One
Bad Dreams
"All right, go for it, Harry!" James said, releasing the Snitch. Harry looked around and saw a flash of gold leaving the room. He zoomed into the kitchen, chasing it. He swerved around the table, where his mother was painting his little sister's fingernails, and flew up the stairs.
"Ooh! Quidditch!" Melody said, spilling over the nail polish bottle in excitement as she rushed into the family room, where she saw Sirius and James sitting on brooms, timing Harry. Melody grabbed her own broom from the closet and got on, pushing off and hovering near the ceiling, looking over her dad's shoulder at the stopwatch.
Meanwhile, Harry was going on a fast chase through the bedrooms upstairs, following the Snitch as closely as he could. He followed it around the guest room, then lost it as he left. He looked around with eagle eyes and saw it reflected in the mirror, trying to hide behind the post at the top of the stairs. Harry zoomed to it and caught it in his hand.
"I got it!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, diving down the stairs and flying back into the family room.
"New record, Harry!" James said. "Forty seconds!"
"Yaaay!" Melody said, clapping. "Good job, Harry!" she said, giving him a high-five.
"It's gonna be you and me, Melody," Harry said. "We're the unbeatable Keeper-and-Seeker team!"
"All right, let's go, me and Sirius against you and Melody," James said to Harry.
"We're going to kick your butt!" Harry said.
"Again!" Melody added.
"All right, you little kids! Let's see what you've got!" Sirius said.
"Hey! I'm ten!" Harry said. "And I'm almost eleven!"
"And I'm nine!" Melody added. "I'm almost ten!"
"All right, let's go!" James said. But they never got the chance.
"JAMES CHRISTOPHER POTTER!" Lily Potter's voice boomed through the house. "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU, NO QUIDDITCH IN THE HOUSE!!!!!!" She came to the door of the family room, fuming, her face bright red. Harry wouldn't have been surprised if smoke had started pouring out her ears.
"But Lily, it's raining!" James said.
"Don't you 'but Lily' me!" she said furiously. "I don't want to hear it! Now give me the brooms!"
Everyone who was mounted groaned.
"Oh, come on, Mom," Harry protested.
"Yeah!" Melody said. "We were just having fun!"
"Remus!" Lily said, noticing him sitting in a chair, reading a book on sea monsters. "You were going to let them get away with this?"
Remus looked up and shrugged. "You think I could talk them out of it?"
"Argh!" Lily groaned and threw up her hands. "What am I going to do with you people?" She Summoned all the brooms, causing Sirius, James, Harry, and Melody to land on various pieces of furniture around the room. Sirius ended up on top of a very tall bookcase and glared at Lily for several moments before Apparating onto the floor.
Just then the doorbell rang. "You, my friends, are saved by the bell," Lily said sternly, pointing a finger at everyone in the family room. She walked out of the room and to the door.
"What's she on about?" Sirius asked, plopping down on the couch. James shrugged.
"It's over my head." He sat down in a chair and Melody climbed onto his lap. Harry sat on the couch next to Sirius, exhausted from his fast-paced ride around the house.
"Melody! Harry! Alex is here!" Lily called from the front hallway.
"Alex!" Harry and Melody cried in unison, jumping off their respective seats and rushing into the front hall. There they met up with a silvery-blond haired boy the same age as Melody and rushed up the stairs to Harry's room.
Lily and her best friend, Melody, who was the younger Melody's namesake, walked into the family room.
"Melody!" Sirius said happily.
"Hey, you," Melody said, walking over to the couch and sitting down next to him.
Melody had been like a fifth Marauder at Hogwarts, but Lily had stopped her from participating in a great deal of the Marauders' stunts. She and Sirius had always been eyeing each other, but that fizzled out when Melody made the mistake of marrying Lucifer Malfoy. A little too late she discovered he was Voldemort's brother and tried to leave, but Lucifer was intent on keeping his secret and raising Alex to be Dark.
Melody wouldn't have any of this, so she poisoned Lucifer's food one night at dinner and escaped with Alex to Hogwarts, where she confided in Albus Dumbledore and he allowed her to stay there as the head of the Dueling Club so she would be safe from her husband and Voldemort. Melody somehow divorced him without Lucifer ever discovering where she was. She was now a single woman and had been visiting Lily and James's house as often as possible.
It turned out that she and Sirius still had major sparks, and they had been flirting nonstop since Melody's divorce.
"So, how's Alex?" Sirius asked.
"He's a sweetie," Melody smiled. "An absolute doll. I don't know how I raised such a polite child, what with my bad influence and his stupid father cussing left and right, but somehow I did. I'm beginning to think he was switched at birth," Melody laughed. "But then, he looks so much like me and his dad there's no way he's not mine."
Meanwhile, Lily was glaring at James, who appeared to be falling asleep in his chair. He felt Lily's gaze on him and opened his eyes to see her unwavering glare. "What now?" he asked.
"So you're going to sit all alone in a chair now, and not even let me sit next to you?" Lily demanded.
"There's room right here," James patted his legs. Lily smiled and rolled her eyes, but walked over and sat on his lap anyway. James leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, pulling his wife to his chest. Lily studied his face, hardly believing she had already been married to him for ten years. She pushed his unruly chair out of his eyes and leaned back against his chest.
"You look tired, James," Melody said, raising her eyebrows.
"Strenuous...athletic...activity..." James mumbled.
"Oh yeah, clicking a stopwatch is SO strenuous," Lily said sarcastically.
"What was he clicking a stopwatch for?" Melody asked.
"He was timing how fast Harry could catch the Snitch," Sirius replied matter-of-factly.
"Quidditch!" Melody said happily. "Awesome!" Lily shot her best friend a Look.
"In the house?" Lily asked.
"Oooh, in the house? I'll have to try--" Melody cut herself off, seeing the murderous look on Lily's face. "I mean, that's awful! What were you two thinking?" But she wasn't being a very good actress. Lily just sighed and rolled her eyes, reminding herself that she was only twenty-eight and she shouldn't be such a stick-in-the-mud.
She looked back at her husband again. His eyes were open, and he was studying her face the same way she was studying his.
"I love you, you know," Lily whispered.
"I know," James whispered back. He leaned forward, pulling his wife closer to him. "I love you too," he murmured, just before their lips met.
