I thought I knew my ending - Year 1 and 2

Chapter 1 - The girl who lived

It was quite horrid to stand on the sidelines. And we had been doing so for over fourteen years. James held me as I watched in disbelief as our son raised his wand to a grinning Lucius Malfoy. How on earth could a fifteen-year-old get it into his head to take on a bunch of Death Eaters with his friends?

All right, Harry Potter had done an awful lot of stupid things in his life. Searching for a 50-foot-long snake, for example. Or cursing one of his teachers for taking the word of a criminal he had met less than an hour ago over his. Many would call this behavior brave, heroic perhaps. But I saw it for what it really was: a cry for help, a way to get closer to us, and perhaps a bit of it was an act of love. Love for his friends and for us. But never for himself.

Before I could cry out in frustration because our son had once again gotten himself into a huge mess, I heard a familiar voice.

"Nice one, James!"

James looked surprised through the veil that separated us from Harry and the rest of his friends. Could Sirius Black see us? But Harry only looked at his gothfather smiling. I furrowed my brows, I only now realized that Harry had probably come to see Sirius as a father over the years. Both had replaced James with each other.

Before I could dwell too much on the relationship my son and my husband's best friend had developed, we heard a bone chilling laugh. Bellatrix Lestrange. A tousled bunch of black curls very similar to her cousin's appeared behind the veil. Sirius jumped in front of a smiling Harry who looked at Malfoy after disarming him, but did not see Bellatrix' curse.

It happened in a split second, yet time seemed to stand still for a moment as Sirius Black, James' best friend, my best friend and perhaps by now in a sense, the father of our son, fell through the veil that separated us death from the living.

Before we could reach forward to catch him, I felt a tug at my belly. A familiar feeling I didn't expect to ever experience again. It was like being pulled along by a portkey, disapperating and sticking your head in a pensieve. All at the same time. James could only stare at me, his face lividly pale as I was pulled along by an unknown force. The last thing I saw was Sirius staring at me. No fear, just helplessness. As if he'd knew this would happen.

A tremendous force, it seemed like a hurricane pressed me down roughly into... a pile of pillows? I was terrified to open my eyes as I tried to control my breathing. But I soon realized that shouldn't be possible. I had no breathing, not at all, not for over fourteen years.

My fingers gripped a mattress and through my eyelids I felt warm sunlight seep in. Touch. One of the senses I had forgotten about.

Below me I heard a bunch of sounds: someone rummaging in a drawer, someone laughing, and outside I heard the loud chirping of a bird. Was that a blackbird?

Slowly I opened my eyes. And blinked. The light shining in through the window dazzled me for a moment so I didn't see anything right away. But then every detail seeped in and burned a memory on my retina. I was standing in my old bedroom.

Full of dismay, I looked around at the muggle stuff I hadn't seen in so long. I walked over to my old bookcase and stroked my fingers over the blue paint and daisies that my Mom and I had painted on it together one hot summer day. I grabbed a book and thought about how my father used to read to me and Petunia at bedtime. It seemed ages ago. He had read us a story about a mean witch who was defeated by a sweet magic fairy. I giggled, but the peace that had fallen over me like a warm blanket after I realized where I was, was rudely disrupted when a thirteen-year-old Petunia suddenly came storming into my room.

"Hurry up, Mom is starting to get nervous and Dad has been waiting an hour for you to bring that idiotic suitcase of yours downstairs." She stood there tapping her foot on the floor and crossed her arms as she looked at me impatiently.

I did my best not to let my mouth fall open and fly into her arms. She rolled her eyes, turned and walked out the door. I felt my stomach drop remembering the last time we saw each other. It ended in a horrible quarrel. She had told me she never wanted to see me again if I married that despicable wizard James.

I turned to grab my trunk and came face to face with my reflection in the mirror. I should have thought about this before since Petunia didn't think it was strange to see me, but when I saw an eleven-year old girl standing in front of me, I still held a trembling hand in front of my mouth. Slowly I walked towards the girl who had my long dark-red hair and touched her reflection, my reflection. My hand slid over the cold glass and lingered defeated beside my body. How? Wh...what?

"Lily, will you come down please? We have to be at the train station in three hours and we still don't know where to find that odd platform." My father's heavy voice kept buzzing in my head. Confused and unable to make room for thoughts like how the hell I ended up in my eleven-year-old body, I grabbed my trunk and tried to walk to the stairs. I was ready to drag it down myself, but quickly noticed that I could barely pull this weight, let alone lift it.

"Come here, silly," said my Dad coming up the stairs. I looked at him in disbelief. The man looked barely one year older than Sirius whom I had only just seen fall through the veil. My hands ached to give him a hug. He had no idea that his daughter hadn't seen him in sixteen years. He had no idea, I suddenly realized and my nails drilled into the wood of the banister, that ten years from today he would die of a heart attack. As tears welled up in my eyes, my mother also came up the stairs.

"Everything okay, honey? Do you have everything you need?" She looked at me smiling, little wrinkles formed around her green eyes. Harry's eyes. My eyes. I couldn't help it. Tears streamed down my face at the tremendous release I felt from seeing my family again.

"Ohh, dear." My mother pressed me against her, smiling. "I know this is incredibly scary now, and I totally understand why you don't want to go to that strange school, with all those..." she bent down and whispered conspiratorially "witches and wizards. But I promise in six months you won't remember who we are if you become the smartest witch ever."

She looked at me smiling broadly, but I could see tears shining in her eyes as well. My father walked toward us and briefly pressed me against him as well. Showing emotion was never his strong suit.

"Cheer up, Lil, you're going to have a great time there and we're going to miss you incredibly, but" he too bent down to speak to me at my height "by Christmas you'll see us again." I looked at my parents as I wiped the tears from my face with the sleeve of my jumper and gave them a watery smile.

"And now, hop in the car so you don't miss your train. Severus will probably already be waiting at the platform."

Severus... My stomach contracted as I thought of the boy I grew up with.

As my parents escorted me to the car and put me in the back seat next to a petulant Petunia, all sorts of memories rushed through my mind. Severus showing me that he could make a dead flower bloom in his hand. Severus who had told me I was a witch after Petunia had scolded me for accidentally turning her favorite stuffed toy into a spider. Severus who had been my best friend until... James. And then the grim memories surfaced, too. Things I had repressed from when James and I were married. How the two of them bullied each other to the point that they couldn't possibly both keep hanging out with me. How Severus began to avoid me and eventually became a Death Eater.

Trees and houses raced by, but the panic attack I so desperately wanted to put off caught up with our car. My mother turned from the passenger seat and held out her hand to me. "Everything will be all right, dear. Breathe in and out. Now repeat that a couple times. Slowly."

I couldn't look at her. The fear she thought took possession of her child was probably nothing more than stress about a new school, in her opinion. I was afraid that if she looked me in the eye, she would find that the fear went much deeper than that. She had no idea that there was a twenty-two-year-old woman in her backseat. A woman who had to leave her newborn son behind after a horrible sorcerer killed her and her husband.