THE GRAVE

The leaves on the trees were turning bright yellow, dark red and a million shades between them. The air was crisp, and when the chilly wind hit her, Lily was glad that she had decided on her woollen coat instead of the unlined jacket she had reached for first that morning. Godric's Hollow was a sleepy little village in the south-east of England with a main street offering all the essential such as a pub, a supermarket and a chip shop, and picturesque little houses with storybook-worthy gardens.

Godric's Hollow had been James' suggestion, and the idea of living in a village where both her worlds co-existed had sounded appealing to Lily, who after many years in the wizarding world had realised that she would never fully belong to either world. These days most of the village's magical population had either left for

She never dared to go there on Christmas, or Halloween or either of Harry or James' birthdays, but she always made a point to select a random day in the autumn to visit the gravesite and make sure it was tidy and free from weeds. Moody would probably have her head if he ever found out that she took such a great risk for something that he would deem utterly pointless, but she did not care. She never stayed for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but for that short time she let her walls down and allowed herself to grieve.

She had chosen a beautiful spot in the graveyard where James and Harry were buried together. It felt a tiny bit comforting that her baby was at least not all by himself, and Lily hoped that James' parents wouldn't have minded that their only son was not buried in the Potter family grave. When she reached the grave, she fell to her knees and she could feel the tears on her cheek before she had even sunk to the ground. Lily rarely cried anymore these days; it was almost as if she had used up all her tears in the early years following James and Harry's deaths and saved the ones she had for one day every year. She reached out to touch the tombstone and her fingers lingered for a long while over Harry's name. It was liberating to let the tears fall freely, and she sat there on the ground for a good fifteen minutes even if the grovel painfully dug into her legs.

She wondered what James would've thought of the person she had become. She had become so cold over the years. Calculating and pessimistic; light years away from the preppy, idealistic teacher's pet he had pursued as a teenager and married when they were barely out of Hogwarts. Oh, he would've disapproved of her, Lily was sure of it. If he had been the one to survive that night in Godric's Hollow he would've gone down the same path as Sirius and foolishly thrown himself in the line of fire until he got burnt, but he would've died a hero. She doubted he would ever have managed do even remotely as much as she had to actually bring Voldemort down.

She did not notice the wizard approaching her until he was standing next to her, his expensive-looking cloak blowing in the wind and his platinum blond hair somehow looking perfectly in place even in the windy weather. If it had been Dolohov or Bellatrix she wouldn't have hesitated to throw herself into a duel, but luckily it was neither of them who had found her.

"Malfoy, how long have you been here?" she asked calmly instead and dried the remaining tears off her cheeks with her glove.

"Long enough to have seen you bawling your eyes out," he replied with a bored drawl.

"Well, that tends to happen when you've buried a child, perhaps you'll find out someday," she snapped.

Lily did not realise how cruel her words were until they had already left her lips, and she briefly even considered apologising, but Malfoy did not miss a beat.

"Your tongue is certainly sharper than I remember, I never expected that from one of Dumbledore's pets."

"What do you want?" Lily asked tiredly and rose from the ground. She doubted he was there to hurt her; he had after all had plenty of time to do so while she was having her annual breakdown. No, it was much more likely that he was after something.

"It's my son," Malfoy said heavily, and his previously proud posture changed completely. "Draco. He's… he's going to be recruited and-"

"What? You don't want him to follow in your footsteps?" Lily said mockingly, sensing an opportunity to gain the upper hand.

Malfoy looked at her with what could only be described as sadness, an emotion Lily did not think the wizard even possessed. "I don't think he's going to survive," he said frankly.

"What a pity," Lily said coldly.

"What if it was your son, Evans?"

"Oh, don't play that card against me, Malfoy," said Lily with a joyless laugh. "My son was killed fifteen years ago by your master. My son was but a baby when he was taken from me. I have no sympathy for you or your son who by all accounts has grown up to be just as despicable as his father."

"You don't want the information then?" Malfoy asked almost defiantly.

"I never said that. What do you have?" Lily said and tried to sound as nonchalant as possible while she was actually itching to find out what Malfoy had to bargain with for such a big favour as getting his son out of the country.

"What can you do for Draco?" Malfoy persisted and Lily sighed.

