Chapter 10:

Innocence and Death

Brewing Veritaserum was like making sourdough bread: you have to feed it. Where sourdough bread requires a dough fed on flour and water, Veritaserum requires a starter potion fed on unicorn hair and thestral scales. Lily reminded herself of this as she read Hestia's notes, trying not to be nervous by the priceless bundle of white glittery hairs and the bottle of silver black scales. Just flour and water, she repeated. Only this was very expensive flour and water, that would be hard to replace if she screwed it up. And it had been years since she had made a sourdough starter, or even seen one. Homemade sourdough bread was her mother's favorite. Her mother used to joke that the sourdough starter was the only pet the Evans Family ever needed. She'd create a new starter every summer. Lily used to give names to their "pets" and help feed them when she was little. She and Petunia used to argue about the names, and then, later, when Petunia stopped talking to her, Severus and Lily would choose the name together, and take turns feeding it. But that was before Severus called her a mudblood, and everything fell apart.

She looked into the cauldron, a shimmering, white liquid, and tried to think of a name. It reminded her of clouds and stars and childhood. As it matured, it would become silver and thick—the color of unicorn blood— and then black and nearly gaseous, and right when it seemed it couldn't be contained, you exposed it to the full moon, added the final ingredients, and it condensed into a smooth, clear Veritaserum. Each cauldron would only produce about four ounces of Veritaserum, but that would be plenty enough for the Order.

"I shall call you Percy," declared Lily, and to make it official she transfigured the ribbon that Hestia had bound her notes with into a sash to wrap around the cauldron, spelling out Percy in cursive, glittery script across the sash with her wand. Finished, and feeling only slightly silly, Lily looked back to Hestia's directions, reading what she needed to feed Percy with tonight. Since he was just a baby, he needed to be fed daily but with smaller portions. Tonight, Lily just needed to feed him one single strand of unicorn hair. Hestia had underlined: Wear gloves to handle the hair! Tomorrow, Hestia would feed Percy one Thestral scale. They would alternate innocence with death until they created truth.

Lily pulled on her gloves and gently took one hair from the bundle. She held it up for a moment, making sure it truly was just one strand. She laid it in the shimmering liquid, and then grabbed her wand, and intensified the heat of the flames beneath the cauldron, bringing the potion to the edge of boiling. She would have to maintain this point of heat with the liquid until the strand of unicorn hair dissolved. Then, she would gradually bring it to a lower temperature.

Lily made herself comfortable in an armchair (formerly a Victorian style bed) causing little clouds of dust to puff into the air as she shifted around. The room wasn't large—it was one of the empty bedrooms in the cottage acting as the Order's headquarters. But it had an excellent fireplace: tall and wide enough for multiple people to floo into. Miniature engravings of centaurs and goblins waged war across the mantel. Lily watched as one squadron of centaurs charged into the frontline of the goblins, and the goblins, lifting a finger, caused all the centaurs to levitate, their hooves running in the air. The centaurs were prepared for this, and they let loose a volley of arrows down upon the goblins. The goblins pointed at each arrow, and the arrows transformed into birds. This was a battle without casualties—more like a dance than actual fighting—and it transfixed Lily as she watched both armies' ever changing tactics and defenses.

She might have been tempted to sleep if not for the Lucitrum potion buzzing in her veins. After the events of yesterday—the mission, Dorcas, the mountains of paperwork for bringing muggles into St. Mungos— and the utter nonsense of today, Lily had lost track of how many doses of Lucitrum she'd drank during work to stay alert, but she'd apparently had a little too much. She went to confront the Head of Potion and Plant Poisoning floor, and —after the idiot made a particularly offensive comment about muggles— lost control and accidentally made his rubbish bin explode, splattering what was left of his spaghetti over the both of them. Edith convinced her to take a small dose of calming draught before she returned to seeing the rest of her patients. It had taken the edge off of it; but still, Lily felt jittery.

So when the fire suddenly flashed green, and a shadowed figure appeared-—Lily immediately stood and pointed her wand, and found herself looking at James Potter. As he stepped out of the flames, Lily saw he was holding two bottles of Butterbeer at his side.

