Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Summary: An unwanted mistake, Harry grows up relying on only himself until his adoption by a magical widow who recognises his parentage for what it really is. Taught the manners, politics and manipulations of high pure-blooded wizarding circles Harry learns to mask and hone his darkness and intelligence swiftly. Deciding to attend Hogwarts Harry chooses to keep a low profile, wishing to escape notice and instead learn and observe those around him. But with the resurrection of Lord Voldemort and his half brothers involvement in his sixth year everything is about to change. As Voldemort begins to spread his influence across Europe Harry's carefully cultivated persona in Britain will begin to unravel as past secrets are found out, Dumbledore becomes interested, tempers flare and Harry's true self it allowed free reign as the only way of surviving the threatening politics of both sides of the war. Only able to rely on himself Harry must dance with the dangerously handsome Dark Lord and the Lord of the Light while dealing with the unfolding secrets of a past and family better left forgotten.

SLASH HP/LV

It was late. The only light in the skinny corridor came from a lone candle lantern fixed high in the ceiling. That tiny flame could hardly fill the space with light and she knew this. It was why she had chosen this part of the house to think. The shadows swallowed her form and allowed her to hide in a way the damning rays of light never could.

The silence was suddenly broken by a desperate and loud gasp from breath followed by the sound of a muffled sob. The beautiful red-headed witch quickly clamped one of her shaking, pale white hands across her mouth and the other around her waist with bruising force.

"Lily?" Unmistakably male, the distant call began increasing in volume the closer its owner moved towards the silently crying woman.

Knowing she hadn't much time to compose herself Lily let her hands fall to her side and forced herself to breathe deeply in an effort to slow her breaths and stifle her tears.

"Lily?" The voice was closer now and she knew that the man had only the small flight of steps to climb before he entered her sanctuary.

"Breathe, Lily. Just breathe." She murmured to herself before straightening her back and opening her mouth to answer the man.

"Where do you suppose your Mummy is Prongslet?" The man's playful question followed by a baby's squeal of happiness made the woman go rigid and her carefully cultivated expression to crumble. It had been so long since she had heard that loving tone within his voice.

"Upstairs? You think so huh? Well, who am I to ignore the great insight of such a little genius!" The man laughed theatrically before a loud creak was heard from as the man was climbed the stairs.

Lily quickly raised her wand and erased all evidence of her breakdown, her red and puffy eyes were now gone along with the greyish hue of her skin. Still, even magic couldn't put the fire back in her emerald eyes.

"Lily?" The man's voice was softer now as he stood not three meters from her yet totally unaware of her presence. Lily took the time to study the man. Handsome. She smiled sadly. Black Potter hair sat messily covered his head while hazel eyes eyed the hypnotic morphing of the abundant shadows warily.

The babe looked like his Father primarily but he had her red hair and straighter nose.

Swallowing past the lump in her throat Lily forced herself to leave the shadows comforting embrace, "I'm here James." She spoke quietly.

The man in front of her gave her appearing figure a sharp and searching look, the intelligence in his eyes quite dominant at that moment.

The pair stood in silence ignoring the happy gurgling of their child as the stared at one another.

"Something you wish to tell me Lily?" James asked calmly his eyes watching for any sudden tension or nerves.

Lily lifted her chin. "Are Sirius, Remus and Peter still here?"

"Of course." He answered.

Lily took a deep, shuddering breath and watched with joy as some concern melted back into those hazel eyes. "Once they leave and Landon's asleep...if you wouldn't mind." She said, and the formal politeness in those words caused her to wince in pain.

She and James had been having some problems recently.

The man nodded silently and turned on his heel to begin his decent. His foot paused on the first step and Lily could only wait stoically in hopeful agony for the man she loved to speak.

"Are you joining us?"

Her breath hitched.

"...Do you want me to?"

It was the unexpected and totally unfamiliar timid voice, more than anything, which made him look in her direction. Silence dragged as he waited for her to raise her eyes and when she did he saw the self-loathing, unbearable guilt and misery shining in her orbs and in what felt like forever he was able to look at her without the ice and fire clawing painfully at his belly.

"...James?..." he watched his normally fiery wife whisper his name brokenly, her emotionless mask unsustainable.

"...Yes." He said softly before turning around and climbing down the stairs without once looking at her face.

They were in James's study. His friends had left an hour ago. Landon; their son, had finally fallen asleep half an hour ago and they had been sitting in silence with only the sporadic pop and sizzle of the blazing fire beside them for the last twenty.

Lily felt nauseous.

It could have been from the devastatingly awkward dinner she had experienced, there was a large possibility that was the reason. She clenched her eyes shut and pressed a closed fist against her stomach. But something told her that wasn't why.

"What is it you wanted Lily?" James said, his voice held no emotion and she knew that if he could have borne to look at her that his eyes would have been ice cold.

She opened her mouth to speak but ended up closing it again when she couldn't think of the words.

She drank in the handsome sight of her husband greedily from where she sat, "...James," his name was a plea in and of itself. She knew what she wanted to say. Of course she did. Lily just couldn't bring herself to utter the words.

"What do you want from me?!" James suddenly snapped fury and bitterness coating his words.

Despite his intimidating tone Lily felt her hope swell, his anger was better than the ice cold indifference and disgust he had been treating her with for two months now.

"I-I don't know." Liar. She wrung her hands nervously in her lap ignoring the increasing rolling of her stomach. "I know it's impossible..." She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, "but I want what we had back again."

James was suddenly out of his chair and pacing furiously, hazel eyes flashing intensely.

"Fuck..." He swore explosively to himself before rounding on her exhausted form, "why Lily! WHY did you do it?!"

"I don't know!" She cried pathetically. But she did know. She knew only too well why she cheated on James.

"I can't even look at you!" James yelled at his miserable wife, "...knowing that you gave yourself to another man, while almost unbearable, I think I could live with it...but the result! it just...FUCK!"

"I do love you..."Lily whispered.

James seemed to deflate. Looking at his wife he knew that he still loved her. In a way he wasn't that surprised when she told him, and she had. Lily had told him about her affair herself. What he didn't understand was why...sure he hadn't been around much but he knew Lily...she loved him. He had known the girl since she had been eleven.

"Were you forced?" James asked without emotion.

For a split second Lily considered saying yes but shook her head. She would never be able to get away with it.

"Tricked?"

"In a way." She murmured.

James's brow twitched. "What do you mean?"

Lily shrugged. It wouldn't help her case.

"Do you love him?"

"No!"

James watched her response carefully, watched the shocked widening of her eyes and the abhorrence darken the green.

James sighed. She wouldn't tell him anything. Who the man was. Why she did it. How long their affair was for. If there a reason at all. Nothing!

"Do you regret it?" He finally asked.

Lily looked at her husband and thought about her son sleeping upstairs and realised he needed an answer to this, and there was only one which he would accept.

"Yes."

She could see him struggling and relented a bit. "James. There was a reason I did what I did. It was not because I was in love with him or hold even the slightest ounce of affection for the man. This-this...thing...growing inside of me repulses me because of what it represents." Lily continued.

James shook his head his hazel eyes glowing with hatred as they settled on his wife's belly.

"I can't raise it Lily. I refuse to."

Despite her earlier words Lily still felt her stomach drop. Her hand covered her stomach almost protectively before she realised what she was doing and felt disgust for her subconscious thoughts.

"James. I love you...but I have to know, can you forgive me?" It was blunt but she needed the answer.

James looked into her eyes and knew he was still in love with her, as he always had been.

She had a reason. It kept echoing in his mind.

He leant forward and kissed her smooth, plump lips for the first time in over two months.

"I forgive you." He whispered.

Lily launched herself at him wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and burying her face into his neck as she started crying.

