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1.
Lily’s daughter was not a liar.
When she said she didn’t remember what had happened to Neville and Archie, Lily believed her. When she confessed to sneaking around late at night to get cookies, Lily believed her. Of course she did. What child would confess to wrongdoing just like that? Harry, who was honest to a fault. Harry, who shared her opinions about wand safety and proper Potions technique even when she wasn’t asked.
When Remus asked, “So, Harry, how are you looking forward to America?”, Harry said, “Can’t wait.”
Lily looked at her daughter’s thoughtful expression, her little smiles in Archie’s direction, and Lily believed her.
Lily’s daughter was not a liar.
2.
“I owe you my life,” Lily vowed with a laugh, as she accepted the package of Ice Mice.
Harry raised her eyebrows. “If everyone handed out life debts for gifts of sweets, politics would be a much more interesting game.”
“Mmm.” Lily savored the icy sweet Mouse, her teeth already beginning to chatter. “Is it not interesting enough yet? I used to keep a notebook with tallies of every time a pureblood said something horrifically prejudiced about Muggleborns and then assured me they didn’t mean offense to me, specifically. I was curious if they’d win over the count of the ones who wanted to directly debate my right to exist over cocktails.”
“Who won?”
Lily chomped the sugar tail off the next Ice Mouse with more force than necessary. “No one. I stopped after I filled the fifth notebook.”
Harry was quiet, and when Lily looked up, her daughter’s face was twisted in an unfamiliar expression.
“I’m sorry, love. I shouldn’t tell you things like that.”
“It’s no surprise.” Harry shrugged, like she heard such things every day.
“It should be. I never wanted you to be part of that world—” Lily had to catch her breath, suddenly gone. “I never expected Archie and Sirius to — I just wish I could protect you from it all. From anyone, anything that would hurt you.”
Harry shifted from foot to foot. She raised her hand to rake through her hair, an achingly familiar gesture. Harry had always been so much her own person, even as a little girl. She rarely reminded Lily of James, until she did, the resemblance suddenly striking: a hand through dark messy hair, a proud smile after an invention, the same unerring focus.
Lily never thought about the ways that Harry was like her.
“No one can protect another person from everything, mum,” said Harry, her voice too heavy for a twelve-year-old.
Lily reached out, fingers twining around her daughter’s slim wrist, and pulled her close. “I thought things would be better at AIM, I really did. That you’d never feel… less than.”
Harry sighed against Lily’s shoulder. “I know,” she said. “I know you’ve always done what you thought was best for me.”
“And you’re happy there, aren’t you?”
Harry smiled, mouth trembling. “I am.”
3.
“Where are you off to?”
Harry froze by the Floo, eyes like a doe. Lily raised an eyebrow at her daughter’s reticence. Harry flitted from house to house and to the apothecary often enough that she didn’t expect to be asked about her destination, Lily supposed.
“Just dropping by the Alleys.”
“Are you seeing Leo?”
“No,” said Harry reluctantly. “Um, I’m meeting someone I interned with back a few years ago. For lunch. And then I have some business at the apothecary,” she added quickly, as if it would distract from the rest of her statement.
“Oh?” Lily smiled. She vaguely remembered the handsome dark-haired boys who had presented at the Potions Guild showcase. One of them had invited Harry to dinner back then, too. “And when are we going to meet this young man? Ask him about his intentions?”
"It's not like that, mum!” Harry protested. “He's trying to learn my Shaped Imbuing method. We're not even friends, really. Trust me, there is absolutely zero need to — it’s not like that.”
Lily eyed the red rising in Harry’s cheeks, and the way she gripped the strap of her potions bag. “Of course,” Lily agreed. "But if it ever is like that… you know you can tell me anything, darling?" Anything, she meant. Anything.
"Of course.”
There was hollowness in the echo of Harry's voice left in the room. Hollowness in Lily's chest. The space between her feet and the fireplace, and the fading green of the Floo.
4.
“Feeling better today?”
“Loads,” Harry said. “Sirius said we shouldn’t be contagious anymore.”
Lily looked her daughter up and down, skeptically. Harry’s green eyes seemed dull. Maybe that was just Lily’s magic, fading, fading — but that didn’t explain the deep shadows under them. Harry didn’t seem aware that she was flexing her fingers around the loose fabric of her tunic.
“Why don’t you go rest for a while? I’ll bring you something for lunch after I get Addy settled.” With a flick of Lily’s wand, the saucepan she’d been stirring floated over to the stove.
“Mum, I feel fine—”
“The dark circles under your eyes say different,” Lily retorted, then smiled indulgently at her daughter's pout. "Your cauldron will be there tomorrow, right next to mine. I'm sure Archie is resting up back at Grimmauld Place too."
Harry’s face said she didn’t believe that.
