The death of an estrangement elicited a strange inner conflict that both James and Lily had experienced more than once during the war. But nobody knew how to react to the news of Regulus Black, least of all Sirius.
The marauders returned from their excursion at 4am. The Potters spent a mere hour at Sirius' flat, consoling him on the death of an enemy. Despite Sirius' constant utterances of "traitor" and "coward", James would not believe that Sirius was in no pain. Isabelle, however, seemed unafraid of Sirius' emotional state.
"Go home," she told The Potters. "Go to bed. James, you've got your thing later today."
"Isabelle's right," Lily professed. "You need to get some sleep. You need to make a good first impression on the instructors."
James squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't need anything. It's my best friend who needs me."
Lily stared at him.
"Prongs..." said Sirius from the sofa. "Since when did our lives stop with each distant death?"
"Distant?" James repeated. "Mate, he was your brother."
"You of all people should understand that my relationship with Regulus was as easy as that-"
"I know, but-"
"James," Lily interrupted. "Sirius isn't going to crumble. You need- yes, need,- to go home. You haven't slept and your first day of training is today."
"I don't care. I'm postponing it."
"You can't be serious."
"Lily, what's more important? My job or my friend's grief?"
"Your job," replied everyone in the room, in unison.
"Prongs, I swear to God..." Sirius growled. "If you don't leave me alone and go to your training session, I'll morph into a dog and bite you on the arse."
"See?" Lily implored. "Good old Padfoot and his wisecracks. He's still in fine spirits. Now let's go."
James rolled his eyes. "Fine. But I'm coming straight here at the end of the day. And I definitely won't enjoy work."
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Lily took Harry to Richmond Park once James had flooed to the Ministry. Lily's affections for Richmond Park had experienced a significant ebb and flow since she was little. It was a national park of two thousand acres, so vast that roads criss-crossed throughout the wide fields and clusters of oak trees. It had been a magical retreat for Lily for many years; a busy yet peaceful safari-like landscape, with the grey towers of central London making the skyline jagged. Lily had spent many Sundays with her family at Richmond Park.
But her rippling relationship with the park was down to its most iconic attraction: the many herds of wild deer that lived there.
As a child, she had found them majestic and beautiful creatures. She and other children would feed them apples and follow them from the trees' shade to the picnic tables. But since learning of her patronus' form and James' animagus, the deer had lost their charm.
There was little else as beautiful as her patronus. Furthermore, when James was in stag form, Lily saw him move with purpose and thought. Real stags, in comparison, were stupid, dozy animals. They were depressing to look at, regardless of her relationship with James.
Lily was not entirely sure why she felt the need to return to Richmond Park that day. It was freezing cold. The grass was covered with frost. Barely any people were walking around, save for the avid ramblers. Lily was shivering, but enjoyed the solitude that the muggle world was providing. She had bought a muggle newspaper, and was sitting at the picnic table that Harry was running circles around. He was bundled up in many layers, and was happily waving a fallen branch in the air. Some of the deer nearby were lazily watching him.
Lily rolled out the muggle newspaper onto the picnic table. The headline had stung her the second she read the angry words.
NINTH MYSTERY DEATH VICTIM IDENTIFIED
The ninth victim of the 'sudden drop disease' found by dog-walkers in Hedgebury Mill Walk in Winchester has been identified as 23-year-old medical student Michael Latimer, who was last seen by his flatmates two hours prior to his time of death. His parents have been contacted and are expected to make a televised appeal for information later this week.
"We are not treating these deaths as homicides, but it is probable that they are linked", the Head of Scotland Yard read in a statement this morning. "These deaths paint a pattern. Since the body sightings have become increasingly distant from London since MP Hugh Fletcher's death in Whitehall, we can rule out the possibility that these are political stunts".
Winchester. Since the muggle family had been found dead in the Forest of Avon, Bellatrix had travelled further away from Lily and James. She'd been to London, killed the MP, killed Regulus, and had just killed a student in Winchester.
She was heading back down to Lily and James.
"Mummy!" called Harry. He was pointing at the group of deer nearby. "Look!"
Lily looked around. Bellatrix, who was expecting a child herself, was still killing other people's sons. She was out there, lusting for blood while her belly expanded with new life, just like Lily's was.
"Stay close to me, darling," she called back to him.
She remembered a time when witches were ugly creatures in fairy tales, and she was normal. She knew exactly how the muggle world would be reacting to nine mystery deaths. Autopsies, pleading statements, air pollution tests, witness reports, conspiracy theories... uncertainty caused more panic than certainty. Women would gossip over lawn fences. It was drugs... it was the government...
The wizarding world knew full well what was going on. It was the ignorance of people on both sides of the magical divide that meant the Ministry's information could not be used to protect or comfort the grieving families.
Lily was stuck in the middle, as always, between the muggle foundations of her very identity, and the absurd world her new family belonged to. Both worlds were flawed, both housed bad people, and both contained little pockets of wonder.
