Dusted
Title: Dusted
Rating: PG-13
Genre: apocalypse fic, drama, romance
Characters/Pairings: Lily/James, Marauder-era crew, Weasley appearances, and one I can't say because of spoilers.
Spoilers: Pre-series, so none, really.
Summary: When Lily and James' world is destroyed by one man, each learns what humanity means.
Notes: No beta, except myself. Cross posted. Prompt “as new as snow” for 7spells. YES, it's apoca!fic; YES, it's an odd juxtaposition, dust and snow; YES, YES, YES, it's been my baby since September (22nd, 2008, to be exact) ;)
Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Scholastic Press, and is used without permission here. I, however, do not claim what is theirs and only what is mine.
Dusted
"...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"
Genesis 3:19
Beneath her feet, the ground crackles, brittle flakes of dirt breaking and crumbling to reddened dust and blowing away in the gusts of wind that sweep the wide expanse of desert. The earth stretching away to all directions is baked red and hard, water greedily leeched from all but the deepest caves and ocean trenches by the consuming destruction.
The sun is still at its height, long rays reaching towards Earth with punishing heat, and the back of her neck is slowly burning in the sun, pale white skin turning red, baking like the dirt. This is how it always is: the mindless trek, pushing on towards the next outpost of civilization, the next wave of heat, the next rush of fear and sadness. This is the world in 1978. This is Lily Evans.
- - -
Later that night, after the sun has sunk below the horizon and the air has become colder, the heat of the day freezing away, Lily takes stock of herself, as she has learned to do every night.
She wears a battered pair of trainers she filched from a dead man’s body outside of Birmingham a few weeks ago. The toes are already splitting open and the laces red with dirt. Her jeans have holes in the knees and are worn slung low on her thin hips where all traces of her once sultry curves have been eaten away, and her shirt is grimy and grey with age. A bag that is slung across her shoulders during the day carries her essentials, including her now neglected wand.
This is how the world has been since May that year. It is November now. Seven months of hell. It began with the Soviets, Lily supposes. They and the Americans, with their ongoing Cold War and nuclear armaments had led the world to the frenzy of building huge weapons and increasing tensions throughout the world.
Ducking her head as she determinedly strikes a match, Lily scowls, her eyes momentarily filling as she remembers how a wizard, possibly Voldemort, possibly just some anarchist or Communist ass, had gotten the idea to pair those nuclear weapons with spells. And the world had gone to hell.
Over the next two or three months, this wizard, whoever he was, set off on a worldwide mission of terror. First the Asian countries: he ignited a bomb that destroyed much of China and swamped most of Polynesia and low lying southeast Asia with a massive tidal wave. The majority of the Middle East was killed in the rumbling aftermath of the attack, as well as most of the Soviet Union. Asia became a wasteland, synonymous with death.
Then came the destruction of South America and the United States. The terrorist had, that time, set off the mechanism inside a prominent chemical plant, increasing the strength of the bomb and allowing for an even greater scale massacre, in which not only North America was leveled, but boiling away parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, exposing the salty ocean floor. This was synonymous with defeat.
Inside Hogwarts, the professors had suspended lessons, and students tuned into radios that received only feeble signals. Students anxiously awaited owls from home and every day as more and more frightened parents came to retrieve their children, the anxiety in their pinched faces and tired eyes speaking volumes.
Europe waited with baited breath for the next attack, which was likely to be close to home. It was. Africa, then Antarctica were simultaneously destroyed. Everywhere, police agencies, intelligence agencies, ordinary citizens searched for the mysterious killer, hoping to end his reign of terror. But they had nothing, no one to start with.
Reports began to trickle in of survivors. To the Muggles, everyone was dead, but word reached the wizarding world of lone bands of renegade folk who had managed, by the grace of spells and other means, to survive the blast and its aftershocks. These stories were heartening, but it was not enough to quell the fear. After all, a few survivors out of the six billion people that had once populated the world meant nothing
Then, in early June, the last bomb dropped. Lily sits back on her heels, staring into the flames as she recalls that fateful day.
She had awoken late that day, she remembers. Classes had screeched to a halt; with less than three dozen students there and the professors swiftly leaving, there was no point. Lily yearned for home, but the owls she sent never returned and Professor Dumbledore had stated that the Hogwarts Express would not be running until further notice. She was stranded at Hogwarts interminably. Still, surrounded by books and the occasional student to talk to, she was able to distract herself.
She was in the library sitting in an armchair and idly thumbing through a textbook, not caring about what she was reading (The Magical Botany of Cape Wrath by Arthur St. Merlin, incidentally), but hoping to pass the time. She’d learned to simply live, breathe, and pray to whatever deity was lurking, long ago.
“Hey Evans,” a jovial voice said behind her.
Lily didn’t bother to turn around, already knowing who it was so she kept on reading, though her eyebrows sardonically rose. James came around, brushing his hip against her shoulder as he passed, and sat down opposite of her. She sat back.
“Hello Potter. What do you want?” Lily had managed to keep her temper with him the last few weeks and didn’t want today to end that winning streak.
“Go to Hogsmede with me.” His hazel eyes held hers, grinning, challenging.
She broke his gaze first with a blush. “We’re not allowed off school grounds. You know that.”
James laughed and settled back in his chair with a small grin of triumph. “Then at least come for a walk with me.”
“All right.”
Lily wipes away tears from her thin face with the back of a dirty hand.
She never saw him again. She had gone to her room to get her cloak and was waiting for him outside the Great Hall. A whistling, rumbling noise filled the air and across the horizon, a cloud swelled and raced towards Hogwarts. As it neared, a high-pitched crack filled the air and screaming, Lily had cowered near the stones of the castle, mumbling an Apparition spell. When it was over, she was far away and in the far north of England; Hogwarts' protective spells had apparently broken.
She hasn’t seen James since, but she’s glad that she finally told him yes.
- - -
The roadways are the worst, she thinks. Long strands of asphalt devoid of cars or motorbikes or anything else that stretch off into the interminable distance are stark reminders of the opulence of the past-of her-civilization. Lily’s been following major roads south and finally reached the M6 about a few days ago, limping onto the broad, paved roadway.
She’d initially apparated to northern Scotland; to a little town that her family had gone on holiday to when she was little. Her father was proud of being part Scots, and took every opportunity to “revel in his heritage,” he once said. One particular time, just after he had been promoted at work, they took the battered car north, driving for an entire day, arriving in the cold, but homey little town early the next morning. Lily’s memory was fuzzy as to what they did during the trip, but the feeling of otherworldliness and safety, even in the crisp open air, must have been what pulled her to the village when she apparated.
She’d walked south for the next few lonely months. At first, the scenery was the crags of the Highlands, jutting out over the dusty road, stripped of their former vegetation and capping of snow, their rough rock exposed to the merciless weather. As she came to the Lowlands and eventually left Scotland, the land had leveled out more, the rough peaks subsiding into dry hillocks. She’d passed around Manchester, unwilling to go into the city where dirty alleys and abandoned factories and homes would only make her feel more alone-but that’s not hard, she’d bitterly thought.
As much as she hates the long ribbon of black that keeps on stretching into the horizon, over the next hill and around the next lakebed, she needs it; without the road, she has no hope of finding London, where she has the most hope of finding people.
It is a dismal grey morning when she pads into the outskirts of London, as though the cloudy sky wants to rain but something is holding it back. The city itself is in a state of disorganized rubble; buildings sag under their own neglected weight, Muggle cars are abandoned on street sides, and the wind keens through alleys and broken windows.
She silently pads through the dusty, twisted streets of the city, keeping a wary eye out for any signs of life, though so far she has seen none. A decomposing body here and there speaks of possible survivors, but nothing living save for a mangy dog has come across Lily’s path.
Making her way to where she believes the entrance of the Ministry of Magic is-or was, she supposes-Lily begins to see a faint glow above a certain point in the city. It’s blue and sparkles faintly in the sunlight when she cocks her head. It is barely visible, but it is enough and Lily, head tilted backwards, begins to jog towards it.
Rapid breathing, splitting shoes slapping the ground. Backpack jouncing on her shoulders, hair twisting free. At last, she reaches the light.
It’s a solid bubble, the blue film. It connects to the ground, then soars high above her and arches into what appears to be a dome before plunging back down to form a tightly sealed world separate from the rest of the Earth.
Lily hesitantly reaches a hand towards the shimmering wall, though her nerves are screaming at her to run, run far away from it, because it’s magic, but nothing she’s ever seen or felt before. However, it means that wizards are close, so she licks her dry lips, breath coming in heaving gasps and places her palm against it, and knows no more.
- - -
“The Dome was contacted today, sir,” an anxious young boy hurries up to him with a piece of paper where the coordinates and biological information of the person have been written, gathered with a stealthy spell and hastily recorded, is placed at his elbow.
James sighs with saddened weariness and looks down at the form through smudged glasses. Female, under the age of twenty, apprehended near the old MoM site. The young wizard looks over at his colleague with a resigned glance knowing that this one will probably not be let go. “Did anyone get photo identification?”
“Err…” the other wizard searches through a stack of papers while James waits, staring at the dirty speck on his glasses.
