Summary: After years of treatment, Lily Potter meets up with her son. A study in obsession. AU.

Author's Note: Exams are coming up and naturally I get a burning urge to finish all these onehitwonders covered with cobwebs in some forsaken corner of my harddrive. So, here's a repost of The Red Room, less explicitly tending towards H/Lily, which really makes it so much better than before, 'cause the logical conclusion of the idea I have parks itself nowhere near any sort of romance.

Big thanks to Mindless (from DLP) for the Beta.

The Red Room
part 1

Harry watched from his perch, raising another glass to meet his lips. Leaning against him, Laila slurred her proposals, her wandering hands making her intentions clear. Weasley hollered her approval from amongst the gaggle as another drunken couple decided to flaunt in the middle of the bar. Drinks were splashed and sprayed and dumped over shrieking and laughing heads. A table drenched in firewhiskey was set on fire; around it like savages they danced. Music blurted from a wireless, an old racy song whose beat thrummed through their veins. Upon the dance floor a couple gently kissed. His gaze paused at that for a moment, and at the crowd around them, and he grinned, raising the glass in congratulations to an old friend. As he moved away from the dance floor, the lights grew dimmer and the tables smaller. From behind up explicit sounds coloured a pretty picture of what was transpiring in the dark. And then Laila moved against him, twisted from the abdomen, with his splayed fingers stroking her long dark hair as her face tilted to meet his lips.

It was almost perfect, he thought. Then he saw her.

She was dressed simply, in a blouse and long skirt that accentuated the thin, sharp lines of her body as she walked. As she came to a pause near a table, he saw her hand dart out and grab a discarded glass and drown its remains. For a moment she stood like that, the glass tipping over her face, with the lamp upon the table around her casting a flickering light over her body. And then her body slightly shook as, presumably, the whiskey mixed with Merlin knew what filth landed its punch, and for a moment he almost considered getting up to help her. But then she drew back a chair and slumped into it, her head downcast and lolling, with one hand still clutching the glass resting upon the table while the other fell to her lap. Even at this distance she looked tired. Her hair had escaped its neat bun and fell around her face in loose threads, a deep dark red. She looked like she had those last few nights, too tired to read to him, but still finding time to sit beside him, gently holding him as he fell asleep.

Now, of course, he could see those nights in entirely different contexts.
He had seen her like this so many times before, always when she was at her most exhausted and cared for little, except him. The memories swelled against him, all those years that he'd tried to forget, incited by just a glance. Laila was moving, inviting him for one last time tonight, and he knew that he should accept her offer, should leave with her right this instant, and quell those memories with ones of Laila and her bed. There was nothing like sex to take your mind off how fucked up you were. And Laila was particularly distracting… but his arousal had already subsided and he knew it didn't work like that. It wasn't that easy. He had already tried.

He didn't want to see her now. He didn't want to see her ever. But despite everything his first second and last impulse was to move to her side and embrace her, like those countless times before that winter.

Laila pushed herself up, her mouth pursed in irritation.

He watched – and it was almost surreal – as Collins moved away from the dance and approached her. Perhaps he hadn't been the only one to notice how she stood out in the crowd. He watched Collins sit down beside her, holding two glasses. As she accepted it, he wondered whether she had accepted it with all that it entailed. Slowly she tipped it over her face, savouring this one in small sips.

Collins put forth a hand, probably inviting her to dance, or if what he'd heard of Collins was accurate, to fuck. She made, of course, no effort to consent, and he could almost imagine her eyebrows arching, the lines of her mouth stretched into a mocking grin. He wondered if she would curse him, and wished that she did. She had enjoyed doing that before: a twist of the hand to inflict some humiliating little harm. James, she had once told him, had taught her that.

But she didn't. St. Mungo's had changed her.

Laila's wet lips touched his ear pleasantly startling him from thoughts of his father. "I see you are otherwise occupied," she whispered, in that weirdly formal way she got when she was drunk. Without waiting for a reply, her lips moved to his ear, "You should talk to her." And then she kissed him, on the cheek. "Bye, Harry. I'll miss you." He stared after her as she walked away, and whispered a goodbye. She would be leaving tomorrow morning for France, while he, well, he had no idea where he would go or what he would do, except that he didn't what to be here anymore.

