After the exams.
LILY XXII
She bit into the apple she held in her hand. She was pacing in an empty room in Hogwarts, reading another treaty on curses. The elements this treaty contained might well be broached in the final examinations that would take place very soon. Lily shot a glance at the centre of the room, where the entirety of the Marauder's Map, unfolded, was displayed, and stared at a specific point in one of the classrooms. This point was one among many others. Her son Harry was only one student seated in the classroom that Lily knew to be that of Study of Ancient Runes. The points displayed on the map showed that Susan Bones was sitting in front of him, Justin Finch-Fletchley on his right, Hannah Abbott on his left, and Michael Corner behind him. Her son was only one point in a sea of students making their last exam. Lily had to admit that she was jealous. The time for exams was almost over for her son, while it was only about to begin for her.
She was soon over with the treaty. Lily placed it back on a nearby table and let herself fall on a chair. She sighed in tiredness and closed her eyes for a time. Standing guard at Hogwarts didn't stop her from studying for her examinations, but it wasn't the best place to study, and even less to train. And although Lily felt far less concerned for Harry's safety than back in March, she always felt that something was waiting to strike at the right moment.
She was alone in the room that Albus Dumbledore gave them. Apart from him and Remus, no one else seemed to know that two Aurors were present at all times. Well, almost at all times. Lily and Miranda were supposed to be on guard right now, but Miranda was called to the Ministry for an urgent affair. One of her informers had been found dead, and she had to deal with it. As a result, Lily was alone to watch over Harry. Well, not really alone. Between Dumbledore and all the professors who kept a close eye on him, and his friends who she often saw following Harry on the map, she couldn't say that she was alone in watching over her son.
And there was also someone else. She couldn't see him right now, but he remained close to Harry during large periods of the day. The map couldn't see him. It seemed that James, Sirius, Remus and Wormtail didn't think of marking them on the map. Or perhaps because they just couldn't place them. However, Lily preferred to think that the map only indicated humans' presence, not that of animals. The owlery, the kitchens, the lake and Hagrid's house never displayed any beast or animal.
She realized that she was hungry all of a sudden. So she did what she sometimes did in those cases.
"Dobby."
She said the word low, but despite this, the house-elf appeared instantly in a loud crack. Lily didn't jump this time. She was used to his sudden appearances and the noise that came with them. And as she almost expected, he was carrying her dinner with him.
"Does Lily Evans want something to eat?" he said, hopefully and enthusiastic as always.
"Thank you, Dobby. I appreciate." She smiled tiredly towards him as he placed the tray on the table next to her. Ever since the Aurors started their watch at Hogwarts, Lily had asked Dobby to keep an eye on Harry, and he did it with a lot of enthusiasm. However, when Lily asked to not let Harry know in any way that he was following him, Dobby kept his word, although Lily was certain that the elf would have wanted more than anything to tell her son that he was protecting him. Dumbledore even relaxed Dobby of some of his work in the kitchens to ensure Harry's protection, even though so far Harry didn't seem to have needed it.
"Is there anything that Dobby can do for Lily Evans?"
"No, no," she said while she took some tea. "It's very good, by the way," she told the elf.
His smile broadened. Lily had gotten endeared to the elf. He could get on someone's nerves sometimes, for various reasons, but he was genuine in his wish to help. A little too genuine sometimes.
"Except… Can you tell me if Harry's alright? How is he?"
The elf smiled even more broadly. "Of course. Dobby is always happy to help." His smile faded a little though afterwards. "Harry Potter is very tired right now."
"So I am," she commented, but Dobby continued with his report.
"His exams are almost over. And he is also very worried about the hippogriff, Buckbeak."
"That doesn't surprise me."
Lily found it unfair that a hippogriff was going to be beheaded. She felt that Lucius Malfoy was trying to get some kind of revenge for what happened last year. That didn't make Lily appreciate the Malfoys in any way.
"But he is fine. Peter Pettigrew has not approached him for months."
"Good thing." She began to cut her steak in little pieces. "Do you want some?"
She asked to be kind, but she was almost sure of the answer before she asked the question.
"Dobby thanks Lily Evans very much, but he has already eaten. And Dobby prepared the meal himself for Lily Evans."
Lily nodded. This elf was way too kind and eager to work for the others, as free as he was.
"Has Dobby done anything to upset Lily Evans?"
