Harry Potter and the Simulacrum Seal

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Lily's Legacy

It was a warm summer evening, but King's Cross station was not very busy. Harry couldn't locate his mother at first; he was so used to seeing her in wizarding robes that he initially looked past her in her Muggle clothing. She was wearing a casual red dress, but, upon closer inspection, Harry could see the end of her wand poking out of her handbag.

Whenever the Muggles weren't looking, she would quickly draw her wand and cast a spell at the barrier of platform nine and three quarters. After each spell, a look of stubborn frustration passed over her face.

Harry understood what she was trying to do: reach Boudica. But whatever she was trying, it didn't work.

It was during one of the times that her wand was stashed in her bag that a hooded man passed through the barrier. He glanced around quickly and grabbed the person closest to the platform: Harry's mum.

Her brief cry of protest caught some people's attention, but when they looked, no one was there.

Harry was drawn through the platform shortly after his mother. The hooded figure had released her arm and was looking around in confusion.

'What's the big idea?' she demanded. She drew her wand and pointed it at him; the hooded man, realizing he was in trouble, threw up his arms.

'I'm sorry! I thought you were a Muggle!' he protested.

'Take off your hood!' she ordered.

The man did so, and Harry was faced with someone who was immediately recognizable. He had Sirius's handsome looks, though not in as great a quantity as his elder brother (for Harry was already certain that this was Regulus Black). His shiny dark hair fell to his shoulder, and his bangs were so long that they nearly covered his eyes. Harry thought he might even be taller than Sirius; he towered over Harry's mother, who barely reached his shoulder.

Lily also seemed to also catch the resemblance. 'Do I know you from somewhere?' she asked. Then, before she could answer, she exclaimed, 'Regulus!'

He huffed in annoyance. 'Yes, can I go now? Like I said, I didn't mean to grab you.'

'How have you been?'

Harry was already noticing his mother's habit of asking after everyone's well-being, even people she wasn't overly friendly with. And unlike those people who did it just for the sake of politeness, the kind look in her eyes told him that she actually cared.

'Fine, fine,' he said impatiently. 'Look, I'm sorry, I'll just be going now -'

'Wait,' she insisted, prodding him with her wand to make sure he did just that. 'Why would you want to pull a Muggle through the barrier?'

'Just for laughs,' he answered acidly, glaring down his nose at Lily. 'It's none of your business anyway. Do you think you're an Auror or something?'

She didn't bother to answer; instead, she examined him with undisguised disbelief and curiosity.

'I'll let you go in a minute,' she told him, perhaps realizing, as Harry did, that he was probably going to try disarming her soon; he was obviously adjusting his grip on his wand as he held it above his head. 'I just want to know one thing first, since it's an awful coincidence meeting you here...you wouldn't happen to know what a Horcrux -'

His eyes went wide as saucers in terror, and his hand moved swiftly down to cover her mouth. 'Don't say the word!' he clamoured. 'How the bloody hell would you know about that?'

She gripped his wrist and pulled his hand forcefully from her mouth. 'I've been researching them,' she replied calmly; Harry knew he'd personally have taken a swing at Regulus by this point, and he inwardly commended her unflappable nature. 'You're here for the same reason I am, aren't you?'

He had a very sour look on his face. Lily lowered her wand in a show of trust that Harry thought was ill-advised, but surprisingly, Regulus just lowered his arms and sighed in defeat.

'Yes, you're right. Happy?'

'Why did you want to -'

Harry was sure she was about to ask why he'd tried to drag a Muggle through the barrier, but as she asked the question, she seemed to come to the answer on her own.

'Oh, I see,' she declared. She chewed her lip thoughtfully. 'You do realize that the Muggle probably wouldn't survive, don't you?' She gave him a lightly reprimanding look, likely remembering that she was supposed to have been the Muggle in question.

Regulus shrugged, clearly not caring one way or the other.

'That isn't very nice,' she scolded. 'I'm sure there's another way. We'll work together.'

'Oh really?' Regulus snorted sceptically. 'Why would I want to work with you?'

'We share the same goal, and I have sometimes been described as clever.' There seemed to be a hidden meaning in those words, and Regulus flushed. It made Harry think that perhaps Regulus had not been considered a particularly intelligent man.

