Lily
Lily Potter couldn't remember ever being so nervous in her life.
No, she corrected herself firmly. I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous because I'm Lily Potter, and Lily Potter doesn't get nervous. Ask anyone.
It was true, that people would say this of her. Ask anyone at Hogwarts about Lily Potter, and they'd tell you how fun she was, how bubbly, cheerful, energetic – sometimes annoyingly so – and how she never took anything too seriously. That's what everyone thought of Lily. Maybe she was a little silly, maybe she was a little air-headed, but she was always a good time.
Lily was glad this was what people thought of her. It was what she wanted people to think of her, because it hid her secret, the secret she'd been hiding since she was seven years old and had first realized how uncomfortable her secret made the people around her.
But sitting outside Professor Longbottom's office, waiting to go in for that dreaded Career Advice meeting, Lily was aware that she was hovering at a crossroads, and that her secret couldn't be kept secret much longer. And that — well, if she'd been anyone other than Lily Potter, that would have made her nervous.
The door opened, and one of Lily's Gryffindor year-mates came out and smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but didn't quite manage it, and the classmate walked away thinking, Lily Potter actually looks nervous. I've never seen that before. If Lily had realized that these were his thoughts, she'd have made more of an effort to smile, toss her hair, and give him one of those flirting glances that promised a world she never actually delivered. But she didn't see. And so he walked away startled by the surprising change in his usually cheery classmate.
"Miss Potter?"
Five years here, and she still hadn't gotten used to hearing Uncle Neville call her Miss Potter. She hadn't gotten used to calling him Professor Longbottom, either.
She stood, wiping her hands on her robe – nervously – and entered.
His office was cool, as it always was. He had two, and they couldn't have been more different. His greenhouse office was bright and sunny and warm, full of tropical plants that made the air pleasantly humid and heavy with the scent of spices and blossoms. But his castle office, given to him when he'd been named Head of Gryffindor House, was always cool. On the lee side of a westward tower, it barely saw the sun, and since Uncle Neville could never inhabit a space without plants, he'd decorated this office accordingly, with things like pitcher plants, maidenhair ferns, rex begonias, coleus, and spider ivy. Most people preferred his greenhouse office. Lily preferred this one.
She entered as she always did, pausing to run a gentle finger up the spine of his Mimosa Pudica just to watch the leaves close up behind her. Then she sat at his desk and tried to smile.
"How are you, Lily?" he asked warmly, and really, was it any wonder she couldn't remember to call him Professor Longbottom when he was running around calling her "Lily" at every turn?
"I'm good," she said, and she almost sounded like she meant it, but he knew her too well.
"There's nothing to be nervous about," he said kindly. "We're just having a conversation."
"A conversation you're gonna tell my dad about?" she asked, eyes meeting his in something of a challenge. He frowned slightly.
"Are you worried about that?" he asked, doing that irritating thing where he answered her questions with questions.
"A little," she said.
"Despite my friendship with them, I don't keep your parents up to date on every single thing you and your brothers do here, you know." His voice was a bit wry, and if this was less serious, Lily might have smiled.
"But you tell them the big stuff," she pushed, not really asking a question. Uncle Neville considered her.
"Are you about to drop some big stuff on me, Lily?" he asked, and he was so frustratingly unreadable!
"Are you gonna tell my dad?" she repeated, lifting her chin in challenge. Professor Longbottom sighed.
"Career Advice meetings are confidential," he assured her. "Your parents won't find out what we talk about here unless you tell them."
Lily nodded, her focus on the desktop as she took several deep breaths, steeling herself to say out loud the words she'd been rehearsing in her room for a week now. On one last deep inhale, she brought her eyes up to his.
"I want to be an Unspeakable," she said. "I want to study death."
By the time Lily was five years old, she'd almost died three times.
At six and a half months pregnant, Ginny Potter had accepted an invitation from her old friend Luna Scamander to go on an expedition to South America to track a colony of the rare Golden Snidgets. Ginny had been hoping to branch out from Quidditch commentary at the Prophet, and had thought that might be the way to do it. She had gone on the trip over Harry's very strong objections, arguing that she still had two and a half months before the kid was supposed to be born, and that even if something did happen, she'd never be too far from help.
Well, something had happened – whether as a result of the trip or the trek through the rainforest or whether it was just something that would have happened had Ginny stayed home, Lily had decided to come early, on the one day that Ginny and Luna were alone in the depths of the South America rainforest. She and her mother might both have died if not for Luna's knowledge and presence of mind. She'd delivered Lily safely, and performed the necessary spells and charms to compensate for her premature development until both Lily and Ginny had been taken to the nearest Magical hospital. Luna had been in line to be godmother already, but that had solidified the choice.
