Fic: A Beginning and an End
Title: A Beginning and an End
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Severus Snape, Lily Potter, Harry Potter
Rating: PG13
Genre: Pre-Hogwarts, First Wizarding War
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.
Word Count: 3,920
Warning: Death Eaters, Graphic Child Birth, Implied Violence, Major Character Injury, Angst
Summary: Severus found her running from a Death Eater raid. Lily was the love of his life and even on opposite sides of a war he would always choose to save her.
A/N: Probably pretty medically inaccurate.
*
It was a night raid; another sleepy unsuspecting wizarding village, another albatross to hang around his neck. It was blood and carnage and a living nightmare as Death Eaters rampaged through the town murdering and torturing as they went.
Severus listened to the screams as he cast another curse and felt a splash of hot blood against his black cloak. Thick viscos drops of the fluid splattered against his white mask. He felt another little bit of his soul blacken and shrivel up. He wondered when the bright shine of purpose and revolutionary idealism had faded to this murky dark hopelessness. Some of the screams reached a fever pitch and yet more began.
The massacre waged on. Bellatrix cackling high and mad, and Crouch Jr. shouting taunts to his victims could be heard over the din. McNair, Rookwood, Crabe, Greyback; all laughing and howling. They surged through the little village like a wave while Severus moved through it all like he was walking in molasses. When did the Dark Lord’s vision of a bright new world begin to tarnish? When did the indiscriminate murder of good witches and wizards become acceptable? When did Severus begin to see this all as the madness that it truly was?
Flashes of movement caught his eye; wizards running for their lives into the forest surrounding their burning village. A barked order from Crouch and Severus was in pursuit, running after the fleeing victims.
The trees seemed to be alive, Severus thought as he ran, unable to get a good shot off while branches and limbs obscured his vision. The forest was unyielding and impeding, like it was fighting back. Truthfully, Severus couldn’t blame it. His efforts to catch the escapees were halfhearted at best and he didn’t know if he should hate himself for it or not.
Jumping nimbly over a root, Severus almost crashed his landing when an achingly familiar voice gave a muffled cry ahead of him.
There, half hidden in the cradle of a massive tree’s roots was a witch. Flaming red hair dimmed in the darkness of night and the gloom of the forest. Her green eyes were indistinguishable in the shadows and her fair skin almost glowed in the scant light of the moon. She was beautiful and familiar and, to Severus’s horror, very, very pregnant.
The large swell of Lily Potter’s belly was impossible to ignore. Her long simple dress was pulled taught over her middle and it was barely adequate at covering her swollen bosom. There, in the dark, in the forest hiding from a Death Eater raid, Lily Potter crouched uncomfortably in the hollow of the tree clutching her belly in pain and pointing her wand unwaveringly at Severus.
Holding perfectly still, Severus grasped his wand lightly at his side and just stared as a wave of emotions swept over him. Anger and resentment, feelings Severus had clung to so tightly when the mark on his arm flared dark, when the Dark Lord took sadistic pleasure in punishing his followers. They were startlingly quick to be buried by the nearly lifelong feelings of love and devotion he had for this woman before him.
She was his first friend, his first love, and his first heartbreak. For nearly all his life she was everything to him until she was nothing and now here she was, watching him with hate and wariness as she prepared, in vain, to protect her unborn child from him.
A ripple of muscle tension rolled visibly over the taught heavy swell of her belly and Lily whimpered. She collapsed back on her bottom. Her wand never wavered and Severus was struck by the sudden frightening realization that she was in labor.
Another contraction came on the heels of the first and when Lily lost control and moaned in pain Severus found himself taking an involuntary step toward her.
“No!” Lily shouted. “Not any closer!”
Frozen once more, Severus watched her struggle to pant through the pain; another contraction and a split second distraction. Severus took the opening and gave his wand the barest of flicks.
Lily’s wand wrenched itself from her grip. In shock she watched it sail into the Death Eater’s hand.
There was silence for a moment as dark resignation crept over Lily’s beautiful pale face.
“Please,” she whispered fear in her voice but determination burning in her eyes. “Please just wait,” she begged. “Just wait until he’s born. Wait and kill me, but don’t- don’t kill my son. Please!”
It hurt, Severus realized. Regardless that he was disguised by robe and mask, it hurt that she would think him capable of ever hurting her. Hearing her beg was like a knife in his heart.
“Ah!” Lily, once holding the gaze of the wizard before her, was then overwhelmed by the pain of another contraction and she squeezed her eyes shut. Clutching her belly with both hands she huffed through the pain and tried to keep her struggles quiet.
His mind cleared as he realized what he had to do. Severus turned his wand on himself and cast a quick charm to disguise his voice. Moving closer he marveled at how much sway Lily Evans still held over him, at how much he still loved her. He pushed the thoughts back, cleared his mind and focused.
