Decided to make a new challenge, and created this one-shot to advertise what it is about and some ideas for it. Enjoy, the challenge rules are at the bottom.
...
Why was she still alive?
This question lingered in Lily Potter's mind as she lay on a bed that wasn't her own, in a home that wasn't her own, with her infant son sleeping in a crib to the right of her bed.
A bed that lacked the other most important male in her life to her left.
It hadn't even been a full week since her family had been attacked by Voldemort, the Dark Lord of Magical Britain and a monster by all definitions. All three of them: herself, James, and Harry, had all been hit by Killing Curses.
The spell no one was supposed to survive being hit by.
And yet...both she and Harry were still alive.
She didn't know why they survived and James didn't, and no one else seemed to know either.
Even Dumbledore was stumped: he had mentioned that if she had died he could have possibly seen how Harry might have been spared (though she wasn't sure about his theory herself. If it was true, what did that say about human selfishness?), but both of them living bewildered him.
All else that conversation produced was keeping Sirius from getting pursued as a Death Eater, (and Pettigrew put on the wanted list along with Bellatrix and a few other Death Eaters who had yet to be captured), and it ended with Albus giving them the former manor of the dead Death Eater Wilkes, seeing as their old home was well wrecked and the still rogue Death Eaters were apparently looking for them.
He reasoned, and Sirius later agreed with the headmaster, that they'd never imagine a 'Mudblood' in one of their homes. He did note that if they did find out, they'd probably use Fiendfyre like mad idiots.
So, they were safe. Sure, they couldn't leave, but between Dumbledore, the Order, Sirius and Remus, and all the random witches and wizards who were thrilled with 'the family who lived' (who on earth named them that?) that they were not going to be without food, or books, or baby products, or much of anything short of top of the line broomsticks and philosophers stones for some time.
That still left her with that burning question: how they were still alive.
...
For the last few days, Lily had felt horrible, like her insides were using Polyjuice Potion.
What, did she live through the killing curse as a hole, but she started slowly dying since? Was Voldemort experimenting with a slow death curse and it blew up in his face?
Harry didn't seem to be suffering the same way though, and the scar on him was defiantly not there before Voldemort came around.
Idly touching her own, similar scar, Lily noted the book that she had dug up from today's 'thank you for making Voldemort blow up' presents, a book that would look quite right hanging in the Medical Wing or St. Mungos outside of the outdated magazines.
It had been from a healer, and according to the note that came with it, it was a self-diagnosing tome. It was meant to tell a witch or wizard, via an analysis of the wizard's blood, if there was something off in them.
Apparently there were many wizards and witches that could not tell the difference between the sniffles and the dragon pox. Given what she had heard Sirius say about his family's issues with minor illnesses, she could sort of see why someone might think sneezing was as bad as seeing a grim.
She idly wondered how many wizards had tried to cure the common cold, to fight cancer.
But regardless, she felt like she should consult the tome.
At the very least, if the killing curse was slow acting, she would at least be aware of it. She could give Harry to Sirius, ensure that the will was sufficiently updated, and possibly even see if she could patch things up with Petunia.
Opening the book to it's first, blank page, Lily placed a single finger on the paper, and felt a small prick.
The page began to shift, as magic began to analyze her blood.
A sentence began to form, slowly becoming legible.
No Ailment Detected
Lily bit her lip, not sure if she liked that response. She wasn't imagining her discomfort. She rose her eyebrow as more text began forming.
Unknown changes to liver. Liver efficiency at 35% higher capacity than normal. Did you use the Alcoholics Charm?
What?
Lily eyed the page with shock, not sure how to take what it was saying. Getting nearly killed by Voldemort, made her liver more efficient?
Similar alterations affecting various other bodily organs and systems. Lung capacity increased by 10%. Red blood cell count 15% higher. White blood cell count down 5%. Body hair growth well below regular levels...
It kept listing more and more little things. X organ was more productive, Y organ was less productive. It was frankly, quite disturbing.
Why was her body doing that?
...Reproductive hormone production abnormal. Body appears to be under the effects of unknown Menstruation related-potions limiting ovum release, as well as inactive but still present fertility potions of unknown origin.
The last one made her pause. She had gotten quite a few talks during her time in Hogwarts about such potions, and how you were not supposed to mix them. The talks had sounded a lot like the ones she had heard about people mixing medicines with alcohol, but worse.
