Chapter Three: Fracture's Flower

Where death reigns, life begins.

The world was black around her as Lily opened her eyes once again. Cold tile met her back and her hair was heavy in her eyes. Red and black was everywhere- like Gryffindor's death. It seemed so long ago now since James encircled her in his warmth and the Potter family brought her back into their house on an icy Easter Sunday. It seemed like so long ago now since she had James, but only like moments before when his ushering not to speak met her pale ears. She felt so deep down in herself where it was cold and empty and her heart was splintered over and over again; she felt beautiful and tragic.

I am Lily. I am Lily. I am Lily. I am Lily. I am me. Where?

She remembered the cracking of crystals just above her head, like perfection being broken into shards. The chandelier- James' chandelier with candles and warmth and light. It had sent her into a flurry of winds with its cleavage. Even at end it was smoothed out into… into Muriel, perhaps? Lily could feel her mind wandering away into oblivion.

Opening her eyes further, she met a colder sight of onyx and quartz beaded together into a pair of two eyes. Lucius, Lucius Malfoy. She knew the name swirling in the darker echoing caverns of her mind. He was a Muggle-hater, an aspiring Deatheater, a man of sin. She knew him just like she knew James. But where James was warm, she also knew this boy was ice. Her thoughts, she knew, could not be her own because she knew another boy, a boy like James and Lucius split in two and mixed against her Christian wishes into a third party. He was Sirius Black and Lily knew she had never in her memory met anyone of that name. Lucius may be ice, but he was a coldness she could not yet understand. And so she met his stormy gaze that would not move its colors.

"You have passive eyes." She spoke from her place on the ground.

"And you, mudblood, are in my compartment."

Lily's eyes did not move, only squinted slightly in confusion. Thoughts raced past a limit of speed she knew she should have set and the winds she had fallen into, the coldness that kept peeling back layer upon layer of her hidden self that even she did not yet know, seemed to race in through her ears and create a tornado of her thoughts until they were rushing… rushing… rushing away. His stoic eyes did not blink.

"No," Lily told him, biting back sighs and gasps at the unexplainable sounds of emptiness in her head. "I believe, that is to say I think," she added, almost nodding at the irony of the lack of such activity behind her eyes, "that this room is mine."

"Look, Evans," His voice was so acidulous. "This is my compartment, it is always my compartment so get-"

But then there were wheels turning beneath her, tracks squeaking beneath her weight. She was moving and sliding and the scarlet of her hair around her held her captive to the Malfoy's gaze. There was London out her window, King's Cross too, and it was rolling back behind her. Within a moment's thought, for her thoughts were indeed once again, as her eyes broke from his, passing quicker that the train through her head, she knew she could never go back.

She let red hair more scarlet that the walls shade her view of Lucius.

"I don't like you, you little prick."

There didn't seem anything else better for her to shape through her mouth and pass out into the world on her voice. The words just seemed to come from her, and though she couldn't find where they came from, she also couldn't put them back. She might have described the feeling to be as if she had been woken in a startle, and the surprise had somehow exploded through her into a rampage of curses. But somehow it resonated her hollow, where her Lucius should have fallen in her memory, into a hushed voice and a monotonous sound. It was like someone had increased a distortion in her to cover any pain or mistake.

Maybe the words came from memory. Maybe not. She didn't know.

But his presence became so cold and his eyes that did not emote became so furiously tangled in nothingness that she almost saw him in her. She almost saw hat coldness in her frailty. And that scared her beyond her deepest wounds, because beyond her own nothingness of mind, there was also coldness that she could still feel in memory.

She let herself fall into the aisle of the train in an instant, more afraid for her seeing sadness in her memory than her life in a Malfoy's hands. She did not know Lucius Malfoy. And though she always had before, she did not fear him. She only feared herself. But she knew that given the slightest chance at her throat, he might cut it with her own wand.

"James, dear, there she is, there's Lily!" Mrs. Potter's voice was on the train as well, slowed in Lily's ears by her oh so many thoughts.

"James!" She could not imagine a moment more dear to her than this, for before her stood James, behind her, Lucius, and between it all was the world. There was Lily. Everything she could ever be was locked within her mind. Were she to lose it, there would be nothing for her but death. But were she to gain those things she could be, she wasn't sure there'd be anything more. To see James gave her reassurance of life and place. She was Lily.

Once more, Lily met eyes with Lucius Malfoy, and at under her gaze he piled all his grace upon his head and stepped back within he shadows of his compartment. He never lowered his eyes from hers until the door blocked his mind.

With less than comfort in her mind, but more than unsettlement, Lily pulled herself away from confusion and transformed all the comfort and all the familiarity of James that she couldn't quite comprehend into a warm smile up at the Potter family. Her trust in James was infinite. Forever after, to guard her from herself and her blanking mind, he could be her eyes. Yet even as her lips quirked upwards and her eyelashes lowered slightly in succession of her thoughts, she knew there was something very wrong. She should know where she was.

I should know.

"What is this place?" she asked, though not sure her voice was loud enough that even James, arm's length away and still approaching to bring her into his hug, could hear her.

