“I drink to our ruined house, to the dolor of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities; that the world is brutal and coarse, that God, in fact, has not saved us.”—Anna Akhmatov
Harry managed to spare a thought to thank Merlin for Severus Snape and his wonderful portkey as he tried to hold up Hermione. She was weak from starvation and torture, and Harry thought her leg might be broken. He was in barely better shape and they were both filthy and exhausted. Hermione tucked her face against his shoulder, whimpering and lifting her left leg off the ground. He hoisted her up a little and she whimpered again. She must have bruised or broken ribs, he thought.
“Come on, just a bit further...I don't think he risked his life to get us out just to leave us too far away to get help,” Harry murmured to her and she nodded, attempting to limp along with him through the misty rain.
They walked—Harry lost track of for how long they trekked through scraggly scrub trees and swathes of drowned grass under the grey sky. They were in their eight millionth patch of scrub when a rail thin, grey haired man silently appeared, holding them at wand point, his eyes narrowed and alert in the cloudy gloom. “Who are you?” he demanded tersely.
Harry and Hermione looked at him blearily, taking a moment to register that this was Remus. “I'm Harry,” Harry said blankly. “Harry Potter.”
“Prove it,” Remus's voice was tight and cold. “I shan't react well to a liar wearing Harry and Hermione's faces, you know.”
“Um,” Harry racked his exhausted brain for something. “When you resigned, I came to your classroom and you were packing up. There was a swing album on your old gramophone. My Uncle Vernon didn't attend my parents' wedding. Molly Weasley's garden—before the war—was overflowing with gnomes and geraniums.””
“Harry suggested to Sirius that they paint over his mother's portrait...”Hermione interjected, her face tight with pain
With each statement, Remus paled and his eyes widened. After Harry mentioned the wedding and Hermione spoke of Sirius's remedy to Mrs. Black, Remus swept them both up into a crushing hug.
“They claimed you died,” he murmured into Harry's hair, “when they dumped Ron's body in the ruins of Diagon. It's been hard, so hard,” his voice cracked, “since you disappeared...” He held them for a moment and stepped back. Hermione panted, releasing the air she had been holding as she had valiantly bore Remus's hug.
Immediately, he look contrite, “I'm so sorry, Hermione. I should have realized...” he trailed off and went into mother hen mode, gently hoisting Hermione's other side.
Remus took them back to the safe house the remnants of the Order was using at the moment. It was little more than a sad little shack in a small wet valley and as they approached, it truly started raining. By the time the reached the door, they were drenched and Hermione was chattering with cold, shivers wracking her too-thin frame.
Remus opened the door and helped them over the threshold and there was a cry and the crack of breaking crockery. An aged and grey Molly Weasley rushed forward, tears creeping down her wrinkled face. She looked like she wanted to sweep them up in a crushing hug and never let go but she stopped, her eyes darting to meet Remus's. He nodded and she started to cry in earnest, wrapping both Harry and Hermione in an immense hug.
“I thought—we thought—you died,” she said softly.
Harry gave a shallow smile, “I should have—nearly did more than once...Can we get Hermione looked at please?”
“Oh Merlin, Hermione! I'm sorry!” she looked at the pale, exhausted, and cold Hermione, who was still standing with Harry's help. “Charlie!” she called, turning around, “Charlie! We could use you, please!”
Charlie appeared out of the shadowed staircase and stopped dead on the bottom step, eyes narrowed.
“They're Harry and Hermione, I swear,” said Remus.
Charlie seemed reassured by that and stepped off the staircase, clinically examining them. He pulled out his wand and ignored Harry and Hermione's involuntary flinch, casting diagnostic spells. “Remus, take Hermione to the sitting room. She's worse off. Mum,” he turned to her, “Harry needs food and some fairly basic healing charms.”
Molly nodded and lead Harry to the kitchen, and Harry couldn't help but cast a backward glance at Hermione as Remus helped her into the sitting room. There was a seat at the counter she insisted he sit at. He obliged and dropped his head on to the counter, finally resting. She let him be for a while, pottering around the kitchen and fixing him a small plate of food and casting the charms.
“Eat slowly,” was all she said as she pushed a bit of potatoes and beans towards him.
He nodded and slowly ate what was there and drank the nutritive potion that followed.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, settling into a chair next to him.
