Hi, so here is another chapter and another development, I suspect maybe two more of the actual Hogsmeade visit and then the rest will be the aftermath, we have only six more chapters left but don't worry there is a part two in the works.

James deflecting from Voldemort is the first strike against him and Lily, you know what I mean.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just the plotline.

Please Read and Review


The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 14-The Sound And The Fury

Voldemort descends onto the village of Hogsmeade bringing himself into the war for the first time. James, Sirius, Marlene, Lily, Remus and Peter's lives will never be the same again as it's a fight to the death with no end in sight. And Lily and Severus find themselves finally on two opposing sides.


Voldemort came out of the shadows his mouth curled as he looked at them all. There was nobody there that he could see as a threat James was sure, surely not? They were a load of high school students, teenagers really, they were all children of different parents, hell there were Slytherin's here! Surely he couldn't be making a move against some of the children, some of the brothers and the sisters and the friends of the people that he was recruiting?

Lily next to him was watching with wide eyes. It was hard to believe that ten minutes ago they were kissing. He was wating and later (though he did not know it then) James realised that he was waiting for a speech. Such a grand entrance he had been expecting a speech, some kind of push for recruitment, global domination, even something as simple as an comment on 'Mudbloods and 'Blood Traitors' but instead the cold cruel mouth opened and…

"Attack"

And then it was back on.

They were like attack dogs he thought as he dove to the side flattening Lily behind him as a curse nearly took them both out. Marlene swore throwing a curse in the direction of what looked like Montagu Nott's father Murdoch and he fell backwards but James didn't have enough time to do anything but let Lily push out from under him and go to the fight. He saw a flash of dark brown with grey in it and he saw an older man his face twisted with the same ravaged disease that Remus had take his friend on and James didn't have enough time to blink because both of the Lestrange brothers (as inbreed and as arrogant as the woman whom one of them had married) were there and then there was a fight.

James had fought before; he had duelled before and he had turned his wand on friend and foe. Little things in the corridors that had turned into bigger duels as he had gotten older, Snape, other snakes, Sirius when James had realised the full extent of what he had done to Remus last year…he had turned his wand on friend and foe and had duelled well enough to give them a serious challenge but this? This was duelling the likes of which he had never seen before. This…this was duelling to the death. This was one person holding one wand and pointing it at another and knowing that they were doing their best to snuff out that other person's life. It was a hard thing, a harder thing for James to realise but for these Death Eaters it seemed to be as natural as breathing.

He ducked another green jet of light and fired the same spell he had used on Snape two years ago at Rabastan. He saw a flash of red and he knew that Lily had the other brother on the run. There was not enough time for them to even look at each other because he was aware that everytime he got distracted the person he was duelling would take that opportunity to kill him.

Voldemort had been watching and James wondered for the briefest of brief seconds weather or not this was a test. Weather not he was like some bizarre Quidditch scout who was looking for the best of the best of the best. He had no idea what he was doing standing there occasionally flicking his wand and forcing whatever poor sod who got next to him back into the fire. He was looking almost amused, and James ducked another curse and then reached forwards and grabbed Rabastan by the head. He dug one finger into his eye and pushed. Rabastan was the weaker of the two brothers and James had been doing Quidditch trials for the better part of three years. Being a chaser did not mean he was weak, it meant a lot of weights and it meant a lot of running and keeping fit and he easily managed to push the older man into the door of the Three Broomsticks and he put his boot into his stomach and pushed it.

He was pleased to see the man went flying. Rosmerta trying desperately to keep whatever customers had fled into the wreckage of her pub safe waved her own wand and the man was blasted back outwards.

"DUCK" She yelled and James did just in time to see the man go flying back out of the pub. He ducked and in doing so he fell to the floor his face connecting with the hard wood and he felt someone grab his hand.

"James get up"

It was Lily and he listened to her and he dragged himself to his feet. Every part of his body was aching as if he had been on a broomstick in a ten force gale and a rainstorm to boot and he was shivering but all he had to do was to keep one hand wrapped around Lily's and the other wrapped around the thin stick of wood that was his only friend right now. He didn't know where Sirius or Remus or Peter had gotten too and all he had was this woman by his side and James thought like a complete and utter lovesick fucking idiot that if this was the end then at least he was with Lily. At least she was by his side and—

The curse hit him in the arm and he fell backwards. Lily had gotten in between them and she shoved him behind some wreckage that might once had been a table and she put up a shield between them. She had put up another one when she had seen him fall and though James wasn't entirely sure what curse had been thrown at him he suspected that it was that and that alone that allowed him to still have his arm attached to it's shoulder. He was bleeding and he knew the cut was deep but he also knew two more things, one it could be fixed and two…right now he was lucky to have it still attached to his body.

"James we have to move" Lily said urgently and her face was awash with terror and James nodded pushing himself to his feet when she stopped.

He turned looking at her because one minute she had been all for them moving and now she had stopped and there was no way that they could stay here when her shield charm could drop at any second.

Instead he followed her gaze and he could see what she was looking at. He was torn between snarling out his own curse and rolling his eyes. He went for the second because the first had always gotten him into a rather big amount of trouble when it had come to Lily and despite the dire, dire predicament that they were in right now that had to mean something good rather than something bad.

Oh Merlin! Now his brain was going as well as his arm.

But it was Snape.

It was always Snape.

It was always going to be Snape was it?

Severus Snape who was standing there in the wreckage blasting curses off and not at the Death Eaters. Snape who was helping a Slytherin fourth year get to his feet and thrusting him at the Death Eater. Snape whose loyalty and allegiance had always been painfully clear to each and every person but the woman crouching next to him.

