ANANKE
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἀνάγκη (anánkē, "necessity")
Noun
ananke (uncountable)
1. Necessity beyond all supplications or sway. Conceived as the ultimate dictator of all fate and circumstances, to which even the gods must ultimately pay homage and deference.
- Wiktionary
Words couldn't have expressed how Lily felt when she Apparated in front of the Turner house that night. It was best described as a deafening, blood-curdling screech that kept ringing in her ears as the potential consequences of her mistake began to unfold in her imagination: her son murdered in his bed, Severus lying in a pool of his own blood, Voldemort taking control of the archway and using it to turn the world into something even worse than it already was. Tonight, her whole world was hanging by a burning thread.
She wished she could have split herself in two, three pieces to be able to get to all of them at once. She needed to warn Severus, and she needed to warn the Ministry. But first of all, she needed to rescue Harry. He had to be Voldemort's top priority, too, and he had no way of protecting himself. Voldemort still didn't know where exactly Harry was, but that was bound to change in no time. Lily needed to get her son somewhere safe, and she needed to do it fast.
She could only pray that nothing bad would happen to Severus in the meanwhile. She found some solace in the knowlege that Severus had been preparing for the worst ever since he had become Dumbledore's agent, and he had made plans to defend himself should he be exposed. But that still didn't mean that his safety was guaranteed. She feared that she would make it back home only to find a Dark Mark looming on the dark sky above.
The rising wind tousled her hair as she ran to the house, ready to get Harry and her parents out of there by any means necessary. But were the Turners still all right? Could she still help them? She couldn't see any signs of an attack outside the house, which was good; Voldemort wouldn't have left the place in such pristine condition had gotten there first.
Taking a closer look at the house, she realized that the lights were out, and that the car was gone. Perhaps the Turners weren't even home tonight. However, she soon noticed a big black dog lying on the ground in the garden. It raised its head and eyed her suspiciously when she approached the door, and then it began to bark at her. Surely, they wouldn't have left the poor dog out in the cold if the whole family had gone out?
She briefly considered ringing the bell but found that she completely lacked the patience for anything that required standing around and waiting. Thus, she simply flicked her wand to unlock the door and entered the place with as much stealth as her current state of mind granted her, which was not much. She was shivering and sweating at the same time, and she had to squeeze her wand hard to keep it from slipping out of her cold hand.
The floor creaked under her feet as she made her way further into the house, and it was the only sound she could hear in the darkness besides the barking. The place seemed empty from the inside, too. However, she soon detected a faint glimmer of light that came from upstairs, and she decided to follow it.
And then, all of a sudden, she tripped on something.
It was big and it was at the level of her feet. It made her fall face first on the floor and drop her wand. The sound she made when she fell rang through the quiet house. And when she turned her head to see what she had stumbled on, she almost gave a shriek.
There, only inches away from her face, lied the body of a woman. Lily didn't know her. It was dark, but she could tell that this woman – a young, round-faced blonde – bore absolutely no resemblance to Harry's adoptive mother. This had to be the nanny.
Which meant that Harry had to be upstairs, with whoever had done this to his carer.
A surge of fear shook Lily's body violently.
It was too late.
Voldemort was already here.
The woman was still breathing, Lily realized, as she picked up her wand with a trembling hand and climbed back on her feet. She had only been stunned. But why had Voldemort spared the life of a Muggle bystander? It struck her as odd, but she didn't have the time to figure out the answer to that question. Still, it granted her some illusion of hope that she might have arrived at the nick of time after all – that perhaps Voldemort was yet to finish what he had come here to do.
It was that feeble sense of hope alone that gave her the strength to drag herself upstairs, although both her heart and her head were so heavy with the most awful expectations that she could barely move. Somehow, her feet carried her to the source of the faint light: a half-closed bedroom door at the end of the upstairs hallway. She pushed it open, even though she was horrified to see what was waiting for her on the other side.
It was like a scene from her worst nightmares. A dark October night, tall shadows dancing on the wall, the howling wind beneath the window pane. A black-haired child sleeping peacefully in his bed, completely unaware of the stranger standing right next to him. The crippling terror hit her so hard that it took her a moment to realize what was wrong with the picture.
The cloaked man next to Harry's bed wasn't Voldemort.
