What Happened That Night
The cottage in Godric's Hollow was quiet. Too quiet.
Outside, the wind howled through the trees, carrying the scent of autumn rain. A storm was coming. Not one of nature, but of fate—something ancient, something inevitable. The sky, ink-dark and unbroken, loomed over the little house where history was about to turn on its axis.
Inside, warm candlelight flickered against the walls, casting long shadows across the wooden floor. A soft melody hummed through the air—Lily Potter's voice, singing under her breath as she cradled her son. She didn't know why she was humming. Just a simple lullaby, something her mother used to sing to her, something instinctual.
Harry stirred in her arms. His tiny fingers curled, and a faint ripple of energy shimmered in the space around him—subtle, unnoticed. Accidental magic. A baby's unconscious tether to the world.
James stood near the window, wand in hand, his silhouette sharp against the glass. His breath fogged up the pane as he peered out into the night. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. A wrongness was creeping in, an unease that had no source—yet.
Then it came.
The wards shattered with a soundless scream. Magic twisted violently in the air, a pulse of destruction that rippled outward like the shattering of a still pond. The house shuddered. The candles flickered wildly, then snuffed out.
And in the doorway, shadowed and unreal, stood him.
Voldemort.
He stepped forward, robes whispering against the floor, his movements slow, deliberate. His presence made the air thin, as if reality itself was recoiling from him. The Dark Lord did not belong in a place like this—a place of love, of warmth. He was an aberration in this home.
James' heart pounded. There was no time.
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Run!"
Magic ignited.
A flash of green. A burst of raw force. The Killing Curse struck like a lightning bolt, tearing through James with a sickening finality. He didn't have time to register the pain before the world blinked out.
A body hit the floor.
Voldemort stepped over it without a glance.
Upstairs, Lily was already moving. She knew there was no escape. Not really. Not from him. She placed Harry into his crib, her hands trembling. Her breath came in short gasps. The magic in the room was already shifting, responding.
Footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Inevitable.
The door creaked open.
There he stood, barely a figure anymore—just a silhouette of death with hollow, pitiless eyes.
Lily turned, arms outstretched, voice shaking. "Not Harry. Please, not my son."
Voldemort tilted his head, expression unreadable. There was no hatred in his eyes, only cold calculation. "Step aside, foolish girl."
"No. Please, not Harry."
The Dark Lord raised his wand, already knowing how this would end.
And then—it happened.
Something deep in the air shifted. The room itself seemed to tighten around them, like reality was holding its breath.
Wild magic.
Unpredictable. Uncontrolled. Unwritten.
Harry, barely a year old, was reaching out. Not with hands, not with conscious intent, but with something else—something untamed and ancient, something that had always been waiting.
Lily didn't know. She didn't see it.
She only saw the green light.
She only felt the cold embrace of death.
And then, the breaking.
Voldemort's Killing Curse—unstoppable, unchallenged—struck. But it did not simply rebound.
It ripped apart.
A detonation of magic, violent and raw, erupted from the child's crib. The spell turned inward, like a snake devouring its own tail. The foundations of the house groaned, the windows shattered outward, and Voldemort—Lord of Death, conqueror of wizards—was unmade.
His body collapsed. His very essence, fractured. His soul, already in pieces, was ripped once more—one last Horcrux torn unwillingly from his being. It should have been the end.
But it wasn't.
The shattered fragment of his soul—his last desperate tether to life—fled. Blind. Thoughtless. Hungry. It latched onto the nearest thing it could find.
Harry gasped. His body absorbed something. Something foreign. Something broken.
A scar seared into his forehead.
The house collapsed.
Silence followed.
Smoke curled from the ruins, twisting in the cold night air. The Dark Lord was gone. The Potters were dead. And the child, marked forever, slept on.
And somewhere, in the unseen web of fate, a prophecy whispered its final verse.
"And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives."