Lily and James materialised outside the gates of Hogwarts, and what they saw caused them to gasp in shock. Part of the towering wall that ran around the castle grounds had been destroyed and the fallen stone was lying in a crumbled heap, some of it strewn across the path. A huge, boat-like clog had been abandoned a little further away. There was an eerie silence hanging over the place, and Lily felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle with the tension in the air.
‘What’s happening?’ she exclaimed in disbelief.
‘Hogwarts must have been attacked,’ James said as he stared grimly around at the scene. Tightening his hold on his wand, he began to pick his way over the rubble. He met no resistance as he did so; the protective spells had been shattered with the curse that destroyed the wall.
‘But why?’ Lily asked, following him. ‘They wouldn’t dare with Dumbledore still here, and there’s been no intelligence to suggest they were mustering for an attack, or even that they were thinking of targeting the school at all. Plus, Sturgis reported that the giants had gone back to mainland Europe after the attack on Loughborough last month.’
‘Well, obviously we were wrong. They’ve attacked the school. I don’t know why, but they have.’
‘We have to help,’ Lily said, her face determined, as if she was expecting James to try and send her to safety again, but James merely nodded resignedly.
They scrambled through the hole in the wall and began to run up the path towards the twinkling lights of the castle. As they drew nearer, the light began to illuminate odd lumps scattered here and there over the grass.
‘What are they?’ Lily asked, frowning, as they drew near to one.
She gasped as she realised what it was.
‘James, oh my God, James, it’s a person!’
She didn’t know why she was so shocked; after all, she had seen bodies and the aftermath of battles before. Perhaps it was something to do with fact that this was a school, a place of children and learning. Not a place of violence and death.
James rushed over and turned the figure onto their back. He didn’t recognise the face. Quickly, he reached for the man’s neck and felt for the pulse where Lily had shown him, but he wasn’t hopeful; the person was cold and pale. He was clearly dead. A white mask was lying next to the body.
‘A Death Eater,’ James said in disgust, standing up again.
‘All these others...’ Lily trailed off, looking about her at the ten or so other masses lying on the grass. ‘What if...’
‘Lily, we can’t check them all,’ James said, guessing her meaning and taking her hand. ‘There’s nothing we can do for them,’ James said softly, leading her back to the path. ‘We have to find out what’s going on. We have to find Harry.’
Lily nodded, and allowed herself to be escorted along the path. She did not look at the bodies; thoughts of her son now occupied most of her mind. Yet there was a small, dark corner that wondered if any of their friends were among the victims.
‘Harry!’ a relieved voice shouted from behind them.
Lily and James both spun around to face the speaker, hearts racing at the mention of their son. It was Sirius.
‘Padfoot!’ James exclaimed, a hint of relief in his tone; he was glad his friend wasn’t among the fallen.
‘Padfoot, what’s going on?’ Lily cried, rushing towards him.
‘P-Prongs?’ Sirius appeared to recoil from them in shock, his eyes wide. ‘Lily?’
‘Yeah, it’s us, mate,’ James said. ‘Look, what’s happened here? Where’s Dumbledore? We’ve got to find him!’
But Sirius just stared at them, looking from face to face with a look of utter disbelief.
‘It can’t be!’ Sirius breathed. He was trembling from head to foot.
‘What’s wrong, Padfoot?’ James asked. ‘We need to find Dumbledore, something’s happened to Harry.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Lily asked, concerned, yet a little annoyed.
‘You- your dead!’ he exclaimed.
‘Dead?’ James’ bemused look vanished, only to be replaced with a look of mingled confusion and concern for his friend.
‘You died!’ Sirius whispered, and then clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘I’m going mad.’
‘Sirius, what the hell are you going on about?’ Lily demanded, now thoroughly exasperated with the man. ‘Just tell us what’s going on!’
But Sirius shook his head.
‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. This can’t be real.’
‘Well, it is, mate, so get on with it,’ James snapped.
Sirius looked up, a tear forming in the corner of his eye.
‘You died,’ he said again. ‘Both of you. Nearly fifteen years ago. Halloween, 1981. You- you were murdered.’
‘It is Halloween, 1981!’ James exclaimed. ‘Well it was yesterday.’
But Sirius shook his head.
‘No, mate. It’s not. It’s the summer of 1996.’
‘What the hell?’ Lily exclaimed.
‘Look, Sirius, I think you need some help, mate...’ James began to say, turning to look at Lily. They exchanged an alarmed glance.
‘It is, trust me,’ Sirius said. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’
He threw his arms around James, tears spilling down his cheeks. Bemused, James hugged back, unsure of quite what to do. After a few moments, Sirius broke away, his eyes still shining.
‘No, you’ve got to listen to me,’ he said in a frustrated voice. ‘I am not ill or anything, I’m telling the truth! Look, I haven’t got a bloody clue how you’re both here, but you are. Trust me, it’s June 1996. You both died, fifteen years ago. Voldemort killed you.’
Lily was staring at him. Everything she trusted was screaming out to her that Sirius was insane, that he was making this up, that he was ill, or cursed, because she and James couldn’t be dead. It was impossible! They would surely remember their deaths, and the intervening time; it had been years!
But then she remembered the state of the house, and how she had woken up in Harry’s room covered in rubble and plaster, a huge hole in the side of the house. The ivy, the dust, the mould. The apparent disuse and rot that had infested itself in the woodwork of the beams and banisters. How the trees had still had their leaves, even though it was early winter, and the last time she had looked, they had been bare. The strength of the sunshine that had felt so out of place...
‘Oh my God,’ Lily said. Could it be? Could she really be dead? Could she have met her end nearly fifteen years ago?
