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Before the sky ripped in half, everyone had been enjoying a peaceful afternoon by the lake.
Well, nearly everyone - Snivellus was lurking by some trees in order to talk to Evans without attracting attention from other Slytherins, and the girl clearly knew it if the pinched expression on her face was anything to go by. James felt highly tempted to go over and give the greasy-haired boy a reason to run off so Evans could get back to enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, but before making it that far, the aforementioned sky got torn apart.
And suddenly, the afternoon wasn’t so sunshine-y any more.
Coils of black fumes billowed out of a great rift, shattered chunks of polished marble and splintered gold-edged oak spitting out to slam into the ground and lake alike. Students screamed and scrambled to get out of the way, older years casting Shield Charms to try and protect themselves and the younger kids. James instinctively moved closer to the rest of the Marauders, he and Sirius merging their own Shield overhead just in time to prevent Remus from getting brained by a broken bit of wrought iron railing.
Apparently, some posh place was in the middle of getting blown up, and a truly brilliant individual thought up the bright idea of raining the resulting debris down onto Hogwarts grounds.
As the small storm of marble and metal and wood died down, smoke and sparks turned the air around the rift into a hellscape, and though he’d very much prefer to follow in the footsteps of other fleeing students, James couldn’t bring himself to leave quite yet - the trees where Evans and Snivellus had been talking were directly underneath the tear in the sky, and he couldn’t see if they’d escaped or- or- Oh, bugger.
“Prongs-!” Peter grabbed at his sleeve, but James shook him off and kept moving, trying to get to a better vantage point to look for Evans. Snivellus he couldn’t care less about, but hang it all, years of work to try and get Lily Evans to go out with him were not going to be flushed down the loo if James could help it.
He heard some muffled complaints behind him as his friends scrambled to keep up, and let a brief grin flicker across his face. Mates for life and Marauders forever, thank Merlin.
They’d just about made it halfway to the haze obscuring the trees from sight when another explosion rumbled from the rift, and an oddly bulky figure came tumbling out of it. Immediately, James and Sirius strengthened their joint Shield, with Remus adding his own layer to it as well, turning the overhead construct into a curved half-sphere of protection just as the figure landed right in front of them.
...a figure which turned out to be an adult-sized individual clutching a couple of tiny kids to his chest.
Huh.
One of the kids bobbed their head up, blinked at James, and then frowned down at the person holding them. “Hawwy,” the toddler said, reaching to presumably pat at a face James couldn’t quite see past the other kid. “Hawwy, wake upsie!”
The person lying on the ground groaned. Smoke continued to expand out of the rift in the sky, and beyond it came the sound of someone shouting Very Angrily.
James made an executive decision that small children should not be anywhere holes in reality with explosions and shouts coming through them. Just as he stepped forward, however, the person underneath the kids evidently came awake, because with sudden movement he rolled himself up and over to one side. His back, aimed towards James and the others, looked to be a right mess, with frayed holes in the jumper and burned spots and bloodstains. If the kids were in similar condition, he couldn’t tell, as the man curled over them in a protective crouch.
“POTTER!” Someone beyond the rift bellowed. James jumped.
“Bugger,” the man crouched over the kids swore. “Delphi, Teddy, stay here.” He then pulled something long and shimmery out of a battered leather pouch hanging from his belt, and James felt his heart skip a beat, because that was his invisibility cloak, what in Merlin’s name-
Sure enough, the cloth settled over the kids and what little could be seen of them to begin with promptly vanished from view. Then the man stood up, and James only got half a second to blink at the back of a mess of black hair before he took off running across the debris-riddled stretch of lakeside field and beach.
“What-” Sirius tried to say. “What?”
None of them had a chance to try to answer or even agree with his bafflement, as Something New crawled out of the rift in the sky, which promptly shivered and began to shrink in size, reducing the amount of thick black smoke coming through. Said Something dropped to the ground, the impact causing such a shake James could feel it through the soles of his boots, even a good distance away. The distorted creature sure didn’t look like it should be heavy enough to shake the ground on impact, but- James felt his skin crawl as it straightened up on extra legs, as if the magic in his veins took one look and went nope, no thank you, time to run away now. Warily studying the bloated white skin and solid red eyes and dark ragged robes dripping with an unknown substance, James felt inclined to agree.
The man who’d pulled the invisibility cloak from his pouch evidently didn’t.
James heard a shout, saw a burst of spellfire, and then the bloated thing howled as bright magic splashed against its skin, cracking and burning the rolls of white flesh. It lifted a few arms and took aim in return, forcing the mystery man to dodge blazing curses made of colors James didn’t know how to describe. He took that moment to actually follow through on his earlier executive decision, and darted forward to grab where the kids had last been.
His arms curled around small bodies, and at least one child shrieked. A small fist caught James on the chin, which, ow. He didn’t let the kicking or fussing deter him from picking them up, however, and then began backpedaling as rapidly as possible. On the lakeside, the furious battle between mystery man and unknown creature continued, neither of them thankfully noticing the semi-abduction of two small children.