They’re in an underground bunker of sorts, he and this group of wizards who managed to survive. There’s the Molly Weasley with two of her sons (husband and oldest son dead), Sirius, a young auror named Kingsley Shacklebolt, a Scottish father and son, and three siblings from Bath. Shacklebolt is their leader by default, largely due to his former Ministry influence and strategizing ability.
The Order-name taken from the old Order of the Phoenix that Kingsley was a part of-has a main mission to undermine the current government that has holed itself into The Dome, a magical blue structure in the middle of London, situated over the old MoM offices. The government composed of a single wizard and a few underlings, but it’s mostly a dictatorship, with magic currently banned and the government takes anyone that it finds inside The Dome for questioning. However, there have been precious few people found, and all of them were Muggles who doubtless didn’t survive questioning.
“Here it is.” The other wizard distractedly slides a photograph to James, who has become the information director-or would be if he had a title, that is. Keeping tabs on their members, seeking out other independent wizards, and a variety of other activities is what he mostly does, as well as researching The Dome and the government.
James looks down at the grainy photo, taken from one of their spelled cameras. A young woman with long curly red hair and a dusty backpack stands in the picture, skinny and worn. James squints in the dim lighting and suddenly swears. Lily.
- - -
Her eyes snap open.
Lily is lying on a floor inside somewhere. A harsh white light is hanging a few feet above her and she’s in a tiny cell. She doesn’t move for a few seconds, but when she hears nothing, she slowly sits up, head pounding. She squints in the bright light and slowly rubs her temple, swearing beneath her breath. With a shock, she realizes she’s dressed in a short white gown, like the type used in Muggle hospitals, and is without her wand; her fingers scrabble at the floor around her, but they’re only met with minute grooves in the white tiling.
Tears involuntarily leak from her dry eyes, but Lily hurriedly wipes them away as the door clanks, then screeches open.
A man walks into the room. He’s tall and lean, with a full dark beard and messy hair and horn-rimmed glasses; in the crook of his arm, he carries a clipboard and Lily notes the wand stuck in the pocket of his spotless white lab coat.
“So,” the man conversationally begins as he leans against the closed door. “I think that we can make this easy. I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to truthfully answer them. Easy?”
Shaking her hair back from her face, dirty though it is, Lily stares up at him. “Uh-uh. Food. Water. I think that those are simple requests and it’d be beyond inhumane to deny me them.”
“Just answer the questions, girl. Now your name?”
“Just give me basic human necessities.”
The man’s face darkens and his black brows snap down. “Name?”
When Lily doesn’t answer, he draws out his wand and points it at the girl sitting against the wall. “I said that we could make this easy but you want to do this the difficult way. Crucio!”
The scream builds in Lily’s throat and erupts as she painfully writhes on the cold floor.
“Name?”
- - -
A rescue mission is being planned; James’ frantic pacing and swearing over the last few days has finally led Kingsley to consent and give the young wizard permission to go out. He knows very well that the government will either kill Lily or imprison her interminably.
The Dome is nearly impenetrable-nearly. There are very few hidden ways in and out of there that don’t require magical identification, but the Order has found them and now uses the passages for covert missions for information or for this, their first rescue.
Slinking through the streets as night falls over London, James safely makes it to one of the entrances and stops, mentally planning his route. They’ll have taken Lily to one of the underground holding cells so when they question her, no one will be able to hear-though the government would prefer to think that there’s no one left in England.
Sweat breaks across his forehead as he imagines their “questioning,” and alone, he forges ahead. The tunnel is dark and dust coats the back of his throat, but as James’ heart pounds in his chest, he doesn’t care because he’s going to find her.
- - -
“You aren’t going to get anything out of me, you know. I don’t know anything, anyone. I don’t know who ‘Kingsley’ is or what ‘the Order’ means. I told you I’ve been alone since you fucking destroyed the world.” Lily’s voice cracks as she swears.
She is lying face down on the ground, skin bruised in several places and bleeding from a few more. Although for giving her name and a partial history, he gave her a glass of water, Lily can’t think of the man as anything but a sadistic monster. She hurts like hell and for the last few days has imagined death as a better alternative. But she can’t die because he won’t let her.
“That’s impossible. No one can survive outside this city in a world that is completely in my power. I say when it rains and where!” The man has told her this before as he crouches in front of her. “I say when this drought will end and when the world is back to its former self! I say who gets to do magic and who does not! I say who lives and who dies!” He vehemently yells, spittle flying from his lips and hitting Lily’s cheek. She makes no move to wipe it away.
The man stands, chest heaving. He spits, deliberately this time, in Lily’s face and kicks her in the ribs. Turning, he opens the door and leaves the room, clipboard still in hand.
The hallway is dim and deserted, but thankfully not wet. The drought in England has made sure that the usual dank decay doesn’t exist and has preserved the elegant Ministry building. Paintings emptied of wizards and witches hang on the walls, opulent brushstroke backgrounds silent while the carpet beneath his feet spews cloudy air with every footfall, speaking of what has suffused the world.
James runs through the halls, taking the well-known paths that his father once walked with him through. His shoes silently slap the ground, jeans torn at the knee and black tee shirt worn thin. He pauses at a junction, frowning at the floor as he attempts to get his bearings, when a hoarse scream echoes faintly through the corridor.
James’ head snaps up and he begins to run towards the sound, heart aching and wand at the ready.
Lily lies curled on the floor next to the wall, completely defeated after this last questioning session with the man. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to survive the next encounter with him and this waiting is the worst part. The anticipation of his next move, next session leaves her quivering on the floor in terror.
She and the man have had four meetings. Over the course of one day or one week, Lily doesn’t know in this room. The overhead lighting never wavers and there’s no window to let her mark time’s passage. Every time that he comes, he asks her questions about men, meetings, organizations that she knows nothing about. Every time, the man doesn’t believe her and she ends up sprawled on the floor in pain.
She coughs, a trickle of blood trailing down from her nose and across her cheek. In her mind’s eye, the room begins to darken and blur when she hears the door’s lock click.
Lily lets forehead drop to the ground and a silent sigh passes through her lips. She thought that he just left. Perhaps not.
Dim magical lighting illuminates the starkly bare passage as James jogs quietly down the hallway. His uneven breathing is the only sound he can hear as he pushes open every door, all unlocked, in the corridor.
Lily has to be here, he thinks, mentally mapping the Ministry in his head. James sends up a silent thank you to his deceased father who let his only offspring wander around the Ministry building as a young child in the summers when few workers were actually in their offices.
He’s reaching the lowest levels; the warm, dry air and lack of windows indicate that, but he still hasn’t found Lily. His feet are going faster, slapping the floor as he jiggles the unlocked doorknobs, hoping, praying. As he rounds a corner, his hand hits a latch and it doesn’t move. At first, James doesn’t notice and keeps on, but he stops in his tracks and turns.
Breathing lightly, feeling slightly sick with anxiousness, he jiggles the door handle; it’s locked. Pressing his ear to the door, hoping for some sign of life, he faintly hears a cough. Slight, higher pitched-a good possibility of its owner being female, so he pulls out his wand.
He can only pray that it’s Lily because as soon as he casts the spell to break the lock, security will be alerted that magic was used on this floor where no one’s supposed to be doing so, and the guard will thunder down here, intent on catching the perpetrator; James only has a few minutes to rescue whoever it is in this cell. If it’s not Lily, then he’ll have to come back for her at a much later date (and who knows where she’ll be by then), forfeiting the best chance she had at life.
James licks his lips and bends his knees in anticipation to spring into the room, his wand poised above the lock. He mutters a quick spell, praying it works; it does and he pushes the door open.
The first thing he sees is red hair.
Lily whimpers as the door opens behind her and curls into a tighter ball, her eyes open but not focused on the white wall in front of her. She can’t, not this time. This time, she may just begin to invent names and locations in a desperate bid to placate the man; she’s too tired, too sore, too lonely to resist any longer.
“Lily?” The voice doesn’t belong to the man. It, in fact, sounds familiar, bringing with it a warm rush of memories:
Go out with me. Hey Evans! Come for a walk with me. I can think of a few things I’d rather do in the dark. Lils!
She rolls over, barely daring to hope, and looks up from her position on the floor. “Potter?”
He crouches next to her and Lily sits up in a puppet-like jerk, staring at him.
“Oh God, Lils,” he mutters, cupping her face with a large hand. His hazel eyes are warm and full of emotion. “Come on.”
He stands and extends a hand, throwing a glance over his shoulder as he does so. Lily grasps his hand and he pulls her to her feet. She realizes that he must’ve used magic to open the door.
“Shit, Potter! Are you trying to die?”
He grins at her, his jovial personality shining through in this worst of moments. “Think you can run?”
Lily frowns. She’s not in the best of health, she knows, but with enough adrenaline, she might make it for a bit. “Not far, but a little, yeah.”
James goes to the door. “Follow me, then.” He looks back at her and winks.
It’s nighttime when they finally emerge from the metaphorical underworld, a triumphant Orpheus leading his living Eurydice. The stars, far above them and not blotted out by electrical lighting, cast an eerie glow over London, the emaciated moon’s light feebly raining down.
The night air is still and hot, clouded with dust, but to Lily it tastes delicious as she clutches James’ arm. She doesn’t mind that she’s starving, doesn’t mind that she’s standing in a too-short, too-thin hospital gown, doesn’t mind that it’s James Potter that rescued her, she’s just overjoyed to be out of the prison.
