(a Harry Potter fanfiction by Princess Kate)

***The Professors' Bookshelf***

The distribution of this story is for personal use only. Any other form of distribution is prohibited without the consent of the author.

"Disclaimer: All characters and places you recognise belong to Ms Rowling. Those few that you don't belong to me.

~ * ~

"We're in a new world," Jem says, "and we've got to make it a better one than the old. That isn't done yet, though some folks seem to think it ought to be. The job isn't finished- it isn't really begun."

--L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on." --Robert Frost

beginning

The first time Lily had been to Hogwarts since her graduation had been nearly five years ago. Sirius had had to meet with Dumbledore for some reason- there was always a reason, always a peril that demanded to be met, one that it seemed only Sirius could meet- and he hadn't wanted to leave her alone. She had assured him that she would be fine- but even after all this time he still treated her as if she were fragile, made of glass, something that might break at any moment. He hadn't listened- but had Sirius ever listened? He had insisted that she couldn't be left alone, and there was no one else who could stay with her- either gone or dead, the others, all were gone or dead. So it had been the lesser of the two evils, taking her to Hogwarts with him.

They had taken the train. Apparation would have been faster, but Sirius wouldn't risk it. He was tired, he said, and wasn't sure that he could concentrate well enough. She knew he was lying, that it was just an excuse because he didn't think that she could do it. She knew better, but she didn't complain. She liked the train. And besides, it had given Sirius a chance to close his eyes. He had slept all the way, snoring steadily while Lily silently looked out the window at the dreary, grey landscape and tried not to remember.

She woke him when they pulled into the station, even though she hated to do it. He had looked so peaceful asleep- almost like a little boy again. How she missed the boy Sirius, the reckless Sirius who would joke and laugh and who could have lighted up a room by merely smiling. He rarely smiled like that anymore; when he smiled now it was small and cynical and sad; the man so unlike the boy that she would have hardly recognised them as being the same person.

When he woke that afternoon he had given her a real, rare smile- as if he had been reading her thoughts and wanted to reassure her with what little he had left. She smiled back at him, almost without restraint, and neither said anything, just sat there in the train together, the rain beating gently against window. Then it was over, all to soon Sirius slipped back on his mask; the tired, old look came back into his eyes and he told her in a weary voice that he supposed they better get off.

Hagrid had been waiting for them at the station; Sirius must have warned him beforehand that she would have been coming as well, and there was a carriage waiting for them.

It had been a long time since she had last seen Hagrid, but he greeted her warmly all the same. Still, there was something missing; like Sirius, his smile never quite seemed to reach his eyes.

He tried to keep up a lively conversation all the way there, but like a small flame fighting against a vast expanse of darkness, ever pressing in, the effort seemed to grow to be too much, and he gave up. Hagrid never seemed to have quite enough breath nowadays, but then, he was lucky to have any at all. He had fought five Death Eaters single-handed, and had come out of it alive, minus a leg and most of his old vivaciousness. But Hagrid was strong, like all of them, stronger, and he would make it. But still, it hurt to see him like this. Lily suddenly wanted to cry.

Sirius sensed this- he sensed everything, there wasn't anything that she could hide from him anymore- and valiantly attempted to keep up the conversation. But it isn't easy to talk to oneself; Hagrid couldn't speak any more, and Lily wouldn't. She was beginning to see why Sirius had thought that this would be a bad idea.

At least Hogwarts looked the same as it had always been- Hogwarts would always be the same. She hadn't realised just how much she had missed this place, the last place that she could remember where everything had truly been all right. All the old memories, the memories that she had willed herself to forget, began to come back, first in slow trickles then gaining in strength and speed, coming like a swift river current, threatening to sweep her away. She clung to Sirius's hand tightly, as if it were a life preserver.

His face was set and grey and impassive and he looked only straight ahead as they made their way down the old halls. She began to see that she had been wrong when she thought that nothing had changed, now that she was inside she began to see that it had all changed perhaps even more radically than Sirius had. It was old and tired and dreary, as if the entire soul had been drained away from the place. It had been a long time since students had been here and it was slowly dying, slowly fading away into nothingness…

Sirius stopped suddenly and she realised that they must be they must be in front of Dumbledore's office. Sirius muttered something and Dumbledore appeared. He seemed to have aged a million years in only a short time, or had it been a long time, she never could tell, to Lily the years had all felt like an eternity.

