She is tired. She sits in front of the fire, staring into the flames, and she is cold. To her very bones, she is cold. She stares into the fire, the flickering flames, and when she closes her eyes, she can still see them dancing from underneath her eyelids. She presses her palms to her eyes, and sits there quietly, listening to the absolute silence of the empty common room.
The truth is, Lily Evans is so very tired. She is sick of the war and the horrible atrocities that occur every day outside of these walls. She is sick of the owls swooping in with the daily mail, and the moment of suspense that descends over the halls as everyone rushes to open the paper, to make sure that the names that are printed under the columns of casualties are not ones that they know, that they will recognize. She is sick of seeing someone recognize a name and burst into tears every single damn day, and she is tired of worrying about who will be next. Sometimes she asks herself if it was worth it; being a witch, coming to Hogwarts-would she had been safer if she had never stepped in these walls, had never walked these halls? She knows she would not have been. Perhaps more ignorant about the constant death that plagues the world, more sheltered from the war that is raging outside.
She wonders how long it will take for the darkness to leak inside the stone walls of Hogwarts. Wonders if they are all waiting for the inevitable, because that's the thing about darkness-it's everywhere; when you sleep, when you dream, if you close your eyes even for a millisecond, just to blink. It's there, creeping behind you, waiting for you to drop your guard, and then it will grab you from behind...and...and...she shudders, and tries to stop thinking this. Everything, anything else would be better than sitting alone in this common room with just her thoughts, her deep morbid thoughts, but she can't stop, the images keep coming, the ideas and the ghosts and the Dark magic that is coming-coming!- for her.
She does not know how long she has been sitting here; her Potions essay is left abandoned on the table, her quill beside the inkwell. She has at least three more inches, but she knows if she moves, it will grab her. The fire keeps the darkness at bay, but it's coming for her, she knows it. She's so scared. Scared for herself, for her family, for her friends. Petty, Mary, Donna, Hest, Severus-Sev has gone too far for his own good. He lived in darkness, thrived in it. He tried to control it, and it ate him, gobbled him up, left him empty. He has left her. He has joined them, the evildoers lurking outside of the castle walls. She wonders if he sees. If he still reads the paper, if he notices the long list of names, if he reads them. Does he think about them? The victims of the darkness that has consumed him? Does he think of their families, of their friends? Of all the people they left behind, who will mourn them?
He deserves to die. He deserves to rot alone in prison, but she still cannot stop thinking of him. She thinks she may have loved him, once-a while back, ages ago, when they were different people. She sighs. Perhaps the darkness has already devoured the castle.
She thinks of herself, of her life. Who will grieve for her when she is gone, who she will grieve for. Death used to be something far away, a lifetime in fact, when she is old and has loved and has been loved. She knows now that a lifetime is not a terribly long time-it is what you make of it and nothing else. There is no promised time, no set limit to the amount one must have. Time is ticking, it is running out. Grains of time, streaming down the hourglass, and she wants to bottle it up, stop the flow, reuse the grains. Cup her hands underneath it and somehow catch it, turn it back, make it stop. She herself is reaching the end of her school years, and what stands behind those doors waiting to greet her frightens her. Yes, frightens her.
Because what of Mum and Dad and Petty-Petty, who hates her, but still waits for her to come home? What about her parents, who were oh-so-proud to have a witch in the family, and yet still oh-so-worried of having her so far away? I will protect them, she thinks, and scoffs at herself. There are people dying-good people, fighters, who knew their time was coming and fought it tooth-and-nail and yet still lost-and she knows she is not as good as them, has not had as much training, does not have their experience. What distinguishes the losers from the winners?
Luck. Chance. Fate.
Lily Evans looks around her, at the dwindling flames of the fire, the embers glowing red underneath. She takes a deep breath, and pulls her Potions essay towards her.
She will go on to graduate Hogwarts. She will not fight-she is not prepared for that, does not have the instincts for that, will surely get herself killed doing that. She will be a Healer, spending her days at St. Mungos and her nights at Grimmauld Place, working for the Order, because one person healed is another person who does not die. She will marry James Potter, and they will have a baby boy on July 31, 1980, and they will die a year later on Halloween. When she is cornered, she will fight before fleeing to save the thing that matters both. She will sacrifice her life for her son, even though she was once so afraid of dying. She has learned that if there is anything that matters, it is happiness. Because time runs out and people die, but happiness is remembered forever.
It is love and happiness that wins a war.