Authors Note: Hey Everyone! So I know I haven't wrote anything for a while, but I finally did...so yay! Another thing, I use the term "burn". No I do not mean barn or something like that. A burn in Scotland, Northern England, parts of Australia, and New Zealand, is a stream or small river. Just a FYI. Enjoy!
Don't own Harry Potter.
The Simple Conversations
Thunder rolled outside, making the windows rattle fiercely on their hinges. Lily jumped from her position on the window seat and looked outside. These gales were quite common where she lived. She loved them, though. They calmed her and helped her concentrate. She was going to continue reading her book, but her stomach emitted a nasty growl that made her realize just how hungry she was. She placed the Droobles wrapper chain bookmark against the inner binding and closed her book.
The living room was full of redheads and a few other various colors too. Since it was raining and was a Saturday, the only people not in the house currently were her father and Teddy. Even Victoire was here, and she worked forensics for the Auror Department. Otherwise the entire family was here; adults in the downstairs kitchen, drinking tea, and the younger generation camped out in the living room.
Molly was sitting in a cream colored armchair next to the fire, snuggled like a cat, and had her nose completely submerged in her book. Lucy sat at the base of the armchair, eyebrows furrowed as her hand quickly danced across the parchment-sketchpad she was drawing in. Every few seconds, she would impatiently push her swept-over bangs further to the side, attempting to stick them behind her ear, but they were too short to stay. Lily grinned at Lucy, whose hand has paused and had glanced at her. She returned the warm smile.
Dominique was next to Lucy, and unlike her, let her very short strawberry blonde hair fall in her eyes. She sat crossed legged in front of the couch, some Muggle playing cards in hand and others were spread out on the coffee table. Inferring from Dom's clenched jaw, she was losing at her game of Solitaire.
Hugo sat in the opposite armchair sideways, legs dangling in the spot where Molly had plucked her armchair. He was throwing a Quaffle into the air and caught it every time which resulted in a rhythmic hollow sound reverberating through the air.
James, Fred, Louis, Roxanne, and Victoire were sitting on the floor around some board game. While Victoire watched with an amused expression, the other four were sprawled out on the floor in various positions, trying to figure out how to play the game. When Lily looked to see what game it was, she glared at James. She knew that he already knew how to play this game!
James looked up from the Monopoly board and grinned widely at her. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, silently laughing. She rolled her eyes at him and his already too big grin seemed to inflate larger.
She pointedly ignored her oldest brother and looked across the room. The front windows were rattling too, she noticed warily. She couldn't even see the drive leading from the front of her house to the road, it was raining so hard. The three figures sitting next to the window didn't even spare it a glance.
On the front wall, a countertop ran from the edge of the wall and wrapped around the room on her right. It ended several feet from the doorway, however, preventing anyone from colliding with it if they rounded the corner. On that end of the counter sat the wireless, continually playing in the background. Al, Scorpius, and Rose practically had their ears pressed to it. She giggled slightly as their expressions shifted so quick that she wasn't sure she saw them shift at all. The only expression that didn't change was that of her brother. Al kept his expression neutral and his eyes and ears sharp as he stared at the wireless.
She shook her head and stood. Lily's limbs ached and burned at her sudden movement. After glancing at the clock above the mantel, she realized that she had been in that position for over an hour. She slowly made her way around James, Fred, Roxanne, Louis, and the Monopoly board and left the room, walking underneath the staircase. She walked to the other side of front room and went down the stairs to the kitchen to grab an apple.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the main door at the top landing opened and in stepped her father and Teddy. They were absolutely soaked. Their hair was matted to their heads and their clothes clung to their bodies like a second and third skin. Lily bounded back up the stairs and assisted the best way she could. She removed both their jackets and rushed them to the washroom. She then returned to find her mother and aunts attempting to warm them up. Her mother was whispering something to her father, and he was nodding his head. Satisfied with whatever answer she had received, she looked around.
"Lily, darling, could you help your father get upstairs? I'm going to grab some Pepper-Up."
Lily nodded and followed her father up the stairs. He grinned at her.
"There's not much for you to do, sweetheart," Harry Potter told his daughter. Lily shrugged.
