Disclaimer: None of it's mine except for Myra and Melora Spring. Not even Nearly Headless Nick, cute as he is especially when played by John Cleese.

Author's Note: I'm so grateful for all your recent comments and very glad so many people are enjoying this story. Only Chapter 22 and an epilogue left to go! If you're interested in a sequel, add me to your author alerts and you'll be kept up to speed.

Lumos

Lily struggled to scream. She thrashed in bed, kicking off the coverlet and throwing back the finely pressed linen sheets. Slowly, Lily recognized where she was: Minerva McGonagall's guest bedroom at the base of Gryffindor Tower. The sun had yet to rise over the mountains, and the Black Lake lay still as night. Harry drowsed safely in a well-shielded cot, cuddling a stuffed snowy owl Minerva had given him the night before.

Something familiar about the owl leaked into Lily's conscious mind like the silvery stuff from a Pensieve. The owl was in her nightmare, but she couldn't remember where exactly. At first, Harry was an orphan in Petunia's house; her son wore ill-fitting eyeglasses just like James's, but they were held together by Muggle transparent tape. Harry fried bacon for Vernon and Petunia, a servant from a modern-day Dickens novel. Next, Harry fought a giant serpent in a subterranean grotto. A redheaded girl lay unconscious on the stone floor. The scene changed rapidly, and a lanky, gawky Harry whose voice was already breaking battled a flaming dragon on a broomstick – that one hurt to recall, because she saw so much of James in his effortless soaring – and later, the most vivid memory of all: herself as a ghost, floating along behind her son as he walked to his own death.

Lily rubbed her sweaty face with her palms. Even her teeth hurt; she'd been clenching them all night. A small stained-glass clock on the bedside said it was only a quarter past five. She'd never get back to sleep; the dream had her jumping at shadows. Lily slid out of bed and put on the spare tartan slippers Minerva had left near the wardrobe. Once she left the blankets, Lily was cold, the sweat drying on her skin from the dream's agitation. She wrapped Myra's old gray dressing gown around herself and left a note for Minerva on the hall table.

Lily smiled as she passed the Fat Lady, snoring gently in her canvas with a voluminous pink nightcap covering her coiffure. Under the Great Hall, the house-elves were already preparing every good thing in the world for breakfast. The smell made Lily's stomach growl. A prickling cold sensation swept up beside her as she stopped to take a deep breath of the delectable aromas of grilled tomatoes and bacon.

"Lily Evans! Why, it's been years. I'd heard you weren't dead after all. I confess I hoped to see you join our number here at Hogwarts."

Lily smiled and pulled Myra's old dressing gown tighter. Nick was an old dear for a ghost–when she was a prefect, she'd become as close to him as a human could be to an apparition – but he did create a chilly downdraft. "It's wonderful to see you, too."

Nearly Headless Nick scratched at the jagged seam running along the base of his neck. "Is there something I can help you find, my dear? Something for young Harry, perhaps?"

"Could you please tell me how to get to Professor Snape's office?"

"Directly behind the Potions classroom, my dear, but why would you need a potion at this early hour? Wouldn't it be better to see Miss Pomfrey if little Harry has fallen ill?"

"I just need to speak to Severus."

Sir Nicholas made a sound like a door blowing open in a stiff breeze. "I'll escort you."

"You're very sweet to worry, but I'll be perfectly all right." The specter tried to follow her down the steep stairs leading down from the main corridor, but Lily waved him off with a friendly smile.

"The other ghosts have said terrible things about Professor Snape. Terrible things. The Fat Friar's very reliable…"

Lily cut him off. "I trust him, Nick. I know I'm not Head Girl anymore, but my word will have to be good enough for you. I'll see you later."

Leaving an insulted ghost fretting behind her, Lily picked her way down the poorly lit stairs. The temperature dropped about ten degrees with each level she descended. Her breath showed as mist in the corridor, illuminated by the flickering green torches.

