Paint it Black- The Rolling Stones
Pretty Face- Soley
December 1977
Lily sat on a chair at Marlene's bed-side in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts, looking at the bushy Christmas tree that had been placed beside Marlene's bed by Sirius Black. It was an impressive piece of magic that Sirius had created to cheer her up. It had arrived in a small tin mug with a ribbon around it, and had grown dramatically every day since the attack.
Marlene had been hexed straight into the hospital wing. She looked scary. Her skin was gray, her hair was brittle and white. Her mouth kept filling up with blood which she had to spit out into a bowl. It made her sick from disgust, and she wouldn't stop vomitting. It was not the first student-on-student hex that year that had worried the staff, nor would it be the last. But it was the first to come from an unknown attacker; a random student who'd heard of Marlene's blood status and felt compelled to express their distaste. Common rooms were on lockdown while the professors tried to find out who to expel. Lily knew it would not make a jot of difference. No muggle-born walked the corridors alone anymore.
Lily had been admiring Marlene's Christmas tree for half an hour now, and was staring at her reflection in the green bauble by her head. Her expression was fearful. It did not match the weary anger in her mind. She tried to smile.
"What are you smiling at?" asked Dorcas, who was sitting on Marlene's bed, stroking her head.
"Nothing," replied Lily quietly. "Just practicing."
Dorcas gave her a quizzical look. Before Lily could explain, Marlene lurched into a sitting position, and before either Lily or Dorcas could register it, she threw up into Dorcas' lap.
"Shit..." Marlene mumbled. "I'm so sorry..."
"It's alright," replied Dorcas, staring down at her disgusting school-skirt. "You've done this before, actually. In decidedly less pitiful circumstances."
Marlene managed a weak smile before falling backwards onto her pillow. Madam Pomfrey came rushing over to fuss her.
"You girls need to leave," Madam Pomfrey told them, pulling a tissue from her apron pocket. "Miss McKinnon needs rest and she will not get it with all this excitement!"
Lily raised her eyebrows at Madam Pomfrey's wording.
"Hear that, Dorky?" asked Lily. "We've got to move this party along."
Dorcas slowly looked up from her sick-covered lap to give Lily a look of misery.
Madam Pomfrey sighed. "Miss Meadowes, let us find you a spare skirt. Any spell can clean up a sick puddle but that smell is going to stay with you for some time..."
Madam Pomfrey took hold of Dorcas by the crook of the arm and lead her out of the Hospital Wing to storage. Lily watched Dorcas waddle awkwardly away, vomit dripping onto the floor of the Wing.
Lily turned round to face Marlene, whose eyes were now half-open.
"I don't know who's more embarrassed..." Marlene croaked. "Me or Meadowes."
"Meadowes, I'm sure," Lily smiled, taking a tissue from the box on Marlene's end-table. "I don't think I've ever known you to be embarrassed, actually."
She began to wipe at Marlene's face. Madam Pomfrey had quickly cleaned her up of vomit, but Lily wiped her sweat, and was gentle and as nurturing as Marlene needed from a familiar female.
"You don't have to be here," said Marlene. "I'm disgusting."
"Don't be silly," replied Lily. "Where else would I be?"
"Outside the Slytherin common room, waiting to avenge me. I'm furious that you're not there right now, smashing skulls."
Lily tutted. "I've been beaten to it, unfortunately. Your boyfriend's out causing anarchy in your name as we speak."
Marlene sighed. "He's too chivalrous for his own good, that boy..." she looked up at Lily with a rare expression of severity. "You'll tell him to not be stupid, won't you?"
Lily looked at her with mock surprise. "I thought you'd be glad to hear he's championing you."
Marlene lurched, and spit a gob of blood into the tin bowl at her bedside. She leant back tiredly. "It's not worth it. This is not worth it. And I don't even know who it was who hexed me, so he can't possibly know. Aaagh..." Marlene clutched her stomach and winced. Lily tensed. Marlene curled over for several seconds before relaxing.
