PROLOGUE:
Darkness had fallen over that world such a long time ago, or so it seemed. No one was safe anymore. There was pain, torture, death everywhere one turned.
The young family residing in Godric's Hollow had been hiding there for close to eighteen months. There was a prophecy regarding the child Lily was carrying and she and James had been ushered to the relative safety of the small Devon village.
It had been here where the baby had been born; a girl — Laurel Anne, named in honour of her maternal grandparents who had unfortunately died before they had the chance to meet her.
She was much loved by the few who knew her; spoiled even, particularly by James' closest friend, Sirius Black, who had been named her godfather. He had driven Lily to distraction on more than one occasion with his unwavering generosity toward his goddaughter. Oh, not that Lily particularly minded the presents he bought for Laurel — or 'Little Doe,' as Sirius had dubbed her — but he had certain quirks that could drive her crazy. He was perhaps a little boisterous, though he much preferred calling himself 'playful' regarding the time spent with little Laurel. All the same, he perhaps wasn't Lily's first choice for a babysitter if she and James ever had need of one.
Remus was considerably calmer than the aforementioned Sirius Black. Of a gentle nature, he would be the one found in a rocking chair with Laurel on his lap, lulling her to sleep; a stark contrast to Sirius who would be swinging her around and dancing with her. Unfortunately for Remus, he probably didn't get to spend as much time as he'd have liked to with the green-eyed baby, for he had an affliction; an affliction which cast him aside from respectable society. So often, he got quite ill, so any time he could spend with Laurel was precious indeed; especially given the ever-present danger looming over not just the small house, but the entirety of the wizarding world.
Peter was neither playful like Sirius, nor tender like Remus. Seeing him with the little girl was something of a strange sight. Laurel was often fidgety when in his presence — she never was with Lily, James, Sirius or Remus. If Peter held her she would frequently try to make a run for it — or rather toddle a bit and fall flat on her face. She would attempt to manoeuvre around him and if he went to hold her, all limbs went flying everywhere; she wriggled like a monkey in his grasp. Perhaps he simply wasn't one for babies, Lily pondered.
James, perhaps, was the strangest of the adults. It was true he had matured enough to somewhat grow out of the reputation he had at Hogwarts, as was evident by his relationship with a child that was not his own. Stranger still was that the child he held affection for was the daughter of the very person he held such personal distaste for since the moment they encountered one another ten years previously.
Laurel's father had never seen her and James had wondered if he even knew he had a daughter to begin with. Would the man care? He hated children having grown up alongside them; why should his own child give him cause to think differently? Perhaps, James mused, if he and his friends had been more tolerant of Severus Snape he wouldn't be quite such an embittered man. Even at such a young age, only twenty-one, the man was miserable as sin.
James sat on the living room floor, the dark-haired child in front of him, four stuffed animals surrounding them both. Reaching out for the stag, he asked the little girl in a musically-toned voice "Can you say 'Prongs?'"
Seeing the stuffed stag gently wiggling before her eyes, she reached out playful hands to take the toy from the man she knew as "Dada."
Struggling to speak, for she was but a mere fifteen months old, she managed to exclaim "Pong!" to which the bespectacled man took mock offence.
"'Pong?'" he repeated, moving to sniff his armpits. "Hey, I don't smell that bad. Lily, your daughter's being mean to me!" he finished with a laugh.
Moving from the kitchen, Lily stood at the doorway. "What's wrong?"
"Your daughter says I stink. I think she could do with taking a smelling test. If this child ever becomes an animagus, my money's on a bee — a smelling bee." With a good-natured smile, he brushed Laurel's nose with his index finger, the sensation prompting the baby to giggle.
With a smile of her own, Lily sat behind her daughter, gently pulling her onto her lap. Focusing on the child's feet, her brow furrowed. How could children honestly take pleasure in having their socks hanging off? How was it not uncomfortable?
No sooner had Lily pondered this that Laurel kicked her foot up, causing her sock to fly off and land on the arm of James' glasses.
"Oh, that's fetching," the red-haired woman smiled.
