The Houses Competition: Year 11, Round 3

House: Slytherin

Class: History of Magic

Category: Standard

Prompt chosen:

- Cokeworth

- [Emotion] Anger

Word Count: 1813

Warnings: Major Character Death; Mentions of attempted genocide, death, and torture

Notes: Lily and Harry escape AU time! I need you to understand, this is not Snape apologetic; don't say I didn't warn you. And for all my Ao3 users out there… I feel like this is an applicable use of Dead Dove, Do Not Eat. I'm sorry.

Lily held Harry as close to her as she could while she hurried down the streets of Cokeworth. She tried to look as calm as she could, but inside she was more afraid than she'd ever been in her life. You-Know-Who was after them. James was probably dead. Peter had betrayed them, and likely the whole Order. James was dead. Sirius was on a mission. Remus was on a mission. She didn't know who to trust. And James was dead. She took a long deep breath; now was not the time for this. She had to think of somewhere to go, and she didn't want to risk Apparating with Harry again.

The street she was walking down was painfully familiar. It was only a few blocks away from the house that she'd grown up in. But both her parents were dead, gone in a car accident three months before Harry was born. She didn't have any friends here either, not anymore. While she was sure any number of her parents' friends would welcome her in in a heartbeat, she couldn't put them in danger. Aside from that, she'd barely spoken to them since she was eleven. There's not much to say to people when you're suddenly part of a whole new world that they can't know of. She was alone, no friends, no family, no one she could trust.

"Lily?"

She spun around, her hand protectively on the back of Harry's sleeping head. Severus was standing a few feet away, two bags of groceries in his hands.

"What are you doing here?" Severus asked, shifting his weight and adjusting his grip on the bags.

Lily tried to think. What was she doing here? And better yet, what should she tell her ex-best friend turned Death Eater? The thought filled her with dread. He was a Death Eater. He would turn her in to You-Know-Who. She turned to walk away, suddenly feeling like she needed to be anywhere but here.

"Lily, wait," Severus said. She could hear him walking quickly towards her. "Let me help you!"

"I don't need your help," Lily said, glancing over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry! Please you have to believe me, I'm so sorry."

Lily stopped sharply and turned around again to face Severus, who was now several feet closer to her. "Sorry?" she spat. "You joined a cult that wants me and everyone like me dead simply because we exist, that has tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of good people for standing against them, and all you say is sorry?"

Severus took a step forward, and Lily took a step back. "Please, I know it's not enough, but… but let me help you! I've started working as a double agent, I've started helping Dumbledore! I was the one who warned him that the Dark Lord was after you. Please, I didn't realize how wrong I was until it was too late. I…"

Lily could still feel her anger and fear spitting and hissing inside her like a batch of Drought of Living Death that had been brewed improperly. "Have you ever heard of the phrase 'too little too late'?" she asked harshly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find someplace safe for Harry and I, because if you haven't forgotten your cult leader is trying to kill us."

"Come to my house."

Lily froze mid-turn. Was he serious?

"Please, he would never look for you there!" Severus said. "You know I'm right. He knows that you know I'm a Death Eater, he would never expect you to trust me."

"I don't trust you," Lily spat back automatically.

Snape was quiet for a moment. "I know… but let me protect you."

Lily's anger flared up again. She didn't need his protection. She didn't need his help. He was what had come between them and it had taken her so long to realize everything that had been wrong in their friendship, and even longer to make any friends that weren't him. But at the same time… she knew why she had Apparated to Cokeworth. She grew up here. Before she was a witch, before the prejudice, before the fear for her life, before the war that seemed endlessly bigger than she was, before all that there was Cokeworth. Before all that she was a little girl going to primary school and the park with her big sister.

"Lily, ple—"

"Fine," she said sharply, trying to hold onto her anger. She couldn't afford to let it go. "But only until I can reach out to Dumbledore or my friends."

She saw the way Severus flinched as she said 'my friends'. Good. He needed to understand that he wasn't her friend. That she hadn't forgiven him. She didn't wait for him as she turned down the road that led to Spinner's End. She knew this town well, and the way to Severus' house even better. The summers she had spent walking there to meet up with Severus crowded in her mind, tinged with the inky darkness that was caused by the death of their friendship.