"This is scary," said Lily.
Marlene made a face. "It's just kids wanting to look like big men."
Lily gritted her teeth. "This isn't a second-year prank, Marlene. This is serious."
Marlene rolled her eyes, closed them, and did not respond.
Lily sat back down. She was too used to Marlene being a loaded gun. Her recent weariness of war-talk was alien. It made Lily feel alone, and more exposed. This, in turn, made her feel like a bad friend.
Lily looked at the Christmas tree.
"Marlene..." Lily whispered.
"Mmm?"
"I, um...
Marlene opened her eyes.
"James and I... did it."
"Did what?"
"It."
Marlene smiled. "You two didn't hang about..."
Lily grinned back. She'd imagined before what sort of reaction she'd get after telling her friends she'd had sex. She'd expected melodramatic gasps and hand-flapping and endless questions, just as it had been when Alice had declared her first time back in fifth year. She had also anticipated that when Marlene's time came, she would be all-singing and all-dancing, wearing her sexuality like a badge, proud and excited about an unlocked dimension- a new part of life, the secrets of the universe spilled. This was what excited Lily now. But Marlene had been calm, almost bashful about it. Lily had not understood Marlene's unusual attitude, until now.
"How was it?" Marlene asked her.
"It was good."
"It didn't hurt?"
Lily shrugged. "Not really."
"Was he nice to you about it? Be honest. Don't cover for him."
"He was nice," she said before Marlene's thoughts could run away with her. "Relax."
"It was yesterday, wasn't it. During the Hogsmeade hours."
Lily nodded again.
"Shrieking Shack?"
Lily winced, the idea having seemed like the most sane option at the time now feeling grubby and stupid.
Marlene saw her expression and grinned. "Me too."
They both wrinkled their noses in disgust and laughed.
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September 1982
The Potters were all awake at five in the morning, before the sun was up. The chilly darkness reminded Lily of Christmas, and for that reason alone she was happy to be up, watching Harry eat his early breakfast while James, dressed in training robes, spent his last few minutes at home cradling Matilda.
Lily tried to calculate how long the war had lasted. She barely knew when it had started, just that all of a sudden there had been a need for her to fight. However long it had been, it felt like months since Lily had revealed her personal milestone to Marlene, and now she and James had perfected the art of creating life. And 'perfect' was an accurate word. It seemed like a lucky fluke that twice now she had borne children who were fine. Healthy. Four limbs, two eyes, two ears and functioning organs. She'd feared, once, that motherhood would be difficult to achieve. Her own twin had been born dead, and James' mother had miscarried three times. Those fears, which had entered Lily's mind only when she'd married, had not occurred to her at all the first time she'd had sex. She'd feared children, not the lack of them. She had militantly armed herself against pregnancy once, and had shaken with fear when her body clock faltered. She tried to picture herself as a teenager, in a Hogwarts uniform, with the two children she now had. Time was weird. It was horrible and unstoppable and complicated and never ever helpful, but it was all people cared about.
"I love you..." James whispered to his daughter. "I love you... Lily, I love her."
"I know."
"I hate them for doing this."
The 'them' James spoke of was the Auror department; Etta Gamble and Rufus Scrimgeour and whoever else had sent the letter demanding that he return to training, or face disqualification.
"We'll miss you."
James grimaced. He kissed his daughter's head again.
Lily hadn't spent so much as an hour away from her yet. When James returned later, Matilda might look completely different. Her eyes might have changed colour by the evening. One day, James might leave for training and come back to a walking baby, or a Hogwarts girl, or a grandchild without having seen any transition take place.
"In the muggle world..." Lily began, thinking aloud. "... only the richest kids go to boarding school. The rest come home to their parents every day."
James looked at her sadly, regretfully. "I know."
"... Dads can stay at home for two weeks before going back to work."
He sighed miserably. "Some wizards can, too. I just happened to choose a career where the people in charge don't care about your personal life."
"I'm sure that's not true."
"I've never been so close to quitting..."
