WHITE FLAG ▹ potter ✓

061. the whole world crying

Potter and the Headmaster were already gone, Draco had finished mending the Vanishing Cabinet, and Lilium (or should he call her Delphini now?) had no idea what was coming for them. But Severus knew, and he could not change what would happen next — no matter how much he wished to.

ϟ

Something was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Hogwarts was darker than usual, the sconces muted, the corridors frigid with rising fear. Lili's pale skin glimmered with the light crawling across the ceiling above her, and she glanced warily towards the window where the sky had changed into something dark and dangerous. The voices of the Hogwarts choir echoed eerily, and the girl felt the danger pulsing in her blood.

But then the Rune on her left finger stung and in her head, she heard a whispered:

'Come to the Astronomy Tower — hurry.'

Lili didn't need to be told twice, instantly breaking into a run through the twisting corridors of the castle that she grew up in, that was her home. As students scuttled off to their Houses — little more than shadows, Lili sprinted by in her heavy boots, somehow silent, a ghost, a shadow within shadows. Invisible to all.

When she finally pushed into the cluttered and heavy darkness of the Tower supply room, Lili saw him there, waiting, staring into the observatory, face pale but healthy. He wasn't injured, he wasn't hurt, he was here and he was whole and he was safe, safe, safe.

"Harry—,"

Harry instantly covered her mouth before pointing above... where Lili's gaze trailed upward slowly, nervously, and what she saw made her want to scream and never stop. Draco and Dumbledore, her cousin holding their Headmaster at wandpoint. The girl's black horrified eyes widened and she jerked desperately forward to help, but Harry held her back.

His lips moved hastily by her ear, "He said to wait, to stay down here—,"

"No..."

No matter how angry she was with Dumbledore, she didn't want this. No, she didn't want this.

"Can you get Snape?" He whispered fervently, "We need to get Snape..."

Lili's hand shakily darted to the obsidian pendant hiding beneath her shirt and she spun the stone until it burnt hot in her palm. Please Sev, come. Please Sev, hurry. Please Sev, save us.

He would come in time, but he would not save them.

Dumbledore's voice echoed in the haunting air, and their horror only grew when Draco disarmed their Headmaster — the greatest wizard of their time — the leader of the Light, his wand flying free, clattering across the ground. Well done, Draco. But killing is not nearly as easy. It all came together: Borgin & Burkes, the Room of Requirement and a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, accidentally hexing Lili into a coma, all of those mysterious failed assassinations on the Headmaster...

It all began to make sense.

"Let me help you, Draco."

"I don't want your help!" Draco cried out, in utter agony, "Don't you understand?! I have to do it! I have to kill you..." His voice dropped to a pitiful whisper, "Or he's gonna kill me."