“How long have you been having contractions?” He demanded as he kneeled in front of her.
His voice sounded indistinguishable in deep metallic echoes. The sound jerked Lily to attention.
“What- Ah!” She cut off in a shout of pain.
A quick wave of his wand and the area around them descended into silence with the casting of privacy spell.
“How long have you been in labor?” He asked again reaching toward her with gloved hands.
“No!” Lily gasped out trying to push herself away from him backing into the tree behind her. “Don’t touch me!”
“We don’t have the time for this!” Severus snapped. “Your contractions are coming too quickly to move you, now. Either you accept my help or you risk endangering yourself and the child.”
Panting through the tightening of her muscles trying to suppress the almost inexplicable urge to push, Lily looked into the shadowed eye slits of the Death Eater’s mask. She knew she had no choice.
Body trembling, Lily gave the Death Eater a reluctant nod. “What do I do?”
Severus felt something inside unclench with relief and he took a calming breath. Hardening his Occlumency shields and compartmentalizing the myriad of conflicting emotions inside him, he concentrated on the task at hand. Pulling up the medi-wizard training required for his Potions Mastery, he felt confident in his knowledge of the situation.
“I need you to lean back against the tree and draw your knees up as close to your chest as you can get them,” he instructed her and a quick wave of his wand vanished her blood and birthing fluid soaked underwear. “I need to examine you to see how open you are.”
Lily’s waters had broken somewhere in between her home and the forest and her contractions had progressed alarmingly quickly. She gritted her teeth and refused to flinch away from the Death Eater’s touch knowing it was a necessary evil.
Severus pressed on her belly with his gloved hands, a light diagnostic spell later and he came to the conclusion that she really should have been halfway through her labor by now. He cast a wordless lumos and discovered that she was bleeding more than she should be.
A shiver of unease was ruthlessly pushed down buried under his shields. He readied himself to do what he must.
“Lily,” he called her attention, “You’re ready to push. When I count to three, breathe and push until I tell you to stop.” Gently taking her grasping hands he helped her grab her knees and pull them as close to her chest as she could. Severus conjured a floating sphere of light and shoved his wand back into its holster.
“Lily?” She was gripping her knees white-knuckled and nodded in determination. “One, two, three, push!” He commanded.
Twenty minutes later, Severus was glad for the privacy wards he’d erected. Lily’s shouts of exertion would have drawn every Death Eater, Order member, and Auror within a five mile radius. The sounds of her screams would never leave him. He could tell Lily was tiring and the amount of blood leaving her body was dangerous, but with Severus directing her efforts and helping what little he could to speed up the process the baby was out to its shoulders and two more hard pushes would see it thrust into the world.
Then Severus could concentrate on Lily’s hemorrhaging.
Five minutes later with more blood staining his gloves and robes and a rapidly darkening bruise from an involuntary kick from Lily, Severus was pulling Lily and James Potter’s son out into the world kicking and screaming.
Five pounds and eight ounces; the infant was small, almost four weeks premature. He seemed unbearably tiny in Severus’s long fingered hands. Covered in blood and amniotic fluid, the boy was wrinkly and protesting with grating cries. He shivered and flailed and scrunched his face up as he squalled. With his infant blue eyes squeezed shut the only distinguishing feature Severus could see was a shock of thick, wet, surprisingly unruly black hair.
He cast a quick spell to suction the fluid from the infant’s airways then severed and healed the umbilical cord. Tearing a length of black Death Eater robe, Severus scourgified it and swaddled Lily’s son haphazardly then placed him next to his mother for safe keeping.
“It’s a boy,” Lily murmured as she collapsed against the tree in exhaustion. Smiling tiredly, she tenderly stroked her son’s cheek. “I knew it was going to be a boy.”
Severus cursed silently as he realized that she was now bleeding out in earnest.
A new level of urgency set in and Severus unsheathed his wand, prepared to fight tooth and nail for Lily’s life.
“Lily, you need to listen to me very closely.” Severus squeezed her trembling sweat slicked knees to get her focus smearing them with blood. “You’re bleeding heavily and I need to stop it.”
She turned her head toward him almost lethargically. Her eyes were hazy and her skin was gray. “I’m bleeding?”
“Yes,” Severus answered looking her in the eyes not liking how quickly she was deteriorating. “You’re hemorrhaging internally. We don’t have much time.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fluttered and her head lolled backward resting against the rough bark of the tree. “I feel so tired.”
Severus’s heart was pounding and his mind was racing through all the possible causes and solutions. With every wasted second Lily was bleeding out more rapidly.
“You need to stay awake,” he commanded his voice level despite the dire situation. “You need to expel the afterbirth and once you do I will have to act very quickly. Do you understand?”
Lily lifted her head again to meet his gaze and gave a wobbly nod. Her eyes were still hazy, but a distant exhausted sort of determination shined from them. “Okay.”
