Chapter Text
Lily knew something was wrong long before Dumbledore shared the blasted prophecy with them, long before the delivery date, before the conception even. It was just that, at first, she foolishly attributed all strangeness to the war.
It started fairly innocuously: a garden frosting all over in the end of July, 1979, muggle tulips sent by Petunia on the death day of their parents and magical azaleas Marlene gifted her last birthday both freezing overnight, ground turning into permafrost seven inches deep.
They figured it was an aberrant spell from a battle. It was no easy feat to undo - Sirius had to do a very questionable if not outright illegal ritual with goat blood, once Lily’s own third attempt spread clumps of ice towards and into their freshly picketed fence. They ended up ripping out and redoing the base wards too, calling Gideon to help rekey them into black tourmaline statuette Remus supplied from Merlin knows where. Peter and she spent four days scrying and recalculating optimal protections, and then James and Sirius sourced hawthorn wood and managed an almost even fence out of it.
The protections in place, yet the question of perpetrator remained unsolved, even days after. Peter and she hit the books on a more obscure charm theory and runic protections respectively, while the others looked into finding the culprit. With Him at the height of His power, it was unnerving to be on receiving end of such a spell, curse really, and not to know when or who cast it.
Order was normally quick to get information on such disturbances. Yet weeks went on, and they were no wiser for which skirmish iced at their doors. No witness, no bodies, no addition of a silver masked fiend handy with the freezing curse.
There were more pressing matters after, so they let that particular mystery rest. But it unsettled them in a way no battle did before. Peter brought to her a ritual, a week on. Fidelius, in case they needed to secure the house better. And a few darker options that kept turning in the back of her mind.
In October Lily started tasting brine in the air. Some people smelt more like stormy sea than others, but she wouldn't put two and two together until the death of Marlene McKinnon and her family in July of 1980.
It was hard not to blame herself once she did. The facts felt like little more than flimsy excuses. Yes, the pregnancy took her off the field, and an aberrant off-putting sea scent seemed to be just at home with other witchly sympthoms of carrying a child. Yes, far from all pregnancy symptoms disappeared with the birth. Yes, she wasn’t surprised the shtick remained long after.
But maybe, she should have noticed the type of people who smelt of salty breeze. The type of magic that boasted brine. Travers, the junior, then yet unconfirmed in his participation of a certain masked club, smelt freshly of raging sea the day before McKinnons were slaughtered. The run-in at the Ministry haven’t meant much until it did.
What she really smelt became obvious then. The Mark was the darkest kind of magics, after all. What did it mean then, that Peter started smelling the same?
Before the terrors of 1980, before the prophecy that confined them to the Hallow, came the joyful news of pregnancy.
She figured it out early December, after puking her guts out while brining Blood-replenisher to the boil. She triple-checked, of course, and only then told James. They were in their living room, reading side by side on the purple sofa that Sirius charmed into howling at Remus, snow piling thick outside, when she told him. His eyes lit up, and he twirled her like he did when she accepted his proposal in ‘78, and then, the cheesy fool, wept, hugging her.
The news seemed to have breathed a new life into their group. Even Remus, who was barely there sometimes, sickly and wan, the Wolf taking over most days, shed his cloak of depression, and brought little trinkets for the coming baby anytime he returned from his mission: a charmed wooden wolf, a runic chewing disk, a little mobile for the crib where chubby little crows with rainbow feathers flew over a glittery nest.
Peter came to visit less and less, but he too sent a cheerful baby blanket personally charmed to sing silly lullabies and a little red cap Lily was convinced he crocheted himself. She didn’t pry too much, taken in with chaos of toddler proofing house for a little witchling, but James told her that it was something with his family.
Sirius was as ecstatic as if it were his own child about to be born, and haven't left their side since, practically moving in. The only times he wasn’t there, was when he and James went in for Order business, except now Sirius did not let James go in alone under any circumstances.
"Think of your baby, Prongs," he said once, when James was being obstinate, and Lily was nearly crying with gratitude for it. She had been far from close with Sirius during Hogwarts, yet now she’d name him her own sworn brother in a heartbeat, honorary Potter or not.
