Always

The story was designed to be interesting. A beautiful Princess born to a good Queen and a kind King. Dresses made of silk and castles filled with song. There was no mention of the Princess growing, of awkward stumbles over too long skirts, of needlepoint lessons that stretched on, of a Queen that wasn’t always good and a King that wasn’t always kind. One moment the Princess was born and the next she was eighteen and getting stolen away in the night.

“Why did they steal the Princess, Granddad?”

“Because the King and Queen had something the Evil Queen wanted”

“What did they have?”

“Money”

The story starts with the Princess but it ends with the Prince: a Prince who was strong and in love but whose most noteworthy story feature was his handsome face. The Prince gathers his knights and rallies them to his cause: to defeat the evil guards that had taken the Princess.

“What horrible guards”

“They weren’t horrible. They were just doing their jobs”

The Prince spoke of the guards’ terrible deeds. The tortures they must be inflicting on the poor Princess. The tortures that they’d already inflicted on the innocent people who crossed their paths.

“So they were horrible”

“They were just doing their jobs”

This story was designed to be interesting so there was no mention of the struggle to figure out where the Princess was being kept, nor the long, boring trek to get there once they did. There was only the fight. Swords clashing and troops so tired they could drop but who fought on anyway. Of troops so scared they could freeze or run but who fought on anyway.

“Did the Prince save the Princess? Did they live happily ever after?”

“No”

“But I thought this was a love story”

“This is a story of war”

In the summer of 1979, twenty witches and wizards travelled from Berlin in order to aid in the fight against the Dark Lord. It was an agreement made between the British and German Magical Ministries, a show of support from an ally made when the British Wizarding Civil War had first began to spread to the rest of the world seven years prior. The war may of spread, but Britain was still at its epicentre and they quickly found themselves in over their heads. Of those twenty witches and wizards, four of them were killed within the first three weeks, another seven got captured. The Order of the Phoenix set about rescuing them by order of the Ministry. They were too late. When they found the solitary wizard who was left alive, he had this look on his face. This…lack. He wasn’t relieved to be rescued. He didn’t seem to have it in him anymore.

That was the look on Sirius’ face now.

As she was awoken abruptly from the stunning curse, he was the first thing she saw. His face was drawn, stained and splotchy, his eyes somehow both vacant and wild. It was the worst she’d ever seen him, and she’d seen him shaking and covered in Benjy Fenwick’s flesh and blood. He doesn’t look relieved to find her alive.

“No,” the word was guttural; it didn’t sound like her voice.

With a burst of frantic energy she shoved his shoulder to pull herself up and past him to the cot. In no state of mind and having only been resting on his heels, Sirius fell back.

She couldn’t breathe.

His eyes were open.

Green eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling, tear tracks still staining cheeks that used to be rosy but were now grey.

She picked him up.

She had been out cold long enough that he was frozen and stiff. There was nothing about him that was alive.

Her breath came back.

She starts screaming.

Her baby. Her baby. Harry. Oh, Harry. Her baby. She’s sorry. She’s sorry. Harry. She failed. She failed. She failed him. Harry. Please.

Please.

She must have fallen because Sirius’ arms were around her. If he said anything she couldn’t hear.

She’s still screaming.

They had to get up eventually. She holds Harry hard to her chest, harder than she ever would have if he were still alive. She remembers the Healer putting him in her arms for the first time, how gentle and soft she kept her touch, so scared of breaking him. There’s nothing gentle about her grip now. She and Sirius don’t lean on each other. She’s got bruises on the top of her arms from the way he clung to her earlier, but they don’t touch now, just walk. There, but not really. Alive, but not really.

Any strength she steeled in herself to make herself move vanished as soon as she caught sight of James on the stairs.

She falls to the floor crying.

And then, however long later, she thinks I’ve fallen to the floor crying, but there’s an element of ridiculousness to it – she had known it was coming, had known the second James had turned from the door shouting “Lily, it’s him!” and, even worse, while she’s on the floor crying she looks at his still face and realises his glasses are crooked.

It’s only when Sirius’ shaking fingers straighten them that she truly registers that she’s not alone in her grief and she lets herself fall further and he holds her up.

It’s Halloween night, 1981, Lily Potter is alive, her family is not, and outside the war continues.

She stays with Sirius. She can’t really say that she moves in. She’d followed him four days ago and never left.

The room she takes over is the one she and James used to live in before they went into hiding. That was a year ago and despite some of their stuff still being there, none of it smells like James anymore, not even the jumpers in the bottom drawer. She wears them anyway.

She doesn’t leave the room much.

She doesn’t get out of bed much.

Her hair is greasy and itching. The air in the bedroom began to feel heavy days ago. That heavy that normally tends to linger around your skin when you’re ill. Except she’s not ill. Unless being sick with grief counts as an illness. It feels like it should. It’s got all the same symptoms. Fatigue and nausea. Stomach pain and chest pain. And pain and pain and pain.

Her bladder’s cramping. It had woken her up hours ago. She’s been lying in the foetal position and staring at the wall ever since.

Another cramp.

She was going to have to get up.

She stumbles on an empty bottle of gin beside her bed. She looks down at it blankly for a second. It feels like her brain is lagging. She kicks it out of the way. It rolls under the bed and clanks as it hits the others.

Padfoot is lying outside her door when she opens it.

At least she doesn’t trip over him this time.

Either he wasn’t sleeping or opening the door had woken him because he picks his head up and eyes her balefully.

She looks down at him.

She doesn’t know what shows on her face but he whines and lays his head back down. Maybe he can’t bear to look. She can’t bear to look. She makes sure to keep her eyes away from the mirror as she goes to the bathroom. The green hurts to look at.

Padfoot is still there when she comes back out. She makes sure her bare leg brushes against his fur as she passes, but she closes the door behind her when she goes back to bed.

These are the only interactions they’ve had lately. She knows he must become human sometimes because he’s not always in the flat and he leaves food outside her door.

Most of the time she doesn’t eat it.

They’d only seen Remus twice since they had gone into hiding, even Sirius’ visits had become sporadic in the worsening state of the war. Peter and Bathilda were the only visitors with any consistency. Maybe that’s why they’d gotten so comfortable. Comfortable enough that when there was a sound in their front garden they only wondered why Peter hadn’t told them he was visiting and James had left his wand behind when he went to check.

They’d all seen familial bonds shatter with different sides chosen, seen friendships darken with betrayal, but through it all they had been arrogant enough to believe it would never be them.

“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Run! I’ll hold him off”

She held him to her chest, her whole body rocked as there was a blast from below. She was crying. She was terrified. There was a green glow and then nothing. Its okay, Harry. It’s okay. Mummy and daddy love you. We love you.

There was banging.

He was coming.

“No! Take me instead! Take me, just not Harry, not Harry!”

Thud.

Thud.

Knock.

She wakes with a gasp. Her face and pillow are wet.

Someone is knocking loudly on the door.

She shook. She can still feel the weight of Harry in her arms. A horrible wrenching sound comes from her chest.