It was Dumbledore.
He turned around and pulled down his hood when he heard her come in. Unlike Lily, who was gaping her mouth in awe, he didn't seem the slightest bit surprised to see her.
"I'm glad you made it," he said softly, and then he glanced at Harry again. "Don't worry. Your son is fine. I put him under a gentle spell, just to make sure that he gets to sleep through the night. There's no reason for him to witness any part of this."
"Professor Dumbledore, what are you doing here?" she gasped. She felt an urge to add a litany of cusses to her question, but – for once in her life – even strong words escaped her.
Dumbledore tilted his head. "Did you not get my message?"
Lily stared at him eyes wide open, but she still couldn't make any sense of the situation.
"What message? What's going on in here? I thought - I thought that -," she swallowed the rest of her sentence, and wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. She simply had to repeat her original question. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same question," said Dumbledore. "I sent young Bartemius to get you, but I'm now getting the impression that he just missed you. And yet here you are, through some loop or another. If that's not serendipitous, I don't know what is."
For some reason, she thought she could hear deep sadness in Dumbledore's voice. Sadness, amiability, and steady determination. Contradictions, layers, mistmatching emotions that kept his true self beyond her grasp. She didn't understand what he was saying any more than she understood what he was feeling – or why she had found him standing in her way once again.
"I just – I had to – Look, Barty Crouch Jr is a Death Eater," she stammered, and shook her head to clear her thoughts. "He overheard me telling him something I shouldn't have said, and then he went straight back to -," she blinked, as some of the pieces to this mystery suddenly fell into their right places, "- you. He came to you."
Dumbledore said nothing, but somehow she felt like his silence proved her right.
That still didn't mean that it made any sense to her.
"Why would he tell you?" she asked.
Dumbledore's smiled at her faintly. There was warmth in that smile, and yet he still looked somehow mournful, like a midwinter dawn.
"I can see why you're confused," he said. "I presume that James told you about Bartemius. That's why you came here thinking that Voldemort was about to attack your son."
Lily tried to process his words, with little success. She looked at Harry, and then back at Dumbledore, and she still couldn't see the connection between what had happened and where they were now.
"I know why you came to that conclusion," Dumbledore continued. "You thought that Bartemius still is who he should be – the most devoted servant Voldemort ever had. But he made a different choice this time. One that brought him to me."
There was something sharp and scornful in Dumbledore's eyes now. Like daggers, they dug deep into her flesh and nailed her to the wall, and for the next few moments she could do nothing but stand and listen.
"I suppose all Bartemius ever wanted was someone to guide him," he said, with a pensive, thoughtful mood that seemed entirely unfitting for the occasion. "It was never really about the cause for him. He just wanted someone to believe in. A father to replace the one who had failed him. In another life, he found that in Voldemort. And in this life, through one twist of fate or another, he came to me instead. Bartemius has been a loyal friend of mine for years."
Now Lily was even more lost. How could Dumbledore be fully aware of what the other Crouch had been like? Lily herself hadn't even remembered, let alone spoken out loud, until fifteen minutes ago. Her total bewilderment must have been obvious, for Dumbledore soon gave a heavy sigh.
"Perhaps I should explain why I've arranged us to meet here," he said and sat down on the chair next to Harry's bed. "Why don't you take a seat? We have much to discuss."
Again, she looked at Harry, who seemed to be sound asleep under a pile of covers. Whatever Dumbledore intended to do, she did not want him anywhere near her son.
"Leave Harry out of this," she said. "Let's do this somewhere else."
"Lily," he said – warmly, yet with enough gravity that made it clear that he was not going to negotiate with her. "This conversation is long overdue, and we're running out of time. I'm going to have to insist that we have it right here and right now without any further delays."
She hesitated, but then she decided to give in. Perhaps the quickest way to get the boy somewhere safe was to listen to what the old wizard had to say.
"All right," she told him. "Tell me. Why are we here?"
Dumbledore crossed his hands. "Because I need to tell you a secret, and because I need to ask of you a question. The secret is not nice, and the question is not easy. But I hope that we reach an understanding by the end of this conversation."
"What's the question?" she asked.
"In a minute," he said. "This has been an eventful day for the both of us, and it'll make things clearer if you know about the real chain of events that brought us here."
