Chapter Text
In one world, James Potter is wandless when he faces Voldemort.
In another, he’s not.
...
“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off-”
The door blasts inwards and Lily runs. She hears, distantly, over the heartbeat loud in her ears- roaring, hissing, crashes. James has always been best at transfiguration. Their ground floor will be a battlefield: transfigured animals and stone and stuffing littering the entire floor.
Maybe Petunia’s godawful vase will finally do some good, she thinks spitefully, slamming the nursery door shut behind her.
(Lily, everyone knows, is good at potions, better at charms.
What very few people know is what she’s best at: warding.)
The spells light up the door, wreathing it red and silver. It will hold, even against Voldemort, but not nearly long enough. Reinforcements won’t arrive for them. Nobody even knows where they are; which of James’ many properties they’ve chosen. With the recent losses in the Order, they’ve adopted a policy of letting the Auror Department be the first responders, at least until their ranks are thickened a little.
But none of that will help Lily save Harry. None of that will help her save James.
She holds Harry close, then deposits him behind her, into the crib.
Warding is not a skill that muggleborns are supposed to be good at. It’s built off of family books, bound in blood, and Lily’s just isn’t red enough. But Lily has brains and a wand and a tongue sharp as a razor- she’s good at warding, has an instinctive understanding of when she’s misstepped, and an even better nose for finding solutions that the original warders couldn’t understand even if they tried.
How do you beat death? She’s searched for the answer for nearly a year.
Now she knows.
Soon, Voldemort will enter. He’ll be angry; being denied anything makes him angry, and these wards will be strong enough to sting him into rage.
Lily cocks her head, listening. There’s a far cry of pain, and she shudders, hands trembling. James is hurting. She wants to go to him. She wants to magic them away, the three of them hiding somewhere else, somewhere safe and sound- but it looks like this is the end. Anti-apparition wards are hot over her shoulders, like fur coats on a muggy summer day. The floo is down. Brooms are hidden in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, because Harry’s managed to sneak his toy out from everywhere else.
The wood on the stairs creak.
She knows, then, that James is dead. Lily chokes on her grief and tightens her grip on her wand. Three times they’ve defied Voldemort, and thrice have they survived.
The end.
The door starts to glow. Lily throws some more wards up, but they’re faltering things, frail and easily batted aside. The wood bends and curves before shattering into a thousand splinters.
Lily conjures a wind that makes her lungs ache, rage and hatred hot in her limbs, and sends the splinters straight back into Voldemort’s face.
He roars, wand slashing upwards. He deflects most of them, but a few get in before he can- Lily can see the pink scars, scraping blood down one temple.
“Lily Potter,” says Voldemort, eyes glittering. “Step aside.”
“No,” Lily replies, voice overloud, shaking. She’s so fucking afraid. “Stop. Please-”
He smiles, slow and white, like a snake baring its fangs. “I’m not here for you.”
“You’re here for my son.” Lily lifts her wand higher and plants her feet in a stance that allows her to protect Harry and still keep her balance. “I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“You cannot stop me.”
She swallows.
“I can try,” says Lily Potter, before she starts dueling Voldemort.
...
Downstairs, James Potter lies in a pool of his own blood.
His glasses have gone missing. There’s a wooden leg stuck through his right thigh- the entire dinner table, lifted and dropped straight down onto him- and his wand lies just out of his grip, where it rolled away from nerveless fingers. He’s close to death; James can taste it in the air, the cold that his father described on his deathbed as peppermint leaves off Orkney’s coast. But James isn’t dead yet.
His wife and son aren’t dead either.
James can’t quite breathe, not after Voldemort slammed him into the wall three times in a row. His ribs are probably broken. His wrist is definitely broken. But James is alive.
Harry is alive. Lily is alive.
He stretches, blood slicking his fingers, a scream caught in his throat, and reaches for his wand.
...
She’s never fought like this before.
Harry is sobbing behind her. Voldemort is still alive, and strong, and Lily is quickly tiring.
Then there’s a sound from downstairs.
Voldemort’s scarlet eyes narrow. “So your husband isn’t dead yet.”
Hope, golden and terrible, unfurls down her spine. Lily reaches behind her and grips Harry’s tiny fist in her own.
“Little matter,” hisses Voldemort. “I’ll kill him after your son. I offered you peace, Lily Potter, do not forget that. But I’m tiring of this defiance.”
Tiring?
Lily laughs. “He’s alive,” she says, as if it’s an explanation.
(It is.)
...
“Bombarda,” whispers James.
...
The world teeters. Lily grabs Harry and whirls on the spot, not even waiting for the Anti-apparition wards to fall. Voldemort screams, high and piercing, and Lily changes her mind even as she turns. She knows the anti-apparition wards will fall, trusts that James hasn’t failed- but she does one thing she knows he’ll never forgive her for.
Lily doesn’t apparate away.
She apparates downstairs.
Straight to James’ side. He’s bloodsoaked, unconscious, and their home is falling apart around them. Half the ceiling caves inwards, not a foot from James’ face, and Lily shrieks, echoing Harry’s fear. Then she gets herself under control.
She apparates James- all of James, along with the table his right leg is speared under- away with her, straight to a forest she’d gone camping in, once, years and years ago, before her parents died. Harry’s screaming in one of her ears, red-faced and terrified.
Me too, bud, Lily thinks, as they land on the mossy forest growth. She bends over, bile sour in her throat. I’ve never been so scared, Harry.
Then she turns to James, and her heart stutters in her chest.
“Oh, Jimmy,” whispers Lily. His shirt is saturated with his blood, and congealed to his skin. Lily’s got some basic mediwitch training, along with the rest of the Order- Albus had insisted, and so had Madam Pomfrey- but she’s not sure how much help it’ll be with someone this pale, someone who’s lost this much blood. “What have you done to yourself?”
She puts a gentle leashing spell on Harry- it keeps him from wandering further than three meters from her, and the forest is novel enough to keep him occupied while she tends to James. But Lily doesn’t have any potions, no medicines, nothing at all save for her wand, and her hands are shaking enough that it probably make matters worse.
Her husband is bleeding out in front of her, and Lily can’t do anything about it.
You’re a witch, aren’t you? Petunia’s voice asks behind her, sharp and disdainful. Be a witch. Do witchy things.
You just dueled Voldemort, Remus points out, in his gentle, incisive fashion. You’ve got a wand that dueled him and survived four times. You’ve got a mind that did the same.