"Bet you couldn't do that again if you tried," James grinned, removing the offending footwear. "Laurel Evans scores!" he exclaimed. "Ten points to Gryffindor!" With that, he methodically placed the sock on the child's head and picked up the stuffed dog. "Can you say 'Padfoot?'"
"Pa'-foo'!" Laurel exclaimed excitedly, distracted by the cuddly toy as Lily returned her sock to her foot.
"'Pa-Foo?' So Padfoot's Chinese, is he?" the man asked, an expression of amusement on his face. "I'll admit, Laurel, he does have a fondness for chow mein, but the man's never been abroad."
"You realise she can't understand you?" his wife stated, a playful questioning look in her emerald eyes.
"Trust me, I know," he said, eyes still focused on the little girl before him. "You may have your father's genes, but you'll always be my baby," he said, somewhat distantly, as he reached over, to plant a kiss on Laurel's forehead.
Not three hours later and the small family was no more. James lay sprawled on the stairs, as the girl's father entered the house, which, from the outside looking in, had been half-blasted apart.
The young man still living couldn't say he felt a great deal of consideration for the deceased Gryffindor, for there had been precious little more than animosity and loathing between the two.
Ascending the last few stairs, he slowly made his way along the lightning-lit, otherwise-shadowed, hallway. The unshakeable feeling of dread at any sight that would have befallen him was enough to knock the man sick. The closer he got, the slower he moved; almost afraid of reaching the end and having to look to his left to witness the fate of the woman and her child.
The thought alone of seeing the young woman dead was enough to break the man's heart, but she actually was. His Master had gone back on his word; he hadn't spared her. There she lay, flat on her stomach, arms extended in a protective manner.
So fixated on the sight of Lily, Severus Snape seemed to not have heard the faint sniffling from the girl in the cot; nor even been aware of her presence.
The sound of the man's gut-wrenching sobs filled the cold night air, and that, in turn, prompted the wailing from little Laurel Evans — confused, terrified and alone.
Sitting there, rocking Lily's limp body in his arms, he finally became aware of the baby, her cries mingled with his own. Turning his head in the child's direction his dark eyes met her own emerald. Lily's eyes; the last piece of Lily left in the world. Her hair, however, was as black as ebony. No, that was James Potter. Lily's soft curls, perhaps, but she was James Potter's daughter.
With a great deal of emotional pain, Severus gently lay Lily back down and cleared the tears from his cheeks as best as he could with the sleeves of his robe. Rather shakily, he stood and turned to leave.
"Dada," came the quiet voice of the little girl, but there was no ignoring it.
His feet froze, preventing him from venturing back out into the night.
"Dada," she said again.
Turning back to face the child, careful to avoid the sight of Lily, which would surely ruin him all over again, he spoke. "I am not your Dada." His voice, filled with utter pain, was soft and low. Against his better judgement, he approached the cot to properly examine the child. She was looking up at him with hope-filled eyes, though still glossy with unshed tears for the mother who would never hold her again.
Reaching out her left hand, she, as gently as any fifteen-month-old could, touched his cheek, upon which was subconsciously resting one lone tear. He flinched at the touch, as he took hold of her hand and released it from his cheek as a way of saying 'Keep your hands to yourself.'
The thunderous roar of a motorcycle was heard in the silence of the night and, almost as if she were completely aware of the visitor to Godric's Hollow, the little girl exclaimed "Doggy!"
The dark-haired man looked to the child questioningly. "Well, that's the strangest-sounding 'doggy' I've ever heard," he said, as he watched her pick up one of the four stuffed toys from her side and cuddle it to her chest with a little giggle. Given recent circumstances she seemed happy enough now and he could so easily leave her to her own devices. Someone would come for her eventually; do with her what they wished. But how could he leave her? The moment he turned his back, she'd likely start wailing again; she'd be alone again not understanding why her mother wasn't moving and wouldn't wake up.
"Laurel!" a man shouted. Black, the child's dogfather. "Laurel!" He sounded crazed. He could kill the child himself, given the chance.
With a quick glance to the door, where the shadow of Black was bounding up the stairs and across the hallway, Severus instinctively, picked up the child, the chest of her pyjama top soaked with blood, and held her close to him. She may be Potter's spawn, but did the last part of Lily really deserve to die?