"Why don't you start by telling me how come you know about Crouch," she told him. "How can you know what he was like in that other life?"
He gave her a hollow smile.
"He is such an intelligent young man. I've never had a friend as dedicated and trustworthy as him. Everybody in the Order of the Phoenix has pledged allegiance to me, and yet I have to say that I couldn't trust any of them blindly. All of them are prone to disobedience, secrecy, or just plain weakness. All but Bartemius. He would rather die than betray me."
Something sinister flashed behind his eyes.
"I know there's been something going on inside the Order, right under my nose. A conspiracy, perhaps, or simply growing discontent. I knew that certain people were talking to each other, but not to me, and I sensed that some of them had begun to question my authority. That will simply not do. Not because I'm jealous of my power, but because we can't defeat Voldemort unless we stand together. I knew I had to weed out any potential dissidence before it would erode the very foundation of our resistance. And for that, I needed Bartemius."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Lily. "I've worked alone since this began. I have nothing to with any conspiracy within the Order."
"Oh, I know you don't," Dumbledore smiled. "I was just trying to explain why Bartemius was keeping an eye on James. I wanted to know whether I could still trust him, so I asked Bartemius to find out whether there was something about him I should be aware of. James has always been so flighty."
Lily frowned. She had always thought that James was one of Dumbledore's favourites. Had she gotten that wrong, too?
"To be honest, I never thought I'd discover anything truly compromising about James. He seemed depressed, but not deceitful. But then Bartemius contacted me out of the blue to inform me that James had just learned he had a child he hadn't even known existed. A child born and hidden away by none other than Lily Evans. And if past events have taught me anything, it's that any curious matter involving you, Miss Evans, warrants full and thorough inspection, because you are an interesting person."
He stared at her with his piercing blue eyes, and for one chilling moment she felt completely exposed, like he could see through her clothes and her skin, through her flesh and her bones all the way to the furthest corners of her mind.
"Then he found the full truth and told you everything. Yeah, I already got that part," Lily said and averted her eyes, in a sad attempt to escape his penetrating gaze.
He smiled some more. But this time, it seemed like he did it only to reveal his teeth.
"Actually, Bartemius didn't have to tell me anything. I was there," he said. "I came to see James this morning, once Bartemius had told me about the child. But you got there first. I saw you going in, and I followed you. I had a feeling that eavesdropping would be the most efficient way of finding out what you were hiding from me, and I was not wrong."
"Fuck," Lily cursed under her breath, but every cuss word she knew felt like an understatement. She felt like kicking herself for having revealed her deepest, darkest secrets directly to Dumbledore himself.
"It really is curious how these things come to pass," said Dumbledore. "I can't say that I think that everything in this life is dictated by fate, but there does seem to be some kind of thread that keeps us all in our places. Certain events seem to be unavoidable. Certain people seem to gravitate towards one another no matter where they go. And when something goes amiss, the universe seems to have a way of correcting itself. Just look at us. You've made such a mess of this timeline, and yet, despite all of your interventions, we've ended up right here where we belong."
"Look, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here," Lily snapped. "I understand that you have a bone to pick with me, but Harry doesn't have to be a part of this. There are no destinies or chosen ones here. I made sure that my son could grow up in peace, far from everything he had to go through in that other life. I'll tell you everything you want to know about that archway, but please leave Harry be."
"I hope that at least a part of you knows how irresponsible that sounds," he replied. "What you're essentially saying is that you'd be willing to surrender the secrets to time and space to someone you clearly despise just to protect your son."
"I'm a mother. Do I have a choice in the way I feel?" she argued.
"We're all something to someone," he replied with a shrug. "Someone's child, someone's brother, someone's lover. And we're all naturally inclined to protect those closest to us. And really, it's only human. There was a time when I was ready to forgo common sense for the sake of the ones I loved, so believe me when I say that I do understand how you feel. But true responsibility is knowing that we must put the greater good before our own sentiments. I learned that the hard way. This is where you should learn your lesson, too."
Lily didn't like the way their conversation was going. She had a bad feeling that she needed to get Harry out of there before Dumbledore got to his main point, but she knew she couldn't have just grabbed him and fled. The old wizard could have easily stopped her.
