THE END
London 1992
PM reveals truth about terrorists! Magicians responsible!
It's a kind of magic? Warlocks to blame for violent U.K attacks.
One newspaper after the other shouted their witty headlines at Lily. The muggles knew, the Statue of Secrecy was broken, what no one had ever expected to happen had come true. Lily absentmindedly handed over a couple of coins to a young man selling newspapers from a stand on the street and waved him off as he tried to hand back the change. Lily hurriedly opened the newspaper up and immediately found the main article on the second page.
Were the witch trials not a fluke? Reliable sources describe a 'Magical Hitler' at large in the U.K.
'Magical Hitler'. There was something about that wording…
It hit her like a brick. It was Mark's wording; Mark's way of summarising Voldemort after she had told him about the dark wizard. It could be a coincidence, of course - there was after all nothing British newspapers enjoyed more than a sensational headline - but Lily's gut feeling was telling her something else. She stuffed the newspaper into her satchel, ducked into a slightly secluded alley and apparated to the street outside Mark's flat.
Mark was sitting on the couch with a cup of espresso in his hand and his head bowed deep in thought, with the BBC news on low volume on the telly when Lily burst into the flat.
She didn't bother taking off her coat or shoes, she just marched up to him and placed herself directly in his line of vision. She slammed the newspaper down on the coffee table in front of the sofa with such force that the candle holders rattled against the glass surface.
"When did you do it?" she asked calmly and looked him straight in the eye.
Mark closed his eyes.
"Lily, I… I didn't mean-"
"Merlin, you're not even going to deny it," she exclaimed.
Mark kept his gaze firmly fixed on the hardwood floor.
"You already seem to know," he responded slowly.
Lily huffed.
"When did you do it? Did you go to your boss the day after I told you I was a witch?"
Silence echoed between them as Mark shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
"No," he eventually denied.
"You waited then? Did you sense an opportunity to climb the ladder? Was it a career move?" Lily spat viciously.
"No, not really," he said warily.
"What was it then?"
"I'm not at liberty to discuss-"
"Fuck your liberty!" Lily shouted. "You've single-handedly revealed a secret that has been kept for centuries and which could very well unleash a civil war."
"I'm not a police officer," Mark confessed eventually. He looked up at her with his dark blue eyes that Lily had always thought looked like two oceans. Now the only thing she could see as she looked into the two dark orbs was shame.
Lily stared at him with genuine surprise on her face.
"What?"
Mark ran both his hands through his hair.
"I used to be, but it was long ago now. For the last decade I've been with MI6."
"Intelligence…" Lily whispered.
"Yes," Mark confirmed.
Lily snorted. "You must've thought you hit a jackpot when you realised what I was."
Mark would not meet her gaze, and Lily felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"What are you not telling me?" she asked slowly.
Mark gave her a pleading look.
"It wasn't a jackpot. It wasn't a coincidence," he said miserably. "One of my colleagues saw you helping a couple of girls who were being harassed in an alleyway in Shoreditch when he was on his way home from work. He saw you using your wand and realised you were one of them, so he tailed you and followed you to the pub and then to your flat in Clapton."
Lily felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
"He brought it up at work and everyone agreed that it was an opportunity to learn more about an enemy we knew next to nothing about. My boss thought… It was decided that… that I would be the best person for the job,"
"The job," Lily repeated bitterly. "Why? Because you're handsome and most women would be flattered if you as much as talked to them?"
Mark did not answer.
"I can't believe it… I've never felt more stupid in my life," Lily muttered. "So, you did it," she whispered. She touched her left cheek and was surprised to find it damp – she had not even realised she had started crying. "You seduced the terrorist."
Once again did Mark not even deign to answer her.
"So, I guess that makes you the James Bond then," Lily said bitterly. "What a gold mine of information I've been."
"Well, for the first nine months I got no information at all," Mark said. "But I got something else,"
"What?"
"You," he said, and Lily snorted loudly. "I'm serious Lily, and I completely understand that you don't believe me, but I don't want you to think that all of this is fabricated," he pleaded.
"But then after nine months the Death Eaters conveniently decided to schedule an attack in your neighbourhood when we were walking home from the pub."
