Prologue
James slowly started to gain consciousness again. His head was buzzing, and his cheek pressed against something cold. Overall, his whole body was in pain.
He opened his eyes, but it didn’t make a difference because the room he was in was pitch black. He could only make out a beam of light from a room upstairs. After a few second his eyes got used to it and he could make out his surroundings. He was in the hall, lying on the floor. His brown hair was a mess, his glasses laid on the floor a few meters next to him.
Why was he lying on the floor?
The last thing he could remember was that he had opened the door, his friend Peter standing on the other side. But there was someone else. A dark figure standing behind him. But James couldn´t remember finding out who it was.
Out of habit he grabbed his glasses to put it back on his nose. He did without thinking, it just felt like the right thing.
Suddenly he heard a scream that sent a chill down his spine and bright green light appeared from upstairs, followed by the crying of a baby.
Lily! Harry!
Ignoring his pain, he got up from the floor to run to upstairs to his wife. But on the stairs, something was laying, blocking his way. Or better someone. Even in the darkness James could make out the outlines of a body. He kneeled, trying to figure out who it was. And why they were in his house. A car passed by, which lit up the hallway and James could see the face of the person on the stairs. It was Peter. Unconscious.
What the hell was going on here? Has Voldemort found them? But then why was Peter here? And where was his wand?
A rock formed in his stomach. Was he dead? No, that can´t be. Not Peter his best friend since his first day at Hogwarts. This cannot be. Having lost so many people he knew in this war, you would think James was used to losing people, but seeing someone he cares about so lifeless was just too much.
He checked his friend’s pulse just to make sure, but relief washed over him as he detected it. Again, a green light flashed through the house, followed again by now harder cries by Harry.
James climbed over his friend and ran up the rest of the steps. The hallway upstairs wasn’t as dark as it was downstairs. In the last room the light was on. It was Harrys room. Before he had opened the door Lily had gone upstairs to put him in bed, while he was in the kitchen putting the leftovers from dinner away.
Slowly now he approached the room, afraid of what he would find. Lily was lying on the floor, in front of Harrys crib in the middle of the room. Her eyes opened, looking lifeless at the ceiling. Her red hair spread around her head on the floor and her hands were lying on her hips.
James didn’t need to check her pulse. Just seeing her like this, and he knew she was dead. All the emotion he had just felt a minute ago, seeing Peter on the stairs, came floating back again. The rock in his stomach felt 10 times bigger now. His breath was just a pitch. It was all so much his head just shut down and there was a terrifying nothingness.
A muffled sob escaped his lips, tears formed in his eyes and his legs gave in, so he ended up on the floor on his knees. He crawled over to his dead wife’s body touching her face. She was still warm.
“Oh Lily” He lifted her torso to wrap his arms around her body. “Please, baby come back to me. This can´t be true” he sobbed into her red hair. But his sobs were not the only ones echoing from the walls. He looked up, meeting the gaze of his toddler Harry. He was still in his crib, tears streaming down his little chubby face, looking back at him with endless sadness. Harry also had a little cut on his forehead. It was still bleeding, and James couldn´t remember Harry having the cut earlier. But he couldn’t let Lily go. He just couldn´t. Not even for his son.
She was the love of his life, his Hogwarts sweetheart, if you could call it that. They had just married two years ago, but they had already been through so much together. The war, her pregnancy and finally having to go into hiding because of the prophecy. It has been always a hard time, even in school, but he couldn´t believe that now it was just supposed to be over. Their whole life, everything they had planned. They couldn’t even raise their son together.
He didn´t know how long he had been sitting there on the floor, Lily in his arms, Harry crying in his crib. The only indicator of time was Lily´s body losing temperature. At some point he could hear the door open downstairs and a male voice yelling his name. A light switch was pressed, it was the loud one next to the front door. The light in the hallway went on and the man downstairs gasped.
“Oh my god. PETER!” he recognised the voice now. It was Sirius, his best friend. But James still couldn´t care less. He just wanted to be Lily. Nothing else.