Hear the man draw breath. If he is lucky, he will soon draw his last.
He hears nothing else, not the cries of his fellow wizards and believers that haunt his nights, not the screaming of Muggle fighter-bombers diving a kilometer away and bringing their world's hellish war one massacre nearer to a close. Not the final words of his brother, master, mentor, leader, a man many leagues away, a man apart in body and soul and dreams. Does Gellert Grindelwald have final words? Is Grindelwald a man to face death with a scowl or a sardonic farewell, a toast to part from this mortal coil?
The man does not know. He admits, after all this time, that he does not know his master as he should. All he knows is that Grindelwald heads to death or defeat, for he knows no wizard alive has stood before the might of Albus Dumbledore and triumphed.
He cannot get comfortable. This shadowy, subterranean burrow is not built for comfort but for sleep, a lifetime's worth for any Muggle or lesser wizard. He would prefer to stand alongside Grindelwald, to die before Dumbledore's fury, to close out life a man and no less. Instead duty renders him a mole, a coward. A back-up plan, so says Grindelwald, for no man is above a vision – and the man knows his master's vision supersedes all else, even his own acceptance, embrace even, that he has failed in life. He has won no great victory. He has not etched his name in the stone of time and space. None shall look upon his works and despair.
Yet, Grindelwald's voice – his voice? – reminds him from some caved-in corner of his mind. Yet. Has his story only been postponed? He refuses to lie to himself. The two greatest wizards of his day, arguably of history, may fight to the death as he cowers here in this living grave. He will awake to Dumbledore's world, Dumbledore's order, and open his eyes to witness a past he has lived, a history he has watched unfold. The present tells him that Grindelwald is a true man, a just one, a visionary building a wizarding world that need not be plagued by the kind of bloodshed and atrocities the Muggles practice every decade or so, of the type the man has watched annihilate his native Germany as the Soviet fury sows wreckage and births despair. All lost. A vision shredded because of a moment of anger, a spark of passion and wrath, a spell gone wrong and fate pitted the dreams of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald in a fight to the death.
What a pity. What a waste. Something foul hides in the twisting of life.
The air in the burrow warms. The man can wait no longer. How long will he sleep? Will he even wake? This mysterious magic, these experimental spells: He admits, he does not like Grindelwald's back-up plan for more reasons than one. But someone must remember. Someone must ferry a dream back into the waking world, long after history has scourged it from record.
He lies upon the hard earth and stares at the granite ceiling just six feet above him. Not a burrow, a coffin. Perhaps he shall never wake up. Perhaps he'll suffocate in this bungalow and the ground will bury him until some adventurer in the future unearths his bleached bones, a fossil in a museum for the young wizards and witches of tomorrow to ogle. Perhaps, deep down, he hopes for just that.
No. He is not so lucky. He will have to live with his shame when his hour comes round at last, his revelation at hand. Yeats was right. From beyond the fog, Bethlehem calls.
"Devil take me, then," he whispers.
The man aims his wand at his temple, closes his eyes, and whispers the words.
It is grand, a colossus! Not enough and beckoning her onwards, and yet so much that she feels the walls, the crowds, the little paper plane-memos zipping through the halls as fleet as brooms in the Quidditch games she learned to love from her mother and father, all of it swirling and coalescing down around her as if the very Ministry of Magic itself wants to trap her here. For fourteen years her father never brought her here. Now here she stands, and now Lily Potter is unsure of what to do next. She is a boat unmoored, and the sea that rumbles through this great burrow pushes her this way and that as she makes no headway at all.
She lets her father do the talking. "Albus had career counseling just last year," Harry Potter tells the tall, richly-dressed man before them. Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister of Magic. Legendary wizard, and thus no different than her father. "But we're all Gryffindors. We're a little more set in things. Lily's the Ravenclaw of the family, so I thought it'd be better to show her around before throwing her off into the deep end."
"This is one of those examples of parents learning what to do for the youngest child through trial and error with the older children, I take it?" Kingsley says with a smile. "I'm also going to guess this was Ms. Granger's idea."
"Well, yeah. But, you know, Lily's not her kid. I get at least half the credit."
Kingsley chuckles. "Your father wants one Auror to follow him, doesn't he?" he asks her.
She knows they want her to smile, and so she smiles. "It's good to look around a bit. I've got another four years at Hogwarts to decide on careers, so it's good to look around."
Diplomatic, neutral, and Kingsley goes with it: "I changed my mind. She sounds like she'll be taking my job one day. Well don't let me hold you up, Lily. Harry, as always, a pleasure."