It was funny; Lily got just as lightheaded from James's kisses now as she had when she was a teenager. She had expected marriage to be a little more serious, maybe, than this. She thought that with children, things might have changed a little, maybe become less romantic. But she was still jsut as in love with James now as she had been the day she had married him, if not more so.
Lily's parents had never been very affectionate toward each other, and she had grown up thinking all marriages were like that. But she had discovered, after marriage, that they weren't. She and James were extremely affectionate toward each other. James had a very sweet child-like innocence about him that Lily loved. Many people thought he held the same vulnerability and naiveness as a small child, too, but he didn't.
James was a lot like Albus Dumbledore in the respect that he was an incredibly powerful wizard, but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking. When James got mad, it made Lily scared. He was so rarely upset that when he was, it was the kind of anger that made you want to drop through a hole in the ground. It was the kind of anger that made you feel a universe apart would still be too close for comfort. It was the kind of anger that could turn deadly.
Lily had only seen him truly angry, spouting true hatred, once in her life, and she never wanted to see him like that again. It had been right after his father was killed. Lily had been in Professor Dumbledore's office, consulting with him about what to do after she finished at Hogwarts, when James had stormed in, trembling with anger from head to toe.
Lily had looked up in astonishment to see her boyfriend standing rigid, red in the face, trembling in an effort not to break something or scream, with power emanating off of him like radiation off the sun.
"James!" Lily had said, getting up from her chair, wanting to calm him down, but something in his eyes told her this was a problem she could not fix.
"What's wrong?" Dumbledore asked.
"Voldemort," James spat. "He killed my father." Lily could tell he was trying very hard not to yell. Dumbledore's eyes flashed.
"Your father?" he asked. "Why?"
"Lily, you better go," James had said. Lily had nodded and left without asking any questions.
James had never told her about that day, and she had never asked. Just the mention of his father made James's body go rigid. She didn't want to see him that angry again.
But that wasn't important anymore. What was important was that she was with him, and they had a very close-knit, beautiful family. And she loved him and their children more than anything.
"Eww, Lily, you look like a couple of teenagers," Melody's teasing voice broke Lily out of her reverie. Lily broke her kiss with James and turned to look at Melody. She turned around long enough to stick her tongue out and then went back to kissing James. Melody smiled, rolled her eyes, and went back to her conversation with Sirius.
"So, how is it to be a single mom?" Sirius asked.
"It's tough, but I wouldn't trade Alex for anything," Melody said. "Alex has become my whole world." she sighed. "But it's very difficult for me to handle just being single. I love dating. I really miss just being able to go out to a pub and meet someone and wing it. Now, the guy has to meet Alex's approval, and be nice to kids, and he has to understand my schedule,"
Sirius looked a little put-out at the thought of Melody trying to pick up guys. Why couldn't she just pick up him, and they could get on with it? But he nodded anyway. "Must be frustrating."
"Oh, it is," Melody nodded fervently in agreement. "While you all were visiting Salem a couple weeks ago, I met this guy at a Quidditch store. Alex was off in a corner, looking at Quidditch posters, and I was checking out the new Nimbus 2000, when a guy came over and started flirting with me.
"Well, I started flirting back, not thinking much of it, and the next thing I know he's asking me on a date. I agree, and we pick a day and a time, and he says he'll meet me at The Porter at eight,"
Sirius's eyes bulged. "The Porter?" he asked. "That place is really expensive," He knew from personal experience just how expensive it actually was.
"Yes, The Porter," Melody said. "That should have tipped me off right there. The Porter? First date? There was something jerky about this guy.
"So anyway, I'm really excited. I find a gorgeous dress. It's short, and cream-colored, and it sparkles. It fit tight, but not too tight, and it was cut a little low, but still modest, and it...well, it was really nice. Do you know what I mean? Oh, why am I asking you, you're a guy," Melody said with a wave of her hand. But Sirius had a pretty good picture of what she meant. Melody was painting a very nice mental picture for him.
"Anyway, that's not the point," Melody continued. "The point is that I looked really good---and I mean really good. I put on my necklace that looks like diamonds, and I had my hair done up real nice, and I put on all kinds of make-up and anti-frizz charms and stuff like that. I even had Alex take a picture. Which I think, actually, is right here," Melody dug through her purse and found the picture.
Sirius took it from her hand and looked at it. There was Melody, looking absolutely gorgeous. She smoothed out her dress and turned around for him. It hugged all her curves and showed off her slim figure. Melody winked at him and blew him a kiss. Sirius chuckled and handed the picture back to Melody. "You photograph well," he commented. Melody smiled.
"Thanks." They held each other's gaze for several moments before Melody tore her eyes from his and put the picture back in her purse. "So anyway," she continued. "I'm all ready to go, when the sitter calls at the last minute and says she can't make it. Well, I don't want to cancel at this point, so I decide to dress Alex up and take him with me. It's not the best situation for a date, but, hey, I figure, it's better a date with Alex there than no date at all. And besides, I'd find out all in one blow whether I liked this guy and if he tolerated kids or not.
"So I dress Alex up and tell him to behave, and we go to The Porter. Right off, my date acts like a complete jerk and looks surprised that I have a kid. Well, everyone at the restaurant is real nice about it. They say the cook will do something special for him if he doesn't like anything on the menu, and they conjure up some little toys and stuff for him, and everyone's real nice to him. Meanwhile, my date keeps ignoring him and trying to act like he's not there. He's making all kinds of moves on me, and I'm sitting there thinking, 'what the hell am I doing?'
"Well, here's the kicker: at the end of the meal, the guy's wife marches in. His wife! Can you believe it? What a jerk!" Melody shook her head and tried to write it off as some kind of joke, but Sirius, being the ladies' man that he was, could see that she was still disappointed and hurt by the whole thing.
"Don't worry about it, Mel. There are plenty of guys out there better than him who would want to go out with you." Like me, Sirius added silently.
Melody smiled weakly. "I guess, but still...the nerve!" Melody shook her head with her mouth set in a line, as if she would like to find that guy and deck him.
Lily and James broke apart and Lily leaned against his chest, closing her eyes and thinking that it would be nice to just fall asleep. James started playing with Lily's necklace. It was a gold chain with an "L" pendant on it. Then James's stomach growled. Loudly. Lily's eyes fluttered open and she looked at the clock on the mantle. It was two o'clock.
