The Law of Unintended Consequences

Chapter 38

Circling Closer

I think that we might just be able to trust her, and believe that she is innocent...

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling, nor do I own the Harry Potter Series.

The Next Day Sunday September 20th, 1975

Albus Dumbledore sighed and scratched his long beard thoughtfully as Lily Evans left, a scowl on her face; he hadn't wanted to refuse her request, but... 'With the evidence she was able to give me, I couldn't even prove her innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt, let alone prove Sirius Black's guilt...' In all honesty, Dumbledore had to admit that the evidence did more to prove her guilt than it did to prove her innocence...

Flashback:

"Professor Dumbledore! A word!"

Dumbledore had been going on his way back to his office after a quick lunch in the Great Hall when Lily Evans had suddenly called out his name; looking back, he saw that she had apparently ran all the way over to him and was panting before him. Looking up at him, she said quietly, "I need to talk to you about something that happened at the end of last term, something important."

Recognizing the words 'end of last term' as indicating what he was already mentally calling 'The Second Werewolf Incident', Dumbledore quickly brought Lily up to his office so that they could have their talk undisturbed. Then she started talking,

"OK, Professor, I'm sure that you are aware of what happened with Severus and Mary at the end of last term, what with the Shrieking Shack and how they were attacked by Remus Lupin, in werewolf form, there. Well, I think that they received a letter from my owl that lured them there somehow, but the thing is, I had given Sirius Black permission to use my owl to send letters if his was busy. As such, I suspect that he used my owl to lure Severus and Mary there somehow, like he did earlier in the year..."

As Lily continued to explain her hypothesis, Dumbledore carefully considered what her words meant; unfortunately, considering that the futures of several childrens' lives were at stake, that meant that he had to be extra-thorough when it came to this particular case, as it wouldn't do any good if he got Remus forced out of the school for the sake of investigating someone who turned out to be innocent. As such, he weighed each word she said, before asking a quick question, "Miss Evans, did you at any point loan your owl to someone other than Sirius Black? You must understand, once loaned, even if it is for a short term, owls treat it as permenant permission of use unless you directly tell them not to service the person they were loaned to..."

Frowning, Lily said, scrunching her face up as she seemed to be deep in thought, "Well, I did give Sabrina Percival permission to use Smallwings once, before the holidays last year, but I doubt that she would have done it. She really has little to gain and all..."

Dumbledore stifled a regretful sigh as she continued, rambling as she did when she was nervous; while Lily, if innocent, had collected a fairly good amount of evidence, the problem was that none of this evidence did anything to prove her innocence, rather showing her possible guilt instead, as she would have certainly known all of this if she was guilty. In addition, thanks to the addition of Sabrina to the mix, Dumbledore couldn't even narrow it down enough, as, given how Sabrina felt about James, Severus' 'mortal enemy', it would make a lot of sense for her to attack him. Sirius' motivation was, of course, obvious.

In the end, as Lily's tale wound down, Dumbledore felt that he had no real choice, and attempted to use leglimency to access her thoughts, hopefully proving her innocence in some way; what he got was something he had never experienced before in his life: when he had sought to access her thoughts, he was repelled by a barrier the likes of which he had never seen before, or even imagined could exist. Almost instantly, he was catapulted across the room and slammed into the bookshelves behind him, causing several of the books inside to fall to the ground as well as the sound of shattering glass as he knocked a trinket of his to the ground. Seeing this, Lily shouted as she rushed over, "Professor! Are you alright!?"

Wincing in pain as he got back up, Dumbledore replied, "I am alright child, do not worry."

'That barrier was by far the most potent Occlumency that I have ever seen; it is extremely odd that it is so powerful, as even Tom or I couldn't generate a barrier a tenth of its power. Even though she is clearly likely to become a powerful witch and has a great deal of potential, she is unlikely to ever touch the same level that Tom and I have reached, yet her Occlumency defies all logic in its strength...' He then frowned, as Occlumency of that strength would not only stop Leglimency in its tracks, but it would make it so that even Veritaserum would be no better than water when it came to getting the truth out of her. Down to his last option, Dumbledore then asked as he sat at his desk,

"Miss Evans, would you please extract your memories of the night in question as well as the ones where you gave permission to use your owl to Mr. Black and Miss Percival so that I may view them in my pensieve?" Nodding, Lily placed her wand to her head, then moved it away, before frowning as nothing was attached to it. She repeated the procedure two more times before Dumbledore attempted it himself; he frowned as he did so, for he could feel that the memories were available to extract, but, when he tried to extract them, they were blocked off by the same massive wall that had sent him flying when he tried to use Leglimency on her.

