Little Lily: The Second Year
Chapter Five: Healing
"Shh Lily, shhh…" Luna closed her eyes against the strain of stress and pain that this whole thing was bringing her. It had been five days since Lily had been placed in St Mungo's and her treatments had been going well up until today. Today was the day they had to perform one of those tests that Luna knew would help her, but also broke her heart a thousand times over to have to watch.
Lily, sitting up, but bound to the bed so she couldn't run off, was screaming again, bloody murder, with tears running down her cheeks as she struggled with all she had to get away. She was absolutely petrified, everything in her telling her to run. The bindings also helped channel any accidental magic, meaning they prevented her from bursting her bubble out to protect herself, which made this all the more terrifying. Harry simply stood beside the bed, trying to talk to her in a soothing voice, as he had always done when she was upset. He looked at Luna and she nodded. They had discussed this, knew it would be difficult… but it had to be done.
Harry sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped his arms around Lily, hugging her tightly even as her screaming increased in volume and her expression got even more fearful. She struggled, but the bonds and his arms held her. Feeling the tears beginning to leak down his face, Harry buried it in her hair, breathing in that old familiar little girl scent that was so genuinely Lily he let out a sob.
"Shhh baby girl, shhh…. It's just Daddy… Daddy loves you sooooo much, Snidget… I just want you to get better so you can come home. Come home to Daddy, and Gramma, and Luna, and Xavier, and Ron, and Hermione, and Ginny. We all just want you to get better so you can come home. Don't you remember me, Lily?" Harry lifted his head and brushed her bangs back from her eyes. She was so scared now that she'd stopped screaming and just sat there, staring at him, eyes paralyzed with fear, mouth wide open. He kissed her forehead and she closed her eyes. "You're my baby. You've always been my little Snidget and I would never, ever, ever, in a million kajillion billion trillion years do anything to hurt you."
Something flickered in Lily's eyes and she blinked, fear mixing with confusion. She turned her head to Luna, but her eyes were still glued to Harry, brown and green meeting green, still so very full of fright it broke his heart. "Is this real or is this not real?"
"This is real, sweetheart. Remember, I showed you all those photographs of you and your Daddy?"
Lily nodded. She remembered the photographs… they were in an album beside her bed along with the presents that weren't sitting at the foot of her bed, most of them books or toys. The photos had confused her greatly. This man, looked perfectly nice and lovely in the photos and he especially looked nice in the pictures he had taken with her. But then her memories told her different. Told her that this man had tortured her, starved her, beaten her, and kept her locked away in a dark basement room…. Had used a spell on her that made her body erupt in pain.
"Isn't this familiar, Lily?" Harry asked as he ran a hand through her hair, ruffling it and then kissing her nose, her cheeks, and finally her forehead. "I used to tuck you into bed every single night and do this. We'd sit and I'd brush out your hair and braid it back so it wouldn't tangle so much, and tuck you in and read you your story. That was when your hair was long and nobody had chopped it short. I used to take you to the salon and they would trim your hair, but we always wanted to keep it long and growing so that you could put it up in so many pretty ways. And afterwards we'd go and we'd get ice cream. You loooove ice cream, you'd always want a big cone full of peppermint stick and birthday cake ice cream."
"You…. You didn't starve me?" Lily asked suddenly, her eyes even more confused now. Some things did feel familiar. His touch… and his smell. And he was gentle, not harsh or scary as her brain made her imagine. Because it was her brain doing all the scary things because someone had messed with her memories, at least that was what Luna had told her. The memories she had were images of things that had happened, but they'd been twisted around to make them seem scary. The Number Men, as Lily referred to them as, had done that to her.
"Nooo! I would never have starved you. You always got breakfast, lunch, snack time, dinner, AND dessert. When you were four you went through a phase where you wouldn't eat anything but elbow macaroni with chopped tomatoes, cream cheese, and gummy bears mixed in. And it had to have gummy bears, otherwise you'd say it was 'disgusting'." Harry laughed at the memory, remembering the face Lily had pulled whenever he'd left out the gummy bears… a totally affronted expression of horror.
"Ewwww…" Lily made a face. "With gummy bears?"