“We’ve got to keep moving.”
Lily looks up at him. In the moonlight, his hair is tipped in silver, the dark beginnings of a beard in shadow while the light catches the rim of his glasses. His pants are holey and faded; his shirt’s no better. These times have been hard on everyone.
“All right,” she quietly acquiesces. “James? Thank you.”
The streets of London are deserted, but it’s still a long walk to the headquarters of the Order and just when James thinks that Lily may make it there without his physical assistance, she drops in the middle of the sidewalk.
He curses and bends down. She’s breathing lightly and there’s no bleeding, so he figures that it’s pure fatigue and hunger, so with a slight grunt, he lifts her.
“You don’t eat nearly enough,” James remarks quietly as he easily begins walking again. “Good thing we have Molly Weasley on our side.”
He walks through the front door like a hero; begrimed and exhausted, but carrying the girl safely in his arms as she curls against his chest.
- - -
When Lily awakes, she’s in a bed, covered with an old quilt. For a minute, she lies there, still and drunk on the feeling of comfort and safety because it’s the first time in months that she feels at ease and without overwhelming fear. Her limbs are relaxed and sluggish-Lily raises a hand and wonders at it, pale in a pool of yellow electric light, veins starkly blue against her skin.
Slowly, with the infinite care of disbelief, she sits up in the bed, blinking owlishly as she takes in her surroundings.
She’s sitting in a bed messily stuffed into a corner of a small cement chamber; large grey blocks form the walls and the floor. Overhead, electric lights quietly hum, shining light onto a large table where maps and other papers are scattered into piles. Connected at the far end is another room; it looks much larger and from what Lily can see, there are several bunks and a few people sitting around a table. It’s a dim, dingy hovel, but the atmosphere speaks of familiarity and a home.
“Morning, gorgeous,” James says, appearing in the room holding a bowl in one hand and a glass in the other. He grins cheekily at her as he rounds the table in long strides. “I’ve brought you breakfast in bed. Doesn’t get much better than this, yeah?”
Lily smiles at him and gratefully takes the bowl and the cup. “Thank you.” She takes a bite of the gently steaming oatmeal in the bowl. “Who made this? It’s delicious.”
James settles down onto the floor next to the bed, leaning against the frame. “Molly Weasley. Few years ahead of us, remember her?”
“That’s right! She married Arthur…they were busy having lots of lovely kids, from what I heard. How are they?”
He looks up at her, solemn. “Arthur and her oldest, Bill, were out working when the bomb went off; out of range of their house’s protection spells,” he says matter-of-factly. “Charlie and Percy survived with her, but she was carrying twins and she lost them as well. Don’t…don’t say anything about her family, though, except the two boys. She’s only just starting to come around.”
“God,” Lily whispers, and bows her head. “To lose your family like that…but I suppose we’ve all lost, haven’t we?”
Later, after she’s slipped on a pair of too-large jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a Muggle band Lily vaguely recognizes, she wanders over to the table and begins to search through the maps and documents laid out.
She’s decided to help The Order; she’s suffered no less than anyone there has. Truthfully, she feels as though she’s suffered a great deal more, having been caged by the enemy and been a firsthand witness to his cruelty, but she knows that that’s selfish. But where to start?
As Lily flicks through a pile of photographs of the man who tortured her, she looks up and sees James leaning in the doorway, a slight grin on his lips.
“Having fun?”
Lily sighs and shakes her head. “Of course I am. Reliving memories of getting tortured by him,” she jerks her head at the pictures on the table, “is a pleasurable way to pass the time.”
“Sorry,” James says, looking down at his feet, then crosses over to look over her shoulder. “Him? He was the one?” He lets out a hard breath.
“What?” She looks back at him, worried. “What is it?”
James jabs a finger at the photograph, where the man stands, hands on his hips as he surveys something out of the camera’s range. “That’s him. The dictator, not some peon he sent,” His eyebrows knit together and Lily can almost see the cogs in his brain ticking. “Why would he deal with you-no offense, m’dear-when you’re a nobody?”
As James slowly lowers himself into a hard wooden chair, not bothering to resister her presence anymore, Lily finds a stool on the other side of the table and sinks onto it, equally deep in thought.
“That’s it!” Lily exclaims sometime later, jumping from her seat.
James looks up from the tabletop where he’d nearly been nodding off, drawing random designs in the wood grain. “What?”
Lily rushes over to him, green eyes over-bright. “Don’t you see? He dealt with me because I’m nobody. He thought all of you were pinned down here in London, but then I tottered in from the countryside, with no idea what’s happened. He’s intrigued. Then, he figures that if he doesn’t know me, I must be part of the Order…”
He stares at Lily. “Oh you brilliant girl!” James kisses her forehead.
“What?”
“You’ve just given us the key to bringing him down. Intrigue the bloody man!”
Lily stares up at James, grasping his forearms as she slowly drops to the nearby bed. “I’m going back in. He still doesn’t know who I am, how I got out. I’ll put on the uniform he gave me, wander around and faint outside the Dome! I can give him false information and…I, I, don’t know what to do after that, but I’ll figure it out.”
“You’re going to go back in there?” he asks, worried. “I-”
Looking him in the eyes, Lily nods. “I have to. I’m the best candidate for it. You know that, James.”
He grumbles a bit, but sits down beside her, a silent acquiescence to what she’s saying. Heavily sighing, he wraps an arm around her, pulling her farther into him. Lily inhales his familiar scent of his worn shirt and wriggles around, fitting her body next to his, finding comfort in the solid heat he radiates.
She feels James lay his head on top of hers and his chest rises with a breath. “We’ll ask Kingsley when he comes in for the night. We’ll work out details…just promise-promise me that you’ll be careful?”
Lily pauses for a moment then sits up, startling James as she disengages from his embrace. She faces him, one leg tucked under the other, and bites her lip. “You want to go for a walk?” she asks, deliberately recalling their last conversation at Hogwarts.
A slow grin spreads across James’ face as he says, “I didn’t ever think you were going to ask.” He leans in and gently kisses her nose, cheeks, and lips, hands grasping her waist as Lily rises up and resettles herself into his lap. She returns his kiss with sweet vigor, tongue flicking out against his bottom lip, hands tangling themselves in the short strands of his hair. Groaning, James falls back into his small bed, bringing Lily with him.
The pants that are too large easily slide off her hips and she quickly draws off both of their shirts; when it comes to nothing, just skin and skin, James hesitates, looking down at Lily. She's pinioned beneath him, hair in an auburn corona around her face and skin turned to alabaster in the weak lighting, and she senses his pause. She reaches up and pulls him towards her, wrapping her legs around his waist as he slips inside her. In each other, they momentarily forget the world.
- - -
He isn’t happy, but Kingsley approves. He hates to send in a young girl, but he’s running out of ideas. James instantly vouches for Lily’s ability to be trusted with their location, but it’s when Sirius Black quietly adds his word that Kingsley sighs and nods, his bald head gleaming in the weak yellow light. He doesn’t have much choice left anymore.
Lily nods quietly, touching the man’s arm with a soft gesture of thanks, then leaves with James to begin preparation, though it doesn’t take much to make Lily look as though she’s been wandering lost in London for the last two days-some artfully applied dirt, the shabby hospital gown, and mussed hair.
They steal out of the Order’s headquarters at dawn and cross the dried riverbed of what was the Thames while the sun’s early morning light throws the long shadows of crumbling buildings into the groove where the river once flowed. After walking in silence for what seems like an eternity, James stops; they’ve arrived near the shimmering walls of the Dome.
He stops and turns to Lily, who’s been trailing behind him their entire hike, shoeless to make it more believable that she’s been running for two days in the dusty city. “You ready?” he quietly asks, voice rough with emotion.
Lily stares at the faint blue globe and licks her lips. “I’ve got to be,” she murmurs, then looks up at James, green eyes luminous in the dark of the alley. “I’m going to be fine. I’ll feed him the wrong information, and make sure that he’s convinced The Order is in the maintenance rooms of Paddington. He’ll go there with his minions and you and the other members will be there to ambush and kill him. In the meantime, I’ll escape my cell and find and break the spell that is holding England.”
James nods. They’ve been over this plan a thousand times, and though there are numerous, dangerous flaws, it’s the best that any of them can come up with-Sirius himself said that he couldn’t do better, given the circumstances. He smiles gently down at her, an ironic twist to his lips as he gives her a wand that belonged to a deceased Order member.
Their fingers linger together, the wand held between them as a last link before the battle. The air is still and shadowed and for a moment, the world has stopped. Then Lily rises up on her toes and brushes James’ lips in a wretched kiss before stepping back and tucking the wand down the front of her gown.
“I think I'm in love with you, you know,” she miserably whispers.
James presses his forehead to hers. “Lils, I’ve always loved you.” He grasps her face in his palms and kisses her, hard, and then she breaks away with a sob and turns from the alley.
He watches her trot toward The Dome, red hair gleaming in the early morning light before she touches the glittering blue wall and collapses in a heap. Before he's caught, James turns from the scene, heart aching, and begins the long walk home.
- - -
This time when Lily wakes up, she knows what to expect: bright white lights, immaculate tiled floor, and a small, windowless cell. She doesn’t ache as much as she thought she would and this time, James’ words still lingering in her mind, she doesn’t feel afraid of the man or the government.
