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

AN: Unbeta'ed. Tried to purge it of little grammatical errors.

The Red Room
part 2

She watched him trying to hold back his tears. They had hurt him. Sometime back it would have been a lethal offense. But she was still too weak from her time at the sanatorium, and revenge could wait.

There were more pressing concerns for now. Briskly she catalogued the various places upon his body where spells had ripped through clothes, some going as far as to burn the flesh beneath. But none exuded too strong a mark, and none seemed potent enough that they could bypass the shields she used to place upon him as a matter of course. That she couldn't have this time around was just another violation she laid squarely at Dumbledore's doorstep. The man had a lot to answer for.

Dropping on one knee, she steeled her expression into a smile even though her face still hurt. Harry had hurt her. She could barely think the words, let alone confront him about it. He was being coerced, she knew, but a niggling part of her refused to accept that James would ever succumb in face of such an obstacle. But Harry wasn't James and she had still had time to train him.

Time.

That was important.

They were running out of time.

"Harry," she whispered, tilting his head gently up to place a kiss upon his forehead, and then wiping the grit from her lips. "We have to go soon, dear. They are coming."

His eyes were lidded shut and he was weakly whimpering, but nevertheless he tried to brace himself up to face her. His leg was twitching, drops of blood mingling with the mud and making brown sludge. She looked back at his face again and her own eyes stared back at her. It was oddly comforting. "Harry –"

"Let me," his voice was tremulous, like a child's is right before the urge to cry is actualized. "…go!" he said. "Please. Mother." But she was already shaking her head. His face was streaked with tears that had mixed with the dirt in the field. Still shaking, she pointed her wand at his face and de-materialized the mud with a flick. "This is how it is Harry. I know you remember." When he closed his eyes once again and tried to turn away from her, she clasped his shoulders with her hands, her fingers digging into the flesh. "You remember, don't you?" But he didn't care to reply, taking long breaths instead, while she just stared at him, suddenly incredulous. She didn't know what she would do if he forget. Surely even Dumbledore wouldn't have gone so far as to erase parts of his childhood?

Long moments passed, and her grip loosened and his shoulders relaxed, curving inwards and towards the ground. While they sat in a small dusty patch, the verdant around them stretched for miles, disappearing with the rolling hills at the horizon. There was a small pond a few steps away from them, its surface gently rippled. There were the trees she remembered, and branches that whistled in the wind. And she couldn't help her eye from roving because nothing seemed to have changed yet everything was so very different.

Suddenly, he cut into her reverie. "I've been here."

She gave him a fleeting glance, "Many times," before turning her gaze back to the pond, its lightly pebbled shore, and the water lapping at the sand.
"I was hurt, here." The eyes that met hers were harsh; the lines of his face were sharp and tense. He had managed to sit up, but still leaned to the right, away from her, with an arm braced against the ground to give him support. "They hit me with a curse. Something dark. Broke my femur."

The memory welled up through the cracks, nostalgic and painful. "They were lucky. And inexperienced. None of them got away alive."

"How did they get us when the headmaster's people didn't?"

"Don't you remember?" After a moment, he shook his head. "It was an… impromptu picnic. On the spur of the moment kind of thing. We were celebrating, that day. I wanted to take us some place nice. Better than the cottage." And while she spoke, she shifted a bit to move closer to him, noting the wary look in his eyes. "It was James' birthday. They…got lucky."

In the silence she counted how long they had here. Last time, they'd been sitting for thirty two minutes before those three deatheaters had sneaked up upon them. She would not repeat the same mistake.

"I was hurt…bad."

She nodded slightly. The breeze was picking up. The clock was ticking down. And buried memories were being plundered. "They'd hurt you…then. This time, your friends did. I know their names. I'll do it all again." She faced him, the startled look on his face puzzling her for a second. "I'll always protect you, Harry."

He was breathing harshly again.

"Always." It was so peaceful here. She had forgotten. "Even when you hurt me." She still hadn't healed the wound he had inflicted. Just as the one he had as a child never healed. In those long nights at St. Mungo's without even the relief of free movement, those last four weeks they had together were a constant reminder of how assiduously the world corrupted its innocents. How innocuously it had turned her Harry away from her.
"For what it's worth," he spoke softly, "I'm sorry."

She leaned slightly against him. A long time ago, he would have been burrowing into her, letting her arms envelop him. But those days were long gone and he was more James than ever before. "I'm sorry," he repeated again, a bit louder, as if realizing he had quite a bit to be sorry about. But she would forgive him; it wasn't his fault. Regardless, his apology, "It means the world to me, Harry."

