Chapter 1: Reunion

Harry Potter, currently six years old, lay on his mattress in his cupboard, silently crying. Next to him lay a ripped card on which he had drawn three stick figures. A small one with black hair and glasses and a scar shaped like a lightning bolt on his face that was supposed to be him. A taller one with the same hair and glasses but no scar, and another one with long, red hair. These were supposed to be his parents. He wasn't sure if they really looked like that, but it had felt right when drawing. His class had drawn these cards in school on Friday, in preparation for Mothering Sunday, but Dudley had found his and torn it, telling him he didn't need it because his parents were long dead anyway.

Harry already had no friends at school because Dudley and his friends kept threatening anyone who tried to talk to him and after a while no one tried anymore. But still, last year he had managed to sneak a card back into his cupboard without anyone noticing.

This year he hadn't been so lucky. He knew for himself that he had no parents, he lived with his mother's sister Petunia Dursley and her husband Vernon. Both of them didn't seem to like him much, they kept telling them that he should be glad that they went through all the trouble of raising him even though they had an own son. But that son was the problem. Stupid Dudley and his stupid friends... Harry remembered in horror the day their grades had come and the Dursleys had noticed that he was better than their precious Dudley in every subject. He had been locked into his cupboard for a week with almost no food for 'spoiling the experience for Duddykins'. An error he had never made again, learning in silence while trying to get worse grades than Dudley without failing. Not an easy task, really.

Of course, he had long ago learned how to pick his lock to sneak out in the middle of the night to nick some leftovers, but still, it wasn't very fun.

But today was the worst. He had been sent to Mrs. Figg - a weird old lady living in the neighbourhood that watched over him sometimes, mostly whenever the Dursleys were out of the house - for the day as the Dursleys went to the zoo to celebrate Mothering Sunday. She had told him all sorts of stories from her cats and showed him the same photo album she always did and in the evening he had been locked away again.

He just couldn't take it anymore... why did his parents die in that car crash... he wanted a mother too...!

Just as he was desperately wishing to not be alone anymore, he heard a rustling sound and stilled.

"...Harry?" a soft, female voice called out. He didn't recognize it, it certainly wasn't the shrill voice of Aunt Petunia... "Is that you...?"

Nervously, he turned around to lie on his back. Above him, a woman stood - or more likely crouched as the cupboard under the stairs was pretty small - the weak light from the light bulb illuminating her bright red hair and green eyes that looked eerily like his own.

"Who are you...?" he asked quietly, knowing that his relatives would hate it if they heard him talking. But more importantly he was wondering who that woman was and how she had managed to step into his cupboard without making any noise.

The woman just kept looking at his forehead, were he knew his weird scar was, one that he had gotten during that car crash when his parents had died... Her face a mixture of relieve and deep sorrow.

"It worked... It really worked...! I am so sorry that I had to leave you. Oh Harry..."

Harry frowned. "What worked? Who are you?" Leaving him? He couldn't remember ever seeing her before.

She sighed. "Harry... I'm Lily, your mother."

He stared at her. Was that an evil joke? Though he couldn't imagine Dudley getting adults to pull his leg. "My mother is dead," he said, his voice cracking slightly.

"...I know, believe me," the woman answered, her expression almost mirroring his, as she raised a hand to cover the lightning bulb. The light shone through it, though weaker than before. "I am so sorry..."

Harrys eyes widened and he sat up, almost banging his head on the stairs above him.

"A-Are you a... ghost...?"

He knew that the Dursleys hated it if he ever said anything even remotely unnormal, anything out of the ordinary, even if it was in a cartoon, as if he would get weird ideas through it, but... he did not know what else to call that woman who said she was his dead mother and whose hand did not block light as completely as it should.

She slowly shook her head. "Not really. I am more than a ghost but less than flesh and blood... I do not know how to describe it... But I am definitely dead, even though I wish I could be with you... How old might you be now? The last time I held you in my arms you were only fifteen months old..."

Harry stared at the woman. She seemed to be serious, even now her voice was full of sorrow and she looked at him so full of love he wanted to cry. Somehow he could believe her that she wasn't quite alive anymore...

"I'm six..." he mumbled. "But if you are dead how can you be here?"