Harry paused, attempting to decide if he wanted —if he was ready—to tell the story. Thoughts jangled in his head, incoherent, and too calm. That, he noticed, was not quite right. “I...” he started, “triggered the taboo...” he went on, explaining the capture and months (he thought) of torture and agony. When he spoke of Rookwood taunting him, telling him how Ron had shat his pants as he died, something broke and the tears flooded. She held his hand as he finally cried over his best friend's death.
When the tears had stopped and Harry was scrubbing salty tracks off his face, she asked gently, “How did you escape?”
“Snape,” he told her softly. “He did what he could to keep us alive—slipped us nutritive potions and healed the worst of it. I know he saved me a few times and god only knows how many times he did that for Hermione.”
Molly nodded.
Later that night after looking in on a peacefully sleeping Hermione, Harry took a shower and he slouched against the wall, slowly sliding down to the floor, feeling disconnected, sore, exhausted, and cracked as the dirt was washed away in a whirl of tainted water.
He rested his head against his forearms on his knees, feeling the slick liquid trickle down his skin and the splash of the spray on the wall behind him.
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? ”
Achelous was at the next major upper hierarchy meeting, lounging absently in a chair with his long ocher robes artfully draped over his body and pooling at the base of the chair. His pin glinted in the firelight, catching the attention of the others. They eyed him with curiosity as they waited for Ibex, who was running a few minutes late.
The door opened and Ibex slipped into the room. “Sorry,” he said, moving toward the head of the table, “got held up.” He settled in his chair and looked expectantly at his human minions with a nod for Achelous. “Reports?” he asked. They made their reports and passed documents up the table to Richard and then Ibex nodded solemnly. “Excellent. Everyone, this is Achelous Doric, head of the London clan. He and his clan are allies. You are to treat them accordingly.”
The Delugians nodded collectively, and a slow and wicked smile spread across Achelous's lips, baring gleaming white teeth in the firelight. They shivered.
***
“Vampires?” hissed James. “Is there a level he won't sink to?”
Remus shot him a harsh glare, “Society breeds its own enemies, James, and that attitude is fodder for incipient hatred.”
James looked apologetic. “I'm sorry...it's just that, well...”
“Vampires are darker than werewolves?” asked Remus coolly. “Only because you make them so.”
“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” ~ Allen Ginsberg
Harry had been turning over a problem in his mind. He needed good, solid public exposure from a source he could control. The newspaper was the simplest and most immediate answer but there was also the potential for a pamphlet campaign. He wasn't sure which was the best option but at the moment he was leaning towards a pamphlet campaign; Harry would have immediate control over what was said and when it was said.
He brought it up at the next inner hierarchy meeting.
“So,” he asked, “any thoughts?”
Doar rubbed his chin, “There's always that Skeeter bint. You could force her to assist us.”
While Harry contemplated this, Rabastan piped up.
“Is there any real need to publicize you yet, my lord?” he asked. “We could just wait until after the coup to do it. I dare say that a good portion of the population already knows you exist, since you encouraged us to speak of you.”
Harry hummed in agreement. “I had forgotten about that. We should perhaps slip things into the news anyway—information we want to distribute as carefully and subtly as possible. Skeeter would be useful for that.”
Rabastan wrinkled his nose, “My lord, if I may remind you, Skeeter is as subtle as a blunted ax.”
“True,” agreed Harry, wishing he could get around his impressions of Rita from his old time line more effectively. “Her editor, Frank Higgins, is a member, right? We can have him slip information in the paper, then. Vernon Helms can take care of that, I hope?” he asked the room at large. “Tell me if you think he can't—I don't want to have this bungled because we picked the wrong man for the mission.”
Jacob Tolson and Richard Hoover looked at each other. “Gerald Cohn might be a better choice, my lord. He's more subtle than Helms and better at dealing with people anyway,” Hoover explained.
Tolson nodded in agreement. “He's young but clever, and I'll oversee him if you'd like.”
“Please do,” Harry said.
*****
A few hours later, when everything was hashed out, Harry greeted a young woman at his door. Eudocia Holloway was short and curvy, with curly blonde hair and a wicked smile.
“Pleased to meet you, my lord,” she said smoothly.
“Indeed,” he replied, shaking her out stretched hand. “Lycaon and Spoon speak highly of you.”
She gave him a faint smile, “I shall have to thank them.”
Harry gave her an amused look and gestured her into the study, where they settled down on a pair of brown and cream couches, a pot of tea on the coffee table between them.
“So,” he said, “as I understand it, you are in charge of your pack's dealing with me and mine.”
