All things Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling. This is an amateur work of fanfiction and no infringement is intended.
Title: Lily Potter: Year One, A Chamber and House Secrets
Author: tainteddr34ms
Rating: Mature. Adult themes. Sexual Situations
Pairing: Lily/Ginny Femslash eventually.
Beta: Leigh
Author's note: This story probably qualifies as a girl!harry story but it's really about a very dark Lily Potter. Very much AU. Chapter titles are title's and lyrics from some of my favorite songs. Themes of child abuse. Sexual situations when the characters are old enough that I'm comfortable writing them.
Lily Potter: Year One, A Chamber and House Secrets
Prologue
Take the Pain and Use It
There's a secret we Evens women keep, passed across the generations. Well, my mother and I, anyway. Before that, the name was Carlisle. The names change whenever one of us marries into a new patriarchal line. A mother and daughter and then a new name. For over fourteen hundred years. Hiding the only Matriarchal Line within the blood of the Patriarchs.
Most generations, only one of us learns the secret. Occasionally, two have enough power to learn it, to be trusted to keep it. My half sister Petunia believes our family to be muggles, or more accurately, that I'm a freak. We're not. I'm not. She's a squib, unworthy of the secret.
Mother was a pureblood witch hiding from her father and grandfather. Disowned for marrying a muggle named John Evans and giving birth to a squib, Petunia. Even though her mother did everything she could to stay in contact and help, the two men were fanatical enough in their pureblood beliefs that my mother was only safe living in the muggle world.
There's another secret Mother only shared with me, though it was only kept for her dignity. John Evans wasn't my father. Morfin Gaunt had a son named Cadmus that no one knew about, not even any of the Gaunts. My mother needed a pureblood daughter to guard the secret after she was gone, so she seduced him and had me.
Harry's a squib. All the boys in my line are, the few that are born, anyway. Morgan's paranoia and magic made sure no male inherited the secrets of her House. James doesn't know, I"ve never had the heart to tell him. Nor the will or freedom to explain.
I love Harry, I really do. Even as I stand over his crib, drawing the blood rune upon his forehead—the worst kind of blood magic on my own child—I convince myself of this. Tears run down my cheeks, but I don't stop. I can't. I have no daughter to teach the secret to so I must continue even as I am prophesied to die tonight. I have the power to manipulate fate, alter the prophecy. But that power demands sacrifice. My life. My son's life. My husband's life. The Most Ancient and Noble House of Le Fay, The Hidden House, must continue. There is no choice.
James would curse me with an unforgivable if he knew the meaning of the rune. A single line divides the rune in two, right down the middle. On the right, The House of Nyx, daughter of Chaos, a stag looking up at the moon, supplication to the Goddess Artemis. James believes it has some meaning about him, about Prongs. He has no idea it demands his death so that his son will be erased from existence, history rewritten. Chaos unleashed on the Tapestry.
In the left House, I write the spell in Latin with a quill. Ut pretium devorat mater filium nasci, sic ut. This mother witch devours her son so that she may be born again.
Done, I drop the quill to the floor, nearly forgotten. Pulling a sharp knife from my robes, I hold my wrist over the rune and run the blade quickly but firmly across it. Skin splits and my blood pours. Harry screams shrilly as the rune absorbs all my spilled blood. After releasing about a pint, I lower my wrist to my side. It is done. I am damned. I don't bother to treat the wound. What's the point? I'll be dead in less than a minute. Fate cannot be avoided, only manipulated.
I've protected my memories for when I'm older, mature enough to handle the secrets of The Most Ancient and Noble House of Le Fay. Not that You Know Who can't get to them. He can. But if he's ever in a position to get at my memories, all will have already been lost. Nothing to worry over really, because if this is the case, I'll have died a second time anyway.
A hard boom sounds from downstairs. The front door being kicked in. Then a brief scuffle followed by heavy, creaking footsteps coming up the stairs. My heart hammers against my chest and my breath comes ragged. A tall, almost reptilian man steps through the door, his black cloak billowing around him as if he stood in a sharp wind instead of the still air of the nursery.
As I play my part in the prophecy and move between him and Harry, I briefly wonder at the penance I'll have to pay for this spell. Magic always has consequences and the darker the spell, the darker the consequences. Considering the bonds I'm betraying, there is no blacker magic. He raises a boney arm and points his wand at me, saying in a deep, firm voice, "Avada kedavra."
A brilliant, emerald green light arcs out from his wand into my chest and I drop dead on the spot before I even hear the rush of the spell. But my soul stays, anchored to the rune on Harry's forehead by my blood.
He Who Must Not Be Named steps up to Harry's crib, pointing his wand at my screaming child's head, repeating, "Avada kedavra."
Goodbye, Harry. I'm so sorry.
A brilliant explosion of green and red light fills the room. As the roof disintegrates above us, flames devour Voldemort instantly, leaving behind a pile of wet, gooey ash. Chaos intervenes, reweaving the Tapestry, removing all traces of Harry James Potter. I'm rewoven into the Tapestry in his place, rebirthed as my daughter by a spell so vile the Ministry has no knowledge of it to make it unforgivable. Lily Nyx Potter. Grateful that, as a newborn child, I won't remember why I live a damned life.