She gave him a small smile. "You called me. If you concentrate enough you will always be able to call me or anyone else who was in your heart and died... It's a very special power and as far as I know you are the only person who is able to do that in the whole world..."

He stared at her, wondering if she was taking the mickey out of him. Especially Uncle Vernon was always very vocal that things like magic didn't exist.

But didn't Harry have proof in front of him that this had been wrong?

"Everyone in my heart? Even... my father?"

She nodded, looking very serious, before glancing around.

"But you might want to do it somewhere different, this room is pretty small..."

He flinched slightly. He knew by the way she talked she meant well, she probably didn't know that this was his room, but he couldn't leave the cupboard today.

"Then... maybe later," he answered evasively. "Though won't people notice you? If you are not fully alive..."

She shook her head. "I am only visible to yourself. As will everyone else you may summon. Do not worry about that."

He nodded, deep in thought.

For a moment, no one said anything. The woman just studied his face as he thought about everything.

"So... you are my mother?" he asked after a while, just to be sure. She nodded. "Um... could you tell me how you died...?"

He felt slightly bad asking that question, especially because it seemed horribly disrespectful, but the only thing he remembered was a lot of green light and horrible pain. Now, a car crash could not been painless, but green light? He wanted to understand...

She seemed confused at first, but nodded a moment later, clearing her throat before starting to talk.

"I guess you already know most of it, but I will start at the beginning, alright?" Harry nodded. "It happened on Halloween in the year nineteen hundred and eighty-one. James and I had managed to hide you from Voldemort thus far, but we never thought that one of our friends would betray our trust. He told Voldemort where we had hidden and he came after us. Both James and I had tried to protect you, but we failed. Both of us were killed by Voldemort. But thankfully I had managed to perform a ritual to save you. He was not able to kill you because you can not be killed anymore. I don't know what exactly happened afterwards, but I have heard from people who died after us that Voldemort has been defeated that very night, believed to have died from his very own curse. But I am sure you know that better than me anyway."

Harry gaped at her. He had wondered if she might have been able to explain why there had been so much green light in that car crash - after all, Aunt Petunia had only told him to ask no questions after she had initially told him the story - but... what she had told him had absolutely nothing to do with a cars! Instead, Lily had given him many words he had never heard before.

"...Who is Voldemort?" Harry began, wondering if it was some kind of crazy mass murderer... If he had really killed his parents... But if that was true, it still didn't explain all of the green light... or why Aunt Petunia would lie to him...

By now, Lily was staring at him, looking shocked herself.

"What do you mean, 'Who is Voldemort'?" she asked, frowning. "Did no one ever tell you how James and I died? I can't imagine that you have never asked..."

"Um... I was told you died in a car crash..." Harry mumbled, worried by now that she might actually get angry with him for not knowing.

"A CAR CRASH?!" Lily half-screamed and Harry's eyes widened.

"Shh!" If she would disturb his relatives he would never hear the end of it..!

She seemingly understood because she tried to calm down.

"I don't think anyone else but you may hear me, either. But I am sorry for my outburst, I did not want to scare you. Still, who has told you that? With whom do you live?"

Harry hesitated for a moment, but even if that Lily wasn't his mother, she was already here so it probably wouldn't hurt to tell her who else was living here.

"Well... with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia," he explained nervously, but nothing could have prepared him for Lily's reaction.

"WHAT?!" She looked beyond shocked, as if she wasn't sure if she had heard him correctly. "How could they? What about the Longbottoms? Or Padfoot? Hell, I would have preferred Severus!"

By now she seemed to be ranting mostly to herself, but Harry was still slightly freaked out. He had never heard of anyone with these names... Should that really be true? At last, she noticed him still being there after a while and regained her composure.

"Again, I'm sorry about that. I've never been very good with containing my emotions. I'm sure you are terribly confused now, I will try to explain everything I can, okay?"

Harry nodded hesitantly. At least it was still pretty early in the evening and no one would bother to look for him.

"You're a wizard," she said after taking a deep breath. He just continued staring at her.

"I'm a what?"

"A wizard. I know, given the fact that you lived with Petunia of all people - and I hope I will find out who has arranged that, once we meet again it won't be fun! - probably means she has never told you anything about me. Or James, or anything about our world."

