Lily and James Potter died today.
Snape was abandoned, his soul collected today.
Harry was orphaned, Sirius imprisoned; Peter betrayed his friends today.
And then tomorrow Hagrid, slowly, to take the child away.
A melancholy chronological account of the most untimely deaths of Hallow's Eve 1981- of Godric's Hollow the night the world came to an end.
Chapter One
...
It's empty, this street in front of me.
No cars, no people- no movement. It's long since past sunset in early November and the streetlights cast an eerie glow over the wet pavement, a breathy wind fills the lungs of the empty street and the wind chimes of Number 17, rustles the bed sheet hiding a ghost at the window of Number 3. A gently waning moon hangs like a chandelier in a ceiling full of a stars.
It was quiet, that of the peculiar sort, like the electricity had been lost and a city was caught mid-scream, confused and perhaps a little frightened; huddled together in packs to guard themselves from the resounding darkness. But there was no noise there- no sound. Not then. Not on the night that the world came to an end.
But there was something odd happening in Godric's Hollow that night. Something strange, something mysterious. Something that's never been fully explained or even understood.
There were two deaths first, noise then, surely, before all this silence. Twelve soon to come- one orphan. A long-lost best friend first, a half giant next and a godfather with an itch in his heart taking up the back. Three visitors, three witnesses. Three viewers of the dead, of the orphan that night.
Their death was primal. It'd happened before, and it'll happen again. And it will always happen exactly when you think that it can't.
But it's too late for that now- all the Muggle alarms have come too late. It was a war after all, and in war you guard your own before anyone else's. The world was soaked in a Death Eater mentality, in Slytherin-esque ambition- you just didn't know who your neighbour could be, who was controlling them from behind the curtain, out of sight. It was too much to ask for Muggle witnesses that night, for video footage. But remember that it's the middle of the night, and things like that don't happen here. Not in public. Not where a cleverly placed Disillusionment charm can't hide the obvious.
Despite the bad, the worse, and the inexplicable, lets have a healthy dose of reality, shall we? A sense of normality amongst these strangers on either side.
Even though there was a Fidelius-shaped hole between Number 17 and Number 19 on the west side of Godric's Hollow, one thing the street did have was houses. Loads of them. But they're grey, empty looking. Stone and wood, mostly; faded by the wear of time. They line the street east and west, with the back gardens facing the full moon on a night like tonight. Looking around, it's easy to see that they're abandoned, even though they shouldn't be. Not with the economy the way it is. Not with it being November first and the day after Hallowe'en.
Surely one house still has sweets on the front porch. Surely there are still pirates and fairies and television heroes walking the streets with heavy pillow cases slung over their shoulders.
Surely one person had seen it. Heard the piercing screams without perforated hiccup-y laughter following in its wake. But this wasn't a haunted house- there was no puppet master hiding in the doorway. Death had been here, and where he's been, dead men follow.
Due north and south (for this was a practical sort of neighbourhood, wizard or no) was full of vacant houses with vacant expressions: windows without pupils, railings without arms supporting them, beers in hand. Doorbells to ring with no one left to answer them.
The flowers are all wilted by now, this late in the year- brown and crawling and dead. Begonias and lilies and ivy racing up the walls of every house, all missing the essential limb for the final ascent; a leg, an arm. A punched out window, the cracked concrete of a long-since haphazard walk.
(The nature of the dead is dead anticipation, after all.) The sort that leaves you stranded at the end of a sentence with adjectives and dying words hanging out of your mouth.
The lamps flicker, even though it's ten past one and the day after Hallowe'en. It was too early for it to be that quiet.
Anyone with a spine is too drunk to be asleep, having too much fun to notice a house that is a little too bomb-stricken to be fake.
You know the one. Number 18.
That young couple with a baby boy, hidden out of sight for four months and counting. That house that disappeared from sight almost a week ago, invisible by a Fidelius charm- the cottage across from the church in the middle of Godric's Hollow.
...
The house closest is attached to a split telephone pole in its own state of disarray. Once tall and strong it developed a hunch. Split vertebrae, a cracked neck. A broken addition to the flickering fate of Godric's Hollow.
I guess it's unpicturesque to mention the crack house around the corner, or the hovel on Number 12. This is a neighbourhood of a generation long gone; you'll hear no childish laughter or the screech of bicycles here. No buzzing of teenagers at the corner store, flipping through magazines and newspapers. No housewives pushing prams on the sidewalk, their children playing hopscotch on the street, buying ice lollies from ice cream vans.
Not since Lily and James died.
But they don't know it yet, do they? They don't understand. These people, the neighbours- sleeping in all those ghost houses on either side. Numbers 17 and 19 haven't bothered to check, they don't yet know that the world is over.
They don't know that those are bodies left on the stairway, in the nursery. Dead parents of lost generation, leaving behind a baby, a particularly unlucky orphan.
I turned my head to the unwelcome crack of Apparation.
There's a Death Eater standing there, silent and still characteristically dressed in black robes and serpent tattoos.
The crack disturbed the peace, not to mention the wind chimes, suddenly in possession of new purpose and clumsy noise. But this man brings grief-stricken silence with him- like a bomb before it detonates, but the shrapnel from that sort of wound cuts far deeper than the skin. It's the sort that can pierce a heart.
This man had assisted in a murder, it's no wonder he clutched his wand like his very life depends on it. No wonder he was sobbing long before he reached the door.
