The next morning, Lily didn't wake up to a pretty picture. Petunia was in her bedroom – Petunia was also the reason she was awake.
"Oh, good, you're up." She said briskly, tearing her eyes away from whatever it was that seemed to have been interesting her on Lily's desk.
Petunia was really skinny, but also really tall, which made her look a little like an overstretched rubber-band. When Lily looked at her from the side, she had roughly the same width as her to-be-bought seventh year History of Magic book, and every time Lily came home for the summer, she got a scare because of how different she was from just about anyone else (it'd occurred to her that she might be sick).
Worse, it seemed this year she'd decided to hack most of her hair off, which actually removed about twenty percent of her body volume. Lily didn't think her sister usually looked pretty, whatever kind of sibling that made her, but there was ugly and then there was making all the wrong choices when it came to her looks, and she didn't think Petunia was particularly ugly either.
Lily, in her best impression of the rebel she was planning on being when she left Hogwarts (and, apparently, before that too), refused to get up and stayed in bed, even if that made it harder to stare at her sister. She used both hands to rub at her face. "Yes, because you opened my window in your loudest heels."
Petunia clucked her tongue and didn't leave, and only one of those things surprised Lily. It occurred to her that she might actually have to deal with her sister and she groaned, reaching for a pillow to stuff her face in.
She hadn't wanted to wake up at all, because she preferred having her subconscious mind dealing with Potter and not remember anything in the morning. If she slept and just let her brain sort all the nonsense, there was a possibility that she might not have to deal with it during the day.
But she was awake and she could still hear Petunia's heels and her mind had clearly been slumbering during the night too, because she could already feel the stress - the kind that only appeared when she was at Hogwarts and James and the Marauders were actually part of her problems. She'd never had it in the summer, which was the argument her irritation was using as the foundation of the headache of the day.
Through the pillow, the sun rays moved against the shadows, and Lily peeked from behind it to see what her sister was doing, and why Petunia would willingly walk even further than she had to into her bedroom. She was still trying to sneak looks at her desk, which seemed rather off, and Petunia was never off. "Tuney, may I ask what you're doing?" Lily frowned. "Actually, why are you even here? I thought you were ditching us for Vernon's family?"
She got that face she always did when she was asked anything and sneered at her. "If you must know, Vernon has got a very important internship at his father's company and our vacation has been postponed. Mum told me that if that was the case, I might as well join the family trip." She gave Lily a particularly nasty look at these words. "Even if some members do seem to appear for the holidays and disregard everyone else in the in-between."
Lily forced a smile, letting the pillow drop to the side and sitting up on the bed. "Really? I had no idea you've been so busy during my school years. Mum and Dad never mentioned anything of the sort in the letters we exchanged twice a week. I did send you letters too, at least in the beginning, but they don't seem to have reached destination."
Petunia pursed her lips. She didn't leave. Her eyes strayed to her desk anyway.
Lily let three seconds pass before wondering what was happening to her life and blowing a frustrated strand of hair from her face. "Petunia, is there any particular reason you're still here, or do you just fancy standing in my bedroom for the rest of the day? Because I'd love some privacy in getting ready."
Petunia scowled. "Breakfast is on the table." She offered, falteringly and after a moment's pause. Lily gave her half a second. She didn't leave.
"Really? That's all?" She asked. "What're you still doing here, then?" Petunia's eyes flickered to her desk for the sixteenth time. "What is it?" She asked exasperatedly and a tad forcefully.
Petunia opened and closed her mouth twice, clearly having something chewing at her she was absolutely loathe to say. "What his that?" She finally cracked, making her gesturing to the Daily Prophet on her desk as curt and inconspicuous as possible. "And what's a Muggle? Wait, no-" She frowned. "I know what it is. That horrible Snape boy said it once – it's us regular, garden-variety people, isn't it?" Her tone of voice suggested an accusation, which was really unfair, in Lily's opinion.
And then it became so very horribly clear to Lily that her sister had not only rudely woken her up, but she'd also rudely been snooping on her things. Which made for a rude lingering in her bedroom that neither of them wanted.
She flew off the bed, snatched the paper and prayed to whoever was listening Petunia's prejudice had kept her from having read the story. "Nothing." She answered, trying to convey smoothness with her pyjamas askew and her hair a sure pillow-nightmare, while also pretending she wasn't hiding the newspaper she'd just grabbed from right in front of her sister's nose behind her back. She ignored the second question and the reference to Snape. "It's- freak stuff. Nothing for your nice, normal head to get stuck on." She cringed as Petunia bristled, but feigned obliviousness and kept going. "Now can you go?"