“I am,” she agreed. “If at all possible, as the elected representative of all the packs who have joined, I would like to sit in on meetings when they deal with us.”
Harry paused, digesting this new information, “Actually, I think you should sit in on the first hierarchy meetings.”
She flashed him a genuine smile, “I'd be honored.”
“Don't force it; use a bigger hammer.”
Harry had another issue to contemplate—what to do with Snape? Half out of spite he was going to keep him, but Harry saw no point in using his talents if he didn't have to. He had asked Rabastan to look through the human Delugians and the vampires and werewolves to look through their own ranks.
In the end, he had three at his disposal—Arcas, who was a tall and slender Caribbean werewolf from St. Andrew's, a young Delugian named Francis, and Callisto, all of whom were willing to help if he wanted something. They all had different areas of expertise and both Arcas and Callisto were as good or better than Snape, respectively, and Francis, whom both Arcas and Callisto had taken a liking to, would be as good as they were someday.
*
He called Snape to a private meeting, choosing to interrupt the man's first free Saturday of the spring holidays, staging the audience in the ballroom, rather than in the study or over lunch as was customary for private meeting with a first hierarchy member.
“My lord,” he greeted with a low bow.
Harry looked down at him from the throne nonchalantly. “Severus,” he acknowledged. “How are you?”
Snape blinked, “Well enough, considering term is still in session.”
Harry titled his head back and forth, “Why do you teach, if you hate it so much?”
“It pays well,” Snape said and then his face went smooth as a polite mask slipped over his features. “Was there something you wished to speak about with me?”
Inwardly, Harry smiled. “There was.”
A long pause, “...And what was it, if I may inquire?”
“To inform you of two things. One, I am aware you are Dumbledore's man. I knew that when you took my mark so I don't consider it a betrayal nor are you in any danger for it. I also commend your undying devotion to a woman who won't give you the time of day,” he added and smiled wickedly when Snape blanched. “Two, I no longer require your services as a potions master.”
Obviously having difficulties schooling his features into a mask, Snape ground out, “Then what do you require of me?”
“Require? Nothing, but you do have an option on the table—continue operating your section of the Deluge.”
“And if I do not wish to do so?” There was a hint of challenge in his voice.
“Then,” Harry said, “you can give up your position and join the rank and file of the Deluge.”
Snape's jar dropped open for a moment and then he shut it with an audible click. “Do I have time to consider?”
Harry nodded, “You have two days.”
“Not liking the consequence is not the same thing as not having a choice.”
Severus Snape had just been rendered obsolete. He knew Ibex—Harry fucking Potter—well enough by now to know there was no way he would be let go. Whatever his future self had done to him as a boy was clearly enough to make him enjoy making Severus's life miserable, but not enough for Ibex to kill him no how much Snape sometimes wished he would. In fact, he would guess Ibex knew that and would therefore never actually kill him, just for spite.
He contemplated the options his lord had presented him as he walked up the long drive to Malfoy Manor, watching the colorful peacocks strut past the white gravel path.
The way Ibex was doing things at the moment meant that it didn't matter if Dumbledore knew about them since he couldn't do anything about them anyway. He used the same tactics (up to a point) and what Ibex was doing wasn't illegal. And when it came time for illegal things to start happening, Severus wouldn't know until it was far too late to do anything.
On the other hand, thinking about the mockery his new-found peers would heap on him if he stepped down made his fists clench in anger.
Better...better to stay where he was, operating a section of the machine that would take over the UK. At least then, he would have some sway and perhaps be able to take out a cog or two. Maybe that would be enough.
“It [the Cheshire Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.” —Lewis Carroll
There was a full circle meeting over dinner one evening in early June at Malfoy Manor and both Narcissa Malfoy and Draco Malfoy were in attendance, as well as other spouses and children.
Draco was currently sitting on his uncle Rudolphus's knee, smiling at his parents and giggling. He was two years old and far different than the Draco Harry had known. That Draco had killed himself when he was twenty out of desperation. Voldemort had strung his body up from the balconies of Malfoy Manor, a ghastly gargoyle above the front door. Narcissa had followed, though she had chosen to taken Macnair and Bellatrix with her by blowing up an entire room in the manor.
Harry shook his head—this Draco and this Narcissa would not walk that path. Looking around he saw the upper crust of the Deluge and their families, but not the werewolves or vampires who were supposed to be attending.
