The Mother Who Lived
By Philip S.
Disclaimer: All things Harry Potter belong to Ms. Rowling, not me.
Author's Note: Just an idea I had the other day, no concrete plans to actually write more at this moment. Let me know what you think and how it might continue from here.
Lady Lillian Potter, born Lilly Evans, opened her eyes and looked around with a curious sense of detachment. The last thing she had seen was the bright green flash of the killing curse coming directly towards her. That should have been it. She should be quite dead. No one survived the killing curse, after all. Well, if everything had worked according to plan there should have been one person to survive it, her son. She had labored long and hard on this ritual, after all, just in case everything else failed. But she herself should be quite dead.
She was still in her son's room and lying on the floor where she had presumably fallen after being hit by the killing curse. Right in front of her was an empty set of robes, still smoking, and a fallen wand. Voldemort's wand, she recognized it. No sign of the Dark Lord, though. So... it had worked? But again, why was she…?
Finally her hearing started working again and the wail of her son filled the room. Her limbs were sluggish, barely obeying her commands, but she managed to rise to her feet and looked into the crib. There was Harry and he was alive. Thank Merlin, he was alive. She didn't quite trust her strength enough to pick him up, but her hands cradled his face and tears of relief ran down her face. It had worked. He was alive and Voldemort was... well, gone, at least. That was all that mattered for the moment.
"Oh, Harry," she sighed, her son calming down now that his mother was moving again. "My beautiful son, Harry!"
She checked him over the best she could at the moment, but except for a small, bleeding cut on his forehead he seemed to be fine.
A commotion from downstairs snapped her out of her relief. Someone was coming. James? No, she reminded herself even as grief stabbed her in the heart like a shard of ice. The only way Voldemort would have made it up here was over her husband's dead body. He would never have surrendered or quit, she was certain. He was dead. Which meant someone else was coming.
Her eyes found her wand lying on the floor where it had fallen earlier and she quickly picked it up. Even as she did, her eyes found Voldemort's wand again, still lying beside his robes. Feeling a surge of anger, she raised her foot and brought her heel down hard on the wooden instrument of her husband's murder, shattering it. It was a bit petty, maybe, but it felt good.
A moment later a dark shape appeared in the door of her room and Lilly almost fired off a curse out of reflex, but at the very last moment she recognized the man standing before her. It stayed her hand… just.
"Severus?" she said, confusion warring with anger.
Severus Snape, her childhood friend – former friend, she reminded herself – stood before her, looking pale and looking at her with wide, wild eyes.
"Lilly? Oh, Lilly, thank Merlin! You're alive! He promised me, but I wasn't sure he..."
His voice trailed off as he took in the rest of the room, seeing Harry behind her, the empty robes at her feet, the shattered wand under her foot.
"Lilly, what happened here? I..."
Lilly Potter was not considered the brightest witch of her generation for nothing. Despite everything that had happened tonight, despite the grief clutching her heart for the death of her husband, her mind would never stop working. Severus was here, despite the house being under the Fidelius charm, meaning the Secret Keeper – Peter – had told him. She knew he had thrown his lot in with the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had come after Harry, which meant he had learned of the prophecy. The details clicked together in her mind, together with his words, his relief at finding her alive, his obvious confusion upon seeing Harry and Voldemort's empty robes, leaving only one conclusion.
"You did this," she hissed at him, the tip of her wand glowing as her magic reacted to the rage gripping every fiber of her being.
"Lilly, no, I... I tried to..." he began.
"Tried what?" she cut him off, more furious than she had ever been in her life. "What did you try, Severus? What concession did you try and weasel out of your precious Dark Lord in return for giving him James and Harry?"
His mouth opened and closed, his eyes were on her, and she knew him long enough to understand even without him saying anything.
"What did you think would happen, Severus?" she asked. "Voldemort would kill James and Harry, leave me alive, and I would come crying to you, throw myself in your arms? Is that what you thought would happen?"
"Lilly, I never wanted… I only ever… I…"
Lilly's rage and grief finally unloaded itself and an overpowered stunning spell threw Severus right across the corridor and through the opposite door, leaving him slumped against the cracked wall of the far room, thoroughly unconscious. Lilly lowered her wand, shaking. She had been so close to casting the Cruciatus instead.
Once her strength had recovered a bit, she took her son in her arms and slowly walked down the stairs into the house's living room. She had fully expected to find what she did, but it still nearly caused her to collapse. Making sure to hold her son so he wouldn't see his father lying dead on the floor, she knelt besides James and tenderly touched her fingers to his face, closing his unseeing eyes.
"Goodbye James," she whispered, choking. "I promise we'll see each other again. When the time comes, I'll find you!"
The door slammed open and Lilly whirled around, her wand at the ready, but she relaxed when she saw the man storming into the house. Sirius Black looked around wildly, taking in the devastated living room, before his eyes finally settled on her and Harry.