"Very little. The Order is running low on resources and even lower on members. We cannot risk it on a spoiled pure-blood brat," she answered honestly.

"I could pay. I have money," he suggested.

Lily raised an eyebrow.

"Really? I thought your Lord depleted the Malfoy fortune years ago."

"Not all of it," he said through gritted teeth. "But I also have something you might find more interesting than money."

Malfoy reached for something in the inner pocket of his cloak and Lily tensed for a moment before he pulled out a small, leather-bound book.

"What is that?" Lily asked suspiciously.

"A diary," he replied and opened the book to show Lily its blank pages. "An empty diary," he clarified.

Lily snorted. "That is your grand bargaining chip? A diary?"

Malfoy tossed the book to her and Lily just barely managed to catch it. "Look at the embossing," he said.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Lily whispered. "It's his diary? Why do you have it?"

"He gave it to me, nearly twenty years ago now," Malfoy explained.

"Why?"

"For safe-keeping, or at least that's what told me at the time. I doubt it's just a diary, the thing reeks of dark magic."

Lily flipped through it, but every page she found was just as blank as the previous.

"Is it important?" Malfoy asked nonchalantly.

"It might be," she admitted, but she was honestly doubtful. Holding Helga Hufflepuff's cup had been the most singular feeling, she had been able to practically feel the dark magic as she held it. She felt nothing like that holding the leather-bound book, and she could not sense the dark magic it supposedly contained. "I suppose you want this back," she said and held out the diary to Malfoy.

Malfoy shrugged. "That's a duplicate so it does not matter to me,"

Lily sighed and cursed her own naivete. "Of course it is, you're not that stupid."

"No, I'm not. Now, are you interested or not, Evans?"

Lily considered her options for a few moments.

"Go to the statue in Weavers Fields tonight at nine," she eventually instructed and with a curt nod, Malfoy apparated away.

She would have to talk to the others, but if Malfoy truly had Voldemort's old diary in his possession it was as good a lead as any. It did not fit in with the Hogwarts Founders theme, but she guessed that it could go in the same category as the Gaunt family ring.

She indulged herself with another five minutes by the grave and tried not to think about the fact that it would be the last time she saw it for a foreseeable future. If Malfoy had found her there it meant she had not been as careful as she had hoped and that it would not be safe to come to Godric's Hollow no matter the time of the year.

She apparated to Bethnal Green Garden directly from the graveyard and walked the short way to Weavers Field. Where she entered the park there was a large, modern statue that she could only guess what it was supposed to symbolise. She walked over to one of the benches and sat down, opened her satchel and pulled out a golden locket with a phoenix on the surface. It was the same locket she had taken from Mulligan, and the one she had reset all the enchantments on afterwards. She scouted the square for a place where Malfoy would find it and settled on hanging it on a branch of one of the trees. The muggles would not see it, and neither would any Death Eaters who might pass through the park unless they themselves were considering defecting. The lockets were one of her best inventions and the main reason she could even conduct meetings like the one with Mulligan.

Lily tried to apparate home directly from Bethnal Green only to discover that there was an anti-apparition ward over the place. Anti-apparition wards were rarely a good sign; often they meant that the Death Eaters were planning something in the area and wanted to both close off the escape route and to stop help from arriving directly at the scene. The wards took plenty of skill to put up and rarely held for more than an hour, which was good for the Order since the Death Eaters couldn't put permanent anti-apparition wards over strategic areas like central London. Unfortunately, the hour the ward held was usually enough for whatever attack they planned on doing.

Lily started walking, hopefully away from the ward, and her feet led her to the nearby Shoreditch, and as she stopped outside a familiar building that she had not been to in years she wondered why they had taken her back there. The Pleasant Partridge had been open for business when she last was in Shoreditch, but just like most businesses in London it was now closed down and boarded up. The sign with a cartoonish chicken hiding behind a comically small egg was still hanging from the façade, but the paint was starting to fall off and Lily doubted it would ever be re-opened.

