Author's note: It's been a hot minute… wow. Enjoy a megalong chapter in the meantime! And you should also know that "You Learn to Live Without" by Idina Menzel from the show If/Then was a major soundtrack to writing this story. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
Warnings: Violence, language
8.
Part III : Time and Other Things That Fly
"You have to be cool about this," Sirius whispered to Lily.
"I'm always cool," she said.
"That's a lie," he said. "But alright."
They Apparated to the Ministry, a place Lily hadn't been to in… well, years. They made their way through the Ministry's halls and Lily didn't bother asking Sirius how he knew where he was going. He had been secretive about everything to date, after all.
They met with Arthur Weasley, of all people, in his broom closet of an office which was filled with knick-knacks and loose ends that had little to nothing to do with each other. Lily was vaguely reminded of a magpie when she looked at him and smiled to herself.
"You'll have to be quick," Arthur said, pushing a cardboard box in their direction. "My colleague will be back soon, and I can only sign this out of the Auror's office for so long…"
Sirius nodded and that's when Lily saw the label on the box: P. E. Pettigrew, confiscated Nov. 4 1981
"No way," Lily breathed to herself. "Sirius, why didn't you tell me you were looking for this?"
"Because I knew you wouldn't be cool about it," Sirius said. "Arthur, thank you so much…"
"I remember the favors I owe," Arthur smiled. "Let's, ah, call it quits for that car."
"Right," Lily grinned, as Sirius tore into the box. Her stomach churned.
What hurt the most was how familiar the blue sweater on top of the pile was. She'd seen Peter wear it a thousand times, had been around when he'd unwrapped it as a Christmas gift from Remus.
She took a deep breath and joined Sirius.
"What are you looking for?" Lily asked.
"Anything," Sirius said. "Anything to try and see… I mean, he's looking for something. He's got to be: why else would he come to the Woodlands, or the Ministry, or Hogwarts… three places where he has no business."
"He does," Lily said. "If his business is the past."
Sirius didn't answer. They sifted through the box carefully, and Lily made a mental note of everything she saw in there. Nothing seemed out of place, and when she thought back to what Peter's most prized possessions had been…
"Even his wand is still here," Lily said. She found herself reaching for it, picking it up, and snapping it in two.
"Lily!" Sirius said.
"Oh gosh," Arthur breathed.
"I'm sorry," Lily said. She tossed the pieces back into the box.
Or so it seemed. Really, she kept a fragment of the wood and a strand of the dragon heartstring within and slipped it in her pocket.
Remus' Patronus came right away, bearing good news.
"Gryffindor won the Quidditch cup!" Remus' voice emanated from the Patronus, giddily.
"He's supposed to be neutral if he's a professor," Sirius said.
Lily grinned and hugged her book against her chest. "Harry's going to be so, so happy…"
A few hours later, it was Lily's turn to be so, so happy when Hedwig arrived bearing a hastily scrawled letter celebrating Gryffindor's victory addressed to her. She read through it once, twice, thrice, and then focused her gaze on the signature: Love, Harry.
She took a deep breath. She and her son didn't fight often, and they had fought badly that Easter—just before he left.
But he still loved her. He still said that.
And that was Lily's victory that day.
Having the Marauder's Map in her possession was uncanny, to say the least. After some debate, she had left it on Remus' unused desk in the office and she spent more time than she'd expected (or would want to admit) looking at it. Sometimes, she would catch Harry's name as he and his friends made their way from one class to the other, or when he went to visit Hedwig. She saw Remus pacing his classroom a lot, though he seemed to be quite active in school life.
Sometimes she would close the map just to open it again and see the Marauders' various penmanships scroll across the parchment. James' disaster handwriting—uneven, inconsistent, sloppy, beautiful—made her smile every time his words appeared on the parchment before her.
"Mrs. Potter," Ollivander said when he recognized her from across the counter.
She didn't ask how he'd done that, and simply pulled the hood off her head and looked up to meet the wandmaker's eyes.
"Sir," she said, inclining her head.
"What brings you here?" he asked. "I had thought that that wand I had given you had been rather sturdy—willow, 10 ¼ long…"
"Phoenix feather," Lily finished. "It's in perfect condition. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I did, however, want to ask you about this…"
She dumped the shards of Pettigrew's wand that she'd managed to smuggle out of the Ministry onto Ollivander's counter, silently apologizing to Arthur Weasley in her head as she did.
He examined the shards.
"Chestnut. Dragon heartstring. 9 ¼. I was asked to identify this wand once, long ago."
"To the Wizenmagot, yes," Lily said quietly. "I was there."
"How did you get your hands on Peter Pettigrew's wand, Mrs. Potter?"
"Creatively," Lily said.
"Naturally," the wandmaker mused.
"What can the wand tell you about the man who used it?" Lily asked.
Ollivander considered this.
"Chestnut takes the temperament of its bearer," Ollivander said quietly. "Although when paired with heartstring, these wands often find themselves in the hands of those overfond of luxury, comfort, and material things."
"Okay," Lily said quietly. "I know next to nothing about wandlore, Mr Ollivander, but I do know that in the Muggle world they can use a piece of someone to find the rest of them—dogs can latch onto smells, DNA analysis can be carried out on crime scenes… I know that my wand is an extension of me, a part of me. Is there any way you can tell me where the person who wielded this wand is?"
"Not reliably," Ollivander said. "Or else I can assure you that the Aurors would have come to me first."
"What about unreliably?" Lily asked.
Ollivander examined her for a second.
"You've met Harry," Lily said. "His father and I have loved a killing curse away from that boy, and I will do far more to keep him safe. Whatever it is that you know, I will try happily."
Ollivander hesitated again, but eventually he nodded and lowered the counter.
"You best come to the back of the shop, Mrs. Potter. That is where old magic grows best."
She and Sirius were lying in bed, as she held the pendent far away from her so that it dangled over her face. They both looked at it; the shard of wood, the calcified heartstring, the strange, blueish amber encasing it all…
"That's a piece of Pettigrew hanging around your neck," Sirius noted.
