Chapter 1: Like the Crack of a Gun


Tonks, Harry felt, was quite cool. Her hair were a short spiky mess of pink, her heart-shaped face relaxed and kind and her eyes laughing. As she tried valiantly to get her wand to fold his socks after packing all his stuff (although he wondered why anyone would need their socks folded at all), Harry marvelled at her metamorphmagus abilities, and the fact that she was an auror.

"Wand still in your jeans? Both buttocks still on? Okay, let's go. Locomotor Trunk." Tonks said, waving her wand.

Harry's trunk rose a few inches into the air. Holding her wand like a conductor's baton, Tonks made it hover across the room and out of the door ahead of them, Hedwig's cage in her left hand. Harry followed her down the stairs carrying his broomstick.

It was at this precise moment that a loud CRACK reverberated around the house, like the sound of a gun, the same sound Harry had heard a few days ago that Uncle Vernon had blamed him for. As he got back to the kitchen, he saw everyone standing completely still, wands pointed at the door. Harry decided that the sound must have meant something to them, but before he could ask, Lupin caught his attention and motioned for him to be silent.

He could hear voices now, out on the street. Taking his own wand out, Harry quietly moved towards Lupin as Tonks put down Hedwig's birdcage and shot a questioning glance at Mad-Eye.

"Who do you think it is?" whispered someone that Harry was fairly certain was Hestia Jones.

"We're not going to stick around to find out." said Moody. Just as he was about to move, the doorbell rang.

In the quiet of the evening, the chiming noise of the bell sounded ominous, like funeral bells.

Lupin and Shacklebolt exchanged a glance and then, as one, the entire Advanced Guard moved towards the door. The elderly man that Harry thought was Elphias Doge quietly said, "Be ready to fly as soon as Remus blasts open the door Harry."

Before he could properly register what had been said, the rest of them had mounted their brooms and had shoved him just behind Tonks.

Moody held out his fingers and silently counted to three.

The doorbell rang again; Lupin opened the door and shot two red spells in quick succession at the intruders. Moody yelled at them to FLY! and they took off, flying through the door and out into the sky.

First Lupin, then Shacklebolt, then Tonks and then him, with Moody following closely behind. He barely caught a glimpse of the Death Eaters, but he thought there were two of them, one with bright red hair and the other with a pair of glasses.

He felt one of them brush their hand against his shirt, but before they could grab a hold of him, Moody shot a stinging hex at them, shouting at Harry to go faster.

Not needing to be told twice, Harry flew like he'd never flown before, leaving behind two very confused people.


Precisely at the moment Tonks was telling Harry of her ineptitude with household spells, Lily and James Potter were falling.

Not in love, not into despair, but simply falling from a great height, threatening to crash onto the ground. Considering the last thing either one of them remembered was Voldemort bursting into their should-have-been-hidden-but-clearly-wasn't abode, they can perhaps be forgiven for not reacting to this in the most sensible of manners.

With their eyes open and hands firmly clutching wands that they vaguely remembered not having held when protecting their baby, Lily and James Potter apparated to the ground that they were currently plummeting to.

They could have, they would later suppose, apparated to familiar territory, or perhaps screamed their heads off when they realised they were falling, with no recollection of how they came about to be in that state, but they were not very normal.

In fact, they would hazard a guess and say that they were the furthest from normal that the world had ever known. In retrospect, Harry's oddness and devil-may-care attitude were a given. And to think, the place that they had apparated to happened to be the most normal place in England.

It wasn't just exaggeration either, for you see, there was only one small magical dwelling near Privet Drive, and it was more than eighty miles away. When Lily and James blinked at the perfectly aligned houses and perfectly kept lawns, they didn't know what to think.

But they hadn't been hailed as one of the best witches and wizards of their generation for nothing—they ignored the strangeness completely and began talking in hushed voices.

"Where are we?" said Lily, a red-haired woman of a bit above average height and sparkling green eyes.

James, her husband, ran a hand through his messy jet black hair and adjusted his glasses. "I don't know, but this place looks strangely familiar…"

"How so?" Lily asked, when it was clear that James wasn't going to say anything.

Knowing that his wife would believe him no matter how ludicrous his statement might be, James refrained from telling her that the only way he could possibly know this neighbourhood was through her, and that opened a distinctly unpleasant can of worms (of the Annoying-in-laws variety).

