Chapter Eight
It's almost here. They can feel it. Dumbledore gathers them together, which makes it official.
"The time approaches," he informs them. "If I'm not mistaken, Harry will soon call us to him, and the final chapter in this tragedy will shortly begin."
Remus has crossed over, confused and mildly distraught but happy to be reunited with them all. He brings them up to date on rumours about Harry, and the battle of Hogwarts in which he lost his life. He's accompanied by a cheeky young witch who introduces herself as his wife.
"You're joking," says Sirius, looking hard at his friend.
Tonks shows them her ring. "You're Harry's mum, right? Amazing, he is." She gazes around her, frowning slightly at the sylvan landscape. City girl, Lily thinks. Maybe in the future she and this funny young witch can go exploring. "We left our lovely Teddy behind," Tonks blurts, her eyes changing colour through her tears. "I don't know what we were thinking, getting ourselves killed like that. Rotten luck all around. He's too young, our Ted, he'll never remember us." Lily hugs her, her mind flickering to Tom, before remembering she should be thinking of Harry.
Regulus tacks out of the shadows, zigzagging from one spot to another as if he might fool them into believing he's not really there. Or not interested in company, just passing through. Spotting him, Sirius jerks his head: get your arse over here. Reg's posture as he dawdles up is a study in conflicting desires. He trying to act above it all, but really, the boy's petrified with shyness. The only reason Lily can see that he's decided to break cover is that he's utterly bewitched by Tonks.
It occurs to Lily that the afterlife is getting a bit crowded.
She feels constantly nervous now, unable to settle. She holds James's hand a great deal and they smile at each other, overwhelmed by the promise of seeing their son. It seems to Lily that the very grass under her feet glows with love, that the trees sing with it, that the sunlight is composed of waves and particles of joy. The scenes on the telly shrink in her memory to a small, black dot. She pushes them to the back of her mind.
Then Albus beckons her aside and takes her hand. "I have a very great favour to ask of you, my dear. Someone is coming, and there's no one he would wish to see more, and no one who could better reconcile him to death, than you."
Lily withdraws her hand. "Severus," she says. She stands blinking, and the sunlight is suddenly only sunlight. "You mean he's dying."
"I'm afraid so," Albus says gravely. Tears sting Lily's eyes. "He has conducted himself with greater loyalty and courage than I'd any right to expect, and has paid the price. Dare I ask whether you've forgiven him enough to welcome him home?"
"I – yes," Lily says, distracted. It's over. She can't quite comprehend how that can be. The future she saw for Harry, for Severus – it will never happen now. A strange, unplaceable regret wells up in her, a feeling she associates with an almost-forgotten fairy tale. Beauty and the Beast. Yes, she remembers. As a child, she'd never understood how Beauty could break her promise like that, how she could so easily forget the Beast once she was safe, surrounded by people who were eager to assure her that the Beast had no soul. How could she leave him to die of a broken heart? It was callous. She feels a bit like that now.
"I'll go meet him. I'll be happy to." Some part of her finds the prospect terrifying. "If you'll just tell me where to find him?"
"You may choose the meeting place," Albus says. "He'll come to you. Treat him gently, my dear. He has a foot in both worlds right now, and he'll be wavering between. That's not an easy introduction to death. But then, Severus seems incapable of choosing the easy way."
"You mean to say he's still alive?"
"I believe," Albus mutters, and then hesitates and says firmly, "Yes. But not for much longer."
"I'll go now," Lily says. "And I'll take Tom with me."
Albus has been about to turn away, toward a beckoning Grindelwald. He swings back with a startled air. "Lily. Do you think that's wise?"
"Perhaps not," she says, unnerved by his shrewd glance. "But it's right."
Albus strokes his beard before saying, "I see. Well, then. Perhaps you know better than I." His condescending tone sets her teeth on edge. Holding out his arms, he conjures the baby out of thin air. That's a bit off-putting. Tom's not a bloody elixir. And the way he's being offered? Like a sacrificial lamb. She picks him up, pats his bum gently and props his feverish head on her shoulder. Turning to go, she's swamped by sudden misgivings, and turns back. "If Harry needs me – if he arrives before I – "
Albus waves her on. "Not to worry. Wherever you are, you'll feel the call. I wager James will come to fetch you and the two of you will go together."