"Yup. The lady at the food shop always glared at me like I never tried to feed you anything else. We were always buying bags of gummy bears and lollipops. Disgusting macaroni for dinner, lollies for dessert. Two lollies. One for after dinner, one for bath time so that you'd let me actually wash your hair."
Lily smiled a little, reaching for the photo album. She opened it to a page, a photo of a tiny black haired girl in a tub, lollipop in one hand, duck in the other. The stories he was telling her meshed with the photos… and photos didn't lie really. They were real ones. Harry laughed again and took the album from her. He turned the pages until he found the one of Lily eating her weird macaroni dish. "And here you are with that… oh! And there's another really good one… right….. here!"
Lily laughed. Little her had to be about six or seven and had her face painted. She was holding a balloon and looking absolutely thrilled that her Daddy had gotten his face painted too, a flower on one side, her name on the other with a heart beneath his eye. Lily's made her look like a pixie dust fairy, all sparkly.
"That was at the end of your first year in primary school. We and the rest of your class went to an amusement park as a sort of awesome field trip."
"I remember…" Lily blinked, pressing at her mind, fighting through the terrible memories that had been instilled in her and then something clicked nicely in her brain. "I ate too much and then we went on the roller coaster and that made me puke. So to make me feel better you got your face painted and you looked so silly I couldn't stop laughing. And then I got my face painted, and we went on tons more rides, and then you got me a balloon. Real or not real?" She asked curiously.
"Real!" Harry beamed, hugging her tightly and kissing her head again. "Oh, Lily, you're going to get better, I just know you are. See, everything is starting to make a little bit more sense, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Lily nodded, her expression still wary of him, but at least she was screaming as she had been when Luna had first brought him into the room. She pressed at her memories more, searching for ones that felt happy, ones that didn't have a blurred edging. Luna had told her to sort her memories, which had been coming back with the help of the bad potion leaving her body and the good potion going in, into two separate piles. The ones with blurry edges were fake and the ones without were truth, though sometimes she still had trouble figuring them out and had to ask for clarification. A pang in Lily's chest and the image of a woman flitted through her mind and she frowned. "My mum is dead, isn't she?"
Harry sighed. "'fraid so, Snidget. But it's always been that way since the day you were born. Oh, but how she wanted you. She loved you the first minute she knew you were inside her. That's why your middle name is Willow. Without her, I don't know what I would have done, because then I wouldn't have you, and you are the single most precious thing in the world to me. Do you understand that? You're my baby."
Lily stared up this man, with his eyes that matched her left one and his jet black, though slightly speckled with silver, hair. She looked down at the picture again and then up at him, with his kind smile and hopeful expression. She was still a bit frightened, but it had ebbed with his and Luna's persistence and the photos… the photos that were the truth of her past, not the blurry memories of horror. She nodded, pressing her head up into his hand as he ruffled her hair again. "Real."
"Real." Harry and Luna nodded confirmation of Lily's statement, and the twelve year old finally smiled.
…..
"I take it your visit with Lily went well then?" Hermione asked as Harry sat down at the kitchen table, a big smile on his face. He was completely at ease, ready to eat whatever Mrs. Weasley had cooked up for them.
"It's going to take a while for her to trust me completely again, but we're making progress. Luna's been playing this game with her to help her discern reality from fantasy and it's really working. They've been using the photo album I brought her to help her determine which memories were tampered with and which are true facts."
"Oh! Luna has an album she's been making since summer before last. She's got plenty of photos of Lily and the rest of the Weasleys in it, would that help as well?"
"I bet it would. Can I borrow it, Luna?"
"'ure." Luna beamed brightly, taking her concentration away from the mashed potatoes she was shoveling into her mouth.
"Chew then chat." The entire table chorused. Ron and Hermione were there with Luna, and Nevvy, and then there was Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and Xavier. Harry was spending the night over with Uncle George and Auntie Angelina. The older kids would be returning to Hogwarts January second. Harry had already owled McGonagall about getting what Lily would need to learn so that she could catch up to her peers by the time the next school year rolled around. She had most of her first year basics, having just missed the very end of the year and she'd only missed half of her second year so far, so it would be simple to get her caught up, even if he had to teach her himself. Hermione would help him and so would the others. Once Lily got well and came home, it'd be a constant state of learning and teaching.