Petunia wasted no more time and left in a hurry that she seemed to have been building up since she'd come in. Lily rubbed her face, felt the consequences of jumping out of bed when sleep wasn't a matter completely put to rest, and thought that at the very least Petunia would be too offended to think much about whatever she might or might not have read.
She flopped back on the bed, belly-up, and her eyes didn't close again, even though the ceiling wasn't that interesting.
James stayed away that day. She'd have liked to think it was because he was picking up on how murderous she was feeling toward him, but that would mean he had more insight over her thoughts than she wanted him to, so she didn't like it too much. Point was she saw neither head nor hide of any of the four nuisances, which was good. Very good.
Not disappointing at all that they were cleaning up to leave after lunch and she didn't hear from him. Or maybe it was, because, by the time Lily was helping her mother with the dishes, she seemed to have noticed something (even if she could never be completely sure that wasn't just Mum-radar). Even so, she could attribute it to worry – she was terrified, both that the Marauders would try something and their names would be next in the Prophet Petunia had seemed so keen on spying, and also that they'd do all that and do it without her.
She had mixed feelings about Potter's ideas – on the one hand, they were Potter's ideas, and on the other they were Potter's ideas. The worst of them were brilliant, she could afford to admit; it was just that the aftermath usually uncovered their recklessness. There was something pressing in her chest because he could get himself killed, and there was something screaming in her stomach that wanted a part of this, and she couldn't see how that would happen if she went on vacation for nearly a month. Which he didn't even know, and that was something else for her mind to get stuck on.
Petunia had claimed she was terribly busy with something she could only mumble about before locking her bedroom door. Her dad was taking the bags to the car (Lily could hear his timed complaints about the amount and the weight) and all that was really missing were those dishes. Those dirty dishes that she had her full attention focused on, since it hadn't occurred to her that she was seventeen and magic was a possibility.
"Lily," Her mother said for the umpteenth time, with an impressive show of a kind of patience Lily would never ever claim to have. That was one of the things she'd trust Potter and Black to back her on. "I think, for the sake of the plates you're nearly breaking, that I can take it from here."
"Sorry." She muttered, feeling properly abashed and handing her mother the plate she'd just knocked against the banister. Those things were deceptively resistant.
Her mother did not, in fact, 'take it from here'. The moment the plate was safely in her hands, she put it down, dried her hands, crossed her arms and assumed her lets-have-a-talk pose. Lily didn't leave the kitchen fast enough.
"Lily," She asked with a strained frown. "what's been going on with you lately?"
Lily was a little startled – she didn't think she was acting any different. Even if things were so very royally and completely messed up in so many ways. "What do you mean?" She asked slowly.
"You've been incredibly distracted ever since you came home – and before that I feared you'd be sending us a letter saying you were staying at school for the summer as well." She pointed out bluntly, sounding so upset Lily felt the beginnings of guilt stir in her stomach. Worse, she couldn't actually tell her that not coming home for the summer was impossible because she might need the excuse in the future. "I'm worried. Does it have anything to do with that boy that visits sometimes? Because it doesn't matter what he seems at first glance, if you don't want to see him here again-" She was getting agitated, so Lily decided to stop her imagination before it led her to dangerous places.
"No- No, it's not- It's not about Pot- James. Really." She added earnestly when her mother didn't seem convinced. "It's not."
"But you admit to there being something?" She pointed out, forcing Lily into a chair and sitting in front of her, kitchen duty forgotten.
Lily hesitated. She wasn't questioning whether she was going to tell her mother anything remotely resembling the truth. She was questioning, yes, what the best way to get out of interrogation was.
She didn't want to lie, especially not to her family. It left her feeling as if she couldn't trust them, which wasn't the truth, which just restarted another vicious cycle of the same. But she didn't want to find out what they'd do if they found out about the current state of the world that was now permanently and irrevocably her home – her place among equals, somewhere she fit in, and which someone was trying to destroy. And they wouldn't understand, because they were her parents, and her parents were supposed to be home. And they were, to some extent. Except now she was a full-grown decision-making adult, which made it a little difficult to ignore the rather terrifying idea that she might actually have to go out there on her own and be expected to succeed with her own brain.
