Lily's holiday was horrible. From the moment she saw Petunia waiting for her in King's Cross and through the final day, Lily wished the entire thing had just never happened. She knew the only way she was going to get through her first day back at school was to think about what had happened as little as possible. But that was easier said than done, she noted. And if you were trying not to think of something, your brain had a funny way of bringing it up. So it was that Lily found herself again recounting everything that had happened over the last two weeks.
She had hurried up to her sister right away when she saw her standing by the ticket booth. "Tuney, what are you doing here? What's wrong?"
Petunia was twisting a copy of the train schedule in her bony hands, tense. She didn't answer.
"Tuney?" Lily prompted, grabbing her sister's shoulders.
She blinked and looked at Lily, her grey-blue eyes overbright. "Mummy is in the hospital. They took her last night," she said finally in a strangled-sounding voice.
Lily froze, holding her breath, waiting for Petunia to go on, to tell her that their mum would be getting out soon, that she had been checked over, and that she was going to be fine. But Petunia didn't say anything else. She just stared, and from the crease between her eyebrows and the strain in the cast of her jaw, Lily knew there was no good news, no consolation to be shared.
"Come on," Lily said, shifting her grip to Petunia's wrist and leading her out of the train station. "Where are you parked?" she asked over her shoulder. "Or did you take a black cab?"
"A black cab," Petunia managed, struggling to keep up with Lily's pace. "Dad has the car."
Lily pulled Petunia right up to the curb and hailed a taxi. One appeared out of nowhere and pulled up to them so quickly Lily thought for a second it was enchanted, but the driver who leaned out of the window to look at them was definitely a Muggle. "Where to?" he asked in a thick Londoner accent.
Petunia stepped forward. "Central Hospital, Hatton," she told the driver.
"But that's all the way in Warwickshire," Lily protested, opening the door of the taxi and climbing in after Petunia and setting Radagast's carrier on the seat between them. He meowed.
"Mum has been going there a lot lately," Petunia said, a bit of waspishness creeping back into her voice. "You'd know that if you weren't constantly running off to that mad house of yours."
Lily scowled. "I'd know that if Dad would tell me anything in those pitiful letters he sends. Or if you'd write to me at all," she snapped as the driver pulled into the busy traffic outside King's Cross. Petunia didn't say anything. Lily looked over and saw that her sister was glaring out the window at the traffic, sulking. "How bad is she?" Lily chanced asking after a moment.
Petunia shot her another glare. "Bad," she said. "And Dad isn't refusing to tell you because he doesn't want to upset you. He's refusing to tell you because he's in complete denial. It's been…"
Her sister trailed off and Lily looked around at her again. Her eyes were red and her cheeks sallow. Petunia cleared her throat and went on. "It hasn't been easy."
Lily bit her lip and watched as Petunia dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat. "How's Mum really?" Lily asked hesitantly a minute later, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Petunia didn't even look at her when she said, "Bad," again. She started straight ahead at the street in front of them. Lily didn't ask her to elaborate.
The ride to the hospital took thirty long minutes. By the time the taxi pulled around to the main entrance, Lily was gripping the door handle, ready to launch herself out of the vehicle. As soon as it came to a stop, she did just that, leaving Petunia to pay the driver.
She hurried through the doors and looked around the unfamiliar halls. There was a reception desk straight ahead of her, but it was, of course, unmanned.
"Lily!" Petunia hissed, and Lily turned around to see her standing outside and holding the door open, sticking her head in the building. She was holding Lily's purse and Radagast's basket. "What am I supposed to do with all of this?"
"Damn," Lily muttered, crossing back to the door and outside. She took her purse from her sister but looked worriedly at her cat. "Tuney, can you…could you…" she broke off, biting her lip again. She couldn't bring Radagast into the hospital, but she couldn't leave him outside either. And judging by the expression on Petunia's face, asking her to bring him home or stay outside with him was out of the question. She was still trying to decide what to do when the door behind them opened again.
"Girls!" a voice called, and Lily turned around.