Frustrated, Dumbledore had no choice but to say, "Thank you for your assistance Miss Evans, but I would strongly advise not mentioning your evidence or suspicions to your friends, as the evidence you have does more to implicate your guilt than your innocence. If you find anything else, do not hesitate to tell me, but there is nothing more that we can do as of right now..."

Lily was clearly disappointed at what he said, but she started to leave nonetheless...

End Flashback:

What particularly troubled Dumbledore was the fact that, with Miss Evans' testimony, he had a problem: after what happened in Diagon Alley, the Marauders had managed to restore much of their former popularity amongst the non-Slytherins, partially because they had stopped hexing people. Making use of said popularity, Dumbledore had decided to form a faction, based on the Marauders, to compete with the Knights and Terranum, as the assumptions he had gone by for not creating such a faction were no longer valid. He strongly suspected that, while the Knights didn't hold much appeal to those he was trying to recruit, Terranum did, meaning that it could draw away the students he had been planning to induct into the Order of the Phoenix long before they were of age.

The problem was, with Miss Evans' new evidence, if she was innocent, that meant that Sirius Black,one of the leaders or his new organization, was likely guilty of attempted murder. However, if he went after the Marauder without evidence, much greater evidence than Miss Evans had provided, he would be destabilizing his power base for nothing, as the other leader, James Potter, would likely refuse to continue helping him without said evidence.

'This presents a problem...'

One Week Later Sunday September 27th, 1975

Severus looked across the Great Hall and glowered at the Marauders; although he and Potter had what was more or less a cease-fire going, Black and Pettigrew seemed to not particularly care, and were spending much of their time trying to aggravate him. Still, it was much better than it had once been, as they restricted themselves to insults for fear of detentions; nonetheless, there was still a great deal of hatred and loathing between Severus and the Marauders, not that he particularly minded.

'Frankly, even if it weren't for the years of bullying, I doubt that I would ever be friends with anyone so moronic and childish as them. They possess talent, without the intelligence to make use of it, nor the patience to avoid their ideas blowing up in their faces. Their arrogance is appalling, and they bullied people solely because they could and it was fun; I have no idea what Lily ever saw in them. Speaking of Lily...'

Severus frowned as he looked at the expression on her face; it was unlike anything that he had ever seen before, even on his own face when he was thinking of Potter with Lily several months back. Her eyes, eternally captivating as they flashed in either joy or anger, excitement or annoyance, had gone ice cold, with not even a single spark in them, almost like they were dead. Her face, always expressive, whatever her emotion, had become an iron mask, not letting the slightest bit of her feelings slip through. 'Dear Merlin...What happened?'

The look on Lily's face wasn't one of anger, sadness or even disgust; it was far worse: it was a look of cold, ruthless malice and complete loathing. Her eyes were fixed upon the Marauders, specifically, Sirius Black, and this look both chilled Severus to the bone and stoked his hatred toward Black to new heights, for, in Severus' opinion, Black deserved to die for being the cause of that look on Lily's kind face. Although sometimes her kindness made Severus very annoyed, especially when it came to all things Marauder, it was so much a part of the Lily he loved that the world seemed a little dimmer without it. Severus glanced over at Mary, eating her potatoes on his right, and noticed the same expression there that he bore on his own face, which caused him to smile slightly.

Although Mary and Lily hadn't been as close as him and Lily or him and Mary, the two of them had certainly become very good friends before the murder attempt on him, and Lily's actions after it, what with trying to get their friendship put back together by any means necessary had impressed Mary a lot, and caused her to grow rather eager to regain her friendship, even if she was still suspicious of Lily. As such, Mary had extended her protective blanket around Lily, just like she had around Severus, the same one that, when Dumbledore had allowed Severus's near-death to go unpunished, had caused her to build an entire organization from the ground up solely for the purposes of protecting him and making Dumbledore pay for his crimes...

Glaring again at Sirius, he whispered to Arcturus, who was picking morosely at the food on his plate on Severus' left because he was in Selene's doghouse after he had tried to get her a kneazle for her birthday, as she was highly alergic to them, "Hey, Arcturus...I was thinking that our comrades might be a little bit bored from lack of prey...How about we send them after...what is Potter calling them now again?"

Arcturus replied in a distracted tone of voice, seeming to be in the midst a difficult internal debate about whether or not his corned beef sandwich deserved to die, "The Guardians of Dumbledore's Mighty Socks or something like that; let's just keep calling them the Marauders and be done with it..."

