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Lily Evans graduates from school on the eve of a war.
No one says it out loud, of course. As if ignoring it would make it all go away. The rising tensions at the Ministry, the purebloods withdrawing into their packs even tighter than before, the uptick in violence against Muggle-borns and blood traitors, people disappearing , whispers of a powerful man behind it all…
She and James get a flat together, because they love each other and they both know that there are dark days coming, so why waste a moment?
They attend shadowed meetings at the Hog’s Head, presided over by their Headmaster, who seems to think that their government won’t be enough to stop what’s coming.
One day they Apparate to Cokeworth and James distracts her parents with a theatrical reenactment of some Marauders incident or another long enough for Lily to thoroughly ward her childhood home. She very carefully does not think about any of the other homes in the area with a connection to the Wizarding world.
Later that night they drop in on Petunia and her awful fiance in Surrey, Lily picking a fight while James casts the same spells from under his invisibility cloak.
Mostly though, they go to work, do laundry, and figure out how to cook for themselves. The flat is rarely quiet or empty, somehow becoming the designated hang out spot for all their friends. Sirius, at least, had the excuse of living just two floors down, and he tends to drag in Remus whenever the poor boy isn’t working overtime at some low paying job he was painfully overqualified for. Alice and Frank are always a delight, happy to compare what they’ve learned in Auror training recently with what Lily’s cursebreaker courses are teaching her. Marlene, who has yet to find a place of her own, uses their flat as a refugee from her large family.
“I don’t know why they expect me to have it together already,” the witch complains one day, feet dangling off the edge of the fire escape. It’s just the two of them for the moment, though James had promised he’d leave the office by five and pick up pizza on his way home. “Not all of us can be Lily Evans, who’s known what she wanted to do since she visited Gringotts for the first time and will probably be announcing her engagement any day now, followed by popping out two—”
It’s a joke . Lily knows it’s a joke. Her friends have been teasing her about moving fast with James since they got together in seventh year, joking about when’s the wedding and who their kids will more closely resemble.
Knowing that Marlene is just taking the piss doesn’t stop an inhuman sound from escaping her throat, or her left hand from jerking off her thigh. Merlin, she’s not even wearing the ring , so shoving her hand into her pocket in the most obvious way is the worst strategy here.
Marlene’s jaw drops. “Lily Evans! Really ?”
“Really.” Lily says, wincing as her friend shrieks.
James had talked about putting an announcement in the paper, which was common practice. Telling Marlene achieves pretty much the same goal in half the time. Lily loves her to death, but the girl can talk.
They still hold a little get together to formally tell their friends. Not at the flat, but in the backroom at some new little restaurant in Diagon. Even Peter puts in a brief appearance, which makes James more happy than he will admit.
Peter has been distant since they graduated. If Lily hadn’t been around to see it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. She had thought that the Marauders were unbreakable, their friendship a universal constant as steady and reliable as the North Star.
A date is set for mid-April, so close that some of Lily’s family start clutching their pearls. She repeats, over and over, that she’s not pregnant. The official line is that they’re rushing the engagement because of James’ parents' ailing health.
Which is true, in part. Euphemia and Fleamont never quite recovered from the last outbreak of dragon pox. Lily adores them both, and has since she met them right after Easter break in fourth year, on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
But it’s not just the uncertainty of how long they’ll be around that had James looking for rings, or Lily saying yes almost before he could get the words out. Everything seems so uncertain these days. Even if the war hadn’t exploded like Lily had fully expected it to, with ‘missions’ for the Order of the Phoenix few and far between— mostly consisting of secret protection details and passing along what amounted to workplace gossip.
It’s like…it’s like they’d all seen a big storm gathering on the horizon. Dark clouds crackling with lightning, the sound of thunder carrying for miles, the palpable drop in air pressure. But instead of that storm reaching them and unleashing a torrent of wind and rain harsh enough to uproot their lives, a spring shower had begun to fall.
Lily Potter gets married unsure if it’s the eve of war, the middle of one, or the aftermath of it.
She has a great time anyway. The decor is perfect, her dress leaves James speechless, and the cake is the most amazing thing she’s ever tasted. The ceremony is mostly Muggle, because the Statute of Secrecy means that only her most direct relatives, or ones she lived with, were allowed to know about magic.
(Petunia doesn’t show up, which somehow surprises Lily even though she’d received the negative RSVP months ago. Dad makes her excuses, always the mediator, while Mum knocks back another glass of champagne and unsubtly changes the subject to the absence of another person Lily had once naively believed would have a place of honor at her wedding. She shuts that down fast.)
The after party is much more magical. They do another set of vows with their hands tied together with red string, let their friends and colleagues and teachers lay blessings on them, and drink a lot of firewhiskey.
Since wedding planning had taken priority over house hunting, James carries her across the threshold of their one-bedroom flat that night. He’s uneasy on his feet and she can’t stop hiccuping.
“I love you, my beautiful wife.” He murmurs against her hip when they’re in bed, pausing in his quest to strip her out of her gown and ornate lingerie to tip his head back and look into her eyes. James hated Vanishing clothing, because he thought it was way more romantic to get naked ‘the old fashioned way’ so Lily normally had to be the one to take that initiative.
Tonight though, she’s more than happy to go slow. “And I love you, my handsome husband.”
The words, the titles, send a shock of happiness through her. Lily bends down to capture James’ lips with her own. She cups his jaw with one hand, carding the other through his already messy hair. Whatever product his eternally suffering parents had managed to talk him into using for the day is long gone.
