Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Here’s the thing about Time –

It is beautiful. It is a mystery. It is infinite, it is always running out, and it is, above all else, dangerous. Who better than the Girl Who Died, the woman who lives more than thirty hours out of synch with the rest of her reality, to dance with it? Your understanding of the very thing that has both saved and damned you is the only reason you wear the Triquetra; the only reason you were courted by the Department of Mysteries even before your NEWT results were finalised; the only reason you can feel the Fracture of the Sacred Loop like a crack in your bones, an urgency tugging at you as you seethe at your father with one breath and swear to Severus Snape that everything will be all right with the other.

(This is a lie.)

Here’s the thing about Time –

It is a closed loop, but not always, which means sometimes when one travels back in time to fix a mistake, they just end up causing the very thing they sought to prevent, and the loop is complete; but sometimes, when one travels back in time to fix a mistake, they make things worse, and that creates its own loop (a Paradox) that cannot be resolved without further intervention, which then recreates the original loop.

(Usually.)

There is only one (1) approved reality, carefully monitored by the Time Room deep within the Department of Mysteries: the Sacred Loop, with its own deviations and rewrites and loops. You have observed and helped maintain fixed points in time, like Aunt Hermione’s three–hour intervention with your father to save Sirius Black’s life: to the teenagers in 1994, it would have felt as though they changed reality, but all they did was ensure it happened – Black always survived that night. You have even just participated in another loop that created the very spell that kept you alive twice over: six months in the past, assisting a younger Draco Malfoy research and create the very Stasis Charm that saved your life, yet now you know it could never have existed without you.

The thing is, these events were always meant to happen. Everything was always meant to happen, except when it’s not, which is when Unspeakables such as yourself step in to correct the Fractures.

When the Triquetra burns, it can only mean one thing – the violent disintegration of the Sacred Loop, and it radiates outwards from one specific fixed point in time.

So what do you do? The obvious thing, of course: you slip through the fabric of Time to the moment of the Fracture, James’s heart pounding in terror, knowing only that if you allow the deviation to occur on the night of 2 May 1998 – specifically, the death of Severus Tobias Snape – then reality as you know it will be unmade.

Here’s the thing about Time –

There is no past, present and future, because all of time happens all at once, but humans are only capable of seeing it one moment, one day at a time. You are, technically, in the past; you are also in your own future, and you are in your (teenage) father’s present. What happens on the night of 2 May 1998 is the culmination of thousands of decisions that have been made and have yet to be made; it cannot and never will exist in a vacuum.

The night of the Battle of Hogwarts is a grim, dour setting, the air heavy with the weight of death and terror, and yet it feels in a way like an old friend – Merlin knows you have met death enough times and felt more terror than anyone reasonably should be expected to in the number of years you have lived. You have visited the Battle before on a previous trip, to observe and stop other would–be time travellers with their home–made Time Turners and ancient rituals, neo–Death Eaters who want to turn the tide of the battle in Voldemort’s favour, or devastated people trying to save their loved ones.

None of those created a Fracture as severe as this one.

There, in the Shrieking Shack, you hide, you watch, and you wait, hidden in the shadows as the subjective past plays out in real time. You watch as Severus Snape – who looks so young, so tired, so tormented – pleads with Voldemort to let him find the boy. You watch as Voldemort turns Nagini on him, the great snake’s fangs piercing his neck. You watch the Dark Lord abandon Snape on the grotty floor in a pool of his own blood, his fingers clutching his shredded throat. You watch as your father – only seventeen, younger than you – step out of his own hiding place to approach the dying man, bending over him. You watch Severus lash out with a hand, grabbing Harry by the front of his robes to rasp take it; you watch his memories pour out of his mouth and ears and eyes, gathered by Aunt Hermione into a flask.

Everything happens exactly as Harry said it did – exactly the way it’s written in all the history books about the War. Severus passes out, his hand falling to the floor with a heavy thump – assumed dead. Voldemort’s speech giving the Order an hour to dispose of their dead and treat the injured – one hour for Harry to give himself up.

You wait until Harry, Ron and Hermione leave the Shack to win the Battle to rush to Severus’s side. A pulse, you think. There should be a pulse, because if Severus Snape dies here, tonight, right now, alone and forgotten on the dank floor of this horrible place haunted by echoing screams, then your reality as you know it will vanish, and you will vanish with it – because there is no Lily Luna Potter without Severus Snape.

Because without Severus Snape, you would have died at the age of ten, your blood curdling and your body necrotising from the Hydra Poison as your parents scream outside the magi–operating theatre, Draco Malfoy’s Stasis Charm pointlessly holding you in suspension for a counteragent that would not have been created. You would have died at the age of eleven, under the thrashing branches of the Whomping Willow, your neck snapped and your life ebbing away, horribly aware of every second that slipped away. You would have died at the age of twelve, submerged deep below the surface of the frozen lake, the chilled water filling your lungs. You would have died at the age of thirteen, the Mors Essentiae sapping away at your very soul, stripping you of hope and joy leaving only despair and torment in its place, weakening and fading and becoming a husk in your own empty shell of a body, with no hope of an impossible cure. You would have died at the age of fifteen to Severus Snape’s cutting curse, then again that very same day to Bane’s blade through your heart, broken and battered and bleeding out on the cold stone altar in the Forbidden Forest, a wound in time finally being sutured.

(Maybe you were supposed to. Maybe you weren’t meant to survive that first time. What if that’s why you kept dying? What if that was the universe’s way of telling you that you were supposed to stay dead –)

But more than that:

The smartest, bravest man you have ever known – a man who has been more of a father to you than your own has, a man who has saved your life, time and time and time again – will be gone forever.

And that – that is unacceptable.

You slip your trembling fingers under the bloody, shredded collar around his torn throat, and there you feel it, the weak thready pulse of a man about to die.

You don’t understand. He survives, you know he survives. He’s been there your entire life, he lived. Harry defeats Voldemort and returns after the Battle and finds Severus Snape clinging to life, everyone knows that – it’s in all the history books, it’s what Harry said happened in all those post–War interviews he gave, it’s what’s taught in the History of Magic classes at Hogwarts.

But these wounds – how can anyone survive these wounds? He can’t die, this isn’t how it happened, this isn’t how it happened –

“You lived,” you choke, touching a shaking hand to Severus’s ice-cold cheek, his skin as white as marble. “I don’t understand. You survived. I know you survived. Severus. Severus, wake up – please –”

His breath rattles in his chest. His eyes flutter. His lips move.

He whispers your name.

Then Severus Snape breathes his last, and –

Chapter Text

Dear Ginny,

I don’t intend to send this letter, so it seems a bit pointless to have addressed it to you. I guess I could just write in a journal, but truth be told, whenever I put a quill to a diary, I freeze – because even now, after all these years, I’m scared that I’ll watch the ink absorb into the pages and see it reappear in his handwriting. But in this, I think you’re the only other person in the entire world who understands that terror. I don’t think I ever saw you write in a journal again after the Chamber of Secrets. So instead of a journal, I’m writing letters I’ll never send, because I don’t want anyone to write back.

It’s the day after James’s funeral. Probably should’ve started with that. Something happened yesterday that made me realise I need to... figure out what’s going on in my head. That’s what you wanted from me, right? A couple of years ago, during our trial separation, right outside the Hospital Wing where our daughter had just been returned to her bed where Snape was out cold in a chair beside her. I guess you couldn’t hold it in any longer. You at least waited long enough for me to cover Snape with a blanket before I told you I was leaving. You stormed out after me, threw up a careless silencing charm for all the good it did when Al was there in the room and could still see you screaming at me for abandoning Lily.

I think I realised it before you did, you know – the moment you stopped loving me. I don’t blame you. I hope you know that. I don’t blame you for falling out of love with me. You looked so tired in that moment, Gin. Like you hadn’t slept in a year. I’ll give you credit – you really did try to save our marriage. You fought so hard for us, for our family, and I’ll always love you for that. But how do you save a marriage where someone is a dead man walking? It took you too long to realise that Luna was more a husband to you than I was. Your voice went all quiet and hoarse and you looked at me with tears in your bloodshot eyes. “What’s going on with you, Harry?” you whispered. “What the fuck is going on with you? Why won’t you talk to me?”

Our daughter had died again for the fourth time, miraculously brought back by Severus, and you wanted me to cry. You wanted me to scream. You wanted me to break down and confess how unbearable it was, living in constant fear that we’d lose our daughter forever, that one day Snape wouldn’t be able to achieve the impossible and bring her back. You wanted me to tell you why I barely looked at Lily when she was home, why I stared at her when she wasn’t looking, why I talked to her like she was a ghost in the house, why I’d given up on her, why I was being such a fucking prat of a husband to you and an even worse father to our daughter. You wanted me to be who I was before we starting living our lives like an executioner’s blade hung over our necks. And I could’ve been that man again, if only I would talk.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I lied instead, and that was when your eyes darkened and your lips thinned and I saw the last flicker of love in your heart for me flutter and die out.

“Go on then,” you snapped. “Piss off back to your office. And don’t bother coming home!”

Another version of me would’ve fought for us. For you. For our family. But how could I? If I fought for you, I’d have had to bring you down with me. How could I condemn you to that, when what I knew had already killed me? I was – am – a dead man walking. Lily has died six times already and each of her deaths brought me closer and closer to the grave. I had to let you go, Gin. I had to, because Lily needs you to live for her.

So why write this now? What changed? Well. Nothing, really. Everything is inevitable and nothing matters, everything sucks and we’re all going to die. But I did something stupid at James’s funeral yesterday, and I think I finally need to get it all out of my head. You deserve to know all of this, but I guess Severus was right about me after all – I am a coward. You deserve so much better. You are the best mother our kids could have asked for and the most amazing wife I could ever have wished for. You know me better than I know myself sometimes. I laughed the first time you accused me of being half in love with Severus Snape that night he brought Al home and spent an hour – what was it you said? Serenading me on the piano? I guess he was. I guess I liked it. But you were right. You were always right about him, about me, about Lily. I deserved that slap you gave me at St Mungo’s, for that heinous thing I said. So after all this time, you’re finally getting what you wanted, one way or another: we need to talk about Lily.

