Chapter 19: The Once and Future King
.oOo.
Halloween, 1977
Nobody could say Hermione was happy about this turn of events. These things that had happened, had been very bad, awful, really. The girls in the infirmary, the students alight with anger, fear - nobody could say she was happy, because she wasn't, but she was… something. Like dormant nerve endings had suddenly regained sensation. She felt the way she had under the stands at Hogwarts, setting Professor Snape's robes alight, or sneaking into the restricted section to read about the basilisk. She'd felt it many times after, of course, but not in some time. How fucking perverse, that something inside her felt at ease in this chaos. She knew she was in trouble, and she knew, although she tried to hide it, Lily was too - perhaps they should be crying, or screaming. Instead, they looked at their mirror reflections with the unblinking cognizance of two cats in the dark.
It was ironic, she supposed, that of all the people to comfort her over this festering part of her heart, it was Lily, who technically stood the most to lose by its machinations.
"A little demented, sure," Lily said, nonchalant. "But, it's not a crime to enjoy what you're good at. If your your surgeon liked the part where they cut you open a little bit, you know, if they did a good job,: she shrugged. "It'd be sort of attractive, actually."
"What?"
"If my surgeon liked it when -"
"I heard you, you're just, bloody hell. Are you going to help me or not?" Lily smiled, her tongue too red, and Hermione had to wonder what the hell she had been up to. Nothing good, certainly. She looked horrendous, now that Hermione thought about it. Her hair was damp and stuck to her forehead. Her skin, which took on such a pretty tan when she'd let it, was practically translucent.
"Are you… well?"
"Unfortunately for you, yes. " She drummed her fingers against her darkened mouth, taking in the scene Hermione had painted for her. It was time, Hermione knew, to figure out whatever it was that Lily was up to. She had thought she was privy to it, taking Sirius along for the ride as they learned about all the plans Minister Midblood and her future cabinet hoped to employ one day, but facing the riotous SPEW members moments before, she realized she only had half of it. They had been planting something, and they wanted it to happen tonight. Lily, considering, stretched her neck, then winced. Not a hickey, Hermione imagined.
"I'll tell you what I'd do, but you're not going to like what I have to say. And you're certainly not going to like the price."
"What do you mean? I answered your questions!"
"I had questions, but you are asking me for context, for strategy, for my life's work!" Hermione refrained from saying that her life's work, if only because she hadn't lived very much of it, could not possibly be worth so much, but she did have a point, in principle. And, of course, there was something to be said about her influence on her peers, and even in her death, the events that succeeded it. So, as much as she loathed the price, she had to admit, there was something tempting about laying all their cards on the table. To approach the sword in the stone and see which one of them would be the one to retrieve it. And so, Hermione agreed to the price, all seven pieces of it, and in return, received, according to Lily, at least, the keys to the kingdom. It was a strange sort of deal, left a bitter taste in her mouth, and she wasn't sure what was left to say after they had done it.
"Well," Hermione said. Lily blinked once, twice, too fast, and despite being in Hermione's body, it made her look younger. They had been here before, where their two paths diverged, but they had been strangers then, hadn't they. Not that they were friends now, exactly, but Hermione didn't deny that she'd come to care for the riotous Head Girl…Finally, she decided on echoing a sentiment from the first time they met. "May the best witch win," she said softly, looking away.
.oOo.
Halloween, 1977
[Frank]
For all his strengths, Frank Longbottom would never claim crowd control to be one of them. He was more soft-spoken, not that his father hadn't tried to mold him into a more awe-inspiring future patriarch. When it was clear that Frank's more reserved nature would not be dismissed, he was passed along to his mother, who knew, as all women in her stature did, that silence was a power, too. Knowing when to let it sit. Thinking in it, moving in it.
It was his mother, really, who had set into motion the series of events that brought he and Lily together after their hearings that summer. He had been happy that they had been able to help, perfectly content to get on with his day, and she hadn't said anything exactly. But she had beckoned Lily to follow, depositing them both at Flortescue's while she ran errands. Of course they were going to talk about course it'd make him sick.
