Chapter Text
The Pottery, Epping Forest
October 31st, 1981 – 9 PM
It was a Saturday, and everyone knew nothing important or significant ever happened on Saturdays.
Saturdays were for fancy food, afternoon naps, and the occasional trip to the beach.
This was not a normal Saturday.
Lily sat on the wide tiled steps outside the ritual room, her eyes closed as she drew in long, even breaths. The air was heavy with incense and smoke that clung to her clothes and skin. The overpowering scent of kesar chandan and jasmine swirled through the air, making her feel heavy-headed and more than a bit woozy.
She’d done it. They had done it.
She opened her eyes and stared down at her hands, red-stained and creased with dark lines from the ritual paint. Her hair clung damply to her face, and her knees felt liquid with elation and relief.
Safe. Harry would be safe.
No matter what happened—no matter what this bloody war took from them—her son would be safe.
She wished she could feel better about it, but all she could taste was ash. All she wanted in that moment was Sev’s arms around her, the smell of sage and bergamot, and his low, deep voice telling her they’d all be okay.
The courtyard was silent and Lily bit back a sob as she closed her eyes again.
“You alright?”
She started, heartbeat jumping, as she opened her eyes to find James sitting beside her, wiping his hands on a cloth. He was eyeing her with lines of concern etched into his face. He was just as exhausted and sweaty as she was, ash and perspiration making him look at least ten years older.
“Yeah,” she lied. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
James just nodded good-naturedly, not calling her out on it. “Bit intense, I’ll admit.” He offered a vaguely disingenuous smile and nudged her with an elbow. She smiled back and felt like melted plastic—sticky and artificial.
“But it did what you hoped it would.”
She nodded not trusting herself to speak.
It had done what she hoped it would—and more. It was a desperate act. Foolish. Reckless. Dangerous.
Severus would be furious when he found out.
She didn’t regret it.
A hundred rebukes flew through her mind, chasing her thoughts like angry, hungry lions. She focused on the tree in the middle of the courtyard, twisting up from the earth in the centre of the Pottery like some kind of ancient, gnarled beacon. It pulsed slightly, as if breathing—deep and slow. Kind, almost. If trees could be kind.
“Here.” James handed her a clouded potion bottle from his pocket, warm to the touch. “Blood-replenisher. Mum said to give it to you. You, uh—you gave a lot.”
She had. It was necessary, of course, but she still felt like a newborn foal—weak and unsteady and vaguely damp. Vulnerable.
She drank the potion, ignoring the lingering taste of copper and iron.
“Thanks.”
Her voice whispered out, hoarse and low and somewhat foreign—like the worn-out voice of a stranger. She was so, so tired.
Safe. Harry would be safe. That’s what mattered.
“Have you heard from him? Recently, I mean. I meant to ask before—but, well, you were a bit busy.” He gave a chuckle that rang hollow in the still, hovering air of the courtyard.
“Last week,” she said, and frowned. It had been a short letter—barely anything at all—and yet the small reassurance had been enough to make the bands of hot iron perpetually around her heart ease just slightly. Just enough to breathe.
Severus was okay. Harry was okay. She was—well, she was suffering from blood loss and mild magical exhaustion, but she was breathing, and that was what mattered.
They were okay.
“He’s doing well—Harry, I mean. Dad said he saw him conjure a spark yesterday. Almost lit the dresser on fire.”
That drew a small, weary smile to her face. Her son the firecracker. She shook her head.
“And what did Charlus do to incite my son’s wrath this time?” she asked, her voice croaking in the middle like a frog from all that damn chanting.
“Took away the toy broom for bedtime, apparently.”
“Ah, well, he’s lucky then. Harry does love that broom.”
“Of course he does! I gave it to him!” James placed a hand on his chest in a mock-arrogant stance that reminded her so much of their school days she nearly laughed. “I have to make sure he knows who his favourite uncle is!”