"Do not phrase it like that," Lily said.
Though she'd thought about it herself and had slipped her wedding ring off the chain around her neck, and back onto her hand for now.
"I'm sorry, it just is," Sirius said.
"You have done grosser things to solve much smaller problems and gain significantly smaller treasure," Lily said.
"I'm going to push you out of bed."
"I would like to see you try," Lily said. Still, she couldn't quite take her eyes off the amber.
"How reliable, exactly, did he say this would be?" Sirius asked, snuggling in closer so that his head was resting against Lily's stomach; one of his favourite sleeping positions.
"Unclear," Lily mused. "But nothing can hurt now, can it?"
"No," Sirius said. He buried his face in the old t-shirt Lily was sleeping in. "No, it really can't."
Dear Lily,
I wanted to write to ye and thank you for your help preparing Buckbeak's defense. I don't know if I said it wrong or if the odds were just always stacked, what with Malfoy's boy being concerned, but it wasn't enough for old Buckbeak. I still wanted to thank you for what you did for us. It meant a lot to me and a lot to Buckbeak too. It'll make it easier to keep him in comfort for his last few days knowing that we did everything that we could for him.
Best wishes and say hullo to Sirius for me,
Hagrid
They were cautious, so very cautious, as they pushed their way into the building. It seemed to have been condemned some time ago now; graffiti artists had already reclaimed the exterior walls, spray paint climbing the walls like ivy growing over the exterior of a much nicer building.
"Lumos," Lily whispered. Her wand lit up the dark interior of the building. The street lamp's light couldn't reach them here.
"Careful where you step, love," Sirius said.
Lily nodded though she was far busier scanning her surroundings. Some broken furniture had been left behind by the last round of unfortunate tenants who had contended with this place. There were signs of squatting, yes, but nothing that had made the pendant around Lily's neck glow as it had when they had Apparated to Edinburgh and found this building in the first place. Nothing that shouted Pettigrew's name from the rooftops.
They kept wandering for the time being, the hairs on the back of Lily's neck upright and every single nerve of hers tingling and ready for some unknown harm.
Finally, the pendant glowed again when they entered one back room. Lily intensified the strength of her charm to cast more light around her. She saw the remnants of a fire which had gone cold long ago and an assortment of metal bits and pieces discarded nearby, including an hourglass.
The pendant's light pulsed as Lily approached it, egging her on to this find she couldn't identify or explain. They knelt by the mess and Sirius whispered some of his curse breaking spells under his breath, trying to learn more from the scraps. He shook his head as nothing new came out, but Ollivander's pendant continued to glow, sure enough for all of them.
"What is this?" Sirius asked.
Lily shook her head.
"I have no idea," she said. "But we should tip the Aurors off about this place. Keep an eye on it…"
"That fucker," Sirius said, laying the metal scraps he'd picked up on the ground. "Just when I thought I couldn't know him less… there's always something new."
"There's always something new," Lily agreed, her voice hardly above a whisper. She held out her hand and Sirius took it.
Lily was procrastinating some copy-editing work she had picked up for Potions Weekly by pacing around the office, stretching her arms over her head and wondering if anybody had boiled the kettle recently. Dobby did like his tea on rainy days…
She tapped her wand to the Marauder's Map as she walked by her desk and the map unfolded in front of her rather quickly, bypassing its usual greetings and filling its creamy emptiness with ink faster than it usually did. Lily frowned and started wondering if the map was perhaps getting old when something caught her eye; a cluster of names by the Whomping Willow.
Her blood froze in her veins when she saw who Harry was with.
"Sirius!" she shouted, grabbing the parchment and running downstairs to find him in the kitchen, where he was just unpacking his bag after coming home from a late day at work. "Sirius!"
"What?" Sirius asked, running to meet her at the bottom of the staircase.
"I see him on the map," Lily said, clutching the parchment. "Pettigrew—he's with Harry and the kids…"
Sirius' face went slack and he grabbed her wrist, pulling her out the door so that they could rush to the streets and Apparate to Hogsmeade outside of the house's wards.
They scrambled down to the Shrieking Shack.
"They have to be there," Sirius said. "There's no reason why they would have disappeared from the map, otherwise… Not when they were so close to the willow."
Lily was breathless from sending a Patronus to Dumbledore as she ran, struggling to keep up with Sirius as they stumbled downhill despite all the hours of running and obstacle courses he'd put her through as of late. Her heart was in her throat as she clutched the map in one hand and her wand in the other, pushing the worst-case scenarios she'd been running in her head for a year to the back of her mind.
"Here," Sirius said, pointing to a part of the house that looked less barricaded than its surroundings.
"Bombarda Maxima!" Lily shouted. The wall gave in under the force of the spell. Rotting planks of wood came raining down and the dust hadn't settled before Sirius and Lily had burst into the decrepit building.
"Homenum Revelio!" Sirius roared. The tracking spell burst from the tip of his wand and they followed the streak of golden light up the stairs. With any semblance of cover completely blown, Lily couldn't help but shout their names.
"Harry?" she shouted into the house. "Ron? Neville? Hermione?"
"We're up here!" Hermione shouted back. Her cry was immediately followed by a terrible choking sound that only made Lily run faster. The steps creaked under her feet and might give out at any moment, but Lily didn't care.
They burst into one of the bedrooms on the upper floor and Lily paled at the sight.
The boys were kneeling on the ground, their hands raised above their heads—all but Ron whose leg was bent at an incredibly unfortunate and painful-looking angle. While they turned to look at the doorway as soon as Lily and Sirius burst in, their eyes had previously been fixed on Peter Pettigrew—who held four wands in one hand and Hermione's shoulder by another. Hermione stood very, very still and a shimmer shining around her betrayed some enchantment that had been cast on her.
Peter's watery eyes widened when he saw Lily and Sirius. They had somehow gotten paler after all those years locked up in Azkaban, so that Lily could barely tell that they were blue from where she stood. His hair had thinned, balding in the back, and he looked as if he'd lost a fair amount of weight in a short amount of time, as if he'd wasted away from some terrible disease. While Peter had always been the shortest of the lot, he seemed scrawny and hunched together now. His pointy nose and twitchy eyes made Lily think of the rat she'd often seen him turn into even more.