She looked back at him. He seemed worried. She realized he must have misinterpreted her shaking of the head.
"No. Not at all, Dobby. I'm…" She refrained from telling him that she was tired, or else he would want to help her again. This elf already had more than enough on his shoulders. "This dinner is delicious." The elf's smile returned. "Why don't you take some time off tonight? I think you've earned it."
Dobby's eyes were filled with gratitude. "Dobby is very grateful. But if Lily Evans or Harry Potter need his help…"
"We're going to be fine, Dobby. Harry will be done with his exams in a few minutes. He's going to enjoy the evening. You should do the same. Anyway, I'll be there to keep an eye on him."
She pointed to the map. Dobby bowed down deeply. "Dobby is very grateful to Lily Evans."
"Now go Dobby. I'm not your mistress, but I order you to take some good time for yourself."
Dobby the house-elf looked more than happy to follow this order, and he disappeared. Lily laughed a little as she resumed to eat her dinner. This elf was really something. The only regret Lily had when it came to meeting him was that she wished he didn't almost kill Harry by trying to save him last year. But well, he was the one who helped them unmask Lucius Malfoy. And being an elf in that family must have been very hard. Lily could no longer hold a grudge against such an innocent creature.
After finishing her main course, Lily ate another apple. She went to watch the Marauder's Map as she bit into it. She saw people moving in the classroom of Ancient Runes. She looked at the hour. The exam was over. Lily felt again a pang of jealousy at her son for his work to be over. Hers was far from the end.
She followed him as left the classroom, many students walking around him. Neither Ron or Hermione were with him. She spotted them both in the common room long before Harry arrived. They finished their exam earlier than Harry's, it seemed. The three of them spent some time together in the common room. Quite some time, in fact. Lily was wondering what they were talking about as all other students were heading towards the Great Hall for dinner. When they finally left, the Gryffindor Tower was almost empty. Lily watched them leaving the common room, and then frowned when she got the impression that another point was running after them, with the name Parvati Patil on it. However, she was proverd wrong in her impression quite quickly, as the girl in question took a different path than Harry, Ron and Hermione, progressing at a rhythm that kept suggesting she was running. She may be in hurry to go somewhere else.
Her son and his two best friends took their time in the Great Hall as well. Lily saw people leaving the four tables as they finished their dinner. It was probably because they took more time to arrive at dinner. Lily wondered if Hermione held back Ron and Harry because she was afraid of her results at her exams and discussed her answers in length. The problem with Harry was that he had difficulty sometimes to make Hermione understand that she had to stop blabbering about studies, especially after the exams were finished.
However, there was something that happened that surprised Lily during dinner. All of a sudden, she saw Harry walking away from Ron and Hermione, and away from the Gryffindor table. And he wasn't alone. She soon made out the name of Hannah Abbott who led her son into an empty room in the Entrance Hall.
For a moment, Lily didn't know what to think about it. But she shook her head. She shouldn't worry too much about that kind of things. In fact, she laughed at her own instinctive attitude. This attitude proved to be misplaced when the girl left the room barely after one or two minutes. What happened right after left her more puzzled though. A point with the same name she saw before, that of Parvati Patil, approached Harry in the Entrance Hall, then they both went into the same empty room Harry just left. They didn't stay inside much longer than the other girl had, and this time Harry was the first one to leave the room and to walk back to the Great Hall where he rejoined Ron and Hermione, Parvati Patil remaining behind in the Entrance Hall.
Lily frowned for real this time. It was strange. Why did two girls… two people separately brought Harry in an empty room only to talk to him for a maximum of two minutes? Why talk in an empty room at all? What were they discussing? Perhaps Lily was asking herself too many questions, but a little while later, as Harry, Ron and Hermione left the Great Hall and headed back to the Gryffindor common room, she noticed how the point of Parvati Patil followed them at a distance. Her nagging feeling that something was wrong grew when Hermione went a separate way to Harry's and Ron's. They finally arrived to the common room where Harry went for what she knew was the boys' dormitory. At the same time, she watched Hermione taking a very strange path that led her back to the Entrance Hall. Not long after, she, Harry and Ron left the common room where they just arrived and reached the Entrance Hall as well. From there, Lily's suspicions were confirmed when the three of them walked out into the park. She suspected immediately where they were heading. The path they took led straight to Hagrid's house.
Lily shook her head.
"Really?"