I shook my head, and when Severus Snape passed me, I followed.
...
Yes. A Death Eater, if I recall. That's what I saw, there was no man underneath those robes, how could there be?
But the first thing he did once he saw it, saw Bursberry Cottage in ruins, was drop his wand. Abandon his courage, but yet he had the bravery to move.
To limp inside, feigning, perhaps, praise towards his master, towards Voldemort- the potential murderer of that last thing he loved. If he opened that house, unlocked the doors, he would know.
Was Lily dead? Was she already gone?
What of the boy?
He knew about the prophesy, of course. In the Hogs Head he heard it, clear as day. The Dark Lord was always one step ahead and two miles behind.
...
The house shimmered into being, a secret had been told. And when it opened, something inside him cracked.
Those robes fell to the ground. The house was in pieces.
The welcome mat was smoking, the door left open, but not harmed. A pair of wands were left abandoned on the sofa, the entertainment of a boy- a son, long forgotten.
The staircase was worse.
The framed photos lining the wall were all shattered, twenty-one years of Potters and Evans and Marauders torn from their frames. Snape had to step over the broken glass, jagged stairs and James Potter to reach the nursery.
...
He was still warm.
His glasses had fallen off of his nose. His hair, still messy and disheveled was black as night, black as Snape's. There was a pacifier in his back pocket. Stains on his shirt and trousers. Nothing but death in his eyes, in his body and in his heart.
He looked harmless in death, but Snape didn't bother to kick to corpse when he passed. Dead anticipation after all, Snape knew better.
And by his hand, a wand-less and defenceless hand, a man was dead. Killed by the power of words, the unadulterated force of rumours and suspicions. Voldemort had been here- looked him in the eye and killed the spare: the first barrier to Lily Potter's son.
...
The hall was bomb stricken.
A bomb truly had exploded, the ruins of the house stood in piles, in pieces. The carpet was laden with scorch marks, burns that cut through solid wood, windows into the rooms below.
It was easier, I think, for Snape to look down. To see the kitchen and the foyer and the bathroom with the lights still on. People could've lived down there, there was a family who once had.
So Snape swallowed, shook off the remainder of a Death Eater facade, settled into his eleven year old self for the first time in ten years. Braced himself for the landing, for something much worse than the death of an enemy.
He stood his ground as he walked, but once, then twice he faltered, but not in body. His spirt was on the road to destruction, his heart thumping madly in his chest, enchained by his ribs- threatening to escape.
There was a mental shut down. Black screen with black words. Reboot. Reboot. Restart. This was no time for a broken heart, son; you didn't know anything yet.
(But don't close your eyes, Severus, you had brought this upon yourself)
He had known what was coming when he heard the screams from three hundred miles away.
He groped blindly for the railing as his knees buckled, as the lights blinked and the moon shone, as the carpet cracked and the nursery came into full light.
As he saw the arm of a dead woman lying on the floor.
Snape's left knee buckled as he slammed into the wall, his heart tumbling onto the floor. As he saw red hair and a vacant green-eyed stare, eyes, a body, lips he hadn't seen in far too long.
Nothing but death in her body, in her eyes and in her heart.
She was draped over the cot, the child silent, crying for his mother, for a parent, for the child was now most certainly an orphan. A cut was still bleeding, jagged and red in the middle of the boys forehead. Droplets of blood dripped down the boys face.
Lily was cold.
Her eyes were open, wide in shock, wreathed in tears and black streaks of burns and soot. Her hair was knotted, curled like an angels even in death, her body tense and so terribly still.
Snape took her hand and held her, cradled her broken body in his, as if to protect her from the inevitability of death, of the mistakes he had made that had separated them so long ago. He pulled her closer and tucked his face into her hair, sobbing openly now, so terribly, terribly remorseful that he could barely see, hardly think past the ache of the hole in his heart. Of the hopeless longing that was gone now because of him.
Of the family, the family, the Potter's spawn with his Lily, the child that should've been dead, killed by the Dark Lord who had most certainly been here. He should've been dead.
And Lily could've lived.
Her dying scream echoed in the empty room as the child thrashed and Snape sobbed, as the moon shone, and the house bent, as a heart changed and a soul became redeemed.
As the remnants of a broken heart and a shattered soul intermingled with that of the dead, of a fate worse than death lying dead in his arms.
...
Snape left her be once he heard the door creak. Whether it was the Dark Lord or a Muggle, it didn't matter. He couldn't be seen- couldn't be seen, couldn't be left alone any longer.
He Dissapparated immediately, almost splinching himself in the process, his mind was in rambles. But it was fitting, I think and you should also, that he did indeed leave a bit of himself in that place- in that room with an orphan and a dead lover. But not as Voldemort had, not a piece of a soul.
It was split enough without magical aid. It was a human ailment, a Muggle condition- his broken heart. No amount of love could heal him now, part of himself had died with her.
So when he left he almost took her with him. But it would've been suspicious, raised questions. The child might remember, and the Dark Lord would never forget. And Snape would be dead in minutes, disobedience is death and death would be sore solace for what he deserved.
Snape turned and with a final, sharp crack the air bent and he disappeared. The child in cot sobbed and reached for his mother, his fist inches from her hair. Still warm, even now. Warm from an old friend, borrowed from a broken heart. But death is death and the price is still far too steep. Love that deep to save a child so loved, so loved that no matter of darkness could kill him now.
He was a survivor, if nothing else- and Harry Potter would take that to the grave.