“He will,” she said, smiling but serious. “Everything you’ve done for us—you and your parents. Keeping us here, hiding us... everything else.” She huffed out a breath, out of words to encompass everything the Potters had done to help them. She leaned over and punched him in the leg, eliciting a dramatic yelp. “Favourite uncle for life.”
“Ah, well. It’s all worth it then.” He gave her an easy smile—meant to reassure, to relax—and she almost did. Almost let go of the rising tension in her chest, the deep feeling of unease that had been following her for weeks.
James Potter was a good man. One of the best. She could never repay him or his family for all they’d risked. She only hoped it was enough.
James leaned back on the tile, looking up at the night sky as it was framed by the sloping roof and chimneys of the Potter estate, the branches of the yew tree seeming to reach up into the heavens to hold the stars.
“Sirius flooed in from Devon,” he said abruptly, still staring upward. Lily held her breath. James hadn’t spoken to Sirius in months—not since Regulus’s disappearance. Not since that awful fight.
“He and Moody flushed two more Death Eaters out of Brixham. Confirmed the Longbottoms were ambushed. Same group that got the twins.”
Lily’s jaw clenched.
“The Weasleys—?”
“On the warpath. Arthur and Molly have their hands full with the kids, but... well, I can’t imagine that stopping her. You know how Molly is. They were her brothers.”
Lily had the sudden, absurd thought of what Petunia would do in the event of her death.
Probably throw a party.
“We should head inside,” she said eventually, feeling her knees creak as she levered herself up. “Check to make sure Charlus hasn’t been ignited by my infant son.”
“I’m sure he’s fine. Practically an angel compared to me—at least, if you listen to my mother talk.”
“Dorea’s a wise woman,” Lily said sagely, smiling when James let out a mock gasp, clutching his chest in offence.
“Oh, by the way—Monty and Phee are planning on visiting tomorrow. Something about the stars and portents being ‘troubling.’”
Lily frowned as they crossed the courtyard toward the house. “Did they specify what exactly they were worried about?”
James shook his head. “No, though it must have been something serious considering they’re packing up the house in Jaipur to come all the way here.”
That set her pulse racing again. Her mind sifted frantically through every sign and omen she could remember: the storm last Wednesday, the shooting star on Tuesday, the magpie in the garden on Friday. She’d always been dreadful at Divining, and she cursed herself now for not paying more attention.
“I’m sure it’s fine, Lils,” James said, though she could see the shadow of worry in his eyes too—the low simmering anxiety that lived in all their hearts now, five years into this bloody war. The worry that never left.
They stepped into the wide, lavish, and colourful drawing room.
And the world screamed.
10 PM
The wards of the Pottery were older than England and more sentient than Hogwarts. They had been woven into the dirt of Epping Forest by Varsha Potter after the crossing into England more than nine hundred years prior. They were warm and wise and carried the blood of thousands of Potters from ages past.
And they were screaming.
Weeping—cracked and splintered like glass under stone. It was not a metaphorical scream, not a screech or a wail-like sound. It was alive and ancient and echoed across the grounds of the Pottery—anguish given breath and fury. It moved beyond thought or sense as every window in the house cracked, and the ancient tree at the heart of the Pottery groaned, swaying with pain and terror.
The gates of the Pottery lit from within with a silvery flame that burned through the darkness, holding till the last as golden, rotting magic lashed against it. Across the grounds, deep in the trees of Epping Forest, clawed hands tore from the earth as large shadowed wraiths pulled themselves from the deep and wailed to the night sky.
Trespassers!
Deceivers!
He who is not welcome here!
They raced across the forest floor, up walls and ceilings, tearing through the cobbled courtyard toward whatever unseen enemy had ruptured the ward-line.
Charlus and Dorea Potter hurtled into the front room with wands aloft, faces pale with fear and fury as they tore through the door and into the garden to face the ominously groaning front gates.
And then—just as suddenly as it had started—it stopped.
A hush fell over the world.
