Lily in mission. And she helps someone to make a choice.

LILY XII

She slowly walked on the metallic surface of one of the many catwalks. Her mission was to find the artefact of dark magic at the top of the abandoned factory. Someone hid it in this empty place, hoping no one would ever think of looking there. The whole area was plunged into complete darkness.

Lily had taken extreme precautions to not be visible. She made sure the electric system of the factory was off and couldn't be reactivated before she walked in. Then she changed her appearance, covering her whole body with a black substance to make her even more difficult to find in the obscurity. She also cast a spell to make her shoes soundless, something critical to avoid detection on surfaces that reverberated sounds like these catwalks did. To avoid the necessity of casting light with her wand, she cast another spell to her eyes to enable her to somewhat see in the dark, like these elite forces of the Muggle British Army who wore night vision goggles, but her spell was far more effective. She also cast another spell to create some kind of invisible sound proof barrier all around her, muting any other sound she might make by breathing or moving.

Still, all those sorts and spells didn't make Lily invisible. She walked very carefully, and moved forward slowly, checking all around her, all her senses in alert, in case someone might approach or see her. She progressed slowly towards her objective, an old observation and control room that was two floors up. She entered a corridor, with concrete surrounding the passage this time. She raised her wand.

"Specialis Revelio!"

She did not say the incantation aloud. Someone could have heard her. Non-verbal spells were much better for stealth purposes. The spell revealed no curse or sort in the whole place, again. However, that did not mean there was no danger ahead, as the corridor turned left in a right angle. Lily pointed the wand to her eyes and cast a spell to allow her to see through walls. She did well. In the blind spot, a man with a bullet proof vest and a long firearm stood guard. No wonder her spells revealed nothing. The defences in this abandoned factory were not magic, but technological. The information she was given had to be true. She was in a base of the MI6.

Lily slowly walked back to the catwalk. She could have stupefied the guard, but who knew how many others there were. She could cast Memory Charms to erase their memories and replace them with others, but those charms were always risky. The best thing to do for a witch was for Muggles to never know she was actually there, to never have seen her. She increased the scope and duration of the charm that allowed her to see through objects. She could make out two other guards on inferior levels, and three men who seemed to be discussing in the control room at the superior level that was her objective. Lily didn't notice any security cameras, but that didn't mean there weren't any. The effect of the spell didn't last long. She couldn't overexert her magic, with all the spells she already threw on herself to reduce at the maximum her chances to be spotted. She even had one that reduced her thermal signature to the minimum. She had to access the next level, but the only stairs leading to it were blocked by the guard she saw earlier.

She came up with a solution quite quickly. She could see the catwalk of the next level right above her head. There was an extinguished lamp right above her objective. Still silently, and without pronouncing the incantation out loud, Lily pointed her wand on the lamp.

"Carpe Retractum!"

An invisible rope, not a physical rope but a magical one, attached itself to the lamp. Usually, this spell produced a purple or orange light, but Lily had mastered a way to throw this spell without creating any kind of light. It was invisible, like she had to be, and it lifted her from the catwalk, high in the air, until she broke the spell right when she was over the catwalk of the superior floor. Then she threw another spell of levitation to muffle her fall on the catwalk. It was the same she used to not fall into the Devil's Snare last year, when she travelled through the dungeons of Hogwarts to save her son. But it wasn't time to think about Harry or his friends. She had a mission that she needed to complete in order to see her son as soon as possible.

She looked around her. There was nobody. No one seemed to have noticed her presence yet, and it had to remain that way. Lily walked discreetly to the final corridor that led to the control room. On the last turn of the corridor, she again cast a spell to see through walls. There was another guard in front of the door giving on this room, in addition to the three men discussing behind this door. They were four. It would be very hard for Lily to access this room without getting noticed at all. Memory Charms might be necessary in the end.

There were certainly a few cameras around. Lily made sure she wouldn't be spotted by them by the use of spells that made her almost invisible to these devices, but humans were a different matter. Anyway, even if she managed to make herself totally invisible to these four men, she couldn't open the door giving on the control room or take the artifact without anyone noticing it. No, the only way was to replace the artifact by the copy she held into her pocket without anyone noticing the exchange, then to leave this place, again unnoticed. They couldn't let any Muggle, let alone agents of the MI6, suspect anything.

