In the Wake of Defeat
If Bella is injured, no one can tell. She's everywhere at once, in her element in the chaos following a disorderly retreat as much as she was on the battlefield, giving orders and organising people and doing something with the wards, magic so thick around her it's hard to breathe.
Thom is unconscious, no one knows what's wrong with him, his mind is closed off hard.
Aster is gone — she didn't retreat to Ancient House, and when they got squads organised to go back and retrieve the wounded, the bodies, she wasn't there, either.
Sev...
Sev is dead.
There are over two-hundred bodies laid out on the lawn, most of them Fourth Circle associates, not actual Death Eaters. He's lying in the third row, all the way at the eastern end of the line. It doesn't look like he's injured at all. A Killing Curse, maybe. Or maybe a Heartstopper. Lightning Curse. Asphyxiation. Blood Boiling Curse. Blood Vanishing Curse. There are hundreds of ways to kill someone and leave a pretty corpse.
Lily doesn't have time to figure out which one was used on him.
Half of those who are left are injured to varying degrees. Most of them badly.
Including most of their healers.
Pulaski, their Chief Healer, he lost a hand. He ordered the stump cauterised and bandaged, knocked back enough pain-killing potion he'll be lucky if his liver doesn't start to fail on him — when one of his subordinates said as much, he just shouted "Triage, Monroe!" in her face, pointing her at a man puking up blood. He's kneeling over a burn victim now, left arm tucked in close to his chest, casting spells with his right.
Lily can hardly do less, even if it feels like she's lost something a hell of a lot more important than a hand.
"Tend to the living first, Daughter. The dead will keep."
Everyone who's conscious is furious. They want blood.
Some of the younger recruits, the ones who know of Aster, but didn't know her well, suggest she's not there because she betrayed them. Bella threatens to rip their tongues out if they say anything like that again, even before they find Aster's wand.
They found her wand.
Wherever she is, she's unarmed. Helpless.
Well, not helpless, this is Aster — she may look like a china doll, but she can kick the arses of most people Lily's ever met just fine without magic.
But she wouldn't leave her wand. Not willingly.
Bella sends Cissa away. Lily hears something about the Wizengamot, but she can't stop and listen, Pulaski is shouting for anyone who isn't already keeping someone from dying to come stop this fucker bleeding out while he repairs his lungs. Not the burn victim, another one now.
Lily doesn't actually know how to do that, not specifically, but no one else is moving to help him. She hums a general healing charm over him, drawing light energy through herself, giving it purpose, but trusting in the magic to figure out the details, because this is so far beyond anything she's seen in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, it's not even funny.
Maintaining her spell as she is, she can feel the damaged tissue being excised and vanished, the magic stimulating the growth of new, healthy lung — spongy and almost lacy, with all the little capillaries and bronchioles. It's mesmerising in an infinite, fractal way. She falls into the magic, but the healer doesn't linger there, continuing up the trachea and larynx, reversing the damage from whatever poison the man had breathed in.
It's enough. The man's breathing is clear, the rasping stops. The healer turns to Lily. "You're not one of mine — who the fuck are you?"
The world, frozen in a long, shocked, too-immediate moment from the first blast, knocking her off her feet and a sneering woman in red armour apparating into the midst of the carnage, sending a cutting curse at Aster as she reached down to help Lily up — Aster somehow managing to dodge it, though only by throwing herself flat on top of Lily — rolling off her and retaliating while she was still on her back, before Lily even realised what was happening, a light piercing curse that went straight through the shield the armoured invader threw up to stop it, her eyes going wide before it went straight through her head, too — Aster dragging her to her feet, shoving her away from the centre of the field where Bella was dancing with Dumbledore, spell-light and fire illuminating dozens of half-transfigured grotesques between them, smacking her across the face — "I said get out of here, Evans!" — "But—" — "Shadow-walk to Ancient House, now!" — "But what about you?!" — turning to deflect a bludgeoning hex and throwing that crooked smirk over her shoulder, "Going soft, Evans? I can take care of myself. Get out of here before you get us both killed!" — through however long she spent just standing in the Dark, trying to catch her breath and focus and the panic as others started to arrive at Ancient House, wounded and dying, and Sev and Bella telling her to tend to the living and hearing that they'd found Aster's wand and right up to this very moment, shuddered back into motion.
She blinked at him. "Evans. Lily Evans." He grunted in acknowledgement, gripping her shoulder painfully tightly to pull himself up to his feet. "How's your arm?"
"Piss on my arm— We have bigger problems, Evans! Pick a body!" he said sharply, gesturing at the makeshift field hospital. There were three other healers tending to the wounded, including the one he'd been shouting at earlier. Half a dozen house elves were popping in and out of the field of bodies with potions and bandages and water. She thought the patients were grouped in a rough triage order — all three healers were focused on patients near them, two were trying to help patients who were already dead. Not literally, they were still breathing, but she could tell they were beyond saving, her Lady's hand already resting heavy on their souls. And there were a handful of people who clearly weren't healers patching up the ones that were just physically injured some way away.
"Hey! You idiots get your arses back here!" Pulaski shouted at a couple who were attempting to leave on recently-repaired legs. "You have a Blood-Chilling Curse on you, and you've got some mind-magic shite sticking to you! Make yourselves useful until we have a chance to deal with you!"
"Which ones are the healers? Among the wounded, I mean?"
"None of this lot." He knelt beside another body, began performing analytics.
"Don't bother, she's too far gone," Lily said without thinking.
Pulaski gave her a sharp glare, but said nothing, still focused on his charms. Two seconds later he said, "How did you...?"
She shrugged. "I just knew?" She'd thought the gift Kore had given her had faded, she hadn't felt the attack looming in the futures of all the people now lying dead, but maybe there was still something there. "Death's already taken hold of them..."
The Healer's eyes widened, then narrowed as recognition struck. "You're de Mort's brat! The necromancer!"
"Er...yes?"
"Who else has She already claimed?"
"Ah...those four," she said, pointing them out. A man with his entrails spilling out of his slashed torso; a woman who, like Sev, could have been sleeping; another man with his chest staved in, like he'd taken a bludgeoning curse at point-blank range; and a third with a hideous gash across his face, half his scalp missing. "That one's slipping," she added. Another woman, twitching and shivering, Lily had no idea what was wrong with her.
"Carson! See if you can pick apart the knot of curses on Koenig before she starts seizing again!"
"But—" the healer working on the woman who looked like she was sleeping objected.
"Now, boy! And Millie, fetch Emily!"
"She'll be fine, sir, she's just exhausted!" Millie called back, not looking up from the man with the collapsed chest.
"I know that! I want her over here ten seconds ago! You— Evans! Help me get our poor unfortunates together, over there." He jerked his chin toward an open patch of ground a couple metres away, already levitating Carson's patient in that direction. "Lay 'em out in a star, heads to the middle, left hands extended toward the centre."
"Are you planning what I think you're planning?"
He looked back at her with the cold, flat eyes of a man who's seen far too many people die. The eyes of a man who's condemned far too many people to death, in order to save others. "Emily is a mind-mage with two decades of experience as an emergency intake healer, and the only reason she's unconscious right now is acute enervation. How certain are you that these five are too far gone to save?"