Snape hadn't even looked at them but Lily was looking at him. She looked at him for what felt like a long time but what must have really only been a matter of seconds and her expression was hard for James to put into words. It looked as if she was saying goodbye to a friend and with that sudden thought he thought of his own friends, of Marlene and Mary, Peter, Remus, Sirius and all the other classmates of him regardless of whose house they were in who had come out tonight hoping for a good time and in response had gotten this.

This bloody, useless, unending fight.

He grabbed Lily and pushed her outside and they ducked as another curse came their way.

And that was when it happened.

He saw the white face and the eyes that were narrowed into slits and he saw the wand move. Board with his followers taking time to annihilate a load of teenagers Voldemort had entered the fight.

James saw the curse coming towards him, a random person facing a wrath that was beyond all evil and he gripped his stick of wood with everything he had in him and when he saw the mouth open in a snarl he screamed to the high heavens, to his mother and his father, to everything and anything that he might have known that he would get through this and he bellowed.

"PROTEGO!"

The shield ripped out of him and it rebounded Voldemort's curse with such strength that the man paused in his total undiluted slaughter and stared at James in something that James genuinely thought was surprise, it wasn't arrogance that had the two men (?) looking at each other it was the sheer forced of nature of the spell. James had thrown everything he had into it.

Lily gripped his shoulder with enough force to bruise and James saw the eyes track from him to her and the slits become even narrower.

Voldemort opened his mouth to kill them both, the two relatively undefended teenagers and James stood up. They were off no match to him, he was a wizard with unending skill and no conscious but he was a Potter and he was damned if he was going to die doing anything other than standing and fighting (other than that rather nice thought that he would die at the age of ninety nine in his bed with old age with Lily holding his hand preferably with his full mental faculties intact—and the other ones too) and if this was his time to die then that was what it was.

And then out of the sky came a new set of cries.

It was witches and wizards on broomsticks off all ages and shapes and sizes and James blinked. It was too much of a fast turn around seeing these people fighting not against them but for them. He was sure he recognised Cormac Wood one of the many Wood brothers (like Weasley's they sprouted like gnomes his mother had always said with a fond smile) and he was sure he recognised Evan Thomas in there as well who had only graduated last year. Amongst them were several people James knew by face and name alone, Dorcas Meadows who had been at his mother's funeral and was high up in the Department of International Co-Operation, Edgar Bones, brother of Amelia Bones, Gideon and Fabien Prewitt who had laid down much of the groundwork for the Marauders and whom had left when James had been in his third year of Hogwarts, a man he was sure he knew as Moody from his father's story alone and then Lily was tugging on his hand and pulling him backwards from another jet of light as it was wand on wand again.

She kissed him.

"I don't know how you did that" she said quietly and he noticed dazed somewhat, that she had a cut on her head and it was leaking blood into her hair and her hair and the blood didn't match. Merlin he needed to lie down. His arm was coated in blood and he was getting a dull, cold ache to it that he was sure was nothing good.

"I don't know either" he said quietly and then he gripped her hand.

Suddenly something crashed into their little hiding place behind the back of the pub and he raised his wand arm screaming in protest only to see that it was Marlene. Her blonde hair was caked in dust and blood and she seemed almost electric with animation.

"Dumbledore" was all she said as James opened his mouth to ask just where in the name of Merlin's electric green thong Sirius and Remus and Mary and Peter were, and it cut him straight off stunned into place.

"Dumbledore?" he asked because yeah if there was one person who he wanted to see tonight after his mother and his father then Dumbledore was in the top three.

"Yes" Marlene said blasting a Slytherin sixth year known by Crabbe with a penchant for taking his frustrations out on the first years backwards into a large cypress tree.

"Dumbledore" Lily breathed and then she was pushing herself to her feet and James was just about to ask what the bloody hell was going on (because his brain was just not co-operating with the rest of his body and Merlin knows that was hanging on by a wing and a prayer), when he saw what she was looking at.

Dumbledore himself with the teachers of Hogwarts at his back had come to their rescue. The old man was running (which was strange in itself) and his face was beyond words.

All James knew was if Dumbledore was looking at him like that he would not be looking with a curled lip of disgust which was Voldemort's way, he'd be running non stop in the other direction. He'd thought he'd seen the worst of Dumbledore during last years complete and utter shit show with Sirius and Remus and Snape but now he was realising that he had never even gotten close.

Lily gripped his hand and James realised she was holding onto most of his weight which was not insignificant and she smiled at him and he could see the tears clinging to her eyelashes again and he could understand why she was crying as he felt like it himself. He saw Remus shakily get to his feet, Sirius stagger upwards having it seemed beaten Nott half to death and Peter appearing out of nowhere. There was no Mary but there was time for that he thought. Mary had been ahead of them…Mary was fine she was probably with the Ravenclaws somewhere, everyone was scattered into little groups or trying to hide and that was fine too. They had not signed up for this.

But in some ways James knew that he had. He knew he had when he had blasted back Voldemort's spell. He was in this now a marked man weather he wanted it or not.

But none of that mattered now.

Because Dumbledore was here.

And James knew that he was going to save them.

And that was all that his thoughts could register at the moment.


And yeah, there you go, I will post the next chapter as soon as it is done.

Next Chapter-Dumbledore arrives and all eyes are on him and Voldemort. And the battle lines between the students of Hogwarts are fully drawn.