It was a beautiful December. There was more snow on the ground than there had been in the past few years, if Lily remembered correctly, and it made Godric’s Hollow look like a Christmas card with its glowing store front windows and multi-coloured lights strung on most of the trees for the holidays.
Lily breathed in as she stepped out from the house, the crisp air stinging her nostrils. It smelled like Bathilda was cooking again. She made a mental note to write her a thank you for the last batch of treacle tart, which had disappeared faster than you could Disapparate, since Sirius and Peter were visiting when they arrived. She charmed the door locked with her wand, and then tucked it into a secure and easily accessible spot in her travelling cloak. James would kill her if he knew she was going out alone today, but she had never yet broken this tradition and a war wasn’t going to change that. He would understand once he knew the circumstances. At least, that is what she hoped.
She secured her cloak as she set off down the front walk, glad that the cold winter provided an easy explanation for it in case someone stopped her. She was dressed in Muggle jeans and a jumper, but she felt too exposed to known and unknown dangers in a coat that offered no good place to hide her wand. Yes, she was going against James’ wishes, but she wasn’t so stupid as to be unarmed or encumbered by fabric these days. Especially with this new development in her life.
After closing the yard’s iron fence, Lily looked around for watching Muggles or anything suspicious, mostly out of habit. She then turned on the spot, her destination clear in her mind.
She appeared next to a large alder tree that was growing dangerously close to a beautiful wrought iron fence, both delicately covered in snow. The clouds were low and heavy with a pending storm. Lily knew it would be a beautiful snowfall before long. She looked around and stepped out onto the deserted, icy path running along the fence. The area had not changed in the last few years. There was a semi-frozen stream off to her right, on the other side of a small road, and a large gently sloping hill on her left that hid the small town she had grown up in on the other side of it. It was a quiet and lonely place but Lily took small comfort in knowing that not many would come here today. She assumed they had better ways of honouring their loved one’s memories. A little part of her knew she should find a better way too, just not this year.
Lily reached the gate and pushed it open slowly, not bothering to take out her wand to melt the snow pressing against it. She started through the grounds; her feet making a soft crunching sound on the snow as she wove through what had become a familiar path.
She stopped in front of her mother’s grave, marked only by a small, snow covered cross with her name and dates carved into the white stone. Lily’s father’s cross stood just off to the left of her mother’s, the words only slightly darker as he had passed on less than a year before her mother. She would never get used to seeing her parents names here. It was hard to acknowledge the connection from the letters that spelled out their names to the people who had loved and raised her.
Lily took out her wand and melted a spot in the snow to kneel in front of her mother’s grave. She sighed as she thought of where to begin. She knew the grave was only a symbol and that if her mother was able to listen from where she truly rested now, then it wouldn’t matter where Lily talked to her, but Lily needed to tell her here.
“Hi Mum. I would ask how you’re doing but…” Lily trailed off, shaking her head at the pathetic start. If she couldn’t do this here, she would never be able to tell James. Start with something easy, she thought. What would she want to hear from you? She took a deep breath, pushed her long red hair back from her face, and started again.
“I’m sure you know, but Petunia and Vernon are well. I got a Christmas card from them. We still don’t see each other, though she seems very happy.” Lily paused, realizing that she knew nothing else about her sister and brother-in-law. It still made her sad how distant they were, especially with all the turmoil in her life right now. Lily decided she would try to send Petunia a letter. Maybe they were finally old enough to set aside their differences. She sighed as she tried to continue with an update. It seemed much harder this year.
“James and I are doing well.” She paused, wondering at that statement. “Well, we’re doing pretty good, considering. I mean, we are doing as well as one could expect, what with all the not-so-mysterious disappearances of so many people and the very real possibility of our friend’s deaths, since there’s a bloody war going on.”
Lily’s thoughts went back to the last couple months, and she could feel her anxiety and stress building up, thinking of what her life had become and the frightening possibilities of how much worse it could get. As she stared at her mother’s name on the cross, Lily was ashamed of the fear and anger that rushed through her, as though the emotions had been waiting for her to realize they were there, ready to take over her actions and thoughts at the first weakness.
Things were not well at all, not anywhere in her life it seemed. She had been trying so hard to keep busy enough not to think about any of it, but here in the quiet cemetery, she couldn’t hold onto her courage that had won her so many honours and friendships at Hogwarts. In her weakness she saw it only as a façade, her Gryffindor heart a false front that surely everyone would now see through.