It would be the best case scenario if you were only rendered barren after extensive unpleasant discharges.
She hadn't been taking either type of potion. She and James were quite in agreement that Harry should not be an only child. James had actually pushed for it the most, citing his history as a 'spoiled brat'.
They hadn't even thought of taking fertility potions. Those had their own problems apparently, enough so even James's parents didn't try them.
The tome didn't reveal anything more after the fertility thing, though that just left a lot more questions.
She wasn't suffering organ failure, but for some reason her body's functions were going through some sort of change.
A dark chill swept through her.
Was this also happening to Harry?
She immediately reached for the book, only to see the note again at the edge of her sight.
P.S: Not approved for children under the age of 7. Results will be off.
Well, that wasn't going to help her bloody sleep tonight. Now she had to try and sleep not only with the knowledge her body was doing...something to itself, but that she would have no way of telling if Harry was being fussy to be fussy, or because his lungs were changing and becoming more efficient for God or Merlin or whatever knows what reason.
...
A few weeks later Lily and a fairly well behaved Harry (given how few restaurants she had taken him to), were enjoying a nice, public meal with Sirius and Remus.
It was a muggle restaurant of course: there were very few of them in the magical world and if she did go to one she'd probably get harassed by the Daily Prophet. She really didn't want to deal with that.
A nice meal with friends, protected by the statue of secrecy even the yellow journalists of the Prophet wouldn't violate. Good food, good company, it was all there.
Lily glanced at a few empty seats and suppressed a frown, but shook her head. Now wasn't the time to think about those she'd lost.
Sirius and Remus were definitely enjoying the food: the wizarding world lacked the sort of fizzy soft drinks only muggles could create, and Sirius had joked at times of wanting to create his own wizarding soda or wizarding pizza parlor/take out place.
As long as no one got stuck to the wall this time, it might not be a bad idea. There were people who couldn't stomach pumpkin juice after all, and the Muggleborn who had introduced Coffee to the magical world was among the first Muggleborns to earn enough money that the mildly stuck up Purebloods found themselves respecting him.
However, there was the a slight...issue.
"Um, Lily..." Sirius gestured her way as she cocked her head at him, somewhat confused.
"I thought I said I was paying for it. Just one 'donation from a unfortunate imperiused victim of the Dark Lord' easily covers this."
"Yeah...I mean between you and I only Remus would have trouble paying for this..." Remus looked apologetic over his lack of funds, "But um...you ate a lot today."
Noting her three plates Lily shrugged, "I was hungry."
"You also drank 5 refills of milk."
"I didn't feel like soda." she noted, not sounding any different from her ease of explaining away her appetite
"Lily..." Remus began, very cautiously, "You're not...um, expressing your grief with food, are you?"
"Expressing my..." Lily parroted, before her eyes went wide "Remus!"
Remus seemed to shrink in his seat, scared to continue. Sirius, however, was a bit more Gryffindor.
"Lily, Remus wasn't saying that to be a git: he doesn't play the git well enough to do that." Sirius tried to play damage control, "He, and myself I suppose, are just worried about you. We all have our ways of managing our loss that day, and our issues with a certain rodent. Old Moony here had to lock me in a closet stunned to keep me from trying to find that bastard and rip him apart with my canine teeth. We wizards can take a few more calories than the average person, but you can still damage yourself if you aren't careful. You have seen what my mother looks like, right?"
The last part was said in jest, though it did not make Lily any less peeved at them.
"I am just hungry. Just, hungry." Lily told them tersely, and the next few minutes in the restaurant were rather terse...
At least until the mariachi band came in. Then the antics of the last two marauders managed to get Lily to let them off the hook.
...
A few weeks later, Lily's eyes opened to a strange feeling of weight on her.
"Oh lovely, they were right. Lovely. Well, I do remember someone sending a dumbbell, might as well figure out how to use the thing..."
Pushing herself out of bed, Lily felt the familiar feeling of getting out of bed in the winter: a cold wave that made you want to get back under the covers and stay there. Though unusually, it felt the most prominent on her stomach?
Looking down, Lily half expected to see a unusually large stomach jotting out of her.
Instead, she was having trouble actually seeing her stomach at all. For something was blocking her view.
Two somethings.
Two somethings that were not that large when she last gave them a good look over.