Following him into her parents room, she sat on the bed while her father pulled out dry clothes. Her mother had come into the room then and asked Lily, rather swiftly, if she could leave. She left, the last thing she heard was her father.
"Ginny, I'm alright, I promise."
He had come downstairs a few minutes later and was greeted by everyone. While almost everyone had hugged him or whacked him in some way, Al, Rose, and Scorpius only nodded, eyes still glued to the wireless.
"Something good?" he asked them.
Al and Rose gave a non-committal shrug, paying closer attention to the wireless than him. Scorpius looked up to answer.
"There are two debaters going off about werewolf rights," Scorpius announced. Everyone's attention peaked at that, and Teddy had walked over to sit next to them. Suddenly, they all were sitting in front of the wireless, mesmerized.
Harry however, found his seat next to his daughter at the back window. Normally, the view from this window was the Northumbrian back country. There was a burn and a forest behind the house. Closer to the house you could see his children's play things from when they were little. They still used them now, he though ruefully. The swing set and jungle gym were closer to the burn (A/N- burn equals small river or stream) in the back. The large vegetable garden they had planted the first spring they lived here thirteen years ago would be happy to see rain again.
Glancing at his daughter, he saw her attention was focused outside too.
"Are you alright?" he asked her quietly, not wanting to disturb the angered commentary from the other side of the room. His children, nieces, and nephews were enraged by what was being said. No one was more mad than Teddy, Harry noted. Teddy never swore like that around Victoire if he could help it.
"I wish it was happy rain."
He chuckled at his fifteen year old daughter. Even to this day she referenced that simple conversation that they had had ten years ago. She had said that happy rain caused rainbows and sunshine. Sad rain was relentless and cold. Normally, Lily liked the "sad rain." Today, something was off.
"Why?" he asked her, curious.
She shrugged. "It's been one of those days."
He laughed outright at her bitter tone. Harry knew where she got that saying from. Whenever he had had a bad day, that's how he would answer Ginny when he arrived home.
"How was your day?" He was sure she asked to be polite, and he felt pride swell softly in him.
"Eventful." He carefully pulled words out of the air. "I had to give the ashes of a daughter to her parents today." His tone slipped into sadness.
Lily looked at him sadly. She knew about the teenager that the Muggles had found a week ago. The Auror office soon became involved when it was revealed that she was a Muggleborn witch. Finally, the case was closed, he thought to himself. No matter how hard he tried though, he couldn't get the image of his daughter replacing the corpse of Amanda Collins on the diagnosis table. Dissected to discover what had happened and to begin an autopsy...the Healers and the forensics team agreed it was what had to be done. And because of it, they had discovered the girls identity. Giving the cremated remains of their eighteen year old daughter to Rich and Georgeanne Collins speared him through. He looked at the fifteen year old girl in front of him.
This was his daughter.
The scary part to him was that his daughter would be more of a target to any dark wizard than the random assault and murder that was Amanda Collins.
He embraced his daughter tightly. She hugged him back, startled obviously by his embrace. He felt her relax. He couldn't dream of his daughter dying. She had already defied death once when she was born- how many children survived being born 4 weeks premature? His daughter did. He would do anything to protect her. Unfortunately, he suddenly thought, this was also Ginny's daughter, which meant that Lily wouldn't want to be protected. If only he could bubble-wrap her and place her somewhere...
She seemed to guess his thoughts and pulled back. The expression on her face was one he'd seen on Ginny many times- the defiant, loving, annoyed Molly Weasley glare that his daughter had recently discovered that she had inherited. He grimaced at her.
"I'm over-reacting again, aren't I?" he asked her seriously.
"No Dad," she told him, expression softening quickly. "You have every right to be feeling this way."
Harry grinned at her. "Okay Miss Psychologist, what's my prognosis?"
She grinned at him and hugged him.
"That it will get better. I'm not going anywhere, Daddy."
"I'm holding you to that, Lily-Loo."
Lily walked up the stairs of her childhood home. The stairs groaned in protest underneath her feet. She felt like her bones were beginning to groan too. She rolled her eyes as she thought of James at his seventy-sixth birthday party, telling her that she was looking old. Apparently, her body agreed with her still-obnoxious brother.
