Chapter Nine

Lily's never been so overwhelmed with love. He glows, her son, her saviour of worlds, multi-layered, Harry now and Harry then and Harry overlapping unto infinity. She barely sees the existing boy for all the intervening selves that cling to him, ripple and flicker around him. Knowing too much, she speaks hardly at all, but walks silently with Harry toward his fate. She stands witness. They all do. There's a line of them, holding hands, and it's astounding that Voldemort is unable to detect the sheer volume of love in the room.

He's nothing like Tom.

Then a green flare bursts around Harry and he falls, already gone, and Albus with him. Sneaky devil. But Lily's learned a thing or two about stealth and cunning and the metaphysics of death. She hurls herself upon the great rush of magic that rises in their wake, and it transports her on a wave of sacrificial power, a white descent into death. All Lily wants is to be where Harry is, so that's where it takes her.

King's Cross station, really? Well, all right, it's not her place to ask. Breathless, invisible, she looks around. The emptiness is rather creepy. Tom's there, stashed naked and helpless under a bench, his small, maimed body on display. Harry keeps sneaking glances at him, but Albus says point-blank, "You cannot help him."

Tom trembles and cries, and Lily thinks, Yeah, well, I bloody well can.

She walks over to the bench and sits down to wait, confident that Harry, at least, has no idea she's there. She resists the mad urgency of her heart and leaves the baby where he is. Just for now. She'll have to settle her score with Albus later.

"Tell me one last thing," Harry says. "Is this real? Or has it all been happening inside my head?"

Albus beams; he loves questions like that. As the mist thickens, Lily rises to her feet and steps without hesitation through the glittering hole of Harry's magic. King's Cross disappears, and for a moment she's disoriented. Too slow, she thinks. Perhaps she lost him, after all. Then she emerges into the blurry, faraway land where suffering and death are more common than happiness. The land of the living.

She falls to her knees beside Harry's body. "My darling," she whispers. "My good, brave boy. I'm so proud of you, Harry. I love you so much. My dearest wish is for you to be happy. So listen carefully now. Listen, my love.

"Once you've defeated Voldemort, go back to the Shrieking Shack." She runs her fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry, I know how exhausted you must be. But Sev," she swallows, "Severus is still alive. You know that phrase about life hanging by a thread? Well, you're his thread, Harry. He trusts you to come back for him. But hope alone isn't enough to stave off death. And he's waited a long time. Longer than you know."

Harry's head stirs beneath her hand. It's time for her to go.

"He was willing to die for you, my love. Remember that. Save him if you can."

Then she's no longer crouching beside her son. He's gone, or she is. Instead, Tom lies before her on his back, naked on the grass that sweeps down to the swings. Lily blinks, haunted by the memory of Harry's shoulder twitching under her touch, the texture of his hair beneath her hand. Hollow with loss, she lifts a kicking, sobbing Tom and folds him to the empty place at her breast.

There's a whisper of fabric beside her, the shifting of feet. Albus stands over her, his face solemn. "Lily Evans Potter. What have you done?"

She squints up at him. "I'm not sure," she admits, then smiles. It's cheeky, but she feels absolutely no guilt. "If I'm not mistaken, I've just changed the future."

Albus sighs and tugs pensively on his beard. Then he removes the golden dial from his pocket and extends his other hand, helping her to rise. "Come along," he says. "We don't want to miss the final showdown." He sweeps his arm out. "If you'll do the honours, my dear?"

She blinks at him uncertainly, then conjures the house and precedes him up the drive and through the door. Once inside, Albus snaps his fingers for Butterbeer and biscuits, and someone knocks. Holding a freshly-swaddled Tom, Lily hurries to answer. It's the conga line: James, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, even Regulus. She stands aside, faking the role of hostess, and they all file in. James passes her with an enigmatic look. Albus spins the rings, adjusting the telly, and another knock sounds. "Door's open!" Lily shouts, and Grindelwald pokes his head through. Albus cries, "Gellert!" and ushers him in. The sitting room's crowded; they all settle and re-settle, competing for the ideal seating arrangement. Lily opts for the floor, snuggling between James's feet, Tom ensconced in her lap.

