The Death and Resurrection of Lilly Belafonte

It was summer again in Biloxi, Mississippi, and the cool night winds were blowing up from the Gulf. Two figures moved silently across the white sand beaches, their steps far smoother on the shifting sanan tan the mincing midwestern tourists who plagued the spot by day. One figure, the larger, stopped abruptly and turned to face the water.

"Lilly," the woman said softly. The other figure, a child, stopped a few feet beyond the speaker and turned back towards her.

"Yes, Mother?" she questioned gravely, tucking a stray lock of red hair behind her ear.

"Things have been happening recently, child."

"Things tend to do that… happen, I mean."

"Enough of your impertinence," the woman snapped, her voice raw with a frustration and a silent rage that had little to do with the girl's retort. "Whenever I try to talk to you all I receive is sarcasm in return. You're seven years old-- too old to antagonize me so and too young to understand why you shouldn't. Now be silent, lest you want your father's ire instead of mine." The girl paled (though her mother could not discern the change, out as they were under the starlight) and immediately fell silent. Her mother sighed raggedly and sank down onto the sand. "Sit," she commanded, but the girl already had.

"Lilly, has it ever occurred to you that you are different from the other children your age?"

"Er… I should say so. I s lik like you do, and they speak like hicks." The woman almost growled in exasperation.

"I'm not talking about the goddamned accent, and you very well know it. Gods, why do you have to make this even more difficult? Do you enjoy seeing me suffer?"

"Perhaps," Lilly remarked flippantly. "If so, I learned it from Father." The woman laughed suddenly, coldly, and a bit maniacally, frightening the girl who was far too perceptive and brilliant for her own good. Her mirthless amusement echoed across the dunes and across the water as the child subtly recoiled.

"Do you think what I came here to tell you is so unimportant that you could avoid it by bandying words with me? You think that because you are more clever than those fools of classmates, you are more clever than I? You stupid little girl.
"You and I both know that you can make things happen that, based on the physical laws you think you know, ought to be impossible. We both know that you can… alter things just enough to protect us both from that den ben bastard I married. You make him pass out when he ought to be good for several more drinks. You somehow block out most of the force behind his blows. You confuse him, so that he stumbles around blearily in the yard because he can't find hiy iny into the house. And, most supernaturally, you dress up every Sunday morning for the church he makes you attend, and somehow both your bruises and mine have faded before anyone else can see them." Lilly sat rigidly, hardly daring to breathe.

"How could you have thought I wouldn't notice?" her mother demanded harshly.

"I thought you might be too relieved to care," the girl replied, pitching her voice low to cover the tremble in it. The woman sighed yet again as she raked her fingers through her own flaming mane of hair.

"Haven't you wondered how it is that you can do those things?"

"No, I'm not remotely curious," the girl retorted.

"I am neither amused nor dissuaded. What do you think is the answer behind your powers?" her mother demanded sharply.

"There's really only one possibility," Lilly said at the end of a long silence. "Magic must be real, and I must be a witch."

Her mother was surprised for thest tst time in a great many years.


It was the bottom of the night in Scotland, and the world was slowly turning towards morning as one black-clad figure hurried through a moonlit corridor in a mostly empty castle. The man was exhausted from his work brewing potions, the muscles in his bacotteotted painfully from long hours spent brooding over various cauldrons. She'll rub away the fatigue, he thought hopefully as he reached the stairs to Gryffindor Tower. He wondered if McGonagall let her go back to her suite before nightfall- the Transfiguration professor wasn't known for being gentle with her apprentices, particularly during the summer holidays.

Through the portal into the darkened common room (the portrait stayed open during the summer), and up the staircase to her suite at the top of the tower. Damn, he needed her. Her bright, trusting smile, her flashy brilliance, her sweet bossiness… she was all he thought about for the last month of the term- his first term as a professor to these absolute dunderheads. He didn't think he could have survived without her- so many times she had comforted him while he endured heartbreaking flashbacks of his years as a Death Eater. So many times she had listened to him before he one day worked up the courage to rest his head in her lap. She'd been stiff at first, and he'd been desperately afraid that she would reject both the contact and him. But she'd softened and stroked his brow, dissipating a mounting tension so powerful he thought he'd be smothered under the weight of it.

Down the short corridor, around the bend, right at her door… he heard laughter. Puzzled, the man stopped to listen, and caught the low murmur of voices coming from her rooms. Slowly he walked forward to the door, which was ajar, and peaked inside, seeing… nothing. Apparently, she wasn't in the sitting room, so she was probably in the bedroom. Smiling, he slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind him, hoping to startle her in the midst of her little girls' night in, or whatever it was she was doing. Stealthily he moved towards her bedroom door, and opened it.

Moments later, he was running through the halls of Hogwarts, tears streaming down his pale skin, hands trembling in his robes. He had found her, his sweet Electra, riding Bill Weasley in the bed he had shared with her. Her curly brown hair thrown back in the wild frizz of lovemaking, her smooth skin glistening in the moonlight.

There are times when men move and the world moves around them, pulling them into a new destiny. Severus Snape did not feel it, though; he only felt his heart burning with an excruciating rage. In his rooms, he crushed a bottle of brandy in his hands, paying no heed to the blood dripping down from the gashes, and found that indifference was all that could keep him sane. Clothe your heart in fire and ice, you utterly stupid fool, and to the world show only fangs, he cried aloud. Only fangs.