October 31st 1976, Godric's Hollow, Great Britain
James Potter worked on clearing up the chaos of two boys playing in the sitting room of his beloved summer cottage in the village of Godric's Hollow. He pulled out a drawer from the sofa, carefully placing all the toys in rows one one side of a wooden separator and the various bits of bedding that were lying around for the twins' nap on the other side. He was just sliding it closed when Lily reappeared around the bottom of the staircase.
"The boys all right?" James asked, standing up and meeting the redheaded goddess that he saw his wife as halfway across the room.
"They went out like lights." Lily replied, smiling.
James pulled her close to him, planting kisses along her neck. The twins, Adrian and Hadrian could be a bit of a handful sometimes. He drew his wand from the back of his waistband, keeping one arm around Lily's waist, embracing his gorgeous wife as he summoned a pair of wine glasses and a bottle from the direction of the kitchen. Catching them with a levitation charm, he lowered them to a small table and chucked his wand over his shoulder in the general direction of the sofa.
"A drink my fair lady?" he asked gallantly, already releasing Lily to pour them a glass of wine each.
An hour later, the bottle was empty and Lily was curled up on James's lap, her head resting on his shoulder, eyes half-closed. In an uncertain time with only each-other and their children to keep them grounded the simplest intimacy staved off the melancholy and stress. Unfortunately, it was not to last.
The Wizarding Area Resistance Defences, commonly known in shorthand as wards flared their connection to the binder, in this case James himself. Instantly alert, he woke Lily.
"Quickly, the plan, take the boys and run, run for Caereyr!" James whispered harshly as her emerald green eyes snapped open; "I will follow. The wards have just flared, someone unknown is inside the Fidelius."
"Peter!" Lily hissed drawing her wand; "If he's betrayed us, I'll either butcher the person who got the secret out of us or gut him!"
James ignored her, dashing over to the window and crouching, giving himself the most amount of defence from the bricks of the wall. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, spotting three figures, robed and masked stood on either side of another taller one wearing a far more ornate mask than any other. James leapt up, grabbing Lily.
"TAKE THE BOYS AND GO!" yelled James, nearly throwing her towards the stairs; "IT'S HIM! Go, run, I'll hold him off."
Terrified, Lily dashed for the stairs as the door imploded. The first Death Eater through the door was dead before he realised what happened. James swept up the two Waterford crystal wineglasses and slung them, one after another into the face-mask of the approaching Death Eater as he came through the door. The lead crystal shattered spectacularly, causing the Death Eater to claw at his eyes as minute particles of glass tore into them.
James dived to the floor in front of the screaming attacker, snatching up the fallen wand. He snarled a curse, punching a fist-sized hole through the stomach of his enemy with a jagged icicle. For a moment the wound was sealed by the icicle, filling it and freezing the flesh, but the lone defender was already moving.
A twirl of the stolen wand transformed the ice into acid. James was fully aware that the chances of him surviving this encounter were low, but the psychological damage he could inflict before falling were high. Summoning his own wand to him, he revelled in the fresh, warm feeling coming from the wood, welcoming his magic instead of the insidious oily feeling of the stolen one.
As a second Death Eater charged him, wand spewing curses, James threw the stolen wand into the air and hit it with his most potent banishing charm combined with an overpowered unbreakable charm, driving it up to the grip in the upper chest of his attacker. Smacking away a curse, he hit the impaling wand with an enlargement charm, watching in gruesome, morbid amusement as the man's shoulders were forced aside and his neck torn away from them.
The next attacker to come through the door was more skilled, wearing a bracer on his left forearm conjuring shields left, right and centre as he strategically placed curses to herd James into a kill-zone from which he'd be hard-pressed to escape. The man loosed a killing curse to put down the sofa just as its immense claws were about to maul him, replying with a volley of piercing curses of little power but sufficient strength to force James to dodge and shield.