The door creaks open and Lily sits, forcing herself to look dull and tired, as the man walks in. He looks the same, though his frown might be a bit deeper. She’d like to think that she’s caused that.
“So you’re back,” he says, voice smooth and calculated.
Lily feigns a cough. “’S better than being out there.” She weakly gestures. “There isn’t food--barely any water. People living like savages.”
The man latches onto one word. “People out there? The Order?”
Letting her head loll back, Lily gazes vacantly up at him. “I met with them. They’re the ones who broke me out of here. Give me clothes, my things, food…then I’ll give you information.”
The man snorts and turns on his heel, leaving with a loudly slamming door. Lily allows herself small smile of half-hearted victory.
It doesn’t take long to convince the man that she came back because The Order was a group of ragtag terrorists living off garbage and the odd Muggle imperishable. That is, after all, what he wants to hear; that his power is absolute and the only people that could stand in his way aren’t, in all reality, much of a threat.
Sitting wrapped in a voluminous old Ministry robe that smells strongly of cat, but is a definite improvement to just the hospital gown, Lily is once again being questioned by the man. She’s held onto the Order’s “secret location” until the end, forcing him to give into her requests, though it’s become easier and easier as she fuels his insatiable hunger for knowledge.
“So where are they? Where’s the rat hole that they’ve been cornered into?” The man paces the room, thin frame bursting with a horrible manic energy.
Lily purses her lips. Developing the persona of a greedy whore has been all too easy in this environment; she plays with the man, thoroughly becoming a minx in his presence. “Tell me something first, sir.”
Glasses glittering in the harsh lighting, the man curtly nods.
“Why are you here? Why did you…set off all those…bombs this summer?” Lily is genuinely curious; this isn’t something that she and James planned on asking him, it’s a piece of information she wants to know for her own sake.
He hesitates and the uncertainty is palpable, but his hubris wins out in the end. “I’m not from…here. I’m from the future, when wizards have learned to time travel.”
“We know how to time travel now,” Lily retorts
The man runs a hand through his hair, the agitated gesture lifting up the heavy bangs that usually cover his forehead. “Yes, I know, but one of my friends figured out a way to send me back further than a few hours. Years. So I came back to set right the wrongs that would have happened.”
“Wrongs? You mean Voldemort?”
The man’s piercing eyes meet Lily’s. “Yes.” The man proceeds to talk about the situation in the world where he comes from in brusque sentences, where a war has dragged on for nearly fifty years and the wizard population has nearly died out. His head bows for a minute. “Now where’s The Order?” He’s decided that he’s let enough slip.
Lily sighs and lets her head fall back against the wall as if she’s reluctantly giving up her last bargaining chip. “The maintenance rooms of Paddington. They’ve burrowed themselves like rabbits in a warren, so you’re going to have to take most, if not all, your men to flush them out.”
“Are you sure they’re still there? You left; they have to suspect that you came back and could give me their location.”
“No, they won’t ever believe that I came back,” she murmurs. “One of the poor hopeless bastards-” she nearly chokes on the word. “He was in love with me. They’ll just think I’ve …they’ll never suspect…”
He nods, a quick jerk of his head and abruptly leaves, his coat swirling behind him like a wizard’s cloak.
Later that night, Lily hears the dull thudding sounds of men hurrying through the corridors of the building. She stands on her bed and presses her ear against the ceiling, hoping to catch news as to what’s going on. But all she knows is that in a short amount of time the tramping stops and everything goes quiet.
She waits a few minutes until nothing new stirs above her, and then retrieves her borrowed wand from behind the cot where she stashed it. She’s surprised that the man fell so easily into their trap, but then again, living alone in this enormous building in a crumbled world, even one that he created, would make anyone go mad.
Lily quickly undoes magic locking on the door and creeps out. When no one immediately comes to apprehend her, she begins to sprint toward where she vaguely remembers James saying the main offices used to be and where he figures this man would have set up his own personal workplace.
She quickly finds the opulent doors; it appears as though the man took all of his men with him as she suggested. Obscuring the nameplate is a thick layer of dust; however, when Lily runs her finger through it, the title “Minister of Magic” gleams in the electric lighting.
Inside the offices, there is barely any space not covered in papers-in fact, it looks eerily similar to James’ desk back at The Order’s headquarters. Maps, lists of coordinates, and documents covered in spiked writing litter surfaces.
Spying a photo frame, Lily unearths it from a pile of parchment where names and dates have been scribbled in unfamiliar handwriting (Harry, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Hagrid, leap out at her), her curiosity getting the better of her. In it, two young boys and a girl smile cheekily at her, waving. Were they the man’s children? Lily starts. One of the boys is lean and dark haired, a scar marring his childish face, which wouldn’t bother her, except he looks almost exactly like James, looks like the man. The grin, the perpetually messy hair: both have that distinct Potter quality to them and Lily feels tears well up in her eyes. Was this James’…child?
She hastily puts the photograph back on the desk and walks to an adjacent door. This one is locked, and although alohomora won’t budge it, it only takes a few minutes work for Lily, armed with her borrowed wand, to figure out the spells.
The door creaks open to reveal a much more personal space than the previous office. A bed, looking lumpy and unsurely transfigured, lurks in one corner. A table with a glowing orb on it dominates the room and in a chair, Lily sees her clothing and rucksack. She rushes towards it and fishes out her wand-miraculously intact-from the bag, before turning to the orb.
The glowing ball suffuses a drawing of England that’s covered in dirt-presumably true English soil, to make the spell more powerful. It encapsulates the entire island, blocking Britain, it would seem, from the rest of Europe. Lily pokes it timidly with one finger, and a whoosh of cold air rushes in through the open window, howling wildly before subsiding just as soon as it began.
Lily glares at the orb, pretty sure that this is the key to why England is locked in drought and no one has come to aid them. Examining, it, she can see the base spells that make up the orb and spends several minutes intently studying them. It’s an intricate piece of spellwork, Lily can tell that much, with the spells lacing and weaving about each other in a complex pattern that not many would be able to think up, let alone decipher.
However, she has determination and overwhelming need on her side and besides, Lily is one of the cleverest witches her age, so she begins to untangle the spells that make up the barrier. As Lily unravels the gleaming charms and hexes, one after another, the world outside starts to tremble with the onslaught of nature. Massive waves rush in from the ocean, swirling into the void left by the Thames. Winds long held at bay smash through streets and across wide country spaces, rattling the bare branches of long-dead trees, and bringing the taste of winter that the country should have already felt. On the far-away horizon, dark clouds start to boil and thunder, readying itself to batter the land.
One spell remains, but Lily can’t fathom what it does. Golden, it trails away to the center of the painted landmass, but no matter what spells and curses Lily flings at it, the spell remains unwavering, faintly humming. Lily has half a mind to try avada kedavra on it, but can’t bring herself to utter the words of the killing curse.
In lieu of magic, Lily grits her teeth and, after tucking her wand in the Ministry robe, reaches out with both hands to the magical thread and with a substantial material beneath her hands, physically snaps the spell in half.
The resulting unleashing of magic howls around her, lifting Lily in the air before spontaneously apparating her to where the man from the future has died because the spell that tethered him to this time and life has been broken.
- - -
The man lies on the ground, green eyes open to the world and an expression of shock evident on his features. His body is slowly crumbing to a fine dusty ash from whatever spell was holding him; James stands above the disintegrating man, chest heaving with exertion as he surveys the site of the battle that by the Order barely won. Scorch marks mar the walls and rubble litters the ground. Wizards from both sides have fallen, but surprisingly, most of James’ people have survived, while only a handful of men from the government are alive.
Above ground, the wind howls through the cracks in the buildings, the stones creaking and warped doors slamming on their hinges. He can hear the steady swoosh of incoming waves and the scent of winter is on its way.
The air shimmers and James, on his guard, suddenly finds himself pointing his wand at Lily. Wrapped in a too-large Ministry robe and blinking confusedly, she’s standing over the growing pile of dust. She smiles weakly at him before stepping back, wiping wind-blown curls away from her face.
“Lils?”
“I killed him,” she mumbles, running a hand through her long red hair. She looks up at James, tears in her eyes. “I’ve never killed anyone before and it’s not…it’s not fair.”
He pulls her to him and wraps her in his arms as he feels a cold gust of winter air whisk by. “He was a monster Lily. Think of the billions and billions of people that he killed. And for what purpose?”
She shakes her head, though she’s clinging desperately to him. “He was saving his own family and friends. He…he had a reason. A good one.”
“But he went too bloody far. He killed our family. Our friends. Our lives. No one should be able to play God.”
“Yeah…” she trails off, burying her face in his shirt.
James gently hugs her and wrapped around each other, they stumble upwards into the chilly, open air. A deep shiver runs down James’ spine as they reach the surface and Lily faintly giggles and shrugs out of half of the robe she’s wearing and tries to wrap it around James as well. He finds a half-ruined wall and slides down until he’s sitting on the ground, exhausted and dirty. Lily smiles and lets James tug her into his lap, draping the robe cover them both.
“His name was Harry, you know,” Lily quietly remarks, almost as an afterthought, sometime later as they watch other Order survivors flock to the battle site. Then, she leans back and lets James envelop her in his arms, his lips resting in her hair, and they sit, watching as snow begins to fall on London.
fin
Rating: PG-13
Genre: apocalypse fic, drama, romance
Characters/Pairings: Lily/James, Marauder-era crew, Weasley appearances, and one I can't say because of spoilers.