Running towards the large mirror, Lily stood in front of it and looked at herself with wide, shocked eyes.
Her nightshirt was no longer covering her stomach, which was probably flatter than it should have been.
The reason: her breasts had grown large enough that they had eaten up what was formerly a loose shirt's slack.
She briefly noticed that her legs also seemed longer than they had been previously, but the bulk of her attention remained on the two very obvious alterations.
"What on earth is going on with me." She whispered. How did getting hit with a killing curse, make her body start changing to a point she could probably put on a wig and pretend to be one of Sirius's cousins.
Sure, the idea of dressing up like Bellatrix for Halloween was somewhat amusing, or the idea of putting on a blond wig and making it seem like Narcissa had gone around the twist. Perhaps it was just James and Sirius's bad influence on her that she thought that would be fun...
The thought of Bellatrix and Narcissa caused a dark thought to enter Lily's head: was she really hit with a killing curse? Or did she get hit with some sort of spell that was slowly turning her into Bellatrix herself!?
She quickly banished that thought from her head: magic could not do that, and her hair had not started going black or blond. She was not hit with a 'give the victim the body of a Black Bi-Witch' spell, such a spell did not exist.
If such a spell exist, that she'd suspect that such a spell would be widely used. Or, based on what Sirius had said of his family, banned as to prevent anyone from being more attractive than the Blacks.
That still left the question of what the hell was going on with her body, and frankly what she was going to have to do if her entire wardrobe was now useless to her.
...
A few days later Lily had decided it might be worth the trouble of tracking down Petunia, if only to try and clear her head of the ongoing stress of the little things in life.
The still quite quiet large home she and Harry had was somewhat depressing, a bit of natural 'I love my son but I need a break' time which had him being watched by Sirius and Remus (as they had nothing better to do), a recent dearth of books she wanted to read (some joker sent her a pureblood genealogy book, and most of the rest of the books she was given were more appropriate for Harry now or in a few years) which she'd probably pick up some more while she was out, and the fact her body kept doing things to itself that bothered her.
Like this morning, she had been brushing her teeth and noted that her canine teeth looked a bit sharper and larger than normal. Not to vampire standards, as she had initially worried, but it was still enough to require some time out of the house doing something productive.
She had managed to find her sister after a time, and they eventually found themselves in a nice little eatery for lunch. If only because Petunia had noted the winter traffic and had decided that waiting a bit before braving it was wise.
"You look...different," Petunia looked up and down at Lily, "I didn't realize magic was useful in such a way, though if you can make yourself look like teenage fantasy woman I'd have taken the scar off myself."
"Believe me, I'm trying to figure what is going on with my body myself." Lily tried to downplay it, as should be obvious by her heavy clothing that did about as good of a job of hiding what was going on with her body as most wizarding garb did.
Of course Petunia had always a good eye for even the most minor minorest of clues. She was always a gossipy little girl, and Lily felt some pity for anyone living near her trying to do anything discretely. She could probably have made a good reporter for Daily Prophet and possibly rivaled Rita Skeeter, had she gone to Hogwarts.
She could probably be just as bad in the muggle world if it lacked the same sort of common sense laws the wizards lacked for their media.
"Well, I guess magic must be so tragic," Petunia snarked as she took a bite of a sandwich, "your husband dies, and your body starts to look like it would be the start attraction of any night club. How horrible."
Lily scowled at her sister at the comment about James, but Petunia continued regardless.
"Yes yes, magic is such a wonderful thing."
Maybe this was not such a good idea. Seeing as she had already paid, perhaps she should just finish her own sandwich and come up with an excuse to leave. Perhaps she could pretend that Sirius had managed to get her new curling irons stuck in his hair again and she was desperately needed to get them out.
"Of course, I could never have gone to Hogwarts." Petunia suddenly mused, taking a somewhat unusual turn in her tone. It sounded like it was preparing to be both decisive, and hurtful: a tone she generally heard only from Slytherins.
This was going to be fun, she just knew it. Perhaps she should have just gone to the bookstore.
"You see, sister, I've taken to reading National Geographic. I like to see how the rest of the world is so much worse than Britain, though I doubt you'd know that locked up in your little Camelot."
"I enjoy my National Geographic as much as you do," Lily would have had a subscription has she not been hidden in an hidden cottage, and then an isolated manorhouse, in recent times. Thankfully she had friends who gave her their own copies when they were done with them.