"Look, there's Harry," Tonks cries, breathless.

The room falls silent. Lily puts one hand up behind her, and James clutches it. Together they watch their son fulfil his destiny.

~~#~~

The cheers have died down. Sirius has stopped whooping and beating on the sofa, Tonks has got over playing games with her hair colour and her silly-putty face, Albus of course still beams and nods like a benevolent deity, and the Butterbeer is flowing. "Haven't you got anything stronger?" Sirius barks, and Lily raises an eyebrow: "Conjure it yourself."

Someone finds her packet of fags, and Sirius and Tonks both light up. Grindelwald wanders away down the hall, and Lily hears him playing chord changes on the piano. It reminds her of Severus. The room fills with chatter and smoke, excitement ringing from wall to wall. Lily claims a place on the sofa, Tom on her lap and a bottle of Butterbeer in one hand. James joins her on one side, Albus on the other.

Then Albus claps his hands together and trumpets, "Places, please! Our young heroes have one last task to perform. Come one, come all! Gather round! There's an unexpected coda to our passion play, and I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Everyone finds a perch, and Albus turns the sound up.

Harry and his friends are ducking through the underbrush, and Lily recognizes where they are at the very moment Sirius mutters, "Crikey. What is this, old re-runs of stupid mistakes?"

Remus tilts his head back on the sofa and groans. "I could happily go for all eternity without ever seeing that accursed place again."

The kids pile inside. Lily's been hoping there would be some evidence that Snape still lives, but he lies utterly unmoving, arms sprawled out, blood drying under him like a thin blanket.

"Lumos," says Harry, and leans over. Snape's mouth is slightly open, his throat gaping and clotted with blood. The only difference is that his eyes, instead of staring fixedly into permanent darkness, are closed.

"Harry!" says Hermione. "Look at this." She crouches down by Snape's limp hand, and a glassy rattling sound fixes their attention as a small bottle rolls out of his grip. She holds it to the light; there's still a streak of red on the glass.

"Tried to save himself, poor bastard." That's Ginger Chappie. Ron.

Harry waves a hand over Snape, and the wand's glow swipes back and forth, Harry's features flapping in and out of focus with an anxious, searching intensity. Snape flares into cadaverous relief, overlit and shadow-carved. Each pass of the light only accentuates how very dead he looks.

"Professor," Harry whispers, strained. The grim face utterly shuts him out. Without looking up, he says, "Give me some light here," and his friends both cast Lumos, exchanging glances as he sinks down next to the body, one knee on Snape's outspread robes and one pressed into his blood. After a second's hovering, Harry croaks, "Damn it," hunches his shoulders, and bends down, carefully pressing his face into the wet, bunched fabric that is the only thing (Lily thinks) keeping the softness of Harry's cheek from the pale skin of Snape's chest.

"My eyes, my eyes!" Sirius barks, flinging himself back in mock-horror against the sofa.

"If you cannot respect the dead," Albus says quietly, "leave the room."

"This man, you are sure he is dead?" Grindelwald leans forward, elbows on knees to peer closer and drink in the details.

The room – both rooms – are achingly silent as Harry kneels there, lying across Snape's body. His face is a pale smudge against the black of Snape's robes.

Then the camera pans in for a close-up, and Lily gasps; a quiver, like a current of water, ripples over Snape's eyelids.

A second later, his lids part, slitting open on crescents of white. The gap widens to reveal the black iris before his eyes slide shut again. When they open a second time, they stay that way, lost and unresponsive, staring up at the dim ceiling.

"Fuck," grunts Sirius.

"Cripes," breathes Ron.

"Well, that's rather unexpected," and Lily thinks that Remus deserves the Understatement of the Year award.

"What the hell's going on here?" James wants to know.

"Severus." The voice is Dumbledore's, whispering Snape's name with some deep emotion that Lily can't fathom.

Grindelwald swivels his head to give his old enemy and lover a keen and not entirely kindly smile. "You have misjudged, yes? Your friend is not yet ready to join you, it seems."