"Also, could you guys save your second year notes?"
"We always save our notes, Mr. Potter." Xavier stared at him like he had asked one of the most absurd questions yet. "We're not Gryffindors who think they'll never need them again." Luna nodded in agreement. "I expect Lily's going to need them when she gets out of the hospital? She can borrow mine. Luna's notes are lacking. She only writes down what gets put on the board."
"Xavier does both the lecture and the board." Luna rolled her eyes.
"At least I can keep up and get O's on my homework instead of A's and E's."
Luna coughed something that sounded strangely like 'overachiever' and then looked back down at her meal as though she hadn't. Xavier stuck his tongue out at her and she stuck hers right on back at him. She grinned and then looked up from her food. "Can we go visit Lily before we go back to school?"
"Sure. I'll let Luna know to prepare her for you. She'll be scared at first, most likely, but you've just got to show her that you love her and stuff, and she'll come around a bit. She won't be completely better for a while though."
"She screamed at me the other day…. But then we had a chat. She's really weird now." Xavier nodded in understanding. He had told Luna about his chat with Lily, but hadn't mentioned it to any of the adults. "She didn't understand who I was really."
"Exactly." Harry nodded, knowing what he meant. "She'll come around though, don't you worry. Luna and the other Healers are working with her all the time to try and get her memory back to where it should be. The potion is helping, and she's beginning to be able to tell the difference between the fake memories and the real ones. She remembered a trip we took once to a theme park when I showed her a photo."
"That's wonderful!" Mrs. Weasley beamed as she cleared away the plates that everyone was finished with. "Who wants dessert? I've made some nice treacle pie."
"Some for me for sure." Harry beamed, knowing that she'd made it to cheer him up in case the visit with Lily hadn't gone well.
"Me too!" Nevvy bounced in his chair and Mrs. Weasley laughed.
"Well, let's everyone have some. And we'll save a slice for Lily to bring when we visit her."
"Oh, she'll love that. She'd always hoard the treacle tarts in her bag after dinner at school, because they don't have them every night." Luna laughed.
"If she's better in time, we'll send her back to school for the last term, that way she can finish her first year, and then she can do her second year over the summer, if she studies hard enough."
"She's very good at studying." Xavier nodded before shoving a forkful of pie into his mouth and letting out a sigh of happiness. Mrs. Weasley's treacle pie was the best. He chewed and then swallowed. "She's really good at Charms and Defense and Potions."
Harry laughed. "Sounds like my mum. She was known for being good at those things as well, except she was a Gryffindor."
"So, she's like… a little Lily… Only less brave." Ron pondered.
"Only more smart." Hermione corrected him.
"Well, she's little and she's Lily, so I guess so." Harry laughed and dug into his pie. "Mrs. Weasley, this is the best pie ever."
"Oh, thank you dear. I thought you might like it." Mrs. Weasley beamed and dropped a second piece onto his plate before he'd even finished the first one. Harry was skinnier than she'd like to see, probably from all that running and then all that worry when she knew for certain he wasn't eating much because Ron and Hermione had told her. But Harry was feeling at ease. His daughter was safe and she was healing. He had been able to hold her today, to talk to her, and to remember something fun they'd done together. It was rejuvenating. He thought he might even be able to sleep tonight. St. Mungo's would send him owls periodically through the night if Lily wasn't asleep. And if something went badly, they'd Floo Ron and Hermione's house.
Finishing his second piece of pie, Harry stretched his arms up and yawned. He rose from his chair and placed his plate in the sink before turning around and extracting Nevvy from her seat. He spun her, holding her on his hip, one arm about her waist, the other clutching one of her little hands. She let out a squeal of pure delight, rocking back and forth.
"Uncy daaance! Uncy dance!" Hermione laughed, happy to see Harry finally coming alive when he'd seemed dead for so long… and not just because she'd thought him dead before a year ago. Nevvy leaned back, her auburn hair flying out behind her, straight and calm unlike her mother's was, her blue-flecked brown eyes sparkling.
"Uncy thinks it's time someone was in their tubby."
