As soon as Lily heard footsteps coming up the stairs, she knew she was going to die. She'd heard the stories (including the ones of some of her friends), seen the aftermaths, and even been witness to a few. No stranger to death, she had guessed this day would eventually come; the sad truth was, once targeted, no one could really hide from him.
With Harry in her arms, she anxiously waited for him to come up the stairs, nerves biting at her, her mind frantically wondering if she could still escape. Deep down, though, she knew the answer.
She hadn't gone to church in a good number of years, but she said a silent prayer that he would at least spare Harry.
The door opened.
A few tense moments.
A shrill, cold laugh.
Words, meaningful and meaningless all at once.
Then, as she had supposed would have happened eventually, endless darkness.
Well, it wasn't entirely endless.
When Lily came to, she found herself on the floor of Harry's nearly destroyed nursery. She sat up and looked around, head swimming in confusion. The world surrounding her was a blur of black and grey and smoke. Her heart ached as she heard the soft but powerful cry of her son as he lay somewhere out of her sight. She wanted oh so badly to reach out to him, to him in her arms and whisper the lullabies that she always sang to him when he was upset. However, she knew, deep down, that she couldn't help him, and she willed herself to cry, though she knew no tears would come. Lily stood up, reached for the doorknob and walked out of the room.
She felt light, weightless even, almost as if she was made of air.
Of course, she was.
Everyone knows ghosts don't weigh anything.
She had always loved her living room. The walls were painted a blue that was blue enough to resemble the color of the sky on a clear day, but pale enough so that it wasn't too blue. There were pictures everywhere: on the side table, on the walls, on the shelves. The sofa was comfy and it matched well with the rest of the room. It was spacious as to allow her family to live comfortably.
She loved the room even more when she saw her husband standing in the middle of it.
"James." She ran (floated?) towards him and hugged him (as much as a ghost can hug another ghost), so grateful for a familiar face.
"Lily." He whispered in to her hair, holding her tight as if he would never let her go. In that moment, Lily wasn't as scared as she was before. She reluctantly pulled away and stared in to James's eyes.
She had no idea why they'd been pulled back to earth.
She figured it would be emotionally painful.
But it had to happen.
As a ghost, she soon figured out that she could hide herself from people if she so chose. She could scream and shout at the top of her lungs in the middle of the road and no one would even glance in her direction. It proved to be quite handy.
"Why!? Why would you do this!? We were nothing but nice to you! You were our friend and you betrayed us!" She seethed anger, rage coursing through her blood. She hadn't expected to be this angry. Lily stared at the small, cowardly man sitting nervously on his bed, head down and wringing his hands.
"We trusted you." She said the last words with so much venom she was surprised that Peter didn't notice. Well, he might've; his head suddenly snapped up, as if he had heard a noise out in the distance. Lily started to advance towards the traitor, hand outstretched. Later, she reflected that if someone had not been there to stop her, her intentions of strangling the life out of Peter would most likely have been fulfilled. She only paused when her hand was a few inches from him and she felt a gentle grip on her arm.
"He's not worth it." James spoke softly as he tried to coax her out of attacking Peter. He pulled her close to him and she was glad that he could still be strong at a time like this. That familiar scent of pine, though fading gradually, still continued to be a major source of comfort for her. She did not notice the tear that slid silently down his face.
She did, however, know that Peter Pettigrew's time would come eventually. Maybe it wouldn't be her to deliver him to justice, but all the same. This was even more confirmed when, on their way out of the drab shabby flat, they happened to pass by someone they least expected to see: Sirius Black. He had a terrifying look on his face, almost murderous, with a strange glint in his eyes as he pounded down the street, his feet carrying him as fast as they apparently could.
If she had shared her thoughts at the time with a younger version of herself, she was sure that the younger would cringe in horror. Lily was happy, happy to see Mr. Black running wildly towards what intuition told her was Peter Pettigrew's flat. She felt a twisted sort of joy at the prospect that justice might come sooner than she thought.
In the emotional intensity of the moment, she couldn't bring herself to care.
Reflecting on the incident, Lily decided that she did care a bit. She remembered the time before she had been died, when she was still in school. She wasn't a very carefree child, what with being Head Girl and her increasing worries over the world outside her beloved Hogwarts, but she could always find it in her heart to offer a kind word or a friendly gesture. Lately though, she felt a bitterness slowly creeping through her veins, steadily guiding her actions. She wondered if it had anything to do with her… ahem, ghostliness. She had learned in school that it wasn't uncommon for restless spirits or ghosts who otherwise had a purpose to fulfill grow vengeful over time.