Someone is still knocking. She wishes Sirius was in to tell them to piss off. She wishes they would fuck off on their own. They keep knocking. She rolls over and screams into the dry pillow on the other side of the bed. The pillow that used to be James’. Still knocking.

She goes to answer it.

It’s a pair of aurors. She recognises their robes from those Moody and Gideon wore sometimes when they came to meetings straight from work. Her brows furrow and she puts a steadying hand on the door and leans her weight against it. Her head is fuzzy and her stomach sick. She hadn’t slept long enough for the buzz to be gone yet.

“Mrs Potter?” says one of the aurors. He has a big nose and a long neck. Idly Lily wonders if this is what Petunia’s son will look like when he’s grown.

Harry will never grow.

She bets he would have looked just like James if he’d had the chance.

She must be staring because the two aurors shift uncomfortably, sharing a glance. The same auror clears their throat.

“It took us a couple of days to track you down, but we’re here to inform you that Black has been captured.”

Lily blinks.

It’s hard to concentrate.

Regulus is dead. She’s sure he’s dead.

She can remember James picking Sirius up out of the gutter.

She blinks again.

Takes a breath.

“What?”

The aurors share another look then look back at her. Their faces are doing a gentle pitying thing. Lily wants to sneer.

“We caught him in a muggle town in Staffordshire,” the other auror says, speaking for the first time. Her hair is brutally short and her face lined and tired. “I’m afraid he…he killed Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles” - this is said really gently. “There are plenty of eye witnesses to attest to the fact and after what he did to you and…well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know he’s been caught”

“After what he did,” Lily repeats. “What exactly isit you think he did?”

Hollowed out and raw, Lily had been walking around emptily for close to three weeks. Now something breaks through the haze.

She’s furious.

He’s still a dog.

It’s been a couple of days since Lily had to shout and scream him out of Azkaban. Had to sit in the ministry as idiots stumbled about and verified she hadn’t somehow been enchanted or imperiused or some other such rot.

He hasn’t been human since they got home. He also hasn’t stopped trembling.

His head is resting on her lap and she keeps her fingers tangled in the fur on his neck and stares at, but doesn’t really watch, the TV. For the first time in a year she was behind on Coronation Street. There hadn’t been much to do while in hiding.

There’s the fumble of footsteps from the outside hallway, a pause and then a knock. She recognises it. Two quick raps, a pause, another knock.

“Come in”

Remus hesitates to come in and then stops again when he closes the door behind him. The flat is dark. Only the blue glow of the TV offers any light. Padfoot doesn’t lift his head at his arrival. Lily doesn’t turn around. Her hand clenches in and releases Padfoot’s fur.

She doesn’t ask a question but Remus answers as though she had. “The only argument we ever had was when I dropped your favourite book in the lake”

She thinks they should probably get some new questions. Peter would have known that. He hasn’t made any move to come further into the flat.

The pause is starting to grate on her.

Her jaw clenches and she keeps her eyes on the TV. It kind of burns but she keeps staring.

“Are you okay?” Remus asks at last.

She runs her tongue across her teeth and cranes her neck to look at him without disturbing Padfoot.

“Are you?” she asks back.

“No”

“Well shut up then!”

She turns back to the TV. It’s only when Padfoot lets out a little whimper that she realises how rough she had gotten. Some fur comes away when she moves her hand.

“…What do you need?”

Everything.

She turns the volume up on the TV with her wand and doesn’t answer.

Remus is quiet as he finally comes towards them. She refuses to turn so she can’t see the look on his face, doesn’t know if he’s looking at her at all. He has to move some empty cider cans out of the way before he can drop down in front of the settee. He keels forward like he couldn’t keep himself up anymore and rests his forehead against Padfoot’s side.

“I’m sorry,” she hears him choke. “James is – and Harry - and I thought – I’m sorry. I’m sorry”

Padfoot is still resting against her, but he curls his body closer to Remus.

Lily’s eyes are wet and she can’t see the TV anymore.

It had been a year since she’d last lived with Sirius and she’d forgotten that his mood dips and highs weren’t reliant on any outside forces and that a switch could flip in his fucked up brain. James had always been better at dealing with his mania. Usually it just hyped him up too and they would bounce each other off the walls until it could calm down.

Lily had never dealt nearly so well.

He won’t stop talking.

He’s telling her about the order missions he’s been on lately. About a new member who stares at him when he thinks he’s not looking. About the weird shaped cloud he saw the other day. About how maybe they should get a new carpet because he had never noticed how dull and grey it was before.

He’s rearranging the furniture when she snaps.

“Can you just shut the fuck up!”

Sirius stops from where he was levitating the side table and it drops with a crack. One of the legs is probably splintered now. His hair is twisted back with a pencil and there are deep bags under his eyes. He hasn’t slept in days.

“James is dead, do you realise that?!” she shouts before she can really stop herself. “He’s dead and you’re what? Happy?” it’s a disgustingly unfair thing to say of course. He’s not happy. Hasn’t been happy. This mindset certainly isn’t, can’t be, happy. “He’s cold and dead and gone and you’re just buzzing around with all the energy in world”

Ah that’s what it is. Lily had been fluctuating between being in a haze and being absolutely spitting mad for weeks now, but at least she knows what brought this particular spike on. Seeing Sirius like this. Talkative and bouncing and wired. She can almost imagine James at his side. Not manic, but feeding off the energy of his twin soul. Voice getting louder as he finds things to keep them busy, laughs wildly as Sirius performs a reckless trick on his motorbike, James right there next to him on his broom. Lily really didn’t think Sirius should have been flying while his head was like that, but it had always been the risk that made it fun for them.

Fuck but she wants James.

Sirius has gone still and dangerous.

She’s reminded why so many people are scared of him.

She’s not scared.

They scream and they shout and they throw things. Sirius’ lamp is broken and there’s a shard in her foot. She keeps screaming. He keeps screaming.

It’s the most vicious fight they’ve ever had.

She blinks and she’s sat in a room that’s hers but not hers. She’s in a yellow towel and her wet hair is dripping. There’s a black dress hanging on the back of her wardrobe.

He’s still manic at the time of the funeral. Lily can’t bear it and she keeps Remus between them as a buffer. It’s terrible and selfish of her, but she can’t deal with it. Not today.

She chose to have them buried in one coffin. Partly because she doesn’t think she could take seeing that tiny little coffin with her baby inside, partly because she doesn’t want Harry to be alone.

“He’s gonna hate that he was like this when he comes out of it,” Remus says to her later. Across the way Sirius is chatting with Emmeline Vance. Lily takes a moment to be relieved that Emmeline has a patient look on her face and also takes a moment to feel guilty that she finds Sirius’ behaviour embarrassing.

Lily hums.

So many people have come up to her to offer her condolences. Every time she wanted to scream and cry and tell them all to just shut up and go away and it’s her husband and her baby that’s dead so take their shallow, fake grief somewhere else. Another unfair feeling, of course, but she’s been chock full of them lately.

“You know, I invited Petunia to the funeral,” she says. She hadn’t even realised she was going to say it. Figured it was going to be another one of those Petunia things that she pushed to the corner of her brain where the word freak was carved.

