Welcome to Gaia! ::

He fell head first into sunlight, and his feet found warm ground. When he straightened up, he saw that he was in a nearly deserted playground. A single huge chimney dominated the distant skyline. Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.

Harry moved closer to the boy. Severus looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised greed in his thin face as he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.

“Lily, don’t do it!” shrieked the elder of the two.

But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.

“Mummy told you not to!”

Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals on the ground, making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up, hands on hips.

“Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!”

“But I’m fine,” said Lily, still giggling. “Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do.”

Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart from themselves and, though the girls did not know it, Severus. Lily had picked up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Severus lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a clear view, then held out her palm. The flower sat there, opening and closing its petals, like some bizarre, many-lipped oyster.

“Stop it!” shrieked Petunia.

“It’s not hurting you,” said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and threw it back to the ground.

“It’s not right,” said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. “How do you do it?” she added, and there was definite longing in her voice.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Severus could no longer contain himself, but had jumped out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Severus seemed to regret his appearance. A dull flush of color mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at Lily.

“What’s obvious?” asked Lily.

Severus had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now hovering beside the swings, he lowered his voice and said, “I know what you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re . . . you’re a witch,” whispered Severus.

She looked affronted.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to somebody!”

She turned, nose in the air and marched off toward her sister.

“No!” said Severus. He was highly colored now, and Harry wondered why he did not take off the ridiculously large coat, unless it was because he did not want to reveal the smock beneath it. He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.

The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding on to one of the swing poles as though it was the safe place in tag.

“You are,” said Severus to Lily. “You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.”

Petunia’s laugh was like cold water.

“Wizard!” she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had recovered from the shock of his sudden appearance. “I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” she told Lily, and it was evident by her tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation. “Why have you been spying on us?”

“Haven’t been spying,” said Severus, hot and uncomfortable and dirty-haired in the bright sunlight. “Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,” he added spitefully, “you’re a Muggle.”

Though Petunia did not understand the word, she could hardly mistake the tone.

“Lily, come on, we’re leaving!” she said shrilly. Lily obeyed her sister at once, glaring at Severus as she left. He stood watching them as they marched through the playground gate, and Harry, the only one left to observe him, recognized Severus’s bitter disappointment, and understand that Severus had been planning this moment for a while, and that it had gone wrong.

He was on platform nine and three-quarters, and Severus stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. Severus was staring at a family of four a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their parents. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister.

“. . . I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen—” She caught her sister’s hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. “Maybe once I’m there — no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”

“I don’t — want — to — go!” said Petunia and she dragged her hand back out of her sister’s grasp. “You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a — a —”

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewing in their owners’ arms, over the owls fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some were already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

“— you think I want to be a — a freak?”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

“I’m not a freak,” said Lily. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“That’s where you’re going,” said Petunia with relish. “A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy . . . weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.”

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

“You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.”

Petunia turned scarlet.

“Beg? I didn’t beg!”

“I saw his reply. It was very kind.”

“You shouldn’t have read —” whispered Petunia, “that was my private — how could you —?”

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Severus stood nearby. Petunia gasped.

“That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!”

“No — not sneaking —” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of —”

“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” said Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed. “Freak!” she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood.

Harry was standing right behind Severus as they faced the candlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. Then Professor McGonagall said, “Evans, Lily!”

He watched his mother walk forward on trembling legs and sit down on the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto her head, and barely a second after it had touched the dark red hair, the hat cried, “Gryffindor!”

Harry heard Severus let out a tiny groan. Lily took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried off toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she glanced back at Severus, and there was a sad little smile on her face. Harry saw Sirius move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms and firmly turned her back on him.

The roll call continued. Harry watched Remus, Peter, and his father join Lily and Sirius at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall called Severus.

Harry walked with him to the stool, watched him place the Sorting Hat on his head. “Slytherin!” cried the Sorting Hat.

And Severus Snape moved off to the other side of the hall, away from Lily, to where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, patted Severus on the back as he sat down beside him.

He was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, but the four House tables were gone. Instead, there were more than a hundred smaller tables, all facing the same way, at each of which sat a student, head bent low, scribbling on a roll of parchment. The only sound was the scratching of quills and the occasional rustle as somebody adjusted their parchment. It was clearly exam time.

Sunshine was streaming through the high window onto the bent heads, which shone chestnut and copper and gold in the bright light. Harry looked around carefully. Severus had to be here somewhere. . . . This was his memory. . . .

And there he was, at a table right behind Harry. Harry stared. Snape-the-teenager had a stringy, pallid look about him, like a plant kept in the dark. His hair was lank and greasy and was flopping onto the table, his hooked nose barely half an inch from the surface of the parchment as he scribbled. Harry moved around behind Severus and read the heading of the examination paper:




So Severus had to be fifteen or sixteen, around Harry’s own age. His hand was flying across the parchment; he had written at least a foot more than his closest neighbors, and yet his writing was minuscule and cramped.