"Hi," James said, standing perfectly still on the welcome mat by the fireplace.

"Hi," Lily repeated, lowering her wand, and trying to steady her heart rate.

"I've brought you a butterbeer. "

"You read my owl."

They both tried to speak at the same time.

"Sorry, you go first," Lily said.

" I brought you a Butterbeer and thought we might talk. I know we normally have our weekly meetings on Thursday, but after yesterday..." He trailed off, still standing on the rug, perfectly still.

"Yeah. We do need to talk. There's not a ton of seating in here, so we could go to one of the other rooms, but I also need to keep an eye on the potion, so—," Lily was rambling, and she knew it, but she couldn't stop the words tumbling out.

"It's fine. I can magic myself a seat." James said and finally stepped off the rug and into the room. He waved his wand almost absentmindedly, and conjured a squashy armchair of his own that looked vaguely like the ones in the Gryffindor Common room. He sat down next to her and offered her a Butterbeer.

"Thanks," She said, taking it, enjoying the warm glass on her finger tips. They looked at each other. Lily wondered if he was trying to read her as she was him. The light of the fireplace softened some of the new lines in his face, and he looked younger, and—with his shirt untucked and the right sleeve of his robes slightly burnt for some unknown reason—more like the James she once knew. With their weekly meetings, the sharp bite of being together in the same room had faded. It felt almost normal to be sitting here, sharing a Butterbeer. James turned to the cauldron. She saw one of his eyebrows raise at the sash.

"You've named it Percy?" He asked, a smile flickering on his face.

He gave her an opening. She felt ready this time: She could do this. She could be Hogwarts Lily again and slide back into that easy rhythm.

"Why do you think I've named it? It could have been Hestia."

"Come on, I know you, Evans. You even named your favorite quill at school. What was it again—that one with the peacock feather? All I remember is that it was a bit old ladyish. "

"Excuse me, Ariadne is not old ladyish!" Lily said, laughing a little.

"Whatever Evans, tell that to Grandmother Potter and her knitting circle. But Percy—that's a good name. I had a stuffed Hippogriff named Sir Percy once," He said, sipping his Butterbeer

"What happened to him? Did Sirius chew him up?" James cracked a smile at that, a real smile, his eyes crinkling up.

"Nah, he was gone before I went to Hogwarts. My dad bought me a stuffed snitch one day, and then he and mum would charm it to fly around for me to run after, so with that, Sir Percy didn't have much of a chance. The snitch obviously stole my affections."

"Poor Sir Percy."

"Yeah," He looked at her for a moment, still half smiling, and then shook his head a little. "Anyways, I've got questions. Do you think that Rosier and Knapton knew that they were being followed?"

"I don't know. Possibly? Dorcas was able to figure out fairly quickly that I wasn't a muggle. She realized I was following them. So if she caught on, perhaps Roiser did as well. Knapton didn't seem to be suspicious. They might not have seen me use a potion on Jonathan Wells—that's the man who got a seizure. But they didn't stay much longer once he went down. They both disapparated before the Aurors and Oblivators came onto the scene. Who's shadowing Knapton today?"

"Hestia and Marlene. They found him just fine, but have been keeping their distance. It appears the most interesting thing he's done is visit his mother today."

"Have you heard any updates about the poison? Dorcas said she got the Auror department and St. Mungos to work together on the analysis."

" I haven't really heard anything besides that. It seems like it has some hallucinogenic ingredients—no surprise there—but that's why Wells wasn't entirely cured with your antidote. I, uh, heard that they've decided to keep him in St. Mungos for a while." He said the last part carefully. Lily's lips tightened, the warm buzzing feeling dissipating.

"Yeah they have. He's stable now; he could leave. But since he's the only one to have had an allergic reaction, they've decided to use him to test out ingredients."

"You don't seem happy about that."