When she reached the top, she knocked on the first door.
"It's open," her father's gruff voice called.
She opened the door with ease and smirked at her father.
"You always told us to stay out. It's weird to just open the door without you unlocking it first."
Her father chuckled appreciatively from his spot by his desk. The old chair that he used to sit on was in the corner- he had no need of it now that he was in a wheelchair. Lily walked over to her wizened father and embraced him.
"Carefully Lily," he told her. "Not as strong as I used to be."
She looked at her father shrewdly. He grinned.
"Twenty years in a wheelchair does that to you," he commented, wheeling himself over to the bookshelf where pictures were placed. He picked one up of the two of them, him swinging the four year old version of herself in a circle by the burn in the back yard.
She remembered when he could walk. When his spinal cord wasn't the mangled mess that it was today. She had been so happy to hear that her father was alive that day, and even more so when she discovered that Teddy had caught and arrested the dark wizard that almost destroyed her father.
"Lily," he suddenly addressed her. "I'm so glad you came."
"I always come, Dad," she replied, hoping now that his memory wasn't leaving him too.
"I know," he told her. "That doesn't mean that I'm not happy to see my only daughter."
She grinned and sat in the old chair. Her father had wheeled himself over to her.
"I want to tell you something, sweetheart."
Nodding her consent, Lily watched her father strictly.
"I don't believe that I have much time left."
Her stomach knotted extremely uncomfortably. She felt the color leave her face and her father taking her hand in his calloused ones. His hands were always calloused, even when she was so little...
He was watching her evenly, trying to comfort her the only way he physically could now. She saw fire rage in his eyes and she knew he was suffering. She had known since he was released from the hospital those twenty years ago. He wanted to stand up and embrace her and tell her everything was okay and going to be fine but he couldn't!...
"Lily."
Lily looked up at him and chocolate brown eyes met her fathers green ones.
"It's going to be okay."
Seeing that she was about to argue, Harry cut her off.
"It will be. I've lived a very long and wonderful life," he told his daughter. "And I wouldn't live it any other way. But my time here is coming to an end. It's time I boarded a train to the other side."
She knew that he was referring to another simple conversation that they had had a long time ago, but this conversation was far from simple.
"But Dad..."
"Everyone dies Lils," he interrupted. "I made sure of that. Please."
"But Daddy..." She almost whined. She felt shocked; she hadn't called her father that in a very long time. She decided to recall for him another simple conversation that they had had a long time ago. It was the middle of a violent storm that made the windows rattle...that kept her and her cousins inside... "I'm not going anywhere Daddy."
His head jerked up to hers. His eyes were emerald flames and she knew he remembered that night. The first and only night he ever gave parents their child in a box, dead.
His voice was level.
"I'm holding you to that, Lily-Loo."
The funeral had been simple and perfect. Her brothers and their children along with her extended family were all there, as were friends. Only her mother remained from her generation and Lily had that feeling that she wasn't going to be with them much longer. Ginny Potter loved her husband, and she knew that he would be waiting for his wife before he crossed over.
Lily felt her gut wrench as herself, James, Al, and Teddy each placed dirt around the casket. It was a reference to her father's Muggle heritage and her family and her had honored it. Her mother had stood up shakily and placed the rose on the grave silently, the only one left from those who fought to save the Wizarding World. Uncle Ron had died five years before, Aunt Hermione three, Neville and Luna both two years ago. Now her father had died and her mother was left.
She recalled the last simple conversation that she had had with her father. And true to his word, his time had come only an hour and a half after she left. He died peacefully in his sleep.
It began raining on the group and many paid their last respects to the hero of the Wizarding World before they left. The sun was still out however and rainbows began dancing around her head. The tomb which now enclosed her father seemed to shine in the wet and sunny rain and Lily actually laughed out loud.
"It's been one of those days, Daddy," she told him, knowing that he was watching over her in Heaven. "Thanks for the happy rain."
And with that Lily left the cemetery, grinning.
I hope you enjoyed it! Please review :)