It was her father. He hurried toward them. "I'd just come out to look for you. I was about to call the train station, thought I don't know what I would have said if you hadn't come out from your platform, Lily…"
Lily ran over to him and gave him a quick hug, which he returned hurriedly. "You should come inside, your mother is…" he trailed off again and gulped. "Your mother would like to see you."
"But Dad, I can't, I have my cat," Lily started to explain, but he turned and went back into the building without listening.
She turned back to Petunia just as she pushed Radagast's basket into Lily's arms and took a step to follow their father. "Tuney, wait!" Lily cried, grabbing her sister's hand. "I can't…" she too trailed off.
Petunia glared at her for a long moment, but her brow unfurrowed as she saw that Lily had tears in her eyes. She closed the distance between herself and Lily and leaned down to whisper in her ear. "Can't you…you know…do something? About the cat?"
Lily looked up at her with wide eyes. She blinked the tears away. "I…I could. I suppose. I mean, I'm not supposed to. Not really, but…" she looked around the parking lot. Nobody was watching. And surely nobody from the Ministry would be able to trace her there. A Muggle hospital might be an odd place for a witch or wizard to go, but the Ministry wouldn't spend so much time looking for the source of one innocuous spell or two.
She looked back to Petunia. "Okay, hide me," she said as she lifted Radagast's basket and pulled out her wand. Petunia glared at the thin stick of wood and started chewing her tongue, but she obligingly moved even closer to stand between Lily and a middle-aged Muggle waiting by the curb.
Lily stuck her wand through the basket, taking a deep breath to steady herself before attempting the spell. The last thing she needed to do was botch the transfiguration and have to worry about fixing her cat on top of whatever was going on with her mother. "Felicitate," she whispered and poked Radagast with her wand. The cat had time for one annoyed yowl before he was transfigured into a candle. Lily took the candle out and tucked it into her purse, then she tapped the basket with her wand and shrunk it down to the size of a thimble and slipped it in her pocket.
When she looked up at Petunia again, she was glaring suspiciously at Lily's purse, where Lily had tucked the candle that was the cat, but she didn't say anything. Lily hurried after her into the hospital, following Petunia through the maze of hallways and stairwells before they reached the right room.
No matter what her father had put in his blasted letters, her mother was not fine. When Lily and Petunia arrived at the room the nurse had directed them to, Lily was certain for a moment that they were in the wrong place. The woman lying on the bed was, at first glance, unrecognizable as their mother.
Tubes and wires snaked out of her arms and into machines positioned around her bed. Her hair, once brilliantly red like Lily's and only sparsely streaked with grey, was now the color of steel with just a few smatterings of dull amber. And her eyes, normally so bright, were tired and vacant. She just stared straight ahead even though her husband was seated next to her, holding her hand and talking softly to her. "Look, Rose, your girls are here," he said as they walked in and Lily checked on the threshold.
Her mother did not look up, did not give any indication that she knew they were there. She just stared.
Tears sprang to Lily's eyes. She turned and dashed past nurses and visitors as she fled. She glanced up in time to see the sign for a women's washroom, and she pushed the door open and darted inside. It clicked shut just as the first sob ripped its way out of her throat.
Lily was dragged back to the hospital every day for the first week of her Christmas holiday. And while her father kept up a cheerful monologue from the moment they stepped into the room to the moment they left it, Lily hardly spoke a word. True, Petunia obediently sat by their mother's side, held her hand, and told her about her days – though it was almost all about Vernon Dursley, the man she had been dating for nearly two years, and whom she hoped would be proposing soon. Lily noted with benign interest that Petunia used to tell her mum all about her and Vernon's hopes of one day starting a family, and later started telling her about the type of wedding she'd like to have. It seemed Petunia was scaling back the timeline of life events she was willing to describe to their mother.
And Lily thought she knew why this was. Every time Petunia finished recounting a story about one of her dates with Vernon, their father would clap a hand on Petunia's shoulder and say loudly, "It'll only be a matter of time before you're taking Petunia wedding dress shopping. Isn't that right, Rose?"