She decided what to do right away. She took the Marauder's Map with her and folded it in a way that she could still watch the section of the park where Harry, Ron, Hermione and Hagrid found themselves. Then she left the room.
As Lily travelled through the mostly empty corridors of the school, she kept an eye on the Marauder's Map folded in her hand. She was relieved to see that Harry and his friends had reached Hagrid's hut and were with him. At least, they had someone to watch over them. They were not all alone as sunlight faded. In fact, they were far from being alone. A group of four other people were currently crossing the park towards Hagrid's hut: Albus Dumbledore, Cornelius Fudge, Arthur Pembleton, and Walden Macnair.
Lily's blood boiled at the sight of the fourth name. Macnair was a former Death Eater, another coward and sycophant who claimed to have been submitted to the Imperius Curse while he was at the service of Voldemort, and who avoided the imprisonment at Azkaban through this claim. With the many times that Harry wrote her about the upcoming execution of Buckbeak the hippogriff, she guessed that this man was there to execute the beast. It was out of the question for Lily to let Harry in the presence of this man, and even less to have him and Fudge find Harry outside the castle at this hour. She quickened her pace.
Sadly, the four men were approaching, and Lily knew soon enough that she wouldn't arrive there in time. However, the moment these four men arrived in front of Hagrid's door, the points indicating the children left Hagrid's hut by the back, and as Dumbledore, Fudge, Pembleton and Macnair walked into the hut, Harry, Ron and Hermione circled it and walked away from Hagrid's home. Lily breathed a sigh of relief, but she didn't slow her pace. She was going to bring those three children back inside right away, before someone saw them.
She was reaching the doors of the Entrance Hall when she noticed that the three of them had stopped in their progress and stood still somewhere near the hut. What were they doing? They should be heading towards the castle. She pushed the heavy doors and walked out in the falling darkness.
"Lumos!"
Her wand produced a light, though she made it only powerful enough to see what the map indicated. She raised the map in front of her, her wand pointed at it from very close. This way, no one in front of her would see any light. The children remained still. Then she noticed the four other people along with Hagrid leaving his hut. From where she was, she could see the path that led downwards to Hagrid's home. Harry, Ron and Hermione were now only separated by a thin fifty meters from Lily Evans. She looked up. She kept walking forward, but to her great confusion, she didn't see them. She looked back to the map, and they were still there. Then she looked up, and there was no visible sign of them again.
And then she heard it. A scream. This wasn't a human scream. Lily wasn't Newt Scamander. She couldn't recognize a creature from its cry or sounds, but it was no difficult task to understand what was going on. And the characteristic sound that followed that of something cutting made of steel, digging into the ground, was unmistakable. The screams stopped.
From afar, Lily heard a lament that could only belong to Hagrid. Lily's heart went to Hagrid in that moment.
"They did it. I… I don't believe it. They did it."
All thoughts about Hagrid or the hippogriff vanished immediately. Lily looked at the origin of this voice, but there was nothing to be seen. Only the empty, uninhabited park. And yet, she couldn't have dreamed. She had clearly heard Hermione's voice.
"Hagrid."
This time, there was no way she imagined it. She heard her son's voice. And then she realized why she couldn't see the three children.
"Maybe we should… I don't know." This time, it was Ron, the son of Molly and Arthur, who spoke. "Wait for Fudge and the others to leave, and go comfort Hagrid a little."
"Out of the question." Lily broke her silence. Although she couldn't see them, she knew very well that the children had to be stunned, if only by the gasps at least Hermione produced. "You're coming back to the castle with me. You'll see Hagrid tomorrow."
"Mom!" Harry said, surprise plain in his voice, as it should be. "How…"
"Back to the castle," she stated in her voice that let no place to discussion. "Keep the cloak, it will keep you hidden. And don't try to run away. Or I'll know."
She pointed the map she was holding. She then heard footsteps in the grass, and knew that the children were following her orders. She would need to have a good discussion with them before they went back to the Gryffindor Tower.
"Harry, you warned her again?" Ron said behind, in a low voice but not low enough for Lily to not hear it.
"I can hear you, you know," Lily remarked. "And shut up if you don't want people to know you're here."
She looked on the map to see where Fudge, Dumbledore, Hagrid, the former Death Eater and the man named Pembleton were. She was relieved for an instant to see they were heading back inside Hagrid's hut. Only for an instant. An instant that proved fatal.
"RUN!"