With a sound that was almost regretful in its smallness—wistful, longing, and so very, very sorry—the ancient wrought-iron gates collapsed into shimmering silver confetti.
They breathed, unshaken but cold with fear. Charlus’s nose was bleeding, the beating ache of the broken wards pulsing through him like a ruptured artery. Beside him, Dorea was ashen, her eyes dark and her hair unbound as she stood in her sleeping gown, barefoot and so very, very brave.
He spared her a single, fleeting glance before facing the impending dark once again.
Voldemort stepped forward like a rupture in reality. He was dressed in an impeccable black suit—so dark it seemed to swallow the light—and on his shoulders hung a golden robe that glittered and shone, seeming almost to laugh with him as he took in his surroundings with that damning, burning golden gaze.
Amused. Watchful. Wrathful.
Here.
He tilted his head at them, curious and smug, his pale face creasing into a wide, sadistic smile.
“Hello there,” he said, his voice low and almost sultry, slithering in a way that made the stomach roll uncomfortably.
Dorea Potter did not answer. She stared at this creature wearing the face of a man. She breathed through her nose, blood roaring in her ears as thousands of years of Black ancestors screamed vengeance and destruction in her veins.
She struck.
“Sekhem-Ka!”
A soundless explosion hit the monster in the chest, knocking him back through a hedge, golden light washing across the garden. Behind her, Charlus finished drawing sigils in the air. They danced around him in silver light—ephemeral, wavering.
“Amrita Jaal!” he cried, and they flashed once; the air tightened around them and flickers of lightning crackled at their feet.
Dorea held her breath, eyes searching for movement, her magic leaching out of her like water through a sieve, trying to find the threat. Behind her she could imagine James and Lily and Harry racing to the Portal Room—to safety.
She prayed they made it.
They had to make it.
The silence was pierced by a sudden, high-pitched, rattling laugh that cracked through the air like static.
“I should thank you,” it said, stepping out of the thrashed foliage, covered in blood and dirt, golden eyes never wavering from them. “You made it so easy.” It smiled wide, teeth gleaming an unnatural white in the darkness. “Was it terribly reassuring? To hear your brother was coming to help you? To save you?”
Again it laughed—high and manic—and Dorea struggled not to vomit.
“So eager! So brave! And all he did was lead me right to you!”
Charlus’s eyes bulged in his face, blood dripping off his chin as he stepped forward.
“What—” His voice came out a thin rasp as he swayed on his feet. “What did you do to my brother?”
Voldemort cooed and leaned forward with a mocking grin. “There, there, poppet. He died so sweetly. Begged so...” He hummed, as if savouring the memory. “Like music.” He tilted his head and flicked his gaze to Dorea; the grin widened. “Not so his little bitch of a wife.” He tutted in disapproval, giving a short shake of his handsome, monstrous head. “She died screaming, soiled in her own fluids, begging for mercy at my hands.”
He hummed, narrowing his gaze as if considering Dorea for the first time.
“I wonder... will you weep for me, daughter of storms?”
Dorea did not answer. She drew in a slow breath that burned, her magic pulling inward like the tide.
“Shedet-Ra, Ominous—” Her wand flicked out—fast and precise—and a blinding flash seared across her vision, striking Voldemort in the face.
Time. That’s all they needed—to buy time.
“I do not fear death, creature,” she spat.
“Pralaya!” Charlus cast after her, the spell hitting like the crack of a whip across Voldemort’s chest.
It screamed, bent backward with its hands covering its face, chest split open like clay. A piercing, high-pitched wail tore through the night, making even the air shiver. Dorea gasped and clutched at her head, caught from falling by Charlus, who swayed but still stood. He didn’t have much time left; the failing wards would take him before long. It was taking all he had to keep the backlash from touching James.
The wail flowed into a laugh—a cackle—as Voldemort straightened, brushing a hand over the gash in his chest. The wound fell away like ash, leaving only a burnt hole in his suit and unmarred flesh beneath. His eyes still burned gold, his face twisted into a wide, manic grin.
