Chapter One - The End
Godric's Hollow was a small, peaceful village in south-west England, just a few miles away from the Welsh border. Despite the chill of the late evening, a number of parents walked costumed children from door to door, collecting sweets and spreading cheer as was the tradition for All Hallows' Eve. Boys dressed up as action stars and comic book heroes ran down the streets play-fighting with those dressed as archetypal villains with their cloaks and their cowls. They fought to save and protect the honour of the various princesses, though admittedly a number of the princesses looked to be getting involved in the make-believe battles themselves.
Lily Potter let out a quiet snort of amusement when her eyes landed on a girl across the street wearing a witch's costume - a long black robe hung from her tiny shoulders and atop her head sat the pièce de résistance, a pointed witch's hat.
A memory of her childhood surfaced from a Halloween party she'd attended when she was eight years old. She'd worn a costume just like the one worn by the girl knocking on her neighbours' front door. As an admittedly precocious child, she'd argued with her mother about how silly the costume was, obviously witches wouldn't really wear robes and pointy hats else they'd be easily found out by everybody else.
Not three years later, her assumption had been corrected in the most mind-boggling of ways.
Behind her, a fifteen month old boy began to grow restless in his cot. The few minutes of inattention on his mother's part had gone on for a few minutes too long. He launched the brown rat plush over the side of his cot in a bid for Mama's attention to be returned to him.
Lily was brought out of her musing by the sound of little Wormtail thudding onto the floor by her feet. She picked it up and looked down at her little boy with a well practised expression of fond exasperation. Meeting innocent looking eyes identical to her own, she shook her head softly. 'Now that's no way to treat Wormtail, is it Harry?' she questioned in an undertone. 'What do we say?'
Harry Potter blinked owlishly up at his mother, but was stopped from responding by what sounded to be a loud roll of thunder coming from every which direction around the house. At the same time the nursery was lit up by a blinding array of lights. Recovering from the change in brightness, Lily's eyes widened as she recognised the signs of the wards around the cottage being overrun. The light and sound stopped almost as suddenly as they'd started, and after only a moment of silence, she heard her husband's voice shouting her from downstairs.
'Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!'
Her heart rate doubled and her mind went into overdrive. Act now, think later, she chastised herself and set about following the plan they had made for this exact scenario. Atop the drawers in Harry's nursery sat a space-expansion charmed bag with everything they could possibly need to survive the night. Almost ripping it open she found what she needed lay right at the top - a portkey in the form of a ruby brooch. Downstairs, a boom sounded as the front door was blasted from its hinges by him.
Lily took a deep breath and blinked her eyes against the tears that had begun to threaten her vision. She grabbed the brooch and flung the bag over her shoulder. Just before she could turn around and pick up Harry, her blood ran cold - there on the drawers, right beside where the bag had been, was James's wand. Obviously he'd left it there before going downstairs to fetch her a cup of tea.
Oh Merlin, she cried internally. He was here and James was facing him alone and wandless. Blinking furiously now as she couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her face, Lily turned and scooped her frightened son into her arms. The grip she held on the portkey in her palm was so fierce that her knuckles were white. She wanted to wait - oh, how desperately she wanted to wait instead of leaving without James. Despite her tears and her anguish and her heartbreak, however, she held on tight to Harry and whispered hoarsely:
'Haven.' Her heart raced almost audibly in her chest as exactly nothing happened.
She whispered it again, a little more insistently. 'Haven!'
A moment more, and still she stood in the centre of the nursery. Fuck, she swore - the situation had long surpassed any need to mind her language, though never enough for her to speak such language aloud with Harry in earshot. As the tell-tale tug behind the navel that she knew to belong to a portkey failed to make itself known, she realised that their attacker must have placed anti-portkey wards around the house. Now she really was in trouble.
The sound of footsteps making their way slowly up the stairs filled her with a dread like none she'd ever known before. If the owner of those footsteps was James, they'd be sprinting, not walking at a leisurely place. A soft sob escaped Lily's throat as she realised that her husband was definitely dead. She hastily cast a locking charm on the door, though she knew it would do very little, before turning to set Harry back down in his cot, kissing him on the forehead and whispering promises of her love to him while she awaited her fate.
For the second time in only a couple of minutes, the quiet of the night was disturbed by the sound of a door being blown off its hinges. Harry could only watch as his mother turned and stood, sobbing and begging to the figure entering the room.
'Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!'
Unmoved by her pleas, the figure spoke in a high, sibilant voice. 'Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now...'
His mother continued though, 'Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-'
A hissing sound filled the room as the man raised his wand to his mother.
'Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy...'
'Avada Kedavra,' the figure hissed as a beam of green erupted from his wand and impacted Lily. Instantly, she fell to the floor, tears still falling from the corners of her empty eyes.