"No," he whispered.
"What do you mean? It must've been the best thing that could've happened after a nine-month drought, you ought to thank them," she said sarcastically.
"It wasn't a Death Eater attack," he said quietly. "The higher-ups were growing impatient for progress, and since I'd told them that I didn't think you would reveal anything unless you were in a tight spot, they decided to put you in one. There was a controlled explosion a street away from the one we always took home for the tube, and one of my colleagues volunteered to… stand in as a fake wizard, to provoke you to use your wand."
Lily stared at him in disbelief.
"It wasn't real? It was orchestrated? I could've killed someone!"
She didn't remember much about the attack, but she could recall finding it odd how the Death Eater they had ran into on the street hadn't even tried to defend himself when Lily hexed him.
"Gillespie was well aware of the risks," Mark mumbled.
Suddenly Lily wasn't crying anymore; anger had replaced any sadness she had previously felt.
"Why?"
"I thought it was for the best. How are we supposed to fight an enemy we know nothing about?"
"You're not supposed to fight them at all! We are supposed to fight them," Lily exclaimed.
Mark stood up forcefully.
"But they are fighting us, Lily! They are killing us. Are we supposed to just stand by and let them?" he asked and for the first time there was a tinge of anger in his voice.
"The Order-"
"The Order is evidently not enough, because innocent people keep being murdered," Mark cut her off.
Lily stared at him for what felt like hours. At some point since she arrived the skies above London had opened and the rain was angrily beating against the windows.
"Dumbledore once told me that one muggle wouldn't be able to break the Statue of Secrecy. He was hardly ever wrong about anything, but boy was he wrong about that," Lily said icily.
"Why
"Because you've put a target on the back of every witch and wizard of any age in this country. On children, Mark! You've told them everything!"
"Not everything," Mark objected.
"Oh, really? What have you left out?"
"I didn't tell them about muggle-borns," he said. "Every parent in the country would be mad with worry that their child might turn out to be magical. Not to mention that there is no guarantee what the government might do with those children if they found them."
"Considering how efficiently the Death Eaters hunt down Muggle-born children these days I doubt there are any left for the muggle authorities to traumatise," said Lily coldly.
"I also didn't tell them about Hogwarts."
Small mercies, Lily thought. The mere idea of the muggle government finding out about Hogwarts was enough to make her shudder.
"What happens now?" Mark asked after another long pause.
Lily sighed.
"Mark, this has been going on for years. You've been systematically lying to me from the moment we met. Everything we have is built on not one lie, but an abundance of them," she said tiredly.
"And you haven't been lying to me? What about all the times you asked about what the police were thinking about the attacks?" he countered.
"Don't even try to make this into my fault," Lily spat. "I told the others in the Order that knowing someone working for the muggle authorities could be useful, but frankly that was more of an excuse to get to know you. I don't think I've seriously tried to pressure you for information since our second date. I told you everything the day we ran into that Death Eater, or I suppose one of your colleagues, on the way home from the pub."
Mark did not respond and Lily looked around the room. Suddenly everything in there felt more impersonal than ever, and she remembered how many times she had reflected on how the interior of the place did not seem to suit Mark.
"I guess that explains the fancy flat," Lily said. "Is it even yours?"
Mark shook his head. "All my grandparents died before I was born and none of them left me as much as a storage cupboard. The flat belongs to the firm, I was granted use of it in order to be able to stay in central London while the… mission was carried out. I used to commute from Milton Keynes."
"Milton Keynes?"
Mark shrugged.
"I dislike living in the city,"
Lily shook her head in disbelief and buttoned her coat. The man in front of her whom she had spent the suddenly felt like a stranger.
"Where are you going?" Mark asked with a tinge of worry in his voice.
"I'm going to clean up the mess you've made," she muttered. "It's probably chaos at headquarters right now."
"Are you coming back?" He asked with a small voice.
The truth was that Lily did not know – the wound from the betrayal was still too fresh to be assessed – but she would not tell him that.
"Don't be greedy Mark, you've gotten information from me for over two years, surely that is much more than you and your colleagues estimated," she said coldly and apparated away before his eyes.
