FicWad

Invitation to a Beheading

Summery: A meeting with a Seer shatters the conflicted world of Lily Potter and sends her into a warpath with her husband, and consequently, with Albus Dumbledore. It is 1983 and the Wizarding World is once again descending into chaos. Alternate History. Book 1 of 3.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related franchises are the property of J.K Rowling and I do not stand to make any monetary profit from them.


Prologue

A child's shriek lingered in the air.

Lily stood leaning against the door, her eyes drooping and her hair strewn about her face in a fierce, red mess that somehow accentuated the sheer exhaustion that trembled her limbs and escaped with every weary sigh. He watched as she heaved against the door, once twice, and then finally drag herself across the room. "Oh James," she said collapsing on the bed. "This is not right. We need to get out."

Standing beside the window, James Potter silently watched his wife. There was little expression on his face, but his arms were stiff and convulsing with violent need. He watched as she mourned, twisting the sheets in her arms, wearied tears spilling out of her beautiful eyes.

"I can't stay here like this. I can't James. I can't. No more."

The air was still and bittersweet. The windows were thrown open to beguile whatever little circulation they could. James tried not to glance through the windows. The violence searing through him was unstable enough: if he glanced outside and acknowledged what he could not see, he knew it would burst.

She was spread wide open upon their bed, her arms dead and tangled up in the silken sheets, her legs carelessly propped over the edge of the bed offering dark glimpses into the recesses of her robes. Her chest heaved with her silent cries. She looked so beautiful then, so delectable with the tears spilling over her pale skin, sparking in the light of the fireplace... he had to turn away.

"...Harry looks so sick James."

A little bulge in one's arms, one head, four limbs, ten precious little fingers gripping between then along, calloused finger with a diamond ring. A loud, unformed, unfocused laugh. The soft delicate swell of the stomach.

She cried again. "Harry is sick. You haven't seen him in days, I know. You bastard."

Of course I have seen him. I can't stand to look at him. He's my son dammit! My flesh and blood. And we're killing him softly.

And once again, she broke down. Her soft cries battered against him.

It had been six months, just under six months that they had been confined to Godric's Hollow. Six months of living under the Fidelius, /safe from Voldemort /but not from each other. The first few days had been the most shocking. As the charm had erected itself the sunlight snuffed out, plunging them in sheer, complete darkness.

And Harry begun to cry.

From then on everything had begun to deteriorate. The shifty, flickering light of the torches played over the house, a dance with the shadows, withering against the walls, creating a silent, eerie atmosphere that was so very alien to them. Living in this, this... madness had slowly broken them down into a jagged mess, sharp with protuberances bloody with their squabbles. And amongst it all, Harry had begun to die.

It was a gradual decline. At first it was strange how he never seemed to grow, despite however much he ate. He began to laugh less, to wiggle a bit more weakly, to suckle for increasingly shorter lengths of time upon her breasts. Then a few months in, there was asmall patch on his forehead paler than the rest of his healthy, pink skin. And it spread, and spread... grew until the ghostly outlines of his veins seemed to be visible underneath his deathly pallor. Crying over him, one day James pronounced what they had been thinking.

"Harry is dying."

It was the first time she had ever hurt him, sent him away beaten and betrayed to fend to his injuries. It was not the last time they had hurt each other.

From then on, the threads began to wear off faster.

The days passed, filled with unease and they stared at the door wondering why nobody came.

He couldn't bare to look at his son, couldn't bare to wonder what all Harry could have done but would not do. She couldn't bare to give Harry up. She sat beside his crib, pouring over a thousand books she had taken with them. Eventually she came to aconclusion they had long divined. The Fidelius was no place to raise a kid.

You have killed us Dumbledore.

And if they left this house, it would break, shatter into a million little slivers illuminated underneath the dead sky by a flash of green.

He stood supported by the wall, staring into the nothingness above their bed, searing with barely contained violence drugged up by his thoughts about the past.

It was a while before he realized she was speaking again.

"I think /'Lumos'/helps James. He needs the sunlight, doesn't he? But I can't hold it any longer...god I feel so tired."

James closed his eyes. He'd seen her, watched her for hours while she slept, in one hand her wand alit with Lumos and the other draped over Harry, resting upon the precious bulge of his stomach. He'd wanted to go in, go in and kiss his child, kiss him till not a drop of skin was left untouched. But he didn't. He stood frozen at the doorway, watching them rest, watching them as Lily began to sweat, to twitch and convulse with magical exhaustion. The fires of the corridor threw deep shadows upon his back and the desperation inspired /Lumos /of his wife scalded him. It was madness she was killing herself over. He couldn't care less, hoping it would help his son.

"...James, can you do it please? Just for a few hours, then I'll go back to it I swear."

When had he stopped, he wondered. When had he stopped loving her to be able to watch her kill herself without a twinge of regret and compassion? He looked at her. She was wafer thin now, with dark circles beneath her eyes. Her skin had a sallow look it, and her eyes, almost perceptually bulging had a feverish sparkle to them. She was lying in a fetal position upon the bed, her legs touching the swell of her breasts, the rise and fall of her chest barely perceptible. Her voice was muffled and accusing.

"You aren't listening are you? /Bastard/."

She unfolded her body and pushed up, glaring at him. Her damp hair was stuck to her back but a few mangled curls dropped over her face. They were red as fire.

"Dammit Potter. Damn you."

Her hands roved upon the bed sheets for the wand she had dropped. She found it and pointed it straight at him.

He was faster. He brandished his wand and she flew back, her legs getting mangled with the bed sheets. She gave a loud shriek of pain as she hit the wall and dropped headfirst upon the sheets. He growled and threw both their wands away and turned towards the window, grabbing the curtains.

Outside was dark as hell. You have killed in us, Dumbledore, all that is good and holy, he thought but with not an inch of regret. Only a primal hunger to hurt.

Stashing the curtains across the window he turned towards Lily. She was crawling away from him with wild, fearful eyes that somehow intensified how innocent, how naïve, how wretched she looked.

Love, he thought, laughing. Love! It was but a memory. This imprisonment, this helplessness with her and that sick, dying child seemed to have killed all notions of love from him.

“James…”

Her voice was uncertain, unsure. He pictured her beneath him, writhing, crying, and it didn’t matter anymore.

He waved an empty hand and somehow his clothes fell from his body, shredded. Her eyes opened impossibly wild.


“Lily.”


End Notes: -

Timeline Change: Fudge says that the Fidelius Charm was cast "barely a week" before Voldemort came after the Potters. (PA10) – Lexicon

I’ve changed it to six months. Why will be revealed as the history of this world is revealed.

Mechanics change: The power of the Fidelius Charm will be diluted more and more as more and more people are Secret Keepers (DH6 ). – Lexicon

I’ve spread this to apply to inanimate resources as well. Fidelius hides a person/place to anyone unable to make the conscious process of identification: if anyone is unable to consciously acknowledge that the Potter’s were living at Godric’s Hallow, they could not bypass the charm. Hence, Air, Sunlight, Groundwater, Bacterium’s are bared from entry. This is why the charm was already weakened by letting in Air.

Done this for two reasons: One, Plot device, two: I find the Fidelius of JKR’s world a bit flawed because it does not take into consideration the inanimate, ecological factors such as the wind, the soil, and most importantly, sunlight.

Ps. I have Chapter one and two penned down. Hoping to post Chapter one soon.