“Adorable,” it purred, and walked forward.
11 PM
James felt it when his parents died.
He felt the sigh in the air around him, heard the bells and the whisper of their ancestors. He felt Her, as always, watching over his shoulder—the pale face, the woman in every dream.
He turned away from Lily and back to the house.
“James, wha—”
“Go,” he said, his wand in hand as he faced the door that led into the house.
“I—James, I can’t just—”
“I said GO!”
He shouted, and she reared back—Harry in her arms, her green eyes vivid in the dark. She nodded once, turned, and ran for the archway that led to the forest portal.
James faced the door and imagined he could feel Voldemort’s steps. Each one thudding slowly towards him. A million questions raced through his mind. How? Who had betrayed them?
Peter.
The name seared itself across his mind in a moment of blinding, painful clarity, and he almost closed his eyes at the pain of it. The betrayal.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered now. It was over—they’d been found. Voldemort was here, and his parents were dead. His aunt and uncle were dead.
Soon he would join them.
Sorry, Reg.
The thought flickered across his mind like a stray feather, and he almost laughed. He hadn’t thought of him in months. Hadn’t dared. It made sense that now, at the end, his mind would betray him too.
He thought of Sirius instead. Sirius was easier. Remus too. He hoped they would be okay. He hoped the world still had enough mercy for that. He couldn’t say he was feeling overly hopeful in this moment, however.
The door opened.
It wasn’t, James thought, a terribly dramatic entrance. There was no thunder, no crashing, no groaning. Even the sacred tree was quiet and still.
Across from him, at the very edge of his vision, he saw a pale face in the darkness. Watching. Waiting.
Not long now.
The creature that the world called Voldemort did not walk so much as glide across the stones toward him. Its body flickered at the edges—flame and shadow merged into one. Its golden robe was torn and bloody; its suit had a hole in it, though the creature itself was uninjured.
It smiled.
“And so the son becomes a man,” it said in sibilant tones. “Tell me, Mr. Potter—did you dream of becoming her master?”
James blinked.
“What?”
The creature snarled, a dark madness crashing across its features. “I know,” it hissed. “I know the secret the Potters kept so religiously. I know! I know what you have hidden from the world!”
It flicked its hand, and James barely brought up a shield in time before a wave of dark flame crashed into him, sending him hurtling across the courtyard.
“I know what you are!” Voldemort hissed as it stalked toward him.
We are not masters of Death, child, his Dadi had told him in her ancient bullfrog voice. We are the keepers of the gate. We hold the key.
“You know nothing,” he said, spitting blood as he climbed to his feet and raised his wand again.
Voldemort shouted something in no language spoken by mortal creatures, and James reacted—pulling at magic he didn’t understand—and the tree responded. The ancient, sacred tree planted nine hundred years ago by the first Potter to step onto English soil reached forward and wrapped itself around Voldemort, binding the creature to itself.
James had a single, shining moment to think—maybe he could win. Maybe he could survive this.
And then his foot slipped.
He fell to his hands and knees, his wand skittering away. His ears rang as he became deaf to the screeching cries of Voldemort fighting the Potter Tree. He looked behind him.
There was a yawning dark—a gaping hole in reality that ate at the edges of his vision. It was pulling him in.
Panic bleached his vision white as he clawed at the ground, trying to dig into the cobblestones, trying to anchor himself to reality.
He slipped further.
It’s alright.
He looked over, and in the haze of his panic he saw her—tall. Taller than the thrashing yew tree, taller than the burning roof of the Pottery. Her face was obscured by a dark hood, her eyes burning into his.
It’s alright.
No. James thought desperately, terror unlike anything he had ever felt clawing at his mind. It’s not alright. It’s not alright.
With a burning, creaking crack, Voldemort wrenched himself free of the tree and turned toward him, golden eyes blazing. He lifted his hand.