Lils, says Sirius, exasperated, teasing, warm, you’re not just good at warding things.
You’re good at creating wards.
Creating wards out of scratch. Blooming golden, impenetrable shields out of words and magic. Are wards so different from spells?
“Episkey,” says Lily, and James’ wrist rights itself with a snap.
There are times in Lily’s life when she’s survived things nobody else could have. She’s never been able to explain it; but the world disappears, and so does Lily’s fear, and all that’s left of her is something cold and intent on the task in front of her.
It’s like that now.
Everything- the forest, the sting of a shallow cut across her left arm, even Harry- disappears, replaced by someone who doesn’t flinch at her husband’s pain, who doesn’t hesitate at the stink of burned flesh, who pulls together medical texts from two-three-four-ten-years’ light reading previous, fighting to keep James alive against all odds.
It’s past dawn when Lily breaks out of the state. James isn’t exactly stable, but he’s breathing, and she’s certain that his ribs haven’t punctured his lungs. She’s vanished the table and cauterized the wound on his thigh. To fix it up further, she’ll need a proper medical textbook.
To get him stable, she’ll need blood-replenishing potions.
She swallows, now, stumbling back to sit against a tree. Her legs are starting to shake, more from exhaustion than from fear. If Lily isn’t careful she’ll go into shock herself, and she can’t afford that.
Harry. She turns and looks for him, and finds him asleep on his belly, curled against a bush. Lily slumps back. I need-
I need potions. And food.
She slowly, slowly, rises to her feet. It’s early enough in the morning that stores wouldn’t be open; Lily can break into one of them and steal some food. She’ll need to keep them safe- James can’t be moved, not until she’s got an idea of how to get his leg fixed up, not until he gets some more blood in him. Lily waves her wand at the large, broad leaves near her and strips off the bloody shirt she’s wearing, swapping it for the still-fibrous, shapeless garment she transfigured.
Seven out of ten, Miss Evans, Lily imagines, in McGonagall’s strict, slightly disappointed voice. I expected better of you.
“So did I, Professor,” she mumbles under her breath, shimmying out of her pyjamas and into a weirdly lopsided skirt. It’s fine. The new fashion’s bright colors. Lily thinks about her mother, wearing wide skirts and one-inch heels until the day she died, and has to swallow inappropriate giggles.
“Sleep well, Harry,” she whispers to him, and then to James, she presses a cold hand to his cold hand. “See you soon.”
...
Sirius’ wand lights up the street, wreathing it in shining green and gold.
“No,” he whispers, staring at the wreckage. There’s no smoke. Just empty places, where four walls and a roof had once been; where, now, there’s just a pile of bricks and wood and stuffing.
“James,” says Sirius, shaking. “James. Oh, god-”
He wades into the mess, ducking under the collapsed ceilings and shoving his way through the splintered barriers- and then Sirius stops.
He stops thinking.
He stops breathing.
There, under his boots: a dark liquid. Sirius knows what it is, even before he touches it. Blood.
A low, ragged sound is torn out of his chest. Sirius lights up his wand and stares, horrified, at the sheer amount of it. It’s sunk into the wooden floorboards. He turns in a slow circle, and Sirius wants to be sick as he sees the destruction, the things that had, not one day ago, been windows or stuffed animals or tables too big for the houses they were being forced into.
There’s a small figurine under his boot, glassy and reflective.
Sirius smashes it under his foot.
...
They come for him, the Aurors, hours too late.
Sirius goes quietly.
...
An hour later, she’s got fruit and bread, scavenged from a nearby grocery store. Lily shivers as she eats it cold- the morning is freezing, biting into her thin clothing, frightening her when she considers how fragile James’ health is- so she layers warming charms on him, and then wards around them, both physical and magical.
Her hands shake as she feeds Harry.
It hurts to leave them behind once more, but Lily cannot keep James alive without potions. And Harry would only make things more complicated.
Sirius, she thinks, even as she wards her clothes against detection. I could-
But they need to survive first, and Sirius doesn’t have potions. St. Mungo’s will be closely watched. There’s only one other place that Lily can think of which will have the sheer amount of healing potions she needs.
Hogwarts.
Harry can’t leave the circle Lily’s circumscribed around him. James is in a coma, angled to catch the sun in a few hours, as soon as it’s higher than the trees. Lily’s skin looks grey and sallow, and she’s hungry, still, likely from all the magic she’s expended. She still hasn’t slept.
She draws her wand and turns around, and apparates straight into Hogsmeade.
A few charms to change the color of her hair, her height, and her voice later- Lily sneaks into Honeydukes and into their back room. She’s got hair the color of dishwater, eyes that look more blue than green, and is short enough to make people just skim their eyes over her. Adults don’t notice children, not in a school.
It takes more effort than it should to transfigure a Hogwarts cloak, but Lily manages; there’s a yellow fringe from the leaf she transfigured it out of, but being mistaken for a Hufflepuff will only keep her profile low.
Albus would help, a voice whispers inside her head, and Lily’s seized by a terrible desire to do that- to throw herself at him and beg him to save her, save her family. He’s done it before. To know you’re alive...
Peter’s betrayed them, though. Peter went and told Voldemort, and now James is in a coma, and Harry’s spelled asleep because Lily can’t risk him being awake. If the person they trusted most could betray them- Lily won’t trust anyone else. Not until James is awake, not until she can speak to him.
Voldemort came for Harry.
He won’t be able to find them if nobody knows where they are.
That decided, Lily ducks into the secret passage and starts walking. James had showed it to her ages ago, back when he’d wanted to indulge her sweet tooth- Lily tries to forget that memory now.
It hurts in her like an abscess. It’s so difficult sometimes, to remember how young and foolish they’d been; how important it had seemed to be taken seriously by the adults, how proud Lily had been to stand in the same room as men like Caradoc Dearborn and Benjy Fenwick, women like Dorcas Meadowes.
Now, Lily’s got blood under her nails and spellfire searing her tongue.
She’s dueled Voldemort four times. She’s survived all of them.
Lily’s outlived her heroes.
...
Poppy lifts an eyebrow at the scrawny Hufflepuff who enters the Hospital wing.
“Need something?”
