Chapter Text
Prologue: An Unusual Coincidence of Circumstance-
It was no great secret that Lily Evans hated James Potter, and that his long-running quest for her affections had been doomed from the start. His tenacity was admired, and provided an amusing spectacle for the denizens of Hogwarts, but it was widely accepted that his efforts would all be in vain and that he would eventually realize this and find another upon whom to lavish his attentions. So it came as a huge shock to absolutely everyone when James and Lily returned for their seventh year, and not only had Potter made head-boy to Lily’s head-girl by some fluke, but that the two were happily dating—having gotten together during the summer. This of course caused much head-scratching, as not even the two’s closest friends had known that they even saw each other outside of school. When asked, the two answered, with an air of an inside joke, that they had attended the same summer camp for years. So with one question answered well enough for the time being, the queries turned towards the advent of a changing of relations between the two.
“Potter’s an idiot, but he’s a good person to have at your back. And if I can trust him to watch my back, I figure I can trust him to watch my heart,” was Lily’s reply whenever she was questioned on the subject.
James was even more useless, as all anyone could get out of him was an excited exclamation that “If I’d known all it would take was a—well I would have petitioned for one years ago!” He would never give a straight answer when questioned on the abrupt shift, or what he was petitioning for exactly, not even to his closest friends, excluding Sirius, whom seemed to have an idea as to what had happened between the two, but would just shake his head when asked, “Those two have been headed this way for years, I don’t know why you’re all so caught up on the how.”
Eventually the new state of events became normal, and people stopped questioning it. Not to say that the two never fought; their shouting matches were still a sight to behold.
The year passed, everyone graduated from the safety of school into the horror of the war going on outside Hogwarts’ walls. To no one’s surprise, Lily and the four known as the Marauders were quick to join the resistance, putting up quite a fight for recent graduates. Lily and James quickly became feared on the battlefield, their crazy tactics and strategies taking the other side by surprise time and again—and when they were finally given command of a small group including Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Fabian and Gideon Prewett, and Peter Pettigrew; only the most elite Death-Eaters and Voldemort himself could stand against them. Three times their group escaped a direct confrontation with Voldemort without lasting harm.
But something went wrong. The Death-Eaters managed to ambush them, somehow knowing their plans ahead of time—Lily was hit by a spell from the wand of Bellatrix Lestrange, and vanished from the battlefield. James in his grief and fury was a fearsome sight, but the ambush had been well planned, they would not win this battle through strength. So the Prewett twins exchanged a glance and created a distraction before commanding the others to grab James and go. The others heeded their order, and at the end of the day the Prewett twins fell, taking over twenty Death-Eaters with them.
James was inconsolable for a week, before to the surprise of Sirius and Remus, two women appeared in his apartment and told him that the spell had not acted as intended: Lily was alive, but without memory or magic. They then gave him a runed dagger of silver and gold that they claimed was an early wedding gift and would restore her memories and her magic. Somehow they made the words wedding gift sound like a threat… a potent one if the way James paled was any measure. They were gone as quickly as they came, saying only that she would have sought childhood sources of comfort; leaving James with a burning determination that no reasoning could quell. He searched the world for a whisper of her, eventually hunting down her pregnant sister who admitted that if a memoryless Lily was looking for comfort, that she had probably ended up in New York near their cousin. Reluctantly she let him go without her, but told him in no uncertain terms that she better hear from Lily the moment she had her memories back.
The cousin when questioned had not seen her, but suggested she might have gone to their childhood vacation home as she’d always loved it there. At James’ insistence, she took him down to the beach where they used to vacation. To their relief, she was indeed staying there in a rented cabin and James was able to restore her memories and magic with the dagger.
However, instead of being relieved upon receiving her memories once more, Lily was highly distraught, and broke down crying for one of the rare times since James had met her. Her story slowly came out through her sobs, and James couldn’t find it in his heart to hate her for her betrayal. He was hurt, and jealous, but she had had no memories of him, and it wouldn’t have been fair to expect faithfulness from her when she couldn’t remember having a boyfriend. When she mentioned the pregnancy and just who the father had been however, he felt a great fear seize his heart. He knew that this could have disastrous and far-reaching consequences.