She turned on herself as she screamed the word… and was hit by a wave of magic solid like a concrete block to fall on her back, a few meters away. Her wand escaped her right hand, the Marauder's Map left the other. Lily tried to move, but she couldn't. She was stupefied. And in front of her, several meters away, stood the man who did this. It was a man of small stature, with the definitive appearance of a rat. One of Lily's greatest fear came to reality as she saw that Peter Pettigrew was standing over her as she was powerless.
"Lily…" She wanted to grab her wand and throw a Killing Curse at this man for everything he did. For James. For Edgar. For Dorcas. For Marlene. And for Harry too, to protect him. But she couldn't. She was immobilized, unable to move. She could see, hear, smell, feel, but not move.
"Lily… I'm really sorry, but I don't have much time," Wormtail said.
He crouched, and to Lily's greatest horror, he removed the Invisibility Cloak from the three other figures who were also lying still on the ground. He turned one over so that he faced him, and Lily knew by the glasses, despite the falling darkness, that it was her son. She fought uselessly to break the spell, but it was useless.
"Harry… I never got the chance to tell you but… You look just like your father." Lily was boiling with rage and despair. "I liked your father. I even admired him. We were friends at school. He saved me more than once, when other students wanted to do something bad to me, he always stood for me… I wish he never died… But I had no choice. You didn't live back then, but everyone was getting killed. Either we joined the Dark Lord or he killed us. I did what was necessary to survive. Just as I'm doing now."
He produced a silver knife. Lily desperately tried to move, still without success. "I'm so sorry it had to come to this. I wish your father joined the Dark Lord. He wanted him and your mother to work for him, you know? If only they accepted… James would be alive. But I had to choose, and I chose to live."
He lowered the knife. It was a torture for Lily, trying with all her forces to move, while being totally unable to do so, as she heard the blade cut through flesh. Tears came to her eyes as she kept trying to break the Stunning Spell.
"Here… Finally… The thing I've been looking for months…" She heard a tinkling that reminded her of flasks she uses to prepare potions. Pettigrew was still crouched over Harry, but she got the impression that he wasn't stabbing her. "The Dark Lord needs it, Harry, you see… And when I bring it to him…"
The night was torn by a terrible shrieking. To Lily's surprise, it came from Wormtail. He was all of a sudden holding his face with his hands, and large quantities of blood escaped them. The scream almost pierced her ears.
"You will do no such thing."
If Lily wasn't yet totally paralyzed, she was now. The grave voice that pierced through the night was well known to her, but it was the last one she expected to hear in those circumstances. From then, all happened in an instant, but it seemed to take an eternity for Lily. Someone with a large dark cloak appeared in her field of view. She recognized the figure, even from his back, and the greasy black hair. Then Wormtail pointed his wand towards him.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The green light blinded Lily. And again, her heart stopped. However, when the light receded, she was surprised to see Severus Snape still standing tall, while Peter Pettigrew had fallen to the ground, and wasn't moving anymore. A large shield was standing between the two men, one still living, and the other one dead. Severus then turned towards her and walked in her direction. He stopped at a reasonable distance from her.
"Is everything fine?" he asked.
The expression on his face was unreadable, probably not helped by the setting sun that seemed to have just disappeared.
"Yes."
She was almost surprised to hear her own voice. But she turned her head then. The Stunning Spell was broken. She stood up and looked at Severus for a moment. Then she saw movement not far away.
"Harry! Ron! Hermione!"
She rushed to their side. They were slowly sitting in the grass.
"Everyone is okay?" Hermione asked to Ron, who grunted in return, rubbing his nose.
However, for Lily, the one she worried the most was her son, and she was right. For while Ron and Hermione seemed to not have been injured, Harry had a large cut running all along his right arm. The silvery knife that made the cut was right next to him.
"Harry! Are you fine?" she asked, pointing her wand to examine the deep cut. She noticed the small vial whose presence she previously guessed at his feet, a red liquid within it.
"I… I think so," he answered, but she was barely listening to him, looking at the injury this monster inflicted to him.
"There doesn't seem to be an infection." She threw a spell that made a bandage appear and roll around Harry's arm, stopping the flow of blood. "We must get you to the hospital wing. You must be examined by Madam Pomfrey…"
"What's going on here?"
Again, she was surprised to hear a voice, but very pleasantly this time. Albus Dumbledore was coming their way, the people of the Ministry and Hagrid on his tail.
