"Say trick or treat!" I coo at my son, enticing him with the blueberry in my open palm. "Come on, say it for mummy!"

"Trick or treat!" comes a playful call from across the room.

I look over the child in blue pajamas with a roll of my eyes, "Not you, James!" But Harry is already grabbing the fruit out of my open hand.

"Very good!" I can't help but smile at him in adoration as he stuffs the coveted berry into his mouth and looks back up at me, waiting for more. "Okay, time for the next house – let's go!"

I climb onto my knees and, taking Harry's hand, scoot several feet around the perimeter of the sitting room. "Say hello to Mr. Hippogriff," I instruct him.

Harry cocks his head, looking perplexed as to what his stuffed toy is doing perched so formally high above him on the chair. "Okay, now say trick or treat!"

My son is characteristically stubborn in his silence, and instead begins crawling under the chair in pursuit of some unnamed treasure.

"He's looking for the berries," James informs me, from his comfortable perch in his chair.

"Oh, right." I jump up and grab a small handful of blueberries from the table and plop myself down again beside Mr. Hippogriff, this time laying two blueberries between his taloned feet.

"You know," I say over my shoulder to my husband, "You and I could be eating real candy right now if we could only go out for the night."

The muted gloom of my longing has my husband up and at my side in a moment. I keep my eyes fixed on my son as he finishes with the blueberries and grabs at Mr. Hippogriff, shaking him up and down with enthusiasm. My sight may be focused on Harry, but every other sense is tuned in to James as he slides down behind me, rubbing his hands down both my arms in soothing reassurance.

"This is only temporary," he hums into my ear.

His voice is earnest and alluring, but I cannot trust his words. "That's what you said last Halloween." I hold my aching words close to my mouth, prohibiting them from reaching my careless child. "When will it end?"

James' fingers brush across my forehead as they entwine themselves with my hair, pulling it delicately behind my ear. "When Harry is safe."

"When Harry is safe." I repeat the words that have become our mantra over the last year and a half, but like anything said too often, the words have begun to sound like nonsense.

I spin around to face James, abandoning our game for the comfort of my husband's face. I dutifully tune my ears to the rhythm of Harry's laughter, ready to run to his aid at the slightest sign of trouble, but it is James that fills my world.

He knows this, and we share a moment of tranquil silence, our hands cupping each other's faces as we breathe together in a moment of sincere companionship.

We've spent almost a year and a half in hiding, and although we were protecting our son, in my mind it was always James that needs to be kept alive. It's our family we're protecting, and that family wouldn't make any sense without James in it. I wouldn't make any sense.

I can endure hiding in this house for years on end. I can endure never meeting another new person. I can enduring forgetting the taste of freedom. I can endure it all for him.

I take a deep breath, and James knows that is my signal that the moment of darkness has passed. He places a tender kiss on my forehead and turns his attention back to our child.

"Harry, look out – Mr. Hippogriff has learned how to breath fire!" James calls out in playful warning.

Harry lets out a yelp of surprise as a puff of blue smoke appears before the hippogriff, sent forth by James' concealed wand.

I smile adoringly at father and son and stand up to stretch my legs. The night is coming to a close. Even the distant cries of excited children outside have begun to die down into the peace of darkness as November approaches.

I pop a few blueberries into my own mouth as I carry them into the kitchen. After tidying up the remnants of our evening meal, I instinctively linger in the room alone. This life of hiding is a paradox; I am at once totally isolated from the outside world, and yet never truly alone. I must be one of the only mothers who has never been more than a dozen feet from her child. It wears on me, but James is always there, and that is a constancy that I would never sacrifice.

I take a steadying breath and make my way back into the sitting room. Mr. Hippogriff lays discarded on his side as James conjures increasingly amusing puffs of smoke, which Harry's hands immediately clap out of existence.

"It's time I put Harry to bed," I announce, calling the fun to a close.

James complies, tossing his wand aside as he picks up his son. "I'll see you upstairs," he says as he hands me Harry, the promise of intimacy laced into his voice.

I smile fondly back at him. My lips instinctively want to reach for his, but Harry is squirming in my arms. I turn towards the stairs, determined to put him to bed quickly before curling up with my husband.

"You know, Harry," I whisper in a conspiratorial hush as we leave the room. "Today is your fifteen month birthday. I know your daddy didn't say anything because he doesn't think it's a real thing, but it is to us. Fifteen months old!"

I am almost at the top of the stairs when the world changes. The door that is supposed to remain closed comes crashing open, and in that moment I know the smile that is not supposed to leave my husband's face is gone.

I cannot turn around, cannot look at what is at the bottom of the stairs. I have nowhere to go, and James is not at my side.

And then his words break through my stupor: "Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

I obey immediately, my body's instincts trusting that James knows what to do. I run the rest of the way to Harry's room, trusting that James will follow in a moment. Harry is strangely quiet. He must also know that Daddy's handling this.

Through the floor I hear the deafeningly final sound of a weighty thump, and then silence.

James is dead, and the child in my arms is all that I have left of him.

Suddenly this child is everything. He is my son and he is my husband and he is my sister and he is everything I have ever been separated from. He is the only thing I have left, and I cannot let go.

James is gone. A world without Harry is not an option for me.

A breath later, the nursery door is blasted open and the Dark Lord is before me. Those bloody eyes that took my husband moments ago now fix with hunger upon my child.

Before my mind can catch up with the moment, I have flung myself in front of the crib and am begging for my child's life with all of the passion that I would beg for the life of the man I can no longer save. "Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

Somewhere in my desperate cries the thoughts of James are disappear, truly replaced by Harry for the first time ever. It is Harry who is my family, it is Harry who is my world, it is Harry who I can protect.

I stand on my own and I know I will not give up this fight. There is no separating me from the one I love.

A sign of recognition seems to pass before my foe's eyes as he sees that his commands are wasted on me. With a look of indifference he raises his wand, and before another thought can pass through my mind, the world has become green.

The last thing on my mind as I fall to the ground is fear of losing the one I love.