AN—Gah! Thank you so much those of you who reviewed the prologue! I got the first one at the end of a very, very stressful day, and let me tell you, I got some serious warm fuzzies off it. It even beat when a friend of my parents, who happens to be a professional chef, told me that my crème brulee was restaurant quality! Thank you so much! Sorry it's been a long time since I posted the prologue…AP Chem test, AP Calc test, a giant ethics project, plus the start of swim season, all in one week. Yeesh, I'm surprised I survived! To all the Americans reading this, HAPPY TURKEY DAY! For everyone else, enjoy your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while we have a giant feast. :-P

p.s. I don't own anything…

Those same healers would have seen her wrench herself from the vision, sobbing, to take up her remaining boy and disappear into the night, knowing that she was the one to doom them to those lives. As it were, there were no healers around to witness the flight of the now powerless mage, and the cries of shock and distress were many and loud the next morning as they discovered that Moniquena Alda, the most powerful seer in the entire known world, disappeared, leaving behind one empty basket and a pool of dark, crimson blood, never to be seen again.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Given to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."

James sighed as he watched over his wife. Lily had been so excited for the twins, planning everything she could: decorating the nursery, picking out names, Merlin, she even started a betting pool with the females in the Order about which houses they would be in, not that he was supposed to know about that, (Gryffindor was the strong favorite, though Ravenclaw was mentioned quite a few times). Seventeen hours of labor, seventeen. And it didn't end in joy like it was supposed to. The tear stains on her face were not from happiness, but from absolute misery, Merlin knows his were.

This war was killing everything. Their hopes, their dreams, their families. Mom and Dad would have been devastated too, they wanted grandchildren so badly But Mom and Dad weren't around. Voldemort had killed them personally just last week. It shocked Lily so badly it forced her into early labor. That was what had killed the boys, not anything that Lily or James had done. James clenched his fist. He was sick and tired of Voldemort killing everyone he loved.

All of a sudden, Lily sat bolt upright. "James, did you hear that?"

"Hear what, Lils?"

"I thought I just heard a baby crying," Lily wiped the dampness off her face and rushed toward the door.

James blanched; this was not a good sign. He Apparated just outside the door, right in front of Lily. "Lily, sweetie, you're hearing things. Please, don't make this harder on yourself. The boys didn't make it." With that, he tried to take her into his arms, to comfort her in the only way he knew.

She pushed him away. "NO! You're wrong. I just heard it again." With tears of hope tracing the tracks left behind by earlier tears of sorrow, she raced across the hallway to the room that would have been the nursery and later the playroom of her darling boys.

James followed her, if only to catch her when she realized that there was no one there. He entered the room quietly, trying to picture what it would have looked like had their sons lived. He could see in his minds eye a very messy room filled with toy broomsticks and prank equipment, as befitted the sons of a Marauder. The room was built so that the ceiling met at a point directly over the center of the room. The north half of the room was painted a pale blue color seen just after dawn, while the south half was the dark blue of dusk. A yellow sun was enchanted to make its way across the ceiling east to west, mimicking the actual path of the orb. Lily's sobbing brought him back to the present, well, that, and the wails coming from a basinet that looked like it came out of the Middle Ages.

"What the…?" James stopped short, staring in disbelief at the foreign object sitting in the middle of what had just been a completely deserted, almost forbidden room.

Lily knelt by the basket, tracing the dark wicker. "Haresh…" Looking up, she exclaimed, "James! I wasn't imagining things! There really is a baby here. But, where did he come from? None of the wards have been breached, and I know this basket is not modern, Muggle or wizard."

"I don't know, Lily, I just don't know."

"James, he's all alone, that's why he's crying. He needs us! I need him! And besides, look at him. He looks just like you. I don't understand, but I don't care!" Lily looked up at James, who had come completely into the room to stand behind her. One glance into Lily's eyes was all it took to convince James that this boy, this Haresh, was now their son.

"Haresh, huh?" James asked. "Even in the wizarding world, that's an extremely unusual name. We'll have to call him Harry for short."

At that statement, both Lily and the newly nicknamed Harry gave soggy giggles. James knew in his heart that he was doing the right thing, and that Harry had been given to them for a reason. He only hoped that Voldemort would never find out about the sudden appearance of the newest Potter, because that would only increase the interest and hatred he seemed to have in the Potter family. After all, fourth times the charm…

AN—Sorry to cut this short. In approximately 15 minutes from now, my mom is going to come and confiscate my computer until I clean my room. Grrrr… but, to make up for this, I'm going to clean my room in record time, and hopefully have another (longer) chapter up by Sunday.