"Lunch!" Lily cried. She jumped off James's lap and rushed into the kitchen. She ran around the kitchen, flying plates out and onto the table, magically filling glasses with milk and juice, popping a plate of sandwiches on the table, putting bowls full of chips and fruit out, and Summoning in some chairs to put around the table. Five minutes after she had rushed into the kitchen, she rushed out of it.
"Okay, Lunch is ready. You all go sit down, and I'll get the kids," Lily said. James, Melody, Sirius, and Remus got up and walked into the kitchen. Lily walked through the other entrance to the room and walked to the bottom of the stairs.
"Harry! Melody! Alex!" She yelled upstairs. "Lunch!" She heard the pounding of feet overhead, and soon three children were running down the stairs. Lily walked into the kitchen just ahead of them and took her place at the end of the table opposite James. Sirius, Remus, and Melody took up one side of the table, and Harry, Alex and the younger Melody took up the other.
Everyone dug in, and there were varied conversations around the table. Lily just sat back and took it all in, smiling at James from across the table. Her children were full of energy, bouncing in their chairs and bubbling over with excitement about...well, everything.
"Mom!" Harry said from his seat at the other end of the table, next to James.
"Yes?" Lily asked.
"Mom, do you think I'm going to get my Hogwarts letter soon?"
"Of course you are, Harry. It should be coming any day now. It usually comes around the end of July, and your birthday's in a week, so don't worry about it."
"What if I'm not accepted?" Harry asked, an apprehensive look on his face.
"Of course you'll be accepted!" Lily said. "You can do magic, can't you?"
"Well...yeah..." Harry said.
"See? You have nothing to worry about." Lily assured him. "Now eat your lunch." Harry nodded and went back to his food.
After lunch everyone moved back into the family room, full and tired. The adults chatted a little.
"Full moon's coming soon," Remus commented. Lily nodded.
"I started working in the basement last night," she assured him. The basement was Lily's workshop for potions. She kept a wide variety of potions ingredients there, and every month she brewed Remus a potion for his transformations.
After that they all sat in silence, listening to the pattering of the rain on the roof and falling into a sleepy haze. Alex curled up in his mom's lap, and Melody leaned her head against Sirius's shoulder. Lily and James sat next to each other on another couch. Harry layed down with his head in his mom's lap, and Melody sat on her dad's lap. James rested his head on Lily's shoulder.
Lily looked at the two men in her life and smiled. They looked like duplicates of each other with their eyes closed. The only difference was that Harry had Lily's eyes. Melody looked exactly like her mother, except with her father's eyes.
The whole room was very quiet and peaceful, and full of love. Lily felt content, happy, and completely safe. This was pure bliss.
Melody, Alex, Sirius, and Remus left sometime later, and then it was just the Potters. They ate dinner and then sat in the family room together. James and Lily put on a little magic show for their children, using some fairly advanced Charms and Transfiguration spells to wow Harry and Melody. James took the petals of a flower sitting on a coffee table and transfigured them into butterflies. Lily summoned several of Melody's dolls and bewitched them to talk and sing and do the can-can.
Then Harry and Melody were sent off to bed, and Lily went down to the basement to work on her potions. She checked Remus's potion and added some dragon's blood to it, then went to check her second potion. The second potion had been stewing for some time now, and it was almost complete. She added a little boomslang skin to it and then made an entry in her logbook about the status of the potions. She moved onto her third potion, which was an experiment she had started a little while ago. She was trying to make a potion that could fight one of the Unforgivable Curses. A Will-Strengthening potion could already pretty much fight off the Imperius Curse, but the Cruciatus Curse was very hard to block--almost impossible, in fact--and everyone knew that Avada Kedavra couldn't be blocked at all.
Lily knew it was silly to try and fight death with a potion, but if she could come up with something that could help Aurors fight off the Unforgivable Curses, it would be worth it. She was constantly worrying about James and his work as an Auror. Lily was actually an Auror too, but she wasn't working in the field like James. She was working as a teacher at Hogwarts and helping Dumbledore with whatever he asked her to. Dumbledore was now in charge of the Aurors and basically running the Ministry as well, because all the Minister did was take advice from Dumbledore.
Lily had taken the place of Potions Master several years ago. Snape had been killed by Voldemort after being found out as a spy, and Lily was the most qualified person for the job. Professor Vector had become head of Slytherin House.
Lily kept experimenting, keeping careful logs of all her experiments in a notebook. She kept adding things to it until James came downstairs and told her to stop.
"Lily, honey, it's midnight," James said gently, putting his hands on her shoulders. Lily sighed and rubbed her eyes, finishing a final documentation in her notebook, and turning around, falling into her husband's arms.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I guess I got carried away. I'm just...worried, that's all. I want to find some way to help you and the other Aurors."
"I know, Lily, but I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."
"You can't guarantee you'll be fine," Lily said, closing her eyes and squeezing James.
"I would never leave you and Harry and Melody here alone."
"Not on purpose, but James, some things are just out of your control!" Lily cried, her voice cracking.
"Shh," James said as Lily started crying. He rubbed her back and let her cry. Lily closed her eyes and took in deep, shaky breaths, calming herself down. She pulled back and wiped away the tears on her face. "You are so beautiful," James told her, pushing her hair out of her face. He kissed her, and then they walked up the stairs to their room.
Lily changed into her nightgown and fell into bed beside James, exhausted. He fell asleep right away, and Lily could hear his soft snores in the dark. But even though she was desperately tired, she couldn't fall asleep. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. It took her a long time to find sleep, and when she did, it was troubled.
It was peaceful in the kitchen. Lily was feeding Harry and James was finishing his dinner. Then they heard the front door break open and fly off its hinges. The house was shadowed in dark magic.
Lily jerked her head with a gasp, letting the spoon she was holding clatter to the floor. "Voldemort," she whispered, here eyes widening in fear.
"Lily, take Harryl and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off--"
"But James!" Lily protested even as she gathered up Harry in her arms.
"GO!" James yelled at her, and he rushed to try and stoop Voldemort as Lily ran out the back door. "James, you idiot!" she whispered, turning to lookback at the house. "Just because you're an Auror..." She let the tears slip down her face. Then she turned to rin into the night, but the glass window behind her exploded and broken glass rained over her.
