To Ashes

In the end, Sirius didn’t even really know why he did it.

He could blame it on the attacks, on the tension running like fire through all of their bodies, but that would be a lie. All it took was one stray comment that dripped like grease from Snape’s lips for Sirius to do what he did best, which was to go for the throat. 

The world turned red, and when it all drained away Sirius’s teeth were bared and Snape was walking away with the secret of the Whomping Willow ringing in his ears. 

Lily woke to a calloused hand covering her mouth and a wand light beaming into her eyes, the damp smell of the woods lingering in the air.  The hand muffled the sound of her panic as she started to thrash against whoever was holding her down.

“ Shh !” The face behind the hand hissed. As the wand light moved out of her face, Lily blinked up, half-blinded, into the darkness to catch the shadowy outline of James hovering over her. 

He must’ve seen she was a second from biting his fingers off because he hurried to continue. 

“Please, we need help, right now .” Any other night she’d have happily told him where he could shove his wand light but the hard edge of his voice turned her veins ice. 

She rolled out of bed and shoved her feet into a pair of trainers, barely keeping up with him as he hurried from the room.

It was only the tense set of James’s shoulders as he half-ran down the halls in front of her that kept Lily from demanding an explanation, the way she could tell he was barely holding himself back from a full sprint, hands clenched into fists at his side.

She followed him out onto the grounds. It was a clear night, lit by the full moon bathing everything in gleaming silver, and Lily found herself listening for a full-throated wolf’s howl.They hurried over the lawn and to the base of the Whomping Willow, slowing as they neared to keep out of reach. Its branches were whipping around in a frenzy in a way Lily had never seen, like something had disturbed it and the tree was crying out in rage. One step too close and she’d be sliced to the bone.

There was a crumpled shape on the ground, and the moonlight caught something slick and dark coating the grass surrounding it. A dog and a rat sat beside the heap, somehow radiating the same urgency as James. 

Lily stared at the dog and the rat, and the dog and the rat stared back at her. None of them blinked. For a moment Lily forced herself to consider the possibility that she was losing her mind.

A low moan broke her gaze away from them. She crept closer, and amongst the huddle of robes on the ground she made out the faint shape of Snape’s pale profile face. She dropped to her knees, hands shaking, and numbly began a blood clotting spell. His pulse was faint, but it was there.

“Remus?” She asked, voice rising along with the terror in her throat.

James shook his head. “No. Snape didn’t get that far, it was the Whomping Willow. Someone ,” he turned to shoot a furious glare at the dog sitting by Snape’s body, “told him where he could find a werewolf.” The dog seemed to shrink in on itself in shame, shoulders hunched and eyes staring at the ground.

“Someone…” Lily echoed, and turned to look at the dog. It looked back at her, almost mournfully, but something about the glint of its eyes was familiar.

“We need you to take him to the hospital wing,” James urged, “we have to herd Remus back to the Shrieking Shack.”

“We?” Lily asked, blinking up at him blankly. “Why is he out of the Shack?”

A strangled sound of frustration came from James, but he looked her straight in the eyes, took three steps back, and turned into a stag right in front of her. 

Lily didn’t even realize that she was opening her mouth to scream until the stag became James who was once again wrapping his hand around her mouth.

“ Lily ,” he whispered harshly, his other hand digging into her arm, “I’ll tell you everything, but not now. You need to get him to the hospital wing before he loses more blood. It’ll be Remus’s head if he dies.”

That pulled her back to herself and she nodded. There was a fight brewing, but with just one look they silently agreed it could wait. Lily took a firm hold of Snape as a stag, a dog, and a rat ran off into the woods to deal with Remus. 

She dragged him, half-dead and limp against her, as fast as she could toward the hospital wing. She continued to mutter every single blood-clotting spell she could remember as they went, but they seemed to have little effect and his blood fell like raindrops over the stone floor, smearing sticky and dark underneath his dragging legs. She could feel it seeping into her own clothes. He grew paler and paler, and although her legs were burning Lily struggled to move faster. She was spurred on by the mental image of Remus -slight, mild-mannered, kind Remus - in chains facing a Ministry tribunal. Hot tears choked her throat as she pushed forward. 

By the time they reached the Hospital Wing Lily’s lungs felt like they were heavy with lead. Propping Snape up a bit higher on her shoulder and fighting a wave of nausea as his head lolled on its neck against hers, she pushed against the old wood. It didn’t give. She pushed and pushed but the doors might as well have been stone under her palms. She finally rammed her shoulder against the wood with all her weight behind it, a strangled noise that was at once a choked sob and a scream tearing free from her mouth, and it finally creaked open to let the two of them tumble into a bloody heap onto the floor. 

Lily closed her eyes as all of the adrenaline swept out of her body like the tide. The stone floor was blissfully cool under her cheek, and relief flooded through her as she heard frantic footsteps and distant shouts grow closer and closer.

She was tugged upwards, she was smacked lightly on the cheeks, she was poked and prodded and shaken by worried adults until they were finally convinced she was hearty and whole under their hands. It was only after she assured them that none of the blood was hers that she was released. 

The next hour was a blur of Aurors and professors plying her with question after question. She gave them the same answer over and over, that she’d been out for a walk and found him alone and bleeding in the hall. She let them scold her for being out alone, and repeated herself when they asked once again what had happened. It was only once she started to sway where she stood that McGonagall shooed them all away. To her immense relief, they did not ask to examine her memories in the Pensieve. 

Madame Pomfrey let her sit with Snape, likely because she was barely registering her orders to leave, and Lily was finally left alone for a quiet moment.

She stared down at him in the cot, his face the color of sun bleached bone, revulsion rising in her at the way his tangled hair spread like slick seaweed across the pillow. She thought of Remus’s life hanging in the balance, of stupid little boys and their pride and the grudges that sat like rocks underneath their skin,  and the revulsion turned to anger. How had she ever loved him? But Lily continued to stare, even as dawn stretched its lovely fingers into the sky outside the windows, because every rise of his chest was proof that Remus was safe.

She stayed there until noon, and he never once stirred.