Title: And All the Nights to Come
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: Angst, canonical child abuse, mother-son relationship
Wordcount: 3600
Rating: PG
Summary: On the night of Harry's ninth birthday, everything seems to be breaking apart for him. His despair reaches out into the darkness and summons the one person who stands a chance of comforting him.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. The title comes from A Game of Thrones.

And All the Nights to Come

The darkness was a vast, unstirred field, on the surface. Beneath the surface were the whirlpools of death, tugging and pulling on the memories of the dead, separating them, wheeling them apart, taking what had been the core of a personality and sending those bits fleeing into the darkness.

It was a calm, relentless presence. No one escaped death. Even those who had formed into ghosts had let the better part of their personalities pass into the darkness. What hovered in the mortal world was a pitiful remnant they confused with continuing existence.

The whirlpools took the longest to destroy traumatic memories, and the last of someone's life. When those combined, sometimes there was a human remnant that could resist the pulling forces for a time.

That, or someone who had made a bargain with death.

In an area of the darkened field where both those circumstances combined, a whirlpool jerked and stopped. Long silence lapped its shores, and then something stirred in the middle of it, rising towards the surface. The whirlpool bubbled like tar, and the spirit that had been the subject of it molded itself into form.

This was a moment when the bargain that the being had made in life applied.

Memories rushed back to her, the last green bolt of light and the crying of her child and the red eyes before her. The sense of being a her, instead of a mute, formless being in the center of the darkness.

The bargain she had made in life had three parts.

Her life in exchange for her son's—and death for the one who had not honored it so. The reverse of the bargain for her son later on, that he might be one who came to know the formlessness of death early in life, and return from it, rather than someone who entered the formlessness and maintained her form.

And one venture to the mortal world, only one, in spirit form, before the hour came for her son to step into the formlessness of death for the first time.

The spirit of Lily Evans Potter rose, and stepped towards life.

"Happy birthday…to me…"

The words whispered and trailed off. Harry Potter buried his head in his arms and said nothing. The words of the song wouldn't come. The little cake he had sketched out in the dust on the floor of his cupboard just looked stupid now.

It had been an awful day.

He'd woken up that morning and Aunt Petunia had taken one look at him and told him he wouldn't be getting breakfast because she didn't like the look on his face. Harry didn't understand. What look? He'd looked like he always did. And he'd even made sure to come out of the cupboard with his face calm and normal and his eyes on the floor when he said good morning to her.

It was so unfair.

Then Dudley and Piers had chased him down the street and around the corner and through the playground and up a tree. Harry had climbed it like he had when Aunt Marge brought Ripper over, and they'd laughed below. Then they'd pointed him out to other kids, ones Harry didn't know, and Harry could heard Dudley telling them stories all about how he was a freak.

He was laughed at for hours.

He'd only got half a sandwich for lunch because he was late. He didn't dare come down from the tree until Dudley and Piers had wandered away for a good half-hour. And then, his stomach rumbling, he had to go out and weed in the garden.

He got sunburned on his back, and he was so hungry, and so thirsty.

Then, when he came into the house to mop the kitchen floor, he asked Aunt Petunia for another sandwich half, and she told him no. And something had snapped in Harry, and he'd asked her, "Why do you hate me so much? I just try to do my chores and be normal! The freakish things that happen to me aren't my fault!"

He was yelling at her by the end, which was never a good idea. Harry had wondered if she would swing the frying pan at him again.

Instead, she'd done something much worse. She'd answered his question.

Harry hunched in on himself. He was sure that he would remember Aunt Petunia's voice echoing in his head forever.

"Why do I hate you? Because you're not normal. You're the product of my whore sister and your drunkard father, and they didn't have the good sense to take you to an orphanage. Do you think we were proud of having you dumped here? Everyone around here knows that you're an orphan and a freak! You're the reason that our neighbors look at us pityingly. You're the reason Piers's mum almost didn't let him play with Dudley! You're the reason we can never go on holiday or get Dudley as many toys as he wants, you cost us so much money! The least you can do is do some chores and not eat some food, so we save the money!"

