Author's Note: This is completely AU. This is not a rehash of The Sorcerer's Stone! I love a good rehash as much as the next fanfictionaholic but there are simply too many of them. Readers should also note that this fanfic, and any sequels to this fanfic will contain a bit of Slash. I am one of those completely rational and not at all unrealistic people that believe that Harry and Draco belong together. Of course, they are going to be very young in the beginning of this so it may take a while for that aspect to come into play. On a side note I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER!

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear.

(WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)

In The Beginning:

Lilly Potter was not afraid of death. At the age of twenty-three she had faced death, seen it, and even courted it. Her old potions professor had even had the gall to claim that she had a 'death wish'. That was not true. She did not have a death wish, quite the contrary. She longed for life. A real life for her family. They had been in hiding for less that a year and already she felt the seclusion suffocating her. The constant worry and nagging fears kept her awake at night. She often found herself analyzing newspaper articles as if they concealed hidden messages, hints to their enemy's movements. Friends that she had known for years suddenly seemed suspicions. In her more rational moments, when her baby was safely tucked into his crib and her husband held her in his arms she could see that she was slowly loosing her grip on reality. Not that she minded much. There was a need for constant vigilance. In the three months that she had trained as an Auror her instructor had constantly shouted and screamed at her for her lack of it. She wondered what Auror Moody would say about her now. She wondered if he was even still alive. It had recently become necessary for the Order to guard their information and living members with more care. No one was ever told anything unless they absolutely had to be told. In her less rational moments, when her husband was in another room and Harry smiled up at her with his bright green eyes, Lilly felt a bone-numbing fear. She really did see suspicious things in the paper! Words that authors let slip, obituaries with no details given about the cause of death. And she knew that at least one of her friends was up to something. Remus was always looking tired. That in and of itself was nothing new, but he was also coming around less often. Lilly knew that he did not have many friends! And while it was possible that he was away looking for work, or on a mission for the Order, she was suspicions. Every dinner that he missed, every day when nothing was heard from him instilled her with just a little more fear. Peter was just as bad, maybe worse. He looked positively ill most of the time. The rest of the time he looked determined, stoic, a little sad. Sometimes Lilly swore that she saw him shoot Harry guilty expressions. And yet, James would not listen to her! Instead he just defended the little rat! James seemed to think that the stress of the war was getting to him. The only one of their friends that retained any sense of normalcy was Sirius. Sometimes when she caught him smirking after a well executed prank, or mouthing off some joke, Lilly felt the strangest urge to remind him that there was a war going on. In fact she had given into this impulse several times. None of these reminders seemed to have sunken into his particularly think skull. For that she was thankful, it spoke volumes about his innocence. The only other friends that Lilly had had in school were Severus and Alice. She didn't like to think about Severus. Just thinking about him was like taking a knife to her heart. She didn't like to think that he would very likely be one of the Death Eaters that she faced in battle one day. Thinking of Alice was even worse! Alice and her husband Frank were in the same situation that Lilly and James had found themselves in, hiding there son from a madman. One of the boys was 'Chosen'. Lilly spent half of her time praying to every magical and muggle deity that it was not her son that was named in prophesy. She spent the other half feeling guilty for wishing such a fate on the son of her closest female friend, her only female friend. Lilly loved Neville. She just loved Harry more.

And despite all of this. Despite the paranoia and the fear. Lilly would still find herself caught unaware on the night when all of her nightmares became a reality. Her husband screams as she ran with Harry up the stares. Her frantic attempts to apparate, even Harry's tears. They all came as a surprise. As she stood in between her son and a monster, begging for the first time in her life, she knew that she was going to die. Slitting her wrist with a quickly thought cutting curse, Lilly barely had time to smear a streak of scarlet liquid across her son's forehead before an unforgiving green light and a cruel laugh ended her life. This was the first and last time that Lilly Potter truly had a wish for death. A life willingly given, a prophesy evoked, and a child saved. The world would never be the same.