Being married isn’t so different from being engaged had been, or dating after leaving Hogwarts. Nothing really changes between her and James, other than the addition of my wife and Potter to his unending repertoire of pet names for her. Lily files the necessary name change paperwork, and expects to pay a bit less on taxes for the year.
Sirius rolls his eyes at her over lunch, egg and cress sandwiches he’d made and hot chips that she’d bought for them. “How romantic.”
Lily rolls her eyes right back, and bumps her foot against his ankle. “I’m just saying! Don’t act surprised, everyone knows that my husband is the romantic one in this relationship. Oh, maybe we could use the return for a little holiday, a late honeymoon once our work schedules loosen up a bit. How’s that for romance?”
“Merlin’s sake Lily, you’re set to inherit— oh never mind. At least I can finally put my fears of you having secret gold digger intentions to rest.”
She bumps her foot against Sirius’ ankle again, a bit harder this time.
Cursebreaker training is long, hard, irregular hours. She comes home sore as hell and bruised as a peach that’s been rolling around in the bottom of the barrel.
James’ internship at the Daily Prophet is not nearly as brutal but is hardly nine to five either, especially once he gets the full time writing job after a year on the staff. She loses count of the amount of times an owl wakes them by pecking at the bedroom window or a patronus bursts through their door to announce that there was breaking news happening so Jamws needed to get somewhere right now to help cover it. Lily gets really, really good at Obliviating the neighbors.
In all of the chaos, it’s easy to slip out of routine. To not mark down dates using a red pen in a little notebook by the bed, to forget a potion here or there, to attribute little aches and pains to training.
Life marches on. Splitting the holidays between their families as a couple has never been a problem, the two groups celebrating very different things at different times. For Halloween they go up to James’ childhood home, the cheerful Potters refusing to let any heaviness ruin the celebrations, despite the fact that everyone around the table knows that this is likely the last Samhain that Monty and Effie will ever see.
Chanukah falls mid-December. Lily dutifully Apparates to her parent’s house to light the menorah, exchange gifts, and eat. James comes three times and tries desperately to impress his in-laws with what he’s picked up over the years, as if he hadn’t already done the same thing twice before.
“Stalker,” Lily jokes, because he’d learned most of this ages ago, back before his crush on her deepened into real feelings and when she still refused to give him the time of day. He’d owl-ordered books and bothered the other Jewish kids at Hogwarts and tried to crash the little gatherings held when their holidays didn’t cross over with the school calendar— which was most of the time.
For New Years, they plan to host their friends for a properly planned party where you have to wear nice-ish clothes and are assigned to bring alcohol or snacks. This is opposed to the unplanned parties that pop up at their flat all the time, people showing up unannounced in whatever they were wearing at the moment with whatever was cheap or about to expire in their own homes.
But first, Christmas. The elder Potters aren’t up to travel or have company, Sirius buys himself a portkey somewhere warmer for the week, and everyone else they know has plans. So Lily and James decide to start establishing their own, married Christmas traditions.
This involves a few small (mostly homemade) gifts for each other, splurging on a new set of pots and pans as a present to themselves, a little plastic plug-in tree for the corner that fascinates James, and a good roast for supper since neither of them are huge fans of turkey.
Lily stores her presents under her dress robes in the wardrobe as she finishes them, wrapping the whole lot all at once one evening while James is helping Remus get ready for the full.
A new quill set she’d charmed to correct his horrendous spelling in real time, so that he didn’t have to break out the dictionary every second and third draft. A vial of a new energy potion she’d been working on that tasted like your favorite foods. An ornament for their little tree made from whatever desk supplies she’d had laying around while on her lunch break.
Finally, a card. She’d bought it cheap down at the corner store. Sliding it into the envelope, Lily is overcome by doubt again. Was this the best way to do it? Surely she, cleverest witch of their year, could think up something else. But this was the easiest way. Her hand had shaken writing the message inside, just as her voice had shaken every time she tried to just tell him .
Everything goes under the tiny tree, and twice she has to stop her husband from trying to magically peek at what was under the wrapping. Then she gives up and lets the low level traps she’d set up on them do their thing.
When James comes begging to her to undo the pink glow staining his fingertips to the knuckle, she laughs at him. “Spoil sports deserve what they get.”
Five hours later she relents, in exchange for James getting rid of the antlers that had sprouted from her head when she tried to pull the exact same move. They’re not even deer antlers like the ones his animagus form (and patronus) sported, tall and so heavy she can barely keep her head upright.
“Reindeer felt more fitting, given the season. Just be glad I didn’t give you a nose to match.”
“Cheeky bastard . I regret letting you watch that movie.”
On the day itself they have a lie in, waking up and having fun then falling back into a light sleep before eventually dragging themselves out of bed for either a very late breakfast or slightly early lunch, depending on how you look at it.
They waste the rest of the day to cuddling on the couch, singing along to Wizarding and Muggle records both, until James hears the local kids down on the street having a snowball fight. He’s grown up since they left Hogwarts, certainly since their earlier school years, but he has always maintained some childlike wonder.
Needless to say, they both end up down on the street. And they get absolutely destroyed. James more than Lily, because for all the lawn wars the Marauders had engineered, he’s never done this without magic. “It’s harder than it looks, Lily-love, don’t laugh at me. What happened to in sickness and in death and snowball loss!”
“I don’t remember that last bit being in my vows.” She says, and leans forward as if to give him a consolatory kiss.
James screeches when she pulls his shirt forward to drop a handful of snow down it instead.
By the time they stumble back inside, numb from the cold and aching from laughter, Lily has nearly forgotten what happens next. Presents . But only after a nice warm bubble bath. Right in the middle of the living room, in a clawfoot tub that seems plucked straight from some fancy daydream Lily might have after a few too many fantasy books.
