and nothing but the truth
chapter twenty-nine
The fight doesn't so much begin as it continues, as it becomes clear to Lily that the place is in chaos. Smoke hits her hotly and rushes into her lungs. She charges after Marlene into the entrance hall of the mansion, and immediately, amidst the shaking walls and overturned furniture, they are met with the sight of a stocky, middle-aged man in blue robes. He looks startled, but his eyes light on Marlene and he relaxes just a notch.
"Marlene," he says, wand held mid-air; there is a glint of metal on his wrist. "What's my mum's maiden name?"
This seems a very strange question to ask in the urgency of the moment, but Marlene replies without hesitation. "Hart."
He lowers his wand, looks Lily up and down, then gestures toward a staircase behind him. There are shouts from upstairs. "There's at least twenty. We've lost two blokes, mostly we've got to secure the border - lucky you came when you did -"
Just then, three people come clattering down that same staircase, making them all jump: two slim, masked Death Eaters and an unfamiliar man. The man is reeling from their attacks; they shout at him; they're playing with their food -
"Expelliarmus!" Lily cries, disarming one as Marlene attacks the other. A red jet of light hits the Death Eaters' victim; he reels, but doesn't fall. The middle-aged man turns and Stuns the attackers.
"They're all upstairs," the victim grunts as Marlene rushes forward to aid him. "Dumbledore's got the west wing under control, but Fenwick's in the library, he can't leave on account of the fire -"
"Someone has to go get him!"
"I'll go," Lily says immediately, and she sprints past them, over the Death Eaters' stilled bodies, and up the stairs. It's a long flight; she's only vaguely aware of where she's supposed to go.
"Avada Kedavra -"
A green light whistles past her ear; instinctively she wheels and throws the first spell she can think of. The Death Eater on the stairs doubles over laughing uncontrollably.
"Stupefy!" she shouts, but he manages to dodge it and send back a giggled curse at her.
Lily is hit in the stomach by what could've been an invisible bowling ball, the wind knocked out of her. She stumbles back and the Death Eater takes this opportunity to send a cutting jinx across her skin.
"Holy-!" She bites her tongue painfully and creates a Shield, though the damage is already done; her cheek stings painfully with blood. "Stupefy - stupefy!"
"Ha ha, can't reach me, can you, little girl?" he taunts, lifting his wand to throw another, probably deadlier curse.
"Petrificus totalus!"
He falls over like a board, paralyzed. Lily sprints past him to the landing, not glancing back. A wave of adrenaline has hit her, violently thrilling. Her blood races, magic coursing through her veins, as if she didn't spend time away from this in the first place.
She is caught in a fork now, a hallway extending to her left and right. The smoke is much thicker up here, because the fire is closer or perhaps because smoke rises, but most definitely enough to make her struggle to catch her breath.
Lily casts a Bubblehead charm, gasping for air, and decides that although she can't determine where the voices and such are coming from, she'll take a right -
She jogs down the hallway, her heart hammering in her chest; somewhere a door squeaks open and closed. But she can't see much, feels eeriely alone. Why does this feel so simple, so...unplanned?
The building itself is like a labrinth, corridors twisting and turning - but that's mostly illusion, since her vision's still smoky -
Lily slows to a cautious stride, wand held out before her. Her eyes water as she tries to scan her surroundings.
Fenwick's in the library, he can't leave...
Is this "Fenwick" being guarded by Death Eaters? Are they holding him hostage, or has he already been killed? And why is it that Lily was first to volunteer, that Marlene hesitated that one, uncharacteristic moment? Uncertainty?
"What have I gotten myself into?" Lily mutters, but the sound of her own voice is startlingly wrong. She tenses.
She can see a large room ahead - the library? - and she pads toward it quickly, trying and failing to muffle her footsteps. Hoping beyond hope, too, that her own incompetency will be offset by incompetency on the part of her foes.
Honestly, this is scaring the shit out of her.
And every rustle sounds like Avada Kedavra.
She reaches the room - no doors, just an open threshold that reveals a wide but shallow chamber, lined with heavy shelves and chairs lined up as if unused for a while. Even in the grey of the smoky air she can see a layer of dust settled thinly over the red carpet.
In other words, it's completely devoid of life, a revelation perhaps more frightening than finding it full of murderers.
Lily has always hated anticipation. As a child, she used to go zip lining with her father. Leaping off a 100-foot drop with nothing but a rope between her and the ground was no problem. She liked it. No, it was the climb, the slow and agonizing journey to the top before she could jump off. Much safer. Much more frightening.
It always left her shaking.
The journey to the library has been the climb, and having waited so eagerly for the fall, she has no idea what to do now that she realizes the zip line isn't even there.
This is why it's rather good she doesn't expect what happens next.
--
In Chinese culture, jade is meant to bring forth luck. It's the favored stone of pendants, charms, and beads.
It's also green. And as Lily can testify, people have an unnatural proclivity for describing shades of green: She has heard emerald-green, sea-green, toad-green, and grass-green among others, truthfully usually while describing her eyes.
And she's always felt driven to say, No, they're not emerald. No, they're not jade. They're just green.They don't bring good luck, they don't inspire beautiful pottery, and they're not stone. They are green. Plain, never-changing, blue-ish green.
