Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including, but not limited to: Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

A Black/Lily

Chapter 1

"Step aside, girl, and I may let you live."

The voice was smooth and dark, and its owner may have once been called handsome, but years spent steeped in the darkest of magicks had seen that those days were long passed. Lily Potter had seen pictures of the Dark Lord Voldemort before, but they did him no justice. Photographs had no way of conveying his sheer force of presence, and for a brief moment, a small part of her brain understood why one might follow him – if one were a bigoted, arrogant pureblood.

Lily didn't even think of accepting the offer as she set herself boldly between the Dark Lord and her child's crib. His eyes flashed in anger and he jabbed his wand at her violently as he spat the incantation for the killing curse. A sickly green light curled from the tip of the wand and struck the redheaded witch standing in Voldemort's way. The dark wizard was already advancing on the crib before Lily Potter's corpse hit the floor, eagerly anticipating the death of this child that dared to have the power to defeat him. Voldemort glared hatefully down at the crying child. How could such a small, insignificant worm threaten him? He raised his wand.

"Avada Kedavra," he intoned. There was barely time for surprise when the jet of green light rebounded off the baby lying in the crib and sped back toward the caster, unexpectedly ending the Dark Lord's reign of terror. In his crib, Harry James Potter continued to cry, unaware of the events that had transpired, as the house around him began to burn.

A flip of the coin, a roll of the dice, one simple act of chance changed the world and the fate of the boy who was destined to save it.

Lily Potter groaned as she opened her eyes. There was not a part of her that didn't ache, and her body definitely didn't like it when she sat up. She felt strangely light-headed as she looked around, trying to remember where she was and how she got there. It was fairly dark, but the full moon hanging high above provided enough light to see she had come to in the ruins of a burnt down building. It was that realization that brought her mind to a screeching halt, as she pushed herself to her feet, despite the protests her body gave her.

"James?" she yelled in a panicky voice. "James, are you here?"

She received no answer, but she didn't really expect one; Voldemort didn't leave survivors. It hadn't quite occurred to her that she was a survivor. Then she came to have a sudden horrible thought: what if she wasn't?. Shakily bringing her hands in front of her face, she cringed at the transparent quality of her skin and collapsed to the ash covered floor. James was dead, and now she knew that she was dead. And if she was dead, then her precious baby boy was dead, too. To make matters worse, she wasn't just dead, but a ghost, unable to pass into the afterlife, unable to be with her husband and son.

She didn't know how long she sat there crying, but the dawn's light was just beginning to creep over the horizon when Lily finally regained awareness of her surroundings. She stood and despondently walked out of the burnt husk of a house, not even registering when she walked through a still standing wall. Her feet brought her to the family plot where she found her own grave. She stared at the headstone for a good minute before turning her attention to the grave marked "James Potter" to one side of her own. Lily looked to the other side of her grave, only to find nothing! Frantic, she searched the surrounding graves for her son's name, finding nothing. She scoured the entire graveyard, not daring to hope, but having to know. Her desperate search revealed no grave marked "Harry James Potter." Her son was alive! Now all she had to do was find him.

She had intended to find Sirius, or at least visit his most recent hideout (that she knew of), but had discovered two things. First, was that covering long distances as a ghost was a pain. Ghosts couldn't use the floo, portkey, apparate, nor use any other magical method of travel she knew. She supposed she could use the Knight Bus, but had no way of summoning the dammed thing to find out. Second, she couldn't go in the direction of Sirius' hideout. That is: she could go in that direction, but not without great difficulty. At first she had thought, with great horror, that she was bound to the site of her death, stuck haunting the charred remains of a house for eternity. Desperate exploration found that to be untrue, as she had no difficulty at all traveling away from the house in the opposite direction. She was obviously connected to something, and prayed that it was her son.

Hours later, after nearly a full day's travel, she was praying that whatever it was she was connected to, it wasn't her son. The reason for this was the house she had come to as the moon neared its zenith. The house looked almost exactly like the house next to it, and the house next to that one, as well. In fact, every house in sight looked the same, only the differing yards and street numbers told them apart. So here she stood in front of number four Privet Drive, Surrey. Petunia's house. There could be no way that her son, her precious baby boy, had been sent to live with her spiteful sister.

Not knowing what it was that she was connected to, only that it was inside her sister's house, Lily Potter made her way up the concrete walkway that led to the front door. She idly noticed the gentle tug that pulled her toward the house vanished as she stepped onto the property. The ghost easily slid through the unopened door and into the house. Taking a minute to inspect the entryway, Lily headed for the stairs, moving through the dark house toward the room at the top of the stairs with a soft light faintly illuminating the hallway.