Kingsley is a titan, and yet she does not know why he looks the part of an institution so much more than her father. Her father killed Voldemort. Her father is Harry Potter, who old Professor Binns talks about in History of Magic, who her classmates whisper about when they gossip behind her back. Yet Harry Potter is at heart a mummer, a persona wholly apart from the father with green eyes who clutches her shoulders and smiles. They are two men, different men, she thinks. One is the war hero who killed the greatest dark wizard of all time. The other man is the one across from her here in the Ministry, the one who yells at James to stop lobbing dungbombs through Al's bedroom window, who drinks butterbeer with Uncle Ron over games of exploding snap, who slow-dances with her mother in the kitchen when they think she's asleep, who tells her that he was an idiot to take Divination, and that she shouldn't worry about taking A Study of Ancient Runes. These are worlds apart, and she is mystified that she keeps one foot in either of them.
"I've a meeting with Dean at nine-thirty," he tells her, his grip on her right shoulder clutching just tight enough to tell her that she'll be fine. "Wish I could skip it, but, you know. You know Dean's son, right? He's in your house."
She does. Another Auror, another of his people, the ones who know that other man named Harry Potter. And yet a mummer too, the man a father of a fellow rising fourth-year boy she knows so well, a boy who calls Ravenclaw Tower home as she does, who sees his father a Gryffindor and takes another path. She has not told her father much about the boy, nor has she told her mother. Al has thankfully kept that secret. "I'm okay waiting," she says.
"How about this," he says, "Aunt Hermione's down in the Ministry Archives researching something for a case she's working on for her department. I'm tied up until eleven – why don't I take you down there and meet her, hm? Afterwards I can show you around my office. We can get lunch later, the three of us. Besides, there's loads in the Archives. I'll probably have to pry you away. If there's anything you want to know, it's there, and she'll show you anything else."
There's the other side, she thinks. There is a Harry Potter the world needs, and the world needs him this morning. The world does not need Lily Potter. She hears the taunts of other Ravenclaws, of the Gryffindors she can't stand but can't tell her father and mother about, for fear of their reaction: Lily. Are you sure she's a Potter? Maybe her mother's had a fling with some other guy, had her pop out on accident. Red hair; you don't see her brothers with red hair. Tell me that's not a coincidence. Her father is heroic, a symbol. She is just another rising fourth-year girl at Hogwarts, except she battles her last name along with the other girls.
She cannot say any of this to her father, however, especially not here in the heart of the world that reveres his past. All she can do is agree and follow him through the cavernous halls of the Ministry, the ceiling lights glistening off of the Potter on the guest badge pinned to her chest.
When she follows her father off the Ministry's creaky elevator on Level Five, announced by a cheerful voice as the floor for the Department of International Magical Cooperation, among other offices, a pair of hooded men watch her step off. They stare straight ahead, the hoods veiling their eyes, and when the elevator doors close and the car descends, Lily smells ash and soot.
"Unspeakables," her father tells her, "from down in the Department of Mysteries. Don't worry about them. Heck, I chief Law Enforcement and they don't even report to me. Come on."
Her stomach churns with doubt. Were they burning something down there, or do they all smell like that? She has heard of them, of course. Her father, her mother, her aunt and uncle, they had all broken into the Department of Mysteries when they were a mere year older than she is now. Queer beasts live down there on the bottom floor of the Ministry with names like time, space, death, love. Prophecy. A million unseen things she only knows from textbooks and hours spent prowling about Hogwarts's library, gleaning clues of a fight that even her parents shied away from all these years later.
Mysteries, within and without. She wants to understand.
If the Hogwarts library impressed her, the Ministry Archives swallow her whole. Surely every book ever written by magical hands calls this place home, soldiers standing in formation within bookshelves that rise twelve, fourteen, sixteen rows high. Glass spheres the size of her palm float through the air between the stacks, encapsulating golden flames that seem to burn the very ether itself. Wizards and witches flit between stacks like ghosts appearing for a visage of black cloaks and pointed hats before disappearing behind another shelf. Lily has left the bowed heads, slouched shoulders, grumbled greetings, and quill twitching of the working world above for an alcove that invites her first smile of the day.
The witch who rounds the nearest shelf with a grin has not aged from the young woman Lily sees in the photographs around her home. Her straight back and raised chin, her bushy hair and perfect teeth that Uncle Ron teases her about for some reason, all the same features at forty-two that made Hermione Granger at eighteen. Now she is not just heroine and Hogwarts post-graduate but Executor of the British Department of International Magical Cooperation, but the warm look she gives Harry, the glance of understanding Lily has spotted innumerable times gliding like an invisible spell between the two sorcerers, parents, and friends, speaks that titles do not make the woman.
"The she is," Hermione says. "Looking all grown up, too."
Her father clutches Lily's shoulder. "Yeah. Enjoy not getting up for work every day while you can."