James let go.
11:30 PM
The creature called Voldemort stared at the spot in the courtyard where James Potter had been. Its head tilted gently to the side.
How very peculiar.
Leave it.
It didn’t want to. It was a mystery. It liked mysteries. Where had the Potter boy gone? It inhaled deeply through its nose.
Even the stench of him was gone.
Leave it. Only the child matters. Only the child. Find the child. Find the Child. FIND THE CHILD.
The creature screamed and laughed as its Mistress cried in its head. Like nails on a chalkboard she raked over his mind, digging in with pain and pleasure, and the creature panted with it—blood and drool spilling from its mouth as it wheeled around toward… toward…
Yes.
There.
The archway.
It inhaled again—the scent of copper and iron, sage and citrus, jasmine and green new things. The bitch was bleeding.
The child.
How delightful the child smelled.
It would so enjoy consuming it whole.
12 AM
Lily was lost.
Lily was furious.
She wheeled around in the darkened wood, her wand aloft and her son in her arms.
“Come on, you fuckin’ bastards!” she hissed into the dark.
The ground rolled beneath her, and the trees shifted and changed. Beyond the shadow of her lumos, something large and scaled moved.
She swallowed heavily.
She had tried to Apparate—nothing. Not even a flicker. She’d drained herself dry today; she barely had enough magic left to light her wand.
Despair crawled up her throat, and she swallowed it down. No. No. She was Lily fucking Prince. She would not give in. She had to… she had to.
She had to find the fucking portal.
She kept moving.
She held her son, and she did not shake, and she ignored the distant sound of laughter.
Her bandages had bled through. She could feel blood sluggishly dripping down her elbow. She ignored it.
“Come on, come on,” she prayed. She begged. She’d made every bargain she could think of in the days before now. She only hoped it was enough. It had to be enough.
Harry gurgled in her arms, and tears streaked down her face.
“Hello, pretty.”
She startled back with a yell, her shoulder slamming into a tree, and Harry began to cry.
Voldemort stepped into the light of her wand, dirty and covered in blood, smiling at her with bright, burning golden eyes.
“Those really are as creepy as I imagined,” she said — the thought having bypassed every filter she had.
The creature tilted its head at her, apparently baffled by her existence.
You and me both, buddy.
“What a curious creature,” it said, circling her like a cat. “I wonder what it will do next?”
She dropped her wand, reached into her waistband, pulled out a Smith & Wesson, aimed, and shot.
The crack echoed through the forest like thunder, and Voldemort fell backwards with a somewhat anticlimactic, muted thump.
“Huh,” she said, and Harry stopped crying.
She tucked the gun away, picked up her wand, and kept walking.
She didn’t get far.
Fucking shite, that’s an annoying laugh, was the only thing she could think as Voldemort appeared in front of her like some kind of gods-damned zombie.
“I have to give points for creativity,” it said, apparently endlessly amused by the hole knitting itself back together in its chest. “It’s been ages since someone has dared shoot me.”
It grinned at her, leaning forward and dripping black sludge onto the forest floor.
Lily breathed through her mouth and turned, putting herself between it and Harry. Her mind had gone white with fear, a desperate fury clawing up her spine as she looked at this horrible thing in front of her. Distantly she knew—in some vague, subconscious sense—that this was it.
Not for Harry, though. She’d made fucking certain of that.
“Enough of this,” the creature said, waving aside her attempts at murder as though they were a child’s tantrum. “Give me the child.”
“No.”
“Don’t be foolish; you have nothing left.” It laughed—high, mocking. “You’ve lost everything.”
“I haven’t lost him yet.”
The creature sighed, and for a single absurd moment sounded almost human. “You could live, you know. There is no call for your head. You mean nothing; you are nothing; and I need nothing from you.” It shrugged, as if being entirely reasonable. “Give the boy to me, and walk away free.”
