Rating:
R
House:
The Dark Arts
Ships:
James Potter/Lily Evans
Characters:
Lily Evans
Genres:
Angst Character Sketch
Era:
The First War Against Voldemort (Cir. 1970-1981)
Stats:
Published: 06/19/2006
Updated: 06/19/2006
Words: 2,553
Chapters: 1
Hits: 1,001

A Woman, but no Angel

Jubilee

Story Summary:
"I'm fine. We're fine." The Potters at the brink of the abyss.

Chapter 01

Posted:
06/19/2006
Hits:
1,001


A Woman, but no Angel

"Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel."

-- Doris Lessing.

There were monochrome shadows creeping across the windowpane as the spider slowly lowered itself from the sill and spun its way down onto the countertop.

Lily watched it with a flat, detached stare.

The daddy longlegs reached out with two of its thin legs and felt its way along the countertop- maybe in search of food? Or maybe it was just checking for pitfalls, like a blind man with his cane.

The daddy longlegs, Remus' voice whispered to her, also known as a harvestman, is an arachnid of the order Phalangida. There's a popular myth that it's one of the most deadly spiders on the planet, but the myth has absolutely no scientific substance to back it up.

There was also a popular saying about how dangerous a mother was when her kids were threatened. Frankly, Lily Potter didn't feel very dangerous, but maybe that was because it was the second safe house they'd been shuffled to in three months.

Besides watching the spider, Lily was making dinner for the other members of the Order. No one had asked her to, but Lily was a domestic without a house. The first, her beautiful Victorian home, was gone now. Nothing but splinters remained of the shudders that James had painted by hand for her because it was more romantic to do things the Muggle way when you didn't have to. Only ash marks were left of the magical herb garden that she had started several months ago. Harry's rocking horse that he wasn't even big enough for yet was only a memory.

Harry.

Her baby was in his makeshift highchair that she had transfigured for him out of a regular chair. He was banging his bottle against the tray and talking to himself in his own private baby-language.

Lily stared at him, at this perfect little person that had somehow ended up in the care of Lily and James Potter. Some days it still felt like a big cosmic joke that they were someone's parents. There were times when she thought that maybe someone would show up one day out of the blue and demand to take Harry back, because it had all been a mistake. An example would be the evening not so long ago when she had taken her eyes off of him for one moment while she was making dinner. It had proved long enough for Harry to tug down the tablecloth, so that a warm pot of corn fell on top of him. The baby had screamed for an hour after that, no matter how much fussing and pleading Lily had done. When James had finally been drawn into the kitchen to ask the reason for all of Harry's noise, she told him that Harry was a baby, and crying was what babies did. She was ashamed.

It wasn't like James was the perfect parent, either. She had caught him trying to give Harry coffee before, and she was never going to forget about the time when he had dropped him while attempting to simultaneously roughhouse with Sirius. Harry had cried then, too. He was a good baby, but there was only so much a kid could take from his own parents. Lily could only imagine what her parents would have said if they could have seen her and James, parents at twenty (nineteen, if her pregnancy was included into the equation). Kids with a kid. James, in his stupid Quidditch jersey and snitch boxers, and Lily with her hands over her ears, begging Harry to please stop crying, she'll do anything.

Harry accidentally dropped his bottle and leaned over the side of his chair to see wherever it had gotten to. "Bah?"

Lily immediately rushed over and retrieved the bottle. But before she gave it back to Harry, she held the rubber cap under hot water from the sink for a full two minutes. She'd never forgive herself if Harry got sick from germs from their dirty floor.

When she handed the bottle back to Harry, he reached for it in such a cheerful way that it made something twist inside of her chest. She ran her hand over his soft hair, and he innocently blinked up at her. She could almost hear his (much older) voice saying, "You're acting barmy again, Mum."

"Yes, Harry, but Mummy is trying really hard. So, be nice to her."