But didn't it always come a time where everyone had to grow up and let go and move on into the scary and the alone and the fending for themselves? This was her time, even if she knew her parents' opinion on what she was planning to do with it would probably be to lock her in a room and not let her come out, ever. The problem was that the whole point was for her to get out of that room in the first place.
"Lily, I-" Her mother sighed frustratedly, tapping her fingers against the table-top. "I just want to help with whatever it is. I'm not trying to push you, but ever since Easter you've been so- so distant, almost downright sad, and I just want to know why! If you tell me, I can help you with it!" She promised.
Lily's mother had great time-tracking abilities. It was probably a week before Easter that Hogsmeade had happened.
Easter was going to be abnormally cold that year. Even though it was April, and it was raining buckets, they shouldn't be taking out scarves and woollen overcoats still. Nor, apparently, should they be going to Hogsmeade in that weather, but Lily was accused of being stubborn all the time.
She tightened the coat, though it didn't seem to help much, and shuffled closer to Alice. Hogsmeade looked more than a little desolate, with all the rain and half-deserted streets, but Lily couldn't focus much on it. Right now all she wanted to think about was indoors, fire, light, and all those things she couldn't see outside in the cold.
Thankfully, they weren't far from The Three Broomsticks, even if thinking about what they'd gone through to get there was sure to send Alice into hour long rants for at least a month - starting the moment they sat down at the table farthest from the door.
"This is the last time I am letting myself be convinced by any of your brilliant ideas." She complained, un-gluing her drenched scarf from her neck. It looked splashy enough to milk at least two cups of water from it. "Look at this place! It's deserted!"
Actually, as Lily had very much noticed but refused to admit, it wasn't. There were four boys heartily laughing by the bar, and God forbid they approach either of them. She was in a bad mood already.
And, between the six of them, they were not, by a long shot, the bravest students at Hogwarts – Rosmerta was by no means busy, but there was still a handful of more of their far less irritating classmates around. She figured Alice was exaggerating to make a point. Lily couldn't say she didn't deserve it a little.
"Sorry." Lily said, properly abashed. "But in all fairness, it didn't really start looking like a storm until half the way here." She meekly pointed out. She'd have felt guiltier if Alice wasn't the one with the almost boyish short hair, while hers was looking like a particularly wet mop.
Alice's scathing answer was cut off, because someone did end up joining them - he wasn't, however, unwelcome, especially not to Alice. Frank slid into the seat beside her, put an arm around her shoulders and instantly mollified her far better than Lily would ever have been able to. "I did not think you two pretty girls would brave the road in this weather." He teased, grinning. "Are you stalking me? I'm flattered the rain didn't stop you, by the way." He added.
Alice was blushing, but that could easily be passed off as the change in temperature when they came in. "No, Lily's the one doing the stalking. I was just dragged along. She's completely obsessed with Potter, and she thinks I haven't noticed he's here too."
Lily made a face as they snickered. "It's like I can hear the universe blanching at that sentence. And, you know, I am a Gryffindor. I'm made for braving things." She said amusedly.
"Not flying." Alice corrected.
"Or dates with James Potter." Frank added.
Lily shrugged. "Everybody's got their weaknesses."
Alice smiled, and Lily decided that the catastrophe was postponed, if not averted. Now all they had to do was have their butterbeers and leave before the Marauders noticed her. Rosmerta came by and took their order before Lily had had much to worry about. Alice chattered enthusiastically to her boyfriend while he played with her hair in an attempt to pretend to be paying attention.
Lily zoned out – she was feeling a little bit like a third wheel, like she usually did whenever Frank was around. Fortunately, she was still feeling guilty enough not to feel bad about it. Thank God she actually liked him too, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to stand hanging out with the two of them.
Until, of course, she realized who Frank was there in the first place with.
"Lily!" He sounded delighted. Why would he possibly sound delighted? It was incompatible with her mood. She groaned, loudly. She hoped he got the message.
He didn't. He dropped to the seat right next to her, and to make matters better, Black took the one on her other side with a grin. She scooted forward when Potter put an arm on the back of her chair and Alice used a hand to cover her giggles. Frank had no such qualms.
"Hello, Remus, Peter." She smiled, even if a little forcibly, at the only two she could think to address right then.
"Oi! I'm feeling really unloved right now, I am." Black said loudly, and Remus rolled his eyes, smiling back at her and taking a seat by Frank.