"Well, using muggles like lab rats isn't my most favorite thing. And that's what they're doing! That's how they see it! They told me today that they're just planning on obliviating his memory each day, so he won't know how long he's actually been in the hospital or what's been shoved down his throat. And when he's done, they'll just wave their wands and blast his memory away once more, and make him think that it's only been a day. The Head of the Poisoning floor couldn't understand why I was upset! He said that muggles are so stupid, they hardly notice anything, or think to even question what's going on. He doubts that even the man's family will wonder where he's gone," She paused to catch her breath, but was surprised when James didn't say anything. She had expected he would argue with her and tell her how it was all for the greater good, but he was silent.

She continued in a much calmer manner: "It's just, there are other ways, more humane ways, to figure out what that poison was. But they don't see him as a person, not really. They just want to do whatever is easiest. And that stupid mindset is why we are losing."

"You think our side is losing?" He asked sharply.

"Well, this doesn't feel like winning does it? It always seems like we are two steps behind Him, scrambling to catch up. And whenever we get close, then we have to deal with this bullshit." He opened his mouth—to agree, to argue? But Lily waved him off: "If you wanted to talk about my opinion of the War, you should have brought something stronger than Butterbeer."

James closed his mouth. Then said: " I need you sober." Lily narrowed her eyes.

"What's going on?"

"I told the Ministry that once they figured out the poison, and the right antidote, I'd be willing to take it. Test it to see what it does on wizards."

"You think it sounds similar to what happened to you?"

"The waitress said in her statement that she thought she was carrying decapitated heads of her parents on her tray. The other woman said that when she was little, she found a spider crawling out of her doll's mouth. Yesterday, she ended up blacking out after she 'felt' the spiders crawl into hers. That sounds like they've been forced to live out their worst fears."

"But she woke up. She wasn't stuck in a coma, like you were. She passed out because she had a panic attack."

"Okay, well that part is maybe a little different, but come on—reliving your nightmares? I felt that. I lived that! I just—I want to see if it feels the same. Maybe it's not the exact poison that was used on me. Maybe they are sister poisons or something, but if it gets us closer to figuring this out, to helping Moody and Alice and Fabian— don't you think it's worth a shot?" Lily studied him, and saw the tension in his shoulders, the bright, almost feverish glint in his eyes, and his hand, hanging off the armrest of his chair, clenched tight into a fist, but still trembling. She wanted to reach out to him, to take his hand in hers, to still it.

" Just be careful," she said gently," Make sure they have an antidote—a full antidote— before you go off and do something stupid," Her hand crept to the edge of her armrest, the tips of her fingers leaning into the space between them. She just wanted to comfort him.

"I know, I know. That's what Dani keeps telling me. To be patient. But it's like—I've waited a year with absolutely nothing. No leads. No answers. Just my damn nightmares and fucked up memories. And now, I'm just afraid I'm going to lose it, or muck it up. There's a lot of leads popping up, and that's terrifying and exciting..." Dani. Danielle? His fiance. He hadn't mentioned her before now. She felt a twinge at his nickname; somehow that made it a little more real. She stopped reaching out, and brought her hand back to the glass bottle of Butterbeer. She squeezed it. James didn't seem to have noticed. He was digging around his robes, still talking, and then he handed her a thick envelope. She took it without thinking, without looking at it, just at him. He wasn't smiling at her, but he looked at her fully, openly.

"...I don't know if this will help; I've looked it over already, and I can't see much use for it, but maybe you will see something in it that I don't," He finished. Lily opened the envelope and read at the top: Maison de Guérison de Morgue Le Fay. She saw the symbol of a cauldron wreathed by laurels in the top right corner and then read: Dossiers Médicaux de James Potter. James's medical records. She started reading eagerly, forgetting for a moment about Dani, about the stupid Head of Poisonings, and lost herself to the translating the records.

"They first thought it was Spell damage—that's what I thought too with Moody and the others." Lily muttered, more to herself than James. He stayed quiet.

" No surface damage—that's different. But, you were alone right? Or thought you were alone. The others were dealing with the ambush first. Jacques found you—was he on the mission with you? He thought you had been stunned, but couldn't renovate you. They ran a lot of different tests, but didn't look for poison. They started thinking you must have had contact with a cursed object. We've wondered that as well.

