Epilogue
Everybody else in the country was celebrating; for Minerva McGonagall, however, seated stiffly on a wall, today was a day of mourning. She was cold and uncomfortable but this was the least she could do for Lily and James Potter, the two children who had readily sacrificed themselves for their son.
"They were too young," she had sobbed to herself when she found out and, if cats could cry, she had a suspicion she would still be crying now.
Remus arranged their funeral and it was a small, subdued affair. Somehow, however, people who had never even met either of them waited outside, laying wreaths down to commemorate them. Once again McGonagall was there, sitting on the front row and wondering whether life could ever go back to normal when a generation of innocent children had been raised in a war and trained to kill.
A few seats down from her sat Remus, dressed in the last nice suit he owned. James had bought it for him only the year before, and when he had protested he had told him that he needed to keep it so that he could get a job and stop living off Potter handouts. This was the first time Remus had put it on since then.
He wished, more than anything, that he could be inside the coffins too; the people he had loved the most were dead, and all he managed to choke out when he stood in front of the guests was, "James, Lily, I'm so sorry I-" before the tears obscured everything else he had written and strangled him. His world had been so much better than he could ever had hoped when he was growing up, and now his friends were dead, in Azkaban or insane. Remus was, just like he had always been when he was younger, alone.
***
Only the very faintest edges of the dawn were beginning to break, and it was still dark beneath the trees. It hurt, deep inside her soul, to be here in a world that she didn't belong to, but Lily didn't care. Everything in her body burned, and she imagined this was what it was like to be tortured, but she could stand it because her son was there. Harry stood in front of her, battered and bruised but alive, and that was all she had ever wanted when she had laid down her life for him. James was beside her, but James had been beside her all these years, and this was her one chance...
She tucked her hair behind her ears and stepped forward, trying to commit his face to memory, remembering how he had looked when he was still a baby in her arms; she tried to fix in her mind how it felt to be looked at properly, well and truly understood by her eyes when they looked back at her out of Harry's face, and she traced every similarity between Harry and James, transported back to her time here at Hogwarts, and she smiled, knowing that Harry had pulled through. He was perfect, even if she had had nothing to do with it.
He stared back at her just as eagerly and all she wanted to do was to hug him, to tell him to leave Voldemort to the adults and to take him away with her. If there were anything she could do, any way at all that she could stay there, with him, she would do it if it meant that she could show her son the love she had wanted to since that Halloween.
"You've been so brave," she said, and she tried to put everything that she wanted to say into those few words. She wasn't sure whether she would have another chance to do so.
"You are nearly there," said James, "very close. We are... so proud of you." He thought of everything he had seen Harry do; thought of how, even without Lily and her example, Harry was better by far than he ever was, and he wondered what he had done to deserve a son like him.
"Does it hurt?" Lily's heart hurt, a completely separate suffering to the agony of being someplace she didn't belong. She reached out, trying to pull him to her and comfort him; for a split second she wanted to encourage him, not just to reassure him, so that he would go willingly to his death and come back to her.
"Dying? Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep," Sirius said.
"And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over."
"I didn't want you to die. Any of you. I'm sorry-" Lily smiled; he didn't understand, he was so young, and yet he wasn't that much younger than she had been. If she could, she would die for him every single day of his life if it meant that he could live happily, if it could excise all his worries about Voldemort from his mind.
She could feel the end drawing near; it already felt as if their grasp on Harry's world was weakening. Lily stayed silent, focusing instead on remembering it all; his hair still stuck up at the back like it had when he was a baby, and she would recognise James' lanky frame anywhere. Harry wasn't looking at her directly, but she refused to look away from him; if this was all she had for eternity, she had to make it count.
"You'll stay with me?" Harry asked.
"Until the very end," said James. They had always been there and none of them would leave now, when it mattered most of all.
Harry looked properly at Lily one last time and she gazed back. "Stay close to me," he said quietly and she did. She wanted to tell him that she always had, but her darling son had more to worry about.
Lily and James Potter vanished as Harry stepped into the firelight which surrounded Voldemort's camp. At the same moment that Harry left the shadows of the Forest, those of the other world melted behind them.
The light was blindingly white after the gloom that lay under the trees; when the tears had cleared from her eyes, Lily turned to James and smiled wordlessly. He moved towards her and cupped her face, returning her smile with exactly the same one she had just seen on Harry's mouth. "It's over," he said, reaching down to take her hand.
Remus and Sirius walked up behind them and, as they all smiled at each other, Lily leant her head against James' shoulder.
***
There are far, far worse things in the living world than dying
Do not pity the dead Harry
I felt too mean leaving it so sad on Christmas Eve, so here's your bonus (which is still sad, but maybe a little less brutal!) which I had written anyway!
Here we are, finally at the end, and I hope you've enjoyed the rather long journey!
If you are interested, these are the songs I listened to while writing this, and which I think make a pretty good soundtrack to it!
Lily's Theme
Song for You - Alexi Murdoch
Corner - Allie Moss
I Found; Spark; Shiver; 5AM - Amber Run
In My Veins - Andrew Belle
Santa Monica Dream; For You - Angus and Julia Stone
Choose Choose; Pull Me In; Home; Photographs & Manuscripts; No Turning Back - August York
Stay With Me - Black English
Holocene; Perth; Towers; Michicant - Bon Iver, although pretty much all their stuff is amazing
Oh Boy - BOY
Calliope; Denim Boy; Birch Trees and Broken Barns - Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps
A Thousand Years - Christina Perri
You Got Me - Colbie Caillat
Fix You - Coldplay
Any Other Way - Daniela Andrade
Trasatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie
Weights & Measures - Dry the River
Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy
Starts & Ends With You - Finn Butler
Still Love; Holiday - Great Caesar
Comes and Goes (In Waves) - Greg Laswell
Down in the Valley - The Head and the Heart
Maybe; Sort Of; Men of Snow; You and I - Ingrid Michaelson
Elation - Isbells
I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz
You Can't Hurry Love - Joe Janiak
Grow Til Tall - Jonsi
Picking Oranges - Leddra Chapman
I'm Alive - Michael Franti and Spearhead
Eyes Closed - The Narrative
Start A War; Sorrow; I Need My Girl - The National (pretty much every song)
Vesper's Goodbye - Nick Jonas and the Administration
King and Lionheart - Of Monsters and Men
St Clarity; Young; Never Heard A Sound; Tenenbaum; Mortal Boy King; Leopold Street; Paint - The Paper Kites (basically everything by them too)
Nightclothes - Radical Face
The Call; Samson - Regina Spector
Regretless - Richard Walters
I Choose You; Get Over You - Sara Bareilles
You Are Enough; Sun; Umbrellas; Masquerade; Green Screens; Tethered; Land or Sea; Learning Curve; Aperture; The Sea of Atlas; Silhouettes; Emphasis; Next to Me - Sleeping At Last (although again everything is good)
Christmas TV - Slow Club
Sigur Ros
Paper Sails - Stu Larsen
Be Good; Forgets Slowly - Tom Rosenthal
Beautiful Girl - William Fitzsimmons