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When Lily is thirteen, she falls asleep during a particularly boring divination lesson. Somehow she slips off her stool, and cracks her head against the table leg. Half the class bursts into laughter, but quieten quickly because Lily is nice and smart and she always helps tutor anyone that needs it.
It’s embarrassing, and Lily blushes and adamantly refuses to hold a hand to her throbbing head lest anyone keep their laughter up. Her head hurts all day, and then all night. She falls asleep sometime after midnight, and wakes the next morning with traces of a strange dream escaping her consciousness wispily.
Vaguely, she can recall the colours yellow and black shuttered sparingly, and the twinkle of a golden cup.
The next week, Hufflepuff wins the Quidditch Cup.
When she’s thirteen and a half, she wakes to a bed full of sweat and tears and sees blood-splashed walls on the backs of her eyelids amidst her frantic blinking.
Three days later, an article in the Prophet reads;
…the muggle wife and children of Wizengamot member Argus Seneca, an advocate for the induction of half-breeds such as werewolves and centaurs more fully into the wizarding community, have been brutally murdered in their home. The site has left traces of notorious werewolf Fenrir Greyback, including…
They become more vivid as she grows.
Fourteen, she wakes to the sounds of ‘Snivellus!’ and ‘mudblood’, and she hyperventilates and wakes Mary accidentally because she can’t - that can’t happen – she can’t lose her place in the heart of the first person who really mattered, and –
She tries, the whole year, to get Severus to sit with her more, to laugh with her and eat with her. She tries and she wishes and she wants because he’s her best friend and she doesn’t want to hurt that way, not ever.
Fifteen and upon waking she throws up to the side of her four-poster bed and then runs like a madwoman to the Headmaster’s office because holy shit, he’s massacring muggles and leaving marks in the sky, Professor, for everyone to see – I saw it, please believe me, I saw it!
He hums thoughtfully, advises her that she’s had a terrible nightmare, and sends her to the infirmary for a sleeping draught. She goes instead to the astronomy tower, clad in nothing but her pyjamas and bunny slippers. There, she sits and stares at the starry night, shivering because she’s left her wand behind in her haste.
Two weeks later, fifty-four muggles are pronounced dead in a ‘freak accident’, a Dark Mark emblazoned upon the clouds above the site.
Fifteen, and Severus spits ‘mudblood’ at her, and her heart breaks because she had tried so hard and now she knows that some things won’t – no, can’t – be changed.
Fifteen, and even after the events by the lake she approaches Sirius Black and tells him not to go home under any circumstances. Not under any. Please, Black, just listen. Please.
When she wakes a week later to the taste of blood from her broken lips, she sends a feverish, scrawled note to Potter with her address and – meet me here ASAP. Bring adult. Urgent.
That night they find Sirius Black, sprawled on the sidewalk before Grimmauld Place as though he’d tried to run. Bloodied, broken, bruised, but breathing – Lily throws up in a nearby bush, blinking through tears and wishing he had just listened –
Later, when she’s written her parents from the warm abode that is the Potter residence, she explains the peculiarity of her dreams to the three Potters and a bandaged but disgruntled Black.
“You must have old blood,” says Fleamont Potter, smiling kindly.
“Don’t be silly, love,” chides Euphemia, a gentle tilt of lips sent Lily’s way, “this isn’t old blood. This is something new and wonderful.”
Wonderful? Lily wants to pull visions of blood and dirty names and heartbreak and things she can’t unsee out of her head and into the world to say: this is disgusting, terrible, abominable – how can you call it wonderful, wonderful – WONDERFUL-
But she forces herself to remember that she has saved Sirius Black’s life. She carefully pushes the thoughts away and nods and smiles and waits until she’s holed up in her room back in Cokeworth to have a cry about it.
She has many dreams throughout her sixth and seventh years. She learns that she can’t always save people, can’t always change things, and wonders if this is what Cassandra felt when Troy was falling.
Some things – some things she didn’t foresee, though. Becoming friends with James, Sirius, Peter, Remus. She sees a transformation in a dream in sixth year, knows their loyalty and keeps their secrets.
By seventh year, she’s entangled with blood traitors and werewolves, half giants and the few muggleborns not in outright hiding.
She didn’t foresee the rise of the Order of the Phoenix.
Instead she sees its downfalls.
.
She wakes with a start, trying to quell her shaking. For a moment she’s panicked at James’ absence, and then glad. She can hear him humming down the hall, no doubt tending to Harry.
Sitting up, she runs a hand through her hair and tries to get her breathing under control.
Halloween, flashing lights – green death.
She hopes desperately it’s not a fixed point.
.
She sees a boy with her eyes, a boy with hurricane hair, huddled into a cupboard under a set of stairs. The same boy, still just a child, fighting off horrors – a man with two faces and a snake to turn him to stone. A familiar black dog and a scruffy, ratty man. Dragons and death and horror and fear and oh god, please not my baby – sacrifice.
.
“Sirius.” She keeps her voice low enough not to garner attention from James and Remus who are doing their best to entertain Harry with a quaffle, a ratty old Gryffindor scarf, and an orange.
He quirks a brow at her and jerks his head towards the kitchen. She follows silently, and watches as her friend flicks his wand. She knows the instant the muffling charm settles into place, distorting Harry’s laughter into something out of an eerie daydream.
“What is it, Lil?”
She sits at the table and puts her head into her hands. Sirius remains standing, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.
“I… have a favour to ask of you.”
She can’t look up. Can’t meet his eyes.
“Halloween’s in two weeks. Create plans. Keep James out for the night, please.”
Lily feels him sit heavily across from her.
“What is it?” he asks again, voice grave.
Her eyes prickle and her throat stings and she’s so fucking scared of what she has to do, but it must be done. She takes a moment to compose herself. Swallows down the desperate fear crawling up her throat, blinks away the moisture and heat from her eyes and lifts her head to give him a small smile.
“Something fixed.”
Harry’s laughter chimes again, muffled and interspersed with dramatic exclamations from Remus and James.
“Lily.”
She can hear the trepidation in his tone.
“I trust you.” He says at long last, and she fights the surge of guilt threatening to swallow her whole.
She closes her eyes and prays that when the moment comes his trust won’t be misplaced.
That she won’t have condemned his best friend to losing his wife and child in one night.
.
She has a dream the night before Halloween.
A boy on Platform nine and three quarters. He’s chattering animatedly to his father, two uncles causing a ruckus trying to shove stink bombs and puking pasties into his trunk.
A map, a whispered password upon awed ears.
Twinkling green eyes – her eyes –
Love you dad! See ya Moony and Pads! Hogwarts is not gonna know what hit it!
Lily knows that it will be worth it.
She dreams no more in October.