Lily looked up at the small group of deer nearby, which had caught Harry's attention minutes ago. Two very new fawns were shivering against their mother, who was vigorously preening them.
It was a strange climate for a doe to have newborns. It was cold and dangerous. The doe was throwing all her energy into keeping her fragile things warm. Silently, with her wand concealed in her coat sleeve, Lily cast a warming charm in their direction.
"Oh my god..." whispered a female voice.
Lily leapt to her feet, wand now out in the open and in her hand. She faced the woman behind her.
A fair haired woman in a pale pink coat, eyes wide in horror, clutching the handles of her enormous sons' push-chair.
"Oh my god..." Lily echoed. "Tuney..."
"Put that thing away," said Petunia weakly. "And don't.. call me that."
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James stood facing a black abyss.
He had entered this strange place through a door that was no longer there, and had been standing for ten minutes staring into endless shadows.
He was not alone. To his left stood an incredibly muscular young man with dull orange hair and scraggy stubble. He'd been pacing up and down when James had been escorted into the room. When James saw the abyss before him, the man had stopped and stared silently, just like James was. Another figure had entered the room too, minutes later. A short, thin person with a shaved head and heavy clunking boots.
James felt other figures in the room too, but he could not see them. The blue moon-ish light from miles above only lit the end of the room where James, the ginger man and the bald figure were stood. Even then, he could hardly see.
The room had a loud echo. Every time anyone took a step, or inhaled sharply, or fidgeted, the sound was amplified and bounced all around them. Perhaps they were in the world's longest corridor.
"Hey..." the ginger man whispered (though his voice echoed so loudly that everyone in the room could hear). "Mate... with the glasses..."
James glanced sideways at him, not trusting of the shadows to take his eyes completely off them.
"Er- yeah?" James whispered back.
"Can I ask you a question?"
James' heard skipped a beat. He turned and faced the man. Was this his first test? The bald figure was facing them now, too, having heard. Was she in on it?
"Yes... you may," whispered James.
"This... this is the Auror place, isn't it?"
James paused. He stared at the ginger, who was waiting for his response anxiously. Now that James could just about see his face, he saw that this man was not an experienced Auror, or even an accomplished wizard. His face, at best, babyish.
"Um... yeah."
The man breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god... for a minute there, I thought I was in the wrong place."
James looked around him, wondering what on earth this bloke could have thought this place was. "We... were escorted here... by Aurors."
As soon as James was finished speaking, the atmosphere in the room shifted. From very far away, deep within the abyss, came footsteps.
Small footsteps. A woman in heels. She walked fast, and the closer she came, the brighter the little white light that was presumably at the end of her wand became.
James had no word for the sharp, claustrophobic focus that he knew then, when his surroundings died and the other people in the room seemed to emit searing heat, as though molten rock oozed through their veins. The feeling was, however, familiar. His shaky breath and tingling legs were symptoms of a kind of addiction that James had kicked when his son was born.
James withdrew his wand.
"We're going to die..." whispered the ginger man. "It was nice knowing you, man with glasses."
James blinked. "Likewise."
The woman came into view.
She was tall, or at least her towering heels made her so. Her black hair was fixed perfectly on top of her head and her deep red lipstick was painted on with expert precision. She wore a pencil skirt and blouse, and looked more like a Minister than an Auror. Perhaps she was one.
She looked around at the Auror applicants, who had all emerged from the darkness. She sized them up like an assassin choosing her weapon.
"You are standing in the safest room in Britain," said the woman, without expression. "The Grettadam Chamber is impenetrable and intruder-proof thanks to a complex security charm in the air you are breathing."
The ginger man clasped his hand to his mouth.
The woman continued. "This charm casts swarms of microscopic insects to latch onto every living thing in this room. These insects read minds and react to the host accordingly."
James' skin was crawling. His mind was whirring. Was this a test? A memory test? A character test? What was he meant to do?
"The insects develop a psychic link with their host within milliseconds. They can read your thoughts and they can alter your memories. At the end of the day, when your initiation interviews are finished, you will not remember a single word of what you said. As for now... if my estimations are correct, you are unable to remember how you got here."
Everyone balked.
James wracked his brain. He remembered the door... stepping into the darkness and looking back at a closing door... someone had closed it... he looked over his shoulder, as did everyone else, at the space on the back wall where a door had once been. His stomach rolled as he realised that he did in fact remember being at Sirius' flat, and then nothing.
When James looked back, the woman was wearing a knowing look. "Like I said... security."
"Oh my god..." groaned the ginger man, clutching his head. "I can feel them in my brain. Nobody breathe!"
The shaven-headed figure, whom James could now see was a woman, was clawing at her scalp.
"Nobody need panic," said the woman calmly. "To honest and genuine applicants to the Auror programme, the insects will merely fly away."
"What's that supposed to mean?!" shouted the bald woman, whose head was red and raw from scratching.
The woman smiled. "It means that if you are here to become an Auror, you have nothing to fear. But if you're an impostor... the insects will poison you into paralysis until you wake up in Azkaban."