The girl pushes hair behind one ear and shuffles her feet. “My- my friend,” she says haltingly, “-he’s hurt. We were just throwing sparks, Madam Pomfrey!” She looks back at Poppy, eyes wide and shining. “Professor Flitwick’s just got us lifting feathers. I swear I didn’t-”
Poppy moves to her stores, waving her wand to disable the wards, even as the girl continues spewing out a long, winding story. She doesn’t remember the girl- she’s a tall one for a first year, but it does take time for even Poppy to remember names. And the girl seems excitable; the boy’s likely not even properly hurt. A little scrape, or even a sprained wrist from falling off-
“Stupefy,” Poppy hears from behind her, just as she enters her storeroom, and then she knows nothing more.
...
Lily regrets not catching Pomfrey, but there’s no time for anything more than an apologetic look at her prone form on the floor.
She takes one of the Pepper-ups and throws the glass against the ground, hard as she can manage. The glass doesn’t break- so it’s spelled unbreakable; Lily sweeps three shelves’ worth of potions into her bag, grunting as the bag becomes almost too heavy to carry.
In Godric’s Hollow, Lily’d had a bag that could have fit an entire shop’s supplies without feeling an ounce heavier.
What she has now is a bag magicked out of leaves, transfigured out of branches to give it a sturdy feel. It’s already stretched to the brim; glass shines out of its depths.
Then she sees, neatly stacked on another shelf in the corner of the storeroom: Pomfrey’s medical texts.
Featherlight charms take power, and Lily’s already nearly scraping the bottom of her magical reserves. She needs rest, needs food, needs-
I need James alive.
And for that, Lily needs medical books.
“Pondere,” says Lily, and staggers as her world goes grey for a long, breathless moment. “Oh- fuck-”
She comes back to herself on her knees, bile and blood in her mouth. Slowly, Lily levers herself upright. Her bones pop. She hisses out through her teeth, then reaches for a Pepper-up on a nearby shelf. It’s dangerous- Pepper-up makes the drinker feel more energetic, but that doesn’t mean they are. Lily’s written essays on witches and wizards burning their magic out from too much Pepper-up.
My entire life is dangerous now.
She tosses it back in two quaffs.
Steam erupts out of her ears, and her world goes as sharp and bright as it had gone grey a moment before. Then, with a defiant wave of her wand, she shrinks the texts and shoves them into her pocket.
Pomfrey is still crumpled on the ground. She’ll wake soon. Lily hefts the bag over her shoulder and drags Pomfrey inside the storeroom- she stashes her wand outside, and physically locks the door.
It’ll delay her from notifying Albus, hopefully long enough for Lily to leave Hogwarts.
The bag bulges under her hands; Lily keeps a tight grip on her wand. She can feel her charms wavering. The stick-straight hair she’s charmed is curling back into her natural waves, heavier and longer. Her shoes are pinching, because charms on inanimate objects- like her shoes- always hold for longer than charms on living things- like her feet. There’s no excuse for Lily to wear a hat, but she wishes for one, desperately, even as she trips and skids her way to the third floor corridor. She just needs to be out from under the castle, and she’ll be able to escape-
The one-eyed witch’s hump closes over her head, throwing her into sudden darkness, and Lily breathes out for the first time in too long.
Then she runs.
It’s too noisy- the glass clinks too much, echoing all along the tunnel- but she can’t stop. It’s the first time she’s given in to the ache in her muscles since Voldemort showed up.
Panic swallows her whole, red and bright.
Not tears. Lily’s hyperventilation has always been silent.
She’d once- in the library- Mulciber-
Mary Macdonald had cried so hard, years and years ago, after Mulciber had raped her. Lily had held her, and then she’d gone to the library and proceeded to have a panic attack for the first time in her life. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe, but that had been the first time it was made clear to her: it wasn’t, it isn’t, and her world will never be safe unless she makes it so. She’d been silent then, and she’s silent now; her knees bruised in the dirt, her throat clogged with all the fear that she’s only able to feel now, hours and hours after the fact.
A distant shout breaks her out of her wet-eyed trembling.
Gritting her teeth, Lily apparates.
...
“Albus,” says Minerva, one hand resting on his shoulder.
He is so tired.
“There weren’t bodies,” Albus says, quietly.
“No,” replies Minerva. “But the home- did you see-”
“Yes. I saw.”
The sun had still been red, when Albus arrived- the kind of red that, in ages past, muggles would have called an omen. The Potters’ house had always been small and neatly kept, even when they were in the middle of moving; James had never been able to accept anything less.
It is now a ruin.
“I’ve moved the Longbottoms into Hogwarts, as you asked.” Minerva hesitates. “The Aurors arrested Sirius in Godric’s Hollow this morning. He’s being moved to Azkaban as we speak.”
He lifts his head. “They were such bright children.”
Minerva steps away, one hand white-knuckled on the balcony railing. The early morning light throws her face into sharp relief. She’s not looking at Albus; when she finally does, there’s a cast to it that makes him feel stung, like flame that’s eaten through wood and emerged into open air, hotter than expected.
“They made their decisions,” she says. “Sirius- I thought he loved them. I’ve never known anyone to love another so fiercely as that boy loved James Potter. I still don’t understand-” Minerva shakes her head, like a cat confronted with a threat, like a lioness thrown into a cage, denying a truth’s very existence. “I don’t understand,” she finishes, sadly.
Albus closes his hand over hers, soft on the marble.
“We will bury them in a few days.”
He must meet with Severus, after this. That will be a difficult- and bitter- conversation, for Severus doesn’t do anything half as well as he does bitterness. And after- oh, after, there’s Remus, there’s Peter, there’s Alice, there’s Marlene- the Potters were well-loved, and that- that’s a rarity, right there, that love that burst into being around them. That kindness, that war always seemed to swallow whole, that they’d kept alive for so very long.
“I’ll be there,” says Minerva, before she walks away.
We’ve lost too much, thinks Albus, weary and cold. These wars- we always lose our best to it.
(Poppy Pomfrey comes shrieking in before he can do anything more, salt-pepper hair askew, wand gripped tight. Thieves, she cries, sparks bleeding out of the end of her wand, purple and hot enough to scorch his carpets, took my entire stock of potions- locked me inside-
They search for them, of course, but never find any more clues.)
Albus buries the Potters on a chilly winter morning, the graves just as empty as his hope, and the world continues spinning onwards.
...
James lives.
Lily shakes apart again, on the forest floor, but Harry brings her out of it- his sweet warmth, the weight that settles in her arms and refuses to be moved for anything.
“I almost lost you,” Lily whispers into his hair, flyaway spiky like his father. “I swear that won’t ever happen again, Hars. Your daddy and I are going to be right here. It’ll take more than a Dark Lord to kill us.”