"It had the most interesting article about genetics you see. It talked about genetics and how they work. In particular, hair color."
"What are you getting at?" Lily wasn't liking where this was going.
"You see Lily, red hair is highly recessive."
Lily wasn't sure what Petunia was getting at, "Yes, and we have red-haired relatives".
"Only on mum's side though. Only on mum's side," Petunia gave a sort of wicked grin one only gave when one was about to unleash a unpleasant but well built up tirade.
"Tell me, sister, are there any red-haired families in fun little Camelot?"
Sure, you had the Weasley, the Prewett, the Bones...
"Wait, what are you implying!?" Lily demanded as Petunia's smirk got bigger.
"Oh, what I'm saying is some wizard came about and did his little things: controlling and binding and then wiping it all from memory, and 9 months later Dad was none the wiser. His favorite little girl, wasn't even his girl. But look at the bright side Lily, you won't grey early."
"No," Lily growled.
"You see, I never got any of your freakishness because my father, and our mother, don't have it. You are just a cuckoo, a changeling, a mutt."
"Mutts are healthier than purebred dogs." Lily told her sister darkly, her tolerance now very thin, "Take it from someone who has dealt with the inbred quite a lot."
"Oh my, your kind are as inbred as those crazy Americans who marry multiple woman or live in the mountains making alcohol? What a shocker." Petunia snarled back, "Tell me, isn't your former husband one of those hillbilly mormon types? Tell me, is that son of yours some blue freak of nature who'll die the mument you sneeze on him?"
At that response, at that insult at Harry, at that threat to her son, Lily growled at her sister.
A growl that would scare the shite out of anyone who was not a groundskeeper at a nearby wizarding school.
Petunia actually recoiled at the sound, looking quite terrified herself.
She wasn't the only one.
Lily clasped her mouth in shock after she realized what sound she had just made, before dashing out of the restaurant in shock.
The mument she was alone, she apparated back home without even a book stop, not even stopping to say high to Remus and Sirius (or ask why Remus had a perm and why Harry was riding Sirius's dog form like a horse), and dashed into her room, shutting the door with a slam.
Harry, Remus, and Dog-Sirius exchanged looks. Harry's was more 'why mummy run by', while Remus and Sirius had 'that meeting didn't go well, did it' looks to them
...
"What am I? What is happening to me?" Lily mumbled into her pillows, her entire body buried in the lush bedding material.
...
"Plah" was Harry's response to the candy Dumbledore offered the little boy.
"Oh, so you don't like sherbet lemons?"
"No."
"Oh, too bad. Now, what is it you want to see me about Lily? You know that, despite some of the sensational rumor mongering Augusta does not blame you for what happened to her son and daughter-in-law."
"I know that," Lily replied, still recalling how nauseous she felt after she heard about those rumors. She could only thank Remus for tracking down Augusta so she could talk to her and get told, quite bluntly, that 'the damn monsters responsible are either in Azkaban, or avoided it with bribes.'
"Are you here to talk about the various mail that I have not sent your way. I was rather blunt when I told you I'd be stopping your junk mail," he magicked over two sets of thick envelopes and held them between the two of them, "I suspected you'd prefer not having to deal with the barrage of people trying to arrange marriage with you, or little Harry for that matter. Thankfully all age appropriate of course."
Lily wasn't sure how to respond to this revelation, or how large both stacks of contracts were: though Harry seemed to have twice as many as she did: should she be thankful she wasn't being swarmed with this while she was trying to figure out why her body was going through some sort of second puberty, or somewhat disturbed.
"Oh yes, you must be very confused. I must admit I have never quite gotten the point of these things: if I could I'd probably have auctioned off my brother and gotten myself some new socks." Albus stated jovially, "None the less, if I'd have to guess on why I am intercepting these letters meant for you is due to your status: a brilliant and powerful witch, rather nice of the eyes I've heard, and co-vanquisher of Voldemort. Apparently even the mildly bigoted are interested, though if you were hoping to be the newest Mrs. Crabbe I'm afraid you're a bit out of luck."
Lily's face was a very clear answer to that idea: it was a face that would be more appropriate for a interrogator in the Auror department.
"Then again, I do recall hearing some talk that the last Mrs. Crabbe was about as hard to get as my 8th use of dragon's blood." Dumbleodre mused before he continued, "Of course Harry here...well they do generally prefer to marry off young, though there is something else at work here. Call it, hedging bets."