He closed Lily's notebook, leaning back into the sun-faded wrought iron chair that chipped flakes of white paint as he shifted in his seat. Across from him, at their small outdoor table, was Lily. She wore a garishly Muggle sunhat, politely looking away as he read, and Frank wondered how either of them were meant to join the throngs of people going about their day as normal behind them.
"Hells bells, " he said finally, breaking the silence between them. Lily laughed into her nearly neon cone - pumpkin and pistachio? - which he ignored. "I mean, this can't be right. They do audits every five years, there's no way—"
"How do you even know that first of all," she asked. "And secondly, it is right. And thirdly," she added after a pause, "Hells bells? Who even says that?"
"My cousin, she-"
"Says Hells bells," Lily interrupted.
"No, I —I mean, maybe? She does this type of work, enforcement. If you found all this out, she certainly has, and so has everyone above her. No offense, I mean." He looked down again at her figures, illustrating the jarring difference in severity of punishment for purebloods versus muggleborns.
"Oh right, of course, you and every other bloody heir, cousins and uncles everywhere you could imagine." She glared at him from under the brim of her floppy hat. He knew, logically, how she looked at him. Charmed, without earning it. And he was, undoubtedly, but he wasn't sure yet if it was worth the cost of his sight. Frank didn't know Lily well enough to tell her this, tell her anything, really, so he just nodded.
"We do," he said, and something in his expression made her soften hers.
"Look, Frank, I'm not accusing your cousin of conspiracy here, I was scared, and I wanted to, I dunno, be informed?" She licked her ice cream, squinting into the sun. "It's just that these things seem to be a lot scarier for people like me than people like you."
Frank was quiet a while, knowing when to sit still. "What if that is what I'm saying? Not Amelia, obviously, and not to you, but…" He leaned in, allowing the silence to settle.
Frank knew that when Alice Flortescue, Lily's friend and ice-cream heiress, was thinking, she'd chew on a piece of gum. He had, in fact, in an effort to get closer to her, nearly bought out the supplies at Honeydukes, just to have on hand to offer her when Slughorn gave them a particularly challenging potion to brew. He didn't need to know Lily well to know that the prospect, however harrowing, to some degree, interested her. She hummed, drumming her fingers against her lips, and Frank wasn't sure if he was pleased or disturbed at the shimmer of delight that crossed Lily's expression as she thought.
"I don't suppose you're suggesting we find out for sure?" she asked, eyebrow raised, and that's exactly what they set out to do. They did research, called in favors, found old Ministry reports that had gotten buried under mountains of legal work, and most of all, they took advantage of their youth, Frank's connections and foresight, Lily's daring and inexhaustible motor. Except, as they were quick to learn, the facts were only half the battle, and power, at least, in the Ministry, moved exceptionally slowly, whether wielded by friend or foe.. If they couldn't change the power, perhaps they could change the people.
And so, Lily and Frank quietly stood up SPEW and its club within a club, and began to play the long game. It had all been going according to plan, at least, until they had returned to school this year. Lily was…different. He could anticipate her less. When she hadn't shown up the first Friday they had originally anticipated sending out what they affectionately called their Opus, it had turned into an impromptu board meeting without her.
"Lady Augusta falls ill, and you tell me you'd be exactly the same, Frank." Alice was cross, as she so rarely was.
"People are going to start asking questions," he replied doubtfully.
"I'm people," Marlene had said. He was grateful to her, for her lack of sentimentality about them. "I've been working my arse off on this," she said, dropping her portion of their pamphlet on the table. Marlene had been tasked with looking at the financial aspect, Mary and Remus on Creatures , Lily the Muggle-borns and Frank the comparatives. Together, they strung together the story that their mere facts did not.