Harry, one year old and proud of it, gums at her fingers. He’s got almost all his teeth, all save for the first four, so he looks like a beaver in reverse. Remus had once spent an entire afternoon warning James that Harry’s teeth would come in crooked. Those that don’t come first come crooked, he’d said, loud and flushed, and Lily had burned her fingers on the china from laughing through a spell.
Teeth’s not what that’s referring to, James had said.
His glasses had been angled, Lily remembers- the sun had been shining from behind him, and the light had caught on the corner of his frames, rainbows splayed like vines all over her walls. She’s known a lot of happiness in her life, but never the kind that came with James, that he brought with him without meaning to; that belonged to him as inextricably as his glasses or his stupid collection of deer figurines.
“Peter was never crooked,” Lily says quietly, tearing up grass that Harry inspects curiously. James is asleep- properly asleep, not in a coma- in front of her, and she’s exhausted, but it’s a kind of exhausted that’s so tired she can’t find it in herself to sleep. “He never came first, but he never tried to cheat either. I always thought he’d be good for Hufflepuff because of it. But I guess loyalty wasn’t his thing.”
She has another hour before she can safely give James another dose of blood-replenishing potion, so Lily stretches out her toes and leans back, resting her skull against the moss. Harry’s a crawling weight pressed up against the side of her stomach. They’re all alone in the world, the three of them, and as safe as she can make them.
Lily stares into the sky, sunny and too-bright for November, right up until she can see spots across her vision even when she closes her eyes.
Those deer figurines, lovingly collected, polished, protected- are gone, now.
...
Remus holds a wooden deer. James had carved it when they were twelve, young and brash and fearless, sure the world would bend to them. The night after he told Remus he knew- knew what Remus was- he’d handed Remus a piece of wood that was so crudely carved it barely suggested the shape of a deer.
It had been a promise, though Remus hadn’t known it then.
The figurine is worn smooth: softened by time, the hard edges rounded and shining. Remus hasn’t gone a day without it for almost a decade.
(In another world, Remus has a son. In another world, the tiny wooden figure’s secrets die with Remus, but the wood lives on, a loving part of Teddy Lupin’s childhood.)
In this world, Remus weeps, and salt stains the pale wood dark as night.
...
Once she thinks James can be moved without setting back his healing, Lily does, out of that forest and into another, further south.
Her father had been from Birmingham, a city boy born and true. But Lily’s mother had been from Wales- a small seaside town near Barmouth. It’s one of her oldest memories: clambering over rough stone and shale with Petunia up sheer cliffs, sleeping off the weariness in the caves, slipping and sliding in the rain.
They apparate near enough to the cliffs, but scrambling up them with a one-year old and a comatose patient is enough to make Lily tear at her hair.
In the end, she hoists Harry in one hand and directs James’s stretcher with her wand.
It doesn’t go easy.
Lily swears loudly as her wand slips in her sweaty grip. It’s the fourth time it’s happened; every single time, her heart plummets as she scrambles to keep James aloft even as her transfigured shoes and clothes stick and slide along the sandy stone. Keeping her own balance is hard enough. Juggling Harry and James and a locomotor mortis that’s just extended enough to shift her center of balance- Lily can scarcely hold it all together.
When she finally enters one of the caves, Lily sets Harry down, guides James in, and then sinks to her own knees, wobbling.
She laughs, and there’s tears in it, but she doesn’t care; Lily is alive, and all her muscles are aching, and fear is curled in her gut, and she’s never felt so alive, every inch of her singing with the life still sewn deep into her blood and bone.
You tried to kill me, she thinks, fingers deep in damp sand, hair matted with sweat and dirt, her son crawling over too-sharp stone, her husband bloodied and broken next to her. You didn’t succeed.
...
Severus doesn’t flee.
He is not a Gryffindor; bright sunlight is not his to boast of. His inheritance is a dark cottage from the wrong side of town, a name with syllables that echo like a snake’s, and a mind to sharpen his wand and hone his tongue.
(He’s lost his heart- that, at least, has been buried with Lily Evans in Godric’s Hollow’s cemetery.)
He remains in Hogwarts, in the darkness of the dungeons. Severus serves two masters and fights in a war that leaves him cold, a shell and a caricature; alive, despairing.
“I’m sorry,” says Dumbledore, and Severus hates him, viciously, like he’s never hated anything else: dizzying, all-consuming.
It isn’t courage that makes him stay. It isn’t intelligence, either- if Severus were smart, he’d flee to a hilly cabin in the middle of Asia, and never once look back.
It’s certainly not loyalty.
Self-knowledge, thinks Severus, as he restocks the infirmary with better potions than Slughorn had ever managed. I cannot live with myself if I run from the man who killed Lily, so I will remain.
Redemption, he thinks later, alone in his rooms, exhausted and bloody with the blood of others. There are sins that cannot be erased, but can be balanced.
Later, staring up at the Dark Lord’s throne, empty and pale as bone, Severus decides.
Hatred, he thinks, and lifts his wand aloft, green light blooming at the tip. I hate you, and you, and you-
Three men die under his wand that night. Severus doesn’t regret any of it.
He doesn’t know of a life other than this.
...
The cave is low enough to have seaweed strewn over the floor. Lily spends the afternoon weaving it, between tending to James and playing with Harry. It pricks at her fingers, salt pruning the skin; Lily doesn’t care. It feels good to have something to physically do.
That night, Harry falls asleep in her lap. Lily sits at the lip of the cave, cold wind blowing through her hair, watching the stars: they’re brighter than she’s ever seen them. The moon hangs full and fat over the horizon. She thinks there’s a storm on its way- when she was younger, Lily’d had the uncanny ability to know when to scramble home, getting to shelter minutes before a summer storm hit- but now, all she knows is the salt and stone and gentle wash of waves on sand, the prickle between her shoulderblades that could be from fear or from an encroaching storm or some actinic mix of both.
“Lils?”
Slowly, as if in a dream, Lily turns.
James is trying to sit up. He’s not able to- Lily’d managed to stick the bandages around his wrist to the bandages around his ribs, so half his body is practically immobile- but he’s awake, and struggling for it.
“Don’t-” Lily stands, and promptly forgets about Harry for a half-breath before her mind catches up with her body; she has to catch him and soothe him back to sleep before turning back to James, “-just lie back, there’s nothing you can-”
“Oh, fuck,” says James, slumping back onto the bed. Lily cuts herself off as his voice grows louder. “That hurts, goddamn.”
