Previously in the Darklyverse: The Gryffindors survived their N.E.W.T.s and struggled with guilt about the deaths of Elisabeth Clearwater and Millie LeProut at the hands of Death Eaters while on Order business.
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June 24th, 1978: Lily Evans
There are thirty-two people in their graduating class. There should have been thirty-three, and Elisabeth Clearwater's absence hangs over them like a thick fog. But thirty-two of them made it here, sitting in the hard wooden chairs McGonagall magicked onto the Quidditch pitch in four rows of eight, the bottom hems of their purple dress robes ruffling in the wind.
In the rows behind them are parents, guardians, and friends of the graduated seventh years here to support them. The Muggle parents and siblings of Muggle-born students like Mary and Peter can't see the castle behind them, but the repelling charms beckoning Muggles away from the area have been taken down for the occasion, so that they can at least find the pitch and enjoy the ceremony without being led away by urgent matters to attend to. Lily, of course, doesn't have any parents, and there was no way Petunia would have agreed to come even if Lily had invited her, so Doc is here on behalf of both her and Marlene, sitting in the stands next to the McKinnons and making polite small talk with Marlene's stepdad. Emmeline's sister, Jacqueline, is there in place of any parents, and James and Sirius have no one there to represent them.
The graduates are seated alphabetically by last name, so Lily is wedged in between Carla Edgecombe from Slytherin and Charlotte Fawcett from Ravenclaw. She wishes they were seated by house—then she would have been in between Sirius and Remus—but she reminds herself to be grateful that the stars didn't align to place her next to Severus.
McGonagall says a few words, then Dumbledore, and then it's the valedictorian's turn. Alice is sitting in the front row on the far end, fumbling with a sheaf of parchment in her hands, but as she gets up and walks toward the podium, her gait is quite steady. "Thank you for that kind introduction, Professor Dumbledore," she says.
"It took me a long time to decide what I had to say up here," she says, "because quite frankly, I shouldn't be the person standing before you today as valedictorian of the Hogwarts class of 1978. The person who was leading in class rank for the first six years of our magical education was a girl named Elisabeth Clearwater who passed away at the hands of Death Eaters a little over a year ago to date, and it should have been her words you all were hearing today, not mine.
"I won't spend my short time on this stage eulogizing Elisabeth: that work has already been done by people who knew her better than I did and loved her enough to do her justice. But it would be foolish of us to ignore Elisabeth's story today, because as we graduate and go out into the world to find careers and make families of our own, we must remember that the lives we build could end as quickly and as senselessly as Elisabeth's did.
"In the seven years we have attended the Hogwarts School, a lot has changed in the world outside these castle walls. Family and friends have disappeared or died. Influential witches and wizards have fallen victim to the Imperius Curse in order to do You-Know-Who's bidding in high places. People have stopped talking to one another openly about the war, afraid to discover that their loved ones fall on the opposite side of it.
"Of course, our Head Boy and Girl here at Hogwarts this past year—James Potter and Lily Evans—led an organization called War Stories with the goal of dispelling misinformation and breaking the taboo of talking about purity politics. I credit them for doing a lot of the hard work to get people to communicate with each other about their beliefs and even, in some rare cases, change people's minds.
"I'll admit that, prior to War Stories, I was one of those people who didn't believe in prejudices I wasn't noticing in front of my own eyes. It's because of people like Lily and James that I learned better, and so I want to challenge all of you to learn, too, like I did. Listen to others. Go out of your way to research blood politics, and talk to the Muggles and Muggle-borns in your lives about their experiences. It's how we can honor Elisabeth and do our part to prevent the Death Eaters' rhetoric from spreading."
Alice continues on in that vein for another five minutes, urging the audience not to stay silent about the war and to spread information and educate themselves as best as they can. Lily's starting to feel like the speech she herself has prepared for today is going to sound kind of stupid coming after Alice's. But finally, Alice reaches the end of her monologue and says, "Please join me in welcoming this year's Head Boy, James Potter, to the stage."
Compared to Alice, James looks much less nervous and much more energetic. Lily thinks back to how reluctant he had been to write a speech at all and wonders how much of his enthusiasm is an act.
"What's up, Hogwarts!" he says after McGonagall performs a quick Sonorus on him. There's some applause; Lily can see Sirius whooping in the row in front of her.
"I have to be honest with you," James continues, bending over the podium like he's leaning in close to share a secret with the audience. "If you had told me when I was eleven years old on the Hogwarts Express for the first time—hell, if you had even told me a year ago when I was going into finals for my sixth year—that I was going to be Head Boy of the class of '78, I would have laughed in your face. Before this year, the biggest thing I'd ever been in charge of was plotting pranks to set around the castle with my fellow jokesters with whom I shared a dormitory. I wasn't leadership material. I wasn't anything but a moderately talented Quidditch player with a knack for mischief.
"But then—two of our classmates died in a Death Eater attack, including Elisabeth Clearwater, who should have been here graduating with us today. And we all did a whole lot of growing up practically overnight.