"The Train. Can't you remember the Hogwarts Express?" Muriel asked her, perhaps forgetting for a moment her earlier battle with one Lily Evans.

Lily didn't answer, only stared blankly at the familiar smoothness of the name against her ears. "Hogwarts?" The word came from her mouth with less than foreign unease. "I don't know that place."

"Then you should listen when I tell you stuff," said Muri. "You might not have had to met Lucius then. I told you not to touch him."

But Lily hadn't touched; only had she looked. Mirrors play tricks, she remembered, as do songs. Lucius wasn't more than a mirror, but Muriel was both. Lily wondered how she knew this.

Lily missed the loving eyes Alec Potter sent his youngest child, only feeling his wife's warm hug and her lips just below her ear. Had seen it, she might have wondered why the Potters' warmth was spread on the Muriel's cold words without restraint of temper. She might have wondered if they even heard their daughter speak.

As it was, she only guessed that the James' family had a strange dislike of her, and was only left confused when Mrs. Potter told her she was on the train to school and she should have a lovely time over Spring term.

"Don't be too strange now, Lily, darling. I get awful lonely when James won't write. And Muri here will only stay with me when it's dreary. I'm sure you'll be happy again soon." she said

But Lily wasn't sure she was ever happy.

Brenna continued, "James will remind you of everything, and if you write me, I'll write back. Besides, I'd like to send you my photographs. An untainted eye of judgement is always a nice touch to an artist's career."

"Mum! Don't use my friends like that."

Lily nodded, not sure of what to say.

"Owl me, Lil." said Brenna in her ear.

And then, with a small, sharp, pop, the Potters were gone, and James was next to her, and Lily's thoughts were all muddled into words that wouldn't logically relieve themselves of her. She could still feel Mrs. Potter's arms around her in a soft, girlish hug.

"I guess we're back here again,"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lily asked him. She pushed a strand of hair into her eyes and gazed out from the mass of red before blowing in up from her skin in a soft burst of breath. She swept her hair back and tried to smile, though she sure it must have looked more like a grimace. "Have I really been here before? I can't remember it."

"Well, for fuck's sake, Lily! It's not like you have memory of much. You couldn't even remember what you ate for breakfast, I bet." The words came out through his lips as the twisted around each other into some sort of strange frown. She wasn't sure what to make of it.

"I didn't eat breakfast. I haven't been awake since yesterday. I fell asleep with you. You must remember that. And then everything blacked out and your father screamed and-"

"That was four days ago. You've woken up and gone to sleep every day since then. And no one ever screamed."

Lily watched James' head tilt to the left, shake, and then tilt to the right. Then she spoke: "I remember that was yesterday, but I can't imagine you would lie. I just… I only remember just a bunch of blackness. And I remember Muriel scratching me. And I remember her screaming. I remember smoking your cigarettes, and that couldn't have been more than yesterday."

"You did. You smoke them everyday. You have for months."

She cocked an eye. "I don't believe that."

"Well, it's true. Whatever that's supposed to mean." He pushed her past a nearly full compartment and into one across the aisle and four doors down. Maroon seats glared back at her, and she instantly knew they had been there before.

Her eyes met his and he nodded to her.

"You looked sad after Christmas so I stared at you. Your eyes are so pretty when you're sad. I called you 'Lily, love' and we've been friends since. I never asked why you wanted to cry."

"I didn't want to cry. I never cry."

"Liar. You ate Chex for breakfast this morning, so you know. And black coffee with honey. Fucking gross, you've gotta admit." He paused and smiled. "I wanted to kiss you so bad that day in here. I never did. And by the time we rode back, you wanted to kiss me too, but you didn't."

"How d'you know?"

"I just do."

Lily was silent for a moment. There wasn't much to be said and she sat down without words. Coffee did sound awfully good.

And James' voice was silk lulling in her eyes to a steady sleep, with dreams of flying men, devil-horses, and eagle quills of a distinctly sharp sugar from a little store named Honeydukes. She dreamt of a never-ending path that eternally continued in darkness and in light, and in forests made of fear and towns of brilliant sunshine. James made Hogwarts a fairytale of the villainous Slytherins against him and the Gryffindor band of Marauders. He called her a princess of all beautiful things with aqua eyes and perfect red hair. But she only thought it a dream.

Hogwarts was home.

Lily knew this before even seeing it, so long before now. She had always blamed this on her sister's cries that witchcraft was evil and wizardry moronic. She said it was only because she was eleven and had never really had a place called home.

But Lily knew just when the castle came into view early Friday morning, just a week after she had left but ever far away, that Hogwarts would always be her love. Men would die and cheat and steal, but Hogwarts would always be warm and faithful as long as Dumbledore was Headmaster. Just the sight of the school brought his name to her lips. James just smiled and draped an arm over her before letting it quickly retreat a moment later.

She should have asked why; he might have told her then.

Slowly she retreated back into a darker corner of her threstal-pulled carriage, as far away from the other side as she could achieve with her only human body. Across the seat sat Lucius Malfoy, upright, regal, and completely undaunted by the school in the slightly frosted window beside him.

James grabbed her hand as the carriage slowed, and Lily inhaled deeply. Nothing was right.