Severus snorted at the poor joke, but said impatiently nonetheless, "Well?"

Arcturus shrugged, then said, still distracted, "Sure, that will be fine..."

Eight Days Later Monday October 5th, 1975

Lily growled as she entered her Potions class, challenging everyone with her eyes to just try and see how she was feeling; not being stupid, they all stayed as far away as they could. Over the past few weeks, the harassment by the Knights had not only continued, it had grown astronomically, and today was no exception; on the way to class from the Great Hall, she had been forced to dodge no less than six different feet aiming to trip her, three hexes and endure about thirty insults of 'Mudblood' and the light.

'I generally dislike fighting, but I have to say that the idea of cutting loose and sending half of Slytherin to the hospital wing is growing more appealing by the day; even Severus dealing with the Marauders never had to deal with punishment like this! And the worst part is that this is only the least of my problems...Stupid Sirius Black; I hope that he dies, is resurrected somehow, then blown to cinders. Repeat said process about fifty times and I think that it will make us even!'

Although she knew that she would never actually go through with what she hoped for Black, she couldn't say that she would mind watching someone else do it; as far as Lily was concerned, he had burned his bridges with her clear through with his little plot. Unfortunately, she was running into a few problems in making him pay for his crimes.

After her extremely disappointing attempt to persuade Dumbledore, Lily realized just how little evidence she really had; even though she knew almost everything the perpetraitor, Black, had done, she had learned nothing that would enable her to establish her own innocence or Black's guilt. As such, she hadn't mentioned her recent discoveries to either Severus or Mary, as she wanted to have proof before trying to claim innocence with them, rather than risk the almost-restored friendship they had. Instead, she had elected to make use of her Potions knowledge to brew a batch of Veritaserum for use on Sirius, then have them listen to the wanker confess to his crimes...

Speaking of Black, Lily glared at him again, incensed anew at what he had said to her two weeks ago, when he had all but confessed his guilt, yet had gotten angry at her for trying to prove it...

Flashback Sunday September 20th, 1975:

Lily stormed up to Sirius, who was reading alone in the common room, apparently studying for Transfiguration class; upon seeing her, he waved and said brightly, "What's up, Lily?"

Furious at how happy he was when she knew about what he had done to Severus, Lily used a quick Levicorpus and Depulso combo to send him crashing upside-down into the wall behind him, then she said coldly, "You won't get away with it, Black; I know what you did, and its only a matter of time before everyone else knows too."

Baffled and angry, Sirius then shouted, while still upside down, "What the hell is going on, Lily!? Why did you he-ACK!"

Lily interrupted him by punching him in the stomach as hard as she possibly could, then said, "I know what you did at the end of last term, how you tried to have Remus kill Severus while in werewolf form! Now then, this is your first, last and only chance, go and confess to Dumbledore now, before I do it for you! If you do this, then I promise that I won't let Sev and Mary use you for target practice next time they want to practice their Sectumsempra spell!"

Sirius blanched for a moment, then recovered with a small smirk, saying coolly, even though he looked extremely strange upsidedown with his robes only kept from falling over his face by his hands, "You're bluffing; if you actually COULD prove my guilt you wouldn't have bothered coming here, and just went straight to Dumbledore. Even if I were guilty, big 'if', you can't prove a single, bloody thing." He then said angrily, "Besides, what would be the problem anyhow? From what Dumbledore told James and I, Snape and Macdonald made it out safely enough, and its not like the world wouldn't be a better place if they hadn't! The two of them are nothing more th-YEOUCH!"

Lily calmly fired another Depulso, causing Sirius' whole body to slam itself against the wall so hard that Lily was sure that he now had a wall-shaped imprint all over his back, then said with a voice filled with utter loathing, "Frankly, Sirius, I think the world would be far better off without YOU in it, but apparently we have to suffer through YOUR presence regardless! I admit, I was bluffing about having proof, but I wasn't bluffing about letting Mary and Sev take care of you; if you don't turn yourself in now, then when I have the evidence, I am going to go and let THEM decide what is a proper punish for worthless! Pieces! Of! Slime! Like! You!" As she said the last six words, Lily kicked him in the chest as hard as she could once for each word and Sirius gritted his teeth to keep from screaming in pain.

She then said softly, her voice filled with the kind of malice she had only heard before from the lips of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, "One thing to keep in mind, Sirius Black, is that there is no such thing as a perfect crime, and if I have to spend the rest of my bloody life finding the mistake that you made, I will GLADLY do so!"

With one final Depulso for good measure, Lily then turned and left the Gryffindor Common Room, leaving a badly hurt and dazed Sirius crumpled on the floor behind her...