“Good.” Severus took a deep breath and focused back between Lily’s thighs, trying not to think about the pool of blood soaking into the earth beneath her. “Push now.”
With a pained groan, Lily grabbed her knees clumsily and pushed as hard as she could. Her stomach muscles tensed weakly and Severus could tell it wasn’t going to be enough. He grasped the umbilical cord tightly and pulled slowly, steadily. If he pulled it out too quickly it would tear her up inside even more and he would lose her in a matter of moments.
“Push again, Lily. You’re almost done.”
She gave another weak push and the afterbirth slipped free a gush of blood coming with it.
“Shit!” Severus spared a fraction of a second to see that the afterbirth was whole before he tossed it aside and started casting every spell he knew to stop the bleeding.
She was deeply torn inside. The physical stress from her flight into the woods, the struggle to suppress her labor, it had injured her greatly. Severus gritted his teeth and dug through the recesses of his mind trying to find a solution. He’d been able to slow the bleeding, shrink the tear, but it was so severe that the only magical methods able to stop it all together and seal the wound would likely damage her irreparably.
Lily’s body suddenly went limp and her head fell back. Her eyes were rolling, her breath was stuttering in her chest.
“Lily!” Severus snapped in panic. “Lily, stay with me! Stay awake,” he demanded.
“’S cold,” she slurred.
He hastily cast a warming charm trying to ward off shock. “Stay awake. Don’t close your eyes.”
“’S so hard.”
“I know,” he soothed. Some of his compartmentalization was failing. There was emotion in his voice. “Just a little bit longer.”
There was nothing more he could do with magic. He’d just as likely kill her as stop the bleeding with anything else he could try. His mind went blank with the hopelessness of the situation, with his utter terror of losing his Lily. Then a flash of a half forgotten passage he’d read in some book or other during his training.
Magic was useless, but an antiquated muggle method might yet save her.
He ripped off his gloves and scourgified his hands until they were almost completely sterile. He ruthlessly cleared his mind again and readied himself for what he was about to do.
“Lily,” she weakly turned her gaze to him, “this will hurt.”
That was all the warning he gave her before he slid his right hand inside her and pressed up hard on the place where he knew she was losing her life blood.
Her back arched and she screamed in pain. Severus used his left hand to hold her pelvis down not lessening the pressure at all.
“Oh God! It hurts!” She gasped and scrabbled at the leaves and dirt with clawing fingers, tears springing to her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“I need to stop the bleeding,” Severus said, unmoved by her tears and cries his concentration entirely on making sure she lived. Making sure her beautiful green eyes didn’t go dull and cloud over with death.
His mother’s cries woke the infant and his wails were ear splitting. Severus felt an unwelcome instinctual urge to quiet his screams even as his ears rang, but he didn’t waver from his task. Lily was more important. Lily would always be more important than anything else.
One hand holding her down and one hand keeping her blood inside her, Severus chanted a spell that gave him internal sight under his breath. He watched the after image of Lily’s wound as her blood flow steadily lessened. Holding his fingers steady in place he started to chant another healing encouraging her wound to clot.
Lily’s body shook around him and she panted heaving breaths as she listening to her son’s cries. She tried to think through the agony of having a Death Eater’s hands inside her womb. Clumsily she unburied a hand from the dirt at her side and reached over to stroke her tiny son’s wet matted messy black hair. He looked like his father.
“It’s okay, baby.” She rasped unsteadily, struggling with the words. “It’s okay, mummy’s here. Don’t cry, baby, everything’s going to be okay.”
Severus’s heart ached as he listened to Lily whisper to her son. In another life, he distantly told himself as he continued chanting, fighting to save her life. In another life, that would have been his son she whispered to. His son she stroked so lovingly and gazed upon like he was the sun. Severus’s heart ached because he would have loved her as if she were his whole world.
But in this life he was holding her wound closed and listening to her beautiful voice sooth James Potter’s spawn.
Finally the boy stopped wailing and finally Lily stopped dying. Her wound was clotted and her blood wasn’t gushing from her. Severus lifted his left hand away and grabbed his wand casting a medical stabilizing charm in her womb to keep the wound from jostling with her movement then a quickening charm in her veins to promote blood replenishment. It wasn’t nearly as effective as a potion, but it would keep her stable until her allies found her.
Carefully removing his hand from inside her, Severus hastily scourgified the blood from his skin leaving traces of it under his nails and caked in the creases of his knuckles. He wanted scrub his skin raw to erase every molecule of reminder of Lily’s brush with death, but he wasn’t finished yet. Lily still needed him.
He cast a scourgifying and drying spells on her tattered dirty dress then tore off another piece of his Death Eater’s robe and transfigured it into a pair of underwear, to protect some of her modesty.