James, snarling as he was suddenly up against the fireplace blocked five fast-bludgeoning hexes before his head hit the mantelpiece. Then he realised something that his father had given him, a relic of flying Hawker Tempest fighters in the Middle East, an elegant, curved blade, a scimitar.
Ducking under another curse, he summoned one of the armchairs, transfiguring it into a mutated monster of some unidentifiable sort that only a mind twisted by hopeless courage could come up with. As the monstrous collection of limbs fell upon the Death Eater, he'd drawn the scimitar, begging the blade to be sharp as another Death Eater ducked through the low doorway, firing curses his way. James sliced the legs out from under him and fired a point-blank blasting curse into his head, painting the wall red as the Death Eater wrestling with the chair finally threw it aside with a similar blasting curse and began to climb to his feet.
It was too late. By that time the tip of Charlus Potter's scimitar drew a long cut across the Death Eater's chest and then sank the length of the blade into his heart with a single, vicious lunge.
"James Potter... Dear Jamessssss..." hissed a serpentine voice.
"My Lord Voldemort..." James replied, a fanatical grin coming across his face as he knelt next to the fallen Death Eater, left hand resting on the grip of the sword embedded in the dead man; "I prayed you were coming. I really want to kill you."
He leapt forward, the sword, held upside-down in his hand coming around in a slash aimed at Riddle's midriff. The blade bit nothing but silk as the dark lord swung backwards, his elegant robes swirling about him as he blocked a gouging curse aimed at his head from James's wand.
Hissing with anger as the fearless father lunged at him with the sword, a ribbon-cutting curse cleaving into the door frame and walls, brushed off the shield of the man stood in the doorway. Voldemort released the shield and aimed a bone shattering curse at the sword, and while not intended for steel, it broke the blade into several pieces.
"I liked that weapon." James growled, delivering an unexpected kick to the back of Voldemort's knee, sending him down on one knee as if genuflecting for a moment.
He summoned the longest shard of the broken sword, transfiguring it into something resembling a dagger, Norse in style with a dragon's head and neck forming the grip and a single-edged, slightly curved blade. James, clutching his wand in his right hand and the dagger on his right, attacked again. Voldemort had never had to defend himself, he was a whirlwind of death and destruction killing all who fled or stood in his path. He had never met a man who would charge him.
James brushed off a cutting curse with a short gesture and slashed downward, unleashing a barrage of cutting curses of all varieties, some diseased curses, some clean, short and deep, long and shallow, his wand described sharp motions in the air as pulse after pulse of magic left it.
The small amount of space he was allowed in the fight was making it easier for him to bring the knife into play. Every time Voldemort went to cast a curse, he was shielding another curse and blocking the knife. At every turn, James's furious aggression was paying off. Suddenly, with a burst of magic, the man, under the cover of a barrage of curses still leaving his wand, morphed into a stag, only needing to toss his head and Voldemort was thrown against the wall under his antlers.
James lowered his head and charged again, but the dark lord rolled out of the way, slicing the antlers to half their length with a cutting curse. A killing curse missed by inches as the stag returned to human form. Rolling out of the way of two further curses, the beleaguered James Potter threw the knife at Riddle, hitting it with a duplication charm and an area banishing charm, so that suddenly a dozen blades flew at the dark lord.
Voldemort blasted them out of the air one-by-one, but even as he did that, James had closed the distance between them. Raising his wand to utter another killing curse, Voldemort found James parrying away the wand with his fist, clenched around the hilt of a knife that he'd caught being blasted away by the dark lord. Then to his shock, the hand with the knife suddenly reversed direction and slammed through the thin, metallic skin of his mask. For the first time in many years, Thomas Riddle felt pain inflicted by another human being.
Triumphantly, having drawn blood from the dark lord himself, James pulled the knife back for another attack, tearing the mask off Voldemort's face, revealing him. The aristocratic features of Tom Riddle were not gone, his eyes red, cheeks sunken and pale, but still that angular arrogance was there, twisted by hate and anger.
