𝐿𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒

There's No Fighting the Inevitable

She walked into a dimly lit room to find candles lining the walls. The fumes were enough to make her fall to the floor with a migraine, but she stood there seemingly untouched.

Her eyes stayed transfixed on the spot in front of her. There laid a single shard of glass that reflected what little light there was off of it. It was shaped into a rough triangle, almost like someone had taken a piece of glass and threw it against the floor.

Careful as to not cut herself, she picked the piece of glass up off the floor. Turning it in her fingers, she found that none of the edges felt as rough as they had looked.

Two startling emerald eyes stared back at her despite her own being a bright blue. The person trapped in the mirror had then started screaming for help, her red hair flying about. Lily.

Marlene woke up with a heaving chest, near gasping for breath. It took a few seconds for her to recognize her surroundings, but it all came flooding back to her. Lily was as good as missing, Minnie had showed up at her house disheveled, and no one had been answering her questions.

Shrugging off Sirius's arm as all the teens had fallen asleep in Marlene and Mary's shared room, she crept down the stairs at the sound of voices, deep ones. She stopped at the bottom of the staircase, so the inhabitants of the kitchen couldn't see her. She was in the primal spot for eavesdropping.

"You should've seen the haunted look in her eyes, Mum."

Marlene recognized the voice as Myles's, and hoped that she didn't tumble down the rest of the stairs by accident because she was almost sure she was going to get the good information that she had been yearning for.

A few days before, when Dumbledore had said that they were finally ready to know what was going on, they had only told them about the Order of the Phoenix. Marlene and the others recognized this as a big deal, but they just wanted to know what was going on with Lily.

"She had just been through a traumatic event, of course her eyes will look haunted!" Her mum responded with strong emotion.

"Lily told us she wanted her friends to know all the details."

Marlene held her baited breath as she heard Marcus speak this time.

"Dumbledore will be the judge of what they hear."

Well that's just shit!

...

Lily didn't know what she had been expecting, but this wasn't it. Learning the names of seven redheads and a whole lotta ruckus later, she had truly been acquainted with the Weasleys and the Burrow.

At first, Lily had completely withdrawn and taken to hiding in her given room. Not wanting to disturb the family with her tears, it stayed that way for a few days. Yet, one day a little redhead boy visited her room and tried to coax her out as he hated seeing people sad.

Charlie Weasley, at the ripe age of five, knocked quietly on the shut door, silently awaiting any response at all. His mum had told him what had happened—albeit a very dumbed down version—so he wasn't expecting a reply, but he sure would like one.

The girl, apparently named Lily, intrigued the small boy as he had never seen someone outside of his family with red hair. Sure, it was a different shade of red, but he still wondered if she could be a distant relative.

He heard a few crash, boom, bangs, before the door opened to reveal another disheveled redhead. She had an extremely bad case of bed head and heavy bags under her eyes, like she hadn't been sleeping. She wore a Gryffindor quidditch jumper and a pair of athletic shorts, presumably as her pajamas.