Lilium Vitri

It was seventeen years today. Seventeen years they've been gone, leaving me alone. Forever. But I am not alone. Their ghosts haunt my past, my present, and my future. This is what they gave their lives to save me for? So I would spend my life tormented by that fateful night? My mother died for me, to deny me the right of even dying by her side. To spend eternity with her. Instead we are separated. For when she died, she went on to wherever people must go when they are cursed out of existence. But I cannot die. I have tried, oh, yes, I have tried. But Fate watches me and laughs, for when my mother died, she determined that I was to have the Hero's part to play. And heroes cannot die till the bad guy has been killed. And the Evil that I face will not lie down and die. So I keep pushing myself back up until it will sleep forever. Because only then can I join my parents. That is why I have come here today. I must absolve myself of their deaths, exorcise myself of their ghosts. Make them let me sleep.

From pictures, memories, and the testimonies of friends, I have constructed a picture of Godric's Hollow. But nothing can prepare me for this. The night is perfect, cloudless, the stars shining all the brighter for the crisp night air. It is the dark of the moon, yet the Hollow seems lit by an ethereal light. It is a bitter irony, for in all respects, the Hollow looks almost exactly as it did that night, but for the fact that in the middle of the Hollow, just to the left of a small spring, where a modest house once stood, there is nothing but ashes, cinders and memories.

I walk towards it as though under a spell. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something that calls me, something I must see, before I forget this night. And indeed, the glint of starlight on glass draws my eye. I follow the pale light, kneeling and scrabbling through rubble with my hands to reach the source of this most beautiful illumination

The rubble gives at last, and the object is released into my careful fingers. It is small, and light, delicate even. I open my hand and study my find carefully. A beautiful glass lily, just open, its cut surface reflecting rainbows of light across my palm. It is so fragile, and yet it was the only thing that survived the destruction. How? My eye falls to the delicate silver chain dangling from the topmost petal, broken in half. Of course. The answer is obvious now. This was my mother's. Her dying body cushioned it, saved it from destruction. It is beautiful, and I hate it. Because it was saved, and not my mother. Nothing could save her.

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October 31, 1981

"Happy Birthday, Lily." The young man smiles nervously, his hands fiddling with the box that he conceals behind his back. Unconsciously, he pushes his black hair away from his eyes, and waits for his young wife's reaction. She takes in the table, set with china, the flowers before her chair, and runs towards her husband, embracing hi gratefully.

"Oh, thank you, James!" she cries, kissing his lips lightly. She leans towards the high chair in which baby Harry, surprisingly sedate, is sitting, clapping his hands at the spectacle before him. "See what a lovely daddy you've got, Harry?" she says conspiratorially, He nods, and gurgles, as she notices what James is hiding. She springs up, and stands before him, playing the petulant child, "What'd you get me?" she asks, pouting prettily.

He shyly takes the box out from behind his back, and hands it out to her. She takes it with eager fingers, and opens it quickly. Delicately she holds the chain up, examining the glass charm. She fastens it around her neck, and hugs him fiercely. They kiss, as Harry smiles beatifically down on the whole gathering of two, his parents, so young, beautiful, and so obviously in love. Then the front door burst open

James breaks from the kiss, snatching Harry out of his seat, and hands him to Lily. "Take Harry and run!" he says urgently, She makes as if to protest, but upon seeing the desperation in his eyes, nods, terror in her gaze. She turns and flees up the stairs, one arm clutching her son, the other holding her necklace tight. "I'll hold him!" he shouts after her, but she is already away. He extracts his wand, and prepares to do battle. He doesn't even have the chance to utter one curse.

Lily has reached Harry's bedroom, and is fumbling desperately with the latch on the window, panic making her fingers clumsy. He stands in the doorway, filling it with his impenetrable black shadow. She pleads, of course, but only to buy time, enough time to shield Harry with her body, as she prepares to make her last stand. So she dies the only way she knows how, facing him, tall, proud, and straight-backed. Without a trace of fear in her eyes, guarding her child. He is merciless, and it is over quickly. Harry screams, long and loud, as his mother's body falls backwards, the radiant glass lily thumping against her chest, once, twice, and then falls still. Voldemort, his attention drawn to the charm, tears it off her slender neck and examines it closely. Satisfied that it is only a silly bauble, he lets it fall back to earth, where it lands on her hand, the blow softened. Then, the Dark Lord turns on Harry.

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I am startled by the memories this lily recalls. Even more surprising, my cheeks are wet with the tears of seventeen hard years. I repress them no longer. Here, among my memories, I may cry, and I do, letting the tears exorcise my demons.

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November 3rd, 1981

Remus Lupin has been given the task of removing his friends' bodies from the site of their deaths. He cries as he does it, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs as he lifts Lily's body, touched by the pallor of death, scarcely noticing the lily clutched in her hand. It slips slowly from her fingers, as though even in death she is loathe to leave it behind. But when it does fall, it lands softly in the dirt, where it is slowly covered by layers of shifting rubble and dust, and lays forgotten for seventeen long years.

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When the flood of tears has abated, I stand. In doing so, I realize that I no longer carry my parents' ghosts. I am saddened by the sight before me, and deep within my heart there is a feeling of emptiness, as there will probably be all my life. But I no longer feel burdened by their presence in my thoughts. I have left them behind, entombed in their shrine. And I no longer need the beautiful glass lily. With a sigh that is just as much relief as regret, I let the chain pool through my fingers, the pendant falling slowly to earth. It hits a stone, and shatters into a myriad of beautiful crystals, each shining pure and lovely. One hits my hand, and cuts it deeply, leaving a mark. I know it will scar, and I am proud to bear this one last token of my parents' love. And, indeed, if you look at it close in the ethereal light, it looks almost like a lily.