There’s a makeshift cradle in the corner of the cave that Lily built, stacking stones on top of each other and keeping it all together with a permanent sticking charm. It won’t do forever, but for a temporary bed, it’s good enough. She goes over there and deposits Harry into it, then returns to James.
Her hands are shaking, just a little.
“What hurts?”
James rolls his eyes at her. “Everything. My hand. My chest. My leg. My tongue, Lils, what happened that made my tongue burn, I don’t understand-”
“Um,” says Lily, “that might have been the blood-replenishers. Or the mix of bone-setting charms and blood-replenishers.”
“You tried to set my bones after giving me a blood replenisher?” James asks, aghast.
She flushes. “I was very worried.”
“It’s the first thing Pomfrey told us not to do!”
“I forgot.”
“It’s made people spontaneously combust!”
“I forgot, Jimmy,” Lily says, stepping closer to him, sinking to her knees and slowly rubbing a lock of his hair between her fingers. It’s soft- it’s so much softer than it looks, and Lily always forgets that until she’s got it in her hands. “There was so much happening- I forgot.” She feels her lips twitch upwards, the smile quavery. “It all worked out, though, didn’t it?”
James sighs in quiet surrender, eyes drifting closed, and she lifts his unbandaged arm to drape it over her lap, heavy and warm.
“How long?” he asks.
“Three days,” Lily replies, soft and threadbare. All of her feels soft, suddenly, with James so warm next to her, his fingers threaded through her own, his hair curling against his temples in sharp, spiky angles. Relief comes in the form of lassitude, spreading rich warmth through her limbs. “D’you remember what happened?”
“I remember someone being a really bad trick-or-treater,” says James.
She huffs a laugh and settles down, next to James, shoulder to neck, arms settled across each other’s stomachs, hips pressed together, side-to-side.
“I was scared,” Lily confesses, into the salty, sweaty side of James’ neck. “I thought you’d die- and that I’d have to teach Harry how to play Quidditch- you know how rubbish I am with brooms-”
James curls his uninjured arm up, the backs of his fingers brushing over her collarbone. “That’s the real tragedy here, isn’t it? Poor Hars, stuck with a mother who’d hide the brooms under the kitchen sink-”
“-it’s been four months, when’ll you let go of that?”
“Never,” announces James, and his eyes- those lovely, dark eyes- are bright as the stars outside when he tugs at her hair playfully. “The house is ruined now. Those poor brooms, they’ll never escape. Which means I can rag you on it forever.”
“Bastard,” says Lily, affectionately, settling closer to him.
She sleeps, and for just one night, Lily can hold her world in her arms.
For one long, lovely night, she lets herself believe she’s safe.
...
The next day, James sits up.
Lily’d left in the morning and returned with a basket of apples, stolen from a nearby orchard. She’d taken Harry with her, which is why James feels free to swear: he hadn’t lied the night before, when he told Lily that every part of him hurt.
It isn’t like he isn’t grateful. James is, which is half the fucking problem. He’s stupidly, desperately grateful that he’s alive, that he can even feel the pain, that he isn’t buried in a cemetery, just another name of the war’s casualties.
But it’s difficult.
James is the healer, among his closest friends- he learned with Sirius and Remus, because werewolves aren’t gentle with their playmates and even if they aren’t turned into werewolves in their animagus forms, the injuries they incur are transferred. There had only been so many times Pomfrey wouldn’t have asked questions, so James had- in a spurt of insight that’s regrettable only in that he hasn’t had more of them- learned as much healing as he could, sneaking books out of the Hogwarts and Potter libraries with careful cunning.
James is the healer. He’s never been the healed.
And he’d never known, intimately, how truly infuriating it was, to be unable to move, to find it painful to fucking breathe-
“James!”
“Lils?”
Lily enters, Harry balanced on her hip, a basket bumping in behind them. She hasn’t tied her hair up; it’s loose and wild around her face, and there’s such warm laughter in her eyes that James feels a smile curl at his own lips.
“The charm went awry,” she says a little breathlessly, pressing a hand over Harry’s head as the basket swings in around them like a cumbersome bludger. “I put a little too much energy into- oh, Merlin-” Lily sets Harry down and he scrambles towards James, giggling. “James, a little help would be-”
James reaches for his wand, but his fingers close on nothing. He remembers- his broken wrist, the twitch of his wand along the syllables of bombarda, fire and dust and blackness full of heat like hell’s own flames-
Amusement is extinguished like a candle.
“I can’t,” he says.
Lily turns to him. Whatever she sees in his face- it turns her quiet, and she silently removes her wand from her sleeve and waves it. The bucket clatters to the floor. James wraps one hand around Harry and stares, defiantly, angrily, at the cave floor.
He wants-
“I don’t have my wand,” says James.
“No,” agrees Lily, moving into the room cautiously. “No- I had bigger things on my mind.”
“Than my wand.”
“Like your life, James.”
His chest aches, from more than broken ribs.
“Lily-” James averts his face, before he lifts it to meet her gaze. “Lily.”
After a long moment, she seats herself on the opposite cave wall. Her thick hair doesn’t leave her looking wild and free, now, but rather small. Pale and narrow and strained, under the bravado.
“What are we doing?” James asks quietly.
“Running,” she answers.
James runs his hand through Harry’s hair, leaning down and stamping a kiss to his forehead. God, he’s so small. He used to be even smaller. And there’s a madman out there who wants to kill him, all for being born at a particular time- James is so angry-
He wants-
“Two of us,” says James. “Against an army.”
“We’re not dead yet.”
“And for how long’ll we last? Before one of them trips on us by complete accident- before- before- one of us makes a mistake! Because we will, this is why we didn’t go on the run before, this is why we decided to stay in a warded house!”
Lily folds her arms over her knees. “That plan didn’t work out, James. It isn’t like we didn’t try. He’s killed entire families, burned down houses that have lasted for centuries. Or have you forgotten what happened to the McKinnons?”
The McKinnons were known for earth magic. Their Head- a crotchety old man named Martin- had denounced Voldemort in front of the Wizengamot for destroying the old groves in the north. Three days later, James had arrived at McKinnon Cottage to see it buried: attic to basement, a mountain where before there had been only a manor.
The McKinnons had been buried alive, from the Head to the youngest child.
“I haven’t forgotten,” James says hoarsely. “But Merlin, Lily, what were you thinking when you brought us to a forest?”