Abashed, Lily nods. Of course Jamie will. Stupid of her to think otherwise. She cranes her head, and James scuffs up, hands in pockets. They stand looking at each other. "Always knew you were soft on the bastard," he grumbles, and she's completely thrown until she realizes he means Severus. "Sorry," he says when she shifts away, annoyed. "My nerves are about shot. It's Harry, y'see. It's the waiting. Think I'll take my broom up, fly in circles for a bit." She nods, suddenly wishing she could go with him. "Give Snivellus a kick in the bollocks when you see him, and tell him it's from me, all right?"
Lily snorts, "Go on with you," and then kisses him, glad he's not going to argue or insist on coming with. They part ways, and Lily glances back once. She sees an odd conga line forming: Sirius behind James; Remus drawn in Sirius's wake like a dog on a leash; Tonks tagging along behind Remus; and poor infatuated Regulus bringing up the rear. Shaking her head, Lily Apparates to the field, summons up her childhood home, and pushes open the door.
She hovers by the telly for a moment, wondering what she'll see if she turns it on. A dark shack, a dying man, blood everywhere. She scoops the bottle from its hiding place and stuffs it in her pocket.
~~#~~
She knows exactly where to find him: standing on the hill overlooking the swings. Swathed in black, his face bony and unrevealing as a mask, he looks as if he's turned up to audition for the role of Death incarnate.
Lily climbs the hill to meet him, and Severus wheels about. His expression betrays no surprise, no wonder or peace, merely a stunned weariness. When he sees her coming, this changes – at first Lily thinks she must be reading him wrong – to something like fear.
She slows down as she gets closer. His physical presence is a shock; her senses register a stranger. She's alone on a hillside with someone she doesn't know. This sharp-boned, wary man is real, whereas the scenes she's been watching are mere images, flickers on a screen. He's taller than she expects, and the darkness of his magic is like an acrid cloud, the gristly, oily texture of his power staining the air around them. This is what Harry wants? But it's no longer her place to pass judgment. It's just that watching hours of his life onscreen hasn't prepared her for the impact.
She halts within a couple of yards of him, adjusting the blanket around Tom. After a moment, he says her name, very low, with the kind of careful warmth that makes her feel as if he's just taken her hand and squeezed it.
She inclines her head. "Severus."
He continues staring, studying her. The baby might as well not exist. "I – Lily, it's good to – " He stops, clearly unsure, then says helplessly, "You're here." He stands as if paralyzed, and she can't bear to look. She does recognize him. She'll know the moment he dies, because under her gaze he'll become young again. He'll go back as far as he has to in order to become the person she once loved. "Thank you for coming," he turns his head slowly, still bewildered by the view, "to show me the way. You're to be my gatekeeper into this world, then?"
"No. I'm not here to help you cross over." He wavers back a step, confused. Long strands of hair paint his face. She wishes she could be kinder, but in giving him a choice, she, too, must choose, and she wouldn't have brought the bottle if she hadn't already made up her mind. "I've come to convince you to go back."
His veneer of sorrow cracks. "Are you out of your – Back? To what?" For a moment his robes hang sodden with blood, a reminder of what awaits him on the other side. Then his face goes blank, and the overlap between worlds fades. "You don't want me here," he says bluntly.
"Did you think I'd welcome you with open arms?" It's not an answer, but she depends on him not being able to keep up with her motives. She turns to pick her way downhill toward the playground, knowing he'll follow. Tom stirs, and she pauses, then takes a huge chance. "Here, you carry him."
Snape looks at the sore-infested child with distaste. "I'm not good with children, you know that. Babies especially."
"You're not good with anyone. Carry him. He's partly your responsibility."
Looking annoyed enough to spit, Snape takes the child. Once Tom is in his arms, the entire hillside seems to freeze. "Dear God," he whispers.
Lily's alarmed to see the blood reappear on his robes, on his hands where they clutch Tom's blanket, on his face, whiter than bone. She keeps her voice steady. "Don't you dare drop him, or I'll see to it you're banished somewhere without human company. Imagine being alone for eternity, and think better of it."
The moment lengthens, while the wounds in Snape's throat break open and drip onto the grass. Then he closes his eyes, hitches the baby closer, and with an effort of will banishes the evidence of his mortality. His eyes, opening on Lily, are accusing. "Haven't I carried my sins long enough?"
"You have the nerve to ask me that?" She tosses her head the way she's seen the Weasley girl do with Harry. "At least now we have a chance to raise him with love. If nothing else, we can heal his sores."
He says drily, "Love's all very well, but in this case I'd recommend dittany."