But, time was up. They'd visit this place again, someday soon, she vowed to herself. But for now, her wand was in her hand and she was moving to stand.

"What are you," he said, perplexed.

"We need to go, now." She cut him off, her voice sharp and brisk. The field was wide and open, with little to no obstruction in line of sight. They were ludicrously easy targets. Cherry-pickings.

"Why?" His voice was wistful and innocent. "This place is beautiful."

Doubt crept in, along with sudden and overwhelming paranoia. He was smart; James had instinctively known this stuff. "They're tracking us. Let's go." She was standing, extending a hand down to him, and silently begging him to take it.

His brow furrowed. "This tracking thing," he said, dissembling and she smiled a small sad smile. "How does it work anyway? How did you delay them for so long?"

But there was no time to waste. He world be disciplined for this. There were boundaries he had…had no right to cross.

A flick of her hand and that thin veneer of innocence upon his face shattered into agony as his body forced him to stand, regardless of his injuries. He screamed, momentarily unable to even move his hands to grip the leg that burned with whatever curse some bastard had thrown.

Her lip curled, and with another flick of her wand he realized he couldn't hear his screams. For some reason he couldn't identify, that made it hurt worse. She moved close to him, gripping him with an arm around his waist, bunching them together. "Stop trying to delay Harry," she said, shackling her rage for now. "Nobody's coming." They were so close, and her head was tilted up towards his, anger spilling despite her best efforts to restrain it. They were so close, in the Astronomy tower, enacting the oldest of clichés. His body was hard beneath her hands and they explored his bare back, nails sharp, moving slowly down his spine. They were so close, parts of his were pressing into her thighs, and there was this wicked smile on her face, as she leaned closer to his lips. They were so close, and nothing existed besides the canvas upon which their hands moved, and nothing else mattered. They were separated by skin and did not, could not bear to be any longer.

He suddenly jerked, and his head crashed against hers. As pain flared and fantasy shattered, she stumbled back and struck out almost instinctively, the incantation slipping past her lips before she realized whom she was cursing. "James!"

It struck him on the shoulder, tearing flesh to the bone and toppling him where he stood. And he screamed but he couldn't be heard.

Frantically she ran up to him, thankful that he hadn't stumbled off the tower. "James," she shrieked again, vanishing his shirt even though she could swear he had been shirtless. "Oh god, oh god. I'm so sorry." His body was in spasms, the magic coursing through his veins. Desperately she tried to compose herself, trying to think up the countercurse. She needed to think. She needed a clear head. His throat convulsed, and his mouth opened wide as if he couldn't breathe. "James!"

She was seventeen, and she had killed her love. She was married, and she watched him die in front of her, too far to help. He held Harry with one hand, protecting him from the onslaught of deatheaters. She watched their magic tear up the beautiful landscape, black flames and red whips breaking against her husband's shields while he could do little but defend. They were trapped and Harry was in the battlefield, cut in a dozen places, his arm broken, but still somehow standing, clutching his father's hand, his blood drenched fingers bravely wiping the tears from his eyes. She'd sent a message to Dumbledore, begging him, despite everything, to help them. But she couldn't focus on that now, she had to tear her gaze away from her child's because deatheaters were tearing at her shields too and she was going to kill them. Avada Kadavra. A thousand and one green lights. Let her profane her soul. It did not matter. She would make every sacrifice. But James was already dead, his dead head resting on her lap, while Harry still clutched his dead hand.

And her eyes were staring up at her, scrunched in pain. Tunnelling through the defences, discarding the years. She had no secrets from herself.

The body in her lap was moving. Its blood was warm, and its lips were not the lips of a dead man. She pressed her own down harder, unable to believe.

He was alive. She looked up, stunned. It was field. A beautiful field. She was not seventeen. This was not James. It was not James. He was not dead. "Harry." She could still save him. She had not failed.

She lifted her wand, and stared right at his face. Pain looked back up at her, unabashed and immodest. "It's oka-y," she stuttered, trying to stem the tears. "I'll make it all right." And she began to cast all the medical spells that she knew, rattling them one after another in her mind.

Then somebody apparated and breached the perimeter she had set up. They were far enough from where the portkey had landed to out of most reasonable perimeter charms that could alert her to their presence. They were close enough that their ability to incapacitate her was not hindered by distance. But it was not her perimeter that they breached, but a mine's. And as the cracks of apparition filled the air, the first mine blew, like the start of a symphony.