James Potter was having a bad day. It hadn't started out as a bad day; in fact, it had started out as a pretty good one. Being an auror, having a good day turn into a shit one wasn't that unusual, but even for a shit day this one was right up there at the top.
The day had started like any other, he had woken up with his beautiful wife snuggled underneath is arms. Like every morning when he awoke from sleep and laid eyes on his angel, he thanked his lucky stars that he had such an incredible woman in his life. It had taken some Marauder levels of sneakiness to get out of bed in a way that didn't wake Lily, but he had wanted to do something special for his family.
Lily was normally the one in charge of cooking, she'd insisted that they not have house elves when they had first married, but he liked to surprise her every once in a while. It was the little things that kept the romance alive, and even after seventeen years of marriage they were still very much in love.
Baby Lily had wandered down from her room at the smell of food. The youngest of the Potter clan had been a surprise, but certainly neither James or Lily were complaining.
The latest edition to the Potter family was as cute as a button, with a temperament that matched neither of her parents. Shy and quiet, the little girl couldn't have been more different from James and Lily in personality.
The father of four had happily spent an hour entertaining his two-year-old daughter while making breakfast for his family. Gently encouraging his shy daughter to help where a two-year-old could assist, he made sure to keep his wand well out of her reach. He had learned that messy lesson early on.
Baby Lily might be painfully shy, but she was going to be a powerful witch when she grew up. It was unheard of for someone so young to be able to access magic, even accidental magic, but Lily had always been special. James had known it the minute he laid eyes on his daughter, it had simply taken the world a little more time to acknowledge that.
Pancakes, eggs, sausages, bacon, toast and hash browns were all carefully hand cooked muggle style, warming charms liberally applied to keep them fresh until they were ready to be eaten. James had listened to his daughter babble with half an ear while prodding at the last of the eggs when his wife had come strolling down to greet him with a sizzling kiss and a smile that could light up the sky.
They'd eaten together, pouring over the daily prophet while making comments at unexpected bits of news, taking turns to keep an eye on their squirrely daughter who had gotten restless once her tummy had been filled.
When eight thirty rolled around, James had jumped into the shower to prepare for the day. Much to his pleasure Lily had slipped in to join him. It was the little things in life that made it worth living.
Sirius had rolled his eyes at the wide unceasing smile on the Potter clan head's face as he stepped into the office, his best friend knowing exactly what had put it there. The head of House Black pretended to gag and throw up into his waste bin by his desk. James didn't let the childish display take away any of the extra spring in his step.
Amelia Bones had called for a meeting with all her Captains that morning, and James had spent the better part of two hours throwing around ideas on security measure and response strategies they could employ to combat the growing forces of the Dark Lord. It hadn't escalated to the point where people were unwilling to head out in the streets, but there was a certain tension in the air ever since Voldemort had tipped his hand on his revival.
The meeting concluded with the point that they needed to think and work on these ideas more instead of sitting on their hands waiting for someone to be attacked. Proactive policing Amelia had called it. James was all for it, he was a man of action. Being parked at a desk most the day never sat well with him.
Too bad for James being a captain meant sitting behind a desk filling out paperwork on other people's after action reports more often than not. He probably would have never taken the post if it wasn't for Lily. Sure it paid more, but he had the entire Potter fortune, what need did he have for a raise?
No, the only reason he took the position requiring more responsibility and less legwork was to put his loving wife's mind at ease, and lord knew he'd give an arm if that meant Lily was happy. Though some days he envied Sirius who still got to drop all pretense of filling out papers at his desk and run off to answer the first call that comes in through the floo. Bastard usually took the time to dump said paperwork on his desk with a cheeky wink before leaving.
Arse.
However, safety wasn't something he could afford anymore. The recent cutback to the auror department a few years prior to Voldemort's return had downsized their police force, leaving them very short of hand with the war looming on the horizon. The new recruits were being put through the academy as quickly as they could pass the strict examination process, but it would be a while before their department was truly wartime ready.
At the moment, even the captains were being put out on patrol and responding to every panicked call that was flooding their floo gate. More often than not it was a false alarm, but no stone left unturned and all that.
James had returned to the work area to find Sirius's kneeling by the fireplace speaking rapidly to the floating head of a worried looking woman. The old witch had apparently spotted some odd looking people wandering suspiciously around outside her neighborhood. And she couldn't apparate in or out of the area which was of even greater concern.