Lily didn’t even seem to notice as he gently, but efficiently slipped them onto her. She was still murmuring to her child, completely and utterly captivated by him now that she was no longer in danger of leaving him alone in this world of death and danger.
“Mummy loves you, my baby,” Lily whispered, gazing at the boy with exhausted bright green eyes. “My beautiful, beautiful boy.”
Severus watched them, kneeling in the blood soaked dirt at Lily’s feet. He felt a wave of jealousy and resentment for this child that had so much of Lily’s love while he had none.
He tore his gaze away and hardened his mental shields until he barely felt anything at all.
“You’re out of danger,” he said abruptly, breaking the calm that had fallen over their little ring of quiet. “Your body will heal completely.”
Lily jerked her gaze toward him, her eyes wide. She’d forgotten she was in the presence of a Death Eater, one of Voldemort’s loyal.
He was a gruesome sight. His bone white mask splattered with coppery dried blood, his robe torn and soaked with the same. She could see no distinguishing features except for his pale long fingered hands.
“Please,” she asked. “Please, will you lift him to me? I don’t think I have the strength to do it myself.”
The Death Eater spent a long moment staring at her, the shadowed eye slits of his mask trained unerringly on her face. She was sure he would ignore her quiet request, but instead he moved slowly, haltingly and lifted her son from the earth. He bore her baby’s slight weight with one long fingering pale hand and cradling his head with the other.
Lily watched her son being brought closer with awe and fear in her chest. This man, this Death Eater held her son’s life in his hands for the second time that night. She was terrified he would snatch it away.
She arranged her arms in a cradle and leaned back against the tree for support. He gently placed her son in her arms and she felt the weight of him settle solidly on her chest. It was one of the most wonderful things she’d ever felt. She didn’t ever want to let him go.
The Death Eater moved away again and Lily tore her eyes from her son’s face to look up at him.
“Why did you save me?” She asked, her finger’s threading through her son’s wild main of hair. He was wrapped in a piece of Death Eater robe she realized. It felt like a violation, but then she remembered that this Death Eater had helped her bore him into this world. That act almost purified it.
“You saved me and you saved my son.” She studied his impassive mask trying to discern any sort of emotion from its hard edges. “Why would you do that for a sworn enemy?”
The Death Eater just knelt there, his shadowed masked gaze burning into her. Lily didn’t look away, though the sight of him, gruesome and skeletal, made her heart beat with fear. She was vulnerable and wandless and at his mercy, but she wouldn’t show him anymore weakness.
They stared at each other in heavy silence, the Death Eater declining to speak and Lily unable to look away from him. A pale glint of gray light filtered through the tree branches and the Death Eater looked toward the East.
It was gray dawn. The sun was rising.
The Death Eater rose gracefully to his feet and turned away from her. He drew his wand, flicked his wrist sharply and the sounds of distant morning birds and the breeze through the trees invaded the silence. The ball of light he’d conjured blinked out of existence.
He turned his back on her and strode to the furthest edge of the roots surrounding them. He reached into a pocket of his inner robe, withdrew her wand, and dropped it to the ground ten feet away from her. She wouldn’t be able to get to it holding her baby and weak from birth and blood loss as she was.
He was stepping over the roots and Lily realized that he was going to leave without another word.
“Wait,” she called after him before she could think better of it.
The Death Eater paused. He stood completely still with his back to her, straight and tall. His body was held ridged as he waited for her to speak.
“I owe you a life debt,” Lily murmured into the quiet between them. His shoulders tensed. Lily bit her lip, determined. “You saved my life twice over, you saved my son’s life. I’m in debt to you.”
Slowly, the Death Eater looked at her over his shoulder, regarded her from behind his stained, bone white mask. When he replied his voice was false, still disguised.
“I’m no enemy of yours. You owe me nothing.”
He faced forward again and lifted his wand with an arching graceful wave he whispered, “Expecto Patronum.” A beautiful, ghostly, silver doe misted from his wand tip and disappeared into the trees following the growing sounds of a search party in the forest.
Lily gasped at the sight and stared at the Death Eater’s back in shock as he disappeared into the shadows without another word.
Severus walked away from the love and heartbreak of his life. His heart was heavy and his head was pounding as his shields crumbled and all of the emotions from the night came flooding into him.
He turned on the spot letting his mind direct his apparation to the miserable place that was at once home and not.
He saved Lily’s life tonight and helped her bring the spawn of James Potter, his boyhood tormenter, into the world. Her tears and her screams and the sound of her gentle loving voice soothing her child while her life’s blood soaked him up to the elbows would forever haunt him. He knew it. It would haunt him like the look of disgust on her face when he’d called her dirty blood, like the blinding brightness of her smile, like the burning agony of his love for her.
The child he’d held in his hands, her child; he was James Potter’s son, every visible inch of him. Severus sneered, hatred, jealousy and resentment swelling inside him until it was all damped down by one redeeming thought.