Of our three children, I had the most in common with James, barely understood Albus on the best of days, and possessed a bond with Lily that you used to claim nearly turned your eyes green with envy. “But why does she have to be such a daddy’s girl,” you often moaned during Lily’s childhood, when she inevitably wanted to be picked up by me, play games with me, get read bedtimes stories by me, play tea parties with me, so on and so forth. For my part, I grinned and pointed out that you were James’s favourite so it was only fair, really, that I got to be Lily’s favourite. Then you’d smack my arm because that was an awful thing to say, Harry James Potter, our children love us equally and we love them all equally too. Which I didn’t disagree with. I do love all my children equally. I just… liked some of them more than others.

You know, I never imagined myself having kids when I was younger. How could I have, when the reality of my existence as the Boy Who Lived and the Chosen One weighed heavier on me with every year, the threat of Voldemort haunting my every waking and sleeping moments? I barely kept myself afloat between trauma and homework. If I ever did think about kids, it was in a fleeting, abstract sense: I’d only have kids if it was peacetime, of course. That was just the smart thing to do. What the hell were my own parents thinking, having a child at the age of twenty in the middle of a War against the darkest forces of evil known to the world at the time? Seriously, it was borderline irresponsible of them. Becoming a father at the sensible age of twenty-four during a truly peaceful era, I can say with some authority that twenty-year-olds have no business having children during war.

After marrying you – because of course we were always going to marry, who else was I going to meet post–War who knew me as someone other than the Boy Who Lived etc etc? – and while we were expecting James, the reality of imminent fatherhood set it and all those thoughts and fears I never allowed myself to dwell on when I was younger assaulted me for nine months straight. Would I be a good dad? It wasn’t like I’d had one for inspiration. Remus had been more like a distant uncle than a fatherly figure, and Sirius more like a bad influencer older brother. What if I was too nervous to hold the baby? Would my kids like me? Would I know what to do if they had trouble at school? Eventually you had enough of my fretting and kicked me through the fireplace with instructions for Ron, George and Charlie to get me drunk so you could have one night of peace before James came along.

It helped, but what actually cured me of my fears was fatherhood itself – when I held James for the first time and knew I would never drop our son. Then I was too busy being a dad to worry about all those other things, and for everything else I didn’t know, I ended up asking Arthur, since the man raised five perfectly decent sons, one amazing daughter, and… Percy.

Then Albus Severus came along and proved that I was right to fear fatherhood after all. I just did not get that kid, Ginny. Yeah. I’m I prat. But Merlin help me, I tried to understand him. To be fair, you did warn me about saddling him with the weight of those names. Albus and Severus. Poor kid was doomed from the start. It’s not his fault I struggled with him getting Sorted into Slytherin and then buddying up with Scorpius Malfoy.

Oh, but Lily. It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when I knew Lily better than I knew James or Al or even you. I knew her frowns, I could read her bright smiles, I knew that little glint in her eyes and the expression she wore just before she was about to cause untold mischief. I never had any doubts or fears or insecurities with her. Not until… not until she started dying like the universe itself was determined to take her back.

Then, as it transpired, I ended up not being as shit of a dad to Al as I could have been because I couldn’t figure him out, because I was too busy being a shit dad to our daughter over her repeated brushes with death.

Kind of comforting to know that one way or another, I’d have been a shit dad to at least one of our kids.

I used to wonder, in my darkest moments, what sort of world this would’ve been if my mother had stepped aside and let Voldemort kill me. A worse one? A better one? Didn’t matter – at least she’d have lived, and that seemed like a fair trade off to me – my death instead of hers. Sometimes I longed for time to change, I wished I could go back and tell her to just do what Voldemort ordered, because I wanted her to live. But as a parent myself, to our three amazing children, I eventually realised she would never have done that. She would never have let me die. That’s what being a parent is all about – knowing that there is no version of reality that you’d ever choose yourself over your child. Knowing there is no greater cruelty than outliving your own child.

There’s a lot I could have done differently over the years since that first death, that awful night we received the fake letter filled with poison. So many things I should have done differently. But at the same time, it was always meant to be this way. I know you can’t understand this yet, and when the time comes that you do understand you’ll hate me all over again. But I needed to spare you, Ginny. I needed to spare you, because I knew how much Lily would need you. I needed to spare you because I love Lily so, so much, and I needed you to be the strong one for her while I became a dead man walking, carrying a burden of knowledge no father should.

I love you. I hope you know that. I’ll always love you. Maybe not the way we once loved each other, but you’re the mother of my children, one of my best friends – we’ve shared so much, endured the impossible together. It’s impossible to not love you. I’m glad you and Luna have found each other. You’ll need her too, when the time comes.

Thank you for everything. And I’m so, so sorry.

Your (ex)husband,

Harry James Potter

Chapter Text

Dear Albus, 

At the time of writing this letter – which, like the one I wrote to your mum, I’m not going to send (sorry) – I’m sitting in a pub. Not drinking, though. Don’t worry. Your old man isn’t turning into a lush. Not yet, anyway. No, I’m just sitting at the bar feeling sorry for myself. I do a lot of that these days. I don’t think I like myself, like this, but it’s hard to feel otherwise.  

Sorry. I haven’t explained it yet, not really. I was going to in my letter to your mum but then I went on a big tangent about my successes and/or failures as a father and by the time I got to the end, I didn’t feel like trying to write about the mindfuckery that is time travel. You, though? I think you’d understand. Or at least a version of you would. Ha. You’d laugh if you knew what I was talking about. 

Soon after I figured out why Lily was dying, I was... desperate. Panicked. I figured it out soon after the Whomping Willow incident. Gin and I took Lily home to rest and recover and we received a house call from Draco Malfoy. More on that another time, in another letter. Needless to say, I emerged from that meeting with a final piece of a puzzle I didn’t even know I’d been putting together for twenty years, knowing with full certainty that your sister did something terrible during the Battle of Hogwarts. 

I did what any sane person would do and broke into the Department of Mysteries. Not my cleverest moment, but I was in pretty extreme denial about... everything. I used some clearance spells that I definitely abused to get through the enchantments and traps, and headed straight for the one room I knew was absolutely forbidden to be in. The Time Room.  

After the Battle of Hogwarts and Voldemort’s defeat – thoroughly sensationalised over the years, since few believed I really defeated him with a simple Expelliarmus and instead ascribed my victory to mysterious and ridiculous powers I don’t possess – the world was essentially my oyster. Weird expression, that – not one used by the wizarding world as such, but it was what Hermione had said breathlessly over a round of drinks in Aberforth’s bar some months after the Battle when she, Ron and I all received quiet, one-time-only offers to get involved in the dark and dangerous depths of the Ministry: the Department of Mysteries.  

“Think about it,” Ron had said. The dying flames from the fireplace reflected in his unfocused eyes, all us of on just one drink too many. “We could get access to spells no one’s ever been allowed to hear about. The three of us, as Unspeakables – we wouldn’t be answerable to anyone, not even the Minister for Magic –” 

“And that’s precisely why we shouldn’t,” Hermione said. “The complete lack of oversight that the Department of Mysteries operates with is incredibly dangerous! The temptation to abuse that power – I'm honestly shocked it’s been allowed to go on this long.” 

“Are you saying that because you actually think it’s unethical, or because you’re worried that you’d give in to that temptation?” Ron jabbed back. Hermione’s flush was answer enough. Ron and I both knew her too well for her to get away with denying, it after all – not after we witnessed her hold a grown woman hostage in a glass jar for an undetermined amount of time before blackmailing her. 

“That’s not the point,” Hermione replied hotly. “The point is – oh, you remember what we saw in the Department of Mysteries. The rooms there, the artefacts – I’m sure it barely scratched the surface of what the Unspeakables are working on. I can only begin to hypothesise what else might be going on in those chambers. Mysteries of life and death, the invention of new spells that could revolutionise society as we know it. Even time travel.” 

“Nuh-uh,” Ron said. “Time Turners all got broken, remember?” 

“You’re not so naïve as to think that time turners are the only methods of altering the past, are you, Ronald Weasley?” 

“Wait,” I said, only slurring a little bit. “Are you saying that if we all become Unspeakables, we could – what, learn how to time travel?” 

Hermione stared at me. I stared at Ron. Ron stared at Hermione. We were all thinking the same thing. 

Colin Creevy. Lavender Brown. Fred, Remus, Tonks. Cedric Diggory. Sirius.

The dying fireplace crackled and startled us before the unspoken idea could seduce us. Ron had laughed, Hermione smiled sheepishly, and I nursed my firewhiskey while I tried not to imagine a world where I had the power to save everyone I ever knew and loved at the tips of my fingers. We respectfully declined the invitation from the unknown Unspeakable. We moved on with our lives. Hermione finished her studies. Ron and I joined the Aurors. The rest, as they say, was history. 

And then, there I was. In the Department of Mysteries, staring into the raw stream of Time itself, sick to my stomach with the knowledge that somehow my daughter had done something so fundamentally wrong that reality itself was broken. 

Before I get into what I saw in the raw stream of Time, there’s something I should... disclose. The Hydra Poison that started all of this mess. Your uncle Ron was the one who hunted down the neo-Death Eaters and apprehended them, while I was on stress leave from the DMLE to stay at home with Ginny and help Lily recover from the poison. Life sentence to Azkaban for most of them, but the culprit, the one responsible for the creation of the potion, was a young woman by the name of Delphi. An orphan, like me. No last name to speak of. No family, only a bunch of Death Eater cultists who filled her head with some delusion of being Voldemort’s secret daughter. Due to the severity of the crime and the intensity of her delusions, all names and motives from the crime were locked and sealed, and those in the know agreed to silence enforced by Unbreakable Vows at the discretion of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. As far as I know, Miss Delphi was Obliviated, served some time in Azkaban, then was sent to live with a lovely Squib couple in France and eventually became an accountant for a small magical legal firm. 

I mention this because when I stared into the raw loop of Time itself, I experienced a stream of memories that I knew had never actually happened and yet were undeniably mine. A different version of reality where Severus Snape died, and Lily Luna’s life was unaffected – a reality where instead of being a terrible father to her, I was a terrible father to you. 

