6.

Hollis Maryanne Potter was born the 15th of June, 1982, in a small room of a flat in Muggle London.

It was the third apartment Lily had held since finding out she was pregnant. She kept to the parts of the city that the muggles considered dangerous, for she had little to fear of being mugged when her clothing was so extensively worked with notice-me-not charms, and the look of the neighborhoods was all the better to keep the magical world away.

Both of the other apartments had been equally inconspicuous. At the first, she had tired of the daily screaming matches between the neighbors that drifted in the through the windows to upset Harry. The second, she had become convinced that the old man living on the third floor was a squib, and that was too close to the Magical World for comfort. This apartment had its own problems, of course; almost everything had been broken beyond what a reparo could mend, and if she were to so much think about leaving the door unlocked there would be idiot muggle teenagers trying to figure out why her door was so much harder to open than the others in the complex. But, by May it was far too late to move again.

Sirius and Remus made sure to visit as often as they could. They had much less time on their hands, with Sirius back at work for the ministry, but even so, one or the other was over nearly every day. The only other person she remained in contact with was Healer Engelhart, and no matter how dear the Healer held Lily, she was hardly a social creature.

When Hollis was born, it was just Lily and Engelhart in the room. Sirius had been called away on a training mission—as he had claimed when Harry was born, though he had come home smelling of a pub—and Remus had been pacing so frantically that Lily had snapped at him to take a walk. She did not care he had made it no farther than the front room, frankly; her attention was on more pressing matters.

The moment Hollis was in her arms Remus was back through the door, Harry in tow. The boy was drowsy-eyed and altogether quite confused—it was the middle of the night, Lily realized, when she looked at the clock. He clung to Remus' leg and buried his face in the soft cloth of his trousers. Hollis, on the other hand, cried and cried in a wail that made Healer Engelhart cringe. Lily had never heard anything so beautiful.

Of course, within two weeks the joy of a newborn had not entirely worn off, but it had certainly faded some. There was little sleep to be had with two children in the house. Harry grew endlessly fascinated by his baby sister. If she were in her mother' or uncles' arms, he was perched a few feet away, staring at her while she stared back.

While he was for the most part, if possible, a calmer child than he had been before, he was also much more fretful than any of them when Hollis' mood turned sour. The moment she started crying he was on his little feet, even if he hung back a ways, minding the instinct that he could do no good getting underfoot to the adults. He reminded Lily so much of how James had been, when he had been born. Neither parent had been ready, though it was said no one ever was. James had always fretted when something went wrong. He was the first to swoop Harry in the air and could nearly always have the baby boy giggling in a heartbeat. But in the rare moments that Harry had been upset, James took on the face of a lost puppy—or, if Harry was in his arms, a deer stuck in the headlights. Though James wasn't there to freeze up over Hollis, Harry and Sirius were just as hopeless around the upset child, leaving Lily and Remus to most of the difficult moments.

As for Remus—he swore that he had been fired again, but Lily suspected he had quit his job to look after Harry. Normally she would have told him off. Remus spent far too much time putting others before himself, and while that balanced nicely with Sirius' much less altruistic personality, in Lily's opinion the skinny, shabby man could do with a bit more self-interest. She could not protest, however, when she was far too tired from waking up at odd hours to meet Hollis' crying demands to deal with a two-year-old. Remus took Harry out when she was especially tired, and she did appreciate that. If Hollis would allow it, she sat down for a nap—or tea, at least.

One such interlude, she had just put the cream in her mug when there came a knock on the door. She looked at the clock. It had only been fifteen minutes since the pair had left, but perhaps her son had forgotten to use the restroom. It wouldn't be the first time. She stood up slowly and meandered to the door, opening it lazily.

The man outside her door was not hand-in-hand with her son, and while he was wearing a patched coat, he was not Remus. Not in the slightest. Lily reached for her wand, only to realize she was not wearing it. She cursed her negligence. Even she had gotten soft, in the wake of Voldemort's disappearance.

"How did you find this place?" she demanded, but Severus Snape spoke right over her.

5.

The fire flared, and out of it stepped Lily Potter.

She had not brought her son. Dumbledore had requested her to; he had only seen the boy briefly, on his unhappy visit to the house at Godric's Hollow in the wake of the disaster. He had not been able to make sense of the scene, which was odd, for him. Normally he could recognize magics at work. Yet from the wreckage of the house, a piece seemed to be missing, a piece which inhibited his understanding of that night.