Ah, there they were. They streamed into the room and conversing before stopping to acknowledge Harry and the Malfoys. Callisto approached, wearing a faint smirk that screamed I know something you don't know! and then he heard Lucius's soft gasp. Harry gave him a sidelong glance and saw his face abruptly snap back into smooth politeness.
Callisto looked like the cat who had got the canary and after the usual formalities, she slipped back into the crowd.
After the last of the newcomers had been greeted, Harry watched Callisto as she sipped a blood cocktail and leaned against a wall. Her face fit right in with the ancestor portraits on the wall and a few of them were trying to stare at her around their frames. One of them spoke and she replied, baring blood soaked teeth. He backed down and slipped out of his portrait, before leaping up and vaulting himself out of the frame of his neighbor's painting. He raced across the arched ceiling's fresco (which depicted Bacchus and Zeus drinking in a forest), dodging clusters of grapes and drunken donkeys.
He noticed a green-looking Lucius was watching, too, as the man scuttled through the small wood and dropped down into a portrait of a sour looking man. He whispered something to the man and they both disappeared, slipping out of the painting.
Lucius swallowed and looked away, leaning down to speak softly to his wife. She looked mutely confused and glanced at Callisto, who hadn't moved. Callisto licked her lips like a cat and smiled at her, tilting her head. Narcissa looked away abruptly.
Curious, Harry gradually made his way across the room to Callisto.
“What are you doing?” he asked with amusement, “Besides distressing your hosts, of course.”
She smirked, “They're my descendants. It's my right as an elderly relative to distress them.”
"How far back?” Harry asked, smiling.
“Four hundred years. I know I've got a portrait here someplace because the current heir recognized me. And I assume there's still a story about my disappearance; or there was last time I talked with any of the family.”
“You didn't keep up with them?” Harry asked curiously.
Callisto shook her head. “My son was four when I was turned and I watched him, but after Castor? Why bother? They were just human.” She shrugged.
“You were Callisto Malfoy, then?” Harry chuckled. “Sort of fits.”
“Sort of,” she agreed. “Callisto Doric, now, so it doesn't matter, does it?”
“No, I suppose not,” Harry agreed. “Who was it that ran off like that?”
“My late husband,” she said with a satisfied smile. “I was quite glad to be rid of him, actually. He was, as they say, a douche bag.”
Harry blinked, “A douche bag?”
“Yes. He was an arrogant, evil-minded twit. I was glad to be shot of him.”
Harry laughed, “I can understand that. I've met a few people like that over the years.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”~ Sun Tzu
The first Thursday morning of break found Albus Dumbledore drinking tea and reading the paper, prior to heading down to the Great Hall. This was a disaster. Ibex (he couldn't bring himself think of the man as Harry) had a thumb in every pie and was slowly building a solid platform on which he could stand. He had people from every sector—purebloods, muggleborns, the poor, the rich—at his beck and call. He hadn't done very much that would create resentment.
The only major weak points Dumbledore could see were the fact that the man was a time traveler and of questionable sanity. Certainly, they were enormous weak points but he couldn't prove either of them. Yet. Time could perhaps reveal a chance to de-rail Ibex's plans.
"Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I'm mad but not ill."--R.A. Wilson, Werewolf Bridge
Lily desperately wanted to meet the man who was and wasn't her son. She waited and hoped and waited some more. She was rewarded most unexpectedly while hunting for potion ingredients in the gloomy woods outside Glasgow. She hadn't thought much of the anti-apparation wards—she would have set some up herself, but appeared there was or had been another forager here recently.
Searching for sweet roses, she caught a glimpse of her fellow forager and did a double take. Ibex!
Lily watched him for some time as he picked through vines and bushes and eventually he looked up, turning his head to search the surroundings like a deer. She hadn't hidden and he caught sight of her. Ibex raised an eyebrow and went back to what he was doing, ignoring her.
“...Harry?” she called tentatively, creeping towards him. “Can I talk to you?”
He turned at the sound of his name, startled, and then looked amused, “I suppose, Mrs. Potter. A question though, do all of you have some inane need to confront me?”
“I don't want to confront you, just talk,” she said, stopping a few feet from him.
“What about?” he asked casually, picking a bit of moss off delicate white flower.
“Dumbledore told us some of what you told him—”
“Really now?" Harry interrupted. "Curious. He was always reluctant to share information with us."
“Who was 'us' in the future?” she asked quickly.