On December 20th Sirius took a curse for James, a botched entrailburner across his side, jagged and rancid; James had to mobilicorpus his unconscious body into the guest bedroom. They tended to him together, Lily brewing all the healing potions she could think off in their cramped kitchen, James scrupulously applying fruits of her labors behind cauldron and moving him every so often to prevent bedsores. By then they could not afford to bring in a Healer, even with precautions.
They spent Christmas at his bedside. Remus and Peter sent their gifts, but neither showed. By then Lily knew that Peter’s mother’s days were numbered, and she sent him a care package. Exchanging anything with Remus was dangerous for Remus in the first place, so his present she kept in her secret kitchen cubby.
When they laid in their bed, a day after, Jaime asked her if she thought Sirius would make a good godfather for their son (Remus was so sure that it was a baby boy coming, and it rubbed off on them both, even though everything Lily knew suggested it was far too early to know). Lily didn't have to think much.
"He's practically your sworn brother, love. Of course, he'd make the best godfather."
They asked him, still bedridden but now awake and eyeing firewhiskey wistfully, on New Years’ Eve, and the always upbeat unserious Sirius nodded as somberly as one would to the, say, Minister, but then, thankfully, broke into a huge weepy smile. Lily giggled at his silly expression, and they all laughed.
In January, Remus spent an entire week at their place, mother henning Sirius and guilting him into being sensible, which Lily knew from experience wouldn’t work for longer than two weeks. Peter came by for an hour, thinned out and grief-stricken, but seemed to cheer up in their company. He chatted with the boys, and then helped recharm the hallway mirror which annoyingly and rudely kept calling her fat.
Remus seemed high-strung, more so than before, so she picked Peter’s mind for ideas on how to share their friend’s burden.
“It’s no good being on constant alert, whatever Moody says,” Peter agreed, wand movement ending in an accurate twirl, “And he should know he is safe here, so I don’t think the pranks would be a good idea.”
“That’s why I am not asking Sirius for advice, now am I,” Lily said, mimicking Molly’s favourite stance of hands on her hips.
Peter smiled shyly. “I think you should just talk to him, Lils. You are good at it”.
Peter’s words as simple as they were touched her by their candidness. She packed him half of the remaining carrot cake she knew he loved, while he bid goodbye to the rest.
That evening, they learnt that there was a reason for Remus’ alertness. He gathered them in the living room, and spent good twenty minutes spelling the doors shut. They watched him dumbfounded for a solid minute, but then joined in with privacy charms.
Once Remus felt their precautions were sufficient he solemnly offered a wizard's vow of silence, as if preparing them for a horrid secret. James, Sirius, and she sat on the sofa, and Remus stood before them, fiddling with his wand, as he often did when looking for the right turn of phrase.
“It reeks of Pale, your house does.”
“Pail?” She asked, befuddled.
“The veil is thin here,” he responded with a non-sequitur, which apparently only she failed to understand. James went white, and Sirius frowned.
“Is the baby dying?” James asked, tone clipped. Lily gasped, slowly getting the idea the Remus was trying to convey. Sirius leaned to her ear, and whispered “Werewolves are sensitive to the magics of Death.”
Remus shook his head in a curt, ragged movement, the room fell silent.
“Then why does it smell like death to you?” She encounter each word slowly, the gravity of the situation slowly sinking in.
“He thinks, ” Sirius answered instead, “that the child will be born a necromancer.”
James’ magic lashed out, and Dorea’s porcelain vase on a side table shattered.
Lily thought to the tales students shared under cover of night. Necromancies tales, each more horrid than the last, was wizards’ favourite genre of ghostly stories. She remembered Parkinson, a Ravenclaw from the year above, saying she’d twist her own baby’s neck before they cut the cord if she knew her child to be a death-diviner, and the rest of older girls agreeing.
"They’d kill him, if they know," said James. “They” needed no clarification.
Lily looked at the people in her living room, gauging if she had to fight her way out. But each person seemed to, miraculously, wrack their brains on how to save her unborn baby instead.