Harry frowned, thinking about what she was implying. "You mean she knows...?"

"Of course she does. She is my sister after all. But she envied me because I was a witch and she was only a muggle - a person who can't use magic. And sadly, that destroyed our friendship very thoroughly. Anyway, I am sure there have been some inexplicable things happening near you, haven't there?"

Harry blinked, surprised. How did she know? He remembered the day Aunt Petunia had cut off all of his hair because no matter how often they went to visit the barber it always looked the same afterwards. It had somehow grown back overnight and he had gotten a week inside of his cupboard for that. Or that one time he had somehow managed to jump onto the roof of the school building even though he had only wanted to hide behind some bins. That had been two weeks for 'climbing school buildings'. Not to mention that one time Dudley had tried to push his face into a toilet bowl causing the whole school bathroom to be flooded with water. Of course, the teachers had believed Dudley when he had told them that Harry had somehow managed to do that himself. Another two weeks inside his cupboard, of which only ten days had passed yet.

His thoughts seemed pretty obvious because Lily smiled at him after a moment. "Don't worry, accidental magic is absolutely normal for young witches and wizards." Her smile began to fade. "Though I can't imagine Petunia liked hearing of these strange things. And her husband takes the same line as far as I am aware... Didn't they have a son about your age? Dunley? No... Dudley, wasn't it?"

Harry nodded mutely and finally decided that he could believe... his mother... for now. She simply knew too much to be a hoax and the Dursleys would never send someone who told him that things like magic existed! They would probably lock him into his cupboard if he even said the word aloud!

And just like that, so many questions bubbled up inside of him... He couldn't help but ask.

Lily turned out to be a great listener and she could explain things in a very simple manner, making him understand the answers to his questions. And she explained a lot. About a beautiful place called Hogwarts, about the Ministry of Magic, Muggles, Squibs, the weirdness of blood-purity...

Voldemort turned out to be an evil wizard who had wanted to eradicate all Muggles and Muggleborns and had been very powerful, but after attacking them that Halloween he had vanished and almost everyone in the Wizarding World was sure that Harry had somehow vanquished the Dark Lord. At least the dead people were saying these things.

Actually, Lily could tell him a whole lot about the afterlife, though surprisingly, there wasn't much to say. She said there wasn't a real place she could describe and time flowed differently too. Also, people had no real bodies, they were just... beings, a bit like spirits, but at least the dead were able to talk with each other and meet lost relatives.

That way she had been able to tell him what supposedly had happened at Halloween. But she also knew better. After all, no one besides the three Potters and Voldemort had been there that night. Of course, it was pretty certain that Voldemort had cast the Killing Curse at Harry, but everything else was pure speculation. Lily explained to him that she had used three very powerful magical objects to make herself invincible before passing that power on to him, which was the reason that Harry had survived the curse. Why Voldemort had vanished... She didn't know, but she guessed that it had to be a side effect of a curse designed to kill meeting someone who couldn't be killed.

Not being able to get killed... that was also something that disturbed Harry quite a bit if it was true, but Lily told him that it was a very bad idea to go testing it because he could still get hurt. And that he knew, considering how much Dudley liked him as a moving punching bag...

They talked until Harry couldn't keep his eyes open any longer and felt his head brimming with information. Lily once more reassured him that he could call her anytime even though she would vanish once he was asleep, before he closed his eyes and drifted off into a deep slumber, filled with dreams about magic, wizards and a certain red-haired woman who smiled kindly at him, telling him she loved him.

First of all: Thank you for so many reviews and ideas of how to continue! I'm always open for suggestions!
(Special thanks to Baracudaz for a small sentence that made me overthrow half of my plot, I think it will be much more interesting now!)
I'm still thinking about the love interest, though I guess based on the reviews I've gotten until now it will probably be either Luna, Daphne, Fleur or Tonks. But who knows what the future will bring? After all, Harry won't be interested in anyone for years. We'll see. ;)

Also, I'm terribly insecure regarding my writing of young Harry, because I'm not very good at writing children... I hope it was alright anyway, especially since Harry Potter certainly isn't a normal six year old boy.

Next chapter will feature more of determined!Lily, once she understands the real situation Harry is currently living in. And don't worry, he won't be the scared, confused boy forever. :)

Regards, Violet-san