A/N: Not sure what's gotten into me today, but I had an idea…and I don't know if it has been done by anyone before, but I guess we'll see. And I'm in the mood to write, so what the heck? Another WIP. Lily/James/Harry and as I love playing with time travel, I thought I'd play with it in the HP universe. If it sucks, let me know, and I promise not to continue. If it doesn't, let me know, and I'll keep going. In any case, happy reading!

Chapter 1:

"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi."

They never left. He watched their reflections, smiling at him, and they never left.

It was so far from the truth of things.

Harry studied every minute detail of their faces. His mother's shining eyes and the deep hazel of his father's hidden behind slim, square glasses. He had been staring at them forever and yet he still felt compelled to reach out and touch the red-haired woman's soft, smiling face. He didn't really know what was stopping him either, as his fist clenched briefly at his side. They were young—Harry had never dreamt them so young, but their faces carried none of those soft creases that came with age.

Of course, if they were alive now, they would look a little different, Harry thought to himself. More like adults, maybe Harry would even have a little brother or sister. Or both.

Mere months ago, his parents had died in a car accident. It was unremarkable, simple and unforgiving, but there it was. And it demanded nothing of him.

But that hadn't been the way it went at all. A car accident didn't kill Lily and James Potter, a car accident couldn't have killed Lily and James Potter. Because they were a witch and a wizard and they died because they stepped in front of him, and looked Lord Voldemort in the eye, and took the certain death meant for him…for him.

He tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes, but it didn't stop him from stepping closer still to the mirror and pressing his hands against it like it could somehow give way and he could fall into the embrace of his mother, feel his father's hand on his shoulder the way it lay comforting on his wife's right now.

"I know you didn't want to leave me," Harry whispered solemnly, feeling more and more as if the figures looking back at him weren't just shadows or wishful impressions. He was suddenly filled with a sorry thought that made him look at his hands still resting on the cold glass, guilt welling up at the bottom of his stomach. "I'm sorry that you thought you had to."

One of the most disappointing things that Harry learned about the magical world was that they still couldn't raise their dead. His life was entirely transformed, and yet he was still a shadow in this mirror, looking at parents he had never really known. It seemed so instinctively unfair, like receiving a large box on Christmas morning to only find something you didn't ask for and don't really like (though Harry wasn't a real expert on Christmas presents).

Carried away in his thoughts, he knew he must have been imagining it, but when he had the courage to look up at his parents again, he thought he saw a change in them. A darkening in his father's eyes and a disconcerting tilt in his mother's head, like she wanted him to take those last words back, his assertion that maybe they didn't have to die.

But he was imagining it. Because Lily Potter couldn't think anything anymore. Nor could his father ever be angry or disturbed again. At least not here before him, in this stupid mirror that showed him just what he wanted to see.

Because they were gone. Whether they were in the Muggle Heaven that Aunt Petunia and Mrs. Figg talked about or just buried in the ground, they were not with him. And for a glimmer of a moment, Harry wished that he could be with them, wherever they were.

And that glimmer of a moment became a shameful, but persistent thought as Harry stared up at his parents. And his hands burned on the glass, making him feel oddly like drifting off to sleep.

"It does not do well to dwell on dreams."

And then there was nothing more to want or wish for.

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She may not have liked him, but Lily Evans did have to admit that she didn't mind having James Potter around when strange things happened. The bloke was pretty good in a crisis (that is, when he wasn't busy being the cause of said crisis).

And Lily had to say, she would consider bodies that came tumbling out of nowhere in the early morning to be a proper crisis.

Of course, she also had to wonder why he always had to be around when the trouble started. It made her very suspicious.

"Hexing first-years for kicks now, Potter?" she asked sharply as she knelt next to the fallen young boy. "Merlin, what happened?"

When Lily had rushed to the side of the fallen presumable-student, James Potter wasn't far behind, and he blanched even as he towered over her and the victim, looking for all the world truly indignant. "Aw, come off it, Evans. You know you can't blame me for this when we were just having a nice chat all the way over there."