The boy would have Lily’s eyes.
*
End.
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Severus Snape, Lily Potter, Harry Potter
Rating: PG13
Genre: Pre-Hogwarts, First Wizarding War
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.
Word Count: 3,920
Warning: Death Eaters, Graphic Child Birth, Implied Violence, Major Character Injury, Angst
Summary: Severus found her running from a Death Eater raid. Lily was the love of his life and even on opposite sides of a war he would always choose to save her.
A/N: Probably pretty medically inaccurate.
*
It was a night raid; another sleepy unsuspecting wizarding village, another albatross to hang around his neck. It was blood and carnage and a living nightmare as Death Eaters rampaged through the town murdering and torturing as they went.
Severus listened to the screams as he cast another curse and felt a splash of hot blood against his black cloak. Thick viscos drops of the fluid splattered against his white mask. He felt another little bit of his soul blacken and shrivel up. He wondered when the bright shine of purpose and revolutionary idealism had faded to this murky dark hopelessness. Some of the screams reached a fever pitch and yet more began.
The massacre waged on. Bellatrix cackling high and mad, and Crouch Jr. shouting taunts to his victims could be heard over the din. McNair, Rookwood, Crabe, Greyback; all laughing and howling. They surged through the little village like a wave while Severus moved through it all like he was walking in molasses. When did the Dark Lord’s vision of a bright new world begin to tarnish? When did the indiscriminate murder of good witches and wizards become acceptable? When did Severus begin to see this all as the madness that it truly was?
Flashes of movement caught his eye; wizards running for their lives into the forest surrounding their burning village. A barked order from Crouch and Severus was in pursuit, running after the fleeing victims.
The trees seemed to be alive, Severus thought as he ran, unable to get a good shot off while branches and limbs obscured his vision. The forest was unyielding and impeding, like it was fighting back. Truthfully, Severus couldn’t blame it. His efforts to catch the escapees were halfhearted at best and he didn’t know if he should hate himself for it or not.
Jumping nimbly over a root, Severus almost crashed his landing when an achingly familiar voice gave a muffled cry ahead of him.
There, half hidden in the cradle of a massive tree’s roots was a witch. Flaming red hair dimmed in the darkness of night and the gloom of the forest. Her green eyes were indistinguishable in the shadows and her fair skin almost glowed in the scant light of the moon. She was beautiful and familiar and, to Severus’s horror, very, very pregnant.
The large swell of Lily Potter’s belly was impossible to ignore. Her long simple dress was pulled taught over her middle and it was barely adequate at covering her swollen bosom. There, in the dark, in the forest hiding from a Death Eater raid, Lily Potter crouched uncomfortably in the hollow of the tree clutching her belly in pain and pointing her wand unwaveringly at Severus.
Holding perfectly still, Severus grasped his wand lightly at his side and just stared as a wave of emotions swept over him. Anger and resentment, feelings Severus had clung to so tightly when the mark on his arm flared dark, when the Dark Lord took sadistic pleasure in punishing his followers. They were startlingly quick to be buried by the nearly lifelong feelings of love and devotion he had for this woman before him.
She was his first friend, his first love, and his first heartbreak. For nearly all his life she was everything to him until she was nothing and now here she was, watching him with hate and wariness as she prepared, in vain, to protect her unborn child from him.
A ripple of muscle tension rolled visibly over the taught heavy swell of her belly and Lily whimpered. She collapsed back on her bottom. Her wand never wavered and Severus was struck by the sudden frightening realization that she was in labor.
Another contraction came on the heels of the first and when Lily lost control and moaned in pain Severus found himself taking an involuntary step toward her.
“No!” Lily shouted. “Not any closer!”
Frozen once more, Severus watched her struggle to pant through the pain; another contraction and a split second distraction. Severus took the opening and gave his wand the barest of flicks.
Lily’s wand wrenched itself from her grip. In shock she watched it sail into the Death Eater’s hand.
There was silence for a moment as dark resignation crept over Lily’s beautiful pale face.
“Please,” she whispered fear in her voice but determination burning in her eyes. “Please just wait,” she begged. “Just wait until he’s born. Wait and kill me, but don’t- don’t kill my son. Please!”
It hurt, Severus realized. Regardless that he was disguised by robe and mask, it hurt that she would think him capable of ever hurting her. Hearing her beg was like a knife in his heart.
“Ah!” Lily, once holding the gaze of the wizard before her, was then overwhelmed by the pain of another contraction and she squeezed her eyes shut. Clutching her belly with both hands she huffed through the pain and tried to keep her struggles quiet.
His mind cleared as he realized what he had to do. Severus turned his wand on himself and cast a quick charm to disguise his voice. Moving closer he marveled at how much sway Lily Evans still held over him, at how much he still loved her. He pushed the thoughts back, cleared his mind and focused.
“How long have you been having contractions?” He demanded as he kneeled in front of her.