"Wounds of the body, yes, thank you, I scored as high as you did in potions, Professor Swot. Dittany's wasted on wounds of the soul." Her downhill foot slithers a little in the grass. "You of all people should be aware of the difference."
They finish the descent in silence, Severus shifting the baby's position several times. At last he says, "It's like holding a part of me that I've tried to cut out with a knife."
"Well, it didn't work, did it?" They reach the edge of the playground before she allows, "He's a part of Harry, too, you know."
For a second, Snape looks desperate enough to take flight. "About the boy. I'm sorry, he's –"
"He'll be fine."
"No, you don't understand. Dumbledore – "
Lily almost stamps her foot. "You need to stop believing everything Dumbledore says!"
Tom starts to cry. Severus shifts the sobbing bundle, looking exhausted, confused, and fed up. "I don't, Lily. I never did." The bitter half-smile he turns on her drives home the fact that he's a Slytherin. He whispers, "That was never the point."
She frowns at her bare feet. "Look, let's get this out in the open right now. Do you really intend to stay here with me? Me and James and little Tommy?"
"I wasn't aware I had a – " He snorts, shakes his head slightly, pivots on one foot, and starts pacing the cement perimeter. "I assume that's an unsubtle hint that you'd prefer me to go elsewhere. Have patience, Lily. I just arrived."
Catching up, she steals a glance at his profile, his exorbitant, hooked nose, which is still the first thing you notice about him, his lank hair, the grace he never exhibited as a youth. His face is lined. She thinks distractedly: he's a man, not a boy. I never knew he would grow up.
"You mistake me," she says, using the pang she feels to sharpen the edge of her voice. "I'm just wondering why you don't make more of an effort to stay with Harry."
Startled, Snape turns. She sees a trace of alarm, the faint mottling of a blush, burn through his passivity before it fades. "Are you mad? I'm – "
" – not dead yet," she supplies with relentless impatience. "Listen to me, Sev. You could stay with him. You could live."
"Not without help," he says, breathing hard. "As you may or may not recall, we're in the middle of a war. Trust me, no one's going to come rushing out to retrieve my exsanguinated corpse."
It's said with unflinching bitterness. He believes it absolutely. Her heart aches, and she hardens it. "Rubbish. That's cowardice pure and simple. You simply want an excuse to give up."
He gives her an irritable look followed by a sharp huff that could pass, on a cold day in hell, for laughter. "Do you blame me?"
She says, quick and sharp or she won't say it at all, "I will never stop blaming you, surely you know that," and Severus tightens his arms around the whimpering child, raising Tom close to his chest like a shield. His face looks drained, more drained, considering he was already colourless and bleak when he arrived. She fears the conversation is weakening whatever hold he still has on life.
She steps off the cement and kicks sand on her way to the swings. He follows. Lily settles herself on the hot leather seat and curls her fingers around the iron links, rocking idly back and forth. Tom doesn't like the sun; his fretting grows louder, and Severus scowls.
Lily stretches her legs to the sun. Severus doesn't even glance down at them. "You can stay here as an onlooker," Lily spells it out for him, "envying my happiness, exactly as you did when we were children." He opens his mouth to protest and she talks over him. "Or you can go back and be there for Harry. Defeating Voldemort doesn't mean he's not perfectly capable of making a hash of his life. In some ways, he's just as much of a dunderhead as you always said he was."
Slashes of scarlet light up his thin face. He retorts stiffly, "Potter has friends."
"Potter, as you call him, is over there flying around with Sirius and wondering what the bloody hell I'm doing here talking to bloody you." She can't help it; the smirk on his face at these words warms her. "As I understand it, we're discussing Harry." Severus almost turns his back on her then, and she says, "It's perfectly all right. You can call him by name in front of me."
"He has friends," Severus repeats in a rough whisper. He's bouncing the baby absently, and infant Tom is staring up, as if he recognizes Snape's face. "If he," Severus hesitates, and it occurs to Lily that he genuinely has trouble saying her son's name, "if…Harry…survives, he'll want for nothing. He's already the golden boy, and the Wizarding World will rush to lay everything at his feet. He has no need of – "
"Bollocks," Lily sighs. "Right, you do that, you tell yourself whatever you need to in order to justify your emotional cowardice. Stay or go, it's all one to me."
"Is it?" he says, his voice strained.
