Succour
By Rey

Lily leaves an ancient protection on her dear son, literally so. But with that, Harry stands to gain more than mere protection.

After all, there is little to none that a loving mother will not do, be she mortal or god-like.

(A three-shot of love, protection, and sacrifice, as well as friendships and family bonds.)

1. Succour

Being an Unspeakable has its advantages and disadvantages, just like any other jobs in any community. But this time, as her family's lives are threatened, Lily Evans leans more towards the advantages.

Professor Dumbledore has convinced James, her husband, that the Fidelius Charm is protection enough for their little hideout. Sirius, little Harry's godfather somewhat against her wishes, has proposed a subterfuge in the secret keeping, with Peter – yet another of James' friends – as the real secret keeper.

Those are all bad ideas. But do they listen to her? No.

Since the wedding party, in which the Marauders pranked Petunia and Vernon rather viciously, Lily has been wondering whyever she agreed to marry James, who used to be her schoolyard nemesis. However, now that her beautiful, beautiful son has been born, she would rather focus on other things.

Such as, how to keep Harry alive and free of any prophecy, even if she has to sacrifice herself in the process. And here lies the foremost advantage of being an Unspeakable like she is, with the unconventional training for fighting being the close second.

Research. It's the biggest lifeline she's hanging on. The Department of Mysteries holds billions of tomes and scrolls and tablets and sheaves of leaves gathered in centuries, and it has connections to other libraries in other magical communities, including the magical great library in Alexandria.

She needs a ritual or a ward or a summoning that she can do herself that may be able to safeguard Harry's life, even if it cannot do the same to her own or James'. She doesn't really trust Peter; she doesn't really like Sirius; she can't persuade James into retreating to the unplottable Potter Manour for a better hideout; she's sceptical about Professor Dumbledore's unexplained prophecy about a little boy that might be able to defeat Voldemort; she's sceptical about the Fidelius Charm itself, with Peter as the cornerstone and with her family living in such an easy-to-find village; so, she has nobody to turn to, especially when Remus, the only Marauder she could tolerate right from the first day of school, has been absent for long periods of time ever since they've graduated from Hogwarts.

There are lots of gods and goddesses in the mundane world, worshipped in various communities with ranging spectrums of faith and evidence or seeming evidence. Lily herself has been brought up a christian of the Church of England, and raised to believe in one god with three characteristics plus lots of angels and saints.

But in the magical world, those gods and goddesses are real; well, as real as the protection rituals and scripts of summoning make them to be.

Lily feels torn and doubtful. But still, she dives further into this topic, after getting the permit for her official project, which is to determine the veracity of the more benign and simple but obscure rituals, if not the summonings. After all, her own beliefs and opinions cannot go between her and Harry's protection. She wants her baby to grow old and happy and kind, even if she dies tomorrow.

Last month, she focused on the Chinese pantheon, hoping to broaden the horizon of the English magical researchers. This month, contrarily, she has chosen to focus on the Old Norse gods and goddesses, as they are the second most popular pantheon after the Old Celtic ones, and more popular than the Greeks. Besides, from the line of ancestry that she was able to trace during her first days in the department, she did find some Norwegian thread, in addition to the Russian and Welsh that she's already known, so she would like to honour that branch of her ancestors this way. And, if she were to entrust her precious son to a deity – or near-deity – aside from the one she's been brought up to believe in, she would rather not do so to one of those self-indulgent, drama-incurring Greeks.

Not that the Norse ones are that much better, she's finding out…

As James is often absent from their hideout, still active as an Auror with Sirius even though they're supposed to be hiding, Lily has decided to bundle Harry up for brief stays in the Scandinavian magical communities. Most of Voldemort's Death Eaters and supporters are from the more southern parts of Europe, anyway, so there is less chance of them happening on someone out for Harry's blood up north. The colder climate is not a problem to a witch, too.

Each day during her stays, she brings a six-month Harry up to her assigned desk in the library, sets him up with toys, surrounds them both in a silencing bubble so that other researchers won't be bothered by his cries or her coos to him, then begins to work on the latest tome or scroll or tablet or sheaf of leaves – or, once, even a statue of the Royal Family of Asgard with what might be a script of summoning etched on its base in an elder variation of Norse runes. Each time in her increasingly prolonged excursions, she comes home to an empty house and clutters left by her husband and his friends, with the bedroom untouched.

Each time, she wonders if she and James will still be spouses when Harry turns one year old.

British magical community, like many others in the world, is highly patriarchal. But Dorea Black, James' own mother, has taught Lily tips on how to find loopholes for women in this culture, with Charlus' input no less. So, she has opened a Gringotts vault for herself upon graduation, and by now it has been filled decently with as much money as she can set aside from her Ministry payments, enchantment and potion commissions, the nest egg Dorea has secretly squirreled away for her, and the excesses of monthly household spending funds James had given her. She has also filed a will both in the mundane and magical sides, despite the fact that her standing as a Muggleborn in the eyes of British magical community is weak at best and nonexistent at worst.