Yet, looking at her sobbing form, he made the decision to ignore the consequences in light of her happiness. He would take every precaution he could to keep her and by extension the child safe. Her happiness was his greatest treasure. So he soothed her, promised to raise the child as his—his heir even in blood. Nothing could change the love he had for her, much less an honest mistake made in love. He wasted no time, and as soon as her sobs stopped, got down on one knee and produced the ring he had been nervously carrying around since a month before her disappearance and asked her to do him the great honor of becoming Lady Potter. Once more Lily was in tears—but these were tears of happiness.
The new couple after promising to invite Sally to the wedding returned to Britain and war. Their wedding was a beautiful production a few months later, Lily just beginning to show. There was much teasing of the newly-weds and a small spectacle when one of the bridesmaids made a great production of turning down Sirius in a humiliating manner when he would not take no for an answer. The only other disturbance was a happy announcement from another couple that they were also expecting a child—a miracle child as the couple had been trying to conceive unsuccessfully for several years.
Life continued on, Lily and Alice beginning to take a more backseat approach in the war in deference to the growing lives they were housing. James split his attention between Lily, the war, and his research—eventually making a disturbing discovery about the Potter ancestry that conversely both further increased his fear for the child he was beginning to love as if his own and his sense that he was doing the right thing in his current course of action.
All was going as smooth as could be, but the matter of the ambush had not been forgotten, and as more and more attacks seemed to be pre-anticipated, fear began to grow of a spy within the group. Lines were drawn and accusations thrown, splintering the group and throwing off the dynamic. Sirius, with the gift passed down his line began feeling his destiny close in with a sense of impending doom and his decisions began to take on a degree of fatalism and the reckless insanity that cursed the Black line as news of his brother’s death reached them.
Finally the limbo broke with the advent of a prophecy:
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark them as his equal, but they will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…
The Longbottoms and the Potters, both expecting in July immediately went into hiding; Lily and James fearing the futility of such an action, but swearing to do all that they could so that their child would come out on top if they were indeed the subject of the prophecy. James was suddenly joined in his frantic research by Lily, and the amount they were now able to go through was staggering with all their time now free. Something however told Lily she needed to focus on the dagger she’d been gifted; and trusting her instincts, most of her research began to slant in that direction.
July finally arrived, both sides holding their breath as the dark and light both appeared to be waiting for something. On July 30 the Longbottoms gave birth to a healthy baby boy whom they named Neville Alexander. A few hours later on the 31st Lily gave birth to a girl whom she named Cressa Verena – much to the dismay of James and Sirius whom had both instantly fallen in love with the child. Lily, James, and Sirius were the only present for the birth bar the midwife, as was custom. As soon as the basic checks were complete, little Cressa was bundled into the next room where rituals were to be performed. First James completed a blood adoption, making the girl truly his as well. Then the ritual confirming Sirius as godfather was performed, transferring enough to make the girl eligible for the Black inheritance should Sirius produce no heirs of his own. Finally, to the bewilderment of the other two, Lily performed another ritual. She would answer no questions about it, and trusting her, the two men dropped it.
Months passed, Cressa and Neville grew rapidly, delighting their families. They learned their first words, took their first steps, and had their first incidents of accidental magic. But outside the happy homes the world grew steadily darker. The enemy was growing restless, impatient as they were unable to find the homes of the children. Their attacks grew more and more violent and daring as the reward for finding the families grew larger and larger.
As Samhain grew nearer, Sirius began feeling the jaws of destiny drawing closer and closer, and fearing that his increasingly reckless behavior coupled with the obviousness of his position would put one of his blood-brothers and his family in danger, urged them to take another as secret keeper. They reluctantly assented and selected the least noticeable of the blood-bound-brothers to put their trust in.
That decision proved, on October 31, to be their undoing.