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EDITORIAL NOTE: Passages marked with an asterisk are taken verbatim or with slight deviations from another work of some note. You know it when you see it.
Harry Black
and the Resurrection Game
Book 2: The Fall of Champions
Chapter 30: Here Be Dragons (Other Dragons)
28 November 1994
8:00 p.m. (Earlier that evening)
The private quarters of Severus Snape
Severus Snape and Lily Potter sat opposite one another in overstuffed wingback chairs for maximum comfort. They'd each also had a cup of tea laced with certain herbs to relax their minds as much as possible. At last, Snape was ready to commence his Legilimency review of his old friend's mind. But before he could cast the spell, he paused thoughtfully.
"Hang on," he said. "Better safe than sorry."
Then, he tapped his wand to his forehead and cast a different spell. For a few seconds, his entire body glowed blue before the strange aura faded.
"What was that?" asked Lily. "I don't recognize that incantation."
"I am not surprised, as I doubt anyone except the Headmaster and myself know the spell. It is an Anti-Patronus Ward. Albus invented it back when I was a spy. The Patronus is his preferred method of emergency communication, but I pointed out how inconvenient it might be to receive a glowing phoenix bearing a message in his words while I was in the presence of another Death Eater, let alone the Dark Lord himself. Indeed, perhaps fatally so. So he invented this Charm. Until I deactivate it, if anyone tries to send me a Patronus message, the spell will register me as being dead."
He let out a wry chuckle. "Admittedly, I sometimes abuse it when I am brewing a delicate potion and do not wish to be interrupted by a Patronus inviting me up to Albus's office for tea."
"You think Albus might choose this moment to send you a Patronus message?" Lily asked in bemusement.
"I think I'm about to perform a Legilimency deep scan into a possibly hostile mind, and any real-world distractions could be disastrous. As I said, better safe than sorry. Now … ready?"
The witch nodded. Snape pierced her with his gaze. "LEGILIMENS."
After an unknown time spent sifting his way aimlessly through Lily's memories, he finally found it. He could not have possibly described "it" to anyone else and certainly to no non-Legilimens. It had no shape, no color, no texture, nothing discernible by conventional senses. But to a Legilimens as skilled as he, "it" was a cluster of thoughts linked together into a coherent unit and held separate from the rest of Lily Potter's mind. In other words, a Memory Palace. Snape studied the Memory Palace's exterior carefully, looking for traps. Finding none, he steeled himself and then reached out telepathically to insinuate his own thought-form into the psychic structure until the Memory Palace resolved itself into a form cognizable to his mundane senses.
To his surprise, his immediate environment seemed non-hostile. It was a ten-foot by ten-foot room with two of the walls covered in shelves of books from floor to ceiling and a third containing a large window covered by heavy maroon drapes. The fourth wall held a number of plaques and certificates above an ornate desk and chair. To his greater surprise, Lily Potter was sitting in the chair wearing the same clothes as the real Lily Potter who was currently sitting in a different chair in his quarters. The woman looked around, seemingly more surprised by her surroundings than by Snape's presence within them.
"Lily?" he said cautiously.
"Yes?" she responded blinking as she looked around. "Oh, it's the Boudoir! Makes sense, I suppose, though I'd have thought that I would do something less obvious for a Memory Palace."
Then, she noticed Snape staring at her intensely and holding his wand tightly.
"What?" she asked cautiously.
"What was the spell I cast prior to casting the Legilimens?"
She blinked a few times in confusion. "You called it the Anti-Patronus Charm. Albus invented it to make Patronuses think you're dead. Why do you ask? Are you worried that I'm an imposter?"
"Yes," said Snape who did not relax his grip on his wand. "I was not expecting to find a representation of your present real-world self in this place. You may, in fact, be a representation of your own psyche manifesting out of a desire to accompany me as I explore your mindscape. But I can think of several other reasons for a representation of you to be here that are far less benign."
She nodded in understanding. "I might be me. Or I might be an Occlumency trap disguised as me designed to lead you into danger. And since a construct I've based on myself probably knows everything the real me knows, there is no way to prove to you that we're on the same side."
"That … is certainly a dangerous possibility," he said.
What he did not say was there was an even more dangerous possibility that he was afraid to speak aloud: that the version of Lily was the same one presently sitting across from him in his chambers in the real world … but that she was not the only version of Lily Potter in residence. And he had yet to meet the version who still had access to Lily's repertoire of borderline-illegal dark curses.
He looked around the room. "Assuming for the moment that you are not my enemy, what is this place? And what does it mean to you?"
"The Potter elves call it the Mistress's Boudoir. It's my private room in Potter Manor that neither James nor any of the elves are permitted to enter."
"An obvious basis for a Memory Palace," said Snape. "Perhaps too obvious. Look around carefully. What looks out of place to you?"
Lily took a quick glance around the room, and her eyes fell first on the desk. There was a scrapbook on the desk next to a lit oil lantern. Immediately, she knew the lantern was out of place; she only used magical lighting in this chamber. Then, she glanced at the scrapbook. It was open to show a cut-out headline and article that she remembered quite well from a Daily Prophet headline from 1978.
MUGGLEBORN FIANCEE OF POTTER HEIR
DEFEATS DEATH EATER IN PUBLIC DUEL
She glanced from the headline up to the oil lamp, and her eyes widened.
"FLAME-FREEZING CHARM! NOW!" she screamed even as she cast the Charm herself. Snape did not hesitate, which was a good thing as barely a second later, the oil lamp exploded and the entire room burst into flames. The two were fully protected by the Charm (to Snape's surprise, as the Charm would not have defended against most magical flames). After ten seconds, the deadly inferno faded to nothingness, and the room returned to its previous condition completely undamaged. The scrapbook and the lamp were gone, however.
"Well," said Snape. "I suppose that is evidence that you are not a cunning Occlumency trap disguised as Lily Potter. How did you know what would happen?"
"The scrapbook was open to a Prophet article about my fight against Bellatrix Lestrange. Well, Miss Demeanor, I suppose. We didn't even find out she was Bellatrix Lestrange until after she was captured later. Anyway, I was no match for her dueling skills, so I lured her into an enclosed area where I had transfigured part of the air to methane and the area rug she happened to be standing on into phosphorus. Then, I just fired an Incendio at her. Boom. If she hadn't been carrying an emergency portkey, she'd have died that day."
"Cunning indeed," he said. "Truth be told, I'd always wondered how you won that fight." He looked around the room. "The Memory Palace, assuming this is your true Memory Palace, is unscathed save that the trap is disarmed. So look around. We're looking for anything that reminds you of Vernon Dursley. Or failing that, anything that strikes you as odd or not belonging in this room."
The pair spent what subjectively felt like several minutes studying the hundreds of books on the shelves, but none held Lily's interest. Then, she turned her attention to the desk and the many academic certifications above it. Something about the positioning of her various degrees looked wrong, and she quickly found the problem. There was an extra diploma hanging on the wall.
"Okay, I'm pretty sure I would remember getting a degree in English Literature from Merton College," she quipped. "Even I didn't dare trying to get a degree from Oxford on top of everything else I was doing back in the day."
Snape moved to stand next to her. The significance of the diploma was lost on him as he'd left the Muggle world for good before university was ever on the horizon. The diploma was indeed from Merton College, and it identified Lily Evans as having earned a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature and (naturally) graduating with first class honors.
"You find this out of place?" Snape asked.
"Well, aside from it being a degree I don't remember studying at a school I don't remember attending, I also identified myself as Lily Evans-Potter when I attended Muggle university."