Peter seemed unsure of how to proceed. He kept glancing between Remus and Potter's general direction, though she refused to look and confirm his exact position (it was a power thing). It looked terrifying.
"Good thing she doesn't love you, then." Potter snickered. Lily was torn between the desire to ignore him and the one to laugh at his face.
"You know, she's pretending you don't exist too." Black played along. She took their advice to heart and did just that. Or kept at it, anyway.
"You'd wonder why, but you're you and she's known that for almost six years now." Remus (there was a reason she liked Remus) pointed out and everyone but Potter laughed.
"That's right!" He said enthusiastically instead. "It's been six years since you insulted me for the first time!" He poked at her side and she could hear the smirk in his voice – and yet she had trouble not smiling at that, it was so ridiculous. She compromised in the end by letting her lips twitch and not retaliate for him touching her.
But Alice wasn't as courteous. Lily wondered how she could ever have thought she wouldn't get back at her. "Oh, she likes it, you know." She reassured Potter, who was instantly looking extremely interested. "That's why she came here. She missed her chance to do it at breakfast."
Lily rolled her eyes. "That was your fault, by the way. I know it's the weekend, but you'd want to get up before you have to go to sleep again, no?" Alice showed Lily her tongue, but since she was clearly not all that passionate about being mad at her, Lily just grinned back.
"Why would you ever want to get up at all?" Black piped in, and either he was a better actor than Lily gave him credit for or he actually meant it.
"To have breakfast." Frank said quite seriously. "I'm pretty sure you haven't ever woken up early enough to have tried Hogwarts' bacon, or you wouldn't ask that kind of questions."
"I'm pretty sure Black hasn't ever woken up early enough to arrive in time to first period." Lily mumbled. Alice and, surprisingly, Potter both snorted, but no one else seemed to have heard it.
Rosmerta arrived with all their drinks, including (somehow) for the four unwanted extras. Well, only two of them were actually unwanted (at least by her), but the only time they weren't all attached at the hip was when their parents, a teacher or, more efficiently and quickly, a girl, surgically separated them, and then they quickly glued themselves back together.
They stayed for a lot longer than Lily would have thought would be comfortable, but then she remembered she was the only one with an actual grudge-creating problem with Potter. They were, as she reluctantly knew, remarkably easy personalities to be with (their table seemed to attract a lot of stares; an almost obnoxiously loud bunch of teenagers in a magical hotspot of a pub was out-of-place), and she ended up withdrawing from the conversation more than she normally would have.
Eventually, Remus, who seemed to do the same in bigger groups, struck up a normal, polite, quieter conversation about their Prefect duties that, as always, made her silently awe at how he got along with Potter and Black's naturally explosive personas. She'd asked him about it, once during a Potion's lesson (on Verisaterum), in a bout of brutal honestly that she hadn't a clue to where it'd come from. He'd smiled, said they made life interesting, and clammed up.
After that, she'd privately stayed with the notion that Remus was a closet-case adrenaline junkie, but not all the truth serum in the world would make that come out of her lips.
The general conversation did, in due course as it was proper for a group of seventeen-year-olds, turn to Quidditch. Potter and Black took this as an opportunity to increase the noise-level, which made nice, normal, polite, quieter conversations become impossible. Remus sighed at the same time she rolled her eyes, and they joined the rest of them in listening, once again, to the story of Gryffindor's unbeatable Seeker's perfectly executed Wronski Feint, and which was the feat largely responsible for his getting into Puddlemere United straight out of school.
"You know," Lily said, drily, once he was done. "if your fascination with broken necks is that great, all you had to do was tell me. I'd be more than happy to handle yours without broomsticks." She was teasing, and she knew he knew that, though when, exactly, she'd begun feeling comfortable teasing James Potter wasn't very clear in her mind.
He grinned at her deliciously. "You're welcome to do anything you want to my neck; or any other part of me, as matter of fact." He said earnestly, and Black pressed his lips together very tightly.
"Thank God I know a lot of vanishing spells and charms, then. Very inventive ones, too." Potter winced and she considered it a win.
She noticed Peter, who was looking as though he'd been dropped from the sky in the middle of a population of a different species. "So, Peter," She said, because ignoring James was still easier than quipping at him. "I thought you'd gone home for the Easter holidays?" She would have smiled at him, but the startled way his watery eyes looked at her disconcerted her. Still, she could feel Potter scowling and bristling, so it was all worth it.
