#masksofmickey

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 cold not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face.

Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother...

Lily: Any news?

Lily: Brilliant! See you upstairs?

James: I’ll join you in a second love...

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. 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 ...

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

The green light filled the cramped hallway...

It lit the pram pushed against the wall... it made the banisters glow like lighting 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.

She threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead...

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, thedestruction 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 -- 

 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 screaming...

but far away...far away...

Godric’s Hollow, December 24th. 1997 

“Do you think they’d be in there Hermione? My mum and dad...?”

“Yeah...I think they would.”

And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending?

 He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating and alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them...

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

“This is where they died, Hermione... “

“...This is where he murdered them.”

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives.

Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse.