The abrasive leather of the backseat of the car scraped at Harry's face, as he laid calmly down in the back of the car. Strands of inky black hair blurred his vision, but he could still make out the figures in the front seats. "Harry, we're getting on the freeway so you need to sit properly." His mother's voice was soft and comforting, so the boy complied. After he buckled the seatbelt—now upright in his seat— he glanced outside and occasionally added remarks to the conversation. "James!" Lily laughed at his father's complete lack of direction. "This is why I get to drive the entire way home."

"Hey, I didn't agree to the entire way home." James defended, swerving into the next lane swiftly. "Why're we visiting these prudes, anyways? Come on, let's go to Sirius' instead. Right, Harry? He's the cool uncle."

"Nope. I'm not participating. I'm impartial. I refuse to piss off the woman. Never. A. Good. Idea." Harry joked, and patted his father's shoulder from the backseat.

James shrugged, giving a snarky grin towards Lily. "Okay, but I'm the one driving so I win."

"No! James!" Lily threatened, her face quickly changing. With a smirk, James looked back at the road.

There were few things Harry could remember clearly about that moment, but he clearly remember that the sky was so incredibly red that it was almost foreshadowing or warning the family. His mother didn't realize, and rummaged through the middle compartment. She looked completely peaceful, but not for long. That was where Harry's memory seemed to cutout from shock, but when his head kicked back into gear every surrounding remained vivid throughout time. Fragments of the window created a cluttered environment and one piece remained stuck in his forehead. His mother's head hit agains the dashboard with such a force that the impact cracked her skull open and blood drenched buttons. Her nose had become crooked from hitting the stick, and Harry witnessed the blood pooling in the cup holder under her nose—that now resembled the nose of an experienced hockey player. By comparison, she may have lucked out. His father was completely gone. If there's was even the smallest sound wave in the area, Harry had become entirely deaf to it.

When the paramedics pulled Harry from the car, he just stared at his mother's distancing figure, and that was when he saw the cause of his father's vanishing act. James' still body was sprawled on the concrete next to the car that had hit them. Harry could've sworn, though, that he saw one last movement of the finger, as if he was fighting to live. Soon, people swarmed around the wrangled figure, but they didn't seem to see the twitch of life.

Screams rang out, as Harry tried to get the men to release him, but they only gave sympathetic looks before forcing him into another ambulance. As he took a few last glances—some of his vision blurred due to breaks in his glasses' lenses—he desperately tried to watch to see if his father moved in the slightest.