"It's definitely muggle." he said.

Lily pursed her lips, as if she could read his mind and knew he was hiding something from her. "You don't say!" she said sarcastically. James simply grinned at her unrepentantly.

After walking forward a little bit, Lily said, "Well, it's fairly late, but someone must be awake. Shall we try one of these houses? See if anyone can tell us where we are?"

James nodded. "Pick a house."

"Oh goody, so many diverse choices! Shall I pick the one with the white front door? Or that one, the one with the even whiter front door?" said Lily gleefully. James just laughed and headed towards the house closest to them.

Now, any sensible person would have been worried about what happened to them, how they got there when they couldn't remember how, or perhaps even nervous about being alone on a completely foreign street in a completely foreign town. However, Lily and James were of the sort that shoved all problems to the side and made the most out of every situation. No use stressing, they thought, if you could get on just as well without.

Lily knocked on the door, the brass plaque informing them that it was the fourth house on the street. It was quiet for a little bit, and then she rang the doorbell, thinking that perhaps the residents were asleep.

Meanwhile, James was overcome with a very familiar sense of déjà vu. Where, he thought, had he seen this house before? Number four…

"Perhaps no one's home?" Lily asked.

"Try again." said James, hoping that someone was in so that he could put a face to the vague images he had in his head.

James never forgot a face. It was why Lily trusted him completely when he said he remembered something; Merlin knew her memory was one of the worst in their year.

She rang it again, and this time they heard movements from inside. Something in their stances tensed, as though they knew something sinister was afoot.

The minute the door burst open and a stunning hex was flung at them, James prepped a tracking spell as Lily cast a shield charm. It had become a sort of habit, after nearly four years of ambushes, ambushing, tussles and fierce battles against the dark side.

He managed to grab one of their shirts and attach the tracking charm onto them before all—James had to count them in his head—ten of the flying blurs flew out of his grasp. Instead of giving chase, Lily and James just stood there, waiting to see if anyone else would burst out of Number Four.

After a few moments, they looked at each other and shrugged, walking to the next house over as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all—they'd bring it up during the next Order meeting, but that wasn't happening until Monday, so they filed the encounter away for later.

This time, Lily rang the doorbell and stood back a little bit. She wasn't going to take any chances with Number Six.

An elderly lady with a stern face and sleep-deprived eyes glared at their presence. "What do you want at this time of night?" she snapped.

Lily smiled politely. "Excuse me miss, we're very sorry to bother you so late. Only, my husband and I've been driving around in circles for the last half hour, and I do believe we're quite lost. If you could just tell us where we are, we'll leave you to get back to bed."

She grumbled under her breath—something about bloody teenagers and joyrides at midnight—before snapping, "You're in Little Whinging."

"Where?" asked James.

Her face darkened further. "Little Whinging, Surrey. Are you drunk?"

But both James and Lily had stopped listening, Lily because even she felt that that address had significance and James because he knew exactly where they were.

"Not at all miss. Also, what day is it?" asked James, because he'd noticed the lack of Hallowe'en decorations and wondered if perhaps they'd missed a day in whatever it was that got them here.

Looking at them strangely, she said "August the second." She promptly shut the door in their face, muttering about drunk good-for-nothings.

"How rude!" Lily said, appalled by the woman's behaviour.

"Forget that. Last I checked, it was October the 31st. What are we, back in time?"

As they both paused to wonder at the ridiculousness of that assertion, James voiced his other epiphany.

"Number four Privet Drive ring any bells?" he asked his wife.

Lily suddenly stilled.

"Petunia!" she said.

James nodded grimly. "But," she began worriedly, "what would Death Eaters be doing here? You don't think—"

"Impossible." said James firmly. They had gone to such great lengths to ensure that the Dursley family could never be associated with the Potters that it would take prophecies, Hagrid's umbrella and Dumbledore's guilt combined for Magic to even touch Petunia Dursley's family.

Which, James reminded himself, could have very conceivably happened.

"Harry." whispered Lily.

Both their eyes widened and, glancing at each other in mutual understanding, they ran as fast as they could to the slightly ajar door of Number Four.