"There's a ritual to lock it in, to hide it," Sirius offered hurriedly. "I'll need to break in London Manor to find the right book, but in the meantime -“
“No one can know,” said James and Remus echoed him.
Lily's body shook, and tears fell, but it was as if she were but a spectator in her own body.
"There's a spell,” somebody said, and she realized it was her speaking. “Fidelius.”
"You want to secret away his identity," Sirius whispered, awed. “You mad, brilliant witch.”
"It’ll take time to set up your ritual. We can't take chances.”
"I'Il be the secret Keeper," said Sirius, and James clasped his hand gratefully.
“Charm me asleep,” said Remus, plopping down on the armchair, “This way you’ll be able to check on me if it worked.”
James nodded, and casted, while Lily pulled out Peter’s notes from the side table, Sirius levitating the glass shards away from her while she was at it.
James conducted the “Sacrament”, Lily the Sharer, and Sirius the Keeper.
Living room smelt like salt and ozone when they were finished.
“Did it work?” She asked, as James woke Remus.
It did. Even the Wolf couldn't tell until Sirius shared the Secret.
They didn’t take the warding off the room, as they started planning their Grimmo break-in, and Lily cuddled under a blanket on a sofa, watching Sirius chart floor plans, and Remus and James worrying over the paths.
When she came to in early hours of morning with a stiff neck, it was decided that Remus stayed protecting Lily, and James and Sirius searched for the book. And that Peter was in no mental capacity to partake in an Azkaban-worthy affair.
“We can’t burden him too much right now,” said James, and while it must have fell awful to not be completely truthful with their friend, everyone seemed to agree on the matter.
Lily started on medicinal potion, once men unwound the warding. Remus helped chop dittany. Sirius and James packed, donning their field robes on.
She glanced at him, then asked, tone light "Is it really bad for him to have this... gift?"
“It is about as much a gift, as the B- the Wolf is, to me” Remus said quietly. “I know I have not been accepting of it, not as much as I’d reckon, you’d like, but the part of the Curse is fuelled by Pale.”
“You worry the atrocities that are assigned to necromancers are a result of induced madness.”
“You won’t ever understand until you look Beyond, and find something staring back.”
She shuddered.
“Am I selfish?”
Remus put down the knife and gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Merlin, no. Half of it may very well be just, what you call it, medieval superstition. ”
“And yet they’d hate him for these medieval superstitions,” her voice shook.
“People seem to never run out of aptitude for hating people for things beyond their control.” Remus said.
She smiled wryly. Right, a mudblood and a werewolf.
She raised her head from the cauldron at the sound of James and Sirius walking in. Sirius hanged back at the entrance not to cramp the kitchen even further, while James pecked her on a cheek, and clasped Remus on his shoulder.
“We are off.”
She swallowed.
“Be safe.”
They left the house, and shortly there were two claps of Apparation.
Remus handed her snake fangs, and unbidden rumour that He was a parselmouth came to mind. Wait.
"Isn't He a necromancer too? I haven't heard of old families trying to put him on a stake”
Remus choked, and Lily waited him out in the absence of their house expert on dark arts.
"Someone who uses necromancy and a necromancer is two different things. He only pierces the Veil forcefully, but your son would call to it like you would to magic.”
“Necromancy literally means divining on the dead, I think. Will he talk to spirits when he grows?”
“Among other things. I guess it is much like prophet business. The ones who see, see too much, and the world hunts them down for it."
“What is so terrifying about seeing dead things? He raises inferi by dozens with no repercussions." she asked.
“He controls them, but he does not control the Veil. There’s a belief that true necromancers command death. And, by Moon, the Pale is looking at your son.”
They fell silent, waiting for James and Sirius’ return.
They returned victorious, if battered; Sirius with cursed burns on his left arm, courtesy of his madden mother, and James with a V-shaped scar across his side. Remus chided them both for carelessness, and Lily agreed - it was a wonder Sirius’ left arm worked at all. They got the book though. Three of them, to obfuscate the true interest.
As Lily hovered with ferula and potions, Remus packed up. He nodded at the three dusty tomes that were acquired, and said: "Tell me if you lack anything for it,” before leaving for the wolves.
(To be continued)