His voice sounded indistinguishable in deep metallic echoes. The sound jerked Lily to attention.
“What- Ah!” She cut off in a shout of pain.
A quick wave of his wand and the area around them descended into silence with the casting of privacy spell.
“How long have you been in labor?” He asked again reaching toward her with gloved hands.
“No!” Lily gasped out trying to push herself away from him backing into the tree behind her. “Don’t touch me!”
“We don’t have the time for this!” Severus snapped. “Your contractions are coming too quickly to move you, now. Either you accept my help or you risk endangering yourself and the child.”
Panting through the tightening of her muscles trying to suppress the almost inexplicable urge to push, Lily looked into the shadowed eye slits of the Death Eater’s mask. She knew she had no choice.
Body trembling, Lily gave the Death Eater a reluctant nod. “What do I do?”
Severus felt something inside unclench with relief and he took a calming breath. Hardening his Occlumency shields and compartmentalizing the myriad of conflicting emotions inside him, he concentrated on the task at hand. Pulling up the medi-wizard training required for his Potions Mastery, he felt confident in his knowledge of the situation.
“I need you to lean back against the tree and draw your knees up as close to your chest as you can get them,” he instructed her and a quick wave of his wand vanished her blood and birthing fluid soaked underwear. “I need to examine you to see how open you are.”
Lily’s waters had broken somewhere in between her home and the forest and her contractions had progressed alarmingly quickly. She gritted her teeth and refused to flinch away from the Death Eater’s touch knowing it was a necessary evil.
Severus pressed on her belly with his gloved hands, a light diagnostic spell later and he came to the conclusion that she really should have been halfway through her labor by now. He cast a wordless lumos and discovered that she was bleeding more than she should be.
A shiver of unease was ruthlessly pushed down buried under his shields. He readied himself to do what he must.
“Lily,” he called her attention, “You’re ready to push. When I count to three, breathe and push until I tell you to stop.” Gently taking her grasping hands he helped her grab her knees and pull them as close to her chest as she could. Severus conjured a floating sphere of light and shoved his wand back into its holster.
“Lily?” She was gripping her knees white-knuckled and nodded in determination. “One, two, three, push!” He commanded.
Twenty minutes later, Severus was glad for the privacy wards he’d erected. Lily’s shouts of exertion would have drawn every Death Eater, Order member, and Auror within a five mile radius. The sounds of her screams would never leave him. He could tell Lily was tiring and the amount of blood leaving her body was dangerous, but with Severus directing her efforts and helping what little he could to speed up the process the baby was out to its shoulders and two more hard pushes would see it thrust into the world.
Then Severus could concentrate on Lily’s hemorrhaging.
Five minutes later with more blood staining his gloves and robes and a rapidly darkening bruise from an involuntary kick from Lily, Severus was pulling Lily and James Potter’s son out into the world kicking and screaming.
Five pounds and eight ounces; the infant was small, almost four weeks premature. He seemed unbearably tiny in Severus’s long fingered hands. Covered in blood and amniotic fluid, the boy was wrinkly and protesting with grating cries. He shivered and flailed and scrunched his face up as he squalled. With his infant blue eyes squeezed shut the only distinguishing feature Severus could see was a shock of thick, wet, surprisingly unruly black hair.
He cast a quick spell to suction the fluid from the infant’s airways then severed and healed the umbilical cord. Tearing a length of black Death Eater robe, Severus scourgified it and swaddled Lily’s son haphazardly then placed him next to his mother for safe keeping.
“It’s a boy,” Lily murmured as she collapsed against the tree in exhaustion. Smiling tiredly, she tenderly stroked her son’s cheek. “I knew it was going to be a boy.”
Severus cursed silently as he realized that she was now bleeding out in earnest.
A new level of urgency set in and Severus unsheathed his wand, prepared to fight tooth and nail for Lily’s life.
“Lily, you need to listen to me very closely.” Severus squeezed her trembling sweat slicked knees to get her focus smearing them with blood. “You’re bleeding heavily and I need to stop it.”
She turned her head toward him almost lethargically. Her eyes were hazy and her skin was gray. “I’m bleeding?”
“Yes,” Severus answered looking her in the eyes not liking how quickly she was deteriorating. “You’re hemorrhaging internally. We don’t have much time.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fluttered and her head lolled backward resting against the rough bark of the tree. “I feel so tired.”
Severus’s heart was pounding and his mind was racing through all the possible causes and solutions. With every wasted second Lily was bleeding out more rapidly.
“You need to stay awake,” he commanded his voice level despite the dire situation. “You need to expel the afterbirth and once you do I will have to act very quickly. Do you understand?”
Lily lifted her head again to meet his gaze and gave a wobbly nod. Her eyes were still hazy, but a distant exhausted sort of determination shined from them. “Okay.”
