AN: To the person who told me to 'get a grip': Thanks for adding to my review count.

Chapter dedicated to all my amazing readers, i.e. not the person above.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Catharsis

Two sides of a coin, they are: heads and tails, prince and pauper, saint... and sinner. Zigzag child, like lightning-born, riding the airwaves and eddies of wind. There is never wrong and right. There is only weak and strong.

She is what she is. Cruel, capricious, a fairy flitting at Beltane's Eve, a child with bones of marble. When she rages the world cowers. Who is there to keep her in check? He is. He, the boy with eyes like diamonds and hair like starlight silk. When she is on the knife-edge of madness he is there to pull her back. They do not know what they are: brother and sister, husband and wife. This is their reality. Since when have they been friend and foe?

Together, they tumble through the seas of eternity, entwined around each other, always. He watches and waits. Whiplike, blades of steel and spine of flame. When she dances along a cliff he locks his fingers round her wrist and -

Pushes -

Lily woke up gasping. For a moment she stared at the ceiling, panting, fragments of visions and cold reality colliding before her eyes. Slowly her vision adjusted and she realised that she was safe in bed.

She was still shaking.

Her dream, if it could even be called that, had featured a shadowy-faced boy and unknown girl locked in an unwinnable war. Sweat cooled on Lily's back. She didn't know who they were, but the pool of options was severely limited. There were only four people she had ever dreamed of.

Recognising that there would be no sleep for her tonight, Lily moved to sit at the end of her bed. Her seventeenth birthday would be in a week. It had been a handful of days since her little excursion with James.

James Potter. What to think of him? She had begun tutoring him in Charm as per their agreement, something that had made Alice raise her brows when she'd heard. He was an excellent pupil. Attentive. Smart. Funny, even. Many times she had found herself laughing.

Lily wanted to think she had forgiven him. That she was completely over the bloody, twisted history they shared. But That Night - that goddamned night - was such an integral part of her psyche that she worried a part of her would never get past it.

And she wanted to. Because despite it all, she liked him. So it was time to do what she hadn't for the past four years.

Lily briefly considered doing it alone, but she knew her limitations. On silent feet she crept to where lay Alice lay gently snoring on her side.

"Alice!" she whispered. "Wake up!"

When this produced no result, she went a step further. "McKinnon, now, or that signed Weird Sisters poster of yours will be on the endangered species list - "

The blonde hissed and blinked. "What the fuck? That's just sad, Lily. What do you want?"

"I want..." Lily paused and cleared her throat. "I want to talk about That Night."

Alice went ramrod-straight. She knew only the vaguest of details; Lily, Sirius and James alone knew the truth of what had occurred deep within the Forbidden Forest.

"Are you sure?" she asked softly.

"Yes. Sure," the redhead murmured. Her voice was low but almost desperately confident.

Alice eyed her for a moment, forming her own conclusions, then wriggled over to make room in her bed. "Come on, then. We've not got all night."

Lily joined her beneath the covers. For what might have been anywhere between a minute and an hour she marshalled her thoughts. Then she began.

"You know, of course, that I used to be friends with Isabelle Yaxley," she said. "She was the sweetest little thing. Her entire family were Death Eaters like mine, but she was... pure. It's hard to explain. Like she couldn't help but see the good in people even when I couldn't help but see the bad."

"You're not like that," Alice said, but Lily ignored her and continued.

"She was Sorted into Slytherin. But I think that the Hat only did it because it knew what would befall her if she wasn't. Isabelle wouldn't have thought to ask the Hat to make her Slytherin like Regulus did, and her family would have truly disowned her if she became anything else - Hufflepuff probably, but maybe Gryffindor like me. At least my family still talk to me. The Yaxleys would have utterly cut her off.

"Isabelle couldn't survive in Slytherin. She was a bleeding mackerel in a sea full of sharks, and we all knew it. Because she couldn't defend herself she got picked on twenty-four seven by everyone - except my cousin Sirius. It's not as though he liked her; he just considered her about as interesting as an ant on the pavement. But still. Indifference was kindness for Isabelle, and soon... she fell in love with him.

