Madness and Sin
Much of Madness, more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
Edgar Alan Poe, "The Conqueror Worm"
She is a princess, really and truly. She is Harry Potter's youngest, his only daughter. She is the star, and – in everyone else's mind – should therefore be pampered, spoilt rotten. The world is hers, laid on a silver platter at her feet. She needs only to reach out and claim it.
But there are times when she wishes she were someone else – not the daughter of a hero. She dreams of becoming her own person and travelling the world, leaving her father's shadow far behind her. She wants to be able to remove her crown, which is heavy on her head, and be Lily Potter no longer. Rather than be known for her last name and be trapped in the glory of a generation past, she wants to shine on her own terms, with her own light. If only she could be just Lily.
She tries, fails, and tries again. She does everything in her power to break free from the Potter image. She is at the top of her classes every year, she became a prefect and eventually Head Girl, she played Seeker for her house Quidditch team for seven years, and Slytherin House enjoyed a golden era while she was still in Hogwarts. She even goes on to play professionally as the Hollyhead Harpies' star Seeker at the age of 16.
All her achievements only seem to aggravate her condition though, and people attribute her success to her being a Potter. By the time she realizes it, she is already rested – quite comfortably – on the pedestal she never wanted. The perfect image she has tried to shrug off now clings to her like a disease, and it is suffocating her.
So she makes a decision her young, somewhat intoxicated mind is sure will separate her from the rest of her clan. She drops pro quidditch and, after a year of intensive training and one too many bottles of firewiskey, she becomes the youngest ever (age 22) to join the Grigori, the Watchers. They're basically just Aurors, except they hunt (note the difference from capture) sorcerers and warlocks – wizards who have embraced black magic and practice them on unsuspecting Muggles (basically the Muggle sterotype for evil witches and wizards). It's a job that is life-threatening at best, and results in an early grave at worst. She almost always returns home more than a little banged up, after weeks (there was a time when she was gone for almost six months) of being away. Her family begs her to quit, if not for her own sake then for theirs, but she has no plans of retiring any time soon.
They think she leaves home to fight and bleed and fight some more because she wants to help safeguard the peace her parent's generation fought and died for, because that's the lie she has always fed them (though in a way it is true). As noble as that makes her sound, Lily has always been a Slytherin at heart, and while Slytherin's are perfectly capable of being noble and chivalrous and all that crap, the real reason why she keeps at her job is something more selfish altogether. She is addicted to the freedom being a Grigori brings her (the amazing post-mission sex and wild parties are more of bonuses than anything).
But then the unthinkable happens, so Lily lies and tells her family she is going on a long-term undercover mission (it's a half-assed lie at best, because she is Lily-freaking-Potter and she's had entire stadiums chanting her name - undercover is just not her forte), then leaves without saying much else.
Lily actually spends the next seven months in America, where her fellow wild-child of a cousin, Dominique, takes her in without a second thought. She lives low-key for a while, trying to hide from the press and escape the "guilt" of the fact that she'd cheated on her long-term boyfriend, Lysander Scamander.
She thinks it's funny how, out of the eight (going on nine) years since she and Lysander started dating during her sixth year at Hogwarts (he was nineteen back then), he's only ever had eyes for her the entire time (he always did put his everything into their relationship), while she had been faithful a grand total of two months (she secretly started banging his man-whore of a twin brother after that. She still does, occasionally). He was, and still very much is, a goody two shoes, and while Lily honestly finds that kind of cute, she's mostly just bored when she's with him. Of course she acts in love and happy, because she is in a demure kind of way, but she's got a wilder side to her that refuses to be held down. There's a part of her that screams for that screw-love-and-marriage-bullshit-I-wanna-get-smashed-and-party-til-dawn kind of living that Lysander never could provide her with.
It's quite the case of irony really that, of all the lovers she's had (she's been with her god-brother Teddy Lupin, six other guys and – as a one-time-I-just-really-want-to-try kind of thing – one girl over the years, all of them high profile personalities), it's Scorpius-too-sexy-for-my-shirt-Malfoy's love child that she had to carry. Maybe it's fate or karma, that her womb is swollen with a growing life because the son of her father's archenemy forgot to use protection (in Scorpius' defense, they were both too wasted and too horny to give a shit).
After thinking on it (by the time she reached her third trimester, Lily was huge enough that all she could do was lie down and think), she decides she doesn't care for her old life anymore, and the second she gets this kid out of her, she'll finally give Lysander the 'yes' he's been waiting to hear and finally get hitched. She'll retire from the Grigori order, maybe even play Quiddtich again, and start a real family when she is actually ready.
When she does go into labor, it's much earlier than expected. It's the longest twelve-and-a-half hours of her life, but after she gets a glimpse of the twins, she realizes she doesn't really mind.
Lily returns to England not long after giving birth. She puts her Grigori days behind her and ties the knot with Lysander. She even plays Quidditch again for a few years, before retiring and taking up a coaching position. She raises her children – Mason, Alice, Sylas, and Julius – with her husband, doing her best to steer them in the right direction, and hoping to high heaven that they don't make the same mistakes she did.
Peter and Helina Snow are an adorable pair, Lily thinks, even though both kids take after her father's side of the family, with their lean, athletic frames, jet-black hair, and blue, blue eyes. Everyone bought the whole adopted story without question, and they hey grow up alongside Lily and Lysader's own children.
The idea for this hit me while I was serving my three-month sentence in my room. Like every grounded teenager, I was being overly-emotional. Now I can't even look at the walls of my room without feeling claustrophobic, and I can't look at my self in the mirror because I find I'm so woe-is-me. Quite frankly, it's so cliche it's disgusting. But hey I hope you guys enjoyed this little piece.
Do Zvidaniya,
Finn