"Then buy her time" Alice hissed, and, of course, she was right, so he spent the school year picking up her slack, smoothing things over. But tonight, he knew, he could hold back the kindling of their work no longer. The girls in the infirmary were going to be a spark to something, and he just hoped it was the right something. When Lily returned from the washroom all aflame, he felt himself relax, just a little. He didn't care that she probably should have sent Mary instead of Alice to see Slughorn, and Marlene instead of Dorcas to the infirmary. He just cared that she looked at ease. Whereas he was never any good wielding the gravity of his name, Lily had always known how to command attention. Together, they could make this work.
"Shouldn't one of us go with you?" Remus asked as Lily reached the end of her list of assignments, the room clearing out. Remus, with one foot in with SPEW and the other with the Marauders, had never been Frank's favorite member; but Lily insisted that half of him was better than none at all, and he would never deny that Remus was a good man.
"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head tightly. "You need to go find Prewett, you're worth more than the rest of us combined with him." That, she hadn't gotten wrong.
"I- alright, what about—" Remus scanned the room. "Pads?" who scowled, still singed by Lily's earlier rebuff. Poor lad, Frank thought. "Prongs, then!"
Lily looked towards him, alarmed, and Frank considered. Push had certainly come to shove, and it couldn't hurt to have the Head Boy on his side. "Game's afoot, Lily," he shrugged. "It'd be nice to have a Chaser on the team."
"Fine. Potter, come on then," she called, and before she could leave, Frank put a hand on her shoulder, leaning in close .
"Board meets at midnight," he whispered. "Bring him."
.oOo.
[James]
"We're splitting up," Lily said curtly as they sped away from their friends. Just moments ago, they had been sitting out on the lake, not enjoying each other's company, but at least tolerating it. James should have known that Lily would kick closed the door that Frank had propped metaphorically open for him. How foolish of him to think he'd been invited in. She didn't even bother to look back at him when she said it, speeding up the stairs that had magically appeared just as she needed them.
"The fuck we are," he spat. "I'm more than just the brawn here, you know. Either you tell me what the hell is going on, or I'm getting back to the infirmary."
"Oh for fuck's sake!" She whipped around. From where she stood ahead of him on the staircase, they met at eye level. She took a deep breath, her brows unstitching slowly. Lily two years ago would have taken his head off, Lily last year would have ignored him, but this Lily?
"I am sorry, genuinely, I am, for disappointing you, or not being what you wanted, or for whatever it is that has you so bloody upset with me, but I promise you, for whatever I've gotten wrong in this godforsaken castle, this, I can do." Her grip tightened around his shoulder, as if trying to convince him of something. She didn't have to.
"I fucking know. You don't think I know? You're the bloody sun, and I-" he cut himself off, he hadn't meant to sound so raw. "What could you possibly need from me?"
Lily frowned again, looking at him this time the way she might a mystery vial from Slughorn.
"I need you to know I am not what you'd hoped for, and I need you to trust me anyways."
It was wicked, he thought, the way that Lily Evans always seemed to know how to get under his skin. He could handle a fight, but a plea? He grit his teeth, pretending not to notice the way that even in his ire, her gaze on him could make him a little bit breathless.
"Fine, Evans" he groaned. "What'll you have me do?"
.oOo.
James did not, in fact, find himself in Gryffindor Tower when Lily finally pulled the curtain back. Instead, he found himself on the seventh floor, staring at a small, white door, with flowers painted on the outside. It wasn't what the Room of Requirement always looked like, but he assumed it was what Lily's door looked like back in Little Whinging.
James would be a liar if he said he'd never thought about being invited into Lily's room, and just as it had been harrowing when it had actually happened earlier in the year, the prospect of entering her Muggle room seemed even worse.
Inside, the walls were light yellow, with darker yellow stripes, and the bedding was blue and frilly upon white wrought iron and a canopy overhead. There was an old cream vanity and dresser set, and two bookshelves on either set of the door. Near a window, someone had pushed up a trunk and covered it with a pillow to make a makeshift window seat, a telescope to its left. A closet brimming with clothes he had never seen her in, Muggle clothes, not hidden by the wooden beads that replaced a door. A worn leather jacket too big to have been for her. Bright red overalls. A green plaid skirt. A little yellow bathing suit. A woolen beret. He felt as though he had entered a kaleidoscope, the image of Lily's increasingly manicured Hogwarts presence superimposed by the snapshots of the girl she was at home.