She was still sitting, slumped against the chair, the glass still gently swivelling in her hand. As the moment passed, he began to wonder why she had come here. Surely it was to look for him, wasn't it? It couldn't be a coincidence? Did he want it to be? Or did he want her to be searching for him, and damn the consequences? Did she remember that he could damn her? She didn't look… anymore deranged than she had the last time around, but that had been years ago. Years and years. He didn't know why he'd never visited after that one time. He remembered that she hadn't been violent, or any of the other things that they had so tearfully warned him about. Sitting on that chair, quietly with her head slightly tilted, as if she were perpetually inquisitive, she hadn't looked anything like what they had made him to expect. She had looked, and he could remember still, so sharply that one last time was burned somewhere in the recesses of his memory – she had looked like a withered leaf, and he remembered thinking that he would forgive her, if even there was anything to forgive. But then she had whispered James, and he, he'd just fled.

And forgotten.

"Discard your past, like old clothes, and throw it in the pyre."

But no, it was all in the pyre, all ash and cinder.

Her glass moved to her lips and she drank, slowly, nursing her drink, and then calling for another.

He couldn't understand this. She was there in front of him, real and solid for the first time in years and he didn't know whether to hate her for daring or to greet her.

But then, someone came up to him and whispered, like some dark terrible secret, "Hey man, is that, well, you know, her? Your mum?" And his voice hardened, it had to, and he replied, "Yes." But then the fool whose acquaintance he knew he would not be keeping from now, blurted, "Damn she's hot," before beginning to splutter drunken apologies.

He waved it away and the music shifted to a slow, dry beat and protests rang loud.

He picked up Laila's half empty glass and eyed it, wondering if she'd been foolish enough to mix some 'fun' with her drink. Shrugging, he sipped.

And they made contact.

She shifted, and he could imagine the chair scraping against the floor as it moved, as her feet hit the ground, as she walked. She was just a couple of feet away now, by coincidence perhaps, but nevertheless in the same establishment where he was celebrating seven years of Hogwarts.

Considering how much attention the place had received because their class had chosen it instead of the more traditional clubs for their party, it could not be a coincidence.

He drank. It was hot and bitter, like black coffee with a magical sting.

He was not aware that he had placed down Laila's glass until she was right up to him, standing immobile for a long moment before picking it up and drowning the drink in a long swallow. She stood close, closer than she had in years. And that old elation, and disgust, came in waves.

"Hello Harry."

"Mother." He couldn't help it: it was almost involuntary.

Mother.

They had warned him against that.

She was not a mother son – she was, not a bad woman either… but a sick one.

They had subjected him to so many counselling sessions, making him recollect their every moment, dissecting it, showing him undercurrents so deep it was hard to believe they existed at all.

Be careful Harry, she had told him once. People love to tear down edifices. It brings the world closer to their level.

From his perch he scrutinized her. She was a torn edifice: her face pinched in and the hollows of her eyes were dark. The hair that had seemed so lustrous in the effacing distance, now hung loose and uneven, as if cut by an inexperienced barber.

"You are not supposed to be here." He was finding it hard to stand, the drink was roaring through his body cutting off the full mobility of his arms.

"I know," she said. He was aware of her scrutiny and tried not to twitch beneath it.

"Aren't you supposed to be in St. Mungo's anyways?" Rehabilitation is a bitch, and psychologically, they had said, she might never have recovered from her husband's death.

"I was released last December." She tilted her head up to look him directly in the eye. "I am… surprised nobody told you."

It had been years since he'd heard her reproach but he could still decipher the inflections.

"They must have wished to spare me the pain."They should have told him; he should have known. "We did not part on the best of terms, you know," he added, shrugging because he had been expecting her to be, at least, contrite.

But her lips curled. "Then tell me Harry, exactly what terms did we part on?"

He looked up, trying to calm himself. How could she ask that! How could she possibly… anger bubbled beneath his skin and his fists clenched, almost wanting to hit her for the nights he had later suffered for her sins. "How the fuck can you ask me that!" He stood, anger roaring like a storm cloud out at sea. "After all you did, how the fuck can you ask me that?"

But she wouldn't back down. "And what did I do Harry? What have they told you I did?" The ring on her hand flashed and he caught her wrist before it could strike his face. "Hell, how many times have I even slapped you! If only James were here –"

The name incensed him. He had suffered beneath its weight all his childhood and damned if he'd suffer again. He didn't twist her arm as he wanted to, neither did he loosen the grip. The music was soft and slow and romantic, and the little of it that he could comprehend right now, calmed him enough not to hurt her.

"I am not James Potter."

She struggled against him and he noticed a hand snaking towards her back. For a wand? – but then she stilled, and her arm became limp in his grasp, the fury vanishing like daylight in December. "I know," she muttered and he had to strain to hear. "Oh Harry I know, I know." She repeated again and again, falling into him, letting his grip support her, his chest hold her straight, as if she would fall without him to define her. The sudden intimacy of the moment drenched him and left him reeling.