"Tubby!" Nevvy clapped her sticky hands, her face covered in pie goop. She just adored her bath time… all the toys and bubbles… not so much the hair washing, but the idea of her ducky and boat kept that at bay.
"We really should be going." Ron agreed, rising from his chair. "Thanks for dinner, Mum. It was excellent."
"Kisses for the best Gramma ever." Harry spun Nevvy around again until they were by Mrs. Weasley. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek while Nevvy kissed her other one. Mrs. Weasley blushed.
"Come along Luna." Hermione brushed her daughter's hair back from her face.
Harry popped into the fireplace with Nevvy, leaving Ron, Hermione, and Luna to follow after them shortly after. Once they were there, Ron reached to take Nevvy from Harry, but he withheld her. "How about you guys go see a film or something? I'll watch the kids."
"Oh, Harry, we couldn't." Hermione shook her head. "We need to…"
"Hermione… we haven't been out in… ages. Not since before Harry." Ron frowned at her. "Harry can watch em, they'll be perfectly fine…"
"Oh… but we've never…"
"Hermione."
"Ron."
"Herrrrrmioooneeee…." Ron gave her a look and she sighed.
"Oh, alright! Harry, Luna should be in bed by no later than ten, eleven at the latest if she's doing homework. And she likes to…"
"Have a mug of warm milk mixed with a bit of vanilla to help her sleep."
"Yes, and Nevvy…"
"Needs a bath."
"And she's been…"
"Favoring her pink footed pajamas with the hippos on them because they're warmer than the other ones." Harry smiled and placed a hand on Hermione's back. "Go on I can…"
"And if she…"
"Starts back up with her cough, I'll to give her a sippy cup of half apple juice, half Pepper-Up potion."
"You've really been paying attention." Hermione hugged him and kissed Nevvy on the cheek before turning to give Luna a quick hug. "You guys be good for Uncy, alright?"
"I'm always good." Luna stuck her tongue out playfully at her mother and Hermione stuck hers right back out at her teasingly. She bent forward and kissed Luna's tongue before the little girl could pull it back in, making Harry and Ron laugh as Luna's face turned to shock. Mums, you never knew what they'd do next even if you'd known them for more than half your life, which Harry and Ron had. If you'd asked either of them if Hermione would do something like that when they were still in school, they would have called you a nutter.
"You are typically well behaved and have a good heart. But you are sometimes naughty." Hermione corrected her older daughter with a smile. She gave her an extra big hug, having never really left her this late at night.
"Mum… go… Uncy's perfectly capable of looking after us. And I can help with Nevvy if he needs me too, but he probably won't because he's raised Lily just fine."
"This is true." Ron nodded, prying his wife off of their daughter.
"I love you! And I love you!" Hermione called, blowing kisses as Ron pulled her out the front door.
"Love you too, Mum, Dad." Luna called after them and Nevvy giggled.
"Bye bye, Muma! Bye bye Dada!"
"Ooooook…." Harry grinned as the door clicked shut and he set Nevvy down. He moved forward to clasp the locks on the door tightly and peered out the window on the top. "Looks like they're taking the car. Anyway, what d'you guys want to do?"
"Nevvy needs her bath." Luna pointed out, reaching to tug at her little sister's dress. Nevvy put her arms up, letting her dress be taken off. She squealed a little bit when it got caught on her head, and then came off. She laughed, banging on her chest with the pure three year old joy of being half naked. As soon as she was free of her dress, she ran down the hallway in just her undies and socks. Harry laughed, chasing after her and scooping her up. He held her sideways in his arms and then brought her up, blowing a raspberry on her tummy. She let out a squeal of happiness.
"'gain! 'gain Uncy!" Harry repeated the raspberry, making Nevvy giggle and wriggle. Harry swung her round onto his hip.
"Silly, Nevvy. She just loves having her stomach blown on."
"Most little kids do, I think." Harry grinned as they started up the stairs. "Lily was always begging for her tummy to be blown on, it's something about the noise, I think. I'd have blown your tummy too if I'd known you when you were a little one."
"Probably, I used to like it just as much as Nevvy." Luna followed Harry into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to watch while he started the water for the bath and helped Nevvy off with the rest of her cloths.
"Alright, sweet girl." Harry lifted her up and plopped her down in the tub. She looked down, frowning.