She sniffed disdainfully. "And if I had gone to Oxford, I would never have gotten a degree in English Literature!"
Snape peered at the diploma more closely. Aside from Lily's name and degree, the only other things on it were the seal of Merton College, some fancy language attesting that Lily had completed her degree with highest honors, and the signature of the Registrar, one Samuel Wise.
"Hmm. Does the name Samuel Wise hold any significance for you?" he asked.
Lily's brow furrowed, but then her eyes widened in surprise. "Tolkien!" she exclaimed before turning back to the bookshelves.
"Tolkien?" Snape asked.
"J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote some of my favorite books from my childhood. Remember how I tried to get you to read The Hobbit?" She paused and looked at him almost reproachfully. "You read four chapters and declared it boring!"
"I remember and I stand by my critique. Now what relevance does that have?"
She gestured towards the mysterious diploma. "Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature until he retired. And Samwise was my favorite character from The Lord of the Rings."
And sure enough, among the books on her shelf was a thick volume of Tolkien's most famous work. Lily and Snape looked at one another for a second. Then, they both reached for the book together. And the second they touched it, they both felt the sensation of something tugging at their navel. The book was apparently a portkey, or, more accurately, Lily's memory of one.
In a blur of magic, Lily and Snape disappeared from the Boudoir.
With a flash of light, Lily and Severus found themselves unceremoniously dumped on what appeared to be the shore of a lake. The lake, in turn, seemed to be in a canyon of some kind. There were steep rocky walls along both sides that extended as far as they could see. Which was not far, as it happened. It seemed to be late on a moonless night, with the stars shining down on the unnaturally still lake. The lake itself was at least 100 yards long, but it might well have been much longer, as a dense fog covered the lake on that far end, obscuring both the far shore and the other end of the canyon.
The pair stood up and looked around. The canyon stretched behind them on either side about 30 feet, at which point a sheer stone surface connected the two sides almost like a dam except completely vertical. The structure must have been made with magic, for there was no visible grouting between the stone blocks or even visible seams to show where the blocks were. It appeared to be a single stone block of incredible size sheared flat from top to bottom.
"Okay, now where are we?" asked Snape irritably.
"I don't know," answered Lily, "though it seems familiar for some reason."
The pair spent a few moments looking for any sign of entry in the stone wall, but there was nothing. Annoyed, Snape turned his attention to the lake. Something about it troubled him, and he picked up a flat stone and hurled it, causing it to skip across the surface of the lake. Lily sidled up next to him.
"You probably shouldn't have done that," she said.
"I know. It was … a sudden impulse," Snape said with a frown, as he realized he'd been taken in by a very subtle Confundus, though he had no idea why the narrative structure of the scene would have deemed it essential that he skip a stone across the lake surface. "Any thoughts on what we should be doing next?"
Before she could answer, they were both distracted by a sudden bubbling coming from the middle of the lake. Lily gasped.
"The Watcher in the Water! You really should not have thrown that rock, Severus!"
She turned and ran towards the far right corner of the stone wall and yelled for Snape to run to the far left corner, which he did.
"Now," she yelled at him across the distance. "Light up a Lumos and shine it on the wall! The entrance should appear! But quickly!"
Snape did as his friend directed, even as the bubbling in the lake was growing louder.
"What am I looking for?!" he asked.
"You'll know it when you see it!" she yelled back, an answer Snape found singularly unhelpful.
Snape had made it halfway to the center when he found what she was talking about. There was no apparent opening, but there was luminescent writing that appeared under the magical light. It was in a language he did not recognize. More importantly, beneath the writing was the outline of a door, though it seemed just as solid as the rest of the wall.
" Lily! I think I found-WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
His exclamation was the result of an abomination of tentacles surging out of the lake to reach out to them. The wizard's first thought was that it was like the Giant Squid from the Black Lake at Hogwarts, but the creature was no squid; it just seemed to be a mass of tentacles. Twenty, thirty, more! He managed to get up a shield at the last second, but the impact of several tentacles against the shield nearly knocked him to his knees.
For her part, Lily did not even consider defense, opting instead to let fly with her most destructive curses, mainly fire and explosive spells, some of which were very dark.
"Well, not too dark for Lily, I suppose," thought Snape as he abandoned his shield to duck under a tentacle and then fire off a Sectumsempra. Four of the nearest tentacles were severed at once, but even more rose up out of the water to replace them. Worse, the severed tentacles continued to move, slithering towards Snape like serpents. He incinerated them at once.
Then, he heard something unexpected, something that chilled him to the bone.
"FIENDFYRE!" Lily cried out. And hell came to … wherever this horrible place was.
Snape's shock that Lily was capable of summoning Fiendfyre was nothing compared to the mixed emotions he felt when the demonic green flames coalesced into a coherent form: a stag. Specifically, a titanic demon stag standing 30 feet tall, with eyes wreathed in hellfire the same shade of green as Lily's own eyes. The demon-stag charged into the lake, causing massive gouts of steam to rise up around its legs. Tentacles wrapped around it and immediately caught fire. But incredibly, even Fiendfyre was not powerful enough to harm whatever nightmare creature was attacking them.
And even that assumed that Lily would be able to hold the spell without the summoned Fiendfyre running wild!
"SEV! OPEN THE DOOR! THE PASSWORD IS 'MELLON'!"
Severus did a double-take. "Melon?!" he asked aloud.
But to his surprise, a true door appeared in the stone wall and it opened to allow entrance to whatever lay beyond. Lily backed towards the door, her face a mask of concentration. Finally, when she was right at the entryway, she slashed her wand down, and with a horrible shriek, the demon stag was wiped from existence. Instantly, the tentacled thing rushed forward. The pair raced through the door and up the stairs on the other side. Tentacles, unable to pursue them, began to bash at the stone wall until rocks fell, blocking their way back.
Snape turned on Lily angrily. "In no particular order: Where are we? What is this place? What was that thing? Why the hell is some wretched fruit the password for the door? And since when have you been able to cast Fiendfyre?"
Lily paused to catch her breath. "We are in the great fortress of Khazad-dûm. We have just passed through the Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. That thing was the Watcher in the Water. Mellon is the word for 'friend' in Sindarin, the language of Elves in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, which is where this whole scenario came from."
"And the Fiendfyre?" Snape asked pointedly.
She swallowed nervously. "I don't know. I have no memory of ever casting that spell. But once I felt desperate enough … I remembered the feeling of knowing how to cast it."
Snape stared at her intensely, so much so that she looked away. "Come on. We need to keep moving. And be on the watch for orcs."
"... Orcs?"
Lily nodded grimly. "Orcs. Or worse … a balrog!"
Severus stared at his friend in consternation, waiting for her to explain what those ominous things were. When no explanation was forthcoming, he sighed and resolved to simply kill every creature that crossed his path and was of a species he didn't recognize.
After an unknown amount of time (as time really was meaningless in a mindscape), the pair passed from dark foreboding ruins into dark foreboding ruins with a noticeably different architectural style. Even Lily found the transition confusing, as apparently "the Chamber of Mazarbul" and, more importantly to Lily, "the Bridge of Khazad-dûm" were nowhere to be found.
Then, the duo paused at the sight of something that seemed out of place: a single golden coin lying suspiciously at the edge of a set of stairs leading down. They moved cautiously towards it but made no move to pick it up, assuming it to be a trap. But then, Lily and Severus looked down the stairs and saw a golden glow emanating from below them. Her eyes widened. Instantly, she cast a Muffliato Charm to conceal their voices.