Lily conceded his point with a slight raise of her eyebrows as she gently turned the boy over and checked for his pulse with two fingers. "I wouldn't consider rejecting you for the fifty-third time to be 'chatting' with you… He's alive." She peered in to the boy's face, frowning as she mulled over the features. "Have you ever seen him before?" There was something very familiar about this young boy, but she knew she hadn't seen him before… if for nothing but the fact that there was an obvious, lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. That was hardly something that she would miss in a new student, especially as a prefect when it was her job to keep track of the younger students.

"I dunno, maybe he's not a Gryffindor…? We best get him to the Hospital Wing," James said and Lily glanced up to see him looking genuinely concerned in a way that made her heart jump a little. These were the moments when she didn't think he was half-bad. "Mobilicorpus." The small, limp body lifted off the ground and floated weightlessly ahead of them as they headed up to the castle.

"You know," James said conversationally after a moment, "there's a good chance that this wasn't an accident…whatever happened to him."

Lily glared over at him, some of her positive feelings washing away a bit. "I never thought it was. It's never harmless when one of the younger years turns up unconscious outside at the crack of dawn. Something must've gone wrong."

"I mean it could have been those sodding Slytherins prepping for their Death Eater duties. Rosier or Mulciber or Avery…Snivellus."

Lily ignored the brief pang in her chest to acknowledge the truth in James' words. If this boy was a Muggle-born, well…then they would know. When the war heated up in the Wizarding World, it also seemed to intensify within the castle walls. It wasn't uncommon to see Gryffindors dueling Slytherins in the corridors or various "purities" of blood turning up in the Hospital Wing. Lily tried not to stereotype, but it wasn't too hard to see where the Dark Magic was coming from. She couldn't imagine what Hogwarts would be like next year when it was already this bad. And she knew that there was a target on her back.

And that target wasn't lost on James Potter, either. The git continually insisted on walking her to class or found excuses to accompany to the library, the lake, even tried to go on patrol with her once (though she quickly hexed the urge right out of him). Lily had made it clear that she didn't need his help, she could take care of herself, and she didn't want him inflicting his needless company upon her, but James Potter could never pass up a chance for heroics…or the chance to jinx a Slytherin…or the chance to go on and on about how much he fancied her and how much she should fancy him.

In any case, though she didn't fight unless provoked, she had to admit that she and James were getting pretty good at dueling as a team. There was a strange fluidity to their actions and it was true that the Death Eater-initiates had begun to lay off of her a little more. But Potter still drove her mental and she really didn't want his help. Especially since it made all of her friends (and everyone else in the god-forsaken school!) fairly insufferable the way they drooled over James and his chivalrous attitude, talking about how they wished that they could all have a bloke like Potter who was so singularly devoted and handsome and talented.

Well, they could have him if they wanted, because she sure didn't. Even if he ever did manage to make his ridiculous hair lay flat.

While they were certainly friendlier than they had been in years past, other things had changed as well. Things that prevented her from ever saying "yes" when he asked her out.

James cast a glance over a his red-headed companion, and then shrugged, not expecting her to answer his speculation anyway. A thread of guilt surged through him for suggesting Snape's involvement. It was a definitive sore spot for her and had been since the summer at the end of their fifth year.

Mudblood.

He often wondered what would have happened if he and Sirius hadn't set themselves on Snape that afternoon. Would Snivellus have ever uttered the word wrenched from him in humiliation…directed it at Lily? Would they still be mates, continuing to baffle each other's closest friends?

Guilt told him 'yes'. Practicality and logic told him 'no'.

Eventually, something had to break with a friendship so fundamentally opposed. But every now and then, James was sorry that Lily saw him as the one who broke it.

Both entrenched in their own minds, they were quite startled when their young passenger twitched and blinked his eyes.

"Blimey!" James muttered and Lily gasped softly and lost her focus on the spell, causing the boy to drop unceremoniously to the ground.

He cried out in pained surprise and Lily immediately dropped to her knees beside him, putting a hand on his forehead. "Oh, bloody hell, I'm so sorry! I'm not used to people just…waking up when I'm floating them like that—not that I do it very often, but—are you alright?!"

The boy rubbed the back of his dark, mussed head (now where have I seen that before? Lily would have rolled her eyes if the timing had been more appropriate) and fully opened his startlingly green eyes as he sat up, steadier than Lily assumed him to be. "I'm…" The boy trailed off as he got a good look at the young woman kneeling next to him. "I'm…"

It was then that James decided to move into the boy's field of vision with a lopsided smile. "Don't worry, mate. Evans is an old pro at rendering the male species speechless with her glowing presence. C'mon Evans, give the little bloke some room to catch his breath."