"Harry? What happened?" Hagrid roared.
"But what…" Fudge started, panting as he arrived, but Severus answered him before he completed his sentence.
"I think your search for Peter Pettigrew is over, Minister. He is there."
He pointed his wand, which produced light as well now, towards the lifeless body of Wormtail. Everyone stared at it. Dumbledore had a very serious expression. Fudge and the man called Pembleton looked speechless. Macnair looked more interested than disgusted by the sight of the body covered in blood. Hagrid was stammering, as if he was trying to say something but couldn't find the words. Finally, it was Dumbledore who broke the silence.
"Lily. Bring Harry, Ron and Hermione to the hospital wing. Have them examined by Madam Pomfrey right away."
Lily was relieved to see that Dumbledore had the same priorities than she had in this moment. "Right away."
She almost dragged her son and forced his two friends to follow her back to the castle as she heard Dumbledore giving instructions to the Minister of Magic, something which wasn't new.
"Cornelius, I think we should contact the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Aurors responsible for the search of Pettigrew. They will certainly have a lot of things to look into and a lot of questions to ask…"
About an hour later, after conducting Harry, Ron and Hermione to the hospital wing, checked by Madam Pomfrey, ensuring that none of them were badly injured (Ron and Hermione had nothing, while Harry's injury was superficial and healed within seconds), and having quite the discussion with them, berating them for leaving the castle outside permitted hours, Lily was sitting in Dumbledore's office, in the presence of the Headmaster himself, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Cornelius Fudge, Amelia Bones and Miranda Savage. She just told them everything that happened tonight and how this resulted in Peter Pettigrew getting killed.
"How is that possible? How could Pettigrew get onto the school grounds?" Fudge complained loudly as Lily completed her explanations.
"This isn't the first time he's done it," Amelia pointed out.
"But with all the additional measures we took…"
"It doesn't matter," Savage said all of a sudden. "Peter Pettigrew is dead. He will not endanger anyone anymore."
"Yes, it's true. Viewed like this… Though, how are we going to explain that we allowed him to get inside Hogwarts again?"
"As for me, I wonder why our protection spells were not activated," Amelia Bones declared. "We were supposed to have alarms and alerts to warn us of any presence of Pettigrew on the school grounds. Why weren't they started?"
"Because… the Marauder's Map left the room we were assigned," Lily explained.
"Excuse me?"
"The spells that were to warn us of Pettigrew's presence were not cast on the map, Madam Bones," Miranda explained. "They were cast on the room where we established ourselves, and they were to alarm the whole school if the room detected Pettigrew's presence on the map. But Evans brought the map with her when she went to bring back Mr Potter and his friends inside the castle, and so the spells didn't detect anything."
"I folded the map as I went out," Lily added. "The map did detect Pettigrew. I just didn't see him because I could only look at a part of the map while I was walking. This part was only displaying a section of the park. When I noticed Pettigrew's presence, it was already too late."
"Well," Madam Bones said, "I wonder why the detection spells were not thrown directly at the map."
"We couldn't," Savage explained. "This map is extraordinarily well done. We couldn't cast a detection spell on it. It never worked. So we cast the best replacement spells we could."
Yes, indeed. It seemed that James and his friends made way too well.
"Pettigrew must have been waiting for the right moment. Maybe he suspected that Harry Potter might come out this night, so he took his chance. The odds of this happening were small… but it happened."
Yes. To her greatest shame, Lily felt that it was her fault. Not only she brought the map with her, technically deactivating the detection spells surrounding it, but she also failed to notice Pettigrew on the map in time. Worse, it was very plausible that Pettigrew got into the school and found Harry because of her. Harry, Ron and Hermione had been hiding under James' Invisibility Cloak, the one Lily gave to her son earlier this year. Pettigrew could not see them. but Lily wasn't hidden. She walked to the sight of everyone in the park, and Wormtail might have guessed that Harry wasn't far when he saw Lily. It was quite possible that she was the cause of this new attack and the injury her son suffered from.
"Well… in any case…" Fudge began, "Pettigrew is dead… This is over… And no one was injured… Well, at least, not badly injured… I think that we must understand that your son was healed pretty quickly?" he asked Lily.
"Yes. Madam Pomfrey will keep him under observation for the night, but Pettigrew only scratched Harry's arm. There was no curse or spell associated with his blade," she replied.