"Y-yes, I was. I mea- I mean, I was supposed to, only my mother had to go on- on a short-notice trip." He stuttered awkwardly. She realized she should have gone with Remus again. Conversations with him were a lot more stimulating, and sometimes she could actually count on him to help her annoy Potter. Of course, later he'd decide to very deliberately ask her uncomfortable questions with a grin about why she needed to annoy Potter so, which wasn't as much fun, but at least those never got to Potter's ears. She hoped, anyway.
"Oh." She answered politely. Peter reddened.
Frank and Alice were talking to each in whispers other very close and with too much giggling involved (at least on Alice's part). Her friend's cheeks were getting progressively more coloured, and Lily decided that if the two of them weren't leaving soon, everyone else would.
That was when half the bar exploded.
Lily wasn't proud to admit that – back then – their reaction times weren't mind-blowing. For a moment that either stretched too long or not long enough, they just stared: stared at a wall that wasn't there anymore, stared at Rosmerta's crumpled and unconscious form that had really not Apparated to the other side of the bar from where she'd been initially, and stared at five figures with faces ridiculously recognisable from at least three years of (not particularly peaceful) sharing of a castle, staring in the middle of the crater they were responsible for like some sort of twisted eye of a storm, only it wasn't safer inside than outside.
Then they threw the first curse, and Lily ducked, and that's the last she remembered seeing of her friends for a while.
This wasn't the first time she'd been in the crossfire of a duel – but calling what went on inside Hogwarts' walls between the Marauders and Slytherin's finest duelling was a stretch. Calling this a duel was a stretch too, mostly because it almost seemed like a group of God-don't-make-her-call-former-classmates-of-hers-Death-Eaters deciding The Three Broomsticks (or its occupants – it was probably more about the occupants) didn't go with the landscape and doing something about it.
From harmless (though sometimes barely tethering on the edge of that definition) and sporadic beams of light, controllable spells, to a mess of no-see, no-hear, no nothing except screaming and white, and green and red and God, but those two didn't go together – and she was feeling out of her depth, out of her everything, she had control over nothing – the ceiling was falling, but it was in little pieces, little, tiny, miniscule, microscopic really, like flour, so that was okay, even if it would turn this into the most twisted cake in history, and seven kids not even in their last year at school would be the squished middle.
Her first instinct wasn't cursing back. Then the table she was cowering under with several other someones (the squished screams were too close) disappeared and she had no choice.
In that quiet moment, when the table was there and then not, there was moment of clarity, where the air was still and the proverbial sunray hit her (and the non-proverbial one too, the wall had really been blown to pieces). There was a very clear, bright fluorescent line separating school from reality. She learned about Unforgivables in DADA, but really, her imagination was rather off – the light beam was much thicker, and much brighter than she would expect for a bringer of death, she saw – she used Protego because it was a spell she was supposed to learn for class, but really it was funny how using it to protect herself from falling debris gave the syllabus a whole new meaning. Lily didn't know if this was because she was a Muggleborn and doing things without spells and magic and potions and anything else wasn't second nature to her – but suddenly she quite clearly realized that yes, her O at DADA was going to have to serve her.
The first enchantment she used was the Shield Charm. She didn't stop there.
She somehow ended up outside, her arm stinging briefly before becoming comfortably warm against the rain and cold. She was fairly certain she hadn't used the door either, but then again, there was a new convenient truck-shaped entrance now, wasn't there? She couldn't see anybody – except, that was, Bellatrix Lestrange, whom she found herself duelling.
She daren't even try offense, because she'd have to have two seconds in-between dodging and blocking Bellatrix's spells to stop defence. She was terrified – was this it? Was this how she would die, pelted by raindrops, alone with a madwoman cackling against the wind, her whipping hair hardly an impediment for her true aim-
Bellatrix spoke, which scared her more than anything else that night. "And which one would you be, Red? Are you the bitch?" She laughed very dementedly, and in the sound Lily heard all the things one should never hear in a laugh, all this perverseness, and black, and pain Bellatrix enjoyed-
Lily didn't answer – even if she had wanted to, which she plainly hadn't, her mouth was too dry, her lungs too empty, her mind too blank – and instead focused on not getting hit with a red, maleficent-looking fireball sort of curse that she didn't want to imagine was the Cruciatus one. Bellatrix didn't play soft, which meant most of what she tried, Lily had to dodge – she didn't hope to find out the consequences of protecting herself with an invisible shield against the words Avada Kedavra that day.
