Chapter Text
prologue
When Lily Evans is six-years-old she goes camping in the Forest of Dean with her family. Petunia had just turned nine and thought she was too old to go exploring, so Lily set out on her own. It hadn’t rained in a week and she liked the crunch of the forest floor under her sandals. She leaps over fallen fir branches until she comes upon a proud stalk of foxglove, fighting against the summer heat with its wilted petals and leaves. They were a lovely pure white and reminded her of the snowdrops in her grandmother’s front garden.
“Don’t touch those,” her mother said behind her. “They’re poisonous.”
Her voice was firm – calm but clear.
“They’re pretty,” she said.
“Yes,” Eleanor Evans said. “They are, aren’t they?”
She felt drawn to the flowers. Her gran would have said it was the fairies calling to her. Lily thought at the time that this was impossible. Fairies and magic were just stories. They weren’t real.
Ten years later she crushes a pure white foxglove beneath the blade of her knife. When it hits the surface of her cauldron, she watches the poison spread like smoke until her Draught of Living Death is black as night. Through the steam, she smiles at James Potter.
“Want a taste?”
“Ought not to test it,” he says. “You’re far too clever, it’d work.”
“Shut up,” is what she says, but a blush is spreading down her neck. He tugs at her sleeve and she rounds the table to lean into his side.
“The brightest witch of her age,” James says in his best Slughorn impression.
She chucks a dried up Valerian root at his head.
ooo
She stands in her son’s nursery and stares him down. His otherworldly eyes are haunting against the pale yellow wallpaper. Under his foot is a stuffed lion that Remus picked out when Harry was born. The sound of James’ body hitting the stairs is ringing in her ears.
“Step aside, girl,” he says, and Lily shivers.
“No,” she says. Begs. “Please. He’s only a baby.”
“I said step aside.” His voice is a hiss, quiet but deadly. “This isn’t about you.”
“He’s my son ,” she breathes. “Please. Have mercy.”
Harry tugs at the back of her shirt. He babbles against her skin. He begins to cry, unaware of any danger in the room and simply wanting his mama’s attention.
“I promised to spare you,” Voldemort sighs, as if this was an inconvenient chore. “But if you insist…”
He raises his wand in a carefree grip. The wood is knobby and strikingly familiar. A bone. It looks like a human bone. Lily swallows back the bile in her throat. She grips the bars of Harry’s crib and blinks through her tears. For so long now, she’s thought that she’d die in battle. She thought she’d die with wand in hand, doing everything she can to make the world better for her son. Instead she’s dying unarmed, nothing but her body between her son and danger. She thinks, for some reason, of her mother at that moment.
Eleanor Potter, who had always wanted her girls to get along. Who would make her girls pray, even when they would roll their eyes and try to weasel their way out of it. Lily Evans’ mother, who couldn’t be at her youngest daughter’s wedding but who left her dress behind for Lily to wear. Eleanor Potter, who always believed that something bigger was protecting her family.
Please , Lily thinks, if there’s anything listening out there. Please, protect my family. Protect Harry. And if you can, my James.
Voldemort’s mouth opens, his teeth the jagged yellow of an old man, and Lily Potter takes her last breath.
I
Her next breath takes in only earth.
She’s choking on it, compressed by it. It’s sticking to her skin, which feels tight and sensitive like it’s brand new. She’s freezing, colder than she can ever remember being. She feels as if she’s been scrubbed raw. She spreads her fingers and feels, unmistakably, the worn and rounded handle of her wand. She grasps it like a lifeline in the dark and tries to speak a spell – any spell.
Her mouth is full of soil. She’s trapped. And she has no idea where her son is.
The panic sets in again, until the strangest voice pops into her head.
Severus, in fourth year, rambling about nonverbal, wandless magic.
It’s common for household spells, he says. Everyone can wordlessly and wandlessly cast a scourgify. But powerful defensive and offensive spells? Those work best verbally or with a wand to concentrate your power. You have to be desperate to do it without a wand.
Desperation is something Lily has in spades. She grips the handle of her wand as tightly as she can and she tries to think her way out of her own grave.
Bombarda , she screams inside her mind. Bombarda maxima!
A few clumps of dirt squirm against her skin and the planks of rotted wood pressing her legs into the earth shudder. She means to scream but it’s impossible. Her head feels airy and somehow also heavy, like she could succumb to sleep at any moment. She knows she shouldn’t but it’s so tempting.
She needs to get out of this. She has to find Harry, find James.
Harry . She envisions his pointed chin and chubby cheeks. His wild hair and bottle green eyes just like hers. The way he was a distraction from the end of the world. Harry never wanted – never needed – anything more than his parents. She has to get back to him.
Bombarda Maxima!
There’s a mass shift around her feet. A rush of air hits her shins. It takes several more casts before she can swallow the cool night air. Magic ricochets through the dirt, glancing off her cheekbone and blasting the soil far enough away from her face enough that she can breathe. She claws her way out, dirt under her fingernails and tears on her cheeks. Her wand rolls a meter away the moment she’s out of the hole and onto the snow-covered ground, catching her breath.
She rolls retching onto her side and this is when she sees the headstones. Twin marble stones neatly engraved.
Lily Potter
Born 30 January 1960
-
Died 31 October 1981
James Potter
Born 27 March 1960
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Died 31 October 1981
James.
