Thanks to my beta Like Broken Glass for making this possible. Please tell me what you think!
Chapter One:
October 12, 1980-October 31, 1981
On October 12th, 1980 Lily and James Potter welcomed a lovely little girl into the world. She didn't cry as she was born, only letting out a sharp shriek when the midwife grabbed her uncomfortably. James and Lily thought long and hard about the name of their first child. They had always wanted many; James had always felt somewhat empty, being an only child, and Lily had never really had a sister in Petunia once she began displaying her magical powers. While James wanted all their names to be traditional like his (William, Lucy, Joseph, Anne, and so on) Lily wanted special names for her children – something one-of-a-kind.
They compromised and decided that Lily should name their daughters and James should name their sons. Therefore, after almost three hours of discussion, the still-not-crying little girl was named Eathelen Sophia Potter.
Nine months later, the Potters had a baby boy.
His birth was much longer and more difficult than Eathelen's, and the little boy – much larger than his sister had been – screamed constantly as he was cleaned and fussed over until he was in his mother's arms. He was quickly proclaimed to be a Harry James by both his mother and his father.
"He looks just like a Harry!" everyone said. Lily and James's friends all gathered into the bedroom to see him, even Alice and Frank Longbottom, whose own little boy had been born just a day before.
When Eathelen was introduced to her little brother, she said with a smile, "Hello, baby."
She was only nine months old, but she knew four words: Mum, Dad, Hello, and Baby. When Harry simply stared up at her, Eathelen grew frustrated and huffed, crossing her arms and giving her mother and father a 'What is this thing supposed to do anyway?' look.
"Sweetheart, Harry doesn't know how to speak yet!" Lily had said. "Look, try letting him grasp your finger like this…"
But at that moment Harry had screamed, demanding his first meal, and the focus in the room was back on the small boy. Eathelen crawled off, unhindered by the adults, to find something interesting to do.
The Potters already knew of the prophecy concerning their small son; they had heard it from Albus Dumbledore the day Lily's due date was discovered:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies ..."
Not three months after Harry's birth, the small family's home on Godric's Hollow was attacked, despite the layers upon layers of protective wards and even the Fidelius Charm placed upon it.
Harry was being nursed for the last time before bed by his mother on the sofa, and Eathelen was being read to by her father. All was quiet and peaceful until with a BANG, the red door was blown in.
James immediately jumped up, his wand ready.
"Lily, take the kids and run! It's him!" he roared, sending an easily blocked curse at the hooded figure, but blocking the one thrown at him just as easily. "I'll hold him off!"
Lily scooped Eathelen up in her arms and ran up the stairs with her and Harry securely pressed to her chest. Eathelen held tight to her mother, breathing heavily with fear, and Harry began to cry quietly.
As the fight continued downstairs, Lily slammed the door to Harry's room and locked it, knowing how futile the action was but unable to help herself. Desperately she tried to remember the spell that would allow temporary Disapparation from her home. It was a spell she hadn't thought she would need – the Fidelius Charm was supposed to be foolproof!
Downstairs, James glared at Lord Voldemort, hoping to buy his wife and children time to escape, but Voldemort wouldn't allow this. With a swish of the Dark Lord's wand, James was thrown into the wall and slid to the floor, unconscious. Certainly it would have been just as easy to kill the man, but Voldemort wanted James and Lily to live. He wanted them to wake up to the corpses of their children and know the price for defying him.
Blowing open the door to the quaint children's nursery, he ignored Lily's cries of 'Please, not my baby!' and threw her into the wall just as he had with her husband. The boy, his targeted child, was already in his little blue crib, while Lily Potter had been holding the older one, the girl, when she was knocked out. Now the child was on the floor beside her mother, shaking the woman's limp arm in an attempt to wake her and gazing fearfully at the snake-like man before her. Voldemort laughed and turned his wand on the boy – Harry Potter. It was hard to believe that this wailing brat was supposed to one day defeat him, but Voldemort wouldn't take a prophecy lightly.
He didn't see the small girl desperately digging through her mother's pockets, trying to find her wand. Of course, Eathelen was far too young to use it, but she knew that if you pointed it and said funny words, things could happen – like when her mother fell down. She figured that if she pointed the right end at the cloaked man and said the right words, she could stop him.
However, she didn't find it in time. The Dark Lord said the words of the killing spell, and everything went white. There were three screams – a shout from the Dark Lord as his body was destroyed and his powers stripped, a cry of pain from Harry as a small scar cut into his forehead, and a louder, longer scream from Eathelen as she was scarred as well, even more so than her brother.
When James and Lily came to, they found an unconscious Eathelen and a sobbing Harry. Dumbledore arrived soon after, examined Harry, and proclaimed that he had defeated Lord Voldemort. While both Harry and Eathelen would have their scars forever, only Harry's was properly examined. It was a shallow, lightning-bolt shaped cut.
His sister's, however, ran from the right side of her neck all the way down her stomach, traveling partway down her back and all over her left arm to the tips of her fingers. Muggles would call it a Lichtenberg Figure, a red-ish stain appearing after a lightning strike and usually disappearing in a matter of days. However, Eathelen's would never disappear, and it was not a normal scar either. However, not even she noticed how it glowed when she was hurt, angry, or scared. She never guessed it was the cause of her slightly heightened magical abilities – or at least she wouldn't for several years.
No one ever thought that that scar would save both her life and her brother's one day. No one guessed that, perhaps, Harry Potter had not defeated the Dark Lord.
No one supposed that the girl who lived at Potter manor, the oldest child and the unknown one, the future Ravenclaw and Peacemaker, the girl of no consequence, would ever save the world.