Lily stumbled forward from the power of the blast, then whirled around to face Voldemort.
"Move," he said coldly. "Give up the baby."
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!" Lily cried, holding Harry tightly to her chest. He was now crying.
"Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside, now..."
"Not Harry, please, no, thake me, kill me instead--"
"Shutup and move!" Voldemort roared. Lily was crying freely now. Sobbing, she sank to her knees.
"Not Harry! Please...have mercy...have mercy..." she sobbed, knowing her attempts were futile, but she had to try. She had to make an attempt to save Harry. She couldn't give up her baby!
"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort screeched.
"No!" Lily cried before her world was blown away in a flash of blinding green light.
She saw Harry in a cupboard, filled with spiders. He was rudely awaken bu a rapping on the door. He looked the same age here as he was now, at home, except he looked like skin and bones, his glasses were held together with tape, his clothes were far too large, and...he had the strangest lightning bolt scar on his forehead.
Harry exited the cupboard and Lily followed him. He walked into the kitchen. Lily recognized her sister, Petunia, snapping at Harry because he was being too slow and telling him to keep an eye on the bacon while she got Dudley up.
"How dare you speak to my child that way!" Lily shrieked indignantly, but Petunia didn't say anything. Harry didn't flinch. They couldn't hear her.
Lily watched in sorrow as she saw her child being mistrated, his Hogwarts letters burned, his future being destroyed. They ended up un a small cabin, a little out to sea, running from the Hogwarts letters. Lily was meserable. Then the door busted in, and she saw Rubeus Hagrid in the doorway.
"Hagrid!" Lily cried, smiling. If Hagrid was here, it was going to be all right. Then time started to speed up.
She saw Harry at Diagon Alley, then Hogwarts, then flying, making the Quidditch team as the youngest player in a hundred years, then finding a three-headed dog, making friends, helping Hagrid with a dragon, then getting past a series of obstacles to find one of his professors standing by the Mirror of Erised, and finding the Sorcerer's Stone, then almost getting killed by Voldemort.
TIme sped up again. Lily saw it go faster, the trials of Harry's second year and defeating the basilisk. Third year. He met Lupin, and Sirius, and Peter. Peter had betrayed them, and Harry had perviously thought Sirius was evil, and for some reason Sirius had been sent to Azkaban and had escaped. Time then sped up even more.
The events of fourth year and the Triwizard Tournament went by in a blur, and slowed to normal time as Harry was tied to a tombstone and had blood taken from his arm, allowing Voldemort to rise. Just when Harry was about to be killed, just when Voldemort started saying "Avada Kedavra," Lily woke up, screaming, in a cold sweat.
"Lily!" James said, sitting up beside her.
"The dream!" Lily gasped, choking out sobs. "It came back,"
"But...you...you...you haven't had that dream since..."
"Melody was born," Lily whispered.
"Was it the same as last time?"
"No...there was more this time. I saw...I saw what happened after Voldemort killed me."
"What was it? What happened?" James pressed, but Lily shook her head.
"I don't want to talk about it," she said, putting a hand to her forehead and getting out of bed. She absentmindedly wandered out into the hallway and down to Harry's room. She opened his door and looked inside. He was sleeping peacefully, undisturbed, bathed in moonlight from his open window.
"Lily, what are you doing?" James whispered, coming up behind her.
"Checking on the kids," Lily said. She closed Harry's door and padded down the hall to Melody's room. She opened the door and looked at her precious daughter. She walked over to her bed and kneeled down beside it.
"Melody wasn't in the dream," Lily said softly.
"She wasn't?" James asked. "But then she wouldn't be, would she, if you and I got killed when Harry was just a little baby."
"I think it was around the time I got pregnant," Lily said. She shivered. "It just seemed so...real, somehow. It was so vivid and detailed, I...I felt like it had actually happened."
"What did you see?" James asked, sinking down on the floor next to her.
"Harry...he was living with my sister, Petunia. They treated him horribly. They made him live in a cupboard, filled with spiders...he had to wear clothes that were too big for him...he looked underfed...he never got a birthday present...his Christmas presents were things like a single tissue or a toothpick...he got warmer gifts from his best friend's mom than he did from his own aunt and uncle." Lily's eyes brimmed with tears, but she continued. "He never knew what it felt like to be loved...he was lied to about his parents and his heritage for years...his aunt and uncle tried to burn and tear apart all his Hogwarts letters, and they kept being delivered, too. They would have destroyed his future, had it not been for Hagrid's efforts. I wouldn't have thought...my own sister...but then, she always hated magic. And...oh God, James, it's just horrible!
"He didn't meet Remus until his third year at Hogwarts, and he lived that year thinking Sirius was a convict. And for some reason, Sirius had been locked in Azkaban for thirteen years. When he finally managed to escape, Harry thought he had killed us and didn't learn the truth until the end of the year...I'm not really sure what all that was about...but can you imagine, James? Harry, never knowing us? Never knowing Sirius? Remus? And Melody wasn't even in the dream at all!
"And then after Harry learned the truth about Sirius, Sirius had to go into hiding. He looked horrible, with waxy skin and matted hair, and his bones sticking out. He had to stay in Animagus form almost all the time, and when he was a human, he started to act like a dog. He was far away from the Sirius we know. It was just all so awful."
Lily looked down at Melody as James wrapped an arm around her.
"And my poor little Melody," Lily whispered. "You didn't even exist."
She stroked her daughter's hand and felt a wet liquid on its surface. Lily took her fingers away and looked at them, discovering, with shock, that they were covered in blood. She turned her daughter's hand over and saw that the lifeline on her palm was bleeding. As she brought her hand to her mouth, Lily saw that her lifeline was bleeding too.
"James!" she shrieked.
"Lily! Your hand!" He cried, grabbing for her hand and taking his arm off her. As he did so, he realized his own palm was bleeding and saw that he had left a mark of blood on the back of Lily's nightgown.
"Harry!" Lily cried, jumping up from the floor and running into Harry's bedroom.
She turned up both his palms, but there was nothing wrong with them. They sat innocently in her hands, completely unmarked. Lily looked at her own palm to see if it was normal, and if it had just been another dream.
Her lifeline was still bleeding.