There was only one way for Lily to achieve this. She first pointed her wand carefully over the wall at the guard.

"Confundo!"

The spell was just powerful enough to make the guard believe anything small he would see, like a small rod of wood, to be merely nothing worth of consideration. Then she produced another, more complicated spell to make the guard believe an issue had somehow come up on the outside. As a result, the guard knocked on the door. It opened. Lily threw additional spells to modify the behavior of the three men inside the control room. One of them accompanied the guard outside. They walked past Lily without noticing her, then she cast another spell that provoked sparks on one of the machines inside the control room. The two remaining men inside looked at it with attention, trying to find what caused these sparks, while Lily used a Summoning Charm.

"Accio!"

The disk flew right toward her. She seized it, then used a Levitation spell to place the copy in its place. It only took a few seconds. When the guard and the third man came back, still oblivious to Lily's presence, no one noticed anything had changed. Lily was already gone, using the same way to leave that she used to walk in. Once outside the abandoned factory, which wasn't that abandoned after all, she Apparated.

She reappeared inside the office of the instructor, at the Ministry of Magic. The man in question nodded his head quite approvingly.

"You have the disk?" She gave it to him, and he nodded even more approvingly. "Very good work, Evans. I don't believe the Stealth evaluations will be a problem for you. Now remove everything you have."

By that, he meant the spells she cast on herself, which Lily cancelled right away. Once done, she looked like a human again. "When will I get the results?" she asked.

"In a few days. You may leave now. Next!"

Just as Lily went to the door, it opened and Nymphadora appeared on the other side. "How well did it go?" she asked Lily.

"Good enough," Lily shortly replied.

"Hard?"

"You know I can't tell you. Good luck, Tonks," she told her friend as she walked away.

Lily yawned on her way out. They were in the middle of the night, and she just completed a preparatory test on stealth techniques. The people she avoided as part of this test were Muggles who believed they were participating to a study on human behavior led by a group of researchers. Obliviators would make sure they wouldn't remember anything that happened that night that might lead them to believe that magic existed. Lily didn't feel entirely comfortable with this practice of using Muggles for Auror training. She had grown in a Muggle family, after all. But she supposed it was difficult to provide more realistic training sessions in certain domains.

Her training taught her that some groups among the Muggle population suspected or were even aware of the existence of the Wizarding world. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was a very good example of it. He had occasional meetings with the Minister of Magic. But he was only the tip of the iceberg. Some very select groups inside governments and secret organizations, such as intelligence agencies, which even the Ministry of Magic struggled to track, knew about their existence, but probably didn't make it public because they suspected the wizards would be upon them if they did. As such, when confronting intelligence and secret services, Aurors were expected to use the greatest caution to avoid complications, such as was the case in the simulation she just went through. Tonks was probably going exactly through same exercise as Lily walked to the Atrium.

Once there, she simply Apparated. She reappeared inside the entrance hall of the building where she lived. It was empty. The windows that usually let the light of day come in only showed complete darkness outside. Lily looked at her watch. It was about two fifteen in the morning. It was definitely time for her to sleep. She climbed the stairs and arrived in front of the door of her apartment, which she opened quietly, and closed just as quietly. She would have prepared herself a tisane, but she was too tired and only filled a glass of water which she emptied right away. Then she changed herself and went to bed.

Right before she entered her bedroom, she took a look inside her son's. She always took a look at it before she went to bed. Only this time, the bedroom was not empty like usual. Her son was inside, deeply sleeping. It was a good thing that he came to spend the Easter holidays at home. At school, many of his comrades thought of him as the heir of Slytherin, a stupid idea that only spread because her son happened to speak Parseltongue. Dumbledore still had no idea how it happened.

She chased those dark thoughts from her mind. She needed a good night of sleep, and Harry was now home, safe. A few days far from Hogwarts would do him some good. Lily went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

She woke up a little late in the morning, with the sweet smell of bacon and eggs caressing her nostrils. Lily stood up and changed herself for the day, then went to the dining room where Harry sat in front of his breakfast.

"Everything is on the oven," he told her when he heard her walk in.

"Thank you, my dear. You are a love." Lily had to admit that, amidst all the courses, training sessions, exams, conferences and seminars she had to attend, she wasn't complaining that her son was here to help her with meals, even to prepare them alone sometimes. She took generous portions of bacon, and also two toasts.