Lily walked through the open door into the room and immediately spotted the crib. She quickly crossed the room and peered into the bassinet. A frustrated scowl appeared on her ghostly face. She hadn't found her son, but rather a chubby baby with blond curls. It was her nephew, she supposed as she looked at him one more time before exiting the room to search the next room. Her eyes lit up again as she rushed across the darkened room to the old bassinet shoved in the far corner. She deflated when she saw that this one was empty. Now she was beginning to get worried. More worried than she had been when she had first seen her sister's house.

Now rushing, she moved to the last bedroom in the house and searched the bed with her eyes. Her sister, her sister's fat husband, but no Harry. She collapsed to her knees. Was the only reason she was pulled here because of her sister? Was she doomed to spend the next sixty years stuck in this awful house watching her awful sister who had probably celebrated when she learned of Lily's death? The only good that would come out of this was at least her son wouldn't grow up in a hateful environment. Her nephew started crying and she tried not to cry herself.

It was only after several minutes that she registered that there was something off about her nephew's cries. It wasn't a loud wailing, and it sounded muffled. Her nephew's room was only a few meters away with its door open. It shouldn't be muffled. Lily sprang to her feet and rushed out of the master bedroom, trying to pinpoint the source of the cries. Once in the hallway she determined it was coming from downstairs. She practically flew down the stairs and paused at the bottom. It sounded like the crying was coming from– no! Not even her sister would do that. No matter how much Petunia Dursley hated her sister, there was no way she would put a child in the cupboard under the stairs!

Lily timidly walked toward the cupboard door, fearful that she would find that yes, her sister was hateful enough to lock a child under the stairs. She moved through the cupboard door and gasped. There, visible only by the smallest traces of light seeping under the door, was her only son, crying.

"Oh, baby," Lily said, tears beginning to cascade down her own cheeks. "Oh, Harry, how could they do this to my baby? Mummy's here now." As she tried to comfort Harry the best she could considering she couldn't actually touch him, Harry slowly calmed down. After his tears stopped he opened his green eyes wide and stared up at her.

"Mummy," he said.

"Yes, baby, mummy's here now."

If Lily ever found out who had put her son with the Dursley's (and was able to interact with the world), she swore she would kill them, but only after killing her sister and the fat muggle her sister had married. She had spent nearly a week in her sister's house, invisible to everybody but Harry. The husband had apparently locked Harry in the cupboard one night because he kept the whole house awake with his crying at godforsaken hours in the night, which was somehow different from when Dudley woke him up crying. "He's got a healthy set of lungs, that boy," Vernon had proudly commented. At mealtime Harry was forced to feed himself while Petunia happily spooned food into Dudley's mouth. Dudley would always cry for more food, and that was when Harry's meal would be over, as Petunia would take Harry's food from in front of him and continue to feed her "precious Dinky-Duddydums." Mealtime was also the only time Harry was let out of the cupboard with the exception of when Petunia had neighbors over to gossip. Lily didn't know what had caused that horrible scar on Harry's forehead, but she wouldn't be surprised if it had happened under her sister's care. If Lily hadn't been brought up by kind and loving parent she might have decided that You-Know-Who was doing the world a favor.

Thinking of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named sent a shudder through Lily's incorporeal form. Why hadn't he killed Harry? Was he still after her son? She tried not to think about these questions overmuch, knowing she wouldn't get any answers without contacting the wizarding world, and she didn't want to leave her son alone, not even for a minute. Surely, though, whoever had left him here would check up on him eventually, and she could get her answers then.

Lily looked down at her son, looking so peaceful as he slept. She had sang him asleep nearly an hour ago using a lullaby she remembered her mother had sang to her. Soft words and soothing songs were the only two things she could provide for her child, and it frustrated her to no end.

"I just wish someone could help my baby boy," Lily whispered. She suddenly felt an immense pressure surrounding her, a feeling akin to apparition, but a hundred times the magnitude. Just as she thought she would be crushed, ghost or no, the world blurred around her and she disappeared from the house.

I just wish someone could help my baby boy.

As she lay on the ground, teeth clenched in pain, Alice Longbottom unknowingly mirrored Lily Potter's thoughts. Her son, Neville was in the corner of the room crying under a silencing charm cast on him by their captors, and her husband, Frank lay just next to her, writhing in agony as one of the Lestrange brothers held him under the Cruciatus curse. The Death Eaters torturing them hadn't done anything more to Neville yet, but that was sure to change. The Lestrange torturing Frank lifted the curse when the other brother motioned for him to stop.