“Merlin, I love magic.” She sighs as they soak. “And your talent for transfiguration, even if I still hate the subject.”
“Only because you’re no good at it. Hey, you can’t hate me for telling you the truth. That was in the marriage vows.”
When they’re suitably warm and clean again, they dress in their pre-sleep clothes (James sleeps in only his pants or completely naked, and Lily favors her knickers and one of his shirts, so pre-sleep clothes are that plus a few more layers for lounging around) they eat the dinner she’s set slow cooking hours ago and then take turns exchanging presents.
The ease she’d found, sex-happy then drunk off laughter and fun, is slowly eaten away by nerves as the evening wears on. Lily is sure she’s underreacting to her presents—a journal that only she can write in and read, a bookmark made from the menu of the cafe in Hogwarts where they had their first date and another from the restaurant he’d proposed at, a photo she doesn’t even remember taking in an enchanted frame—which makes her feel like shit.
“Last one,” she says, reaching over to pull the envelope from where she’d hidden it under the base of the small tree.
“We agreed on three though,” he protests with a pout.
Lily smiles. “This is…this is more of a present for both of us, really.”
“Oh?” He reaches to take it from her, warm fingers brushing hers. There’s a moment where they’re both holding it. And then Lily lets go. This is it. Everything is out of her hands now. Unless she snatches it back, yells nevermind, and runs away to their room to plot something more appropriate.
She’s never been good at this sort of thing! Lily has always been too direct.
And then someone knocks on the door.
“I’ll get it.” Lily says quickly, annoyance rising. So close.
“No, I—don’t get up, Lilyflower.”
“Too late.” She’s already up. There’s another knock, harder. Louder. “Hold your Hippogriffs!”
Maybe it’s a neighbor in need of a cup of sugar, or one of their friends whose plans fell through, or a random stranger looking for directions. Whoever it is, James would inevitably invite them in for a drink and then there’d be another person around when he found out, and she would have to talk two people into pretending that she’d found some better way to break the news.
(James would help her come up with one, and would swear up and down that it was how things had happened. He was a good husband like that.)
A third round of knocks, which sounds more like someone pounding their fist against the wood than anything. Flour emergency, or someone’s drunk, or—
Someone here to hurt us. Merlin, if Alastor Moody ever saw her answer the door without checking the peephole or even drawing her wand, he’d kill her himself.
“More merciful than the Death Eaters would do you in, that’s for damn sure.” The Auror had said, over and over, in Order meetings.
But Lily Potter has never really been touched by the war everyone knew was coming, and her head is too full of everything else to remember Moody’s words until she’s already twisted the knob and gotten the door half-open. By then it’s too late.
The first thing Lily sees is black . Robes, and hair. Two bodies, dressed the same, pressed so close together that it looks like one.
Black eyes, too. Wild and well known.
A darkening bruise spilling across pale skin, a painfully familiar sight.
That nose, and those cheekbones, and his eternally chapped and nerve-bitten lips.
The pieces slide together and her wand comes up, even as her brain still struggles to understand the picture in front of her. “Severus?”
“Lily.” He says, sounding as shocked as she feels. As if she was the one who had shown up at his door. On Christmas, no less. “I—”
Then James is beside her, wand raised much steadier. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Snape (they were not on a first name basis, not in a long time) looks at James. His mouth doesn’t even curl in disgust, eyes flicking between them. “We need help. I cast familia invenire —”
We . Lily had nearly forgotten the other body in the hall, leaning hard against Snape’s, dark head slumped. It’s hard to tell with all the loose black fabric they’re dressed in but she is pretty sure that Snape is the only thing keeping this guy up.
“That’s to find close blood relatives.” James snaps. “I think I would have noticed a grease stain on the family tree.”
“Not me, bastard, him.” Snape shifts, and the head of his mostly unconscious companion lolls back. It's streaked with something awful and blue and pulsing, some dark curse Lily’s never seen before.
But under all of that, it’s familiar. Lily narrows her eyes like it would help her put a name to the face. The young man looks around their age so she should remember him from school. But he’s not someone she’d ever seen in Gryffindor tower, or any of Snape’s Slytherin friends who had always made her uneasy. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw come up blanks too.
Her first thought…weirdly, her first thought is Gideon Prewitt. Assuming Gid had dyed his hair, lost four stone, and had a wardrobe overall since she saw him last.
Unlike with Snape, the pieces refuse to slide into place. And what a strange assortment of pieces. This guy has the same face shape as Gid, but undeniable Fab’s ears under that messy mop of hair that’s identical to…to James’s hair, the signature Potter hair, the stuff Monty had spent a decade of his professional career working to tame.
And when his eyes crack open, just a bit, Lily sees her great aunt. Her dad. Her own eyes, the ones James had written a thousand horrible poems about back in fourth year.
“This is Albus Potter, your grandson from the future, and unless he gets a magic transfusion from someone in his immediate family very soon, he is going to be eaten alive by a very nasty bloodline curse.”
James laughs. “Really, that’s what you’re going with? Time traveling relative? We don’t even have kids .”
“James.” Lily says, quietly, unable to look away. There’s blood dripping from billowing black robes onto her welcome mat, and in the face of that, all her other fears seem very trivial. Here was a story worthy of the Marauders after all. She grabs Albus’ other arm and takes half of his weight, tugging him into the flat. Finally, her voice doesn’t leave her or shake. “James, I’m pregnant.”
Despite what the door opening thing might suggest, Lily isn’t actually stupid. She dumps Albus on the couch then demands that Snape hand over his wand and explain.