If there was one thing that she could be proud of, then it was the fact that Harry was the only one of them that didn't carry those horrid frown lines around his mouth. His forehead was as smooth and unconcerned as a baby's should be. She was grateful, because it meant that he still didn't know any better. He didn't know that it was a curse that had come smashing through the window that was above his crib last month as his foolish parents slept obliviously on in the next room. He didn't know that there was a mad sociopath desperately seeking him out, or that the best his parents could do for him was to go into hiding like the scared children they were.

With a bitter pinch of her heart, she wondered if he would grow up to resent her and James for being so weak. She resented herself, and on particularly bad days, she resented James. That night, when he had been so drunk on firewhisky that he hadn't even known his own name...

There was a sudden popping noise, and the lights flickered on and off to alert her to the fact that someone had just come through the wards. Despite the fact that she was expecting this, Lily literally leapt forward to the counter, where her wand was lying beside her ladle. She gripped it with white knuckles and threw herself back in front of Harry's highchair.

She was rigid as a statue when Elphias Doge came waltzing into her kitchen.

Doge cheerfully checked over her boiling pots, seeming not to notice her half-aimed stance. "Hope you included enough basil, Lily," he said in a conspirator's whisper. "You know how much I love it when you add basil."

He gave Lily a wink, and then he left the kitchen to reconvene with the other members in the living room.

It wasn't until he was gone that Lily realized that she had stopped breathing. She touched a shaky hand to her forehead and felt the clammy skin beneath her fingertips. Turning her head, she caught sight of her own reflection in the window. Her green eyes were wide and dilated, and her usually fair skin was ashen.

She was still gripping her wand.

Lily gave a slightly hysterical laugh before clapping a hand over her mouth. No, that wouldn't do. If she lost it now, then she would never be of any use to Harry. They'd have to cart her away long before the Dark Lord ever found them. She consciously loosened her handle on the wand, and she released her death-grip on the back of her son's highchair. "Did you hear that, Harry?" she said in a high, strained voice as she returned to her pots. "Elphias wants basil."

Harry smiled at her around his bottle.

Lily mechanically located a bottle of basil and sprinkled some of it into her sauce. James wouldn't like it, but Elphias was their guest, even if this wasn't really much of a home. Despite what Severus Snape used to sneer about her family, she had been raised with good breeding and a firm sense of hospitable manners.

Speaking of manners...

Lily gritted her teeth and bent down to retrieve her dragon hide gloves from beneath the sink. She was going to have to clear off Severus' various potions from the kitchen table before offering anyone their dinner. He hadn't bothered to do so before storming out after one of Sirius' less kind remarks about his allegiances. She would have to remind him later that this was their house for the time being and not just a place for him to dump his belongings when he didn't need them.

The lights flickered again, and Lily dropped the gloves and squeezed her eyes shut. She gripped the countertop in order to prevent another automated reaction. They couldn't go on like this. She couldn't. One day, she was just going to snap and--

"It's Benjy, Lily!" James called from the living room. He knew her so well.

However, his assurance had the opposite effect this time. Her entire body tensed, and she shot a panicked glance at Harry.

Benjy Fenwick. He was back.

Her eyes abruptly fell again on Severus' potions. It hadn't been terribly considerate of him to leave potential poison in her kitchen where she prepared food.

Or so she had thought.

Later, Lily would have to blame all of the constant stress that she'd been under for the thoughts that came unbidden into her mind just then.

It came down to a simple matter of survival. One of them was trying to kill her. Her family. Harry. Her perfect little baby who had never hurt anyone. She had to protect him. It was her duty as his mother, and she so wanted to be worthy of him. Harry trusted her to take care of him, and despite his egalitarian words about equal parenting, she knew that James expected her to keep their baby safe. It was what a mother did. What kind of mother would she be if she just stood by and let him eat her dinner while he was planning ways to hand Harry straight off to the Dark Lord?

Him.

Yes, Lily knew who the traitor was. No one had ever suggested him to her-- they didn't like to tell her these things-- but she knew.

