It hurts.
It hurts like liquid fire spreading through her veins, burning through every fiber of her being, leaving nothing behind but pain and pain and more pain. She screamed and she screamed and she screamed but somehow, no matter how loudly she screams, she still hears that mocking laughter, that taunting laughter, rising above all other sounds, pressing into her, crushing her with how wrong it is, to take pleasure in other's pain. She screams louder in fury that she cannot stop the pain, in terror of what will happen and she shakes and quivers and shivers violently.
And suddenly it stops, like a wave that crashed against the rocks and never returned, violently sudden with its leaving. She breathes heavily, her cheek throbbing in pain, and looks blearily at shadowed figures above her. Her roommates, her mind wearily supplies after a moment. They whisper softly, worriedly. You were screaming in your sleep. Are you okay? Sorry I slapped you, but we had to wake you. She smiles at them, and said she would be fine, and knows that they know it is fake and untrue, but will tell them nothing more. They sigh as one and return to their beds, and she listens to the rustle of bedsheets as they prepare themselves to sleep once more.
She would not sleep again tonight, she knows. Not after that pain-wreaked vision. She lifted a hand, and and stared at it as it shaked and hurt with the remnants of that phantom pain. She lets her hand drop, and after a long moment, begins to cry, tears flowing down her face freely, but she feels nothing but an aching hole in her being and pain that wasn't there.
It hurts. And she hated it.
--
Lily Evans is no seer. She cannot predict the future and know what will happen. She does not look into a crystal ball and be able to see the questions to the upcoming NEWTS. She dropped Divination after a single lesson because Trelawney was nothing but a fraud. But she knows her dream, or whatever it was, will come true. Not now, later, though she knows not how far in the future it would be. And for a moment, she hates it, the feeling in her gut that tells her the dream is true the same way it tells her that yes, the answers she has written for a test is correct, and she hates her future and hates the Wizarding World because everything starts and ends with magic.
The moment passes and she stops hating. She lifts her bag further up onto her shoulder, and makes her way to Charms, her favourite class, with a slight bounce in her steps that was as fake as it was real. What will happen will happen, but it will not happen now. And as she listens to Professor Flitwick, and lifts her wand to cast one Charm after another, the magic that rushes through her and fills her reminds Lily once more of what makes her love magic so much, and what her sister would never understand.
And when that infuriating Potter and and sweet Remus laugh at that annoying Black's antics across the room, she glares and she forgets her dream. When Potter winks jauntily at her even as Professor Flitwick chides them for disrupting the class, and Mister Black, that charm was not meant to be used on Mister Pettigrew, or any other person for that matter, Lily feels her heart skip a beat,and her breath catches in her mouth and she turns away.
Her heart pounds in her chest, one-two, one-two, and feels it in her bones, that she will marry James Potter in the future. She does not believe in God or Jesus or Buddha or anything but herself, but she prays to whomever will listen that their future together will be happy. Yet as she prays, she knows it will not be so.
--
She stares in wonder at the heavy bundle in her arms. She had just created life, her child, her baby, her Harry. She does not let go, not even to her husband. Just a minute more, she says, and the minute becames another and another, and the Mediwitch clucks her tongue and gently pries her Harry from her arms and hands him to James, who starts cooing at Harry, and tells her firmly to sleep and rest. Lily reluctantly agrees, her eyes still focused on her Harry. She smiles like the world is not in the middle of a stupid, foolish war, as if James and herself were not fighting in the frontlines, and her heart and body is heavy no more.
--
Lily clutches Harry tightly in her arms, staring unseeingly at Albus. Our Harry might be the Chosen one this prophecy speaks of, James says incredulously, not believing. Albus agrees, and for a split second, Lily thinks she saw Albus as he is, an old man that has seen too many things and did too many things and is scared and tired, but time moves on, and Albus is the Headmaster, Defeater of Grindelward again. She listens to Albus and James talk of Frank and Alice and their little Neville, and of hiding and Fidelius Charms as she looks down at Harry's green, green eyes as he gurgles and swipes at her hair and she knows, with a sinking of her heart, that it is Harry, and not Neville, that is the One.
And she hates Voldemort, for destroying her life and the world she now claims as her own, and Trelawney, for the Prophecy that will damn her son, and Albus, for being the one to tell her and for not being able to do anything. But most of all she hates herself, for she is helpless and useless. Then Harry cries the way only babies can, and Lily forgets all her hate and tends to him. And Harry beams, happiness radiating from him, and Lily smiles back, and she is content.
--
Lily places Harry into his crib, and looks at him. James' hair and James' cheer and her eyes and her build. Smoke tickles her nose, and her heart thunders in her chest, and the house shakes and Voldemort, that evil, evil man, says two words she can hear even from up here, and she knows James is no more. That thing would be coming for her now, and she should prepare, she knew, but she wanted just another minute with Harry. Just another moment, so she does nothing but look for a moment more, her mind screaming at her to do something, anything!
He enters the room, and Lily whirls around, her and in her hand, and she suppresses a shiver. The utter wrongness of Voldemort fills the room, and chokes her, but she glares at him defiantly. I will not let you have Harry, she hears herself say, and she knows her time is soon. Voldemort laughs that same laugh that haunts her dreams for reasons she did not know but she remembers now, that pain-filled dream from long ago. And she hates once more. Voldemort, for he will be her end. James, for dying on her. Harry, for having been born such a perfect mix of James and Lily yet he had to be the One spoken of in a Prophecy that damned her and James. Peter, for being a traitorous rat. And she hates and she hates and she wants Voldemort to suffer, for being ruining her everything.
But she knows she cannot defeat him, not now, not ever, just like she knows her Harry will, not now, but later. So she does not throw a curse, though she very much wanted to, and cries for all that she has lost and will lose. Not Harry, she screams, take me but not Harry! And she hears that haunting laughter once more, and weeps and mourns her iminent death and all that she wants to do but cannot, and she wants him to suffer.
She murmurs the incantation of a ritual etched in her memory under her breath, that laughter still ringing in her ears, and she finishes just as Voldemort throws the Killing Curse at her, and she throws herself Harry to protect him, and in that fraction of a second before she leaves the world, she is secure in the knowledge that her Harry will live and kill the man that destroyed their life. Not now, but later. She dies, and for a moment longer, lingers on as a spirit, and whispers. Harry. My Harry. I love you so much yet I hate you. Be strong. Like the grass that survives the stormy winds, but not like the trees that are blown away. I love you, Harry, but I hate you. For a moment, she deludes herself into believing that Harry had nodded in agreement to her words, then the moment passes and she knows he had. And she is content, and disappears just as Voldemort whispered the to words that would seal his fate.
--
Lily Potter was no seer, but she had Known many things. How she was doomed to an early death. How there are no happily ever afters, not for her nor for her James or Harry. And she Knew that her Hary would make sure that vile creature would not have a happily ever after too.
Albus Dumbledore is no seer, but he knows many things. None of the things he knew helped him, as he stared down at the wailing Harry in his arms, Hagrid talking anxiously, and he feels the weight on his heart grow heavier. And because he did not know, he made a decision and follows it through and places Harry on the Dursley's frontstep. He Apparates away, and knows not of the chilling green eyes that had not left him, and knows not of the deary fate that would await young Harry, and then, his world and all he held dear. Because he was no seer, and did not Know, and he loved too much and did not hate and believed too much in people who should not be believed in.
Albus Dumbledore did not Know, and thus he had damned them all.
--
Years later, when Voldemort was dead, Harry Potter took over the Wizarding World and ruled with fear and terror. And Albus Dumbledore placed his head in his hands and wept, wondering where he had gone wrong.