A/N: Everyone loves a good prophecy! i don't know whether i really like this chapter, but i'm the author, and authors are never happy with what they've done. make your own assumptions.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, from the shirt on my back to the keyboard which I so lovinglytap away at.Not even Harry Potter! Or, for that matter anything associated with it!
Dumbledore opened the door and stepped through rather unceremoniously. Lily didn't know what she had been expecting. Perhaps fireworks or an orchestra, she thought wildly to herself. She followed him over the threshold, turning to close the door.
"Don't!" Dumbledore said suddenly, but calmly all the same.
Lily wasn't sure how he had seen her. He was, and had always been, looking straight ahead, not glancing over his shoulder at Lily. She heeded his warning however, and let the door be.
Unaware of what to expect, Lily chanced a look around the room. Everything was black, from the walls and the ceiling to the dozen or so doors spaced at regular intervals along the single, circular wall. The only light was coming from dozens of candles, each of which burned a pale, ghostly blue flame.
Lily immediately wished she could examine the contents behind each of the intriguing black doors, but Dumbledore was already crossing the room, and Lily, remembering her promise, quickly followed suit.
She found herself embalmed in a ray of beautiful, diamond-bright light. She looked to see that the source of the light was an enormous bell-jar, made of crystal and full of something glittery, blowing in the wind.
Lily very much wanted to examine this jar more closely, but Dumbledore was already sweeping through the room to a door at the other end. Lily followed once again, pausing briefly at the threshold, taking one longing glance back at the beautiful, swirling wind. She made to enter the next room, stopping suddenly in utter surprise.
It seemed to Lily as though she had just entered the largest library imaginable. The room was immense, filled with nothing but rows and rows of shelves. She expected the shelves to house books, but instead they were filled with tiny glass orbs, glimmering slightly through a curtain of dust. As in the circular room through which she had entered the Department of Mysteries, the torches in their brackets were burning an eerie, blue flame.
"Follow me," Dumbledore whispered, fog coming from his mouth, for the room was very cold. Lily knew why he was using such a hushed voice. The room was so huge, so imposing, it seemed only proper to whisper, so not to disturb the dusty glass balls.
He turned left and began walking purposefully down the rows of shelves. She glanced at the row they had emerged in front of. Row fifty-three. Lily followed Dumbledore down the many rows.
Forty-nine… forty-eight… the numbers were getting smaller as they walked on. Dumbledore, however, did not slow his pace.
Thirty-four… thirty-three… they must be getting close now, these balls were so dusty one would hardly be able to tell they were made of glass.
Twenty-eight… twenty-seven… couldn't be much further now… Dumbledore turned abruptly, and Lily, who had kept walking, had to backtrack to turn down the row Dumbledore had. Row twenty-four… Lily noted to herself. Not looking where she was going, she bumped right into Dumbledore.
"Umph!" she grunted, "Oh, sorry professor…"
"That is quite alright Lily…" he pointed to a particularly dusty orb; it obviously had not been touched for many years. "There… that is something that may interest you."
Lily looked to where he was pointing. Below the glass ball was a label, in quite fancy handwriting, it stated:
C.A.T. to W.B.P.A.D
(?) Dark Lord
And
(?) Lily Evans
Final Applicant Unknown
"What's this?" Lily asked Dumbledore, unsure of why they had stopped there, and why the label had her name on it.
"That," Dumbledore answered slowly, "Is the prophecy which I have told you not nearly enough about." Lily just nodded.
Final applicant unknown…Lily thought to herself. Dumbledore had not mentioned a third party; simply that it contained information about her and, she shuddered at the thought of the name, Voldemort.
Reaching up, Lily removed the dusty glass ball from the shelf. She had prepared for it to be cold, much like the rest of the strange room she was in. She was quite surprised when she felt it warm to her touch, as though it had been sitting in the sun, or perhaps blown incessantly by a hairdryer.
She looked up at Dumbledore, who suddenly looked much older. Lily had never really thought of him as an old man. True, his long hair and beard were both snowy white, but he had always seemed youthful. Now he looked aged, wizened, even slightly diminished.