On the other hand, she has always admired others' eyes - brown has rich reds and yellows and darkness, blue has the clarity of water and the brightness of the sun reflecting off the ocean. Grey, like Sirius's, has the stolidity of a calm lake and the turbulence of a storm cloud.
And hazel - handsome hazel - is a blend of honey-golds and mahogany and even that dreadful greenn, mixed and shifting and dynamic the way her eyes will never be.
So it should be no surprise that Lily recognizes those eyes when they are staring so questioningly into hers.
He has appeared out of nowhere, literally, and he takes her away from the library and through another door and he slams her against a wall as the door swings shut. And he demands, "What are you doing here? What are you doing here?!"
Her mouth opens and closes.
James is pressed up so close, but it's beyond her comprehension as she starts thinking the same thing: What are you doing here?
The hazel eyes bore into her.
Lily's adrenaline is suddenly replaced by thrumming relief, and she feels numb. James is here. James can protect her. She doesn't need to fight alone, because James will be with her and he must know what he is doing.
Then Lily fairly shoves him off her, or tries, because she's struck by the idea that maybe, like others she's known, he isn't on the same side. But he struggles back, gripping her wrists and holding her there against the wall.
She panics.
"You're hurting me," she grits out, head spinning. His grip relaxes just a bit.
"What's my nickname for you?" he demands, coughing a little on smoke.
"Llio," she gasps as his fingernails dig into her arm.
"Ask me -"
"What's - what's my best friend's middle name?"
He lets go of her then, backing away. "John," he says.
But she isn't the only person to know that, and she crosses to him, grabbing his left sleeve and yanking it up to the elbow.
No Mark.
A watch.
"Good," she says weakly, her wand clattering to the floor. She moves to embrace him in relief, but he takes her shoulders, pushes her away, and tells her,
"Pick up your wand - what are you doing here?!"
She shows him her own watch. He looks at it in shocked silence. She leans down and retrieves her wand, horrified at having done such a careless thing, then looks back up. He's watching her intently.
"What are you doing in the east wing?" he asks forcefully. "The Death Eaters are gathered in the west wing -"
"I was sent here -"
"By whom?" he wants to know, moving his hands to cradle her face. He's trembling.
"Some man from the Order - he said 'Fenwick' was up here, trapped," she explains hesitantly. "And -"
James swears very loudly and she jumps. His voice reverberates against the walls. "You've been lied to - who brought you, where is he?"
"Marlene McKinnon, I dunno -"
"Marlene?" He drops his hands from her face, seizes his wand from his pocket. "Then we've got to go, now - something wrong - Marlene may be in danger -"
From a detached point of view, this is amusing. Of course Marlene may be in danger. She's in a mansion chock full of Death Eaters. But this is not a detached point of view, it is anything but amusing, and Lily does not laugh.
Instead her eyes follow James's motions worriedly as he extracts a silvery cloth from his pocket.
"How is she?" she tries to ask. "And why -"
He throws it over them, and she realizes it's a cloak, barely large enough for two if they huddle together. "Why'd you intercept me?" she finishes, panicked.
James looks incredulous. "Because I lo-" A scream echoes from far across the house, and he swears again, wrapping his arm around Lily's waist. "No time. Let's go."
Somehow she's dragged from the room, stumbling hastily after James as her blood resumes pumping through her veins at a wild pace. At that same pace they are rushing down the hallway as he hisses, hush, and she is afraid of what will come next.
This is hardly the James she knows. There's a scared expression on his face she's never seen before, and all she can think is, over and over again, Why?
What's going to happen?
How does he know what to do?
A musical voice can be heard chanting in her ears, suddenly, over the din of James's seemingly deafening whispers, the words -
West wing, west wing. Please!
It's Marlene's voice.
Somewhere they're back to the landing and James steps over the man she left paralyzed and unconscious, as if he isn't there. Blood trickles from a cut on the Death Eater's forehead perhaps he hit his head on the way down. Lily feels sick.
"Wait -" she tries hopelessly, digging in her heels and taking James's elbow. He stumbles to a stop and the cloak slips a little.
"What are you doing?" he whispers harshly, tugging on her waist.
"I've got to help -"
"You can't, that's idiotic, he doesn't deserve it -"
But Lily can't take her eyes off the man. He's not someone she recognizes; his face is cold and unfamiliar to her. Yet she sees the blunt lines and young tiredness of it and thinks he could very easily be someone else.
A man who loves, a man who laughs, a man who simply took the wrong path when he came to the fork in the road.
James slaps her then, though not as if he means it, and she shakes her head and stops thinking. Thought will only distract her. Thought about the past, about Sirius and his brother, about James and the kiss and the argument. Thought about Marlene in danger or Petunia drifting away or Remus holding her through the lonely night all because she said, The heating in my hall's broken, you know, and I don't...
She doesn't, true, she doesn't want to think. Thought is gone. Instinct is here.
Instinct means becoming the quick-reacting machine James already is; instinct means adrenaline and fear trickling through her veins; instinct means forgetting, for one moment, someone else she can help, and instead helping herself.
Author's Notes: I hope everyone will like this chapter... I was really looking forward to writing it, though any sort of battle scene is really difficult, for me, to write. Anyway, please review and tell me if I did okay. I'd really appreciate it!