“Good.” Severus took a deep breath and focused back between Lily’s thighs, trying not to think about the pool of blood soaking into the earth beneath her. “Push now.”
With a pained groan, Lily grabbed her knees clumsily and pushed as hard as she could. Her stomach muscles tensed weakly and Severus could tell it wasn’t going to be enough. He grasped the umbilical cord tightly and pulled slowly, steadily. If he pulled it out too quickly it would tear her up inside even more and he would lose her in a matter of moments.
“Push again, Lily. You’re almost done.”
She gave another weak push and the afterbirth slipped free a gush of blood coming with it.
“Shit!” Severus spared a fraction of a second to see that the afterbirth was whole before he tossed it aside and started casting every spell he knew to stop the bleeding.
She was deeply torn inside. The physical stress from her flight into the woods, the struggle to suppress her labor, it had injured her greatly. Severus gritted his teeth and dug through the recesses of his mind trying to find a solution. He’d been able to slow the bleeding, shrink the tear, but it was so severe that the only magical methods able to stop it all together and seal the wound would likely damage her irreparably.
Lily’s body suddenly went limp and her head fell back. Her eyes were rolling, her breath was stuttering in her chest.
“Lily!” Severus snapped in panic. “Lily, stay with me! Stay awake,” he demanded.
“’S cold,” she slurred.
He hastily cast a warming charm trying to ward off shock. “Stay awake. Don’t close your eyes.”
“’S so hard.”
“I know,” he soothed. Some of his compartmentalization was failing. There was emotion in his voice. “Just a little bit longer.”
There was nothing more he could do with magic. He’d just as likely kill her as stop the bleeding with anything else he could try. His mind went blank with the hopelessness of the situation, with his utter terror of losing his Lily. Then a flash of a half forgotten passage he’d read in some book or other during his training.
Magic was useless, but an antiquated muggle method might yet save her.
He ripped off his gloves and scourgified his hands until they were almost completely sterile. He ruthlessly cleared his mind again and readied himself for what he was about to do.
“Lily,” she weakly turned her gaze to him, “this will hurt.”
That was all the warning he gave her before he slid his right hand inside her and pressed up hard on the place where he knew she was losing her life blood.
Her back arched and she screamed in pain. Severus used his left hand to hold her pelvis down not lessening the pressure at all.
“Oh God! It hurts!” She gasped and scrabbled at the leaves and dirt with clawing fingers, tears springing to her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“I need to stop the bleeding,” Severus said, unmoved by her tears and cries his concentration entirely on making sure she lived. Making sure her beautiful green eyes didn’t go dull and cloud over with death.
His mother’s cries woke the infant and his wails were ear splitting. Severus felt an unwelcome instinctual urge to quiet his screams even as his ears rang, but he didn’t waver from his task. Lily was more important. Lily would always be more important than anything else.
One hand holding her down and one hand keeping her blood inside her, Severus chanted a spell that gave him internal sight under his breath. He watched the after image of Lily’s wound as her blood flow steadily lessened. Holding his fingers steady in place he started to chant another healing encouraging her wound to clot.
Lily’s body shook around him and she panted heaving breaths as she listening to her son’s cries. She tried to think through the agony of having a Death Eater’s hands inside her womb. Clumsily she unburied a hand from the dirt at her side and reached over to stroke her tiny son’s wet matted messy black hair. He looked like his father.
“It’s okay, baby.” She rasped unsteadily, struggling with the words. “It’s okay, mummy’s here. Don’t cry, baby, everything’s going to be okay.”
Severus’s heart ached as he listened to Lily whisper to her son. In another life, he distantly told himself as he continued chanting, fighting to save her life. In another life, that would have been his son she whispered to. His son she stroked so lovingly and gazed upon like he was the sun. Severus’s heart ached because he would have loved her as if she were his whole world.
But in this life he was holding her wound closed and listening to her beautiful voice sooth James Potter’s spawn.
Finally the boy stopped wailing and finally Lily stopped dying. Her wound was clotted and her blood wasn’t gushing from her. Severus lifted his left hand away and grabbed his wand casting a medical stabilizing charm in her womb to keep the wound from jostling with her movement then a quickening charm in her veins to promote blood replenishment. It wasn’t nearly as effective as a potion, but it would keep her stable until her allies found her.
Carefully removing his hand from inside her, Severus hastily scourgified the blood from his skin leaving traces of it under his nails and caked in the creases of his knuckles. He wanted scrub his skin raw to erase every molecule of reminder of Lily’s brush with death, but he wasn’t finished yet. Lily still needed him.
He cast a scourgifying and drying spells on her tattered dirty dress then tore off another piece of his Death Eater’s robe and transfigured it into a pair of underwear, to protect some of her modesty.
Lily didn’t even seem to notice as he gently, but efficiently slipped them onto her. She was still murmuring to her child, completely and utterly captivated by him now that she was no longer in danger of leaving him alone in this world of death and danger.