"Alright, Lily," he said quietly. "Let's go."
She followed him out of the room full of glass orbs. Row twenty-four… she found herself thinking again. She didn't know why she was remembering what row the prophecy was in, it wasn't likely that she would be returning to the department of mysteries, but she couldn't help it. Row twenty-four.
As Lily and Dumbledore made their way back through the glittering room, she chanced one last glance at the glittering bell jar. It was beautiful, yes, but she no longer cared what mystery was contained in this ethereal room. The only mystery she was concerned with was a certain glass ball, and it was currently enclosed in her left hand.
Lily wasn't really aware of walking back through the odd round room and out of the department of mysteries. Her legs were carrying her, but her thoughts were elsewhere, not at all in her present state. She was, consequently, thoroughly surprised when she was once again standing in the crowded entrance hall of the ministry of magic, being handed a quill by Dumbledore.
"It's a portkey," he was saying. She grasped the end of the handsome eagle feather, and felt, for the second time that day, a familiar sensation in the region just behind her naval.
Lily landed rather hard on the stone floor of the passage where she had arrived much earlier that day. Dumbledore, who had amazingly managed to keep his footing, pulled her once again from the ground. Without a word, he made his way back into his office, sitting behind the desk upon which Lily's father's letter still lay.
It only took a glimpse of her father's beautifully untidy scrawl for Lily's eyes to well up with tears. She had been strong all day, she had listened to Dumbledore, she had gotten the prophecy, and it didn't change a thing, her father was still dead. He wasn't coming back. Lily had seen it, just like that, a rushing wind signaled the theft of his soul. She couldn't help it; she simply hung her head and sobbed.
Lily didn't know how long she sat there, tears pouring from her eyes, not daring to look anywhere but her own lap. She did know that it was not until some time later when the steady stream of salty liquid was dammed. She knew it wasn't gone, but perhaps her eyes thought it best that they take a break, and leave some tears for another occasion.
She looked determinedly at Dumbledore. His eyes did not twinkle, yet they did not show any sympathy. Rather, they showed a sort of understanding. Lily's heart suddenly hardened. She hated those eyes; everything about them, right down to their tiny black pupils. She hated them because they contained what she knew her eyes would never contain, understanding… understanding why people must experience loss.
Dumbledore, for what seemed like the umpteenth time since Lily had made seen him, sighed a great, heavy, sigh. "I think now it is time… I cannot put it off any longer," he said wearily. "You need to hear the prophecy."
Lily, of course, had no idea how she was to extract a prophecy from this tiny glass ball. But, just as she was staring at it, wishing with all of her might that it did not exist, a face appeared in it.
As she watched, amazed and bewildered, the face slowly began to rise from the glass ball, and soon the head and torso of a rather frail-looking witch was floating on the desk before her. She was very thin, but she was draped in multiple shawls, which gave her a hunched look, as though she was many years older than she actually was.
As Lily observed the strange woman, she began to speak,
"THE DARK LORD WILL RISE SWIFTLY, MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY WHO CAME BEFORE HIM… TRY AS THEY MIGHT, THE MOST POWERFUL WIZARDS WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TO CONQUER HIM… AS HIS POWER INCREASES, AN EMERALD EYED BEAUTY DISCOVERS HER DESTINY, UNAWARE OF THE POWER WITHIN... WITH HAIR LIKE FIRE, SHE WILL BE GIVEN A CHOICE FEW ENDURE… FROM A HORRIFIC LOSS A COMPANIONSHIP WILL EMERGE… AND PUREBLOOD AND MUDBLOOD WILL UNITE TO PRODUCE THE ONLY HOPE OF THE WIZARDING WORLD…"
Lily just stared straight ahead. "It means me?" she asked, though she knew the answer already.
"There is no doubt in my mind that, it does, in fact, mean you," Dumbledore said.
Lily didn't know what to say. She didn't want to talk about it, but she also had no idea what it meant. She chanced another question.
"This prophecy," she began, unsure of where he question was going, "underneath of it, it said there was a third person involved, but I only noticed it mention two."