Spoilers: Pre-series, so none, really.
Summary: When Lily and James' world is destroyed by one man, each learns what humanity means.
Notes: No beta, except myself. Cross posted. Prompt “as new as snow” for 7spells. YES, it's apoca!fic; YES, it's an odd juxtaposition, dust and snow; YES, YES, YES, it's been my baby since September (22nd, 2008, to be exact) ;)
Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Scholastic Press, and is used without permission here. I, however, do not claim what is theirs and only what is mine.
Dusted
"...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"
Genesis 3:19
Beneath her feet, the ground crackles, brittle flakes of dirt breaking and crumbling to reddened dust and blowing away in the gusts of wind that sweep the wide expanse of desert. The earth stretching away to all directions is baked red and hard, water greedily leeched from all but the deepest caves and ocean trenches by the consuming destruction.
The sun is still at its height, long rays reaching towards Earth with punishing heat, and the back of her neck is slowly burning in the sun, pale white skin turning red, baking like the dirt. This is how it always is: the mindless trek, pushing on towards the next outpost of civilization, the next wave of heat, the next rush of fear and sadness. This is the world in 1978. This is Lily Evans.
- - -
Later that night, after the sun has sunk below the horizon and the air has become colder, the heat of the day freezing away, Lily takes stock of herself, as she has learned to do every night.
She wears a battered pair of trainers she filched from a dead man’s body outside of Birmingham a few weeks ago. The toes are already splitting open and the laces red with dirt. Her jeans have holes in the knees and are worn slung low on her thin hips where all traces of her once sultry curves have been eaten away, and her shirt is grimy and grey with age. A bag that is slung across her shoulders during the day carries her essentials, including her now neglected wand.
This is how the world has been since May that year. It is November now. Seven months of hell. It began with the Soviets, Lily supposes. They and the Americans, with their ongoing Cold War and nuclear armaments had led the world to the frenzy of building huge weapons and increasing tensions throughout the world.
Ducking her head as she determinedly strikes a match, Lily scowls, her eyes momentarily filling as she remembers how a wizard, possibly Voldemort, possibly just some anarchist or Communist ass, had gotten the idea to pair those nuclear weapons with spells. And the world had gone to hell.
Over the next two or three months, this wizard, whoever he was, set off on a worldwide mission of terror. First the Asian countries: he ignited a bomb that destroyed much of China and swamped most of Polynesia and low lying southeast Asia with a massive tidal wave. The majority of the Middle East was killed in the rumbling aftermath of the attack, as well as most of the Soviet Union. Asia became a wasteland, synonymous with death.
Then came the destruction of South America and the United States. The terrorist had, that time, set off the mechanism inside a prominent chemical plant, increasing the strength of the bomb and allowing for an even greater scale massacre, in which not only North America was leveled, but boiling away parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, exposing the salty ocean floor. This was synonymous with defeat.
Inside Hogwarts, the professors had suspended lessons, and students tuned into radios that received only feeble signals. Students anxiously awaited owls from home and every day as more and more frightened parents came to retrieve their children, the anxiety in their pinched faces and tired eyes speaking volumes.
Europe waited with baited breath for the next attack, which was likely to be close to home. It was. Africa, then Antarctica were simultaneously destroyed. Everywhere, police agencies, intelligence agencies, ordinary citizens searched for the mysterious killer, hoping to end his reign of terror. But they had nothing, no one to start with.
Reports began to trickle in of survivors. To the Muggles, everyone was dead, but word reached the wizarding world of lone bands of renegade folk who had managed, by the grace of spells and other means, to survive the blast and its aftershocks. These stories were heartening, but it was not enough to quell the fear. After all, a few survivors out of the six billion people that had once populated the world meant nothing
Then, in early June, the last bomb dropped. Lily sits back on her heels, staring into the flames as she recalls that fateful day.
She had awoken late that day, she remembers. Classes had screeched to a halt; with less than three dozen students there and the professors swiftly leaving, there was no point. Lily yearned for home, but the owls she sent never returned and Professor Dumbledore had stated that the Hogwarts Express would not be running until further notice. She was stranded at Hogwarts interminably. Still, surrounded by books and the occasional student to talk to, she was able to distract herself.
She was in the library sitting in an armchair and idly thumbing through a textbook, not caring about what she was reading (The Magical Botany of Cape Wrath by Arthur St. Merlin, incidentally), but hoping to pass the time. She’d learned to simply live, breathe, and pray to whatever deity was lurking, long ago.
“Hey Evans,” a jovial voice said behind her.
Lily didn’t bother to turn around, already knowing who it was so she kept on reading, though her eyebrows sardonically rose. James came around, brushing his hip against her shoulder as he passed, and sat down opposite of her. She sat back.
“Hello Potter. What do you want?” Lily had managed to keep her temper with him the last few weeks and didn’t want today to end that winning streak.
“Go to Hogsmede with me.” His hazel eyes held hers, grinning, challenging.
She broke his gaze first with a blush. “We’re not allowed off school grounds. You know that.”
James laughed and settled back in his chair with a small grin of triumph. “Then at least come for a walk with me.”
“All right.”
Lily wipes away tears from her thin face with the back of a dirty hand.
She never saw him again. She had gone to her room to get her cloak and was waiting for him outside the Great Hall. A whistling, rumbling noise filled the air and across the horizon, a cloud swelled and raced towards Hogwarts. As it neared, a high-pitched crack filled the air and screaming, Lily had cowered near the stones of the castle, mumbling an Apparition spell. When it was over, she was far away and in the far north of England; Hogwarts' protective spells had apparently broken.
She hasn’t seen James since, but she’s glad that she finally told him yes.
- - -
The roadways are the worst, she thinks. Long strands of asphalt devoid of cars or motorbikes or anything else that stretch off into the interminable distance are stark reminders of the opulence of the past-of her-civilization. Lily’s been following major roads south and finally reached the M6 about a few days ago, limping onto the broad, paved roadway.
She’d initially apparated to northern Scotland; to a little town that her family had gone on holiday to when she was little. Her father was proud of being part Scots, and took every opportunity to “revel in his heritage,” he once said. One particular time, just after he had been promoted at work, they took the battered car north, driving for an entire day, arriving in the cold, but homey little town early the next morning. Lily’s memory was fuzzy as to what they did during the trip, but the feeling of otherworldliness and safety, even in the crisp open air, must have been what pulled her to the village when she apparated.
She’d walked south for the next few lonely months. At first, the scenery was the crags of the Highlands, jutting out over the dusty road, stripped of their former vegetation and capping of snow, their rough rock exposed to the merciless weather. As she came to the Lowlands and eventually left Scotland, the land had leveled out more, the rough peaks subsiding into dry hillocks. She’d passed around Manchester, unwilling to go into the city where dirty alleys and abandoned factories and homes would only make her feel more alone-but that’s not hard, she’d bitterly thought.
As much as she hates the long ribbon of black that keeps on stretching into the horizon, over the next hill and around the next lakebed, she needs it; without the road, she has no hope of finding London, where she has the most hope of finding people.
It is a dismal grey morning when she pads into the outskirts of London, as though the cloudy sky wants to rain but something is holding it back. The city itself is in a state of disorganized rubble; buildings sag under their own neglected weight, Muggle cars are abandoned on street sides, and the wind keens through alleys and broken windows.
She silently pads through the dusty, twisted streets of the city, keeping a wary eye out for any signs of life, though so far she has seen none. A decomposing body here and there speaks of possible survivors, but nothing living save for a mangy dog has come across Lily’s path.
Making her way to where she believes the entrance of the Ministry of Magic is-or was, she supposes-Lily begins to see a faint glow above a certain point in the city. It’s blue and sparkles faintly in the sunlight when she cocks her head. It is barely visible, but it is enough and Lily, head tilted backwards, begins to jog towards it.
Rapid breathing, splitting shoes slapping the ground. Backpack jouncing on her shoulders, hair twisting free. At last, she reaches the light.
It’s a solid bubble, the blue film. It connects to the ground, then soars high above her and arches into what appears to be a dome before plunging back down to form a tightly sealed world separate from the rest of the Earth.
Lily hesitantly reaches a hand towards the shimmering wall, though her nerves are screaming at her to run, run far away from it, because it’s magic, but nothing she’s ever seen or felt before. However, it means that wizards are close, so she licks her dry lips, breath coming in heaving gasps and places her palm against it, and knows no more.
- - -
“The Dome was contacted today, sir,” an anxious young boy hurries up to him with a piece of paper where the coordinates and biological information of the person have been written, gathered with a stealthy spell and hastily recorded, is placed at his elbow.
James sighs with saddened weariness and looks down at the form through smudged glasses. Female, under the age of twenty, apprehended near the old MoM site. The young wizard looks over at his colleague with a resigned glance knowing that this one will probably not be let go. “Did anyone get photo identification?”
“Err…” the other wizard searches through a stack of papers while James waits, staring at the dirty speck on his glasses.
