A shout out to everyone who followed and/or faved my fic, just from the first chapter: thank you so much! You've really flattered me, and I'm honored you thought my work was worth keeping for later. EsKiMo719191726, xrysatsan, Little Green Faerie Of Doom, Sharkdude5, and skyjadeprincess, you guys are the best!
On April 30th, 2004, the Dark Lord Voldemort began to slowly walk up the winding central street of Godric's Hollow. A quick Imperius to one of the beasts swarming around him confirmed that the Potter cottage had not just been removed from the world physically, but mentally as well.
This truly was a brilliant move by Dumbledore. If he hadn't had the fortune to have recruited Peter Pettigrew, he not only would be unable to see Potter Cottage, he would have quite literally been unable to comprehend the concept of the Potters having a home in the first place.
As he began to approach the wardline for the Potter College, he reached out with his magical senses. After taking years to truly master the sorcerer's gift of soulscape manipulation, he was so completely aware of his own magic that he could reach out with it, and give himself a rudimentary form of magical echolocation. He could sense that Rookwood had been right: due to the nature of the Fidelus, and its requirement of absolute trust, no other wards could be put around the house without breaking it.
This fact greatly pleased Voldemort, because it meant that he wouldn't have to face that old man and his irritating fiery chicken. He had no doubt that if Dumbledore got involved, the simple assassination would turn into a drawn-out battle. And while he was certain that he would win that battle, or at least get away before the end of Beltane to perform his Horcrux ritual, he had no real desire to test his mettle against his former headmaster on what should be a simple mission.
Chuckling slightly at just how poor Dumbledore's luck was, Voldemort spent five minutes to draw a quick ritual circle in the ground, and sacrificed some blood to form a new anti-transportation barrier he'd been meaning to try. With the new ward in place, the Fidelus disappeared with a quiet pop, unknown to the residents of the cottage.
After ensuring the Potters couldn't escape, Voldemort stepped onto ttheir front porch, raised his hand, and knocked. After all, he mused, even if someone had betrayed their magic, there's no reason to be rude when you kill them.
James Potter was a simple man. For all that he had matured from his days at Hogwarts, he had never really developed the complex ambitions that some of his peers had. No, for James Potter, paradise was living a simple life with his life and child, away from the hustle of the Wizarding World, and maybe flooing in to the Auror Offices a few times a week to help catch dark wizards.
While James thought there were many unfortunate things about the prophecy, namely, putting his entire family's life in jeopardy, he had to admit that the life it left him living wasn't exactly one he was too broken up about.
Sure, he wished he could still be in the field, and hated that other people were risking their lives battling the darkness while he stayed home and did nothing; but sometimes, when he curled up by the fire with his beautiful twins in their arms, he could forget about all the awful shite—he mentally apologized to his wife—going on, and just sink into the comforting warmth of his family. Even if Lily spent most of her time in her study, working on some powerful spell he wasn't allowed to know about, he still had the twins, and on those rare occasions where Lily did come and spend time with him and the twins, life was perfect.
However, now was not one of those times. Lily and James had just heard about the death of the McKinnons: Marlene was Lily's very best friend, and Adrian was one of James's fellow order members, and one of the groomsmen at his wedding. Lily had retreated to her room, doing God-knows-what, while James put on his old dragonhide armor, from his days in the auror core before they started killing, and practiced all the old combat maneuvers he remembered.
James may have loved Albus Dumbledore more than his own grandfather, and maybe even more than his own father, but sometimes, he really resented the choices the Headmaster made for the people in the Order. James was fit, he was young, and he had a cause worth fighting for! It was the height of stupidity to hole him up in a house where he could only sit and rot, instead of putting him on the front lines against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the Death Eaters!
As James paced around the room, a knock sounded at the door, startling James out of his brooding.
James was confused, but ultimately, decided that Sirius must have come a day early for his weekly visits, for some reason or another. As much as James dearly loved his brother in all but blood, he would be the first to admit that Sirius could be incredibly needy and childish when it came to attention.