All she could do was to stall him. She remembered what she had told James before she had left. If she wouldn't return in time, he would find help and follow her. It would not be long until the rest of the Order of the Phoenix would come and rescue her – or, at the very least, provide a distraction that would allow her to take Harry and run.
"But that still doesn't explain how you knew about Crouch," she asked, just to keep him talking. "I didn't even mention him to James until a moment before I came here. You couldn't have possibly known what he was like in that other world."
"That's true, but I'm yet to tell you everything I did before I came here," he said. "It might not have occurred to you, seeing that you seem to put your kin above everything else, that I could be more interested in the archway than in Harry when I learned the truth about your past. I went straight to the Department of Mysteries after I left James's house."
She blinked. "But it was destroyed."
"As they would have you believe," Dumbledore replied. "The public has not been informed of this, but the Deparment of Mysteries was fully restored years ago. The Unspeakables thought that it would be safer to have Voldemort believe that the place is still in ruins so that his men wouldn't try to attack it again. You didn't really think that a few falling rocks could destroy something as ancient and powerful as a portal through time, did you?"
"I didn't," she replied. "I just thought that it was now inaccessible. And in any case, I never wanted to go near it again."
"You were never tempted to take another peek at the future?"
Lily shook her head. "I thought I would just ruin everything if I tried it again."
Dumbledore's eyes brightened. "Then perhaps you do understand yourself better than I give you credit for. But I'm afraid I lack your restraint. I needed to see that archway with my own eyes, and so I did."
Her heart skipped a beat, although she was not sure why. She knew that Dumbledore couldn't have used the archway even if he had tried. The next solstice was months away, so any attempt to pass through would have resulted in his immediate death.
"They call it the Death Chamber, did you know that?" he continued. "That room the archway is in. The Unspeakables study it to unravel the mysteries of the netherworld. They spend their days trying to decipher the voices they hear coming from the other side, but so far no one has ever understood what they're saying. Some even go mad trying. But it was different for me. Maybe because I already knew what I was looking for."
Something about Dumbledore's demeanour changed just then. His voice became dreamier, as if he was talking to himself instead of her.
"It felt like suddenly becoming fluent in a foreign language. When I thought about all those things that had never happened because of your interventions, I began to understand what those voices were saying. As if I was listening to the wailing of lost potential. That's what those voices are, I think. The ghost pain of things that never came to be. An echo in eternity. And somehow, I understood why. You can't simply write a whole future out of existence and expect it not to leave any kind of mark."
"What? You mean that the other world still exists, right there on the other side?" Lily asked. The thought was followed by a great deal of anxiety, but also a weird sense of nostalgia when she thought about the other Severus.
Dumbledore shrugged. "I don't know. I admit that much of that peculiar contruction remains a mystery to me."
Suddenly, his blue eyes turned wide and glassy.
"All I know is that when I listened to those voices, I began to remember something I felt like I had forgotten. I got the strangest urge to pull back that veil, and to gaze into the infinity," he paused and raised his hand, and appeared to mimic what he had just described. "And then it all came back to me. My life. My death. Seventeen years of history that had since been undone. What remains of that other life called for me through time and space, and it forced its way into my memory. Suddenly I remembered it all. I remembered it like I had lived it."
A fraught silence landed between them, as Dumbledore seemed to be mesmerized by the memory of whatever had happened to him while Lily stood there gaping at him.
"That makes no sense," she said eventually. "You can't – you can't just remember something that never even happened to you."
"It did happen to me, in another place, in another time, to someone I could have been," he replied. "When time gets twisted and corrupted, or cut like a thread, it doesn't just cease to exist. Something always remains in the fringes of eternity. And today, that something reached out to me from beyond the veil."
Lily tried to wrap her mind around this impossible idea. It sounded simply too mad to be true. But Dumbledore didn't look like he was lying.
He gazed at Harry again, and placed his hand gently on the sleeping child's back. Lily held her breath.
"I remember Harry, too," he said and smiled at the boy. "I tried not to love him, but I could not help it. He was like the grandson I never had. I couldn't have been more proud of him. It thrills me to know that he did defeat Voldemort in the end, even though I didn't live to see it. Then again, I never doubted him. I had spent so much time setting him up as the hero he was meant to become that I knew he could make it."
