multiversallogs | he walks among his peers unread;

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.

Lily smiles a little, awkwardly. She wasn't entirely sure what answer she was expecting, but that was a good one, she supposes.

"You said you had more pictures?" she asks, attempting to change the subject. "May I see them?"

"Of course." He flips through the book and carefully removes a few more snaps, some muggle, some wizarding, and spreads them out on the table. In the photographs, the same group of friends ages, is injured, healed, acquires new allies, and loses members. Most of them seem to be taken in a series of poorly kept muggle flats with the occasional appearance of Grimmauld Place or some other Order hideaway.

Save Moody, there is a marked absence of anyone that Lily might be familiar with.

They are, Lily thinks, all so young. So much younger than they should be, she corrects herself, since it looks like some of them are older than she is.

It's a cold feeling she gets in her stomach, when she realizes her son is now older than she'll ever get the chance to be in England.

She pushes a strand of hair back, looks up at Sebastian. "Where - may I ask what happened to the first Order? Where are they?"

Surely they can't all be dead, right? Alice and Frank were alive. Molly and Arthur, Emmeline, Professor Dumbledore, McGonagall - why aren't they in the pictures?

Sebastian looks down at the photographs to hide his expression while he weighs various answers.

"Leading up into the second war going 'hot', the Death Eaters had years to work their way into government and discredit or remove the original members. Those that survived often, well, they weren't the sort of people who'd actually fight on the ground and they, they opposed Voldemort in other ways." It's a very careful bit of wording that avoids saying they didn't all support the second Order.

Lily sucks in a breath through her teeth as she looks at the pictures. So, like the last time, the war was a young person's war. The first Order was comprised mostly of fresh Hogwarts graduates, and this one looks the same.

"I see." It's a sad sort of feeling, this utter lack of familiar faces, like this is happening in a world she doesn't belong in, one she lacks any sort of connection to. (She doesn't, she thinks. She's dead.) "At least you still had Mad-Eye with you."

"He understood," Sebastian says with a smile for Alastor. "And usually managed to keep us from turning into small, greasy spots on the floor."

Usually.

"Anyway, the war is long over and I've made my peace with it."

She smiles at him, though it's tinged with sadness, and squeezes that scarred, calloused hand again. "I'm glad. For both of those. How long have you been here?"

he walks among his peers unread;

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