elizabeth and Remus," James said, trying to look at it all objectively. It wasn't working. " Anne and Sirius are his legal guardians, but with them living apart and the hell Anne's going through thinking I'm dead...better Elizabeth and Remus."

" I did not mean one of your sisters and her husband," Dumbledore said quietly. " I meant Lily's sister Petunia and her husband Vernon."

" Muggles."

" Harry will be safest there, James. Lily died to protect him. Her blood kin can give him a protection that you and your family never can, even with your-ah-brand of magic." James noticed Dumbledore shudder slightly, but visibly. He had learned to control his own shudders years ago, but they still fought to come when that was mentioned.

He looked up at Dumbledore. " You do realize that I could use my 'brand of magic', as you call it, and kill you right now for your meddling?"

Dumbledore looked back at him as frankly. " Are you?"

" No."

" I didn't think so."

" Dammit, Albus!" James exclaimed vehemently. " How did the boy survive?"

" Lily sacrificed herself for him. That is a powerful magic- a powerful charm." James nodded. Charms had always been Lily's specialty. "Harry threw down Voldemort when Voldemort attempted to kill him." Dumbledore threw it out as if it were an afterthought. James jumped to his feet.

" What!?"

Dumbledore nodded. " Remarkable, isn't it? We have all been working so hard and so long on this, and now a one-year-old boy has overthrown him for us."

James crossed the room and looked down into the cradle. His son would be the spitting image of him one day, but for Lily's eyes and now one other thing. A lightning bolt shaped cut showed clearly on the boy's forehead in the light from the lamps. " That's where..."

Dumbledore nodded. " The Killing Curse hit him and rebounded."

" So we have a reprieve," James said, his jaw clenching painfully. " For how long? Five years? Two? "

" Perhaps as many as twenty," Dumbledore said, unpertrubed by his former pupil's bitter tone.

" Don't be irrational," James returned, irritated. Twenty years indeed! Voldemort was many things-mad came to mind-but stupid was't one of them. He would return well before twenty years. That was one thing about optimists that drove James half insane. They were always irrational. Dumbledore didn't rebuke him; there was no doubt in James's mind that Dumbledore assumed he had been plunged immediatly into mourning and was not kindly disposed to encouragement. In reality, he wasn't feeling anything yet.

" As I am now dead," he said at length, " what am I going to do?"

James saw something in Dumbledore's face relax. " Thank you for seeing the necessity of things being the way they are, James."

" I have the Sight," James reminded him. " I know better than anyone that prophecy has to be fulfilled, and you told me and Lily the prophecy about him. Now, what am I supposed to do now, since you're playing puppet master with my life yet again?"

Dumbledore handed him a packet of official-looking papers. " Records and memories are being modified as we speak," Dumbledore said. " As soon as your funeral is over in three days, you'll be going to America, where you have, according to these papers and some records and memories, been a citizen for two years and voted in the last election." Dumbledore looked quite pleased with himself for devising this. It was then that it hit James that Dumbledore wasn't even reacting to Morgan's death-his own daughter. Dumbledore was tougher than he'd though.

" You are a piece of work, aren't you?" He demanded.

Dumbledore just handed him a cup of tea.