James smiled slightly as he stroked the beautiful woman's hair, waiting patiently as she calmed down. When her sobs had disappeared and her shaking stopped James narrowed his eyes and spoke into the silence.

"I will not abide the child Lily."

He felt her stiffen slightly before nodding mutely against his neck in agreement.

"As soon as it's born I'll put it up for adoption."She said.

His jaw clenched.

"No."

All of James Potter's anger and bitterness at her betrayal had shifted onto the child growing within his wife. It was the problem. It's absence the solution.

Lily pulled back to look at her husband in question.

"It will be as if this child was never carried by you Lily. We tell no one of your pregnancy. No one." James dictated and Lily swallowed past her unease knowing that this was the only way to get her family back, her husband and son...her only son. "I will pay a qualified witch to birth the thing and then I will obliviate her. You will not name the child. It will be given to an orphanage of acceptable distance from here. No one will know, pregnancy's can be hidden. I want it to be like this child never existed."

James wouldn't budge. He had a cruel streak and though she knew that it was wrong to view the child as the root and cause of the problem she couldn't help but be thankful that his mind had divided it in such a way. Thinking about it, it would be best if her pregnancy was never known and the child disappeared into obscurity. He would never know. And she would never have to face her mistake again.

"Yes James. I think that would be best." She agreed quietly.

Feeling him relax with her words Lily desperately wanted to prove to him that he had made the right decision by taking her back again. Turning her head slightly she pressed a light kiss to his neck and the hollow at the base of his ear. Ignoring the voice in her head that told her that she also wanted the distraction from the guilt she refused to acknowledge, Lily bit down on his earlobe gently enjoying the way his muscles had tensed again and his breath was speeding up.

Slowly kissing her way across his jaw Lily finally pressed a soft kiss to his lips at the exact same moment she pressed her right hip against his arousal. James groaned against his wife's lips and brought his hands to settle around her waist. When Lily had thrown herself into his arms earlier it had resulted with Lily sitting across his lap on the floor, a position he desperately wanted to change. Still passionately lip-locked James silently urged his wife to move, his hands directing her as she slowly lifted her hips and shifted so that her legs were now on either side of him. Deliberately she rocked forward against James, her movement creating a delicious friction. Ripping their mouths apart James began to unbutton the simple white blouse she wore kissing his way further down as the beautiful red-head continued her torturously slow rocking above him.

Suddenly, between feverish kisses and heated skin James's movements halted abruptly.

"James?" Lily asked a little short of breath and trying to clear the lust from her thoughts.

James, for his part, was staring at the slight bump on Lily's normally flat stomach with an unreadable expression. His hands still held the last button he had yet to undo in his grasp but his eyes refused to lift from the spot.

Lily flushed and slowly climbed off of James buttoning her shirt closed as quickly as she could.

"How many months along are you?" He asked quietly.

Lily chanced a glance and sighed in relief when she recognised that James wasn't looking at her in revulsion but...she glanced down and swiftly slid the last button closed.

"Three months." She answered quietly.

James ran his hand through his hair and gracefully rose to his feet.

"Can you disguise it now?" He asked.

Lily frowned in confusion. There was nobody around to see.

"I-I can't make love to you Lills when it's right in front of me. I just can't." He explained.

Somehow, that comment made her feel worse than any of the others did and she didn't know why. She hated seeing the bump herself when she looked in the mirror. It was understandable; how James felt. She nodded once and cast the glamour on herself, surprised when James was there immediately kissing her passionately with little abandon.

Later, as James slept peacefully beside her Lily rose from the bed pulling on a dressing gown to cover her obvious nakedness and padded to the bathroom. There, in the protection of her own company, Lily faced the mirror and took down the glamour. Staring at the tiny bump she allowed herself this one moment to feel the inevitable love she felt for the baby, allowed herself to realise its innocence in all of this.

Sighing, Lily turned around and flicked her wand turning the light off before making her way back to her room. Pulling the covers aside she slid into the bed's warmth and closed her eyes to the world, letting the bitterness, manipulations and lie's the child was conceived in wash over her again.