Bad Dreams
"All right, go for it, Harry!" James said, releasing the Snitch. Harry looked around and saw a flash of gold leaving the room. He zoomed into the kitchen, chasing it. He swerved around the table, where his mother was painting his little sister's fingernails, and flew up the stairs.
"Ooh! Quidditch!" Melody said, spilling over the nail polish bottle in excitement as she rushed into the family room, where she saw Sirius and James sitting on brooms, timing Harry. Melody grabbed her own broom from the closet and got on, pushing off and hovering near the ceiling, looking over her dad's shoulder at the stopwatch.
Meanwhile, Harry was going on a fast chase through the bedrooms upstairs, following the Snitch as closely as he could. He followed it around the guest room, then lost it as he left. He looked around with eagle eyes and saw it reflected in the mirror, trying to hide behind the post at the top of the stairs. Harry zoomed to it and caught it in his hand.
"I got it!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, diving down the stairs and flying back into the family room.
"New record, Harry!" James said. "Forty seconds!"
"Yaaay!" Melody said, clapping. "Good job, Harry!" she said, giving him a high-five.
"It's gonna be you and me, Melody," Harry said. "We're the unbeatable Keeper-and-Seeker team!"
"All right, let's go, me and Sirius against you and Melody," James said to Harry.
"We're going to kick your butt!" Harry said.
"Again!" Melody added.
"All right, you little kids! Let's see what you've got!" Sirius said.
"Hey! I'm ten!" Harry said. "And I'm almost eleven!"
"And I'm nine!" Melody added. "I'm almost ten!"
"All right, let's go!" James said. But they never got the chance.
"JAMES CHRISTOPHER POTTER!" Lily Potter's voice boomed through the house. "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU, NO QUIDDITCH IN THE HOUSE!!!!!!" She came to the door of the family room, fuming, her face bright red. Harry wouldn't have been surprised if smoke had started pouring out her ears.
"But Lily, it's raining!" James said.
"Don't you 'but Lily' me!" she said furiously. "I don't want to hear it! Now give me the brooms!"
Everyone who was mounted groaned.
"Oh, come on, Mom," Harry protested.
"Yeah!" Melody said. "We were just having fun!"
"Remus!" Lily said, noticing him sitting in a chair, reading a book on sea monsters. "You were going to let them get away with this?"
Remus looked up and shrugged. "You think I could talk them out of it?"
"Argh!" Lily groaned and threw up her hands. "What am I going to do with you people?" She Summoned all the brooms, causing Sirius, James, Harry, and Melody to land on various pieces of furniture around the room. Sirius ended up on top of a very tall bookcase and glared at Lily for several moments before Apparating onto the floor.
Just then the doorbell rang. "You, my friends, are saved by the bell," Lily said sternly, pointing a finger at everyone in the family room. She walked out of the room and to the door.
"What's she on about?" Sirius asked, plopping down on the couch. James shrugged.
"It's over my head." He sat down in a chair and Melody climbed onto his lap. Harry sat on the couch next to Sirius, exhausted from his fast-paced ride around the house.
"Melody! Harry! Alex is here!" Lily called from the front hallway.
"Alex!" Harry and Melody cried in unison, jumping off their respective seats and rushing into the front hall. There they met up with a silvery-blond haired boy the same age as Melody and rushed up the stairs to Harry's room.
Lily and her best friend, Melody, who was the younger Melody's namesake, walked into the family room.
"Melody!" Sirius said happily.
"Hey, you," Melody said, walking over to the couch and sitting down next to him.
Melody had been like a fifth Marauder at Hogwarts, but Lily had stopped her from participating in a great deal of the Marauders' stunts. She and Sirius had always been eyeing each other, but that fizzled out when Melody made the mistake of marrying Lucifer Malfoy. A little too late she discovered he was Voldemort's brother and tried to leave, but Lucifer was intent on keeping his secret and raising Alex to be Dark.
Melody wouldn't have any of this, so she poisoned Lucifer's food one night at dinner and escaped with Alex to Hogwarts, where she confided in Albus Dumbledore and he allowed her to stay there as the head of the Dueling Club so she would be safe from her husband and Voldemort. Melody somehow divorced him without Lucifer ever discovering where she was. She was now a single woman and had been visiting Lily and James's house as often as possible.
It turned out that she and Sirius still had major sparks, and they had been flirting nonstop since Melody's divorce.
"So, how's Alex?" Sirius asked.
"He's a sweetie," Melody smiled. "An absolute doll. I don't know how I raised such a polite child, what with my bad influence and his stupid father cussing left and right, but somehow I did. I'm beginning to think he was switched at birth," Melody laughed. "But then, he looks so much like me and his dad there's no way he's not mine."
Meanwhile, Lily was glaring at James, who appeared to be falling asleep in his chair. He felt Lily's gaze on him and opened his eyes to see her unwavering glare. "What now?" he asked.
"So you're going to sit all alone in a chair now, and not even let me sit next to you?" Lily demanded.
"There's room right here," James patted his legs. Lily smiled and rolled her eyes, but walked over and sat on his lap anyway. James leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, pulling his wife to his chest. Lily studied his face, hardly believing she had already been married to him for ten years. She pushed his unruly chair out of his eyes and leaned back against his chest.
"You look tired, James," Melody said, raising her eyebrows.
"Strenuous...athletic...activity..." James mumbled.
"Oh yeah, clicking a stopwatch is SO strenuous," Lily said sarcastically.
"What was he clicking a stopwatch for?" Melody asked.
"He was timing how fast Harry could catch the Snitch," Sirius replied matter-of-factly.
"Quidditch!" Melody said happily. "Awesome!" Lily shot her best friend a Look.
"In the house?" Lily asked.
"Oooh, in the house? I'll have to try--" Melody cut herself off, seeing the murderous look on Lily's face. "I mean, that's awful! What were you two thinking?" But she wasn't being a very good actress. Lily just sighed and rolled her eyes, reminding herself that she was only twenty-eight and she shouldn't be such a stick-in-the-mud.
She looked back at her husband again. His eyes were open, and he was studying her face the same way she was studying his.
"I love you, you know," Lily whispered.
"I know," James whispered back. He leaned forward, pulling his wife closer to him. "I love you too," he murmured, just before their lips met.
