Who: Lily Black & Harry Potter6-KNAP What: Harry’s hurt and Lily has figured out she’s a Healer When: Monday, June 18; evening after this. (Backdated) Where: Outside Alpha Block Warnings: None? There’s some bloodyness!
Lily had been feeling rather helpless since arriving, mostly because she knew no one and didn’t have the slightest clue how everyone who claimed to know her, did. She’d fought valiantly against believing anything James Potter tried to make her believe—wasn’t she supposed to adamantly believe he was dangerous?—but the problem with her fight was that, for once, James had logic on his side. He made sense, had more vividly detailed memories than she’d been given and, at the forefront, he’d been able to tell her that she knew how to Heal. She hadn’t believed him, really, until the night of the Deltalian ball—Merlin, the felt like a long time ago now that they were in this new setting—when she’d moved based on instinct and adrenalin and found herself actually healing the Taken who were hurt in the chaos following the assassination attempt.
So, when they arrived back here at the compound, Lily had found herself have a lot to consider. Every thought was more confusing to the next and, no matter how many times James got something right about her, that didn’t change the fact that, no matter what, her reality was hard. She couldn’t even talk to her own Sirius and the implications of James’ theory of her condition were heartbreaking at best.
When she heard that there would be a need for a team of Healers tonight, at least, she was able to pull herself out of her thought-consuming reverie enough to eagerly join the ranks—if nothing else than in an effort to distract herself from her thoughts for a few hours.
Unfortunately, Lily didn’t just happen upon a distraction. Apparently, the call for Healers had been prudent considering even the feeblest attempts at breaking into the mysterious block resulted in bloodshed. Her instincts kicked in as they had done in Deltalia and Lily had set to work attempting to patch up as many people as she could manage before anyone actually passed out from too much blood loss.
And then she’d seen him. Harry.
Something inside of Lily snapped and, abandoning any pretense, she’d rushed to him, startled only briefly by the shock of green in his eyes before she took to trying to stop the flow of blood from his arm. “Stubborn just like your father. You should have stopped before it got this far.” She was absolutely gutted by the sight of Harry hurt and, as unusual and confusing as that was for her, it didn’t change the fact that her attention was solely on him now. Pulling out a makeshift bandage, she wrapped it around the symbol on his forearm and looked for the next worse wound before she looked at him. “Are you alright?” Was it stupid? Probably, but like Harry said, there was no way he was going to simply walk away from an opportunity like this. A fuck you, even though it hurt. He wanted information. He wanted answers. They all did. Something so mysterious and it was frustrating for the young man to just sit there and be okay with everything when he wasn’t. They all went at it for a little while before everyone started to notice the blood. Harry hadn’t even noticed until he a felt a very familiar sting upon his arms and noticed the blood seeping through his shirt. He glanced around with his green eyes, noticing how stubborn everyone else had been. Some more than others.
Harry wasn’t one to quit, but to see others hurt more than him struck a nerve. Putting his wand away, he attempted to help the others, to make them stop before their wounds worsened. He tried.
He was confronted by the last person Harry thought he would see there. By the last person who he would think to tend to him, considering she had no children, or so she told him. Harry was speechless, his heart raced, his eyes examining every feature of her face. She looked similar to the other Lilies he had met, but none so familiar as his own mother looked.
Harry remained quiet for a few moments before he stammered in speech. “Y-y-yes.” Giving a quick nod, he glanced down at his bandaged arm then back up at Lily. He caught her eyes with his and realized how unfair it all felt. “Sorry. You don’t have to. There are others who need your help more than me.” Harry, for some reason, did not want to be close to her at this moment. He didn’t know how to control his emotions with screaming that she was his mother. Clenching his fists, he hissed at the sting in the wounds that followed. “Fuck.” Harry would rather suffer his wounds than be cared for by his own mother who refused to believe she was his.
Lily's brow creased as her heart clenched beneath a sharp ache. There were some things that she had never been able to deny, specifically her gut instinct and, right now, it was raging an unrelenting war against the past six years and everything she'd convinced herself she'd known. BIting down on her bottom lip, she reached for his other arm and checked it for more wounds, pulling out another bandage as she did so.