“We don’t have time.” Snape hisses, a habit she blames on Slytherin house. He’d never hissed things before they went to Hogwarts. “Just—look, you don’t have to believe me, just cast the spell and see for yourself. If I’m lying then nothing will happen. No harm done.”
Lily knows he’s not lying. Severus Snape had never once lied to her successfully. James is not nearly as trusting.
“Except that I’ll have drained myself trying.” James snaps.
“I will if you won’t. Just tell me the incantation.” She says, before they can start tearing into each other like they had at school. It always started like this and ended with extensive property damage and at least one of them headed to the hospital wing.
Since she’s never heard of a magical transfusion, Lily figures that it must be one of those things you had to grow up in a wizarding home to know about, like the household spells Snape’s mum and then James and Euphemia had taught her.
“It’s really more of a—” Snape starts, but James cuts him off.
“No way, Lily, you can’t—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can’t do, no one is dying on my sofa if I can help it—”
Helpfully, Albus lets out a pained groan. Snape’s expression shifts for a moment before he buried all hint of worry. James is not nearly as good at hiding his feelings. For all that he was capable of holding a grudge, her husband had never been one to like to watch even people he didn’t like suffer. That Albus looks so achingly familiar can’t hurt.
“Fine, I’ll do it. In exchange for answers. Very thorough answers. Lily, keep an eye on him.” James nods at Snape, who is bound to one of their kitchen chairs, then goes to get some candles and chalk. Because apparently a magical transfusion was not a single spell but a whole ritual.
Snape explains the whole thing as James preps, like they’re kids again. The history (witches and wizards have been doing this far longer than Muggles have been doing blood transfusions, since the 1500s) and the purpose (to flush whatever dark spell Albus had been hit with out of his system, though it would not make him any more powerful than he had been before, which is what scholars originally think the ritual was created to do) and why Snape couldn’t do it (new, strange magic would be rejected by Albus’ body and speed up the curse further).
“The closer the blood bond, the better. An identical twin is most ideal, followed by siblings and parents. Both of those were out, for obvious reasons. So I used a bit of his blood for familia invenire and hoped for the best.”
“So you really didn’t know I lived here when you knocked?”
“I—” he falters. “It had crossed my mind, since I know that his maternal grandparents don’t live in London. Honestly I would have taken just Potter if that’s what it took to save his life.”
They don’t talk much, after that. Except for when she realizes that his stupid robes are hiding that he’s also injured—
“Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”
“Don’t be dramatic, it’s barely a scratch, I’m fine. Don’t point your wand at me, you couldn’t episkey a paper cut. Surely you have some potions around here that would achieve the same effect.”
—they sit silently at the table while James draws patterns and chants. Slowly Albus stops looking like he’s wandered off the set of Shock Waves . Eventually, James sits back on his heels and sighs, shoulders slumping. “So I guess you weren’t lying.”
“Why the hell would I lie about your grandson?”
“I—”
Albus’s eyes flutter open. He squints against the light and turns his head, letting out a little half-sob when he sees James. “Dad?”
“ Grand dad.” Snape says, and Albus’s eyes flick to them.
He really does have the Evans family eyes. Down to the shape and shade of green. They widen at the sight of Snape tied up and Lily holding a wand in either hand. “Where’s Scorpius? What happened?”
“We got caught.”
“Obviously. I remember that much.” Albus’ face screws up in pain, as if remembering hurts. “I think. Actually, that might be just a recurring nightmare. But what about Scorpius? Regulus?”
Scorpius, Lily vaguely remembers from Astronomy, is a constellation from the Southern celestial hemisphere. Regulus has to be Sirius’ younger brother, but she doesn’t remember any Black named Scorpius at school. Another time traveler? She wonders if her friend is currently getting a visit from his own future grandson on whatever beach he’s currently lazing on.
Snape’s face goes a bit pinched. “The…we had to split up. You were in bad shape and even though you took the brunt of the curse, Scorpius got hit too.” Very quickly, because Albus looks about to leap up and go find this Scorpius himself, he adds, “ But that’s why Regulus took him, they’re related enough that it should be fine.”
“Hm. Well, at least the incest is finally sort of useful.”
That makes James laugh. Not the cruel way he had earlier, but a genuine, full belly laugh that has him doubling over. “Okay kid, you can stay.”
Albus’ concern wavers long enough to glare at James indignantly. “Kid? We’re the same age!”
Undeterred, James reaches over to fluff up Albus’ hair.
“I promised to send them a message as soon as you were stable.” Snape says pointedly, shifting in his bindings, making James scowl.
“I can do it,” Albus reassures him, patting himself down, pushing into pockets and coming up empty. “Fuck. Where’s my wand? And my notes?”
“Your wand got left behind, no great loss—”
“Rude.”
“—and Regulus grabbed your notebook. Didn’t want to risk it falling to the wrong hands, even with the protections on it.”
Albus exhales. “Thank Merlin.”
She adds the question of why a notebook is more important than a wand to her ever expanding list of questions. “Snape, if you dictate, I’ll write out a letter to send with our owl when she gets back from hunting.”
“Or you could give me back my wand and I could send them a patronus now .”
“ You can cast a patronus?” James asks, with all the disbelief Lily feels. He had dropped Defence after O.W.L’s, like most of the Slytherins in their year. Rumor was that the snakes held their own Dark Arts courses in the dungeons, led by older students whose parents passed on spells that would never be approved by the Board. Lily can’t imagine that a patronus, used primarily as a guide against the dark, was part of that curriculum. Making it a messenger was even more difficult. Lily hadn’t learned it until she joined up with the Order.