Lily lunges for her wand and takes aim for the headstone.
“Bombarda maxima!” Her voice is a rasp. She can still taste the grave dirt on her tongue. “Bombarda! James! James?”
She blasts the area twice more before tossing her wand aside and shoving at the loose earth with her bare hands. Her fingers go numb within moments. Her torn nails are catching on the dramatically long and muddy sleeves of dress robes she has no memory of putting on and her hair is hanging in limp clumps around her face. Snow has soaked the fabric. At last, she’s scrabbling at the coffin. A horrible thought occurs to her.
What if she’s too late? What if she's the only one that’s still alive and she’s about to see nothing but James’ lifeless body?
“James!” She tugs away the boards, uncaring of splinters under her nails or the musty smell of the damp wood. “James, can you hear me?”
She finds his hair first, of course, the curls matted together with icy mud. He coughs up brown and black, dirt clogging his mouth and throat. She does her best to pull it out, tangling her weak fingers in his hair and stroking his temples gently.
“Oh, thank God,” she sobs. “I thought you were dead!”
“I feel it,” he says. “What’s happening?”
His lips are blue and his skin is pale – he looks dead. He’s the image directly from Lily’s worst nightmares.
“I…I don’t know,” she admits. “The last thing I remember–”
James opens his eyes. Growing dread is building in her belly. She can make out James’ concerned expression by only moonlight.
“What?” he asks, “What do you remember? Lily?”
“The last thing I remember is being with Harry. In his nursery. With Voldemort,” she says. “And getting hit with the Killing Curse and I…that’s it. I don’t…I don’t understand, James, why am I alive?”
James shuts his eyes, shaking his head slightly in the mud.
“James?” Lily combs her fingers through his wet hair. “Are you alright? I didn’t hit you, did I?”
“No,” James says, firmly. “No, but can you get me out of here? I’m really cold.”
“Yeah, ‘course.”
They work as quickly as they can. Frightened of injuring him, she uses water to wash away the soil around his legs. No matter how warm she makes it coming out of her wand his teeth chatter uncontrollably. She helps him out and wraps him in a tight hug.
“I should’ve had my wand,” James says, his voice cracking. “I…I can’t believe I didn’t have it on me, I–”
“I didn’t have mine, either,” she says, gritting her teeth. “Moody would’ve had our hides. It’s…it’s not our fault.”
James shakes his head. The droplets that fall land on her face. The heat they’ve found in each other’s arms is better than nothing, but it’s short-lived with swift winds picking up all throughout the cemetery.
“James,” Lily says softly. “The Fidelius, though. Peter…”
“I know,” he says. “I – we’ll have to figure that out later. Harry, he – agh.”
He puts a hand across the back of Lily’s head, pressing a kiss to her chilly forehead and leaning into her. His eyes shine with tears and his chin trembles slightly as his cheek leans against her forehead.
“Where do we go?” she says. “We were…I don’t know. Dumbledore?”
“Maybe,” James says. “But first we need dry clothes and information. We – well, it’s clearly been more than a few days. Snow’s covered our…the graves. We must’ve been…for at least a few days, right?”
“And Harry,” Lily says, hopefully. “Maybe…maybe he’s here too?”
James glances at the headstones again, his lips pressing together.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Lily watches him play at the collar of her robes, fingers splaying over the clammy skin along her collarbone. It feels as if she’s wearing clothes a size too big for her, hanging over a body made of nothing but skin and bones. Being brought back from the dead is no easy feat, she has to assume, but she truly does feel like death.
“We could Apparate but I’m exhausted,” James says. “So maybe we could try to see if the house is still in good shape after –”
There’s a quiet gasp behind them. Bathilda Bagshot is standing at the entrance to the cemetery in forest green robes and a wool cloak, her wrinkled face slack with shock. The two wreaths of flowers she had been carrying slip from her hands into the snow.
“Merlin, I…Lily?” she says. “I…I don’t understand.”
Lily turns toward their neighbor, her fingers shaking. What muscles she has left are sore from shivering by now and she feels as if she could keel over and sleep for another four days if she was allowed.
“Neither do we,” she says. “Bathilda, please, if you could help us to warm and get in contact with Dumbledore? We would appreciate it.”
Bathilda watches them for another moment before slowly reaches down into her velvet robes for her crooked wand. She brandishes it in their direction and speaks into the darkness, a minor tremble still in her voice.
“I will help you, if you can answer my questions.”
Lily wants to argue – she really is feeling very irritable – but she knows it wouldn’t help. She nods in agreement and elbows her husband to get him to do the same.
“On the first day I met you,” she gestures to Lily. “What were you doing?”
“Flower picking,” Lily says, flatly. “With Harry.”
Bathilda’s face seems to fall slightly before hardening again.
“And you?”
James shakes his head. “I was bringing you to tea on Harry’s first birthday.”
“My word…it really is you.” Bathilda’s voice quivers slightly, her eyes wide. She waves her hand in the direction of the village. “I don’t understand it, but we have more pressing matters. Come, come, let’s get you inside before anyone else sees you.”
James nods dutifully, bending to pull his wand from the muddy slick he’d dragged himself from and sticking it into the breast pocket of his funeral clothes. His hand never leaves Lily’s.