The New Age
Harry receives the letter in August; he is eleven, and it is time, but Lily cries all the same.
The trip to Hogwarts is awful; the Guards watch them with the eyes of vultures, wands in hands, and curses on the tips of their tongues. The school is a fortress, surrounded by armed wizards and ancient magics – it used to be to prevent attacks, but now it is to prevent escape. Harry's hand clutches hers desperately.
"Be brave, my son," she tells him.
Lily stands with the other parents during the Sorting Ceremony. They used to have a magical hat to divide the students, the rumours say, before the Minister had it removed.
All magic can become out-dated, Minister Riddle had said. He'd appointed a council to decide, instead.
The Council is made of several powerful men, old men, who radiate power and influence; men who are bigoted and egotistical, but have the trust of the Minister. The children look small and fragile in the middle of the chamber, lined up ready to face them and their accusing sneers.
It tends to go like this: Slytherin for the children favoured by the Ministry, Hufflepuff for the mudbloods, Gryffindor for the children the Ministry dislikes, and Ravenclaw for the rest.
Harry will be in Gryffindor. The Potter name is only spoken as a curse these days, since the Revolt. Since James was declared an Undesirable.
Since James was killed.
The Council does not even discuss it. Harry becomes a Gryffindor. No one is surprised.
He is just like his father, after all.
When she returns to her decrepit flat, it is dark outside. Lily attempts to light the half-melted candles with her wand; the electricity hasn't worked in a while, and probably won't for even longer. She cannot afford to get it fixed.
But her wand doesn't even spark. She feels her way to bed in the darkness.
Her mattress feels extremely uncomfortable that night. She normally shares with Harry, and it is incredibly lonely without his small, warm body curled up against her. She tosses and turns all night, and when sleep comes, it is restless.
A crash wakes her. Screams follow, and yelling, and thumps, like bodies hitting the floor. The building Lily lives in is full of people on the List – the rebels, the criminals, the Undesirables – and the Ministry likes to perform raids to make sure no one is rebelling against them. She's yet to be raided, but she knows it is only a matter of time.
Obedience can only protect her for so long. She knows her name is on the List too.
The next morning, Lily is reassigned to a new job.
Her old job is not applicable for a woman without a dependant, Lily is told. She knows what that means: more hours, and less pay. But she wakes up early and pulls on her regulation clothes all the same, and lets some peacock of a man judge her worth at the job centre - which isn't much to them.
"Potions," the man grunts at her. The stamp he gives her paperwork feels very final.
Her wand is taken too, and placed with her file. You don't need a wand to brew potions, they tell her.
A young woman in red robes leads Lily down to the Lab, right on the bottom levels of the Ministry. It's a long walk but Lily knows not to speak a word during it. The red robes are rare, but everyone knows what they mean: traitor.
And everyone knows what the punishment for being a traitor is.
It's hard to betray anyone without a tongue, after all.
The Labs are different from any place Lily's worked in before. Dark and dingy, with rows of tables set with potion stations, and the cupboards on the walls are filled haphazardly with piles of ingredients. At the front of the room, like in a classroom, there is a sturdy desk and, behind it, a tall man stands scowling at them all. His hair is shoulder length and greasy, falling into his dark eyes, and Lily has to stifle a gasp at the familiar figure.
"Evans," the man snaps. He gestures to the only cauldron free in front of his desk. "You will work here."
Lily leaves the red robed woman at the door and passes through the rows of silent workers, ignoring the way their eyes flash to her before quickly looking away, frightened. Her work station has a book opened to the recipe of the Draught of Living Death. Silently going to the cupboards to gather her ingredients, she thinks of Severus Snape and about how even after all these years, he can't accept her marriage, even though James is long since dead.
She works long hours in the Lab. It is dark when she arrives and dark when she leaves, and without Harry, her routine involves nothing more than eating, sleeping and working. The routine is tiring, the potions complex, the days unsociable - they work in silence with Snape glaring at them - but time passes quickly.
Before Lily knows it, the school year is over.
Harry returns to her with shadowed eyes, the sort that Lily sees when she looks into the mirror, and there is nothing she wants to do more than hug him to her chest and never let him go. But when her hands reach for him, Harry flinches away.
The whole holiday, Lily watches him with growing concern and with that concern comes anger, hot and furious inside her veins. Harry does not say a word, but some things do not need to be spoken. Flinching means he has been physically hurt; silence means that he has been taught his words mean nothing; nightmares mean that he has seen things that no child ever should.
It breaks her heart to send him back to Hogwarts.
"Bye Mum," Harry says.
All Lily hears is please don't make me go back there.
She watches her son enter the imposing gates and wonders what parts of him will be lost this year.