"What do you think?" Then she does it; she hasn't been sure until now that she would, but she says it, point-blank: "Would I be dead if not for you?"
There's no way of knowing that, actually. If the slaughter at Godric's Hollow had never happened, Voldemort would have continued unchecked. But Lily has no interest in splitting philosophical hairs just now; she has the truth on her side and every right to say this, and nothing less than the truth will drive Snape to his knees. "I may never forgive you, Severus. But I'll bet you anything Harry will."
He stands petrified, fading and flickering like an image on her telly screen, and it terrifies her that he's alive yet, his body suspended precariously by a thread. The living suffer so terribly. Re-opening this old wound of the soul when he's dying of untreated wounds of the body may destroy him.
But there's no way they could meet again and not speak of it. Besides, it's too late to take it back.
"I've tried…" There's an odd, choked note in his voice, of baffled anger. "I don't know what more I can do by way of penance. Except kneel. If that's what it takes."
She recoils, even while thinking she should do it. She should make him cry out against her as he did against Harry. Once upon a time, she would have felt she had every right to force him to his knees. But she's learned by example – Harry's example – and she wants to preserve some glimmer of Sev's love for her.
"Don't be daft," she snaps, drawing lines in the sand with her toes. "I'm not exiling you from paradise or condemning you to eternal torment. I'm merely pointing out that you won't find what you want by staying here, because it's not here. You left it behind. So if you really want – " She shrugs, fearing she's talked herself into a corner. There's very little she can promise him, after all. "Look, just hang on until Harry comes for you. Because he will. And it will mean a great deal to him if you're alive."
"Yes, a lifetime in Azkaban is a very great deal. Need I spell out what that would mean to me?"
Severus moves to the swing beside her, but instead of sitting in it, he speaks a cooling charm, lowers Tom onto the seat and then places the baby's hands around the chains, fixing them in place with a spell. He circles around behind them, his robes flapping. A shadowy after-effect paints a ripple of black along the air as he passes, a symptom, perhaps, of his condition, wavering between life and death.
A second later Lily feels his long hands fit themselves to her back. It's not unexpected, but the shock of him touching her sends a jolt right to her toes. She swallows. He gives her a gentle push, then does the same for Tom.
She can't see his expression when he says, "How long do you expect me to 'hang on,' as you so tactfully put it?"
She smiles to herself; a peevish Severus is better than a tragic Severus. "As long as you can," she says, enjoying the breeze that skims through her hair like gentle fingers. "As long as absolutely necessary. You're good at that."
"I must be, since people keep rubbing my face in it," he mutters with the hint of a snarl. Lily stubs one heel in the sand and spins her seat about, the chains chattering as they cross overhead, metal grating on metal. She hadn't stopped to consider that he might be on the verge of giving her another push; both his hands flare wide to avoid striking her face. For one second, she anticipates them settling like veils over her skin, shading her eyes from the sun, the taste of them white against her lips.
But Severus waits, his hands aloft, uncommitted either way. He'll do nothing unless she gives him permission.
She almost does. Almost invites it. Almost, because she suspects that if he were to touch her with those chill fingers – and Lily knows, despite the sun and the heat of his robes, that he'll feel cool, like clean sheets on a summer's night, because somewhere on the other side, he's dying – if he did, she might kick free of the swing, step forward against those sun-drenched, puritanical layers, and lean up for a kiss. She's pretty sure she can gauge the best angle to avoid the whole issue of duelling noses, she even vaguely remembers the reverent pressure of his thin lips, once upon a time, with the humid, rotting-plant smell rising from the canal, and then her mind flashes helplessly to Harry's hands on that lean, pale torso, because damn it, Harry's seen – will see – more of Severus's body than Lily ever did.
Because she hadn't wanted it then. It had been hers for the taking, and she'd known that and valued it accordingly, at nothing, because it already belonged to her.
The truth was, there'd been no challenge or thrill in claiming something that came unbidden to her hand, even something as wild and potentially dangerous as Severus Snape. As her Gryffindor clique, and most of Hogwarts for that matter, had taken pains to demonstrate, Snivellus was no prize even as Slytherins went.
That's all over. She's long since made her choice. Lily digs her feet into the sand and backs her swing up, so that she's standing, fists clenched around the twisted iron links.
Turned like this, the breeze tosses tendrils of hair around her face. She's aware of Severus watching, his eyes hooded. His eyes aren't actually black, but they're dark enough to fool people into thinking they are, and they dilate at the slightest sign of threat or pleasure. Lily remembers that. He was a passionate child, and somehow she doubts that's changed much.