"Don't try anything," Peter said, his voice barely a squeak. His hand tightened around Hermione's shoulder. "Nothing needs to happen here."
"Like hell it does," Sirius snarled.
Peter's fingers dug into Hermione's shoulder and she winced, crying out in pain.
"Wands down," Peter said. The knuckles on his hand were white. "You don't—you don't want to test me."
"I think we know plenty of what you're made of," Lily said. But the rage in her stomach couldn't take over now; not when the children were here and when Hermione was in such a vulnerable position. She needed to keep it together.
"L-lower your wand," Peter said again.
"Not when you've got a child in such a precarious position," Lily said. Her lip quivered. "She's a child, Peter. Don't do this."
"I don't have to do anything," Peter said, with the breathlessness of someone who wasn't entirely there. "I came for one simple reason and when I have what I want I'll go."
"I don't trust you." Sirius said.
"You're not touching Harry!" Ron yelled. Pettigrew waved his handful of wands and Ron was pushed back. He howled in pain again.
"Ron!" Harry said, diving towards him. Another wild swing of Pettigrew's fistful of wands and Harry was thrown back from his friend.
"Don't you dare!" Lily said. Sirius raised his wand, but Lily grabbed his wrist and shot him a look. It was too risky. What if he threw Hermione in front of him like a human shield? Lily couldn't put it past him...
"Peter," Lily said. Her voice shook. She realized she hadn't said that name out loud in months now, always calling him Pettigrew as if that degree of separation could make up for how close they had once been. How once he had been Peter, Pete, Wormtail, Wormy, Uncle Wormy, love, sweetheart…
"Lily I don't want to do this," Peter said. "Stand back."
"I won't stand down but I won't cast the first spell," Lily said calmly, evenly. She needed to get Hermione out of harm's way before she did anything else; before she tried to disarm Peter, kicked his ass all the way back to Azkaban, freed Hermione from whatever spell she was being held hostage with…
"Then tell the girl to cooperate with me," Peter said, voice hoarse.
"She has a name," Sirius said.
"I don't care!" Peter said, his voice rising with tension. "Tell her to give it to me!"
Hermione looked pale and her brown eyes darted around the Shack and its occupants, confused.
"What are you looking for?" Lily said, trying to keep her tone sharp enough to ground Peter and gentle enough not to tip him off.
"Her Time-Turner!" Peter roared.
"She's a child," Sirius roared. "What in Merlin's everlasting fucking name would she have a Time-Turner for?"
Lily thought that this was more than a fair question, but then something that Harry said came back to her—from when he'd been lamenting about the state of his friend group a few months ago. We never see Hermione anymore. She's always so busy. I don't even know how she manages to take all these classes all at once.
"Hermione?" Lily asked cautiously. She tried to meet the frightened girl's eyes and ground her. "Hermione, do you have it with you?"
"Nobody knows I have it," Hermione said in a small voice. "McGonagall made me promise not to tell anyone."
"I know," Lily said gently. "I know, sweetheart, you did your part."
"But Pettigrew broke into the Department of Mysteries months ago," Sirius said, catching on. "Where they keep the registry of existing Time-Turners and logs of their circulation."
Neville's little voice whispered to his friends "what's a Time-Turner?" but neither of them knew the answer.
"Convenient for you, wasn't it, Pettigrew?" Sirius said, disgust and anger rolling from him like waves. "James' son and a powerful magical object, all in one place for your slimy little hands to find at once…"
"I don't care about the boy!" Peter spat at once again. "Once I have the Time-Turner, the boy won't even matter!"
The hairs on the back of Lily's neck stood upright.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm done," Peter said, thrusting the tips of his wands against Hermione's throat. She gasped and everyone in the room simultaneously perked up and reeled back once they realized just how much danger Hermione was in. "Tell her to give it to me!"
"Hermione, give it to him," Lily said. "It's a magical artefact, it's not worth your life…"
"What are you going to do with a Time-Turner, Pettigrew?" Sirius interrupted.
"It doesn't matter," Lily hissed.
"It might," Sirius shot back before turning back to look at Peter. "Was that what you did as an Unspeakable? Was that the project you kept as secret as your fucking Death Eater tendencies?"
"I was a prodigy," Peter said quietly, his voice hushed. "Nobody would have expected it of me, but I was brilliant. I was becoming the leading expert on Time-Turners, and I've spent 12 years in Azkaban thinking of all the ways to make them better."
Lily had to focus on her breathing to stay calm and cool and even. She was in a hostage negotiation with the man whose betrayal had unraveled her entire life, with Sirius as a ticking time bomb by her side. The worst part about it all was how unhinged Peter looked, how vulnerable all the children were in front of this man with an unsettling spark in his eyes. If she didn't keep it together, she was afraid of which way Pettigrew would tilt.
"Was that what we found?" Lily asked quietly. "In Edinburgh?"
"The first one was a mistake," Peter said quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself. "Mistakes happen, but this one—this one will take me far back enough for it to…"
"Where are you going?" Sirius asked, concern ebbing into his voice. Sirius had to ask, but Lily knew. Pettigrew would go to the same place she would, if she could go anywhere at all.
"You want to go back to the night that James died," Lily said quietly.
Sirius startled next to her but she knew it was true. Pettigrew only nodded.
"My life changed too that night," he said quietly. It was like a punch in her gut.
"It did," Lily said. "But not in the same way."
"Not in the same way, but it doesn't matter," Peter said. "I can undo this."
Before Sirius and Lily could even exchange glances to confirm with one another that this was absolute foolishness, Hermione spoke up.
"That's impossible," she said, her complexion paling.
"Shut up!" Peter cried. Lily didn't know if he did it on purpose but his grip around Hermione tightened and she shouted.
"Impedimenta!"
The curse came from behind them and hit Peter square in the chest. He froze in place and Harry immediately bounced to his feet to go pry Hermione from his grip.