He started at her desk, half pens and paper, half lotions and makeup. Tucked in between where the glass of her mirror met the old cream painted wood frame were dozens of pictures, some of people he recognized, and some he did not. One particularly caught his eye, lines in it from where it had been folded in four. It was their year, all the Gryffindors, Remus had gotten a camera that year and took pictures of everything. He picked it up and flipped it over, flushing when he saw his own messy scrawl. They had kissed just before the summer, briefly, finally, on a dare playing a Muggle game with a bottle Sirius had read about in a magazine. She had rolled her eyes, getting up onto her knees and pulling him up by his collar to meet her.
"Wasn't so bad, was it?" James asked, and she shrugged.
"It was alright," she said, nonchalant, but when they boarded the train, she hung back from her friends, slipping next to him before he entered his compartment.
"Write to me?" he asked, scribbling his address on the photo and handing it to her.
"I might," she grinned. They had been much younger then, and upon their return to the castle, the rising tension with their classmates, he and Snivellus' unfortunate mishap, and the fact that her eyes seemed to either glaze over him or light up in anger when he passed, he thought it was the last genuine smile she'd ever give him . But, then why had she kept it, among pictures of people he assumed she loved? He frowned, not understanding, and put the picture in his pocket.
He found the scrolls not long after, well hidden in a secret compartment she had hollowed out from one of the desk's legs. On its top, it read: "The Purification Process: Part II of IV".
He sat on the edge of her bed, comically large under her tulle canopy, and began to read.
.oOo.
Before they started their formal education, most young wizards hailing from a certain status received tutoring on subjects that interested them. Dragons, Potions, Astrology, War. James had taken after his mother, fleeting from one to the next, until they had run out of qualified tutors. One summer, he had expressed a vague interest in Muggle London, and his mother, so delighted by what he was not sure was his precociousness or ingénue, had hired a Muggle - the sister of a French Muggle-born girl she knew, to nanny him. Of course, then he had gotten bored, she had been Obliviated, and he instead latched onto Alchemy, spending the rest of the summer trying to turn the rocks he found in the stream running through their property into gold.
There were four steps to it, and presumably four parts to the pamphlet SPEW was putting together. Hers, Part II, outlined how the consequences of breaking the Underage Sorcery law had been applied unfairly, targeting those who some in the upper echelon of Wizarding Britain would find "less desirable" with harsher punishments. It wasn't a manifesto, it wasn't a declaration, it was simply a story— that if you were Muggle-born, or poor, or a werewolf, or last in line to an unsecured fortune, run-ins with the courts led to disproportionate punishment - stripping wands and expulsion from wizarding society for offenses that would get someone better positioned, by blood or by wealth, a slap on the wrist. And it made sense, in a way, that with Muggle-borns, especially, no understanding of the courts, no education from Hogwarts about their rights, nobody to advocate or appeal on their behalf, you were simply more likely to…disappear. It painted a picture so jarring he could feel the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
Supplemental, he assumed, to her part of the pamphlet, was her research. He flipped through a photo album she had told him to retrieve, whispering a spell to change them from Muggle pictures to newspaper clippings, court documents, all sorts of evidence. It wasn't hard to tell which one was Lily's, James's breath caught in his throat when he got to it. A witch had been accused of a second infraction. There had been an accident, little hope of help, which she had foolishly admitted, and she had even stolen a wand to do so. On paper, it was clear cut, and yet, in practice, how should a child, when given a shred of a chance to help another, should be punished for trying? How old had she been, he wondered, flipping back to the date. Oh. he realized, fingers finding the folded photo in his pocket. Of course she had come back to school a changed witch. And he? He had spent the summer in France, learning how to sail.