As James walked over to the door, grabbing the handle, his world exploded into a cascade of bright lights and splinters.
Ever since Lily Potter heard the prophecy, she was a changed woman.
Once Severus had turned traitor and revealed his overhearing of the prophecy, she knew that the Dark Lord and his Knights for Magic would come for her and her family, and that was something that Lily Potter could not allow.
She'd spent almost the entire the two months since the twins' birthday cooped up in her study, subsiding on three hours of sleep, daily pepper-ups, and three nutritional potions a day for meals. She knew that she was slowly killing her body, and that even if she stopped right now, she probably wouldn't live past forty, but she didn't care, because someone was trying to harm her babies.
She never relaxed, never took breaks, and almost never even spoke to her husband, except for telling him about the "powerful spell" she was making. Hell, she had just heard her ex-lover Marlene had died—by far her most serious relationship before James—and she barley even batted an eye. It was like the whole world melted away, both the past and the future, and the only thing left was her task, her goal.
James may have had an unshakeable faith in Albus Dumbledore to protect them, but Lily certainly did not. To be quite honest, James's idolization of the old zealot was one of the things she liked least about him, other than his occasionally bouts of Hogwarts-level immaturity. She'd heard from Severus that even during pitched battles between the Order and the Knights, James would take time to taunt his old schoolyard rival, throwing those awful insults she had thought she'd broken him out of.
Grimacing at the reminder of te feud between her husband and her best friend, she cleared her mind of extraneous thoughts, and returned to her task. The Task. She told James that it was designing some sort of spell to combat the Dark Lord, knowing her… less-than-academic husband wouldn't question such a ridiculous proposition. Really! She thought, did he think that his wife would come out of her room with some new, unblockable jet of light that would instantly kill Voldemort when it hit him? He already had the Avada Kedavra curse, and if he wasn't willing to use that, she doubted that he'd be willing to use any sort of truly game-changing spell she'd create.
No, deep inside Potter Cottage, the home of one of Dumbledore's greatest champion's, protected by Dumbledore himself, Lily Potter was working on a ritual. Like all muggleborns, she had initially been opposed to ritual magics when she entered Hogwarts, and the ideology of "seclusionism" which promoted them. She never really grew out of her dislike of seclusionism—it's hard to agree with a political position that says your parents and relatives would be better off never having known you—but after Severus had included her in a Samhain remembrance ritual in her fourth year, after her grandmother died, she had radically altered her position on all the so-called "old rites".
When she burned the myrrh and yew leaves, and bowed her head in the ritual circle, and said the prayer, she had felt connected to magic for the very first time. It was like she had been blind her whole life, and now she could see. She experienced incredible visions with this new sense, seeing her grandmother in all her youthful glory. She saw the past, present, and future, all at once, and felt an absolute peace, love and acceptance in the embrace of magic that she had only felt before as an infant in her mother's arms.
She knew she wouldn't be able to express this opinion to her husband or her friends without being crucified for it (pun absolutely intended), or being shunned for her "addiction to dark magics", but she didn't care. While as a whole, she agreed with James's political views about integration with muggles, and opposed Voldemort's campaign of terroristic violence against the nation, she had never stopped practicing the Old Rites in secret. Six times a year, she'd sneak away to her study, light an offering, and experience magic of the purest kind. There was nothing evil about that.
Now, however, with the lives of her children at stake, she dove headfirst into the more powerful, esoteric, and at times questionable uses of ritual magic. She combed the Hogwarts restricted section for books on protection rituals, and spent house cross-referencing sacrificial compendiums for the appropriate sacrifices for various different subtypes of protective intent.
