Fading With The Light

A candle is alight on the table, every drop catching and spilling on the silver. An hour has passed and already half of it has melted away. Low in the sky the moon is pretending to be larger than it is, hanging menacing and yellow by the rooftops. It looks close enough to touch only she knows all too well about illusions; an hour, two hours from now, it will be high in the sky beyond all reach, detached from the world it observes.

There is no full moon tonight, but the one in the sky is reaching close. Harry turns his head in his sleep and mumbles nonsense words while Lily maintains her guarded watch. She thinks of Remus and hopes that he has enough Wolfsbane to tide him over. She thinks of James, and hopes to the moon, to the stars, that he is safe. Wherever he is right now.

Every night that James is out there she worries for him. It isn't something she can suppress. How many times has she cradled her son in her arms wondering whether or not his father will come home alive, if at all? Yet she can't say for certain that she doesn't know the future. She does, if only in fragments and hints at possibilities.

Can she deal with that knowledge, that foresight? How should she come to terms with the threatening future as foretold by the stars? She doesn't know. All they have right now is to live for these days, these moments; these futures that Lily looks into, she can't quite be certain any of them will live to see.

The candle is burning low and she looks out at the night. All she sees is the light cast by the streetlights. Lily steps towards the window and gazes up at the sky, and there the moon is, hanging up in the darkness somewhere far away from them, much smaller now than it was when she last saw it. It doesn't look as tangible now, it's so detached. Such is the nature of illusions.

A greater illusion -- they once believed they were safe. In some longing way, Lily still does.

***

One of her greatest skills in school was Divination, and not just because she liked to spend so much time in the Astronomy Tower. Lily had an aptitude for telling the future, an instinct for telling the truth at a glance. Even now she continues to exercise these skills, sitting at windows attempting to provide her own wisdom to James and Albus Dumbledore and others out their fighting their war.

She is never quite sure just how much of the future she wants to know and over the years she has developed a detachment to the process, combining her arithmancy and divination skills to create charts with varying degrees of accuracy. By candlelight in night-time she sharpens her knowledge, craving that precision, but fearing it too. Divination is not only about learning or skill but instinct, and with every stroke of her quill Lily defies the foreboding her heart tells her is coming.

The distance she puts between herself and her predictions is always crossed in a brief moment, every time the stars align to spell danger. There are so many scribbled notes on parchment never flown by owl, too many unfinished thoughts of warning that she could never send due to the plain fact of security.

These predictions had once told her that very, very dark times were ahead. Lily had thrown her quill across the room, frustrated at how she had already known that, not understanding that the most final of dark times was yet to come.

The stars still tell her the same things. She looks up into the tiny pinpricks of light. She is aware that somewhere, billions of light-years away, other burning lights exists out there that they cannot see or draw their conclusions from, and she wonders if it is foolish to place her hopes in light that is not even visible.

There has to be more stars out there, she knows. Those secret glimmers too far for those on Earth to see. Maybe those are the ones that hold the keys to all their futures.

***

Every time Harry cries she is thrown into high alert. Part of it is maternal instinct; another part is the fear in the back of her mind that rises. Sometimes it's not crying, it's screaming. Lily can't help but feel the clutch of insecurity in her stomach when that happens. What if she can't calm him? What if her words won't soothe her own son? What if those screams are being caused by something darker, more dangerous than simply hunger or restlessness or being shocked from sleep?

***

"Tell me my future," James had told her one cold cloudy night back in fifth year when he had found her in the Astronomy Tower. Lily had traced the lines on his palms, understanding what they told her. As she shyly leaned forward to kiss him she knew that she would be part of his future somehow; or if not, she would make it so.

***

The stars continued to hold their cryptic messages for her when Harry lay low within her belly, a reflection of the waxing moon. As nights passed and James travelled in the night towards fates unknown Lily charted their enigmatic paths, predicting their futures, seeking guidance. Beyond the arrow of The Hunter she saw wars sketching themselves out among the constellations, saw hope, saw a brief reprieve. There was no whens or whys or specifics; simply signs.

Frustrated, she spent hours on her charts in those dark hours by candlelight. Were her efforts useless? The weight of her child was heavy, a near-constant reminder that she had two lives to think of. She spoke to the gently rolling child in her swelling belly constantly, telling him stories, of her days at Hogwarts and fairy tales and anything to distract her from the piles of predictions growing in the corner, from that fear. She was carrying life, and that was something to hope for in these times of death.

The chart Lily drew for Harry in the days after his birth told her great things were to come for him. That was immediately clear. She spent a day visualising, imagining rather than predicting, a world where Harry was safe and successful. Such hopes she had, just as any parent would have for a child. She wrote them down on parchment for James to read and when he finally came home, weeks later, Lily saw a kind of hope glimmering in his eyes, too.

Lily had learned a simple lesson in these past few years. That you made your own magic in this world, it wasn't granted.

***

Petunia had stared at her with cold eyes the last time they saw one another; a detached, strained sisterhood broken further with the knowledge that magic couldn't bring back the dead. Silent, they had stood at the grave of their mother, mourning, asking questions neither had answers to. As Lily lights another candle she thinks of the upcoming All Hallow's Eve, a time to remember the dead.