He blasted James into a wall and advanced on him, wand levelled.
"Akh-ka-ieb Amenta-khet!"
Looking back just once at her husband as the door imploded, Lily ran for the twins. She snatched up the Portkey, an enchanted teddy bear and whispered the activation word.
"Eagle's Fortress."
Nothing happened. With the cold experimentation of a scientist, she checked the enchantments on the bear. They were all there and working. Lily then tried to disapparate. Nothing, her spin on the spot only served to nearly send her onto her front. All exit routes were blocked. The children, under the effects of a hastily-cast sleeping spell would not remain unconscious long.
She narrowed her eyes at the cot and then some blankets. Hastily knotting the blanket around the cot with the boys in it, she knotted the other end to the wardrobe and swung open the window. Quickly lowering the cot out, Lily slid down the improvised rope after it, transfiguring a knife as she went. The moment her feet hit the ground, she sliced open the blanket, snatched up the sleeping boys and ran for the ward-line, twenty feet away.
When she felt the wards lift, Lily let out a breath of relief and vanished with a pop. Reappearing in the courtyard of an immense, walled fortress in the depths of Wales, bypassing the magical defences as only the lady of the house could, Lily aimed her wand at a nearby watering trough for horses and unleashed her most powerful blasting curse, obliterating it with a loud orange-coloured bomb sound.
Not more than a minute later, the great doors to the fortress burst open, revealing a man of great stature, maybe not a half-giant but stood over six feet tall and well-built, wearing shin-length chainmail and an over-robe, while held in his hands was a double-headed battleaxe.
"Cedric." Lily breathed
Cedric the Saxon finished his last evening patrol of the walls of Caereryr Castle, deep in the wild valleys and mountains of Wales, the last of the great Roman forts, around which, several further fortresses had been built, a Norman stone motte-and-bailey, then a huge medieval fortress and finally the artillery bastions of a Tudor fort.
It had been his home for fifteen-hundred years. His prison. He should never have crossed Lucius Artorius Castus, Arthur the Potter. It had been a mistake. Arthur could have claimed his life, but ensorcelled him to the bloodline of his own family. Bound, eternally. A curse, to see the world change before his eyes, bound within the curtain walls, unable to change anything himself. It was worse than an honourable death at the end of a sword. And yet, in years more recent, he had not been detested by the Potters, not an enemy. He had grown rather fond of some of them, no more than James, and his consort, Lillian.
Stepping into his study, he ran his hand down the shaft of a double-bladed battle axe, mounted on an elegant stand he'd carved centuries before in his spare time. It stood next to the aged colours of the Sixth Legion, which leaned against the wall in the corner of the room.
Cedric was physically a huge, bear-like man, with long, dirty-blond hair and a full beard with a few locks plaited, including the ends of his moustache. When doing his duties around the estate, he wore simple leather boots, nearly knee-length, loose cotton breeches and a wine-red tunic, with a seax short sword thrust through his belt.
However, stood on a stand in the shape of a man was a set of padded dragon-leather armour with several chainmail pieces laid over it and a wine-red robe woven with Saxon runes for protection, and a Saxon broadsword lay against the door, not used as anything more than a fire poker for many a year.
Settling back in a chair, he was just reaching for a bottle of mead when a great blast erupted from the courtyard. In moments, he was swathed in a layer of light leather, his chainmail and dragon's hide armour and then a robe over it. Strapping his sword on its belt around his waist, Cedric snatched up his axe and dashed for the staircase down to the entrance hall. Racing down the staircase, he hoisted the bar from across the fortress doors and flung them open.
Cedric stepped out, hoisting his axe in both hands in preparation for a good fight when he stopped, seeing the current Lady Potter, pale as death itself, clutching her sons.
"Cedric." he heard her breathe before straightening up and speaking clearly; "Cedric, take my sons and place them somewhere safe. Then get me a pistol from the armoury, I know Charlus Potter hoarded weapons, get me a couple now!"