At Lily's confused look he explained, "As you may be aware, most of the Pureblood families are related to some extent. Some more than others, and some a lot more than others. Sirius, Remus, and James all had a related ancestor at some point, it's to a point that you could declare virtually anyone whose pureblood, or many halflboods, family and you'd be right. Sadly that means that I am in fact related very distantly to that Umbridge woman..."
They both shivered at the thought, even Harry who did not know what a 'Umbridge' was.
"Forgive me for rambling, it's merely for the point of explaining why people are hedging bets. You see, among Sirius's family his father is dead, his brother is missing and presumed dead, and most of the other with Black in their name are probably going to die in the near future. As a result, they have come to believe, with good reason, that Sirius will become the heir of the House of Black. They are also betting, I'd suggest, that he cannot have children. It's a safe bet if you are aware of family history, recent history with his two cousins with children, and the fact the third cousin has no children."
All in the room let out a shiver at the idea of Bellatrix having children. Fawkes let out a panicked cry for his own two knuts.
"It is also know that Sirius and Narcissa, who has the only male descendant of the family who is not soon to depart on the next great adventure, do not get along. As such, he is unlikely to let the title go to her son. So, several families with daughters to spare appear to be...gambling that Harry will be declared Sirius's heir, and thus the title of Black could be passed to him, and from there to any children."
"Gambling?" Lily said the word as if it were an insult. Gambling with their children, gambling with her child?
Albus rose an eyebrow as he noted Lily's temper, but said nothing. Lily's temper was something that was well known, though he felt like it was somehow...more ferocious than usual.
"Politics, Lily, are a nasty thing. Particularly when they use their children the way I may use a compromise: agreeing to lessen the taxes on the rich to give Hogwarts enough money to start teaching Ancient Runes again, for example. Of course, there is another reason."
"What, they think Harry's the heir to bottomless wealth, limitless political power, and a few relics of Merlin?" Lily snarked as Albus laughed.
"They are quite aware that your wealth is merely deep, your political power only notable, and what relics you do have aren't exactly the bragging kind. No, the issue is the wizarding families have finally realized basic math."
"They realize that 'their' numbers are dropping. Perhaps they didn't realize wars did that to populations. Now, a few of them realize that the issue is also partially genetic, and I'm glad to say that I've seen quite a few families realize that muggleborns aren't the bane of magical existence. I personally find that rather nice. Others however...well they seem to think the issue they have is quantity, not quality."
"Albus..." Lily began, not liking the idea of what was about to be said, "Does this have anything to do with one of those silly, 'Family Restoration Acts'..."
"Yes, but thankfully even if they get passed, they'd be hard pressed to get it made mandatory. It would only matter to you if you decided that you suddenly wanted Harry helping to father the succession of a half dozen wizarding families, or little Harry somehow managed to pull it off on his own."
No, no she didn't. James had joked about such acts in the past, after he became quite aware that Lily was not for it at all (as to let her know he was not serious about it, after of course proving he wasn't being Sirius about it. Said joke being old long before they married).
'Of course, Harry deserves all of the girls he can get. The smartest, the loyalest, the bravest, the slickest, the most attractive. Perhaps I can help him out in finding them...'
Lily blinked, not sure where that thought had come from. Giving her son a harem was hardly up there on her list of things she wanted to do for him: a car was higher up than that, and the Leaky Cauldron had no parking spaces worth anything! Let alone Hogsmeade, where they were banned...
'Though if a boy or three happened to catch his eye as well, more to him. Variety is the spice of life after all'.
Okay, that was even further out of field than the last one. What was going on with her?
Ever since James died and she got hit with a killing curse her organs had started to change, her body was changing, she started growling like one of Hagrid's pets, and now her mind was starting to rebel against her?
She did not think like that before, she had never thought like that. But now she was...
Egh...
A dark corner of her mind that was not currently thinking of giving Harry more wives than years wondered why these thoughts weren't coming her way. She had no answers for it..
"...Lily?"
Dumbledore snapped her out of her thoughts as he looked her over in his 'concerned grandfather variant 6' eye movement.