So when he had requested Lily Potter visit him, he had requested she bring her son. He wanted to examine the scar running jagged across his forehead, likened by some to a lightning bolt. Perhaps, he thought, an understanding of the scar would engender an understanding of what had rent the Dark Lord Voldemort from his body.

She had not brought her son.

"Lily," he said, standing from his desk and opening his arms in greeting. "I am glad to see you."

"Professor," she responded. Her eyes darted around the circular office, taking in the instruments and portraits that kept it full.

"Please, have a seat." Dumbledore conjured her a red armchair on the other side of his desk. She settled into it, apparently oblivious to the way she let her eyes slip closed as she sunk into the cushions.

The young woman looked exhausted, frankly. There were dark circles under her eyes, she must have lost at least a stone since he had last seen her, and the red hair she had pulled into a side braid was lackluster and in need of a strong health potion. Her eyes, when she opened them, were pink around the rims, a startling contrast with the green of the irises. Her son, Harry, had inherited her eyes, if his memory served him well. He wondered if the boy would look so distrustful when he came to Hogwarts.

"Well? What is it?" Her voice was rough as her appearance; Dumbledore wondered if she had been sick recently. It had been over a month since she had snapped out of her waking coma, and surely she had been compromised, health-wise, following that.

"I never properly offered you my condolences following James' death," he said, keeping his voice soft. "He was taken from you far too soon."

He watched the wave of pain pass tension through her body, shoulders briefly rising before she wiped herself of expression. It was a new façade for her, blankness; as a student, and even following her entrance to the Order, she had always been open and loud in expressing her emotions.

"Yes," she said simply. Her eyes wandered away from him, looking past, out the windows beyond his desk. "And Harry will not have a father."

"Although I imagine he will have plenty of love at home, with Mr. Black and Mr. Lupin?"

The four men—James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew—had been inseparable in their youth, fashioning themselves a brotherhood and naming this group the Marauders, the worst-kept secret of their time. Upon graduation, it seemed, they had remained close, and when the young Potters had gone into hiding they had chosen Sirius as their secret keeper. That was, at least, what they had told Dumbledore—and he had lauded it as an excellent arrangement: Sirius had always been fiercely loyal to his adoptive brother, despite his speculative upbringing.

Or, that is what he had thought, before being called to the scene at Godric's Hollow.

He was not fond of being caught without full disclosure.

"No thanks to you," Lily said. Her voice was calm, no trace of emotion, but her eyes were narrowed and she shifted marginally forward. She did not use the armrests, but kept tucked into herself, as though protecting her body.

"Yes," Dumbledore said softly. He thought back to his conclusion, when he had written her for a meeting, that he was not in the wrong for failing to assist her crusade of the liberation of Sirius from Azkaban. He had been in France at first, then Germany, assisting in the coordination of forces rooting out local Death Eater offshoots, and returned to England only to meet spies and attend trials. "I am sorry Sirius had to suffer like that, Lily. I really am. And now that I am back, I was hoping you might explain to me what happened?"

She scoffed, reaching to flip her braid back. "What happened was that you told the aurors that Sirius had been our secret keeper, and that he must have betrayed us."

"That was what I thought to be true."

"Well, it wasn't. We had feared that—it had recently become official, that Remus and Sirius were seeing each other—"

Dumbledore blinked at that, but at his age keeping his expression schooled the way she had to fight to was easy. Remus and Sirius? He did remember them being discussed in the conference room, a running bet between McGonagall and Slughorn. But his attentions, in those days, were less for the cares of students and more for their potential and character.

"—and we were afraid that Voldemort would try to use Remus to get to Sirius."

"I see," said Dumbledore. "And so you switched to Peter."

"Yes. On Halloween."

Dumbledore studied the back of his hands, rested on the desk before him. They were old hands, now, and the protruding veins never ceased to bring him back to earth. He would expect anger at that Potters, for taking the matter into their own discretion, failing the plans he had laid. But Lily did not deserve to bear blame; her husband was dead, and she had been in such a shock it could have very well left her in the Janus Thickley ward of St. Mungo's for good, as he understood it. Likewise, Remus and Sirius could not be blamed for their love, any more than Lily and James' love and the birth of Harry could be blamed for James' death.

"And so Mr. Pettigrew was the mole all along," he summarized. "I am sorry that a friend could betray you like that, especially one so dear as Peter."

"That's how people are, isn't it? You put your trust in them and they fail your expectations. That's how it always is."