Lily laughed in its face. “Spare me?” She laughed again—wild and bright and fucking furious. “You don’t have the power to spare me. You don’t even have the right.”
It was right, of course. Lily had nothing. No magic, a handful of apparently useless bullets, and no more allies. She was alone.
So she did something incredibly stupid.
She reached down—deep, past the dwindled light of her core—into the burning star that was her soul and her life force, and pulled. She pulled, and with all the biting fury of her heart, she cast her spell. She cast every curse she’d ever learned.
The creature, bemused and utterly without conscience, responded in kind.
It wasn’t a long duel. It wasn’t a fair one.
But in the end, Voldemort had to reattach his arm, and he’d entirely lost his golden robe and his left pant leg.
And Harry lay screaming in his mother’s arms, her body cushioning his fall.
12:30 AM
The house did not collapse.
It should have. It had been gutted by spellfire, walls scorched black, floorboards buckled and bleeding smoke. The air was heavy with ash and copper and the thin metallic ring of ruptured magic.
But it stood.
The Pottery—ancient, buried in centuries of magic and oaths—was far too stubborn to fall. It leaned against the bones of the world like a wounded animal refusing to die. Something deeper in the architecture held it together.
Grief, perhaps.
Severus Snape stepped through the remains of the front door.
He did not flinch at the heat or the soot. Or the bodies.
He had known, before he arrived, what he would find.
He moved like a wraith through the ruined home, careful and fast. His boots made no sound against the charred floorboards. His breath was low and quiet, his heartbeat a quick stutter in his veins.
He passed through the courtyard and paused—for half a breath, just a single fleeting moment—in the shadow of the twisted yew, at the place where James Potter had vanished.
Then he turned and vanished through the stone archway into the forest. The air grew heavier the further he went. It seemed as he walked that the trees themselves leaned away from him. With every step he felt dread creeping into his veins like ice.
He knew what he would find, and he was desperate not to find it.
On he went.
Around him, beyond the shadow of the leaves, he heard it—the whispers of something that should not be here. Something ancient and insane. Something wrong.
And finally, horribly, he stopped.
There stood Voldemort, holding in his pale, bloodied arms Severus’s own beloved infant son.
He did not appear to notice Severus at first. Not until the air changed. Not until the shadow reached out and eclipsed the moon, casting the Dark Lord into obscurity.
He saw her body first. Lily lay sprawled across the forest floor, close enough to the stone portal circle to touch it. Her hair fanned like flames around her, her beautiful green eyes wide and empty.
Severus’s breath caught, held, and released.
Then he spoke.
“Tomas.”
The creature turned, its golden eyes lighting upon its faithful servant with the idle interest of a satisfied cat as one pale finger traced Harry’s face.
“My faithful servant,” it said softly. “Why have you come?”
Severus stared at it, his face utterly without expression. He did not draw his wand. He did not raise his voice. When he spoke, it was in the low, clear whisper of a language older than time.
“Ashtira.”
The syllables cracked through the night—a soundless impact that pushed at the trees and the earth. Far above them, the moon went dark and the stars winked out. Beyond the clearing, at the edge of the trees where the mad, violent whispers of Chaos had lingered, a soundless scream fell into the earth.
Severus’s eyes went black—pupil and sclera—as if someone had filled them with ink and stars, an ocean of night.
The wind came through in a rattling moan, and the creature’s eyes went wide as its body began to shake.
Shadow-like limbs reached up and took Harry from its arms, carrying him back to the earth beside his mother. And from the strewn leaves came voices.
Children.
Thousands and thousands of children, all whispering, speaking in a cacophony as Voldemort stood and shook and stared at Severus as though it had never seen him before.
Then the children began to sing.
The echo of a lullaby no mother ever got to finish. The sound of names written in dirt. The music of the lost.
Voldemort shuddered violently, its golden gaze wheeling around as if searching for something.
“My mistress, my lady—” it gasped, its eyes bulging. “Why—why have you forsaken—”
Severus stepped forward and reached out a single hand to grasp Voldemort’s chin between his thumb and forefinger.