"Well, now, have you decided to cooperate or do you still require... convincing?" asked the Lestrange who seemed to be in charge – Rodolphus, Alice thought. Alice glared defiantly and Frank spat at him. He seemed to be expecting this, as he immediately brightened. "Excellent! My wife has been so eagerly awaiting her turn."

Rabastan and Rodolphus both moved to make way for the tall, darkly elegant witch who had, until now, been observing the torture from one of the walls of the room. Her eyes had a dangerous glint to them and her wicked smile had grown more beautifully insane as she watched her husband brother-in-law elicit screams from the couple. Now, though, it was her turn, and she so looked forward to causing them to scream for her.

Bellatrix Black, as a child, had always been attracted to power, obsessively so. The siren's song of the dark arts had called to her more strongly than others, and by the time she had entered Hogwarts she had already begun her descent into madness. Before the end of her first year her wand had channeled so much dark magic that even harmless charms and jinxes cast with it caused discomfort and a sense of dread. A sabotaged ritual at age fifteen fractured her soul and removed any hope of turning from her path, and the seventh year student who had been responsible vanished one Hogsmeade weekend (He finally turned up on his parents' step five months later in several small boxes).

It was Bellatrix's incomplete soul and Alice's desperate cry for help that called Lily Potter's ghost to the scene. Lily's immaterial form hadn't even the chance to become visible when the magic that had summoned her forced her into Bellatrix's body, were Bellatrix's soul, broken as it was, latched onto hers in an attempt to make itself whole.

Bellatrix herself hadn't even noticed any change at first, but at some point between standing by the wall and moving toward the Longbottoms she had developed an intense maternal instinct. Seeing the child futilely screaming in the corner with his parents lying tortured on the ground before him aggravated her newly found sentiment, and her expression transformed from manic anticipation to righteous fury in the blink of an eye. Rabastan didn't see the transformation, as he was still keeping his eyes on their captives, but his brother, who had turned to watch Bellatrix approach, saw the change that overcame his wife's face. The swift shift left Rodolphus no time to react as Bellatrix stabbed her wand at him and spat out the killing curse. The shock of his wife attacking him without warning cost him the valuable time he needed to dodge the spell, and it hit him dead-center. The incantation and Rodolphus' corpse falling to the ground was enough for Rabastan to whip around. He received a nasty bone exploding curse to the chest for his efforts, and he, too fell to the ground dead, a gaping cavity in his torso where his ribs had violently escaped their confines.

Bellatrix stood there, wand still outstretched, her chest heaving in anger. Frank Longbottom stared up at her with his eyes wide in wonder while Alice couldn't move her eyes from where Rabastan's messy corpse had landed next to her. The room was silent save for Bellatrix's heavy breathing.

The deceptive stillness of the room was broken when the fourth Death Eater, Bartemius Crouch, Jr. entered. The commotion had attracted his attention from his post outside, where he was keeping a lookout for law enforcement.

"Hey, what's going on in--" he began, but cut himself off when the scene he was witness to finally registered.

He quickly came to his senses and was able to dive forward into the room and barely avoid being hit with the flesh-rotting curse Bellatrix had flung at him. He retaliated with an asphyxiation jinx. Bartemius didn't know what had happened, but the jinx should stop the dark witch long enough for him to figure out what had happened. He didn't bother casting anything to follow up the asphyxiation jinx when he saw his opponent make no move to dodge or shield against his spell. Unfortunately for Crouch, it had slipped his mind that his opponent wasn't just any opponent; it was Bellatrix Lestrange. Thus, he was unprepared when Bellatrix intercepted the spell with the tip of her wand and sent it back with a small flourish, using the same motion to snap off a truly nasty curse that hadn't been seen since its creation in ancient Sumer.

Crouch paid the price for his error in judgment as was hit by both spells. The first, his own asphyxiation jinx, would hinder his breathing, allowing just enough to maintain consciousness, and the second would slowly and painfully melt every muscle in his body over the course of several hours.

Nobody moved for several minutes before Bellatrix's adrenaline had stopped flowing and she realized just what she had done. Her eyes flew wide open and she looked around the room, staring at the two corpses with amazement. She took in everything like it was all new to her, like she wasn't sure where she was. Movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention and she jumped, spinning to face it and the spell she had in mind died on her lips when she saw it was the squirming and still silenced Neville Longbottom. Her face melted from an expression of surprise to something almost soft, and she took a few tentative steps toward the baby. She stopped before she had made it even five steps, looking confused about something and shaking her head. Her lips were moving, but they formed no words and she made no sound.