1989

She had found the Pleasant Partridge in Shoreditch by accident when she had needed a place to disappear to after defending three school children against two snatchers in an alleyway not far from the pub. She had been on her way from an Order meeting when she had heard the high-pitched screams and had not hesitated. Fortunately, the two snatchers who had been harassing the three girls were dumb as rocks and easily disarmed. Unfortunately, the commotion had attracted more attention than Lily would've liked, and after quickly and as discreetly as possible obliviating the children she had slipped away from the alley and ended up at the first pub she could find. She had not counted on finding the best pie and mash she'd ever had in London there, and almost unconsciously she had returned repeatedly in the last couple of months.

She knew it was foolish of her to become a regular anywhere in the city, but her life was already chaotic enough as it was, and she found it comforting to sit down by the bar with a drink or some food while Charlie the barkeeper entertained her with stories of people who had supposedly visited his pub.

This Monday evening the pub was a little more than half-full, with a large party of university students occupying the billiards and a group of middle-aged women who had shopping bags all over the floor under their tables. Apart from herself there was only a good-looking man sitting at the bar. He was handsome enough to turn heads, including Lily's, which probably was the reason she knew she had seen him there before. Just as she was busy observing him his head snapped to the left and his eyes met Lily's. She felt herself blush and for a moment considered grabbing her coat and satchel and running out of the pub as fast as she could, but before she had made up her mind, he picked up his half-finished beer and walked over to her.

He truly was a good-looking man; tall and blond with warm brown eyes. He was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans but was the kind of man who looked good in anything. She had previously guessed that he was just a couple of years older than her, but up close she could some crow's feet around his eyes and thought he might actually be pushing forty and just be one of those men who looked better the further they made it into middle-age.

"May I buy you a drink?" He asked with a deep, masculine voice with a faint remnant of a Scottish accent in his otherwise clean RP.

"You may," she replied and tried to sound as normal as possible, and he took a seat at the bar stool next to hers.

"Whatever the lady wants," he told the bartender who nodded and put down the glass he was cleaning to take Lily's order.

She asked for another beer.

"I've seen you here before, do you live nearby?" The handsome man asked, and Lily could not deny feeling flattered that he had noticed her too.

She shook her head. "I have a flat in Clapton. What about you?"

"Bayswater."

Lily raised an eyebrow.

"Fancy."

The man chuckled.

"Well, I haven't paid for it myself; my grandparents left it to me when they died. I should probably sell it and buy something smaller, but it's not really a seller's market nowadays,"

"Shoreditch is a bit out of the way if you live in Bayswater," Lily commented. "Do you work here?"

"No, I'm down by the river. Metropolitan police."

Lily paused for a few moments. So that explained the nice physique, or perhaps not, she had certainly seen plenty of policemen who were anything but fit. She wondered if it was wise to fraternise with someone working for a muggle governmental institution but figured that some smalltalk at a bar could hardly hurt while she made up her mind.

"You haven't told me your name, officer," she said eventually.

The man held out a hand.

"Mark McAuley at your service, ma'am," he said as Lily placed her own hand in his and was given a firm handshake.

"Lily Evans."

"Shoreditch isn't exactly next-door to Clapton either," Mark said.

"It's on the way home," she answered with a shrug. "And Charlie's pies are better than any I've found in Clapton."

"You work downtown?"

"I'm a nanny for a family in Westminster. It's probably much more boring than your job, you don't want to hear about it."

Being a nanny was sufficiently vague, and it would explain her lack of a regular work schedule.

Mark offered her a dazzling smile. "I very much doubt it, but even if it is, I'd love to hear about your boring work, Lily Evans."

Perhaps befriending a police officer wasn't such a bad idea – the Order knew very little about how muggle authorities were reasoning about the recurring Death Eater attacks – and a source on the inside might be useful. Oh, the war had turned her into such a Slytherin.

She smiled back.

Lily did not want to think about Mark and quickly left the street with the Pleasant Partridge to push him away her mind. Shoreditch was a sorry sight these days with barely as much as a Tesco open anymore, a stark contrast to how lively it had been just a couple of years ago. She made another apparition attempt further down the road, and this time she successfully left the miserable Shoreditch behind.

AN:

Mark is of course important, you'll see why in the future, but I don't introduce random muggle OC's without reason.

There is of course no such thing as a pub called The Pleasant Partridge in Shoreditch in London, at least not to my (or Google's) knowledge.

Is anyone reading this, by the way? A quick hi in a review would be much appreciated :)