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Tweak says, "Hey, Sonny-boy!"

harry potter is gnomeface, king of gnomes (bravestheart) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2012-10-24 19:29:00

Entry tags:

ch: can: harry potter, ch: love: lily potter, p: annalisa, p: veetee

Who: Harry^can & Lily^love
What: first meeting.
Where: cemetery.
When: Wednesday, late afternoon
Warnings: TBD

Once a day, without fail, Harry made it out to the cemetery to visit the graves. He didn't always manage to stop long at all of them-- quite a few of them were marked, for him-- but he always stopped to touch them all before leaving the cemetery again. Most of his time was spent at his parents' grave, though, because it was Halloween. Well, not quite, but it was getting close; it was a time of year that evoked a lot of sad memories for everyone on compound.

For his part, Harry was just grateful that the cemetery was here. Mourning his parents seemed easier when he had a grave to visit. He'd visited the one in Godric's Hollow frequently, including on Halloween in 1998, which was now about a year ago. Here on compound, he had actual parents that he could go to when he needed to talk to them, which was usually why he ended up at their headstone when it wasn't Halloween. But his parents from his world weren't here anymore, and he was missing them. Not just thinking about their Halloween in 1981, the night they'd died, but wondering what their other Halloweens were like, from their childhood to the first one they'd spent with Harry.

Their grave here wasn't really their grave, but it didn't matter to him. It looked the same, exactly how he expected it to look. He had been sitting in front of it for a while, and finally got to his feet and pressed a kiss to his fingertips before touching them to the headstone, then went about his ritual of touching each of the marked headstones on his way out of the cemetery.

But then stopped, because he turned a corner and found himself looking at a very familiar redhead. For a moment he thought it was his mum, but he knew it wasn't; it wasn't either of the Lilys he was most familiar with either, nor was it Lily Snape, whom he'd seen enough to distinguish her from the rest. It was either the kidnapped Lily who'd just returned, or the one from the love world; both of them had Harrys here, but had always been kind to him. It didn't matter to him which world they were from, really, he still considered them all his mothers, though different Lilys seemed to talk to different versions of their son (most importantly, their own, if they had them here, and Harry didn't want to take away from that).

He didn't want to disturb her, but he offered her a smile anyway and said quietly, "Hi, mum."

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lily_pot
2012-10-25 02:53 am UTC (link)

Lily turned at the sound of someone approaching her, and couldn't help the small smile that curved her mouth when she saw that it was Harry standing close. Not her Harry, but she could definitely see that it was a Harry. It was always extraordinary to see how much they looked like James -- encouraging, she thought.

But then, she didn't really like the idea of any of them being in a graveyard. It seemed that all of the Harrys had had far too many people to bury, and it wasn't only her own son that she wanted to protect. She wished that she could protected all of these Harrys, because the other thing that versions of her son seemed to have in common was that their lives hadn't been easy.

"Hello, Harry," she said, reaching up at the same time to gently trail her fingertips across his forehead, gently pushing his hair away from his eyes.

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bravestheart
2012-10-25 03:45 am UTC (link)

For a moment, Harry thought she was reaching out to touch his scar; then he realized she was brushing his hair out of his eyes. He smiled at her, and reached up to try to smooth the back of his hair down as he always did when he felt a little bit awkward. Not that she made him uncomfortable, at all, but he still wasn't entirely used to the way it felt to be around his mum. With the two he'd gotten to know best, the novelty had gone away a bit, but every new version of her brought it all back to him.

"Were you..." he began, trying to ask whether she was visiting the grave of someone in particular, but trailed off, because that wasn't really what he was asking. What he wanted to say was, "Sorry, don't let me disturb you."

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lily_pot
2012-10-25 04:04 am UTC (link)

He was certainly younger than the Harry from her world, although Lily couldn't tell exactly how much younger. There still seemed to be a bit more touch of child about him, although she certainly wouldn't call him a child. It was sad to learn how little of childhood her son got to experience, really.

"Oh, you're not disturbing me," she answered readily. In truth, she hadn't really known why she had come out to the graveyard. It wasn't as if she was looking for anybody, exactly. It had been a mere impulse, and so she had decided to go along with it. She did want to see more of the compound, although she was a bit wary of some of the places -- and perhaps rightly so, especially with everything that had happened so far.

She knew there was a chance that the zombies could come back or something like that, but it didn't seem as if the scientists liked to repeat their tricks, so she had anticipated the graveyard being a relatively peaceful place to be.

"Which world are you from?" she asked, inclining her head a little. It wasn't that she liked to define people by their worlds -- but it was the only way to tell where they were coming from.

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bravestheart
2012-10-25 04:21 am UTC (link)

Well, that was good. Harry knew that most people probably weren't as glad for the cemetery as he was, and didn't find it as comforting to have a place to remember all the people they had lost-- most people, he hoped, hadn't lost quite so many people as he had-- but he didn't want to disturb those who came out here for the same reasons he did.