It was funny; Lily got just as lightheaded from James's kisses now as she had when she was a teenager. She had expected marriage to be a little more serious, maybe, than this. She thought that with children, things might have changed a little, maybe become less romantic. But she was still jsut as in love with James now as she had been the day she had married him, if not more so.
Lily's parents had never been very affectionate toward each other, and she had grown up thinking all marriages were like that. But she had discovered, after marriage, that they weren't. She and James were extremely affectionate toward each other. James had a very sweet child-like innocence about him that Lily loved. Many people thought he held the same vulnerability and naiveness as a small child, too, but he didn't.
James was a lot like Albus Dumbledore in the respect that he was an incredibly powerful wizard, but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking. When James got mad, it made Lily scared. He was so rarely upset that when he was, it was the kind of anger that made you want to drop through a hole in the ground. It was the kind of anger that made you feel a universe apart would still be too close for comfort. It was the kind of anger that could turn deadly.
Lily had only seen him truly angry, spouting true hatred, once in her life, and she never wanted to see him like that again. It had been right after his father was killed. Lily had been in Professor Dumbledore's office, consulting with him about what to do after she finished at Hogwarts, when James had stormed in, trembling with anger from head to toe.
Lily had looked up in astonishment to see her boyfriend standing rigid, red in the face, trembling in an effort not to break something or scream, with power emanating off of him like radiation off the sun.
"James!" Lily had said, getting up from her chair, wanting to calm him down, but something in his eyes told her this was a problem she could not fix.
"What's wrong?" Dumbledore asked.
"Voldemort," James spat. "He killed my father." Lily could tell he was trying very hard not to yell. Dumbledore's eyes flashed.
"Your father?" he asked. "Why?"
"Lily, you better go," James had said. Lily had nodded and left without asking any questions.
James had never told her about that day, and she had never asked. Just the mention of his father made James's body go rigid. She didn't want to see him that angry again.
But that wasn't important anymore. What was important was that she was with him, and they had a very close-knit, beautiful family. And she loved him and their children more than anything.
"Eww, Lily, you look like a couple of teenagers," Melody's teasing voice broke Lily out of her reverie. Lily broke her kiss with James and turned to look at Melody. She turned around long enough to stick her tongue out and then went back to kissing James. Melody smiled, rolled her eyes, and went back to her conversation with Sirius.
"So, how is it to be a single mom?" Sirius asked.
"It's tough, but I wouldn't trade Alex for anything," Melody said. "Alex has become my whole world." she sighed. "But it's very difficult for me to handle just being single. I love dating. I really miss just being able to go out to a pub and meet someone and wing it. Now, the guy has to meet Alex's approval, and be nice to kids, and he has to understand my schedule,"
Sirius looked a little put-out at the thought of Melody trying to pick up guys. Why couldn't she just pick up him, and they could get on with it? But he nodded anyway. "Must be frustrating."
"Oh, it is," Melody nodded fervently in agreement. "While you all were visiting Salem a couple weeks ago, I met this guy at a Quidditch store. Alex was off in a corner, looking at Quidditch posters, and I was checking out the new Nimbus 2000, when a guy came over and started flirting with me.
"Well, I started flirting back, not thinking much of it, and the next thing I know he's asking me on a date. I agree, and we pick a day and a time, and he says he'll meet me at The Porter at eight,"
Sirius's eyes bulged. "The Porter?" he asked. "That place is really expensive," He knew from personal experience just how expensive it actually was.
"Yes, The Porter," Melody said. "That should have tipped me off right there. The Porter? First date? There was something jerky about this guy.
"So anyway, I'm really excited. I find a gorgeous dress. It's short, and cream-colored, and it sparkles. It fit tight, but not too tight, and it was cut a little low, but still modest, and it...well, it was really nice. Do you know what I mean? Oh, why am I asking you, you're a guy," Melody said with a wave of her hand. But Sirius had a pretty good picture of what she meant. Melody was painting a very nice mental picture for him.
"Anyway, that's not the point," Melody continued. "The point is that I looked really good---and I mean really good. I put on my necklace that looks like diamonds, and I had my hair done up real nice, and I put on all kinds of make-up and anti-frizz charms and stuff like that. I even had Alex take a picture. Which I think, actually, is right here," Melody dug through her purse and found the picture.
Sirius took it from her hand and looked at it. There was Melody, looking absolutely gorgeous. She smoothed out her dress and turned around for him. It hugged all her curves and showed off her slim figure. Melody winked at him and blew him a kiss. Sirius chuckled and handed the picture back to Melody. "You photograph well," he commented. Melody smiled.
"Thanks." They held each other's gaze for several moments before Melody tore her eyes from his and put the picture back in her purse. "So anyway," she continued. "I'm all ready to go, when the sitter calls at the last minute and says she can't make it. Well, I don't want to cancel at this point, so I decide to dress Alex up and take him with me. It's not the best situation for a date, but, hey, I figure, it's better a date with Alex there than no date at all. And besides, I'd find out all in one blow whether I liked this guy and if he tolerated kids or not.
"So I dress Alex up and tell him to behave, and we go to The Porter. Right off, my date acts like a complete jerk and looks surprised that I have a kid. Well, everyone at the restaurant is real nice about it. They say the cook will do something special for him if he doesn't like anything on the menu, and they conjure up some little toys and stuff for him, and everyone's real nice to him. Meanwhile, my date keeps ignoring him and trying to act like he's not there. He's making all kinds of moves on me, and I'm sitting there thinking, 'what the hell am I doing?'
"Well, here's the kicker: at the end of the meal, the guy's wife marches in. His wife! Can you believe it? What a jerk!" Melody shook her head and tried to write it off as some kind of joke, but Sirius, being the ladies' man that he was, could see that she was still disappointed and hurt by the whole thing.
"Don't worry about it, Mel. There are plenty of guys out there better than him who would want to go out with you." Like me, Sirius added silently.
Melody smiled weakly. "I guess, but still...the nerve!" Melody shook her head with her mouth set in a line, as if she would like to find that guy and deck him.
Lily and James broke apart and Lily leaned against his chest, closing her eyes and thinking that it would be nice to just fall asleep. James started playing with Lily's necklace. It was a gold chain with an "L" pendant on it. Then James's stomach growled. Loudly. Lily's eyes fluttered open and she looked at the clock on the mantle. It was two o'clock.
