Full Summary: Leora Potter had always been a rather odd girl, even to her wizarding equals. Witches, it was said, didn't typically shine like a star when happy. Neither did they wield illumination like a sword, or suck life from a room, or was as swift of foot as daylight. When three desperate mothers make a wish in dire times that binds their children together, Leora finds out what it means to be the last Aether Bender. Lu Ten/ Fem!Harry/Zuko/Male!Azula. Strong M.


But if there was a heaven, this is what it felt like. Touching the Aether with my bare hands I could never have anticipated this. ~ Samantha Shannon.


Lily Potter's P.O.V

Lily Potter was going to die. She knew it as soon as James had kissed her, hard and hot and achingly final, before locking the nursery door to meet the beast prowling up their garden path. She could still feel the warmth of his lips on hers, as she could feel the babe in her arms, heavy and silent, glowing fiercely in the gloom of the room, unaware of the inevitability creeping closer.

Yet, Lily knew.

Lily knew, and there was nothing she could do.

This was it.

She bent down deep and kissed Leora, her daughter, as James did with her, one last time over the swell of her pale brow, lingering, taking in her scent, the feel of her skin, the sheen, before she gently placed her silent babe in the crib at her back. She ran her hand through her dense white curls, shining so brightly, so happily, the same shade as her own, though Lily did not glow this night, and stared down at those vivid, brilliant eyes.

Her little stardust.

She would be alone in the world after this night.

Alone and scared and ignorant of who-

What she was.

But, crucially, she would live.

Leora would live, and Lily would die, and the stars above would burn anew.

Tears crested on Lily's lashes, but they did not fall.

Lily stayed that way, eye to eye, mother to daughter, last of her kind to last of her kind. She stared through the shout echoing out downstairs. She stared as the door rattled and the walls shook and James bellowed no more from the bottom of the steps. She stared as she heard the creak of the wood groaning underneath weight of something coming. She stared at her daughter, and she felt no fear.

Lily Potter was going to die, but her child, her sweet child, would not.

Please, Spirits, if you can hear me, let my daughter live. I know I have not prayed to you in years. I know I have forgotten the old ways. I can barely remember what it feels like to bend anymore. Perhaps I lost my own glow so long ago… But look. Look at her. See how she shines even now. I have failed, and I am sorry, but please… Let her live, let her love, let her laugh, and let her light up the sky.

The door of the nursery exploded, chunks and splinters of wood sailing like confetti caught in a great gust. Lily did not jolt. She did not flinch. She did not recoil. She only prayed and gazed down at her daughter's eyes. So much like her own. So much like Lily's own mother, from so long ago, a lifetime away and-

"Step aside girl, and you can live."

Voldemort's voice was more hiss than human. Lily sluggishly swivelled, keeping the child, her child, safe behind her. He was a being of shadow in the doorway. More spectre than man. The dark come to snuff out the light. Woefully, even basked in shade and gloom as he was in the murk of the night, she could see those terribly dreadful red eyes.

Live?

Live without her daughter? Live without her love?

That was no life at all.

Lily pitied the thing before her if he could not understand that.

"No."

He hissed at her calm tone, and she thought it might have been a growl of anger if he didn't have a forked tongue. Even here, facing death wearing such a monstrous facade, Lily was not scared. She had confronted more than this grotesque husk, survived fleeing her own homeland as a child not much older than her daughter, as her mother's village was burned down around them in wisps of smoke and ash and ruin, as the last of her people were slaughtered and slain, her mother too after she smuggled Lily through that bizarre arch.

Lily remembered her, reaching, screaming-

Run! Go! Now!

Lily had ran, and she had never seen her mother again.

Only her blood a startling red on the snow caps of the mountain.

She'd survived coming here, to this strange, strange beautiful place filled with none Benders. She had a family take her in, the Evans, give her love, though her adopted sister, Petunia had… Drifted away. She went to Hogwarts, found companionship and love, and more family. And she had lost to. Friends gone along the way, dead or turned by the doctrine of hatred.

Where there is light, there is darkness, and it will always thirst to consume it.

She had a good life.

Short, but sweet.

"This is your last chance. Move."

Lily glanced to the window of the nursery, to the stars twinkling outside that October night. How bright they shined in the dark. It reminded her of home. Of the lost land fogged by age and time. Shrewdly, unseen, her foot slewed back, pressing the box at her feet further underneath the crib, safe and hidden.

Where it would stay hidden for sixteen years before Leora would find it.

Please, let her live. Let her go home. Let her-

"Never."

The wand rose high, a spindly thing of bone white wood, aimed right at her chest. With a flash of green, Lily Potter died with the memory of home on the back of her eyelids.

Leora screamed.

She dimmed.

She wept and cried and she too faced that terrible green light that was no light at all really, but an oil spill of fury and hate and everything wrong in the world.

Yet, she lived.

And nothing would ever be the same again.


Thoughts?

A.N: Leora is a Hebrew name meaning Light onto me, or I have light. I thought, for this fic, it fit quite well. The prologue is pretty short, as it normally is for my fics, as I use the prologues as a toe in the water to test reception lol, but chapter lengths will pick up in size if this fic carries on, pulling in around four to six thousand. Either way, I hope you liked this little taster, and are looking forward to more. If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review!