“I was thinking,” says Lily, slowly, “that I couldn’t trust anyone.”
Oh, Morgana’s tits, this is-
“We have to-”
“No,” says Lily, and shakes her hair over her shoulder, eyes so bright they score him right to the heart. “No, let’s talk about that, James. Peter betrayed us. He told Voldemort, and that leaves us here.”
“He could’ve been captured-”
“Jimmy,” says Lily, sadly, “do you believe that?”
Yes, thinks James. Yes, I believe that. I loved Peter, and he loved me, and he would never-
“No,” is what comes out of his mouth, anguished and sharp-edged as a blade.
Lily doesn’t move- Harry, who’d been chewing on an apple core, abruptly throws it off to the side and starts crying at the sudden contraction of James’ arm around him- but Lily doesn’t react; she’s focused on James, and her eyes are soft, her entire face is so soft and sad and lovely, and James wants-
“You’re going to recover,” she says. “We’re going to survive, we’re going to live, and Voldemort will die before he can ever touch our son.” She sweeps forwards, hands cold as she grips his arm, their son hiccuping between them. “And nobody will stop us, James, not your friends, not my friends, not Albus, not the Order.”
“You don’t trust any of them?”
“Right now- I think we can keep this between us.”
James is a Potter.
People don’t understand- Potters aren’t like Blacks, aren’t like Malfoys. Family matters to Blacks; money matters to Malfoys. To Potters, it’s the legacy that’s important. Did you leave the world a better place than you entered it? Did you try your hardest, over and over again, at your lowest and your worst?
He’s so tired.
But there are times when he knows he’s growing up- when the world is cold, and his lungs aren’t quite large enough for his skin, and he wants nothing more than to shrink away; but his spine just doesn’t compress, his hands don’t shake, his eyes remain level- and James feels it now, in this small, wind-battered cave, his wife and son in his arms.
(There is one thing James Potter wants, desperately, stupidly, with everything that he has inside of him: to not be afraid.
He kisses Lily’s hair instead.)
“Yes,” says James. Let them come, werewolves and vampires and Death Eaters alike. There are two people here who will defy them. There are two Potters here, whose legacy is triumph. “Yes, let’s do this.”
...
Half of his face is scarred.
Voldemort does not scream, does not weep, does not falter, but-
But the Potters escaped. He knows they’re dead; there isn’t a chance for them to have survived on their own, and they haven’t reached out to any of their contacts in either the Wizarding or muggle worlds. He knows they’re dead, and he hates that their death has left a scar on him.
I will have them broken, he thinks, trailing sparks over his head- glamours following in its wake, replacing red, twisted skin with his familiar bone-pale appearance. When I take the government- when I hold this country- I will find their corpses. I will have their bodies stripped and whipped through every street of London.
“Blood will fall,” he whispers, magic eating through his vision and turning it bright as the sun. It hurts. Voldemort revels in it. “And from the impurity, Britain shall rise, stronger than ever before.”
...
Two days later, Lily goes to Diagon.
She dyes her hair black and charms her eyes brown, and wears a transfigured robe that’s more provocative than anything Lily would have worn by choice. A few sweeps of careful makeup later, her face looks decades older.
James and Harry remain behind.
It’s dangerous. Lily knows it, knows what she’s risking, but- but they need money. Gold, or pounds, whichever is necessary; and it’s all sitting in a vault in Gringotts.
Gringotts has been neutral thus far. Lily’s got hopes that it won’t change, but if the government ever falls... that’ll leave Gringotts with enough incentive to sell the information. And there are snitches everywhere.
If she’s smart enough, if she’s good enough, Lily will get access to the money.
Lily will be.
She has to be, so she will be.
“Be safe,” says James, hands warm and large on her shoulders. Lily can see the anger in him: he hates sitting quietly while anyone risks their lives, and this is worse than even hiding in Godric’s Hollow while the war rages around them. Lily lets herself slump into the warmth of his body for a long moment, and then she straightens.
“Always,” she says. “And you- stay down, stay safe. I’ll be back soon.”
“Lily-”
She kisses him. Once. Hard, teeth and noses clashing, dizzying like a slap of hot air after an evening beside a river.
Then she leans down and kisses Harry, and steps back, and lets the world resolve into a kaleidoscope of grey and green and blue.
“I love you,” mouths Lily, even as she disappears.
The crack of apparition echoes in the early morning, but Lily doesn’t flinch. She’s wearing high-heeled boots that click along the cobblestones; Lily deliberately makes the sounds as obnoxious as she can manage and strides forwards, towards Gringotts.
The people are quieter by far than when Lily first entered the Wizarding World. The shops are shuttered; people keep their heads down and their children close. It scratches something uncomfortable in her chest.
Inside-
Inside, Lily walks over to the nearest teller.
“Good morning,” she says crisply. “I’m here to open certain vaults that have recently been closed by the bank.”
“Didn’t pay the maintenance fee?” asks the goblin.
Lily bristles, cold and disdainful. Dignity all but drips from her skin. “I arrived from Switzerland,” she says. “I have taken Portkey after Portkey, and your shabby excuse of a government just told me that I had to come all the way down here to open vaults that should have necessitated a will-reading-”
“Madam,” interrupts the goblin with a poorly-hidden roll of his eyes, “what do you want?”
“Open the Potter vaults,” snaps Lily.
The goblin blinks. “Impossible. The Lord and Lady Potter have been declared dead.”
“Do I look like a necromancer? I am not refuting that.” Lily lifts her wand and swishes it down, sparks spitting out of the end, scorching the wooden table. “I am not of Potter blood, but that is not the only way to become the owner of a house, is it?”
“There hasn’t been a-”
“The magic chose me,” says Lily, with relish. “I have, here, Lily Potter’s wand. And it works for me as well as it ever did for her.”
“Madam,” says the goblin, slowly, “where did you find a Lady’s wand-”
This is the moment.
Lily lifts the wand, and brings it down so quickly, so sharply, that the world goes dark. This is a simple enough ward; but it’s got enough moving parts that it’s a delicate affair, and is esoteric enough that Lily can be sure that people inside the bank won’t immediately know of it. But most importantly: it’s impressive, enough that the goblins will stop asking questions.
The torches gutter out a moment before the stones above their heads turn invisible; Lily tilts her head up and watches the sunlight fall on Gringotts’ marble floor for the first time since the first Rebellion’s peace treaty was signed and the walls were rebuilt.