So, that was a yes, then. "Positive," she muttered, lifting Millie's former patient into the air, and positioning him opposite the woman.
She didn't manage to get back ten seconds before she'd left, but it was probably only a minute or two before Millie returned, with a hovering patient of her own. And only another minute or two after that before the healer, Emily, was sitting bolt-upright, gasping for air as five other souls slipped across the Veil.
She looked at the symbol cut into her hand, and then around at the corpses behind her. "Milton... You didn't..."
"I sure as fuck did, Missy, and I don't have time for your whinging about cannibalism, I've got people dying over here! Get your arse off the ground and make yourself useful! And you— Evans! What are you doing, standing around with your thumbs up your arse? Get—" He was cut off by a high-pitched shriek, as one of the non-healers who was poking at the less critical cases reeled back, flailing at something that looked a bit like an insubstantial, sickly green spider through the mage-sight charm Lily had finally remembered to use on herself. "Belay that— Go rescue B.J." He shook his head in disbelief. "That kid..."
Oh, that was BJ, wasn't it — Lily hadn't recognised him, too distracted by the curse that had flipped on him. She hurried to help him fight it off before it could worm its way too deeply into his magic. She didn't recognise it, but that didn't mean much, she hadn't recognised most of the curses she'd seen today. It was obviously dark and active, focused on its victim's soul, which meant that an infusion of light magic into its victim would force it to recoil. She hit BJ with a Cheering Charm, trapping it in a containment bubble when it reacted as expected.
"Evans?"
"Er... Hi, B.J." She was kind of surprised he recognised her, she hadn't bothered keeping up the glamours after they'd left the Festa Morgana.
"I'm inordinately glad to see you. There's something different about you. Did you change your hair?" he asked, giving her a boyish grin.
"I...might've overdone that Cheering Charm. What the hell is this thing?"
"Haven't the foggiest."
Right, unmaking it was, then. She muttered the incantation under her breath, channelling as much destructive energy into the curse as she could. Which was quite a lot more than the last time she'd tried this curse. Might've overdone that, too. Not that it mattered, the curse she'd pulled off of BJ still erupted into invisible flames, it just burned away into nothingness a little bit faster than it might have otherwise.
BJ chuckled. "Well, look at you, Hellflower — all grown up and casting counter-curses like a proper healer!"
"Tell you a secret?"
He nodded.
"I am so far out of my depth right now..."
"Ah, well. I suspect we all are, a bit. Well," he added, glancing over Lily's shoulder at Bella, stalking over to talk to Pulaski. "Maybe not the Blackheart, but everyone else."
"De Mort's catatonic," she informed him.
BJ swallowed hard. "Okay, maybe her too, then. Where's Aster?"
"Missing in action. And Sev—" she cut herself off, shaking her head. She couldn't say it.
"No!" he gasped. "Gods and Powers, Lily, I'm so sorry," he said, pulling her into a hug.
"Hey! Less hugging! More cursebreaking! People are dying!" Bella interrupted, sounding uncannily like Pulaski. "I've been informed that people who kill as many people as I do have no business trying to play healer — superstitious old fucker — so I'm doing curse-checks. To get all these useless wastes of space out of the way, in Millie's words," she added, quirking her head at the growing crowd of otherwise mostly-healed walking wounded.
"Ludmilla said that?" BJ sniggered.
"Oh, no, Milton. I guess that is a bit ambiguous. Hmm... Not important. Asphodel, you're clear, but stick around, even barely trained novice healers are apparently more welcome right now than myself. Baby Barty...that is a hell of a Cheering Charm, but other than that, fine. I was serious, about the dying and the cursebreaking, though. Do that one, next," she said, pointing at a thin, middle-aged man whose pale, waxen face was starting to go a slightly morbid green. "He's got some corruption-based curse lurking in his blood, on top of the tangle of other superficial shite. The rest of these, if their symptoms aren't killing them, the curses won't either."
Lily couldn't help asking, "Any news?" as she turned to go.
"No." Just the one flat, hard word was enough to make Lily's blood run cold. She turned back. "We have over two dozen unaccounted for. I'll be assigning that lot to search parties when they're cleared. The Family Magic doesn't think Aster's dead, but it can't feel her, which is both weird and disturbing. No change with Thom, and if she's doing as I told her, Cissy should be declaring that there's a schism in the House before the Wizengamot in about—" She flicked off a tempus charm. How was it already almost five? "—three hours. I've already isolated this property from the rest of the House to reinforce the impression that I'm the only Black who's gone rogue and called up the enceinte against the possibility of a follow-up assault, but it's more likely they're trying to bottle us up here.
"The Floo is down, and there's a massive anti-disapparation blanket ward over the property — looks like they worked palings with runic casting and supported them with geomancy, so it would be more trouble than it's worth right now to break them. We recovered thirty-four bodies from their side. A few of Dumbledore's Phoenixes and hired wands, but mostly Aurors and Hit Wizards. So unless they're going to station every last one they've got left at the wardline to intercept anyone who tries to leave overland and keep up a Patronus patrol, we're not actually under siege, yet. They'll need to get Public Works out here to lay containment wards around the whole property to stop shadow-walking and physical egress. Maybe six hours. We'll pick them off and sabotage their wardstones as they come. If they don't give up and stop sending wardcrafters to get killed, they'll probably manage to cut us off in about a week. Maybe two. Plenty of time to get everyone out to more anonymous safehouses, break anyone who was captured out of gaol, return the bodies of our people to their families. Think of some suitable way to decorate Diagon Alley with theirs...
"It's under control. Tend to the living. And don't forget to eat something at some point." And then she was gone, arresting the survivors' attention with a sharp whistle.
Lily couldn't quite imagine ever wanting to eat anything again, looking at the carnage all around them.
It was well after midday by the time Lily was dismissed by a very tired Emily. Pulaski had collapsed sometime around sunrise. The next-most-senior healer had ordered that he be kept unconscious until he could be treated. All of the others who had been there all night were dismissed, too — Millie and Carson and Monroe — leaving the remaining patients in the care of more recently revived healers.
Most of them had been moved inside, along with the bodies of the dead. The main ballroom had become a morgue. The sunlight shining through the wall of tall, arched windows, falling on rows of corpses and reflected by the mirrors opposite, seemed obscene. All the more so because they were still in the process of stripping and washing the bodies, wrapping them in makeshift shrouds — sheets and tablecloths with preservation and stasis charms painted on (No one had anticipated a need for nearly three hundred burial shrouds.) — cleaning and folding their clothes, to be stacked atop the bodies with the rest of their belongings. Some of them, the ones who had family here, were being cared for by those family members, but it seemed most were being tended to by the elves, and a handful of human volunteers. It took Lily so long to find Sev, she thought he must already have been wrapped up. She was resigning herself to peeking at every veiled face in the hall when she realised that there was another room, a small chamber off to one side, maybe a cloakroom, with only two bodies laid out on a low (elf-sized), wooden table that looked to have been borrowed from a kitchen somewhere — its surface was covered with the marks of hundreds of meals prepared using it as a cutting board.