It’s strange living with two sets of memories in one’s head. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I forget which one is real. In that version of reality, your mum and I are still married. James is alive. Lily’s favourite subject is Charms, not Arithmancy. Luna’s husband is still alive. And Severus Snape is dead. That’s the branch in our timelines: Severus Snape’s death. But I’ll get to that later. This letter is about you. This memory is the same in both timelines – you were afraid of breaking the family tradition and getting sorted into Slytherin. I told you that I would be proud of you no matter what House you ended up in because I didn’t actually think you’d be anything other than a Gryffindor. That night you wrote and told us you were Sorted into Slytherin alongside Scorpius Malfoy.

Oof.

The key difference that I can pick out between the two timelines is that in that other reality, Scorpius Malfoy was plagued by rumours of being Voldemort’s secret time-travel baby via the late Astoria Greengrass. It seems like such a stupid thing for anyone to take seriously. I mean, really? Voldemort cuckholding Draco Malfoy via Time Turner? Obviously such rumours never existed in our timeline, and I think Severus Snape’s fierce protectiveness over the Malfoys are the reason for that. No one would dare accuse his beloved godson of being Voldemort’s secret lovechild with the tragically kind, tragically dead Astoria Greengrass. Also, Draco Malfoy became a Healer in our timeline. As far as I could tell he was just rich and unemployed in the other one, so I guess he didn’t have the same reformed image as he does in our world. And he only became a Healer because of... Severus Snape.

It all keeps coming back to him. Every single fucking time.

Anyway.  

In the other reality, Draco approached me for help in clearing Scorpius’s name from the rumours with a statement about all Time Turners being destroyed. But I couldn’t, because in that reality, a Time Turner was still in existence. You and I kept drifting apart. Lily started Hogwarts with no incident. Rose turned into a mean bitch and wouldn’t have a bar of you and Scorpius, which seems strange considering how tight the three of you are in this world. Around the same time, Amos Diggory’s “niece” approached me asking for help to go back in time to save Cedric Diggory’s life.  

I declined, obviously. Absolute madness.  

You, though? In this other timeline, you and I were so at odds that I couldn’t even give you a sentimental gift without it turning into a fight, and I said something... pretty awful. I don’t know why I feel so wretched about it, it’s not like I actually said it to you in this reality, but the memory of it is so crystal clear in my mind that every time I think of it, I want to gag.  

Sometimes I wish you weren’t my son. 

The worst thing I did to you in this version of reality was name you after Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. An unimaginably cruel thing, Severus once said, which made me laugh. Unfair, perhaps, to pit a newborn against the legacy of the two worst and greatest men I’d ever known, but not cruel. Your mother tolerated my need for a legacy with our first two kids (as the Weasley family/legacy names were all already taken by her older brothers for their own children by the time you and James came along), but she sure put her foot down when Lily was born and gave her Luna’s name because “it’s absolutely fucking deranged of you to want to name our daughter after your dead owl, Harry!” Personally, I still think Lily Hedwig Potter had a nice ring to it. 

Sorry. Back on track.  

In this other version of reality, you and Scorpius decided to help Amos and his niece, Delphi Diggory. Yeah – Delphi. That Delphi. You stole the prototype Time Turner, you went back in time to stop Cedric’s death by sabotaging him during the third trial. Here’s where my memories of this timeline get a bit fuzzy, because as far as I can tell it involved some internal loops that you and Scorpius were involved in that I wasn’t “alive” for. Weird, right? That I remember that? You both fucked up the timeline because you’re not supposed to mess with time like that. FUCK.  

I’m not angry at you. I’m not. You didn’t even do this. This is another version of you. And that other version of you only did it because I was a piece of shit! Long story short, you and Scorpius fucked up, you tried to fix it, fucked up even worse and erased yourself and me from reality for a little while, then Scorpius fixed it and you realised Delphi was Voldemort’s secret lovechild with Bellatrix LeStrange (or so she claimed; I have my doubts) and the whole thing was a plot by her to change the timeline to ensure Voldemort’s victory, and we all ended up on Halloween, 1981, where I had to ensure the timeline occurred as it should. I had to listen to Voldemort murder my parents. Well. The other me did. I just remember it.

After that... I guess things must have gotten better. I have some fleeting memories of you and Scorpius making more friends at school. Rose dated Scorpius for a while. That was weird. Ginny and I stayed happily if blandly married.  Your brother and sister were largely unaffected, and life went on. I stepped up my parenting game to you after all that time travel mess.

I don’t think I was a bad father to you, Al. Not in this reality, at least. Maybe just an average one. Slightly above mediocre. But a way better father than I would have been to you in that other timeline.  

I think I would have absorbed more memories, but before I could, I was wrenched away from the raw streams of Time by an Unspeakable. It’s weird – she is so clear as a presence in my mind but I can’t recall anything about her, except how grizzled she was. Well into her hundreds, without a doubt – older than Dumbledore when he died. But crackling with fury and power.  

“So, Harry Potter,” she growled. “You think being the Boy Who Lived, the Saviour, the Chosen One, gives you the right to invade the Department of Mysteries again for your own selfish cause?” 

“I – no, wait, you don’t understand –” 

“Oh, don’t I?” she spat. “You declined my invitation to join the ranks of the Unspeakables years ago. To enter now after such an insult – why should I not throw you through the Veil this instant?”  

“I’m here about my daughter!” I yelled. “Lily Luna Potter!” 

That’s what I tried to say. What came out was: 

“I’m here about my daughter! L̸̫̔͋͗͘i̸͍͉̪̫̽̊̔̾l̷̻͆̄ͅý̷̫͙͒͛ ̵̧̨̼̝͆̇̀̏L̴̬̲͊ű̸̜ǹ̷̛̘̙ą̷͉͚̺̉͠ ̷̩̭̻̋P̷̧̆ ̷̩̭̻̋–” I broke off, choked, and tried again. “L̷̗͂͝i̴̭͒̋ļ̵͆͋ỵ̴̡̐̕ ̶̯̈̈́L̸̨̎u̷̼͌͝n̷̝͆a̶͉͒̕ ̷̼̭̈́P̷̧̆o̴̺͆͝t̶͙̍͘͜ ̷̩̭̻̋–” 

The Unspeakable barked a laugh. “You cannot speak the Forbidden Name in this room, Mr Potter,” she said. “Try it one more time and your tongue will be taken from you, for daring to utter the name of the ruin of the Sacred Loop.” 

“The ruin of – what? What are you talking about?” 

“The Daughter of Tomorrow,” she said with scoff. “That’s what the Centaurs call her. The daughter of a tomorrow that shall never be, and all of us are trapped in a fractured world caused by her selfishness. She inherited that from you, you know. That drive to save someone she should have let die. Oh yes, I know what you saw in the timestream, Mr Potter. A veritable utopia compared to your current reality. Does it comfort you to know that you were only mildly better at being a father in the World That Should Have Been than this reality?” 

My head was swimming. There were so many things I could have said, or should have responded to, but all I could blurt out was, “You’re saying – those memories I have now – those were... real?” 

The Unspeakable shrugged. “Yes. And no. They are from the reality we should all be in, had your daughter not created a dangerous paradox. Or perhaps she is the paradox. Out of synchronisation with time itself, a girl twice or three times dead and yet she breathes, a broken child –” 

“She’s not broken!” 

“Broken and twisted and mangled and shattered, just like this reality. We are all of us entangled in the knot she recklessly created.” 

I couldn’t breathe. “I have to save her,” I gasped. “I can fix this. I know I can. I just have to –” 

The Unspeakable slapped me across the face.  

For an old woman, she knew how to hit. My head snapped sideways, my cheek burning and my eyes watering from the force of it.  

“You and her and your saving people thing,” the Unspeakable snapped while I was stunned into silence. “She is beyond saving, Harry Potter. Your daughter disobeyed every single rule of this Department, violated the demands of Time itself. The paradox cannot be tampered with, and the World That Should Have Been is forbidden to us now. Any attempt to reverse what your wretched child has done will erase us all from existence.” 

“But she hasn’t done anything yet!” I cried. “She’s not even twelve, she’s just a child, she –” 

“What she did, she did on the second of May, 1998. She has been torn apart and sundered by time. She is shredded across reality. There is nothing you can do.” 

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t accept that –” 

“You must, Mr Potter. Your daughter died before she was even born.” 

She must have sensed my agony in that moment, because her gaze suddenly softened and she reached out to grasp my elbow, steadying me before I could collapse. Or rather to start dragging me to the exit.  

“I regret that you had find out so soon,” she said quietly. “Not many people would have worked it out, Mr Potter. But it’s best that you mourn her now and learn to live with this burden, so you may enjoy the years you have left with her.”  

“Aren’t you going to Obliviate me?” I asked numbly. 

The Unspeakable tilted her head, narrowing her eyes at me. I think she must have Legilimised me. I wasn’t as good at Occlumency then as I eventually became. “No, I don’t think I shall need to, no matter how much you wish I would,” she said, with something like pity in her tone. I allowed her to guide me out of the Department of Mysteries in a trance. “Perhaps your memories of the World That Should Have Been will offer you comfort while you endure the wait for the paradox to complete itself. But I must warn you, Mr Potter: do not return here. Do not attempt to intervene. And speak of this to no one.” 

“No one? How can I keep this to myself?” 

“Harry,” she said sadly, “do you truly wish for any of your loved ones to feel the same agony you do?” 

I think about the World That Should Have Been a lot, Al. I think about how I wish it was real, even though it would have meant your life sucked balls. What sort of awful father does that make me? Wishing for you to suffer through bullying and bad parenting, so that our family as a whole might suffer just a little less. Lily whole, James alive, your parents still in love and married, your uncle Ron and aunt Hermione also still in love and married. A rough few years with a crazy girl claiming to be Voldemort’s daughter and wiping you from the timeline for a bit, but it all worked out in the end.