"The coin's not a trap per se," she whispered. "I think it's just to lead us here. It marks the transition."
"Transition to what?" Snape asked. Lily did not respond, instead she started cautiously down the corridor and down the stairs until she reached the bottom. Severus came up beside her and gasped in absolute astonishment.
Stretching out before them was a vast, cavernous chamber, easily three times the size of the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch. And it was covered in mounds of gold. Gold coins, gold ingots, gold jewelry, gold cups. A vast sea of gold, worth perhaps more than all the vaults in Gringotts Bank. He turned his attention to Lily and was unnerved to see how pale she had become.
"Lily?" he whispered.
"We've jumped from one book to another," she whispered. "We're not in The Lord of the Rings anymore. We're in The Hobbit. This is the great treasure chamber of the King Under The Mountain. It's the Lair of Smaug."
Before Snape could ask a question, there was a sudden sound as one particular mountain of treasure shifted, causing an avalanche of coins and other precious items.
"Disillusion!" Lily whispered while tapping her wand to her head. Instantly, Snape did the same, rendering himself as invisible as Lily. Then, he froze in absolute terror. The cascade of treasure slid away to reveal the head of a dragon.
Of course, Snape had already seen five dragons earlier that day, so one might expect him to be blasé about the experience. He was not. Judging by the size of the head and also the fact that the beast's tail was visible from a spot roughly 100 yards away, it was clear that this dragon was at least five times the size of the largest dragon to appear in the Triwizard Tournament. No dragon in recorded wizarding history was as big as the creature before them.
"Smaug," Lily whispered. "Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities. The last dragon of the Third Age." She took a deep breath before girding her Gryffindor courage. "Come on."
Slowly, the two crept into the massive treasure chamber despite Snape's misgivings. He thought he could still break the connection and withdraw from Lily's mind at this point, but that would not solve the problem of recovering her lost memories. There was no obvious way around this chamber and the leviathan who slept within it. As far as Severus could tell, the only way out was through.
*Then Smaug spoke.
*"Well, Thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!"
The dragon's head rose languidly from the treasure pile, a king's ransom in gold and jewels dripping from his scales. Smaug's voice was unlike anything Severus Snape had ever heard. It was not that the dragon was loud per se. But rather it resonated within and off of everything in the chamber including Snape's own body. He felt as though the dragon's voice made his bones vibrate. Despite his peerless Occlumency, the man now felt more afraid than at any prior point that he could recall. More frightened than when he was waiting every night for Voldemort to rip his true loyalties out of his mind and then torture him to death.
Oddly, the wizard thought, the fact that Smaug spoke in a cultured Received Pronunciation somehow only made him more frightening.
Lily leaned in and whispered. "Can you cast the Killing Curse?" Snape nodded. "I think you'll only get one chance. There's a bare patch in the hollow of his left breast that's his only weak spot."
With that (and to Snape's great alarm), Lily stepped away from him. And though she remained Disillusioned, she abandoned her Muffliato spell and loudly called out to the dragon!
"No thank you, O Smaug the Tremendous!" she replied while desperately trying to remember how this scene played out in the book. "I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you to see if you were truly as great as tales say."
Smaug tilted his head slightly as if waiting for something. *"I did not believe them," Lily added quickly. Apparently, if nothing else, she would need to remember to prompt the dragon's lines as they came up.
"Do you now?" said the dragon, somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it.
*"Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities," replied Lily.
*"You have nice manners for a thief and a liar."
As Lily and Smaug bantered, Snape silently cast a few more stealth Charms on himself and began slowly moving to find a better position while trying to avoid giving away his position by disturbing any of the unsteady piles of golden treasure. Listening to the other two, he had the odd (yet entirely accurate) feeling that they were both reading from a script, though the dragon had done a better job of knowing his lines considering how Lily stammered and stuttered through her own. Luckily, though Snape didn't realize it, Bilbo Baggins likely stammered a bit as well in this scene, so her inarticulateness did not disrupt the flow of the novel's dialogue too much. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of what Snape could only describe as "riddle games," Lily began provoking the dragon with a discussion of his "soft underbelly."
"Your information is antiquated," Smaug snapped. "I am armored above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me."
"I might have guessed it," said Lily. "Truly there can be nowhere to be found the equal of Lord Smaug the Impenetrable. What … what magnificence to possess a waistcoat of fine diamonds!"
Severus rolled his eyes at the florid dialogue and silently congratulated himself for his earlier dismissal of Tolkien's literary qualities.
"Yes, it is rare and wonderful, indeed," said Smaug absurdly pleased. The dragon rolled over unleashing another avalanche of golden riches as it repositioned itself to show off its protective coating. "Look! What do you say to that?"
From her own hiding place, the still-invisible Lily silently cast a Color-Changing Charm to paint a glowing target on the vulnerable spot she'd told Severus of.
*"Dazzlingly marvelous! Perfect! Flawless! Staggering! NOW, SEV!"
On cue, Snape pointed his wand at the target. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"
As Snape became visible, the dragon's head swiveled in his direction, but too late. A flash of green light shot from his wand straight to the vulnerable spot and struck true. Smaug let out a roar of rage and agony.
Which Snape found quite alarming, as the Killing Curse was supposed to kill instantly, not leave its victims alive long enough to register any pain. Indeed, not only was Smaug's death not instantaneous, the damnable lizard wasn't dying at all! Instead, Smaug reared back his massive head and prepared to blast Snape with a gout of dragonfire.
Before Snape could react, there was a pop next to him as Lily Apparated to his side, grabbed him with both arms, and Apparated them both to the far side of the room just before flames of unimaginable intensity struck the spot where he'd been standing … and everything within fifty feet of it! The pair landed roughly in a pile of gold coins and instantly Disillusioned themselves again, followed by another Muffliato. For good measure, they hid behind the pile of coins even as the enormous dragon began stalking around the treasure chamber searching for them.
"I don't understand," Lily hissed angrily. "That should have worked! The whole point of Smaug is that he's invincible except for that one weak spot!"
Snape poked his head up above the treasure mound. The dragon was stalking around the other side of the chamber but would move to their side soon enough.
"How does he die in the book? Or does he die?"
"He does," Lily confirmed. "Bard the Bowman kills him with the Black Arrow at the Burning of Esgaroth a chapter or two after this. Maybe if I conjured a magic arrow and shot …!"
"Wait, wait!" Snape interrupted irritably. "Smaug dies but does not do so here? In this very chamber?"
"No, I just said he died at the Laketown of Esgaroth …"
"Unimportant," the wizard snapped angrily. "What matters is that if he does not die here, then he cannot die here! The force of narrative protects him from any stratagem we might have for defeating him!"
Snape shook his head. "The perfect Occlumency defense. A deadly creature of titanic power that cannot be killed because it is simply a fact of his existence that he must die somewhere else at the hands of someone else at some future point in the story. And unless you have specifically created an Occlumency construct of his death scene, we cannot defeat him before he kills us. Lily, I am sorry but we must withdraw …!"
Lily ignored his suggestion of retreat as she thought about what he'd said about the narrative force of this defense. Then, her eyes widened as she clutched his forearm.
"God, I'm such an idiot! Cover me! Draw Smaug's fire!" Then, she jumped up and darted away from him once more.
Chagrined, Snape also stepped back from the enormous pile of gold he'd been hiding behind and began spellcasting. Smaug turned to his direction, but before the dragon could attack, Snape banished the pile of gold towards the creature's head, while simultaneously quadrupling its volume and also raising the temperature of the gold to its boiling point.