They’re in an underground bunker of sorts, he and this group of wizards who managed to survive. There’s the Molly Weasley with two of her sons (husband and oldest son dead), Sirius, a young auror named Kingsley Shacklebolt, a Scottish father and son, and three siblings from Bath. Shacklebolt is their leader by default, largely due to his former Ministry influence and strategizing ability.
The Order-name taken from the old Order of the Phoenix that Kingsley was a part of-has a main mission to undermine the current government that has holed itself into The Dome, a magical blue structure in the middle of London, situated over the old MoM offices. The government composed of a single wizard and a few underlings, but it’s mostly a dictatorship, with magic currently banned and the government takes anyone that it finds inside The Dome for questioning. However, there have been precious few people found, and all of them were Muggles who doubtless didn’t survive questioning.
“Here it is.” The other wizard distractedly slides a photograph to James, who has become the information director-or would be if he had a title, that is. Keeping tabs on their members, seeking out other independent wizards, and a variety of other activities is what he mostly does, as well as researching The Dome and the government.
James looks down at the grainy photo, taken from one of their spelled cameras. A young woman with long curly red hair and a dusty backpack stands in the picture, skinny and worn. James squints in the dim lighting and suddenly swears. Lily.
- - -
Her eyes snap open.
Lily is lying on a floor inside somewhere. A harsh white light is hanging a few feet above her and she’s in a tiny cell. She doesn’t move for a few seconds, but when she hears nothing, she slowly sits up, head pounding. She squints in the bright light and slowly rubs her temple, swearing beneath her breath. With a shock, she realizes she’s dressed in a short white gown, like the type used in Muggle hospitals, and is without her wand; her fingers scrabble at the floor around her, but they’re only met with minute grooves in the white tiling.
Tears involuntarily leak from her dry eyes, but Lily hurriedly wipes them away as the door clanks, then screeches open.
A man walks into the room. He’s tall and lean, with a full dark beard and messy hair and horn-rimmed glasses; in the crook of his arm, he carries a clipboard and Lily notes the wand stuck in the pocket of his spotless white lab coat.
“So,” the man conversationally begins as he leans against the closed door. “I think that we can make this easy. I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to truthfully answer them. Easy?”
Shaking her hair back from her face, dirty though it is, Lily stares up at him. “Uh-uh. Food. Water. I think that those are simple requests and it’d be beyond inhumane to deny me them.”
“Just answer the questions, girl. Now your name?”
“Just give me basic human necessities.”
The man’s face darkens and his black brows snap down. “Name?”
When Lily doesn’t answer, he draws out his wand and points it at the girl sitting against the wall. “I said that we could make this easy but you want to do this the difficult way. Crucio!”
The scream builds in Lily’s throat and erupts as she painfully writhes on the cold floor.
“Name?”
- - -
A rescue mission is being planned; James’ frantic pacing and swearing over the last few days has finally led Kingsley to consent and give the young wizard permission to go out. He knows very well that the government will either kill Lily or imprison her interminably.
The Dome is nearly impenetrable-nearly. There are very few hidden ways in and out of there that don’t require magical identification, but the Order has found them and now uses the passages for covert missions for information or for this, their first rescue.
Slinking through the streets as night falls over London, James safely makes it to one of the entrances and stops, mentally planning his route. They’ll have taken Lily to one of the underground holding cells so when they question her, no one will be able to hear-though the government would prefer to think that there’s no one left in England.
Sweat breaks across his forehead as he imagines their “questioning,” and alone, he forges ahead. The tunnel is dark and dust coats the back of his throat, but as James’ heart pounds in his chest, he doesn’t care because he’s going to find her.
- - -
“You aren’t going to get anything out of me, you know. I don’t know anything, anyone. I don’t know who ‘Kingsley’ is or what ‘the Order’ means. I told you I’ve been alone since you fucking destroyed the world.” Lily’s voice cracks as she swears.
She is lying face down on the ground, skin bruised in several places and bleeding from a few more. Although for giving her name and a partial history, he gave her a glass of water, Lily can’t think of the man as anything but a sadistic monster. She hurts like hell and for the last few days has imagined death as a better alternative. But she can’t die because he won’t let her.
“That’s impossible. No one can survive outside this city in a world that is completely in my power. I say when it rains and where!” The man has told her this before as he crouches in front of her. “I say when this drought will end and when the world is back to its former self! I say who gets to do magic and who does not! I say who lives and who dies!” He vehemently yells, spittle flying from his lips and hitting Lily’s cheek. She makes no move to wipe it away.
The man stands, chest heaving. He spits, deliberately this time, in Lily’s face and kicks her in the ribs. Turning, he opens the door and leaves the room, clipboard still in hand.
The hallway is dim and deserted, but thankfully not wet. The drought in England has made sure that the usual dank decay doesn’t exist and has preserved the elegant Ministry building. Paintings emptied of wizards and witches hang on the walls, opulent brushstroke backgrounds silent while the carpet beneath his feet spews cloudy air with every footfall, speaking of what has suffused the world.
James runs through the halls, taking the well-known paths that his father once walked with him through. His shoes silently slap the ground, jeans torn at the knee and black tee shirt worn thin. He pauses at a junction, frowning at the floor as he attempts to get his bearings, when a hoarse scream echoes faintly through the corridor.
James’ head snaps up and he begins to run towards the sound, heart aching and wand at the ready.
Lily lies curled on the floor next to the wall, completely defeated after this last questioning session with the man. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to survive the next encounter with him and this waiting is the worst part. The anticipation of his next move, next session leaves her quivering on the floor in terror.
She and the man have had four meetings. Over the course of one day or one week, Lily doesn’t know in this room. The overhead lighting never wavers and there’s no window to let her mark time’s passage. Every time that he comes, he asks her questions about men, meetings, organizations that she knows nothing about. Every time, the man doesn’t believe her and she ends up sprawled on the floor in pain.
She coughs, a trickle of blood trailing down from her nose and across her cheek. In her mind’s eye, the room begins to darken and blur when she hears the door’s lock click.
Lily lets forehead drop to the ground and a silent sigh passes through her lips. She thought that he just left. Perhaps not.
Dim magical lighting illuminates the starkly bare passage as James jogs quietly down the hallway. His uneven breathing is the only sound he can hear as he pushes open every door, all unlocked, in the corridor.
Lily has to be here, he thinks, mentally mapping the Ministry in his head. James sends up a silent thank you to his deceased father who let his only offspring wander around the Ministry building as a young child in the summers when few workers were actually in their offices.
He’s reaching the lowest levels; the warm, dry air and lack of windows indicate that, but he still hasn’t found Lily. His feet are going faster, slapping the floor as he jiggles the unlocked doorknobs, hoping, praying. As he rounds a corner, his hand hits a latch and it doesn’t move. At first, James doesn’t notice and keeps on, but he stops in his tracks and turns.
Breathing lightly, feeling slightly sick with anxiousness, he jiggles the door handle; it’s locked. Pressing his ear to the door, hoping for some sign of life, he faintly hears a cough. Slight, higher pitched-a good possibility of its owner being female, so he pulls out his wand.
He can only pray that it’s Lily because as soon as he casts the spell to break the lock, security will be alerted that magic was used on this floor where no one’s supposed to be doing so, and the guard will thunder down here, intent on catching the perpetrator; James only has a few minutes to rescue whoever it is in this cell. If it’s not Lily, then he’ll have to come back for her at a much later date (and who knows where she’ll be by then), forfeiting the best chance she had at life.
James licks his lips and bends his knees in anticipation to spring into the room, his wand poised above the lock. He mutters a quick spell, praying it works; it does and he pushes the door open.
The first thing he sees is red hair.
Lily whimpers as the door opens behind her and curls into a tighter ball, her eyes open but not focused on the white wall in front of her. She can’t, not this time. This time, she may just begin to invent names and locations in a desperate bid to placate the man; she’s too tired, too sore, too lonely to resist any longer.
“Lily?” The voice doesn’t belong to the man. It, in fact, sounds familiar, bringing with it a warm rush of memories:
Go out with me. Hey Evans! Come for a walk with me. I can think of a few things I’d rather do in the dark. Lils!
She rolls over, barely daring to hope, and looks up from her position on the floor. “Potter?”
He crouches next to her and Lily sits up in a puppet-like jerk, staring at him.
“Oh God, Lils,” he mutters, cupping her face with a large hand. His hazel eyes are warm and full of emotion. “Come on.”
He stands and extends a hand, throwing a glance over his shoulder as he does so. Lily grasps his hand and he pulls her to her feet. She realizes that he must’ve used magic to open the door.
“Shit, Potter! Are you trying to die?”
He grins at her, his jovial personality shining through in this worst of moments. “Think you can run?”
Lily frowns. She’s not in the best of health, she knows, but with enough adrenaline, she might make it for a bit. “Not far, but a little, yeah.”
James goes to the door. “Follow me, then.” He looks back at her and winks.
It’s nighttime when they finally emerge from the metaphorical underworld, a triumphant Orpheus leading his living Eurydice. The stars, far above them and not blotted out by electrical lighting, cast an eerie glow over London, the emaciated moon’s light feebly raining down.
The night air is still and hot, clouded with dust, but to Lily it tastes delicious as she clutches James’ arm. She doesn’t mind that she’s starving, doesn’t mind that she’s standing in a too-short, too-thin hospital gown, doesn’t mind that it’s James Potter that rescued her, she’s just overjoyed to be out of the prison.
