Levicorpus, a Fanfic

[terri_testing]

Disclaimer:  Any reader, I assume, already knows to whom the characters and setting belong.  I claim nothing.

AU to canon, and to my fanfic “Liberacorpus.”

Warning for language, and for (non explicit) violence.

Summary:  Snape reconsiders a decision that he had previously reached.  So does Lily.

Comments

[jana_ch]

The hardest part of the story to believe? Remus showing backbone. But if anyone is going to rescue Lily it has to be him, because it certainly won’t be Peter or Sirius, and I can’t see her being able to rescue herself after the way she was ground down in Liberacorpus.

So where will she go when she leaves Godric’s Hollow with nothing but her wand and the clothes on her back? I doubt if James will just give her up; we know how persistant he can be. Are her parents still alive, in Cokeworth perhaps? The only one sure to be willing and able to protect her for her own sake is Severus; she is exactly the sort of complication he does not need, and would be certain to take on, to his own detriment.

Lily would not think of going to Severus after all this time on her own initiative. It would have to be luck again: going to her parents in Cokeworth, meeting Sev by accident, letting the whole story pour out in a flood of tears. Severus won’t remember what he saved her from, but that won’t matter, since that particular threat is gone, and the threat of James’s obsessions is one Severus understands all too well.

But everyone else in the wizarding world will tell Lily to go back to her husband and behave herself-which is the most likely outcome, Sev or no Sev. Lily will talk herself around to the idea that Severus is exaggerating her danger because of his old ‘schoolboy grudge,’ and will end up going back to hubby. She’ll probably even beg his forgiveness, which she never did of Sev. At least whatever children James eventually knocks her up with won’t have prophesies hanging over their heads.

Lily ground down

[terri_testing]

This is quite early in the grinding process- he's got her alienated from her magical girlfriends, but hasn't gotten too far on attacking her self-worth-he was waiting to get her further tied to him by pregnancy (and isolated/ dependent by same) to work more on that. Excuse me, to work on educating her on being a proper wife to a Pureblood husband, smoothing off those Muggle rough edges including that unseemly independence of thought.

It will come as a shock to her to realize that she HAS been alienated from all HER magical friends and is now associating only with HIS--it's kind of crept up on her without her realizing what was going on. She's certainly not turning to a Marauder for advice or help, and she's not especially close to any of the (few) women in the Order. So yes, she would go home first--and Lily might be inclined to want to write this outburst off as a shocking aberration, but for her folks it would crystallize a vague unease.

Of course, her parents would be utterly powerless to protect her against James. But if she has to admit that she needs protection, that's most of her emotional battle won right there--she HASN'T been so ground down yet that she feels she deserves a repetition. If she realizes NOW that she would get one.

Of course, I'D be pretty damned terrified if I had James Potter after me. How good are his tracking charms, anyway?

What I'm really not sure about is what James will want to do when he wakes up from the Stupefy. Will he want her back, will he want to kill her, will he want to teach her a lesson and then discard her, will he want never to see her again...? Sirius might actually be her ally in this--she's unworthy of you, man!

James Giving Up?

[jana_ch]

I can’t see James just giving up. The man is nothing if not persistant. Assuming he didn’t start chasing Lily until he went through puberty, he spent at least three and possibly four years pursuing one girl. For a teenage sports star with lots of other options, that’s forever. She is his, dammit! He put himself through the wringer to get her (when she should have been falling at his feet-stupid Northern bint, her muggle parents barely out of the working class), and he is not about to let her go running off and tell everyone she’s dumped James Potter.

I can’t see him trying to kill her, though. He is heavily invested in the myth of the Great and Good James Potter, and the Great and Good James Potter does not commit murder (manslaughter maybe, but not pre-meditated). He sometimes has to chastise his wife a bit, but he’s always in control of that, he says. Another thing the Great and Good James Potter does not do, however, is get dumped. He will get her back.

Sirius might well try to talk him out of it. “Nothing wrong with muggleborns, Prongs, but everyone says you can’t really train ’em. I’ve got a couple of Prewitt cousins who love to go out to muggle pubs-both redheads! I’ll send them an owl and we’ll celebrate your freedom.” But I don’t see him succeeding. James is alpha dog of that pack, and (to mix metaphors) no stag worth his rack will let a hind wander away from his harem during the mating season.

[oryx_leucoryx]

You know, in this version James went all the way to call Lily the M-word, so perhaps some Gryffindors might support Lily's leaving. If she is still in touch with any of them.

[jana_ch]

An abused spouse can always find excuses for her abuser, if she’s been trained to it well enough. The question is whether Lily is so far gone yet that she’ll give James the ‘second chance’ she wouldn’t give Sev at sixteen.

It would be just like Gryffindors, though, to think that the unforgivable sin was using a bad word, not physical assault. Was that Cruciatus that James used on Lily? I think it would have to be something like that for Remus to stiffen his spine and do something.