"I appreciate that you're taking in a lot of new information right now," Marlene McKinnon sighed, tying a loop into her roll of scrolls to be hooked onto an owl . "But could you be a dear and process on the job?"
"I-sorry," he replied. After grabbing her scroll, Lily had asked him to meet her in another secret room. Now, he was in what looked like had once been a strategy room for Gryffindor in the tunnels rumor had he constructed. He and Marlene had been relegated to menial tasks while the adults, it seemed, argued. Lily and Frank were arguing their cases, Frank of the mind that their work had to go out today, while Lily wanted to wait.
"So what happens now?" He was glad to have found her, of the "insiders," she seemed to be most on the outside. "What if they can't agree?"
"This isn't a dictatorship, it's a club. We're going to take a vote."
This didn't feel like a normal club, but he didn't argue. He looked down at the pamphlet in its hands, the assertions it made. He thought about Lily's anger at him when he said he wanted to do the Wizengamot Internship on a whim. The way she kissed him at the beginning of the summer years before and had seemingly forgotten about him by the end. "Is it true, do you think?"
"Do you think I'd be here if it weren't?" He felt silly, as he often had with Lily. Silly for his affections, and now silly that he hadn't realized the completely different worlds in which they operated.
"You need to vote no," he whispered, and Marlene gave him a tight lipped smile, like she might a child who had gotten on her last nerve.
"What for? I think Frank's right."
"For me, as a favor."
"A favor?" she hissed, and James winced. She began to count on her fingers. "The ball, those mirrors you had me blast your crest off of, helping Sirius deal with his horror of a mother? I am afraid you've used up your three wishes."
"A deal, then. "
.oOo.
November 21, 1977
[Lily]
Significantly secondarily to whatever the hell Lily had been up to, James Potter's character was a mystery that itched at Hermione's brain. He was petulant and spoiled. He was acerbic, and now, she realized, when he seemed to be the only person who could stand the sight of her since Halloween, unfailingly loyal. It didn't pass her, that if asked to describe Lily, Hermione may have said many of the same things. Spoiled, perhaps not - her room back home was not big or new, but it was full of love.
Lily had revealed its existence to her in such a secret, and Hermione had to bite her lip to not laugh. She might not have been able to find the scroll without Lily's help, but she had certainly found the impressive replica of her muggle room that Lily had created. Where else did people look for secrets, if not the Room of Requirement?
What she hadn't been able to make herself do, however, was actually enter it. It was easier for her to be Lily in her room in the Head Suite, with her sterile journals and her school uniform. That was Headgirl Lily, soon to be Wizengamot Intern Lily. Future barrister Lily. Eventual Minister Lily? The Lily Hermione had to pretend to be, and to some extent, she imagined Lily pretended to be, too.
But at the edge of her Muggle room, fingers around the doorframe where Lily and Petunia had been tracking their heights since they could stand, Hermione began to panic. It was the room of a girl, blooming into a life that she, whether Hermione wanted to admit it or not, would play a hand in cutting short. Oh, what had Hermione being here already done to the poor girl? What was she going to do? She had shut the door, recoiling as if it had been on fire, and vowed not to enter it again, lest she become too sentimental.
She was grateful, then, and a bit perplexed, for James' assistance that night, and for his loyalty since. Nobody had been more confused than Frank though, who widened his eyes in comical shock when Hermione and James had come through the door together, but played it off as well as he could. She couldn't imagine why, because he had been the one to ask her to bring him, but Frank seemed to defer to her judgment.
She had wondered, voicing her doubt to even Lily herself, why it was Lily who seemed to spearhead their crew. She was smart, certainly, but not the smartest, that was Frank. Not the kindest, that was Alice. Perhaps the most reckless? Most inventive? And maybe that was true, but what was also true, she knew now, was that Lily's story was simply the saddest, the most convincing. She'd be a star witness if this ever went to trial, cleverly catapulting a career that would eventually, Hermione could imagine, trade in her tragedies - sick mum, tragic accident - as blood offerings for the crown. It was an awful lot of pressure to put on a young girl, on her friends she thought, not without fondness.