Then, when Lily was two years old, they'd discovered at someone's birthday party that she was deathly allergic to strawberries, of all things. She'd been sitting at the kids table eating her strawberry shortcake when all of a sudden, she couldn't breathe (Lily vaguely remembered this). Luckily, her cousin Dominique had noticed and had run for the nearest adult, and again, Lily's godmother Luna had saved her life with a Muggle device called an Epipen (her husband Rolf was allergic to bee stings and had found the Epipen more reliable than magic, so he always had one with him). Grandmother Molly had gone on about the horrors of stabbing a child with a needle, but Luna had calmly remarked that wizards didn't hold the corner on the market of medical advancements, and that anti-anaphylaxis spells were all well and good until you needed one and everyone around you didn't know them or was underage. To this day, Lily had an Epipen prescription and carried it with her, just in case.
And at four, she'd somehow contracted bacterial meningitis, a mostly Muggle illness that was even more terrifying than its name sounded. It was her Aunt Audrey who had come to the rescue then. Aunt Audrey was a Muggle psychologist who had recognized the symptoms and rushed her to a Muggle hospital. That had been the closest Lily had come to dying, and it was the one she remembered most definitely. The further she got from that day, the less certain she was about whether her memories were real or tricks of her dangerously high fever, but something had happened. There had been a beautiful place, white and full of light and music, and people who looked familiar but who she'd never met, and she'd wanted to go to them. And she almost had, but one of them, a woman who looked like her, but had Al's bright green eyes, had said, "No, sweetheart. Not yet. Go back to your Mum and Dad, little Lily."
Her brushes with death had had three effects on the rest of her life.
First, she was just a little frailer than most children her age. She was a little weaker, a little slower, a little more prone to falling ill, and she walked with just the tiniest hint of a limp leftover from the fever. She grew out of these tendencies the older she got, but no one really seemed to recognize that.
Second, her family, especially her parents, especially her dad, were terrified of losing her. She knew that their protectiveness of her was just because they loved her and they wanted to make sure she was safe, but it was stifling sometimes, to have so many things she wasn't allowed to do. She loved the time she spent with her godmother Luna because Auntie Luna was one of the only people in her life who didn't come with a list of restrictions. She loved her parents and brothers, too, of course she did, but she spent a lot of time wishing that they'd let her live her own life.
And third, she was fascinated with death. She thought about it all the time, wanting to know why people died and how they died and what happened to them after they died. When she was young, she had chattered about it all the time, even talking about the people she'd seen in the white place when she saw them again in her dad's photo album.
"Hey, I know her!" she had said at age seven, pointing at the red-haired woman in the wedding picture.
"Well, of course you do, sweetheart," her dad had said with a laugh. "That's your grandma Lily. My mum."
"No," Lily had said like it was any other piece of information. "It's the lady who told me to come back to you and Mummy when I was sick! I was gonna go to the white place, but she said not to. She was nice. And her voice sounded like sunshine. And they were there, too!" She'd pointed at the two men in the photo then, noticing belatedlyhow white and still her dad had gone. "Daddy?" she'd whispered. She'd hated the way he was staring at her. "Daddy? Did I say something wrong?"
"No," he'd assured her, but his voice was choked, and he'd held her really tight after that, and she hadn't quite believed him.
She started noticing after that, the way that no one really liked it when she asked about death and dying. So she'd stopped. She put a smile on her face and acted bright and sunny, like she didn't think about those things, so that the people around her would stop wearing those worried faces when they looked at her. She'd stopped talking about it for eight years now, but she'd never stopped thinking about it. And now she'd told Uncle Neville.
To be honest, she'd kind of expected the world to stop when she said those words in his office. I want to be an Unspeakable. I want to study death. She expected him to stare at her, to gape open-mouthed, to be shocked and stunned into silence.
But here he was, nodding, and rifling through the pamphlets on his desk until he found the one he was looking for, black and shiny, with just a question mark and the Ministry Seal embossed in dark grey on top, and requiring an illumination spell to read the material inside.
And he didn't ask "What?" or for a clarification or repetition. He just rolled his eyes at the pamphlet and then said, "Well, Lily, the Unspeakables are the elite. They only take the best. They require the highest NEWT marks in Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Astronomy, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, and that's a serious caseload to take on. So if you're —"
"Wait!" Lily said, flustered and confused. He looked up at her in question. "Aren't you — what are you doing?"
"I'm advising you on your career options," Uncle Neville said. "What are you doing?"
"Aren't you shocked?" she demanded. "That happy little happy-go-lucky Lily wants to study death?"
Uncle Neville raised an eyebrow. "Should I be?" he asked.
"Yes!" she said, with some exasperation. "I've spent eight years being happy-go-lucky so that people wouldn't know this was what I thought about all the time!"