“To rayaa shodegi, gomshodegi.” He released him, and Voldemort fell to his knees. “Vengeance belongs to me, and me alone.”
The shadows rose from the earth in a wave. They did not howl. They did not shriek. They sang—softly, unbearably—like the lullabies of forgotten children who had never been sung back to sleep.
The forest sang with them.
Magic—old and unclean—spilled from the seams of the world. It was not the burning chaos of Voldemort’s choosing, wild and malformed. It was older, something that had waited patiently beneath the floorboards of reality for millennia.
Voldemort opened its mouth to speak—to cast, to command—but its voice died in its throat as the chorus drowned it out. The shadows took shape. They bled from the leaves and trees, humming with vengeance and memory. Grief given form.
Voldemort’s wand hissed to life.
Severus did not move.
Azhdaha, the great serpent that followed Voldemort everywhere, emerged from mist and burning flame. Her scales were gold and shifting, her shape coalescing from fire and smoke. Her jaws opened—lined with flame and hunger.
And Voldemort screamed.
In ecstacy and terror.
In realization.
Because it saw now—too late—that it had always only been a vessel. A tool. That in this, its final moment, its soul did not belong to it.
It belonged to the thing that made it.
Azhdaha closed her jaws, and Voldemort was consumed.
12:45 AM
Severus fell to his knees. He reached for Lily by instinct—desperate and mindless. He gathered her into his arms and pulled her to his chest.
Her eyes had not closed. Her fingers were curled still around her gun.
He pressed his face into her hair, shuddering breathes tearing from his mouth, and began to sing.
“Lala’i, lala’i... be khabe shirin boro...”
He cradled her as he had once cradled her hand in secret—like something sacred and holy.
He wept with the quiet devastation of a man who had broken his own soul to keep a promise. When at last he looked upon his son, it was with eyes that resembled shadowed pits.
Harry had not cried. Not since the moment the shadows had cradled him. He sat amidst leaves and dirt with wide green eyes, watching Severus with an artificial, glassy calm.
Severus slowly, painfully, lowered Lily to the ground and took his son into his arms.
“Pesaram... hush,” he whispered. “It is done. It is done. I have you.”
He bent his head and pressed his nose into his son’s hair and breathed. Harrison smelled of ozone and burnt sage, jasmine and moss. Severus pressed a reverent kiss to his son’s forehead and leaned back to look him over, pausing when he saw the mark—bleeding still—on the child’s head.
Like lightning. Or the roots of a tree, running from his hairline to his eyebrow.
Dread, deep and sharp, welled in Severus' heart, and he curled himself around his son like a shield—as though he could shield him bodily from anything and anyone who might ever wish to harm him. Or mark him as their own.
Fuck.
Slowly, Severus began to rock, singing quietly under his breath until Harrison was asleep again. Distantly, he was aware of the things that needed to be done. He needed to leave. He needed to get them to safety.
He couldn’t bring himself to move just yet.
And then, behind him, a branch snapped, and Severus looked up.
Dumbledore.
Late.
Always, always too late.
Severus didn’t turn, but he curled a little further around Harrison, his arms tightening as he cradled his son’s sleeping head in his hands.
“Severus—what have you done?”
He seemed confused. Which was fair, Severus supposed. He himself was confused. His mind—normally immaculate, surgical, precise—was a mess. Thoughts tumbled together in ash and dust; devastation and grief stormed through him until he shook with it.
Still he sat, and he sang, and he didn’t turn away from his son.
“Severus?”
He was closer now, standing over him—over Lily and Harrison—and some creeping sense of self-preservation crawled up Severus’s spine. He looked up.
Immediately he felt it—the moment he met those pansy-blue eyes, dim behind half-moon spectacles. The force of Dumbledore’s Legilimency slammed into him like a train.