Lily watches, scarcely breathing. If she were alone, she'd be curled on the floor, almost pressed to the telly, as close as she could get to being in the shack with them. She'd be touching Severus with her fingertips, petting Harry, urging them with soft strokes. Never mind, she'll watch again later when no one's about. Fearing that any moment now she'll have to blow her nose, she strokes Tom's scabby head.

The viewpoint retreats again, and Lily swallows a suffocating wave of jealousy as a gaunt hand, smeared to the sleeve with blood, wavers upward, orients itself, then descends as slowly as in a dream, settling with extraordinary gentleness upon Harry's uncombed head.

"Um, Harry," says the girl, suppressed tears bottled in her voice. "He's – don't you think you should – "

"His heart's beating," Harry insists. "I can hear it. He's alive, Hermione, I swear!"

"Mate, she's only trying to tell you – "

"Shhh," Harry commands, burrowing deeper into Snape's clothing, and Lily suppresses an hysterical giggle.

The moment lengthens, Harry's friends standing side by side fidgeting in embarrassment as their loathsome professor cradles Harry's head to his breast and Harry stays huddled, oblivious, listening eagerly for signs of life. Then the long fingers tighten and Harry jerks upright in shock, blurting, "Shite! You're alive! Let me go!"

Dislodged, Snape's hand tumbles to Harry's shoulder, then slides listlessly down his robes and thuds to the floor.

"Potter." It's a graveyard whisper, and the children's eyes go wide in fright. Then, "Help me up."

Hermione brings out the potions and administers them. She and Ron stand back while Harry helps Snape to sit up, coughing and breathing with difficulty.

"I don't understand," Snape says, raspy and confused. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you think?" Harry says. "In case you were still – I couldn't just leave you."

Snape's face is ghastly, all sunken, glaring eyes and red-cracked lips. His resemblance to a vampire does him no favours. He frowns at the blood on his hands. Then his fingers thread through the folds of Harry's robe and spasm into a fist. "Tell me." His voice is a ragged ghost. "The Dark Lord, is he – "

"Dead," Harry says, and his face quiets. He smiles painfully. "Really dead this time." The smile widens, and offscreen there's the sound of Hermione sniffling back tears. "We won."

Snape stares into his eyes as if he can't quite believe what he's hearing or doesn't understand the words or has simply reached the end of the script he's been following all his life and hasn't the faintest idea what to do when confronted with a blank page. Instead of letting Harry go, he clenches his fingers tighter and his lips move. A small bubble of blood pops, and they recoil away from each other, Snape struggling to swallow, head turned aside. Awkwardly Harry clasps his shoulder. "Professor?"

Brows a fierce V over his closed eyes, Snape tries again. "Voldemort – gone. But you," his voice catches, which could be due to the fact that his throat is an open, draining hole, but Lily doesn't think so. "You're alive."

Harry snorts. "Yeah, sorry about that. Can't have everything."

Snape gives an abrupt, pained shake of his head, and a small gout of red leaks from his neck. Hermione says, "For God's sake, Harry, don't let him jerk about like that. The whole point is to stop him from bleeding."

Jolted by her voice, Snape gazes up aslant, hot and cold and slightly delirious; Lily's pretty sure he's blind to anything but Harry. "I didn't – " The haze clears from his eyes, and he sounds amazed. "I didn't fail you, then."

Harry's chin jerks a little, and Lily smoothes her fingers rapidly back and forth over her lips, intent on hiding the way her mouth stretches, the way her whole face grimaces with a pent-up sob.

"No." Harry clears his throat, his glasses flashing as he seeks out his friends. "No, sir. You didn't fail us."

Snape's head wobbles; it might be a nod. Then, as if he can no longer support the weight of being alive, he lowers his face and slumps like a tired child, his forehead sinking to Harry's chest. Harry blinks repeatedly and bites his lip, then slowly unclasps Snape's arm. Lily takes a deep, shaky breath and lets it out silently when Harry raises his hand and places it with great care atop Snape's black, bloodstained head.