As Sirius ordered the woman to step back so that he could go through the gate, the flames abruptly roared blue, startling the dark haired man into yelping before dying down to a regular orange. Repeated attempts to reconnect with the woman had failed.
James knew immediately something had happened and had followed a worried Sirius to the apparition point. They had the general location of the woman's home based on the address from where the floo call had come in from, they would try to get as close as possible through appartation and then hoof it there on foot. Auror Biggs and Jones joined them as backup.
The closest they managed to get was still half a mile away from the old woman's location. The witch lived in a muggle area, downtown from the looks of the buildings and shops nearby. It was eerily quiet, far too quiet for a weekday morning. None of the muggle motorcars were seen on the road, and there didn't appear to be anyone out and about either. Strange.
A quick humuculos revealo charm from Biggs deepened the mystery. There were no signs human life near them. Now more than a little bit alarmed, the four-man team had moved rapidly for the witch's last known location under James's direction, keeping a wary eye out for any signs of enemy movement, or indeed any life at all.
Ten rather silent minutes of nerve-wracking half jogging led them to the rather normal looking home of the woman who had reported the anti-apparition field that had blanketed her neighborhood. They had immediately tensed seeing the door hanging loosely off its hinge. Someone had kicked the door in with great force judging by the boot shaped print on the ruined entrance laying on the floor a few meters from the entrance.
James sent Biggs and Jones to circle the home to see if they could spot the intruders around back while he and Sirius had entered carefully, wands drawn to cover one another's blind spot.
Sirius tried calling for the woman, but got no response.
The living room was a mess, upturned furniture and scorch marks from stray spell fire littered the small space. There had apparently been a struggle, though there were no signs of anyone still there. No blood to indicate injuries, and no body to be found, though that certainly didn't rule out homicide in a world where anyone with a wand could probably transfigurate a corpse into something less noticeable.
Biggs entered through the backdoor to report that it was all clear out back, and that was when all hell broke loose. The sound of shattering glass startled the three aurors into whipping their wands to face the direction of the noise. A small green flashing orb bounced once on the carpet floor before rolling in between Biggs's feet.
The woman had stared down at the oddly shaped object with eyebrows furrowed in confusion, opening her mouth to ask a question she never got to finish. The noise had been deafening, a massive explosion that rung James's ears. Blistering heat washed up against his skin despite the distance, instantly drying and chapping the exposed flesh.
But that seemed inconsequential when compared to what happened to Biggs. James had seen some pretty horrific things in his time, both as an auror and as a member of the Order of the Phoenix. The broken bodies of people that had been burnt, cut and smashed. He'd even seen a fair share of people die in that manner, bad business all around. Still, there was something especially brutal in watching Biggs get blown to pieces.
One moment she had been standing there, and the next there were bloody chunks of her all over the room. A small part of James detached from the moment noticed absentmindedly that both her boots were still somehow exactly where they had been, bits of bone and flesh sticking out the top of the leather like macabre Halloween lawn ornaments.
And that was what had turned a relatively good day into a bad one. In fact the day seemed downright determined to take the title of Worst Day Ever with each passing moment.
"Get down!" Sirius screamed as green light tore through the open doorway.
Both men dived for the floor, not bothering to try for shield spells thinking it was the killing curse. The explosions and smell of burning material that followed proved otherwise.
Outside James could hear Jones throwing curses back at their unseen foes, the familiar swooping noise of the man's favorite evisceration curse filling the air next to the odd whining emerald spell that the enemy seemed to prefer.
"Jones!" James bellowed as green light forced him to keep his head down. "Get inside! We'll cover you!"
Sirius had bellied crawled over to the broken window, peeking his head out through the space the odd spells had come through. He quickly raised a hand up to show two fingers as James moved up on his opposite side.
"Got one bloke on the left behind one of them blue muggle cars," the Black Head of House whispered. "Another next to the lamppost. I got that one!"
"On three," hissed James.
"Three!" they shouted together, the old joke from their Hogwarts days slipping through despite the dire situation.
Together they popped up into the space and began hurling curses at their designated targets. James noted that the man he was throwing stunners at was rather tall, or maybe it was his thinness that gave him the impression of height. He was dressed in a cobalt muggle suit, and held a long gleaming silver device in his hands.
The first pair of stunners James threw missed the target, the red lights smacking harmlessly into the side of the car. His target immediately crouched down to lower his profile swiveling his head about to try to catch a glimpse of James. The odd movement of the man's neck raised the hair on the back of the wizard's neck.
