"The Little Girl"
A/N: This is a rather sad one-shot that I came up with while listening to John Michael Montgomery's country song "The Little Girl". The song has got to be my favorite country song ever, and I would listen to it while reading this—it'll help you understand this better. I know Harry and Ginny will be completely OOC, but hopefully you will accept it.
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And the drinking and the fighting
just got worse every night
Behind their couch she'd be hiding
Oh what a sad little life
The door slamming shut alerted Lily Luna Potter to the arrival of her father late that night. Seated quietly on the sofa in their large home, she listened to his approaching footsteps and heard the unsteady rhythm of his shoes on the wood floor. She could imagine him lurching through the kitchen, perhaps grabbing hold of one of the chairs to keep from tripping over his own feet in a drunken stupor. Sure enough, she heard the footsteps stumble, heard a muttered curse as the chair squeaked on the floor. She kept her eyes trained on the television, knowing he would not care for her staring, knowing he would speak to her anyway.
His shadow appeared before he did, distorted against the wall, and then an instant later he came into view. He frowned through drink-bleary eyes. "What are you doing up?"
Lily looked up from the show she was pretending to watch. "Waiting for you, Daddy," she said softly.
"Well, go to bed!"
Quickly, jumping as though scalded, Lily did so, rushing to shut the television off before starting to climb the stairs to her room. She looked back over her shoulder to see her dad looking over to the master bedroom, where Ginny Potter was clearly in a drugged state. She shivered seeing the anger in his eyes. Her father never touched Lily, never touched any of his children, but Lily knew what he did to her mother. She heard their shouts and screams and arguments, she heard the slaps and saw the bruises that sometimes marked Ginny's arms and face the next morning.
Climbing into her bed, drawing up her covers, Lily heard the beginnings of a fight break out between her parents and buried her face in her pillow, trying to keep her eyes from burning with tears.
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Harry Potter had changed. It was never explained what happened in his mind, or what could have prompted his behavior, but he became… troubled. Angered. Terrible nightmares led to long, sleepless nights. Those sleepless nights eventually led to a drinking addiction that had before only been a firewhiskey every other night. Drunk, he was violent, easily set off, although he never touched his children. He beat Ginny sometimes, cursed her in those drunken moments, and she eventually became too broken to stand up for herself. Lily's mother turned to the wizard equivalent to drugs, and that left the Potter children to fend for themselves. James, as the oldest, kept both Albus and Lily as protected from what their father did as possible, hiding evidence, cleaning bloodstains, putting silencing charms up in their rooms so they would not hear the screaming matches down in the first floor. But eventually he had to leave for jobs, and Albus was in charge, keeping Lily as ignorant as possible as to what was happening in the troubled household. But like James, he had to move on, get a job, and this left Lily, at the age of twelve, to fend for herself, and she learned what her brothers had tried to protect her from.
She witnessed Harry's leaving in the evenings, and stayed up until he came home, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, he would come home the way he was before drinking ruined him, the way she remembered him, laughing and smiling and joking. But it never happened. He came home every night drunk, and every night she heard her parents fight. She would not fall asleep until she heard James and Albus come home. Normally they didn't have to worry about these nights at Hogwarts, but in the summer and breaks… Well, they did the best they could.
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The drunken rages became steadily worse as the days went on. Lily wanted out, she wanted to run, she wanted to go to her Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione's house, but the Floo had been shut off. She wanted to plead with James and Albus and have them all go to their godbrother Teddy's flat in London, but Teddy had cut himself from his godfather after witnessing his decline. She didn't know where he was living.
She lay in her bed that night, listening to her parents fighting, waiting for her brothers to get home, when suddenly a large crash from the living room brought her fully aware. Trembling, she listened to her father yelling in his drunken rage, cursing her mother, heard Ginny scream back. Standing, Lily slowly walked out of her room, horrified but unable to stay away. This fight was the worst yet. Sure enough, as she approached and slowly descended the stairs, she saw her mother and father standing in the entrance to their bedroom, locked in a terrible fight, yelling at each other. Frightened, Lily crouched behind the couch, watching everything, unable to do anything. She wanted to run back up to her room, and lock the door behind her, but she couldn't.
As she watched, Ginny tore herself from Harry's grip and rushed away, further into the living room, drawing her wand. Her brown eyes were crazed and lined with red, both by the use of drugs and tears. Lily watched with horror as her father drew his own wand, looking dangerous, and she knew she couldn't watch anymore. She hid her face in the soft cloth of the sofa, just as her mother screeched a curse, and heard her father retaliate. There was a sickening squirting sound, and a heavy thud—a jet of red shot above Lily's head and splattered across the wall. Fully terrified, Lily heard through covered ears another thud, heard his father gasping—no, sobbing—speaking her mother's name over and over again. There was no reply, and Lily heard a dry, shaky breath, heard a wand scraped across the floor as it was picked up—and heard a muttered spell. There was a flash of green, then—
Silence. And still Lily trembled behind the couch.
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The news shocked the entire wizarding world, when the headline 'Harry and Ginny Potter Found Dead In Their Home!' blared across the newspapers. The Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, was conferred about what should be done about the news, but he simply shook his head helplessly. There was nothing to be done except inspect what had happened. What they found was a homicide and a suicide. Ginny had been killed by a vicious Cutting Curse to the neck, and Harry had taken his life, realizing what he had done.
James and Albus Potter, the papers said, had been out that night. Lily Potter had been found frozen in shock behind the couch, silent and watching her mother's blood drip down the wall behind her. She had not spoken once. The three siblings were taken to London, to the Ministry of Magic, waiting for their relatives to come pick them up. When finally Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione came, they were both in tears, but clung to the children, unwilling to let them go. When the press asked for answers, Aunt Hermione threatened to hex them, her eyes blazing, and they had backed away.
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The day of the funeral came three days later. It was a small ceremony, despite the millions who wished to come to Harry Potter's funeral. Grandmum Weasley and Aunt Hermione had put their feet down, however, and said it was going to be quiet and hushed, not a fanfare for politics or fame. The two Potters would be laid to rest by the people who had known them best.
It was a quiet, subdued place at the cemetery, where the funeral was in Godric's Hollow. First, however, there was a meeting in the church, where the family had a Muggle pastor say the final words for the dead.
The entire time Lily, who had not spoken the entire time since being taken from the house, looked vaguely up at the altar, not even looking at the closed coffins of her parents. Albus tried to get her attention, concerned about his baby sister's silence, but she ignored him. James, too, attempted to speak to her, but she didn't appear to hear him. It was only after the pastor had finished speaking that Lily moved.
She approached the man, even as Al and James rushed after her. "Sir?" she asked softly, and her voice effectively silenced the entire building as her family froze in shock, hearing her speak, to a stranger no less.
The Muggle pastor looked down at her curiously. "Yes, Miss?" he said, surprised. He knew from the report that this little girl had witnessed her parents' deaths. "What is it?"
She turned to her eyes up. "Who is that man?"
He followed her gaze, as did her family, up to the carved effigy of Christ hanging from the cross, looking down at them in anguish and forgiveness.
"Lily!" James hissed, grabbing her hand. "You should be ashamed of yourself, thinking of some stranger at- at Mum and Dad's funeral-"
"But he's not a stranger!" she protested, looking at her brother. "I know him! He came down from that cross!"
"Excuse me?" the pastor asked, wonder sparking in his eyes.
She turned to him, then looked at her family. "I don't know his name, but he was there. He was there in our house, the night Mum and Dad died. He hid there behind the couch with me and held me. He said I would be all right. He said everything was in His hands."
A/N: Liked it? Hated it?