End Flashback:

When Lily had told Sirius that she would be happy to spend the rest of her life proving her innocence, she had meant it, but what she had said was geared more towards getting him to slip up rather than really believing that there was proof lying around. However, Sirius had had years of practice pretending innocence after pranking someone, so he was still laughing and joking like their confrontation had never happened, so no-one was able to tell the difference, although the fact that Lily and him avoided speaking with each other whenever possible caused some gossip to go around that he had made a pass at her and was sent back on his hindquarters.

Still, Lily wasn't one to give up, and she had decided that she would find out the truth by any means necessary. As such, she had started brewing a cauldron of Veritaserum in a secret tunnel on the sixth floor, figuring that it wouldn't be discovered anytime soon as James had told her that, in her past life, he hadn't managed to find it until well into sixth year. Unfortunately, it would be another two weeks until she was able to use it, and she would have to be extremely careful, as using Veritaserum without Ministry permission was a crime punishable by up to six months in Azkaban. 'Punishment or not, its worth the risk, as long as it gets me the proof necessary to restore our friendship...'

Realizing that she was getting lost in thought, Lily tried to pay attention to Slughorn's lecture, but without Severus' presence providing someone who could compete with her seriously, it was frightfully boring. Even the one time that she had tried to sit together with James and Sabrina hadn't changed it at all. 'I just can't get my interest piqued without Severus here to compete against; that is another thing that Black will suffer-'

Suddenly the dungeon door opened, and she whirled around, only to see Severus and Mary standing there, almost glowing in the torchlight, Severus with a sardonic sneer and Mary with a slight smile standing beside him. Slughorn only nodded over to them before telling them to "Grab a seat."; Lily's heart raced and she was fairly sure that she was blushing as the two sat down beside her, then she asked quietly, "You came back...? Why?"

The two of them glanced at each other, then Severus said sarcastically, smiling slightly as he did so, "Apparently the Ravenclaws are less intelligent than their House's reputation would indicate; neither Mary nor I could stand another day working with dunderheads such as them..."

Lily hugged the two of them, causing Severus to blush slightly before he hid his face with his hair, then she beamed at him, causing Mary to roll her eyes, before saying "So do you add this now...?" as she grabbed the bottle of Combustion Concoction that Lily had made a couple of weeks before, which caused both Lily and Severus to shout "NO!", causing Mary to flinch and drop the potion inside. Severus had time to mumble "Dear Merlin...", then the potion exploded, showering them with a rather disgusting cocktail of ingredients...

One Week Later Monday October 12th, 1975

Mary frowned a little as she thought over the events of the past week; there was something going on involving Lily and Black and she didn't like it. The look of loathing on Lily's face whenever she looked at the young Gryffindor meant that, whatever it was, it wasn't just big, it was huge; never, at any point of Mary's friendship with Lily, had she seen her look at anyone with hatred, not even Mulciber or Avery, and Mary knew that she had plenty of good reasons to hate them.

Mary herself only tolerated Mulciber, and she hated Avery, as, like with Mulciber, he had hexed her more than a few times, and with his probable rape attempt on top of it...It was a very good thing that he was likely never to meet her in a dark alleyway, yet Lily had never looked at them like she looked at Black now.

What was particularly annoying was that, whatever Black had done, Lily for some reason refused to tell her or Severus, trying to placate them with a fake smile and a change of subject, neither of which could fool the two of them, who knew her better than anyone, for very long. Mary would have been suspicious about Lily's keeping secrets so soon after the three of them had started being friends again, but she couldn't imagine what her sudden hatred of Sirius had to do with them, so she and Severus only watched her whenever they could, both worrying, but unable to do anything but watch.

'I wish she would just tell us; unless it is something like her actually being guilty of the murder attempt upon us, it couldn't be that bad...'

Wanting to clear her mind of such a depressing topic, Mary then sighed and glanced over at Severus; letting her eyes roam over her ex-boyfriend she couldn't help but smile as she watched him brewing the Bamboozling Brew that he had prepared for next week's Potions class. Even though they had just received the assignment today, Severus couldn't help himself from working on it at the first opportunity, not that Mary minded, as she got to see Severus at his best, when he was utterly focused on something and his brilliant mind was working hard to improve it, and the fact that he fit the 'Dark and Mysterious' type to a 'T' didn't hurt her attraction for him at all, nor did his rather fit body.