"Lunch!" Lily cried. She jumped off James's lap and rushed into the kitchen. She ran around the kitchen, flying plates out and onto the table, magically filling glasses with milk and juice, popping a plate of sandwiches on the table, putting bowls full of chips and fruit out, and Summoning in some chairs to put around the table. Five minutes after she had rushed into the kitchen, she rushed out of it.
"Okay, Lunch is ready. You all go sit down, and I'll get the kids," Lily said. James, Melody, Sirius, and Remus got up and walked into the kitchen. Lily walked through the other entrance to the room and walked to the bottom of the stairs.
"Harry! Melody! Alex!" She yelled upstairs. "Lunch!" She heard the pounding of feet overhead, and soon three children were running down the stairs. Lily walked into the kitchen just ahead of them and took her place at the end of the table opposite James. Sirius, Remus, and Melody took up one side of the table, and Harry, Alex and the younger Melody took up the other.
Everyone dug in, and there were varied conversations around the table. Lily just sat back and took it all in, smiling at James from across the table. Her children were full of energy, bouncing in their chairs and bubbling over with excitement about...well, everything.
"Mom!" Harry said from his seat at the other end of the table, next to James.
"Yes?" Lily asked.
"Mom, do you think I'm going to get my Hogwarts letter soon?"
"Of course you are, Harry. It should be coming any day now. It usually comes around the end of July, and your birthday's in a week, so don't worry about it."
"What if I'm not accepted?" Harry asked, an apprehensive look on his face.
"Of course you'll be accepted!" Lily said. "You can do magic, can't you?"
"Well...yeah..." Harry said.
"See? You have nothing to worry about." Lily assured him. "Now eat your lunch." Harry nodded and went back to his food.
After lunch everyone moved back into the family room, full and tired. The adults chatted a little.
"Full moon's coming soon," Remus commented. Lily nodded.
"I started working in the basement last night," she assured him. The basement was Lily's workshop for potions. She kept a wide variety of potions ingredients there, and every month she brewed Remus a potion for his transformations.
After that they all sat in silence, listening to the pattering of the rain on the roof and falling into a sleepy haze. Alex curled up in his mom's lap, and Melody leaned her head against Sirius's shoulder. Lily and James sat next to each other on another couch. Harry layed down with his head in his mom's lap, and Melody sat on her dad's lap. James rested his head on Lily's shoulder.
Lily looked at the two men in her life and smiled. They looked like duplicates of each other with their eyes closed. The only difference was that Harry had Lily's eyes. Melody looked exactly like her mother, except with her father's eyes.
The whole room was very quiet and peaceful, and full of love. Lily felt content, happy, and completely safe. This was pure bliss.
Melody, Alex, Sirius, and Remus left sometime later, and then it was just the Potters. They ate dinner and then sat in the family room together. James and Lily put on a little magic show for their children, using some fairly advanced Charms and Transfiguration spells to wow Harry and Melody. James took the petals of a flower sitting on a coffee table and transfigured them into butterflies. Lily summoned several of Melody's dolls and bewitched them to talk and sing and do the can-can.
Then Harry and Melody were sent off to bed, and Lily went down to the basement to work on her potions. She checked Remus's potion and added some dragon's blood to it, then went to check her second potion. The second potion had been stewing for some time now, and it was almost complete. She added a little boomslang skin to it and then made an entry in her logbook about the status of the potions. She moved onto her third potion, which was an experiment she had started a little while ago. She was trying to make a potion that could fight one of the Unforgivable Curses. A Will-Strengthening potion could already pretty much fight off the Imperius Curse, but the Cruciatus Curse was very hard to block--almost impossible, in fact--and everyone knew that Avada Kedavra couldn't be blocked at all.
Lily knew it was silly to try and fight death with a potion, but if she could come up with something that could help Aurors fight off the Unforgivable Curses, it would be worth it. She was constantly worrying about James and his work as an Auror. Lily was actually an Auror too, but she wasn't working in the field like James. She was working as a teacher at Hogwarts and helping Dumbledore with whatever he asked her to. Dumbledore was now in charge of the Aurors and basically running the Ministry as well, because all the Minister did was take advice from Dumbledore.
Lily had taken the place of Potions Master several years ago. Snape had been killed by Voldemort after being found out as a spy, and Lily was the most qualified person for the job. Professor Vector had become head of Slytherin House.
Lily kept experimenting, keeping careful logs of all her experiments in a notebook. She kept adding things to it until James came downstairs and told her to stop.
"Lily, honey, it's midnight," James said gently, putting his hands on her shoulders. Lily sighed and rubbed her eyes, finishing a final documentation in her notebook, and turning around, falling into her husband's arms.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I guess I got carried away. I'm just...worried, that's all. I want to find some way to help you and the other Aurors."
"I know, Lily, but I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."
"You can't guarantee you'll be fine," Lily said, closing her eyes and squeezing James.
"I would never leave you and Harry and Melody here alone."
"Not on purpose, but James, some things are just out of your control!" Lily cried, her voice cracking.
"Shh," James said as Lily started crying. He rubbed her back and let her cry. Lily closed her eyes and took in deep, shaky breaths, calming herself down. She pulled back and wiped away the tears on her face. "You are so beautiful," James told her, pushing her hair out of her face. He kissed her, and then they walked up the stairs to their room.
Lily changed into her nightgown and fell into bed beside James, exhausted. He fell asleep right away, and Lily could hear his soft snores in the dark. But even though she was desperately tired, she couldn't fall asleep. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. It took her a long time to find sleep, and when she did, it was troubled.
It was peaceful in the kitchen. Lily was feeding Harry and James was finishing his dinner. Then they heard the front door break open and fly off its hinges. The house was shadowed in dark magic.
Lily jerked her head with a gasp, letting the spoon she was holding clatter to the floor. "Voldemort," she whispered, here eyes widening in fear.
"Lily, take Harryl and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off--"
"But James!" Lily protested even as she gathered up Harry in her arms.
"GO!" James yelled at her, and he rushed to try and stoop Voldemort as Lily ran out the back door. "James, you idiot!" she whispered, turning to lookback at the house. "Just because you're an Auror..." She let the tears slip down her face. Then she turned to rin into the night, but the glass window behind her exploded and broken glass rained over her.