You make it in every universe, Al, because you’re the strongest of all of us. You, my young potions genius. My Slytherin son. Best friends (or more?) with Scorpius Malfoy. Severus Snape’s hand-picked apprentice. The way you helped Severus with that potion to cure your sister of the Mors Essentaie… I’ve never been prouder of you. I hope you know how highly I regard you. How deeply I respect you. I was barely around in this world anyway and you turned out so... so brilliantly. And I can’t even congratulate myself on that. Half of it is Severus’s doing, and it’s only Severus’s doing because he lived. 

What an unimaginably cruel thing your sister has done to us all.  

I’d like to scream, but I won’t. I screamed a lot when I was fifteen. Screaming is hard work. I don’t have the energy for it anymore. No, I think I’m going to order a drink now. Something strong enough to get me through the next letter.

To you, Albus Severus Potter – and the World That Should Have Been.  

Your father, 

Harry

Chapter Text

Dear James,

How does one start a letter to one’s dead son? Do I apologise to you? Do I acknowledge you in the past tense, can I write to you as if you’re still here? I had some vague idea of arranging the other letters to get delivered after I die in however many years or decades from now, but this one… I guess this one is for catharsis.

I’ll start with this. Your funeral was a week ago. It was a nice ceremony. Quiet, respectful. Friends and family only. You were laid to rest in the Godric’s Hollow graveyard, close to my parents. The wake was held in our home. Lily wept silently the whole time. Ginny wouldn’t look at me. But aside from that… I think you’d have appreciated the reserved proceedings, albeit that you’d probably have wanted more music or some jokes to lighten the mood. Of course, it’s a bit hard to joke at your son’s funeral.

Sorry if this doesn’t, uh… make much sense. I only meant to have one drink, but then I knocked back a couple more than I should have after I finished writing your brother’s letter. Don’t worry, I’m… I’m looking after myself. I know you were worried about that, during the trial separation. You were my rock through those months – always checking in to see how I was going, whether I was eating, encouraging me to take up piano lessons again in my downtime instead of brooding… You know who you reminded me of? Not myself, or even either of your namesakes. No, you reminded me of Cedric Diggory. A good, kind, compassionate young man, cut down before his time in a senseless, ruthless murder for being in the way of the true victim –

I’d better not go there. Not if I want to get through the rest of this letter without ruining the ink and parchment with tears.

What I was trying to say was, you don’t have to worry about me. Really. Teddy is spending a lot of time with me. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m planning on giving the Invisibility Cloak to them. It should really go to Al, or Lily, but I think Al just wants to move on with things (that is, wants to move out and live with Scorpius and commit himself to a Potions apprenticeship) and to give it to Lily… I think that would hurt her more than anything. Bad enough she carries you in her chest, a constant reminder of what happened. She’s been through too much to also carry another reminder of what you sacrificed.

Oh, yeah. Your mother and I are getting divorced for real. It was inevitable, of course, but this… this was the feather that broke the hippogriff’s back, so to speak. Don’t blame yourself. The writing was on the wall for years. Even you knew it was coming. Just last year, over dinner after you graduated and just before you applied for the Auror program, you raised it yourself. “Dad,” you said, “I have to ask... is it because of Professor Snape?”

“Is what because of Snape,” I asked.

“You and mum separating. Because it’s fine if it is! I mean, it’s a bit – odd, sure, but I won’t... I’m not going to judge you or anything.”

It wasn’t because of Severus Snape, no more than it was about Ginny and Luna. We’d gone years as it was already knowing about our extramarital emotional affairs and being completely fine with it. If not for the fact that I was being a wretched cunt about Lily and Ginny couldn’t stand it anymore, your mum and I would probably have stayed together for, well, forever. Maybe invited our respective emotional affair partners into the marriage. Ha. Can you imagine Severus reacting to that? Then again, given how close he and Ginny are now, maybe he’d’ve taken us up on it.

Not that you needed to know that.

“No, James,” I said, and left it at that.

“But you do have feelings for him.”

“And what, precisely, would you know about that?”

You pointedly stared at the piano. “It’s... kind of obvious, dad,” you said. “For what it’s worth, I think he also –”

“Also what,” I said sharply.

“Nothing,” you muttered, then quietly excused yourself from the dinner table and went back to studying for your Auror exam.

(I have to assume you were going to say something about Severus’s… feelings. I think it’s safe to say those feelings (whatever they are) are reciprocated, given he snogged back. But it was poor taste of me to do that at your funeral, right after accusing him that everything would have been easier if he’d died that night during the Battle of Hogwarts. Sorry for desecrating your wake, James. My father and Sirius are probably rolling in their graves.)

When you told me you were becoming an Auror, I thought – why? Since when? What for? You were always fine at DADA – a solid EE for your NEWTs. You didn’t show any particular interest in offensive and defensive magic. Even the rest of your subjects you excelled in academically and magically, but the only subject that you flourished in was History of Magic. It’s same in the World That Should Have Been. Sorry, you don’t know about that – that was Al’s letter – but take my word for it. You were supposed to become the new Professor of History of Magic at Hogwarts, right after Professor Binns looked up from his notes one day, realised he was dead, and passed on.

When I asked you why you were going for the Auror course, you muttered something about following in my footsteps. But I know that was a lie, James. Becoming an Auror isn’t supposed to be a nepotism thing or a default-career thing because it was “expected” of you. It requires passion. You had passion, but not for the job, not like I did. You became one of the youngest Aurors in the history of the DMLE because you wanted to protect Lily.

I did tell you not to do it, just for Lily. You took it the wrong way, of course. You thought I was telling you not to bother, because she was just going to die again anyway, and I think a part of you never really forgave me for that. But that wasn’t what I meant. I wanted you to live your own life, James – free from expectations. I wanted you to be free to be the man you deserved to be, a man free from the paradox your sister locked us all in when she chose to save Severus’s life that night during the Battle of Hogwarts.

But no. You just couldn’t let it be. You inherited my saving people thing. You just had to become an Auror, you just had to bully McGonagall into overseeing the duelling club at Hogwarts specifically to keep an eye on Lily, you just had to rush into danger to save your sister to make up for your ‘guilt’ over failing to protect her in her first year from the hazing and the Whomping Willow, for failing to save her from the Lake, for being ‘useless’ when she was dying from the Faileghast attack. I told you none of that was your fault, I told you that it wasn’t on your shoulders. Why couldn’t you believe me, James? Why couldn’t you trust me when I promised you that I didn’t hold you responsible for any of it?

Stupid of me to ask that. I know why, of course. Because if I was in your position, if I didn’t have the knowledge I have – of the World That Should Have Been, of what Lily did – what Lily will do – then I’d have felt the same as you.

That day when you Floo’d me at my office to tell me that Lily had died again the morning of the duelling club – a fucking Sectumsepmra, of all curses – didn’t surprise me. I’d known it was only a matter of time before another Rube Goldberg death struck. (Oh, sorry, that won’t make sense to you, but don’t worry, I’ll cover that in another letter.) I was just so relieved that it was so… innocuous, I guess? No collateral damage, no days on end stressing about it, no Stasis Charm, no miraculous potion to be produced within a set number of hours. Just rapid blood-loss, a defib charm, blood replenishing potion, and Severus was right there with the healing spell. Lily was going to make such a swift recovery she didn’t even have to leave Hogwarts for specialised treatment. Seemed almost kind compared to the other deaths to date. And then none of us would have to worry about another death for months or even years. That was the pattern, right?

“Thanks for telling me,” I replied, and looked back down at my paperwork.

I’ll regret that for the rest of my life.

“You fucking prick,” you snapped.

You had never taken that tone with me before. Ever.

“Excuse me?” I said. My eyebrows must’ve been up to my scar.

I’ll never forget your expression, James. That visceral disgust. And I couldn’t even say I didn’t deserve it. “You heard me,” you said. “I called you a fucking prick. I tell you that your daughter almost died again today and the only thing you can say is thanks for telling me? We all know you checked out of Lily’s life a long time ago but you could at least make a fucking effort to pretend to care! Ask me how she is! Ask if she’s still in the Hospital Wing or if she wants you to visit her! Do you even want to know about what’s going to happen to the little shithead who cast the curse?”

“Don’t,” I growled, “talk to me like that.”

“I wouldn’t talk to you like this if you could just get your head out of your ass!”

“James Sirius Potter –”

“Don’t full name me, Harry James Potter,” you snapped right back. “I defended you for years. You know? When you first started spiraling after Lily’s second or third death, I begged mum to get you help for your depression.”

“I’m not fucking depressed, James!”

“But you are! Look at you! You mourned Lily so hard you put yourself in the grave! I barely recognise you these days. What happened to my dad? The guy who bought me my first broomstick and took my flying at midnight at Christmas when I was five, so we could see the stars? These days I’m lucky to get two words out of you if I ask you what you want for dinner!”

I’m not going to rewrite our entire argument. It’s too... too painful. Worse than the memories I have of my alternate self, telling Albus that I wished he wasn’t my son. Once you left in a storm of fire and ash through the Floo, I slumped back down at my desk and contemplated storming the Department of Mysteries again. The Unspeakable warned me what would happen if I tried to mess with time, but god, anything would be better than this, wouldn’t it? Anything would have been better than the urgent notice I received a few hours later from St Mungo’s telling me to come urgently, that there’d been a terrible incident. Anything would have been better than hearing Draco Malfoy’s voice break as he delivered the blow, telling me that you died saving Lily, that your body was only brought home because Severus Splinched himself in half to your sister to safety and bring your body with them, that the only chance Lily had to live a little longer was to cut your heart out of your chest and transplant it into her instead.

Anything, even a world where I died and Voldemort won, would have been better than living in a world where you were gone. Anything. Even oblivion.

No parent should ever have to outlive their own children. And I can’t even take comfort in the fact that your heart still beats in Lily’s chest now, because –

Well. I’ve said it enough already, haven’t I.

I know Lily sometimes thinks that I wish Severus had saved you instead of her. I can’t even say she’s wrong, because then at least all of this would just be... gone. And I wouldn’t have to wake up every morning with another reality’s memories thinking you’re alive, getting out of bed to greet you and your siblings, then remembering halfway down the hallway that you’re gone and the last thing I ever said to you was that you were a stupid, arrogant little boy playing at being an adult.