Snape glares. “I can.”
Enlightening as that was, it wasn’t the kind of answer that James had bargained for. Now that Albus is no longer on death’s doorstep she feels the need to understand exactly how he’d ended up there, with Severus Snape to save him.
“Alright. One patronus, and both of you clean up a bit, then you tell us everything. Deal?”
“Once Scor and Regulus get here.” Albus bargains. “It’ll be easier to tell you the whole story with my notes anyway.”
James doesn’t like it, but Lily releases Snape from his binds and hands him his wand. They watch as Snape casts, “ Expecto Patronum ,” and a silver lion bursts from the tip of his wand.
He records the message, a brief assurance that Albus has been healed followed by the flat’s address and a good Apparition point–both provided by Lily–then bids the Blacks to be careful about tails on their way here. If they’re half as paranoid as Moody, the trip would take at least twenty minutes. When he’s done, the lion prowls gracefully through the wall and into London, where it will hopefully not be seen by any Muggles out for a late night stroll to look at the Christmas lights.
If pressed, a lion would not have been Lily’s first guess at Snape’s patronus.
Then again, a doe hadn’t been what she was expecting for herself. The shape of souls was a mystery to her.
Snape’s wand is exchanged for two fresh sets of clothes and some towels, and the two of them are directed to the bathroom for a quick shower each. Lily spares a moment to be grateful that they’d gotten rid of the fireside bathtub already, sparing them awkward questions or disgusted looks.
“So.” James says, when it’s just them again. “Pregnant.”
Lily rests a hand on her still flat stomach. “Yeah.”
Her husband’s face is impassive. For the very first time, Lily has doubts about something other than finding an interesting way to break the news. For all that he had always talked about a herd of little Potters, they hadn’t discussed it happening this soon. They’re still teenagers (Lily will be twenty a month from now, James in three) and there’s a war on (kind of, sort of) and—
He kisses her. Passionate, but gentler than he had just hours ago. James’ strong arms wrap around her waist and pick her up, spinning her in the air. “A son! Lily, we’re going to have a son!”
“We don’t know that for sure, James, I’m only two months along.”
“Albus thought I was his dad though.” He points out, letting her down.
“This kid might not be his dad. Maybe I’m currently carrying his aunt or uncle.”
James smiles, leaning down to kiss her again. “Good point.”
He slips a hand up her shirt to lay his hand on her stomach. If they were alone, he’d likely pull her shirt off and spend a while kissing the bump that doesn’t exist yet while muttering sweet nothings about her and their child. As it is, the gesture just reminds Lily that she isn’t wearing a bra and she very much wants to be before even more people show up.
Albus comes back first, looking a bit like a drowned kitten with his still dripping hair and the jersey James wore for his recreational Quidditch league hanging off his shoulder. His lips turn up at the corners, tentative. “Hi. I realized I didn’t actually get to introduce myself, earlier. I’m Albus Potter.”
“James.”
“I’m Lily.” She says with a laugh.
“Nice to meet you, James and Lily.” His eyes dip down. “Dad.”
Well, that settled that debate at least. “So, Albus. I can’t say I’ve met many Albuses.”
Albus leans against the counter, watching Lily divide the roast that was supposed to feed just two into six portions. “Yeah, well. I was named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. Brave men, both of them.”
He says the words stiffly, like they’re something he’s heard a thousand times.
“Both of them were also very complicated and kinda assholes, honestly. Still, me and my siblings all agree that dead people’s names and legacies are easier to deal with than whatever Mum would have come up with. She names all of our pets, and…” Albus shudders. “My older brother is James Sirius, and my sister is Lily Luna. Of course, Aunt Luna is perfectly alive, but when Lily was born she’d been missing for three months and everyone assumed the worst. When she eventually wandered out of that bog, she was very flattered, and it was too late to change it.”
Meaning that James and Lily hadn’t been around to see their grandchildren born. Lily…Lily decides not to think about that. Not now. Whatever crazy (and illegal? Almost definitely illegal) twist of fate had brought Albus to them had given them a chance to meet him now, and that’s all that mattered.
Just after Snape returns, toweling off his hair and looking very weird in James’ pajama bottoms and sleep shirt, there’s another knock. This one is much more polite than Snape’s had been. James checks the peephole and then lets in two men.
Again, Lily knows one and feels like she should know the other. Again, both wear flowing black robes and no small amount of blood.
Regulus Black looks pretty much the same as the last time she saw him. In the right lighting, he and Sirius could be twins, if Regulus grew his hair out a bit more. He’d be graduated by now, off doing whatever proper purebloods did when they were set to inherit more money than God and saw themselves above such things as careers.
Scorpius is blond, and fast. Practically a blur as he rushes into the flat and throws himself at Albus, who meets him halfway. They don’t even kiss but their embrace, the way they lean their foreheads together to look into each other’s eyes and begin murmuring things meant only for each other’s ears, is so intimate that Lily has to look away.
Someone should probably keep an eye on their other guests, anyway. James certainly was already distracted. He might hate Snape and Black but he’s also an insufferable romantic.
“You’d think they’d been apart weeks and not hours.” Snape scoffs, also averting his gaze.
“It’s been a stressful few hours.” Black points out, arm brushing Snape’s as he turns to her and extends a hand that Lily shakes hesitantly. “Thank you for allowing us shelter in your home.”
“Yeah, well.” Lily shrugs, because she doesn’t really know where she’s going with that.
No problem. That remained to be seen.
That’s what family’s for. Only Albus was family.
We didn’t have anything else going on. Huge lie.
We’re used to it. That one was true, but typically the people they let in were friends, not strangers and vague enemies.