'Fine, but we can't get in to see the witch without bending your precious moral rules,' he told her disdainfully. 'She requires a Muggle sacrifice.'

Lily thought it over briefly and came to the same conclusion Hermione had.

Regulus glared incredulously. 'I don't have time to wait for you to brew a stupid potion!'

'I'm sure it could be purchased in one of the less-savoury apothecaries,' she noted gently.

Then Lily managed to point out that Regulus's family was heavily associated with the Dark arts and other illegal activities without making it seem like an insult. 'Perhaps you could get some? I'd go, but your family is received better than I am, with your ancient and noble history.'

He pouted in annoyance, and Harry realized that Regulus looked even younger than Lily - he wondered if he'd even graduated from Hogwarts yet. 'Fine, wait here - but if I can't find any, we're doing this my way.'

He Apparated away, and Lily settled on a bench to wait for him. She drew a book out of her bag and stared at it intently, scribbling down the odd note; Harry realized that it was the notebook that had appeared on his bed with the details on how to create the Dementor net.

She must've been refining the research, he realized. So Harry's mother was searching for information on Horcruxes, and in her spare time she was figuring out how to incapacitate Dementors. He couldn't help but smile a little.

Harry's eyes fell upon a clock hung on the station wall. It moved with unnatural speed - one hour and then another went by before Regulus returned.

Lily shut her notebook and looked up at him brightly; he held a familiar-looking potion in a vial.

'Here.' He shoved it toward her. As Lily uncorked it, he muttered, 'If I were you, I wouldn't drink it.'

'Why not?'

He fixed her with an exasperated expression. 'Because I wouldn't trust you to keep me alive in there.'

This just made Lily smile ruefully. 'Well, I trust you - I know you don't like me, but you wouldn't want James and your brother to find out that you were responsible for my death.'

It seemed like this hadn't occurred to Regulus before; he looked like he was choking on something and grabbed her arm before she could drink the potion. 'Are you sure about this?'

He sounded very young and anxious. Lily smiled reassuringly. 'Don't worry. I trust you. You're a capable wizard.' She laughed a little. 'I still remember that hex you put on your brother last year. It was really very good.'

As if she were telling him a secret, she added in a low voice, 'And truthfully, he did deserve it - he often does!'

Regulus seemed to swell with pride, but then he scowled as if remembering that he wasn't supposed to care about a compliment from a Mudblood.

Lily drank the potion and grabbed Regulus's hand. He blushed and stammered, 'I'm not sure if this'll work.'

'Don't worry,' she told him. 'I know it will.'

The scene ended.

'I learned everything there was to know about Horcruxes,' said the simulacrum. 'I knew enough to create one, but that isn't what I wanted.'

'You wanted to destroy them,' he finished. Harry was surprise when the simulacrum shook her head in fierce disagreement. He was frustrated; he just didn't understand what his mother could have been thinking.

'What, then? What was the point of learning about Horcruxes if you didn't want to make one or destroy his?'

'I wanted to save him.'

Harry was astounded. 'What?'

Her lips turned downward into a sad, beseeching look. 'Once I learned what a Horcrux was, I realized what a horrific situation Lord Voldemort had placed himself in. Imagine: if all his Horcruxes were destroyed, and he were killed, what would happen to him next?'

Harry didn't respond; he didn't have the slightest idea. 'Think,' she insisted. 'Where do souls end up when they die?'

'I don't know,' he answered automatically, but then an image came to mind from years ago - and he remembered that his mother had been an Unspeakable.

'The Veil.'

The veil-covered archway in the Department of Mysteries...the one Sirius had fallen through and never escaped...

She nodded solemnly. 'That is the gateway through which souls pass after death. But what would become of someone with a broken soul, Harry? Souls can pass through the archway torn by the crimes they've committed in life, but if their crimes against others - against themselves - are so great that they have been ripped apart, there can be no healing for them, not even in death.'

'I don't understand. You...you wanted to fix his soul?'

A glimmer of hope blossomed in Harry's chest. If she'd found a way to fix Voldemort's soul, then maybe Harry's could be fixed, too.

'That became my goal after speaking with Boudica. She told me of how young he had been when he'd made his choice; it was a rash decision made by a mentally unsound youth.