“We’ve got to keep moving.”
Lily looks up at him. In the moonlight, his hair is tipped in silver, the dark beginnings of a beard in shadow while the light catches the rim of his glasses. His pants are holey and faded; his shirt’s no better. These times have been hard on everyone.
“All right,” she quietly acquiesces. “James? Thank you.”
The streets of London are deserted, but it’s still a long walk to the headquarters of the Order and just when James thinks that Lily may make it there without his physical assistance, she drops in the middle of the sidewalk.
He curses and bends down. She’s breathing lightly and there’s no bleeding, so he figures that it’s pure fatigue and hunger, so with a slight grunt, he lifts her.
“You don’t eat nearly enough,” James remarks quietly as he easily begins walking again. “Good thing we have Molly Weasley on our side.”
He walks through the front door like a hero; begrimed and exhausted, but carrying the girl safely in his arms as she curls against his chest.
- - -
When Lily awakes, she’s in a bed, covered with an old quilt. For a minute, she lies there, still and drunk on the feeling of comfort and safety because it’s the first time in months that she feels at ease and without overwhelming fear. Her limbs are relaxed and sluggish-Lily raises a hand and wonders at it, pale in a pool of yellow electric light, veins starkly blue against her skin.
Slowly, with the infinite care of disbelief, she sits up in the bed, blinking owlishly as she takes in her surroundings.
She’s sitting in a bed messily stuffed into a corner of a small cement chamber; large grey blocks form the walls and the floor. Overhead, electric lights quietly hum, shining light onto a large table where maps and other papers are scattered into piles. Connected at the far end is another room; it looks much larger and from what Lily can see, there are several bunks and a few people sitting around a table. It’s a dim, dingy hovel, but the atmosphere speaks of familiarity and a home.
“Morning, gorgeous,” James says, appearing in the room holding a bowl in one hand and a glass in the other. He grins cheekily at her as he rounds the table in long strides. “I’ve brought you breakfast in bed. Doesn’t get much better than this, yeah?”
Lily smiles at him and gratefully takes the bowl and the cup. “Thank you.” She takes a bite of the gently steaming oatmeal in the bowl. “Who made this? It’s delicious.”
James settles down onto the floor next to the bed, leaning against the frame. “Molly Weasley. Few years ahead of us, remember her?”
“That’s right! She married Arthur…they were busy having lots of lovely kids, from what I heard. How are they?”
He looks up at her, solemn. “Arthur and her oldest, Bill, were out working when the bomb went off; out of range of their house’s protection spells,” he says matter-of-factly. “Charlie and Percy survived with her, but she was carrying twins and she lost them as well. Don’t…don’t say anything about her family, though, except the two boys. She’s only just starting to come around.”
“God,” Lily whispers, and bows her head. “To lose your family like that…but I suppose we’ve all lost, haven’t we?”
Later, after she’s slipped on a pair of too-large jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a Muggle band Lily vaguely recognizes, she wanders over to the table and begins to search through the maps and documents laid out.
She’s decided to help The Order; she’s suffered no less than anyone there has. Truthfully, she feels as though she’s suffered a great deal more, having been caged by the enemy and been a firsthand witness to his cruelty, but she knows that that’s selfish. But where to start?
As Lily flicks through a pile of photographs of the man who tortured her, she looks up and sees James leaning in the doorway, a slight grin on his lips.
“Having fun?”
Lily sighs and shakes her head. “Of course I am. Reliving memories of getting tortured by him,” she jerks her head at the pictures on the table, “is a pleasurable way to pass the time.”
“Sorry,” James says, looking down at his feet, then crosses over to look over her shoulder. “Him? He was the one?” He lets out a hard breath.
“What?” She looks back at him, worried. “What is it?”
James jabs a finger at the photograph, where the man stands, hands on his hips as he surveys something out of the camera’s range. “That’s him. The dictator, not some peon he sent,” His eyebrows knit together and Lily can almost see the cogs in his brain ticking. “Why would he deal with you-no offense, m’dear-when you’re a nobody?”
As James slowly lowers himself into a hard wooden chair, not bothering to resister her presence anymore, Lily finds a stool on the other side of the table and sinks onto it, equally deep in thought.
“That’s it!” Lily exclaims sometime later, jumping from her seat.
James looks up from the tabletop where he’d nearly been nodding off, drawing random designs in the wood grain. “What?”
Lily rushes over to him, green eyes over-bright. “Don’t you see? He dealt with me because I’m nobody. He thought all of you were pinned down here in London, but then I tottered in from the countryside, with no idea what’s happened. He’s intrigued. Then, he figures that if he doesn’t know me, I must be part of the Order…”
He stares at Lily. “Oh you brilliant girl!” James kisses her forehead.
“What?”
“You’ve just given us the key to bringing him down. Intrigue the bloody man!”
Lily stares up at James, grasping his forearms as she slowly drops to the nearby bed. “I’m going back in. He still doesn’t know who I am, how I got out. I’ll put on the uniform he gave me, wander around and faint outside the Dome! I can give him false information and…I, I, don’t know what to do after that, but I’ll figure it out.”
“You’re going to go back in there?” he asks, worried. “I-”
Looking him in the eyes, Lily nods. “I have to. I’m the best candidate for it. You know that, James.”
He grumbles a bit, but sits down beside her, a silent acquiescence to what she’s saying. Heavily sighing, he wraps an arm around her, pulling her farther into him. Lily inhales his familiar scent of his worn shirt and wriggles around, fitting her body next to his, finding comfort in the solid heat he radiates.
She feels James lay his head on top of hers and his chest rises with a breath. “We’ll ask Kingsley when he comes in for the night. We’ll work out details…just promise-promise me that you’ll be careful?”
Lily pauses for a moment then sits up, startling James as she disengages from his embrace. She faces him, one leg tucked under the other, and bites her lip. “You want to go for a walk?” she asks, deliberately recalling their last conversation at Hogwarts.
A slow grin spreads across James’ face as he says, “I didn’t ever think you were going to ask.” He leans in and gently kisses her nose, cheeks, and lips, hands grasping her waist as Lily rises up and resettles herself into his lap. She returns his kiss with sweet vigor, tongue flicking out against his bottom lip, hands tangling themselves in the short strands of his hair. Groaning, James falls back into his small bed, bringing Lily with him.
The pants that are too large easily slide off her hips and she quickly draws off both of their shirts; when it comes to nothing, just skin and skin, James hesitates, looking down at Lily. She's pinioned beneath him, hair in an auburn corona around her face and skin turned to alabaster in the weak lighting, and she senses his pause. She reaches up and pulls him towards her, wrapping her legs around his waist as he slips inside her. In each other, they momentarily forget the world.
- - -
He isn’t happy, but Kingsley approves. He hates to send in a young girl, but he’s running out of ideas. James instantly vouches for Lily’s ability to be trusted with their location, but it’s when Sirius Black quietly adds his word that Kingsley sighs and nods, his bald head gleaming in the weak yellow light. He doesn’t have much choice left anymore.
Lily nods quietly, touching the man’s arm with a soft gesture of thanks, then leaves with James to begin preparation, though it doesn’t take much to make Lily look as though she’s been wandering lost in London for the last two days-some artfully applied dirt, the shabby hospital gown, and mussed hair.
They steal out of the Order’s headquarters at dawn and cross the dried riverbed of what was the Thames while the sun’s early morning light throws the long shadows of crumbling buildings into the groove where the river once flowed. After walking in silence for what seems like an eternity, James stops; they’ve arrived near the shimmering walls of the Dome.
He stops and turns to Lily, who’s been trailing behind him their entire hike, shoeless to make it more believable that she’s been running for two days in the dusty city. “You ready?” he quietly asks, voice rough with emotion.
Lily stares at the faint blue globe and licks her lips. “I’ve got to be,” she murmurs, then looks up at James, green eyes luminous in the dark of the alley. “I’m going to be fine. I’ll feed him the wrong information, and make sure that he’s convinced The Order is in the maintenance rooms of Paddington. He’ll go there with his minions and you and the other members will be there to ambush and kill him. In the meantime, I’ll escape my cell and find and break the spell that is holding England.”
James nods. They’ve been over this plan a thousand times, and though there are numerous, dangerous flaws, it’s the best that any of them can come up with-Sirius himself said that he couldn’t do better, given the circumstances. He smiles gently down at her, an ironic twist to his lips as he gives her a wand that belonged to a deceased Order member.
Their fingers linger together, the wand held between them as a last link before the battle. The air is still and shadowed and for a moment, the world has stopped. Then Lily rises up on her toes and brushes James’ lips in a wretched kiss before stepping back and tucking the wand down the front of her gown.
“I think I'm in love with you, you know,” she miserably whispers.
James presses his forehead to hers. “Lils, I’ve always loved you.” He grasps her face in his palms and kisses her, hard, and then she breaks away with a sob and turns from the alley.
He watches her trot toward The Dome, red hair gleaming in the early morning light before she touches the glittering blue wall and collapses in a heap. Before he's caught, James turns from the scene, heart aching, and begins the long walk home.
- - -
This time when Lily wakes up, she knows what to expect: bright white lights, immaculate tiled floor, and a small, windowless cell. She doesn’t ache as much as she thought she would and this time, James’ words still lingering in her mind, she doesn’t feel afraid of the man or the government.