He turned his face back to Lily. "Do you know what made him so special?"
"The prophecy," Lily replied, although she didn't even believe in it.
Dumbledore shook his head.
"No. It was never about that. The prophecy did put him in an unique position, but there was never anything special about him per se. Sure he was brave, and noble, and strong, but not remarkably so. In fact, he was always rather ordinary. Average, even. And that was exactly why he was the hero we needed. I didn't realize that until the last years of my life, but when I did, I was glad that I had chosen him instead of Neville."
Lily blinked. "That you had chosen him?"
The look on Dumbledore's face was unreadable.
"People like to think of themselves as free individuals who make their own choices," he said, "but I believe that most of us don't even want all that responsibility. Few people truly enjoy liberty. Most of us prefer to be told what to do and what to think. Who to love and who to hate. Who to be. Following someone else's commands gives us the illusion of safety and order in a world that's ultimately quite chaotic. That's why we need leaders. We feel lost without them."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Lily insisted. Inside, she was still trying to find a way out. She felt like a butterfly that was about to be caught in a spiderweb.
"I'm trying to help you understand what it was like for us, back in that other time," Dumbledore elaborated. "The truth is that we were losing the war. Not because the Death Eaters were stronger, but because Tom Riddle knew how to create an illusion of stronger. He understood the power of a good story, and no story was better than the one he had written about himself: that he was the great Lord Voldemort, here to punish the weak, to reward the strong, and to bring about a new age of stability and prosperity. He told his story so well that the world eventually forget who he really was – simply another poor orphan with nothing to his name."
He stood up and took a few paces around the room.
"And thus, some began to love him, and others began to fear him, and either way he was soon ruling over everyone because he was running the narrative", he continued. "It was that story that made him truly immortal. What came after it was just the finishing touch. Death comes to all of us, but stories live on. Especially those that are not true."
"If that's true, then why has it taken you so long to defeat him?" asked Lily.
"Because our story wasn't as strong as his," he replied. "That was our problem from the start. Our ideals did not stand a chance against his, because an unappealing truth always loses to a powerful myth. Voldemort gave people a story, a champion, and a purpose, and so they flocked to him. We could never compete with that, because we didn't even have a hero of our own. Until he came along," he gestured at Harry, "The Chosen One".
"I thought you said he was ordinary," said Lily.
"Oh, he was," Dumbledore replied. "That's what made him so perfect. Son of a respected pureblood wizard and a common Muggle-born mother. Born out of love, baptized by tragedy, raised in oblivion as an orphan. He entered our world untainted, freed from the sins of his father, and completely untouched by the politics and the beliefs that usually shape our kind from early childhood. That's why he could become a hero for all of us. Anyone could see a hint of themselves in him because he was both a blank slate and a combination of the world of magical and the world of Muggles. He had his enemies, too, but they were radicals, and they weren't many. In the end, they only made him shine brighter."
Lily gazed at Harry. She still couldn't see him clearly because he was buried under the covers. It didn't occur to her until then that this was the closest she had been to her son since giving birth to him.
"If there's a point to this, I hope you're about to get to it," she said.
All of a sudden, Dumbledore look weary and old.
"Young people like you do not know what it was like before Voldemort," he said. "You all seem to think that we all lived in peace and harmony until he emerged, but the truth is that there has always been a dark threat hanging upon our world. Before Voldemort, we called that threat Grindelwald. Before him, it was the dreaded Valerian Voronin, who spent decades terrorizing Muggles all over the world, and before that there was Ceridwen the Merciless, who tried to declare herself the Witch Queen of England. There have been many dark lords and evil witches in our history reaching all the way back to Morgan le Fey and beyond. Voldemort is simply the latest one in a long line of wizards who have tried to rule the world."
"I'm not an idiot. I know our history," said Lily. Now she was getting the impression that it was Dumbledore who was trying to stall.
"It's one thing to simply know the past, and an entirely different thing to understand it enough to see the future," said Dumbledore. "If you look at our history as a whole, you'll notice that when a dark wizard dies, it never takes long for someone else to take his place. There are always those among us who would rather abuse their powers to rule over Muggles and other lesser beings, just because they can. And on it goes, this mad dance of ours."