Cursing his poor aim, James switched to bludgeoning hexes, hoping to scare his opponent into switching locations. The hexes slammed into the side of the car with the force of a charging bull, rocking the entire frame of the vehicle. Metal dented and windows broke, showering his opponent with glass, the howl of the vehicles sirens adding to the commotion. The unnaturally thin man remained stubbornly in place.
Sirius gave a whoop of victory next to James having had more luck with his enemy. James chanced a glance at his friend's target and caught the similarly dressed man dropping into a boneless mess on the pavement. Curiously, a cloud of green noxious looking gas almost immediately filled the air around his fallen form, hiding the body out of sight.
"The hell?" Sirius muttered.
"Jones!" bellowed James returning his attention back to his own target. "Get your arse in here!"
The young lanky auror bolted from behind the tree he had been taking shelter, making a beeline for the backdoor of the house. James continued to hammer the last target's cover, joined in by an enthusiastic Sirius who was switching between bludgeoning hexes and cutting curses.
Just as Jones neared the shadow of safety, bright sickly green light caught him across the torso. James felt the nauseating plummet of his heart as the young man folded under the force of the attack, his torso bursting into a bloody flaming mess. Jones hit the ground with a meaty thump, never even getting the chance to scream.
What killed Jones came barreling around the corner, and for a second James couldn't help but stare.
It was definitely not human, despite its humanoid form. Standing perhaps only half a head shorter than Hagrid but looking large enough to wrestle the half giant, the newcomer bore heavy dark olive armor that looked straight out of the history pages detailing the goblin rebellions.
What little skin that was exposed was a deep red, leathery and pulsating with veins. Golden eyes with pitch dark irises swept the battlefield, and they narrowed maliciously when they spotted the two men by the windowsill.
It raised the massive oblong silver device in its hands, immediately showering their position with green light. James shouted a word that Lily would have slapped him for as the wall above him simply vanished under the force of the odd creature's attack. He heard it give a deep throated roar, a sound muted by the mask it wore. The spine chilling sound was answered by echoing howls from out of sight.
"Shit!" swore Sirius. "James, we need to fall back and get reinforcements!"
The auror captain blind fired half a dozen wordless disarming spells through what remained of their cover. "Go, I'll cover you!"
Sirius stood up, careful to keep himself out of sight and began to back out of the room to find a position he could set up over-watch so that James could retreat without being torn to pieces. As he crossed the living room, Sirius suddenly dropped his wand, his hands leaping to his head as a primal roar of pain tore itself from his throat.
James whirled to look for an unexpected enemy that may have flanked them, but saw nothing in the room.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Sirius screamed as he dropped to his knees, hands gripping his head.
"Sirius!" James bellowed. He dropped onto his stomach and crawled over to his writhing friend.
Sirius was practically convulsing on the floor as he clutched at his head, fingers digging bloody tracks into his scalp as if he were trying to get at the pain hurting him from within his skull.
The thud of an object hitting the floor caused James to turn and look behind him. His eye widened as he spotted the egg like shape of the object that had killed Biggs. Throwing himself over Sirius, James covered his friend's body as best he could and threw up the most powerful shield charm he had.
Most people made the mistake of using protego as their shield spell of choice in all situations. It wasn't a bad one as far as protective magic went. It was capable of blocking or at least lessening the effects of the majority of spells witches and wizards liked to throw around.
However, protego was a charm designed to halt or slow down the direct transference of magical power, spells like stunners or cutting hexes that inflicted its effects when the spell made contact with the target. It did little to stop direct elemental energies or kinetic force, a little known fact for those who did not take the time to study up on the art of dueling.
The heat and concussive wave of the explosive that had killed Biggs had given James an inkling of the nature of the device, and so he immediately threw up the elemental shield spell sparatus, that Lily favored.
Kinetic energy and heat slammed into the invisible wall James erected, the temperature around him remaining a cool indoor ambient despite the sea of orange flames inches from his face. James had made the right choice in protective spell from keeping them from being roasted, but unfortunately like the protego it was not without weakness. Sparatus while amazing for stopping elemental energies, was not as good of a barrier for physical objects.
The firestorm was kept at bay; the shrapnel caused by the grenade tearing into the building structure was not.
James shouted in pain as wooden splinters showered him. His dragon hide cloak deflected the worst of it, leaving little more than bruises along his body where the pieces struck. Sirius had not been so lucky.