Then she turns the wand in a slow rotation, and watches the anger on the goblins’ faces turn to fear as the sunlight turns dimmer and stormclouds start to form.
(People don’t pay attention in History of Magic.
Lily hadn’t either, to be fair- but she’d read the books before and after. She knows that goblins hate sunlight. She also knows that hatred is not the same as fear.
Goblins hate sunlight.
Goblins fear rain.)
“Master goblin,” says Lily, softly, “open the vaults.”
...
It isn’t a permanent change, what she’s done to the ceiling.
But it proves her point well enough, and was only slightly more straining to do than a strong Patronus. The goblins are cowed, Lily has access to the vaults, and once she’s down there she retrieves as many of the charmed objects as she can. There won’t be any more reason for her to enter Gringotts after this- the small pouches she shoves up her sleeves will directly funnel the money needed from the vault. There are even a few wands there, and Lily takes a random handful- they’ll be helpful for James, even if they won’t ever work as well for him as his mahogany wand- and ducks out without once looking relieved or pleased.
Displeasure is a pureblood’s bread and butter. Lily leans on that heavily- lip curling, eyes narrowed, ugliness sitting on her bones just as dramatically as the makeup.
When Lily steps out of the bank, relief still doesn’t lighten her shoulders.
Until she apparates, she can’t appear relieved. Lily moves with easy grace instead, towards one of the apparition points, right up until she sees-
Two children, scrambling away from-
No, thinks Lily, wand already in hand, sprinting forwards as spellfire bursts into being in the far distance.
She knows that dark head of hair.
Bellatrix Black. No- Bellatrix Lestrange, now, because she’d married a man just as cruel as her, for all that Bellatrix is smarter by far. Lily’s faced her on the battlefield for a long time now.
(They’ve almost killed each other four times.)
“James is going to kill me,” she mutters under her breath, before picking up her skirts and running towards the screams.
...
Bellatrix is beautiful.
Lily’s not so prideful that she denies that- she knows it, like she knows that James is kind, like she knows that she loves Harry- but Bellatrix isn’t the kind of beauty that Lily’s ever known before. It’s the kind of beauty that Lily’d seen in the coal mines near her house, before she ever learned of magic: dark, deadly, ugly.
Dangerous.
“Get behind me,” she says to the two children frozen in the middle of the street. One of them is magic- Lily can feel it, tingling along her nerves, but the other looks so much like Petunia that her heart aches. They’re- both of them- crying. One of Lily’s hands drags them back, and the other slashes her wand down at Bellatrix, throwing her head over heels for all too brief a reprieve.
“Your parents?” demands Lily, still not turning towards them.
The younger girl- the magical one- says, shrilly, “They were right here!”
“The Professor said we’d be safe,” flares the older girl. “She promised. Our parents didn’t- we didn’t-”
“Tough beat,” agrees Lily, and tilts her head to one of the awnings. “Get inside, both of you, and don’t come out. If someone comes inside, smash their heads with the vases inside.”
“We’re not going to smash vases!”
“McGonagall,” hisses the Petunia-lookalike, puffing up from the force of her outrage. “She said we wouldn’t have to worry. She told us-”
Lily glances back. Bellatrix is getting up. There’s blood running down one of her cheeks, painting one side of her face red. She looks demented. She looks furious.
“Listen to me,” says Lily, quietly, kneeling down to the girls’ height. She rubs away the tears from the magicless girl’s cheek. “This world is a lot of things, but safe isn’t one of them. And you can run from it if you want, but it’ll swallow you up sooner or later. Doesn’t matter if you don’t have magic. Only way to make it safer is to make it safer yourself, and sometimes that means-”
Bellatrix’s spell splashes against the ground, exactly where Lily’s hand had been just a moment previous.
“-smashing some vases,” finishes Lily, and turns, and doesn’t look behind her as she starts dueling Bellatrix.
...
Lily’s good at dueling.
Bellatrix is better.
...
There’s blood dribbling out of her ankle.
It’s a shallow cut across her ankle, but Lily can barely walk; it must have severed tendons. Anti-apparition wards have been put up by the Death Eaters, so Lily knows nobody else is coming, not the aurors, not the Order. All she has is her own wand and wits. It’s not little; against most any other person, Lily might have bet on herself. But Bellatrix is better than Lily. She always has been.
She ducks into a side alley, trying to breathe through the pain, and throws up a few of the same wards that Voldemort had punched through. Bellatrix doesn’t have his raw power. This will last for just long enough that Lily can probably heal herself. That she can come up with a plan to-
As she peels the soaked linen from her skin, Lily has an idea.
Madness, she thinks, but she can’t deny that she can’t keep up what she’s doing. Bellatrix will just wear her down until Lily makes a fatal mistake. Lily needs an advantage that Bellatrix wouldn’t expect.
She doesn’t know who I am, thinks Lily, wildly, slowly severing the strip of cloth. So she won’t be expecting anything like our other duels.
Lily’s hidden her love of warding, of rituals, for ten years. She’s swallowed books whole, inhaled scraps of knowledge stolen from muggle historians and magical texts both. There’s only a handful of people she’d trust to know more about rituals than she does in the entire world.
Mayans? Lily shakes her head, bracing it against the stone wall behind her. No, their rituals take too much preparation. Egyptian? But Lily’s experience in Egyptian rituals come from Akhenaten’s reign, which relies on sunlight. And Lily isn’t going to rely on something that can be obscured by clouds or buildings or even a hand-
Indian rituals take their ayurvedic principles too seriously, and I have no idea which type Bellatrix is. Chinese rituals are balanced by the elements, not numbers; that’ll go badly if I don’t keep the power constant for all of them, and that’ll be all but impossible in battle. The Australians...
The Australians have a decent ritual for imprisoning people in bars of living wood. But the ritual needs singing, and Lily can’t carry a tune to save her life.
Which means that she’ll need to develop her own ritual.
Greek rituals are quite forgiving of bastardization, she thinks, and draws two runes- the second one will spit out poison if the first is deactivated. Numerically significant numbers- three, seven, thirteen- three’s the easiest to manage.
Her fingers are still red from the cloth wound around her ankle.
Lily stares at it for a long minute. She hears Bellatrix shriek, distantly, as she triggers the secondary rune, mind racing. Lily has her own blood, soaked into the fabric of her robes. She has the girl’s tears, dried salt rubbed into her skin.
Let’s do this, thinks Lily, mouth dry. Let us finish this.