1996
Lily did not know how long she sat on the living room floor next to the corpse of a man who had once been one of the people she hated most in the world. Although her opinion of him had somewhat changed since Narcissa's death she could not overlook the never-ending list of heinous crimes he had committed over the years. She took a closer look at the diary and quickly realised that its' pages were just as blank as the duplicate's had been. All previous horcruxes had been heavily warded, and since this one had not been left in a secure location there was no doubt in Lily's mind that the object itself must have its' own protection.
She wondered how much time she had. Once Voldemort realised that the Order was gone he might let his guard down for a while and maybe that could give her the opportunity to-
No. Who knew how many horcruxes there were left. Dumbledore had presented a theory in his memories that it would be seven, but Lily thought there was not nearly enough evidence to assume that. The best thing Lily could do was to get herself to the place where there was a reasonable chance that another might be, and if she was successful get it destroyed along with the diary.
As she was pondering what she should do before leaving her flat for good she heard the unmistakable sound of a door handle turning and her blood ran cold. She had warded the place as much as she could, and the only way one would be able to enter the flat was if they knew it existed and actively looked for it. She had told no one of its' location or even which city it was in, and she could not imagine who could possibly be on the other side of the door.
Lily raised her wand and had a jinx ready at the tip of her tongue as the door swung open and revealed a tall figure in muggle clothing.
Lily could not mask her surprise at seeing Mark McAuley stumble into her ratty flat in his tailored, grey coat and shiny leather shoes. Despite still being an undeniably handsome man, he looked as if he had aged at least a decade since she last saw him three years ago with heavy bags under his eyes and a worried look on his face.
When he spotted Lily, he let out a loud breath of relief.
"You're alive. Oh my God, Lily, I didn't know, I swear," he said pleadingly and rushed over to envelope her in a tight hug.
"Mark? What are you doing here? How did you find me?" She asked with equal parts irritation and relief in her voice and detangled herself from the embrace. The familiar scent of Mark's cologne hit her like a brick and despite everything she realised that she had missed him.
"I tried to call you," Mark continued as if he hadn't heard her question.
Lily frowned.
"You were the one calling me earlier?"
Mark nodded.
"I was in London, it was the only way I could reach you in time, but you didn't pick up."
"How did you get my number?" Lily wanted to know.
"I recently found out. Last week we got a report about five teenagers being found unconscious on a playground outside Sheffield. They were all disoriented when they woke up, but one of them had a vague memory of a red-haired woman pointing a wooden stick at her. The local authorities relayed all the information to us, and it only took me a couple of days to figure out which flat was yours," he explained.
Lily said a long string of curse words under her breath. She knew she had hurried too much when obliviating the teenagers at the playground the previous week.
"What are you doing here?" She said again.
"Please, Lily, I swear I didn't know," Mark repeated.
"What did you not know, Mark?" Lily asked sternly.
Mark took a deep breath.
"The government has been desperate for progress for months now, they feel that they need to show the world that they are taking action against the wizards," he began.
"Action?" Lily echoed.
"It was decided nearly a month ago that an operation would be carried out against the only location known to host wizards."
Lily stared at him in shock and disbelief.
"It wasn't the Death Eaters who blew up Grimmauld Place. It was you," she whispered.
"I wasn't involved, I only found out this morning."
"How many people died?" She asked. "In addition to the eleven Order members, how many of its' own citizens did the government murder today?"
Mark shifted uncomfortably.
"The surrounding muggle buildings were discreetly evacuated earlier in the afternoon, but of course there were casualties on the streets..."
"How many?" Lily repeated.
"The count is around a dozen at the moment," Mark confessed.
"And the muggle government plans on taking credit for this?" Lily asked incredulously.
Mark nodded.
"Yes. They intend to frame it in a way that they had discovered a terrorist cell, and that the terrorists set off the explosives when they realised that they were cornered. They want to emphasise the part about finding the location and eliminating a number of wizards rather than focusing on the civilian lives that were lost."
"And the reason they knew the location is because you told them," Lily said.
Mark at least had the decency to look ashamed.
"I told them about a townhouse in Islington years ago, how they manage to pinpoint the exact location… I have no clue, to be honest. I don't have access to that kind of sensitive information anymore."
Lily didn't ask why.