"Ah, yes," Dumbledore agreed, "Of course, for the longest time, those at the department of mysteries only saw two in it as well. They believed, as I am sure it sounds to you, a red-haired witch would befriend this Dark Lord. However, the first prophecy makes it clear that the Dark Lord mentioned is Lord Voldemort and— many people do not realize this, but— he is a half-blood. Therefore it would come to pass that the pureblood mentioned is a third party."
"Okay," was all Lily said in response. She really didn't really know what to say. This was all hitting her at the same time, and she didn't know what to say. She merely sat there until Dumbledore began to speak again.
"The companionship mentioned I think is meant to emerge from the loss of your father. It is not, in my most humble opinion, a companionship with Lord Voldemort, however." Lily's heart immediately leapt at this thought, she had feared that was exactly what the companionship was.
Dumbledore continued, "I do not have all the answers, Lily, and I am sorry this was sprung upon you at such a difficult time in your life, but I, being only human, made the mistake of keeping this from you. Now, since the prophesied events are beginning to take place, I have no choice but to let you know now, at the worst time."
Lily just stared. He was right, it was a mistake to keep it from her. Now-- her heart already full to bursting-- she had the added burden of realizing that she must stumble around blindly, trying to fulfill a prophecy she did not understand, while the fate of the entire wizarding world rested on her shoulders.
"It's not fair," she muttered for the second time, eyes once again resting on the cold stone floor.
"I know," was all Dumbledore said in response.
Lily felt her temper rising, how could he know? "You don't know!" she heard herself screaming at Dumbledore, and before she could help herself, her fiery temper had gotten the best of her, and she was screaming at him all the hurt she felt, all the pain, the unfairness of it all. If she could make him feel perhaps a fraction of what she was feeling right now, perhaps then he would know.
"—you DON'T KNOW what it feels like! You didn't lose your father today! You didn't realize you had the fate of the entire wizarding world on your shoulders! YOU DON'T KNOW! YOU CAN'T KNOW!"
She stopped, fuming, and began to cry. She hadn't meant to blame this on Dumbledore, but he was still just sitting there, calm, and she sobbed into her own hands, "you don't know."
Lily returned later that day to her home, and over the next several days, hardly came out of her bedroom. She had furiously torn down all the pictures of her friends she had pinned up on the wall and thrown them in an old shoebox, most of them still smiling and waving at her. What right do they have to be cheerful anyway? She thought bitterly to herself as she did this.
No right; that was the answer. No right at all. They had no business being happy, when her very soul was screaming with agony. She devoid her room of color, and pulled the curtains over the window, furiously trying to block out the summer sun. She spent the whole of every day lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, and when night approached, she would slip into a tortured sleep, full of green flashes and rushing winds.
Her father's funeral had been the hardest. The pain was tripled by the fact that they could not reveal the true cause of his death, as his muggle friends would never understand. A car crash, that's what they put it to. Driving home late one night from London, he had swerved and hit a tree, no other cars were involved. His body was so mangled, they refused to open the casket. It was all lies.
Many days later—Lily didn't know how many, they seemed to slip by so slowly and she had quit keeping track—Lily's mother knocked on her door.
"We're going into London tomorrow," she said in a motherly tone, trying her best to comfort Lily, though she was grieving as well.
"Why?" Lily asked monotonously.
"We need to get your school supplies, you leave in three days."
"Oh, right." Lily couldn't believe it. She was returning to Hogwarts in three days? How was that even possible? Where had the time gone?
"Mum—" Lily began.
"Yes, dear?"
"I'm sorry for what happened to daddy…"
"Don't blame yourself darling…" She smiled warmly, "I love your father very dearly, and I know he loves me, wherever he is. As you grow older, you will realize that the one's we love never really leave us. No, they are there, lingering just out of sight."
Lily smiled. It was the first smile that had broken her lips in days, since she had spent the entire day with James Potter. She had forgotten that day completely. "I love you daddy," she whispered, before falling into her first dreamless sleep.
A/N: The "A" stands for Aislin, which is the name I had originally given Cassandra Trelawny before I realized she was already named. Next chapter, GO!