He sat down on the chair again, and he looked like he was carrying the whole world on his shoulders.
"I am an old man," he said. "I was already an old man when I began fighting this particular war. I had seen dark lords rise and fall, and I'd grown so very tired of it. I wanted something other than a part to play in this endless cycle of blood. I wanted to see the powerful putting down their weapons, and listening to the wise. I wanted to see order where there chaos has always reigned. I wanted our people to learn from our past mistakes."
He looked up at her. "There's something deeply wrong with a world that keeps trying to destroy itself. All I've ever really wanted was to fix it. I wanted to take control of the narrative and tell a better story than the one we keep repeating. I wanted my legacy to be a future that was not simply an echo of our past. That's what I talk about when I talk about the greater good."
Lily was finally starting to understand why Dumbledore had come to Harry.
"So you wanted Harry to be your champion, so that he could replace Voldemort," she said, and she bit her teeth. "You can't choose his fate for him. He's a person, not a puppet. Why couldn't you just become your own hero?"
Dumbledore's lip curled in a way that suggested he didn't find the idea entirely unappealing, but he shook his head anyway.
"Oh, no. I could have never become a true leader. I was too far controversial for that. I made some affiliations and mistakes in my youth that rendered me unsuitable for any position that required the support of the public. What we needed was someone young and pure, someone who could unify our people through compassion, someone with a story strong enough to compete with the myth of the Dark Lord. An innocent hero," his eyes suddenly turned darker. "Or a victim."
She didn't like the way he looked at her. "What are you saying?"
He straightened his back and held her gaze. "I have something to confess. It was the darkest secret I ever kept. I never told anyone about it, not even to Harry, or Severus, or anyone else I might have confided in. I was too ashamed to speak of it, yet I cannot regret what I did because it had to be done. It ended up yielding even better results than I had imagined, as if some higher power had acted through me when I chose to do such an unspeakable act. I do not expect you to forgive me, but I do hope that you will understand why I did it."
"Tell me," Lily whispered, even though she could already tell that she was about to learn something she would rather not know. Her feet felt weak, but she stood before him like a rock, ready to receive whatever horrors he was about to set upon her.
"I am the reason Voldemort killed you and James."
His words sounded like a gunshot. It pierced the air, it pierced her skin. She was bleeding, yet she still couldn't quite comprehend what he was telling her.
"...what?"
"I had to," he said. "We were losing the war. Our side had become a mess. Everyone was either too busy fighting each other, or too cowardly to stand up for what was right. The Ministry was weak, and the Order of the Phoenix was too small. Meanwhile, Voldemort was quickly gaining support. I was desperate. I didn't know how to stop him."
For a moment, he looked scared, frail, and ancient.
"Then it became clear to us that Voldemort was going to attack either you and the Longbottoms, and a horrible idea came to me. What if I allowed it? What would people think of the Dark Lord if he murdered a defenseless child and his innocent parents in cold blood? He had done heinous things before, but nothing quite as disgraceful. I realized that a tragedy as perfect as that was just what we needed to seize the narrative and to rekindle the public's interest in resistance. Outrage can be a powerful weapon, and it sounded just like the kind of thing that could help the people find their courage to fight Voldemort again. So I made a choice. Three innocent souls for the rest of the world. I chose you and James and Harry, because you were more expendable than the Longbottoms."
Lily couldn't believe her ears. It was far too foul, too cruel, too much, even from him. She covered her mouth with her hand to hold back whatever was about to come out of it.
"You have to believe me when I say that I never took any pride or pleasure in it," he continued, and she could hear his regret in his voice. "I adored you, all of you. You were young and blameless, and you trusted me. I wish there had been another way, but the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that a sacrifice was the only thing that could have turned the tide for our favour. It was evil, but it was the lesser evil, and it was necessary. And I wept for you and your child."
"Stop talking!" she hissed. "Just stop... I don't want to hear it."
He ignored her pleas.
"It was deceptively easy. All I had to do was to have him find you when you least expected it. I suggested you appointed yourself a secret keeper, and then I made sure that you picked the one who was bound to betray you. I knew that Peter had turned against us. I just hadn't told anyone because I had suspected that I might have some strategic use for a sneak, as it did. But you wouldn't have picked him over Sirius and Remus, so I had to make some arrangements. I convinced Sirius that you shouldn't choose him because it would be too obvious. I also made you believe that Remus's lycantrophy made too unreliable. That left you with Peter."