"The training went well last night?" Harry asked her.

"Yes, quite well. Your old mother just wishes it didn't happen at night."

She had to get used to irregular schedules again. She spent ten years with a regular work schedule, beginning at nine o'clock, leaving at seventeen o'clock. This time was over. Working entire days, even at night, would become common once she would be an Auror. She still had over a year of training to get through, but there was almost more behind her than in front of her now. She was progressing, and her success during last night's simulation was proof of that.

"I thought you didn't like it when we called yourself old," Harry pointed out.

She pinched him on the top of the head. "Only when it comes from the others, especially my son," she said with a wicked smile while pointing her finger at him. "Now, let's talk about what we're going to do today. It will be our last chance to spend time together before you go back to Hogwarts and me to the training that takes all my time."

"First, I've got to choose my subjects for next year. I haven't done it yet. Hermione is probably going to kill me if she discovers I haven't chosen yet when we meet on the train."

Lily could easily imagine that. "So you still have no idea about what you're going to choose?"

"No. The only thing I'm sure of, it's that I want to give up Potions."

Again, she could completely imagine why. Potions was not an interesting class like it was when Horace Slughorn taught them. Harry now had the worst teacher he could imagine. "I get why you would like to do that, Harry, but you cannot give up a core subject, not before you pass your O.W.L.s."

"Ron will be disappointed. He told me he wanted to ditch Defence Against the Dark Arts before we embarked on the Hogwarts Express."

Lily only needed to think about Gilderoy Lockhart for a fraction of a second to totally and fully understand his best friend's desire. "Is that the course where a fool released Cornish pixies into the classroom?"

"Yes, and that fool is..."

"... your teacher," Lily completed.

She rolled her eyes. She allowed Harry to mock his teachers as much as he wished, as long as it wasn't while he was in Hogwarts. She established that rule very clearly last year. However, when it came to Lockhart, she was ready to make an exception. This imbecile sent her about a dozen letters since she crossed his path at Flourish and Blotts last summer. The most stupid and unnerving was the one she received for Valentine's Day. And when Harry wrote her about the stupidities this fool organized on this day at Hogwarts... How could even Dumbledore hire someone like that?

"So," Lily resumed, "aside from your wishes to abandon your classes with incompetent and unlikable teachers, have you any idea about which electives you're going to take next year?"

"I don't know, Mom. I'm not even sure what each of those teach. The only I'm sure not to take is Muggle Studies."

"You do well. You have a lifetime of experience with Muggles. Do you have the list with you?"

He nodded. He went to take the list of choices in his bag and brought it back to her. Lily looked at it. It was identical to the choices she had to make before her own third year. There was Muggle Studies, of course, which was useless for people like her and Harry who grew up in the world of Muggles. The others were Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, and Study of Ancient Runes.

"Same courses than in my time," she commented.

"What did you choose back then?" Harry asked her.

"Arithmancy and Study of Ancient Runes. Though I must warn you, Arithmancy is a difficult one. It is the study of the magical properties of numbers. As for Ancient Runes, we studied ancient scripts in that course. It can sometimes be useful to learn older spells and potions which have disappeared today."

"Do you think I should choose them?"

She looked at her son. "I think you should choose what you think is in line with your interests, and what you think will help you in your future. What would you like to do, later?" Her son kept his mouth shut. He looked uneasy to say it aloud. "Come on, tell me."

"Professional Quidditch player?"

She smiled after a moment. Of course, Harry was only twelve. And given how good he was as a Seeker, it was no wonder that it was his dream. "I understand. But I must warn you, you're not certain of reaching that goal. Your father himself wanted to become a professional player, but he didn't in the end." James never had the time to become a professional player, not with the fight against Voldemort.

"What happened? He failed to join a team?"

"No. His priorities just changed after he left Hogwarts." She took a closer look at the list of available courses. She didn't really want to talk about James and what he could have become had he lived. "Well, you like outdoor activities. Why not take Care of Magical Creatures? It's the only elective course that will not take place between four walls."

Harry seemed to think about it for a moment. "Okay," he said finally. "Yes, that looks like a good idea."

"So, I cross it for you?" Harry nodded after a moment, and Lily checked the box next to this class. "Do you know what are your friends choosing?"