Smaug raised one of his titanic wings to cover his head, and the vast quantity of molten gold splashed against it. The dragon roared in pain but then turned its head to glare angrily at the wizard.
Meanwhile, Lily stood about ten feet away and was ignoring the dragon completely. Instead, she swung her wand in a wide arc that encompassed the whole chamber. "ACCIO ARKENSTONE!" she screamed. Instantly, a small glowing object exploded out of the treasure hoard about fifty feet away from them and rocketed towards her.
As Smaug drew breath to blast them with dragonfire once more, Lily moved back towards Snape, never taking her eyes off the glowing object. With one hand, she grabbed Snape's arm. With the other, she reached out to catch a diamond as big as her hand. The two were portkeyed away barely a second before Smaug's dragonfire obliterated the area where they'd stood.
The pair landed roughly in the middle of an asphalt street in a Muggle neighborhood. It was night. Instantly, they both jumped to their feet with their wands out, searching for another Occlumency defense, but nothing appeared threatening at the moment. Snape looked around suspiciously.
"This is Cokesworth," he said. "Somewhere near …"
"My parents' house," Lily said in a tight voice. She was looking over his shoulder. He turned and saw that she was right. They stood in front of a psychic representation of Lily's childhood home, the one that Death Eaters had burned to the ground in 1979 after torturing her parents, Michael and Rose Evans, inside.
"Lily, this … does not feel like a psychic construct. I think we're in an actual memory."
The witch looked around in confusion. "So … no more traps? We're actually in my own mind?"
"Not necessarily," Snape said uneasily. "Memories of a sufficiently dangerous experience can also be effective psychic traps against intruders who cannot figure out how you escaped the experience in real life. Or who for whatever reason cannot replicate how you escaped the memory event."
"A memory of what, though? And where am I in this memory?"
Snape looked around again. Except for a few dim street lamps and a full moon, the only source of light came from inside the Evans home.
"You, or rather Memory-You, must be inside the house. And it must be a very powerful memory if you have created the surrounding neighborhood as a mental staging area to whatever is going on inside. Do you have any idea what this memory represents?"
Lily shook her head and then made her way towards the house. Snape followed.
"By the way, what is an 'Arkenstone'?" he inquired.
"When you told me that Smaug couldn't be defeated in his treasure room, I realized that his presence was both a trap and a misdirection. Smaug couldn't die in that room, but that was where Bilbo Baggins found the Arkenstone, the Macguffin that drives the plot of the entire book. So I just summoned it out of the hoard, reasoning that finding it was the victory condition."
Very little of that made sense to Severus, so he chose to ignore it. They continued cautiously towards the house only to freeze in shock and horror. There was a terrible yet familiar flash of light in the sky over the house.
The Dark Mark lit the night sky.
To his own surprise, Snape felt an all too familiar tingling sensation from the Dark Mark tattoo that marred his forearm. Somehow, this scene was built on a memory of the Dark Mark so clearly recalled that it incorporated the Anti-Apparition and Anti-Portkey Wards contained in the real version. The two friends looked at each other and then rushed inside the house, pausing only long enough to notice that the front door was hanging by a single hinge.
The entryway opened into the Evans' parlor and inside …
Lily froze and slapped a hand over her face to stop herself from screaming. Lying on the floor of the parlor were Michael and Rose Evans, both horribly mutilated, but still alive. She took a step towards them, but Snape grabbed her by the arm to stop her while he cast a diagnostic spell with his other hand.
"Lily … they're gone. They have been subjected to the Cruciatus for … for long enough to destroy their minds. They are as broken as Alice and Frank Longbottom are, perhaps worse."
She turned to him with tears in her eyes.
"Sev," she sobbed. "I knew they'd been tortured, but only because the Lestranges confessed to it at their trials! I never saw them before they died! What is going on?!"
Before Snape could reply, they both heard the sound of spellfire from deeper in the house. Together, they proceeded, but soon froze at a sound neither could have imagined hearing in this place.
The voices of Lily Evans Potter … and Lord Voldemort!
"YOU BASTARD!" screamed Memory-Lily, as she hurled deadly curses at the Dark Lord who casually batted them all aside while standing, impossibly, in the middle of the Evans' kitchen.
Under the circumstances, Snape thought that the Dark Lord was responding with remarkable patience.
"Your anger is not incomprehensible to me, Lady Potter," he said patiently, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum. "While I had no love for my own parents, I understand that family affection is common among others. Thus, I shall ignore for the moment your lack of civility. For the moment."
Memory-Lily glared at Voldemort with undisguised hatred. "You sent those animals to torture my parents to insanity, and you speak of CIVILITY?!"
"Not so," Voldemort corrected. "Your parents' assailants were not acting under my orders. Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange took offense at how you humiliated Bellatrix Lestrange in your recent duel."
He smiled. "Oh, yes. The infamous Miss Demeanor is actually the cousin of your dear friend Sirius Black and, more distantly, your husband."
Lily swallowed. That Voldemort was revealing the names of Inner Circle members so casually did not speak well of his plans for her. Voldemort continued.
"They sought revenge without alerting me to their plans, for which they will be punished. For what it's worth, I took no umbrage over your defeat of dear Bella. Indeed, it was what made me finally realize how invaluable you could be if turned to my cause. And I can afford the luxury of civility right now."
The Dark Lord smiled smugly. "After all, you lack the power to escape, let alone to harm me in any way. You have never cast the Killing Curse in your life, Lady Potter. And even if you feel like trying, I could strike you down before you uttered the first word of the incantation. No lesser spell would have a chance. So … will you listen? And consider what I think is a very generous offer?"
"Generous. Offer?!" Memory-Lily spat out through gritted teeth. "After everything you and your Death Eaters have done-even before tonight!-you think I might join you?!"
The real Lily turned to Severus with a shocked expression. Apparently, Lily had come to the Evans' home on the night they had been tortured but before the house was burned. And learned that the Lestranges were high-ranking Death Eaters, a fact she'd never shared with the Order. And the Dark Lord had come personally to invite her to become a Death Eater?!
"You and your husband, Lady Potter. He has spurned my offer repeatedly, but I am hopeful you could persuade him to see reason. And while you have made your own opposition to my movement's agenda clear, let me assure you of one thing, Lady Potter. Blood matters, but to me and those closest to me, ability matters more. Ability … and vision."
Memory-Lily barked out a hysterical laugh. "Ability and vision? They matter enough to let a Mudblood and her blood traitor husband into your little death cult?!"
Voldemort chuckled. "Well, most of them would never even know. The blood traitor Lord Potter and his Mudblood wife would make the ideal undercover agents, after all. And no one would ever suspect the author of your infamous letter to the Daily Prophet might have become a secret Death Eater. But more importantly, your husband is a genius at Transfiguration. And my sources inform me that you are a genius at … everything. Let us talk terms, Lady Potter. I promise you, if you really knew what my plans were, you and your husband would beg to be a part of it!"
Memory-Lily sneered. "And if I say no?"
"Then I will kill you," he said bluntly. "You are too dangerous for me to tolerate as one of Dumbledore's loyal foot soldiers. Think carefully, Lily Potter. You have no spell capable of defeating me. You have no spell that can even allow you to escape."
Lily bowed her head. "Well, that's a thing about me, Lord Voldemort. I'm always eager to try new things."
