Previously in the Darklyverse: Voldemort killed James after Lucius Malfoy captured him. Lily and Sirius hunted the remaining Horcruxes. The rest of the Order languished in Azkaban while Death Eaters controlled the Ministry.

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June 11th, 1982: Lily Potter

Lily wouldn't call herself a particularly lucky person. Her parents died when she was only sixteen; she wasted almost a decade of her life being best friends with somebody who loves the Dark Arts and hates Muggle-borns like her on principle; she and her family have spent the last two years in hiding from a Dark Lord who wants her son dead. That same lord has recently had her husband, her best mate, and two of her other closest friends all murdered. Lucky—not so much.

But standing here waiting for Lord Voldemort to arrive, she'd say that, under the circumstances, the events of the last ten minutes have been very fortunate indeed. For one thing, she knows where Malfoy lives—she and Mary visited him and his campaign manager here twice while they were running against each other for Minister—and knowing the location of his manor gives her a direct line to the Death Eaters. For another, Malfoy may be the interim British Minister of Magic, but it turns out his allegiance to the Death Eaters is stronger than his desire to see Lily arrested—he's bypassed the Ministry and contacted Voldemort directly to come and kill her. And Malfoy may have taken her wand when she arrived, but Sirius had the foresight to give her his wand, too: Sirius's wand is the one she surrendered to Malfoy, and her own is tucked in her robes where Malfoy can't see it.

You'd think Lily wouldn't be feeling quite so good about life, considering that she's here at the mercy of a mass murderer and torturer while waiting for his psychopathic leader to come and try to kill her—but if she wants what's left of her family to survive this war and ever regain anything close to a normal life, this is exactly what she needs to happen. As far as she can tell, Voldemort has no idea that his Horcruxes have been destroyed, which means that when Lily breaks out Sirius's wand and tries to kill Voldemort, he won't see it coming, and he certainly won't think it'll work. She may not have a lot of things on her side, but at least a wand might give her the edge she needs to actually survive this thing.

She thinks she's scared in some distant, primal part of her mind—her palms are sweating, and her heart is thumping, and she really, really needs to pee—but she's not registering her fear consciously, at least. If anything, Lily just feels like it was always going to come down to this—her versus Voldemort with nothing but her wits and a smuggled wand here to save her. It's ironic, isn't it? After all the time she spent railing against James for his desire to be the one to track Voldemort down—after all the months in hiding and the conviction that she needed to stay away from the action for Harry's sake—now here she is, risking her neck to try to do the reckless thing and kill the man herself.

Honestly, the seventeen-year-old Lily who cofounded the Order of the Phoenix and marched into the battle that got Millie and Elisabeth killed would be ashamed of the Lily of the past two years who's fought so hard to get away from the war effort. Back then, she'd wanted to make a difference, to make the world a better place—and she's getting her wish, isn't she? Only… it's at the expense of her family, and when she was seventeen, she hadn't banked on ever having a husband or a son depending on her. When she was seventeen, she hadn't known what it's like to fear for your child's life.

Malfoy winces and clutches his arm to his chest. Lily wouldn't have thought much of it, except just minutes ago, she saw him pull back the sleeve on that same arm and press his fingers to a tattoo to summon Voldemort here. "Is your little master running behind schedule?" she sneers, if only to pass the time and take her mind off of what she's about to do. "I guess he's not at your beck and call the way you're at his, huh?"

"Shut your mouth, Mudblood," Malfoy barks back.

"'Mudblood,' huh? Looks like the coward gets a little braver once we're behind closed doors. Better not let the rest of the world hear you call me that, or you might get voted out of office faster than you can say 'special election.'"

"And who exactly is going to run against me? You? Let me remind you that you lost your election—"

"Yet I still managed to get more votes than you," Lily points out, smirking. "Even Runcorn beat you in this last one, and he was a first-timer. All it takes is one person who will step up and put their name on the ballot—"

"Like who?" grunts Malfoy. "Your whole precious Order is dead, locked up in Azkaban, or on the run from the Ministry. Who outside of it is going to be foolish enough to oppose me?"

"All it takes is one person. You may keep everybody in the Order in Azkaban and never give them a fair trial, but if even one person decides to stand up to you Death Eaters' regime, there's hope. There's always somebody, Malfoy."

They're interrupted by a crack of Apparition—and there Voldemort is, just as bald and pale-faced and noseless as Lily remembers from the three times she managed to evade certain death at his hand. "Leave us," says Voldemort in a chilly voice, and Malfoy bows his head and steps out of the room.