She eventually settled on using a twenty-seven sided star as her base which would ensure incredibly powerful wards. Three being the numerological basis of defense and protection, and twenty-seven being the third power of three, a twenty-seven-sided star, with the appropriate sacrifice, would create a ward so powerful that it would be capable of deflecting any and all harmful magic aimed at her children. Theoretically, this ward would be so powerful it would last for almost a day after casting, ensuring that any threat would be well and truly gone before her shield dissapated. However, the price for this power, and the reason that twenty-seven was and incredibly uncommon base in ritual warding, was the necessary sacrifice: a mother's life, freely given.
Once she completed the layout for the ritual, on the day of Beltane, she knew that her days were numbered. That was alright though, it was worth it. With this ritual her children were safe, and she could finally rest easy. She could lay down her burdens and return to magic, giving her children her love in the most potent way she knew how.
As Lily began to put away her books on ritual theory, she paused as she heard a knock at the front door. She heard her husband let out a joyful shout as her heart turned to stone. She knew it in her bones: her time had come.
She cut open her arm and started bleeding, drawing a ritual circle, as downstairs, she heard the world implode with a cannon-blast.
"BAM!" Voldemort thought, laughing as he walked through the Potter's now-ruined sitting room. He would never grow tired of the "knock on the door and blast it in" routine. He absently realized that Bellatrix was right: for a seventy-something immortal sociopath, he had an unreasonable flair for the dramatic.
Curious, he looked around, trying to find the body of James Potter. "Well", he mused aloud, "he might just not be in enough pieces for me to see. He was standing directly next to the door." A moment later, Voldemort dismissed the thought; he didn't care to waste time searching through the rubble when he could be vanquishing his enemies.
Absently, he stepped over the remains of what he thought was a couch, moving through the rooms of the small cottage trying to find the nursery. He could vaguely hear a baby's cry coming from upstairs, so he headed that way. Proceeding up the stairs, Voldemort couldn't contain his satisfaction. Honestly, he took no joy in killing, he wasn't that kind of sociopath thank you very much, but the rush of defeating one's enemies, and winning a victory for the forces of justice, was a high unlike any other.
Quickly, Voldemort proceeded up the stairs, and quickly killed Severus's Potter girl, who was pathetically pleading for her life. He remembered how clever she was, and didn't want to take any chances. Ironically, it was his haste that made him miss the brief flare of cleverly-concealed designs on the ground.
Summoning a blanket from somewhere in the house, Voldemort looked for the female twin who, according to Severus, was born just a few minutes after her brother: the last magical child born on the 29th of February. Searching the crib, Voldemort couldn't find her; it seemed that Severus had for some reason been mistaken, and that the Potters twins were both male. One had red hair, and one a bright blonde, with a lightning-bolt birthmark on his forehead.
No matter, he was planning to kill them both anyways, he thought, as he held the blanket out to the first child. As the child grabbed it, however, the source's of Voldemort's confusion rapidly became apparent, as the child had shifted from a he to a she in the time it took for her to make her first tug.
A changeling then, he thought, with the lightning bolt being their gift-mark. That explained it; Severus had been correct; he was still one of his most intelligent and skilled Knights. As Voldemort allowed her to pull the blanket from his hands, he drew the Hebrew rune Beth on his chest, which signified division and containment, to anchor the child's death for his Beltane-eve Horcrux ritual. It was ironic, he mused: he had never killed a literal child to create the "false child" of the Horcrux.
Double-checking that the blanket was still in the little changeling's hands, Voldemort stepped back and raised his wand to the her forehead. "I apologize Iris Potter, you could have been a truly great mage. Your sacrifice will be remembered in the Kingdom of Magic."
Voldemort cast his spell, and the world exploded into golden light.
Albus Dumbledore was jerked out of his peaceful slumber by the feeling of a rubber band stretching until it snapped.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he took a mental catalogue of his present state using his considerable skills in occlumency. There! He couldn't feel the magical strain that came with being the anchor-point for the Potters' fidelus. He quickly putting on his battle-robes over his nightwear, and called for his ride to the Potters.
"Fawkes!"