Remus stops looking worriedly across at Sirius to look at her instead. He goes so far as to move until he’s stood in front of her. Perhaps he feels like this is more significant than it actually is. Or maybe not. She thinks she can count on one hand the amount of times she’s spoken about Petunia to Remus. She’d barely spoken about Petunia to James.

“She didn’t come to our wedding, but she gave us a Christmas present last year. A truly horrible looking vase that I’m pretty sure she was just re-gifting, but still, it was something. I thought – I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t think she hated me this much. This is my husband, my – my baby. I can’t help but wonder if I – if I’d died too, would she have even come? Would she have cared?”

She swipes at the tears on her face. Her cheeks feel rubbed raw. All she’s done today is cry.

Remus hasn’t taken his eyes off of her face since she’d started talking.

“She’s your sister” he says. “I’m sure she cares”

Her hand clenches and she has to make a conscious effort to unlock her fingers. A now familiar anger is rolling around in her stomach again. There is a stone at the base of her throat. Whether that stone is anger or grief it’s hard to say: some unholy mix of the two more than likely.

She glares over to where Sirius is now stood alone; shifting from foot to foot with energy he can’t make dissipate. Looking at him makes her feel even more exhausted than she already is. It also makes her wish she had saved her Petunia break down for him. Sirius would have known that was a stupid, useless thing to say. Sirius, who had lost not one brother but two, one he had lost long before he’d really lost him.

“Oh what would you know?” she snaps.

Remus is as calm as ever in the face of her undeserved anger and it inexplicably makes her angrier. She’s itching for a fight.

Remus refuses to give her one.

When he’s human, few and far between these days, Sirius makes her breakfast and talks to her as if she’s really there. He loved them as much as she did. He’s doing this for her. It’s too bad that she’s not really there to appreciate it. Inside her head there’s a forgotten wand and a baby crying.

“I don’t understand why he didn’t kill me” she says to Sirius, and he is Sirius right now.

He’s just come back from a run for the Order. He doesn’t tell her what it was for and she doesn’t ask. The sleeve of his wand arm is stained with blood up to the elbow. She doesn’t know whose blood it is. He’s staring at the board he’s using to track Pettigrew.

Sirius goes stiff but he doesn’t say anything.

For him that’s an admittance of having no clue. Maybe it was a lesser known side effect of being raised by parents like his.

“Maybe he just really wanted Harry” she said through gritted teeth.

“That doesn’t make any sense” he says.

He’s right of course. It doesn’t.

James had been a pureblood and Voldemort had tossed him aside as though he was nothing. But he’d told Lily to step aside. It would have been much quicker to kill her outright.

So why?

Fucking why?

She takes a swig of firewhiskey.

Sirius takes a swig of firewhiskey.

She goes to get their stuff from Godric’s Hollow. It’s just as horrible as she thought it would be.

Bad things don’t happen on a schedule. Terrible, gut-wrenching things can happen when you least expect it. You could be pottering around righting furniture from your son’s latest excursion on his toy broom while the room fills with your son’s laughs as your husband makes bubbles come out of his wand, when suddenly “Lily, it’s him! Take Harry and go!” And everything is over in an instant. But the pain stretches out in the spaces between each second. Then you’re sat four glasses deep in a bottle of whiskey and remembering you never put all the ornaments back out and you forgot to send that letter to Sirius.

“Harry really liked his broom” she says. It feels like a ridiculous thing to say. It is a ridiculous thing to say. Every little thing had an air of ridiculousness about it.

Sirius is crying.

Lily feels carved out.

The anger is eating her up. It’s itching and scratching at her insides. She needs…she doesn’t know what she needs. Everything. Everything. Everything.

She takes the hang over potion Sirius hands her as he downs his own.

She rejoins the order.

They’ve changed locations since she was last there. It had been over year so it was a given, but disorientating nonetheless.

The Orders numbers had always been small, but looking at it now was like a gut-punch. Even more so when there are so many faces she doesn’t recognise. So many faces that she expects to see but will never see again.

Except.

They’ve put the photo up on the wall. The original Order of the Phoenix. Benjy, Caradoc, Marlene, Fabian, Gideon. Dorcas.

Dorcas,

Dorcas with whom Lily had shared a dorm for seven years, who she had grown up with, who wanted to be a quidditch player but had become a soldier instead. Dorcas who had been the maid of honour at Lily’s wedding but who Lily had only caught glimpses of and had hurried conversations with as missions clashed and Dorcas was sent on her long, and ultimaterly her last, order mission that was important enough to never get disclosed, important enough that she got killed by Voldemort himself. The Dorcas in the photo keeps throwing furtive glances at Gideon. She thinks about the silly crush a twelve year old Dorcas had on him when he was just the big bad quidditch captain, wonders if she grew to love him properly while Lily was in hiding.

“Dorcas and Gideon,” she says to Sirius, who is studying the photo with a face like carved marble. “Were they-“

“He was going to propose,” he says. “His sister, Molly, found the ring in his stuff”

Another twist of the knife. All these kids forced to become heroes, all these heroes doomed to become tragedies. She wonders which one of them went first. She never got told. There were so many deaths, so close together; she had gotten them in a letter that read like an obituary.

One of the newer members that Lily doesn’t recognise calls Sirius over. He touches his hand to her back as he leaves her side. She misses him instantly.

She keeps looking at the photo. Everyone grimfaced and straight-backed. But there, right in the centre, was James and Sirius, who always had smiles to spare even in the darkest of times.

“It’s always the best of us we lose first” she hadn’t noticed Moody’s approach but she didn’t have it in her to jump. She looks around at him. He’s gotten a cane and a limp since she saw him last.

“Yeah,” she agrees softly and lets herself get caught on the edge of James’ smile.

The meeting is called to order. Lily automatically leaves a space between herself and Sirius when they take their seats.

He stares at the empty chair.

She can’t stand the look on his face. She shuffles across awkwardly to sit next to him instead.

It’s Christmas.

She, Sirius and Remus spend it in the graveyard.

The flat is dark again.

They both have a bottle of whiskey.

Sirius isn’t crying. He isn’t doing anything. That makes it worse somehow.

“I’m sorry I killed them,” he says. He is blank faced and drunk. An unusual and terrible combination. “If I’d have stayed secret keeper-“

“Then Peter would have betrayed you and you would have been tortured and killed and then he would have found us anyway and we’d all be dead”

They look at each other and the same awful thought crosses their minds. They take long gulps from the bottles in their hands and don’t voice it.

It had been a while since she’d seen Padfoot.

Sirius had spent a lot of time since James and Harry’s deaths as a dog. His emotions were less complex. It made things easier for a while. Lily wishes she had the same escape.

“Why’d you stop?”

“It hurts more when I change back”

He likens it to eating ice cream to soothe a sore throat. It helps in that one second mid swallow, but the pain always seemed more intense for the second absence.

Lily thinks she simply wouldn’t turn back.

“Any other relatives?”

“Just a second cousin in Stafford. That’s where I caught up to him last time”

“His job?”

“He quit months ago”

They stood in front of the makeshift board in their living room. Every detail of Peter Pettigrew’s life staring out at them.