She snapped her wand towards the Dark Lord and cried out a spell. "MARIPOSUS MAXIMUS!" Instantly, the entire kitchen was filled with brilliant butterflies in a dazzling array of colors. Severus and the real Lily were utterly baffled by the spell choice and even Voldemort was befuddled for a few seconds before he slashed his wand to dispel the butterfly swarm. But then, they all realized that the butterfly spell had merely been a distraction to prevent Voldemort from reacting to the real attack.
Memory-Lily's arm was high over her head swinging in a circular arc. And in her eyes was something that Severus had never seen in his friend before. This was a Lily Evans Potter that he had never known.
Before Voldemort could react, Memory-Lily slashed her wand down and screamed a word that epitomized her utter apocalyptic hatred of the man before her.
"FIENDFYRE!"
And Hell came to Cokesworth in the middle of the Evans family kitchen.
The green flames surged forward towards Voldemort, but before they could wash over him and annihilate him, the Dark Lord Apparated away. Instantly, Snape grabbed the real Lily by the arm and Apparated her back out to the street.
"Wh-hat?!" exclaimed the shocked witch.
"The Dark Mark contains Anti-Apparition and Anti-Portkey wards. She-you-could not have escaped without first driving away the Dark Lord and then extinguishing the wards somehow. An elegant, if insane, solution. And also, an elegant, if insane, psychic trap. Only someone with a Dark Mark like myself could have Apparated out of the house before being immolated. But no Death Eater could have ever survived the Chamber of Smaug, a trap utterly dependent on an obsessive love of a particular work of Muggle fiction."
From the street, they watched as the Fiendfyre tore through the house and shot up into the sky in a massive column that twisted and resolved into the head and neck of a dragon made of solid green fire. The dragon's mighty jaws opened wide and then bit down on the Dark Mark until the glowing mark disintegrated.
"THAT'S HOW THE HOUSE BURNED DOWN?!" Lily exclaimed in complete shock. "I DID IT?!"
Severus nodded dumbly. "Which leads to the next question-why didn't the Fiendfyre burn down the whole of Cokeworth?!"
The answer came seconds later, as the Fiendfyre dragon let out a mighty roar before collapsing back to the ground. But even over the roar of the dragon, the pair could hear screaming. Not screams of pain, but of rage. After a few seconds more, the Fiendfyre finally snuffed itself out, leaving Memory-Lily on her knees on a bare patch of kitchen linoleum surrounded by a 30-yard circle of blackened earth that stank of Dark Magic. And Memory-Lily was still screaming.
After a few seconds, though, the primal scream finally ended. Memory-Lily fell forward onto the floor for a moment, her screams replaced with wracking sobs. But the moment passed swiftly, as Memory-Lily apparently had the presence of mind to realize that remaining in an area contaminated with Fiendfyre was a bad idea. She pulled herself to her feet and Apparated away.
"All this … actually happened?!" said Lily in a daze. "Why don't I remember it? Was I Obliviated?"
"Worse," said Snape. "This isn't your memory. It's hers. And now, it's how we find her!"
"What? What are you talking…?"
Before Lily could finish her question, Snape turned her around and put his hands on the sides of her head to hold her steady and peered deep into her eyes.
"LEGILIMENS!"
There was a flash of light. Not quite the sense of an Apparation or a Portkey so much as the feeling of the world turning to smoke around them and then reforming. Lily wrenched herself from Snape's grasp and the two looked around wildly to get their bearings.
They stood in a hallway in what looked to be a very old and opulent home.
"Is this Potter Manor?" Snape asked urgently.
"Y-yes, I think so." Lily responded. "This is the second floor of the east wing. But it looks different. We've redecorated a few times. This … this is how it looked when James and I first moved in."
She looked to her friend with a fearful expression. "Severus, what is going on?!"
Snape looked at her cautiously as if unsure of how to answer. Reluctantly, he decided on the truth.
"Lily, I do not know when or how it happened. But at some point, through an Occlumency mishap, or perhaps simply the traumas of your life during the war, or some combination of the two, you have developed multiple personalities. There is the Lily Evans Potter who stands before me now. And there is at least one more. The Other Lily. One who knows magic that you do not know. One who is self-destructive enough to unleash Fiendfyre on her first try. And … and one ruthless enough to murder Vernon Dursley and vindictive enough to gloat to Petunia over it before erasing her memories just so that the Other Lily could have the satisfaction of having done so!"
Severus paused and swallowed deeply. "And … I am sorry, Lily. But … I have absolutely no way of knowing which of you is the real Lily, assuming either of you are."
Lily stared at him in speechless shock. In the silence, they both heard a sound coming from down the hall. It was the sound of a woman's tears.
"It's coming from the nursery," Lily said softly. Without waiting for a response from Severus, she walked slowly down the hall to the open door to the nursery. Inside was another version of Lily Potter, one who appeared to be 21 or so. She had her back to the door, as she stood hunched over a large double-crib built for twins, one marked with an H on one side and a J on the other, though from this vantage point, Severus could not see if any infants were inside. As she wept softly, Severus and the real Lily could hear the Memory-Lily softly repeating something over and over again, like a mantra.
"I have to be strong. I have to be strong. I have to be strong."
"I … I think I remember this moment. This was …" Lily stopped and her face went pale. "This was the day, no, the moment when I decided it would be best for Harry to go to Petunia's." She swallowed. "For his own good."
"I have to be strong. I have to be strong." The other Lily continued repeating those words until suddenly she paused. Her back stiffened as she raised her head.
"I have to be strong," she said clearly before turning around to face Snape and her counterpart. She glared at them both hatefully, but her next words were directly towards Lily in a look of naked contempt.
"Because God knows you never were!"
The Other Lily raised a hand and clenched it into a fist, and instantly, the room descended into chaos. Heavy chains burst through the wall to wrap around both Snape and Lily tightly. Then, most of the walls, floor, and ceiling disintegrated. A few sparse areas remained to provide platforms for Severus and the two versions of Lily to stand upon, as well as another for the double-crib. But all of the platforms seemed to be floating freely in a sea of roiling chaos, one resembling a particularly disturbing Jackson Pollock painting, which enveloped them on all sides. Idly, Severus recalled a conversation with Lily early during their Fifth Year (before their friendship broke apart) in which they discussed whether abstract expressionist art might serve as a template for an Occlumency defense that could defeat a Legilimens simply by completely disorienting them.
"I suppose this makes it two times I owe you, Lily-Flower," said the Other Lily. "One for waking me up in Fifth Year. And now, another one for bringing Snivellus here to me, so I can finally take care of this Death Eater once and for all!"
"NO!" exclaimed the other woman. "Don't you dare hurt him! Haven't you killed enough people?!"
The Other Lily rolled her eyes. "Pathetic how forgiving you are! Have you forgotten?! 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…' Those were the words that Snivellus gave to Voldemort in exchange for the privilege of the Dark Mark. HE SENT VOLDEMORT TO OUR HOME SO HE COULD KILL OUR CHILDREN!"
Severus focused his Legilimency on the raging persona in front of him. She was obviously skilled at Occlumency, but her unstable personality might make her particularly vulnerable to manipulation through Legilimency. Assuming he could do so without provoking her into killing him, of course. Here in this dreamscape, he feared she could do so easily.
"Yes, Lily," Severus growled out, even as the chains tightened around his throat. "I gave the prophecy to the Dark Lord. But I repented and risked my life as a spy to atone for that mistake. But more importantly, your children did not die!"
