Chapter Text
“Do you sit on that arse? Because I can guarantee I’m not sleeping on it.”
A Jaw Drop.
“Holy shit—“ A fit of coughs overtook pink lips as James Potter doubled over in laughter. “—that was fucking awful .”
The woman leaned up against the counter, her delight was obvious by the way she beamed at him. “Alright there, Potter?”
“Just fine—where’d you hear that one?” He managed to somewhat contain himself as he straightened back up, a smile lifting his face. She smirked and reached up towards the bridge of his nose, but was prevented by a quick nudge of his hand. He straightened up his glasses by himself.
Not bothered by his rejection of her touch, she answered his question: “One of the girls told me some bloke tried it on her in the pub.”
A beat of slightly baffled silence.
“Did it work?”
She snorts. “Of course not, Allie left the second he spouted the bullshite—not the part about how amazing her arse is—Merlin knows those squats do her wonders…”
James cut into her murmuring about how nice her friend’s arse was with an amused question: “Then why did you think it was going to be any different now?”
She shrugs. “I just wanted your attention.”
He has to give her slightly grudging respect for that. (God knows he’s done and said worse for the same reason.) “Well, you’ve certainly got it.”
“Brilliant, though I wish I had something else of yours.” A coy glance down and the heavy hint is received. He rolls his eyes at that. “Laying it on a bit thick, yeah?”
“Only figuratively, I’ll physically lay it on you later.”
“Goddammit.”
“What? That was clever,” she said mock-indignantly.
“Only slightly—and you really have to work on your filter—professional environment, remember?” (Seriously, when did his fifteen-year-old self reincarnate as a woman?)
A smirk. (This is karma, isn’t it?)
“Well, I’d like to work—“
“Out of the way! Out of the way!”
James whips his head away from the desk and is met with the sight of two Aurors: Benjy Fenwick and Emmeline Vance, top agents recently enlisted on a seek and destroy mission in fucking Japan .
What the hell?
Both are rushing through the front room of Saint Mungos, pushing past a crowd of healers clad in light green robes. Between them is a levitated stretcher with a body on it. Oh shit.
“Potter! We need Healer Potter!”
His hands are a blur in his peripheral, working overtime and some more to maintain some sign of a heartbeat with stabilizing spells. The patient has severe scarring on her left arm, running down the length of what seems to have been a pale ligament. Her fingers are charred, almost completely unrecognizable, though not unfixable. Hair, muddied and tangled was a red and crusty cloud above her head.
His wand dashes across the feminine body, running scans whilst his right hand is occupied with flipping through his notebook and then scribbling his hurried observations:
- Minor scarring on neck
- Major burns on right arm
- Right leg broken
- Left leg bruised (shin to ankle)
- Magic depleti-
A sudden spike in the monitor and James feels hope.
There we go.
“Aldritch! I need you to keep her steady!” The other healer steps in, ready with his wand. “Like that?”
“ There —that’s it.”
James steps away, allowing his co-worker to take over the job of keeping the patient alive. It would be easier for him now that James had practically gotten her back from the dead.
“Anything else?” Aldritch Mendax gives him an inquisitive look, slightly alarmed by the damage that was made even more apparent by the closer proximity.
“No, just hold her steady, I’m tryna take a step back here, maybe think—“ an already-written word catches his eye; and though unfinished, was Troubling: depletion.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
“Make sure you don’t change anything, keep your magic low and don’t let it waver, understand? Keep an eye on her and if there are any spikes then *magic’ll shut her down*.
A nod and his warning is understood. “What are you doing now?”
James licks his dry lips, peering down into his notebook again. “I’ve got to try and fix this. We still don’t know what caused everything so we have to work carefully.”
Mendax frowns. “Main concerns?”
“Severe injuries and burns, but I can’t tell if the burns are magical or physical.”
“Oh, that’s not good, we’ll have to figure out what she—wait, what did Fenwick say her name was?”
James pauses in his ruminating. “I don’t know, he never gave one—here, keep her safe and I’ll get a blood sample.”
On her less injured arm, he injects a syringe, pulling blood out. At the risk of overloading her system with too much magic, he is forced to resort to muggle devices. After he pulls away from her bedside, he waves his wand on the blood-filled syringe and letters begin to form in the air.
An L . Then an I and then some other letters that James sees every day but never thought he’d ever see again in this order.
And then there are consecutive shatters, figurative and physical and James wants to fucking wake up . There’s a shatter of glass and red. Another of reality and then comes the chilling notion that maybe this is real—or maybe it’s God finally paying him back for all his sins, or maybe it was—
“What’s wrong?!” Aldritch turns his head to James, clearly alarmed at his sudden lack of awareness but still smart enough keeping his wand trained on the patient— no, not just patient —“Evans.”
“What?” Aldritch is confused, but that was to be expected; he doesn’t know. But James knows . He also remembers . He really wishes he doesn’t.
And when James speaks, his voice comes out in what was supposed to be a whisper, but sounds a lot like a shout in the room of white walls and smells he never wants to smell again.
“Her name is Lily Evans.”