Still, she has tried and prepared for everything the best she can and knows. She has even bought a small house with a large yard deep in the most mountainous, least accessible region in Wales, and stocked it up to be self-sustainable and ready for a getaway. She has also packed up a trunk of mementos for Harry to peruse later, should she be unable to raise him, however heavy and pained her heart feels when doing so.

The only thing that she is still missing from her list of just-in-cases is a godmother.

Alice McKinnon, now Alice Longbottom, has offered to fill such position. In another life, under another circumstance, Lily would have welcomed the offer heartily; Alice has been her close friend aside from Merry McDonald, after all, and Harry could have little Neville as a perfect godbrother, too. But unfortunately, Alice has confessed that Professor Dumbledore has also visited her family with the vague tale of the prophecy he claimed he's heard from someone.

God forbid, if anything happened to her and Alice, if she took the other woman's offer, then both boys would have nobody to depend on once they were gone, which would defeat the purpose in the first place. It would be even worse for her situation, since Neville still has his paternal grandmother and various paternal elder relatives, while both her parents and James' are no longer there to take care of Harry, and she won't – can't – entrust Harry to Petunia, not after what the Marauders have done to Petunia and Vernon during that disastrous wedding reception. With how immature, womanising and reckless Sirius is, and with how he seems to treat Harry as James' son instead of as Harry, she doesn't think she can trust that mutt seriously, either. So, she figures she desperately needs a balancing force in the form of a godmother, immediately at that.

A god-mother, if she would be brazen enough to admit it, to hope for it.

But then again, mothers can turn wild and desperate when their precious, precious babies are threatened…

Harry is ten months old.

Lily's research now shifts to all goddesses that preside over family and home, as Voldemort's attacks all throughout Great Britain escalate in number, scale of destruction, viciousness, ingenuity and insidiousness.

James and Sirius seem to have taken up residence in the Auror headquarters in the Ministry, so Lily herself moves with Harry to Norway semi-permanently. She keeps researching, and at last settles on Frigga from the Old Norse.

James forgets Harry's birthday. Lily bites her lip, restrains her anger, and forces herself to focus on the summoning she is attempting to do. She has returned to Godric's Hollow for her baby's birthday, thinking that James and Sirius would at least like to celebrate the important day with her and the birthday boy…

She shakes her head, grits her teeth, and continues to tweak the script of summoning she has been working on for the better part of two days. Laid on a blanket beside her on the grass of their backyard, Harry kicks about happily and babbles to himself, content as can be, oblivious that his father is not around to wish him a happy first birthday, oblivious that his mother is attempting to beg a goddess for succour for him.

But at last, as there is only an hour left to the exact time her son was born a year ago, she is finished with the wording, and can begin to gather all the necessary items, as per accordance to the various tomes and scrolls she has cobbled the knowledge of this summoning from. – Simple and heartfelt will do it. She has neither the time, the patience, nor the heart to do and say the elaborate things hinted by those accounts and stories, anyhow.

Four – exorbitantly priced – phoenix-tear-treated white beeswax candles are lit on the four main corners of the compass. They stand in a square angle to each other on the grass where she finalised her wording moments ago, connected to each other by an unbroken trail of refined salt from the North Sea and soil crumbles from the place where the Norse pantheon are rumoured to have ever touched down on. The inner space is big enough for roughly four adults of average tall size to stand on, carpeted by a thick layer of newly picked pine needles, and strewn with lilies for her namesake, as well as roses – the latter being, aside from her namesake, a touch of her childhood belief of Mother Mary that she cannot get rid of and partially doesn't wish to.

The biggest candle, the one that stands directly before her, is the one that signifies Frigga to her, while the second biggest, placed on the opposite corner of it, signifies Odin. The smaller candle on her right signifies Loki, while its twin on the left signifies his brother Thor. Once came a thought to have Loki's supposed children represented also in this ritual patch, to complete the family and hopefully make the goddess more sympathetic towards her course, but the different accounts the legends have given pertaining to their existence have made Lily hesitate to act on the thought. – She can only hope madly now that the decision won't cost her or Harry – especially Harry – any grief.

Now, having cleaned herself and Harry thoroughly, and having clad herself and her son in their finest clothes that are still practical, she sits on her legs before the candle that represents Frigga with Harry seated in her lap and takes a deep breath. – Unlike the popular belief, rituals, to which summonings actually belong to, never have fixed aspects, be they ingredients, time, wording, steps, or magic use; these all depend on the users, the purposes, and many other things. But if this one fails…

She shoos that thought away, violently. She cannot afford doubting herself, now.

Deep breath. In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out.

Magic warms her chest, spreads throughout her body, saturates her being.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

And on the second Harry turns one year old, she begins.