The bubbling hate she feels rising up her throat every time she thinks of him disturbs her, but it also keeps her going.

She needs him found.

She needs him to pay.

She needs…she just needs.

They clank their glasses together as they gulp their gin down straight. It helps them think.

Maybe it’s a horrible, horrible thing to consider, but she can’t help but wonder how James would cope if their situations were reversed. James who loved his friends and family more than anything. James who thought it was the height of dishonor to mistrust those he held dear.

How would he have reacted to losing her and Harry? How would he have reacted to Peter betraying them?

She can never say for sure.

She could imagine him asking Peter why. Could imagine him pitying him for ever being scared enough to turn to Voldemort. And she’s sure that’s the reason. Can imagine him being so angry and so hurt but also so lenient. Lily was always meant to be the kinder one out of the two of them, that’s what everyone always said, but she can’t, she can’t. She’s burning.

The Death Eaters try to take Diagon Alley. It’s 2am when they get Moody’s patronus. They’re still swallowing their sobering potions as they apparate.

The fight has already started when they get there. There’s someone screaming. The cruciatus by the sound of it. There’s a flash of green and she sees someone’s body drop. She doesn’t know who it is.

Sirius is gone from her side as soon as their feet are on solid ground.

Lily ducks as a spell comes careening her way. She doesn’t know what spell it was, but she sends a stunning curse back regardless. They’re wearing the customary dark robes and skull mask and Lily can’t even distinguish their gender let alone tell who they are. They parry by throwing a shield charm up. Lily sets the debris at their feet on fire. Their momentary distraction means her next stunner lands. She’d learned that particular trick from James. No sooner had the death eater landed on their back that there is someone else to clash wands with. And someone else and someone else.

Adrenaline courses through her veins, her heart pounds and magic crackles at her fingertips.

She had been in hiding for a year and had been pregnant and sidelined for 9 months before that so it had been a long time since she had been involved in a fight like this. Had it always felt like this? Like her insides were too big for her body, like she’d run for miles but somehow had more energy than ever before. Like she could explode and raze everything.

She felt alive.

Sirius had already been to Peter’s house. Had gone to see him when - “Lily, it’s him! Take Harry and run!” - he had first felt something wrong.

Lily goes anyway.

It is a strange thing being in a house that has sat empty for so long, it makes the hair at the nape of her neck stand on end. The kitchen is dusty and there’s the ghastly smell of sour milk coming from the muggle fridge. The living room looks untouched and unlived in, no rings on the coffee table, no misshapen cushions on the settee. The bedroom tells another story entirely. The drawers are thrown open, empty of everything but forgotten socks and an old Gryffindor tie he must have kept a hold of. The wardrobe is open with hangers sticking out at odd angles and old robes screwed up at the bottom and leaving a trail across the floor. The duvet is in a ball on the bed. Beside the chest of drawers, there is a floorboard that had been lifted up and left there, a hidden space whose secret holdings had already been removed. Peter had obviously left in a hurry.

There’s nothing to find.

She knew there wouldn’t be, Sirius would have been much more thorough in his search than she’s being now.

There’s something stuck to her foot. She bends down to pull it free and freezes when she sees what it is. James and Sirius sat beneath their favourite willow tree on the school grounds, their eyes are almost closed with the force of their grins as they shove and attempt to get the other in a headlock. Remus is beside Sirius his smile more reserved but his cheeks flushed a happy pink as he looks from his wrestling friends to the person taking the picture. When was the last time she had seen him like that? And Peter beside James, a pleased little smile and a puffed up chest, laughing and cheering them on, so happy to be included.

Lily thought she could be sick.

The fury she feels has her hands shaking and fire licking up the back of her throat. Hot, angry tears gather at the corner of her eyes.

She bellows in anger and tears the picture up viciously, destroying those smiles and that happy moment forever because Peter had already destroyed it hadn’t he? Every moment, every memory, tainted with the knowledge of who he’d be and now they are unable to make more because James is gone. He is gone because of him. Because of the man who was supposed to be his friend. For the man that James would have died for.

He should’ve-

He should’ve.

He should’ve died. He should have died rather than betray them.

When Lily makes her way out of the house, it is burning behind her.

She can’t sleep.

She hadn’t closed her wardrobe all the way. There’s a sleeve of a robe sticking out. She thinks it’s James’. She stares at it. It almost looks like someone is stood within, eerily still, their arm reaching out. James was particular about making sure that wardrobes and cupboard doors were shut. She’d have teased him about being scared of the bogeyman if she hadn’t known he had a traumatic experience with a boggart when he was twelve. She’d never asked, but now she wonders what he had seen.

She tears her eyes away.

They catch on the resin ashtray on the bedside table. Mary had made it and gifted it to James during secret santa in their seventh year. But, God, Mary. She hadn’t thought about her in years. She wonders what she’s up to now. Wonders if her name is still McDonald. Mary, who had experienced the beginnings of the war at fifteen when a Slytherin had hit her with a spell so terrible that it made her scream and shake and lose a faith she never thought she could lose. Mary who had gotten out while she still could. God, but you were the smart one, Mary. You were the smart one.

Mrs Pettigrew is as short and stout as her son, but her skin is clear and cheeks rosy. Her smile is kind and her eyes have laugh lines and Lily hates her.

She offered Lily tea before she had even gotten both feet in the door and then insisted so strongly after Lily had declined that she had ended up with a cup of tea anyway.

“I was so devastated when I heard, you can imagine, losing a child,” she is saying. Her eyes are wet and she is sniffing.

Lily wants to hit her. She wants to scratch and bite and pull her horrid thinning hair out. She is intimately familiar with losing a child. This woman knows nothing. It isn’t her fault, not really, Lily hates her anyway.

“And Sirius. He was always such a good friend to Peter. I didn’t believe it at first of course and then for the aurors to come out again to tell me I had been right and that my Petie’s alive but that he’s on you-know-who’s side” she shakes her head and dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Well I can’t believe that either. He’s such a sweet boy my Peter. He couldn’t possibly be working for him. It must be another mistake. And that mess with James and his son…Peter could never”

Mess.

She watches the mother cry and she waits to feel some sort of sympathy, or pity at the very least. It doesn’t come. Lily grips the mug in her hand painfully and resists the urge to grab her wand.

She wants to though.

She wants to lash out. Doesn’t want James’ name in this woman’s mouth. She wants to shake her, scream at her, can’t you see what a cowardly rat your son is? Can’t you see what he’s done?

“Yes,” Lily says very carefully. It’s hard to keep the fury from her voice. “But that doesn’t really answer my question”

“Oh, I’m sorry” she sniffs. “What was your question again, dear?”

“Have you seen him since then?” she asks again, slower this time.

“Oh, no, I’m afraid not”

She looks so terribly disappointed.

Lily wants to kick her under the table. She pushes her chair out with more force than necessary instead. This was useless. This useless visit with this useless woman got her nowhere.

“Well, I’ll have to get going if you’ve got no other information, the war stops for no one you know,” Lily says in a glib voice that masks the hate boiling beneath. She needs to be more careful on which of Sirius’ habits she picks up, but she thinks she okay with this one.