Lily spun around, wand raised, and found herself facing Remus and Tonks.
"When the fuck did you get here?" Sirius asked. He turned to Neville. "Neville, as far as your grandmother's concerned, you still don't know the word fuck—or at least not from me. But seriously, when the fuck?"
"Did you honestly think I wouldn't stay overtime to keep an eye on you on the day of Buckbeak's trial, knowing fully well that you would want to sneak out to be with Hagrid?" Tonks asked Harry, arching a hot pink eyebrow at him. "Honestly, Harry. We've known each other for weeks now."
Before Harry could respond, Tonks rushed to Pettigrew and fished a set of enchanted handcuffs from the back pocket of her jeans. The chain between the mannacles extended so that she could bind Pettigrew in place despite the awkward position he was frozen in. His eyes still widened in shock and followed the Auror's movements.
"Peter Emilius Pettigrew," Tonks said. "You are under arrest by order of the Ministry for Magic, warrant 54TC, for unlawfully escaping from Azkaban. Under this warrant, Aurors are authorized to contain you by magical means on sight. It is my duty to inform you that you are currently under an impediment jinx which will last until you are in the custody of the Head Auror. You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you before the Wizenmagot. You have the right to access legal aid each and every time you interact with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and its representatives. These rights will be restated to you once you are no longer under the influence of magic."
She plucked the wands from his hands and threw them back to their respective owners.
Sirius was tending to Hermione, undoing whatever spell Pettigrew had cast to keep her hostage. She was breathing easier now. Remus was assessing Ron's leg injury as a concerned Neville, who Lily was just noticing was sporting a black eye, hovered.
Lily, meanwhile, had run to Harry. She wrapped him in her arms and buried her face in his messy hair. While she was at it, she buried the part of her that wanted to strangle him alive underneath the piles and piles of relief she felt.
"How did you get here?" Harry asked, though he didn't seem too fussed by the answer, nestled in her arms. "How did you know..?"
"I was looking at the map," Lily said. "Not to follow you, I—I was being nostalgic. We saw Pettigrew and then we saw you disappear. We notified Dumbledore."
"I sent him a Patronus too," Tonks said. She tugged on the manacles around Pettigrew's wrists to check their fit and seemed satisfied.
"Back to my thing, how did you know?" Sirius asked, looking from Remus to Tonks.
"It's like Dora—I mean, Auror Tonks, said," Remus said diplomatically. He was still kneeling on the ground, doing what he could to stabilize Ron's leg. "She suspected that Harry and the others may sneak out of the castle after hours. We kept an eye on the grounds from the Defense Against the Dark Arts quarters…"
"Did you, now?" Sirius asked.
Remus blushed but carried on. "When we lost sight of them going from Hagrid's Hut to the castle again, we went down to investigate and Auror Tonks noticed signs of a struggle. It took some creativity to neutralize the Whomping Willow, but we're here now."
"Speaking of a struggle, what did happen?" Tonks asked, turning back to Harry and the others.
"We were walking back from Hagrid's when Crookshanks, that's my cat, came to find me and started acting up," Hermione said. She rubbed at her arm, where Pettigrew had held her. "He was trying to pull us away or something, and all of a sudden Pettigrew was there. He told me he wanted this, but I didn't understand."
Hermione pulled a long, bronze pendant from the inside of her sweater. On a delicate chain hung an hourglass hanging in a series of rings, which she allowed to hang outside of her shirt now.
"Is that a Time-Turner?" Neville whispered. Hermione went on.
"He grabbed Ron, at first, but then Ron pulled away and broke his leg. So he grabbed me and Crookshanks tried to help, but then Pettigrew, he…"
Hermione's lower lip trembled.
"Oh, love," Lily said. She opened an arm and Hermione came to burrow against her side.
"We were trying to help Crookshanks when he grabbed my wand, and then he got the others, then he took Hermione…" Ron said.
"We followed him into the shack," Harry said. "We were afraid of what he would do to her."
"You did good," Sirius said. "Pettigrew is a coward and there's strength in numbers."
Lily's eyes drifted back to the statue of Pettigrew, frozen in place. It was eerie and unsettling, the way that his eyes continued to watch them go. For one brief second they even made eye contact.
She turned to Tonks.
"What now?" she asked.
"Now Ron needs some real medical attention," Tonks said. "No offence, Remus."
"None taken," Remus said.
"All four of you should probably visit Madam Pomfrey, as a matter of fact," Tonks said. "I'll bring Pettigrew back to the castle and call for reinforcement from there."
"There's an empty cellar near my classroom where a Boggart used to be," Remus said. "It's out of the way of students. That may be a good place to keep him."
Tonks nodded, her grey eyes weighing her options and her protocols.
"Then he'll go back to Azkaban?" Harry asked, tentatively. He looked to Pettigrew and then back at the Auror. "Then the Dementors will go away and he'll pay for what he did to my parents?"
Lily's stomach twisted at those words.
"Yes," Tonks said. "And you'll finally be rid of me."
"That's not what I meant," Harry said with a grimace. Tonks grinned back.
"Alright," she said. "Mrs. Potter—"
"Lily."
"Lily, then," Tonks said. "Could you go first with the children? Sirius, would you be able to carry Ron out? Remus, I would appreciate a hand in levitating Pettigrew out. I want this to be nice and easy and careful. I don't want him to be able to play off so much as a bump he received while in Auror custody."
They fell in line, just like that, and carefully made their way down the stairs of the Shrieking Shack—Lily, always checking over her shoulder to make sure everyone was following, the children holding onto each other, Sirius holding up Ron, and Remus and Tonks levitating Peter between them with the same decorum and precision as pallbearers. It was an unusual procession, and they nearly made it out of the Shrieking Shack. Nearly.
They were halfway through the tunnel leading out of the Shrieking Shack when Remus froze—coming to a sudden stop in the earthen tunnel. Lily only knew because she heard Tonks say his name.
She spun around and saw Remus frozen in place, brown eyes wide in terror. He met her eyes as soon as he could. One of his hands was shaking.
"I didn't take my potion," Remus said. "I… I came here instead."