"Clearly, you are not here over a concern about a lack of junk mail, not that I could see why you'd want to see all the paper adds for half off floo powder or various death threats. You don't seem to be feeling like you are responsible for the Longbottom's fate, or James, or anything of the sorts. But something is bothering you, isn't it."
Lily took a deep breath, realizing that a lot of eye were on her. Dumbledore, Harry, Fawkes, the various headmaster portraits...but she had to tell someone.
She had to get it off her chest.
Exhaling, she began explaining everything.
Everything strange that had been happening to her since she Halloween: the oddities with her body and now her emotions and thoughts. All her theories and how they were dashed, her fears and how they were still there, and most of all her growing sense of uncertainty and concern about everything, including her own parentage.
"...and I don't know when it will stop. What is happening to me Dumbledore, and is there anyway I can make it stop?"
Dumbledore looked ponderous, his eyes having a thoughtful sheen to them as he remained silent for a mument.
"Well, that is a most odd set of symptoms you have. I can think of a number of reasons for your odd body changes, or your odd mood issues, or why your blood cell make up is acting up. But all together they don't make sense...and some of the things you've described should be impossible. If there were a magic that made yourself taller, Filius would not need as many stools."
The last one was meant as a joke, but it did not work. Dumbledore did not seem put out by it's failure though.
"So, you can't help me?" Lily asked despondently as Dumbledore smiled.
"Just because one doesn't know how to help, doesn't mean they should not help. I can always read more books for a possible answer or hypothesis, and I am always available for a consultation." he looked her way with a friendly smile.
"Lily, regardless of what is happening to you, I will always be there to help you."
Several thanks yous, pleasantries, and assurances were promptly exchanged, even as Lily left with Harry in tow (by by).
Albus coudn't help but chuckle at that last bit. Oh, the innocence and kindess of youth.
"Awk."
Fawkes gave him a long look, the Phoenix having been doing so since he made the comment about not knowing anything, though he had been polite enough not to do so while Lily was here.
.
"Knowing and suspecting are two different things Fawkes: my hypothesis is something that has never been proven before on a subject I know little about." he defended his omission.
"Awk."
"If it is true, it changes nothing about what I said. I will hep her, and Harry if he is similarly affected. That's the other thing, if my hypothesis is correct then the question turns to the young Harry. Would be a Veela-like case where the signs of his heritage are much delayed, or did Voldemort do something odd with his cursing? We can only watch, and wait."
"Awk..."
"Oh yes, I am aware of the potential pathways this opens up if Voldemort does manage to return. New allies are always welcome, though I am also aware if I botch this up it could easily lead to a whole new set of problems I really would prefer not to deal with at the same time as Tom's attempts at a comeback."
Fawkes didn't seem fully satisfied, but he did seem like he wasn't going to argue anymore, though he did tilt his head at Dumbedore's way.
"...Fawkes, I'm not going to get the Ministry involved. They are bad enough with non-humans they have experience with: do you really want them performing first contact?"
Fawkes's expression was one that would make some who'd see it assume the Phoenix was about to burst into flames then and there.
...
A few more days later Lily woke on a cold winters morning, really wishing that wizards would invent thermostats.
Groggily, as she had not the time for showers or coffee, Lily moved through the halls at a monotonous pace, clearly not fully awake.
Setting Harry up with some breakfast, she began the all important task of finding some coffee for herself, a coffee spell already at play with her wand...
Whap, whap
An odd feeling was coursing through her, one she could not quite trace.
Whap, whap
As it was repeated, she started to get some sense of what it was...
"Mrow."
It was the cat, whom Hagrid had managed to find for her a few days after their house was destroyed.
It was not just her and Harry's breakfast time.
"In a second, just let me make some coffee..." Lily told the pushy feline drowsily, only to be surged to awareness when she saw her cat.
The Tabby darted out from behind her, jumping up next to her with the classical feline look of 'feed me'.
But from where the cat had jumped from, there was no part of her body to be prodded.
"What were you..." Lily began to ask the cat, dread evident in her voice.
A paw gesture led Lily's eyes downwards, where the answer became clear.
A long, black tail was twitching at her side, easily longer than her arm and tipped with a spade like shape. Slowly moving her hand down herself, she felt around her tailbone...and found herself squeezing the base of her tail.
There was the only one way to respond to this.
Lily screamed in horror, before running out of the kitchen.
Harry and the family cat watched this, quite alarmed.
...