She’d never talked to Regulus Black at school of course, but his formal way of talking (not to mention the posh accent that Sirius had spent years kicking and Snape years trying to copy) has always rubbed her the wrong way.
“Oh, here. You probably want this back.” Scorpius says, pulling away from Albus far enough that he can pull out a small black book and press it into the hands of a relieved looking Albus.
“Ah, the mysterious notebook full of answers.” James drawls, apparently over romance and back to hating dark magic. “Like why my grandson is standing in my kitchen fifty years ahead of time with a bunch of Death Eaters and a bloody Malfoy.”
Ah, so that’s where the blond came from. It’s not golden like Alice’s or dusty like Petunia’s. Just...pale, nearly white, like all the color had been stripped from the strands. She remembers thinking that Lucius Malfoy looked like a princess back when she was a first year, before she learned he was more like a demon who could cut you open with just a few words.
(Mostly metaphorically speaking, though he wasn’t a half-bad dueler either.)
It makes Albus scowl and curl a protective arm around Scorpius’ waist, but Scorpius himself just looks at James and smiles. “Oh, you sound just like Harry. And look like him too! It’s a bit uncanny.”
His voice is full of so much more life than his relative’s. Significantly higher too.
“How much have you told them?” Black asks, the question aimed at Snape but answered by Albus, who’s flipping fast through the pages of his book.
“Nothing. I thought a visual aid would be best. Annals .”
A spell, one she’s never heard. Or maybe just a trigger word. Whatever it is makes the pages of Albus’ notebook explode from the binding and fly every which way. Lily’s hands fly up instinctively to shield her face and she braces for a thousand papercuts to scratch across her skin. But the pages don’t do anything more than brush by her lightly.
When the fluttering and flapping sound fades, she lowers her arms and gasps.
The six of them stand in the eye of a hurricane. Except instead of water, this storm is made of information. Newspaper clippings, photographs, notes in half a dozen handwritings. All spinning slowly in the air around them.
“We should sit.” Albus says, and they do. The pages follow them, always centered on the book.
It must make a funny picture, the six of them around the rarely used dining room table. Lily next to James, Snape next to Black, the time travelers at each head. Even though it was his suggestion, Albus stays on his feet and examines the airborne collage with a look of intense concentration.
At least until James loses his patience. “Well?”
“Just…trying to find the best place to start.”
“Graduation?” Scorpius suggests. “We finished school a year and a half ago, class of 2024. A week later, we moved into number twelve, Grimmauld Place.”
Lily had graduated a year and a half ago too, in 1978. This seems to bother James less than the address. “Why the hell would you move in there ? It’s horrible.”
“It’s my ancestral home.” Black says shortly.
Knowing what she does about Sirius' family and childhood, those two statements seem like they could coexist very easily.
“It’s been in the Black family since–oh never mind, that’s not important. Point is, Sirius Black inherited it and then left it to my dad, his godson, since he died without having kids of his own.” Albus says. “Dad lived there for a bit until Mum got pregnant with James, and he sealed it up real good when he left for the last time. So the place was amazingly preserved.”
“And more than happy to open up to someone with Black family blood in their veins. Auntie Andromada and cousin Teddy wanted no part, but my nana helped a bit.” Scorpius says. “That’s Narcissa Malfoy, if you hadn’t guessed already.”
Albus smiles at him. “Your hair really gives it away, love.”
“Let me guess, some dark artifact that the Blacks really shouldn’t have had threw you fifty years into the past?”
Their guests stare at James in shock. Albus and Scorpius openly, Snape and Black much more subtly. Lily only notices the slightly wider eyes, the tightening of his jaw, because Snape is right in front of her.
(When had he learned to hide his emotions? What had happened in the last eighteen months, after years of fighting with the Marauders and a whole life of living with his father, that he didn’t let everything he was thinking play across his face anymore?)
“Uh, yeah.” Albus wets his lips. “Big, weird grandfather clock in the top floor study. I shouldn’t have messed with it, but I thought it might be one like Gran and Gramps have at the Burrow. An older version covered in grime and mold. So I opened it up, tried to clean it.”
“It was kind of like the wardrobe in Narnia, except that instead of wandering into the dark and coming out in a snowy wood, Albus played with the clock hands, causing the door to open and the vortex of time that powered the clock to suck us up and spit us out into the same study, just forty six years in the past.”
“So nothing like the wardrobe, then.” Lily says.
Scorpius just shrugs. “We got…unlucky, but also very lucky, about what was happening in that study, at that time, in 1978. It was a very important meeting.”
The Blacks probably never had meetings that they didn’t deem very important, the self-absorbed bastards. None of the pureblood families ever did. Lily remembers calling most of Slytherin house, plus James and Sirius, arrogant narcissists on more than one occasion.
“The unlucky part was that it was a private meeting being held at the behest of a very powerful dark wizard named Tom Marvello Riddle, better known as Voldemort.” Albus says.
With the wand Scorpius had passed him, Albus reaches out to tap his wall of papers and the wall shuffles to allow a handful to come to the front and hold still so that they can see. Suddenly, Lily wishes that Albus’ notebook had been left behind, or at least that her grandson hadn’t thought visual aids necessary.
The face staring down at her from a dozen drawings and photographs is sometimes handsome, sometimes grotesquely twisted into something barely human. In every picture the man has intense eyes that feel as if they’re burning into her very soul.
Voldemort . Lily had heard the name for the first time in third year, from whatever raving rando was holding the Defense post at the time, and hadn’t been able to escape it since. They’d started saying You-Know-Who halfway through fifth year, afraid that just saying the full name might draw his attention.