"That one so young should feel as such…"

He remembered his sister's death, and feeling much as young Lily did now. People had been nothing more than a disappointment to him—himself most of all. It had taken him much longer than three months to get over his paralyzing grief, though perhaps his depression had been less physically apparent than Lily's. Still, he imagined he could understand her cynicism: even after all these years, he was occasionally crippled with self-doubt.

Old as he was, he was not disposed to accept just anything unlikely at the drop of the wand. Perhaps that had led him to ignoring the letters he had gotten from the young mother; he had only scanned them well enough to realize she offered no insight into the mystery of Voldemort's apparent demise and had set them aside, brushing past all other matters to devote focus to the problems at hand.

The problem at hand now was a woman who had decided she could not trust him. She could not trust him, with good reason.

"What did you call me for, really?" Lily asked. "It wasn't to give your condolences, or you could have simply come by yourself, or owled."

"I did consider visiting," Dumbledore admitted. "However, it would seem your current abode is being rather carefully warded."

"Rather carefully?" She laughed: a joyless sound. "If it's kept under your radar, than I say I'm doing more than keeping it 'rather carefully' warded, Professor."

"Under my radar?"

"A muggle expression."

He wondered how much that could tell him, whether it was something remembered from her childhood or a more recent turn of events that brought the turn of phrase so easily to her tongue.

"Well, I am certainly impressed, Miss Potter. And glad that you, and your son, are keeping safe. That is, as it happens, the matter I wish to discuss with you."

"My son?"

"Yes. You haven't brought him with you, I've noticed."

"No," she said. "I don't bring him to places with people I don't trust."

He closed his eyes, a quiet sigh slipping through his lips. "Of course. Although, I can promise you, solemnly vow, that I would never hurt young Harry."

"Perhaps not intentionally." Opening his eyes found hers staring right back, her head tilted slightly to one side. "But we have come to realize you are good at hurting people indirectly."

"Oh?"

He would not deny that. Yet he was unsure how she had concluded he did so more than others, when in fact dealing such damage was an unavoidable part of being human. One might buy the last copy of a book at the store, only for another customer to come in a few minutes later and languish that the one book they needed was gone. Or he might send an Order member on a mission, only to receive information shortly after that they were walking into a trap. There were certain unavoidable damages one dealt on the world, living.

"Yes," she said. She seemed relatively eager to explain his faults, which clashed with Dumbledore's idea of Lily Potter: caring, loving. "You move people like pawns, and then, when they fall, have another to move into their place."

"I'm not sure I follow," he said, voice even softer.

"I'm sure you do," she said. "The Order could have done plenty without having so many of us killed, couldn't it have, Professor? Had we not so blindly been following your lead."

"You think I deliberately put people in harm's way."

It was a harsh accusation, and her words were cutting indeed. Dumbledore had always valued his leadership to the Order, to try and know it's members personally, to try not to ask too much of them. Of course members had died: it was war. It was unfortunate reality, that when you had seen so many come and go as he had, Death was part and parcel to life.

But she was too young to know that. The Potters had only graduated Hogwarts three years ago, and had been both so young at the time, young and eager to join the Order. He had allowed them, dependent on their beginning training for their professions of choice. James had chosen the Auror Academy; Lily, St. Mungo's. He had done his best to give them something of a future beyond the war, as so many young people were inclined to get caught up in the present and think of nothing else. He had done his best for them, to try and make sure they had lives outside of the fight.

And she claimed he did nothing but move them as pawns?

"No," she said.

He lifted an eyebrow.

"I don't think you deliberately put anyone in harm's way. You spend too much time avoiding direct conflict for that."

He dipped his head. Direct conflicts, he thought, were best left to the aurors trained for battle. The Order had the best of intentions at heart, and they were all fine wizarding folk, but they were a rabble, not an army. He may have accepted Death, but it did not mean he would forgive the blood on his hands if he put the people trusting him on the frontlines. Those who were lost in the smaller missions were painful enough to accept.

"We think you are a blind man, a blind man who couldn't see when he was making the same mistakes over and over again, who didn't feel enough guilt to learn from his mistakes and fix his tactics."

"The thing about declaring someone to be blind to reality," he told her, "Is that they have no way to reasonably defend themselves."

The hands in her lap came up to cross her chest. Her lip curled. "And that's the thing," she said. "Your automatic response is to defend yourself, without even thinking back on your actions."