She can't tell who's more shocked, herself or Severus, when she blurts out: "Anyway, it would never have worked out. Aren't you gay?"
He stares, and Lily catches herself treacherously hoping that his amazing technicolour blush will overrun his face. Alas, it seems to have flown with the winds of puberty, a delicious but temporary side-effect.
"I beg your pardon?" She waits him out, rocking almost insolently against the swing. He reins in the snarl and says with slightly less violence, "What exactly do you mean by that?"
Time is so short that everything she needs to say is bound to come tumbling out in a flurry of non-sequiturs. Lily shrugs. "Would you really have married me if given the chance?"
"Yes." He doesn't hesitate.
Lily shivers with temptation. After all this time, he still sees her as magical. It would be so easy to keep him here. "You'd have married me and sacrificed your physical desires to stay with someone you had a crush on when you were nine years old?"
Merlin, you can see that broomstick ram right up his spine. He looks at her askance, and she notices that he's turned horrifically pale. One hand flies to his throat and presses, but there's no sign of blood, and she suspects the gesture has more to do with all the things he's never said aloud, all the silences that define him. "I would have been faithful, if that's what you're asking," he says, his manner stilted. "I would have loved you all my life. I've lost so much, of far greater worth than my 'sexual preferences,' that it hardly qualifies as a sacrifice."
Harry would have something to say about that. She supposes she could only offend him more by demanding to know if he's still a virgin, but that wouldn't help her cause.
She concentrates on the flashes of memory, what she saw when she violated his privacy, the way he touched Harry, the way it transfigured them both. She thinks of Harry with his face in his hands, hungry and ashamed, and it makes her push harder.
"I saw you in the Forest of Dean, watching him," she blurts, as Severus reaches a restless hand over to nudge the baby's swing. "Did you know that Harry's Patronus is a stag?"
She's no sooner said it than a shock of dark, angry pink sprays his features. Merlin, it's amazing to see someone so sallow and grim, so starkly wedded to black and white, suffused with sudden colour, even if, in Severus's case, it means he's about to lose his temper.
"Really," he says, with an edge cutting enough to dice runespoor. They lock eyes for a charged moment. "Your point being?"
His coldness startles and dizzies her, like a billywig's sting. This is a Severus she never knew, years older than she will ever be, and she wishes now that she'd treated his adolescent attempts at dignity with the indulgence they deserved. She wishes, too, that she could explain to him how sex and love are magical on their own, unique and indescribable, but when you put the two together, it's like –
"Did you ever learn to fly?" bursts stupidly from her mouth.
Taken aback, he says, "Yes." Then his lips and shoulders tighten. "Not like you, though. It's not the same. When I do it." Funny, she can hear his accent twang through the words. "Not like when you fly. So maybe the answer's no, after all. If flying's what you do, then no, I never learned."
"That's because," she says slowly, and it doesn't matter that it makes no sense, she's saying this as much for herself as for him, "you need wings, Sev. You need someone who'll push you off the edge." His thin body, wrapped in blackness, pulls in on itself. For the first time, Lily gets a glimpse of how disfiguringly lonely his life must be.
Horcruxes aren't the only darkness capable of ripping a soul to shreds. If she could hale Severus's out of his body and spread it alongside him on the grass, it would be tattered and stained, irradiated with despair.
She shouldn't allow him within a hundred miles of Harry. But who will save the saviour if Severus dies?
"Go back," she says sharply. "Harry won't leave you."
He pales again, save for two raw, red streaks along the bones just below his eyes. They appear painful to the touch. Mortified. He's holding her with his darkest, grimmest look, almost pleading, You can't possibly know. Don't say it. Do not tell me you know.
Suddenly Lily wants to hurt him. She wants to slap him, claw him, draw blood. Because she does know. She knows he was hers. For years and years he loved her and belonged to her, and now she's lost him. To her own son. Ironic that the whole reason she's here is because, for all that he resists, Severus will go back, and she knows it, and it's up to her to make sure he doesn't leave it too late.
She thrusts the bottle at him. "Take this. Go on. You're absolutely right, I don't want you here. My heart's not that big." Later, she will take a rueful pride in having out-Slytherined the Slytherin. "But I'm sure Harry can find a use for you."
As she speaks Harry's name, she feels the surge of longing. Oh, Merlin, the summons. It's Harry's magic. His call.