“Oh, Remus, Sirius, Shacklebolt, Dumbledore, Minerva, the Weasleys, a few others. If he didn't already tell you, Peter betrayed your family and you died in my original time line, so you were not an us.”
“What happened after we—” she swallowed, “—died?”
“I was sent to the Dursleys. Didn't Dumbledore already tell you this?”
“Y-yes, but I want to hear it for myself,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Will my son be as short as you are?” she asked quickly, looking to force him to answer questions about his childhood.
He raised an eyebrow. “I'll choose not take offense to that,” and he chuckled when she looked embarrassed, “but no, he probably won't. I...had a rather different childhood than he'll have.”
“How different?”
“How's you're relationship with your sister?” Harry asked her.
“We send letters at Christmas and gifts on birthdays. That's it,” Lily replied.
Harry seemed to be debating something, tilting his head back and forth. “Are you sure?”
“Sure.” She needed these answers.
“As you wish," he shrugged. "I was starved, neglected, abused, and I slept in a cupboard below their staircase. I think Dumbledore overestimated Aunt Petunia's sense of sisterly duty when he hoped she'd take me in,” he explained when she blanched. “However, adversity bred character and I survived mostly all right.”
Lily nodded blankly, trying to understand a mother who would leave a toddler into a closet.
“Have I answered your questions?” he asked.
“What did they do to you?” Lily asked, still caught in the horror of her child being left in a closet.
“Who?” Harry asked. “There were a lot of people over the years, Mrs. Potter, who did various things to me.”
“Explain. All of it,” she demanded, trying desperately not to think about her baby shut in tiny, dark cupboard.
“You really don't want me to,” he said calmly.
“I need to understand you! You're my son!”
Harry tilted his head side to side again, “True, but only in a biological sense. I think I explained that to the Headmaster at some point.”
She shook her head, “I don't know if you did or did not—he didn't say.”
“Mm, well, I think you'll regret it if I give into your demands and tell you everything,” he said, twirling the flower between his fingers.
“No I won't,” she insisted. “Tell me!”
Harry shook his head. “It doesn't matter.” He turned to leave, and she planted herself firmly in front of him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. He laughed at Lily, “Move, Mrs. Potter.”
“No.”
He narrowed his eyes in return, “May I remind you that I am a Dark Lord?”
“But you're also a person.”
“True,” he agreed. “What's that got to do with it?”
“All people have some sort of attachment to their mothers,” Lily stated.
Harry rolled his eyes, “I am absolutely not interested in talking to you about this.”
“Tell. Me.”
“No," Harry disagreed. And then he paused. "But I will give you a few of the less grisly memories, if you like. But don't say I didn't warn you,” he said, reaching into his cloak and pulling out a glass phial. He paused and stared at her, obviously waiting for an answer.
“Fine,” she said tersely, starting to deflate as she remembered exactly who she was dealing with. She was lucky that he hadn't outright killed her.
He shrugged again, and tucked the flower away before retrieving his wand from the recesses of his cloak. Putting the tip to his temple, he pulled out a few short, silvery memory strands and deposited them in the phial and corked it. They shimmered like mercury as he handed them to her.
After she accepted them, he slipped around her and was disappeared into the shadows.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;One need not be a house;The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place.~Emily Dickinson, Time and Eternity
“You did what?!” James nearly screamed.
Lily clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut up!” she hissed. “I'm alive, aren't I? You don't need to yell.” Holding out the phial of memories, she added, “He gave me these. We need a pensive.”
“What is this 'we' you speak of?" James practically spat, "I don't need to know nor do I care about whatever it is in there.” He pointed at the phial.
“Fine,” she sniffed. “Fine. I'll watch them by myself.”
“Whatever,” he said, stalking off and muttering to himself about 'crazy woman' and 'fucking insane...'
Glaring at his retreating back, she set about acquiring a pensive to view the memories in.
****
A week passed before Dumbledore gave in and allowed her to borrow his pensive, on the condition that she allow him to view the contents. And after putting Harry to bed, she poured the phial out into the basin and dove in.
The world spun, and she landed in a dungeon cell, complete with manacles hanging from the wall and a figure hunched on a pile of straw in the corner.
Thumping steps could be heard approaching and the figure's head snapped up; it was a grungy, thin, and very young Harry, covered with burns, scars, and open wounds. The door opened and a man entered the room, a smug smirk on his face and his wand in his hand.