"You can't," Lily said with exasperation. She stood up, and walked around the kitchen table to James. She came to stand closer to him than necessary, so that the baby was nestled between them.
"We've said this before. Our lives will never be easy. But you having your dream job will certainly help us."
James looked across the room at Harry, who was still sat eating his porridge while oblivious to his parents' upset. "It was easier to leave Harry when I was fighting to keep him safe. It feels so selfish leaving her."
Lily shrugged. "This'll be for her, too. You'll be keeping the bad people away..." Lily could hear herself trying to convince her husband to leave her alone all day with a newborn and a toddler, and it sounded ridiculous. She wanted to beg him to stay, but she was not that wife.
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The Grettadam Chamber was full of loud clashing and clanging, metallic clanking and scraping. It was painful to the ears with such an echo. But James was glad of it. He'd found this charm- to cast long lengths of binding metal chains from one's wand- extremely difficult. He was not used to challenging charms, and welcomed the activity it provided his mind.
He wanted to stop thinking about the baby, and about Lily at home with two children alone. Auror training was either boring or violent, and he was not in the mood for either atmosphere.
He stood opposite a mannequin, made animate by magical clockwork. He was creepy and emotionless, a smiley face painted on in black paint. James had spent the past two hours attempting to whip a conjured metal chain around its middle to bind it, but he couldn't get it right. He'd catch his neck, which would be fatal, or he would miss his arms, which would allow him to wriggle free. Or, he'd mess up the charm entirely, and he'd produce a too-short chain. It was a nightmare to get right, and everyone else was struggling too. Bertie Weasley's kept conjuring sheets of chainmail as opposed to an actual chain, and the aggressively-competitive Valentine had already dislocated her shoulder from the force of her chains' whips.
"No lunch hour until you've all managed to bind your mannequins once with the charm!" Etta Gamble called out to the chamber. She was walking along behind the row of frustrated trainees, and leaned close to James as she walked behind him.
"I'll let you know if I think you need a private lesson..." she whispered, her hot breath on his neck making him squirm. She walked away, her heeled shoes clacking a slow beat against the black marble of the chamber floor.
James cast his wand in a violent whipping motion towards his mannequin and managed to flick the mannequin's middle with a conjured chain. How on earth was he meant to bind the bloody thing?
At the far end of the chamber, which was so deep and far-back it was in was totally dark, a door was hastily opened, and someone walked out from the darkness towards the training.
A young man whom James didn't recognise approached Etta Gamble, who looked at the man in mild surprise. As the sounds of whooshes and clanging chains dimmed to silence, the man came close to Gamble. He whispered something to her, and her face turned stony, and the man stepped aside with his head bowed low.
"Valentine?" Gamble called out to the trainees.
Valentine marched towards Gamble from the other side of the room, militant and composed, and came to a sudden stop in front of Gamble.
"I need to speak with you outside..." said the man. "...please."
Etta Gamble gave nothing away to Valentine when she looked at her. Instead, stepped solemnly aside for Valentine to follow the man out of the chamber, into the foyer of the Auror department. A minute later, once the clanging of chains had reached its previous volume, a devastated howl from Valentine echoed throughout the chamber.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
She had never liked the song for its ubiquity in pubs and at parties, but now, it made her want to leap around the kitchen like a twenty-two year old whose life was all dancefloors, hungry men and amber liquids.. not this lonely young mother.
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black...
She listened to the lyrics and thought of the wet frozen world outside and the baking heat of the sun somewhere else on Earth, and the people she shared her house with and the people she shared the planet with, and she danced with the other invisible people who knew that evil was just as common and present as good. You could kill with kindness. Chase people off a dancefloor. Lock them out of the party. They would freeze outside.
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes...
"I want to dance..." Lily told Remus from the kitchen table. "But I can barely move."
Remus was stood just outside the open door, a charm shielding him from the rain, creating an other-worldly force field around him which filled with smoke like a glass elevator.
"I can get you potions for your pain," he told her before taking a long drag on his cigarette. "I can make them myself, even."