"Lilly? Harry? What happened? Where is…," she saw the exact moment his eyes found James, his brother in all but blood. "Oh no, James. Is he…?"
Lilly couldn't find the words, so she just nodded.
"Oh Merlin, Lilly! I am so sorry. How…? Peter! He must have…! Oh, that dirty rat, I will…"
"NO!" she screamed at him, seeing the rage building on his face and the way his body turned toward the door. He was about to run off, she realized. He would chase after Peter, treacherous Peter, and leave her here, alone, with the body of her husband.
"Don't you dare leave me, Sirius Black!" she yelled at him, her voice hoarse and desperate.
"But… Peter… I need to…"
"Peter can wait!" she cut him off. "He can wait! You can't... don't… don't you dare, Sirius! I… I need…"
A moment later Sirius was beside her, taking her into his arms, and she could no longer hold back the tears. Harry squirmed in her arms, upset, but she simply couldn't stop. And from the way he was shaking, Sirius was crying as well. Together they grieved over the friend and husband they had lost.
The rest of the night passed in a blur. At some point the Aurors, Dumbledore, Hagrid, and several other people arrived, Lilly couldn't recall in what order. Not that it mattered. She simply clutched her son to her heart and Sirius stayed at her side, never letting go of her.
She was briefly aware of the Aurors carrying a still unconscious Severus down the stairs, mostly because she felt Sirius tense beside her at the sight of the young man he had despised since their earliest school days. Didn't matter. She gave Dumbledore a brief rundown of what had happened, but she left out several things.
Even as she grieved, her mind was still working furiously, trying to figure out what had happened here tonight. Fearing that Voldemort would find them, would go after Harry, she had made her backup plan. Not even James had known about it, for she knew his somewhat narrow views on what magic was light and what was dark. The ritual she had performed had been a blood rite, borderline dark, and very dangerous. She hadn't cared, though. Everything to make sure her son would survive.
And he had. The rite had worked, or so she assumed. She didn't know exactly what had happened between her being hit by the killing curse and waking up again... something she still didn't understand. According to everything she had read and learned, the rite required a sacrifice, her sacrifice, in order to protect Harry. Which was why she had basically begged Voldemort to kill her, because if he had simply stunned her or brushed her aside, Harry would have been defenseless.
But he had killed her. And whatever he had then tried to do to Harry had obviously backfired and killed him. Or had it? The killing curse didn't disintegrate bodies, it simply ripped the life from them. Something else had happened, she didn't know what. And whatever it was, it had apparently somehow revived her in the process.
She needed to research this. She needed to figure out why she and her son were still alive and she also needed to figure out whether Voldemort was really, truly dead or still lurking somewhere, a danger to Harry still.
Well, she was the brightest witch of her generation, everyone kept saying. Time for her to validate that title.
The Blood War effectively ended that night. Within hours the news of the Dark Lord's defeat spread across Wizarding Britain like wildfire. The very next morning the Daily Prophet's headline informed everyone who somehow hadn't heard yet.
DARK LORD DEFEATED! LADY LILLIAN POTTER SAVES WIZARDING BRITAIN!
The blow to the Death Eaters and everyone who supported or at least shared their ideology of blood purity could not have been harsher. Their lord, supposedly the most powerful wizard ever, defeated by a muggleborn witch, a mudblood, of all people. How could that possibly be true? Many of them wanted to believe it a lie, but the continued absence of their lord, not to mention a very good close-up picture of his empty robes and shattered wand lying on the floor of the Potter house, made that very difficult.
And the blows kept coming. Lady Potter was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class, the first time a muggleborn had received this honor. She took her late husband's place in the Wizengamot, the wizarding governing body, even as Sirius Black, decried as blood traitor by many of the old families, took the place of his late mother as head of the Black family.
When the time came for the captured and suspected Death Eaters to be put on trial, her mere presence in the court chamber served to shatter Lucius Malfoy's calm demeanor. His claim to have been under the Imperius Curse the entire time gained little credence when he started ranting about the filthy mudblood sullying the hallowed chamber with her presence and the audacity of her claiming to have killed Lord Voldemort.
Of course Lady Potter had never made any such claim. She told the Aurors the bare minimum and nothing at all to the press. The story pretty much wrote itself and her silence on the matter was ascribed to her grief over her dead husband. She remained tight-lipped about the actual events of that night, even to her closest friends and allies. She knew Albus Dumbledore at the very least suspected that there was more than she was telling, the man was far too smart for his own good. But until she knew exactly what had happened, she would not tell anyone about the blood rite she had performed, both for fear that it might lead people to label her as a dark witch herself as well as for what it might mean for Harry, who retained a curious, lightning-shaped scar from the events of that night.
And as the world moved on, she researched. For she was Lilly Potter, brightest witch of her generation, and she would find out what had happened that night, what had happened to Voldemort, and why she was still alive. Nothing would stop her. Nothing!
THE END (for now)