“Hello, Potter. How are we this evening?”
Harry didn't respond, shirking back to the wall, his eyes wary and careful.
“Speak when spoken to, Potter,” the man said lazily and cast a Crucio.
Harry's jaw clenched tight and he dropped back against the straw before letting out a pitiful scream as his body shook with pain. After a moment, the man let up, leaving him gasping.
“My lord would be most upset if I turned you into a vegetable,” he said lightly. With a flick of his wand, a small tray floated through the doorway and landed with precision before Harry. “Eat it while it's hot, boy.” With that, he slipped out the door.
As the bolts were thrown and the locks clicked shut, Harry leaned over and vomited. After emptying his stomach, he flopped back and weakly watched the steam drift up from what appeared to be a bowl of hot gruel.
The scene swirled and came to a stop, showing a different cell and an age-ravaged Bellatrix kneeling over Harry's prone form, a glinting knife in hand. His body was covered in neat, evenly spaced square cuts and his skin looked like a bleeding quilt. She leaned down, slipping the pointed blade beneath his skin, “Take the skin and peel it back...now, doesn't that feel better?” she asked kindly as she pried a square of skin loose. Blood poured from the wound and Harry let out a cracking groan and a hoarse whimper as she dropped the square of skin on the floor with a wet splat.
Lily's stomach turned and just as she thought she might vomit, the world spun again and she wold herself staring at the inside of a cupboard, lit by a single light bulb dangling from the angled ceiling.
A thin and tiny Harry—looking no more than five or six years old—was fiddling with a small plastic knight and his horse, making all the little noises children make when playing. There was a thud and Harry panicked, shoving his toys under the cot.
The door was thrown open and a fat man roared at him, “GET OUT HERE!”
It took Lily a moment to register that it was Vernon doing the yelling as Harry scrambled out of the cupboard and ducked under his arm, dodging a heavy-handed swipe. She followed him out and saw her sister staring angrily at Harry. “Boy—chores. The list is on the table. At eight years old, we shouldn't have to get you up in the morning.”
Eight? She thought, Eight?! He can't possibly be eight—he's so little!
Harry flushed and picked up the list. After reading it, he pulled out scrubbing brushes and bleach power from the cupboard under the kitchen sink and set off upstairs.
“No food for two days if I have to get you up again, boy,” Vernon added as the small boy trudged upstairs.
He nodded dully and made his way up the staircase again.
Spin.
Harry—at Hogwarts, if the uniform proved anything—yelling at a man in a purple turban. The man sneered and spoke. His face paused, he seemed to be speaking to someone neither Lily or Harry could see. He started to unwind the turban and turned around as a face emerged from the back of his skull, thin-lipped and evil-eyed.
Spin.
Sirius falling through a veil in a dark amphitheater and Harry screaming, fighting Remus who was holding him back. Lily moved around them, expecting to see Sirius on the other side. She was mystified to see a faintly swaying curtain but no Sirius.
Spin.
Dumbledore flying off a parapet, Snape looking bitter and resentful, a pale child looking frightened out of his wits, and a horde of jeering Death Eaters.
Spin.
Snape pulling a girl into Harry's cell and throwing her at him, tossing a book at the two of them—a portkey. They disappeared and she followed, landing in a drowned wood where Harry and the girl stood.
Spin.
Harry was kneeling at the side of Remus's brutally mangled corpse, staring blankly at him. Next to him, an almost angelic blonde woman lay, looking as though she were asleep. A red haired man—a Weasley she thought—was bent over her body and sobbing, holding her hand.
Spin.
Lily landed, vertigo making her vision swim. She leaned against a wall for support, looking around. Blood was smeared across a snowy marble floor, like someone had pressed a body against the floor with crushing force and shoved it across the marble, the bones leaving grooves in the stone. Half a head rested against the far wall, separated from the lower part of a torso. Arms that had been torn from their sockets rested halfway between the torso and head.
“Ron!” Harry yelled, screaming in chorus with the girl Lily had seen earlier as they were dragged kicking and screaming into the house. A thin, reptilian-looking man sneered at them and pointed his wand at the girl. She screamed and arched when the spell slammed into her, going limp. Harry turned to hurl abuse at the man, wild-eyed and enraged.
Another spell flare and Harry went limp.
The world began to spin again and Lily jerked herself out of the pensive with a yell, tears streaming down her face.
James rushed in when he heard her yell and found her curled up on the chair, crying and staring at the basin.