The house was as run-down and foreboding as she remembered it, like someone had taken the life force of a Dementor and woven it through the walls. Harry started fussing almost as soon as they stepped inside. Lily didn't blame him. She walked to the living room—where she remembered having many uncomfortable cups of tea with Severus and his Mum—and set about comforting him. It seemed to take ages for him to settle down again into sleep. She sat down on the saggy, threadbare sofa, feeling more like a caged animal than anything else. She shouldn't have come here. Whatever Severus said, she could never trust him again.

"I made you tea," Severus said, walking slowly into the room carrying two steaming mugs. "Just the way you always used to take it."

"Thanks," Lily said. She slid her arm out from underneath Harry's legs and took the mug. She didn't know if she trusted him enough to drink it, but the warmth of the mug in her hand provided some small comfort.

"I…"

"If you say you're sorry one more time I will hex you." It was a sentence Lily had said many times when they were younger, even during the summer when the laws made the threat meaningless, but this time it lacked the friendly banter that had given birth to it.

"Right," Severus said. There was a long, thick, uncomfortable silence. It was like someone had transported them into a cube of jelly that was slowly eating away at everything inside of it. "What will you do next?"

"I don't know," Lily said. Once again fear began creeping its way through her mind, attempting to silence every rational thought. "I suppose Dumbledore will find someplace safe we can hide."

Severus scoffed.

"What?"

"It's nothing," Severus said.

Lily clenched her jaw and gave him a look that she hoped was filled with every ounce of contempt she felt towards him.

"It's just… that didn't exactly work out last time," Severus said.

Lily could hardly believe her ears. Had he really just said that? As if 'what happened last time' was just a bit of bad weather at a picnic and not the death of her husband—the love of her life—and almost of herself and her son. He really was full of it. "That had nothing to do with Dumbledore, or his ability to keep us safe. We trusted Peter to be our Secret Keeper, and he betrayed us."

Severus scoffed again, but this time Lily didn't have to glare at him for him to speak his mind. "Is it any surprise? Potter's friends have never been trustworthy."

Lily turned her face away from him and set her cup on the small table beside the sofa. He never could resist an opportunity to insult James. At first it felt deserved, then annoying, and now? James was her husband, and James was dead.

"Lily, what I'm trying to say is now you can finally be safe!"

"What, with you?"

"Yes!" Severus said. "I tried to warn you, back at Hogwarts and even after, Potter was never going to be able to protect you, but I can." He moved to kneel in front of her, as if he was about to propose. "I can keep you safe, I can protect you from the Dark Lord, from the Death Eaters."

"And how are you going to do that when you are a Death Eater?" Lily wasn't sure if her heart was pounding from fear or anger, but it didn't really matter, did it?

"Because I love you! I have since we were children, and I—"

Lily slapped him across the face as hard as she could. That shut him up. "How dare you?" she hissed. "My husband… James is dead. He gave his life to protect me, and what? You think I'll come crawling back to you like some sort of…" She struggled to find the word, but gave up. "Our friendship didn't end because you called me a slur, it ended because you chose to follow a group that believes I shouldn't exist and you saw nothing wrong with it. You hate Muggle-borns but love me, and that's supposed to make me feel safe?" She began patting Harry's back as his fussing turned into crying. "You are disgusting."

"Lily, please I…"

He almost looked pitiful, sitting on the floor with a hand on his face. Almost.

Lily stood up. "No. I shouldn't have come here. Thank you for reminding me why," she said.

"Leaving so soon?"

They say when facing a threat people have three instinctive responses. To fight, to run, or to freeze. Lily prided herself on the fact that she always fought, but the sound of You-Know-Who's voice turned her muscles to ice for far longer than she would have wished.

"I'm not here for you," You-Know-Who said, his wand by his side in a falsely relaxed grip. "Just give me the child and you can go. You can live your life. Find a new husband, have a new son."

Lily looked up to meet his eyes. "If you think any parent could replace their child like that then you really are heartless."

A smirk played across You-Know-Who's face, and Lily knew two things. One, she was right, he was heartless; and two, she would never yield to him. Severus was sitting frozen on the floor, whether out of fear or some spell she didn't know, and it didn't matter.

"Go to hell," she said. "I swear on every ounce of magic in this world that I will never stop protecting Harry, even if you kill me."

She turned around, curling her body around Harry. The last spell she ever heard was the Killing Curse. The last sound she ever heard was Harry's cry.