Running into the foyee of the manor, Lily finally stopped screaming and running, before grabbing her newly grown tail in anger.
"What the hell are you!?" she demanded, though the tail failed to respond.
Dropping it, she squeezed her knuckles tightly in frustration.
What was going on with her!?
Knock Knock.
Lily's attention was diverted from anger at the oddities of her life by someone banging at the door.
Noting her tail, she quickly adjusted her nightgown to hide it before approaching the door cautiously. One couldn't be associates of Moody for long before you no longer just opened your door.
Peering through a view-hole in the door, Lily saw a single person standing outside it: a woman.
The woman appeared to be about her age, with dark hair a similar shade to James or Sirius, though her face resembled neither at all. The woman was dressed in loose muggle clothing, quite odd given that the manor was well out of muggle areas, and even odder given that it was winter. She did look chilled though.
Lily also noted that the woman probably would have been smaller than Lily, even before a certain set of her body parts decided that they wanted to get ambitious and had surpassed Black size a while back and now were approaching Bones levels. She had much longer legs though, which to some (such as a certain Padfoot) would have well made up for it.
Unsure of how the woman had gotten here but none the less unwilling to leave her out to freeze Lily prepared to open the door, mentally planning how to ensure the woman failed to run into anything magical, when the woman reached behind herself.
Lily tensed, expecting her to draw a wand, though she did not. Nor did she draw out a gun.
Instead, she pulled out her own, identical tail to Lily's.
She gestured to it, and Lily resumed her movement to open the door.
This woman was like her?
Did she know something more? Perhaps how to reverse the effects?
As the door clicked and Lily pulled at the handle to creek it open, the woman burst inside and quickly began talking.
"Oh thank you! I could smell you ever since I got blown up here: the air currents are acting up and I got lost on my way to Ireland. Embarrassing I know, what of our kind ever gets that lost!? So, this is a nice house, must cost a lot? How on earth did you afford it, most houses this nice are owned by really stingy people, or really obnoxious wizards? I mean, I could see maybe getting a stingy person to do so if you had a lot of time, but you seem rather young to have managed that! Plus, this place smells like wizards..."
The woman was now looking right into Lily's eyes, and Lily could get a good look at the woman's eyes: they were green much like her own, though her green has some blue impurities to them.
"So, who are you anyway? I've never seen you around before, or anyone who really looks like you? I've been all over the U.K, and Ireland, but I can't recall ever seeing one of us who looks like you. Are you new here?" she suddenly darted back, as if finally realizing she had been invading her personal space.
"Oh my, did you recently fly in here from the continent? Do you even speak English? I must seem so rude then...Hola, Como se llama Usted? Bonjour, Comment vous appelez-vous? Wie Heiben Sei...?"
She promptly spoke more foreign languages, and Lily was somehow less lost than when she had started taking faster than a Quiddich racer.
What about flying? Our kind?
"..." Lily quickly cut the woman off as she started talking in what she was pretty sure was Hungarian, "My name is Lily, I'm not new here: I've lived in this country all my life, though I did only just move to this house..."
"Oh, Lily! Is that short for Lilith, and why haven't I seen you around before then? I've been here all my life too, and I've been to all our residences at some point or another, and I've never seen you before? I'm pretty sure I'd remember someone as strikeout as you!" Lily blushed, having never heard someone call another 'a strikeout', but she suspected it roughly translated to 'hot', "I mean really, you are amazing looking! Oh, my name's Meridiana by the way."
She finally, stopped talking. Merlin, she was like the anti-Binns. At least she had a name.
"To tell you the truth..." Lily began, cautious as he wasn't sure how this was going to go, "I don't know what you are talking about. What do you mean, our kind?" Lily pulled out her own tail, as loath as she was to say it, to emphasize it to her, "I've only started becoming...this, since Halloween. I got hit with a Killing Curse by a Dark Wizard name Lord Voldemort..."
"The ugly freak of a snake guy?"
Lily was stopped by the confused woman who had called Voldemort an ugly freak of a snake guy. It was just...bizarre to hear.
"So, you're saying that you were human until only a few months ago? Huh, that is really weird. I've never heard of that before, but then again..." The woman, who had never quite gotten out of her personal space, leaned in again.
