He came like an oncoming storm (Book 1 of the Stigma of the Wind series)

Chapter 1: Prologue

"Avada Kedavra"

And the world went white.

"'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than to have never loved at all."

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Lily Potter woke up. It was no slow process but a sudden awakening. Bile rose in her throat, her stomach was cramping. She started coughing up not only her last meal but blood as well. After what seemed like hours, her body stopped shaking and finally let her have a breath. Nauseated she banished her stomach's contents and the blood, sinking to the ground. She lay there for a few short moments, gathering herself before she sat up again, looking around.

The room was in ruins. Broken wood and debris everywhere, it seemed like the roof had caved in, miraculously missing her and the crib. The crib! Voldemort! Her precious babies!

Her nausea must have been forgotten somewhere between "crib" and "Voldemort", because she jumped up, leaping towards the crib. There they were, both pairs of eyes looking up at her. Daniel's warm leaf green eyes were teary, he must have been terribly afraid. There was a cut that started on the back of his nose and ran over his cheek, another, much thinner cut started on the right side of Daniel's forehead, cutting his right eyebrow in half, running over his eyelid (where the cut had run over the eye the iris bled red) and continuing towards his jaw, meeting with the first cut right above the cheekbone.

There were several other, jaggy cuts across Daniel's face and neck, none of them were lethal or even life-threatening, all of them were on his right side. As an aspiring healer, Lily knew that most of them had come from a splintered curse, however, she also knew how to make them vanish. Soon enough, all cuts but the crossed ones on Daniel's face were gone. The thin-cut over the eye had been inserted with most of the dark curse, some of the foreign magic bleeding into the other cut that had been created by a wayward piece of wood. Unfortunately, she could not make the "X"-shaped scar on her son's face disappear, the dark magic being too strong for her to overcome. She could simply close the wounds and numb the pain.

Harry looked much calmer than Daniel. He sat to his brother's right. Lily stopped. She knew of the prophecy, though Dumbledore had been very vague about its content... If her gut instinct did not betray her, Voldemort had come tonight to kill one of her precious babies. The thought alone let her shudder, on a rational basis she may have even understood the Dark Lord's reasoning, but these were her babies, no one not even some all-powerful Dark Lord HURT! HER! BABY-BOYS! She grasped them both tightly, whispering assurances in their ears, telling them that this would never happen again. Never! Not on her watch, not ever!

Daniel tangled his chubby little fingers in her hair, slowly falling into sleep. Harry stayed awake, looking at her with turquoise eyes that slowly dimmed to jade again. Lily took a blanket from the crib, wrapping Daniel in it, and sat him into her lap. She took Harry up by the armpits looking at him. He had sat at his brother's right side, the side the curse splinters had come from. A bleeding cut, brimming with dark magic – and something else, something even more dangerous – was on his forehead, covered by his unruly fringe. With great care, as to not hurt her baby, she brushed the dark bangs aside, revealing a lightning bolt-shaped wound on her younger son's forehead. Or at least, that was what most amateurs would have thought. Lily however had graduated at the top of her "Ancient-Runes" class and knew that the cut was not a lightning bolt, but a "Sigel" or "Sol" rune, a rune that usually meant "s". The rune itself had been abused by the Germans during Hitler's regime. But originally it symbolised "victory". A small smile grazed the witch's features. Her little boy had been faced with He-who-must-not-be-named and won. Not only that, he still must have had enough magic left to protect her and Daniel from the crashing roof. A sad look overtook her features, Harry had even tried to warn them about Peter's betrayal...