"Hermione took all the options, even Muggle Studies."

"Really?" Lily was surprised.

"Yes. She says that she's interested by the Muggle culture from the wizarding point of view." This girl would definitely never cease to surprise Lily.

"Well, I advise you not to do the same thing. I'm not even sure if it is possible to have all courses at the same time. A schedule could be impossible to arrange. What about your friend Ronald?"

"He wasn't sure either. He said he was perhaps interested by Divination. He thinks it would be cool to predict the future."

"Be careful with that, Harry. Future is never written," she warned him, thinking about the prophecy the current professor of Divination at Hogwarts made about her son and Voldemort. "If you want my opinion, learning divination is as useful in real life as learning when the founders of Hogwarts lost their baby teeth."

They both laughed. "Okay, so no Divination." Harry's decision relieved Lily. She didn't want to take the risk of him facing the woman who predicted the threat he would represent for Voldemort. "I might take one of your subjects then. Can I look?" She gave him the list. He looked at it for a moment. "I'll take Study of Ancient Runes." He checked the box next to it. "I can speak to snakes, so it shouldn't be too difficult to learn ancient languages."

He had an ironic smile, which she returned. Lily thought it was probably the best choice. Harry was indeed better at learning languages than with numbers back in elementary school.

"I heard there's been no new attack since the Christmas holidays," she said, trying to cheer up her son's morale.

"No. And the Mandrakes are almost ready. Everyone will soon be revived, and then we will know who did this. In fact, even Ernie started talking to me again."

Ernie Macmillan was a student from Hufflepuff, a friend of the poor boy who was Petrified at the same time as Nick. Harry told her in lengths about how other students avoided him and suspected him of being the heir of Slytherin, and this Ernie was the one who suspected Harry the most, and who made his thoughts the most vocal among all students. If he began to talk to Harry again, this was a good sign.

"Good. I'm sure this will all be over soon." She tried to reassure Harry as much as she tried to convince herself about this.

"Perhaps the heir of Slytherin is too afraid. The whole school is on alert," Harry said, his voice sounding hopeful.

It was good that Harry took things positively. He tried to hide it from her, but his letters clearly showed how dark his mood had become following the Petrification of Nick and the Hufflepuff student. He looked happier now, more relaxed.

She and Harry enjoyed the day together. Lily needed this as much as her son. Her training as an Auror took its toll on her. She spent so much time training and studying that she didn't even know who her neighbors were, despite the fact that twenty families of wizards lived in the same tower as she did.

In late afternoon, she and Harry were each reading a book on their side in the living room. It was good, for once, to not read something that was related to her studies. Harry, on his side, read a book about the Tutshill Tornados. However, after a moment he rose his eyes from his book and asked her something she didn't expect.

"Mom, do you know why Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts?"

She looked up from her book, and looked at her son very closely. "Why are you asking?"

"Well, I went to take tea at his house not long before I left, and somehow we stumbled upon the subject, but he didn't want to talk about it."

Lily sighed. "I don't think we can blame him, Harry. It cannot be a pleasant memory to relive."

"I know. But... I was wondering if you knew what happened. Why was he expelled? I mean, we don't expel people from Hogwarts without good reasons. They can't, right?" he asked, uncertain.

She looked at her son with pity. He had no idea how unforgiving the wizarding world could be. "When it comes to expulsion or sentence, wizards are often biased when it comes to half-giants."

"Half-giants?"

Lily realized too late the mistake she committed. She closed her eyes. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Hagrid is a half-giant?" her son asked her. She looked at him. He didn't seem angry, or suspicious. He just looked surprised. She closed her book with a sigh and stared straight at him.

"Harry, you remember that girl from your elementary school, Celestina?"

Her son reacted immediately. "Yes, of course. She was my friend. And the best football player of the school, among girls."

"And you remember what happened to her? Only because of the color of her hair?"

Harry said nothing. He only nodded, his face turning contrite within an instant. This wasn't a fond memory for any of them. Harry and Celestina had played football together during their pauses for a few months, before Harry joined the football team of the school. Celestina was a very kind and sweet girl, with blue eyes and auburn hair. Her parents came from Spain and were quite poor. When the sweet girl managed to be accepted on the girls' football team of the school, she was subjected to an initiation that involved spending time with a group of six boys behind bushes at the back of the school. What these boys did to her was horrible. Her parents took her out of school a week later, and Harry never saw her again afterwards. Harry almost got into a fight with one of these boys a few days later, after he heard him mock how red-haired people were easy to scare. The accident forced Lily to come and talk to the principal, who was kind enough to not give any punishment to Harry, only a warning.