"Bubbles?"
"Bubbles." Harry grabbed the baby bubble bath and squirted some beneath the faucet. Nevvy looked pleased and grabbed for her boat. She pressed it down in the water, making it sink as far as it could and then watching it bounce back up to bob on top of the shallow water.
Luna was silent for a while, watching as Harry scrubbed Nevvy with a ducky towel puppet. She seemed to be pondering something seriously. She bit her lip, her top teeth reminding Harry a bit of Hermione when they'd been younger. Large but endearing at the same time. "I think Xavier likes her. As in liiiiiikes her."
"Hmm? Likes who?" Harry asked as he absentmindedly poured some baby shampoo on Nevvy's head and began scrubbing. It was completely tear free, a special wizarding formula that would knock the socks off the Muggle stuff.
"Lily, of course." Luna giggled as Harry faltered and dropped the shampoo right in the water.
"Uncy, dat does not go dere." Nevvy pointed out, fishing the bottle out of the tub and placing it, dripping with suds, on the side. Harry turned to look at Luna.
"How would you know that?"
"Well, he talks to her about everything, even the stuff he won't tell me. And he gave her his second favorite Snapper, and you don't just give you second favorite Snapper to just anyone. And he got sad around her birthday when she wasn't there, and he was getting sad around Christmas, but then you found Lily and saved her, and he looked happier and he was even happier tonight when you came and told us she's starting to really get better. And he got her a necklace for Christmas, and boys don't usually do stuff like that unless they like ya." Luna stated this all rather simply, as though it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
"His Snapper?"
"His second favorite Snapper." Luna nodded slowly with each word as she said this very matter of factly. Harry was briefly reminded of Hermione stating some fact or other straight from a book when they were younger. It gave him chills… Luna did look an astonishingly good bit like Hermione, though her nose was longer and she was quite a bit taller than her mother had been at twelve. That, and her eyes twinkled, blue just like her father's.
"How old is he?"
"Thirteen. His birthday is at the beginning of November."
Harry let out a breath as though he'd been holding it. He didn't like the idea of kids aged twelve and thirteen having those types of feelings, but if he thought about it, he'd been thirteen when he'd first seen Cho Chang and thought she was supermegaawesomecute (he hadn't thought she was supermegafoxyawesomehott until the next year).
"I just wanted to warn you." Luna shrugged and offered Nevvy the turtle that was sitting on the sink. Nevvy laughed and took it, dunking it under the water to fill it up and then squirting at a target on the wall above the faucet.
"Thanks." Harry nodded. He knew it would come eventually, kids growing up and dating, but he just hadn't hoped it would be this soon. Lily was still just his little Snidget after all… and he wasn't quite ready to let go of that, not after the past year they'd had. First he'd had to give her up, then he'd gotten her back and that had been so short before she'd been taken from him. No, he was definitely not ready for his baby to be getting interested in boys… but then, maybe she wasn't and it was just Xavier, being older than her. Turning his attention back to Nevvy, Harry squished her hair up onto the top of her head, the soap helping it stand straight up. "Look, Luna."
"Hehe, Nevvy's a troll doll!" Luna giggled and reached over to give the very tip of Nevvy's hair a curl. She smiled. "Hey, can we really go see Lily tomorrow?"
"Yeah, if it's cool with your folks. We'll bring Xavier as well, it'll really help Lily."
"Yay!" Luna danced about and slipped on a bit of wet floor, falling into Harry's lap before she could right herself. Harry laughed and tickled her with soapy hands. She was a great niece, even if she wasn't his biological one, she was just as good as.
…..
"Alright guys, here's what's going to happen." Harry stated as he, Luna, and Xavier stood outside the window into St. Mungo's. "We're all going to go in together, and Lily is going to be bound to her bed so she doesn't run off. She's most likely going to scream and be really scared, but hopefully she'll calm down after a few minutes. Make sure you let her know that you really love her, ok? And you can show her your pictures."
Luna clutched her photo album closer to her chest and nodded, her face a bit strained. She wanted to help Lily, but she was also worried about how this visit was going to go.