“Five more minutes!”

The voice made Harry jump; turning, he saw the top of Professor Flitwick’s head moving between the desks a short distance away. Professor Flitwick was walking past a boy with untidy black hair . . . very untidy black hair. . . .

Harry moved so quickly that, had he been solid, he would have knocked desks flying. Instead he seemed to slide, dreamlike, across two aisles and up a third. The back of the black-haired boy’s head drew nearer and nearer. . . . He was straightening up now, putting down his quill, pulling his roll of parchment toward him so as to reread what he had written. . . .

Harry stopped in front of the desk and gazed down at his sixteen-year-old father.

Excitement exploded in the pit of his stomach: It was as though he was looking at himself but with deliberate mistakes. James’s eyes were hazel, his nose was slightly longer than Harry’s, and there was no scar on his forehead, but they had the same thin face, same mouth, same eyebrows. James’s hair stuck up at the back exactly like Harry’s did, his hands could have been Harry’s, and Harry could tell that when James stood up, they would be within an inch of each other’s heights.

James yawned hugely and rumpled up his hair, making it even messier than it had been. Then, with a glance at Professor Flitwick, he turned in his seat and grinned at a boy sitting four seats behind him.

With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking; his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James’s nor Harry’s could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn’t seem to have noticed. And two seats along from this girl — Harry’s stomach gave another pleasurable squirm — was Remus Lupin. He looked rather pale and peaky (was full moon approaching?) and was absorbed in the exam: As he reread his answers he scratched his chin with the end of his quill, frowning slightly.

So that meant Peter Pettigrew had to be around here somewhere too . . . and sure enough, Harry spotted him within seconds: a small, mousy-haired boy with a pointed nose. Peter looked anxious; he was chewing his fingernails, staring down at his paper, scuffing the ground with his toes. Every now and then he glanced hopefully at his neighbor’s paper. Harry stared at Peter for a moment, then back at James, who was now doodling on a bit of scrap parchment. He had drawn a snitch and was now tracing the letters L. E. What did they stand for?

“Quills down please!” squeaked Professor Flitwick. “That means you too, Stebbins! Please remain seated while I collect your parchment! Accio!”

More than a hundred rolls of parchment zoomed into the air and into Professor Flitwick’s outstretched arms, knocking him off his feet. Several people laughed. A couple of students at the front desks got up, took hold of Professor Flitwick beneath the elbows, and lifted him onto his feet again.

“Thank you . . . thank you,” panted Professor Flitwick. “Very well, everybody, you’re free to go!”

Harry looked down at his father, who had hastily crossed out the L. E. he had been embellishing, jumped to his feet, stuffed his quill and the exam question paper into his bag, which he slung over his back, and stood waiting for Sirius to join him.

Harry looked around and glimpsed Severus a short way away, moving between the tables toward the doors into the entrance hall, still absorbed in his examination paper. Round-shouldered yet angular, he walked in a twitchy manner that recalled a spider, his oily hair swinging about his face.

A gang of chattering girls separated Severus from James and Sirius, and by planting himself in the midst of this group, Harry managed to keep Severus in sight while straining his ears to catch the voices of James and his friends.

“Did you like question ten, Moony?” asked Sirius as they emerged into the entrance hall.

“Loved it,” said Remus briskly. “‘Give five signs that identify the werewolf.’ Excellent question.”

“D’you think you managed to get all the signs?” said James in tones of mock concern.

“Think I did,” said Remus seriously, as they joined the crowd thronging around the front doors eager to get out into the sunlit grounds. “One: He’s sitting on my chair. Two: He’s wearing my clothes. Three: His name’s Remus Lupin . . .’”

Peter was the only one who didn’t laugh.

“I got the snout shape, the pupils of the eyes, and the tufted tail,” he said anxiously, “but I couldn’t think what else—”

“How thick are you Wormtail?” said James impatiently. “You run round with a werewolf once a month—”

“Keep your voice down,” implored Remus.

Harry looked anxiously behind him again. Severus remained close by, still buried in his examination questions; but this was Severus’s memory, and Harry was sure that if Severus chose to wander off in a different direction once outside in the grounds, he, Harry, would not be able to follow James any farther. To his intense relief, however, when James and his friends strode off down the lawn towards the lake, Severus followed, still poring over the paper and apparently with no fixed idea of where he was going. By jogging a little ahead of him, Harry managed to keep a close watch on James and the others.

“Well, I thought that paper was a piece of cake,” he heard Sirius say. “I’d be surprised if I don’t get Outstanding on it at least.”