"Well, good thing. I'm sure we can present things from a right angle. Dumbledore, I'm sure that you won't oppose that we… present these events under the best possible light. After all, we don't need parents to panic or fear the worst for their children when there is no reason for that."
"As long as it doesn't endanger my students, Cornelius, you can handle the communication the way you want," Dumbledore said. "I guess you will want to bring the body and perform an autopsy."
"We will," Amelia Bones stated shortly.
"Very well. If you have other questions, please feel free to ask them, but I would like to send Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall away if you allow. There are already rumors running through the school, and I think the Heads of Houses would be more useful calming their students."
"You may go," Amelia Bones replied, "but remain available if Aurors have other questions to ask you."
The two teachers nodded and left on that. Lily looked over her shoulder. Minerva sent her an encouraging look, but for once it wasn't her visual contact Lily was looking for. She felt sorry as she witnessed Severus heading out without a glance towards her. She would have wanted to tell him, even if only through a look in the eyes, that for once, she was thankful to him. But this would have to wait for later, it seemed.
"Well, I guess that there's nothing else to do. I mean, Pettigrew is dead." Fudge then seemed to realize something. "I guess you will want the Dementors to be gone, Dumbledore."
"Indeed, Cornelius. I think my students, my professors and the residents of Hogsmeade will be very happy to see them gone," the Headmaster replied.
To that, Cornelius. "Indeed. You are right. I'll talk with them and order them back to Azkaban right away. Savage, follow us. Lily… you may stay. You must be relieved that Harry is alive, but your son was injured nonetheless, so I won't force you to come back to the Ministry right away. But I expect a detailed report tomorrow on my desk."
"Yes, Minister," Lily replied. This was not a task she looked forward to, but if she was to be an Auror, she would have to contend with it. If she indeed became an Auror. After tonight's events, she was no longer sure it might happen. She let Pettigrew approach her own son, after all.
"We will need to talk tomorrow as well," Miranda whispered on her way out, which did nothing to reassure Lily. But for now, she didn't really care about it. Her son was what mattered the most. And this was why she remained alone with Dumbledore when all the others were gone.
"I have the impression that you want to tell me something, Lily," the Headmaster rightfully said, his concerned and understanding expression encouraging her to speak.
"Yes. First, I'm not sad that Pettigrew is dead," she declared, almost defiantly.
"Which is totally understandable. Even I never take joy in someone's death, but we are humans, and we have the right to be relieved and to not shed tears when someone who wants to cause us harm dies."
"Yes. But I wish we could have interrogated him. Severus should not have killed him."
"I know that you don't like him, Lily, and you have good reasons to not like him. But he may have saved Harry's life tonight. Even you cannot deny this."
"No. I'm not denying it. He may have saved Harry's life. But I don't think he did."
Dumbledore looked more closely to Lily. "How so?"
She was glad that Dumbledore didn't put her answer on the fact she didn't trust Snape, for this wasn't the reason why she thought that. "I don't believe that Wormtail was trying to kill Harry. At least, I think this wasn't the only reason why he tried to approach him this year. If he had only wanted to kill Harry, he could have done it a long time ago. Instead… He didn't try to kill him on the Hogwarts Express. And tonight, instead of killing him, he took some of his blood. And he said before he died that he had been looking for this for months, and that Voldemort needed it."
Lily's words hung in the office. Dumbledore kept staring at her, seeming very interested in what she was saying.
"What could Voldemort do with Harry's blood?"
Dumbledore slowly positioned himself back more comfortably into his chair. "Thousands of things. Human blood has many uses in magic, especially in the dark arts. It can be used for potions, poisons, remedies, curses, rituals, even spells. And…" He hesitated before he spoke. "I do not think me neither that Pettigrew was trying to kill Harry. No. From what you told me, I think he was acting on Voldemort's orders. And since I am quite certain that Voldemort wants nothing more but to kill Harry with his own hand, I would not picture Peter trying to kill Harry. This would have put his life into danger far more than any possible failure. No. Peter must have found Voldemort, one way or another, and he came back on Voldemort's orders. And it seemed that he wanted something very specific. Something that was worth risking one of his last, perhaps his last surviving servant. Something that Voldemort wanted so badly that Peter was ready to risk his own life to get it."
"But… what he would want to do with Harry's blood?"
"As I said, there are many uses to human blood. I have theories, thousands of them, and will need time to determine the ones that are the most plausible."
