I feel like the latest oneshots yielded by my unhinged last-minute writing sessions have gotten increasingly dramatic while also progressively making less and less sense. This one might make the least sense of all. So… enjoy, I guess?

Written for the February assignment for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry forum.

Subject: Graphic Design

Task 1: Background – Prompt: Write a fic with no dialogue, only prose.

Disclaimer: I refuse to put one. Y'all know who Harry Potter belongs to. Google it if you don't. (It's not me, by the way. Just so we're clear. Please don't do that to yourselves.)

Word count: 973 words

Summary: Lily learns of the prophecy and spends the night containing her anxieties.

Lily Evans-Potter quietly slunk into her baby's nursery and up to Harry's crib. The nursery had been done up in shades of mint green and a beautiful powder blue a mere two days before Harry was born—James and Sirius had spent the entirety of Lily's pregnancy arguing about paint colours for the room, and she'd finally had enough and magicked the walls with the first colours that sprang to her mind. Yet, the room looked beautiful, as if it had been decorated over months of precious care.

They were young and Harry had been a surprise, and so the entire past year of their life had unfolded exactly like this—chaotic and panicked and messy, yet filled with so much love and care that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes. Little Harry Potter, with his stubby fingers and toes and three-months'-wise green eyes, was the single jewel in all their lives, and he was so, so loved. He spent most of his days sleeping like an angel in the cedar-wood crib Remus had spent months carving just for him, or giggling away at Sirius' unbreakable glass windchimes hanging above his head. He was sweet and innocent, and he'd known nothing but happiness for all his young life.

But after what Dumbledore had told Lily that night, she knew that was about to change.

Faint muffled thuds filtered in from underneath the closed nursery door, and Lily shuddered at the reminder of the anger she was supposed to feel. She cast a muffling spell before it woke Harry up. Across the hallway, James was unleashing his fury on their bedroom, and the sounds of breaking furniture and fractured glass were apparently potent enough to escape the strong silencing spells he had cast on their door. Rage and chaos—it was the only way her husband knew to cope with his helplessness.

Lily wanted to smash things too. Merlin, she wanted to smash everything. Dumbledore had sat them both down earlier and told them everything Severus Snape had relayed to him that night—the prophecy, its repercussions, the Dark Lord's choice. Neither can live while the other survives.

There were two families who had defied Voldemort thrice and lived to tell the tale. Two families with young sons who were born as the seventh month died. Two babies to choose from as his equal.

And if Severus was right, Voldemort had chosen Harry.

Neither can live while the other survives.

Heat pricked at Lily's emerald eyes as she stared down at her sleeping son. Rosy cheeks, dark charcoal-brushed lashes that fanned above them, hiding brilliant green eyes underneath that matched Lily's own. Her flesh and blood, her heart and soul, her precious jewel baby. Little Harry Potter, all of three months old, somehow held an indescribable power within his young body that no one, not even Lily herself, could fathom.

And any moment now, the Dark Lord would be coming for that power.

He'd destroy her baby.

What could she say that would be worthy to convey her grief? What could she do so that the prophecy had never been? Who could she beg so that her infant son would keep living to see the next day?

If she could go back in time, she'd give her life to Voldemort's wand three times over if it absolved Harry from having parents who'd lived to tell the tale. So that Harry wouldn't be prophesied as his equal. So that Harry wouldn't play a part in the prophecy at all.

If she could go back in time, she'd give her life to ensure she took the Dark Bastard right down to hell with her.

But what-ifs weren't enough to spare Harry's life. They needed to find safety; they'd cut ties with everyone they knew and go completely underground if they had to. They needed to talk to Dumbledore.

She needed to research warding magic to protect Harry—she'd read every runic warding book in the country; would use her blood to strengthen her spells if it came down to it.

James would never abide by blood magic; he was ultimately a rule-follower when it came down to it, possessing a strong black-and-white code of ethics that drove her round the bend on her worst days. She'd never tell him the truth; he didn't need to know. While the Marauders scoured their resources for Light magic tricks that vowed to work, she'd cover the rest of their bases and walk the off-the-beaten-paths that they'd never dare to explore.

Anything to keep Harry safe.

What would life look like for them from this point on? Was Harry still too young to pick up on his parents living their lives drowning in sickening stomach-ripping fear? Only three months old, and all he'd known was happiness. Merlin, Lily hoped to every deity that existed that that would never change.

I will keep you safe, she wanted to whisper to her sleeping child. Press a ghosting kiss against his soft baby curls and murmur words of comfort and care. But Lily was nothing if not pragmatic, and she knew better to whisper promises she couldn't keep.

So instead, she said nothing and stood wordlessly by Harry's cribside, watching her baby breathe still and slow till the sun rose in the sky and splashed rays of golden-yellow across his happy sleep-soft cheeks, and held all those promises that ached to spill from her lips in an iron cage deep within her chest.

Harry never knew it then, three months' wise and a lifetime too young, but there had never been a moment since that fateful night that he had been more loved.

And the world never knew it, but that had been the very night Harry Potter's unfathomable power—the power that marked him as Voldemort's equal—had blossomed into fruition.

An unvoiced, unacted, unassailable promise of love.