Previously in the Darklyverse: Belby's latest version of the Wolfsbane Potion was a success, allowing Remus full lucidity and the ability to sleep through the night in wolf form (CH35). Alice feuded with Sirius over werewolf rights and blood purity's role in society (CH27). Lily struggled with missing Severus and being afraid of her developing feelings for James (CH26). Dorcas and the sixth year Gryffindors hatched a plan to overtake a group of young Death Eaters at an upcoming gathering (CH35).
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May 4th, 1977: Lily Evans
The Gryffindors are shocked and relieved to find Remus joining them in the Great Hall halfway through breakfast. He looks a little peaky, but not nearly as much as usual the day after a full moon, and he's grinning a little as he swings his legs over the bench and starts loading up his plate with waffles. "It worked!" he says in a hushed voice in response to their inquiring looks. "I slept most of the night!"
"That's great!" says Peter as Sirius sighs with relief and James thumps Remus on the back with a broad grin.
"Yeah," Remus says happily, reaching for the syrup. "Madam Pomfrey didn't know what to make of it. She kept me under observation for a couple of hours after she fetched me from the Shack early this morning, but I think it was mostly because she couldn't believe that I could possibly be uninjured, after—what usually happens. I'm usually pretty banged up even when we run—uh—even though there's never anyone around to chase after."
"So that's it, just like that?" asks Marlene through a mouthful of cereal. She swallows thickly and continues, "Belby's not going to cut you off now that he's got a working formula, is he?"
"He says he'll keep me in stock until we graduate, as a thank-you for trusting him to experiment on me for all these months. I'm… not ready to deal with imagining what I'm going to do after that. I won't be able to brew it for myself; the recipe is enormously complicated, and besides, I won't be able to handle the aconite in it; it's poisonous to me."
Lily says, "He's planning to publish soon, right? Once the recipe is out there, I'm sure I can take over brewing it for you."
"Thanks, Lily. Really. Thank you all for—for…"
James claps Remus on the back again.
Alice is the only one not smiling, staring pensively at her plate and looking around as if startled when the other Gryffindors start to get up from the table and make their ways to either Transfiguration or, in Mary's case, the common room. Lily hangs back at the table to wait for Alice to gather up her book bag and then asks, "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Fine. Sorry, I just…" Lily waits, watching quietly as Alice stands and slings her bag over her shoulder. "All this time, I've thought that the laws restricting werewolves' freedoms were justified because werewolves are a danger to society, whether they want to be or not. But if there's a potion now that can change all that, is it really fair to—to deny them certain jobs, or to forbid them to be around children, when they can control it?"
"Was it ever fair?" Lily points out. Alice opens her mouth to argue, but Lily interrupts, "I see where you're coming from, Alice, that registration is meant to protect humans from werewolves that aren't in control, but how does restricting what werewolves do the other twenty-nine days out of the month protect anybody?"
"It… it…" But Alice seems to be at a loss for words. She frowns and then abruptly starts walking toward the exit doors, Lily right beside her. Alice sighs, then, and says, "I've been taught all my life that the world works one way, and I feel like you're all expecting me to just throw that out the window overnight."
"Not overnight," Lily counters. "But, yeah, Sirius wants you to grapple with it, the way I'm sure he had to grapple with it when he first came to Hogwarts and was suddenly exposed to points of view that weren't his parents'."
Alice scoffs, "Sirius has never had to grapple with politics in his life. He's always hated his family, you know that."
"Hating his family is different from hating the subtleties of a political ideology he never would have thought to challenge. You may be fighting with him over this, but I think you two are more alike than you realize—he just started thinking about these issues earlier than you did."
Hanging back by the doors between the Great Hall and the entrance hall, Alice chews on her lips and says, "Remind me how this is any of your business again?"
"Alice, we go to boarding school with a close-knit circle of friends. Isn't interfering in my friends' business like a rite of passage or something? I've been watching you lot do it to each other for the last six years."
"Guess this means you're really our friend now, then," says Alice with a wry smile, and they head out the doors toward Transfiguration together.
The two of them are at the base of the staircase when it happens. "Hello, Lily," says a familiar, snotty voice, and Lily turns to find Severus standing there looking particularly repentant.
It's not like Lily doesn't already see him numerous times a week during lessons and in the Great Hall, but she's come to expect those awful moments of ignoring each other's presence; it catches her off guard that Severus would directly approach her out here in the halls with no reason for them to interact with each other, and she's instantly flooded with a mixture of remorse and anger. You'd think that nearly a year later Lily would be over it, but she's not over it. She misses her friend. Whatever else happened there, she misses her friend, and she's pissed that he had to go and mess it all up with his prejudices and his slurs and his unwillingness to see people of her blood status as just people.
And yet—Lily couldn't keep making excuses for it. She just couldn't. And a little voice inside her head screams at her that James and Marlene and all of her new friends—for all their flaws, they would never call anyone a Mudblood, and they would never hurt her in the particular oppressive way that Severus did.
So she holds her head high, and she says coldly, "Hello, Severus," and she marches up the marble staircase, taking Alice's hand and dragging her alongside her.
All these months, she's resented having to work beside James in Transfiguration (and in Potions, for that matter), but it's like her eyes have opened and she doesn't want to avoid him anymore. So what if kissing James over Christmas made her feel overwhelmed, suddenly in over her head with someone she'd only really been getting to know for a couple of months? Just because James is a new friend doesn't mean that he can't be a good one, and again, whatever his shortcomings, he would never do what Severus did: his allegiances would never fall that way. She plunks down next to him at their desk and cheerfully says hello, and his eyes widen a little, but he says hello back and doesn't seem to want to question Lily's friendliness. She smiles at him.