The threesome headed in through the glass and went through the lobby, heading up to the children's ward. The ward was brighter than most of the others, though still sterilely white, it had pictures drawn by some of the kids there and a mural of the outdoors.
"Oh, here you are!" Luna stated peeking out of her office door. "Just let me finish adding some boomslang skin to my cure for Ebola and then we'll go see Lily."
"You're curing Ebola? " Harry asked, blinking as Luna turned around to toss something into the cauldron that was simmering on her desk.
"Oh yes. I think I've got it this time. It'd be better with some Crumple-Horned Snorkack toenails, but I've substituted powered bicorn horn instead. It should work." Luna waved it off and came back out into the hallway, closing her door behind her. "Well, let's go then."
They followed Luna down the hallway to Lily's room where the little girl was propped up in her bed looking at the Harry's picture album. Luna stopped them at the door and held up a hand to tell them to wait before she entered the room. "Lily, you've got visitors."
Lily looked up from the album to smile at Luna and then her eyes moved to the door. She tilted her head to one side, something she always seemed to do when she was contemplating or pondering an idea with curiosity. Her face wasn't as fearful as normal, but it was slightly wary and she moved back in her bed a bit, flattening her back against the currently upright bit of the mattress. She blinked a couple of times, seeming to be struggling with something in her head before she forced a small smile. "Hi Daddy."
"Hey there, Snidget!" Harry beamed, glad she wasn't trying to run and that she hadn't been bound down to the bed. That was a good sign that she was making enough progress for Luna to leave her free. "I've brought your best mates along to see you. They really missed you."
"Hi Lily." Luna bit her lip, peeking in through the door, but big Luna motioned them all forward, so they entered the room. Harry moved to sit in the chair next to Lily's bed and Luna edged closer as though she was approaching a frightened animal. Xavier strode right in, but stopped when he reached the empty bed that sat beside Lily's. He sat on it and Luna rushed to join him, both of them looking at Lily nervously. She wasn't screaming or trying to run away, so that was good.
"I er… I brought you this. To help you remember us." Luna rose and offered her the album at arm's length. Lily took it after a couple of moments and opened it. She blinked. Here was a photo of her and this girl and boy, all looking impossibly bright and happy sitting on a bronze colored couch, Lily in the middle with her arms around both of them, bringing their heads in and nearly smacking them together while they laughed.
"That's the Ravenclaw common room at Hogwarts. We're all Ravenclaws, that means we're the smartest house." Luna stated proudly, sitting down on the bed next to Lily to help translate the photos. Lily tensed up, but did not move away from this girl who was supposed to be one of her very best friends. She had memories of her, but she was still struggling sorting reality from the blurry made-up ones. But Luna didn't frighten her much really, just made her a bit uncomfortable, which was a lot better than being scared. "And that's you two playing your silly Gobstones game. I don't get the point of it, I like chess better."
Lily was blinking, looking down at the photo, her head tilting and she leaned forward, staring at the very center where the game pad was. She suddenly dropped the album into her lap and rolled over. Luna moved out of the way as Lily tugged open the drawer of the table beside her bed. She grappled within it for a few moments before she extracted something small. She slid out of the bed and took the couple of steps it was to cover the space between her and Xavier. She held out her hand and he burst out laughing.
"She's still got her Snapper! I figured it would have been lost."
"You gave me this?" Lily asked, looking around the room for confirmation. The beloved item in her hand had been her one source of comfort in that dark basement room where the Number Men had kept her. She still rolled it between her palms at night between dinner and bed time and then in-between times when she was feeling particularly anxious about the world. She also kept a tight hold on it when she was struggling with sorting her memories. "Real or not real, he gave me this."
"Real!" Luna beamed.
"First time we played, yeah." Xavier's face brightened quite a lot more than it had been. He dug into his own pocket, extracting his own swirling black and green Snapper. "See? This one is mine, and that one is yours. And we each have a set of Gobstones that we play with and…"
"And you've won a hundred and sixty games, whereas I've won a hundred and twenty four." Lily whispered, the information flowing from her brain as though she'd always known it. This boy and this girl… they were friends. Her friends. Her best friends… even if it still felt weird.
"Yeah!" Xavier laughed again. "That's right, that's right!"