"What?" Sirius said.
"It's a full moon," Remus said quietly.
"Oh no," Harry said before Lily could even react.
Remus looked over his shoulder and then choked, seemingly on thin air.
"Get out," Remus said, looking up at them with wild, panicked eyes. His other hand began to shake and soon his eyes went glassy and the trembling took over all his limbs.
"Remus," Tonks said, stepping towards him.
"No!" Lily shouted. "No, no, back away!"
"Tonks, take Pettigrew on your own!" Sirius said. He entrusted Ron to his friends before running to Remus, barreling into him and wrapping his arms around Remus' chest and arms. "He's a werwolf, he can't help it, you have to get out!"
"Tonks, take Pettigrew!" Lily said. She picked up Ron from the other children, slinging his arm over her shoulders. "Harry, take the others and run!"
"But—"
"No buts," Tonks said.
Remus' wand fell out of his hand, no matter how hard he'd tried to cling to it. When it hit the ground, Pettigrew broke free of the curse that had had him floating above the ground. When he hit the tunnel floor, Tonks' spell on him broke. Before Lily could even process what had happened, Pettigrew threw himself towards Hermione. He grabbed hold of the now exposed Time-Turner around her neck and Hermione screamed as Pettigrew spun the hourglass hanging around her neck. The two of them began to shimer.
"NO!" Harry shouted. "You're not taking anybody else!"
"HARRY!" Lily shouted—but before she could do much more, Harry had thrown himself towards Pettigrew and Hermione. He grabbed onto his friend just as they disappeared.
"OUT!" Sirius roared.
Lily's head was spinning and she wanted to scream—but she didn't have time. Why was it that Lily never had time to scream when her life fell apart?
Remus' head was lengthening, his shoulders were hunched, his hands curled into paws.
"We have to go!" Tonks shouted. With Lily stunned, Tonks had thrown Ron over her shoulders in a fireman's carry. Lily grabbed Neville's hand and pulled him forwards.
"What about Sirius?" Neville asked, wide-eyed and panicked.
"He'll be fine!" Lily said. "He has his ways! Trust me, I'll explain later!"
They kept running. They were only about halfway through the tunnel, out of sight of the werewolf, when the snarling and the sound of snapping jaws reached her. She heard a distinctly unpleasant thump sound and then the sound of a dog yelping in pain. She froze in her footsteps. What had Remus said time and time again, when Lily had first wanted to become an Animagus? That Padfoot on his own wasn't strong enough to contain the wolf?
Lily looked over her shoulder. They weren't going to make it to the end of the tunnel before the wolf picked up on the scent of humans and came in pursuit.
Harry was gone, but Ron and Neville were there. Tonks was raising her wand now, ready to defend them—but there were so few spells that worked against a fully-transformed adult werewolf… It was more important for the children to get out of the tunnel.
"Go," Lily said. "I'll help Sirius hold him back! Go!"
"That's mad Lily, what are you going to do?"
"I…" Lily took a deep breath. "I'll be fine! Get the children out and tell Dumbledore!"
Lily had been shocked for a good long time when they told her. James gave her more than enough time to process the news, patient and gentle and nervous as he anticipated her response, but she could tell he was nervous too.
"McGonagall said that becoming an Animagus was the most difficult thing she had ever done," Lily said.
"It was in my top three as well," James said.
"James."
"Sorry," James said. "But, honest, it wasn't easy. We worked hard."
"How did you do it, then?" Lily said. "I mean, of course I believe you—you've all shown me, but…"
James shrugged.
"I don't know how the other two did it," he said. "Maybe it's different for everyone. But I just… wanted it very badly."
"You wanted it very badly?" Lily repeated, somewhat incredulous.
"I did," James said. "I wanted it for Remus, and I loved Remus. Maybe I just… I don't know, loved it into being, you know?"
"No," Lily said. "I… I don't."
"Oh," James said. "Well, I thought you might. You're really good at loving, Lily Evans. That's… that's why I'm telling you all of this. Because I want to keep loving you but that means being honest."
"It does," Lily said. She leaned forward and kissed him.
Lily ran towards the black dog and the werewolf. Had Sirius not been jaw-to-jaw and claw-to-claw with a werewolf, he would have murdered Lily for doing this.
But she wasn't doing this his way or Peter's way or Remus' way. She was going to do it her way and her way was that, no matter how unmanageable the world got and no matter how bad things went, she was good at loving people.
She loved Harry, wherever he had gone. She loved Sirius, who was fighting to defend those he loved. She loved Remus enough that she would do whatever it took for him not to become the monster he had always feared of becoming.
She leapt into the air and closed her eyes.
She didn't hit the ground again.
The wind that picked up under her wings took care of that.
She circled the werewolf's head once, twice, three times to distract him from the dog for a moment. She was too afraid to land, too afraid to think about the motions of flying, because truthfully she had no idea what she was doing. She only knew that she wanted to fly back into the tunnel, back towards the Shrieking Shack, where Remus would be safe.
Sirius barked once, twice, and went from an offensive position to a friendly, playful body language. He wagged his tail and bounced around the werewolf, inciting whatever part of a werewolf remained canine to follow him and play. The werewolf snarled some more and Lily had to work especially hard to maintain her composure—but Sirius kept at it. Eventually, the two of them coaxed the werewolf back into the Shrieking Shack. As the werewolf evaluated his surroundings, sniffing around at the already damaged and dust-coated furniture around him, Lily perched on the top of a dresser.
What was she? She stood on talons but she felt unbalanced. Where she might pay her arms and legs equal attention as a woman, the wings in this form weighed more. She couldn't explain the feeling of having feathers. Her vision was sharper than it had ever been before, and she saw far more of the shack in greater detail than she would have expected.
Down below, on the floor, Sirius was looking up at her from his dog form. While the werewolf was occupied, reckoning with the four walls around it, Sirius padded closer to the door. He slipped into his dog form just long enough to shut the tunnel entrance without catching the werewolf's attention before falling back down on all four.
Otherwise, it was the three creatures inside the shack for the night.
