Disclaimer: Do Not Own!
If someone had said things couldn't get any worse, they were wrong.
Dead wrong.
Literally dead wrong as the final stick of dynamite was duct taped to the plain house. The men moved away, running fast to their vehicles parked a football field away.
Voldemort smirked as he surveyed their work through his binoculars. Perfect. The Potters weren't going to escape now. He lowered the binoculars. Their luck was at an end. It was a shame really; it had been a rather fun chase, one that Lord Voldemort had used all of his power to end.
The snake-like man lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips. "Burn them."
His high pitched, cold laugh was lost as the house was torn apart, the fire tearing a bright gash in the midnight sky.
Lily Potter was reading a bedtime story to her son, Harry. "Goodnight room," she read in a her most soothing voice, "goodnight moon; goodnight cow jumping over the moon." She looked up from the orange book to smile at her son.
He was fast asleep, his tiny fist clenched around his blue fuzzy blanket covered in yellow stars. The messy black hair he had inherited from his father was sticking up in every possible direction. She watched her sleeping son. After a few moments, she stood up and leaned down, kissing him gently on the cheek. "Goodnight, Harry," she whispered. She turned off the reading light, the lightning bolt nightlight illuminating the room faintly. She smiled at her sleeping son again then turned and quietly exited baby Harry's temporary room.
James Potter was in the kitchen, his eyes bloodshot as he tried to focus on the directions to make mac 'n cheese.
"Let me do that, baby," said Lily, taking the cardboard box from her husband. She wrapped her arms around his waist, looking up into his tired brown eyes.
"Thanks, honey," James murmured, a small smile on his lips. He imitated his wife, wrapping his arms around her. "How's Harry?"
"Fast asleep," replied Lily. She got on her tip-toes and kissed her husband. Their eyes closed and, for a few seconds, the threat of Lord Voldemort was gone. For a moment, they weren't hiding from the single most powerful terrorist in the world.
For a moment, everything was back to how it was.
The kiss ended and Lily broke out of James' arms. She rinsed their only pot in the sink, scraping out the residue of their last meal. She filled it half-way with water and plunked it on the stove. She turned back to James as they waited for the water to boil.
Neither said anything; there wasn't anything to say. They had discussed almost everything a thousand times: would Voldemort ever stop, should they have hidden Harry with Lily's sister Petunia and her husband, where would they go next… On and on the list of already discussed topics went.
James' eyes drifted to a window. "Lily…" James began. His voice died in his throat. "Lily, there's someone out there," he whispered urgently as he saw the figure of a man.
Lily's pale skin went several shades paler. "Do you think- ?"
"Go!" hissed James, grabbing his wife's arms and pushing her toward Harry's room, "Go! Take Harry and run! I'll do what I can!"
"James-!" Lily yelled hoarsely, running back to her husband and kissing him one last time.
"Go!" shouted James, running back to the kitchen and grabbing his AK-47. He broke the window and rolled out. Albus Dumbledore had given him that gun. Hopefully some of the man's luck in battle had rubbed off on the gun. There was shouting ahead of him and he shot blindly into the dark as he ran. Screams of surprise and agony told him he was on the right track. Oh what he wouldn't give to have his best friend Sirius here with him…
Lily bundled baby Harry tightly in his blue starred blanket and grabbed his nightlight. Holstered to her hip was a semi-automatic handgun. She kicked the window out of the baby boy's room and silently jumped out. No one attacked her. She could hear James' handiwork from the other side of the house. She ran to the car, manually unlocking it and putting Harry on the floor of the backseat.
She ran back to the edge house, hoping to see James.
"Lily! Why are you still here? Run! Get out of here!"
James' shout was lost as the house exploded. Lily's own scream of horror and pain was drowned out by the roaring fire that ripped the house apart. And far, far away, a high, cold laugh resounded through the night.
Harry woke when his lightning bolt nightlight, still hot from being plugged into the wall, fell onto his forehead, searing a perfect lightning bolt into his skin. He bawled in pain, tossing and turning in his blankets to get the burning to stop.
Harry didn't know that his parents were dead, that, in the morning, the site would be swarming with MI6 representatives who had been helping to protect the Potters. He didn't know that Albus Dumbledore, the man who taught Voldemort, would be there sadly inspecting the ruins, or that Alastor Moody, the head of MI6, would fly from France to be there. He didn't know that he wouldn't be found for hours until his godfather Sirius Black raced in on his motorcycle to see for the wreckage, his heart torn in two as he learned that, yes, Lily and James were dead. For a moment his heart would be whole again with the possibility of Harry's survival. When he did find Harry, tucked snugly away in the back seat of the car with an angry burn on his head, the joy he felt could never be equaled. But almost immediately that joy would be destroyed when Dumbledore announced that Harry would live with his aunt and uncle, relatives that had long proclaimed to hate the Potters.
Harry didn't know any of this. Once the burning in his forehead stopped, he curled back up in his blanket and fell soundly asleep once more.