'I couldn't hate him. He didn't deserve the fate he'd brought upon himself. After his first Horcrux had been made, his soul could no longer grow in wisdom - he could not rise above his base nature. He was trapped forever by a childhood fear of death that transformed him into a creature of hatred and evil.'

Harry couldn't bring himself to agree. 'But he's done so many horrible things, Mum! He's killed countless others - and you and Dad! He doesn't care about them or their lives or their souls! Why should you - or I - care about what happens to him?!'

She reminded him of Dumbledore with her wise smile. 'You may have trouble feeling that way yourself, especially given what you have suffered. But you could not have come this far without a good heart. Condemning a man to eternal suffering for acts borne from his own fear and pain is not right. I couldn't let it happen.'

'What did you do?' he asked her.

'I needed to find his Horcruxes. It was not easy; it took me over a year to determine a way to divine their locations.'

***

Lily's figure was hidden by her heavy fur robes as she struggled through a heavy storm. Snow fell from the sky only to be caught in winds that swirled sideways and blew it into her face; she fought to keep her hood up but soon gave in and allowed the snow to catch in her hair and the freezing cold to redden her cheeks.

Harry followed her, untouched by the weather, wondering what she could possibly be doing outside on a day like this.

It was the only day for the ritual to work, a voice in his head informed him. The first snowfall of the season is always magic.

It was with impressive effort that Lily managed to reach her destination. Once there, she threw her bag - the familiar one in which the simulacrum resided, but which seemed to be an ordinary satchel at the moment - onto the ground.

He watched her with intense curiosity as she took out several candles and placed them in a circle around her. Then she took out a few handfuls of small vials, each of which contained a powder, a liquid, an herb, or gelatinous goop.

With care, she combined each in a specific order, often stopping to hold her wand over the ingredients and softly chanting words that couldn't be heard over the storm.

When she was finished, she took off her boots and woolly socks and stood barefoot in the centre of the circle. Then she unbuttoned her winter robes and set them on the ground as well; she stood wearing only a light white robe underneath that bared much of her arms and legs to the frigid cold.

Lily bent down and searched for something in the pockets of her discarded winter robes, soon withdrawing a sharp knife. She stood up, and Harry watched uneasily as she held the knife, bit her lip hard, and made a swift cut down the length of her arm. Her expression steeled against the pain, she did the same to the other arm.

The knife dropped from her hand. With both her arms bleeding in streams onto the ground, turning the snow at her feet a deep red, she shouted something to the sky. Then, seemingly satisfied with the amount of blood spilled, she raised one arm and used it to point her wand at the pile of ingredients. Golden sparkles drifted down onto the mixture as she continued to chant.

A purple-grey cloud emerged with a blast of wind that even the snowstorm couldn't match. It blew Lily's hair straight backwards, and she shut her eyes against it.

As the force of it lessened, Lily managed to squint at the images forming in the cloud. Harry watched as it showed, for a few moments, a blurry glimpse of a cave by the sea - the cave in which Slytherin's locket had been hidden, he realized.

The energy seemed to drain out of Harry's mother; she fell forward onto her knees, and in that instant, the cloud snapped into a beacon of white light that blazed through the night sky much like the Dark Mark.

The light dissipated, and the ritual ended.

With pure force of will, Lily made her body push itself up. Her shivering hands felt around for her boots first - the socks were a lost cause - and she slowly forced her blue feet into them.

As she reached for her robe, the storm stopped so suddenly that both Harry and his mother knew it wasn't a natural occurrence. An instant later, Voldemort appeared - he pressed her against a tree by the throat and snarled frighteningly.

'You bitch!'

He physically wrenched her wand from her hand and threw it several feet away. Lily whimpered once in surprise and fear, but afterward put on a brave face.

His eyes stared into hers with the intensity of a Legilimens, and whatever he saw there made him relax his hand on her throat enough for her to breathe. 'How dare you meddle in my affairs!'

'I've done nothing to you,' she answered evenly.

She shuddered from the cold, but perhaps Voldemort saw it as a sign of terror, for he took unusual pity and pulled his hand free of her throat completely.

'What other use could you have for such a spell? I know you are trying to find a way to weaken me, even after I graciously spared your worthless life! Do you deny it?'

She lifted her chin proudly. 'I do deny it. I have no intention of causing you any harm.'