"Colour," he said. "What about you?" It was funny, how he'd gotten so used to recognizing people. Their faces were usually practically identical, so he had to pick up on the much more subtle differences between versions. The way they held themselves, their style of dress, the way they spoke. Differences in age or expression or markings, like scars and tattoos. He didn't define people by world, either, but it gave him a starting point from which he could figure out what each unique individual was like.

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lily_pot
2012-10-25 04:56 am UTC (link)

Colour -- that made him one of the first Harrys that she had spoken to, and she remembered him as being particularly kind. She sorely wished that she could have just hug him in the same way that she hugged her Harry -- the way that she hoped made it seem like everything was going to be okay. But she knew that she could love this Harry as much as she loved her own, but she wasn't his mother, exactly. And she knew that no matter what she did, there was always that very important difference.

"Love," she answered, a small smile still on her face. She knew that her world earned the love name for an unpleasant reason, but she liked to pretend otherwise. She liked to pretend that it was because of the strength of love -- that James and Harry were still strong, and still fought for such important principles despite everything that happened.

"We've spoken before then," she commented lightly. "In the journals after I first arrived."

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bravestheart
2012-10-25 05:13 am UTC (link)

That would have been Harry's guess, but since he hadn't seen the Lily from Party World since she'd come back again, he hadn't had any way of being sure. It was better to ask than to assume, he figured.

Love world was a lot like his, in terms of his own life. The Harry that was here was a lot like him. His mother, this Lily, had died to protect him from Voldemort. After that his life had been fairly different, but still included the responsibility, the fight against Voldemort. How different life had been for his mum in that world, he didn't really know. He didn't have a timeline for when love had become illegal, something to cure; he didn't know how much that had affected her life. He did know that she had married his dad and had him and died on the same night. She'd probably had to find out her future since arriving here, which couldn't have been easy.

"Yeah, we have," he said, smile strengthening. "How're you holding up, with this place and everything? It's not easy being here, I know."

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lily_pot
2012-10-25 05:41 am UTC (link)

"Well enough," Lily said with a nod. Really, it was harder to see how sad everyone was around her, rather than learning of the way her future went. It made her sad too, of course. But there was nothing she could do to change it -- and she had known, from the moment that Harry was born, that she would do anything to protect her family. There were certainly worse ways to have died. She died protecting her son, and she now knew that while he had a very unconventional childhood, he still grew up surrounded by people that loved him. And that was enough to get her by.

"I'm really glad to see the wonderful man you grew up into," she said -- and she was referring to her Harry in specific, but also the fact that all the Harrys seemed as if they grew up to be brave and loving. And that made her happy. She would have wanted to see that even if she knew that lived to be a 151 and saw Harry grow up the entire while.

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bravestheart
2012-10-25 06:14 am UTC (link)

"My mum said that too, when she was here," Harry said, smiling slightly. They were so alike, all the Lilys; except for the one he'd met from the UWN world, but none of the Lilys still here were quite that drastically different from the mum he'd known. "It's a mixed bag, finding out about the future, but there are some parts of it that are really nice. I hope it's easier for you than it was for her."

Her James seemed to be settling in better than his dad had, so that made it easier. He hadn't needed to spend much time here without her, and he hadn't needed to find out about his own future death (at least, so far as Harry knew), so that probably made things simpler. Harry still wanted to help these alternate versions of his family settle in here better, if he could.

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lily_pot
2012-10-25 06:38 am UTC (link)

"Your mum was here?" Lily asked, unable to hide her curiosity. It was good, she thought, that he at least got to meet his own mother -- although it made her sad, the idea that he had lost her again. Quietly, she did hope that Harry would leave before she did. It hurt to have lost him once, but she thought, that way, he never had to deal with losing her more than once.

On the other hand, she was very curious about other Lilys. She hadn't really made any contact with them yet, but she knew there were a few others here, and she had, of course, heard that many of them had similar histories. She didn't know how she was supposed to go about interacting with versions of herself.

"It is sad, knowing everything that happens," Lily answered. "But I don't want to waste the time I have here dwelling on those things."

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bravestheart
2012-10-25 06:58 am UTC (link)

"Yeah, my mum and my dad," Harry said. "They came here a while ago. My dad got here first, and he didn't like being here without her, and then they put her in a different room when she arrived, and he left not long after that-- and then she wasn't happy here without him." He shrugged. "I'm glad they were here, but I'm also glad they went home, because they were really miserable here."

And he hadn't been able to help them, not really. His mum had wanted to hang on for him, even though he'd told her she didn't have to. Sometimes, the ages and times and ways in which they brought people here just didn't work. In some cases, they got readjusted and it worked better. Other times they just didn't come back, the way his parents hadn't.

It was still more time than he'd ever had with them before, and that was brilliant. And he still had parents here, like the version of Lily in front of him.

"That's a good way of looking at it," he said, nodding. "At least there's plenty to distract you, isn't there?"

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