Beside her, there's the rip of a tissue being torn from a box and the wet sound of someone blowing his nose. Glancing over, she sees Albus smiling a little, wadded tissue dabbing at his upper lip.

For a fleeting instant, Lily's reminded of her long-ago, scornful thought, about the impossibility of a unicorn ever finding a Slytherin in whose lap it might lower its dangerous head; to whose innocence it might surrender its own. It never occurred to her that she might have got it backwards, that there might be such a thing as a black unicorn, a greasy unicorn, scarred instead of sleek, a beast with yellow teeth and a history of goring its adversaries. But she's acutely conscious of the magic flowing from the screen as this bitter, dark creature bows down and lays himself entirely in her son's hands.

And she's aware, with a strange sensation, like cloth ripping inside her, that Severus doesn't belong to her anymore.

"I do so love happy endings," Albus sighs as Harry hesitantly begins stroking Snape's hair, obviously embarrassed but not letting that stop him.

It doesn't end there, of course. A great clamour breaks out on both sides of the tube. Ron's, "Ew, will you cut it out, Harry? S'enough to turn a bloke's stomach," and Hermione's, "I really don't think you ought to take liberties – " collide inside the room with the sound of Sirius gagging, Remus interjecting, "Harry's a decent chap, but he does have a tendency to go overboard," and James struggling to spit out the scandalised words, "What. The. Bleeding. Hell?"

Lily hunches over to hide her turmoil. Merlin, it hurts. It really bloody hurts, and she doesn't know why. At the same time, a deep satisfaction is spreading through her, a settled, pleasurable ache of relief that she's done something right. It's bracing to have feelings so at odds with each other, and she wonders, since Albus is sitting right there, how often he used to end up feeling this chaos of contradictory things after meddling so ruthlessly in people's lives. He was like this, too, always stacking the deck. She sneaks a quick, appraising look at him. To her utter lack of surprise, Albus is watching her. The reddened tip of his nose and creases of sorrow narrowing his eyes aren't so much approval – although they're that, too – as they are respect.

It occurs to her, with a strange, belated irritation, that she's not the only one in the room having his face rubbed in the fact that Severus is no longer, and will never again be, theirs.

They exchange wary smiles. Once Lily decides they've reached as much of an understanding as she can tolerate, she looks away.

Rocking a little, she glances down at Tom, who stares back, his wide, worried eyes studying her face. She traces his sore cheek with the pad of one finger and gives him a watery smile. To her shock, his mouth gapes open and he smiles back. There's nothing sly or powerful about it. It could be attributed to gas or an imitation of the many times she's smiled at him or it might, just might, be joy. His toothless grin is infectious, though, and it tips her squirming bundle of emotions over the line into happiness.

She focuses on the scene in front of her and realizes that Harry's been murmuring to Severus the whole time, rocking him – sweet Merlin! rocking Sev – and she's completely missed what he said. Severus's face is buried in Harry's robes, and one hand grips his arm with the desperation of a penitent who expects at any moment to be torn away.

The screen goes black.

Oh no. Please, no.

Lily's scalp prickles and her heart turns to ice. She remembers Snape's death, remembers the black screen, and the tears she's managed not to shed start sliding down her cheeks. She reminds herself there were no guarantees. You can only postpone death for so long. But she'd thought this was Harry's channel. She'd convinced herself Severus was going to live.

Then James says, "Oops."

They all look at him. He raises his head and smiles in mock-apology. "I do believe I just broke it." The two halves of the dial lie open in his lap like a hatched egg, and the small, intricate ball of gears has fallen out. The rings lie separately, detached.

"Couldn't stand it anymore, eh, mate?" Sirius grins.

"I've seen enough." James says this with an odd defiance, looking straight at her as he does.

Lily closes her mouth abruptly on a cry of outrage and scrubs her face dry. On her other side, Albus sighs, "Ah, well. I imagine it's served its purpose. We can't sit around forever dreaming of what-ifs and if-onlys."

"Too right," says Tonks cheerfully. "Besides, Harry's a growing boy and needs his privacy, don't you think? We're dead, and he's not."