She'd taken a deep breath after that, and then continued in a calmer voice, "And since you seem to dislike the way you're treated so much, maybe going to bed without dinner will make you appreciate it a little more."

And then Aunt Petunia had shoved Harry into the cupboard and locked the door.

At the moment, Harry just wanted to hunch in on himself, and go to sleep, and never wake up again. Why did he have to be like this? Why did he had to live with his aunt and uncle? Why had his parents been so stupid? They should have left him to an orphanage like Aunt Petunia said.

Harry knew about orphanages from the telly and a few books. He knew he would still have to do chores there and he wouldn't get a lot to eat, but at least that would be the case with everyone there, 'cause orphanages were for poor children. He would be normal. Maybe the freakish things wouldn't happen.

Harry reached out and scrubbed away the birthday cake with candles with his foot.

"I hate being me," he whispered.

So much later that Harry had no idea if it was morning or not, light started to fill his cupboard. He wiped the back of his hand across his face, not caring how dirty or snotty it was. There was no one in here to make a fuss, and Aunt Petunia would always hate him no matter what happened.

That was the problem, he thought miserably. That was the real reason her words had hit him so strongly. They'd made him realize that no matter what he did or how polite he was or many chores he did, his relatives would never love him.

And if people related to him by blood couldn't love him, and his parents couldn't love him enough not to get killed, then how was anyone ever going to love him? He would never have friends. He would never have a family of his own, the way he dreamed of.

It would just always be the same. He might as well stay in the cupboard.

A sob broke out of Harry's throat, but then he realized that the light was glowing right in front of him, instead of being morning or the kitchen light from Dudley sneaking down for a snack shining under the cupboard door. Harry cowered back from it, his arms still wrapped around his knees.

It was another freakish thing, and he just knew he would get in trouble for it. And he needed to eat. His stomach hurt.

The light grew brighter and brighter, and Harry watched it in resignation, the way he'd watched his teacher's hair turn blue. The freakish things almost never seemed to do what he wanted them to do. Only the awful jumper getting smaller and his hair coming back after Aunt Petunia cut it did, and the last one still got him in trouble.

"Harry."

Harry blinked. The freakish things had never included someone speaking to him before. He wondered if he was insane. Some freaks were, he knew. There was an old man who lurched down the street in Little Whinging sometimes, laughing and talking to himself.

"Harry. Oh, my little boy."

Yeah, I'm delusional, Harry thought, as he stared at the face forming in front of him. It was a woman with green eyes like his, but bright red hair. She reached out and cupped his cheeks, and he could feel tingling warmth.

She looked like she—loved him.

Which meant he was delusional, because no one ever would.

"Oh, Harry," the woman said, and looked around the cupboard. She didn't seem to take up that much space, as if, even though she was kneeling in front of him, her legs and most of her body was in another place. She looked at him with a misty smile. "This isn't what I would have wanted for you."

"Who are you?" Harry whispered.

"You don't recognize me. They must not have shown you pictures." The woman slowly shook her head, never looking away from him. It was sort of nice to have someone pay so much attention to him, although Harry knew it would mean pain later most of the time. "I'm your mum, Harry. Lily Potter."

Harry's heart lurched so painfully that he supposed he must have nearly woken up. Because this was a dream, right? It had to be a dream. Dead people didn't come and kneel down in front of you. And the pretty woman hadn't said she wasn't dead.

And freaks don't have pretty mums.

Harry wouldn't get a chance to ask anyone these questions when he was awake, though, so he asked now. "Why did you let Dad drive drunk, Mum? Why did you have to die and abandon me here?"

His mother's hands slid gently down his cheeks, the same warmth that was like sitting next to a fuzzy fire over and over. "We didn't die in a car accident, Harry, your dad and I. We died defending you from an evil wizard."

Harry's mouth fell open. "There's no such thing as magic."

"Yes, there is. I know your aunt and uncle told you there isn't." His mother sighed, but there was a cold expression on her face that made Harry a little afraid of her. "But you are a wizard, just like I was a witch, and your father James was a wizard."

"I—I'm not a freak?"

Suddenly the pretty woman moved, and then she was hugging him so hard that it was like being hugged by a wooden chair. Harry just sat there, too stunned to react. He felt a soft warmth like tears in his hair.