“Mummy loves you, my baby,” Lily whispered, gazing at the boy with exhausted bright green eyes. “My beautiful, beautiful boy.”
Severus watched them, kneeling in the blood soaked dirt at Lily’s feet. He felt a wave of jealousy and resentment for this child that had so much of Lily’s love while he had none.
He tore his gaze away and hardened his mental shields until he barely felt anything at all.
“You’re out of danger,” he said abruptly, breaking the calm that had fallen over their little ring of quiet. “Your body will heal completely.”
Lily jerked her gaze toward him, her eyes wide. She’d forgotten she was in the presence of a Death Eater, one of Voldemort’s loyal.
He was a gruesome sight. His bone white mask splattered with coppery dried blood, his robe torn and soaked with the same. She could see no distinguishing features except for his pale long fingered hands.
“Please,” she asked. “Please, will you lift him to me? I don’t think I have the strength to do it myself.”
The Death Eater spent a long moment staring at her, the shadowed eye slits of his mask trained unerringly on her face. She was sure he would ignore her quiet request, but instead he moved slowly, haltingly and lifted her son from the earth. He bore her baby’s slight weight with one long fingering pale hand and cradling his head with the other.
Lily watched her son being brought closer with awe and fear in her chest. This man, this Death Eater held her son’s life in his hands for the second time that night. She was terrified he would snatch it away.
She arranged her arms in a cradle and leaned back against the tree for support. He gently placed her son in her arms and she felt the weight of him settle solidly on her chest. It was one of the most wonderful things she’d ever felt. She didn’t ever want to let him go.
The Death Eater moved away again and Lily tore her eyes from her son’s face to look up at him.
“Why did you save me?” She asked, her finger’s threading through her son’s wild main of hair. He was wrapped in a piece of Death Eater robe she realized. It felt like a violation, but then she remembered that this Death Eater had helped her bore him into this world. That act almost purified it.
“You saved me and you saved my son.” She studied his impassive mask trying to discern any sort of emotion from its hard edges. “Why would you do that for a sworn enemy?”
The Death Eater just knelt there, his shadowed masked gaze burning into her. Lily didn’t look away, though the sight of him, gruesome and skeletal, made her heart beat with fear. She was vulnerable and wandless and at his mercy, but she wouldn’t show him anymore weakness.
They stared at each other in heavy silence, the Death Eater declining to speak and Lily unable to look away from him. A pale glint of gray light filtered through the tree branches and the Death Eater looked toward the East.
It was gray dawn. The sun was rising.
The Death Eater rose gracefully to his feet and turned away from her. He drew his wand, flicked his wrist sharply and the sounds of distant morning birds and the breeze through the trees invaded the silence. The ball of light he’d conjured blinked out of existence.
He turned his back on her and strode to the furthest edge of the roots surrounding them. He reached into a pocket of his inner robe, withdrew her wand, and dropped it to the ground ten feet away from her. She wouldn’t be able to get to it holding her baby and weak from birth and blood loss as she was.
He was stepping over the roots and Lily realized that he was going to leave without another word.
“Wait,” she called after him before she could think better of it.
The Death Eater paused. He stood completely still with his back to her, straight and tall. His body was held ridged as he waited for her to speak.
“I owe you a life debt,” Lily murmured into the quiet between them. His shoulders tensed. Lily bit her lip, determined. “You saved my life twice over, you saved my son’s life. I’m in debt to you.”
Slowly, the Death Eater looked at her over his shoulder, regarded her from behind his stained, bone white mask. When he replied his voice was false, still disguised.
“I’m no enemy of yours. You owe me nothing.”
He faced forward again and lifted his wand with an arching graceful wave he whispered, “Expecto Patronum.” A beautiful, ghostly, silver doe misted from his wand tip and disappeared into the trees following the growing sounds of a search party in the forest.
Lily gasped at the sight and stared at the Death Eater’s back in shock as he disappeared into the shadows without another word.
Severus walked away from the love and heartbreak of his life. His heart was heavy and his head was pounding as his shields crumbled and all of the emotions from the night came flooding into him.
He turned on the spot letting his mind direct his apparation to the miserable place that was at once home and not.
He saved Lily’s life tonight and helped her bring the spawn of James Potter, his boyhood tormenter, into the world. Her tears and her screams and the sound of her gentle loving voice soothing her child while her life’s blood soaked him up to the elbows would forever haunt him. He knew it. It would haunt him like the look of disgust on her face when he’d called her dirty blood, like the blinding brightness of her smile, like the burning agony of his love for her.
The child he’d held in his hands, her child; he was James Potter’s son, every visible inch of him. Severus sneered, hatred, jealousy and resentment swelling inside him until it was all damped down by one redeeming thought.
The boy would have Lily’s eyes.
*
End.