…
"Fawkes!"
…
When his longtime pet just sat on his perch, looking at him with what he would swear was amusement, Albus cursed.
Curse it! Tom must have finally completed that phoenix-prevention ritual he'd been working on. Albus had hoped he'd have more time, but it seemed that Tom's studies into the dark arts had accelerated ever since he'd heard the prophecy. This was a disaster!
Albus once again summoned Fawkes to him, requesting transport to the outskirts of Tom's ward, and they disappeared in a flash of fire.
Gaining his bearings after the jarring sensation of flame travel, Albus looked around at where his phoenix had taken him. CURSE IT. Tom's wards apparently stretched to cover almost the entire town. And what's worse, he wouldn't be able to use any sort of magical travel within their confines, even brooms or flying carpets, so he'd half to run to the Potter Cottage at the back of the town, wasting valuable minutes that Tom could use to fulfill his sick desires.
After about four minutes of traveling as quickly as his 123-year-old bones would let him, Albus finally could see the Potter Cottage in the distance. Unable to see the Dark Mark that signaled the end of one of Tom's assassinations, Albus put on a burst of speed, praying that one of the Potters had managed to delay Tom enough for Albus to make a difference. But as Albus rushed down the street, it became very apparent, very suddenly, that something quite strange had happened.
Albus stopped in his tracks, mouth agape, as he watched the top floor of the cottage explode in a burst golden flames.
*BWOOM*
Well, that was new.
Panting with exertion from his run, Albus made his way through the crowd of muggles gathered outside, presumably wondering how on earth an ancient-looking cottage had not only sprung up in the middle of their village overnight, but exploded in unnatural fire. As he reached the doorstep, he cast the requisite spell to inform the ministry obliviation squads, and strode in through the hole in the wall that was left of the doorway.
Albus tore through the ruined living room, not even glancing at the massed rubble, and ran upstairs to the bedroom of the prophecy child, At the doorway, he paused, remembering the potential danger of the situation, and cast a few basic detection wards. When he found nothing but two children lying in the ruins of a crib, he burst through the door.
Looking around, Albus could barley believe that this used to be a child's bedroom. The walls were scorched pitch-black with magical discharge, and the metallic scent of blood hung heavy in the air. Daring to hope for the first time since he was awoken, he stepped over Lily Potter's body gaze down at the children. On seeing the female child sleeping with a bleeding lightning bolt on her face, he uncharacteristically shouted in joy.
Yes! It had come true! The prophecy had been fulfilled! Tom had obviously tried to kill the girl, Albus theorized, and opposed by the immaculate purity of the girl's soul, his curse had somehow reflected, leaving her with a bloody face, and that thin lightning curse-scar on her forehead.
However, as Albus cast his first medical detection spell on the child, he felt his blood run cold
There, focused around her forehead, he could see it: a small remnant of Tom's soul.
Oh, how Albus had hoped that the rumors weren't true. He knew his old student had delved deeply into the blackest of magics, but to split his very soul, his immortal being? Those who had performed the vilest magics and created the monstrosity known as the Horcrux had forever split themselves from the hope of salvation by mutilating their soul, and had truly sunk into the vileness and corruption of the dark arts beyond all hope.
However, now that he knew Tom had made one of those abominations, he knew he had to greatly reevaluate his plans for Iris Potter. Tom was not dead, and so her prophesized role was not over. No, like countless martyrs before her, she would need to follow the model of Christ, and give up her fleshly form for the greater good of the world.
Iris could not be raised as any sort of hero or celebrity, the way he knew she would if she was left in the world of magic. No, he knew that celebrities fled from humility and meekness, and humility and meekness would be required for the girl to willingly sacrifice her life. Once again, he cursed the lack of magical monasteries: a monastic environment would be perfect to raise the selfless martyr that the world required.
