multiversallogs | he walks among his peers unread;

Lily is silent, her hand still moving over Conan's head, though it becomes questionable if she's still scratching him for his pleasure - or her own comfort. The snippets she's gotten from Tonks and Hermione have been nothing like this, and it makes her feel ill. But she wants to know - and she knows that Harry lives.

Somehow, Harry lives. Knowing that, knowing that her son is okay, somehow -

"How did the spell rebound?" she asks, focusing on that first. "What tragedy? Why was Sirius blamed?"

"That's all interconnected. Sirius was charged with being a traitor and that for reasons no one could explain, he broke the Fidelius Charm keeping you and James safe. Are you from that far along the timeline?" He doesn't say outright ask if she's dead in her homeworld, but he suspects that must be the case.

Lily glances at Sol, then takes in a deep breath before she nods. "Yes, but - Sirius wasn't the keeper of the Fidelius Charm. I guess people still ... thought he was?"

"As a martyr, he never said otherwise. Maybe he blamed himself or was told to keep quiet, but the fact remains that he wasn't exonerated until after his death, more than a decade after the fact." Sebastian believes that the truth is a mix of the two: Sirius blamed himself and was gently encouraged to accept the blame because it put a neat cap on the war.

"And, you asked how the spell rebounded. It..., a witch's last act, especially when it's borne out of powerful emotion, it can do almost anything."

Lily takes a moment, her hand slowing, then stilling, on Conan's head as she considers the weight of Sebastian's words. A witch's last act, especially when it's borne out of powerful emotion ...

The memory of that night forces its way back to the forefront of her mind, much like Voldemort had that night: Not Harry, please, take me instead!

And then the flash of green light ...

She stares at Sebastian. "You don't mean - you can't mean - I -?"

"The night Voldemort came, both you and James fell at Godric's Hollow. Your son lived and Dumbledore chose to place him with the Dursleys to be raised as a muggle." Sebastian looks down at his hands, gathering his thoughts before pressing onwards. "Do you need a moment?"

"Yes, please."

She ducks her head and presses a hand to her mouth, feeling her tears burning at her eyes despite her best efforts to hold them back. Despite herself, a little choked sob wells up, but she swallows it back with effort and blinks the tears away determinedly.

Her last act was to protect her son, and he lived. It's overwhelming, this knowledge, this happiness.

Once she's pulled herself together, she looks at Sebastian again. "Why was he sent to live with Tuney? She - why not someone in the wizarding world?"

Sol, quiet but still present - this is theirs, this moment, but he's not sure Sebastian could have it on his own, not yet - rests his hand against the back of Sebastian's arm, steadying, well aware of the acute difference between Lily's emotional response to that news and what it had ultimately meant for her son. For Sebastian.

“Take your time,” he says, quietly.

Sebastian looks over to Sol and nods in agreement before taking a couple of slow, steady breaths. Yet again, he's managed to make Lily cry and he's reminded of the way James berated him for his cruelty. Just as it was in Bete Noire, he never intended to harm her for the sake of causing her suffering, but if she choose to know the truth, it's not his place to keep it from her.

"Dumbledore felt that the best way to protect him was to put him in with blood relatives." There's no way to know for sure, but Sebastian has wondered if the protection afforded to him by his mother's death would've been supported better by living with people who truly considered him a part of their family.

"But - " Lily swallows, hands fisting in her lap as she tries to keep control of her emotions. Nothing will ever change the deep-seated feeling of gratitude that she has that her son lived, and that Tuney and Vernon presumably took him in. She doesn't care for them, but she's certain they put a roof over his head and clothes on his back, which is something. But how good of care could they have taken of him? People who hated magic, hated everything it stood for? " - but they hated magic. Did they still take good care of him?"

He won't lie, but for now, he'll redirect the question to something a little less ugly, "Dumbledore put someone in the neighbourhood to keep an eye on things."

"And when the time came, collected him so he could go to Hogwarts, where he was schooled, fought in the second war, and survived." Sebastian would rather push on past his early childhood, which was a period of uninterrupted unpleasantness, and draw Lily's attention to her son's continued existence. He may not always have been happy, but alive and suffering still allows for the hope of liberation.

"Lily, there's one last, great and painful piece of news. Do you want it today or shall I wait?"

She looks up at him once she's sure she has her emotions under control, takes a deep breath through her nose, and smiles. It's weak, but it reaches her eyes, and she means it.

"Well - I suppose since we're ripping off the plaster, we may as well all the way, oughtn't we?"

"There was a lot of political fallout from the end of the second war and I'd lost the ability to do magic, which made it both miserable and rather dangerous for me to remain in London. I chose the name Sebastian and built up a new identity as a muggle, but before that, -- what I mean is, the reason I know so much about Harry's life, is that it was my own." It's not a smooth revelation and he doesn't know if she'll accept it, but he couldn't go about his life in the city without having told her.