"Frigga," she whispers, in the best translation to Old Norse that she knows, as her magic reaches the candles and begins to saturate the ritual patch, "Frigga, Frigga, Oh hear me, mother of Thor and Loki, Queen of Asgard, spouse to Odin King." She takes in a rattling breath, letting her emotions – longing fear desperation hope love-Harry love love love – empower and tinge her magic. "Oh hear me, Frigga, she who gave succour to my ancestors, mother of Thor and Loki." She rarely begs for anything in her life, and never seriously; but now she begs, with all her being and all her might.

"Frigga." Her voice quivers, hard. She swallows, then begins again: "Frigga, mother of Thor and Loki, please hear me. I, Lily Rose Evans, spouse of James Charlus Potter, beg of you, oh defender of families, protector of youths and children; please give succour to my son, the babe in my arms, Harry James Potter." Her voice breaks and peters to a stop, and for a moment the only things she can hear is her own wet breaths and the humming of her magic.

And then, as a rough sob is torn from her throat, everything explodes. – No more adherence to script, no more coherence to try to speak in Old Norse, no more leash to her magic and emotions, no more dam for her words.

She talks about Voldemort and his Death Eaters. She talks about the vague prophecy Professor Dumbledore believes in so much, about a boy that is to be a weapon. She talks about James and Sirius being so often and so long absent, probably trying futilely to make the world safer for Harry to live in. She talks about being hunted as a Mudblood, about Harry also being hunted as a Mudblood's get. She talks about Harry being a possible weapon to defeat Voldemort and being hunted like an animal for it: a mother's living, waking nightmare in progress.

She doesn't quite realise it, when a pair of soft, warm arms and a comforting presence wrap her and her son in a tight embrace. She just talks.

Dear Mr. Selwyn,
Firstly, sir, I would like to apologise for violating our protocol on conducting rituals and summonings. I was too eager to begin right away. But the summoning that I chose was completed, sir! The price was only an exhaustion that faded after a week. (But then, I am a mother that has been taking care of my son alone all this time, so maybe this variable should be taken into account.)
Enclosed please find the sketch of my summoning ground as well as the materials, script and parameters that I used alongside it. I utilised these variables to summon Frigga, the Norse deity of Family and motherhood. From the conversations I had with her, and the fact that she could return here without being summoned, I can say for certain that she and her family, as well as other people mentioned in the Old Norse myths, are not deities as described by mundane and magical sources.
I do hope my findings may contribute something at least to our archives, if not to our knowledge on these beings that for so long were treated as gods and goddesses. I do hope someday somebody will try it with other deities from other pantheons. Sadly, I can't do it myself, sir, and I apologise for that. I believe you know the ward on this letter and how it can be activated, sir, so please kindly receive my farewell.
May we meet again under happy circumstances in the next life, if there be any.
Lily Evans

As the man calling himself Voldemort kills her husband, as death itself seems to creep up on her alongside the progress of that murderer up the stairs of her home, Lily completes yet another summoning; a simple one, spoken in the Asgardian tongue, but the most costly.

"Frigga, Allmother, bless this child, Harry James Potter. Give him strength, give him succour. I, Lily Rose Evans, beg you, on the cusp of my death."

She can feel it, the moment the summoning works.

She has just used a mixture of hers and Harry's blood to draw a hasty lightning rune for strength and victory on the tiny brow of her tiny son, and it now vanishes without a trace. Most likely, it has been swallowed by the surge of now-familiar great power that is even now cocooning the tiny, wriggling body still resting in her grasp.

The power laps gently at her bloodied finger, which is still attached to the tail-end of the lightning rune, as if in greeting, or some succour for her own self, never thought of let alone asked for. But she is grateful, oh how she is grateful.

The monster is before her now, staring eagerly at her, unperturbed that he – no, it – has just killed a man in cold blood.

She lays her son in his crib behind her, trusting his godmother to look after him, to safeguard him, to be there for him.

"Not Harry, please. Take me instead."

And here, now, she activates her death ward, her own protection for him, embedded in his skin months before this plea to a kind, kind mother was ever spoken, let alone answered.

The last thing that she sees is not the monster, or the green death that it loves to use, but the tear-stained visage of a great, kind, selfless mother, wreathed in the fragrance of pine needles and lilies and roses.

Lily Evans crumples onto the floor of the nursery with a faint relieved smile on her lips.

And the green death that roars for the third time in this torn little cottage, nearly as soon as the second has found its mark, connects instead with a double layer of protection that cocoons its target.

The monster's red eyes widen, faced with the shimmering barrier of gold overlain with streaks of rainbow colours, and the split second of stupour is all that the bounced spell needs to connects with its caster, weakened by the bounce but strengthened with the protections.

The empty robe crumples onto the ground, as the body beneath it is burnt into ashes, then swept away to scatter in lonely fields by a passing breeze, scented with pine needles and lilies and roses.

The protection barriers sink back into the skin of the crying little boy, but the gold stays on his hair, just as a scar on the shape of the lightning rune bleeds sluggishly on his brow.

The life of Balder, youngest son of Frigga and Odin, has just begun.