And then Lily tripped.
It wasn't her fault – she'd been more preoccupied with her opponent than her where her heels where heading. Bellatrix had been forcing her backwards, for some reason (she fervently hoped never to find out what, because her nightmares for the next few weeks were already booked, and she didn't want them to have to extend over a period of months) and her pathetic attempts to repel her had culminated with her falling backwards over a relatively soft rock – she'd never known rocks could be soft, or have cloaks covering them and oh God, she shut her eyes and tried to imagine this person, this human, bodied person under her could not be dead, and tried to pretend she couldn't be dead in a few moment's notice too, because she was just standing there looking stupid and-
Something barked.
It was a dog. A dog had barked, then had full-body-impacted Bellatrix Lestrange to the ground, literally howling mad, biting down with some serious force her wand-hand and Lily had never loved dogs more. Lily scrambled to her feet, listening to Bellatrix's shrieking curses and non-magic curses and not managing anything, because as far as anyone could see, the dog was clearly enjoying trying to wrestle the wand out of her hand – and then she remembered the body, the maybe-dead, no, maybe-alive body that was still under her.
It was Peter. Lily didn't quite know what to do with herself, much less with him, and so her hands sort of hovered like useless rescue-copters that couldn't do much with the rescue at all. There it was: at long last, it hit her that this was a war and that, quite suddenly, they were smack right in the middle of it. There was her classmate, her friend, lying out cold on the ground, someone she had classes with, someone with whom she sat and listened to teachers droning on about their education (and what was that worth, in the middle of the street, in drenched hair, drenched clothes, waiting for a cold that wouldn't hit her skin yet, but which had frozen her insides already?), someone she'd watched picking his nose at thirteen! And now this, and he looked so peaceful - oblivious to this, oblivious to the screams, oblivious to Lily's livid inner turmoil, oblivious to everything except his dreams.
Where was she, where boys who called themselves 'Marauders' lay on a deserted road because someone who convinced and manipulated and dark-charmed people away from right and wrong and morals and principles wanted a change that would make more boys like Peter end up right there with him? Why was she fighting his follower, how come she was fighting for her future life now, how come she had to fight for her life at all?
Peter wouldn't wake up. She blinked back the tears that weren't coming, blinked back the water that covered her whole face and looked – looked everywhere for somewhere safe where Peter could stay for all of five minutes. There was nowhere. She couldn't see a place where Peter would be safe. She couldn't see a place where she'd be safe either.
The dog's howling had stopped, but Bellatrix's hadn't. Lily's wand was in her hand.
Peter had gotten lucky so far – he'd just have to hope he'd get lucky a little bit longer. Cautiously, and with a dangerously trembling hand, she approached the dog and its prey, wand outstretched and ready to attack this time.
The dog was quite beautiful – its night-colour hair was long and thick and lustrous, almost reminding her of Black's hair, even in the pouring rain. It had a longish snout, and its growling made its gums shake in rage. The eyes were narrowed to dark, glittering little beads. It looked big and powerful and scary, and Lily felt safer, for some reason, in its presence. At the very least, it wasn't paying attention to her, but to Bellatrix, and it wasn't the kind of attention Lily would want. It had her wand in its mouth, and it was dripping pink water, which was likely was a diluted version of what was running down Bellatrix's arm. She hadn't gotten up – both because the dog had made a nest out of her, and possibly because she didn't like her chances of outrunning it, just like Lily wouldn't.
Lily pointed her wand directly at the witch's face, feeling a kind of inspired rage that only came from a sudden moment of clarity that instantly led to despair and misery, which made for the adrenaline-fueled bravery (of the reckless kind) that she was now feeling – at least her mind was not shattered now, because anger was very focusing, and very focused as well.
"Call your- friends. Now." She ordered, quietly and very steadily, in spite of the rain, the fear and the pure and uncontrollable rage that were all making her whole body tremble.
Bellatrix snorted.
The dog growled a warning.
Bellatrix smirked at her and didn't seem to care about her mutilated arm anymore. "I see now – vermin can't turn into other animals. Although I wouldn't have expected a mudblood not to be a bitch." She sneered at the dog. Lily was confused.