"Ah, here we go. Their treatments: antidote to the Draught of Living Death, Confectio Alcherme—but neither had much effect. Daily doses of the calming draught seemed to help your symptoms—yes, yes, that all lines up with what we have done. Oh! Here's something different: Legilimency. It had a strong reaction from you, but they didn't try it again because of the safety for the caster. Do you know what they mean by that?"

"Apparently, I attacked the man and nearly gouged his eyes out." James said. Lily looked up from the parchment.

"Oh." He had gone pale, and sat hunched over. "I'm sorry, J-Potter. I wasn't thinking. I shouldn't have just rattled on like that. "

"It's fine. Really it is, I'm alright."

"Are you though?"

"What? Yeah, I'm grand." He said weakly. Both hands were trembling now. Lily folded up the parchment; she'd examine it more later.

"You mentioned you had to go through therapy. What did that look like?"

"Um, well, I went through physical therapy. A lot of my muscles had atrophied, and I had to get used to walking, and using my wand again. Some of the muscle memory was a bit wobbly after everything."

"Did you talk with anyone about your memory damage?"

"I—they offered to do a Legilimency session with me, you know. Try to help me sort out the mess of everything, but I didn't go for it. I couldn't bear to have anyone go poking around in my head, and then there is the whole thing with the Order. How can I know if I can really trust them with any of that information, you know? So they offered, but I think they were relieved when I turned them down, considering what happened last time. But, Dumbledore gave me his pensive, and he and I went through some of the damaged memories together. He showed me how to identify them, and then I just shifted through it all on my own and tried to piece things back together. It's not perfect. Sometimes, I still get triggered and one of the twisted ones pop back up, or I get flashes of one of the nightmares. But most of the time, I'm good. I can cope."

"Were many of your memories damaged?"

"The ones that had a high level of emotion with them—whether that was joy, or love, or fear, sorrow—all of those were mucked with." They sat there in silence for beat, listening to the potion hiss while James tried to control his visible shaking, and Lily debated about pushing him further.

"You know, maybe Hestia could help," Lily finally said.

"What?"

"I mean, and I'm not trying to overstep or anything, but she's an Oblivator. And she's in the Order. What if she was able to erase the memory of the nightmares? Or if she could get rid of whatever is left of the taint on your normal memories?"

"I-" But whatever James was going to say was cut off by the sound of a loud banshee-like wail emanating from the cauldron. He flinched, and in a flash, was standing up, drawing out his wand.

"Oh damn!" Lily said, as she jabbed her wand in the air, making quick slashing movements. The sound ended, and then she pointed her wand at the hissing, bubbling surface of the potion, and sent out a cooling charm. " Sorry about that. I cast a charm to alert me when the potion reached its boiling point, but I was a little overenthusiastic,"

"No, it's fine" James said, still standing, "What time is it anyway?" He glanced at his wrist watch, "Merlin it's late. I got to go."

"James—"

"I'll see you then, Thursday night? For our weekly meeting?"

"Yes but—"

"Brilliant. I'll better be off. Percy!" He said, nodding at the still steaming potion. Then he grabbed a fistful of green powder (a bit more than he needed) tossed it into the fire, and was gone. Off to Sirius's.

Lily looked back at the empty, conjured chair beside her; he forgot to vanish it in his rush. She hadn't meant to push him too far. She leaned over the potion, examining the color, the smell, to see if the brief second of boiling had ruined it. Perhaps it was a bit more luminescent than before, but that could also be due to the now dissolved unicorn hair. After extinguishing the flames and setting another alarm for an hour later, she opened back up James's medical records, and scanned through the document until she found what she was looking for: the tremor. After an hour of translating, Lily saw that their conclusion echoed her own. The tremor wasn't due to physiological trauma—it was psychological. And as such, any potions or elixirs would be minimally effective at treating its effects. They were doubtful that the tremor would ever be fully cured. And, according to their records, James had apparently not taken their news well.

A/N: Woo! Slight progress between Lily and James in this chapter. Next chapter will be from Hestia's perspective as she works with James. Also, I decided to name France's counterpart to St. Mungos after Morgana Le Fay. In some of the Arthurian Myths, she is a healer, so I thought it was a good match.