As her bottled up anxieties overcame her, Lily’s fears and frustrations came rushing out at once. “Being in the Order is wonderful, it feels right, fighting and protecting. Well, except for when I get hurt, which seems to happen a lot lately, not as much as James, but he’s used to getting a little beat up with Quiddtich and all, so he really doesn’t fuss as much, at least around me, but really I don’t mind the pain, because we really are doing the right thing, but, I just… fighting Lord Voldemort really doesn’t seem to be that good for our marriage.” Lily paused after she blurted the last words out, realizing what had really been bothering her all this time, what had driven her to come out here, despite the danger of being alone in a deserted area.
She continued, wanting to get it all out, hoping it would make her feel better. “It’s just… we fight. All the time it seems. And it’s always really stupid stuff, you know? Like, you left the light on, you take up more than half the bed, you leave your wand everywhere, then panic when you can’t find it, you never pick up after yourself.” Lily bent over in frustration, holding her head in her hands and grabbing her hair as she tried to hold back the tears.
“And it never ends. It’s like we’re having the same fight all the time and I don’t know why. One moment I feel horrible, like I did something wrong to start all this, then the next moment I blame it all on James, convincing myself that he’s the one who is making things so hard on me.”
Lily took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself as her thoughts sped forward. “Then I start to wonder if James and I should be together at all anymore.” She sat up, fighting for control over her emotions. “I mean, if we can’t go without a fight for even one day, why try to do it for the rest of our lives? I mean, I love him, Mum, with all that I am, I love him.” She paused again, really thinking about what she was saying and how much it hurt her.
“Even thinking of not being with him is utterly devastating to me. And that is what makes this so hard, I, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to fix it, or that I even can, I-“ Her breath caught in her throat and Lily couldn’t hold in the tears any longer.
She gulped in air as she raised her head to the sky and hot tears slid down her cheeks, quickly cooling as they dripped off her chin onto her cloak.
“I’m pregnant, Mum,” she whispered into the cold air, noticing that her breath formed a faint mist in front of her. “And I miss you more than ever.”
She sat quietly, brushing away her tears as they came, then slowed, feeling lost and desperately alone. No, she wasn’t alone. She had someone with her who could hear her every word, breath, heartbeat, even without the aid of ears. She sat back, amazed by that thought, drawing her knees to her chest and folding her cloak around her to keep out the chill. The snow had started to fall in larg,e soft flakes that covered her and the ground in no time.
She knew she should head back. James would be returning home from his assignment soon, and nothing good would come from her not being there for the shift change. But she needed to get her fears under control before she could return to her Order duties. She didn’t want to end up like poor Caradoc who had disappeared and was probably dead because his mind was wandering at an inopportune time.
In a flash, the memory of Caradoc was replaced by an image similar to the scene she was in now. Instead of herself, Lily saw a man, only a few years younger than herself, kneeling in the snow over a pair of graves. He looked like James, with glasses and black hair sticking up every which way. He was crying, and Lily knew he was crying for his parents whose lives were stolen from this world much too soon.
Though the image lasted only a moment, it allowed Lily to regain control of her fears and uncertainty.
“No,” she said into the cool air. “No. That will not be my child. That will not be my family.”
Lily knew she would not allow herself to give into her doubts and weaknesses again. She would do everything in her power to prevent her child from crying over graves like herself. She would fight, harder than before, to protect her child and James, to try and rid the world of this evil that threatened everything she knew and loved. She and James would work things out, because in the end, they loved each other. Their love was bigger than the stupid fights, bigger than the war. She would not let this evil seep into her life and take everything away from her. The life inside of Lily gave her the courage to fight, because death was not an option.
With renewed energy and determination, Lily was now ready to head home and take on this next hurtle in her life. Lily stood up, shaking off the snow that had settled on her hair and cloak. She looked again at her mother’s grave and gave a little smile, knowing that her conclusions may have had a little divine help. Her mother would have been overjoyed at the thought of a grandchild. Lily hoped that she would be able to watch over her grandson or daughter. If this child was going to be anything like James, she could use some more divine intervention.
Thinking of James, Lily made her way back through the new snow to the cemetery gate. Now that she had found peace, their fights and anger truly seemed insignificant to this new joy they would share. Although, she didn’t know how long it would take James to feel happy at the news. Lily knew the sooner she told him, the faster he would come around. With a little trepidation, Lily reached the alder tree and Disapparated, her destination and what she had to do when she got there clear in her mind.