He said something to Sirius and Sirius had paused and clutched Lily's hand tighter, so tight she felt it might almost fall off. He told her that he didn't want to leave her out here, but he didn't have any choice because he and Dumbledore had to discuss something important and she… he stopped himself before he could say it, but she knew what he was going to say. Because she couldn't be trusted.

She had assured him she would be all right, and then the two men had disappeared, leaving her alone.

At first it hadn't been so bad. She had wandered up and down the corridor, always mindful always to keep the stone gargoyle, which she supposed must have been the entry marker, in her sight. She looked at the portraits. A few were slashed and completely ruined, most of the others had been long deserted and dusty spider webs had grown over the frames. But the backgrounds were still there, and that was enough. She could imagine that the people were still there, in their paintings, that they could talk to her like they once had.

One of the backgrounds was a fancy castle, which reminded her of the fairy stories her mother used to read to her when she was little. She had always loved those stories, brave knights and fair princesses and evil dragons, where good was white and bad was black and the two never intermingled into murky greyness. They had always ended with the knight and the princess riding into the sunset; she had never read a story that hadn't ended like that, ended happily. The knight and the princess always got married, and lived happily ever after, maybe they moved into a castle of their own, maybe they had children, maybe a little baby boy, with messy black hair like his father's and green, green eyes…

She turned quickly to the next picture. It seemed to be blurred and she couldn't tell what it was, not even when she wiped away the spider webs. It was still blurred and her eyes still stung with hot tears. She didn't know exactly why she should be crying, only that she was, and that there was nothing left in the world that could console her.

It seemed to be only a short time later, even though Sirius had later told her, with a guilty, agonised look in his eye, that it had been hours and hours, that she became aware that she wasn't alone anymore and Sirius must have been out of his meeting. He didn't say anything at first, didn't need to, and she didn't know that she could have borne it if he had. He merely stood with her, his eyes clouded over with bitter remembrances of his own, and mourned with her. For her. For them. For their world.

It had been afternoon when they arrived, but now it was dark, and as they slowly walked back towards Hagrid's waiting carriage, the stars shone down like tiny pricks of hope against the endless night.

first chapter

"What did Dumbledore say?" Lily had asked, Hogwarts a safe distance away and the train car silent. They were the only two passengers, as they had been that afternoon, except for an old man in tattered clothing and a ragged beard who slept silently in one corner.

"A good many things," said Sirius shortly, in the tone he always took when Lily voiced her wonderings. It was a voice so unlike the Sirius she used to know, a voice full of quiet authority and pain, that it usually quieted her. But tonight- she didn't really understand the reasoning that had prompted her to ask, but she knew she didn't have to. Sirius seemed to understand this, like he seemed to understand everything, so added, in a slightly softer voice, "He wants to reopen Hogwarts."

This had not been what Lily was expecting. She sat back hard in her chair, studying his carefully blank face- it hadn't looked like he was joking, and there was no way, she knew, that he would have had joked about something like that. "But- why?"

Sirius sighed wearily and kept his eyes carefully trained on her hands. It had been an old trick of his, to concentrate on her hands when there had been something he couldn't trust himself to say to her face. "He thinks it's time. And I think he's right. Every year we keep the school closed, the harder it will be to open it again. And besides-" he had paused, his eyes quickly darting up to meet hers then focusing again on her hands, "we've no excuse now. The school was only to be closed until the defeat of Voldemort. That was six months ago. The time to begin rebuilding is past due. Hogwarts seems like the logical place to start."

"But is it? What about the Ministry? Or Hogsmeade? Or Diagon Alley? Or-?"

Sirius's face was pained. "We've lost an entire generation, Lily. If we started with Hogsmeade, or even the Ministry, after only a few years there would be hardly anyone left who could understand what those things really mean. We've got to begin with passing down our knowledge, before it's lost. If we do a sufficient job, our students can rebuild. If we don't, there's no hope at all."

"No hope at all," Lily had repeated.

Sirius hadn't replied, he had known that there was nothing he could say.

Lily bit her lip. "Dumbledore is right, of course. He's always right."

"No one is right all of the time."

The train had begun to slow, they were approaching the station. Lily asked slowly, cautiously, "When does he want to begin the school?"

Sirius hadn't answered immediately. "Ideally, this September. But then that only leaves us a few months to get the place back in order, to find teachers… it wouldn't be impossible, but it would be extremely difficult."

