Chapter 15
She had never slept so well, Lily thought as she slowly opened her eyes, her throat was a little dry and her muscles a little sore but...Tom!
She sat up abruptly and almost bumped her head against someone else's... Lily blinked several times, trying to clear the fog that was lingering in her head. Her eyes widened as she met the stranger's.
"You look awfully like me, except for the horns," she blurted out before blushing.
She was in her room and Abaxas was there too, "How are you feeling, Lily?" He asked quietly.
She shrugged, "Like someone who faked their death? Honestly, I feel fine. How is Tom? Has he..." She couldn't bear to even imagine that he hadn't survived.
The Malfoy Lord sighed, "He's stable, still in a coma, mending a soul broken into five pieces takes time."
Lily exhaled in relief, "Good, and me? How long have I been asleep?"
"Just a day, you had a nasty cut on your arm, but otherwise you are well. Now tell me, how did you survive the killing curse?" He looked at her intensely.
She giggled. "Oh, nothing fancy. I conjured a pane of glass. I know the Avada Kedavra can pass through any shield, but not a solid object, so it hit the glass instead. Then I broke the necklace in my hand and let the draught enter my bloodstream. Abraxas stared at her in disbelief. "What? Did Dumbledore tell you it was the power of love and friendship? No, it was just glass." She giggled at his expression.
"Well, it worked anyway," he said with a smile, "Now, may I present Eadha Viridian, she needs to talk to you, so I'll leave you two alone."
Lily nodded, "Alright, thank you."
Abraxas beamed, looking much younger all of a sudden, she thought: "It is I who thank you, Lily."
As he closed the door behind him, she turned her attention to the elf, Eadha, "So are we related?"
The woman nodded, "Indeed, decades ago my brother decided he wanted to explore the world, it was the first time since we were hidden that one of us wanted to leave. It caused much grief and anger, but we accepted it and he left, never to return".
Lily struggled to wrap her head around it, "OK, your brother, I'm sure I don't remember a grandfather or great-grandfather with horns, and you don't look a day over thirty".
Eadha's lips didn't even twitch, "We live much longer than other beings and it's not very complicated to hide our distinctive features."
She felt deeply uncomfortable. "Ah, I see, and your brother is where in my family tree?" She only knew her father's grandfather, and he died when she was two, and she was the spitting image of her mother.
"He's the father of your mother's father," she said matter-of-factly.
"Okay. So you are my great grand aunt" Silence "Why am I the only one with magic?"
Eadha spoke again in her blank voice, "It's one of the reasons why our kind almost disappeared, our genes usually go dormant when not mated with another member of our kind, we theorised that yours woke up and became active for some reason."
Lily frowned, "This genetic peculiarity could lead to severe consanguinity, no?"
She nodded again, "Yes, if our lifespans weren't so long and our fertility so low, Arden and I were separated by thirty-three years."
She gasped in surprise, "What is your life expectancy?"
"A little over six or seven hundred years, our eldest is 842 years old," she said as if that wasn't a startling piece of information.
Lily felt a shiver run down her spine, "I'm not going to live that long, am I?"
The elf shook her head negatively, "No, you're only part elf."
"Ah. And how did you learn of my existence?" Because now that she thought about it... Eadha couldn't have learned everything about her, searched for her family, discovered her connection to her brother between the time Abraxas brought her here and now. They knew before.
Her new-found family member replied, "A prophecy has been spoken of a girl who carries our blood without being one of us, that she will lead our people back to the light if we follow her.
Realisation dawned on her and she felt her throat dry up, "So this prophecy is an old one? Or a recent one...?"
Eadha shook her again, "No, it was prophesied on the 31st of January 1960, according to your calendar.
Lily sighed, "The day I was born. Well, I have a feeling you don't like me very much, so I won't keep you any longer, thank you for the explanations"
The woman's expression seemed to crack a little before she regained her composure, "Our eldest has offered you a place among us. If you wish to enter our world, find the oldest tree in the forest, it will let you pass."
"Why should I go there?" She asked, confused.
"You have Fae-elven blood, you have a natural affinity with one or two elements, we can help you work your elemental magic. It is a magic that only you among the Wix possess" It would explain her quick mastery of Fiendfyre.
Lily nodded, "I'll think about it, thank you."
Eadha started for the exit, but then turned back to Lily "I hated my brother for leaving us and dying like a human”
The red-haired witch smiled, "Okay, I understand, but I am not your brother.
The elf left without another word and Lily fell onto her back.
She finally knew why Voldemort was so fascinated with her.