"No," his mum whispered. "I'm so sorry, Harry. We didn't want to die and leave you. But the evil wizard who killed us didn't leave us a lot of choice. It was that or leave you to be killed by him, and that would be worse."

"Why does someone want to kill me?" Harry hesitantly lifted his arms to touch the woman, who was about half-there. "I mean, other than Uncle Vernon."

"In the world we're part of, the real world," said his mother, with a small smile, "you're famous. There was a wizard called Voldemort who was seeking to kill you. It had been foretold that you would be his enemy." Her arms were growing stronger and more solid, and Harry held on. This was the most wonderful dream. "And—well, your father and I died defending you."

For a moment, she seemed like she wanted to say something else, but she ended up shaking her head and just holding Harry tight. Harry cuddled against her. He wasn't sure that he wanted to hear anything more about evil wizards, or how his mum had died.

But she sighed, and continued in a soft voice. "Other things happened that shouldn't have, but I don't know about them because they occurred after I died. I only know what happened right before I died and then the most important things afterwards—about your life here. That you needed me." Her hand stroked his hair.

"Can you take me to live with you?" Harry asked.

"Darling, I'm dead. So is your father."

"But I could come with you anyway?" Harry pressed closer and let the heat soak into him, and her beauty. "I wouldn't mind being dead. Someone at my school said it was just like falling asleep. That's right, isn't it? And I could sleep next to you, and we could dream. We could share dreams, right? So I would get to know you."

Again, Harry had the sensation of slow, warm tears sliding down the side of his neck. He didn't wipe them away. This was still the best.

"No, Harry. I'm sorry."

Harry tensed and then tore himself away from his mum, even though it hurt. He huddled back in the cupboard. "Then why did you come here?" he asked bitterly. He knew it was bitter. He didn't care. "If you weren't going to rescue me and take me to live with you?"

His mother knelt where he'd left her, her hair hiding part of her face. One eye was visible, and she was staring at him with such love that Harry crept back towards her. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him fiercely.

"To tell you that you will find love someday," she whispered. "To tell you that your father and I loved you, and it's not true nobody ever did. In two years. What if I tell you that it all changes in two years?"

"Two years?" Harry thought about it. Two years from today would his eleventh birthday. But he didn't know what would be so special about that. He still couldn't legally live away from the Dursleys, and if they sent him away to a boarding school, it wouldn't be right on his eleventh birthday. Most boarding schools were on their summer hols then.

"Yes. I promise."

Harry grew still. Those were important words. Not that many people ever spoke them to him, except for Uncle Vernon promising to do things like not feed Harry for a week. "You do?"

"Yes." His mum kissed him, and Harry leaned into it. He had always thought that he wouldn't reject his mum's kisses the way Dudley rejected Aunt Petunia's if she was still alive. He would appreciate them. "I promise. That's when you learn about magic."

"Someone comes and tells me?" His mother nodded, and Harry swallowed enough air to power his racing heart and asked, "You come and tell me?"

His mother shook her head. "Oh, Harry. I wish I could. But this was the night that you needed me most, and we'll see each other one more time after this, when you're going towards a fate you can hardly imagine."

"I thought you didn't know about things that happened since you were dead."

His mother laughed quietly. "I might have made a bargain with Death to keep you alive."

"What?"

"Don't worry about it," his mother added hastily, even though Harry thought this was very interesting and he wanted to ask more questions about it. "Just remember that you're going to get out of here, and—darling, there will be friends and adventure and more changes than you can imagine."

"Wait," Harry said, figuring out a problem. "If that's the night when I learn about magic, how come you came and told me now?"

His mum hesitated. Harry just waited, staring at her, absorbing as much as he could. He wasn't going to see her many other times, and he wanted to remember what she looked like.

"You're going to think this is a dream," his mum said finally, the way Aunt Petunia would have told Dudley that he couldn't have any more sweets—if she ever did that. "You won't remember me very well. That was part of my bargain with Death, too."

"No." Harry knew he was crying, and crying was for babies and mums, but he couldn't stop. "Why did you come here at all if you just knew I was going to forget about you?"