She had to force her eyes away from them to look at Sev. His skin was even more sallow in death, his fine, lank hair caked with dried mud. He looked younger, the tension usually present in every line of his face, even in sleep, absent for once. She brushed a speck of dirt away from the corner of his mouth, something in her breaking as she felt how cold he was. "Oh, Sev...I'm sorry..." she whispered, at a loss for other words.
She'd failed him.
And Aster.
The two people in the entire world she truly cared about, the two people she'd decided to care about, the ones she'd declared her own, had both been taken from her in the space of...of minutes. She'd run, and— It— She simply couldn't comprehend it.
Sev— The last time she'd seen him, he was dancing with a blonde girl, obviously younger than them, someone Lily didn't know. She hadn't wanted to interrupt to introduce herself, it looked like he was actually starting to enjoy himself.
And Aster— Aster hadn't even kissed her goodbye...
An elf approached quietly, knocking lightly on the doorframe to alert her to its presence. "We saved Miss Lily's Sev for her to care for," it said, almost as softly. "And Mister Thom for the Mistress. But if Miss prefers—"
"No." Her voice sounded far too loud in her own ears. "I'll do it. I'll... I'll need water. And a cloth."
The elf nodded solemnly. "Lil will fetch them for you."
She examined Thom while she waited. (She didn't want to look at Sev. At the body that used to be Sev.)
He wasn't dead. He was breathing, his heart beating. Both were slow, but steady. He had no physical injuries, though the tears in his robes, crusted with blood, suggested that he had been injured. And there were no lingering curses, or even traces of magic on him, which was...odd. He was awfully muddy, as though he'd been knocked to the ground by the blast — not surprising, Lily and Aster had been in the first rank of the Fourth Circle and she'd been knocked to the ground — if whatever had happened to him happened quickly, maybe he just hadn't gotten up. That could've saved him getting cursed to seven hells, maybe...but he'd been in the inner circle, leading the ritual — he had to have been hit by at least a few of those transformation cantrips.
There weren't even any traces of healing magic on him, which was even weirder, but physically, he seemed...fine.
Psychically... She reached out hesitantly, uncertain what was wrong, and wary of hurting him. If he didn't recognise her mind and lashed out at her like a wounded animal, she didn't have the slightest idea how to actually defend herself.
His mind was still closed off, which was weird — she'd noticed pretty much immediately that he never used occlumency. He could pull back and stop himself from invading the minds of people around him (if he wanted to), but she'd never felt him try to keep anyone out of his own mind.
But...that meant he had to be conscious, she thought?
She meant, it felt like a really firm barrier. Sev couldn't (hadn't been able to) keep the boundaries of his mind this well defined when he was asleep, and he used occlumency all the time. Unconscious occlumency was a reflex built up by practising, and Thom never practised, so...
She pushed a little harder at him. Thom? she thought at him, even though she knew he couldn't 'hear' her.
Usually he was in contact with all the other minds around him, but right now, he wouldn't be aware of anything outside of his own mind. She thought it kind of felt like he pushed back, maybe, somehow, or...maybe like the shape of his mind was unstable? Changing, sort of. Which, it really shouldn't be, and she couldn't say for sure that it was — Thom's psychic presence was much 'bigger' than hers, she couldn't really 'see' enough of it at once to tell — but...
The image/memory/sensation that came to mind was of an unborn baby kicking in the womb. (Not her memory, she'd never even known anyone who was pregnant, let alone laid a hand on their belly — it must have been an echo of one of Nicole's...) Like something was trying to get out.
What that something could be, she didn't know, and it was probably a terrible idea to try to find out, but she needed to know what was wrong with him, if he needed help...and the only way to do that was to establish contact with him.
Lily had been a proper mind mage for all of a month, and Thom was probably the most powerful, scariest (mortal) mind mage in Britain. Certainly the most intimidating she'd ever met. Also the most fucked up person she'd ever met (including Bella). She didn't want to try to get inside his head 'unsupervised' (not that he made many efforts to keep her from stumbling across memories and fantasies she would much rather not when he was awake, either) and she was pretty sure that if he wanted to keep her out, she wouldn't stand a chance of getting in. Weird, shifting internal pressures aside, she couldn't feel any weaknesses in his defences, so a 'normal' legilimency approach was right out. (She didn't actually know how to break into another mind, like a legilimency attack, any more than she knew how to defend against one, but even if she did, she was pretty sure Thom would smack her down without even trying.)
According to Thom, legilimens established contact with other minds by 'attuning' their own mind — part of their own mind, not all of it, forgetting who she was would be bad, especially if she was channelling Thom — to that of the 'other'. He insisted that the trick to doing legilimency was really very simple — make your own mind sufficiently similar to that of the 'other', and the 'other' will accept you as part of itself. And you accept it as an extension of yourself. Of the little part of you that resonates with it. And then you can do whatever you like with it, because it's yours.
Of course, if the other person whose mind you were trying to read understood that too, and was any good at occlumency, it could be dangerous, because they could manipulate that little bit of you as though it was part of their own mind, because in the moment it would be. Aster, for example, was, as Thom had explained only a couple of days ago, sort of absurdly good at using occlumency like a legilimens. If you did it right, though, Thom had assured her, the other wouldn't even notice you were there. You just had to attune yourself thoroughly.
Sev claimed (had claimed) that this was much more difficult than Thom made it sound, that most people who were even the slightest bit self-aware would notice the presence of another consciousness lurking in their thoughts, especially if they used occlumency to define the edge of their mental 'space'. Someone completely open like Thom (or Aster, who did use occlumency to hide memories and information within her mind and could use it to push an intruder out, but didn't cut herself off from the world around her like Bella) might not notice someone encroaching on them immediately, but the whole point of occlumency barriers, like the one Thom was using now, was being very aware of yourself and resisting any outside incursion. Even if an incursion was perfectly attuned, if it was coming from outside of your own space, it could be recognised and resisted.
Thom's counter-claim was that obviously one's mind should be attuned to the ambient magic of the space outside the mind one was trying to invade, until it came into contact with the other, whereupon one started resonating with the other, right at the edge of the other's mind, preferably across a broad contact. Everyone expected legilimens to try to sneak a niggling little probe past them. No one expected them to essentially make themselves part of the barrier between the other and everything else.
Sev had said that was ridiculous, but it made sense to Lily. You just kind of had to...let yourself become one with the Universe, and then lean into the other mind. Relax, like holding your breath and letting yourself sink in a pool until you reached that magic point where you were just floating, weightless. But in someone's mind/magic/soul, because mind magic was kind of insane, when she thought about it.
She had to sit down first, though, because she wasn't nearly as good as Thom at paying attention to what her own body was doing and also mind magic. She had a tendency to fall over, which was very distracting.
There were no chairs, so she perched herself gingerly on the edge of the table, then decided that lying down would be even better than sitting, especially since this wasn't exactly an armchair. She could still tip over. She briefly considered lying on the floor, before deciding that would be silly (it wasn't like she was going to get corpse-cooties or something, it was just a body) and just stretching out there, turning her head to her right, and very determinedly not thinking about the fact that the body on her left used to belong to Sev.