"Yes, you sound like you're absolutely fine," Lily said, her eyes flicking back to his. Her breath caught in her throat but she recovered and went to work on the next wound. "These wounds aren't going to stay healed, so you really need to get to the hospital where we can all make sure that someone's keeping an eye on the bandages."
She cringed to herself—how impersonal could she sound? She couldn't even remember being a Healer or how she'd handled her hypothetical patients, but if she wanted to be clinical, she was doing a good job of it. It was a wall, a guard, because letting him know that she cared more than she could remember ever caring for another person meant that she was admitting it and admitting it was terrifying. She'd cared at the tournament, she'd cared after the tournament and she cared more than ever, now.
Letting out a small breath, Lily let her fingers brush over the bandage. "Can I get you to the hospital?" she asked, voice softening despite the way her heart was pounding in her ears—at the sight of him and of his injuries that she hadn't even finished bandaging yet.
“I’ve had worse, believe me.” Harry managed a small smile out of jest, despite of the fight or flight feeling. He gave a small nod the smile fading as fast as his heart was pounding. From what Harry could tell from Lily’s tone of voice, she was being professional and not at all personal. It ripped him apart, to be so close to his mother and yet still so far from her heart and mind. It hurt so much that he could not stand it anymore. He sat there silently yet his mind raced.
If he just got up and walked to the hospital, he might not get another chance again to be this close to his mother and to be alone with her. If he got up, he would be giving up on her, on them, on his family. If he blurted everything out, he risked making her cry and possibly running away from him. Harry risked having her be in denial all over again, starting from square one and possibly staying there for the rest of their lives. Harry was bold enough to take risks but this risk scared him the most.
“How long are you going to live this lie?” His eyes were full of concern and hope, searching her face for some kind of answer. “You can’t feel anything when it comes to me can you? Do you care?”
Pursing her lips into a thin line, Lily stilled for the briefest of moments before she replied, focusing on the bandages, "It's not as simple as that, Harry. Some things are about lies and truths but others are not so black and white." She didn't know exactly how to say what she meant or how to adequately express how terrifying it was to admit to what he wanted her to admit. Did he know how much acknowledging that she had failed a child of hers for his entire life work break her heart into a million tiny pieces? Or that acknowledging what was taken from her—and them—meant also giving up on Sirius?
She couldn't expect him to read her mind, nor could she blame him now for what he was trying to do.
Which was just as well considering his next words caught her completely off guard. Her head whipped up to looked pointedly at him as she said, eyes widening, "Of course I feel something, Harry. Don't you know how much it kills me to see you wounded right now? Or how confusing it is to worry so much for someone I don't remember? I care more than I can even possibly begin to comprehend."
There was a fire in her green eyes that flickered even as her bottom lip trembled and she busied herself with patching him up again. She didn't let people see her cry and, even deeper than that, she didn't want to be weak to Harry, especially. She felt the inherent desire to be stronger in front of him. Lily closed her eyes and took in a slow breath before opening them again. Of course she cared, that was the root of her current problem.
Harry grew angry and perhaps, it was simply because he couldn’t understand her meaning. In his mind, she was living a lie and going along with it because it was easier than accepting the truth and playing catch up on seventeen years of his life. Seventeen years of thinking she was married to Sirius rather than James. Harry whispered his words. “That’s bullshit.” There was a bit of a hiss at the end of his sentence but he couldn’t help but to feel it. It was when her lip trembled and he could see the gleam in the same set of emerald eyes they shared, that he knew he had to be careful.
“I’m sorry. Its just...” Harry gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes, desperately trying not to spit out his words and thoughts all at once. “I always thought the first time I would meet you would be...joyious.” He choked on his words and he was beginning to think this was a terrible idea. But he had to try.
Harry took a hold of her hands to make her start mending him. Harry could suffer the pain for a few moments more. She was more important than whatever open wounds he had. “Mum...I don’t care if it takes years, days, months...I really don’t care....I’ll make you remember and I’ll help you understand why you care so much for me.” His eyes locked with hers. “I love you, mum.”