"Because you needed me." His mum leaned forwards and kissed his forehead, right over the lightning bolt scar that sometimes ached when he dreamed about the green light and a woman screaming (who was probably his mum, Harry realized then). "And you won't remember me very well, but you'll remember the feeling."

"What feeling?" Harry sniffed and tried to get rid of the tears. If she wasn't going to be here much longer, he wanted to look at her some more.

"The feeling that someone loves you. I love you, Harry."

Harry held onto her, onto that warm feeling, and let her stroke his hair and murmur into his ear. He shuddered and let her sing a lullaby that sounded half-familiar, and he let her say over and over that she loved him.

His mum, somehow here. Even if Death made him forget, Harry was still going to try to hang on and remember as much as he could.

And when he could feel himself drifting towards sleep and knew that he would go to sleep and wouldn't wake up again before she was gone, Harry murmured, "I love you, too, Mum."

There was a kiss on his cheek. And then nothing.

"Get up, freak!"

Harry opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling of his cupboard. His first thought was that it was kind of odd he wasn't sleeping on his cot. He didn't sleep on the floor now, not now that he was nine.

His second thought was to remember Aunt Petunia's words from yesterday. But strangely, they hurt now less than they had.

"Freak!" That was Dudley. He was kicking the door. "Mum, the freak won't wake up! I say don't give him any breakfast!"

Harry swallowed. The words would have panicked him yesterday. He was really hungry.

But there was something—like a feeling, or a hug that someone was giving him even though they were invisible. He didn't feel as bad as he had last night.

Aunt Petunia opened the cupboard door and sneered down at him. "Come out now, boy, or you won't eat this morning, either."

Harry lifted his head high and stared her in the face. And the common sense that he'd left behind yesterday when he'd felt so bad made him say, "But then I'll fall face down in the garden when I'm doing the weeding, and what will the neighbors say?"

Aunt Petunia turned white. "What did you say?"

"I said I would fall down in the garden while I was doing the weeding," Harry told her. He was aware of Dudley gaping at him, but he didn't look at his cousin. He kept his whole attention on his aunt. She was the one who would actually decide whether he ate today. "Because the only thing I've had to eat in the last thirty-six hours is a sandwich half. Do you want to do that? Don't you want me to be normal?"

Aunt Petunia swallowed loudly, and then she said, "Yes, well, go into the kitchen and make breakfast, boy. Sausages and bacon and eggs, of course, and some porridge. And orange juice. And you may have two eggs and a small bowl of porridge."

Harry nodded firmly and went into the kitchen. Behind him, Dudley whinged, "But Mum."

"Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, Dudley. At least you know Mummy loves you, not like that freak."'

Harry smiled a little as he reached for the ingredients to make the Dursleys' breakfast—and his. That wasn't true. He could remember a wonderful dream last night where his mum was real, and beautiful, and loved him.

It probably wasn't real, of course. She'd also said things about magic and evil wizards that Harry found it hard to believe. But for some reason, it was easier to hear he was a freak and insults about his parents, now. It was as if the dream was glowing like a little ember in his chest.

Harry wanted to carry that ember around with him forever.

The being that had been Lily Potter sank again into the black whirlpool that was hers since she returned to the embrace of death. It was always a returning, that simple place where death pulled apart bits of personalities and memories and spun them apart.

In the moments before she lost coherence, Lily remembered the bargain she'd made with Death, and the way that Harry would someday come to master the Hallows—that was part of the price—and how she had learned one thing when Death came to her.

This endless place was both the one people came to after their deaths and the one where they waited before their births. The whirlpools pulled apart what they had been and sent those pieces on to what was to be. Everyone who was born tomorrow would be a composite of many, many who had died.

Lily Potter sank into the black water knowing that some of her love might even now be combining with other emotions into the body of a child, and some of her skill at Charms was going to a second, and some of her fearlessness that had seen her Sorted into Gryffindor and being the first successful person to summon Death in a thousand years was elsewhere.

But for now—

For now, in the moments before she sank, she was still herself, and she was still the woman who loved her child.

And would see him, in spirit form, one more time.

Then she was gone, back to the forces of rebirth.

The End.