It felt like it was hours later when the werewolf finally stopped pacing the shack and ramming itself into the walls or throwing itself down the stairs. The great creature finally laid down in the middle of a living room whose furniture it had upturned twice.
The bear-like black dog Lily had spent the night with had gone to curl up with him.
Following his lead, Lily had flown down from her current perch and gone to nest on the werewolf's shoulder.
Hours later, the transformation that had taken hold of Remus undid itself and he was himself again. Sirius returned to his human form, looking absolutely drained, grey eyes wide with shock. Lily hopped off of Remus and tried to figure out how exactly one disengaged from one's Animagus form. She had spent nearly three years now trying to achieve one, the logistics of reversing the process had never occurred to her.
"Think about where you need to be," Sirius said gently, in a quiet voice so he wouldn't wake Remus.
Lily needed to talk to Sirius, and so she was herself again.
"Merlin," Sirius said. "Merlin, Lily, come here…"
Lily circled Remus, so that her friend could continue to sleep peacefully with his head on Sirius' lap. Sirius wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.
"You were so beautiful, Lily," Sirius said quietly. "You looked so elegant and slick and beautiful…"
Lily tried not to shake in his arms though she felt like a leaf far past the last day of autumn.
"Harry went into the past," she said. "Harry went into the past…"
"I know," Sirius said. "I know, I'm trying… I'm trying not to think about it until we can get out here. Until we can talk to Dumbledore and Tonks."
Lily shut her eyes and exhaled. She knew there was no way in the world that she would accomplish the same, but she tried to keep breathing. She wouldn't do her son any favours if she wasn't breathing.
She turned to look at Remus, asleep. Some of the cuts and bruises and bitemarks he'd inflicted upon himself overnight had carried over to his human body. His right arm, the one that he always used to break or dislocate during the full moons, wasn't in good shape.
"Is it always this bad?" Lily whispered. Sirius winced.
"It's always worse when he's contained," Sirius said. "Werewolves—they're dangerous, yes, but they're just creatures who want to be free. You and I did our best to distract him from himself, but…"
"So yes," Lily said. "When he doesn't have access to the Wolfsbane potion or an open space, it's this bad."
Sirius reached down and pushed Remus' hair out of his eyes.
"He's going to hate that the kids saw that," Sirius said. "And Dora…"
"We should go," Lily said. "We should go so that we don't worry them. Remus would be more comfortable in the infirmary room anyways."
Sirius nodded and picked up Remus, careful not to further injure his broken arm.
Lily gasped when she walked in the infirmary and saw Harry and Hermione, sitting on a hospital bed, drinking hot cocoa, and chatting with Dumbledore. One bed away, Neville was sitting at Ron's bedside.
"Harry," she breathed.
"Go," Sirius said.
"Remus!"
It was Tonks, wide-eyed and pale and looking absolutely exhausted. Her robes were torn at the hems.
"Is he alright?" she heard Tonks ask, although she only had arms for Harry. In fact, her son hopped off the infirmary bed and ran towards her. He buried his face in her sweater and surprised Lily by crying.
"Oh, baby," Lily sighed, wrapping her arms around him even more tightly. "Oh, baby, come here…"
"Good morning Lily," Dumbledore said. "Sirius."
Madam Pomfrey had helped Sirius lower Remus on an infirmary bed and had pulled a curtain around his bed for privacy as she tended to his wounds.
"What happened?" Lily asked. She looked down at Harry whose green eyes remained wet and shaken.
"We went back in time," Harry said. "Pettigrew, he—he brought us back to where he said he would; to Godric's Hollow."
"He brought you there," Lily said, paling.
"He brought us to Godric's Hollow the night that… the night that Voldemort came for me," Harry said. His chin toughened as he said it, trying to pull himself together. Hermione looked pale and she held her cup of hot chocolate especially tightly.
Lily's entire body slacked.
"Harry…" she said, reaching out to touch his hair and cup his cheek. He leaned into her touch and shut his eyes, which had the effect of squeezing out a few additional tears.
"I saw him," Harry said. "I saw… I saw the explosion at the house."
Lily shut her eyes and took a deep breath. She pulled him to her.
"I'm so sorry," Lily said quietly. "I'm so, so sorry."
"We lost Pettigrew," Harry said. "We—once things started happening we had to hide. Hermione said that if anyone saw us we might stop existing or something, so we had to run and Pettigrew he... he transformed."
She held Harry against her a little bit longer before she asked more questions.
"How did you get back?" she asked quietly.
"I went to Godric's Hollow," Tonks said. "I knew that was the place where Pettigrew was going. But as for the timing of it all…"
"I fortunately remembered, while I was on my way to respond to the Patronus you sent me on your way to the Shrieking Shack, that I had left a Time-Turner in Godric's Hollow last time I visited the village," Dumbledore said. "There is a rickety brick in the fountain in the town square. If one wiggles it enough, it does offer quite a nice, hidden compartment."
"How..?" Lily asked. "How did you know..?"
"Mum, time travel is very complicated," Harry said.
"It is," Lily agreed.
"I wasn't aware that Time-Turners could go forwards in time as well," Sirius said.
"One can," Dumbledore said. He held up his hand, from which two Time-Turners dangled. "A patent under development, abandoned by the Unspeakables years ago when Peter Pettigrew ceased to be in their service. It will be returned to the Department of Mysteries along with Mrs. Granger's Time-Turner."
Hermione nodded vehemently. Lily swallowed.
"There was a lot we didn't know about Peter," she said.
"There was a lot that Peter hid," Dumbledore said. "Do not torture yourself, Lily. You have done enough of it over the years and your night has already been difficult enough."
"We thought you were going to die," Neville finally spoke up.
"Oh, sweetheart," Lily said. "No, no, Sirius and I were fine."
"How?" Hermione spoke up.
"I'm an Animagus," Sirius said. Even Dumbledore startled at this. While the Marauders had all used their Animagus abilities to the Order's advantage, it had always been amongst themselves. Telling Dumbledore would have been like breaking a pact they had made long ago, but Sirius spoke now.