Harry looked up at the figure's face but could make out nothing except for his eyes from under its cowl. A crimson gaze met his eyes and held there for a moment before the wand was raised again, this time at him. Though completely incapable of comprehending the moment, Harry's eyes closed as he took a deep breath in and instinctively called. How or what for, he didn't know - couldn't know - but his magic responded and took over for a brief moment. The room was once more filled with that bright green light, but not before the figure saw the toddler's eyes snap open. Eyes which just a moment before showed the most vibrant peridot irises surrounded by an almost immaculate shining white were now completely black. The green beam struck true, hitting the infant directly in the forehead.
Harry Potter's eyes turned lifeless in a blink and the last of the Potters knew no more.
-oOo-
Something was very wrong, Sirius Black realised once he'd finished searching Peter Pettigrew's house for his missing friend. He racked his brain trying to think of the last time he'd seen or heard from the younger man, settling on the fact that it had been nearly a week now. A bead of sweat ran down Sirius's spine. If Peter had been captured... it didn't bear even thinking about.
In an instant he turned on his heel and apparated to just outside of Godric's Hollow, quickly looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody had borne witness to his sudden appearance. Satisfied that he'd been neither noticed nor followed, he set off on a quick march into the village. The bells of the church, St Jerome's if he remembered correctly, tolled as he paced around the corner of Church Lane onto Ash Close, at the end of which was the Potters' cottage.
He moved to the end of the street at a near run, but stumbled and his progress halted the moment he laid eyes on the small house. The chimney stack was still dutifully expelling smoke from the fire and the kitchen lights were turned on. That was about all that looked regular about the house though. The front door was missing - its frame shattered and splintered, and the wall around it cracked. Worse still, almost half of the thatched roof was completely missing above the nursery.
The nursery. Sirius's blood ran cold. Harry.
At the thought of his godson having come to harm, he sprinted up to the house, wand in hand. On reaching the now empty door frame, he found the door itself in pieces lying up to ten feet into the hallway. On the floor of the small living room at the back of the house lay James, perfectly still, his lifeless eyes facing the stairs. Sirius felt his heart fall through his feet and tears began to stream down his face. Numbly, his feet carried him upstairs towards the nursery.
The nursery door had been shattered in much the same way that the front door had been, and the sight caused Sirius's tears to make themselves known as choked sobs. Almost reluctantly, he approached the room. While seeing the state of the door had nearly brought the man to his knees, seeing the scene inside definitely did.
Lily lay on the ground, eyes pointing towards Harry's cot. She looked as graceful as ever, even in death, which had him struggling to see through the blur of his tears. To her right lay one of the many escape bags he knew were dotted around the house, and one of the ruby brooches he knew to be an emergency portkey was sitting loosely in the palm of her hand.
To her left lay a cloaked man, whose wand was in three pieces beside his hand. The hood of his cowl had fallen back to reveal chalk-white skin stretching horribly over a hairless head, a serpentine nose and blood-red eyes. The monster was certainly dead - of that there was no doubt - though that was of little consolation to Sirius who had turned to face the cot.
Harry was still sitting upright, leaning back against the side of the cot which stood flush with the wall. His bright green eyes, so like Lily's own, looked to be staring up at a point above Sirius' head, obviously where Voldemort had been standing before him, but they held none of the laughter, none of the childish joy nor the cheeky glint he'd come to recognise. Tonight they were completely dull and empty. On his forehead above his right eye was a bleeding cut shaped like the Sowilo rune.
Sirius crawled across the floor to the cot and cried out in anguish, reaching in to pick up the toddler. Desperately, he checked for a pulse but, as expected, found none and just held him tightly to his chest, swaying and murmuring apologies for what might have been an eternity. He gently closed Harry's eyes and brushed his hand through his thin hair before placing a delicate kiss on his forehead.
As his sobs turned to sniffles, he rose to place Harry back in his cot, before covering him with his blanket. Into the silence, he whispered hoarsely, 'Goodnight, Pup,' and turned to face Lily. Wiping his face, he absently thought he'd never be able to cry again after the amount he had cried tonight.
'Na-night, Pa'foo,' a small voice responded, and in his grief Sirius very nearly missed it. Nearly falling over himself, he turned on his heel to find his godson rolling onto his front sleepily. As it happened, he definitely did still have more tears left to cry.
Author's Notes: Three Hallows' Eve is a story which diverges from canon on the night of Halloween 1981, and will cover Harry's childhood and first year at Hogwarts. It will technically meet the requirements for the Jily Meets Harmony challenge, as set by the HMS Harmony Discord server, but since Harmony will be 11/12 when this story wraps up, the relationship isn't really going to be all there. (I do have ideas to continue this story in sequel, though!)
It's pretty much completely plotted out, but there's no release schedule for chapters - they come out pretty much as they're finished. That said, if I think of something later down the line that really could have done with being set up in an earlier chapter, I have no qualms about coming back and editing or completely rewriting previous chapters as needed. I'll mention it in an Author's Note at the top of the chapter if I've done that so you can go back and see what's changed if you're reading as the chapters are released.
I hope you enjoy reading the story! Please do let me know what you think.
Peace and love, amidland.