Perhaps she was.
It was no help either that James appeared to be growing distant- as in, literally fading. While she could easily raise her hand and not be able to see through, she would occasionally look around for James and at first not even notice him. It was only after she slightly squinted at the incoming sunlight through the window that she would see his outline.
He was constantly gazing out the window of their living room. She had long since stopped asking him what he was looking at. In fact, she was lucky if she got more than a few sentences out of him in one day. She didn't mind much, but maybe that was just the ghost-induced apathy talking. She would say that she did miss his colors; his fading had also brought on the loss of the more vibrant colors of James, such as the streaks of gold in his hazel eyes or the stark blackness of his hair. But besides, it wasn't as if he was totally unresponsive; all she had to do was put a hand on his slightly less-there shoulder and he would bring a hand up to it without hesitation or raise a hand to lightly wrap around her waist.
His depression seemed to worsen when Harry was brought to live with Petunia and her whale of a husband and he got to see how they treated him. He had only actually met them once (all parties involved agreed it was uncomfortable night of awkward tension and never mentioned it again). He had heard stories from Lily, though, stories of Petunia teasing her till she cried or stealing her things. She could tell the thought of their child staying with her sister made him physically ill, as they had their own young baby to take care of and had shown the greatest contempt when they had discovered Harry sleeping on their doorstep.
Lily was reminded of her bitterness when she was she was sitting with James in a park, wasting away the afternoon, his arm wrapped gently around her shoulders and her head resting on his. She had just been staring absentmindedly when she had spied a young Muggle couple with who she supposed was their young toddler, laughing and playing happily. For a brief few seconds, she had wished upon them dark, terrible things.
After the brief burst of vengefulness had passed, though, she had been so frightened at herself that she had noticeably started shaking, James sending her a quizzical look as his grip on her tightened slightly. Soon after, she had stood up and left, her hands holding a slight tremor that continued until James covered them with his own. It was that incident that had prompted her to be more aware of her continually rising hostility. She might have become more apathetic to the discomforts of the living, but she would not condone her increasing revengeful tendencies.
It was hard though. By that time, a few years had passed since her death and being a ghost was tougher than it looked.
By the time Harry had reached 7th year, James had faded completely. In a way, he was a ghost to her. However, that wasn't to say he was gone. She often felt his comforting presence around her, surrounding her with uncommon warmth. Whenever she would feel a chill- not an actual chill, mind you, but the kind that one feels in the soul, which twists up a person's heartstrings and outlines their vision in blue- a soothing summery breeze would soon follow and wrap her in memories of a time when things weren't so bad. She reveled in the times when she could sense him nearby, always giving off positive energy to brighten her up. Nevertheless, it sometimes got uncomfortably lonely without his physical form there to place an arm around her waist or distractedly play with her hair.
Over the course of the years, Lily found her bitterness turn to a deep feeling of melancholy. She could no longer find it within her to hate everything about the world and those who still lived in it. That didn't necessarily mean she was happy.
Her ghostly existence had improved significantly when Harry went to Hogwarts. Her baby was finally surrounded by magic and people who loved him. She had silently beamed with joy when Harry befriended that lovely Ron Wesley boy and had certainly felt herself burst with pride when they saved Hermione from that troll on Halloween (though what a troll was doing in Hogwarts, she had no idea). Her maternal instincts and anxiety had kicked in towards the end of the year when the trio got themselves involved in that Philosopher's Stone business and she perpetually found herself wanting to help her son. She let him sort it out himself though, figuring that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if they were… reunited.
She would later feel the highest sense of guilt for even thinking those thoughts.
Harry's school career concerned her and made her fret over him almost constantly for the next 6 years until what would have been his 7th year, had he not left and gone searching with his friends for the Horcruxes. That was when she became truly grateful for the effect James had on her; had it not been for him, she probably would have had the ghost equivalent of a stroke.
Her stress reached the pinnacle by what people would later refer to as the Battle of Hogwarts. As her son and his friends had arrived at Hogwarts, Lily was hit with a sense that something big and important was about to happen. It gradually increased, slowly filling up her insides with a sort of anticipatory discomfort.
Something was coming, something that would change everything, she was sure.
Whether or not she would be ready, she didn't know.
She most certainly was not.
After all, how does one prepare for sitting in your half destroyed cottage one minute, then magically in front of your son in the middle of the Forbidden Forest the next?
So, yes, it was all a bit unexpected.
When it was done, as everything was going white, she could've sworn she heard a man's familiar hearty laugh and, softly, in the background, a train whistle.