Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

A/N: This story was written before the publication of OOTP.

Track 1

Halloween, 1986

Godric's Hollow

James and Lilly Potter were on their way back from Dumbledore's Halloween ball, where many of the wizards belonging to the headmaster's circle had met. The event had not been meant for entertainment purposes only, but they had been able to forget about the serious situation they were in for a while, before they had been called into the headmaster's study with the others. They had spent long hours there, before they had been able to make their way back.

They had left their six years old son Harry with a good and reliable friend, and so they re-apparated in some distance to their home, to walk the rest of the way and enjoy one of the rare, peaceful nights. The moon was high in the sky, and the night was cool, as was to be expected at this time of the year, although the last days had been pretty mild.

Lilly's thin and elegant princess dress looked to be made of magic rather than cloth, and she was getting cold soon. She shuddered.

"Cold?" James whispered. They were walking so close that she could feel the air stirring at her ear when he talked.

They had reached a point from where they had a good view over all of Godric's Hollow. James draped his red overcoat around his wife's shoulders as they stopped.

Lilly pulled the soft coat closer around her, and leaned slightly into James. For a few minutes they stood there, unmoving, enjoying each other's company and the view.

Suddenly, James pointed.

"Look! Over there!" he called excitedly.

His wife looked into the direction his hand gave her. She winced. Green smoke rose from a house, forming the Dark Mark in the air above it.

They needed another moment to realize what they were looking at. Whirling around, Lilly stared at James, her eyes wide with fear. "That's our house!" she yelled. Then she was gone, racing down the hill as quickly as the dress she was wearing would permit. James was close behind her.

o

The Deatheaters had been thorough, that much they could see at once. They had obviously not minded using anything else than magic to destroy whatever they could get their hands on. The gate was on the ground, broken into various pieces, some meters away from the fince. The door was open, swinging on a broken hinge, and some windows had been shatterd from the inside.

James was the first to enter the house, wordlessly, his wand ready in his hand. Just behind the door he froze. He had just stepped onto a battlefield. Not a single piece of furniture was still upright. Even the heaviest things had been pushed over. Every step brought him down on glass shards or pieces of parchment. The smell of blood, mixed with something else, was heavy in the air. The wall across the room sported a wide, dark patch.

Lilly suppressed a scream when she followed her husband.

A figure lay face down by their feet, motionless. Hesitating, James knelt to turn the man onto his back. "Goyle..." he hissed. At least the deatheaters had not gotten away without losses on their side. This knowledge was bitter satisfaction for him.

Although she knew what she was going to find, Lily ran into the nursery, followed by her husband. Her dress caught on an upturned table, which was almost blocking the door. She never noticed when the thin cloth ripped.

Seconds later, they saw what they had already known, but denied until the very last moment. The deatheaters had not come to rip their home to pieces. Harry had obviously died under the Avada Kedavra spell. His death had been fast and painless, but that was not much of a consolation for the Potters.

Lily was fighting down tears. They could not, must not linger, not even to murn their dead son. The danger of the deatheaters, not having found their original target, returning to finish what they had come for, was too big.

If Harry's death was to be revenged, they had to return to Hogwarts, to speak with Dumbledore. They had one more thing to do first, though...

o

James lit his way with a lumos. Following a track of blood and shattered furniture, hours seemed to pass before they found what they had been looking for. Severus had fought with all his strength. The room was in pieces too small or too badly damaged to recognize their original shapes. Scorched and burnt pieces were everywhere, as well as bits of broken wood. The smell of fresh and half-dried blood was mixed with the disgusting stink of burned flesh and something stronger, something even worse that James refused to identify.

The man who had become James' and Lily's best friend after their time at Hogwarts, lay lifelessly in a corner of their destroyed living room. His left hand had never released it's death grip on his shattered wand. If he was still alive, the death eaters must have left only scant minutes before they had arrived.

With slow, deliberate steps, his eyes never moving from the back of Snape's head, James walked over, to do what he had to do. He bit the back of his hand to keep from screaming of vomiting when he went to his knees on the blood-soake carpet next to his friend.

An agonized sound proved his worst fear to be true. The deatheaters had killed the child quickly, but they had not spoiled their own fun by killing the adult with an uncomplicated Avada Kedavra. Their fury for not finding Lily and James had been turned onto the babysitter Snape.

No man in his condition had any right to be alive anymore, let alone conscious. Severus was both. It could only mean, that he was still under some very powerful spells that kept him that way.

James' eyes moved over Snape's body, and he realized, that there was no way to help his friend. It looked as if someone had cut open his belly, put his hand in the wound and pulled out anything he could grab. More probably, some spell that was meant for tearing furniture to pieces had bounced off something and hit him, but the result was the same. The only thing that could be keeping Snape alive still was magic.

"Sev..." James murmured, reaching out to brush bloody strands of hair from his friend's face. His mind was racing, trying in vain to remember a spell, any spell, to help Severus, no matter how.

Slowly, inch by inch, Snape's head turned into James' direction. His eyes were open, but they looked through James, blindly, their usual color turned a milky white. Pain contorted a face that told more about the fight than the other man wanted to know. The right side of Snape's face had been touched by a fire spell. It had left a black track across his cheek, and the heat had sufficed to blister the skin around it. Four deep, bloody cuts ran down the other half. Some animagus must have jumped at him there.

He had barely enough strength left to manage a painful whimper when James' hand touched one of those cuts, but he was trying to say something nevertheless. If there were no words coming from Snape's mouth, they were drowned in the blood that came with them.

"Easy, Sev. Don't try to speak", James said, feeling helpless. Had he been able to muster enough concentration, he would have been tempted to try the Avada Kedavra himself.

While he could do nothing but murmur comforting lies and stay with his dying friend, Lily silently entered the room. The self-control she showed when she knelt beside the two men, putting the coat James had given her an eternity ago, in another life - or so it seemed - was surprising. Her face was tight and pale. She bit her lips until she tasted blood. Once again, there were tears in her eyes, but she stayed with them. Carefully, he took Snape's left hand. There was not much left of his right one.

"Easy, Sev. We're with you", she told him, her voice choked with tears, not knowing if he was even able to hear her.

Once again, Snape's mouth moved, unable to produce a sound. This time, it was not necessary. The word his bloody lips were forming was more than clear. 'Please.'

Tears blurred the world in front of Lily's eyes. "Finite Incantatem", she whispered.

A shudder when through Snape's body.

Lily and James could only watch helplessly, as Severus took one last painful breath, before his head fell to one side, and the spell that had so horribly prolonged his life, dissolved.