Ashes

At night I dream.

During the day it is easier to fill the time, the empty hours that hang so heavily on my hands. I get up and shower, then fill the kettle and make breakfast on the old gas cooker they have given me.

Each day at the same time I make my way on foot to the Department of Security to report in and collect my provision card. It's always the same man - short, stocky, balding, with an officious manner and distant blue eyes. I'm sure I knew him once, long ago. We never speak.

On the way home, I shop for food: a difficult and time-consuming process. There's never enough credit on the card and I spend my afternoons wandering from shop to shop, turning over the battered produce, looking for bargains. The onions that are only half mouldy, wizened carrots, yesterday's bread - these are the foundations of my evening meal. I'm lucky; some shops won't serve Mudbloods at all.

At night I dream.

I dream of screaming and splintering wood, of a rushing sound and a jet of green light. Of my husband's sightless eyes. I wake up strangling in twisted sheets, caked in sweat and grime, my arms stinging where I have torn at them while I dream. I wake up crying and shaking and calling my dead son's name.

--

Things I never knew when I was younger: it's impossible to cast Avada Kedavra on yourself. Oh, you can try, but the spell just fizzles out. There's a flicker of green and a sigh, almost a disappointed sound. Nothing else.

I tried. I kept on trying until they broke my wand.

After that I tried the Muggle ways. I slit my wrists. I drank bleach. I put my head in the oven. Each time they found me and brought me back, struggling and screaming. Eventually they tired of rescuing me and I learnt a new use for the Imperius curse.

He wants me alive, you see. I'm a symbol of his benevolence. And in some strange way he is a man of his word. He promised me that I would live.

Others were not so lucky. Severus Snape was tortured and executed in the main square, where the Ministry of Magic used to be. If I close my eyes, I can still hear his screams. Sirius Black was cornered by Death Eaters and killed himself. Remus Lupin disappeared. I hope he is still alive somewhere but I doubt it. Despite Voldemort's promises, his world is not kind to werewolves.

--

The mirror is cracked again, a great gout of glass missing from one side. Idly I wonder if I can find it and use it to cut my throat, if there will be time for one quick jagged slash before Imperius kicks in. I wonder why the mirror cracks from time to time, why the cups spill from their hooks and shatter on the floor. They are always replaced. Everything is replaced. I look at myself in the mirror while I scrub potato dirt from my hands.

I see an old woman looking back at me from the glass. Her short hair is a deep red, the colour of a dying fire. I remember that I used to be proud of my hair, as if it could matter what colour a thing was. Here and there the hair grows ash-white, like bones that have lain too long under a hostile sun. I remember tearing out my hair in clumps and watching, spellbound, as the red grew back white.

The woman's face and hands are red and coarse with scrubbing and the scars at each wrist are white. Too much cold water, too little soap, too many years. As the woman stares at me she clenches and unclenches her fists, and I feel the echoing ache along my arms as the cuts reopen and bleed. She raises her hands for me to see, stiff and claw-like in the mirror. The blood under her nails is my own.

--

I almost manage it.

At night I dream, and I'm there. I'm standing by the cradle, I'm watching as a younger Lily - a younger me - rocks a black-haired baby to sleep. She's wrapped in a blue and green mohair shawl. I remember James buying it for me in Dun Laoghaire. Harry's face is screwed up ready for a scream, but at the last minute he stuffs a hand into his mouth instead and looks in my direction.

And sees me. And sees me.

And then there's a splintering sound and my husband is screaming. I say the words with him. I know them by heart.

'Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Run! I'll hold him off - '

The sound of somebody stumbling from a room. A door bursting open. A cackle of high-pitched laughter. Footsteps on the stairs.

I grab at Lily, try to hold her back. The wool of her shawl is soft beneath my fingers. I'm pulling as hard as I can but she doesn't seem to notice. I'm screaming, but she doesn't seem to hear.

She - I - we - turn expectantly to the door.

It opens.

--

When I wake, a tatter of blue and green beneath my nails. I pull out the mohair strand and stare at it in disbelief.

--

I am going mad. I am going mad. I am going mad.

It is a comforting thought. I have spent so long staring over the edge into insanity that it is good to know that soon the fight will be over. All I have to do now is let go.

A burst of static from the radio as I pass. It hasn't worked in years. I bend down and examine it. It's turned off. There is no power.

All the cups lie smashed on the kitchen floor. I stay in all day and pace up and down. The radio hisses at me each time I approach.

--

With Dumbledore dead, and the babies dead, he simply took over. No one stood in his way. No one dared.

I don't know what we expected. We had fought for so long, in so many ways, to bring about Voldemort's downfall, that his victory seemed like the ending of the world - as if everything we had ever known would be cast aside and forgotten. But it was less than that, and more than that.

Our right to vote went first. Simple and brilliant, silencing us at a stroke - because what Pureblood wizard would dare to side with Muggle-borns against Voldemort? Next they took away our right to practise magic. We renounced our wands, or had them broken before us. Our Gringotts accounts were seized, to defray the expenses of battle - as if, somehow, this war had been fought on our behalf.

Our property was confiscated, and loaned back to us by a munificent state. Throughout the meticulous destruction of our lives, we were constantly reminded how lucky we were to be allowed to live, to be alive at all without fear of persecution or physical harm. But who would waste time toying with Mudbloods and risk Voldemort's anger when the entire Muggle world exists as a playground?

--

I dream of a green-eyed boy. He is small for his age, with black, untidy hair, and he wears the Gryffindor colours. A jagged scar blazes defiantly on his forehead, a scar like a lightning bolt.

I know without knowing in this dream that I am dead and James is dead. I do not know why my son is alive. He looks so much like James that it hurts. But he has my eyes.

I wake up smiling.

--

Glass lies in pools on the bathroom floor. I crouch beside the bath, beside the fragments of the shattered mirror, clutching the tiny scrap of blue and green.

Am I going mad? The alternative is terrifying. And I wonder, why is this happening, why now, why to me? I close my eyes and think again of my son, green-eyed and laughing, dressed in red and gold. Alive. I do not remember ever having been so afraid.

Hope. Hope is very dangerous.

I go to bed, and pray for dreams.

--

I open my eyes and look around me. This time, it's me rocking the baby, it's me wearing the mohair shawl. I can feel the strength in my limbs. I pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. My skin is smooth and elastic under my touch. My hair is thick and red and clean, the colour of flames. I realise that I have forgotten how good it feels just to be alive. I wish I could remember this moment forever. Dear God, I think, give me just one week, just one day, just one hour -

A splintering sound.

'Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Run! I'll hold him off - '

The sound of somebody stumbling from a room. A door bursting open. A cackle of high-pitched laughter. Footsteps on the stairs.

I want to hold my baby, but there's no time. I turn to the door. It opens.

--

Such a small thing, the ending of a world. I move in front of the cradle and look Tom Riddle in the eye. Is this how it is supposed to be? I will never know. But I have to believe it. He has to believe it. I look him in the eye and put everything, everything, into my next words:

'Not Harry, no - please. Take me. Kill me instead.'