"He expects to find enough teachers for all seven years by the end of the summer?"

"No. We both agreed that perhaps it would be for the best just to take a first year class this next year. Then the next year we would add second years, and the next year third." He had been watching her carefully as he spoke, like he always did, as if she would turn into a wisp of smoke and float away with a passing wind at any moment if he said the wrong thing. "But I wouldn't count on getting this thing off the ground this year, so-"

"It will," Lily had said confidently, much more confidently than she felt. And then her confidence had wavered, and she had added in a hoarse whisper, "Harry would have been a first year this year."

Sirius hadn't said anything more. There had been no need; by that time the train had stopped and he only had to stand, to take her hand to help her up. And then they had gone home.

second chapter

That night had been a sleepless one for her. She had tossed and turned all night, new unsettling thoughts intertwined with the old nightmares dancing across her mind, and when the grey dawn at long last had crept up on her window she had been by no means rested, but at least she had been sure. And experience had taught her to value the latter far more.

"I want to do something," she had informed Sirius that morning at breakfast.

For a long moment he had just stared at her, as if he didn't know quite what to make out of her statement. Finally, "But you are doing something. What do you call the work you've been doing with Madam Pomfrey at the hospital?"

She had expected this. "That's not really something. That's just somewhere where I'm out of the way. And now that… it's… over there'll be won't be hardly any need for me there at all. I want to do something that counts."

"I would think that all your efforts did count to all the wizards and witches whose lives you saved. Without you, there would still be no way to heal victims of the Crucio curse. Are you saying that wasn't worth anything?"

"Of course not. All I'm saying is that it's time to do something different. You can't argue with me, you were saying the same thing just the other day, when Eustace Hill called, trying to convince you to take the job of Minister."

Sirius hadn't anything to say to that. "So just what, exactly, do you propose?"

This was what she had tossed and turned all the last night over. She had stared down into her eggs for a moment, then suddenly made up her mind and looked up, meeting Sirius's questioning glance with a defiant stare. "I want to teach. I'm rather good at Charms, aren't I? And there's really no one else for the job. No one who can be spared, at least."

"No one except you." Sirius had stared at her hands for a very long time. "If you want to do it, I can't very well stop you, can I?"

"No. I'm going to do it." She paused. "But I would like to think that-"

She hadn't had to finish. "I think you can."

And that had been all there was to it; there was nothing else that she had needed.

third chapter

They had gone up to Hogwarts the next week, again by train. It seemed almost sacrilegious to Lily to approach it in any other way.

Hagrid hadn't met them at the station this time. He had sent in his place a merry looking young wizard, with red cheeks and curly hair, who had been very friendly and very wonderful, but hadn't been Hagrid. She was glad when they had finally arrived at the school.

Dumbledore had been waiting for them in the Great Hall. The enchanted ceiling was gone; it had been destroyed in the battle, and the bright stars shone down through the open gape, the full moon which cast silvery shadows over the small group of people gathered. They had all seemed so pitiful to Lily that night, those small band of survivors huddled together in the middle of the hall, so piteous and afraid even though it had only been that morning that Eustace Hill had announced that there was nothing to be afraid of ever again, that the sacrifices made by the brave sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers had ushered in a new era of previously unknown peace, where fear would be a word known by none.

Sirius had moved to go speak with Dumbledore; he had only come up to see that Lily made it all right, and then he would go back home, back to the hundreds of thousands of things that were part of the job of restoration. So many things had to be done, so many things; and in the face of the tasks that others would have to face Lily had suddenly felt small and inconsequential.

But she had the firm belief that she was doing the best that she could do, and that was all that she could do. Sirius had come then to say good-bye, he had squeezed her hand and told her he'd be up the next weekend to check on the progress here and if there was anything she needed she could call him anytime. She knew that, and told him so, and in return had seen the faintest glimmer of his old smile… and then he was gone, and she had been alone.

She had turned to the others, all of whom she recognised- there had been so few people left that one couldn't help knowing nearly everyone, if only by sight. There had been old Arabella Figg and Tadhg O'Reilly and Aine Finnigan and Gerard Diggory and even Severus Snape, who had looked half dead. He had spent the past five years in St Mungo's, and it had only been on the part of Lily's research that he had even made it that long. She hadn't wanted to give him the benefits of it, she couldn't understand how someone who had been as well-known a Death Eater as he had been deserved anything but death, and a slow, excruciating one at that, a death that was racked with pain and with the dying screams of a baby who you could do nothing to save echoing in your ears. But Dumbledore had insisted, and Sirius in turn had insisted, and she had figured that when Sirius Black had taken it upon himself to try to save Severus Snape one might as well do the thing, because Sirius would have had never insisted- never even thought about it- unless there was some saving grace that she had not known about.