Not that that really mattered, since she closed her eyes to focus better. She pushed her conscious thoughts away, focusing on her breathing and letting herself just sort of...drift, until she encountered Thom's mind, floating in the sea of psychic energy she was letting herself dissolve into, and sort of leaned against him, very casually, like she was slipping through an illusion into a secret passage she didn't want anyone else to know was there. Sinking into the energy of his mind, and trying not to pay too much attention to what she was doing, because that would make it more obvious. Like not thinking about certain animals of a particular colour. It was best not to think at all, but she wasn't very good at that.
Wait. Had that been her own thought? It was kind of hard to tell in someone else's mind, especially when they weren't making it very obvious they were talking to her.
Now she was definitely thinking about what she was doing, and having a self to be doing things with was slightly antithetical to being one with the other, but she suspected that the incoherent storm of energy around her might be distracting enough that Thom didn't notice.
Seriously, what the hell was going on? It...almost felt like... Like there was another mind in here? Maybe more than one. And they were fighting back against an attempted intrusion that was coming from all sides at once, attempting not to resonate with Thom or each other, their edges sharp and ragged and twisting, pushing him away, pushing each other away — she was certain, now, that there was more than one — but there was nowhere to go— Trying to make him resonate with them — trying to possess him — different pieces of him pulled in different directions...
That...wasn't possible, was it?
Well, she knew it was possible, he'd admitted as much when she'd been power-drunk in the wake of Nicole and entertaining the idea of stealing everything from someone. And the way he'd said that she would have to work up to it had felt like he was implying that yes, he'd done something of the like before.
But for one mind to engulf multiple other minds?
An overwhelming wave of frustration and pain and fury engulfed her, and suddenly she was standing in the circle again, beside Bella rather than Aster, at the centre — as Thom, obviously.
He was playing the part of a pagan priest of some stripe or another, the sole priest of a religion all his own, maybe, distantly aware of the hundreds of minds surrounding him, most of them happy and comfortable, floating in a haze of alcohol and various other drugs and potions, some simply drunk on laughter and camaraderie and the joy of being here, being part of something. He was riding the wave of their emotions, feeling an odd echo of their feelings which almost felt as though they were his own — he knew they weren't, but it wasn't unpleasant, second-hand happiness. But he was far more focused on the ritual, the summoning of Magic — more inviting, really — that was what he was here for. The guests were only witnesses, invited to share in the ceremony for the ceremony of the thing, not because he truly wanted them there.
He didn't dislike having them here — see: secondhand happiness — but they weren't necessary.
None of this was, really. He knew that, on some level. He could just as easily acknowledge the shift in the balance of magic at home — in bed, even. But this was...respectful. Making an event of it gave it more meaning.
He was still speaking about the Powers governing the holiday and the eternal waxing and waning of the Dark and the Light, about celebrating the Dark at the height of its power, and recognising the shift as the Light began to regain its strength, as the world moved toward spring—
It was a pretty good speech, if he did say so himself.
In fact, the most prominent thought that crossed his mind in the split-second he had to realise that something was wrong before the explosion was Damn it! I won't get to finish my speech...
The attack was well-coordinated and ruthlessly enacted. The anti-disapparation palings snapped into place in the same moment that the bomb — a wooden sphere the size of a beach-ball, covered with runes, all glowing an ominous red — was transported into their midst. In less than a blink, it had been triggered, fire and force spewing outward, knocking him off his feet, burning his face. The feeling of insects crawling beneath his skin that accompanied the reflexive healing which immediately repaired the damage was even more uncomfortable than the series of partial transfigurations he was hit with — cantrips, set to transform, mutilate, spewing into the air in a second wave, like a fountain, peppering the area out to perhaps the edges of the Third Circle. Bella had gotten a shield up, as had most of the First Circle. But not all of them. Was that Nott, over there? And most of them had at least been caught by the initial blast. All of them except Bella, actually. She always had been unnaturally quick on the draw — wasn't even singed.
By the time he pulled the transformative magic into himself and neutralised it, reasserting his identity and form to reverse the incomplete spells, she had blasted the wretched device — still spewing cantrips — into so much matchwood.
It must have been almost done, though, because before he managed to block out the pain and panic and confusion and fear suddenly screaming at him from seven-hundred minds and regain his feet, red-clad Aurors and battlemages in leather armour were apparating into their midst.
Aurors and battlemages and mind mages — three of them, and they had exactly one goal in mind: neutralise Tom Riddle.
He kept them out of his mind long enough to see Dumbledore make his entrance, perhaps thirty seconds after the bomb was dropped, and Bella engage him with a Killing Curse — the Old Goat dodged it narrowly, letting it pass him harmlessly by to rip the soul out of an Auror behind him — before Thom's attackers overwhelmed his defences. Keeping people out of his mind had never been his strong suit. Dragging them in, though — even when they weren't properly attuned, even when they realised what he was doing and struggled frantically to withdraw, to flee back to their own bodies...
Oh, no you don't, you fuckers! You wanted in, you're coming in! You wanted me neutralised? Well, congratulations! You now have my full attention!
He engulfed them completely, bearing down, bombarding them with memories and sensations and raw fury — you dare?! — pulling a bit of energy away from one, a memory from another, assimilating them one little nibble at a time. It didn't take long, though, until they realised what was happening, came to the obvious conclusion that it was kill or be killed, now. Their own bodies had died as soon as he ripped their minds away. If they didn't manage to eat him alive (and each other — sharing a body with one other consciousness was a tricky proposition, let alone two), they would themselves be entirely subsumed.
He had the advantage, in a way — they were in his mind, there was clearly more of him than any of them — and he was almost certainly a more experienced metaphage than any of them. But there wasn't more of him than all of them together. He was over-extended — he'd managed to swallow them, cut them off from their bodies, but only just — and while all three of them seemed to have realised that they would have to destroy him if they wanted to live, they didn't seem to have realised, yet, that they would have to destroy each other, too. He was fighting a very complicated legilimency battle on three fronts, entirely consuming his awareness. The physical world might as well not exist at the moment, and there was a very real chance that they would tear him apart before he could do the same to them.
It was not a good time for a fourth foreign consciousness to wander into his mind, even if Asphodel was a relatively unobtrusive, benign presence. Closed doors mean keep out!
The string of memories ended abruptly.
Lily equally abruptly became conscious of the elf — Lil? — gently shaking her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, Lil was looking down at her with an expression of mixed disapproval and relief. "Miss Lily is well? Lil was beginning to think that Mister Thom's state is catching."
"Er, no. I'm fine. I'm fine..." She had no idea how she'd gotten back in her own body, and she had equally little idea whether Thom was going to be okay, or how long it would take him to wake up, but at least she knew what was happening now.
The expression tipped a little bit more toward disapproval. "In that case, if Miss Lily wishes to sleep, there are beds available. Beds where Miss Lily will not be mistaken for one of the dead."
"What? No, I wasn't sleeping, I was trying to figure out what's wrong with Thom. I didn't want to get too distracted by the mind reading and, you know, fall over."