He stared into her eyes again, and she stared right back, showing him everything he wanted to see. Harry knew that she had no reason to hold back: she was telling the truth.

Voldemort soon reached the same conclusion, though without knowing what Harry knew about her true goals, he couldn't hide his perplexity. 'You're an Occlumens,' he accused, though he didn't sound as though he believed it himself.

She shook her head, and he seemed to accept that as truth even without confirming it through Legilimency. Harry's mother wouldn't have been any better at Occlumency than he was.

'I can't let you live,' Voldemort said with a note of regret. 'You know far too much. Such a pity...'

He pointed his wand at her; he was so close that the tip was a hair's breadth from her stomach. 'Avada Kedavra!'

Voldemort's wand didn't even fizzle. He held it up in front of his face and examined it with a deeply perturbed frown.

Lily's eyes commanded his attention. With a gentle expression, she softly spoke, 'You have to want that spell to work.'

His lower lip trembled ever so slightly. Harry, who had seen Voldemort look both triumphant and hateful, had never seen him with anything close to the expression on his face. It was a mixture of agitation and awe.

Harry wondered if he'd ever not wanted to kill someone before.

The moment ended, and Voldemort glared at her resentfully. 'I will spare you,' he proclaimed. 'Do not expect to benefit from my generosity again -'

'LET HER GO!!'

Harry, shocked, turned around. His father's voice had carried from so far off that he was barely a speck - but a rapidly approaching speck. He couldn't help but think that his father was a little stupid to have alerted his enemy so blatantly of his arrival, though to be fair, he probably had a lot less combat experience than Harry.

He also couldn't help thinking that his father had arrived at the worst possible moment.

When James Potter arrived on the scene, he saw his wife's winter robes lying in a heap on the ground and drew his own conclusions. If he'd been fired up for a fight before, he was now possessed with whole-hearted outrage.

'YOU SON OF A BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!'

Voldemort rolled his eyes sardonically and blocked James's opening volley with insulting ease.

Lily gasped. 'James, no!'

Voldemort lost whatever frayed patience he'd had left. 'Avada Kedavra!'

James leaped from the snow and dodged the curse.

'Avada Kedavra!' he tried again.

But James rolled, and the curse missed by a couple of inches. He cast a silent hex at Voldemort that bounced off his spell wards.

'Stop it!' Lily begged. She tried to move toward her wand, but Voldemort shoved her to the ground.

'Avada Kedavra!'

James managed to avoid the third attempt on his life with a short-distance Apparition that landed him next to Lily.

'This is irritating,' muttered Voldemort with a glare; if looks could kill, James's corpse would have been roasting on the ground.

Oh boy, thought Harry dryly, willing his dad to take the wise course of action and Apparate away with his mum. Unsurprisingly, that wasn't what James chose to do.

'Meddle with my wife, will you?!'

James shot a small fireball at him; Voldemort merely sidestepped the spell. He picked at the corner of his robes and grimaced at the singed hem.

Lily's apparent embarrassment at the situation seemed to put him in a moderately better mood, for he chuckled and said, 'Very well, your wife shall keep her honour.'

Lily threw him a less than appreciative look for that bit of innuendo. He bowed mockingly and loudly Apparated away.

Harry only caught a glimpse of the snowstorm's return before the scene drew to a close.

'It took three months to find the cave,' the simulacrum told him matter-of-factly, as though it were unaffected by the scene he'd just witnessed - which, he supposed, it probably was.

He found himself outside the mouth of the cave and felt some disappointment when he saw his mother and Regulus Black walking away from it. He'd have liked to see how they got past Voldemort's defences - but he abruptly remembered that he didn't have a limitless amount of time to stroll down memory lane.

They were both drenched and stumbled their way forward as if they would pass out from exhaustion at any moment. Lily had her brown satchel slung over her shoulder and was dragging behind Regulus.

Harry noticed that her belly was significantly larger than the last time he'd seen her; she was pregnant. He counted the months and realized that she had definitely been pregnant with him in the previous scene as well.

When they were a good distance from the cave, Regulus turned to her, and Harry scowled when he saw his wand was directed at Lily. 'Right - hand it over.'

She smiled tiredly. 'I suppose that this is where our intentions diverge,' she commented pertly with as much energy as she could muster.