And then the rain went too quiet. Too inconsequential.
Lily couldn't say what it was, exactly. It was lots of different things. Bellatrix's unconcerned, almost giddy attitude, a feeling of horrible foreboding deep in her gut, the fact that there had been way too much calm in the last ten minutes, a sudden dreadful silence behind her, the dog's shudder and cowering and whimpering and the sound of a boot just kicking aside a body – Peter – carelessly. It all amounted to Lily turning around and wishing for a quick death.
Lord Voldemort was walking toward a wandless woman, a dog lying on top of her, and Lily. Lily had a wand. It had never seemed more like a helpless wooden stick, much like herself. Or at least her best impression of one.
Up until then, Voldemort had been a misty phantom on the edge of her awareness – something foul, shapeless, shadowy, barely real. It was there but not really. Now he was right there, looking straight at her, with red-blood eyes that saw more than she wanted him to see, and thinning hair that made him look a little human – too human-
"A mudblood. And you thought it wise to fight my Bella?" He said this musingly and too low for her to plausibly hear over the raindrops, and quite suddenly she realized she couldn't hear much of anything else – she opened her mouth to scream-
And there was a great loud bark and the dog was there, standing in front of her like some sort of laughable invisible barrier – Voldemort looked away from her, tore that humanly inhumane vision from her direct line of sight and she felt as though she finally had permission to collapse to the ground. She could hear Bellatrix Lestrange cackling in anticipation – Voldemort raised his wand - the dog would go first-
"No!" Someone shouted – and she realized that it had been two voices as one, and half had been hers.
Potter showed up out of nowhere, wand in hand and running so fast he was practically sliding down the diminished version of a river that had formed in Hogsmeade's main street. And, because it was Potter, Lily understood immediately that he was about to do something so incredibly reckless it could only be brave and so stupid it could only have been Gryffindor (as a footnote, she was the one with her bottom on the freezing and wet asphalt, with a dog protecting her from the Wizarding World latest nightmare), like raising an admittedly convulsing wand to Voldemort's chest.
Bellatrix's gasp was incredulous and maniacally hysterical, and Lily's was livid. The dog seemed to agree, because it started howling and nudging James' leg – but he wasn't listening, he just kept very still like a statue with a wand trained on Lord Voldemort.
And Voldemort raised his eyebrows. "You seemed to have run into the wrong group of schoolchildren, Bella. Obviously, these seven – they are the ones who will finally overthrow me." His voice carried the s's so well Lily felt them whisper down her spine and make her shake and shiver and increase her terror.
Bella's laughter rang cold and out-of-place among the silent witnesses. "Such a pity, to spill pure blood. I have no reason to mean you any harm, boy." He told James, whose stiffening back told her, even if not him, that not being on Voldemort's hit list was insulting.
"Don't you worry about that." He said, perfectly cheerfully. But Lily knew him, knew his tones of voice, knew when he was nervous, jittery, terrified or livid, and knew when he was far beyond any of those. "It'll be no trouble, giving you one."
And he threw the first curse.
The way Voldemort handled it was funny, in a twisted, Lily's-been-exposed-to-Bellatrix-too-long way, waving his wand almost as if he was bored, like ladies used to handle those old handkerchiefs they kept in their cuffs. Lily never found out which one it had been - by then James was already running, running and almost making her take off, but at least her hand was securely in his and that dog, he was dogging their steps (James', anyway, because hers were mostly drag-marks) – and she couldn't find the time or the breath or the pause to tell him no, no, no, Peter's still back there with the madman and the madwoman! But then another part of her just kept thinking not fast enough. Voldemort wasn't cursing – likely, it was the only reason they were still alive – and, somehow, impossibly, she found herself right next to James.
"We can't keep running! It's just amusing him!"
"Jeez, Evans, way to cheer a bloke up." James snapped, but then their eyes met, and she found he was just as terrified as she was. "We don't have any cover – I can barely see anything in this rain!"
"Then make one!" She cried, and they flattened themselves as Voldemort unexpectedly stopped being amused.
James waved his wand, face scrunched up against the rain and the curses and the difficulty of the charm and then they were right behind a huge, rocky, weirdly-shaped thing. And the dog, the weirdly ever-present dog, grumbled as if saying about-time and flopped straight to the floor, tongue out and looking more like Black than ever. Lily practically did the same against the rock, because James could run.