Lily shook her head. "Just stay with me."
Remus looked at her. "Are you alright?"
Lily nodded, sensing how unconvincing her smile was. "Just feeling a bit sorry for myself."
Remus nodded. "I get a bit like that too, these days."
Upstairs, Harry napped. He'd succumbed to sleep without a fight. On the kitchen table, in the same Moses basket she'd been planted in on the day she was born, Matilda slept too. Despite the music playing on the turntable, which Lily had slowly cranked up and up and up in volume, just to see if she would wake. She'd stirred briefly when the turntable was on its highest volume, then nothing. She slept soundly. Just as she always did.
"I have perfect kids, Moony."
"True."
"So why do I feel... so..."
"Depressed?"
"No, not depressed..."
"Definitely depressed."
Lily pushed herself off her chair, onto the floor. For a second, Remus was alarmed. But she crawled along the stone floor to the doorway, where she leant against the door frame and curled up. "Do you reckon?"
Remus sighed. "Please sit on a chair. Let me help you..."
"I want to watch the rain. Moony, do you think I'm depressed?"
Remus flung his cigarette onto the grass, ducked inside the kitchen and brought a dining chair forward to the doorway. Without protest, Lily allowed him to help her up onto it.
"Yes, I do. And there are potions to alleviate it, which I can get you if you let me run errands for you."
"Why am I depressed?" she asked earnestly. "I have perfect kids, remember? And James!"
"War, etcetera," Remus answered her.
Lily rolled her eyes. "That ended months ago. I've had a baby since then. I shouldn't be like this."
Remus knelt down in front of her. He held a hand out. She watched it tremble as he held it as still as he could manage. "See? It seems war doesn't go away. Don't beat yourself up about it, you're not the only one still... feeling the effects."
"That was done to you by Bellatrix weeks ago."
"There you go. The war's not over."
"Remus..."
"Lily!" he mocked her, taking his cigarette case back out of his trouser pocket. "Only you can say why you're depressed. Answer the question yourself, tell me why you're feeling low."
Lily watched him take out a match and yet another cigarette, and noted how many he'd smoked since his arrival hours ago, and decided that she'd broach the subject later.
"I've been thinking a lot about Marlene," she told him. It made him pause before lighting his cigarette. "And my sister," she continued. "and I miss my Mum and I miss England."
Remus looked up, at the forest and mountains surrounding the house.
"Sweden is beautiful," Lily said quickly. "It's peaceful and I like living here, but it's not the same. I want a house of our own for once, and I wish James didn't have to go back to the Auror department when Matilda's so young and I'm struggling to write anything but that's not because I'm so pre-occupied with Matilda because she just sleeps all the time and never cries, but I... I don't know, I thought... things would be different by now."
Remus watched a plume of smoke leave his mouth and swirl around him in the force-field that kept him dry from the rain. "You expected the baby to fix everything."
Lily furrowed her brows. "No..." she said quietly.
Remus did not reply.
"I have so much to do," said Lily tiredly. "I just... don't want to."
"Definitely depressed," Remus said again. "But you've just had a baby. Merlin knows what that does to you inside, but you should probably give yourself a little time."
Lily swallowed, feeling uncomfortably warm. She turned to look behind her at Matilda, but saw the messy state of the kitchen and internally groaned. She stood up, ignoring the soreness and cramping inside her, and picked up her wand from the kitchen table. She waved it, and turned back to Remus as various pots and pans and food items lifted from the table and the countertops and drifted around the kitchen, landing elegantly into the sink or re-ordering themselves into cupboards.
"Look at you, using magic for once!" Remus exclaimed. "You really must be depressed!"
Lily rolled her eyes. "I should probably do all this by hand, I just can't be bothered..."
"Why do you think you should be slaving over housework mere days after giving birth?"
"Because I enjoy it."
Remus looked at her as though she'd just told him she'd mated with a gorilla.