"The entire Order is gone, Mark! The only people who would and could stand up to You-Know-Who are dead! He's going to win, and all of us are probably going to die," she said instead.
Lily had never said the words before, never allowed herself to even consider the possibility, but she had also never before been the last living member of the Order of the Phoenix.
"The military has been stocking up on explosives. Magical or not, I bet a large bomb would do some damage to him too," Mark said confidently.
Lily laughed joylessly.
"There's so much you don't know."
"Then tell me!" Mark insisted. "Tell me what I don't know."
"Tell you? Do you remember what happened the last time I told you something? Despite promising you wouldn't, you ran to your boss and colleagues and told them everything."
The silence hung in the air between them for a long while. Lily could see the end of Lucius Malfoy's ponytail from where she was standing in the kitchen and as she replayed the day's events in her mind, she could hardly believe they had actually happened. As far as bad days went, this was a close second to October 31st 1981.
"I hope you realise that if I'd known what they were planning I would've tried to stop it," Mark eventually said in a low voice.
"Well, it hardly matters now. You should leave, I have much to do," Lily said tiredly.
She had never asked Moody where he disposed of dead bodies, but it was not as if it really mattered if Malfoy was found in a couple of days. Perhaps she would smuggle him into a morgue and have him buried as an unknown muggle, there would at least be some irony in that.
"Let me help, Lily, let me do something, anything," Mark begged.
Lily thought for a few moments and then grabbed an empty glass vial from the kitchen counter. She pointed her wand at her left temple and pulled out a long, silvery string of memories that she guided into the vial with the tip of her wand.
Mark stared at her with wide open eyes but did not make a comment.
"If you ever run into another witch or wizard who seems interested in taking You-Know-Who down, you should give them this," Lily said and handed him the vial.
"What is it?" Mark asked and eyed it suspiciously.
"The key to destroying him," she answered tiredly.
Mark looked at her warily.
"Why are you giving me this?"
Lily smiled sadly.
"I'm going to do as much damage as I can, but I doubt it's going to be enough," she said earnestly.
"Lily…"
She cut him off before he could continue.
"My son died fifteen years ago, Mark. Everything I've done since then has been to avenge him, and I came to terms with the fact that it would cost me my own life years ago. I was supposed to be home that night, I was supposed to die alongside them, but I didn't. Every minute of my life feels like borrowed time; time I'm not supposed to have."
"Really? That's how you felt all that time?" He asked and clearly referred to the years they had been together.
"I've never been happier after Harry's death than I was when I was with you. When we were together, I used to imagine a life for us together after the war was won," she confessed. "I used to imagine us moving in together and getting rid of those uncomfortable, fancy chairs in your flat and connecting the fireplace to the Floo network so I could easily get to whatever normal job I would have. On Friday evenings after you were done with your normal job we would go to our pub in Shoreditch and Charlie at the bar would tell us outrageous stories of celebrities who had allegedly gotten drunk there."
Mark looked down on the floor.
Lily continued. "Sometimes I even imagined that we would have a child or two, and that we would get to do all the things I never had the chance to do with Harry. Teach them to ride a bike, take them to the sea and let them dip their feet and fat little legs in the water. Wave them off at King's Cross as they boarded the Hogwarts Express…"
"When I found out that you had lied to me all along… You destroyed the one thing I had in my life that had nothing to do with the war against You-Know-Who. After over a decade of only fighting for vengeance for the past, I had started fighting for a future, but I didn't realise it until I had lost it." Lily's voice wavered and she felt tears threatening to erupt at any moment.
The silence hung between them for what could be anything from seconds to hours.
"Is there anything I can do to help you? Anything at all?" Mark eventually asked quietly.
Lily thought for a few moments and then took a couple of deep breaths. She spotted Malfoy's blond head in the corner of the eye.
"Do you know how to dispose of a corpse?"
AN: Long time no see. A lot has changed in the world since I last posted, but with uni closing down and me being stuck on my paper I figured I could write a bit on this instead. I'm considering taking down the chapters I've written and re-working them because I want to pace things a bit differently (too many flashbacks in some chapters for instance) but I haven't decided whether I'm going to do that or just write the whole thing down and rewrite things later.