But as much as he wanted to believe that she needed his help, that she was his mother and should get his support, the past few years had made him wary of her every action, made him distrustful of her every move. He had spent long nights contemplating the life he had lead with her, wondering whether the abuse the councillors had spoken of had been true. And once he had reconciled himself to that, everything had changed. If his past was not as he had believed it to be, then what was he?

She moved back, and he could see the tears in her eyes. She moved to wipe them, but he got there first, cupping her face as he remembered he had done, that summer morning, and flicking them away with his thumb. Her presence was insidious, and he was in the past again, still smiling at her voice. He didn't remember how it had happened, but they had been on a picnic and there had been a lot of noise, and when he'd reached her, she'd been sitting against the tree, her wand out, a hand holding her leg tight. He'd run up to her, said 'mother' in that proud, worried voice of his that was soon to be shattered, and held his hand against her face to wipe away the tears. They had both been surprised when his splayed fingers had glowed blue.

They didn't glow blue this time, but it still seemed as if unspeakable pain rushed out of her. She smiled at him; it was beautiful.

"Oh, Harry how I've missed you."

He'd missed her too, and he knows he's always going to miss her, because she was not the person he'd spent more than half his life with; that person never existed.

"I've missed you too."

This was delusion. He had learned better, so much better than this.
He let go of her face, and moved back. "Why are you here?" And if she sensed the sudden shift in mood, she didn't let her expression affirm it. "I wanted to meet you –"

He caught her gaze and she must have seen something upon his face because hers ignited in fiery anger that reminded him of the couple of times he had seen her defend herself in court. He had been innocent then, and she had been his mother, and he had cried desperately for her when they had taken her away.

The recollection reminded him of her betrayals and crushed all remaining sympathy. As she opened her mouth to speak he cut her off.

"I could put you in Azkaban for this." He intoned.

Her eyes narrowed. She'd always been quick to anger, and quicker to strike. "You wouldn't dare."

"Look around you, mother" She didn't. "Most of these people know who you are. I bet they're already calling the Aurors." His smiled, slightly. "You're kinda famous, you know."

"I taught you better than to believe in fabrications, Harry."

Denial is the first form of defence. It must be broken through, Harry, for any real healing to begin.

"You taught me a lot of things. I was kinda out of it for the last couple of weeks of them, if you –" The slap connected this time, and his head tilted at the force. Emaciated she might look; weak was not. He looked up at her stricken face, the anger and hate simmering beneath the surface. "Harry" she said. "Oh, Harry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." And he couldn't bear that, her stupid simpering little apologies. Before they'd caught her, she'd apologized to him every day for what she did. She moved closer to him, the back of her hand moving gently to his face as if to caress the pain away – and that too, was something he could vividly remember. The past was imposing upon the present, bleeding from its cuts. And before he could stop himself, he hit her, and this time if wasn't the ineffectual punch of a tiny, twelve year old fist.

She staggered back, her cry punctured by her fall. They were people all around them, and he could see their shocked faces, and he didn't care. Anger was stealing into every part of his body and his wand was out and he didn't know what he wanted to do, he never had, except perhaps making her feel a part of the pain he felt at her betrayal. But he'd forgotten how good a dueller she was, because by his next step her wand was already out, and she was staring at him, her bright green eyes wide at his unforgiveable action. "Oh Harry," she said, her voice a mockery of its earlier self. "You should not have done that."

"Stupefy"

She deflected it with ease, and she was already standing, blood lightly oozing from her cheek. His friends were crowding around them, a couple moving to his side, while others stopped the music. There were a thousand stares, hushed voices, and – and he didn't care, he drowned it all out, because they didn't matter, not now. Laila suddenly stood beside him, her wand raised, her voice angry, "Leave, Mrs. Potter. You really have no business here."

Lily stared at her like he'd seen her do so many times before. This was stupid; he should not have done this. He knew what Lily was capable of.

"Avada Kadavra."

People screamed. Fear was the lethal silence between heartbeats. He twisted. The room lurched, light and dark tumbling over each other. The floor hit him on the face. He felt the smack of bodies hitting his and prayed that none were dead. It hurt.

In the cacophony of screams and the powerful thrum of retaliatory magic, he felt himself move without his volition. Spells were hitting him, he knew, because suddenly his arm and leg and chest flared in pain and he couldn't think, could barely form a coherent thought let alone some form of defence. He didn't know who was hitting him, just that he'd lost his glasses and the world was a blur. And when the world lurched, in the tell-tale way it does when you run smack dab onto a portkey, all he could think of was his hate, but it was punctured by an old love that still festered, despite everything.