A/N: A "what if Voldemort did spare Lily Potter, killed James and Harry Potter, and gave her to Severus Snape" story.

I don't own any of the character of Harry Potter, just this story.

# means that there is a jump in time.

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She hears James call out to her with determined fear, and her body reacts before her mind has fully grasped the entire meaning of her husband's words, and Lily Potter flies up the stairs, into the room of her only child, throws a chain of wards she knows will do nothing but give her a few extra seconds. But those seconds are all she needs. She has prepared for this possibility, even though she has hoped never having to use it. But now the time is right. Now, they have been betrayed, and she will do whatever it takes to ensure her child is safe. For Harry, she will die. Words fall from her lips in whispers that seem to sink into the centre of the room, deep into the wood that makes up the walls, the floor, the ceiling, Harry's crib, the old rocket chair. The magic leaps all over, wraps her and the little boy in layers upon layers of a magic as old as time itself. Love, so much love. Lily pours it all into a wish. Safety for her son. A life for a life. Her death will ensure the life of the little boy with James's messy hair and her own green eyes, and the knowledge makes her able to pour even more magic into the room, until she can feel her core being on the verge of bursting and fading away. She holds it still, needs but a few more heartbeats.

Across the room, in the doorway, stands the enemy, wand raised as he tears through her wards. Lily isn't bothered. She put the wards up to win time, time that is now almost up. And she is ready. The enemy, the man shaped being that is no longer human, tells her to stand aside, as if he really believes she will do such a thing. It's almost laughable. Lily speaks the words that activates the magic she has gathered. The enemy repeats his words. She defies him, moves even closer to the crib that hold her child, blocks him from the enemy's red eyes. Snarling, the enemy's wand leaps through the air, and all Lily knows is darkness, darkness, and the release of her magic as it pulses through her and takes her consciousness at last, and she is pleased.

#

Awareness. A soft feeling along the back of her body. A fleeting touch of fingers against her cheek.
"James," Lily says, because this is the place beyond death, and her husband has been waiting for her so that they can keep watch over their child together.
The man that is touching her is not her husband.
The skin with its pale and sickly yellowish hue, the lanky hair that creates curtains of darkness, the bottomless eyes with no soul. Lily knows only one with such a face. And that knowledge tells her that something has gone terribly wrong.
"Lily. You're safe here with me."
His words breaks the last shreds of calm that Lily is clinging to, and she lashes out without care.
"Safe with you? I'll never be anything with you, least of all safe. What have you done? Where is my son, where is my husband?"
"Lily, calm down. I had to keep you safe. It'll be better this way. Without them, he can't harm you."
Without them. Lily hears the truth, knows it in the deepest corner of her shattered heart, feels it in the traces of her own spell that clings to her body, her body and not her son's body. This is what went wrong. Somehow, she was spared, and her son killed in her place, and all her carefully laid plans shattered like a house of cards.
"You made him spare me. You let him kill my husband. You stood by and let him kill my son." She hisses the words at the man who was once her friend, and he recoils slightly away from her.
"I had to, they were obstacles, he wouldn't let you all live. There was a proph-"
"Burn for eternity, Severus Snape," Lily snarls, and magic – the magic she had created for her son that is now hers to wield until she dies - erupts around her, streaks out like a slumbering dragon that's been forced to wake, and the fire is all around her, all over the man with eyes that hold no soul, and the screams echo in her ears. She lays still on the bed until the screams have stopped and all that is left are burned bones and ashes. Then, and only then, does Lily Potter move. Her feet, bare and without any traces of burns, passes the pile of ash and bones, takes her out of the little room, into a corridor that is vaguely familiar. Lily snorts. Of all the places he could have tried to hold her prisoner, he chose his childhood home. Pathetic. She walks on, down the broken stair, through the unused kitchen, out in the hall and through the doorway. The night air is crisp and cool, and she breathes deeply. Magic coils around her, guides her. Lily Potter disappears without a sound.

#

No one in the wizarding world of England knows who the mysterious hooded figure who keeps killing Death Eaters is, all that is known is that the person leaves behind ashes and blackened bones along with enough evidence to identify the remains, as well as proof that they did, indeed, follow Voldemort in life.

If some selected few notice that Lily Potter, widowed wife and childless mother since five months, goes missing from work and her new home from time to time, they do not speak of it, for surely she is still grieving her son and husband. Being spared, being left behind, cannot be easy, and no one blames her for needing time.

#

Red Fury. A name the few remaining Death Eaters, and Voldemort, has learned to fear. Elusive as shadows, bright as the fire they use to kill, void of mercy.

Bellatrix Lestrange burns with strangled whimpers in the hallway of Riddle Manor. Besides her trashing form lays the burnt shell of a snake.

Lord Voldemort, once Tom Marvolo Riddle, watches the hooded figure cross the room. The air crackles with magic of a kind he has never encountered along his journey to concur death, to learn all the secrets of magic, and in the tiny sliver that remains of his soul, he feels a faint echo of fear.
"Say hello to your sheep for me."
Voldemort has no time to utter a word of magic in defence. The fire is sudden and all around him, inside him, and he screams as it burns away his magic, his body, his mind, burns him out of existence in a heartbeat.

#

Lily Potter kneels by the pale grey stone, traces a gentle finger over the writing that still shines with the freshness of white gold months later. On the grass, resting slightly against the stone, is a red candle. Red for love, red for life. Fire leaps from the fingertips of her right hand, surges around the candlewick for a heartbeat before it sets the candle aflame.
"I love you," Lily whispers, and the candle flame burns brighter in reply to her words. It softens the thorns around her heart just enough to make her get on with another day.
"I'll see you someday, wait for me."
Another flicker places a small smile on her lips. Lily Potter gets up on tired feet, blows a kiss to the grave of her husband and son, and leaves the little graveyard in Godric's Hollow. Around her, the air is thick with magic of old times, magic that promises her that one day she will see her family once more.