Lily laughed weakly, the ache in her belly hindering any proper belly laughter. "Come on, it's therapeutic! Getting your hands dirty, sweating a bit, working... it's a part of life." She smiled wistfully. "When James and I get our own house, I'm going to grow vegetables without any magic at all."
Remus took a drag of his cigarette. "There's a wizard in Cornwall who's lived off conjured food for the past sixty years. Never bought a seed, just cast a spell."
"That's precisely my problem with magic!" said Lily. "Magic is beautiful and life-saving and fun and complex and brilliant but there are too many old wizards who use every magical short-cut known to man and end up rotting away in their mansions, never seeing another soul, never leaving their armchairs because they don't need to!"
"Ah. You met Cygnus and Phineas Potter."
"It's a pandemic... if only they'd-" Lily froze.
"...Lily?"
Lily thought of Sirius' shop; the knick-knacks and trinkets that wizards found fascinating that she'd never given a second thought to. She thought of the hoards of customers outside Sirius' shop that day. That magazine, Tiger Eye, whose pro-muggle leanings were not as tentative as they might have been before the war. There was genuine intrigue towards muggles that had been taboo before. A new topic of societal discussion had been unlocked. It hadn't been something Lily had thought about during the war. There had been human lives to protect. This was a pleasant, welcome side-effect of liberation.
"Oh my god..." Lily dived for the living room and threw herself down onto the floor next to the coffee table.
"Merlin, Woman!" Remus followed her, confused and unnerved. "I thought you could barely move!"
Lily cracked her knuckles. "I'm writing a novel, Moony," she said, exhilerated. "And I'll finish it one day. But this takes priority."
Completely lost, Remus came to sit on the sofa behind her and leant his chin on her shoulder as she typed.
'Are They Mad?: An Essay on Muggles, Magic and The Mind, by Lily Potter.'
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Bellatrix Black had claimed a new cluster of victims. Five muggles, all in a café in Muswell Hill, who would appear on the muggle newspapers tomorrow morning with an accompanying fiction about a gas explosion. A sixth fatality, who would not be featured, was Valentine's brother.
James found himself accompanying Valentine, along with Ammon and Bertie Weasley to St Mungos to visit her widowed sister-in-law and fatherless nieces.
Healers and relatives congregated around the hospital bed on the Spell Damage ward where Valentine's sister sobbed into the hair of one of her daughters, who was frozen and silent with shock, blood pouring from the side of her head.
"Mr Potter..." said the solemn voice of Cornelius Peck. "Tell me the Aurors are close to finding this madwoman."
Peck was wiping blood from his hands with a cloth.
"I'm sure they are," James replied noncommittally . "You must be sick of seeing me, Mr Peck. I have too many reasons to be here."
Mr Peck smiled half-heartedly. "Your face is always a welcome sight on the ward, Mr Potter. You're a war hero. People like to know you're still with us."
Some bloody war hero, he thought.
"Frank and Alice, are they still... uh..." Mad as a box of frogs?
"Their condition is stable," Peck replied delicately. "That is... neither good nor bad."
James looked around. "Where are they?"
Peck shifted uncomfortably. "They're in the residential ward now."
James did not respond.
A healer called Peck over, and he gladly left James' company.
James hadn't seen Cornelius Peck since the wedding, where he'd sat at Emmeline Vance's side while his wife was here. She would be in the residential ward, too, now. Surely? If she was as ill as Emmeline had said she was. It made James curious about Cornelius Peck. A job mere feet from his chronically-mad wife, where he'd met his mistress. Maybe Peck was a bad person. James did not believe that. More likely, Peck was just weak for women.
"Potter..."
James turned round.
"Potter..."
Several beds along, away from the crowd of healers gathered around Valentine's family, was Ted Tonks.
"Merlin..." James rushed towards him.
Ted had lost weight. His cheeks were almost hollow. He stared at James with the vacant expression of someone tired of thinking.
"Are you... alright?" James asked, knowing the question was stupid.
Ted managed a brief smile. "Getting there." He glanced at the bed surrounded by healers. "Poor girls..."