She recast the glamour then turned on her side and cuddled up to James smiling as his arms snaked around her slim figure and pulled her closer to his chest.

.....................................(6 MONTHS LATER)..................................................................

"Ahhh!" Lily screamed in pain as the mediwitch urged her to push harder.

"I can see its head love! It shouldn't be long now. Just concentrate on pushing and seeing your adorable baby for the first time." The middle aged woman encouraged warmly.

"Keep your comments to yourself, Madame; no-one here wants to hear them." James snarled, the woman's words did nothing but increase his hatred for the thing.

The mediwitch drew back at the words; highly offended. "My word..." she gasped.

"Just get on with it!" James snapped impatiently.

Lily tried desperately to keep her mind on the actual delivery but her thoughts were swirling in a confused mess. She wouldn't even get to meet the child. She sobbed as another contraction hit, whether it was from the pain in her body or her thoughts she didn't know anymore.

"That's it sweetie, almost there...and, yes!" A baby's cry broke through as the mediwitch cut the umbilical cord and beamed down at the child.

"It's a boy!" She sang happily to the beautiful, exhausted witch on the bed before turning towards the man in the corner.

"Would you like to hold your son sir?" she asked gently, sure that the man's earlier unkindness was just due to worry and anxiety for his wife and child.

The man's expression became thunderous, "It is not my child!" he hissed and pointed his wand at the woman intent on obliviating her.

"James! The baby, be careful!" Lily cried out.

James glared at his wife warningly, his tolerance at an end for the day.

"Do you want to do this Lily? You told me you held nothing but hatred for the child, now we can get rid of it and get on with our lives. That is what you wanted, is it not?"

Lily was stumped for a moment before she slowly nodded. "Yes. Yes, this is what I want."

"What is going...?!" The kind mediwitch's words were cut short as James brutally erased her memories of the child, ripping the newborn babe roughly from her cradling embrace.

Lily opened her mouth to protest but swiftly shut it again and forcibly turned her eyes to the window, unwilling to watch as her husband apparated away with her son.

The middle aged witch blinked stupidly before she looked at her surroundings in confusion.

"Good Merlin! Where on earth am I? Miss? Miss..." But Lily ignored her questions; too busy justifying her actions to herself to pay the distressed woman any heed.

"Just take it. I want nothing to do with the thing ever again." James grimaced as he handed the silent babe to the young woman who had answered the orphanage's door.

"What? B-but...excuse me, you can't just... Sir, sir!" The twenty three year old woman called frantically after the man but as she rounded the corner he had disappeared around there was no sign of him anywhere.

"God..." She shifted the still silent child into a better position eyeing the empty streets nervously, "what am I going to do with you?" She said to the baby softly.

A gasp escaped her as she glimpsed the most enchanting pair of emerald eyes she had ever seen blinking back at her. Recovering from her shock she smiled at the beautiful child softly.

"My, aren't you a gorgeous fellow." She laughed.

Slowly, Megan began to walk back towards the orphanage hunched over the tiny figure protectively.

"Such a stunning person must have an equally captivating name, no?" She laughed delightedly, she had never named anyone before, "I think...Hadrian will serve you well little one, Hadrian Walker."

"Is it done?"

"I don't want to talk about that, it's behind us. In fact, I feel like doing something that doesn't involve any talking."

"James..."

"Enough Lily. It's over now; let's just get on with our lives. It's just you, me and Landon."

"...Exactly what I wanted."

"And you say the man simply put him in your arms and left Megan?"

"Yep, said he wanted nothing to do with the child."

"Well he can't stay here, there isn't any room."

"Where will he go then?"

"No need to be distressed child. I have a friend who runs an orphanage not far from here; in London, I'm sure they have room the child."

"What? Mr Shields? Isn't...well...I haven't always heard great things about Blackborne Mrs Phillips."

"Nonsense child, those are simply ugly rumours, no truth whatsoever. He will be well looked after."

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