"Says the man who laughed when James admitted he slept through his Astronomy O.W.L.," Hermione snorts.
"It's Astronomy. It's not like he stopped breathing."
"It's an important class, Harry," says Hermione. She glances at Lily, scrunches up her face, and laughs. "Alright, not that important, but if you start being too honest Lily's going to sleep through it too. Do you want to go one-for-three in kids who actually take that exam?"
"Al raising the bar again. Can't imagine where he gets that from," Harry says. He pulls Lily close and tousles her hair. "I'm going to ditch you on Aunt Hermione, kiddo, but I'll be back as soon as Dean tells me all his boring briefing notes. Don't let your aunt give you an entrance exam to the Department of Mysteries while I'm gone."
Hermione chuckles as Harry leaves. "I'd like to think you'd get into somewhere better than that, Lily. But come on. Your dad's got his daily pressing issue. I remember when he was having those at your age."
The Archives pull at her from all sides as Hermione leads her through the maze. Titles like Exspiravitum, or On the Origins of Wraiths and The Four Voyages to the Vampire's Covens tug at her curiosity like fishermen's lures. From Magistrate Beligeiro's Tryst with the Veil leaks a green mist that coalesces into a ghost in the shape of a maiden, beckoning Lily with a smile and a twirl before darting back into the red leather-bound tome. Solare's Secrets of Merry Aide as Understood from the Moste Radiant of Heavenly Bodies glows like a sun that lights up an entire corridor. The book chuckles as Lily passes, and she has an urge to grab it off the shelf and memorize every page.
"I know that face. I used to love spending time in the Hogwarts library," Hermione says as Lily wanders wide-eyed through the stacks. "There's so much to learn that's not taught in class. Go on, take a look at something. Books are meant to be read, and the Ministry's got the largest library in the magical world here."
So it was Aunt Hermione's idea to bring me here, Lily thinks. For good reason: Neither of her cousins Rose and Hugo, Hermione's children, want anything to do with a career in the Ministry. Rose wants to go overseas and travel like Teddy Lupin and cousin Victoire had, and Hugo's idea of a good time is vegetating in the Hufflepuff Common Room. James has a summer internship with the Puddlemore United Quidditch team here in his first summer after graduating Hogwarts, and for all of Al's dedication and hard work, even Lily knew her bookish brother sees Hogwarts as both an education and a career. But show off what the Ministry has to offer to the Ravenclaw daughter, the baby of the family, and maybe Aunt Hermione and her father has someone to follow in their footsteps. If she likes learning and spends time in the library, well, show her the grandest library of all. Whet her appetite and watch her follow the right path all on her own. You cannot force a man to revelation. He must find the path himself.
A good plan, and it's working. Lily doesn't notice Hermione leave her to her perusing, smiling as she watches her niece plop down beside a shelf with The Second Act of Godric Gryffindor for company.
How much times has passed when a soft, unfamiliar voice rouses her from her reading? "Ah, the Gryffindor tetralogy. Part two, looks like. Riveting tale, but not the best of the Hogwarts founders."
A man with a warm grin and wearing a brown woolen tunic crouches on the other side of the aisle, clutching a book with a green-and-silver cover. Lily almost misses him when she looks up: Between his plain, round, unshaven face, his blonde hair cut so close he looks nearly bald, and his almost peasant-like attire, he is a far cry from the wizards and witches in their black and red and silver robes strolling through the Archives. He has none of the air of importance and urgency they carry around like weights bound to their backs.
Lily scoots back against her shelf. "Er, I don't think I know you."
"Lily Potter, isn't it?" he says. "I spotted you walk in with your father. And Hermione Granger, of course. Who doesn't know her?"
Ah. The next phase of the ploy: Get one of the Archives's librarians to encourage her without parental guidance. You'll be an adult in three years, Lily, she could hear her father say. Mum and I won't always be around for you then. "Oh. Yeah. I'm just a visitor."
The man, librarian she supposes, nods and appraises the page she's on. "Godric's pact of friendship with King Aethelred the Unready of the English. A half-dozen years after Hogwarts's founding, and still relevant today as a key note of tolerance given our new world ever since your father ended Voldemort's threat. But history's written by the victors, I suppose, and Gryffindor's everyone's darling ever since that moment Voldemort fell. I suppose you'd know, in your family. Gryffindors everywhere. They can be a bit overbearing with their chest-thumping, can't they?"
She suppresses a laugh. "Are you a librarian or a historian or something?"
"Oh, I know my history. Not so much my library science," the man says. He passes her the silver-and-green book with a gentle hand. "Rumor has it from one Neville Longbottom that you take after your aunt more than your mother and father, so much so that he wagers you and a certain Hugo Weasley were switched at birth. If that's the case, I know what kind of curiosity Miss Granger has. Try this book if you want more than just Gryffindor's view of things."