"I can't stand here and tell you how I led the student body this past year without giving credit to the people who, frankly, have worked just as hard if not harder than I did to improve dissent from pureblood culture at Hogwarts. So many of the people standing here today, as well as a few who have already graduated or look forward to it next year, played an integral role in…" James stops, and Lily knows he's holding back the temptation to name themselves as the perpetrator of last year's purity pranks and as having been present for Elisabeth and Millie's deaths. "…They've played an integral role in changing the climate at this school, and I'm sure they'll all go on to do incredible things on the front lines as well as behind them in the coming months."
Should they fess up, come clean, own up to the rumors, and admit that they were involved in Elisabeth's death? Lily feels like a piece of shit for not admitting to it, but it's not her place to out the other members of the Order of the Phoenix and put them in danger of being the victims of even more Death Eater violence in the future. She fingers the parchment in her hands, claps hard for James when he wraps up his speech, and then she's on her feet, heading up to the podium and thanking James for introducing her.
She clears her throat, and the noise rings out for the entire audience to hear. Oh, Merlin, is she really going to do this? She sets her parchment on the podium and glances over the first couple of points. Seems like she's really doing this, then.
"Like James talked about during his speech, I also wasn't an obvious choice to be one of the Heads of my graduating class. Until the end of my fifth year, I had one friend." She pointedly looks down at her notes and not at Severus. "I was a loner, and I was angry, and nobody would have looked to me for leadership. And then—in our sixth year, I started getting to know my fellow Gryffindors as well as some of the students outside of my house and year. And one of those students was a Hufflepuff prefect by the name of Elisabeth Clearwater.
"What happened to Elisabeth is everything wrong with Wizarding Britain. It was senseless, and it was wrong, and it was—more than anything—preventable. I say this," says Lily, and she squeezes her eyes shut and turns over the parchment bearing her speech so that the blank side faces up, "as someone who was there to see the murders of Elisabeth and as a young Ravenclaw by the name of Millie LeProut."
Immediately, the crowd below starts to buzz. Marlene is looking at her with her eyes bugging out of her head, and James is shaking his head vigorously from side to side, but—Lily won't out anyone else, but this, she suddenly thinks, is the only way she can truly atone for what happened. It always was.
"Elisabeth and I left the castle that night on bad information that led her to an ambush she had no chance of surviving. This wasn't a random killing: we received details from other students who belonged to Slytherin House of an upcoming Death Eater meeting, and we took off for it in the hopes of intervening enough to deliver some justice for the countless Muggles and Muggle-borns who have suffered at their hands. But the meeting was a setup. I barely escaped with my life, and Elisabeth and Millie…
"What happened to them is unforgivable," she continues, flipping the parchment back over and finding her place on it. "But where there once was unforgivable cruelty within this very castle that led to two students' deaths, there also has been, through the organization War Stories and through conversations encouraged by my peers to take place throughout the castle, incredible progress.
"So I'm not going to stand here and tell you what I accomplished during my time at Hogwarts. No—I want you to know that Elisabeth Clearwater's bravery affected me and my peers in ways that will last forever. I want to thank Damocles Belby from Slytherin for developing a potion that allows werewolves to keep their minds during transformation on the full moon, a potion whose advent has enabled Ministry officials to draft legislation that gives werewolves some of their rights back. I want to recognize Frank Longbottom, Alice Abbott, and Kingsley Shacklebolt for being accepted into the Auror training program starting next month in order to fight Lord Voldemort—" a gasp goes around the pitch at the name "—and the dark wizards in league with him. And I want to acknowledge the students whose legacies haven't been written yet, like Meredith McKinnon, a Slytherin first year who is singlehandedly responsible for bringing a total of six members of Slytherin house to War Stories meetings by the end of this school year."
By the time she reaches the end of her speech ten minutes later, Lily feels totally winded, like the audience has sucked all the life force out of her and left her a shell of herself. But she feels grateful for the opportunity to speak out and so proud of them all for surviving these past years of war together. Hell, she's proud of them even for doing the work that resulted in the ambush, because their intentions were pure and they did the best they could.
They've done the best they could, all this time.
She's going to be in trouble with the others, she's sure, for going off script and admitting to being with Elisabeth and Millie at the moment of their deaths. She's just endangered her own life, and she's probably endangered the lives of her friends, and maybe she shouldn't have done it—but she doesn't think she could stand to hide her culpability another second.
Alice is the first graduate to walk across the stage, receiving a handwritten parchment diploma from McGonagall and shaking hands with her as well as Dumbledore and Harold Minchum, the Minister of Magic. Belby follows, then Sirius. There are about eight people in between Sirius and Lily, and she stands in line with her purple robes rustling in the breeze and her conscience clear for the first time in an exceptionally long time.
This is it, she tells herself as she walks across the stage, Doc and Marlene and James all hooting for her in the audience. She just has to collect this one piece of parchment, and the Order—and the world—will be ready to accept her wholeheartedly, for better or worse.
She can't wait to get started.