Warnings&Disclaimer: First chapter lovers

Its going to be a bit long winded but after the interlude is over i think the pace picks up remarkably.

A/N:

Reworked 11/19/13

Not a lot of changes.

Lily Potter

Lily did not feel an ounce of guilt as she told James their son was dead. She couldn't. Because it was True. She, herself, had killed the innocence a child naturally posses. The Potter part of the boy was gone the moment James, under the Imperious, declared him removed from the Potter line.

Harry and the James part of him were gone when he was blood adopted by three purebloods.

She wasn't sure if the other men understood though. Sometimes those who grow up with magic assume they know everything there is to know and don't bother researching spells and rituals at all. They don't seem to respect that magic can do anything. She had long suspected purebloods and even halfbloods were desensitized to some of the more reality bending aspects of magic.

The ritual they had preformed had been based on some particularly nasty rituals she had found in an lad Dark tome in Severus' home one summer. She had carefully reworked the spell and it's outcome to make sure the desired results had been accomplished. At the basest of it the ritual had been a crude power supplying blood adoption. She had used her skills in ancient runes and charms to make it much more.

The ritual removed all impurities of blood and took the joined essence of the three most powerful and skilled men she knew and remade the child as if he were born of their own flesh.

It ended with the boy having none of her left in him at all.

She could hardly call herself his mother at all, and certainly not by any blood line standards of the wizarding world.

His features had morphed into aristocratic sharpness common among noble family's. His eyes had taken the color of the sacrifice ritual.

His hair was the darkness of a child borne of the night.

He wasn't hers or Jamie's anymore.

His baby softness seemed to be missing, one dark auburn hair and striking lavender eyes were gone as well. She was glad sometimes that the boy was gone now, she didn't have to look into his strange eyes and see all that she had done anymore at least.

But it had left her soul broken. Something once as pure and light and airy as a cloud. Something she once debated the existence of with her family and church members. Now she knew that it was more real, less ephemeral than she'd ever believed. But not until it was too late, not until it was gone.

No guilt wasn't eating her alive, piece by piece. She wasn't concerned for her carefully choosen victims, men and women of the dirty streets of London. All had been worthless awful people. Rapists and thieves and whores and murderers themselves. Nothing in them redeeming at all.

No, Her soul was wrecked from multiple murders done in cold blood. The ritual required no remorse for victims. She was having her soul carved at piece by piece with self loathing.

That she was wicked enough to murder. That she was evil enough to do THAT ritual even though she knew and suspected the many unasked for consequences and side effects. She had sentenced her son to a life of dark magic and loneliness.

She abandoned him for his own good. She was as bad as Dumbledore and Voldemort together. Manipulating four strong men out of a child and heir to noble pure families. She was a temptress and taunter and she let it all happen.

And worse yet.

When her son received his letter at the tender age of eleven and went down Diagon alley, everyone would know. As he boarded the Hogwarts express they would look at him and understand. When Dumbledore saw he would act. He would take her defiance as what it was, a challenge to his abilities at stoping the war. James would be destroyed and all the boy's fathers would find out about the prophecies guiding hand in their lives.

And the worst of all Harry was no more.

Perhaps it was guilt after all.

Being devoured by depression and emotions so strong was wearing on her. Months after the loss of the child she was worn down and broken.

Her pale red hair was washed out and greasy, grey littered among the strands. Her pale milk white skin had thinned to tissue paper and was dyed with grey. Skin and bones replaced her once lithe form. Her sparkling blue eyes were dull and lifeless.

At the age of 22 she was dying and she knew it.

Ironic that all around her thought her death was out of heart break when in reality she had only hung on out of the heart break.

Soon she would die.

She prayed.

She did not deserve better.

But perhaps she deserved worse.

She wasn't talking of James. He was a rude uncouth prejudiced man. Even her love couldn't fog over his unattractive qualities. She couldn't let the savior of the wizarding world be affected by his attitudes, let alone her own son.

The boy had to be conditioned For what was coming.

So her biggest betrayal was not to her tiny infant son. She was simply honing him Into what he needed to be. He would be lauded as a savior in the end. Die a myths death and live a life of power. He would defeat the dark. Decimate it really.

She knew that. In the face of his destiny it was of no consequence that he would not have a family.