Her complete lack of surprise seemed to set Regulus on edge. 'Hand it over, Mu - Lily,' he insisted.

'At least you've learned my name,' she said, the bag falling off her shoulder. She got to her knees (slowly, given her condition) and dug the Horcrux out - but before she withdrew it completely from the bag, she mouthed something over the locket. A black mist whispered over it for a fraction of a second and fell into the bag.

She smiled.

'Hurry up!' he demanded.

Lily produced the locket. She walked over and handed it to him; Regulus, unable to look her in the eye, blandly said, 'Thanks for the help.'

She looked at him sadly. 'How long?'

Harry didn't understand, but apparently Regulus did. 'Not long - but long enough for me to destroy it.'

'Are you certain that it's worth it, to die for revenge?'

He stared down at the locket like a lost child. 'There's nothing else left for me to die for.'

They parted ways, and Harry found himself back in the Headmaster's office of Hogwarts. The simulacrum, badly faded, floated before him expectantly.

'What did you do to the Horcrux?' he asked.

'By the time Regulus and I found the Horcrux, I'd had a lot of time to plan what I would do,' she explained. 'I knew that Regulus would betray me in the end. He wanted revenge - that was the only victory he could hope for before death. He had too much heart to be a Death Eater, but he knew he could never escape them.'

'I knew I'd have the Horcrux for only a short time.' It seemed as though the simulacrum only had a short time too; she was fading in and out. 'I created something to store a small fraction of it in - just the portion of his soul that bubbled on the surface, eager to escape its confines, for every soul longs for escape after too many years.'

'What good was that supposed to do?' Harry truly didn't understand what the point was in taking only part of the Horcrux.

'It's in the bag,' she stated. 'A small crystal. The crystal also contains the magic that powers my image. It has one single purpose: to absorb broken pieces of soul.'

'So it's a Horcrux destroyer?'

'No; it takes the soul from the Horcrux and stores it safely within. The small snatch of Voldemort's soul it has received has attuned it specifically to him; once a magical force has broken the bond of his soul to the object it's stored in, it can absorb it.

'Once all the pieces were absorbed, it was my hope to transfer them back to Voldemort's body. Then, were he to die, his soul pieces would be close enough to travel into the afterlife together, allowing him to become whole again.

'But there's a problem.'

Every second word she spoke was very faint now. 'What is it?' he asked, aware of the imminence of the simulacrum's demise.

'The crystal needs a lot of power to break the bonds of the Horcrux,' she told him. 'More than any one witch or wizard could possibly muster alone.'

That was a problem, but...'There's an even bigger problem,' said Harry. 'All the Horcruxes are destroyed now.'

She smiled, and he knew she must already know the solution to that. 'A soul can never be destroyed, not even by magic. The pieces of his soul are already beyond the Veil. They must be retrieved.'

'That's impossible,' Harry informed her. 'No one can go beyond the Veil. Sirius did, and...'

'He died,' she finished. 'Of course; no living being can cross the Veil.' She looked at him meaningfully. 'No living being.'

'No living being...' Harry repeated. His eyes widened as he understood her meaning. I can't die, he remembered.

What would happen if Harry crossed the Veil?

But his heart sunk as he realized the flaw that still remained in this solution. 'What...what about me?' he asked desperately. 'I still need to piece my own soul back together. Could another crystal be made?'

'Your soul and his are intertwined,' she told him firmly. 'Break the bond between you.'

'The bond is forged by love,' argued Harry, feeling increasingly hopeless. 'That's supposed to be the most powerful force there is. What could defeat it?'

She frowned and closed her eyes, fading from existence entirely.

'Hello?' he called.

She soon returned. 'I've checked my notes,' she told him. 'You're right; love is an all-powerful force, but...'

With a raised eyebrow, she added, 'Your love is not the only source of love in the world. There is a much stronger concentration elsewhere.'

Before Harry could ask where that was, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a creature tumbled into the room from out of nowhere.

'Harry Potter sir!'

It was Dobby. He was grubby, and his toes stuck out of his socks; his face seemed twice as wrinkled as the last time Harry had seen him. He was certainly worse for wear.

'You need to leave now!' Dobby insisted, his eyes even wider than usual with uncustomary panic. 'It's coming, and it's not a lady, sir! It killed the other house-elves who stayed at Hogwarts!'