He flinched, his arms tightening around Harrison. Reflex screamed at him to block it—to hide, to sweep away the events of the evening, to bury it all in ice and snow.
But his barriers were cracked, his mind a shambles. He was too raw, too open. He’d used too much, exposed himself to powers too old and terrifying to name.
So he did the only thing he could—the only option left to him, and the last one he would ever take in a saner moment. The mental panic button. Self-detonation.
The last resort.
He reached inward and cut loose the memory—unplugged it root and stem—and let it burn.
His mind closed in on itself like a vault, and Dumbledore reeled back with a gasp, falling beside him into the wet leaves.
They sat there for a horrible, still moment: Severus a frozen statue holding a child he could no longer confidently name, but whom instinct told him was important.
So important.
“Give me the boy, Severus.”
Severus clutched the child tighter.
“You are not well,” Dumbledore said, voice colder now. “You’ve lost your mind to grief. I’ll send for Hagrid; he will take the boy to safety. You are not to be near him again.”
The magic behind the words lashed into him, chaining him with a cold so sharp it burned. Severus didn’t scream. He didn’t flinch or let go. He held the boy and sat and shivered.
He did not answer.
In his mind, there were only ashes.
1AM
The moon had risen higher now—a blade-thin crescent, pale and clean against the dark sky. It lit the wreckage below in dim, grief-stricken light.
Sirius Black dismounted at the edge of the ruined garden. The grass was scorched. The air still stank of burnt magic and stone. His eyes, wide and pale, took it in, and he shivered.
This had been his home once. A family like and unlike his own.
Now, only silence—and the echo of something screaming—remained.
He stepped over rubble, his boots crunching through shattered tile and splinters of wood. His wand was in his hand, though he barely noticed it. His fingers itched. His mouth was dry.
He could feel it: the splintered wards pulsing outward like a wounded animal. And no Potter nearby to hear or help.
None but one.
A shape moved through the smoke ahead—broad and shaggy, towering over him like a mountain.
Hagrid.
He was curled around something: a bundle of wriggling blankets that let out the occasional plaintive cry. Relief crashed through Sirius like water over fire, and he sagged forward.
Harry.
He ran forward. “Hagrid! Thank the gods he’s alright! Give him to me.” He held out his hands expectantly.
Hagrid looked up, his face red and wet and confused. “Sirius—what’re you—?”
“He’s my godson,” Sirius said sharply, patience absent in the face of devastating loss and the low simmer of righteous fury. “I’m here to take him. Come on, we need to get him somewhere safe—”
But Hagrid didn’t move. He stood and loomed, looking somehow awkward despite his great height. In his arms, Harry stirred.
“Can’t,” Hagrid said, voice a low, regretful rumble. “Dumbledore tol’ me ter—I’m ter take him ter Hogwarts.” He nodded to himself, as if to reassure himself that this was the right course.
Sirius blinked. “What? No—no, Hagrid, look at me. I’m not the traitor—Peter was the Keeper—”
“I don’ know nothin’ abou’ that,” Hagrid said miserably, his beetle-black eyes glittering in the dim light. “I jus’ know what I were told.”
“You think I’d hurt him?”
Hagrid frowned and seemed to war with himself for a moment before shaking his great shaggy head. “I think... I think I can’ be takin’ that risk. Not with what’s left.”
Sirius stared at him, and then—slowly, deliberately—he set down his wand. His voice, when it came, was ragged and worn at the edges.
“Take the bike.”
Hagrid frowned. “What?”
“Take the bike. It’ll get you there faster. It’s charmed to fly, it’s strong enough to carry you both. Take it.”
Hagrid blinked at him, wide-eyed. “Ye sure?”
“Just get him out of here!”
Hagrid hesitated a single moment more, then nodded once, firmly. He carried Harry toward the clearing where the motorbike waited, humming faintly.
Sirius didn’t watch him go.
He stood still, staring at the remains of the house.
Then he turned on his heel and vanished into the dark.