The room went silent.
James had thought little about the Auror training process. He hadn't needed to. Since before the war, James despised dark wizards enough to risk life and limb trying to hunt them down. The Aurors, as incompetent as they had been in the war, were saviours. But you couldn't be someone's saviour without being someone's hindrance. Now that he thought about it, there were a million reasons for a dark wizard to want to infiltrate the Auror office. In the wake of recent events, revenge was probably the most prominent. James was in danger almost as much as his targets were.
The woman smiled. "Good. No liars this year, then."
The applicants looked around at each other, stunned.
"Wands out, wand-lighting charms on..." the woman turned on her heels. "Follow me."
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Lily put her wand in her coat pocket, her mouth still agape and her eyes still fixed on her sister.
Petunia's lips were pursed, but she looked ready to scream.
"How did you know I'd be here?" Petunia asked in quiet, shaking distain.
"I didn't!" Lily squeaked. "I just... I took Harry for a walk and..." Lily looked behind her at Harry, who was staring at Petunia. A stranger.
"That's your son?" Petunia asked.
Lily turned back and nodded.
Petunia seemed to calm. She looked at Harry. "He doesn't look like you."
Lily took a deep breath. "No... thank goodness."
Petunia looked up and down at Lily. "You look dreadful."
"I'm in shock and I'm cold."
"No, I mean your hair's scraggy and you're getting fat."
"I've been in a war and I'm pregnant."
Petunia's expression didn't change for several seconds. "You're..." she began. "The..." she began again. Then, she rolled her eyes. "I can't be here. I'm going."
"No!" exclaimed Lily, jumping forward. Petunia all but dived away from her. "Please stay," said Lily. "While Vernon's not here, we can talk."
Petunia scoffed. "You say that as though I'm his prisoner."
Lily said nothing.
"Right, I'm leaving."
"Tuney-"
"Do not follow me. I'll call the police if you do."
Petunia swerved the pram in the other direction and walked away.
Lily panicked. "Petunia! Wait! Don't do this!"
Petunia did not answer. She kept on walking, pushing Lily's nephew in a pram in front of her.
Lily hesitated, glanced briefly at Harry and at the doe, and knew he was safe. She ran towards Petunia, propelling herself across the wet frosty grass knowing that these moments were endangered, and grabbed Petunia's elbow.
Petunia shrieked and shook her off. Before she said anything, Lily spoke.
"This... is..." Lily panted. "This is goodbye forever."
Petunia stopped.
Lily had known for a while that those words were necessary, and if she ever saw her sister again, she would have to use them. They would hurt. They may even destroy something that had once been indestructible.
"I beg your pardon?" asked Petunia, still scandalised by being grabbed, but having heard Lily's words perfectly clearly.
Lily swallowed. "You know I'm right... if you walk away now... we can never meet..."
"I... I don't... know what you..." stammered Petunia.
Lily took several deep breaths. "Either we're sisters or we're not, Petunia. If we are, we see each other and we talk. You had me for a lot longer than you've had Vernon..."
Petunia's eyed widened. "Do not-"
"I know, I know..." Lily interrupted. "I understand. Don't worry, I'm the same."
Petunia pressed her lips together at the implication of her brother-in-law.
"But if you don't want me in your life, Petunia, just cut me off..."
Lily looked away from Petunia then. The barely-noticeable softening of her expression resurrected memories that were long-dead. Precious ones.
"Make it clear, Petunia. I know we'll never be best friends again. That's something you did make clear."
Petunia inhaled and looked up at the London skyline behind Lily.
"But you can't dangle our relationship on a thread in front of me and watch me beg. Give it to me, or take it away. Make a decision, or I'll just walk."
The sounds of bitter wind in the baron branches and distant roar of planes taking-off overhead filled the silence. Lily looked over her shoulder to Harry, who was taking small steps towards her with uncertainty. Lily smiled and waved at him. He waved shyly back.
Lily looked back at Petunia, whose gaze was still fixed on the London skyscrapers.
"Petunia?"
Petunia squeezed her eyes shut. "It's been quiet here, for us," she said. "No wars."
Lily looked around at the park. She blinked back the moisture in her eyes.
"My Dudley needs his lunch. I have to go."
"Petunia-"
"I'll be in touch."
Petunia kept on walking, leaving Lily and Harry alone.
Lily turned round to say something to Harry, but what she found when she turned shocked her.
The doe, whose fawns were sleeping soundly under their warming charm, was standing tall and beautifully over Harry.
Lily was not scared. Rather, she clasped her hand over her mouth and sank to the floor as the doe watched attentively as Petunia walked further and further away with the pram. Harry clutched the doe's front legs and watched with concern as his mother caught her breath.
When Petunia was a safe distance away, The doe retreated.
"Thank you..." Lily managed. "You beautiful thing... thank you."
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A/N: Thank you for reading.
Richmond Park is a real place where I grew up. Roads and skyline and deer and all.
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