"Lily," Uncle Neville said, "I remember the questions you ran around asking when you were a kid. And you wrote me three and a half rolls of parchment on how the interaction of the properties of asphodel and wormwood control the fine line between sleeping and dying in the Draught of the Living Death – I put two and two together." Lily looked at her hands, chagrined. After a moment's silence, he spoke again, a question this time. "Have you really been playing cheerful and air-headed to throw people off the scent?" Lily nodded, but didn't look up. "Lils, you shouldn't hide what you're passionate about."
Lily snorted. "Actually, sometimes, you probably should," she said. "I mean, do you know how people look at you when you're seven and you walk around chattering about death all the time? Do you know how your dad looks at you?"
It was more than she intended to reveal, but it slipped out, and he understood immediately. She looked away again. "Lily," he said, softly, clearly collecting his thoughts as he spoke. "Lily, your dad . . . has lived a life defined by death and loss. And just when he thought he was past it, you—"
Lily held up a hand to stop him. "You don't have to give me the explanation," she said. "I've read his biography. And I get it. I do. But I'd do just about anything to keep him from looking like that ever again. But this is all I've ever wanted to do, Uncle Neville. It's all I can imagine myself ever doing. Trying to find the answers to the questions that have plagued me my whole life."
She watched carefully though her eyelashes as he considered this, and then nodded. "You know you're going to have to tell him sometime, though, right?" he finally said.
"Yeah, see, I was thinking maybe I wouldn't, actually?" she said then, in a rush. "Like, I was thinking that I could just get into the program, and be an Unspeakable, and never tell anybody like my dad exactly what it is I study, since I don't think I'd be allowed?"
"Well, that's an interesting theory," Uncle Neville said dryly, "but if you stay on your current track, Lily, it's not going to be an issue, because right now, you don't have the marks to get accepted as an Unspeakable."
Lily froze. "What do you mean?" she asked in a small voice. Uncle Neville sighed.
"This is what I saying before," he said seriously. "The Department of Mysteries only takes the elite, Lils, only the highest NEWT scores. They require you to take and sit exams for six NEWT classes. Six. Most students balk at four. And they'll only accept less than Outstanding in two of them, only one if that mark is lower than Exceeds Expectations. I'm not saying you can't do it. I know you're a smart girl, and I know you're smarter than you let on. You wrote me three and a half rolls of parchment on how the interaction of the properties of asphodel and wormwood control the fine line between sleeping and dying in the Draught of the Living Death. But if you're serious about this, you need to buckle down, because right now, you don't have the marks to get into half the NEWT classes you need." He was shuffling through her class file now. "Transfiguration, Astronomy, and Potions, you need to get them all up, and honestly, Lils, your Herbology mark skims closer to the A line than I want it to."
His words went straight to her core, and she sat straighter in her chair, a crease of worry between her eyebrows. "I want this," she told him. "I want to be an Unspeakable. Tell me what I have to do, Professor."
Uncle Neville smiled. "All right," he said. "You've got six months to get your class scores and test scores to a level where the staff will feel confident letting you take on a six-class courseload. I'll help you in any way I can, Lily. So let's work out a schedule."
For the next half hour, they bent together over his desk, arranging tutors and scheduling study sessions, outlining expectations and planning class strategies. Lily thought her head might burst open with the weight of it all, but she was determined. She could and would do this.
"I think you're well on your way," Uncle Neville said as she gathered up her things. "And I'll be checking in with you once a week, okay?" She nodded. "And Lily?" he hesitated for a moment, then continued. "Every person alive wonders about death. Everyone wants to know what's next. You just aren't afraid of it the way most people are. And that's nothing to be ashamed of, okay?"
"You think I should tell my dad," she said, filling in the words left unsaid.
"I think you should tell your dad," he confirmed. "I think you might be surprised to hear how much insight he has to offer. And I think it will be good for him to see his daughter for who she really is. If you'll let him."
Lily studied the floor. "I'll . . . think about it," she finally said. He smiled and stood.
"That's enough for now," he said. "After all, you've got a lot of other things to focus on at the moment."
It wasn't professional, and it wasn't exactly proper, but she hugged him hard before she left. "Thank you, Uncle Neville," she said. He ruffled her hair.
"Any time, Lils."
Lily is another one of those characters who I feel gets the short stick in fandom, and again, I'm guilty of it to. So when I started to think about what direction I wanted to take her, I looked into what would be a contrast to the happy peppy chatterbox most people seem to write. And I thought about what that might be in place to mask.
I've also been fascinated for a while with medicine in the magical world. Like, it's clear from the series that not everything can be fixed with a simple spell or potion. And we hear about Dragon Pox, but do wizards never get chicken pox? Or pneumonia or cancer? And if stitches and surgery are considered so gruesome, do wizard kids never get shots? What about the kids with food or medicine allergies? What are the equivalents?
So I decided to give Lily an illness-prone backstory, and see how that might define her. And I wanted to see how Harry would handle having a child fascinated by death, a child who had so many brushes with it. We'll get into that father/daughter relationship more in Lily and Hugo and Lucy's spin-off piece.