Petunia would wince whenever he did this, but Mr. Evans didn't seem to notice. Their mother would not react at all.
Lily herself said as little as she could. As illogical as she knew she was being, she could not think of the shrunken woman in the bed as her mother. Her mother, ROse Evans, had been lively, funny, and dramatic. She had told them silly jokes in the car and sang songs when she put them to bed. She was the only one who knew how to calm Petunia down when she was having one of her tantrums, just what to say to reassure Lily that her sister never hated her, and exactly whether they were in the mood for coco or tea. The woman in the bed just stared.
And all the while, doctors and nurses moved in and out of the room, checking charts and taking readings of this and that. Lily thought, after spending so much time in the Hospital Wing, that she was used to being in a medical setting; magical or Muggle, she had expected all hospitals to be the same. But the way the Muggle doctors interacted with both patient and visitors was entirely unfamiliar. She and Madam Pomfrey, when they treated patients, moved with urgency. When Madam Pomfrey delivered bad news, she spoke with a briskness and honesty that Lily could respect. The doctors who came in every day to exchange murmured tidings with her father moved with a hesitancy that Lily thought was unbecoming of their profession. They gave only vague observations and dumbed-down their explanations. Lily resented them for it. But still, she listened.
In the end, it hadn't been Alzheimer's that took her mother away. It had been another stroke. As Lily learned by listening in when a doctor called Miller came in to talk to her father on the sixth day of Lily's holiday, her mother had had a second stroke the day before Lily came home. Strokes, apparently, became more common when a patient was bedridden. And while the first stroke had been minor, the second was serious. It had resulted in memory loss which, combined with the advanced Alzheimer's Disease, essentially wiped away everything that was left of Rose.
Lily heard Doctor Miller whispering this to her father on Thursday, the day before Christmas, and she knew right then that she would never get to talk to her mother again. When her father chided her in the car on the way home that night for refusing to sit with her mother and tell her about the last few months she had been away, Lily ignored him. Her resentment towards her father was nearly as crushing as her grief for her mother. As far as Lily was concerned, by lying about her mother's health and keeping Lily away at school, he had deprived Lily and Rose of their last chance to say goodbye. And she remembered, late that night as she cried herself to sleep, that she hadn't even said goodbye the morning she left for Hogwarts that Fall, since Rose had been having a "bad day." Now it was too late, because the woman in the bed didn't know that her daughter was near. She didn't listen when she told her that she loved her. The woman in the bed just stared.
The next morning, Mr. Evans once again woke Lily and Petunia and told them they were going to the hospital. Lily knew better than to protest. She sat up in bed and stroked Radagast, whom she had transfigured back into a cat in the hospital parking lot on the first day of her holiday, and damn the Ministry. Then she got dressed and followed Petunia into the back seat of their father's car.
Nobody spoke a word the entire way to Central Hospital.
Lily continued her stretch of silence for the first hour of their visit. She looked down at her hands, trying to ignore the false cheer in her father's voice as he wished the woman in the bed a Happy Christmas and tried to prompt Petunia to pull a cracker with him. But several minutes later, now adorned with an orange paper crown, Mr. Evans put a hand on Petunia's shoulder. "Petunia, let's give your sister a few minutes alone with her mum," he said, and Lily looked up, alarmed.
"No! No, you don't need to do that," Lily protested.
Mr. Evans waved a hand. "Nonsense," he said, now with a touch of steel in his voice. "You haven't had any time just the two of you in…well, in quite a while. Petunia and I will just go to the tea room for a few minutes and let you catch up."
Lily stood up and watched them go with her hands clenched. Petunia glanced back over her shoulder in the doorway and gave Lily a look somewhere between commiseration and pity. The door clicked shut.
With nothing else to do, Lily looked back down at the woman in the bed. She stared. Lily sat down.
Now beginning to feel awkward, Lily glanced around the room. It was sparse, spartan. The walls were painted with a thick, globby white paint and there were no decorations. It looked…sterile. Desensitizing. It wasn't at all the place Lily would choose to die.