“Of course,” Mrs Pettigrew hurries to stand up too and leads her to the door. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Ms…sorry I don’t think I got your last name?” she says with a smile as she opens the door.

Lily steps out and looks her in the face.

“Potter”

Mrs Pettigrew goes pale.

Lily apparates away.

Order of the Phoenix meetings were jarring these days. A strange mix of those she knew and those she now fought beside but only knew by name. Sirius greets everyone like friends and that’s jarring too. Time was that Sirius knew no one she didn’t know.

He’s across the room now talking to a dark haired man with a spattering of freckles across his face.

She thinks she’d feel more comfortable if she joined him; she turns to Elphias instead and says “Still wearing the hat, I see”

He grins. “It’s me lucky hat, can’t go without it.”

Sturgis scoffs. “If there’s anything lucky about that eyesore of a hat, I’ll eat my own”

“Well I haven’t died in this hat, have I?”

“Hard to argue with that kind of infallible logic”

“Exactly”

Lily smothers a smile. It’s easier with those she’d known before. Harder is the new members. She finds herself sharp and short-tempered. She has no patience for their naivety. It fills her with rage every time she has to see it.

She remembers meeting Marlene McKinnon for the first time.

Marlene, who Lily had only known in the wake of her losing everything, who, at twenty-four, had already lost everyone in her family bar a younger brother. Marlene, who Lily had never gotten close to because she didn’t let anyone get close; she burned anyone who tried. It had been a good thing that Fabian had liked to play with fire. She had never wondered what Marlene had been like before her family’s deaths. She wonders now. Whether she had been kind and funny and soft, all the things Lily had been before she too got eaten up from the inside.

She can remember feeling rubbed raw whenever in Marlene’s presence, her edges too sharp for Lily to stand for too long. Thinking back it had not been dissimilar to how she had felt around Sirius when she and James had first begun to get close.

She understands better now.

She can feel her eyes prickling as the meeting starts. She had cried for hours when she had found out about Marlene and her brother.

Tragedy never ceases.

James used to complain about stake-out duty.

Terribly boring stuff, he’d say, like being in detention only you can’t even zone out because you have to keep watch.

Lily hadn’t been able to understand what there was to moan about. She found nothing wrong with the relatively safe observation job compared to the bone-shaking fear she found in the face of a death eater’s wand.

She thinks she gets it now.

Only once had he come home grinning and bursting with a story about a daring motorbike escape and muggle police and hey, maybe we should call the baby Elvendork.

Of course he had been partnered with Sirius that time. James and Sirius had the unique ability to find fun in anything. At least when they were together. Sirius got dark and James got listless when faced with the same situation while apart.

Lily longs for Sirius now even though everyone knows he’s a stunningly poor stake-out partner. He was just as likely to abandon his post to follow a different lead as he was to get into a fight with whoever he had been stuck with. There were few people Sirius had the patience to deal with for any significant length of time.

She thinks she gets that now too.

She and Hestia Jones are sat in a muggle car to appear as inconspicuous as possible. She can’t stop bouncing her leg. She’s itching to do something.

Hestia keeps shooting her furtive glances. The last time she had spoken to her was the day of the funeral.

“Lily,” she finally says. “I just wanted to say that I’m…well, I’m sorry about James and…and your son. And if you want to talk-”

Lily’s eyes burn with the force of her own glare.

“…we can talk later…”

Her glare intensifies as the steering wheel creaks under her grip.

“…or never…I’m good with never”

She thinks that’s it, but

“Only I just-”

“I couldn’t help but notice Emmeline doesn’t have anything to do with you anymore,” Lily cuts in. Her voice is deceptively cavalier. “You used to be thick as thieves but she won’t even sit next to you anymore. Why is that?”

She keeps her eyes on the house they were told to watch.

Hestia doesn’t say anything else.

It’s hours of uncomfortable silence later that a food delivery witch appears with a crack and Silas Krankley, the wizard they were looking out for, opens the door. The wizard accepts the food and hands over some coins. He closes the door again and the delivery witch apparates away.

All this for a twenty second glimpse of a wizard.

“At least we know we’ve got the right address now,” Hestia says. “We can pass it on to the aurors”

“Yippee,” Lily deadpans and starts the car.

It’s James’ birthday.

She drinks until she blacks out.

In the beginning she believed they were fighting for peace, but that’s not true is it? You can’t fight for peace, they’re two contradictory things.

They are fighting to win.

They want peace eventually of course, but not now. What use is peace when those who are willing to commit such atrocities roam free?

She’s using spells she learned in class. She’s using them against those she shared desks with, those she passed in the hall. A cutting curse feels different when you’re using it on someone’s throat. Wingardium Leviosa feels different when lifting someone up and up and up and then releasing it instead of bringing them back down.

She can remember learning about Dark magic. She can remember feeling repulsed by the ghastly descriptions and the horrible twisted diagrams in the text book. Magic that ate you up inside and burns everything it touches. But her teachers never told her how dark Light magic could be.

She uses a ticking charm to distract a target as Moody casts that unforgivably green spell.

They’ve got permission to use those now.

She hasn’t.

Not yet.

She’s saving it for someone.

She manages to save a baby but not his parents.

The healers have to pry him from her arms.

She spends all night crying.

They’re running out of hangover potion.

“Confringo!”

She’s lucky it wasn’t a non-verbal spell as it gives her time to duck and cast a shield as store fronts blast open and rocks go flying.

People are screaming.

She doesn’t know who cast it, doesn’t know if it was her side or theirs. There’s no way they didn’t hurt some of their own whoever it was.

That doesn’t always matter anymore.

When the dust settles there’s fire everywhere. Someone has cast incendio on the wreckage.

There’s a death eater a few feet away. His mask is missing and she recognizes him. Quenton something-or-other. She had been potion partners with him once. She can remember thinking he was funny.

She casts the trip jinx.

Back in second year, when they had been learning about witch burnings in History of Magic, she can remember being confused as to how any of them died when you could cast a flame freezing spell with a wave of your wand. It had been one of her roommates, Emma Brown, who had looked at her incredulously. “That’s like asking how anybody can drown when you have the ability to swim.”

Quenton falls into the flames and starts screaming. He can’t do anything, his wand burns quicker than he does.

She picks her way across the street, putting out flames as she goes. She stops when she recognizes someone at her feet. Dirty blonde hair is splayed out around her head; half of it was singed and blackening. Nora Cowling, the newest member. Lily pauses to enervate her. She gasps and scrambles for her wand. Wide eyed, each side of her hair different lengths, and her robes covered in dust and blood, she looks like a wild thing.

“Thanks,” she croaks.

Lily looks up and there’s a wand pointing their way.

She doesn’t have time to raise her own.

It doesn’t matter.

Someone else hits them with the entrails-expelling curse. They may as well have swallowed an exploding potion for the way their insides burst forth. The first time she had seen it cast she had thrown up, as it was she still has to swallow back bile now. Nora is not so desensitized and gets sick across Lily’s knees.

She is shaking and gasping.