A breath later, she explodes out of the alley with a flurry of spells. Straight into the main road, which is silent as a grave and larger, more space for the ritual to be executed. Bellatrix is right behind her, and they exchange more spells- not truly dangerous ones, just enough to drive the other backwards, thoughtless, more reaction than any action.
They settle, finally, into a circle: pacing slowly around each other, equidistant.
Lily drags her ankle alongside her, blood staining the sand beneath her shoes.
“I’ve never seen you before,” says Bellatrix, dark eyes alight, ferocious.
“Oh,” replies Lily, wand aloft. “You have.”
“I never forget a face.”
She throws herself into a roll and lands on the opposite end of the circle, straight at Bellatrix, ankle throbbing and heart pounding. She shields Bellatrix’s reflexive volley and grins when she sees the straight furrow she’s left behind her in the sand.
All Lily needs now is for one spell to connect. Just one.
Calor, she thinks, desperately, and the silent spell leaves her wand, powerful enough to pierce Bellatrix’s shields.
Bellatrix flinches when it connects, but when there’s no effect beyond that she starts to laugh. “Mudblood loving leaves you weak, darling.”
Her cheeks flush. Lily watches hungrily, silently. She takes two steps back, three, and Bellatrix follows with quiet, stalking grace.
“Who’re you? From the Continent? You ought to have stayed away, poor dear. Maybe than you could’ve lived to see night.”
Please, please, please-
"Any last words?” Bellatrix asks, laughing, head tipping back.
One shining, brilliant drop of sweat falls from her temple, straight into the middle of the circle.
Rituals don’t need words. All they need is intent. Desire, deep as the springs of the sea- and Lily’s never wanted anything more in that moment than she’s wanted to kill Bellatrix.
“Blood, cut against my will,” says Lily, smiling nastily, furiously, alive, alive, alive. “Tears, shed for injustice against innocents. And sweat, from cruelty unabated. Ah, Bellatrix, did you think you were getting out of this alive?”
Bellatrix’s face whitens. “What are you-”
“Theta,” says Lily. “The Greeks called it Thanatos. Do you remember who Thanatos was, Bella?”
“No,” she hisses.
“Yes,” replies Lily, stumbling back, pressing her back against the wall. She tilts her head up, to the sun, and she says, “Death.”
When she looks back, Bellatrix is dead.
...
Lily heals herself with a quick wave of her wand, gritting her teeth against the pain, and then goes to find the girls in the shop. The Alley is filling up with people once more, so Lily’s not that worried about being identified. She does take a cloak that was abandoned on the street, though, because tempting fate is never a good idea.
She doesn’t know what the girls’ parents look like, but she has a slowly-rising knowledge in the pit of her stomach-
The younger girl gives a cry when she sees a woman’s skirt, and both of them take off. Lily winces when she sees her fear was correct: the girls’ mother is dead. By avada kedavra. On their first visit to the Wizarding World.
Their father stumbles out of the dust a few minutes later and swallows the younger girl up in an embrace. Lily backs away, slowly, but then the older girl- the one who looks like Petunia- looks up at her. She’s got blue eyes, like the sky above them, and her dishwater hair is drawn back into a high ponytail. By mutual agreement, they step away from the others, towards a shadowed awning.
“They would’ve killed us, too,” she says, voice wobbling. “If you hadn’t stopped her.”
Lily closes her eyes. The ritual had hurt, somewhere behind her ribs, and it still hurts to move. Bellatrix’s blood had soaked into the sand and stone of Diagon Alley and Lily had stepped forwards, had dug through her pockets methodically, because corpses still held secrets.
“I’m not your hero,” she replies.
The girl’s jaw juts out. She’s not pretty, not at all, but she looks so incandescently angry- Lily can see Petunia in her, can’t stop seeing her sister, who hates her, who loathes Lily like Lily’s loathes murderers.
Lily’s a murderer. She has fourteen lives staining her hands.
“I hit two people with those vases. But the things they were doing-” she shivers, then looks disgusted with herself for such a reaction. “I can’t match up with that.”
“No,” agrees Lily. “You can’t.”
“Emily’s not going to leave this world,” she whispers.
“Listen- girl-” Lily feels the itch along her spine, the watchful eyes, and flinches. “We’re in the middle of a war. It isn’t always like this.”
“My name’s Irene.”
“Irene, then.” Lily sighs. “You want to know how I stopped her? Bellatrix? The lunatic who was trying to kill you? I took three things. My blood, and her sweat. And you know the third?” She puts a hand on Irene’s shoulder, feels the awkward angle of teenage bone and muscle. “Your tears.”
“’m not magic,” she says.
“Magic’s not everything,” Lily tells her. “There’s more in the world than the magic that we teach: right, and knowing you’re right, and fighting to make your world right. You’re a third of what killed Bellatrix fucking Lestrange. You and your magicless hands.”
Irene lifts her head, and she looks like she’s swallowed a star. “They killed my mum.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t do what you did.”
“Nope.” Lily sighs, seeing the distinctive flash of aurors’ robes, and steps away, towards the area where the anti-apparition wards are flickering, faltering. “But people have been trying to kill Bellatrix for years, years, and you did, at- what, fourteen? That’s not something any other kid could’ve done.”
“They,” says Irene, “killed my mum.”
Lily softens. “I know. I know, Irene. They killed my mum, too."
“Magic’s not everything.”
“Not even close,” Lily tells her.
Slowly, Irene nods. Lily moves further back, ready to disapparate, when Irene says, abruptly- “Wait- it’s- you never told me who you are.”
Lily thinks of theta, of death, of blood and salt and fear. She’s had the imprint of her wand on her palms for the past week; it hasn’t been more than a week since Voldemort stood in front of her, since Lily had been ready to die for her son. She’s never been so lonely, so tired, so-
She’s never been so fucking afraid.
But there’s a girl here, who looks like Petunia, who’s got a world at her fingertips that’s just killed her mother. She’s not looking at Lily like Lily’s a hero; she’s looking at Lily like Lily’s a shield, a sword, something solid against the danger of the world.
(This girl’s tears just killed Bellatrix Lestrange.)
I dare, she thinks, Bellatrix’s blood mixing with her own on her hands, red and damning and terrible. A black cloak, stolen, is heavy around her hair. I am a flower of beauty. I am a flower of death. And I will not hide my face from the sun.
I will not die quiet.
“Call me Thanatos,” says Lily, and apparates.