[A/N: Written for lilyjames_fest at LiveJournal.

I don't own Harry Potter]

They say that time is a curious thing, that it distorts, slowing down and speeding up when you least want it to. But that's not quite true. Time doesn't change. Seconds tick by into minutes which fall neatly into hours, days, months, and years.

It's the mind, rather, that is curious. And how curious it is in its perception of time. A moment, instead of passing by into history, can spread out and seem to take an eternity. It's the mind that plays with time, manipulates and changes it. And it's the mind that remembers those few select moments decades past when they should've been forgotten. It's the mind that takes time to the grave and beyond.

Lily felt it happen in the briefest moment before she could even comprehend the words and the flash of green light from the downstairs hall. She sensed it before she recognized that the slight thud meant that the curse had hit its mark. Somehow, she knew what had happened before the conscious realisation occurred.

Something in Lily snapped and broke and the pull she'd grown so accustomed to over the past ten years was gone. The acute awareness of James Potter's presence had dissipated, gone out before the light from the killing curse dissolved into the night.

The first time she'd felt it, that awareness had been strange and unwelcome, like so much else that had happened since she first received her letter from Hogwarts. Lily first attributed the foreign feeling to the sudden influx of magical energy in the air. When the feeling didn't fade as she grew used to ghosts and charms and talking portraits, she blamed being homesick and the lapse in contact from her best friend and sister. Finally, after about a month, she realised that the pull was more severe when the obnoxious, spoiled, and inexplicably popular Potter boy was around. Anger towards everything about him became the new culprit, the new cause for the bizarre sensation. And, as the feeling still refused to fade, the anger morphed to resentment. It seemed to Lily that she was fated to despise Potter and she accepted it.

Even when she'd finally grown accustomed to the tug, it never completely disappeared. As her relationship with James morphed from hatred to tolerance to friendship and, finally, to love, the tug remained relatively unchanged. Over the past ten years it had become an integral part of her life and she'd come to depend on it. It was her anchoring point to the world, a never changing constant that meant she was still alive, even in the midst of terror and hardship.

And now it was gone. The realisation of the gaping chasm in her being startled her back to the present.

As fast as the stream of memories had come on, they disappeared, and Lily was suddenly hyperaware of her surroundings.

Her baby – ihis son/i – was in her arms. She could feel his heart beating against her chest, marking the passage of time. It was too quiet. James was no longer yelling and there were no footsteps to be heard.

The door to Harry's nursery was shut. Somehow, Lily had managed to follow James' command to run. Somehow, she'd made it upstairs and into the first open door. She saw the pathetic barricade of hastily stacked boxes and a toppled rocking chair.

Lily only realised she was still retreating from the door when she felt something hard come into contact with the small of her back. It was Harry's crib. She was at the back of the room; there was nowhere else for her to go. She didn't even have her wand.

Fear gripped her, tearing at her heart and pulling the hole wider and wider until she could bear it no more. Fear turned to terror so tangible that it burned. Gasping for breath, trying to stay upright, Lily held onto Harry, using him as an anchor to the world. James was gone and Harry was the only real thing. She clung to him, trying desperately to use him as an anchor to the world.

And then he squirmed, trying to free himself from his mother's too tight grasp. His quiet whimpers of discontent were more than enough to push Lily over the edge. She pressed her face into his soft mess of baby hair and backed away from the door. Tears and sweat dampened his hair as Lily shook, trying and failing to not sob.

She had thought everything had been as broken as it could ever be. Their son had been marked for certain death and Remus' loyalty had been pulled into question. They had had to go into hiding and leave what was left of their normal lives. She'd thought foolishly that things couldn't get worse.

But everything had changed so quickly with one moment of misplaced trust. They had been betrayed and James was dead and she was going to die. And Harry, her wonderful beautiful baby that was perfectly hers and James', was going to die. And she was going to fail, not only at her duty as a member of the Order, but as a mother.

And then she was screaming. Lily didn't know how it had happened or how long the screams had been coming from her, but she was suddenly aware of the noise, that it was coming from her. And somehow she knew that it didn't matter that she was giving away her position to Voldemort, at least not anymore.

She would plead, she decided. Not for her own life. No, that had begun fading the moment the tug had disappeared. Lily's life – her soul – had become so intertwined with James' that there was no life for her without him.

But there iwas/i Harry. Harry, with James' smile and uncontrollable hair. Harry, with her eyes, green eyes that had blinked up at her even from birth. Harry who was so much more, even after just fifteen months, than the sum of his two parents.

She would plead for him, die for him. Just maybe, one moment of decided sacrifice would alter the path of fate. And then, when she followed James, just maybe their baby would have a chance to live.

[A/N: Thoughts?]