“Please, dear,” Lily said, voice turning firmer.
Harry waved a hand in defeat and retreated to her bedroom.
Later, when Lily brought up a tray of food, she found her daughter fast asleep on top of the covers. Another mother would have assumed Harry had been too exhausted by sickness to crawl under them, but Lily knew that wasn’t it. She’d peeked in to check on Harry before. These past few years, Harry was sleeping atop the covers more often than not.
Lily had provided a lighter set of blankets in the hallway cupboard; Harry hadn’t touched them. She’d scooched the pile of books on the bed off to the side table; Harry had spread out new ones the next day. She’d asked about the sleeping arrangements at Harry’s dorm at AIM; Harry had dodged the question.
Lily sat on the bed next to her daughter, and brushed a curl off Harry’s face. There was a little bit of drool on the pillow. Lily closed her eyes. Harry was one, refusing to go to sleep unless Lily walked her all around the house. Harry was five, begging for Lily to tell the Fountain of Fair Fortune a third time. Harry was eight, laid up with the flu and reading Potions periodicals in between bites of toast. Harry was thirteen, weeping in her sleep as her core expanded.
Lily opened her eyes, and Harry was fourteen again. Sleeping, Harry looked as young and fragile as she was. Looked like the daughter Lily would fight and die to protect.
Harry opened her eyes, too, and the image wavered. Harry’s face when she woke was blank — then creased with a perfectly-polite smile of gratitude. It was wrong in a way that Lily could never describe or question. Too forced. Too tired. Green eyes like an old, old woman.
“Thanks, mum,” said Harry, nodding toward the tray of food on the side table. “Love you.”
“I love you,” said Lily, too fervently.
She sat with Harry while Harry ate, stroking her daughter’s hair. Harry leaned against her shoulder. When Lily had her daughter here with her, making soft crunching noises, it all had to be okay.
“Can I go to Diagon?” Harry asked, after she’d finished up her lunch.
Lily bit her lip, thinking of the smile on Harry’s face whenever she talked about Leo Hurst. “Sure, but take a break from brewing for the day, okay?”
“I will,” said Harry.
When Harry joined the dinner table that night, she smelled like a cauldron. Lily bent her head towards Addy, snug in her lap, and breathed.
5.
That disk should not have been able to stop a Killing Curse.
No spell could stop Avada Kedavra; that was the whole point. Physical objects could, or else a Killing Curse misfired would whiz through walls and hit bystanders kilometres away. But a shield, a magical ward? No. It couldn’t have stopped the Killing Curse. But it had. The whole world had watched it. She’d seen the green light hit the imposter; she’d seen the child live.
Magic was all about intent.
That wasn’t something Lily had learned at AIM. It wasn’t something she’d learned from James. She’d known it since she was a girl, since her magic had flared wild and powerful and ever-responsive to her whim.
She’d designed the Disk to protect Archie, imbued her runic array with her magic. And behind that magic, coursing through her: fear for her nephew, determination to keep him safe, and love. Archie had always been Diana’s son, even after her death, never Lily’s, but Lily loved him like he was blood family.
Magic was all about intent. Lily had meant to protect her family. Her always-wild magic had heard her desperation, morphed the disk to be what she needed. A protective magic greater and more terrible than anything she had ever crafted. A protective magic that would never have worked so effectively, worn by a stranger.
A stranger would have died. The child hadn’t.
Lily braced herself against her desk, against the realizations shattering into existence. One. Two. A flood of shards, a flood of daggers.
A stranger would have died.
A stranger could not have fooled Sirius. A stranger wouldn’t have cared for Remus’s safety, back when the werewolf had lost control at Hogwarts.
Switching wands was not like switching children’s clothes. And Lily’s daughter, her careful daughter who took notes on every minor Potions substitution, would never have forgotten if she’d risked her soul to play Rigel at a pureblood gala.
Lily’s daughter, always prepared, cool and collected even during the terror at the Quidditch World Cup… She’d turned out fiercer than anyone, even Lily, had expected. Braver than anyone had bargained for, but in a more subtle way than brash, outgoing Archie. She’d always been more dedicated to Potions than anything else.
Lily’s daughter, who’d sent shockwaves in the academic world before even getting her OWLs… She would have apprenticed to Severus, even if it raised eyebrows for those who knew Archie. She would have done enough to be credited in the notes of his published research.
Harry, who’d collapsed in pain on her thirteenth birthday from her expanding core… Maybe she could have killed a basilisk. Maybe she could have laughed, through the blood dripping in her eyes, in the throes of grief, in the face of death. Maybe she could have dueled like a grown woman, and won.
Lily Potter held the blueprints to the Disk in her shaking hand. Magic simmered under her skin, wild as the magic that had shredded the Hogwarts wards, and she knew the truth.