Lily was supposed to snap back with some sharp retort, but for reasons unbeknownst to James, she merely scooted back a few inches, saying nothing, still looking into the mirror of this young boy's eyes. A moment later, she blinked and said, "I'm Lily."

Immediately, the boy nodded, still looking dazed. "I …I know…" And then, as quickly as he had spoken, his mouth dropped back open like a fish rooting for water, glancing between his two rescuers. "I mean…I mean, where am I?"

Lily and James exchanged another concerned glance that was not lost on the object of their concern. Though he seemed disoriented, there was also a strange mix of panic and…was it eagerness? "Er…am I dead? Is this Heaven?"

After a moment of bewildered silence, Lily's face finally smoothed over and she responded matter-of-factly. "Of course not. Trust me, if it was, he wouldn't be here." She jerked her thumb back at James, who spluttered with indignation.

The boy looked more than a little startled at that, and Lily sighed. He was so young, and there was an acute possibility that something had happened to him. Maybe he was attacked or, at the very least, lost. "Do you know how you got here…?" She realized that she hadn't even asked him his name, but he got the hint.

"Harry," he said. The sudden numbness in his expression made her worry that she had upset him somehow. "And I don't know… I think, I think I…"

Lily took his hand, hoping to quell his disoriented rambling. "Okay, okay, just—what do you last remember? Can you tell us that?"

Now James knelt next to them, his usually jocular expression sobering. "Were you attacked?"

The boy—Harry—swallowed. "I was…Dumbledore was with me. He was there."

"Dumbledore?" James said, not looking particularly like he believed the younger boy. "Right. Were you attacked?"

But again, Harry gave no real answer. He was looking between them, his attention shifting back and forth as if he couldn't believe his eyes. It both unnerved Lily and sharpened her observation. She really looked at him for the first time since they found him lying on the ground.

Relieved to look away from Harry's scrutiny, she turned to James. "What is he, your cousin or something?"

"Huh?"

She sighed. "Forget it." She didn't know how she didn't notice the resemblance immediately. Perhaps because this boy didn't seem nearly as smarmy as his elder lookalike. But Harry looked nearly exactly like the James Potter whom Lily had met on the train in her first year, but a gentler and more soulful version. Apparently, they even shared a visual impairment, she thought, noting the round glasses. But different eyes. Completely different.

"What happened to your forehead?" James asked and Lily subtly smacked him on the shin. She had seen the scar as well, but she was too polite to say anything. It didn't look fresh enough to have any connection with this incident, and it might have some terrible memory attached to it.

She did have to admit though, it was strange, that scar. Very definitively lightning-shaped. Like his head had literally cracked. At James' words, Harry clamped a hand over the peculiar disfigurement and pulled out of his wordless daze. "It's still there?"

And now James was looking at the boy like he had quite lost his mind. "Er…yeah?"

"It's all right," Lily said. "You don't have to talk about it. We need to figure out what happened to you." She released his hand, quite forgetting that she had been holding it all this time, though Harry hadn't seemed to mind. She stood and brushed off her robes. "I think you need the Hospital Wing—"

"No! I mean…I'm fine." Harry protested, panic creeping once again into his voice. "You're not going, are you?"

"Well no," Lily said, taken aback. "We can't just leave you here. Are you sure you don't need to be checked out? You seem a little confused."

"I'm fine," Harry insisted. "I—Is Professor Dumbledore here…now?"

"O'course," James said. "He's the Headmaster, isn't he?" James held out a hand to help Harry up, but Harry opted to push himself to his feet, stumbling just slightly backward.

"I'm fine," he said to Lily, who flicked her hand out reflexively when she saw him wobble. "Could you just…stay…and take me to Professor Dumbledore?"

"I dunno…" James was rubbing the back of his hair again. "You reckon Dumbledore's awake?"

"We'll take you," Lily said firmly, grabbing the young boy's hand again and pulling him towards the castle. She didn't bother to answer James. Crazy old geniuses struck Lily as the type to get an early start. And if he wasn't awake, well… this was important.

And the panic in Harry's voice. She didn't like it at all. In fact, it made her feel a little anxious herself.