"It was Bellatrix."
"I know," he smirked. "Ears like a bat, me."
James looked around. "Where's Andromeda? Why isn't she here?" James asked.
"She's out looking for a job," Ted's voice was croaky, barely more than a whisper. "She won't find one."
"Why not?"
Ted blinked slowly. "Too much of a Black for some, not enough of a Black for others."
" What about Sirius? Didn't he offer her a job in the shop?"
"He did, Andromeda wouldn't have it. Says she's bad for business."
"That's ridiculous."
"That's reality... Listen, Potter, there are things you need to do for my family..."
James grimaced. "I can't find her, Ted."
"Not her..." he croaked. "Potter, Sirius is in trouble."
James heard his heartbeat in his ears. He looked around at the others on the ward, all of them far enough away not to be able to hear. He leaned closer anyway. "Why?"
"The Minister was here... talking with Scrimgeour when another victim was in that bed..." Ted looked at the bed beside him. "They want to bring Walburga Black in for questioning, but she hasn't been seen in weeks..."
James gulped. "Sirius would argue that's got nothing to do with him."
"Make sure people know that..." Ted coughed, and it sounded chesty and painful. "Nobody knows about Walburga yet, but when they do, they'll say she's helping Bellatrix."
"But Sirius hasn't seen her in years!" James hissed. "Whatever Walburga has done or is doing, Sirius has nothing to do with it! They hate each other!"
"Exactly. If the mob turns to Walburga Black, she'll send them straight to Sirius. She'll do anything to save herself and she can spin a story as efficiently as a spider spins a web."
James dropped his head. "Fuck."
"And the Prophet will either suggest Sirius' collusion or it'll spin him as a heartless bastard who abandoned her. Soaking up the sun in Australia while his frail, bereaved mother is interrogated."
James looked at him pleadingly. "What do I do?" he asked the man in the sick bed.
"Sell him. Sell the marauders. Advocate his shop, do a tell-all interview. Be a war hero..."
Ears like a bat, me.
"...Keep Sirius away. The more we can distract the public from Walburga's hearing, the better."
"Fine..." said James, thinking. "...fine."
"There's something else..."
James almost groaned.
Ted reached a shaky hand to the drawer in his bed-side table. James opened it for him, and took out the only thing in there: a small wooden box.
"Open it, and take the key."
James opened the box. A golden key was sitting atop several folded piece of paper. James recognised it instantly as a Gringotts key.
"Go to my vault... take out everything and get the vault closed."
"Why?"
"You won't see my wife for some time. She's fled the country. When it's safe to do so, give her the money. Keep it out of Gringotts. If anything happens to me or Annie, the Malfoys will find a way to take the money and leave Dora with nothing."
James shook his head. "But nothing's going to happen to you..."
"You don't know that. Potter, my wife can't find a job. She has her own vault but she won't be able to support Dora for long..."
"Ted-"
"Make sure my Dora marries for love."
"Ted... you're overreacting."
"I was eighteen when she was born. Still at Hogwarts. She's got no-one but me and Annie. If anything happens to us... you're all she's got."
"I don't need your money for that, Ted."
"Please."
James ground his teeth as he thought. Ted was a man he could not figure out. The whole world was against him for no reason at all.
"I'll take this," James held up the key. "But only to protect your money in a bad situation. Once you're out of here, it's yours again."
Ted looked doubtful.
"Your family are safe with me, Ted. On my mother's grave, I swear it."
"I believe it, James."
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Dear Petunia,
I am writing to let you know that you have a niece. Whether you know her or not is up to you. I warn you that she will likely be a freak, like her mother.
Lily X
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A/N: I'm Pregnant, and my due date is Harry's birthday. Also, I'm turning 22 (same age as Lily) this month (same as Lily). Also, my boyfriend's Dad's name is Ron and he has a brother called George. Fuckkking weird.
Sorry this took a long time. Personal dramas. See above.
Hope everyone had a good Holiday and New Year. Been keeping your resolutions? I haven't.
N x