As this thought gripped her, a sob escaped Lily's lips and she lunged forward and seized the woman's hand. She felt the engagement ring and wedding band click against the woman's bony fingers as she squeezed. They were loose on her fingers now. She had shrunken, receded.
Lily didn't want to notice that. She didn't want to see it. She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back tears.
When she was able to chance another peek at her mother's face, she noticed that someone, most likely her father, had put another one of those paper crowns from a cracker on her head. He had probably meant it as a vain attempt to include the vacant woman in the bed in their Christmas celebrations, but to Lily, it looked more like he was trying to pretty-up an accessory to the room. While once they would have gathered together around a Christmas tree, now they gathered around this woman. Isn't she festive?
Lily reached forward and took the crown off. As she did so, her fingers brushed the grey hair. As unfamiliar as it looked, it still felt the same.
Lily clenched her jaw. Her mother must be in there somewhere, she thought suddenly, fiercely. She stood up, hand still cradling her mother's head. "Mum?" she said loudly. Her mother just stared. Lily turned away, pulling her hand back, and grabbed her purse from the floor. Heart beating fast, she took out her wand.
She crossed to the door and opened it, peering into the hall. Nobody was around. She pulled the door closed and listened as it clicked shut. In the silence of the room, the sound was like a gunshot. Lily turned and crossed back to her mother.
Once she had reached the staring woman's bed, she hesitated again. She knew what she wanted to do, but not how to do it. With a fleeting surge of hysteria, she recalled that the worst injury she had ever healed was a broken arm.
Wand still raised but not knowing quite what to do, Lily dropped back into her chair. She looked at the staring woman, who did not look back.
Lily inched her chair forward and shot another nervous glance at the door, but there was no movement or noise from the other side. "Er…" Lily began, readjusting her grip on her wand. She remembered vaguely that she'd promised someone she wouldn't do exactly what she was about to do.
But before she had the chance to do anything else, to even try to think of a spell she might use, the woman in the bed blinked.
Lily blinked too. The woman blinked again and, slowly, turned her head to face Lily.
She thought for a moment that she had done magic without meaning to, but she felt no accompanying surge of power, and she hadn't had any idea what spell she would have had to use, anyway.
"Lily?" the woman's asked. Her voice was thin and raspy, but Lily recognized it.
She dropped her wand and it clattered to the floor and rolled under the bed. "Mum?" she asked again, leaning forward to grip her hand again, tightly this time.
Her mother blinked at her again and moved her mouth, as though wanting to speak but not able to think of the right words. After what felt like an hour but was probably only a few seconds, her mother spoke again. "You're…here."
"Yes! Yes, I'm here, Mummy! I'm—"
The door was thrown open and her father appeared carrying a Styrofoam cup. "We got you tea, Lily. Earl Grey with milk and no sugar, isn't that how you take it?" he asked, leading Petunia into the room.
Lily jumped but didn't take her eyes off of her mother's, but the woman on the bed didn't speak again. Though her eyes were still on Lily, Lily was sure that they weren't actually seeing her. The familiar brightness that Lily had caught a glimmer of a moment before was absent again. Lily leaned back and shut her eyes as her father walked in and set the cup down on the windowsill next to her, apparently not having noticed the look on Lily's face.
But Petunia did notice that. She noticed something else, too. "What did you DO?" she almost screamed as she pushed the door closed behind her.
Lily opened her eyes and looked around at her sister, who was glaring at something on the floor. Lily's wand. Lily jumped from her seat and dived under the bed, grabbing the wand and shoving it back in her purse as her father turned around at Petunia's raised voice.
"Petunia, darling, please! Your mother needs rest! What are you—"
But Petunia was pointing a shaking finger at Lily. "She did something to Mum!" she shrieked. "She had her…her…her wand out!"
Mr. Evans wheeled back to Lily. "What?" he cried, hurrying forward and taking the woman in the bed's hand.
"I didn't do anything!" Lily said, straightening up and looking earnestly at both of them. "I…my wand must have fallen out of my purse. I didn't use it, I didn't do magic! I swear!"