“Me too,” said James. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a struggling Golden Snitch.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Nicked it,” said James casually. He started playing with the Snitch, allowing it to fly as much as a foot away and seizing it again; his reflexes were excellent. Peter watched him in awe.

They stopped in the shade of the very same beech tree on the edge of the lake where Harry, Ron, and Hermione had spent a Sunday finishing their homework, and threw themselves down on the grass.

Harry looked over his shoulder yet again and saw, to his delight, that Severus had settled himself on the grass in the dense shadows of a clump of bushes. He was as deeply immersed in the O.W.L. paper as ever, which left Harry free to sit down on the grass between the beech and the bushes, and watch the foursome under the tree.

The sunlight was dazzling on the smooth surface of the lake, on the bank of which the group of laughing girls who had just left the Great Hall were sitting with shoes and socks off, cooling their feet in the water.

Remus had pulled out a book and was reading. Sirius stared around at the students milling over the grass, looking rather haughty and bored, but very handsomely so. James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom farther and farther away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. Peter was watching him with his mouth open. Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Peter gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn’t tell Peter to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. Harry noticed his father had a habit of rumpling up his hair as though to make sure it did not get too tidy, and also that he kept looking over at the girls by the water’s edge.

“Put that away, will you?” said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch, and Peter let out a cheer. “Before Wormtail wets himself from excitement.”

Peter turned slightly pink but James grinned.

“If it bothers you,” he said, stuffing the Snitch back in his pocket. Harry had the distinct impression that Sirius was the only one for whom James would have stopped showing off.

“I’m bored,” said Sirius. “Wish it was full moon.”

“You might,” said Remus darkly from behind his book. “We’ve still got Transfiguration, if you’re bored you could test me. . . . Here.” He held out his book.

Sirius snorted. “I don’t need to look at that rubbish, I know it all.”

“This’ll liven you up, Padfoot,” said James quietly. “Look who it is. . . .”

Sirius’s head turned. He had become very still, like a dog that has scented a rabbit.

“Excellent,” he said softly. “Snivellus.”

Harry turned to see what Sirius was looking at.

Severus was on his feet again, and was stowing the O.W.L. paper in his bag. As he emerged from the shadows of the bushes and set off across the grass, Sirius and James stood up. Remus and Peter remained sitting: Remus was still staring down at his book, though his eyes were not moving and a faint frown line had appeared between his eyebrows. Peter was looking from Sirius and James to Severus with a look of avid anticipation on his face.

“All right, Snivellus?” said James loudly.

Severus reacted so fast it was as though he had been expecting an attack. Dropping his bag, he plunged his hand inside his robes, and his wand was halfway into the air when James shouted “Expelliarmus!”

Severus's wand flew twelve feet into the air and fell with a little thud in the grass behind him. Sirius let out a bark of laughter.

“Impedimenta!” he said, pointing his wand at Severus, who was knocked off his feet, halfway through a dive toward his own fallen wand.

Students all around had turned to watch. Some of them had gotten to their feet and were edging nearer to watch. Some looked apprehensive, others entertained.

Severus lay panting on the ground. James and Sirius advanced on him, wands up, James glancing over his shoulder at the girls at the water's edge as he went. Peter was on his feet now, watching hungrily, edging around Remus to get a clearer view.

“How'd the exam go, Snivelly?” said James.

“I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment,” said Sirius viciously. “There'll be great grease marks all over it, they won't be able to read a word.”

Several people watching laughed; Severus was clearly unpopular. Peter sniggered shrilly. Severus was trying to get up, but the jinx was still operating on him; he was struggling, as though bound by invisible ropes.

“You—wait,” he panted, staring up at James with an expression of purest loathing. “You—wait. . . .”

“Wait for what?” said Sirius coolly. “What are you going to do, Snivelly, wipe your nose on us?”

Severus let out a stream of mixed swearwords and hexes, but his wand being ten feet away nothing happened.

“Wash out your mouth,” said James coldly. “Scourgify!”

Pink soap bubbles streamed from Severus’s mouth at once; the froth was covering his lips, making him gag, choking him—

“Leave him ALONE!”

James and Sirius looked around. James's free hand jumped to his hair again.

It was one of the girls from the lake edge. She had thick, dark red hair that fell to her shoulders and startlingly green almond-shaped eyes — Harry's eyes.

Harry's mother . . .

“All right, Evans?” said James, and his voice was suddenly pleasant, deeper, more mature.

“Leave him alone,” Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. “What’s he done to you?”

“Well,” said James, appearing to deliberate his answer. “It’s more the fact he exists, if you know what I mean. . . .”

Many of the surrounding watchers laughed, Sirius and Peter included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and neither did Lily.

“You think you’re funny,” she said coldly. “But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.”

