Mumma holds me and rocks me in the rocking chair placed in my nursery. She smiles down at me and her red hair dangles in my face, tickling my cheeks. Her green eyes sparkle when I laugh. She flicks her wand around a bit and whispers, "Lumos." The tip lights up and Mum waves it in front of my face. I watch it, completely taken by the magic of it all.
"Oh, baby Harry. You don't know just how much Mumma and Dadda love you," she says softly.
I do know how much they both love me. They make it known all the time. Either way, I liked hearing it. I yawn once, a large yawn for a smallish baby, and Mumma keeps rocking me in the chair. She hums softly and smiles at me. I grin and start nibbling at my hand.
Mumma stands and puts me in my crib, laying a light blanket over my legs. She smiles down at me again (Mumma is a very smiley person) and touches my forehead with her pointer finger. I reach a chubby hand up and hold her finger. She smiles.
Then all of the sudden, a loud noise comes from downstairs. Mumma looks concerned. Biting her lip, she stands and walks from my room. She screams, loud and un-Mumma like.
"JAMES!" Tears are running down her face and I don't know what's going on. She runs back into my room and kneels in front of me. I look at her through the bars of my crib.
"Harry, Mumma loves you..." she says through tears and hiccups. "Mumma loves you so much, Harry."
A snake-man sweeps into the room and smiles evilly. He points his wand at Mummy and she screams, tears still running down her cheeks. Without another word, he shouts, "Avada Kadavra!" Mummy falls to the floor with a THUD. She isn't breathing.
Next, he points the wand at me, stepping over Mummy with his grungy bare feet. He says the same to me, a blast of green light shooting from the wand. But instead of me falling like Mummy did, it bounces back off of me and hits the man. He falls and soon just vanishes.
I start to cry, wishing Mumma would pick me up and hold me close to her. Wishing Mummy would sing to me and dance around the lounge like we do. But she hasn't moved since the man did the spell. And Dadda hasn't come into the room with us, either. Where is he?
Another man, this one with stringy black hair and wearing a dark robe comes into the room. He sees Mumma and clutches his chest.
"Lilly...Oh, Lilly," he whispers, using Mumma's real name. He must know her. But I've never seen him, only Sirius and Remus and some others of Mumma and Dadda's friends. Never this guy.
He rushes over to Mumma and holds her, crying openly. "LILLY!" he shouts, and then more softly, "Always, Lilly...Always..."
I stop crying, tears still trailing down my cheeks, but without the noise. The man looks up and notices me suddenly. He stares my eyes, and then at my forehead.
"You have your mother's eyes..."
I didn't know what he meant. I'd rather have my Mumma instead of just her eyes. I mumble (just baby noises, really) but he continues to cry over Mumma. He strokes her hair and I watch.
Where was Dadda? Why was Mumma not moving even when this man was holding her? Where was our ginger cat, whom I loved to chase around on my mini-broomstick? Was I alone now?
)()()()()()
Later, after the black-haired man left, a large man comes into the room and starts crying when he sees Mumma. He pulls out a handkerchief the size of one of Mumma's blankets and blows his nose. It scares me.
"Lilly and James Potter...Both dead in one night?" he mutters to himself. "And the cat?"
He blows his nose again and wipes his eyes which are like two little black beetles set into a big man's face. His beard reaches down to his chest and he's wearing a big coat. Everything on this man was big.
He notices me for the first time and realizes I'm not "dead" (whatever that was). He gasps softly and his eyes flicker to my forehead. What was with people doing that?
"Harry...You have your mother's eyes." He comes over to me, being careful to step around Mumma. He bends down and lifts me up easily. I don't struggle.
Mumma is still laying on the floor. Isn't she going to tell this man not to take me?! She doesn't, because the man takes me from the room and down the stairs. I see Dadda laying on the stair landing, his face with the same expression as Mumma's. The man bends over Dadda and sniffles again, sounding like a foghorn I heard when Mumma and Dadda took me to the sea.
As we walk through the rest of the house, I see that the furniture is flipped over and torn. Mumma would be mad.
Stuffing flows out of the chair Dadda sleeps in some times when he's reading the Daily Prophet. The cat is stretched out and doesn't lift his head when we walk by. He must've been "dead", too. I sigh and yawn. It was a fight to keep my eyes open.
The man walks out the door and I look up at the window of my nursery. The glass is blown out and the curtains flap in the breeze. Mumma never looked out the window.
The man lays me in a basket, wrapping his coat around me. He sits on a giant motorcycle and revs it. It lifts up and we leave the yard. I yawn as he shouts, "We're flying over Surrey, Harry!"
I fall asleep and stay asleep until the next morning when a woman shrieks the next morning.