The pain in his head was very literally blinding him. All James could see was a bright light shining between his cracked open eyelids. Had he splinched himself?

A sharp pain in his lower leg dismissed that notion. He'd never been splinched before, but he doubted that he would still be able to feel a part of his body he'd left behind. That was one thing at least. He forced his eyes open a little further and stared, amazed. The blinding light was the sun. He was outside!

Grunting, he forced himself to sit up and take a look around, but nothing there seemed capable of aiding him. The overgrown tangle of grass that surrounded him gradually gave way to shrubs and a few trees, but there was no visible sign of habitation. Not that he expected it.

Where to go from here was the question. James wasn't sure whether or not Peter had been lying to him, but it was almost inconceivable that Dumbledore could be gone, and Dumbledore meant Hogwarts. It appeared to be summer, but Dumbledore should be there.

If Hogwarts was still standing. True, it seemed impossible that the school could be gone, but it also seemed impossible that Peter could have betrayed them. Had it just been Peter? What about the others?

He'd figure that out later, he decided finally. The chances of being able to successfully Apparate to Hogwarts with Peter's wand and no idea of where he was were slim. He'd have to find a landmark, or a village.

That was it. He'd figure out where he was and go to Hogwarts, if it was still there. If not, London. Sirius had a house there. Maybe he was still around.

Maybe he was still alive.

No. Sirius was alive, just as Remus was alive, just as Dumbledore was alive, until someone he could actually trust said otherwise, as was Harry. He'd seen Lily die, there was no questioning that now, but it was possible that Harry survived.

He stood slowly, looking for anything remotely informative. A few birds flew by, but nothing more. The trees continued off toward the south, at least he thought it was south, but they weren't really thick enough to be an identifiable forest.

He lay Peter's wand in the flat of his palm. "Point me," he whispered. It spun several times and stopped so that it was pointing toward the trees.

Well, he had never had the greatest sense of direction, even as a stag. He looked around again. Traveling as a stag would be much easier.

He formed the picture of Prongs in his mind, down to the last branch of the antlers, and willed himself to flow into that shape. It was slow, much slower than a transformation should have been. Some lingering side effect of the bracers? It had to be, though he didn't see how they would affect that.

Now to pick a direction. He could probably assume that he wasn't anywhere near Wales, but where exactly? Perhaps if he could find another deer he could communicate. It had always worked in the Forbidden Forest.

He found a doe eventually, who informed him that he was really much closer to Hogwarts than he had thought. It would only be a few days' travel to what the deer called "the magic trees." She even thought to warn him, though somewhat cryptically, of the Whomping Willow.

The first day stayed sunny. He stopped a few times to drink, and once to pick a few berries. Grass had never appealed to James tremendously. The second day was much the same, but by the time he hit the edge of the Forbidden Forest on the third it was beginning to drizzle.

James began to feel nervous. Was the castle there? Voldemort might have left the forest standing even if the castle fell, as it was full of dangerous creatures, but it seemed more like the evil wizard to destroy anything even remotely reminiscent of Albus Dumbledore. Hopefully he was right.

His first glimpse of Hogwarts took his breath away as thoroughly as it had when he'd been a first year crossing the lake for the first time on a stormy fall evening. Dark, threatening clouds framed the castle, but just as he remembered it, it stood as though nothing, not even pure darkness, could ever threaten the ancient stones.

He changed back on the steps just before the main doors, and was both relieved and concerned to find the entrance unlocked. Did they lock the doors over the summer?

He sprinted down the hallways and up to the second floor, where Dumbledore's gargoyle waited, just as always. He pounded on the wall beside it several times, but got no response.

"Sweets," he gasped to himself. The passwords had always been sweets. "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans." The gargoyle did not respond. "Cockroach Cluster," he tried. Nothing. "Lemon drop, Mars Bars, Pumpkin Pasty." He pounded on the wall once more in frustration. "Chocolate Frog!"

The gargoyle sprang aside. Half disbelieving, James sprinted up the spiral staircase, refusing to wait for the wooden steps to carry him up on their own. He threw the door in, immediately relieved by the sight of Fawkes sitting on his stand, and the familiar Sorting Hat on a shelf behind the desk, next to an empty display cupboard.

Behind the enormous clawed desk, Dumbledore looked up at him with an awe-struck expression that James had never seen on the Headmaster's face. He cleared his throat once.

"Please have a seat." He motioned to the large chair on the other side of the desk before taking out his wand, pointing it at a quill on his desk, and murmuring "Portus." Fawkes rose from his perch, grabbed the quill, and disappeared in a puff.

Almost immediately, before Dumbledore could speak, three figures reappeared, one holding the now useless portkey. On the left was Lupin, hair now bordering on gray in places, on the right Sirius, looking much like had always had, and in the middle a gangly young man with untidy black hair and startling green eyes.

James' breath caught in his throat. Harry.

He turned to Dumbledore to ask if he was going mad, but Dumbledore was no longer there. In his place sat something with terrible, slimy chalk-white skin and piercing red slits for eyes. When he turned, horrified, back to Harry, Sirius, and Remus, they were gone as well, replaced with a huge, towering snake and a rat-faced, balding little man who James had come to despise. Dumbledore's familiar office vanished, to be replaced once again by the plain stone walls of a tiny room, unblemished save for the rock pallet resembling an altar.

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Loud, cackling laughter filled the air.

A/N: For those of you who wanted a happy ending, I apologize. I actually wanted one myself, but that's not where the story wanted to go. And yes, the "mistakes" were intentional, for anyone wondering. It was how James remembered things, thus Gryffindor's sword was not there, and Sirius was. And as an added disclaimer, I stole the transformation thing from David Eddings' Belgariad.