“I will if you go out with me, Evans,” said James quickly. “Go on . . . Go out with me, and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.”

Behind him, the Impediment Jinx was wearing off. Severus was beginning to inch toward his fallen wand, spitting out soapsuds as he crawled.

“I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily.

“Bad luck, Prongs,” said Sirius briskly turning back to Severus. “OY!”

But too late; Severus had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James’ face, spattering his robes with blood. James whirled about; a second flash of light later, Severus was hanging upside down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of graying underpants.

Many people in the small crowd watching cheered. Sirius, James, and Peter roared with laughter.

Lily, whose furious expression had twitched for an instant as though she was going to smile, said, “Let him down!”

“Certainly,” said James, and he jerked his wand upward. Severus fell into a crumpled heap on the ground. Disentangling himself from his robes, he got quickly to his feet, wand up, but Sirius said, “Petrificus Totalus!” and Severus keeled over again at once, rigid as a board.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Lily shouted. She had her own wand out now. James and Sirius eyed it warily.

“Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you,” said James earnestly.

“Take the curse off him, then!”

James sighed deeply, then turned to Severus and muttered the countercurse.

“There you go,” he said, as Severus struggled to his feet again, “you're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus—”

“I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!”

Lily blinked. “Fine,” she said coolly. “I won’t bother in the future. And I’d wash my pants if I were you, Snivellus.”

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Severus, his wand pointed threateningly at him.

“I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You're as bad as he is. . . .”

“What!" yelped James. “I’d NEVER call you a — you-know-what!”

“Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you’ve just gotten off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can — I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK.”

She turned on her heel and hurried away.

“Evans!” James shouted after her. “Hey, EVANS!”

But she didn’t look back.

“What is it with her?” said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him.

“Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate,” said Sirius.

“Right,” said James, who looked furious now, “right —”

There was another flash of light, and Severus was once again hanging upside down in the air.

“Who wants to see me take Snivelly’s pants off?”

But whether James really did take off Severus's pants, Harry never found out.


((Note: In my hardback of OotP, the last spell that Sirius casts on Snape right before Lily takes out her wand was originally Locomotor mortis, but it got changed in the paperback edition I have to Petrificus Totalus. Assuming that the later edition is more correct, I put Petrificus Totalus in this retelling.))

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Save your breath.”

It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

“I only came because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here.”

“I was, I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just—”

“Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends — you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”

He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.

“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.”

“No — listen, I didn’t mean —”

“— to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?”

He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole.

He stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Severus was panting, turning on the spot, his wand, waiting for something or for someone. . . . His fear infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over his shoulder, wondering what is was that Severus was waiting for —

Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air: Harry thought of lightning, but Severus had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand.

“Don’t kill me!”

“That was not my intention.”

Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his roves whipping around him, and his face was illuminated from below in the light cast from his wand.

“Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?”

“No — no message — I’m here on my own account!”

Severus was wringing his hands: He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him.

“I — I come with a warning — no, a request — please —”

Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Severus faced each other.

“What request could a Death Eater make of me?”

“The — the prophecy . . . the prediction . . . Trelawney . . .”

“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore. “How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?”

“Everything — everything I heard!” said Severus. “That is why — it is for that reason — he thinks it means Lily Evans!”

“The prophecy did not refer to a woman,” said Dumbledore. “It spoke of a boy born at the end of July —”

“You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down — kill them all —”

“If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?”

“I have — I have asked him —”

“You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Severus seemed to shrink a little. “You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?”

Severus said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

“Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Keep her — them — safe. Please.”

“And what will you give me in return, Severus?”

“In — in return?” Severus gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, “Anything.”

The night was wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe. . . . And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occasions. . . . Not anger . . . that was for weaker souls than he . . . but triumph, yes. . . . He had waited for this, he had hoped for it. . . .

“Nice costume, mister!”

He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face; then the child turned and ran away. . . . Beneath the robe he fingered the handle of his wand. . . . One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother . . . but unnecessary, quite unnecessary. . . .

And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, though they did not know it yet. . . . And he made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, and stared over it. . . .

They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. The child was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his small fist. . . .

A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning. . . .

The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.

He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand. . . .

“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!”

Hold him off, without a wand in his hand! . . . He laughed before casting the curse. . . .

“Avada Kedavra!”

The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut. . . .

He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear. . . . He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in. . . . She had no wand upon her either. . . . How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments. . . .

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand . . . and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead. . . .

“Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!”

“Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside now.”

“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead —”

“This is my last warning —”

“Not Harry! Please . . . have mercy . . . have mercy. . . . Not Harry! Not Harry! Please — I’ll do anything —”

“Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”

He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all. . . .

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time: He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing—

He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy’s face: He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry; It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage—

“Avada Kedavra!”

And then he broke: He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away . . . far away. . . .