And so, it was with fondness, she kept telling herself, that she took the insight Lily had given her into her true intentions and did what had to be done. Yes, it was with fondness, and a clinical aplomb, and with a glint off her canines like a knife against a whetstone, that she tore the sword from the stone and slit SPEW at its throat.
"You can't possibly believe this is going to work," she had whispered to her council. They were young, and hopeful, and perhaps if they had only come sooner, or been older, it may have worked. Like The Jungle for Wizarding Britain, Lily their Upton Sinclair, or Martin Luther at the steps of the Church. Except, of course, that the rot had eaten its way through the core of the Ministry, the pockets of its elite, the ideology at the very center of who and who should not be a part of Wizarding Britain. The very same rot that fed and festered among Tom Riddle and his followers, who were increasingly emboldened by the night. They wouldn't be rooting out corruption, they'd be putting a target on their backs. They were going to get themselves killed, she said aloud. Just not in the way that they needed to be, she didn't.
And so SPEW, in all their aspirational anger, their academic anarchy, had not survived. It was split ideologically between those who believed they had to build a better society through the courts and elections, and those who grabbed for their wands when something this way wicked would come. Except for Alice, of course, who in her love for both Lily and Frank, abstained. It had been the angriest she'd ever seen her, seen any of them, when the vote to move forward had failed, and she supposed it was well deserved, to have their close friend become a turn coat and a skeptic before their very eyes. She took no pleasure in the way she had shattered their plans, missed Alice and Mary terribly as they brushed by her in the halls. Frank, at least, would meet her pleading gaze, although she couldn't tell what he thought of what he saw.
No, nobody could say that Hermione was happy about these events. In fact, the only person in the entire situation who was happy may have been Lily herself, albeit for the moment. Brilliant, clever, naive Lily. At least she could leave her to her naivety. Lily was undoubtedly pleased that she had elicited the location of the Horcruxes in return for the information, the keys to the kingdom, as she had called it, she had given Hermione. Except, now, Hermione was not sure there would be a kingdom for her to return to.
Lily would, however, Hermione thought,at least have James looking out for her, try and deny it as he might. Remus had quickly swooped in to fill the hole Frank had left in her morning runs, but this morning, after the full moon, it was James who had been by the lake, scowling as he speed-walked around its perimeter. He was a ways away, severely underdressed for the chill of the morning, and kept a ways away.
"You could just run with me, you know," Hermione called back towards him, finally. "Instead of following me?"
"You don't think I'm trying to?" He leaned forward, hands on his knees. "Who takes a run for fun?" he panted.
"Well it's either this or the library Potter, it's the only fun to be had this early in the morning," she replied, and he groaned. Now that the threat of Lily's secret life bubbling over had at least taken a backseat while the knights of her roundtable licked their wounds, Hermione had more time to spend doing what she was good at. Brewing an antidote with Slughorn for the girls in the infirmary, working on the runes that had sent her there in the first place. There was still much to figure out, of course, but for the first time since she had gotten there, she felt like she was making a bit of progress. She felt a bit like herself.
There was, of course, the one thing, about the Horcruxes. It's not like she could switch places and allow Lily to find them herself, Voldemort would inevitably just make more, and Merlin only knew what that would do to the timeline. So, of course, when Lily had asked Hermoine, brightest witch of her age, war heroine, rising Ministry star, and perhaps, it did not pass her, on the trajectory for the top job herself, she had simply lied.
"Oi, Evans," she heard James call when she counted how many laps they had left. "I can't, my lungs, I'll take the bloody library over this," he said, and despite herself, and the biting cold, she laughed.
No, nobody could say Hermione Granger was happy about this turn of events. But she certainly was something.
.oOo.
A/N - *cue Kill Bill sirens*
A/N Again - Thank you, as always for engaging (and hopefully enjoying) in this writing with me.