Lily feels like there ought to be dramatic music or smoke machines or something to signal just how much her pulse has picked up—just how few precious seconds of life she probably has left. But it's just her and Voldemort staring at each other, him sneering, her shaking so hard she can barely stand. "We meet again," Voldemort says softly, curling his fingers around his wand.

"Yes," says Lily. Her voice is shaking just as hard as her knees.

"I take it you've smuggled in a wand somehow?"

"Yes," she agrees, figuring there's no point in lying—if Voldemort suspects her of it, then her element of surprise is gone. Damn.

"No matter," Voldemort declares. "It's more satisfying if it's an equal duel, isn't it?—though I suppose I do have the unfair advantage of immortality."

She's so, so tempted to drop her bomb—that they've destroyed all of his Horcruxes—but she knows the satisfaction of seeing his face when she breaks the news would be fleeting. Better to whip out her wand and use it to kill him dead.

But Voldemort is faster than her, and the next thing she knows, she's on the ground in the most agonizing pain she's felt since—well—since the last time she was under a Cruciatus Curse. It seems to go on and on, but when at last her limbs go weak and she sobs herself back into reality, she reminds herself that she's not dead yet, that no spell Voldemort can use against her could hurt her anywhere near as badly as James's death hurts. If she could survive losing her husband, then she can endure any pain that any wizard might hurl at her.

To her surprise, when she finally straightens up into a sitting position, Voldemort has pocketed his wand and raised his hands into the air. "Go on, then. Hit me with your best shot, why don't you?"

She doesn't hesitate. "Avada Kedavra!"

And—nothing happens.

Well, something happens: a wisp of green light shoots out the end of Lily's wand and washes over Voldemort, who stumbles backward a bit but remains on his feet. "Interesting," he murmurs. "When your friend Dorcas Meadowes tried that, she did the thing properly—there was a full jet of light and everything—only, of course, when the light touched me, I survived it."

Lily doesn't understand. She's not talking about Voldemort's motivations—he's clearly entertained by this, thinking that there's no chance that any spell could kill him, that a properly cast Killing Curse will only rebound and kill Lily herself instead. What she doesn't understand is how the spell could possibly have failed. Have the goblins not yet finished with the sword as scheduled? Did Voldemort catch on that they were destroying Horcruxes and make himself some more of them?

"You have to mean it for it to take," he says now. Oh—that makes sense. "Try it again, why don't you? Try to really feel how much you hate me." His lips are curled up.

"This is for my husband," Lily whispers, raising her wand. "I'm going to kill you, and you're never going to hurt anybody else ever again."

"Are you really?" Voldemort chuckles. "Suppose you do kill me. You won't, but let's entertain the idea, shall we? What makes you think that my death will mean this war is over?"

Lily falters at that. She's always assumed—they've all always assumed—

"The Minister of Magic is not under the Imperius Curse," he reminds her. "Lucius Malfoy has had more than a taste of what it's like to see the light leave the eyes of the people who are less than he is—what it's like to trap your enemies so tightly that they'll never see the light of day. All my followers have, and they're the ones who control the Ministry. Do you really think that my death would prompt them to give up that power?"

"Maybe not," she admits, and she's pleased to find that her voice has steadied, "but what I can do is make sure that you never live to see it."

"No, Potter: you will never live to see me die, and neither will your son."

He's laughing, but Lily ignores it. She concentrates on the way she felt when Sirius broke the news to her that James was dead—like her soul had been ripped from her body and tattered more thoroughly than Voldemort's was when he made the Horcruxes. She thinks about Emmeline, the Gryffindor outcast who had her back when she was on the outs with the rest of her house—Mary, her campaign manager, whose loyalty to Lily never wavered even as she watched Lily rip her best friend straight away from her—Marlene, the woman who made Lily feel like she had a future after her friendship with Severus was gone. She thinks about Millie LeProut and Elisabeth Clearwater dropping dead before her eyes. She thinks about Marlene's father, Doc; Eddie Bones and Benjy Fenwick; Dorcas Meadowes and the Prewett twins; Hyatt Pertinger and Rosalie Caprine and Jaime Raywood—every last person she's seen ripped away from her as a result of this awful, endless war.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" she roars—

—and this time, Voldemort drops clean to the floor with a thud. The laughter still hasn't left his eyes.

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END OF BOOK FOUR