I.

The shift in pronoun hits Lily like a fist to the chest, and she stares at Sebastian for a long moment, her hand lifting unconsciously from her lap as though to touch him before she pulls it back into a fist, not sure how he'll react. Looking at him now, she can see - here and there, the traces of James in his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the arch of his brow.

"Oh my God," she whispers, the hand in mid-air moving to cover her mouth. "Harry, I can't - " She's welling up again, but it's not tears of sadness or shock, but happiness, and her smile is watery but brilliant. "Oh, I'm - I'm so sorry you're here but I'm - so glad you're here."

"So'm I, and I'm sorry I couldn't, that I didn't know how to tell you this in a better way." Sebastian puts aside his teacup and lets his hand rest, palm up on the table between them - a gesture to show that if she wants to hold his hand, she's welcome. His palm is hot from being wrapped around the mug and the scarring stands out in stark relief against the rest of his workman's callouses.

She hesitates for a moment, then wraps her hand around his. His hand is warm and scarred and big; it reminds her so much of James' hand that her breath catches in her throat.

Her son is alive, and here, and - it's awful that his magic has been taken from him, but he seems to be okay without it, and ... he's alive. Maybe it's not the best outcome, but it's the one that she has, and she's so happy she gets to meet him.

"I'm glad you told me at all," she says with a smile, giving his hand a squeeze. "Thank you."

"At the very least, I had to give you the choice to know." Sebastian knows that there are still a great many ways he can inadvertently hurt Lily, but for now he feels relief. "And, of course, you're welcome to ask and know about anything in my life."

Wearing muggle clothing and without a visible wand, he doesn't look much like a 'proper' wizard but there are still traces of his old life if one knows where to look.

"I want to know everything," Lily admits with a laugh. "I haven't heard much of anything from people. Hermione has said she's friends with you - when did you meet her?"

"The one here isn't the version I know best, but I met Hermione on the train to Hogwarts where she and I became fast friends. I've brought a couple of photos, if you wanted to see them?" In part, he'd brought them along to support his story, but they can serve to move along the conversation just as well.

Lily lights up like a Christmas tree. She couldn't be happier if Harry - no, Sebastian - had told her that he was going to take her to meet all of his friends at the company picnic.

"I'd love to see them, thank you."

Sebastian pulls out a battered old paperback book that he's clearly used as a scrapbook and journal. In amongst the pages, there are photographs taped in alongside folded note papers and other personal commentary. Curiously, the book seems to have been expanded so that it contains far more pages than one would expect from such a slim volume.

The first photograph he offers is a casual shot of a few of the younger order members. Ron, Hermione, and Neville playing some sort of card game and laughing brightly, Draco and Luna deep in conversation, and Sebastian sitting up on a windowbox reading. It brings back fond memories for Sebastian, but to an outsider, the good cheer is likely ignored in the face of their collective injuries; nearly everyone in the shot has visible scarring, stitches, or bandages.

"We're all about nineteen in this one. That's Ron Weasley, Hermine you know, Longbottom's son, Lovegood's daughter and Malfoy, too," he lists them off pointing out which face goes with which name.

Lily is struck by how ... rough the group looks. It's clear they've been through the wringer, that the war they are fighting is a difficult and ugly one. Suddenly, the scars on Sebastian's hands make a lot more sense, and she feels her stomach lurch in sympathy.

"That's Alice's son?" she asks, fingers brushing over Neville's image, and she smiles. "He looks like her. That's her nose." Weasley is a good name to hear in conjunction as well, but - Malfoy?

"Lucius Malfoy?" she asks, looking up. "That's his son?"

"Neville's a good man and a brilliant herbologist. All those are his," he says pointing to the herb garden in the window boxes. Urban gardening for wizarding supplies wasn't that easy, but it was better than trying to buy materials on the black market or worse, risk capture and enter Diagon Alley.

"Yes, Draco. At first there'd been some complaints, but we could all work together." They might not have gotten along as friends or agreed on certain aspects of politics, but no one would deny that Draco was the reason most of the Order remained breathing and comparatively healthy.

If she had been disinclined to believe Sebastian before, this picture would have convinced her that she was talking to her son. These people - she sees their parents in their faces, in the way they hold themselves. She can see Xeno Lovegood's dreaminess in his daughter's eyes, the set of Narcissa Black's jaw on Draco's pointed face, the good humor and all the bloody freckles that go along with being a Weasley in the boy named Ron.

"What did you do?" she asks, looking up again. "All of you, I mean? How did you fight him?"

Sebastian frowns, confused by her question. How else does one fight a war?

"We avoided the Ministry, made deals where we could, and killed his people before they got ours," he says cautiously. Sebastian is concerned that it's not going to be the answer she'd like to hear, but he's even more sure that she doesn't want details about tactics.

he walks among his peers unread;

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