It's not a lady? Harry swallowed; he could only mean Ginny.

Voldemort had arrived. Harry was out of time. He hurriedly picked up the bag, not even waiting for the simulacrum to shut off, and found to his surprise that all its weight seemed to have been drained.

'And where do you think you're going?'

The voice was sugary-sweet - but it wasn't Ginny.

He looked into the flinty, cruel eyes of Lily Potter, and his brain stopped working for several seconds.

'No!' cried Dobby, rolling up his short-sleeved tea-cosy. 'I won't let you hurt Harry Potter!'

Is this a dream? Harry wondered. Another vision? What could it mean?

It was only when a green bolt of light pierced the air that Harry snapped out of his daze - but by then it was far too late.

Dobby, unaware of Harry's immortality, jumped in front of him. He fell to the ground, dead.

Harry said nothing at all, not even to decry the tragedy. He knew it wasn't a dream now, so he took up his wand, a crushing depression settling over him. This was nearly as awful as fighting Ginny.

'Hello baby-pie,' said his mother's voice in a cold inflection that his mother would never have used. Harry momentarily wondered if the spirit of Bellatrix Lestrange had been transplanted into his mother's body.

'Hello,' was all he could think to say at first. He stepped around Dobby's body and warily asked, 'Who are you, exactly? I know you're not really my mum.'

'She's a Horcrux.'

Harry's eyes lit upon Dumbledore, who watched him gravely from his portrait.

'I eliminated all the Horcruxes,' said Harry, who immediately stuck his attention back onto his mother. No, she's not my mother, he realized. Horcrux or no Horcrux, Harry had just seen a lot of his mum, and she didn't move in the overtly sensual way this woman did, nor did she ever sneer.

She didn't cackle, either, and that's precisely what the impostor did upon hearing Dumbledore's voice, though she was in the doorway and couldn't possibly see his portrait. 'We can all be undead together now!' she declared with twisted mirth.

'I've been watching her,' said Dumbledore seriously by way of explanation. 'Voldemort has not yet noticed my presence in a group portrait within the Minister for Magic's office. I have been gathering intelligence in the hope of finding someone reliable to relay it to.'

'Why is she here?' he asked.

'She is not particularly valued by him,' Dumbledore offered. 'I do not believe that she turned out as he intended, and her mind is gradually coming unglued. He does not like to be reminded of his failures, and she is getting on his nerves.'

'He'll be happy to see you again, Harry-pudding,' the woman, whom Harry refused to think of as Lily ever again, declared.

He ignored her taunt. 'So you think she was sent here for me to finish her off for him?'

'I think it likely. Voldemort probably hopes that she can at least weaken you before he steps in. He is almost certainly nearby.'

The creature took another step into the room.

'If Voldemort wants it dead, I'm happy to be of service,' he said, glaring at the monster that dared to defile his mother's face with an evil smile.

'Yes, I also agree that she needs to go for the sake of all that is still right with the world, but perhaps you should take the advice of your mother's simulacrum and try the crystal.'

'What?' Harry looked up sharply at Dumbledore's portrait in surprise at how much it knew; it smiled down on him benignly.

And that was all Harry saw before he was smacked in the side by the Killing Curse.

When he rematerialized in the office, reborn again, Harry rubbed the place where he'd been cursed, feeling the ghost of a bruise still remaining.

Dumbledore tut-tutted at himself. 'Terribly sorry; I didn't mean to distract you. I should also apologize for eavesdropping on your previous conversation with your mother's simulacrum, but I'm afraid that I'm not really sorry, and being dead takes away any social incentive to pretend that I am.'

As Dumbledore spoke, Harry and the Horcrux circled the room, glaring nastily at each other.

'She said it needed a source of magical power,' Harry reminded him as he took a step to the side, keeping his back to the wall. 'One bigger than me.'

Unfortunately, Harry couldn't cast a spell while he was speaking, and the Horcrux knew it. She nearly managed to hit him with the Cruciatus Curse - and with all the cruelty he saw in her, Harry didn't doubt that she could keep him under it until Voldemort arrived to pick him up and take him away to his new life as a limbless wall hanging.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry caught a curiously pleased grin on the Headmaster's face.

'And Hogwarts is precisely the place to find one,' Dumbledore revealed.