The door creaks open and Lily sits, forcing herself to look dull and tired, as the man walks in. He looks the same, though his frown might be a bit deeper. She’d like to think that she’s caused that.
“So you’re back,” he says, voice smooth and calculated.
Lily feigns a cough. “’S better than being out there.” She weakly gestures. “There isn’t food--barely any water. People living like savages.”
The man latches onto one word. “People out there? The Order?”
Letting her head loll back, Lily gazes vacantly up at him. “I met with them. They’re the ones who broke me out of here. Give me clothes, my things, food…then I’ll give you information.”
The man snorts and turns on his heel, leaving with a loudly slamming door. Lily allows herself small smile of half-hearted victory.
It doesn’t take long to convince the man that she came back because The Order was a group of ragtag terrorists living off garbage and the odd Muggle imperishable. That is, after all, what he wants to hear; that his power is absolute and the only people that could stand in his way aren’t, in all reality, much of a threat.
Sitting wrapped in a voluminous old Ministry robe that smells strongly of cat, but is a definite improvement to just the hospital gown, Lily is once again being questioned by the man. She’s held onto the Order’s “secret location” until the end, forcing him to give into her requests, though it’s become easier and easier as she fuels his insatiable hunger for knowledge.
“So where are they? Where’s the rat hole that they’ve been cornered into?” The man paces the room, thin frame bursting with a horrible manic energy.
Lily purses her lips. Developing the persona of a greedy whore has been all too easy in this environment; she plays with the man, thoroughly becoming a minx in his presence. “Tell me something first, sir.”
Glasses glittering in the harsh lighting, the man curtly nods.
“Why are you here? Why did you…set off all those…bombs this summer?” Lily is genuinely curious; this isn’t something that she and James planned on asking him, it’s a piece of information she wants to know for her own sake.
He hesitates and the uncertainty is palpable, but his hubris wins out in the end. “I’m not from…here. I’m from the future, when wizards have learned to time travel.”
“We know how to time travel now,” Lily retorts
The man runs a hand through his hair, the agitated gesture lifting up the heavy bangs that usually cover his forehead. “Yes, I know, but one of my friends figured out a way to send me back further than a few hours. Years. So I came back to set right the wrongs that would have happened.”
“Wrongs? You mean Voldemort?”
The man’s piercing eyes meet Lily’s. “Yes.” The man proceeds to talk about the situation in the world where he comes from in brusque sentences, where a war has dragged on for nearly fifty years and the wizard population has nearly died out. His head bows for a minute. “Now where’s The Order?” He’s decided that he’s let enough slip.
Lily sighs and lets her head fall back against the wall as if she’s reluctantly giving up her last bargaining chip. “The maintenance rooms of Paddington. They’ve burrowed themselves like rabbits in a warren, so you’re going to have to take most, if not all, your men to flush them out.”
“Are you sure they’re still there? You left; they have to suspect that you came back and could give me their location.”
“No, they won’t ever believe that I came back,” she murmurs. “One of the poor hopeless bastards-” she nearly chokes on the word. “He was in love with me. They’ll just think I’ve …they’ll never suspect…”
He nods, a quick jerk of his head and abruptly leaves, his coat swirling behind him like a wizard’s cloak.
Later that night, Lily hears the dull thudding sounds of men hurrying through the corridors of the building. She stands on her bed and presses her ear against the ceiling, hoping to catch news as to what’s going on. But all she knows is that in a short amount of time the tramping stops and everything goes quiet.
She waits a few minutes until nothing new stirs above her, and then retrieves her borrowed wand from behind the cot where she stashed it. She’s surprised that the man fell so easily into their trap, but then again, living alone in this enormous building in a crumbled world, even one that he created, would make anyone go mad.
Lily quickly undoes magic locking on the door and creeps out. When no one immediately comes to apprehend her, she begins to sprint toward where she vaguely remembers James saying the main offices used to be and where he figures this man would have set up his own personal workplace.
She quickly finds the opulent doors; it appears as though the man took all of his men with him as she suggested. Obscuring the nameplate is a thick layer of dust; however, when Lily runs her finger through it, the title “Minister of Magic” gleams in the electric lighting.
Inside the offices, there is barely any space not covered in papers-in fact, it looks eerily similar to James’ desk back at The Order’s headquarters. Maps, lists of coordinates, and documents covered in spiked writing litter surfaces.
Spying a photo frame, Lily unearths it from a pile of parchment where names and dates have been scribbled in unfamiliar handwriting (Harry, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Hagrid, leap out at her), her curiosity getting the better of her. In it, two young boys and a girl smile cheekily at her, waving. Were they the man’s children? Lily starts. One of the boys is lean and dark haired, a scar marring his childish face, which wouldn’t bother her, except he looks almost exactly like James, looks like the man. The grin, the perpetually messy hair: both have that distinct Potter quality to them and Lily feels tears well up in her eyes. Was this James’…child?
She hastily puts the photograph back on the desk and walks to an adjacent door. This one is locked, and although alohomora won’t budge it, it only takes a few minutes work for Lily, armed with her borrowed wand, to figure out the spells.
The door creaks open to reveal a much more personal space than the previous office. A bed, looking lumpy and unsurely transfigured, lurks in one corner. A table with a glowing orb on it dominates the room and in a chair, Lily sees her clothing and rucksack. She rushes towards it and fishes out her wand-miraculously intact-from the bag, before turning to the orb.
The glowing ball suffuses a drawing of England that’s covered in dirt-presumably true English soil, to make the spell more powerful. It encapsulates the entire island, blocking Britain, it would seem, from the rest of Europe. Lily pokes it timidly with one finger, and a whoosh of cold air rushes in through the open window, howling wildly before subsiding just as soon as it began.
Lily glares at the orb, pretty sure that this is the key to why England is locked in drought and no one has come to aid them. Examining, it, she can see the base spells that make up the orb and spends several minutes intently studying them. It’s an intricate piece of spellwork, Lily can tell that much, with the spells lacing and weaving about each other in a complex pattern that not many would be able to think up, let alone decipher.
However, she has determination and overwhelming need on her side and besides, Lily is one of the cleverest witches her age, so she begins to untangle the spells that make up the barrier. As Lily unravels the gleaming charms and hexes, one after another, the world outside starts to tremble with the onslaught of nature. Massive waves rush in from the ocean, swirling into the void left by the Thames. Winds long held at bay smash through streets and across wide country spaces, rattling the bare branches of long-dead trees, and bringing the taste of winter that the country should have already felt. On the far-away horizon, dark clouds start to boil and thunder, readying itself to batter the land.
One spell remains, but Lily can’t fathom what it does. Golden, it trails away to the center of the painted landmass, but no matter what spells and curses Lily flings at it, the spell remains unwavering, faintly humming. Lily has half a mind to try avada kedavra on it, but can’t bring herself to utter the words of the killing curse.
In lieu of magic, Lily grits her teeth and, after tucking her wand in the Ministry robe, reaches out with both hands to the magical thread and with a substantial material beneath her hands, physically snaps the spell in half.
The resulting unleashing of magic howls around her, lifting Lily in the air before spontaneously apparating her to where the man from the future has died because the spell that tethered him to this time and life has been broken.
- - -
The man lies on the ground, green eyes open to the world and an expression of shock evident on his features. His body is slowly crumbing to a fine dusty ash from whatever spell was holding him; James stands above the disintegrating man, chest heaving with exertion as he surveys the site of the battle that by the Order barely won. Scorch marks mar the walls and rubble litters the ground. Wizards from both sides have fallen, but surprisingly, most of James’ people have survived, while only a handful of men from the government are alive.
Above ground, the wind howls through the cracks in the buildings, the stones creaking and warped doors slamming on their hinges. He can hear the steady swoosh of incoming waves and the scent of winter is on its way.
The air shimmers and James, on his guard, suddenly finds himself pointing his wand at Lily. Wrapped in a too-large Ministry robe and blinking confusedly, she’s standing over the growing pile of dust. She smiles weakly at him before stepping back, wiping wind-blown curls away from her face.
“Lils?”
“I killed him,” she mumbles, running a hand through her long red hair. She looks up at James, tears in her eyes. “I’ve never killed anyone before and it’s not…it’s not fair.”
He pulls her to him and wraps her in his arms as he feels a cold gust of winter air whisk by. “He was a monster Lily. Think of the billions and billions of people that he killed. And for what purpose?”
She shakes her head, though she’s clinging desperately to him. “He was saving his own family and friends. He…he had a reason. A good one.”
“But he went too bloody far. He killed our family. Our friends. Our lives. No one should be able to play God.”
“Yeah…” she trails off, burying her face in his shirt.
James gently hugs her and wrapped around each other, they stumble upwards into the chilly, open air. A deep shiver runs down James’ spine as they reach the surface and Lily faintly giggles and shrugs out of half of the robe she’s wearing and tries to wrap it around James as well. He finds a half-ruined wall and slides down until he’s sitting on the ground, exhausted and dirty. Lily smiles and lets James tug her into his lap, draping the robe cover them both.
“His name was Harry, you know,” Lily quietly remarks, almost as an afterthought, sometime later as they watch other Order survivors flock to the battle site. Then, she leans back and lets James envelop her in his arms, his lips resting in her hair, and they sit, watching as snow begins to fall on London.
fin