He paused, and for a moment the distant barking of the dog was the only sound that broke the silence.
"I hoped that your deaths would be quick, clean, and painless," he continued. "I hoped that you wouldn't fight back, so that he wouldn't have a reason to make you suffer. I even borrowed James's invisibility cloak so that you'd have nowhere to hide. If you had survived, it would have all been useless. I know it sounds cruel, but I did it out of love."
His eyes turned a little bit brighter. "And then it happened. A miracle. You died, but the boy lived, and suddenly Voldemort was gone. I had been filled with so much doubt until then, but that one night vindicated me in full. I knew that my sacrifice hadn't been in vain. We had a hero, and we had a story. Voldemort had been overthrown, and I had been granted a second chance to get everything right. It came with the cost of your lives, but together we ended up saving thousands. Together, we created hope."
"We didn't do anything," said Lily. She was quivering with a fury unlike anything she had ever felt before. "It was all you. You and your big plans, you and your manipulations, you and your fucking greater good!"
"Yes. The greater good," he replied, with unflinching determination.
He stood up and took a few steps towards her, looking as menacing as a bird of prey, but she was far too angry to be intimidated by him.
"I told you my secret because it's imperative that you understand the significance of your own death," he said. "It wasn't your destiny. It didn't happen by chance. You died because it was necessary."
"What the hell does that even mean?" she shouted.
"It means that our story demanded it. It was crucial part of a carefully planned sequence of events, something that needed to happen so that the story could end with hope, goodness, and peace. The ancient Greeks had a fitting word for something like this. Ananke. Necessity."
Something about the word made Lily's skin crawl. Or perhaps it was the conviction in Dumbledore's voice when he said it. Now she knew what he was about to ask of her to do.
"You've managed to cause quite a lot of damage to this timeline," he said, "- but I believe there's still time to set things right. Harry can still become the Boy Who Lived. He can still be our unspoilt hero, the one who will unite our hearts against evil. But that won't happen unless he becomes a myth."
He looked deep into Lily's eyes. "You need to die so that your son can become who he was meant to be."
"You're insane!" she shouted. "This - this doesn't need to happen! You already know how to defeat Voldemort! Just tell us what to do, and nobody else has to die!"
Dumbledore narrowed his eyes. "Have you not listened to what I've been trying to tell you? Voldemort is not the problem. He's merely the product of it. What I want is to make sure that his legacy dies with him."
"But it doesn't have to be like this!" Lily insisted. Her back was against the wall now. "Work with me! We can do something else to make sure that there won't be another Dark Lord ever again. This isn't the right way to do this!"
"I'm afraid it is," Dumbledore said apologetically. "I know because I've seen it. We both have. In the future, we win, and it's all because of your sacrifice."
"Stop saying like it was something I chose to do!" she yelled. "The other me died because she was murdered, not because she willingly sacrificed herself! This time, I got to choose, and I chose life. I chose it so I could protect my son, and Severus, and James, and everyone else who would have died or suffered without me!"
"You chose to protect the ones you love, because you couldn't bear to see them in pain," said Dumbledore. "I understand. You listened to your heart, and it told you to do anything to keep it from breaking. I'm sure that what you've done seems selfless and brave to you, but that's only because you're caught up in your own emotions. You can't see the bigger picture, those thousands and thousands of innocents who will die and suffer because of a war that has gone on far too long, not to mention all those wars that are to come if we fail to stop evil today."
His blue eyes glimmered in the faint light of the room. "Or maybe you can see it. Perhaps you're choosing to ignore it, because it's too hard for you to admit that you've allowed others to die just to keep your own friends and family safe. Tell me, has it yet occured to you that all of your actions have, in fact, been utterly selfish?"
His words crawled inside her heart like maggots. She was horrified to discovered that a part of her agreed with him. Was he right about her? Was she just another selfish person posing as a saint?
"You're just trying to manipulate me," she said. "This isn't just some stupid little game of yours!"