"An excellent sentiment," Albus says. "Not to mention an inarguable truth."

"Nonsense," Grindelwald roars, slinging an arm around Albus's shoulders. "I am onto you, my dear hypocrite. Never try to tell me you have not dedicated your life to disregarding inconvenient truths such as that." He grins sideways at Lily. "Mother of heroes, will you walk with us?"

In ones and twos they wander out the door until the house is empty again. Lily's the last to emerge, and she doesn't look back; she knows when the house is gone. She doubts she'll ever summon it again.

"Well," Albus says. "Little Tommy played his part to perfection, don't you think?"

"Are you mad?" Lily cries, remembering her vow to yell at Albus for his treatment of Tom at King's Cross. "Don't you ever do that to him again. That was horrible and cruel. This poor little boy already suffers enough."

"It was in Harry's best interests," Albus says, infuriatingly calm. "We had to know how strong his connection to Voldemort was. If he'd been compelled to pick up the baby, well – "

"Well, what?" says Lily, with dawning suspicion.

"We'd have known he would never entirely be free of temptation."

"Yes? Meaning that at some incalculable point in the future he'd have been in danger of going Dark?"

Albus shrugs, his face inscrutable. "No need to dwell upon it," is all he says. "Harry passed the test. He didn't allow compassion to overrule his sense of what was most important."

Lily almost boils over with the impulse to shout: Don't you dare try to remake Harry in your image! But at the same instant Grindelwald shrewdly re-directs the conversation by saying: "Your Dark Lord, he has finally crossed over, you say? Hum, very interesting. Why then, do you suppose, is this child still here? Is he not part of this larger soul?"

Albus brightens and starts to stroke his beard, gazing, not at Lily and Tom, but straight at Gellert. "That's a very good question. A very good question indeed. I've no idea how that works in death. But you're right, it appears that a fragmented soul isn't bound to reunite, even with all the scattered pieces gathered in one place. Do you know, I believe that bears looking into."

"Thank Gott," erupts Grindelwald. "I am thoroughly sick of piddling around with dragon's blood, Albus. It is enough. I am more than ready to proceed to worthier fields of enquiry, and this seems, as you English would say, just the ticket."

"Speculate all you like," Lily says. "But leave Tom out of it."

~~#~~

She abandons them to their deep philosophical debate and carries Tom to the swings. On her way, she hears laughter overhead, and looks up to see James flying around in figure eights. There's a rumbling growl from the woods, and Sirius's motorcycle takes to the air, Remus clinging on fearfully behind. The bike backfires, and they surge up to intercept James, who whips about and speeds off toward the lake with Sirius in hot pursuit. Lily waves as the figures dwindle into the blue, then takes Tom by the wrist and makes him wave, too.

As the noise dies away, she steps onto the sand and sets Tom down amid the twinkling grains, pleased when he doesn't whimper. She conjures a pail and shovel for him, then props him up and says, "Now watch this, love. Someday I'll teach you how to do this, I promise."

The leather seat warms her bum. She glides back and forth, smiling at the baby, building up the rhythm, halfway imagining Severus behind her, his long hands catching, pushing, letting go. She'll always think of him now when she comes here. His footprints have silted away, and it's anybody's guess what became of his blood.

But the playground means something to her it never has before: it's the site of a past she could have had and didn't. Perhaps someone, somewhere, has clicked through the scenes of her life and witnessed a future in which she and Severus stayed together; where he turned to her in the marsh and she rolled over and her whole life changed at the look on his face. It would have meant something, surely, that happiness.

Lily pumps the air, urging the swing higher, her hair and skirt fluttering, her mouth stretched with laughter. The sky tilts and swoops, and she rears into it, driving the swing up and up. Tom flashes by, staring at her, and the sun blazes in her eyes, and she feels the perfect moment spring through her muscles. Launching into flight, she spreads her arms wide and descends in a blaze of joy, pure as one can be only in the bliss of childhood or the absolute freedom of death. The white sand rises to meet her, and she returns to the world like the feather dropped from a shining wing.

FIN