"And… and we play chess?" Lily turned around to look at Luna and she nodded. "And I've never beaten you, no one has."
"No one." Luna grinned brightly and flipped through the album a bit. "Look, here we are studying in the library. And then there's you and me playing in the backyard at the Burrow… and there here's all of us with Aunt Ginny at her flat."
"That wheelchair lady…" Lily frowned for a few moments, staring at the woman with red hair.
"Well, she was in a wheelchair. There was…"
"An accident.'
"Yeah. But she's getting loads better. She's got braces on her legs now to help work her muscles."
"You saw her the first day you were here, Lily." Harry spoke up now, having been sitting back to let the kids do their own thing until now. "She was here, but then you woke up and ran away because you were terrified of us still."
"Oh yeah…" Lily nodded and then frowned, looking around. "How come she didn't come too? I'd like to see her… Only, I have some pictures of her too. And some memories… nice ones, but I'm not sure if they're real or not."
"Well, I suppose we could floo her right now and see if she isn't busy. Though, Lily, if they're nice memories, they're probably real." Harry smiled, glad to see his daughter actually indicating that she wanted to see someone instead of the other way around. It showed that she truly was making progress. Luna said the old potion was pretty much completely out of her system now, though it still took a good bit of the good potion to help fix the damage the Number Men had done.
"I could get her." Xavier stated. "Her flat's only a couple of blocks from here."
"How about, you go Floo her? There's fireplaces for making calls in a room just off the waiting area." Harry suggested, not wanting the thirteen year old running around London by himself. He was sure he'd be fine, but he wasn't about to take any chances. Mrs. Weasley would skin him if he let Xavier wander London by himself.
"Alright." Xavier nodded and got up from the bed. "I'll be right back then." He left the room and little Luna began showing Lily more of the photos. Sometimes they would giggle, making Harry smile and remember how he and Ron used to be when they found something amusing.
Lily was feeling more confidant around this new Luna girl, who, after asking, she found out had been named after the Healer Luna who looked after her. That made her feel even better and it was easier to relax a bit as they looked through the pictures. Some of them were silly, like Xavier with a face full of gunk or a small round fluffy creature with a long pink nose that was trying to get up Luna's nose.
"What is that thing?" Lily asked curiously, pointing to the fluff-ball. She'd had dreams about that thing, only it had been bright red with horns, not fluffy and yellow and insanely adorable.
"That's Quaffle, he's your puffskein." Luna provided, flipping the page to a picture of Lily curled on her side in bed, fast asleep with a puffskein cuddled up on top of the side of her face like she was the best bed ever. "He misses you a lot."
"He's mine? He's so cute!" Lily stroked the photo.
"Maybe we can bring him tomorrow to see you. He's been staying with me over vacation, but at school he sometimes sleeps with Xavier."
Five minutes later, Xavier returned, Ginny following, her braces helping her strand proudly. She smiled, entering the room and Lily looked up from the photo album. Lily returned the smile after a moment, looking wary, but also anxious and happy at the same time. She leaned forward in the bed, eying the woman apprehensively, but willingly.
"Hello Lily." Ginny beamed brightly and came over, sitting on the foot of the bed and offering Lily her hand. Lily reached out tentatively, taking it and something inside her clicked and she smiled right on back, wider now, brighter. "Xavier said you wanted me to com visit."
"Yes… I found theses." Lily nodded affirmation and then looked around the room before turning her eyes back to Ginny. She let go of her hand and reached for the photo album her father had brought her a while ago. She opened it to the very last page and undid the string tying the envelope in the back open. Harry had pasted it there to put photos in that he hadn't quite gotten to putting in the album yet. A smattering of photos spilled out and onto the white blanket of the hospital bed.
"Oh wow…" Ginny picked up some of the photos. They were mostly of her and Harry, hanging out by the lake, or in the common room… looking crazy happy and goofy just to be around one another. "I'd forgotten about these…"
"So had I. Hermione gave them to me months ago." Harry admitted, reaching out to pick up one of the pictures and smiling at it.
"You were almost my mum." Lily stated, pointing to a more… kissy lovey dovey picture that was still on the bed. A sixteen year old Harry had his arms wrapped around a fifteen year old Ginny tightly, curled up in a chair in the corner of the Gryffindor common room. Wizarding photos, the two in the photo occasionally pecked one another on the lips and then looked around bashfully as though worried someone one catch them.
