This is my first posting, and my first one-shot. I do hope you enjoy it. Special thanks to my beta Aebbe for making sure I don't make a fool of myself.
Harry Potter is copyright J.K. Rowlings. This fan fiction is provided for entertainment purposes only.
There was a blanket...
There was a blanket draped across a rocking chair in the corner of the nursery. It was a pale yellow blanket made of the softest cotton, with little brooms stitched all over. The rocking chair was still slowly rocking from the force of the explosion that had also caused part of the room to be blasted away into nothingness.
There was no noise in the room, except for the chair's soft creaking sound and the flapping noise of the yellow baby blanket gently tapping against the back.
Tiny dust particles fell from the newly ripped open roof. And a small toddler lay unconscious in his crib, haphazardly lying, as if he had fallen from a high height into the small bed.
Next to the crib was the body of a young woman; red hair lay about her head, giving her a glowing crown against the dark of the night. Her green eyes were closed, never to open again. Even sleep could not look that peaceful.
Down stairs in the hallway was a young man with jet black hair, lying face down in the carpet, as if he had tripped and not picked himself up. His glasses broken underneath him; shards of the glass had cut into the young man's cheek; blood that was now drying had dripped down and onto the tan rug.
A fire in the hearth was only embers now and looked to be in need of tending.
A tea pot sat on the dining room table with two empty tea cups waiting to be filled.
A toy broom was propped against a leather armchair, along with a soft ball that very much resembled a quaffle.
The silence on the main floor was deafening.
And the only noise in the house, the creaking of a rocking chair in a nursery, sounded heavy and mournful; it was the sound of the last beats of life inside the Potter house.
Soon the momentum would stop, and the chair would cease to make a noise.
Soon there would be only the memory of a happy family in the house.
Soon the toddler would wake with the foulest of fevers, crying out for his mum and da.
His cries would go unanswered.
The blanket would be left behind, along with many of the Potters' belongings when the toddler would be taken away.
This night, the eve of All Saints, brought two more into their fold. For saintly tears still stained the young woman's face as she lay on the nursery floor.
The world had changed.
The child had lived.
The Prophecy had become fact.
After the toddler had cried itself back to sleep, temperature still raging, another young man had appeared downstairs; he was lying on top of the man in the hallway. He had been turned onto his back, and the new young man with his own jet black hair was sobbing openly and unabashedly on his friend's chest.
With trembling hands the man took the cuff of his sleeve and gently wiped the blood off of his best friend's cheek. The sobbing did not stop, and the grey eyed man could barely see through river of tears.
He went back to clutching the lifeless body, begging for forgiveness. He knew not how long he sobbed on top of his friend, but he knew he had to get up, had to see.
Slowly and hollowly he made his way upstairs, in search of two more people he blamed himself for letting down. The door to the nursery was open and he could feel the slight prickle of the cold night air as he approached the open door.
He saw her feet first, quickly followed by the rest of her. She looked like an angel. And the young man found himself on his knees in the hallway having seen that the top most corner of the room had been blown away.
The young man whimpered and moaned loudly in anger and pain. He could feel pieces of him being ripped apart and crushed. His friends, people he loved more than he had ever loved his own family, were gone because of him. He let them down.
The crib could be seen from the hallway, illuminated by the sliver of moonlight, his grey eyes reflecting the horrifying scene in the dark.
Could he bring himself to look upon his own godson's lifeless body?
His breath caught in his throat as he sobbed again. He didn't know if he had the strength to see the little boy as lifeless as his parents.
The red hair of the woman pulled him like a moth to a flame. He numbly made his way into the room. Trying hard to prepare himself for what he was about to see.
Never again would this house hold a Christmas party.
Never again would the young men play another game of Quidditch.
Never again would he hear his godson call for him.
As he looked into the crib, his cry of anguish was cut short; the toddler's chest rose and fell with quick breaths. The grey eyed mans breathing hitched at what he now saw. Distress and loss waged war with rejoicing as he looked upon his godson's face. The weight of the grief for what he had lost that night was heavy.
The young toddler opened his emerald green eyes, miniature versions of his mother's, and looked up at the bereaved man. His cries alerted his godfather. Green met grey. The young man scooped up his godson and once they were embraced in a tight hug, the grey eyed man ground his teeth in blissful agony.
The toddler's temperature was tended to, and the grey eyed man took his godson and sat in the rocking chair, facing away from the now covered form of the red haired woman.
With the yellow blanket still draped across the back of the chair, the grey eyed man felt the swelling of emotions over take him.
The toddler with the angry cut on his forehead fell asleep in the arms of his godfather.
The chair was once more the only sound in the house.
The chilly night air could not be felt by the young man.
The pain and sorrow took too much room in him for it to affect him.
His grey eyes hard and calculating, the black haired man planned his next move.
Bundling up the toddler in blankets from the crib he left the nursery to find a safe place to keep his most precious ward.
For the last time the rocking chair was the only sound to be heard within the Potter house.
Now, however, the yellow blanket with little brooms stitched on it, had fallen to the floor next to the woman.
The blanket had belonged to the toddler's father, when he himself had been a boy.
It lay there as still and forever unmoving as the two people who had wrapped their son in it the day he had been born.
It was now a relic of the brief time the couple and toddler had been a family.
Sometimes the most important things aren't the things we remember forever. Sometimes it's the little things. Things that gave us comfort whether or not we needed it.
And although Harry James Potter could never explain why, the day he found out his wife Ginny was pregnant with their first child, he went to a baby store and bought a pale yellow blanket with brooms stitched on it.