The Slytherin braced himself. If he'd misread the alternate Lily's personality, things might go very bad for him after his next words.
"The closest any of your children have come to dying was after you sent Harry to live with the Dursleys! You put Harry's life in danger. And after I helped rescue him from that house, it was you who murdered Vernon in an act of pointless revenge!"
"SHUT UP!" snapped the Other Lily.
"He's only repeating the truth we both know!" Lily exclaimed. "We just saw this memory play out. Even after deciding it was for the best, I still couldn't send Harry away until you took over! It's your fault he was trapped with Petunia and Vernon! You even cast the Sympathetic Occlusion Spell to discourage James and me from checking in on him!"
For just a second, the Other Lily's expression of hatred and contempt was marred by different emotions: regret and shame. Severus's eyes narrowed.
"No, you did more than that, didn't you!" he exclaimed. "You cast the Sympathetic Occlusion Spell wrong! You made some kind of mistake in the casting that ensured James and Lily Potter would be disinterested in Harry's fate!"
"I MADE NO MISTAKE!" the other Lily shrieked. "I KNEW THAT SHE WOULD BE WEAK! OR IF NOT HER, THEN JAMES WOULD! THEY WOULD BE WEAK AND SEEK OUT HARRY AND GET HIM KILLED!"
She paused to collect herself, her voice breathless after so much shouting.
"So I altered the working of the spell so that it would affect us just as much as anyone else. I made us forget about Harry for his own good! But it was still a weak spell, easily broken. All Tuney had to do was to call us and tell us Harry had magic. Hell, she could have called us for any reason pertaining to Harry, and we would have remembered! But she never did, because she cared more about hurting Harry because of her damnable fear and jealousy!"
"And you say I'm the weak one!" snapped the bound Lily. "But even now, you're making excuses for your mistake! A mistake that led our son to being abused! Who are you?! How are you even a part of me?!"
The Other Lily laughed contemptuously. "I'm a part of you because you need me. Need me to make the hard choices! To save Harry from the Death Eaters! To not flinch at killing when our life was on the line! To explore the Dark Arts without fear! TO LOOK VOLDEMORT IN THE EYE AND CAST FUCKING FIENDFYRE IN HIS FACE! I've always been here to do the things you couldn't do. Ever since we were a little girl facing down those thugs back in Cokeworth! I was locked away after that, but when you were in Fifth Year mucking about with Occlumency, you set me free! And I've been protecting us both ever since!"
The bound Lily shook her head in confusion. "Thugs? In Cokeworth? What are you talking about?!"
"You don't remember, Lily," her twin said harshly. "Because, like I said, I'm here to protect you!"
"You protect her like you protected Harry," Snape interrupted. "Poorly. And in ways that cause more problems than you solve. To wit: Vernon Dursley was innocent!"
Both women snapped their heads towards the Slytherin in shock at that pronouncement.
"You Death Eater bastard!" screamed the Other Lily. "How dare you defend him!"
"I HAVE BEEN IN HIS MIND, LILY!" Snape thundered. "His and Petunia's! In the immediate aftermath of the Doxy incident, I Legilimized them both! They are under a magical curse that compels them to fear and hate Harry!"
Both versions of Lily Potter gasped in shock at that revelation. The Slytherin prepared himself for what would come as his next words struck the Other Lily like a knife.
"And I am quite certain that it was because of YOU! You altered the Sympathetic Occlusion Spell! It made you and James disregard the safety of your own son. But I am certain your alterations also affected the minds of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, instilling in them an unnatural fear of your son that, over time, drove them mad and made them abusive towards him! HARRY'S MISTREATMENT WAS YOUR FAULT! YOU MURDERED YOUR OWN BROTHER-IN-LAW FOR NOTHING!"
In fact, Severus was certain of no such thing. But he thought the false assertion might be enough to throw the Other Lily. To get her to drop her guard for an instant. And an instant was all he needed.
"LIAR!" Other Lily screamed as she pointed her wand towards Snape with murder in her eye. "MY SPELL COULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT! AVAD- …!"
"LEGILIMENS!" Snape intoned, interrupting the Other Lily's Killing Curse mid-word.
The man had half a second to wonder if this was a terrible idea, Legilimizing a damaged and possibly psychotic secondary personality while within that personality's Memory Palace. Among the possible outcomes was a total collapse of Lily Potter's mind, which would probably kill Snape just as easily as any direct action by the deranged persona if he couldn't escape. And a small part of him knew that escape was impossible, that he would not simply flee Lily's mind to save himself so long as there was any chance of saving her.
And so he plunged deeper and deeper into his oldest friend's mind - into the minds of both Lilys - as the seminal events that shaped her psyche passed before his eyes.
It is March of 1994, and Lily is staring, frozen, at Peter Pettigrew, who has just demanded that she choose one of them to be bitten by a werewolf. Frozen, until a forgotten part of her steps forward to make "the smart play." Fortunately, Harry-brilliant, resourceful, Slytherin Harry-deals with Wormtail himself before she has to pull the trigger. Afterwards, she shows her gratitude by offering to divorce James, take half his money, and move Harry to France as a way of blocking the Potter Prophecy, but Harry already has a plan for that too. Such a clever boy!
It is October of 1992, and Lily is sitting in a conjured chair, terrorizing her sister while her doomed brother-in-law snores loudly in the bed next to her. Despite her rage towards the disgusting Muggle pig, she is strangely proud. She'd always wondered if she could commit the perfect crime.
It is September of 1991, and Lily is watching aghast as James's drunken Howler echoes through the Great Hall. She runs out immediately, intent on sending a Howler of her own to James at his office, and so she misses Harry's response and Jim climbing up onto a table to further embarrass the family. She will be present a few days later to hear Jim scream the word "Mudblood" at a young Muggleborn girl in his dorm. And later that day, she watches as Harry presents his family with a restraining order, forbidding them from even trying to speak with him. She decides that's probably for the best.
It is July of 1991, and Lily and James have just learned that Harry has received a Hogwarts letter. Almost immediately, she decides not to reach out to Harry. She is sure he will hate them all. Because she would if she'd been in his place. They'll be lucky if he doesn't kill them all some day. She would.
It is August of 1986, and Lily is standing on the front lawn of Potter Manor casually banishing a garden snake she has just spitefully sliced in two. Jim is on his way back to the house, his questions about Parseltongue put off for the moment by the promise of treacle tart. She takes a few moments to set up an additional ward that will ensure no snakes can enter the grounds of Potter Manor again. Idly, she wonders if Harry might also have inherited the Parseltongue legacy of House Wilkes. Probably not, since Harry is just a squib. She envies her oldest son. If only the entire Potter family had become squibs as well, and they could have all walked away together.
It is November of 1981, and Albus Dumbledore has just declared Jim Potter to be the Boy-Who-Lived. Lily pushes him aside to comfort her savior-child with hardly a thought to Harry. Later on, after the Healers declare Harry a squib, she will remember that moment and feel shame. Then, she will push the thought aside and turn to how best to protect both her squib son and her wizarding son from the Death Eaters that are still out there. Whatever it takes.
It is July of 1979, and Lily has just summoned Fiendfyre for the first time. It failed to kill Voldemort-her third defiance of the Dark Lord-but at least it ended the suffering of her parents. She wonders how Petunia will take the news.
It is September of 1976, and Lily is remembering Dorea Potter's description of the "soul bond" between Lily and James as she watches the Toe-Rag from across Platform 9 and . "Well," she thinks, "it wouldn't hurt to try, I suppose."