"You're right," he replied. "This isn't just some game. It's the game, the only one that matters. Life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. It's all decided here, and we are the players. I'm giving you a chance to choose the next move. So what will it be? Will you go down as the heroic mother of the Boy Who Lived, or as the coward who refused to accept that her time was up?"
Lily leaned against the wall. She felt like the room was spinning.
"I don't care," she whispered as her final defense. "I want to live. I want everyone to live."
Dumbledore sighed softly.
"I understand that you're scared," he said. "Nobody wants to die. But if you think about it, you've already won. You have gotten so much more out of life than you were ever meant to have. You got six years. Your son has had the happy childhood he deserves. You've made peace with your sister. You saved your husband. Many others who were meant to die got a second chance because of you. You even got to be with the man you love. Some of us never get to experience any of that."
"Well I want more," she said, and she didn't care how selfish it sounded. "Call me greedy. I want to stay here and be with Harry and Severus. I want to keep fighting. I don't want to give up."
"It's not giving up," he replied. "It's just moving on. We all must embrace death when it comes to us. I know I did."
Suddenly, Lily realized that she was talking to a man who had already died once. She wondered if he remembered anything from the great beyond. If she died tonight, where would she go?
"Tomorrow will belong to either Harry or Voldemort," Dumbledore concluded. "You get to choose which. But make your choice quick. Voldemort should be here any minute now."
Lily turned pale. "What have you done?"
"I sent him an anonymous letter earlier this evening," Dumbledore replied. "I told him all about Harry. I shouldn't take long for him to find us. This needs to happen tonight."
"No!" Lily shouted, and she raised her wand. "You can't! I'm – I'm taking Harry!"
"You may try," said Dumbledore. He stared her down, and she felt so tiny and weak and powerless. She couldn't move her feet or her hands, and she couldn't pronounce a single curse. She knew he could easily stop her if she tried.
"All you need to do is to be there for your son," said Dumbledore. "Protect him. Love him. Do that, and Voldemort can't hurt him. The charm will keep him safe."
"It doesn't work like that!" she screamed.
"It will. You just have to choose death. Choose Harry. Choose him knowing that nothing is keeping you here, that you could step aside on any moment to save yourself, that you will stand between Harry and Voldemort till the end. What could be more selfless than that?"
"You can't know that!" Lily said. She was crying now, although crying made her feel even more helpless. "And it's not a free choice if you're making me do it!"
His eyes turned softer, almost compassionate.
"Just focus on your love," he said. "If anything goes wrong, I'll be here. I promise you that I will make sure that Harry stays safe, no matter what happens. The last thing I want is to bring him any harm."
"I'm not going to let you do this!" she spat. "And neither is James! He's going to be here any minute now, and he's bringing the Order with him! Do you think they're going to just stand by and allow Voldemort to murder me?"
Dumbledore gave her a pitiful look.
"James is not coming," he replied. "Bartemius had a message for him as well, and I'm sure it's already been delivered. I told him to ask James to stand back. I promised him that he will get his son back if he lets you come to me alone. I'm afraid you're on your own, Lily."
Lily slumped against the wall. Her heart could no longer beat, her lungs could no longer breathe, her bones could no longer support her weight – the weight of everything she was, everything she could have been, everything she couldn't be. And she couldn't help but wonder if Dumbledore was right. Was this unavoidable? Was this a necessity – that she had always been meant to die for her son, no matter how much she had tried to resist it?
She felt it again. That swooping sense of history being made. Her fate had been tossed in the air, and all she could do was to wait and see where it would land.
"Just imagine it," he said. "After all these years, after everything you have done, your journey still ends here. Don't you think that means something?"
She didn't have the time to say anything about that, for suddenly they heard a loud sound coming from downstairs. The dog outside had stopped barking.
"He's here," Dumbledore said quietly, and gazed at her one more time with pleading eyes. "Do the right thing, Lily. Please."
He muttered a spell under his breath and turned invisible, but she could still sense his presence in the room.
It didn't take long for Lord Voldemort to appear in the doorway in his full ghastly glory. He was tall and pale and thin, clad in robes of black and green. The snake was with him, at his feet, and it hissed at her when she looked at it.
But when she stared into his red eyes, she realized that she felt no fear.
All she felt was anger.