She was not even upset to lying to Albus, her loving mentor. The man to draw together her and many others to for The Order of the Phoenix, the best damn chance the Light would ever have of holding their own. The man who had taught her the intricate scruples of being right in ways that could manipulate and save, all the while using others as pieces in her own chess game. She was after all doing it for The Greater Good, and he would see that when the Charmed letter she sent arrived on Eli's Eleventh birthday.

She couldn't be bothered by Albus' and James opinions when she had been lying to them for years, ever since her fourth summer at Hogwarts.

She was thinking of her ultimate sin, the ultimate treason by all counts. She had betrayed the three men who had helped her, given over all for her. Played so many dual roles and lies and spying games for her since her prophecy induced revelation that summer long ago. They had been closer and farther apart from her than anyone.

And she had obliviated the three without thought.

She locked away all memories of them together, all the subverted years of hiding in Hogwarts, all the duality of their duplicities with the Dark Lord and the so called Light Lord. Locked away loves in two of them, locked away the depression resulting from refusal in one. Locked away their successor, because all three noble houses would never have another heir unless Harry- The baby was formally undeclared.

He would not be.

They didn't know he was. She had knowingly cursed three noble houses out of existence and betrayed a sacred oath she had written herself and signed in the blood of her alliance.

They would not remember, but they wouldn't forget either. She was a professional Obliviator at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; she knew the charm in all ways. They would always feel the aching loss of something, because it wasn't truly gone. More like hidden behind blood shields that would devour reversal spells and reject liligamancy.

And now she would die for her own duplicity.

Even with what would result, the withering and rotting away, the lingering years she had to endure, she had betrayed her words. Oath-Breaker would forever fallow her name in the wizard dealings she had to attend in her impending doom.

But she simply couldn't risk one of the men caving. Despite wizard oath's; they would mean nothing, eventually, to the men. Purebloods were of family stock. They would need to rescue him somehow. They would talk of him amongst themselves.

It was too much to be left up to chance.

And then once he was in their world they risked corrupting him from all of their own ideals and prejudices and possible dark dealings. One was a Spy for light and dark, painted black then white and black again. One was much too mentally unstable, deeply traumatized by blood borne insanity and the treachery of his family to leave him with such an inheritance. One was deep cover in Voldemort's inner circle and Brother-bound to his infertile elder who had married into insanity and taken to it with relish, he was utterly convincing because of his own taint.

The child couldn't be given to them no matter what.

No matter intent, no matter love, no matter duty, no matter prophecy. They would infect and influence him. The prophecy had been clear, do not allow him to enter our world before the magical age. So he would not.

So now she suffered from the written word of optimistic teens who would not trust unless under dire penalties. The boy's, her boys she could refer to them fondly, would probably not have recalled the words had she let them, anyway. The consequences of betrayal foreign to them as was now the concept of any other allegiance.

They had all grown so close, loving one another so deeply. Two discovering each other so thoroughly they had bound themselves in a marital union she had also forced from their minds. One betrayed by a lover and ensconced in love so deep he needed them to survive.

And her.

The center piece to the men so different. A seer by blood and a prophetess by chance. A confidante to all three. She'd not intended this betrayal, she'd neither Seen no planned it. So naively she had allowed herself to bring them close to her heart. Closer than the sister now lost to her. Closer than kind-hearted parents who could not relate. Closer than a beautiful man with a teenage mind and simpering Gryffindor ideals she had married. Too close for her heart to take.

But this was better. Already her magic had dwindled to a trickle; soon, if she did not undo her duplicity enchantments she would be unable, as the curse on their oath ate her magical core first. Then the Soul. Then finally the body.

How did we know such things at such Young ages? She could not help smiling fondly. Such distrust.

But she had managed. Bound the three together for eternity, as they had always thought.

No matter outside appearances.

She, a little lost mudblood who happened upon seer blood by some twist of fate.

She had wrangled in a childhood friend; a snarky nasty boy so thoroughly abused and disillusioned her heart hurt for him even now.

Took in a boy of the Blackest and darkest blood of pureblood society, descended from Mordred himself, steeped in madness of his line and his own Gryffindor nobility despite it.

And a boy who once would have thought nothing of slaughtering her parents and crucioing her into madness, and never debasing himself to the level she was on.

Yes.

She did deserve much worse then what she faced for all that she had taken.

StarGuide2011