"She loved him with all the feeling she had in her heart," Lily said, her voice growing strained. "I tried to stop her. God knows I did everything in my power to warn her off, to make her see reason. But she was just a lonely little girl bullied by everyone and she'd latched onto the one person who hadn't hurt her."

"So she loved him. Fine. I always suspected he knew, but he never said or did anything, and I began to relax. Then Isabelle's older brother - I forget his name - fucked up monumentally. You remember the Big Ben Triumph?"

"Remind me," Alice murmured.

"Newspapers worldwide hailed it as one of the greatest saves in history. A masked man entered to defuse a magical bomb just seconds before it would have taken out the Houses of Parliament. Only that man was Yaxley, and he wasn't there to defuse it - his job was to set it off."

Alice blinked at this piece of utter stupidity. Lily smiled faintly.

"I know. Insane, isn't it? But that was the end of that plan, because security quadrupled and the chance was lost. The Dark Lord was... upset. But he didn't decide to punish Yaxley. Instead, the next evening I found a note from Isabelle saying that Sirius had finally asked her out.

"I knew he wouldn't have. Not without some ulterior motive. So I asked around, and the Bloody Baron - who's always been fond of me - said he'd seen the two of them and James Potter heading towards the Forbidden Forest.

"God. I didn't think. Didn't even take a second to process it. I tore off with nothing but my wand, and got there just as they began."

The scrap of memory she had sunk into the morning before Narcissa's wedding played once more in her mind.

"She's here," Potter said. Even at thirteen he was arrogant and handsome, and he walked like he owned the world. But his gorgeous features were dark and twisted, a feral light in his eyes. "What shall we do with her?"

Sirius gazed at Lily uninterestedly. "Well, this one wasn't meant to be here," he said. She bared her teeth in a useless show of defiance. Her hands had been bound behind her back, and without her wand she was powerless to undo the tight Muggle knot.

"I want her," Potter said decisively. "She'll be good fun. Any objections?"

"Course not," her cousin said.

Potter, he who was the devil incarnate, swished his wand. "Crucio!"

Lily screamed.

She shook herself. "There you have it. James and Sirius spent the night torturing Isabelle, then they killed her. I only had ten seconds of pain. She had hours."

"And after that they left you tied up and unconscious in the Common Room," Alice said quietly. She had been the one to find her.

Lily exhaled. "Yes. And until that dinner party when I repaid James with twenty seconds, I could think of nothing else."

"But now?"

"Now... I believe I might grow to like him. He already amuses me. He's been helpful."

"In short," Alice said, "he's acting like a completely different person. Like someone who no longer wants to be a Death Eater." She studied the redhead. "I wonder what brought such an abrupt change."

Lily shrugged. "Who can say?"

Suddenly she was tired. These were words she had never spoken aloud before, and they had taken their toll on her. She now wanted nothing more than to go straight back to sleep.

Alice noticed. "One last question," she said. "Tell me, Lily. This is something I've often wondered about. Both Sirius and James were there that night - but why was James the focus of your revenge and not your cousin?"

Surprised, Lily had to consider the question carefully before she could answer. "It's complicated," she said slowly. "Sirius is Sirius. Hating him would be akin to hating a knife because it has cut you, or fire because it has burned you. There's just no point. Because he might be a curse today, but he's equally as likely to be a blessing tomorrow, and madness is his middle name." She thought of the instability gene. "Hell, it could be mine too. And James was the one who actually Cruciated me, so I suppose I just felt more strongly about him."

"Alright," Alice said. "Thank you. I've always wanted to know that. Goodnight, Lily,"

"Goodnight," she said as she tiptoed back to her own bed.

This had been cathartic. She no longer felt vaguely guilty for looking forward to seeing him tomorrow.