"James-" She said urgently. "Peter – he was back there-" She was trying – she was trying really hard – but a sob escaped her. She buried her head in her hands, only she didn't want a head right then, she didn't want to think, didn't want to imagine poor Peter, just lying there unconscious, Voldemort and Bellatrix looming over him- how could she have just left him there?!
James was halfway out the security the rock offered before she noticed a thing, but the dog had quicker reflexes. It grabbed his leg and pulled him forcibly back, and for one, terrible moment, she thought it'd give him the same treatment it'd given Bellatrix – but then it'd let go, growled loudly and reproachfully at him and shot off into the rain, alone and smaller and more inconspicuous than any human – even if it seemed strangely aware…
No curses shot its way, and Lily was glad, because she was starting to like it.
James watched it anxiously – Lily started to form the idea that maybe the dog was more than a dog, but the confusion was not worth the time it would waste. "Where's Remus?" He demanded, wildly looking for the answer as if it would be around him somewhere.
"I don't know." She answered, and the terror built again, stretching as if a hand and enveloping her whole being into one giant mess of worry. Where was Remus? Or Alice? Or Frank, or Sirius? "You've lost him?"
"I've lost everyone!" He cried, and seemed to want to tug at his hair.
Then Voldemort spoke.
"You have plenty of dare, James Potter." Voldemort said, deadly and smooth like poison. His voice was loud and abnormal, distorted by spell or malice. "Devilish, if one may. Even if, in inopportune moments such as this, it can easily be mistaken for affronting recklessness. And loyalty – your furry friend, who just dragged the other one from here, it seems, is perfectly unscathed. Consider it a show of good faith. Useful qualities, I daresay. Touching ones. They've more than likely served others at some point.
"And yet – what about you? Where are they? Those loyal friends – you're here, facing me, and I see but one mudblood by your side." Lily flinched and James' eyes were murderous behind the glasses.
"You're a bright young man too. I saw what you just did to Mulciber – it's certainly- inventive, you'll allow me. I can help you, James. Can you imagine what you could do with unlimited possibilities - resources? Not those offered at Hogwarts – they barely, tamely skim the surface. You could do formidable things. You have potential. Don't you want to explore it?"
He answered his own question. "Join me, and you'll find real loyalty. Royalty." James looked incredulous now, but Voldemort seemed perfectly self-assured of the sentiment. "All those things you crave – I see them, all of them, deep down there, even her… You could have it all – you wouldn't have to do anything. You'd have the respect and that support, unwavering, of the Wizarding World. Think of all the things you could do – you'd be cleaning our world, purging it! Is there a nobler task? You are a Gryffindor, are you not?"
James had stood perfectly stoic through his words, and Lily had been perfectly content watching him, dying to know what went on in his head. For whatever reason, she was aware that Voldemort had touched a few right buttons – more than a few wrong ones too – and she knew that there was no way, and that Voldemort knew less of loyalty than the average Slytherin, which his big talk showed, and yet, and yet… And now, listening to the silence, she almost wished Voldemort's voice back. Then James nodded, gave her a jittery sort of look, the kind of look she'd come to associate to late-night findings of him where he wasn't supposed to be (when he wasn't supposed to be), put one arm around the rock – his wand arm – and fired an indistinguishable spell with indistinguishable words.
A cool, female and impersonal voice began reciting, in deadpan, "If your blood is indeed the purest of the purest, please contact St. Mungo's immediately – you may be missing vital components from it, important to your life. A lot of respected and important members of our community have perished due to this terrible, non-contagious disease that seems to be spreading more quickly than the birthrate of pureblood babies. Please, help us help you."
There was a beat of silence. Then Bellatrix Lestrange began screaming bloody murder in a string of profanities.
Lily wanted to be having a nightmare. Potter seemed to be feeling perfectly pleased with himself, but she was afraid the rock they were hiding behind was going to have a very explosive ending, and they were going along with it.
"Sorry." He whispered. She peeked between her fingers to let him take a good long glance at the look on her face. "I just wanted to say something as ridiculous as he did back."
"If that is your answer-" Voldemort sighed, as though regretting the bother it would be, killing James. "It's a pity, James Potter. We will meet again. And I will not be so friendly then." Voldemort's snake-like voice whispered all the way to them, heard even above Bellatrix's screams of outrage – and then there was a Disapparating pop and Lily knew they were gone.
It was over. And it'd begun at last.