Face ashen, Severus holds the bottle for a long moment, then pulls the cork. His nose wrinkles. "Dragon's blood. To put me out of my misery?"
"Don't be a git," she says. "Albus distilled this elixir, with a little help from his dear friend Grindelwald." Snape's eyebrows shoot up, and he re-corks the bottle. "He quoted you, actually. Something about putting a stopper in death." A melancholy smile, like a bird's shadow, skims his eyes, his lips, and Lily sees how one might learn to love this face. "But it's an untested stopper, so you're right, it might kill you. Or it might buy you time."
Restless, she orients herself in the direction from which Harry's call emanates.
Snape holds the elixir up to examine it; the liquid turns blood-red in reaction to the sunlight. His black hair lifts like a shawl in the breeze, and Lily fears that the wind will knock him down, dissolve him. But Merlin, she can feel the tug at her heart. She needs to go. Her son is coming.
She hurries on, "I was going to give it to Harry, but I've realized – well, I can't explain why, but he's not going to need it. He'll be fine. So – there, if you want to risk it, it's yours."
In the distance, James shouts, "Lily, it's time! Harry's summoning us, come quickly!"
"Harry's here?" Snape whispers, his eyes fierce and troubled.
"Just for a while, just passing through, so we can speak to him, tell him," and Lily hates that she's saying this to Severus's face, even if he already knows, "that we love him. That no matter what, it'll turn out all right." She babbles on, desperate to be gone, desperate not to say goodbye. "We'll stay with him so that he won't die alone. So he won't lose hope."
She turns away, scanning the rise of the hill. James is nowhere in sight. Behind her, Snape echoes, "Hope," in an angry voice and then starts to cough. Lily spins around, and he's vomiting blood into the clean white sand. Her nerves strung tight, singing with the need to fly to her son's aid, she takes a step toward him, then turns back, torn between the hill and the swings. "Sev! I'm sorry, I have to go. It's Harry."
He draws himself up, wiping his mouth, and squints beyond her at the trees, at the shimmering sky, as if he, too, can feel the summons. "I know," he says. He doesn't reach out, as if he's used to it, as if he's learned to stand back and let other people go. His cold black eyes shift from the distance to her, then down to the bottle in his hand. He thumbs it open. With no fuss at all, he drinks down the contents, as if he swallows poison every day.
"I'll – I'll see you later," Lily says, sounding callous and childish to her own ears. She's already walking backward up the hill as blood starts trickling from the corners of his mouth. She half-expects him to call after her, "Don't go," or, "I'm sorry," or worst of all, what she most wants to hear, "I love you."
He doesn't. His voice passes her, as if running on ahead. Not even, "Goodbye." The only words she can make out before they're stolen by the wind are, "Save him."
Released, she breaks into a sprint, and there's James on the crest, come to fetch her. The grass under her toes feels cool, clean. She crushes it, running, the sound of Sev's gluey cough chasing after her. It stops, but she continues her climb to the hilltop, clutching the hand James holds out to her before looking back.
Across the way, on the other side of the playground, a middle-aged woman with lank black hair and a half-buttoned cardigan stands with her arms clenched across her breasts. She leans forward, as if wanting to hide her sallow face, and Lily realizes she's crying. As the woman trudges back the other way, then Disapparates mid-stride, a memory snicks into place: the bitter witch of Spinner's End.
Sev's mum. Bloody hell. She must have watched the whole thing.
He's gone, of course. Sev is gone. The empty seats of the swing are wobbling back and forth. Splashed on the white sand, a vivid red stain catches the sun.
Lily's heart throbs painfully. The swings are empty. "Tom!" She forgot. She left him. Oh, Merlin, there's no time. She stares around, disbelieving. "Tom, where are you!" She gives James a panicky look. "Oh, God. Severus didn't take him, did he?"
James shakes his head. "I can't think why he'd want to. Come on, love, we'll be late." She clutches him, still staring to all sides as if Tom might miraculously appear, and he catches her face, kissing the corner of her mouth. "Don't worry, Lil. It'll be all right." He nods encouragingly. "We're going to see Harry."
"Harry," she echoes, and suddenly everything is all right. It will be. She's seen it. She's sacrificed something that once belonged to her, set him free in the name of a greater good, and isn't that the price of a happy ending? In fairy tales, at least.
Then the veil between worlds rends, sucking them to a place in the forest where their son stands waiting with a stone in his hand.