"And did Miss discover how to wake Mister Thom?" the elf asked, a very reluctant gleam of hope in its — her? it could be difficult to tell with elves... — too-large eyes.
Lily sighed. "No. He sort of...bit off more than he could chew, er...psychically speaking. He...kind of...dragged the mind mages who were attacking him out of their bodies, and now he's trying to stop them from tearing his mind apart because, well, obviously they don't want to be eaten alive, so... We can't wake him up. And I don't think he wants anyone else trying to talk to him, either. And I don't know how long it's going to take until we...know, one way or the other."
The elf gave a disapproving sniff, glaring at the comatose man. "Mister Thom will be fine, then. Mind magics is all will. Mister Thom will be hurting, but will not die if it is a matter of will. And perhaps the overconfident snake will learn not to eat people. Or only to eat small-minded people," she added, with a wry smirk. Lily snorted. Until she'd come to Ancient House, she hadn't realised that elves could be wry — the Hogwarts elves certainly weren't, or at least not around students. "Trixie will be relieved to hear this." Lil sounded pretty relieved herself.
"Trixie?"
"Mistress, Lil means. Miss Bella was Trixie when she was small." The elf held a hand up level with her own ears with a nostalgic grin. "Do not be telling Mistress Lil tells you this, but when Miss Bella was small, she thought she is an elf."
Bella, who had appeared in the doorway right around the time Lil said don't tell Bella, cleared her throat.
"Oh! Call on the Dark..." the elf squeaked, with a half-suppressed grin suggesting she'd known "Trixie" was there all along.
Bella rolled her eyes. "Very small. I think I was about two. And in defence of my two-year-old self, I'd never seen another human before. And I make a really bad elf, anyway."
"Mistress should not pretend she doesn't know Lil meant unwell. Miss Bella was a sweet child, once," she informed Lily. "Before the tweelks caught her."
Bella glowered down at the elf, complaining at her for a few seconds in her own language before cutting herself off. "Why are we even talking about this? Surely there are more important things to do..."
"Because it is good to think of happy times when everyone is sad and hurting and angry. Miss Lily is not wanting to think about her Sev," Lil said, drawing him back to the forefront of Lily's mind. Her eyes flicked back to him — to his body — of their own accord.
No. It still doesn't seem real. That he could be gone... Why hadn't she gone back for him? She hadn't been able to think...
"And because Mistress will always be Trixie to Lil."
She disappeared with a pop before Bella could say, "Don't call me Trixie!" She turned to Lily, still sitting on the table between her comatose father and the empty shell that used to belong to her best friend, with a tired sigh. "What the hell was that about?"
"The magical nobility equivalent of sharing embarrassing baby pictures, I assume." Lily answered absently, making a concerted effort to focus on Bella, rather than...everything else. "I managed to get through to Thom, not that it does us much good."
"What did you find out?" Bella demanded, with a startling degree of sudden alertness.
"Um. He's fighting for control of his body with three other mind mages he kind of sort of...ate. I'm pretty sure he's going to be out of it until he either subdues and subsumes them, or they tear his mind apart. I have no idea how long it's going to take, but as long as he's like this, I think he's...fine? I mean, there's nothing we can do for him except keep his body alive, like a person in a coma."
Bella let out a sigh of relief, letting herself lean against the nearest wall. "Good. That's good. There are spells for that, slow his metabolism so his body won't suffer... I can take him back to his house, he'll be safe there until he wakes up."
"He...might not," Lily said, unnerved by the certainty of that until. She wasn't sure how Bella would take it if he didn't, and—
"He will." That was not a tone that would suffer any debate on the matter, but she changed the subject before Lily could say anything else anyway, nodding at Sev. "Were you going to do the rites for your Sev?"
"Er...if you mean washing the body, yes. Is there...more to it than that?"
Bella shrugged. "Not really. The rites are kind of a lay-tradition. They're meant to prepare the soul, purifying it — removing any traces of maliciousness it might carry with it into death and have to suffer eternally, you know the sort of thing — by washing the body. Free it from any ties to its body and its life, assure it that its unfinished business will be completed, and help it find its way to whatever afterlife they believed in. I mean, his soul's already beyond the Veil, but common superstition holds that you have to wait three days before you can reanimate a body because there's still some part of them lingering."
It was really because it took about that long for a soul to be entirely assimilated into Death. And it was really about resurrecting someone, not reanimating their flesh (though Lily knew most people didn't know the difference). Death couldn't emulate the person you wanted to resurrect until they were fully assimilated.
"And I guess it's also kind of a paying-last-respects sort of thing. Though I seriously doubt the dead person cares. Thom says funeral rituals are for the mourners, anyway. Helps the living come to terms with the fact that that person's gone now. And since we're going to have to store the bodies for a few days and probably transport most of them so their families can hold their own funerals and wakes and memorials and such, cleaning them up and preserving them is just practical."
Lily nodded. "I'll...just do that, then." She wondered if she should tell Eileen. Sev had certainly had no intention of ever visiting his mother again. But he might have...wanted her to know, at least. Lily didn't think the drunken bitch deserved even that much from them — she'd ignored Sev for most of his life, after all, turned a blind eye to Tobias — but Sev was a softer, kinder person than she was.
She dipped the towel in the water and wrung it out, then realised that she should probably undress him first. Which was easier said than done. The volunteers, out in the other room, had made it look easy, but dead people, as it turned out, were heavy. And Lily didn't have three other people to help her move him around.
Bella, who apparently intended to get Thom cleaned up too, had just vanished his clothes, but it...just didn't seem right to do that to Sev. It was too...impersonal. Too distant. It made what should be a very intimate act of reflection seem clinical.
She had to make herself believe it was real. That was the point.
She just...couldn't.
And now she was just getting frustrated and angry at how difficult it was to undress a bloody corpse, thinking of it as a thing, a problem to be solved — that was definitely not the right frame of mind for this ritual.
She stopped, just kneeling beside the body, staring at Sev's face. He would hate it, seeing her manhandle him like this, all awkward and undignified.
Sev had always been very self-conscious like that. He'd made a point of losing his lower-class, muggle accent as soon as they'd come to Hogwarts, taken to carrying himself like the nobles he was surrounded by in Slytherin (not that it had helped him fit in, he was still the worst kind of halfblood, and didn't understand anything about their culture — he'd been mocked terribly for his attempts to "pretend to be a real wizard" those first couple of years), and rather than carefully avoiding drawing attention as he had in Cokeworth, used words he'd found in books that made him sound as smart as he actually was. Mostly to insult Aster. Sirius, then. It had, apparently, been one thing for other Slytherins to make fun of him, but something very different for a...
She couldn't remember the exact words he had used. They'd been in the Transfiguration corridor, only a couple of weeks into their second year. It had been sunny, but chilly. The windows had been open because someone had set off a dung-bomb. And Potter and Black had come skipping up to her, throwing their arms around her shoulders, interrupting their conversation to demand that she congratulate them on successfully pranking their Head of House, not that they were admitting to anything, of course. Sev had essentially told them to piss off in no uncertain terms...she just couldn't remember what those terms were.
Damn it! This was going to bug her, now...
"Do you want a bloody hint, Princess?"