- - - ✦ - - -
"Why not just kill him?" Narcissa angrily paced the veranda, looking very unlike herself, pale and her hair unkempt.
Abraxas took a deep breath, "I want to talk to Tom first, I have an idea of what to do for his political career, but first I need Dumbledore for something else".
"What could he possibly be useful for?" Lucius said as he rolled his eyes, "He's completely lost it, he kept Mr Lupin in a cell with silver bars. And Dumbledore made no Horcruxes."
"Tom needs closure, he will decide what to do with Dumbledore," the couple nodded, too exhausted to argue any further.
"We need to deal with the dead now," Abraxas sighed.
His son looked thoughtful, "You're right, I think we should wait for our Lord to wake up first, if he really wants to put Voldemort behind him, we could spin a story where Dumbledore and Voldemort killed each other... the Order member being the victim."
"There would be no victims on our side?" Narcissa countered.
Lucius and Abraxas looked at each other and his son asked, "I don't think Flint and Urquhart's wives have reported their husbands' deaths yet? It was what, three days ago that he killed them?"
Narcissa nodded, "Yes, and I could manage to fake the date of their deaths to fit the timeline"
"We can also add Araminta," Abraxas explained absently.
Lucius gulped, "She's dead?"
He nodded "Indeed, I found her dead in her bed this morning, pity" Probably a courtesy from Tom before the attack.
The three of them exchanged glances before grinning.
- - - ✦ - - -
His whole body was on fire, he felt as if white-hot blades were cutting him into tiny pieces. Then his whole body froze, as if each piece of him was stuck in an iceberg. Finally, his body fell, as if it were made of air and each piece merged with the others.
He woke with a gasp, clutching his chest where he felt a searing pain, exhaling painfully, he looked around.
He was in his quarters at Malfoy Manor and judging by the light coming from the windows, it was around midday.
Slowly he got out of bed, his whole body felt strange, like he was a newborn in an adult body, he stopped when he saw his reflection in the mirror, he wasn't wearing his glamour.
But he looked perfectly normal. Pale, gaunt, ashen, hollow but otherwise normal, his hair no longer falling out, his eyes their natural brown shade.
Tom gulped, a huge, overwhelming terror washed over him and he fell to his knees, his Horcruxes gone. He shivered in the middle of the room, he was mortal, he could die, now, in a minute, in an hour, tomorrow, his life could end with every passing second.
He felt his emotions thundering between his fragile Occlumency shield, but he didn't let them break. The last time he had a panic attack was right before his first Horcrux, he wasn't going to start again.
He stumbled out of the suffocating room, walked through the corridors and found every room empty, and that's when it hit him.
Lily was dead.
He almost fell in the middle of the veranda as he remembered what had happened. Tom headed for the dungeons, hoping that Abraxas - if he was still alive, he fought back his panic - had put the intruders in the cells.
When he saw Dumbledore leaning against the bars, his brain short-circuited and he frantically grabbed him by the collar, "Why did you kill her? WHY?"
His old professor blinked, "I... She jumped, Tom, I didn't want to kill her.
"BUT YOU DID!" he shouted, feeling the pain in his chest come back.
"You really do love her," Dumbledore whispered. Tom froze and let go of the old man's collar.
"What?" He breathed, almost as if afraid to speak.
Dumbledore rose to his feet, now towering over him, "Abraxas Malfoy told me that you made Horcruxes, Lily's death apparently made you feel remorseful enough to reabsorb them"
Tom almost snorted, Abraxas, sneaky old man, of course he told Albus Dumbledore about his Horcruxes, now there was no way he was going to make another one... unless he killed Dumbledore and his minions. No, Dumbledore was more useful alive than dead for the time being.
He remained on the floor, his back to the stone of the dungeon, "He was right, and now she is dead and I am whole. My mind has never been so clear, it's too clear." He couldn't stop babbling now that he had started, "Do you remember, Dumbledore, how you've always watched me since the day you met me, how you've tried to see, I don't know, the monster that was in me. I spent all my school years thinking that at any moment Albus Dumbledore would call the Auror because I sneezed louder than most people," Silence only replied, "The first day I met you I was terrified, not only because you set fire to my wardrobe, but because the week before Mrs Cole had decided to perform an exorcism on me, and for Mrs Cole a successful exorcism is one that makes people bleed, because all sins are in the blood. All of which is to say that you saw me as a deranged, sociopathic child, when in fact I was just terrified that you were going to hurt me. For when you first met me, Albus Dumbledore, no one had ever been kind to me... and you were no different".