It is June of 1976, and Lily is in the unused classroom hidden behind a spell she has found called the Sympathetic Occlusion Spell. It protects the classroom from discovery so that she and Sev can use it for private research. At the moment, she is performing an advanced Occlumency procedure to awaken her own Advocatus Diaboli. She hopes it is Severus, just as he sheepishly admitted that his own Advocatus was her.
It is not.
Something has gone wrong with the process. An old memory locked away long before resurfaces, and then a voice speaks to her that sounds exactly like her own. And in the nearby mirror where the Advocatus is supposed to materialize, she sees only her own reflection but one that moves independently and glares back at her almost disdainfully. Lily staggers out of the room and searches for Severus only to find him being abused once more by the Toe-Rag and his gang. She is furious, but also strangely amused. The Toe-Rag has somehow stolen and learned Sev's Levicorpus spell. She'd told him he needed better security for his notes. But he mistakes her smile for mockery and calls her a Mudblood, and something inside her freezes. A voice that sounds like her own but far colder whispers:
"He's made his choice. He chose the Purebloods. Cut him off."
The choice is made. And in the coming months and years, more and more choices will be made after listening to that voice.
Snape dove deeper and deeper, certain the answer was close. The voice, the Other Lily, was unleashed that day in 1976, but only in response to the recovery of a traumatic memory. The Legilimens pushed forward, grasping at the smoky tendrils of that forgotten memory and tracing them back to their source. And at the heart of Lily's sense of identity, he found it, hidden within the wreckage of a botched Obliviate spell.
It is January of 1967. Lily is 6, going on 7. Her mother Rose is walking her and her sister Petunia (age 10) back home from an afternoon at the park. It is cold and growing dark, and their mother takes a wrong turn and walks the three of them into an unfamiliar part of Cokeworth. They have only lived here for a few months, after all. Suddenly, four hooligans looking for easy prey intercept them and drag the three of them into an alley. Rose Evans begs for mercy and offers them her purse. Petunia is crying. Lily is frightened and confused. She is young. She doesn't understand what these men want, why their mother is so terrified. One of them puts a knife under Rose's throat and grabs at her blouse. Petunia is rigid with terror. And Lily's head is hurting now. Her skull is pounding, pounding POUNDING …
And everything turns red …
The moment passes, and Lily looks around fearfully. She is on her knees, her head still reeling from the awful headache she'd felt. Rose is lying on the ground nearby, unconscious but also unharmed. Petunia is staring at Lily with wide, frightened eyes.
"Lily! Wh-wh-what … what did you do?!" she asks in a shuddering voice.
The remains of the four attackers are smeared across the alley walls.
Suddenly, there are two loud pops, like twin cars backfiring in unison. Two men have arrived. A Hit Wizard and an Auror Trainee shadowing him, though Lily does not know that now. But she will never get completely over a mild inexplicable dread at the sight of those red overcoats like the one her husband would one day wear. They take in the scene grimly.
"Blimey, what a mess! What the hell happened, Gibbon?!"
The Hit Wizard, Durwood Gibbon, casts a few investigatory spells to confirm his assumptions.
"Looks like some Muggle filth tried to have their way with the woman. Maybe with the kids too. Who knows? Dirty animals. Anyway, one of the kids must be a Muggleborn and killed them with accidental magic."
The Auror Trainee (a 19-year-old Gawain Robards who, years later, would mentor James through his own traineeship would often visit the Potters in their home) nodded as he began cleaning up the gory aftermath of Lily's accidental magic. "But which one did it, do you think?"
"Who cares?" said Gibbon as he cast spells of his own over the unconscious Rose and the nearly-hysterical Petunia, to heal the former, calm the latter, and make them both forget what had happened. "Whichever one gets a Hogwarts letter in a few years, I reckon. Not our problem."
"Too right, I suppose," said Robards as he finished erasing the magical residue of the four Muggle criminals' evisceration. "Still, whichever one it was is going to be a pretty powerful witch someday, if she could do this with accidental magic, eh, Gibbon!"
Durwood Gibbon, Senior Hit Wizard and secret Death Eater, shrugged without concern. "She'll still be just a Mudblood in my book. The last thing McAvity and his terrorist scum need is a young witch who learned to kill at such a tender age. Mark my words! These Mudbloods will be the death of us all!"
Robards clucked his tongue. "They'll definitely be the death of your career, Gibbon, if you keep calling them Mudbloods all the time! Crouch has been coming down on that kind of talk. And this one won't even remember killing anyone if you can do a bloody Obliviate right for once!"
"Fuck you, Robards," Gibbon muttered as he put his wand right in Lily's face. "OBLIVIATE!"
With a flash of light and a terrible sound like a thunderstrike, Snape was ejected from the flashback and back into the Other Lily's corrupted Memory Palace, where his astral self remained trapped in ever-tightening chains. But he'd seen enough to grasp the memory's import: When Lily had been a small child, she'd slain four Muggles who had attacked her mother, her sister, and herself with an incredible burst of accidental magic. And just moments later, before she could have had any opportunity to process what had occurred, she'd been subjected to a botched Obliviation by that cretin Durwood Gibbon, the crooked Auror who Snape remembered well from his time as an active Death Eater.
Indeed, having seen Lily's recovered memory, Snape wondered if Gibbon hadn't botched Petunia's Obliviation also. It might well have explained Petunia's nearly hysterical reaction to the "freakishness" she witnessed when he and Lily had displayed their magic as children.
In any event, the memory of using magic for lethal purposes, if not exactly lethal intent, remained trapped deep in Lily's subconscious until she'd inadvertently released it during their Fifth Year. And ever since, the Other Lily had functioned as a corrupted Advocatus Diaboli fashioned from a version of Lily herself but one without any moral restraints on the use of her magic. Indeed, an Advocatus that had come to believe that it was the real Lily and was even able to subtly influence the real Lily's actions without revealing its existence to her.
"Well," he thought ruefully, "for some definitions of 'real,' I suppose. The Other Lily might well be a closer representation of what sort of person Lily might be if her memories had not been altered at such a young age. At this point, it is impossible to know."
Meanwhile, while the Other Lily was momentarily disoriented by the psychic assault, Severus took the brief distraction to escape his bonds before she could attack. For an instant, the Slytherin's body flowed like a shadow and shrank down in size. Then, he simply slipped through his bonds in his smaller inchoate Animagus form: a Flying Fox. In his bat-form, Snape easily slipped free from his bonds and took to the air, nimbly dodging the Other Lily's furious attacks, dodging lightning and firebolts easily.
But then, Snape's evasive flight path took him over the crib that rested on one of the floating islands that orbited the Other Lily in the chaotic debris field. By chance, he looked down into the crib and saw…
and saw…
and saw…
A sudden near-miss from the Other Lily pulled him from his reverie, causing him to lose control of his imaginary Animagus form and the human Severus Snape crashed down onto another drifting patch of floor from the Potter nursery. The Other Lily pointed her wand straight at the disoriented man and prepared a Killing Curse.
"Stop it!" cried the real Lily, still in her chains. "Don't hurt him!"
"You're so weak, Lily." The other woman called over her shoulder. "You're not strong enough to break your bonds, and you're not strong enough to save Snivellus! Every memory we have of being strong enough to do what was necessary is one of mine!"
Lily's eyes widened as she had a realization. That wasn't true. She knew she had at least one memory which was definitely her own, one from a nightmarish encounter in the Hogwarts faculty staff room just a year and a half before. Because the Other Lily would never have selflessly stepped in front of a group of children not her own in a hopeless effort to protect them from a monster. And in this place, Lily now realized, one could not only summon up a memory but also use those memories to transform one's own self.