"Do you have wings?" Meridiana asked, as the back of her shirt ruffled and a pair of large, bat like wings shot out. "I take it from your 'what in the name of orgasmic pleasure was that' expression that you don't? Huh, you mustn't have grown them yet, which is really weird. Most of us Succubi or Inccubi grow them early in puberty, even before we do the actually important growings. And if you are witch, that's really odd: we really don't interact with magical humans much at all. You guys have that really stupid statue thing that says we'd have to stay away from most humans, and that is just stupid, I mean really stupid. I mean, are you guys even allowed to..." Realization sparked in her still too close to her face eyes, and Lily wasn't sure where this train of Anti-Binns would go now.
"Are you one of those, what do they call its...magglebirths?"
It took Lily a few seconds to process what she was trying to say. She as still rearing from the words she used to describe what she apparently was: Succubi and Incubi. Demons
"Muggleborns? Yes, I am..." she'd have said 'she thought' recently, but it didn't seem the time.
"Oh, oh, OH! That must be it, it makes perfect sense!"
Um, what does?
"You must have been a Muggleborn, and a Cambion at the same time! I wonder if that's happened before...but you said you weren't like you were now until you were hit by that curse from Vopemark. Maybe that killed the muggle part of it, which is still a really odd name. Muggle muggle muggle...wait, you can still do magic right? Right!?"
If she said no, would she get out of her face?
"Um, yes. I was using magic to make coffee just earlier."
"To make coffee? Why not use a coffee maker, or go to a coffeeshop? Is that a weird wizard thing? But wait, if you can still do magic, and you're turning into one of us...That. Is. Amazing!" Meridiana was now looking at her like she was a celebrity or an amazing piece of craftsmanship or something.
"So, is that magic of yours still making coffee, because I'm really cold! This place of yours really could use some heating, or some actual decor. Did you just move in here or something?! Oh wait, you mentioned being attacked by a crazed madman, that probably is the case isn't it. Sorry about that! So, can I have a cup of coffee while we continue this talk somewhere a bit warmer?"
Lily felt she was going to regret this, but this Meridiana was seemingly given her the information she so desperately needed. It was probably going to give her a migraine, but the information would be worth it.
She just hoped it would not contain too many more surprises
...
Rules time.
Challenge 70:
Lily Potter, the Mother who-lived?
Why she and her son had survived the killing curse, when no one else had ever done so, eludes her and everyone else.
As Lily ponders this question, strange things are happening. Her body behaves oddly, and even her mind begins to do strange things. But when a mysterious stranger with answers appears at her doorstep, Lily Potter finds herself with a whole new world of problems.
1: You do not need to use the exact set up established above. You can change things as you need them if they do not interfere with the rules, though I do request certain things remain the same. Among them include Dumbedore, Sirius, and Remus being good and not bashed, Lily changing over time, a behavior trend of reacting to threats to Harry in the same way a bear might, Lily has to run into a Succubus or Incubus before fully changing, and not having the Potter family own beach houses everywhere each with their own Scrooge McDuck moneypits to dive into.
2: Succubus and Incubus culture is by and large your blank canvas to work with, I just request that Veela are kept a separate species and that no named HP characters are made into them retroactively.
3: Relationships between characters can be monogamous or polygamous, it is your call. Same with exact sexualities.
4: There has to values dissonance between magicals and succubi-inccubi. Also, Harry cannot be nonchalant about it. Walking around with a tail exposed is not acceptable.
5: If Harry is a Incubus or not at the same time as Lily, or requires a death of his own to become so (a AK to the face, Basilisk venom, etc) is your call
6: Same with possessing the Scar Horcrux, same with Lily possibly having one.
7: No Incest. Lily starts this story with muggle morality, and incest is a bit of a tough Taboo to change.
8: Do not overpower Harry. Beyond being an Incubus and his canon magical powers, he will not be an Animagus, a Metamorphmagus, a Werewolf, a Vampire, or have the magical power to manipulate Voldemort like a puppet on strings. This also includes legal and political power: Harry will not have the power to make Malfoys fear to anger him nor magical house rings.
EXTRA: This is not a requirement, but a suggestion I got from a guy named Hyaroo on Spacebattles. He suggested the possibility of having the transformation of Lily also lead her to lose her magic. I am not a huge fan of this idea, given that I have seen far too many High School A.U fics where they take everything but the character's names away, but if you want to do so it is possible. Just note, if Lily loses her magic, so would Harry so do keep that in mind.