Maybe she's not ready to date James Potter, but she might be finally ready to be his friend again.
xx
Lily's not going to lie: she's nervous, very nervous, about the upcoming face-off at the Death Eaters' meeting.
They meet the night before to go over the plan again. Dorcas has the time and place—just after dusk in a particular clearing in the Scottish countryside, near a graveyard—and they'll arrive there at least an hour in advance, to be sure that none of the Death Eaters hear the cracks of their Apparition. They've decided that it will be best to pick off Voldemort's followers one by one as they arrive, rather than waiting for the entire group to congregate before attacking: they may lose scare value and impact that way, but it'll be safer, given that they are underage wizards and will be up against enemies who may not hesitate to attempt the use of Unforgivable Curses against them. The plan is to Stun the Death Eaters, Apparate with them to the Ministry, and use the store of Veritaserum that Lily stole from Professor Slughorn the night before to ensure their confessions.
"And Regulus said that it's a meeting for new recruits?"
"Primarily. We're expecting school-aged wizards, maybe some who are a few years out of Hogwarts," says Dorcas, pinning back her hair and speaking calmly and confidently. "So they probably won't be any more battle-trained than we are, but they also probably are willing to at least attempt use of the Unforgivable Curses, considering who they're followers of, so we need to be on our guard."
"I still don't like this," says Gideon, glaring at Dorcas.
"Yeah, well, you don't have to. Like Potter said, you're welcome to leave."
Personally, Lily feels like they lucked out, getting Dorcas on board with their movement. They were doing well at educating the student body on their own, but it wasn't until Dorcas joined up that they really had a purpose or a direction, and it's because of her intel that they have plans for a first mission at all. Gideon may not trust her, but Lily knows what it's like to be an outcast from everyone around you the way that Dorcas is within Slytherin House—she believes that Dorcas isn't leading them on.
Lily just hopes that their plan is sound enough that they aren't walking into something that's going to get them killed.
When the group disbands, the Gryffindors head back to their common room together, Lily walking beside James and Mary at the front of the group. It's late enough that the common room is mostly deserted when they reach it, and although most of them head upstairs to their dormitories, Lily takes a seat by the fire and stares blankly into the dying embers. A few moments later, she feels the couch cushion beside her dip down, and she looks over to find James there joining her. "Hey," he says, his voice cracking.
"Hey."
She's tried to make a point to be friendlier to him the last several days, sitting next to him at mealtimes and joining him to study during free periods. Undoubtedly, the abrupt shift in how she's been treating him has confused him. "I probably owe you an explanation, huh?" she adds now, and James looks up.
"You don't owe me anything," he tries to say, but she raises a hand.
"Yes, I do, just—let me get this out." He falls silent again, waiting. "After Christmas, I panicked. I did. I'm not going to apologize for wanting to slow things down, but—I cut you out of my life almost entirely, to the extent I could with having as many mutual friends as we do, and taking it that far wasn't fair to you. If I needed space, I should have asked for it and used it to really work through what I needed to work on. Instead, I've just been pushing it down and avoiding you, and that wasn't right."
"Lily—"
"James, I… really like you." She looks away for this part, unable to meet James's eyes, unwilling to find out what she would find in them. "I do. So much that it scares me. That's what this was about."
Very hesitantly, James raises a hand and places it on Lily's shoulder, squeezing. "I really like you, too," he says softly, "if you hadn't noticed."
Lily chokes out a laugh and places her hand on top of James's. "I'm not saying this can't ever go anywhere. Just—give me time, okay? I need to go slow with this."
James's lips curl into a smile. "I've got all the time in the world."
xx
Lily knows it's a no-go from the instant that they Apparate into the clearing. She barely has a second to process the swarm of tall, hooded figures encircling them before jets of light begin flying through the air, her friends' figures starting to crumple to the ground one by one. "Lily," says Peter frantically—still only sixteen, he'd Side-Along-Apparated here with her—and he tugs on her sleeve. "Lily, we have to go now, it was a trap—"
"We can't leave just leave them lying here!" she squeals in horror, rushing forward to check the pulse of a collapsed Marlene. Please just be Stunned, please just be Stunned…
Dorcas is still on her feet and flinging curses at whomever she can reach; Lily watches two Death Eaters go down at Dorcas's hand, and she knows right then that Dorcas didn't lead them into this trap intentionally. Peter seizes Marlene's arm in one of his hands and Eddie Bones's shoulder in the other and Disapparates on the spot—or at least tries to. Lily can see one of his calves still on the ground, gushing blood from where it's been severed from the rest of his body.
"Oh, no," she mumbles to herself. "Oh, no…"
Just then, she sees a jet of green light heading for her and narrowly dodges it, flinging a Stunner in the direction from whence it came. Lily Disapparates and reappears in the woods outside the circle of Death Eaters; a few of the nearest ones turn and start hurling spells her way, but she ducks behind a tree and shoots Stunners from around it until the screams of Avada Kedavra pointed toward her stop. Ducking out from behind the cover of the tree, she tries to take stock of who's left in the clearing. A few others seem to have followed Peter's example and Disapparated away with fallen bodies in their hands; a few bodies are still on the ground, a few others under cover of the woods like Lily, only Dorcas, James, and Mildred LeProut still fighting from the center of the clearing, and then—
"NO!" she screams as a jet of green light flies out and hits Millie square in the chest. She seems to hang there in ethereal balance for a moment before crumpling entirely to the ground, her short hair plastered to her rat-like face. The scream has drawn Death Eater attention onto Lily, but she doesn't care; she doesn't care; a girl is dead because of them, and…
She runs back toward the center of the clearing, counting bodies: there are only four more on the ground, and it's no good; Peter was right; Disapparating away seems to be their only viable option. Lily seizes Remus's hand and Peter's disembodied leg and turns on the spot into the compressing darkness, praying, praying…