He would never be the most physically attractive, but he wasn't that bad, and his intelligence drew Mary to him like a moth to a flame; there had been other boys that Mary had been attracted to, even Black at one point, something she was glad she had never told anyone, but no-one had managed to take her interest and make it nearly all-consuming like he had. Her love for him had reached the point where she admitted to herself that she would be willing to sacrifice her life for him if it proved necessary, and she suspected that Lily felt the same way as well; it was the only reason that Mary was even willing to consider her as her rival.

'Of course, I have no intention of getting into a situation where sacrificing my life for him should prove necessary; if I sacrifice myself, then it will only hurt him. As Severus said, it is far better to sacrifice others for the sake of the one you love than sacrifice yourself...' A while back, Severus had told her of a quote he had heard from his father, paraphrasing it as the original wording was inappropriate for a child his age, that the American General, George Patton had said, and how he had made it his own.

'No shmuck ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb shmuck die for his country.' Mary and Severus agreed with this ideal completely, as both of them would much rather put people like Avery and Black into their graves rather than let any of their small group get harmed...Suddenly noticing that Severus had stopped due to what appeared to be a break, Mary said,

"So, Severus, what do you think? Should we pair Celeste and Bode together in group four? Or should we split them up and put Celeste in group four and Bode in group five?"

Severus thought it over carefully, then said, "Crouch said that he wants each group to be capable of handling any and all expected situations, so I would say split the two of them up, as we don't have many who are as good with Charms as those two are."

Mary nodded, then said teasingly, "You know, Sev, I think that you might be getting a crush on Miss Greengrass here, what with all this complimenting of her..."

Severus blanched, then said with a tone of embarrassment, "Hey! Just because she happens to have good marks in Charms doesn't mean that I want to date her! I dated you didn't I?"

Mary laughed, then said, "I dunno...I think that Charms marks might just be your Amortentia..."

Severus had by then turned slightly red with embarrassment, so Mary decided to cut him a break, "OK, OK, its fine..." She then grinned as a thought struck her, "I guess this means that you will have to be my pack-mule instead when we go to Hogsmeade next week!"

Severus was clearly about to protest, but suddenly had to turn as his potion started to bubble, apparently indicating that it was ready for the next step. Mary mentally cheered for a moment, knowing that Severus would be far too late to do anything about it after she told Lily about his willingness to be a pack-mule...

Chuckling as Severus went back to his potion, Mary smiled as she finished up the roster so that it would be ready to mail to Crouch; it had been a stroke of pure, absolute luck when he had been there to debrief them after the Diagon Alley incident, as it had given her access to a wealth of resources she hadn't expected, such as the transcripts of everyone in the school and nearly a thousand galleons for equipment. Even more luckily, those resources were about to go through the roof, what with Minister Bagnold stepping down for him after being blasted in the press for making promises that the wizarding world would be completely safe for the years to come if she were re-elected mere days before the incident.

It had been quite a surprise to the two of them, but Crouch was completely in support of their ideas and had even come up with his own suggestions; he was a man after their own hearts. He, like them, understood that war was coming, and it would certainly be a bloody one; unlike Bagnold, who had preferred to pretend that the signs on the horizon were not predicting war, Crouch had no intention of being caught flat-footed, and had started taking steps in anticipation, such as the creation of Terranum. Like Mary and Severus, Crouch had realized long ago that the Ministry simply wasn't set up for a total war, as the Aurors, while well-trained, were first and foremost detectives, not fighters, and the plans on recognizing the actions the Death Eaters took as criminal were a mistake, as it meant that they had to be proven to be guilty of crimes...

Instead, Severus and Mary had suggested that he view the Death Eaters as rebels, guilty of sedition and treason by definition; this would mean that, rather than needing to prove their guilt to prosecute them of any crimes, the Ministry would be empowered to simply kill them, as the crime of treason was punishable by death...

Then there was Terranum...

Author's Note: Severus, Lily and Mary continue circling closer and closer to each other, but the incident at the end of last term still has a wedge between them. Crouch has succeeded at what he had always tried to do in the original time-line, become Minister of Magic, and Dumbledore continues to try to protect the 'greater good', even at the cost of individual people's happiness.

For those of you who are wondering why Lily's mind completely shut out Dumbledore and why she was unable to withdraw a single memory, it has a rather simple explanation, and it is because of the one difference between her and every other human being on the planet...

I hope that you all enjoyed this chapter and I am sorry it took so long to come out (I had a lot of different, conflicting ideas where I could take the plot; what can I say?). The next Chapter of 'What if? The Purgatory of Lily' will probably come out before the next chapter of this one does (It may be a shameless plug, but I strongly suggest reading it!).