Chapter Text
The town of Salisbury was engulfed in a thick fog.
It had been so for more than two days. No matter how the winds blew, or what the weather forecast on the radio said (the local weatherman Timothy Smith’s voice grew more and more high-pitched as each night passed, with the poor man insisting that the weather for Wiltshire during the end of July was, in fact, supposed to be clear and sunny with a light breeze.
Most people living in Salisbury at the time never bothered much with the weather, but they were now beginning to get upset with the weather station’s continuous mistakes. The postbox in front of the Smith house, filled to the brim with angry letters, proved so.
But what the people never realised, and what even poor Mr Smith never came to know, was that he was right. The weather was indeed clear and sunny with a light breeze, in all parts of Wiltshire. All except Salisbury. Because of magic.
Magic that had been devised by dozens of people dressed in cloaks of black to cover the town in the impenetrable fog, and in doing so, avoided the non-magic folk from seeing several people practically popping into existence on the sides of roads throughout the day and night. These people were witches and wizards, and their large mass had come for one purpose: to observe a birth, or rather, two.
At the corner of the last street in Salisbury, there stood a withered old iron gate that led to nothing at all, opening back out onto the next street. But what the non-magic folk saw was merely an illusion. In reality, the gate was made of pure black iron, polished to perfection, and they opened on their own to a magnificent garden covered in exotic plants and flowers. Pale white peacocks patrolled the hedges, squawking loudly to each other whenever a new arrival came through the gate.
At the end of the garden, following a central fountain shaped like a twisted snake, stood a massive, handsome manor house. Black with a green tiled roof, silver gargoyles sitting on the ledge caught the few rays of sunlight that slipped through the thick fog, making them shine like false gold.
Under the gargoyles, inside the room with the most of the magical group, at the centre of them all stood two men, both pacing the floor in different directions. One man was tall and thin, with a pair of round horn-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his slim nose, with a head of shaggy jet-black hair. The other was shorter but dressed in a far more regal manner, with a long silver-topped cane swinging by his side and his black satin cloak trailing behind him like a tail. He had a pale face with pointed cheekbones, and his long pale blond hair was tied in a neat ponytail. His eyes, cold and grey, kept glancing at two things: the door to a room adjacent to theirs, and the hazel brown eyes of his fellow pacer.
Finally, the man with grey eyes stopped, and so did his partner. They turned to face each other, a few feet apart, and both smiled.
“Well, James,” started Lucius Malfoy. “It would appear that our children are not quite ready to enter the world just yet.” He chuckled at his own joke.
James Potter merely nodded, nervousness visible in every inch of his body, and said, “Indeed, Lucius. One might almost think they’re doing it on purpose. But perhaps it is for the-”
And here, he stopped himself. Or rather, he did just before Lucius’s cane came swinging down on the inch of carpet before James’s left foot with a muffled whack. All chatter in the room that had been going on stopped, and all present stared at Lucius and James, waiting to see what would happen.
“Were you going to suggest,” whispered Lucius, slowly pulling out a sleek and small length of wand from his cane, “That the Dark Lord must be proven wrong, James? That he must not be allowed to have his way?”
“No, of course not,” protested James, backing slowly from Lucius, right hand reaching into his robe pockets for his own wand. “Why would you-”
He stopped then, for he saw that Lucius’s eyes were welling up with tears. The man refused to blink, afraid to even let a single drop out, but James understood perfectly. The fear, excitement and anxiety that were knotted together in an ugly embrace within the minds and hearts of the two men. For they knew what was to be the fate of their firstborn if they were-
At that moment, an elderly lady dressed in the lime-green robes of a Healer, entered the room. The sound of her steps on the thick carpet, though muffled, cut through the quiet of the room like a knife. Every witch and wizard turned to look at her, eyes searching her face for an answer.
“Congratulations, Mr Malfoy. Your wife has had a beautiful baby girl, whom she has given the name Dracona,” she proclaimed in an announcement to the room.
James thought he imagined it when he heard the Healer tell Lucius: the wizard’s face had appeared crestfallen, almost defeated for a moment, before immediately returning to their cool, calculating mould.
“As for you, Mr Potter, you and Mrs Potter are now the parents of a healthy baby boy. His name, your wife said, is Harry.”
Lucius noted how the Healer had called James’s newborn son healthy, but had not said the same of his daughter. He made a mental note to check on the baby as soon as he was able to.
But he was distracted when he saw the expression on James’s face. James stood still as a lamppost, only his eyes moving rapidly as though trying to understand what he had heard, figuring it out, and having a response. Yet, at the end of the whole ordeal, all he could muster was a weak-sounding “Oh,” before nearly sinking to the ground. Lucius caught him in time, offering him his cane, before quietly saying, “You know what needs to be done, Potter.”
James wanted to protest. He wanted to resist, to refuse, but he knew there was no way he would be able to, not when he was surrounded by the most powerful and bloodthirsty Death Eaters of their time. He had come too far, seen and done too much to have any chance of leaving safely with his family.
He just had to hope that his research would pay off in time….
“James,” said Lucius, in a tone softer than any he had ever used while previously talking to him. “You know what He will do once he finds out about your reluctance to obey him. You must be the one to call him. Please,” and here Lucius grabbed James’s hands in frustration, “Do it or we will all suffer!” He seemed on the verge of tears again.
James quietly looked at Lucius, and quietly nodded. He knew too, all too well. The consequences of defying Lord Voldemort.
Slowly, James raised his left arm, pulling back the sleeve to expose the Dark Mark burned into the skin of his inner forearm: a great snake passing through the cracks and openings of a human skull, coiling around it with open fangs.
With his right index finger, James Potter touched the skull, and the world grew loud with the sound of cold, harsh laughter, coming closer and closer to him….
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