Nora is almost twenty years older than Lily, but she didn’t feel it. She can remember her first battle. Can remember freezing in fear, fumbling for her wand in the dark but mind blank of any spells. She can also remember what happened next, Marlene hauling her to her feet and screaming at her to “-fucking move! You were a Gryffindor, weren’t you?” It had snapped Lily out of it, but she thinks about what she really needed to hear back then.

She grabs Nora’s hand and holds tight.

“You can do this”

Still terrified, but brave, she nods.

They fight on.

Sirius becomes an auror.

They’ve been fast tracking the training for close to a year now.

After fighting at Moody’s side for the better part of four years, they wave the training completely.

Turns out it’s hard to read what’s on the Pettigrew board when you drink a bottle of vodka on an empty stomach.

She kind of wishes Sirius hadn’t gotten a job.

Drinking alone is worse somehow.

The dust settles and the death eaters, those still living, apparate away. A few of them grip the arms of their dead to take with them, others get abandoned in the wreckage. The ministry will clean up the site and return their bodies to their loved ones.

Lily picks her way over the smashed up ground, veering to the left when she sees the gruesome remains of a person.

Elphias is dusting off his hat. Nora is hooking Emmeline’s arm over her shoulder to help her limp along. Gregory Malkin is hovering over the dead body of Theodora, he’s smoothing the hair from her slack face.

She forces her eyes away.

She doesn’t immediately spot Sirius.

For a long, awful, sickening moment, she thinks she’s going to have to look down. Thinks Sirius will lying prone on his back, silver eyes glassy and staring unseeingly at the dark sky. She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. She can’t be alone. She can’t lose him too.

She can’t.

He and Moody emerge from the corner. They’ve got Porquin propped up between them and are helping to drag him along.

Her breath comes back, but the heaviness doesn’t go away.

She’s suddenly exhausted.

It’s an awful thought (though all her thoughts are awful these days) but she can’t help but think she preferred it when they were still dueling.

They find Peter.

Or his body at least.

She supposes there isn’t much use in an Order of the Phoenix spy who is not in the Order of the Phoenix.

Harry should be turning two.

Remus comes to visit.

He looks over at all the empty liquor bottles that litter the flat.

“I can’t stand to watch you both kill yourselves” he says, picking up a bottle from the ground. The contents slosh. Lily hadn’t realized it still had some in.

“Then don’t watch” she says, taking the bottle back.

Sirius roots around the cupboard to make sure they still have some hangover potion left.

He’s got work in the morning.

Sirius is in a depressive episode.

His room is dark and he lies on his side in bed, only the top of his head is visible, that and his deadened eyes. In contrast to his manic episodes he tends to sleep a lot when he’s like this. Worse is when he’s awake. He stares blankly at the walls. There but not there. Lily is reminded of how she was when in her grief stricken haze. How terrible it must be to go through it so often for what seems like no reason at all. She wonders how young it had started.

Lily is almost out of the flat when she turns back and makes Sirius something to eat and drink. Ironically enough he was better at this sort of thing than her: taking care of people, the consequence of being the older sibling she supposes.

She hesitates and considers kissing his forehead or stroking his hair, offering some sort of physical comfort for that which she has no words for. She decides against it. Touch was always a funny thing with Sirius, either he was clingy and a single change of body language or lack of communication could make him think you hated him, or he flinched from touch and scratched at his own skin. Better to leave it for now.

For once the fight hadn’t yet started when Lily gets there. She lingers with Mad-Eye and watches as protective wards and traps were placed by those whose magic was better suited for it. Quite a few of the aurors had turned up for aid, some other ministry workers that Lily didn’t have any hope of recognizing.

This part is almost worse than the fighting itself. The waiting. There is an anticipatory shake in her fingers and her mind wants to drift to make the time go quicker but the flood of adrenaline from an oncoming fight wouldn’t allow her brain to quiet.

Then, all at once, they’re fighting.

It goes on for hours. There’s a cut on the back of Lily’s forearm from where she had thrown it up to protect her face from a cutting curse. It makes every spell she casts painful and she wishes she could switch to her other arm but she had never mastered the ability to cast with her left hand.

The fight stretches on.

Each side is evenly matched.

Longer still.

She’s been fighting with the same death eater for hours now. Her spells have singed their robes and knocked the mask from their face, but she doesn’t recognize her still. She has a choppy black bob, brown skin and a myriad of golden tattoos from her temples to her chin. She’s not fighting with a wand but with hand gestures. This death eater wasn’t from around here.

Lily casts the killing curse.

The death eater drops.

Lily had thought about how she might use the killing curse for the first time. Since James and Harry she had thought she would use it in the name of justice. After they had found Peter’s body she considered she may use it out of desperation, perhaps protecting someone else? Maybe she’d even use it out of anger, at a death eater who does something so heinous she can’t imagine dragging the fight out.

Never in all her imaginings does she think she would use it because she was tired.

Just that.

She was tired.

When she gets home Sirius hasn’t moved, the food and drink on his bedside are untouched. She had hesitated before, but this time she doesn’t. She crawls into bed behind him and snuggles close, resting her forehead at the top of his spine.

She closes her eyes but doesn’t sleep.

There’s a quiet stretch.

Sirius goes to work.

Lily drinks and watches the Disney videos she forgot she had under the bed. She thinks about how she’ll never get to show these films to Harry. She and James will never get to bicker good-naturedly as they awkwardly try to raise a kid with both magical and muggle culture.

She throws the empty bottle of fire-whiskey at the television.

She curls over and screams into the pillow on her lap and then breathes until the lack of fresh air forces her to sit up.

She keeps drinking.

When she wakes up mid-afternoon the next day, it’s to find that Sirius had covered her with a blanket and cleaned up the glass.

He didn’t fix the tv though.

She doesn’t fix it either.

Lily hates recruitment duty maybe more than she hates stake outs. It feels too much like she’s simply donning a fake smile and saying hey, feel like coming to die for our cause? She’s never anything but honest when she’s talking to them; she’s upfront about how hard it is to oppose the death eaters directly. She still walks away feeling like she’s leading someone hand in hand to their death.

Lily comes home to find the flat spotless.

Sirius has never been particularly messy, but then the same could have been said about Lily once upon a time (she was the one who always had to nag James to pick his robes up off the floor and to wash a goddamn dish every once in a while, its one measly spell, James, honestly), but they had both let themselves slip.

The side tables are polished, the curtains are open for the first time since Lily had come back to stay and, most notably, there were no dirty glasses or empty bottles and cans littered about the floor and coffee table.

A weird sinking sensation goes from her heart to the bottom of her stomach and she goes to check the kitchen cupboards.

There’s no alcohol.

Even Alphard Black’s special bottle of two hundred year old mead had been moved from behind the cereal boxes.

Lily sits on the kitchen floor and fists her hands in her hair.

She doesn’t know why it upsets her so much.

It feels a little like getting left behind when you hadn’t even realized you were falling back.

She wants to go and visit James and Harry.

She thinks if she did she would lie beside the grave and pretend that she’s in it. She thinks she would never leave.