The house was dark, the only light seeming to be coming from, as they found out when they began frantically exploring, the kitchen. Spotless, immaculate and clinical were some of the words James would use to describe the Dursley household, for indeed it was—there were several pictures of them to prove it (not that he needed the affirmation of course. His memory was one thing that he could always rely on.)

Not a single picture however, of a green-eyed boy with messy hair. But what both the twenty one year olds noticed was that, with each picture they came across, Dudley Dursley, Lily's nephew who was only a few months older than Harry, kept on growing. In fact, there were several framed certificates for rugby and boxing (though most of them were for participation only) that seemed to fancy that it was 1995. Or at least, that seemed to be the latest date that they could find.

"What's going on James?" asked Lily, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. It wasn't every day that you went from 1981 to 1995 after all.

James, on the other hand, shrugged off his perplexity and simply embraced the fact that he had missed fourteen years of the calendar. After all, stranger things had happened in the magical world (time-turners and accurate palmistry came to mind). What was one more impossibility?

"I do believe, love, that we're standing in Petunia's immaculate foyer and rightly besmirching it with our freakish presence." said James, with a very severe expression on his face.

Lily felt better knowing that James didn't seem to find their mess of a life too crazy—it would be alright now. "Come now James, one might assume you actually felt it to be a crime."

"Of course. Petunia's OCD must be accommodated. I couldn't bear to cause her undue distress." he replied gravely.

They both gave into their twitching lips and snickered before heading upstairs.

Looking into the bedrooms, uncaring about their very blatant 'breaking and entering', James once again marvelled at the colour choice—salmon pink had always been his sister-in-law's favourite. They finally happened upon a door (that had a suspicious cat flap) that they instantly knew was different.

Magical, they would go so far as to say.

Lily knew immediately that her baby had been here—she'd recognise Harry's scent anywhere. Sirius had called her a dog when she'd mentioned her sense of smell, and James had promptly said that she'd fit right in with the motley crew of illegal animagi. But this was different—this was probably one of those mother things.

James did not have such powers unfortunately, so he had to rely on his deductive reasoning. Luckily, dealing with Peter's and Sirius' pointed, sceptical, obnoxious and/or idiotic questions and observations had honed James' skill to an art form.

The room was shabby, but clean enough that it looked recently lived in. There were books on the shelf and it was to these that James turned his attentions to, ignoring the lumpy bed and broken-repaired clock on the side-table. It was amazing how much you could tell about someone by looking at the titles of the books they kept.

"Quidditch through the Ages, The Standard Book of Spells (grade 4), A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration…" read James. "Lily, I think this is Harry's room."

"I know." she said, sitting heavily on the bed.

They'd spent nearly an hour looking through the house, and she was tired. The adrenaline was wearing off and Lily let it sink in that Voldemort had invaded her home, (presumably) taken her baby, it was 1995, her baby was living with the Dursleys (they'd never seen eye-to-eye when it came to magic and she didn't for one second believe that that would have changed in fourteen years) and there were no pictures of him in this ridiculously clean house.

"The mattress is lumpy." she said, trying to find anything else to focus on.

"There are wards on this house." said James, after muttering a few spells under his breath.

"This clock needs fixing." said Lily.

"No Death Eater would be able to get in."

"All the toys are broken…"

"Lily!" yelled James, having a eureka moment.

Snapping out of it, Lily looked at him with full concentration.

"Harry was with the people that flew away!" he said excitedly.

Lily just looked at him blankly, before catching his train of thought. Giving into her burgeoning desire, Lily verbalised what was on both their minds:

"Bloody hell."

"Exactly. I put a tracker on one of them. We can find them." James began pacing, an excessively complex idea forming in his head, little details piecing together to create a really convoluted whole.

Silently casting a spell with his wand tucked away in his pocket (wandless and wordless magic was one of the things James had spent ages trying to master, seeing as he had had nearly an entire year in hiding with little else but nappy changes and a sleeping Harry to occupy him), he honed in to where the charm informed him his target was.

"I know that place, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how." said James, almost to himself.

Grabbing Lily's hand (and squeezing it reassuringly because he knew she was on the verge of a well-deserved breakdown), he headed out the door and outside the boundary of Number Four Privet Drive, before disappearing with a 'pop'.


Well, I hope you liked James and Lily's introductions. And, I hope I made it believable.

DISCLAIMER: Some lines are taken/directly modified from the original Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I do not own it.