Familiar hands caught James around the shoulders right as he nearly tripped, and Remus and Peter guided him back behind a particularly large chunk of shattered marble, Sirius covering them with a white-knuckled grip on his wand. “What the buggering hell do we do?” The boy asked, glancing around with wide eyes.
James could only shrug helplessly in return. They were mere fifth year students, not even in possession of their O.W.L scores yet, and the magic being launched back and forth by the lakeside looked very much to be on Dumbledore’s skill level rather than theirs.
And then a miniature sun exploded right on the mystery man’s heels, flinging him shoulders-first into a fallen tree trunk. A girl popped up from the other side of it.
Rather than simply skip a single beat, James would swear his heart stopped completely in that moment.
Lily Evans shouted something he couldn’t hear, and a meager scrap of a Shield Charm snapped into place in-between them and the creature stalking forward. It started to laugh, an ugly, choking sound, which turned into a furious hiss when a second figure stood up beside Evans.
“Snape,” the creature sneered, baring a mouth full of sharp teeth. “I’m going to enjoy tearing you to pieces."
Even from a fair distance away, James could tell both Snivellus and Evans went pale. But then the mystery man stood back up, to plant himself firmly in the creature’s path, blocking the view of the students behind him. “You will do no such thing,” he snarled, and- he didn’t have a wand, but he raised both his hands, and so did the creature, and light gathered and grew and exploded out to collide between them- and it held, like when spells from sibling-wands collided except bigger and James almost couldn’t stand to look it was so bright-
-and the bundle in his arms shifted, a small pale hand emerging to throw something that looked like a rather battered Quidditch Snitch, which went whizzing away with a speed and direct course that had to come from accidental magic-
-and it smacked straight into the side of the creature’s head.
For a split second, blood-red eyes turned to stare directly at James, shock mixed with rage mixed with an evil intent so strong it froze the breath in his throat.
And the locked spells broke apart.
Burning gold and bitter green light crashed over the creature, roaring like a thousand lions and drowning out any death scream it might’ve released. Chalk-white skin blackened and seared, extra limbs shattered and broke away, growing gashes bled ichor and magic alike - until all that remained was a sad, wretched little husk lying on the torn ground.
Merlin's buggering bollocks.
The mystery man lowered his hands, breathing heavily, and also looked to the spot where James and his friends hid. “De-” he tried to call, voice cracking. “Delphi!”
A small knee jabbed James in the gut, and he got the message. Bending down, he tried to be careful in letting go, but the kids still tumbled as they pushed themselves free and took off running across the rather worse for wear field.
Which left James holding a cloak identical to the one hidden in his school trunk back at the castle.
After a moment’s indecision, he cautiously followed the kids.
The bigger one with a mess of black curls slowed down on approach, letting the smaller toddler with dirty blonde hair careen into the kneeling man at full tilt. James would’ve sworn the bitty had brown locks, but he supposed it was a trick of the light when they first landed. As he approached, however, he could see the strands shifting in color, morphing to true blonde and then pale platinum hair, before taking on a faint pink tint. Huh.
Remus and Sirius came even with him when James stopped, a few steps away from the man hugging his kids, Peter perhaps being the most sensible of them and choosing to remain half-behind their trio. Evans and Snivellus came out from behind the tree trunk as well, watching the strangers with awe and trepidation, respectively.
“That was amazing,” Evans murmured.
The man let out a short bark of bitter laughter, face pressed into the one kid’s curls. “Desperate,” he corrected, “Desperate and stupid, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“Where’d you even come from?” James couldn’t help but ask, glancing up towards the rift- which, er, seemed to have closed up during the fight. Nothing but smoke and ash floating above them.
“Somewhere that’s not likely to still be standing by this point,” the man said cryptically, finally picking his head up, and-
Oh.
No wonder someone bellowed “Potter” earlier.
From the way his mates stiffened and Evans gasped and Snivellus gulped, James figured he wasn’t the only one to think the mystery man looked awfully familiar. He slowly blinked at all of them, green eyes flicking back and forth behind broken glasses, before slumping back against the battered tree trunk with a groan. “Well,” he sighed. “This is going to be a mess. How long do you reckon we’ve got before the professors show up?”
Not long at all, considering the sudden flare of flames off to the left, which cleared away and left Headmaster Dumbledore standing on the beach, phoenix on his shoulder and a dire expression on his face.
The smaller kid untucked their face from the mystery man’s chest, and pointed. “Hawwy! Hawwy, ‘ook! Faw’sie!”
“Yeah, Teddy, it’s Fawkes.” The man’s mouth twitched into a faint grin. “And that’s Albus Dumbledore, but you can call him Dumbly, okay?”
“Dumbly-daw,” the kid agreed.
James liked him already.