"SEV!" Lily screamed. "CLOSE YOUR EYES!" And as dazed as he was, Severus knew enough to obey the command.
In response to Lily's cry, her doppelganger turned towards her instinctively. And then, her eyes widened in shock. The true Lily's body began to shift and flow and expand, not slipping free of her bonds so much as ripping through them as though they were cobwebs. Larger and larger she grew, her form melting and reshaping, turning a brilliant green and manifesting metallic scales. And suddenly, towering over the other Lily was … a Basilisk!
More specifically, it was Lily Potter's memory of seeing Slytherin's Basilisk firsthand in the Spring of 1992 … and being petrified by it!
The Other Lily started to scream but the words caught in her throat. Even her long hair, which had been swinging wildly, was suddenly frozen in place. Her entire world was reduced to an overwhelming awareness of "two big yellow eyes." And then, the Other Lily was still, nothing more than an incredibly lifelike statue.
At once, Lily abandoned her basilisk manifestation to resume her normal form. She took a moment to make sure that her doppelganger was well and truly petrified. She called out to Severus that it was safe. A second later, there was a soft pop as Severus apparated to her side.
"Is … is it over?" Lily asked, never taking her eyes off the statue of the Other Lily, whose face was marred by a terrifying rage.
"For now," Severus replied. "You were clever to confront her with your memory of being petrified. But you also carry within you the memory of being revived from this state. I have no idea how long this stratagem will contain her. But for now, she is contained."
Lily nodded stiffly. There was still a danger. She was still a danger. But for now, she'd done all she could to ameliorate it. It was time to go.
Snape's Quarters
Lily blinked her eyes. She was back in her overstuffed chair in Severus's quarters, with her friend (the one her alternate personality had just tried to kill) sitting across from her.
"What now?" she asked. "How do we get rid of her for good?"
Snape grimaced. "I … do not think simply getting rid of her is an option, Lily. She is, for better or worse, a fundamental part of your psyche and has been since at least the age of fifteen. Any treatment options fall under the ambit of Mind Healing, about which I know woefully little. Perhaps Ted Tonks …"
Before Snape could continue that line of inquiry, he was distracted by a most unexpected sight: a green and silver balloon floating lazily around the room at chest-height. Perturbed, he strode over to the balloon to capture it, only for it to pop instantly. Then, as if emanating from the balloon, the voice of Albus Dumbledore rang out in a deceptively calm voice that belied the undercurrent of urgency in his words.
Severus,
I hope this message finds you well and you are simply misusing a spell I created for an important purpose merely to ignore me. It is currently November 28th, 1994, at five minutes past nine o'clock. If you are able, please come to my office at once, as a matter of grave importance has arisen. Please bring any research materials you might have that are relevant to the castle's original ward scheme or which might assist in translating a document from 10th Century Old Welsh.
If you are, in fact, dead, please disregard this message and you have my condolences.
Albus
Severus pinched his nose and counted down from ten before glancing at the clock on the wall. It was 9:15. He turned to an equally flummoxed Lily.
"I have to go. We will continue this conversation later. Please show yourself out."
She nodded, and the Potions Master quickly left. Lily took a moment to collect herself and then pulled out her wand.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM."
Faline, her doe Patronus, appeared at once and capered lightly around the room.
"Go to James Potter. Tell him … tell him we need to talk."
Much later that night, Severus Snape finally went to bed, exhausted from his activities. And as he slept, his Occlumency caused his subconscious to review the day's events, categorize the memories, and assign them all a relative importance for later consideration. All his memories save one.
That one fragment of a memory his second-tier persona took one look at and then locked away deep within his subsidiary selves, blocking all recollection of it from conscious thought. He would not recover the memory and have the opportunity to consider its import for quite some time.
But then, Snape's evasive flight path took him over the baby crib that rested on one of the floating islands which orbited the Other Lily in the chaotic debris field. By chance, he looked down into the crib and saw…
And saw …
And saw …
Not a pair of twins. Not even a single sleeping babe.
Inside the crib that should have contained Harry and Jim Potter, there was only a blackness, a blackness so deep and terrible that it threatened to consume his very soul.
AN1: Check out the Sinister Man's web presence on the POS wiki, the POS TV Tropes page, and my Discord server (through which you can see advance previews of this story as it is being written). Also, the Sinister Man would be profoundly grateful if you checked out my P*n page and supported my original fiction. Patronage is not necessary to get the free POS previews via Discord.
AN1: Check out the Sinister Man's web presence on the POS wiki, the POS TV Tropes page, and my Discord server (through which you can see advance previews of this story as it is being written). Also, the Sinister Man would be profoundly grateful if you checked out my P*n page to support my original fiction. Patronage is not necessary to get the free POS previews via Discord. To reiterate: I will never charge money for anything POS or HP related, and have nothing to do with people who are trying to monetize my work.
Relatedly, I think AI in general is mostly nothing but automated copyright infringement, and making money off someone else's work for which you have created an "audiobook" with an AI that simulates Stephen Fry's voice is disgusting.
AN2: Obviously, the passages marked with the asterisk are from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
AN3: What the Sinister Man is reading:
Under the Hunter's Moon by saxcuL. the all-knowing. A HP/Percy Jackson crossover in which none of the PJ main characters are involved at all (and likely haven't been born yet). After Lily was rendered barren by a curse, she and James perform a ritual to summon one of the Celtic fertility gods to help them conceive a child. A mistake in the ritual (combined with the fact that James' animagus form is that of her sacred animal) results in them summoning Artemis instead. And she is intrigued by the possibility of a loophole whereby she could sire a demigod child without violating her sacred oath of virginity. After mistakenly thinking that the Potters and their child all died on Halloween, the Goddess of the Hunt is shocked to hear a desperate prayer from Harry Potter for anyone to help him while he's fighting the Basilisk. And she answers. The story combines the HP story with the PJ mythos/backstory and throws in a lot of divine machinations. Oh, and the Formorians are terrifying. Now up to Book 4.
Shattered Paragon by Trash_Production. This is only up to chapter 10, and I try not to recommend fics that haven't advanced very far plot-wise. But I'm just so intrigued by the premise, and it's so unusual to see something new or at least reimagined. It's a trope mashup in which an adult powerful Harry deeply traumatized by all the friends who died in the fight against Voldemort gets sent back to July 31, 1991. Only he wakes up in a WBWL story in which Harry has no scar and the living Potters abandoned him with the Durlseys because of the usual "Harry is a squib" bullshit. It's early yet, but there is definitely more going on beneath the surface, since Harry quickly intuits that Dumbledore almost certainly used Dark Magic to provide the protections on the BWL and 4 Privet Drive. In something of twist, the Ravenclaw Harry is mildly contemptuous of the Potters but mostly doesn't care about them at all since he has no memories either of his original parents or any abuse this world's Harry suffered prior to the start of the first novel.
AN3: Special thanks to my Discord editors: AjithSen, Anne Codex, Leader of the Light, Blue Rose, BlueWater, Dinkeycat, Farsight, kean, Nemo's Flower Song, PrettyPinkCupcake, Sakkiko, skyari, ThePhoenix006, and 平和. Thanks guys!
AN4: Vital Statistics (FF.N): Reviews: 20,146. Followers: 23,122. Favorites: 21,504. Communities: 260. Discord followers: 6,672. Go Team POS.