I’ve lived the last seven years knowing I’d lose my daughter, but never in my darkest nightmares did I think I’d have to bury you first.

I love you, James. I miss you with all my heart.

Your father, always,

Harry

Chapter Text

Severus,

In another world, you died in the Shrieking Shack on 2 May 1998.

In this world, you survived. And you have ruined everything.

Dear Severus,

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you. You weren’t... I’m not... we’re not ready for that. I don’t think we ever will be. It’s fucked up, isn’t it? Our entire dynamic. We –

Severus,

You were supposed to die. Why didn’t you die? Everything would have been so much easier if you’d –

Severus,

I’m not going to restart your letter this time. Whatever I write, I’m going to commit to, otherwise I’ll never get this out. A fair warning: this one is going to be… messy. But that’s us, isn’t it. We’re a mess. Or at least, I am these days. I think you got yourself figured out in the post-War years. You lucky, ignorant fucking bastard.

It’s been a month since James’s funeral. I’ve spent just about every day since then holed up at home, sitting at the piano, playing a song I keep getting wrong. I haven’t been allowed to return to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement yet, but that’s all right. I don’t think I’ll go back anyway. I’m so… tired, Severus. Is this how you felt in that final year at Hogwarts during the War? Brittle, exhausted, on edge, crushed under the weight of what you knew and what you had to do? Counting down the days, wanting it to all end?

God, I was so close to admitting to everything that night you returned Albus home, shared a drink with me and played the piano while we bared our souls to each other in the most reserved way possible. It was on the tip of my tongue. I think if you had just pressed on my Occlumency shields a little harder, I’d have shown everything to you, so we could be miserable together – or so that you could stop the knot from tightening around us all. “When I came back to the Shrieking Shack, I was so sure I was coming back to collect your corpse,” I remember telling you. “All those years I’d hated you and feared you and mistrusted you, only for your memories to alter everything I thought I’d ever known in the space of a few minutes – it was awful. The thought that I’d never be able to – to make amends, to apologise to you, or set things right –”

“Perhaps you are under some misconception that I’d desired any of those things,” you replied. “I was a spy, Potter. A double agent. I was prepared to die in my duty and service, without hope, without witness, without reward.”

“You were alone.” That was a lie. I knew you weren’t alone. I knew Lily was there with you. But you thought you were alone, and still you faced death – just as I had done, with no one but the ghosts of my past.

You frowned, perhaps half-remembering the touch of a future ghost’s lips upon your forehead in the second before your suspended death. “I was at peace,” you said.

I can’t remember what I said after that. Something about respecting you, and a half-lie about how I don’t know if could have done what you did all those years. Because I could, you know. I was. I am. Every single day I wake up and I withhold knowledge that could make or break this very reality. Because I know, I understand what a burden you carried all those years. I can’t pinpoint the moment I realised what I felt for you was... a bit more than just respect. Sometime after seeing Dumbledore’s memories and understanding everything you endured for the sake of the War, probably, but it didn’t become real until our lives collided in St Mungo’s and Draco summoned you to save Lily’s life from the Hydra Poison. I think if I’d told you everything, you of all people would have understood.

But you were right about me, Severus – I am a coward. Even when you nearly wrested the truth from my mind when you attacked me at the hospital, I still couldn’t bear to destroy you with the truth the way the truth destroyed me. So the closest I ever came to admitting it was that night at the piano.

“When I found you alive, it was like – a miracle,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it. No one could have survived those wounds, not after so much time had passed. At the time I thought… maybe Lily was watching over you.”

Ask, I remember thinking. Ask how you survived those wounds after all that time. Ask which Lily.

But you didn’t. I think you subconsciously did know, because you twitched at what I said and haltingly agreed, “Perhaps she was.”

I nearly kissed you that evening. When you finished playing that song and our drinks were almost gone, the warmth of your body next to mine and the weight of the world on our shoulders. I wanted to kiss you. I should have kissed you. But the moment passed. You stood up. Ginny returned home, you left, and soon after that Ginny tore into me. Not about the fact that I was in a daze and had basically admitted to being in love with you to your face – seriously, I told you that I loved the Half-Blood Prince and you didn’t respond? – but about the fact that I was being absolutely ludicrous where you and Lily were concerned and she was considering just divorcing me already so you could co-parent the kids with me instead, maybe that would get my head out of my ass. I didn’t hang around. I said goodbye to Al and went to my office at the DMLE to go through the Rolf Scamander case again.

Ron came by an hour later. “Ginny told me what she said.” He clapped me on the back. “Don’t worry about it, mate. You know how she can get, when she’s angry about something. I mean, weird accusation, saying you were in love with Snape, but I reckon –”

“She’s right,” I said.

Ron looked as though he wanted to be anywhere else. I wanted to be anywhere else. “Okay. Well. Okay.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean – yeah – you always were fixated on him, weren’t you? Even before he gave you his memories and you went back to save him. At school you were always watching him. Talking about him. Trying to figure him out.”

“I thought he was evil,” I protested, because I hadn’t been thinking about you that way when I was at school, for Merlin’s sake.

“I just meant, you have always been kind of intense about him. After you found out about his true loyalties, you pretty much became his personal champion. Like, fanatical. I always figured it was misplaced guilt – don’t argue, you absolutely do that, Hermione and I always said so – but…”

The truth of your loyalties, the magnitude of what you did during the War to save us all, was definitely part of it. The bigger part of it was the night you created a bespoke counteragent to the Hydra Poison to save my daughter’s life – and then all the years afterwards, when I became obsessed with you and every single second of your life. I traced every branch of your life, analysed every single impact you made on this world since you survived the Battle of Hogwarts. How could I not hate and love you in equal measure, for being so brilliant, for being alive, for saving my daughter, for being the very reason she died so many times?

Sit down, Severus. You’re gonna need a hard drink for this.

Because you survived the War, you became something of a figurehead for both sides. For our side, you were the bravest soldier of the entire War – the spy who risked it all and gave everything he was to the cause. The man who deceived Voldemort. For the surviving Death Eaters who were loyal to their cause, you represented their Master’s downfall. They rallied. They attacked. They tried to go after you countless times, but after you woke up from your coma and recovered you vanished overseas for a few years, so the Death Eaters turned their attention towards the society that no longer tolerated them. The Aurors hunted them. And I was good at hunting them. But it was like cutting heads off a Hydra. Hah. Hydra. The poison that started it all, created by Delphi the supposed “daughter of Voldemort” who sent it to my daughter in a fake Hogwarts acceptance letter to hurt me. And you – incredibly, impossibly – saved her.

It was because of that (and Albus being a menace at school, you having awoken his fascination with potions experimentation), that McGonagall invited you to return to Hogwarts to fill the vacant Potions Master position. After Lily’s next brush with death at the branches of the Whomping Willow, I asked James what had happened that night – why he hadn’t gone out to search for the missing first year students. Not to blame him – never to blame him – but because I needed to understand every element of that night. You know what he told me? He said the only reason he hadn’t gone out was because you had gone out. Soon after that I peered into the streams of Time itself in the Department of Mysteries and remembered memories of a life I should have lived instead: memories of the same incident, where you weren’t a Hogwarts Professor, where James did go out after the first years and halted the hazing before it got too far. Lily was never supposed to be anywhere near the Whomping Willow in the first place. There but for the grace of God, as the Muggles are fond of saying.

The third death, drowning in the icy Lake. This one is a bit… abstract, but bear with me. Rose’s bad grades in your class. Remember that? She went from a model student to a failing grade in a term. I remember, because Hermione wouldn’t stop crying about it and how it was her fault because Rose had figured out she and Ron were divorced. Except Rose’s grades had nothing to do with Hermione and Ron separating. Rose already knew. No, her bad grades were caused by her boyfriend breaking up with her. He broke up with her because his parents moved overseas to take their son out of school, to get away from the ‘Scourge of Hogwarts’ as the returning Potions Master. So Rose was miserable, so she had a bad parent-teacher interview, so she didn’t join her cousins ice skating on the Lake because she was moping, so she couldn’t help get everyone off the cracking ice in time like she did in the World That Should Have Been, she knew the structural integrity of the Lake was wrong and prevented a catastrophic drowning. Wild, right?

The fourth death – the Faileghast. This one took me a while to figure out. I mentioned something about Lily’s Rube Goldberg deaths in my last letter. You’ve spent time in the Muggle world, I don’t have to explain that reference to you. Still, even this one feels… extremely bizarre. Are you ready?

My failing marriage. That wasn’t really your fault, of course. I mean, it was, partially, but Ginny and I had lived together for years knowing we were half in love with other people – she with Luna (I looked the other way) and me with you (she thought it was hilarious, until it wasn’t). But here’s the thing: Luna’s husband Rolf died in our timeline. He was alive and well in the World That Should Have Been. So what changed? It took me ages to work this one out. It’s ludicrous. And yes – it ties back to you. Because everything ties back to you. Lily was only at Hogwarts that break with James and Albus because Ginny and I were trialling a separation and didn’t want our kids around that, but the Faileghast wouldn’t have been anywhere near Hogwarts in the other timeline because Rolf Scamandar didn’t die trying to rescue a rare magical creature from the black-market trade after turning down a position as the Chief Consulting Magizoologist for the Prophet. A job he only turned down because you, Severus Snape, wrote a research paper in 2004 about the creature’s rare parts showing up in the black-markets in the first place, which prompted Rolf to go after the trading ring, which ended with his death, which resulted in Luna taking up her late husband’s work and hunting the Faileghast, driving it all the way to Scotland where Lily was at school during the break to get afflicted with the Mors Essentiae…

Yeah. I feel like I need a pinboard and some red string, too.

Lily’s fifth and six deaths are easy. She didn’t join the duelling club in the World That Should Have Been and she didn’t take Arithmancy. And she wasn’t a paradox in the other world, because she was never under the Stasis Charm, because it doesn’t exist because Malfoy didn’t become a Healer and develop the spell with her help, so there was never any reason for her to be out at the edge of the Forest in the first place, and even if she was, the Centaurs wouldn’t have attacked her because she would not have been out of synch with reality, and my son would still be alive.