"Well," Lily resumed, "the Wizarding world is no different. Some people are marginalized, intimidated, looked down upon, even persecuted because of their appearance, their origins, their beliefs. How and where they are born. Look at myself and Hermione, and what Draco Malfoy told her at the beginning of the year. Muggle-born are still looked down upon. Even half-bloods are, to a certain extent. Look at what happens at Hogwarts with the attacks. The same thing happens to Squibs. But it also happens to other people who are not considered to be humans. Giants, werewolves, elves, centaurs, goblins... They are not treated as equals under the law by the Ministry of Magic. When something bad happens and they just happen to be around, people believe they are guilty immediately."

Harry was looking at the floor, as if lost in great thoughts. "I never thought that Hagrid could be a half-giant. Is that even possible?"

"It is. Hagrid is the living proof of it. But he doesn't know that I know. I don't want you to tell about it to anybody, not even Ron and Hermione. Is that clear?"

Harry nodded. "When I read about giants," he said though afterwards, "they are always depicted as being violent. But Hagrid... He's not violent at all. I mean, he wouldn't even try to harm a fly that flies around his head."

"No, indeed. But it's understandable why he doesn't want people to know he's a half-giant. And also why he doesn't want people to know why he got expelled from Hogwarts in his third year."

"But... what was he accused of?"

She sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. "Hagrid never told me, and no one seems to know why. But the Professor Dumbledore once told me that Hagrid was accused of something very grave. There was no direct proof against him. Everything was circumstantial. But he was a half-giant, and Hogwarts' Headmaster at the time was looking for someone to blame, so he picked Hagrid, had him expelled, his wand broken. Dumbledore was teaching Transfiguration at the time, and he convinced the headmaster to keep Hagrid as gamekeeper. No matter what Hagrid was accused of, I don't see him willingly doing anything that would warrant his expulsion."

Harry looked lost in his thoughts again.

"Please don't tell me that he's trying to raise a baby dragon again?" she asked her son.

Harry looked quite surprised. He laughed nervously. "No, no. I think he got his lesson last year."

Lily smiled as well. "Well, if Hagrid has any flaw, it's that he sees good in everyone, human or non-human, even the most horrible magical creatures. But that's also what makes him a good man."

A good man, indeed. That was what Lily thought of Hagrid. The gamekeeper may be stupid at moments, but he wasn't arrogant or selfish or evil like others. Hagrid had a good heart, and anyone believing he was cruel only because one of his parents happened to be a giant just didn't know him and based their judgment on prejudice and hate. Prejudice and hate were what led so many people to embrace the ideology of Voldemort a long time ago.

She brought Harry to the restaurant this evening. It seemed like a lifetime since she last walked into such a place. They had a good dinner together. At one time, when they just received their dessert, a couple accompanied by a little girl who seemed about the same age as Harry walked next to them. The girl, who had blond hair arranged in pigtails, waved at her son.

"Hi, Harry."

"Oh. Hi, Hannah."

She smiled sweetly at him.

"You know that girl?" Lily asked him.

"Yes. It's Hannah Abbott. We're in the same class of Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts. She's a Hufflepuff."

Lily looked at the girl and her parents walking away. "I think I've seen her parents before. Yes, I think they live in the same tower than us."

"Really?" Harry asked, surprised, after taking a mouthful of ice cream.

"Yes, I think so. I think I saw them in the entrance hall once or twice."

"The world is smaller than I thought," he commented.

"Yes, it is. She looks like a nice girl."

"Yes. She's one of the few who did not think I was the heir of Slytherin after they heard me speak to a snake."

Lily changed the subject of their conversation quite quickly. She didn't want them to talk about the fact that Harry was a Parselmouth during his last dinner before he got back to Hogwarts. Still, it reassured her to know that there were at least some students who did not view her son like a monster after they realized he could talk this language. Prejudice was a very big problem in both the Muggle and the Wizarding worlds.

Please review.

Next chapter: Harry