PROLOGUE
Lily sits in her prison cell, her home for the past ten years, and thinks to herself how mad it is that she hasn’t gone completely crazy yet. Ten years in dull, grey, pristine-looking rooms that were actually very dirty, because the cleaners barely bothered to consider that prisoners too needed good hygiene to keep themselves alive. Perhaps they wanted them dead. A lot of people didn’t want prisoners to get the treatment they got. They wanted worse.
Thinking of it, Lily isn’t completely sure about the not going crazy part. Perhaps she was crazy from the start. From the second she first walked into the grounds of Hogwarts, and maybe crazy even before that. When she sat in her room during high school and started to memorise Shakespeare, when she had plays of her own where the only audience was her ears listening to her voice playing all the characters, and the few times she got to participate in small plays at her local theatre. Had she not been crazy from the start, she wouldn’t have been where she is now. Sitting on her small prison-bed with a hard mattress, and staring into the wall. Yet, she felt no regrets.
Suddenly, while deep in thought, the door of her cell opens and reveals one of the guards at the prison. He nods at her, but she offers nothing but her glare. She hated everyone who worked at that prison. Especially the guards.
“You have a visitor. Detective Moody,” the guard says.
Okay, so Lily doesn’t hate everyone at the prison. She makes an exception for Alastor Moody. Sure, he got on her nerves sometimes, but she definitely got on his nerves too. Especially when she was in one of those moods where she speaks like reciting Shakespeare could be a first language. So she nods, stands up, and lets the guard cuff her hands.
The guard takes her through the halls she’d walked through many times before. When going to court, when getting interrogated, when Sirius visited her, when Moody visited her. Most of the time, it was to lead her to the same small room, where the walls were windows with guards both inside and outside, and where there were two blue plastic-chairs and a white table.
Moody was already seated in one of the chairs, leaning backwards and drinking a coffee. Black. No sugar. Lily could see it. His drink of choice depended on what he was expecting from her. If it had some sugar, it was a normal day. If it was tea, he felt soft and was most likely there just to chat, because Lily usually didn’t have anyone to have a normal conversation with, except for him and Sirius. Black coffee with no sugar, however, meant that he expected Lily to be a stubborn and annoying piece of shit. To be fair, she usually was.
Moody turns around when he hears the door open, and gives Lily a slight smile and a nod. “Lily.”
“Moody.” Lily is taken to the second chair, and the guard cuffs her hands to the table. The guard moves away from her, and to the other guards standing outside, and she finally relaxes into the chair. Sometimes she wanted to laugh, because they treated her like she was dangerous. She wasn’t, she knew that very well herself. Had they looked past the crimes, they would’ve seen the person. The person isn’t dangerous.
“How are you doing?” Moody asks, looking at her and then taking a sip from his coffee.
“As good as I can in here, I suppose,” she answers, fidgeting with her hands.
“I heard the parole hearing went your way. I’d expect you to be more positive because of that,” he says, but not sounding mad. More amused.
“I am happy about that, but I’m also too numb to be really feeling it,” she admits. Moody just nods, then takes a long sip from his cup. He clears his throat, preparing to say something, but Lily interrupts him before he even begins.
“Your coffee is fucking darker than my cell at night. You’re here for the same fortnightly reason, I expect?” Lily says, and now Moody definitely looks amused, and a bit exhausted as well. He looks down.
“Fortnightly,” he mutters, and shakes his head. He looks up again. “What, have you analysed my drinking choices?”
“I’ve analysed stuff my whole life. I have to analyse something here too.” she says, and Moody chuckles.
“And you decided to analyse my coffee?”
“Yes.”
“My coffee? Not your fellow prisoners? That’s much more interesting.”
Lily laughs, because she’s always hated analysing people. Real, living ones. She prefers characters in books and storylines. Analysing small lines. That was her thing. Not real, living people.
“I suppose I never got the chance,” she says, instead of that. “I keep mostly to myself, and you know that. I usually only go outside my cell for visitors, and it’s not like any of the others here want anything to do with a murderer.”
“You know that I don’t think it was really you who did it,” Moody said, almost defensively. It was understandable, as he kept repeating it almost every single time he saw her. Which was the reason for the same fortnightly reason too.
“Doesn’t matter, you’re the only one,” she defends.
“Sirius thinks you did it then?” he asks, almost teasingly. Lily fucking hated the man.
“You’re one of the only ones. One of two, to be exact,” she says. She leans back and sinks down in her chair, and Moody clears his throat.
“Let’s get to the point, shall we?” Moody asks. “Yes, I’m here for the same fortnightly reason, and—”
“And the answer is still no,” Lily interrupts, quite fucking sick of having the same conversation over and over again. The answer has always, and will always remain, no.
Moody sighs. “I thought you might say that.”
“Yeah, I've said so for the past ten years. I don’t know how you expect me to change my answer.” Lily knows that, if she was the detective in this case, she’d get so tired and eventually leave it behind her. There are so many unanswered questions, so many that even her friends don't know the answer to, but she does. She doesn’t think that a detective deserves the truth before her friends know it, and she doesn’t even know if she has it in her to tell them. But Moody still has that hopeful expression, and this time it’s mixed with confidence, as if he’s really sure of her saying yes this time. Lily is more than happy to disappoint him.
“You know, I think I might be able to convince you this time,” he says, and Lily laughs again. “Don’t laugh Lily.” Lily still laughs.
“How are you going to convince me?” she says, still laughing a bit. She starts leaning towards him, closing them off from the world, and she whispers, “Pout and cry? Beg on your knees? Give up everything for the truth? I’m not saying it. I’m not risking it.”
Moody now looks slightly horrified, but still hopeful and confident. Lily wishes that she could slap it out of him, without the guards rushing in and dragging her back to her cell. You lose so many privileges as a prisoner.
“You don’t have to risk it. I’m retiring,” and at that Lily looks at him with surprise. She’d never thought that Alastor Moody would retire from his detective position. “I thought I would earn a reaction because of that. Yes I’m retiring, and we don’t have enough time to talk about that, so let’s get to it. Yes or no?”
Her expression is neutral again, the shock already past her. “The answer is still no. How is that supposed to convince me?” She puts one of her legs up on the chair, knee up, and rests her head on it.
“When I retire, my word here won’t matter anymore. Anything you tell me, will be for me only. There’s no risk in it. The only thing it will do is to let me finally sleep peacefully at night, and probably lift some weight off your shoulders,” he says. “It would be nice to sleep without a million questions.”
Lily considers. She goes through any pros and cons that she can find. The truth is a heavy weight, but she isn’t alone with it. One other person knows, but she’d rather get the weight off their shoulders than her own.
It could be nice, because she would always lay awake at night, haunted by the memories. Haunted by flashbacks that felt so real that she thought she’d gone back in time. At the same time, it would be nice to know that the person that put you in prison lays awake at night with a million unanswered questions.
Moody sits there the whole time, looking and letting her take her time. And she takes her time. Takes twenty minutes in complete silence. The only sound being an annoying clock ticking over the door, and eventually she reaches her conclusion.
“You have defeated me,” Lily sighs, and leans back from her previous position. Moody looks surprised by the sudden response, then the piece of shit looks happy. “I will tell you everything, but on one condition.”
“And that is?” he asks, eagerly.
“We wait until I’m out of here,” she says, but Moody only keeps a neutral expression. She sighs, “Do we have a deal?”
Moody considers, then nods. “We have a deal.”