"Huh?"
"Featherweight Charm." Oh. Well, now she felt stupid. Obviously that would make it much easier to undress him. "Also, if you want to wait and...I don't know, get some sleep or something? I seem to recall telling you that the dead would keep."
"Get some sleep?" Lily echoed.
"Well, I assume you're not used to staying up for thirty-plus hours at a go, which is a potential explanation for your getting lost in thought and staring off into space over a corpse with an amused little smirk on your face, and one which I'm actually capable of addressing, so."
Oh, right. She had been up since yesterday morning, hadn't she? It...didn't seem that long. And yet it somehow also seemed like yesterday was an entirely different lifetime ago.
"I was just thinking about this one time Sev was insulting Aster, back when we were kids. And it was hilarious at the time, but I can't remember exactly what he said, and if he weren't dead, I'd ask him, because he probably would, but he is, so I can't, and—" She cut herself off, taking a deep breath. You're babbling, Evans. Borderline hysterically. Pull yourself together. "It's not important."
She cast the Featherweight Charm, which did indeed make it much easier to remove the heavy, formal robes Sev had worn for the wedding and the party. She had no idea where he'd gotten them. Not that it mattered, really.
Bella kept her peace, letting Lily get on with cleaning the dirt and blood from Sev's skin. She did so almost mechanically. Despite her best efforts, she kept catching her mind wandering. Thinking about Sev, mostly, but Aster too.
Trying not to think about the fact that she just– just ran away and left them— She hadn't even tried to find Sev through the Shadows and get him out too, she just— She'd panicked. She hadn't been able to think, she'd— Everything had been so...loud. And sudden. And Aster was pushing her away, telling her to get out, come back here—
If Aster wasn't dead, and she wasn't here, she had to have been captured, right?
"Bella..."
"Hmm?"
"What happens... What happens if Aster's been captured? What— How do we get her back?"
Bella, who was almost done with Thom, looked up with an absolutely unreadable expression. "It depends who has her. If it's Dumbledore, he'll likely attempt to use her as a bargaining chip in negotiating a surrender, which will necessitate communication. We'll track the owls to whatever hole he's crawled into to lick his wounds, after which I believe I promised to destroy him and erase his name from history. I admittedly don't know how I'm going to manage that second part, and honestly, I haven't decided how I'm going to take care of the first part, yet — I'm sure Thom will have suggestions when he wakes up — but Cissy's already working on dragging his political career into the mud, which is a start.
"If it's Crouch, he's more likely to keep her and attempt to extract information from her. If last night was any indication, the gloves are off now, so torture is not out of the question. It's likely they'll try truth potions and mind magic first, though. Aster is a good occlumens, and stubborn as they come. She knows how to resist questioning under veritaserum—" Lily had to raise an eyebrow at that. Veritaserum was supposed to be impossible to resist. "There are lies, and then there are lies," Bella added, giving her a painfully familiar smirk. "They won't break her, at least not in the next few days. Crouch won't be able to resist participating in the questioning himself — actually, it's possible Aster will answer all of their questions in a mix of languages her interrogators don't speak, we did practise that, so Crouch will have to involve himself — and he's the Director of the D.L.E., he can't just stop coming to work. I already have people tailing him and working on obtaining a focus for a sympathetic tracking spell.
"They're not going to kill her, either way. We will get her back, Princess."
Lily nodded, biting her lower lip.
"What?"
"Huh? I didn't say anything."
"No, you just look like you want to. And it will be much easier to get the mud out of his hair if you conjure a stand for the bowl and rest his head in the water."
Good idea. She did. But washing someone's hair didn't exactly require the same degree of concentration as free conjuration. She couldn't stop coming back to the fact that she'd left them.
"I'm sorry," she admitted, after what felt like several long minutes.
"Why?"
"I— I could have saved her. I could have saved Sev. I just— Aster told me to run, and I ran. I didn't think, I just...hid. In the Shadows. People were fighting and dying and getting captured, and I just left them... I didn't even try to help..."
Bella rolled her eyes, obviously done with Thom, but equally obviously not in a hurry to run off and do something else, curling into one of those odd sitting positions she and Aster both liked so much, one leg folded in front of her, her other knee pulled up so she could lean forward and rest her chin on it. Lily had no idea how that could possibly be comfortable. "So, if you were dead or captured too, that would be better? Because you are fucking worthless in a fight."
That was true. Bella had made her do a practice-duel with Aster the other weekend, just to get an idea of how well she could defend herself (because apparently learning to do so properly wasn't optional). Lily imagined it had been a bit like watching Aster try to fight Bella. "I should've– should've dragged her along with me, or gone to find Sev — he's not — wasn't — any better a fighter than I am, or... I panicked. I was afraid — I've never been afraid like that in my life— I couldn't think— I couldn't understand what was happening, couldn't focus—"
"Mmm. Yeah, that's normal. Getting used to that kind of chaos and violence takes time. From what I've observed, it tends to be easier on most people if they see it from the offensive perspective, first. The mind-mage thing probably didn't help. I know it was slowing Thom down, hundreds of terrified, panicking people all around you, I'm not surprised you got caught up in it."
...Lily hadn't actually considered that. That part of the reason she'd been so viscerally terrified, so unable to focus or think past the fear and confusion, the intensity of it, was because everyone around her had been confused and terrified. She'd thought she just felt safer when she got into the Shadows because, well, it was a hell of a lot less likely that anyone was going to hit her with a fatal curse there, but now that Bella mentioned it, it had been a bit like flipping a switch, from panicked to just...numb. Overwhelmed. Working on auto-pilot.
That did make her feel a little better about so completely failing Sev and Aster. Not much, but a little.
"But you didn't do anything stupid, following Aster's orders and getting yourself out of there was the best thing you could have done in the circumstances. And you kept moving, made yourself useful dealing with the wounded. You were a bit shocky, but you didn't get sick or cry or get too emotional to function. That's better than most recruits do, the first time they go out on a raid. And you'll do better next time."
"Next time?"
Bella grinned. "This isn't over, Princess. We're at war now, and we're just getting started. We still have the advantage over the Ministry, even with the losses we sustained. If anything, the Knights have more motivation now. And they won't take us by surprise like that again. So, yes. Next time. I'm going to give you to Milton to train as a front-line healer. He actually requested you. Seems you impressed him. The phrases 'not a bloody overconfident idiot doing more harm than good' and 'kept her fucking head, unlike some other morons I could name' were mentioned. High praise coming from Milton Pulaski."
Seriously? Lily hadn't felt like she was keeping her head. She'd felt like she was drowning in dying people, and barely keeping her head above water.
"Anyway, I'm going to take Thom home. You can come, if you like. You could use a bath yourself. And probably food and sleep."
"I don't think I could eat or sleep right now," she admitted. "I'm... I'd like to stay here and just...think, for a while. About Sev."
"Lil brought candles with the winding sheet. I'm guessing she thought you'd want to hold a vigil for him."
"Will you help me...wrap him, before you go?"