With the thud of the girl's godfather crashing into the wall, the Potions Master whirled around, child on one hip and his wand withdrawn.
Staggering into the nursery, the animagus trained his eyes on Lily's deceased form. With a cry of anger at recent events, he took note of his nemesis standing before him. "What are you doing here?" he asked, voice filled with rage, tears streaming down his face. "Give her to me, Snape. You've done enough." He began to advance on the teacher, who was unwilling to sacrifice the child in his arms. "I said give her to me. You're to blame for all this, aren't you?"
"And who was the Secret Keeper, Black?" the baby-adorned man challenged.
"You don't know anything!" the Gryffindor shot back, as he moved to wrench the child from the Slytherin's grasp. With the disturbance, the girl began to cry. "Oh, Little Doe," he sobbed into her hair. "I'm so sorry."
With his wand still pointed in Black's general direction, Snape showed no sign of faltering. Even as a student, Black's temper had been unpredictable; there was no telling what he might do.
"Where's all this blood come from?" he asked, unthreateningly, though his tone soon turned to one of rage. "What did you do to her?"
"I never touched her," Snape replied.
"Oh," he exclaimed, turning to lock eyes with his foe, "and I suppose she was just covered in blood when you showed up, was she?"
"Yes," was the plain, honest reply.
Calmly, Black placed the child back in her cot, kissing her forehead, before pulling his own wand out and holding it to Snape's face. "Well, you're a Death Eater, Snape." he spat. "Pray tell; what curse is responsible?"
Laurel looked up to both men in front of her, on either side of her cot, as they were on the verge of cursing each other into oblivion. Before any spell could be cast, however, the Death Eater lifted the child's pyjama top to reveal a scar curiously-shaped like a bolt of lightning smack-bang in the middle of her chest, which was still lightly bleeding. "'S' marks the spot," he said, quietly, as he covered her up once more, before turning his eyes away from the child.
"What do you mean, 'S' marks the spot?" Black questioned, as he lowered his wand.
"You never took Ancient Runes, did you?"
"And what does education have to do with all this?" the animagus asked, exasperated.
"Education can take you far, Black. Perhaps if you'd educated yourself you might have realised that by now," Snape bit back. No sooner were the words out of his mouth that Black's wand was again pointed in Snape's direction. "You saw that scar," Snape continued. "In the Runic Alphabet it is reminiscent of the letter 'S.' In the child's case, I believe it has more of a meaning than a solitary letter.
"Oh, and what might this 'S' stand for, Snape? 'Sacrifice?' I think plenty of that's been done already!" he seethed aggressively, jerking his head in the direction of the dead woman lying on the floor, as the expression on his unwanted companion's face contorted once more into one of emotional pain. "Oh, what's this now? Gonna cry, are you? Some things never change, eh, Snivellus?" he scoffed.
Almost as if the little girl knew what was going on, she threw the stuffed dog at her godfather, hitting him on the head.
"Laurel, if you're going to throw your toys at least throw them at him," he groaned, indicating the man he so loathed. "It's because of you James and Lily are dead." Another toy thrown at his head — this time the stag. Sirius ignored it. "And now Laurel's an orphan and it's all your fault."
"I know," Snape said, defeated, as he fought to hide his tears from his nemesis. He cast a glance sideways to Laurel sitting in her cot, now with the stuffed wolf in her hand.
"It's not bad enough that you tried to destroy Remus at Hogwarts; you've now destroyed a whole family. Well done, Severus Snape. Five hundred points to Slytherin, Order of Merlin First Class. Give the man a bloody medal!" Now the wolf hit him on the head.
Without the energy to argue anymore, the Hogwarts employee turned to leave.
"Oh, what's this? Running away, eh? Coward! Go on! Sling your hook!"
The last of the four toys the child always slept with, hit an angered Sirius on the back of the head and rolled across the floor to Snape's feet. Two pairs of eyes, one black and one silver, fell on the stuffed rat. Snape knew it didn't require any words — the baby's action told her godfather everything he needed to know and she never made a single sound.