The Potions corridor was exactly as she remembered. They were so far below ground, the level of light never changed. At any moment, young Lily could come tripping out of Slughorn's classroom, barely restraining herself from bragging to Severus about her marks. Lily stopped to lean against the wall for a moment, her heart pounding unaccountably.

The door to the Potions classroom stood open. On the worktables, cauldrons stood clean and ready for the day's first lesson. A sliver of yellow lamplight showed under the door beside the student store cupboard. Lily tiptoed across to knock.

"Yes?" said a slightly irritated voice on the other side.

"It's Lily."

"Come in." The door swung open of its own accord. Severus sat on a wide leather sofa, fully dressed in a black frock coat. A half-full cup of tea steamed on the side table beside him. Scrolls lay stacked in such a narrow, high arrangement on the work surface, Lily thought they couldn't stay upright without being charmed. Severus seemed completely at home. Lily felt a fleeting resentment for his ability to relax into his old routines where her own were destroyed forever.

In a shallow cabinet on the rear wall stood a vast array of flasks in dozens of colors, some glowing softly and some pulling light into little pockets of self-contained darkness. Lily recognized several of the preparations even without the labels written in Severus's precise lettering – Felix Felicis, Amortentia, and the Draught of Living Death. She walked closer, bending to examine a flask whose contents were a mystery. The potion was a soft gold color, swirling with opalescent light.

"What's this one?"

"That's Forgetfulness Potion. Attractive, isn't it?" Lily sat on the other end of the sofa without waiting to be asked. Severus rolled a student's paper and moved it to the marked pile. "I'd have thought you'd need your sleep after yesterday. Where's the boy?"

It amused Lily that Severus rarely used Harry's first name, as if something of James clung to him when his name were spoken aloud. "He's in Minerva's guest room, fast asleep in his cot. She'll be all too glad to fawn over him if he wakes up before I get back." Lily tightened her arms around herself, still feeling a chill from the damp corridor outside. "I had a nightmare. I couldn't get back to sleep."

"I believe Muggles are far wiser than we; many consider dreams a random firing of neurons." Severus unrolled another essay and snorted at the words written in a blotchy, childlike hand that tipped dramatically to the left. "First-years."

Lily wanted to shake him. Irritation brought her back to herself, sweeping the remnants of otherworldly fear from her waking mind. "I need you to listen for five minutes, Severus, is that too much to ask?" He rolled the first-year's essay into a tight cylinder and folded his broad hands on the worktable, waiting for her to speak. "I dreamed Harry's entire life last night. James and I both died in Godric's Hollow, but it was Voldemort, not Peter who killed us. Petunia raised him… she hated him. You… you were his Potions teacher. You were really hard on him." Severus smirked a little at her reprimand. "I don't remember all of it, but Harry had James's cloak. I saw him sneaking around in Hogsmeade with two other kids, a boy and a girl. The boy looked like a Weasley.

"Then Harry was in a graveyard—there was a boy on the ground beside him, a dead boy. Peter cut into Harry's arm with a knife – he brought back Voldemort with Harry's blood."

Severus used a softer voice than he had before. "Lily, Peter Pettigrew is dead."

Lily hiccuped. "Is this where I'm supposed to say 'thank you?'"? Severus didn't respond, but he shifted uncomfortably on the cold, hard leather sofa. "He fought, Severus. He fought Voldemort alone, and he was just a child. It was terrible." She closed her mouth, unwilling to continue.

"What else?"

"We died for him, Severus. Me, James, Sirius, Remus, Dumbledore… even you. We died so Harry could live."

Severus didn't answer right away. A vertical line appeared between his dark brows, and he answered with veiled contempt. "Dumbledore: that's a surprise."

His lowered voice had always made Lily shiver, but not with fear: feelings she had steered quickly away from as a young girl, parsing their very impossibility even as the quickness entered her heartbeat. When they were young, Lily joked and teased to distract him from such intensity. After the breach in their friendship, it simply made her furious how Severus could still pull her strings without even trying.

"And yourself?"

