Lily was halfway up the stairs, on her way to put Mary down for the night, when the front door burst open, and everything started happening too quickly.
Pettigrew!We’ve been betrayed, she realized instantly.
Her daughter whimpered at the splintering crash.
I’ll KILL him! she raged silently, but she wouldn’t, she knew.
There was no time for vengeance, not now, nor would there be, ever again.
“Lily, take Mary and go!” James shouted, but she was already gone. The floo was in the living room, and she could feel the anti-disapparition and portkey wards stifling her magic and that of the pendant that she always, always wore around her neck, the one that should have whisked her and her baby away to safety the second she recognized the danger they were in.
There was no way to run – no time to escape. This was it – the worst that could happen, the last stand.
She had a plan, though she had hoped never to need it.
“It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!” echoed strangely in her wake as she raced toward the nursery – the most heavily warded space within the house.
She heard the Killing Curse cast behind her, and the body of her husband hitting the floor. A scream wrenched itself from her throat at the loss of him – her best friend, lover, help-meet… he had been everything she could have asked for in a husband, and their wedding bond torn asunder resonated painfully down to her bones. It was all she could do not to drop Mary and fall to her knees in tears. But now was not the time for mourning.
She blocked the door, shifting chairs and boxes with a wave of her wand – even a few seconds could be crucial – before returning to her task.
“I hoped it would never come to this,” she muttered, dropping her daughter into her crib too-roughly, but this was not the time for gentleness – not at all. No more than for vengeance or flight or mourning.
She cut her palm wordlessly, and threw her wand away. She did not need it now – could not have it, truth be told. It was necessary, now, that she should not try to defend herself: that she should go willingly to her death, before her he turned on her daughter. With a wand in her hand, there was no guarantee that she would not react with war-drilled instinct, fighting for her life without thinking.
The ritual had been mostly-complete for months. A final rune, drawn in blood, just over the Third Eye – Sowilo, for the triumph of light over darkness, resistance to death, and a union of souls – and it was done. All that remained was for the sacrifice – Lily herself – to die, willingly, before the blood was dry. The wards would do the rest.
Lily Evans might not be able to fight the Dark Lord for her daughter’s life – she would not stand a chance against him in a straightforward duel – but she could and would ensure that he died with her, and Mary survived his attack.
She could hear the monster’s footsteps coming down the hall, could hear him drawing nearer, deliberately slowly. She hugged the child close in her last moments, whispering her love and fixing her mind on her intentions. This was, without a doubt, the hardest thing she had ever had to do, to wait and stop and face death without fighting, but when the little girl was born, Lily had known at once: she would die for her child, to keep her safe. Still, there were tears in her eyes as Voldemort forced his way through the door.
Then, suddenly, he was there, his face mere feet from her own, at the very edge of the warded space, unable to advance further. He was taller than she remembered, and unnaturally pale, with red eyes and a hideously snake-like face. He was even uglier now than he had been before she (involuntarily) retired from the field. She wondered, fleetingly, if he recognized her, for he did not attack at once.
She dropped Mary back into the crib and whirled to stand between the child and the murderer, babbling the only thought in her mind. “Not Mary, not Mary, please not Mary!”
“Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now.”
Not a chance in any of the nine fucking hells! There was only one way he was getting anywhere near the crib, and that was over her dead body. “Not Mary, please no, take me, kill me instead –”
“This is my last warning…”
If Lily hadn’t been absolutely terrified, for herself and her child, she might have wondered at greater length why he was warning her at all, why he was giving her the slightest of chances. Did he recognize her, and suspect a trick? But this was not the time for curiosity, either. “Not Mary! Please… have mercy… have mercy… Not Mary! Not Mary! Please – I’ll do anything…”
“Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”
There was a compulsion behind his order, but she would not bow to it – she was behind enough wards, in this place, that unless she willed it, she could not be moved by anything short of an Avada. Mary’s life depended on it. James was already dead, and she would not last ten seconds in a duel with him. But she couldn’t take the chance that he wouldn’t kill her – the ritual needed to be completed – only then would Mary be safe.
It must, she thought, have infuriated him that his compulsion held no sway over her, but she was willing to wager that in the defense of her daughter, she could shake off even an imperius.
He seemed to realize it all at once, because a green light flashed without warning, and then pain – pain beyond anything she had ever before experienced. Anyone who says an Avada is a painless death is lying, she thought irrelevantly as her body fell to the floor and her consciousness, life-spark, mind, soul, self was pulled into the hastily-completed ritual, wrapping itself around Mary, a final shield, one last protection for the innocent child.
The babe began to cry as the final ward was activated – not with a flash of power, but with the faintest trickle of blood, as that of the sacrifice sank through her flesh and joined her own, blood of her blood, becoming one being with two souls – the elder willing to do anything to protect the younger. She – they – were standing, now, in the crib, looking up at the red-eyed snake. It stared at them with a fury that only seemed to grow the more they cried.
Then, not a minute after the first time, the green light struck again. It was exponentially worse, bearing the pain of a second separation so soon after the first – but that didn’t matter. Lily would die a thousand times before she allowed him to touch her child. The curse stripped her away from her child, but she clung, desperately, to the two bodies she had so briefly inhabited – long enough to see the true defense of the nursery spring to life.
The Wrath of Adrestia Unbound, a White Arts ritual suspended in a ward, sparked to life as the Killing Curse crossed its trigger-line, unprovoked harm instantly turned back upon its caster threefold. The ward would not – could not – have avenged Lily herself: she had earned her death at the hands of Voldemort three times over and more, and she knew it. But Mary was an innocent. The child had never sought to harm the Dark Lord in any way, and as such, had fairly earned no enmity from him. The Goddess of Just Retribution would restore the balance between the Dark Lord and the child with extreme prejudice.
A swirl of light and color descended upon the wizard, atomizing his body, breaking him down to nothing and less than nothing. His pain and terror were nearly tangible as the ward spent its excess fury on the unprotected part of the room. His wand and robes fell to the ground, and Mary’s eyes opened. She wailed, and Lily let herself slip away, into the Void between universes, secure in the knowledge that her child was alive, and safe from the threat of Voldemort forever.
As quickly as it had all begun, everything stopped.