"I became an Animagus when I was still studying at Hogwarts, in order to spend time with Remus during the full moons. That's when Pettigrew learned as well, and James too."
"But you aren't on the registry," Hermione said, frowning some more. "Neville and I had a project on Animagi. We would have seen your name."
"Touché," Sirius said. "10 points to Gryffindor. Am I allowed to do that?"
"You may ask Professor Lupin to award points on your behalf if you wish," Dumbledore said.
Sirius shrugged. Good enough.
"We never registered, the lot of us," Sirius said. "We studied to become Animagi in secret and we didn't want to reveal why we'd done it, for Remus' sake."
"And you?" Harry asked, looking up at Lily.
"I…" Lily trailed off. "I have been practising for some time now. Yesterday was my first successful transformation."
"Wicked," Ron said. "What were you? Something cool? Imagine training hard to become an Animagus, and voila! You're a bloody slug."
Lily couldn't help but smile just as Hermione hissed, "That's not helpful, Ronald."
"I was thankfully a little more useful than a bloody slug," Lily said.
"You were brilliant," Sirius said. "And you look exhausted."
"You don't look so hot yourself," Lily retorted.
"I'm always somewhat hot," Sirius said. "I thankfully have that working in my favour."
The children laughed and Lily bit back a smile.
When Dumbledore made his exit from the infirmary, Lily let go of her son to hurry away and ambush him in the hall.
"Professor," she said.
"Lily," he said, nodding his head. "Congratulations on your successful transformation. It is quite an accomplishment."
"I'm aware," Lily said. "I'm furious with you."
"I'm aware," Dumbledore said.
"You're three for three," Lily said. "Three years, three encounters with Voldemort or his forces."
"I know," Dumbledore said. She had a hard time deciphering what exactly was going on in the old man's crystal blue eyes. She had never been good at reading Dumbledore; had never felt like she needed to back in the Order. But there was something like guilt in his eyes, and Lily would settle for that.
"There's one way you can make this better," she said.
"And what way would that be, Mrs. Potter?" Dumbledore asked.
"You can give me what I need to finish what I couldn't start in front of the children," Lily said, straightforwardly.
Dumbledore arched an eyebrow.
The air above Godric's Hollow in the November breeze was so incredibly different from the stuffy or subterranean air of the Shrieking Shack. The wind here was cold, crisp, wild. It carried Lily far more easily. She had never shared James' love of flying before but she could understand what the fuss was about, now that she was the one playing with the wind. A tilt of her wings, a dip of her head, a furrow of her tail… It was all so easy and so smooth, hundreds of feet above the ground.
Well, not quite hundreds of feet. Lily was, after all, on the hunt.
She circled the cottage where she had kissed James and tasted the next sixty years of her life, ignoring it as completely as she could. This was not why Lily had bartered peace for a dangerous magical artefact. As impossibly broken as her life had become on this night, Lily couldn't afford to touch it. What might it do to the life she had built after? What might it do to her son? No, this wasn't why she was here.
She perched on the gutters James must have cleaned twice a week while they were in hiding, starved for something to do. For a moment hesitation and doubt accelerated the heartbeat in her chest, but it all faded when she heard them appear—Hermione, Harry, and Peter. They appeared across the street and it took everything in Lily's power not to interfere. She saw Harry push Peter away from Hermione and swing a rather impressive punch. Peter stumbled back, but he hadn't brought a wand with him when fleeing the Shrieking Shack. Hermione had hers and she blasted him away from them.
That was when Peter gave up, and Lily soon realized why. A hooded figure in a black cloak walked down the street and approached the cottage. Lily's blood froze in her veins as if it would stay there forever.
If she could scream to the woman inside, the woman not yet scarred, she would. But she couldn't, not without endangering everyone and everything she'd loved—and protecting that was, after all, what today was about.
Peter transformed into a rat and scurried away from the children, while Harry and Hermione dove to hide from Voldemort in the neighbour's bushes.
Lily took off. She was fast, she was agile, she was sharp. Everything from her vision to the curve of her wings to her sharp talons was built for what she was doing now; diving down and snatching up the rat that ran. Once her prey was secure, she flew straight up again and made for the edge of town. Pettigrew squealed and writhed in her grip but Lily didn't give him any wiggle room to work with.
Once they were far away from Godric's Hollow that she was sure Pettigrew wouldn't be able to interfere with Voldemort's fall or the children's jump forward in time, Lily dove down. When she was about a dozen feet over the ground, she dropped the rat without giving him any kind of warning. The force of the impact would have shattered a small rodent's body, so Peter did exactly what Lily had hoped he would: transformed into his human form. He tucked and rolled as he crash-landed in the field she'd selected. Lily landed on her own two feet behind him, Time-Turner resting on her chest and wand drawn.
"Stand up!" Lily said. "Stand up because you owe me at least that. I want to see your hands."
Peter scrambled to his feet, hands up. He paled when he saw who she was and from when she had come. The lightning scar branding her face and neck and chest, the lighting scar that she was acquiring as they settled this, showed him who she was. She was Lily Potter, the Girl Who Lived.
"If you try anything else even remotely funny, we can go again," Lily said. "I don't know how high I'll drop you from then, just so you know."
"Lily," Peter gasped, backing away from her. "Lily, it's… it's…"
"Shut up," Lily said. "Shut up. What could you possibly have to say to me?"
"Lily," Peter said. "Lily, it's me… it's Peter."
"I know," Lily said. "Don't you think I know it? Don't you think I know exactly who you are after burying my husband and sitting at your trial as if you hadn't been in my house eating pancakes weeks before?"
Peter cowered before her.
"I could kill you," Lily said. "You know that, yes?"
"Lily, please," Pettigrew said. "You have—the power of the Dark Lord, his threats, his presence… you have no idea how difficult…"
"Don't talk to me about difficult," Lily roared. "I've done the most difficult thing in the world. I've learned to live without the love of my life. I've learned how to change every aspect of my life so that I could survive without the air I needed to breathe. I've learned not to die a bit with every smile I see in the faces of the boys he left behind."