Wait? Didn't Lily have some sort of magic-hating siblings? He remembered her rants after her wedding often enough, about how her sister stormed out of the reception after decrying its "unnaturalness". That could work…
A childhood starved of affection would cultivate a martyr who valued Love above all else, and a childhood of self-denial—albeit denial of God's greatest gift to mankind—would make a martyr who valued the burdens of others far above her own. Yes, Albus thought, sizing the girl up, he would create the sacrifice the world needed: God himself demanded it.
Coming to a decision, Albus felt his soul lighten once again. Yes, it was not the overwhelming joy he felt when he thought Tom truly defeatedAlbus moved over to the other child and began to chant in archaic Latin. This was some of the most powerful magic he knew, spellcrafted by Francis Bacon himself, and he knew he would need it to give the wizarding world their defeater of Voldemort. The wizarding world needed a symbol of hope and unification, and they'd have it, while the true defeater of Voldemort would be forged into their savior.
Slowly, the tip of his wand glowing white-hot, Albus began to trace an "x" on the left side of the male child's forehead. The girl had shown the result of a cruse reflected by a spiritual purity, and Albus was not one to meddle in God's magic. He could, however, make a few small adjustments, if it meant saving more souls. He chuckled to himself as he worked: after all, when set at an angle, an "x" looks rather like a cross, doesn't it?
Satisfied with the matching curse-scars on the twins forehead—albeit caused by different curses, and for a loose definition of "matching"—Albus began to plan on who he would send the false vanquisher to be raised by. He knew a certain level of arrogance and self-centeredness would be unavoidable due to his celebrity, but that didn't mean Albus would hand him over to a family which would actively cultivate those properties. Meekness and humility were not just valuable for martyrs, after all.
Perhaps the Longbottoms? They were a grounded, loving light family, who were in a unique position to understand the burdens of prophecy: real or imagined. A boy raised by them would grow up with the perfect family: a stern father, nurturing mother, and loving brother. He would become as well-rounded and humble as any celebrity could be.
He could almost picture a Potter boy raised by the Longbottoms now as he contemplated the future. Perhaps this was why it was so surprising when James Potter burst into the room, stumbling haggardly, with Fawkes perched on his shoulder,
"James!" Albus exclaimed, unable to hide his shock. He looked over at Fawkes, who flapped his wings in the avian equivalent to a shrug, eyes still glistening.
"Headmaster, what… what happened?" James said, leaning against the doorframe. "I heard a knock at the door, and then a huge boom, and the next thing I know I'm waking up now…"
"Oh, my child… I am so, terribly sorry", he said, quickly setting his face into a suitably mournful expression. "But just a few minutes ago, Voldemort attacked your home"
James gasped. "Lily! The Twins! Is everyone alright?!"
Dumbledore forced a tear to his eye. "My boy I'm afraid… I'm afraid Lily has gone on to the next great adventure."
James almost collapsed back into unconsciousness, as his knees buckled. He fell to the floor over Lily's body, unable to comprehend what had happened.
"However, despite this great tragedy, I have hopeful news, which might present you with some comfort in this trying time." James turned to look at his surrogate father, his face uncomprehending "The prophecy has come true: young Danny has defeated Voldemort."
AN: Yes, the only reason James survived was because he was wearing his dragonhide armor.
—
Dumbledore believes that Iris's lightning bolt is a remnant of Voldemort's killing curse, because he'd never actually seen her before. The Horcrux is still in Iris's forehead because that's where Voldemort aimed the curse.
—
To clarify the timescale: Voldemort goes after the Potters at around 18:00, and plans to complete the Horcrux ritual at exactly midnight, at the start of Beltane. The (more pagan) characters in this book will repeatedly refer to the attack as happening "on Beltane", but technically it happened a few hours before. However, given that there are only three wizards alive (well, "alive" in Voldemort's case) that know the exact details of the attack, the point is rather moot for the magical world.
—
Also, for clarification on what "spellcrafted" means… well you'll just have to wait and find out, won't you?