A stray piece of metal roof rafter had found its way into the few weak points of the auror grade combat robes, impaling the man in the stomach. Already the navy blue of the auror uniform was turning dark with blood from the wound.
"Shit!" James swore as he knelt over his friend, trying to get an assessment of how bad the injury was.
Sirius batted his hands away weakly, his paling face twisted into a grimace of pain though he appeared to have recovered from the mental attack.
"Forget me!" he hissed. "Get the hell out of here James!"
"Like hell," James retorted.
He cast a wary glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing was coming around the corner. Grabbing Sirius by the shoulders, he dragged his friend behind a couch where he would be out of the way of stray enemy fire.
"James, I'm not the one with wife and kids waiting for me to come home! Get your arse out of here you git! We're both goners if we stay!"
"For once in your life Black, shut the hell up and do as you're told!" snapped James angrily. "Put some god damn pressure on the wound. I'm not winning this fight just to have you bleed out on me you wanker!"
Sirius snarled something in reply, but complied with his friend's order. A heavy foreign whining noise filled the air causing both men to look up in alarm. Swearing at the unfairness of the world, James made for the window again.
Scrambling back towards the position he had previously retreated from, James paused long enough to snatch up Sirius's Ash Wood wand and tossing it to his friend. He poked his head out the opening and nearly suffered a heart attack at the equally alarmed looking red face staring back at him inches away.
Without thinking, he raised his wand and instinctively cast a silent stunner into the face of his adversary. The creature stumbled backwards, shaking its head as if someone had smacked it upside the head, but remained very much conscious. In fact, it was looking a little bit mad judging by the gleaming promise of violence in its beady eyes.
A reflexive piercing hex drilled a neat hole into the large monster's eye socket, spurts of brain matter and what passed for its blood exploding messily out of the back of its head. It remained standing for a moment before it fell on its back.
Not entirely without weakness then.
Good.
James let loose a blistering hail of curses at the nearest batch of his red skin foes, their large forms folded comically low to the ground in an effort to stay behind random pieces of cover. A movement in the sky caught the former chasers eye and he turned and spotted the muggle aircraft circling in the air.
James was probably one of those rare few purebloods who had a concept of what a muggle airplane was. In fact, he was probably one of the only purebloods to have ever ridden in one.
Lily had wanted to take the family on a trip to a muggle theme park in America a few years back, Disneyland or something like it. She'd wanted the family to experience the muggle way of life, and had booked them tickets on an airplane.
The kids had been rather excited at the prospect of traveling muggle style something James had not shared to quite the same level. He'd flown all his life on a broom, and he loved being in the air, but even an hour in the sky could leave his crotch and rear sore despite all the claims of cushioning charms broomsticks advertised. Probably why the
Persians still preferred using flying rugs despite their penitence to randomly stall in the air when the weavings got tattered with age.
Ten hours in the sky sounded like a nightmare on his ability to ever be able to please his wife in the bedroom again. Still he loved Lily, and anything she wanted to do he'd gladly give it a shot, and it had been surprisingly comfortable much to his surprise.
This one was nothing like the massive comfy international flight Lily had booked them on. It was much smaller, squat and almost boxy in design in comparison to the long aerodynamic shape of the craft James had boarded. Gray in color with tinted windows, it looked much more predatory than the airplanes that had been parked at the airport.
The backside of the plane opened up as the craft circled. Death and destruction began to rain out at the inhuman creatures assaulting his position. Beams of red light cut down the thin man in a suit, ripping his torso to shreds. Green clouds plumed from the body that was torn in half. The big red skinned creatures split up and began running for cover. James watched in bewilderment as two were torn to shreds before they could reach cover.
The aircraft circled, the backside continuing to pour out a barrage of burning red light at the creatures below it. James spotted a dark skinned man leap from the back of the airship as it hovered over a water tower. He held a long sleek dark object in his hand, something that resembled what James knew to be a muggle gun. The man propped his weapon against a piece of piping and began to periodically take shots at some unseen enemy, the booming crack of the rifle audible even to James despite the distance.
The airplane circled again, this time hovering over the open space of the local park near the house. More people came sliding down long lengths of rope dropped from the back of the ship before it took off into the sky. They moved out of his sight, their steps hurried but cautious.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, James pulled back over to his downed friend. It seemed help had come in the most unexpected form. Now they just needed to get Sirius to a healer, and fast.