As for her last death… well. It hasn’t happened yet. But it will happen. It has happened – just not from our perspective. My daughter will fracture herself across time to save you, and because of that, the universe tried to correct itself by killing her time and time and time again in ways directly influenced by the mistake of your continued existence, but it couldn’t, because you kept saving her every single time, and because you saved her, she adored you. Of course she was always going to save you, too. It's a fucking mess. I don’t even know how to begin to untie the knot you and she have created.

The last question I have to answer is how I figured it out. I’ve been… intentionally delaying writing this out in my letters to this point, because even now it’s hard for me to figure out how to explain something that took place all at once over the course of two decades.

It started the night I returned to the Shrieking Shack, after the Battle of Hogwarts –

No, that’s not right. I mean, it is right, but... that’s not the right place to start. Damn it.

Okay. Trying again. I realised something was going on when I left your apothecary in Knockturn Alley after you saved Lily the first time –

No. Sorry. Not the right place to start either.

Once, Draco Malfoy would have been the last person in the entire wizarding world – bar Voldemort and Umbridge – I would have allowed anywhere near my daughter. It wasn’t just because of the Dark Mark, or because of Draco’s contentious history at Hogwarts with me, or that I thought Scorpius was a bad influence on Albus (until I became otherwise occupied). It was because he was a Healer, and if we were anywhere near him, it meant that someone I loved was in need of healing. No one likes to spend time in a hospital.

I was already on edge when Draco came over to my home to run some diagnostic spells on Lily after the Whomping Willow incident. He has a below average bedside manner, by the way. Brusque, perfunctory, sneered a lot, scowled a lot, barked orders, generally arrogant and standoffish.

Lily found it hilarious.

“You have a clean bill of health, Miss Potter,” Malfoy declared, and offered her his hand to shake, which she seized with gusto and brilliant beaming smile. “Can I have a moment alone with your parents?”

Lily offered him a suspicious look, but obeyed when Ginny raised an eyebrow and ordered her out.

No sooner had the door closed behind her, Malfoy’s amused expression turned serious. “Please, have a seat. There’s something I need to… disclose.”

Not words a parent ever wants to hear about their child.

You see, that conversation that followed was the turning point. I didn’t realise it yet. Lily knew, I think. She always showed a natural affinity for Legilimency and Occlumency. I didn’t shield my thoughts in that moment, when I stepped out of the room in a daze and saw her. Eavesdropping, of course – not that I could talk. She saw me, saw my expression, and then I felt her probe my mind. Oh, not intentionally, of course – she had no idea what she was doing, and I didn’t realise what was happening until she’d already felt the fracture in my psyche and interpreted my existential terror as being ashamed of her that she was ‘broken’.

Draco admitted to me and Ginny that, while Lily had made a full recovery from both of her deaths (to date), there was a lingering side-effect from the Stasis Charm he employed on her for well over 24 hours. It was nothing to worry about, he reassured us – but normally his patients who were under the charm realigned with the stream of reality within a matter of weeks or months. Lily, though? She was permanently out of synchronisation with the timeline.

“What does that mean?” Ginny asked while whatever words I tried to speak turned to ash in my mouth, because when I looked up as Malfoy explained that she was technically a small fracture in time and that her life would be otherwise entirely unaffected, I saw –

“All it means,” he said, “is that she can’t ever use the Stasis Charm.”

“Oh,” Ginny said with a small laugh, “that’s it?”

Draco snorted too, but still frowned. “The odds of her using the charm are infinitesimally low, given she’d have to learn it and she can only learn it from me, and I have no intention of ever teaching it to her, but I must warn you – if she ever does use it… she will be torn apart and sundered by time.”

I looked up and I saw –

Her.

And then, I remembered. I remembered the night of the Battle, returning to the Shrieking Shack, hours after I’d left you to die in a pool of your own blood. I expected to find a corpse, cold and stiff with rigor mortis. I was going to bring you back and give you a funeral and burial worthy of the greatest hero of our time, and instead – instead I found you clinging to life, with seconds to spare. There was this horrible scream I could hear in the back of my mind, the scream of Shrieking Shack, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose because I swear when I arrived I saw the ghost of Lily Evans leaning over you.

“Mum?” I whispered, and then – she was gone. A lingering effect of the Resurrection Stone? I didn’t have time to think on it. I had to save you. I couldn’t believe you’d survived all that time, that you hadn’t bled out. No one could have survived those wounds. No one. I stabilised you as best as I could. I brought you back to safety, to get help. You were comatose for months but you were alive and then I had a post-War society to hold together and I didn’t give that vision another thought.

But you know what’s weird? I kept seeing her, that red-haired woman, just out of focus, at the corner of my vision, everywhere I went. I never gave it any thought, other than thinking of her as my… I don’t know. Guardian angel? A permanent effect from being the Master of Death, however briefly? I didn’t mind. I didn’t even notice it most of the time, and eventually forgot about it entirely until the night I went to visit you at your apothecary in Knockturn Alley with a note from my daughter in my pocket and my heart in my throat. You’d only been home for, what, fifteen minutes? Freshly returned from overseas to escape the relentless media that had assaulted your shop for weeks after your miracle in saving Lily’s life with your counteragent. I knocked on your door. You let me in. We spoke. We bantered. We shook hands. You dismissed me, and I left with a smile.

I stepped out into the quiet night. It was dark. I breathed in the air, giddy with glee. After all those years trying to get your attention, trying to reconnect (or rather, just connect) with you, and I finally could start to consider you as something like a friend. I was about to Apparate home, but then… I saw her. A young woman in the middle of the dark, empty street. At first I thought the lamplight was flickering, but as my eyes adjusted I realised the lamplight was fine. She was the one flickering. She couldn’t have been older than twenty. Shoulder-length red hair, black high-collard robes, a silver brooch on her chest. Seeing her felt like déjà vu. And she was staring at me, with these wide, terrified eyes.

“Hi,” I called out, approaching her. “Are you all right? You don’t look so great.”

“You… you can see me?” the woman asked. Her voice sounded strange. Hoarse. Fractured. Like she had been screaming for hours. Months. Years.

“Well, yeah,” I replied. “You’re right here. Do you need help?”

“Help,” she replied. She spasmed. That’s the best I can describe it. Like her entire being just glitched out of reality and shattered in front of me before reforming, and I heard this shriek in my head, the same howl that raised the hairs on the back of my neck all those years ago in the Shack.

“Fuck,” I said, drawing my wand. “Okay, hold on –”

“Dad,” she choked, flailing her left hand. “Dad, help – p-please –”

It couldn’t be. It was impossible. And yet with that, I knew who I was looking at. How could I not know my own daughter’s face? She was older, but I knew that voice, I knew that face, I knew those eyes. This was Lily, my daughter, older, and she wasn’t just in agony, she wasn’t just terrified, she was begging for my help.

“Lily,” I breathed. I tried to catch her hand, and passed right through. “What – what –”

“But this means – this means you knew,” she whispered. She glitched violently again, splintering and shredding before my eyes. “It means you’ve always known –”

I watched her unravel before my very eyes, torn apart and shredded. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and then –

She was gone. The street was empty and quiet.

I went home in a daze.

I must have imagined it, I thought. I must have been tired, hallucinating from lack of sleep or too much stress. But the image of her fracturing before my eyes was burned into my brain. I saw her when I closed my eyes. I saw her at the corner of my vision, everywhere I went. I saw her in the reflection of every mirror and reflective surface I passed. Always there, always screaming, always fracturing.

So when Draco said that if she ever used the Stasis Charm she would be torn apart and sundered by time, it was like the last veil of denial lifted from my mind. I looked up, and there she was. Torn apart. Sundered. Fractured by time. There she was, like she had been every second of every day since the Battle of Hogwarts, sundered into a million million pieces, screaming backwards and forwards through all of history in the Shrieking Shack, dying forever, trapped in a single moment of time, ripped apart by time itself –

All for saving your life.

I should have separated the two of you. I should have prevented you from having anything to do with each other, I should have broken the bond you formed. I should never have allowed this to come to pass. But by the time I worked it out, it was too late. She already thought the world of you and you would have burned the world to ashes to save her. Keeping you away from her, it would have broken her heart and she would have resented me. I mean… she resents me anyway, with good reason, but at least she’s had you.

The day I see her in those black high–collared robes with a silver brooch on her chest – that’s when I’ll know. That’s when Lily will travel back in time and cast the Stasis Charm on you to keep you alive. I don’t know how she knows the spell, but I can take a good enough guess. I think she’ll be recruited by the Department of Mysteries when she finishes school. Her grades in Arithmancy are too good for her not to be. I know there’s no chance Draco voluntarily teaches her the charm, so I think… I think she’s going to be the one who helps him design it. That Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries all but confirmed it when I infiltrated the Time Room and stared into the raw stream of reality. And then, one day, for some reason, Lily will be drawn to the Battle of Hogwarts. She will lean over you as you take your last breath and suspend you in time until I can return to get you help, and she will be torn apart and sundered by time by the same spell that saved her life, the same spell she helped create, and I will spend the rest of my life haunted her shattered ghost out of the corner of my eye, everywhere and nowhere, forever.

I don’t know how to thank you, for saving her life over and over again. I didn’t back then and I still don’t now, because how can I thank you when I hate you so much for it? Sometimes I wish you’d just let her die, that you’d allowed the streams of reality reroute and correct and kill her, so that you would die, because – what was it Bane told you? You won’t survive her death? Literally. You would not have survived her deaths, any of them. But the rest of us, we’d wake up one morning and be in the World That Should Have Been. Except you couldn’t, you can’t let her die, because you love her as much as I do and she loves you in equal measure. You and Lily have symbiotically kept each other alive over and over and over again, and nothing can untie this knot you two have created.

Believe me – I’ve tried.

I’ve been dying a little bit every day since the day I realised what was going to happen. What had happened. And when you find out, Severus? When you find out that Lily died on 2 May 1998 saving your life, to create this cursed reality? It will destroy you.

For that, I’m sorry. But at least then I won’t be alone with this burden anymore.