"You know Professor Longbottom?" Lily asks, looking over the book. The World Unseen: Salazar Slytherin's Last Curse, reads the title in glittering green.
The man nods. "I've spoken to him. He's an interesting man, so noble and yet out of the spotlight your father has commanded all these years. One day, dare I say soon, he'll not be just Professor Longbottom of Herbology, but Headmaster Longbottom, Protector of Hogwarts." He waves his hand towards the book she's opened. "A little history. Salazar Slytherin, Rowena Ravenclaw, and other things beyond the normal histories you'll read about from droll Professor Binns, I'd wager."
"I don't know many Slytherins," Lily says, leafing through the first few pages. "There's a Slytherin boy my cousin Rose hates. Scorpius Malfoy."
"Malfoy is a hated name in these times. Your Scorpius has his grandfather and father to thank for that. But I don't think being a Slytherin is the cause of that. Indeed, I don't think Salazar himself would be proud of the deeds Lucius Malfoy got up to, let alone the horrors brought about by Voldemort. Not at all. I doubt he knew of the faraway consequences of his actions taken so long ago."
"Hmm?" Lily looks up after a minute of silence. The man is nowhere to be found, not in front of her, not beside her, not in the aisle. He has disappeared, here one moment, gone the next. She purses her lips: Alone again without a word. The man had been well caught up on his history, less so on his social skills. She empathizes.
The World Unseen smells old. Its vellum pages crinkle and crackle as Lily turns them, and illuminations wriggle and writhe over the parchment. On one page a slimy, indigo, crab-like beast trots around the parchment and lunges at a wand-wielding wizard draped in mail. On another, a man shrouded in black smoke materializes and dissipates before a witch's stunning spell. The original subject that led to Salazar Slytherin devising the Pact of Blood, reads the caption, and the individual that eluded Godric Gryffindor's watchmen for years while terrorizing Exeter. His capture is theorized as the cause behind the construction of Slytherin's first Chamber of Secrets, deep below –
Tales of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin working together fighting monsters? Fun, and it would drive Rose mad, but it isn't Lily's taste.
She's nearly forgotten about the book and the historian who knows Professor Longbottom by the time Hermione comes back around. "I see you got caught up," Hermione says. "What's this?"
Lily looks towards where she left The World Unseen. The book's gone, emptiness in its place, bare wooden floor. Her breath catches in her throat and she swallows her confusion.
"Gryffindor's history?" Hermione says, pawing through The Second Act of Godric Gryffindor. "Hm." She's quiet, contemplative, her eyes downcast before she glances at her niece. "It was a funny thing, really. The Sorting Hat almost didn't put me in Gryffindor. It almost sent me to Ravenclaw instead, like it did you. It's not exactly a scientific process, sorting."
Lily hears, but she's not listening. The book's disappearance vexes her.
Something glows down the aisle, growing brighter. Hermione turns and frowns as a blue-and-white stag bounds past the corner of the aisle, dashing towards her at a full gait before slowing to a trot, then a canter before skidding to a stop before them. Lily knows it at once: Her father's Patronus.
She has seen it once before. Four years ago, more than a year before she began her Hogwarts career, this very stag dashed up to her family's home in Ottery St. Catchpole. Being October with both Al and James at school, she and her mother had been the only ones to receive her father's warning to escape home. Antonin Dolohov, the Patronus had said then. The last Death Eater at large, and he's been spotted around the local area. Get out. Lily's father, along with her Uncle Ron, Dean Thomas, fellow Auror Michael Corner, and several others had subdued Dolohov later that night, but Lily hadn't stopped crying for days.
Her breath catches as the Patronus speaks again: "Stay where you are. Something's going on up here on the ground floor. Keep Lily safe."
Hermione draws her wand, her jaw set. Lily hears murmurs throughout the library as the ceiling shakes, a rumble echoing through the stacks as if the earth deep below quakes. A minute passes. Two. Lily's stomach churns.
Ash. Lily smells smoke, a faint smell, not from a fire burning now, but as from the remnants of a fire that burnt out, reduced to embers long ago.
Another minute passes with Hermione's free hand clutching Lily's forearm, guarding her niece behind her, her wand drawn as if ready to defend against Voldemort reborn, if need be. Finally one of the paper planes Lily had seen earlier in the Ministry halls darts forward into Hermione's grasp. She opens the paper, frowning, and then her frown turns to a look of horror. Lily only sees a glimpse of the scrawled writing before Hermione crumples it in her hand, but what she makes out is enough.
Smoke, she reads. Assassin. And Kingsley Shacklebolt.