Her father looked carefully at his wife, taking one hand off of hers and petting her hair, then glancing up at the monitors to read their displays. They didn't make much sense to Lily, but apparently whatever they showed was familiar to him. He stood up again and turned to Petunia. "Darling, your mother is fine."
"No! No! No!" Petunia wailed. "She did something! She must have! Get the doctors back in here, Daddy! Make them put Mummy right!"
Lily gasped, stung by the accusation, but devastated by the hopelessness in her sister's voice. Put her right, indeed, she though weakly.
There were tears in Petunia's eyes when they next met Lily's, but Lily saw in the look they shared that Petunia, just like Lily, knew that nothing could be done to put their mother right. Nothing could be done to bring her back. And Lily could see that Petunia didn't really believe that it was Lily's fault. But if the pain filling her sister's heart was anything like the anguish in her own, Lily knew that Petunia, like her, just needed something to blame.
Lily looked down at the floor. It was too shiny, and the linoleum squeaked as Lily shifted her feet. Her father was still trying to soothe Petunia. The woman in the bed wasn't doing anything. "I'm going to the tea room," Lily forced out, and she walked out of the room.
Her father found her in the tea room an hour later. He sat down in the chair across from Lily. Neither of them said anything at first. Lily dug her fingernail into the side of her Styrofoam cup, studying the pattern of indentations she had made in the time she'd been sitting there.
Then her father sighed. "Petunia is getting the car," he said. Lily didn't respond. "She knows you didn't so anything to your mother," he went on after another moment. Lily looked up at him. His eyes were tired, and the lines etched into his face we so much deeper than Lily remembered them. The hair at his temples was beginning to go grey.
They grew silent again.
After an endless minute, Lily looked up again. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, her voice barely stronger than a whisper.
Her father smiled sadly at her. "Because there's nothing you can do," he said. "And because I didn't want you to have to watch. I've tried to shield Petunia as much as I can, but she's resistant. I know how close you girls always were with your mother, and Petunia isn't going to give that up. Sometimes I think she's trying to take control with the doctors, even. I don't think she trusts me to make the decisions anymore."
Lily bit her lip and forced her eyes to remain dry. In truth, she didn't think that she trusted her father with the decisions anymore, either.
"I know what's going on, Lily."
She looked up again. "What?"
"With your mother. I know what's going on," he said.
"What do you—" Lily began, but before she could ask the rest of her question, someone appeared at their table.
It was Petunia. "I've pulled the car around, Dad," she said, not looking at Lily. "It's waiting for us out front."
"Thank you, sweetheart," he said and he stood up. Lily did the same. She followed Petunia and her father out of the tea room and down the hall. She peeked into her mother's room as they walked past the open door, but all she saw was the unfamiliar woman in the bed, still staring vacantly at the too-white wall.
Mr. Evans did not insist that they go back to the hospital again, but Lily went every day. In a way, her brief encounter with her mother on Christmas had opened something inside Lily. It had allowed her, in those brief few words they had exchanged, to say both hello and goodbye. Her mother, or all of her that was left, knew that Lily had been there, that she had come to be with her.
She spent the next five days sitting in the plain, sterile hospital room holding hands with the woman in the bed, brushing her hair, and unnecessarily plumping her pillows. She may not be her mother anymore, Lily thought, but no matter who she was, the woman deserved some company.
The woman in the bed never said another word, never even moved her eyes to Lily's face again, but it felt good for Lily to be there.
Petunia went back only once and she split the time between staring sadly at the woman and glaring at Lily whenever she smoothed the blankets or brushed the grey hair back from her forehead.
Her father also went every day, sometimes with Lily and sometimes alone. Lily didn't listen anymore when he talked to the doctors. It didn't matter what they said.
Lily woke up early on the morning of December 31, 1976 to the sound of the telephone ringing. She glanced at her alarm clock and saw that it was half-past five. She got out of bed and opened the door to her room, intending to go to the kitchen for the phone, but her father picked it up on the second ring. Lily drew back, standing in her doorway, listening.