She goes to her granddad’s grave in Cokeworth instead. She traces her fingers over his etched name and thinks, tell me the story about the Princess and the guards who were just doing their jobs. Tell me about the Prince that went to war to save her.

Tell me how he didn’t.

I didn’t understand it then.

I do now. I do now.

Let me hear it again.

I don’t remember how it ends.

Hestia is dead.

Hestia, Gregory, Ambrosius, Porquin, they were all dead.

When she’d rejoined the order there had been twenty-four members. Now they were down to sixteen.

“Fall back!” Moody shouts.

The Order and those that chose to fight with them begin to drop back. Shooting spells that allow them time to apparate away.

Lily pushes her way forward instead.

Hestia is dead. The woman she had fought beside since she was 18 and fresh from Hogwarts. She’s fucking dead. Lily has to keep fighting. She can’t just leave. She can’t just let these bastards win.

Someone grabs her arm and hauls her back.

Sirius is lucky that she recognizes him before her wand could finish its slashing movement. She almost cut his arm right off.

He apparates them away.

They can’t apparate right into their flat, there’s too many wards preventing just that, so they’re still in the street when they land and Lily yanks her arm from his grasp.

“What the fuck?” Lily snaps, whirling on him.

“What the fuck me?!” Sirius roars back. “What the fuck you! Moody said to fall back, what the fuck did you think you were doing?!”

“I thought I was fucking fighting,” Lily says. “They killed them. They killed Hestia. She was our friend, and we were just going to leave? Let them get away with it?”

“Right, because letting them kill you too would teach them such a lesson” Sirius says. The sarcastic tone infuriates her.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot”

“I’ll talk to you however you act and you’re acting like an idiot. You’re being selfish”

“Selfish?!” she screeches. “How am I selfish for wanting to keep fighting?”

Sirius huffs violently through his nose and shakes his head. He is glaring down at her.

“That’s not wanting to fight, that’s wanting to die”

“My husband and baby are dead already, what the fuck do I care?” she spits out. She didn’t really mean to say it. Especially not to Sirius. The words are out there now though and she can’t take them back. Isn’t sure she wants to. They hang in the air heavily.

Sirius looks down at her. The fight is gone. That makes it worse somehow. Fighting is a part of who Sirius is, there was always fight in him. To see him without it strikes her as wrong and she shifts on her feet.

“That’s what makes you selfish,” he says quietly but firmly. “I lost James and Harry. And you seem perfectly fine making me lose you too”

He hits her shoulder with his own as he storms past her into their building.

“Maybe you’re the selfish one!” she shouts after him.

The door slams shut and she’s stood alone in the street.

She wants to cry.

“I’m sorry”

“Me too”

Lily feels like she’s still in hiding. Sure she leaves to go to meetings and battles and stake-outs, but she says no whenever any of the new members ask if she wants to join them for a drink, and the days that stretch between the fighting are spent sat in front of the TV, resisting the urge to go to the corner shop and buy a drink and impatiently waiting for Sirius to get home.

“Maybe you could get a job,” Sirius says.

Lily scoffs.

“Really,” he says. “St Mungos is always looking these days. Who knows, maybe they need some potion makers and you can get your old job back”

Lily shakes her head.

“It’s not the sort of job you can just drop if the Order needs you,” she says.

Sirius goes still and careful. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“I need to be fighting,” she tells him. “I can’t stop. I can’t just stop”

Fabian and Gideon Prewett had been on the periphery of Lily’s life growing up. They had been in their fourth year when she had started at Hogwarts, people she saw laughing in the common room, bodies she saw flying on the Quidditch pitch, attractive boys gossiped about in the hallways, Gideon had been a prefect and Head Boy, but she had never even shared passing greetings with them.

Then they became people she fought beside, people she laughed and cried with, and people who had her back like she had theirs.

Now they are memories she grieves.

In 1978, Fabian had been fired from his job as an Auror for drinking on the job. No one who knew him was particularly surprised. He had gotten a job at the Leaky Cauldron shortly after. It proved surprisingly useful for the order. Gossip was a powerful thing, and lips became loose when they had been drinking.

It’s funny how things circle back around.

Lily wipes down the bar and flicks her wand towards the empty glasses. They float back to the kitchen to be washed.

How many times had they sat at this bar and chatted to Fabian as he worked? It makes her heart ache to think about it. She tries not to think about it.

“Working hard or hardly working?” she looks up to Sirius’ grin.

She gives him the deliberately flat look that she learned from Remus and he barks out a laugh.

“You want some firewhiskey?” she asks, already grabbing a glass, but Sirius shakes his head.

“I’m only stopping off. I’m on stake-out duty,” he says.

Lily grimaces.

“Who are you with?”

“Rhys”

It takes her a second to place him then she remembers. He’s the black haired, freckled man who talks a lot with his hands. She’s seen him with Sirius more than once.

“You’ve been working with him a lot”

Sirius stiffens. “And?” he snaps.

Lily’s brows shoot up.

“And nothing. You just don’t normally have the patience to work with people that much. Especially not on stake outs.”

Sirius relaxes and Lily wonders what he was worried she would say.

Another fight. This one down in Devon.

What could the death eaters even want in fucking Devon?

It’s easier to use the killing curse now.

She and Sirius don’t speak when they get home.

They each shower and then knock elbows as they brush their teeth at the same time.

He wants to say something to her.

Lily doesn’t have to wait long; Sirius wasn’t one to sit with words.

“You used the killing curse”

Lily spits the toothpaste froth from her mouth into the sink.

“So what?” she says. She hadn’t been expecting to feel so defensive, certainly not with Sirius, and yet. “It’s not like I did anything wrong”

And she didn’t. It’s kill or be killed these days. The killing curse or a cutting curse, it shouldn’t make a difference.

He sits on the edge of the bath and flattens down the curled up corner of the bath mat with his foot.

“I know, I just…I guess I never expected you to use any Dark magic” he says.

“We never expected a lot of things” she says back.

There’s a vampire sitting at the end of the bar.

The vampire is also drunk.

Before now Lily hadn’t stopped to consider that vampires could get drunk.

It’s impossible just from looking at them to distinguish on whether they are male or female: the pale, gaunt creature having a very androgynous look about them despite having little to no hair on their head. She wonders whether, as dark creature, they even classify themselves as one or the other. She decides not to ask, she is already having trouble not staring (she’s never been good about not satiating her curiosity, its perhaps only down to that horrible incident in fifth year that Lily had never snuck out to witness one of Remus’ transformations herself).

Speaking of

“…filthy mutts,” the vampire is saying. Perhaps to her, perhaps to the room at large, but Lily is the only one listening. “Fighting besides you-know-who, can you believe?”

Lily figures from the way they speak this vampire can’t be an overly old one.

“Forgetting completely that wizards like that are the ones that isolated creatures like them in the first place” the vampire rolls their eyes and throws back their drink. They said ‘them’ in a way that could be heard as ‘us’. “Fucking idiots”

Lily fills the empty glass up again with blood infused mead (it’s the first time it had been requested from Lily and she found the smell of it is something awful).

She puts the bottle back, but returns to vampire immediately, resting her arms on the bar top.