"Are... are you okay?" gently voiced Alice, who was still bound and on the floor. She wasn't sure what to make of it, but Bellatrix Lestrange had just saved Alice's family and now looked so very lost. The dark witch snapped her head in Alice's direction and they locked eyes. Alice could see the emotional turmoil raging behind Bellatrix's violet eyes as they stared at each for several seconds.

Suddenly, Bellatrix turned and rushed out of the room, practically stumbling through the halls and out the front door. She staggered her way across the lawn and off the property. As soon as she made it past the perimeter of the wards Bellatrix stopped to focus as best she could and dissapparated.

It was an hour later that ministry Aurors arrived at the scene, wands out and ready for anything. Anything, that is, except for two bound Aurors comforting a baby as best they could, two dead Death Eaters, and one still living Death Eater wishing he were dead. Frank and Alice Longbottom were promptly unbound and their son unsilenced. While most of the Aurors were securing the property, one was examining the Lestrange brothers and another doing what she could to identify the curse afflicting Crouch.

There was a sharp crack signifying someone apparating in and Senior Auror Alastor Moody thumped into the room with the Longbottoms a minute afterward. His magical eye spun wildly in its socket as he examined every inch of the room without moving from the doorway. Satisfied, he walked over to where Frank and Alice were sitting on a couch that had seen better days. Alice held Neville in her lap and a mediwizard was examining the three of them.

"Frank, Alice," Moody greeted. "Heard you had an exciting night. You okay?" Moody didn't wait for an answer and turned to the mediwizard. "They okay?"

"Prolonged Cruciatus exposure and some nasty chaffing on their limbs. Some cracked teeth, as well. Nothing a few potions won't solve. They'll probably experience phantom pain for a week or so, but there's not much we can do about that, considering how long they were tortured.

"I'm more worried about they boy here. He witnessed the whole thing. There may be lasting psychological damage, but it's too early to tell. The damn fool Lockhart wanted to memory charm the boy."

"Of course he did," growled the grizzled Auror in response. "It's the only thing he's good at. The wanker wants to feel useful. If you're done here, see what's going on with Crouch's boy over there. Wouldn't want him to die before he could confess. Wouldn't Crouch love that?"

The mediwizard nodded in response to Moody's cruel smile and cast a few more diagnostic charms before heading over to the lone remaining Death Eater, informing the Longbottoms someone would get them the potions they needed as he turned away.

"Tell me a story," Alastor prompted.

"Four Death Eaters penetrated the wards around eight." Frank told Moody. "They must have been working on them for day's, though, as they managed to isolate the intruder ward and disable it quietly, in addition to setting up their own anti-transportation wards. Alice and I were just getting ready to put Neville to bed when they burst in. We were finished before we knew what was going on.

"Dammit! They really caught us with our pants down!"

Frank was angry at himself that he had allowed his wife and son to be captured by Death Eaters in his own home.

"Don't worry about it," Moody grunted, the sympathy sounding very strange coming from him. Alice patted her husband's arm and continued where he left off.

"We were fully bound and on the floor before we could even think about doing anything. Then they started asking questions. They wanted to know where You-Know-Who is."

"Hmph!" Moody interrupted. "That Potter boy killed him."

"They don't believe that," Alice retorted, "and they were going to get answers out of us one way or another."

"Crouch's son went outside to keep an eye out for unwelcome guests and the Lestrange brothers used the Cruciatus on Alice an I," Frank picked up. "And Bellatrix Lestrange just stood near the wall and watched."

The news seemed to startle Moody.

"Bellatrix Lestrange was here?" he ground out. "And you're not dead?" Moody was incredulous.

"That's the thing," Frank responded. "The Lestrange brothers interrogated us for a while. I think they eventually grew bored and let Bellatrix step in. At first I thought we were goners, but that's when things got strange."

"Strange how?" Moody demanded.

"One second she's preparing to torture us, and the next she kills her husband and brother and law," revealed Alice. "Just like that. Then Crouch, Jr. came in and... I know she's good, but I didn't know how good. She reflected his spell back at him and sent one of her own faster than you'd believe."

"Oh, I'd believe," the disfigured Auror mused while absently rubbing his wooden leg.

"After that she just kind of stood there for a while. We were too afraid to speak an she looked like she had no idea where she was or what she'd just done. After a few minutes she ran out the door, but I don't think she really knew what was going on then, either."

Alastor frowned and was silent for a long time.

"I ought to tell Albus," he finally spoke. "He'll probably ask you to put your memories of tonight in a pensive. Merlin knows I'd like to see it."

Last updated: 13th June, 2007