Disclaimer: The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. All rights reserved to J K Rowling.
Credits: The Garden Gate by Nati Deviantart
Warning: Adult contents, Dark themes, Not for children.
A Flower By Any Other Name
The Beginning
1978
Lily Potter cried bitter tears as she lay clutching the edge of the bathtub. Her face was ashen and sweat-stained, her nightgown covered in a patch of blood which smeared red on the glistening white tiles of the lavish bathroom. Beside her lay a small lump, barely the size of a walnut and covered by a blood soaked hand towel. This was her third miscarriage and her heart lay shattered at another loss.
Lily had never thought much about motherhood or children, like everyone else she had taken for granted the gift of being able to procreate. It was when James had sat her down and told her of the Potter line's low fertility- how Euphemia and Fleamont were almost resigned to having the Potter line die with them before James' miraculous conception that Lily slowly grew conscious of the fact that she may possibly never have a child with the man she loved.
It surprised her how much that knowledge hurt her.
When she grew pregnant, Lily had been elated and relieved. She was so very thankful and blessed that they could be the exceptions- that they could start a family with ease. Until the first miscarriage happened.
Lily hadn't cried then, having still been hopeful that it was just a stroke of bad luck. She was freshly graduated from Hogwarts at the time, there was a Dark Lord wreaking horrors around her. Her body hadn't been prepared.
She cried the second time she miscarried but her heart was still brimming with optimism. By then Lily was aching for a child, every loss so far building upon her desire to nurture and give life. Certainly the third time would be the charm?
This time Lily was certain it would kill her if it happened again.
It took months of perusing magical tomes and remedies before she realised nothing worked and then despite her reservations she took to looking at darker tomes and literature.
"What would you sacrifice to gain something you most desire?"
It was there at a crossroads during a full moon on a chillingly cold windy night that Lily was faced with a demon. One she summoned. She wondered how it came to this. James would be furious if he knew.
What would she sacrifice in order to gain something she most desired?
She surmised that as long as no life was lost, she would be able to sacrifice anything.
That night Lily Potter broke her own rib and with her own two hands snapped a piece and offered it to the demon.
Ground to dust then mixed with blood so black it looked like tar, Lily drank the concoction returned to her.
It was Autumn 1979 when Lily found out she was pregnant. This time was different. Five months passed by harmlessly and then it turned into seven months, before long it was the 31st of July 1980 and Lily was once more ashen-faced and sweat stained. This time however there was an unmistakeable glow of joy as she cradled her squirming, live, baby.
It had fiery red hair and bright green eyes; her sweet little girl.
Primrose for 'I can't live without you' because Lily knew upon laying eyes on her that she could not.
Primrose Lily Potter.
All was perfect.
Until the prophecy happened.
Perhaps she got a taste for it, or perhaps she was just desperate, Lily didn't know but once more she was at a crossroads and once more she was face to face with the demon who gifted Lily her child.
"What would you sacrifice for the life of your child?"
Anything.
If it meant protecting her from the Dark Lord's grasps, Lily could sacrifice anything.
The demon gave her a vial; the liquid was the colour of rust. Lily didn't dare ask what it was.
"Baptise your babe and know that the curse of death shall not take her."
Upon emerging from the bloody waters of her unholy baptism, Primrose's fiery hair was now peppered with golden strands.
Lily did not know what she sacrificed for this gift.
The night the Dark Lord entered Godric's Hollow, Lily's faith in the demon wavered. She could not stand aside and test whether her child truly was safe, and so she begged. She begged like the desperate mother she was and then she fell like her husband.
What the demon left unspoken was that the life of a child was precious, and so too must the sacrifice be great for twisting and perverting something so innocent- for that was what she had done. Lily Potter and James Potter were never destined to live.
The killing curse rebounded and Primrose Potter was hailed the Girl-Who-Lived.
As she was abandoned on the doorsteps of her unsuspecting relatives, and with all the celebrations happening throughout the United Kingdom, no one heard as Sybil Trelawney uttered another prophecy.
"Fate-marked, Unholy Messiah. Never to walk within the hallowed gardens of Eden. Damned is she whom life shall never grow. Queen to all creatures of Lilith's making. Sons of Adam will bend knee at her Glory. Hail the Dark Mistress for her path marks a metamorphosis that all magical kind will feel. "