Peter winced.
Lily went on.
"The Peter Pettigrew from this moment, the who hasn't traveled back in time—he'll be arrested. You know he will; you wouldn't dare disrupt the timeline and risk endangering your pathetic excuse for a life. There's a lot you do wrong Peter, but you're good at self-preservation and you understand your Time-Turners."
Peter looked at her.
"And I wouldn't dare disrupt it either," Lily said. She lowered her wand and took a deep breath. "I don't know what happens when someone from the future is killed in the past, but I won't take such a gamble for a pawn like you. So consider this a warning."
Peter exhaled and as he did, Lily blasted a Full Body-Bind Curse in his direction. He fell back in the grass and Lily approached, leaning over him. She pushed her hair out of her face, showing off the network of scars on her face.
"I have come from the future to tell you just how badly I want to kill you and show you how easily I could," Lily said. "On my own. Even without Remus or Sirius out for your blood. So remember me, when you finish hiding in the past and age up to match my present. Stay away from me. Stay away from my family. And above all, stay away from my son or I won't have a reason not to do what I didn't tonight. I think I've made myself clear."
Lily stood up straight and looked at Peter Pettigrew, spread out in the grass, one last time.
Harry was right; time travel was complicated. Lily hadn't jumped back to Godric's Hollow to take risks; she had come to establish that she was the bigger threat.
She took off in her bird form again, this time going back towards the village and the house that she knew would be destroyed. From her bird's eye view, she saw Harry and Hermione hiding in the neighbour's bushes as the worst night of Lily's life played out. The cottage was destroyed by the time Lily arrived. Remus and Sirius had just walked her out, running into Bathilda Bagshot and Dumbledore. The Aurors came for Voldemort's body and to condemn the house. They took James too. Lily refused to let the Healers touch the fresh scars on her face. She was finally coaxed into going home with Sirius and Remus, with nothing but her wand and her son It had been enough. It hurt Lily, to watch this scene play out again, but she knew it would be enough.
It hurt to watch Harry watch this. Hermione got progressively more pale and she held Harry's hand, which Lily was incredibly thankful for, but Harry's face aged at least a decade as he watched this night unfold.
When it was done at last, when the wizards were done cleaning up their mess, Harry and Hermione were alone in the neighbour's bushes.
Lily swept done, startling the children at first, yes. But then she landed on Harry's shoulder, trying to mind her talons, and nibbled at a strand of Hermione's hair. She cooed as she listened to their theories about where this bird had come from. When she felt that they were reasonably comfortable with her, she took off to show them the way to the Time-Turner Dumbledore had described and that they would need to go home.
When Lily returned to the infirmary, only moments from when she had taken the Time-Turner from Dumbledore and gone back to Godric's Hollow, she took a moment to collect herself before pushing the doors of the infirmary.
Perhaps more time had passed than she'd thought at first. The infirmary was largely empty now; Ron was sleeping a few beds down, but there was no sign of Sirius or the other children. She did, however, hear Remus' voice from behind the curtain Madam Pomfrey had drawn earlier. It sounded broken and anguished.
"I… I am a werewolf," Remus said.
"I feel like you could have told me that," she heard Tonks answer.
"My experience with others learning about my truth is not positive," Remus said quietly. "My only friends are the friends who knew and stayed by my side—in class, in the Shrieking Shack… for all the time after that."
"I was going to ask how you knew about the passage," Tonks said.
"It was built for me," Remus said. "So that I could perhaps have a semblance of a normal life."
"It seems to me that it did its job, then," Tonks said. "It kept you safe last night. You're here now."
"For now. Parents will not want their children to be taught by a werewolf," Remus said quietly.
"And how exactly will they find out?" Tonks asked. "I'm not saying that Neville Longbottom is a good liar, but he would try very hard for you."
"From… you'll have a report to write," Remus said. "To tell the Auror Department what happened here tonight."
"I do," Tonks said. "I'll tell them what they need to know about Pettigrew. But I'm not in the business of outing werewolves. That isn't why I became an Auror and it isn't the kind of woman I want to be—not to mention the kind of woman you deserve."
"I…" Remus' voice hung in the air for a few moments. "I could never possibly deserve you."
"I'm afraid you're not the judge of that," Tonks said.
Lily smiled at that and backed out of the infirmary to give them their privacy.
The present wasn't completely broken after all. That much was clear.
Sirius had fallen asleep in one of Hogwarts' many guest rooms and a ghost who had been friendly with James once upon a time helped Lily find her son in one of the courtyards. Neville and Hermione weren't with him, so she sat on the bench with him.
"How are you?" she asked quietly, even if it felt like the most ridiculous question in the world.
"I can't believe we let Pettigrew get away," Harry said. His voice was raw and so Lily knew he'd been crying. "I can't… how are they going to find him now that he's… you know, left behind?"
"One version of him, the version you have met who had escaped from Azkaban, will relive the years he spent behind bars," Lily said. "He will probably hide well and his chances of running into himself are quite low. He will age up and catch up with us again."
"So he might be out there now?" Harry asked, eyes widening.
"He is," Lily said. "He definitely is. But he won't be bothering us. Trust me."
Harry took a deep breath but he very clearly didn't like the thought.
Lily ran a hand through Harry's wild hair.
"I still can't believe he's free," Harry said. "It's not fair."
"No, it's not," Lily said. "But Harry… was losing your father any fairer with him in prison?"
Harry stared at his feet.
"No," he said. Lily nodded in agreement and took his hand.
"It's never fair, is it?" Harry asked.
"You learn to live without fairness," Lily said. Among many other things.
"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"What was Dad's Animagus form?" Harry asked.
Lily smiled as she thought of it, as she thought of James.
"He was a stag," Lily said. "He had the brownest eyes and the softest way about him."
"Okay," Harry said. "And what is yours?"
Lily smiled.
"I think I'm a bird of prey," she said.
"Do you think you might be a kite?" Harry asked. Lily smiled brighter.
"I do," she said. "I do think I may be a kite."
Harry smiled at her knowingly and she smiled back.
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