“Tell me,” she says, looking the vampire in the face, “have you ever heard of the Order of the Phoenix?”

You’d think by now they would have gotten better at recognizing when one of their own was not of their own mind.

They are down to eleven.

Sirius is already blisteringly spitting mad when she gets to the Order meeting. It has been a long time since she has seen him like this. He’d seemed to calm more and more lately as though he had to compensate for Lily’s own reckless fury. Now his face is red and his grey eyes almost black with wild rage. He looks uncomfortably like Bellatrix Lestrange when he’s like this. Remus is frantically trying to talk him down and one of the other members, Rhys Mathers, has Sirius’ wand in his hand. Lily wonders how he had gotten it.

“What’s going on?” she demands.

Everything goes still and the three of them turn to look at her.

“Fuck this,” Sirius spits, snatching his wand from Rhys, who’s grip had gone slack at the sight of her, and storms from the room.

Remus goes to follow him, but Rhys puts a staying hand on his arm. They share some quiet words before Rhys goes to follow Sirius.

“Remus,” she says. His name demands an explanation.

He takes a breath and meets her eyes. He’s being careful. It makes her spine stiffen and she braces herself.

“Sturgis and Lyle found the Death Eater who told Voldemort about the prophecy”

Her heart pounds.

She steps forward fervently.

“Where?”

She knows who it is as soon as he says Spinner’s End.

It’s an unbearable week of constant asking before Dumbledore allows her to see Snape. He wanted to put him under interrogation and get as much information as he could first. Gifted in the art of legillimency and also dark and painful spells, Sirius is often turned to for interrogation purposes. She wonder’s if he had been asked this time or if he was deemed too close to it. She idly hopes that he was. He’d of had no mercy. Not for him. He’s being kept in one of the heavily warded backrooms of the Hog’s Head. Aberforth has her hand her wand over before she’s allowed back there.

“Don’t let him make you do something you never wanted to do,” he says as he takes it. “Don’t let him take that too”

She isn’t quite ready for how it feels to see him again after all these years. He somehow looks the same and completely different all at once. His hair is still a greasy length of black to his chin, he has the same hooked nose and sallow skin, but he looks older than he should, like he’s aged ten years in the last five. He’s still wearing his death eater robes. His wrists and ankles don’t move from the arms and legs of the chair.

“Lily,” he breathes. He’s looking at her desperately. Like he can’t quite believe she’s there and has to look his fill as quick as he can.

“Why?” her voice strains and it’s hard to force the word out.

“I didn’t know it was about you,” he says. She’s glad he didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. She doesn’t think she could have kept holding herself back if he had. “As soon as I found out I asked him to spare you. I tried to keep you safe.”

He says this as though he did something good. As though trying to save her was ever going to be enough. Was ever going to be what she wanted.

She’s ill-equipped to deal with the unbridled fury that fills her at the sound of it. She’s been angry, she’s always angry, but all of it feels like nothing compared to this.

“You asked him to spare me?” she spits. She doesn’t recognize her own voice. “You asked him to spare me, but were fine with him killing James, killing Harry?” her voice breaks.

There’s a small touch of confusion on his face before it clears. He hadn’t recognized her son’s name. He was the reason he is dead and he didn’t even know his name.

“You don’t know what he’s like,” Snape says. “I couldn’t have stopped him, he was determined to prevent the prophecy, but you…you had nothing to do with it. You could be kept safe”

He doesn’t mention James at all.

“Safe!” she shrieks. She can see on his face that if he wasn’t spelled still he would have flinched back. “You think I give a fuck about being safe anymore?! James and – and Harry, my – my baby, they’re dead because of you.”

She’s crying.

Anger and grief: a horrible combination of broken shouting and hot tears down fury-reddened cheeks.

“This is all your fault! You ruined my life! You ruined my fucking life!” she screams.

“I saved your life,” he says.

She strikes him across the face before she even makes the conscious decision to do so.

Everything stops.

All that anger and hurt, she could feel it freezing. That molten rage is cooling and hardening into dragon-forged steel. He had robbed her of the dignity of dying with her family and he didn’t even care.

Her dad had never liked Snape; had tried on multiple occasions to get her to stop spending time with him. He always said there was something wrong with him. Lily hadn’t believed him, he had been her best friend and she loved him and she’d known, or she’d thought she’d known, that he loved her too. But her dad was right, he was right. There’s something wrong with him. Anybody who can do what he did and not regret it had no concept of love, not really.

She breathes until her breaths go quiet.

Her hands are shaking.

“Do you remember when you told me about the dementors?” she asks. Thrown by the abrupt change of subject he only nods. “You told me what they did and I told you I didn’t think anybody deserved a fate like that”

“I remember,” he says quietly.

Lily had been reborn by hatred and bloodshed and she had no room in her empty heart to forgive a Death Eater. She is not the woman she was.

She looks him in the eyes and tells him to pucker up.

The resin ashtray is clean bar a fine layer of dust.

She wonders for a second if she should take up smoking, but it had always been more of James’ thing than hers. Maybe she might bum one after they had been out drinking but the after taste never sat right in her mouth.

She rolls over and she’s facing the wardrobe instead. The doors are closed now. She can’t remember closing them, suspects Sirius might have, he had lived with James even longer than she had after all.

She closes her eyes.

She thinks back to the last time she and James had been in this bed. Her belly swollen and her head resting between his shoulder blades as the light faded from behind the curtains.

They had never really cuddled. James ran hot and Lily was all elbows and knees. Suddenly, starkly, she wishes they had. That she had held tight to him and didn’t let go until the morning light called for it, and even then it would be ever so reluctant.

James had been the love of her life and yet she had spent more time ignoring him and arguing with him than she had spent loving him. Yet another thing that never works out fucking fair.

She wishes she could go back. Wishes she could sit back in that carriage and smile and say “I hope I’m in Gryffindor too.”

Lily has taken to leaving her door open now, so when Sirius comes by with a sandwich and a glass of orange juice he comes to place it on her bedside table instead of leaving it by her door.

“What’s your biggest regret?” she asks.

He swears and almost spills the juice. He had thought she’d been sleeping. She opens her eyes to look at him. He’s wearing his auror robes still and his hair is tied back.

He looks back at her and blinks.

Something settles across his face.

“Regulus” he says.

Lily blinks back. She doesn’t know what she had expected him to say. They had already spoken about secret keepers and there was no use regretting what would have amounted to the same outcome.

She had never met Sirius’ brother. She doesn’t think she had ever even passed him in the halls, or if she had she hadn’t known to look. She wonders if they had looked similar or if they were as different as she and Petunia. Based on the stark resemblance between Sirius and his cousins (the two she had seen anyway) she would lean towards the former.

She thinks about Petunia, who hates her for what she is. She wishes it could be different, but it’s not the gut punch it used to be, it’s not something she regrets, because what could she have done really?

She wants to ask Sirius what it is he regrets. She has become well practiced over the years at never voicing the numerous questions she has about Sirius’ family.

This time she asks anyway.

He doesn’t answer.

Some things hurt too much to voice she supposes.