Lily's vigil, such as it was, didn't last very long. She had been awake for thirty-odd hours, after all. She wasn't sure how long she lay on the table beside Sev before she fell asleep, staring at the candles and the light and shadows playing across his face and remembering him and wondering if there was something wrong with her by turns, because she didn't feel sad.
She felt...lost. Lop-sided and off-balance. She didn't know how to be Lily Evans without Severus Snape at her side.
She felt hollow. Ill. To be alone, alive, when Sev wasn't, was just so...so overwhelmingly wrong, she couldn't comprehend how such a thing was possible.
And she felt furious. At the fucker who'd actually killed him, yes, and Fate, but mostly at herself. Even if Bella had given her an excuse for her uselessness, she still hadn't been there when Sev had needed her. She'd failed him.
And she'd lost him.
They would get Aster back. Thom would wake up. But Sev wouldn't.
He didn't have to die. It was too soon. She still needed him. And she knew it hadn't been his time. She just knew it.
He'd been taken from her, stolen— It wasn't right!
She refused to believe it. Refused to accept it. Sev wasn't allowed to die before her, dammit!
But he had.
Some stranger, some anonymous battlemage, had just...stopped his heart. Just one more in the crowd, one more to slaughter.
Why, Kore? Why Sev? Why did it have to be—
"It didn't have to be," the goddess said, her voice stark and cold. When Lily turned to look at her, her expression was empty. She wore red, as she always did, but rather than poppies and roses and marigolds, today it was a red that reminded Lily of the horrors of the field hospital, a dark, bloody colour.
"Then why?"
"Why was there a fight at all? Why were you there? Why was that man casting that curse at that moment? Mortals make choices."
"But...why Sev? Why did he have to—"
Persephone shrugged. "Chance."
"But there were hundreds of other people there! Hundreds who survived, got away! Why couldn't he have—"
"And who would you have had die in his place? That curse, once cast, had to strike someone. The girl he was dancing with? A mother of three? A healer who saved dozens of lives in the aftermath?"
"Anyone, Kore! Anyone but Aster." She wouldn't trade one of her people for the other, but anyone else, she didn't care. "Two people! Is that too much to ask? I only want to keep two people, and– and You took them both!" Not Persephone, not Death, but Magic. Fate. They were all the same, in the end.
"Mortals make choices," the goddess repeated. "Their actions are the causes and effects which shape their own lives. At a certain point, momentum takes over. A path, a chain of events, is set, and regardless of the minor choices anyone involved might make, the end is certain."
That was such a load of rubbish, Lily didn't even have words. Gods couldn't do much directly on the mortal plane, that was true, that was why they had dedicants, but they could influence events indirectly, and they had perspective humans didn't. It might not have made a difference after the curse was cast, after Sev stepped into its path, too little time left to dodge, but half a second's hesitation on the part of the killer, an intuition whispered to Sev to duck—
"You could have saved him! I know You could have! It didn't have to be Sev! I don't care who would have died in his place — he wasn't supposed to die, it wasn't his time! I would have known if it was!"
"It wasn't not his time. In moments such as that, with so many lives at a turning point, so many choices and interactions, all of them carrying so much potential, no one individual can be expected to survive. The world will carry on without him. History will carry on, settle into new channels. The grand scheme of things is hardly ever affected by the loss of any one mortal."
"Who cares about the world, the grand scheme? I need him, Kore! He was important to me! Why would You— Why would You do this to me?" she asked, trying not to cry. "Have I— Did I do something wrong?"
"I suppose that depends. Would you have ended Nicole's life tonight, knowing that her mother, her brother, all the people who loved her, will feel the same pain you're feeling now, when they realise she's not coming home?"
"I... What?"
"Would you have done it if you hadn't known that she would have died today, regardless?"
"I—" Would she have? She...didn't actually know. She had been more concerned about Persephone's reaction than about the girl or her family, but if the matter of whether her soul went to Death or was destroyed weren't a consideration...
"I know you're not afraid of me, child," the goddess said, brushing Lily's hair out of her face and lifting her chin to look her in the eye. "You're not afraid to die, to leave the mortal plane. But I will not have you take death lightly. I will not forbid you to kill — at times I might even ask you to do so. But you will do so with full understanding of the consequences of your actions."
"This is about Nicole? You took him as– as some sort of punishment?"
"No, child. Not as a punishment. As a lesson. To understand what it means to end a life, to snuff out its potential, end its consciousness, that's one thing. The dead don't suffer. But death, dying, the transition, is more about the living than the dead. The ones left behind. When you take a life, you're taking it from them. Taking someone they love away from them, forever.
"As Severus was taken from you."
Lily was crying, now. She couldn't seem to help it, hearing Persephone say forever. She buried her face in the goddess's shoulder, an awkward seated half-hug, one arm around her shoulders, rocking her gently, the other holding her hands.
"I would not have my favoured priestess become so cruel and callous as to kill without even a thought for the people she harms by doing so. As though a life is but a token in a game, to be gambled with and lost when luck and lack of skill conspire against you. I would have you recall this moment, this feeling, and weigh the suffering you cause by taking your enemies' lives against the suffering you alleviate by ending them and the joy you take in wielding that power."
"I don't," she sniffled. "I didn't. Didn't enjoy it. The magic, yes, but not the killing." She hadn't felt anything about it, really.
"No. But then, killing that terrified shell of a girl, relieving her soul from the living nightmare which was its only experience of the world and consigning it to oblivion — that was a mercy. The life of the person she once was ended when you gave her memories to me. And I will not have you fall to Riddle's corruption, to his encouragement to take pleasure in the act of ending a life, in causing pain to others. Nor will I allow you to be indifferent to it.
"There is a certain degree of nihilism in knowing Death so intimately, and some Aspects embody that attitude, it's true. But you gave yourself to me as Persephone. An Aspect which embraces life as fully as she embraces death, keeping the Balance through ambivalence, rather than neutrality. She is Life in Death, and Death in Life — the recognition that death defines life as light defines darkness — that life is all the more precious because it is finite.
"Experiencing the joys and sorrows of life, its pleasures and pains, its passion, is part of living. And even if an experience does not inspire feeling in you, you can still appreciate that it does inspire feeling in others. And I would have you do so. Act freely, but be mindful of the gravity of the decisions you make, fully conscious of the effects which follow from those actions. Do you understand?"
Lily nodded, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Yes. And I will. I promise. But..."
"But?"
Was she really going to make Lily say it?
"Yes, I am."
"But, if this was a lesson, teaching me what it feels like to– to lose someone — and I've learned it, I swear I have... Does that mean I can have Sev back?" Persephone hesitated, frowning at her. "Please? I need him— I need him to help me...to be my conscience."
Because even though she had just promised to be conscientious about things — decisions, actions, consequences — she'd feel a lot more confident in her ability to do that with Sev at her side. He'd always been...well, the sensible one, out of the two of them. Dour and serious and cynical, even when they were little kids. The one with his feet planted firmly on the ground, paying attention to the world around them while she wandered around with her head in the clouds, keeping her from losing herself in Magic. The one who pointed out, with a long-suffering sigh, that she was being bloody creepy again, who played devil's advocate for her and pointed out when she was missing something completely obvious about (to steal Aster and Bella's term) normal people. She didn't know how to be Lily Evans without Sev, and she strongly suspected that Asphodel de Mort was going to need someone sane and steady in her life even more than Lily had.