He dipped his head again, looking back at his hands. There was a mole on his index knuckle that he had a way of forgetting about until he happened to glance down, the sort of small, unimportant information that one puts out of their mind to make way for less trivial matters. In the war, he had always pushed the Order forward, not leaving time to mourn the fallen, to lose momentum. That was the way it had to be.

"And so," the woman was saying, surely taking his silence as a victory for her part, although he couldn't imagine it a victory she wished. "I believe you have something of mine."

He knew instantly what she referred to, as that, in fact, was the real reason he had called her to Hogwarts: the invisibility cloak that James Potter had lent Dumbledore when they settled on Sirius as secret keeper. Of course he had intended discussion on the matter of Harry's future. He could see, however, that such a conversation was at this point futile. It was best left for when her anger with him had subsided, an end to which the return of the cloak would hopefully propel.

But he hesitated.

There had been good reason for him to keep it, after all. By now he was all but convinced: this was the Invisibility Cloak of legend, the cloak which had belonged to Death itself, one of the Deathly Hallows.

The goal of uniting the three Hallows—the Invisibility Cloak in his hands, the Elder Wand on his desk, and the fabled Resurrection Stone—had died with his love of Gellert Grindelwald, all those years ago. Still, when James had shown him the cloak, he had to know. He could not leave the matter unchecked. Even now, now that he knew the cloak a Hallow but that the temptation had cost James his life, he was hesitant to give it back. He forced himself to draw it from his desk and hand it to the woman, and she took it with shaking arms.

"I am sorry, my dear," he said as the young woman stared at the shimmering cloth in her hands. She stroked it slowly. "The thought that I was the one to deny you of this one protection… I wish it could be undone."

"So do I," Lily said, voice just as soft. But then the trance seemed to leave her, and she stood from the chair. "But the past is unchangeable. What is done cannot be unwritten."

She turned to walk back to the fire.

"Miss Potter," Dumbledore called. "Please, sit back down. I would like to discuss your defenses. Voldemort—"

"Is not dead," she said, looking back over her shoulder. "Of course he isn't. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool. But my defenses are none of your concern, not any more."

"Lily," he implored. "I want to help keep you safe! And help your son, whose childhood will surely be altered by this tragedy."

"Too bad," Lily said. She turned back around, holding out the cloak. "See, Professor, that's the thing: you say that you are sorry. Sorry. You say that you are sorry you took away our last line of defense, you are sorry James died—but even now, you are doing the same thing you always did with the Order. Pushing forward like you have made no errors, like you have a right to declare what happens next with no reflection on what happened last. And not all of us are so naïve, Professor, to follow you blindly. We are not going to take orders from you any longer. Not now. Not when Voldemort returns."

"We?" Dumbledore echoes. "Who makes up 'we'?"

"Everyone who has seen your failure," she said. Her hand dipped into the pocket of her pants, and came out with a handful of floo powder. Strange, considering that he had a bowl on his mantle, as most wizards do. Surely her distrust did not run so deep she would not even use his floo powder?

"I am sorry, Lily," he said again, as she stepped back. "For what it's worth."

Her lip curled, and she dropped the powder. She did not state her destination.

Dumbledore did not sit back down, but crossed the room to where Fawkes, the phoenix, stood on his stand. The bird had been reborn recently, while he was out of the country. It was only suiting; the end of an era. He ran a finger down the creature's neck, and it chirped at him, leaning in to his touch.

He could only hope that Lily Potter could find it in her heart to forgive him, before her son was old enough to be affected by such poisonous anger.

6.

"Lily, I swear," he said frantically, "I know Dumbledore must have said—but hear me out! I didn't know—"

"Severus," she said sharply. "I don't know what you are talking about and you need to leave. Now."

"I didn't know it meant you—I swear—"

That caught Lily's attention. There were only so many things he could be referring to, in such a frenzy.

Making up her mind, she reached out and grabbed the man by the collar of his oversized jacket, pulling him inside and hastily slamming the door shut. It was odd—like a scene straight out of her—their—childhood. The particular situation had the potential for far greater brevity than any of their childish drama would have, however, and there was not the resolute belief that she would be able to forgive Severus when he said his piece. Not anymore.

She crossed her arms across her chest and faced him. "Explain."

"I had just been—just been doing what I was supposed to—I didn't even know you were pregnant for months, months—and I begged Dumbledore—and I begged him—"

"You begged Dumbledore." Though his words were too fragmented to make much sense of, there was a sinking in her gut, the echoes of the waves in her ears. Funny, she thought, how when you've realized so many people closest to you had betrayed your trust it is still possible to feel the sting of hurt from someone who you have no reason to trust anyways. Someone like Severus.