‘You can’t be telling the truth, Sirius,’ James said in a weak voice, and Lily knew that he had also been thinking of the same strange things that had happened. ‘Couldn’t this all be some sort of spell? Something to disorientate us while the Death Eaters attack Hogwarts? Or- or a dream or something?’
‘Does this feel like a dream?’ Sirius said with a weak laugh. ‘If it is, it’s the most realistic one I’ve ever had.’
Lily reached out a shaking hand and weakly grasped the sleeve of James’ robe. She felt like she was going to collapse.
‘Here,’ Sirius said, hurrying forward and helping to lower her down to the ground. He sat down beside her, and she looked at him. There was utter conviction and truth in his eyes. She could not doubt that he truly believed what he was saying.
‘If we did... die,’ she said slowly, ‘what happened to Harry?’
James sat down beside her with a soft thump, and she took his hand as he stared out into the blackness.
Sirius cleared his throat. ‘He survived,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows why, but it looks like the curse rebounded onto Voldemort. He was sort of destroyed.
‘What?’ James said, his head snapping around. At the same time, Lily felt a jolt of hope. He had survived... he wasn’t dead, according to Sirius. Whatever was happening, that had to be good news, didn’t it?
‘Yeah,’ Sirius was saying. ‘He destroyed Voldemort, for a time, at least; he’s come back, though. Dumbledore took Harry to live with your sister, Petunia. He’s fifteen now.
Lily was silent. Somehow, the thought that their son would have aged as the years passed hadn’t really occurred to her until now. She barely heard James’ words to Sirius.
‘Why didn’t you take him?’
Sirius was silent for a moment; his air seemed wistful.
‘I tried,’ Sirius said, shaking his head. ‘And if I did, it might have changed everything. Hagrid took him,’ he added in explanation. ‘He got to- to the house before I did. He was on Dumbledore’s orders, he said. He took him to Petunia, and I, well, I went after Peter.’
Lily looked up sharply, and James made a movement as if to protest, but Sirius held up a hand.
‘That disgusting rat betrayed you!’ he spat. ‘He sold you to Voldemort in return for protection, to save his own pathetic skin. He as good as killed you.’
‘You’re lying,’ James said. This, above all else, seemed to have shaken James. The loyalty of his friends had always been a truth that he could have counted on. If nothing else, he would always have their trust and friendship, but now, even that had apparently been a lie. ‘Peter would never have done that. He must have been tortured, or they tricked or forced it out of him. He would never have done that...’
Sirius shook his head sadly. ‘I wish I was lying, mate, I really do. Before that night, I never thought he’d have done it either, but he did. He went to them out of his own free will. But what did you expect me to do? Sit down calmly with a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘No, I went after him, found him too. It wasn’t hard. I cornered him in the middle of a street in broad daylight. I was going to kill him for killing you, for selling you like cattle in a market. I wanted to punish him, but the little swine blew the street up behind us, killing everyone in range. Twelve people, I think it was in the end. He transformed and escaped to a life in exile, and I was left behind.
‘Of course, nobody knew that you’d switched Secret Keeper from me to him, not even Dumbledore. They all thought I had done it, that I was the one who had sold you to Voldemort. That it was I who was the double agent. They took me away and convicted me of your murders and I was convicted to life in Azkaban.’
‘Oh, Sirius,’ Lily said. Whatever doubts were raging in her mind, the look in his eye and the determined calm tone of his voice was deeply moving, and, if he really was telling the truth, he had been through a terrible ordeal. It was hard to comprehend. ‘How are you here now, though?’
‘I escaped,’ he said, sighing heavily, and for a moment a shadow crossed his face and his eyes seemed dead and hollow. They caught a glimpse of what he must have been like in those absent years. ‘Two years ago. I’ve been on the run since then. Harry helped me escape the Ministry. He’s a good kid,’ he added to the pair of them in a soft voice. ‘Really brave, you’d be proud of him, hell knows I am. He looks like you, Prongs. Exactly, but with Lily’s eyes.’
Lily looked away from Sirius’ searching eyes. She didn’t know what to believe, but the talk of Harry as a teenage boy was clenching at her heart. If Sirius was telling the truth, then she had missed him growing up. They had left him an orphan.
‘We best get to Dumbledore,’ James said, ending the strange silence that had descended upon them. ‘He’ll know what’s going on. If you’re telling the truth.
Sirius nodded, although he looked like a man who was incredibly sure that what he knew was the truth. He and James took Lily’s hands and helped her to her feet. She looked again at the bodies littering the lawn.
‘Something’s happened,’ Sirius said. He too was looking around at the scene. ‘We were at the Ministry,’ he added. ‘There was a fight with the Death Eaters. Harry and some other kids were trying to fight them, and we came to rescue them. I fell through some sort of arch, and when I hit the ground on the other side, everyone had gone. So I came here to find Dumbledore and see what was going on. Perhaps they used the Ministry thing as a ruse to get us to leave the school with less protection.’
‘Harry was fighting Death Eaters?’ James asked.
‘Yeah. He was okay when I was there, though,’ Sirius reassured them. ‘He’s got a bit of a habit of getting himself into trouble with them.’
He stopped speaking and turned to face Lily and James, a strange look in his eye.
‘Look, whether this is real or not, I can’t describe how good it is to see you two again.’ He reached forwards and embraced them both. Lily could feel his wet tears seeping slowly through her blouse.
‘I’ve missed you guys.’
A Stone From the Riverbank by Sapphire at Dawn
Chapter Notes: So, finally, here's chapter nine. I'm very sorry for the wait, but updates should be a little bit more regular now. Major thanks to Sarah/TheCursedQuill who beta'ed this.
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks for reading, and please leave a review!