She knows that Petunia had been angry because the one time she had believed in magic, it was a last resort, and her sudden faith left unproven. Lily knows that Petunia's anger wasn't helped by the soft but telling swells at both their bellies; that Petunia's one hope of regaining favour, bringing into the world a first-born grandchild, was tempered by the announcement of another.

Harry cries out and Lily can't tame the panic that rises. She panics now, despite the calm she always tries to carry herself with. The full moon has come and is slowly disappearing from the sky, one thin slice at a time. She thinks of the power involved in the lunar cycle, the pull of that gravity on water and on blood, and somehow her focus on that causes her to stop shaking. A soothing finger trailing on Harry's soft round arm quiets his wails. Although it was suggested to her once Lily could never perform the Quietus charm on her own son; those strong cries remind her that he is alive, here, her own.

In her arms Harry relaxes. Lily wonders about her nephew, how he is doing. She has never seen him, and knows she probably never will. She thinks of a time when her sister didn't dismiss her as a freak and misses that childhood, when she believed she was safe.

Dudley was born into a world that only believed in magic as a quick-fix answer to problems. Harry was born into other possibilities. Which is better? she wonders as she tries to soothe her son. Which would be safer? More importantly, which would Harry grow up to defend?

***

She still tries to divine the future, even though they all know they must take it one day at a time. Foolish hopes, she tells herself, and does it anyway. There is no reassuring roundness when she looks out the window, and the stars seem so much brighter for it. She feels the presence of James coming up behind her, as though his soul reaches her a second before his warmth does. It's a silly, indulgent thought, she knows. But she likes to believe that sort of connection will somehow alert them if James falls into danger.

"It's me," he says, and without looking back towards him Lily reaches back and strokes along the side of his face. You could tell a lot by a person about their face, she muses, feeling the strain in her elbows. When she turns towards him James looks only slightly amused.

"What do you see in those lines?" he asks. Those lines, she wants to tell him, they tell me you've seen things that you will never say. That you've been places you can't bring yourself to tell me. They speak of horrors. Of things that are not quite triumphs.

Lily takes his hands in hers and looks in wonder at how those lines have changed over time, how his future has altered. She doesn't want to predict the future right now. All that matters at this moment is the present, that's all they have to live for.

"I see that you're here," Lily says, because she sees a shadow over both their futures but can't bring herself to say that, either. "You're home, and you're safe now."

"I'm staying, this time," he says. His voice is resolute and wraps around her in the thick silence. He's staying. He's staying. For how much longer? she wonders. How many days will this last before Albus requires James's help once again?

The tide of desperation is something that cannot be forced aside. In the falling dark they grieve although neither says a word. James has seen the fear for the future in her eyes and she has seen something else in him, too. The quiet, brooding acknowledgement in his eyes that he had to kill again, just to stay ahead of the game; that despite all the magic they can wield and the power a group of wizards can produce, it still cannot resurrect the dead. She clutches his hands and grasps for something, anything, to say.

Only shadows, that magic would create. Only ghosts.

***

When she was six years old, her sister ten, Lily found Petunia sitting by her window and sulking. Lily hovered at the open door in her pink flannel pyjamas pulling up at her socks, wondering why her sister wasn't dressed for bed yet. A small school blazer was left crumpled on the bed, books not quite neatly lined up on the table. That was Petunia being messy, and Lily worried for her.

"Tunie, what are you doing?"

Petunia's eyes were red and puffy but both of them chose not to mention that. "Looking for constellations."

"What are they?"

"Star pictures. We learned about them in school today. Come here, Lily."

She pulled at her socks again so they didn't dangle over her toes and walked over to the window to join Petunia. "Where are the pictures?"

Petunia pointed. "Up there. That's supposed to be a bear."

"I don't see it."

"That's a bear."

"I can see a saucepan."

They laughed.

"Some people say they can tell your future from the stars," Petunia said, sounding pleased she could finally pass along some knowledge.

"How?" Lily asked.

At a loss, she simply shrugged. "I don't know. They see something in those pictures. And maybe the moon tells them something too."

Lily looked up out the window. "I think it's the stars. And the moon just watches."

Petunia paused, thinking, and then giggled. "I can see the face up there," she said. "He's smiling at us."

"It's a she."

"It's an it!"

Lily leaned over and poked at her sister's ribs. Petunia giggled and poked back. That round moon up there was smiling down on them, Lily decided. She could see all those little shadows, she could see that face too. She smiled up at it as Petunia pulled out a small bar of chocolate and offered some to her with a furtive gesture. Lily accepted with a smile and a thank you, looking up at the pale orb suspended in the sky.

Yes. The moon just watches. It sees all.

Doesn't it?

***

There should be celebrations, quiet candles burning for loved ones passed. Yet the streets are dark, only dim light gleaming from windows signalling commemorations. The Dark Mark is hanging low above a rooftop, warning of what is to come. It is not an illusion. It will not rise in the sky to become untouchable.

There is a fraction of the moon in the sky tonight; barely enough to illuminate the dark. Any light it casts is concealed by the clouds. Almost as though the moon above knows of the danger below and is turning its pale face away, not quite prepared to see the horrors below.

~ an end

Thank you for reading.

Some trivia regarding phases of the moon:

On the 8th of October, 1981, the moon was close to full.

On the 26th-28th,there was no moon.

On the 31st of October, 1981, there was a hint of a waxing crescent.