"I didn't think the Dark Lord would listen," he said, "Even though I begged him not to—so I sent Dumbledore a message. I told him that he thought it was you, and that you were in danger—I begged Dumbledore to protect you—"

Though the words were falling on her ears, Lily was hearing none of them, only the steady roar of a tumultuous ocean. Severus' meaning could always be found between the lines, if you listened close enough. Lily wished she hadn't listened. Wished she had turned him away at the door, taken Hollis and left.

"You told him," she whispered hollowly. "You told Voldemort the prophecy."

The truth, it seemed, was dawning on both of them. For a moment Severus looked confused, then mortified, his pale skin flushing with dark red spots. "I didn't know!" he insisted. "Lily—I would have never—never—put you in his path, I swear! I begged—"

"You told Voldemort the prophecy," she repeated, and looked up at him, her nostrils flaring and lips twisting into a snarl. "You told Voldemort! And now James is dead. Dead, Severus! And what about him, what about Harry? Not a word of begging for either of them, I imagine, because no, Severus Snape doesn't give a damn if it doesn't cross his mind. You fucking—"

"Dumbledore didn't tell you," Severus said. Of course he did. Because even when it was Lily suffering his single-minded idiocy, he couldn't focus on anything but what he was directly involved with.

"That fucking asshole told me many things," she said, "But he failed to mention you. Funny, maybe he at least had the decency to be ashamed of making a deal with someone of your degeneracy. I should have saved my scorn for you, not him!"

Severus flinched, and perhaps if Lily had not been in such a state she would not have said such things. But she was angry—livid—the cabinets were starting to shake and the light bulb's glow had shrunk back in fright, and Severus too seemed to cower.

"My son," Lily carried on, "No longer has a father. Because of you! What are you going to do about that, you bastard? He's somehow the most famous boy alive, and doesn't even understand why—can you even imagine how horrible it will be? Can you sympathize with the pain of someone outside of your own skull?"

"Lily, I tried to—"

"I don't give a shit what you tried to do, Severus," she snarled. "Dumbledore tried to protect us, and look what happened. He would have let me ignorant of this, too, wouldn't he? So you could come slinking back in, the battered victim?"

The tea she had left on the table burst, sending shards of glass and milky liquid in every direction. Severus spun around, wand out, immobilizing it in an instant. The silence seemed to descend like an iron wall between them, and time seemed to stretch out until, from what seemed like an impossible distance, Hollis cried out.

"Get out," Lily said quietly.

"Lily, I—"

Her jaw worked as she pressed her teeth together. Hollis' wailing made the apartment's stifling air seem filled with sudden urgency. "Get. Out."

A knock came on the door, and Severus whirled about again, wand at shoulder level. Lily was standing at the door, so she merely turned to slam it open, revealing Remus crouched down over the two-year-old Harry, who was trying to hold back tears. "Harry tripped and hurt his knee, can you—" the man started to say, before he looked up and saw Severus standing behind her.

Lily turned without a word and swept by the intruder, beckoned by Hollis' wails. Severus seemed as immobilized as the tea hanging in the air behind him, staring at Harry, who stared right back, though his bright eyes were watering and his knee red with blood. For a moment, Severus seemed to act unconsciously, lowering his wand to point towards the boy, but Remus, seeing that, stepped between them, drawing his own wand and facing the man without a word.

At last Severus seemed to return to himself, blinking, and his eyes came up to meet Remus'. His face pulled back into an awful grimace, and he tucked his wand away as he swept out of the apartment, oversized coat billowing out behind him as he made for the stairs.

In the kitchen, the fragments of the glass fell to the floor.

A/N

Thank you all for your support! I'm glad to see there are so many of you still reading new works in the fandom.

I was going to post chapters on Mondays, but I think Sundays work a little better for me, so here this is. As you can see, chapter length is a little bit variable, due to the way this story is formatted. The "chapter" after this is quite long.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to ask! Reviews are the fuel that keeps editing enjoyable. (And trust me, there's editing going on, even if you still see typos here and there. My first draft had Lily losing three stone instead of one. Oh dear.) You can also ask to my tumblr—username thenoacat—or review on AO3, where this story is being cross-posted.

One final note - the name Hollis, the nickname for which is Holly, I definitely got from the story the Never Ending Road. Once it was in my head, it stuck. It is a very long, well-written, and still updating story, and I encourage all of you to read it if you are not already!

Thank you!