Lily winced at the hissed exclamation, but didn't argue it. It was bullshit, no matter how anyone looked at it. She couldn't blame Harry for his frustrations just as she knew she shouldn't feel guilty for being confused and uncertain. She wanted nothing more than to take back all of her words and reactions so far since she'd been here, even if she'd meant everything she'd said and done when they'd happened, if only to not make him feel like someone wasn't happy to see him. It was so complicated, so inexplicable, this predicament. Instead she said, "I'm sorry that I am not what you imagined or expected, that this situation isn't ideal but, Harry, I'm trying. I promise you that I am. Whatever the answers are, I'm trying to find them and make sense of them."
Her heart pounded louder in her ears as Harry stopped her in her pursuit to temporarily heal and bandage all of his wounds. Lily's heart did break then, but not in an entirely hopeless way. She was on the verge of something that was going to hurt like hell but, looking into the eyes that perfectly reflected her own, she felt like, perhaps, it was worth it.
Whether or not she was Harry's mother, she wanted to protect him and make him happy and not let him down.
Not knowing what to say or what words would even be appropriate, Lily pulled her hands from his and moved to hug him, holding him close and tightly as she did so. It felt so right and natural to embrace him, to shield him, to heal his hurts, just like healing had felt like an extension of herself even though she couldn't remember having been a Healer. It didn't even cross her mind to be bothered by the fact that she was probably getting blood on her, just as long as she wasn't hurting him more by hugging him. Tears in her eyes and nose reddened from the effort of holding back her tears, Lily pulled back and gave him a small smile. "I'm not just patching you up because I'm supposed to helping the Healer team, you know. I just care about making sure you don't get more hurt than you already are. I'm right here for you, Harry.”
“No...no no no no no.” Harry shook his head and held onto her hands tightly. “That’s just it. It isn’t your fault. Its not even our fault.” He frowned, trying to find the right words. “...we’ve been trying to figure this out for years, but what we gathered, you and...” Harry didn’t speak his name. He didn’t want to. “You were kidnapped by the Lestranges and my whole life...we’ve been searching the world to find you.” Harry wasn’t even exaggerating. There wasn’t a moment in his life that he could recall where they weren’t looking for his mother and uncle.
“Don’t apologize for something that wasn’t even your fault.” He felt guilty and tried explaining himself. “Nothing is ever ideal, I learned this at an early age...but...” Harry was cut off as Lily embraced him into a hug. Part of what he ever wanted was actually happening. He held his breath and slowly wrapped his arms around her small frame. Holding onto her tightly, not caring if it was hurting or not, he didn’t want to let her go. Harry could feel it and he was trying to ignore the fact he was about to bawl like a little baby.
Breathing slowly, he continued to hold onto her tightly until she pulled back. She didn’t return the I love you, but Harry didn’t really care. He wasn’t thinking. Lily might have been holding back her tears but Harry couldn’t. A few tears rolled down the young man’s cheeks before he embraced her again. “I take it back. This is perfect.” A few more tears, Harry held his breath to hold the rest of them in while holding onto Lily. He wasn’t sure if it felt awkward but he could not help himself. Seventeen...almost eighteen years of missing these hugs from his mother...there was no way he was letting go just yet.
Lily didn’t mind the second embrace, not at all. Certainly not nearly as much as she might have minded the physical contact when she’d first gotten here. She could say whether or not her guilt was actually justified but she felt it, anyway. She felt every bit of what this version of what had happened to her would mean and she felt every bit of all the years she had probably missed. And the fact of the matter was that it didn’t matter who was her real husband or who attacked her or why she couldn’t remember anything because there was no denying the way his eyes perfectly mirrored hers or the way her heart twisted and beat in ways that she’d never felt before because she couldn’t remember being a mother before.
Pretenses dissolving, Lily let a few tears that she’d been holding back slip down her cheeks, too, and strengthened the hold she had on him.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, not fully understanding what exactly she was apologizing for but apologizing for all of it anyway—for not being there, for not knowing what she’d missed, for not knowing yet which life was real, for being confused, for hurting him through her confusion. Not pulling back so as not to break the embrace, Lily creased her brow and asked, after several long moments had passed, “Are you alright? I don’t want you losing too much blood, Harry. I feel wretched enough seeing you hurt.”