She had seen the looks that Dumbledore kept sending him. She had even overheard Kingsley and Arthur talking about him. Apparently, he had been coming up with some rather shaky alibis lately. There were suspicions about some of the information he kept coming up with out of nowhere.

Lily had never liked him. The way that she would catch him looking at her sometimes when James wasn't there... Or the way that he always paid special attention to Harry...

Of course, she was always polite. She was polite to everyone, with the exception of her husband and his friends. She even included some special spices he liked whenever she was cooking for him, like with Elphias' basil.

He wouldn't even notice...

She was shaking, and there was sweat dripping off her face. A trembling hand reached out for the nearest vial.

Three times.

They'd escaped him three times.

The last time, she had been three weeks pregnant with James Potter's son. Then, there had been Death Eaters at her homes. Each of them. She hadn't seen him those times, but he had probably been there... each... time. They just kept coming, and now with this snake in their midst... Lily was tired of always feeling small and helpless. How many more times before their luck finally ran out? Harry would want her to--

But at that moment-- that exact moment-- Harry threw down his bottle and started making whining noises, reaching up for her.

She stared at him as if she didn't recognize him. He started to cry, and James called, "Do you need help in there, Lily?"

Then, she snapped out of whatever daze she had entered, and she went to pick up her son. He didn't stop crying, so she tried bouncing him. If one were being honest, then they might have critiqued her for bouncing him a little too hard. But there was no one else in the kitchen to see them. And Harry did stop crying after a moment.

"I'm fine. We're fine," she called back.

She put Harry back in his highchair and finished making dinner. She cleared off Severus' potions, being sure to bag the ones that looked especially dangerous. She shoved them into a cupboard beneath the sink, and then she scrubbed off the table at least twice before finally performing cleaning spells on everything. She couldn't bare the thought of anyone even thinking that she couldn't do this right. They hadn't asked her to make dinner, but she knew that they expected to be served their food on a clean table. She could do that much.

Lily pushed all thoughts of Benjy Fenwick far from her mind, even when he was sitting directly across from her and she thought that she felt his leg brush against hers at one point. She looked straight through him when she passed him the dishes. She ignored his loud, boisterous voice as she made sure that Peter had at least two of the rolls that she had baked especially for him on his plate.

That night, when James was buried deep inside of her, she mentally chanted the infertility spells that Marjory Banks used to smugly pass around to the girls in their dorm at Hogwarts. She gasped as his fingers curled inside her, and her back arched up from the bed. His heavy panting filled her ears, and her nails scratched down the skin of his back. She didn't blame him for the third glass of wine that he'd consumed, but there couldn't be another accident like last time. Lily couldn't bear it.

It wasn't that she didn't love Harry. God, she loved him so much. It was just that...

Lily turned her head to muffle her scream in James' neck as she came hard with him inside her. He came a moment later, and they lay sticky like that in the twilight darkness of their empty bedroom. As the sweat cooled on their bodies, she stared at his throbbing Adam's apple for a lack of anything else to stare at. There wasn't any point to decorating or personal touches when they were just going to have to move again the next time. She didn't want to think about the fact that she didn't particularly want to look up into James' eyes. But then, it must not have bothered him, because his own gaze was averted over her head somewhere.

"We're going to be fine," he whispered out of nowhere. The words floated away from them and melted back into the shadows. Lily just clutched him tighter.

Three days later, there were only bits of Benjy Fenwick found at the site of his murder. By all accounts, it had been a particularly brutal attack. It was a close blow to the Order, and Sirius' mouth was set into a grim line when he brought the news to them. James moped around their tiny, confined space for days like someone had finally let the wind out of his sails. He stared blankly at the walls with Harry sitting up on his chest.

At the end of the seventh day, with the night long into way, James finally cracked, and she heard him trying to muffle his sobs into his pillow. She curled up against his back and cried with him, because she was afraid that if she didn't cry, then she might have smiled.

Finis.

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