Yours,

Harry J. Potter

Chapter Text

My dearest Lily,

What does it feel like to be unmade? What is it like, to rupture every single cell in your body and fracture yourself across every single moment in time all at once? It must be agony. It must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be screaming like this. That bone-deep, horrific shriek of a thousand tears in time, your whole body ripping through existence. I can’t remember the last time I woke to the sound of silence. I can’t remember when the last time I fell asleep without hearing your constant cries of pain echoing in my ears was.

In the World That Should Have Been, you have a wonderful life, Lily. You are loved. You are so loved. You are happy, whole, and you have your entire life ahead of you. You finish Hogwarts at the top of your class in Charms, just like your grandmother did. You are poached by the Ministry immediately to work in the Department of Magical Transportation, developing Portkeys. James is alive and well, Albus is… well, not as good in that universe but he’s not dead so that’s certainly a plus. Your parents are together, you never brush with death – not even once. And if Severus had known that, I have no doubt he’d gladly lay his life down so that you could live the life you were meant to. You know he would, without hesitation.

But then you’d have had to be willing to sacrifice him.

Let’s go back to when it all started for me – when it will happen for you. The night of the Battle of Hogwarts. A grim, dour setting, the air heavy with the weight of death and terror. I know all about your employment as an Unspeakable, of course. I know it was you who spent six months helping Draco Malfoy develop the very spell that would save your life. You went back – or rather, you’ll go back – to that awful night. Did it feel like an old friend? Merlin knows you met death enough times and felt more terror than anyone reasonably should be expected to in the number of years you have lived. You must have visited the Battle before on previous trips, to observe and stop other would-be time travellers with their home–made Time Turners and ancient rituals, neo–Death Eaters who want to turn the tide of the battle in Voldemort’s favour, or devastated people trying to save their loved ones.

Did you know something is going to happen? Did you feel it, like a fracture in reality itself? Is that why you went – is that why you’ll go to the Shrieking Shack and hide, watch, and wait, hidden in the shadows as the subjective past plays out in real time? Did you see Severus Snape – so young, so tired, so tormented – pleading with Voldemort to let him find me? Do you watch as Voldemort turns Nagini on him, the great snake’s fangs piercing his neck? Do you watch him abandon Snape on the floor in a pool of his own blood, his fingers clutching his shredded throat? Did you see me, only seventeen, younger than you, approach Snape and bend over him – do you see Severus lash out with a hand, grabbing me by the front of my robes to rasp take it, his memories pour out of his mouth and ears and eyes, gathered by Hermione into a flask.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Severus passes out, his hand falling to the floor with a heavy thump. I didn’t check for a pulse. I assumed… I should’ve tried to help him, but I assumed he was dead and I had no reason to think he was on our side. Voldemort gave the Order an hour to dispose of our dead and treat our injured – one hour for me to give myself up. I didn’t check to see if Snape was still alive. I didn’t check to see if he could survive.

I wish I had. I wish I had, because if I had, maybe you wouldn’t have felt compelled to do what you did. Did you watch me abandon him to his fate, as surely as Voldemort did? The man you talk about with stars in your eyes, the man who was a better father to you for your teenage years than I ever was – you would’ve seen me leave him to die.

The final nail in the coffin for you, seeing me abandon the man who was a better father to you than I had been.

Did you kneel by his side, drenching your robes in his blood, and try to find his pulse? You must’ve found one – weak, fluttering, dying. Because if Severus Snape had died that night, forgotten and alone on the dank floor of that horrible place haunted by echoing screams, then your reality as you knew it would have vanished and you’d vanish with it, because without Severus Snape, you would have died at the age of ten, your blood curdling and your body necrotising from the Hydra Poison as Ginny and I screamed outside the magi–operating theatre, Draco Malfoy’s Stasis Charm pointlessly holding you in suspension for a counteragent that would not have been created. You would have died at the age of eleven, under the thrashing branches of the Whomping Willow, your neck snapped and your life ebbing away, horribly aware of every second that slipped away. You would have died at the age of twelve, submerged deep below the surface of the frozen lake, the chilled water filling your lungs. You would have died at the age of thirteen, the Mors Essentiae sapping away at your very soul, stripping you of hope and joy leaving only despair and torment in its place, weakening and fading and becoming a husk in your own empty shell of a body, with no hope of an impossible cure. You would have died at the age of fifteen to Severus Snape’s cutting curse, then again that very same day to Bane’s blade through your heart, broken and battered and bleeding out on the cold stone altar in the Forbidden Forest, a wound in time finally being sutured.

Except none of that would have happened. Don’t you understand? You only died because Snape was alive and he was only alive because you saved him, and you only saved him because he was alive to save you. If he had died like he should have, there wouldn’t have been a neo-Death Eater cult seeking revenge on me; Delphi would have bided her time and gone through Albus instead with some ludicrous time travel plot hinging on Cedric fucking Diggory. If Severus had died, James would have gone out after you and the other first years and stopped you from going anywhere near the Whomping Willow. If he’d died, Rose wouldn’t have been moping on the side of the lake and gotten everyone off when she realised the structural integrity was weak. If he’d died, the Faileghast wouldn’t have come anywhere near Hogwarts because Rolf Scamander would still be alive. If he’d died, you wouldn’t have had any reason to join the duelling club and you wouldn’t have taken Arithmancy as a course because you wouldn’t be interested in Time in the first place, and even if you were and you’d still gone to the edge of the forest for that cursed class, you wouldn’t be a paradox and Bane wouldn’t have attacked you.

Did any of that occur to you? It must have done. You must have realised what was going on as you stood over his body in the Shrieking Shack, watching him bleed to death. Did you realise that maybe you weren’t meant to survive that first time? What if that’s why you kept dying? What if that was the universe’s way of telling you that you were supposed to stay dead? Or did you work it out in that moment, and realise that if Severus Snape died then you would live? Kneeling beside Severus Snape, realising in that moment that the only way he could live is if you cast the one spell utterly forbidden to you because it was you, it was always you, it was you who saved Severus Snape’s life that night and you didn’t know it, it was you who saved him and fractured reality and created the only timeline you have ever known –

But of course you wouldn’t have just let reality rewrite itself. You couldn’t let the streams of reality reroute themselves and reshape this reality into the World That Should Have Been. Not you, not Lily Luna Potter. Not the Girl Who Died. You would have stood there and realised that if you let reality correct itself, then the smartest, bravest man you have ever known – a man who has been more of a father to you than I was, a man who has saved your life time and time and time again – would be gone forever.

And that – that must have been unacceptable to you.

So you tell him to hold on. So you tell him that he’s going to live. So you cast the Stasis Charm, knowing it will tear you apart and sunder you to time itself. You are dying. You have died. You will die. You are sundered into a million million fragments, scattered across Severus Snape’s timeline, and now I’m stuck watching helplessly as time tries over and over again to kill you so that you don’t exist to save Severus. I see you every night, screaming in agony, everywhere I go, following me, haunting me, reminding me that you died before you were even born to save a man who should have died.

And I’m so fucking angry with you. How dare you? How DARE you do this to yourself – to me, to your mother, to James, to Albus, to your family, to this world? Why didn’t you just let him die, Lily? Why couldn’t you have just let Severus die and let reality fix itself? And the worst part is that –

It hasn’t even happened yet. Not really. Not for this timeline. You haven’t done any of this yet, but you’re condemned by the past and I’m imprisoned by the future and Severus Snape is at the centre of this knot of paradoxical reality. That day is coming soon, though. You’ve already been poached by the Department of Mysteries. You wear your hair short around your shoulders. You dress in black high-collared robes to hide the scar on your chest where your brother’s heart beats in your chest. The day I see you with a silver brooch pinned to your chest – that’s when I’ll know. Will I be strong enough to let it happen? I guess I have no choice. Maybe I’ll give in to my weakness and beg you to stop, but knowing my luck that’ll just close the loop and seal the paradox.

And there is nothing I can do to save you. Do you know what that feels like, Lily? I’m your father. I watched you come into this world. I held you. I rocked you to sleep. I watched you grow. I played tea parties with you, I read you tales from Beedle the Bard, I promised I would always, always be there for you, that I’d move the world to protect you. And for the past twenty-eight years, I’ve been watching you die.

I can’t save you. Because you died years before you were even born. Now I’m trapped watching you die every single second of my waking hours, hearing your shrieks echoing through time in my nightmares, knowing I can’t help you. Knowing there is nothing I can do to protect you from this fate worse than death. And I will spend the rest of my life seeing your shattered ghost from the corner of my eye, screaming in agony, everywhere and nowhere, forever.

So I sit here now, in the Shrieking Shack, hearing you scream and scream and scream, backwards and forwards through time, the distant howl anchored to this cursed place in time and space that birthed all those haunted stories. The same distant shrieking I heard when I was in my third year at Hogwarts, confronting Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew; the same haunting screams in the background when Voldemort murdered Severus.

It was always you, Lily. And I’m the only one who knows.

I wish I could have saved you from this. I never stopped loving you. Not for one second. You think I don’t see you anymore, but it’s the opposite. I see you, always. I see you right now, dying and splintering. I hear you, screaming and dying. I think I died with you.

But know this: you’ll never be alone. I am your witness to what you sacrificed for Severus Snape. What you will sacrifice. I see you, Lily, fracturing across every moment of reality. I hear you screaming, and I take comfort in that because at least I know there’s a part of you still out there and I can still hear your voice.

One day, I’ll be with you again.

With love,

Your father

Chapter Text

This is what it is to be unmade –

Agony.

This is what it is to be unmade –

All of reality, every moment of every second of existence happening at once –

This is what it is to be unmade –

Why does this keep happening to me?

You reek of a paradox –

If she ever uses the Statis Charm, she will be torn apart and sundered by time –

Maybe I’m supposed to!

My kind do not well tolerate wounds in the fabric of time –

Maybe I wasn’t meant to survive that first time! What if that’s why I keep dying?