He exchanged a few quiet pleasantries with whoever was on the other end of the line. He said "okay" several times, and then "when?" Then he sighed, thanked the person who called, and put the phone back on the hook. Lily heard the sound of a chair being pulled back from the kitchen table and the creak of wood as he sat down. After a moment, he began to cry.
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Lily's attention. It was Petunia, standing in her doorway down the hall. Her eyes flicked to Lily and they shared a long, expressionless look. Then Petunia turned around and went back into her room, closing the door quietly behind her. Lily did the same.
Lily didn't go to the funeral. There was no point. She'd said goodbye to her mother days ago, and putting on a black dress and having her hand shaken by a line of her mother's friends and family members whom she hadn't seen in years wasn't going to do anyone any good. Instead, she packed her bags for Hogwarts.
"Darling, you can't possibly be ready to go back to school," her father insisted the night after the funeral when Lily asked him if she would drop her off at King's Cross the next day.
"I have to go back," Lily said wearily. She had been expecting a fight. "It's the middle of the school year. I can't miss my lessons."
"Lily, your mother just died," he said, and his voice grew quiet when he got to the last word, as though if he didn't say it loudly, then neither of them would have to think too hard about it. "I'm sure your professors will understand if you need to take a few weeks, or even a few months—"
Lily shook her head. "No, Dad! I can't do that. And I want to go back." She didn't explain why and hoped her father wouldn't press her on it. In truth, Lily was desperate to get away from her house. Every time she walked into a room, she expected to find her mother there, cross-stitching on the couch or humming to herself as she washed dishes in the kitchen. But she couldn't say this to her father, not when he had been going to such great lengths to make everything seem normal for her and Petunia.
Petunia came into the room in time to catch Lily's last sentence. "Where are you going, Lily?" she said sharply.
Her father said "nowhere' and the same time that Lily said "back to school." They stopped and glared at each other. Petunia's eyes widened.
"You can't go back to school!" she said shrilly.
Lily turned to her, surprised. "Why?"
Petunia was blinking, apparently surprised at herself too. "Because I…I mean…because it's improper! It's wrong!" she finally said, regaining a bit of the sharp tone she usually used when she addressed Lily.
"What do you mean?" Lily asked.
"Mum isn't even cold in the ground yet, and you're just running off back to that freak place so you can pretend it never happened!" Petunia spat, eyes narrowing.
Their father took a step between them. "Petunia, that's enough," he said, and Petunia folded her arms, sulking and glaring at Lily. Mr. Evans sighed and turned back to his younger daughter. "Lily, if you want to go back to school, I won't stop you. but I insist on informing your Head of House before you get there so arrangements can be made for you to come home if you need to."
Lily considered and nodded. "I don't know where I'll get an owl, though," she said doubtfully. But almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she heard a tapping sound from her bedroom. She got up and peeked through the doorway.
One of the Hogwarts owls was perched outside her window, a letter in his beak. Lily hurried over to let him in and took the letter curiously. She opened it and read:
Dear Miss Evans,
It has come to our attention that you have recently suffered the loss of a family member. May I first extend my deepest condolences to you and your family. I wish to inform you, on behalf of the headmaster, that procedures can be put in place to accommodate any bereavement leave you wish to take from your lessons. You are, of course, welcome back to the castle at any time you choose. We will do our utmost to minimize any impact this tragic event may have on your studies. Please let me know of your decision by return owl.
Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress.
Lily took the letter back out to where her father was standing in the living room and handed it to him wordlessly. He read it through and muttered begrudgingly that it seemed everything had been arranged.
"I can go, then?" she asked.
Her father gave her a long, hard look. "If you think it's best, you can go, Lily. But…" Lily didn't listen as her father went on to suggest her that she come back home for the Easter holidays. She nodded through his talk and then went back into her room to scribble a reply to Professor McGonagall. She sent it off with the school owl, watching it fly away and nursing a strong suspicion as to who had sent tidings of her mother' death to the school.