"I suppose you're right…" Ginny laughed and ruffled her hair. "But then you wouldn't be quite you. I probably would have been, if this one…" She pointed to Harry. "Hadn't been all gung-ho gotta kill Voldemort so we can't be together anymore because I love you and he'll use you to get to me."
"Hey, it happened before just because you knew me, I wasn't going to risk it a second time and have it be even worse." Harry pointed out quickly, reaching over to look at the pictures himself. Luna had grabbed hold of one and was giggling up a storm to herself. Xavier sat on the other bed, watching curiously. Luna offered him the photo and he glanced at it, letting out a snort and covering his mouth to keep from making too much noise.
"I was a little kid! I was more than perfectly capable of defending myself by the time…"
"Bellatrix almost killed you and she would have if your mother hadn't of stepped in! And that was just for being part of the resistance. What do you think she would have done to you if she'd of found out how much you mean to me? What you are to me?"
"But she didn't! I'm here and I'm alive and…" Ginny blinked, tilting her head. "Mean to you? Are to you? Harry, you're getting your present and past tenses mixed up again." She spun around, swinging her legs off of the bed so she was properly facing him. "I know I meant something to you in the past, but that's the past."
"No, I'm not getting my tenses mixed up." Harry hide his face quickly, ducking to look fixedly at his shoe as though it had suddenly become the most interesting thing ever to be in existence. "Listen, we should probably discuss this some other-"
"So you still have feelings for me, is that it?" Ginny asked, placing her hands on her hips, her own face tingeing pink. Her chin jutted out in a way reminiscent of her older twin brothers when they were serious. As always, it caught Harry off guard and he faltered. His eyes moved around the room quickly, trying to lock on anything besides those flaming brown eyes that always seemed capable of seeing right through him no matter how much he tried to hide things.
"I er…."
"Harry James Potter, you answer me right now! Do you or do you not-"
"Yes! Ok? Yes, but this isn't the time or place to be-" Harry was cut off abruptly by Ginny grabbing the collar of his shirt and tugging him forward so that she could promptly kiss him full on the lips. Harry's eyes blinked in shock for a moment before the closed and his whole expression was replaced by absolute bliss.
Luna let out a high pitched squeal, Xavier's face was beyond shocked as his Gobstone fell from his hand and rolled across the bed he was sitting on, and Lily looked like she was torn between laughing and mouthing like a goldfish. Finally she burst out. "Are you going to be my mum now?"
Harry and Ginny broke apart, both red in the face. Ginny turned around and laughed, tugging Lily to her and giving her a snuggle. Lily tensed up, rigid against Ginny, but it did feel ok to be hugged like this… slightly familiar, but not completely comfortable yet. She wriggled free after a moments and smiled a bit. She really was getting better, slowly but surely, with time. All these people that she had been afraid of, they really weren't scary at all. They were her friends and her family, people who really seemed to genuinely care about her, and she hoped that she'd remember even more and be able to get out of the hospital soon. She liked Healer Luna well enough and she felt safe here, but her heart somehow knew that this wasn't the place for her. This was not her home, there was somewhere else she belonged… with these people who were sitting at her bedside.
"Well, are you?" Lily inquired again after neither adult answered her pressing question. She knew that her real mother was dead. This man was her father though, and he loved her, or at least, she felt he did. Ginny wasn't quite as clear in her head yet, but something in her told her that having her for a mum wouldn't suck.
"Honey, these things take time. We'll just have to wait and see what happens." Harry reached out, ruffling Lily's hair. He trailed his eyes to Ginny. "That is, of course... if you… if you want to…. You know… go out sometime or something."
"Sure." Ginny nodded. Luna let out another pitchy squeal, typical for any giddy twelve year old girl who had just seen her aunt finally kiss her uncle after having heard about how much in love they used to be when they were younger. It had most definitely been quite the interesting of days.
Wooo! This one took a bit of extra editing as it was pretty long to begin with but also kind of crap. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and if you have the time, I always love hearing from you. It makes me smile.
Love Always,
S.Q.O.