DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.

~ Tear Rainbow ~

"Stand aside, you stupid girl!" the Dark Lord commands her. "Stand aside, now."

But Lily stays stubbornly standing where she has planted herself in front of her son's crib. She will not let this maniac kill her baby.

"Over my dead body," she snarls.

"Oh, I don't think so," Voldemort replies, the corners of his lips tugging up into an arrogant smirk as he advances on her.

Lily's grip tightens on her wand, but there is no shield charm in the world that can stop a Killing Curse and her mind is so full of must protect Harry that she can't think of which offensive spell would be good to use in this scenario.

And then the Dark Lord is close, too close, and the next thing Lily knows she is falling to the floor. As she hits the ground, she hears the maniac intone "Avada Kedavra" and sees a flash of green light, but distantly, as if it is not happening to her, but wait - didn't it happen already and isn't she dead?

Yes, she is dead. Of course she is dead. But her soul has obviously not moved on yet. Is she a ghost? For some odd reason, she is vividly aware of the texture of the carpet against her cheek.

A ghost shouldn't be able to feel that, she thinks - the first coherent thought she has had since the madman breached the security of her home and - Oh, god. James! James must be dead too if -

Her mind begins to register the stinging pain in her other cheek, the one that isn't pressed against the soft fibers of the plush carpet of her baby's bedroom. And the truth finally dawns on her. She wasn't hit with a Killing Curse at all; she'd been backhanded across the face.

By the time Lily finally manages to gather her wits and pull herself up off the floor, Lord Voldemort is long gone from not only the room but the vicinity.

"Harry?" the young woman croaks out, her voice shaking with fear as she rushes over to the side of her baby's crib. "Harry? Harry?!"

She knows in the back of her mind that her child is already dead, but the reality of it doesn't really hit her until she is looking down at the unmoving little body upon the periwinkle blue sheets. The cheerful teddy-bear pattern on the boy's shirt seems obscene against the chest that no longer rises and falls with life-sustaining breaths.

Lily scoops her son's still-warm corpse up from the bed and cradles him against her chest. She makes no attempt to fight back the tears that begin to fall. A sob breaks from her throat as she drops to her knees, still hugging her dead baby tightly to her chest as she pours out her grief for the husband and child that have been taken away from her by evil.

She is still in this position when Dumbledore finds her.

Lily vows revenge on the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters, but before she has a chance to do anything more than grieve her losses, the war is over. The Dark Lord falls, defeated by an infant, and his followers are rounded up and sent to Azkaban. Some of them manage to weasel their way out of prison sentences, but most of them do not.

Neville Longbottom becomes known as the savior of the Wizarding world, the one who defeated He Who Must Not Be Named. Neville is often referred to as the Boy Who Lived.

People do not speak of Harry Potter. No one wants to hear about the Boy Who Died, the boy who was confused with the true Child of Prophecy, the little baby who was murdered in cold blood by the most evil of men.

Lily does not know what to do with her life now, what to do with herself. Every minute of every day she misses her husband and her sweet baby boy, but there is no one with whom she can speak of them because the rest of the world is celebrating the fall of the Dark Lord and no one wants to deal with her grief and her tears. She can't stand to be around James's old friends. They choose to honor James by "keeping his spirit alive" and living their lives much as they would have if they had not lost a friend. Oh, they were sad at first, of course... but weeks after the funeral they are able to recount memories with smiles and laughter, and Lily isn't ready for that yet - doesn't know if she will ever be ready to smile again - and she just can't be around the remaining Marauders anymore.

Her grief is not something of which she can easily let go. It is tied to deeply into her guilt, her guilt over not being able to protect her child, over being rendered senseless by the mere slap of hand for a few moments more than were necessary for the purveyor of evil to sunder her child's soul from his flesh. If only she had been stronger, more persistent, more stalwart, quicker on the draw... if only she had thought to fight, if only she had been on the offensive, rather than thinking only to use herself as a shield, if only she had actually been able to think at all instead of freezing up in fear when she was facing off against the inhuman evil that had come to take her son away from her... if only she had been any of those things, then maybe her poor sweet baby would still be alive.

But she didn't and he isn't. There is no changing the past. And now she stuck in an unchanging present, unable to forgive herself for her own weaknesses and mistakes. She can't move on. She does not want to move on.

She will continue to exist but will never truly live again. Her heart is caught in the past, her sorrow eternal, her tears forever painting rainbow-trails down her face.

~end~