Lily stumbled forward from the power of the blast, then whirled around to face Voldemort.
"Move," he said coldly. "Give up the baby."
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!" Lily cried, holding Harry tightly to her chest. He was now crying.
"Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside, now..."
"Not Harry, please, no, thake me, kill me instead--"
"Shutup and move!" Voldemort roared. Lily was crying freely now. Sobbing, she sank to her knees.
"Not Harry! Please...have mercy...have mercy..." she sobbed, knowing her attempts were futile, but she had to try. She had to make an attempt to save Harry. She couldn't give up her baby!
"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort screeched.
"No!" Lily cried before her world was blown away in a flash of blinding green light.
She saw Harry in a cupboard, filled with spiders. He was rudely awaken bu a rapping on the door. He looked the same age here as he was now, at home, except he looked like skin and bones, his glasses were held together with tape, his clothes were far too large, and...he had the strangest lightning bolt scar on his forehead.
Harry exited the cupboard and Lily followed him. He walked into the kitchen. Lily recognized her sister, Petunia, snapping at Harry because he was being too slow and telling him to keep an eye on the bacon while she got Dudley up.
"How dare you speak to my child that way!" Lily shrieked indignantly, but Petunia didn't say anything. Harry didn't flinch. They couldn't hear her.
Lily watched in sorrow as she saw her child being mistrated, his Hogwarts letters burned, his future being destroyed. They ended up un a small cabin, a little out to sea, running from the Hogwarts letters. Lily was meserable. Then the door busted in, and she saw Rubeus Hagrid in the doorway.
"Hagrid!" Lily cried, smiling. If Hagrid was here, it was going to be all right. Then time started to speed up.
She saw Harry at Diagon Alley, then Hogwarts, then flying, making the Quidditch team as the youngest player in a hundred years, then finding a three-headed dog, making friends, helping Hagrid with a dragon, then getting past a series of obstacles to find one of his professors standing by the Mirror of Erised, and finding the Sorcerer's Stone, then almost getting killed by Voldemort.
TIme sped up again. Lily saw it go faster, the trials of Harry's second year and defeating the basilisk. Third year. He met Lupin, and Sirius, and Peter. Peter had betrayed them, and Harry had perviously thought Sirius was evil, and for some reason Sirius had been sent to Azkaban and had escaped. Time then sped up even more.
The events of fourth year and the Triwizard Tournament went by in a blur, and slowed to normal time as Harry was tied to a tombstone and had blood taken from his arm, allowing Voldemort to rise. Just when Harry was about to be killed, just when Voldemort started saying "Avada Kedavra," Lily woke up, screaming, in a cold sweat.
"Lily!" James said, sitting up beside her.
"The dream!" Lily gasped, choking out sobs. "It came back,"
"But...you...you...you haven't had that dream since..."
"Melody was born," Lily whispered.
"Was it the same as last time?"
"No...there was more this time. I saw...I saw what happened after Voldemort killed me."
"What was it? What happened?" James pressed, but Lily shook her head.
"I don't want to talk about it," she said, putting a hand to her forehead and getting out of bed. She absentmindedly wandered out into the hallway and down to Harry's room. She opened his door and looked inside. He was sleeping peacefully, undisturbed, bathed in moonlight from his open window.
"Lily, what are you doing?" James whispered, coming up behind her.
"Checking on the kids," Lily said. She closed Harry's door and padded down the hall to Melody's room. She opened the door and looked at her precious daughter. She walked over to her bed and kneeled down beside it.
"Melody wasn't in the dream," Lily said softly.
"She wasn't?" James asked. "But then she wouldn't be, would she, if you and I got killed when Harry was just a little baby."
"I think it was around the time I got pregnant," Lily said. She shivered. "It just seemed so...real, somehow. It was so vivid and detailed, I...I felt like it had actually happened."
"What did you see?" James asked, sinking down on the floor next to her.
"Harry...he was living with my sister, Petunia. They treated him horribly. They made him live in a cupboard, filled with spiders...he had to wear clothes that were too big for him...he looked underfed...he never got a birthday present...his Christmas presents were things like a single tissue or a toothpick...he got warmer gifts from his best friend's mom than he did from his own aunt and uncle." Lily's eyes brimmed with tears, but she continued. "He never knew what it felt like to be loved...he was lied to about his parents and his heritage for years...his aunt and uncle tried to burn and tear apart all his Hogwarts letters, and they kept being delivered, too. They would have destroyed his future, had it not been for Hagrid's efforts. I wouldn't have thought...my own sister...but then, she always hated magic. And...oh God, James, it's just horrible!
"He didn't meet Remus until his third year at Hogwarts, and he lived that year thinking Sirius was a convict. And for some reason, Sirius had been locked in Azkaban for thirteen years. When he finally managed to escape, Harry thought he had killed us and didn't learn the truth until the end of the year...I'm not really sure what all that was about...but can you imagine, James? Harry, never knowing us? Never knowing Sirius? Remus? And Melody wasn't even in the dream at all!
"And then after Harry learned the truth about Sirius, Sirius had to go into hiding. He looked horrible, with waxy skin and matted hair, and his bones sticking out. He had to stay in Animagus form almost all the time, and when he was a human, he started to act like a dog. He was far away from the Sirius we know. It was just all so awful."
Lily looked down at Melody as James wrapped an arm around her.
"And my poor little Melody," Lily whispered. "You didn't even exist."
She stroked her daughter's hand and felt a wet liquid on its surface. Lily took her fingers away and looked at them, discovering, with shock, that they were covered in blood. She turned her daughter's hand over and saw that the lifeline on her palm was bleeding. As she brought her hand to her mouth, Lily saw that her lifeline was bleeding too.
"James!" she shrieked.
"Lily! Your hand!" He cried, grabbing for her hand and taking his arm off her. As he did so, he realized his own palm was bleeding and saw that he had left a mark of blood on the back of Lily's nightgown.
"Harry!" Lily cried, jumping up from the floor and running into Harry's bedroom.
She turned up both his palms, but there was nothing wrong with them. They sat innocently in her hands, completely unmarked. Lily looked at her own palm to see if it was normal, and if it had just been another dream.
Her lifeline was still bleeding.