It the years since then she had learned a little, enough that she could now say that she didn't really regret saving his life, but that had been as far as she could allow herself to go.

Dumbledore had broken into her thoughts then, informing them all, in an almost painfully tired voice, that they had all better retire for the night. "Tomorrow," he had said, "will bring us much to do, and we had best be rested to meet it."

fourth chapter

The staff rooms, during the intervening years, had long fallen into disrepair. But Dumbledore had assured that them they had received the least damages, and there had been really nothing they could do about them that night- tomorrow, said Old Mrs Figg in between sneezes, they would have to make this their first priority.

Lily had agreed with her. The room where she had found herself that night was hardly the worst, at least it had been more or less intact and none of the floorboards had begun to rot away, but everything had been covered by at least five inches of dust. She had set an easy enough cleaning charm on the bed and then gone to work on the window, or what she supposed was the window, it had been so black and grime covered that she hadn't been completely sure.

The bed had already been completely cleaned and the charm had already set to work on the nightstand when Lily finally managed to chip away enough of the grime to get a substantial view of the outdoors. She hadn't been able to see much, only a little bit of the Forbidden Forest and the full moon shining brightly overhead, but that had been enough. Suddenly very tired, she lay down on the bed, not bothering to take off even her shoes, and had stared through the tiny circle she had made in the window, at the moon which shone in the sky, so remote and unaware. She suddenly felt very alone.

She had been alone before; those two terrible months when Sirius had been Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit and she had been the only one who could have testified to free him. But she had been ill, so ill, the after effects of the curse that had hit her, and she hadn't wanted to get better, not even to clear Sirius's name. All she had ever really wanted was James by her side and now he was gone, and it had been all her fault that he was gone. She had fought against getting better, because there had been no use living in a world with no James in it, with no Harry in it, in a world where such terrible things happened and friend turned against friend and brother against brother. She had been alone, so terribly alone…

It had been Remus who had finally knocked some sense into her, Remus who had always been the sensible one, Remus who was gone now. Five years later he and two others had been captured by Death Eaters, and had they killed themselves rather than be subjected to torture, had taken their own lives rather than risk betraying their comrades.

And then only Sirius had been left, but it was the new Sirius, the Sirius who had suddenly hardened into a man that she didn't know. And every day had been lived in the fear that he, too, would be taken from her…

Lily had known a thing or two about being alone.

end

But the next morning had come, and then the next, and then the next. Lily found herself almost enjoying her work, at least it had kept her busy and her mind on the present. Sirius came on the weekend, like he had promised, and said that he was impressed by all that had been done so far. The school might be ready by September after all, he had said. She had answered that she hoped so, like she was supposed to, and like she found that she did.

And so the school had been ready to open when September came; it stood poised and waiting for the first students to again walk through the door in wonder. And they had come, a small group of bedraggled first years, the pioneer class of a new generation.

Sirius had come to see it, and Eustace Hill, who had beamed down from the high dais as if it was all his doing. He had made a speech before the Sorting, a long speech extolling the infinite efforts of all who had given their blood and their sweat and their tears for this very moment. None of the children had listened, and neither had Lily.

And then had come the Sorting, out had come the old Sorting Hat, the only real survivor of the war, the only thing that had never been touched, had never had to change; a bridge between the past and the future.

There had been few children that year; and Lily found herself thinking about all the children that might have been. She could see them very vividly, watching, those children who might have been, for this had been their victory, too; she could see them almost more clearly than anything else. A round faced girl with blonde plaits, a tall boy with an affable grin, a skinny little boy with glasses and messy black hair whose eyes seemed to be focused on her the entire evening. She smiled at him, and he had grinned back, a grin that was achingly familiar and hauntingly different. Then the Sorting had ended and they had disappeared back into the night; for spectres cannot live where there is joy.

And joy there had been, coming like an irrevocable relief, the overwhelming sense that Lily had, at long last, come home.

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Last updated Monday, October 29, 2001