– fractured across every single moment of reality –

But this means – this means you knew. It means you’ve always known –

Be careful, young Lily Luna –  

THE GIRL IS WRONG! She is a wound in time! Can’t you sense it, Severus Snape? Can’t you –  

What if this is the universe’s way of telling me that I’m supposed to stay dead –

The streams of reality have ways of rerouting themselves –

My daughter died in the Shrieking Shack on 2 May 1998 –

You didn’t see the way Dad looked at me, like I was –

– to keep you alive!

It may be your unmaking –

And all you can do is scream –

and scream –

– and you see yourself, kneeling beside Severus Snape, realising in that moment that the only way he can live is if you cast the one spell utterly forbidden to you because it was you, it was always you, it was you who saved Severus Snape’s life this night and you didn’t know it, it was you who saved him and fractured reality and created the only timeline you have ever known. You created your own paradox. The universe has been trying to kill you all this time to set things right, because if you die then Severus dies and the timeline, whatever it was meant to be, will be restored.

No. You know him. You know Severus Snape. You die so that he lives so that you live so that you die, but there is no version of reality wherein he will ever allow you to stay dead. You and he, bound all these years, all those deaths you died that were supposed be his while the universe tried over and over again to unmake this very moment. It wants Severus Snape dead and everything that ever happened to you is a direct consequence of the mistake of his continued existence.

Because he will live. And you will die. You are dying. You have died. You’ve been dead all this time and Harry – Harry knew, somehow he knew, that you are sundered into a million million fragments, scattered across Severus Snape’s timeline, watching helplessly as Time tries over and over again to kill you so that you don’t exist to save Severus.

(What if that’s why you kept dying? What if that was the universe’s way of telling you that you were supposed to stay dead–)

“No,” you see yourself say, brushing the hair back from his forehead. “No, I know you, Severus Snape. There is no version of reality in which I will ever allow you to die and you will burn the world to ash so I can live.” Your lips to his forehead. “So keep breathing, Severus. Keep breathing. And stay alive –”

– and Severus Snape breathes his last, and you are –

̶͚͇̽ ̴̢̦̺̠̈̅̃͝ T  ̶̧̤̝̳̑̈̽̿ ̶͎̺̄̏͒͝ ̵̰̞͎̠̈́͆ ̴̥́̈́͠ ̷͍̬̒̅̇ ̸̹͋̌̿ ̴̦͎̉ ̶̭͚̀̈́ ̵͙̜̖̪͂̌ ̸̟͖͆̌̋́ ̶̨̈́̇̔ ̶̣̑̒̕ ̵̱̯̩̂ ̵̧͇͕͑ ̸͖̈́͐̕ ̸͎̭͛̈́ O  ̶̲̪̜̈́̒̋̚ ̸̖̣̥̒̕ ̷͚̭̦̋͊ ̵͋̊ͅ ̵͕͕̾̍ ̶͍̀̐͋̓ ̶̨̣̎͛͑ ̷̝̭͓́̂͝ ̶̠̪̗́ ̷̧̛͖̬̒̒͜ ̸̳̀ ̵̅ͅ ̴̜̆͌͗͜ ̷̺͓̗̣͗̈́̏͗ ̴̭̌ ̴̡̛͍̑͋̌ ̴͉́͒̓̍ͅ ̵̨̬̂͛͐̚ ̶̛̜͓͙̂͗ ̶̥̬̓̈́̍ R  ̵̡͈̘̅͐ ̶̭̰̱͎̈́ ̶̖̘͚̟̉̓̑͘ ̵̹́͘͠ ̷͚͚̐̇́͠ ̵͔̂͂ ̴͇͉̆̾́ ̴̘̦̍ ̶̟͈̣̽̋͝ ̶̰̰͈̹̀͘ ̶̢͔͎̠͊͂̃̃ ̸̯͕̆͑ ̶̘̦̮̋͋ ̷̮̗̟̱̓̋ ̴̘̬̖͊̈́̓̅ ̷̟̈́ ̴̖̘̻̀ ̷̨̳̟̩̉͒ ̷̢͚̣̂ ̵̧̝͍̱͛́̚ ̶̛̜͉͂͐̈ ̸̖̪̿̃͜ N

– holding him in a single moment in time before death, keeping him alive –

̶͚͇̽ ̴̢̦̺̠̈̅̃͝ A  ̸͚̝̏̕͜ ̶̹͖̂̋̈́͘ ̴̰͒͝ ̵͚̓̐̍̎ ̶̅͂̚͜ ̵̢͊ ̶̛̤ ̶̖͝ ̴̳͚̯͛̑́̓͜ ̸͚̰͍̈́͊ ̷̮̙̞͊̏̌͋ ̸͓̺̼̤̀̓̒̈ ̸̢̟̽ ̸̡̮̐̌ P  ̵̛̯͕̈́ ̷̧̗̙̅ ̷̧͎̙̊͜ ̷̢̜̰͙͆̅ ̸̺̈́͊̚ ̸̬̘͕͊̿͝ ̸̞̙̭̏ ̶̛͈͔̜̦̈́̚ ̴̳̳͔͍͋̓̚ ̵͍̜̪̒̀ ̴̫̾ ̴̡͎͍̗́̒ ̸͉̾̏́͠ A  ̶̢̩̏͛̂͜ ̴̗͛ ̶̖͙͊́͒ ̴̙̗͂̍ ̶͈͆̉ ̵̭̥̤̂ ̴̢̺͖̱̇̐̚ ̸̬͗̕ ̶̮̙̮̙͐̄̕ ̸̢̬͇̽̅͝ ̸̲͇̭̦̓̽ ̸̬͎̾͛ ̵͙͉̙̣̽͑͠ ̷͎̘̈́ ̴̽̾̔͊ͅ ̸̢̮͔̑ R  ̵͓̃̇ ̷̳͎͐̀ ̸̧̧͋̑̌͊ ̷͇̽ ̸̨̻͎͓̈́̓̂͠ ̵͕̫̾̂͜ ̸̫͍̳̉̉̋͆ ̴̢͚̻̱̀̂̀͘ ̶̢͍́̋͜ ̴̹̗͍̅̽ ̶̠͉̃̃ ̴͎̞͍͆ ̵̘̖̬̝͊ ̴̦̤̻͛ ̸̠̗͖̈́͌ ̷̨̢̫̗̀ ̷̛̦͉̿̕ͅ ̶̫̬͛͝͝ ̷̘̺̏̀̈́ T

 – And you see your father, seventeen and triumphant, returning to the Shack expecting to find a corpse but instead he sees Severus Snape still alive, instead he looks up and he sees –

– you –

“Mum?” he whispers, and you scream and scream and scream, and –

– there you are in the reflection of the window of your room in St Mungo’s, Harry staring into the glass and right at you, his hair limp and greasy and sporting a three-day old stubble, his eyes heavy and bloodshot meeting yours through the reflection. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he whispers to you, his words fogging the glass, “James is… James is with you. Okay? Just remember that. James is with you. You are not alone. I see you, Lily. My brave girl –”

– and you scream and scream and scream, and –

Harry is in his office at the DMLE, picking a chair up, throwing it right through you – “WHY? WHY DID YOU DO IT? DAMN YOU, LILY, DAMN YOU FOR CHOOSING HIM INSTEAD OF US –”

– and you scream and scream and scream, and –

Harry, ignoring Ginny’s burning gaze as he drapes a blanket over Severus’s sleeping form in the chair next to your bed where you are recovering from the Mors Essentiae, and he looks up and grimaces and you scream and scream and scream, and –

Severus is staggering in the hospital wing, trying to tear off his clothes in confusion through hypothermic shock and Harry is there, bracing his arms as his legs give out, and you scream and scream and scream, and –

“She’s permanently out of synchronisation with the timeline,” Healer Malfoy says. Your mum asks what that means, then laughs when he says aside from being a small fracture in time you are otherwise entirely unaffected and all it means is that you can’t ever use the Stasis Charm, because if she ever does it, she will be torn apart and sundered by time, but Harry, Harry doesn’t laugh, Harry has jerked his head upwards and he’s staring directly at you, his green eyes wide with horror and grief and realisation, looking at you as if you’re broken because you are broken, you’re broken and twisted and mangled and shattered, just like this reality, you and Severus and Harry and James and Malfoy and everyone you know and love entangled in this knot you recklessly created, and you scream and scream and scream, and –

Harry, stepping out of Severus’s apothecary into a dark, quiet night, a smile on his mouth and a hand through his hair with giddy glee, then he looks up and meets your eyes and frowns and calls out, “Hi, are you all right? You don’t look so great.”

“You,” you choke out as time unravels your vocal chords, “you can s̶̖̆e̶͇̾e̷̛̱ me?”

“Well, yeah. You’re right here. Do you need help?”

Help. You need – no. You are beyond help, beyond saving. You disobeyed every single rule of the Department of Mysteries, violated the demands of Time itself. The paradox cannot be tampered with and any attempt to reverse what you’ve done will erase everything from existence as you shred across reality, and you scream and scream and scream, and –

“Fuck,” Harry yelps, drawing his wand, “okay, hold on –”

“Dad,” you choke, flailing your hand towards him, “Dad, help – p-p̷̰̈l̵̺̂e̶̖͐ą̶̐s̴̨̊ě̵̬–”

And now he understands. Now he recognises you. He whispers your name in shock and reaches for you but his hand passes right through your fractured body, unravelling at the seams, and oh god this means – this means he knew, it means he’s always known, and you scream and scream and scream, and –

this is what it is to be unmade –

Severus, a young man – still a boy, still at Hogwarts, his brow furrowed in determination as he crawls through the tunnel about to emerge into the Shrieking Shack where a werewolf prowls and waits in hunger –

“Ǹ̵̈O!̷" you scream, “TUȒ̵͚N̶͈̂ ̸̡̽B̷A̵̹̒C̶K,T̶̘̚U̸̫͛R̵̨̔N̴ B̴̆Ă̴̙C̶̔K̸ ̸̅͜NO̶̠̾W̷–”

Severus falters, hesitates, the ancient shrieks of the Shack, your screams anchored to this terrible place emanating forwards and backwards through all of time, chilling his bones and delaying him by two precious seconds, just long enough for James Potter to catch him and haul him from the jaws of death –

and you scream

and scream

and scream.

to be concluded

in

the deliverance of lily luna potter