"But without Peter, he cannot get his hands on Harry's blood anyway. Whatever the use he wanted to make out of it, he's unable to get it."
"We must never underestimate Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore reminded her, and Lily could only agree that he was right. "We deprived him of a useful servant, and we may have a better idea of his intentions, so he's temporarily weakened. But we are talking about Voldemort, and he will keep trying to come back, no matter what happens. We cannot lower our guard, I'm afraid. If this year proved anything, it's that danger is looming all around us, and coming from the places and people we expect the less."
Again, Dumbledore's wisdom proved accurate. An assassin had hidden in Harry's dormitory at Hogwarts for two years, and he managed to attack him in the places where he was supposed to be safest.
"I think you should go and get some sleep, Lily. The night has been tiresome for everybody, although it only began."
"Can I see my son again before I leave?"
"Yes. I'm sure he's still waiting for you. I'll tell Madam Pomfrey to let you visit him. Although don't expect her to be happy about it."
Indeed, Madam Pomfrey wasn't happy to see Lily visiting Harry again after the lengthy conversation she previously had with him. She only relented because Lily had Dumbledore's authorization.
"I give you ten minutes, then he must rest," she stated abruptly.
Lily went to the bed where Harry was. He was sitting on it, clearly still awakened, with Ron and Hermione close buy.
"It seems that the three of you have your eyes open," she commented.
"How are you, Mom?" her son asked her.
"I'm fine. I came to see if you were doing alright."
"Yes, I am. What about Hagrid?"
Lily pursed her lips. "He looked fine when we left him." At least, he looked physically fine. Lily knew that Hagrid would certainly be devastated tomorrow. For now, he might be more worried for Harry, Ron and Hermione than anything, but the loss of his hippogriff would come back to haunt him very soon once the news that the three of them were alright sank in. "You should go and see him tomorrow."
"We will," Hermione said. "And Pettigrew? Is he really dead?"
"Yes, he is," she stated plainly. Much like last summer, Lily didn't feel really overjoyed at the news. She felt relieved that this man was gone, for he would no longer be a danger, but she felt no joy. "You don't have to worry anymore. The Ministry is bringing his body out. And…" She gave the news, as this was probably the best thing to happen today, "The Dementors are going back to Azkaban tonight."
She could see the relief on her son's face.
"Oh, right when we were getting used to them," Ron mocked. Lily thought it was clearly meant to be sarcastic. "And what about us? Are we in trouble?"
Lily rolled her eyes. "That will be to Dumbledore and McGonagall to decide. And you…" She looked to her son with a severe expression. "I'll keep a close eye on you this summer."
"Will you have time with your examinations?" he retorted.
The worst was that he was right. Well, in fact, she didn't want to punish Harry, nor Ron or Hermione for what they did tonight. When considered, they only went out to comfort Hagrid in a time when he needed it, and they had taken many precautions to not be caught, even by Wormtail, even using the Invisibility Cloak. Lily truly felt that it was her presence that probably betrayed theirs. Still, she couldn't send the message that it was fine to leave the castle's confines at night. She would have to think about something once Harry was back home. For now, she felt that the professors would have to decide what disciplinary sanctions were required, and that the three children were punished more than enough for breaking out of the school with what they went through.
"Don't underestimate your mother," she warned him.
However, Madam Pomfrey came to tell her that visit was over, and Lily was forced to leave after kissing Harry on the forehead and wishing good night to them all. She then went into the dungeons of the castle, where she knew he would be. She never thought that she would actually do that one day, but she was going to thank Severus Snape. After all, although he technically killed someone tonight, and willingly made this person suffer with one of the spells he created which Lily always despised, he also saved her son. For a moment, when he approached her, she almost got the impression that the boy she knew in her childhood was back, but perhaps it was only the result of her imagination and the lack of light.
Lily didn't find him in his office. She finally decided that she ought to go sleep a little. Tomorrow, she would probably be debriefed at the Ministry of Magic, where people would ask her to explain this disaster. She did allow Wormtail inside Hogwarts, after all. She felt that next morning could prove quite a challenge for her. However, right now, she only was relieved that Harry was safe and felt that they all deserved a good night of sleep.
I know this is not as extensive as the end of the third book in canon, but I hope you appreciate the direction the story is slowly taking away from canon.
Please review.
Next chapter: Hannah