Evacuation is a skill every young magical child in England learns, normally by four.

When dawn cracks, his sharp ear picks up the sirens immediately.

Soon the sirens are swallowed by howls. Ear-rupturing howls of missiles, packed with enchantments, striking the earth in a collusion of dark magic and nuclear energy that happens when the worst of two worlds align.

The howls tear everything. Sky, air, ground. Skin, blood, bone.

Al Potter is a cockroach shuffling its way out of a rapid extermination. Down on all limbs: a mind in a machine, fingernails ravage dirt as though they were made for it, stout legs kicking as his scrawny form claws its way through the tunnel imbedded beneath their house—once a haven, now a cemetery.

Silent tears stream down dirtied cheeks. Inside his chest remains a mangled, unpunctured wound.

James, Lily, he wants to bleed out. Mum.

X

The only emotion worth feeling now is relief. At being alive. At all his limbs still attached to his body.

"I'm up here, son!"

At his ears, still functioning properly, still able to hear the gravel in his living father's voice.

The only emotion left now is relief. All others are dead.

Shoving his disordered head through the burrowed opening, eyes scan what little remains of Godric's Hollow, seared broken houses and half-melted metal domes—shelters, failed—that were built by the Ministry in case something like this happened. A childhood gone up in smoke. At last he makes out a silhouette.

Dad.

Little thighs quake, charred from flame, as he squeezes himself out of the dirthole. Then it's a blind dash. Blood pulses at his temples while lungs desperately seek air. Vision wobbles from the bumps in the cauterized terrain, or maybe from the tears, he isn't sure, but he can't stop. Legs surge one after the other, arms spread. He can't stop.

Not until he's caught in a tight, protective embrace.

X

Teeth rattling, he lays for a long time, curled into the form of his father, a thin embryonic blanket enveloping them both. It is dark. They are somewhere the sun doesn't exist, underground, maybe, with no heat and the small light at the end of a wand. Of his father's two palms, one is nestled against his scalp, pressing him close, steady; the other is clasped to a miniature hourglass that is beaded around their necks.

"Oh Albus," comes a sob. "Hold on to me."

"Ok."

"I'm serious, don't let go until we're there."

"Ok Dad."

"I love you Albus."

"I love you too Dad."

"Ok. I'll see you soon."