He didn't want to look at Dumbledore, so he just went on: "How was I supposed to become something other than what people saw in me? And don't start with 'we are defined by our choices', but what do you do when you feel you have no choice? I was the product of my father's rape, the devil's child of the Wool orphanage, and to Albus Dumbledore, the most influential wizard in Europe, I was the next Dark Lord".
This time he looked at Dumbledore who, to his surprise, was crying softly, "You ruined me, you only saw my potential for evil and of course I had to use it" It felt freeing to say these things to this man.
"And Lily saw your potential for good," Dumbledore said softly.
Tom took a deep breath, got to his feet and said, "Don't say her name".
He was heading for the stairs to leave the dungeons when Dumbledore called to him, "I'm very sorry, Tom"
He did not answer him.
He began to walk aimlessly down the corridor, stopping only to cast a tempus to check the date, his eyes widening as he saw that he had spent two weeks in a coma. He had probably missed Lily's funeral. A lump formed in his throat.
When he reached the veranda, still deserted, he saw Lily's favourite sofa, her blanket still on it, and the book she had been reading, it was a Muggle book, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
He let himself fall onto the sofa, his head in the pillows, he could still smell her perfume, citrus, he loved citrus.
Lily had been so fiery, so bright, even when his control over his mind was slipping, she still somehow grounded him, she was an equal in magic as well as in mind...
"Oh, you're awake!"
His mind froze. He slowly raised his head, taking in a great deal of inspiration before facing the owner of the voice.
Lily was here, wearing a dirty brown jumpsuit, with small cuts on her fingers that indicated she had been gardening.
His breath caught and he spoke very slowly, "I saw you being struck with an Avada. How are you standing here before me? Am I starting to hallucinate? Am I dying?"
She snorted, "Wow, here I thought you were dramatic with your soul torn into five pieces, but when you're whole it's a whole new level," she lost her grin, "I'm warning you, you're going to be angry. But it was for your sake, because we care about you."
His hand twitched "Spit it out"
"I faked my death, it was Abraxas' idea and I agreed, I took a draught of the Living Death, conjured some glass for the curse and it gave the illusion that I was struck by the Avada so that you would feel remorse for my death," she spoke extremely fast, a sheepish look on her face.
He took a deep breath, "Run Lily, just run and tell Abraxas to run as well" He rose to his feet, "No, you know what, stay here" Before she could react he hugged her so tightly he could hear her bones cracking and when he released her just as she began to relax he whispered, "Now you can run.
She scrambled away as he began to cast stinging spells at her back "Stop it! We saved you! You were going mad!" She shouted as she left the porch to flee into the gardens.
"It's you that's driving me mad, Evans!" He shouted as he chased after her tickling charm.
She quickly led him to the flower bed she was working on, and apparently everyone had decided that gardening was the new family activity.
"Merlin's beard, Tom!" Abraxas exclaimed with a bright smile.
He glared at him, "Lily told me all about your little plan".
His old friend smiled, "I see, it worked well apparently, now stop sulking and help us, it is such a wonderful activity, gardening..."
- - - ✦ - - -
Lily was slowly finishing her dessert, reading a book about healing with poisonous plants, when the Malfoy family indicated they were going to sleep, she nodded absently.
It was only after a few minutes of silence that she realised Voldemort was still there, looking at her intensely. "What?"
"Nothing" He continued to read the newspapers from the last two weeks.
She raised an eyebrow and said in a clipped tone, "By the way, I don't know if Abraxas told you about the situation with the elves, but I'm going to join them for a while to train my elemental magic. That's what you wanted, right?" She had spoken to Abraxas about it, and he had assured her that no one knew why Voldemort had insisted on her being on their side, which had comforted her a little.
Tom's expression seemed to crumple a little, she had never noticed how eerie his face and aura had been when his soul was torn, now he was more expressive, more human. "I...yes, this is what I intended."
“You could have told me” She whispered “How did you know who I was ?”
He puts down the newspaper and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking back at her, "I have someone who works as the Unspeakable and I asked him to look at the prophecies that are stored there, it is quite a task but one day he came to see me, a prophecy with my name and yours had appeared," he paused, "Only those affected by a prophecy can hear it. We managed to get me into the Hall of Prophecy so I could hear it. To my surprise, it wasn't really about me, but about you and an ancient and forgotten people. I later learned that the prophecy had been spoken by one of them, so I thought that if I could convince you to join me willingly, then I would have won the war; the elves are immensely powerful and just having their support is a huge advantage”
Lily nodded, suppressing the pain in her chest and smiled weakly, "Ah, that's why you recruited me yourself and trained me personally... .... Well, I'm leaving tomorrow, so I'm going to bed. I need to rest," she quickly got to her feet and scrambled away.