Some called him a visionary, others a madman.
At the very first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix that Lily attended, just before graduation, Albus Dumbledore had called him a great threat to all that was good in the world.
Lily, for a long time, had only thought of him as the man that was stealing her best friend.
“What was the lucky part?” She asks, fingers curling around her wand as if the pictures were about to jump from the paper and attack. Weirder things had already happened tonight. “A nearby window to jump out?”
Snape’s mouth curls into a dark grin, all teeth. “More like a conveniently located heavy candlestick, used to strike the Dark Lord over the head before any of us even realized what was happening. Brutish, but effective.”
“No spell we cast would have hurt him.” Albus says, a bit defensively. “Besides, the really lucky bit was you two. Coming out during the initiation of any other Death Eaters would have meant…well, instant death.”
Initiation. She’d known, of course, that Snape was friends with wannabe Death Eaters, the children of those who were rumored to already be working with Voldermort. That Lucius Malfoy had written to Snape after he graduated, and met up with him some Hogsmeade weekends.
They’d fought about it, so many times.
They’re my dormates, Lily. I have to try and get along with them.
Malfoy just thinks I have promise, that’s all. He’s promised to introduce me to some people. You know Slughorn doesn’t like me enough to do it.
I’m not saying I agree with everything they’re saying but if you’d just read this pamphlet—
Until she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Mudblood.
The first few times the word had been aimed at her, it hurt. But Lily had gotten over it. Learned to laugh, because what a stupid-sounding insult. But coming from his mouth—she understood why all the other Muggleborns flinched away from it.
Words didn’t matter. The intent did. Severus Snape had spat the slur at her with rage, and embarrassment, and scorn. So she’d given up believing that he’d ever be anything but a Death Eater.
Let him try and climb the ranks into the respectability and power he craved, far away from the place they’d come from. She’d be there when the ladder broke, or he was pushed off, wand at the ready.
“But not these two.” James says dubiously, even if the proof was right in front of them.
“No.” Albus taps the storm again, and the Voldemort pictures vanish, replaced by new pages.
Headlines, mostly, the dates from the far flung future. Snape Acquitted! Dumbldore’s Death Eater. Boy-Who-Lives Lobbies For Post Mortem Order of Merlin! Harry Hails Heroism. Murderer or Martyr? She sees a much older Snape looking out stone faced from photos. She sees a boy behind a podium that has to be her son, her Harry, speaking to a crowd. She sees—
“Is that a statue ?” James squaks.
“You’ve got one too, in Godric’s Hollow. It gets vandalized way less often.” Scorpius assures him, patting James on the hand.
That does seem to improve her husband’s mood. Albus dismisses the Snape related pages and brings forward a single photocopied note that floats beside his head. “Regulus Black was also a traitor to the cause, albeit much less successfully and for a totally different reason. In the long run he did more damage than good, but the foundation was there to flip him too.”
“Well, not all of us can be Severus Snape.” Black says, that mask of severe professionalism momentarily breaking into the same teasing tone that she’d heard so often from his brother. It’s a bit jarring.
Even more jarring is the way Snape ducks his head, bashful.
Lily looks back at Albus. “Where did you even get all of this? You can’t have just had it on you.”
“Actually, I did. See, I’m a magical historian, and my focus is the role of Slytherin House during the first and second Wizarding Wars against Voldemort.This notebook was a gift from my parents back in fourth year after…uh, well, after our first time travel adventure, when I started getting into history.”
There is…so much to unpack there. Lily doesn’t even know where to start.
James, predictably, starts with: “Why would you want to study the snakes? It’s just evil, evil, torture, murder, evil.”
“First of all, I literally just showed you that that isn’t the case.” Albus snaps. “There were Death Eaters from other houses too. The second war wouldn’t have even happened without—oh, nevermind. The main reason was that I’m a Slytherin, and I was fed up of hearing from my entire fucking family that a choice made by a dusty old hat completely defined me when they didn’t actually know the first thing about my house.”
“Oh.”
Second war. Harry in the Daily Prophet. You’ve got a statue too–
“First time travel adventure?” Lily decides to ask.
Both of the displaced men shift. It’s their turn to look bashful.
“We might have…jumped off the Hogwarts Express, broken into the Minister for Magic’s office, and stolen an illegal time turner–do you guys know what time turners are? I can’t remember when they were invented but the name is pretty self explanatory I feel like—”
“We’re getting off topic.” Black interrupts, cutting Scorpius off.
Looking very much like he’d rather keep talking about jumping off the Hogwarts express (!!) and breaking into the Minister’s office (!!!!), James nods. “Fine, yeah. So you fell through time, hit Voldy over the head, used your future knowledge to talk some Death Eaters out of killing you, then what?”
Meaning: why didn’t you come to us right away, instead of just when you needed a blood relative?
Meaning: where have the four of you been for a year and a half?
Meaning: what happened that you’re here now?
“Weeeell.” Albus stretches out the word. “We sorta took some inspiration from a different Death Eater, stuffed the bastard in a trunk, and started impersonating him?”
Lily lays a hand over her stomach and twists to scowl at James. “This is entirely your fault.”
“No! My dear lady, the combined curriculum vitae of the Marauders doesn’t measure up to even half of what our heirs apparent have admitted to on this night. The blame cannot lie solely on the Potter blood.”
Great. Apparently, Black is familiar enough with James’ poetic moods that he knows when to cut one off before it gets started. He takes control of the storytelling, which doesn’t get any less insane from there.