Severus sat quietly for a moment, his shoulders hunched over. He clasped his hands between his knees, his damp hair hiding his face from her. "The only thing that surprises me is how long I survived without you." Before Lily had a chance to answer, Severus stood up, striding toward a bookshelf. Mingled among stacks of scrolls and leather-bound books of magic were plain volumes covered in cloth. Lily watched as Severus flipped rapidly through two books and shelved them again with care. He brought a third volume bound in red back to the sofa and sat beside her, opening the book to a marked page. "Muggles call it the many-worlds theory. Here." He slid the heavy book into her lap and pointed to the article.

"I didn't know you read Muggle scientific journals."

"For fun," Severus qualified. Lily smiled through her tears. "Many physicists believe that alternate universes are real. Every branch of possibility exists somewhere; every time we make a decision, we create another world."

Lily blew her nose. "That's far too much responsibility for my liking. One world is bad enough."

"Perhaps your dream was connected to the prophecy."

Lily shuddered and crumpled her handkerchief in her palm. "I'm not a Seer, Severus. At least I'd better not be. I'd hate to be stuck up in a tower with all those blasted crystal balls."

"Perhaps it is the echo from another reality; perhaps it was brought on by the trauma you experienced yesterday." Severus reached a hesitant hand across to Lily's cheek and brushed her sweaty auburn hair back behind her ear. Lily's heart thumped painfully sideways as if someone were sitting on her ribcage. She shouldn't feel this way when he touched her; it had to be the long days of hiding together, protecting Harry, depending on one another to survive. She loved James. She was thankful Severus was her friend again. That was all. "Are you all right?"

"I guess I'll have to be." Lily leaned against the back of the sofa and tried to relax her clenched muscles. "Apparently I've been declared legally dead, thanks to your fancy spellwork on Peter's body. I have to go to the Ministry this morning and sort it out before I can get into Gringotts. What a bloody bore."

Severus's wide mouth quirked upward at the corners. "I'm going to spend some time with Melora today. Dumbledore wants me to examine that scar."

"Poor thing." Lily felt uncomfortable. Melora Spring, Myra's only child, clung to life in the hospital wing; her life lay in ruins, even more than Lily's own. Lily wondered what she could possibly do to make amends. "I saw Miss Pomfrey and Minerva shaking their heads over her last night. Do you have any idea what Myra did to save us?"

Severus shook his head. "I never learned as much from her as I should have. Myra kept trying to teach me more of the Druid way, but I was so focused… first on impressing you, then on making the Dark Lord proud."

Lily's breath caught at the self-loathing in his voice. Severus had never been one to volunteer personal revelations; it cost him dearly to admit such a failing. Lily's palm hovered over his forearm. Severus flinched away and pulled his sleeve down over the Dark Mark.

"You don't have to worry about that anymore."

"Which one?"

"Neither of them."

As dark as his frock coat, Severus's eyes stared emptily into the corner of the room, at the ranks of dusty flasks filled with floating dead creatures, at the lamplight flickering off the stained-glass windows. "I loved her, Lily. She tried so hard to be what I needed. She knew what I needed, and she never asked for anything in return."

Tears swam back into Lily's eyes. "I loved Myra, too, and I only knew her for a few weeks. Wherever she's gone, she knows how you feel."

"I wish I believed in any of that."

Silence stretched between them. "It's six o'clock," said Severus unexpectedly, "are you hungry? I could have the kitchens send something down."

Lily yawned. "Not yet. Would anyone miss me if I got another half-hour of sleep?"

"I doubt it."

Lily couldn't keep her eyes open. "Read to me."

She had the rare satisfaction of a surprised pause. "Not first-year potions? I'm afraid their grammar will only give you further nightmares."

"Anything. It would help me relax." Lily shifted the Muggle journal to the worktable, lay down on her side on the smooth black leather sofa, and pulled her arms under her head. "Wake me at six-thirty?"

Lily heard the rustle of scrolls on the side table. "The mechanics of hellebore when taken concomitant with infusion of asphodel…"

She dreamed no more.