And, well...she liked Sev. He was brilliant and funny and patient and they had history. He loved her. He was hers. And she wasn't ready to let him go, damn it!
"And...I just need him, okay? Please let me have him back. Please."
Kore sighed. "Very well. I will give him a second chance. Just one, and only because you ought to know true joy, as well as pain. And because I believe he will help remind you to at least try to give a shite about other people now and again."
Lily snorted at that particular phrasing. It was a very Sev thing to say — Kore generally avoided casual vulgarities. She had sworn at Thom over Samhain, but she really didn't like him. "Thank you," she murmured, throwing her arms around the goddess. "And, just one more thing—"
Kore snorted at that. "What, one miracle isn't enough for you?"
"No, it's not— I just have one more question: Aster's not dead, is she?"
"No."
"Do you know where she is? Can you tell me?"
"Yes, and no, that would be telling. And unless I'm very mistaken, that was three questions. I think it's time for you to wake up, now."
For a certain value of awake. The candles were still burning when Lily's eyes fluttered open, but only just, flames low and guttering as they drowned in their holders. It didn't matter, she didn't need them to see. She wasn't sure she really needed to see at all. She didn't actually seem to be in control of her body, at the moment.
She felt like she was still dreaming, or like Thom had taken control of her body again, watching as her hands lifted the veil-like extension of the shroud that Bella had folded over Sev's face. More like she was dreaming than she had in her dream, actually. Trance-like. She didn't think about what she was doing, just went along with it, watching from the back of her own mind as Persephone breathed Sev's soul back into him, rekindling his life with a spark of magic. She felt his heart begin to beat again under her hand, felt his chest rise as he gasped for air like a man on the verge of drowning.
And then he screamed, a pained, terrified sound, and Lily actually woke up, alone in her body again.
"Sev! Sev, it's fine! You're fine! Calm down!"
"Lily?" he panted.
"Yeah, I'm here, Sev."
"Why can't I— Where are we? Why can't I move? And why is it dark? You didn't blind me again, did you?"
Lily laughed, maybe a little more than that question warranted. Thinking back on the exploits of their second-year selves, practising charms they'd only read about with no precautions to speak of was somewhat amusing. (Madam Pomfrey had not been amused when two twelve-year-olds were brought to her needing new corneas because they'd decided it was a good idea to stare directly at a lumax.) But she was mostly just relieved. He was alive!
"No, you're not blind, the candles just went out. Hang on, I'll find my wand. We're at Ancient House—"
"What— I thought I was dead!"
"Er..."
"Lily...I can't help but find that 'er' to be somewhat suspicious."
"Well..."
"Lily," he said, impressively calmly. "Did I actually die?"
"Ah...about that..."
"Lily, you fucking madwoman, it's a bloody simple question! Yes or no! Was I dead?!"
"Yes." She finally managed to locate her wand (it had rolled off the table) and conjured a couple of light globes just in time to see Sev giving her a very familiar unnerved-yet-still-disapproving glare. It quickly shifted to a scowl as he looked down to see why he couldn't move, and realised that he was...slightly mummified.
"Gods and Powers, Lily! What the fuck?! Why'm I— Were you actually going to bury me? What the hell?!"
"Well...cremate you, actually. Don't give me that look! You were dead! It seemed like the thing to do," she said defensively, helping him unwind the sheet and free his arms, at which point she pinned them right back to his sides, hugging him so tightly he seemed to be having trouble speaking. He was warm, and had a heartbeat, and— Well, he still smelled like cedar and verbena, the oils in the water Lil had brought to wash him, but he was alive, and annoyed with her, and she couldn't stop giggling, what the hell was wrong with her?
"Ah, yes, right, of course. I was dead? Past tense? Not dead now, and languishing in some weird, new absurdist hell?"
"Yes. Past tense. And no, this is the same old absurdist hell. Welcome back to the land of the living."
"Oh." He appeared to think this over for a long moment, then added, "How long was I dead? Am I actually me, or do I just think I am?"
"You're you. It was only about a day."
Sev might not be much for high ritual himself, but he'd spent enough time around Lily to know the three-day rule. "...How?"
"Magic?"
"Lily..."
"I don't know, Sev! I asked Persephone, and She let me have you back."
"You just...asked. Death just...gave you my soul, because you asked."
"Well, no, I also cried. Kind of a lot."
"Really?" he said, as though he didn't actually believe her.
"Really." She swept his hair away from his face, just for an excuse to touch him, remind herself that he was real. The fact that he was alive was almost as surreal and incomprehensible as it had been that he was dead. "Losing you was...terrible, Sev. It hurt."
"Yes, well, in case you were wondering, dying is no picnic, either." He shuddered. Apparently he didn't want to talk about it, though, because he changed the subject with a familiar, long-suffering sigh. "Who else knows? That I was dead."
Lily found herself completely unable to stop smiling, even in the face of what was actually kind of an important question. "Bella, definitely. The Black elves — we're at Ancient House. I didn't tell anyone, but I was tied up with the healers until about two. I have no idea who else might've seen you in the meanwhile. Someone put you and de Mort in here — he's not dead, just comatose," she added quickly as Sev's eyes went wide. "I...think he'll be fine. Er. Maybe? There's nothing we can do for him, anyway. Bella took him home. But someone apparently thought they'd put you in here with him earlier, presumably so Bella and I wouldn't have to hunt for you out in the ballroom, or so we'd have some privacy preparing your body for the funeral, or whatever. Which, no one told me, so I did end up looking for you for a while, but the point is, I don't think many other people would have seen you? I mean, someone must have, I don't know if the elves know how important you are to me... Oh, I told B.J.," she remembered belatedly. "He might've told them."
Sev groaned. "And everyone else who knows me."
"So? What's more likely: that I freaked out over you being dead when you were really only under some sort of petrification curse, or that I brought you back from the dead? Well, I guess Healer Pulaski might guess the latter, but anyone else would say you must not have really been dead. Because actually, truly reviving the dead is impossible, everyone knows that."
He sighed. "Right. Right... I presume Black is alive and well, since I don't see her corpse lying around here. Did Evan make it?"
"I...don't know. I haven't seen him, but that doesn't mean much. There are two-hundred and fifty-some dead, and about four-hundred running around doing...whatever. Well, three-hundred. There were a hundred and twelve critically wounded who were still under observation when I was relieved, and I didn't work on all of them. Bella would probably know. She said there were two-dozen people unaccounted for, so she must have a list, or something." She gave him a moment to come to terms with the overwhelming losses they'd suffered before adding, "Aster's missing."
"...Fuck."
"Yeah, that's about the shape of it," Lily agreed, somewhat sobered by considering the death toll and consequent loss and pain and mourning, but only somewhat. She'd gotten Sev back. And Kore hadn't said she ought to feel bad about people she didn't care about dying, only that she had to be aware that other people were going to mourn them. The fact that she hadn't gotten Aster back, yet, was far more important to her. "We will get her back, though. As soon as we find out who has her and where they're holding her..."