Albus pulls a hundred articles that would never come to pass in this time. Every single one is a heart wrenching tragedy, belonging to the fully fledged war Lily had expected. Every single one had been avoided–or at least altered—because of the four men at her table, who had used Polyjuice Potion to assume the face of Lord Voldemort and slowly manipulate the man’s followers into their own downfalls.
“My parents were all too happy to agree to his request that Grimmauld be the new headquarters.” Black says. “And when I went back to school, I began passing information to Dumbldore. Anonymously, of course. Drove the old bastard crazy trying to figure out how someone kept getting past his office security.”
It was Albus who assumed the responsibility of Voldemort most often. Snape stepped into the position of his second in command, once they’d gotten Bellatrix Lestrange off the board with a well timed tip to the DMLE, covering for Albus whenever needed.
Scorpius had his own, unusual role in the coup of the century. A healer-in-training, he knew enough that it was his job to keep Voldemort in a state of catatonia, while also working as a stealth therapist on Voldemort’s followers.
“A what?”
“It’s like a mind healer, which is a specialization I was looking into before all of this.” Scorpius explains. “My father and grandfather and great grandfather were Death Eaters. I understand the mentality even if I wasn’t raised with it, and don’t agree with it. Plus, not all of his army were rich purebloods. The backbone of his forces were people who joined up because they felt they had no place in society. I don’t know how much it helped, but…” he shrugs.
“Scorpius has been taking correspondence courses in psychology through Cambridge since our fifth year.” Albus says proudly.
The hardest part, Black tells them, was the dark mark. Snape rolls up his sleeve to show off the snake and skull that had hovered over burned out houses and ransacked stores, branded on his forearm. Then he shows that it’ll come off with a bit of Mrs. Slower’s All Purpose Magical Mess Remover. “The Dark Lord used an altered version of the Protean Charm, and marked the innermost circle. The others started getting suspicious when he stopped calling, or coming when they dared try to summon him.”
She has to get up and make tea, after that. Lily passes out cups to her husband, two not-quite Death Eaters, her grandson from the future, and an endlessly kind Malfoy. She wishes that she could add a bit of whiskey to it. Especially when the story finally catches up to the present.
It was the sloth brain, of all things, that screwed them in the end. At least that was Snape’s theory as to why the combination of Draught of Living Death (his own, altered recipe) and Dreamless Sleep had failed.
“There was an article about the spread of the Anhanga virus in Brazil last week.” Snape admits tightly.
That’s his way of saying meaning the ingredients were compromised, and Voldemort was able to fight off the combined effect of the potions long enough for him to use his fucked up brand to inform his followers that they were being lead by an impostor.
The four of them had barely gotten out alive. Albus and Scorpius had taken the bloodline curse together, courtesy of Antonin Dolohov, Regulus had nearly splinched himself Apparating out of Grimmauld, and Snape was apparently still waiting on the Skil-Gro he’d chugged on the way here to regrow half his ribs. Their only saving grace had been that Voldemort himself hadn’t been a part of the fight.
“Two questions.” James says. “Well, way bloody more than that really, but two for now. One: why the hell keep the most powerful wizard alive in the dark about what was really happening with the war? And two: why didn’t you just kill him when you had him laced to the gills with potions? Don’t tell me your ethical code held you back.”
Black sneers at him.
“Complicated and kinda an asshole,” Albus reminds them, ticking off the point on his fingers. “As for killing the son of a bitch…well, if it were possible at this point in time, someone would have done it already. We’re close though.”
“So fucking close.” Snape mutters regretfully. He glowers at his cup of tea like he could set it on fire with his mind. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“Third question.” Scorpius says. “What happens now?”
“Well, complicated or no, you’ll probably have to tell Dumbldore something. Warn him that things are about to get bad, now that he’s loose again.” Lily says, trying not to picture how bad it probably was right now.
She feels slightly better when Scorpius explains that Voldemort himself wouldn’t be able to do much right away. The potions and months of inactivity would have messed with his body. Then Black casually points out that the Dark Lord would likely ‘get back into practice’ by torturing his followers for not noticing he’d been replaced and failing to capture the impostors.
Which. They signed up for that, really, following a genocidal monster. Letting him mark them. But Lily can’t help but feel a bit bad for them anyway. There was a reason Crucio earned a wizard a one way ticket to a lifetime in prison.
(And it was almost the man across from her, taking that mark and all that anger with it, just because he– No. She’s not making excuses for him. Not ever again. Even if he is here now, on the right side and more useful than Lily could ever dream of being…)
“So telling Dumbldore isn’t life or death for anyone that doesn’t deserve it.” James summarizes. “Tomorrow then, you’ll fill him in. And in the meantime, I can transfigure a pretty mean bed.”
So that’s how Christmas ends: her husband knows she’s pregnant and the proof that her kid would turn out alright curls up with his boyfriend (newly showered and changed into some of their spare clothes) then promptly passes out on the bed that is normally a couch. James makes two of the dining room chairs into cots, for Snape and Black. She can’t tell if that’s some sort of weird passive aggressiveness or if he really is that dense.
Who is she kidding? James had spent years convinced that Snape secretly fancied her. He’s got old fashioned ideas about romance and how to express it, and is lucky that she’d come to find that attractive.
“Padfoot will never want to go on holiday again.” James whispers in the dark of their bedroom as they try to follow Albus and Scorpius’ swift example. “He’s going to lose his mind when he finds out all the action he missed out on.”
“Plenty ahead.” Lily responds. Voldemort wasn’t dead yet, after all.
That was alright though. She wasn’t due until July. Plenty of time.
Lily Evans Potter is going to give birth in a peaceful world, and her son is going to be the most loved boy that ever lived, with one very weird family tree.