"May I ask why my lady?" said Cedric.
"My husband, your lord, faces down Voldemort at this very moment, with the intent to end the line you are sworn to protect." she hissed.
Cedric contemplated for a few seconds simply leaving. Without help, James Potter was dead, and with no head of house 'of age', there was nothing stopping him. A thousand years in a magically-saturated environment had lent him some magic of his own, he'd learnt to manipulate it. He could go anywhere in the world... a world he didn't know. He nodded and relieved Lily of the burden of the two children, and despite himself, a small smile broke out as the twins snuggled into his shoulders, one of them clutching at the braids of his hair.
A few minutes later Cedric returned, a pair of semi-automatic pistols with three magazines each in a pair of holsters which he handed to Lily. Shaking loose the mental cobwebs, he test-drew his sword, before hefting the axe in one hand. He smiled. It was a thin, unpleasant smile. Lily, having pushed one pistol into the back of her waistband and the other's holster attached to the outside of her right pocket, clutched Cedric and disapparated.
Appearing just a few yards down the road, Cedric and Lily sprinted towards the cottage, narrowly dodging a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle as it did what bikes often didn't do, descend out of the sky and slam into the road, jarring the suspension. The man on the back peeled off his helmet as Lily looked towards him, revealing shoulder-length brown hair.
"Lils! It's Peter! He's gone!" yelled Sirius.
"Voldemort's in there!" Lily yelled back, throwing a pistol to Sirius, who caught it deftly.
The Death Eaters who had remained outside, just two of the six who had come with their master, ran towards them as they burst through the Fidelius charm.
"LILY, GET JAMES!" Sirius yelled, gunning his motorcycle and hurtling towards one of the Death Eaters, who was pitched over the handlebars and the driver's lowered head. Kicking down the stand, Sirius climbed off.
The Death Eater rose, a sheet of silver hair appearing as his shattered mask fell away from his face. Sirius tensed. His hated cousin-in-law Lucius Malfoy. The man who had, in an arranged marriage, bound the will of one of his favourite relatives. There was none of his typical banter. Black and Malfoy each brought up his respective wand, and as Lucius moved to utter a curse, without hesitation, Sirius shot him thrice, each bullet from the pistol impacting his chest.
"So long, I hope Narcissa doesn't like widowhood because she had a crush on an available friend of mine." Sirius commented, walking over to Cedric, who had batted his opponent into the stone wall around the front garden with the flat of his axe.
"Black, oathsworn son of the Potters." Cedric greeted him.
"Cedric." Sirius replied, holding his wand in a loose grip, ready to loose a vicious cutting curse; "You need me to kill this scum."
"On the contrary." Cedric rasped, using the tip of one of the axeheads to tip the mask off the face of... Peter Pettigrew; "I'm about to kill one of your friends. I think you should watch."
"He betrayed them willingly?" asked Sirius.
"Yes. Led his master right to their door." Cedric replied.
"If it is done, it is best done quickly." Sirius nodded.
Cedric planted Pettigrew's face into the low stone wall with his boot and swung his axe over his shoulder, delivering a single blow to smoothly sever his neck. That was when they heard a scream.
"Akh-ka-ieb Amenta-khet!"
Like a puppet with its strings cut, Voldemort collapsed next to James, before suddenly, black flames erupted around him. Amenta-khet, fires of the underworld consumed 'ieb', his body, 'akh', his soul and 'ka', the spirit which would pass on to the afterlife, there was nothing left.
James tried to move, but couldn't. Certainly, being blasted into the wall had broken something.
"Hey." he whispered as Lily knelt next to him, wand-tip dancing as she began to heal him.
"Don't move." Lily replied; "The boys are safe. And we are not staying here. If I have to knock you out and drag you there myself, we're moving to the castle."
"I... agree." James coughed as he felt the bones of his right shoulder knitting together.