"Begin what?" I screamed, "You're finished!"

Voldemort only laughed, although it was joyless, I doubted if that man had ever felt true happiness in his life, "Those are some strong words for somebody in a position such as yourself."

Everything about him was cold and calculated, he'd probably thought about my rage and sadness and factored it in beforehand. Although looking at his face now, perhaps he hadn't; he would never feel what I was feeling right now so perhaps he hadn't expected it all.

Despite the fact that I'd been in worse positions than this, I felt more trapped than I'd ever felt before. If I looked to my left, If I looked one way, I saw my Mother suspended in the air like a piece of meat and if I looked the other, I would see in my reflection in Dorcas's glassy eyes. That was probably how he wanted it, forcing me to look at him and him alone.

"This is only the beginning, things can and will get a lot worse for you if you don't comply," He said, his thing lips still curved into a twisted smile, "Now, Lily - "

All of a sudden, a jet of red light shot through the air, knocking Voldemort several inches across the ground. In shock, the Deatheater holding me let me fall to the ground but I had no intention of helping in what was about to be a budding battle because they were too late, Voldemort had already done his worst. Within seconds, spells began to fly around me, the red light unleashing a barrage of curses and hexes hurtling in every direction. On my hands and knees, I crawled over to my Mother, allowing her to fall down, so that when she hit the ground, she felt no pain. Behind me, came several Order members, putting her arms over their shoulders before apparating away with her. Before, I would have screamed and cried, unwilling to let her go but I was too empty inside to fret, she was safe and that was all the mattered.

That was more than could be said for Dorcas.

Amidst the chaos, nobody had stopped to take care of the dead girl who had been my best friend, her body still lying at the side. An almost unspeakable pain and sadness seemed to well up inside of me as I walked over to her, the skirmish behind me fading into white noise. The tears which had temporarily vanished, sprung back to my eyes again as I knelt down besides her. My wand had been stashed back into my pocket, I was ridiculously vulnerable to attack but somehow that didn't matter, nothing mattered except for one thing: she was gone. I'd lost her.

It could be argued that I'd lost her the moment Glenn had come into her life, that was the day everything had changed and I'd been too caught up to spot. The signs had been all there, the signs that things weren't as they should be and I'd missed every single one of them. I saw them all now, I doubted they'd ever leave my mind again but it was too late, much too late.

There was something so unsettling about seeing her so still, she was never still, always laughing or making some crude joke. Even when she slept, she used to toss and turn, so much so that we used to joke that it looked like a Deatheater crept into her bed every night. It wasn't a joke now, a Deatheater had crept in and taken her from me.

No matter how I thought about it, nothing could mask the fact that she was gone. Dorcas Meadowes was gone.

As gently as I could, I closed her eyes so that way I could pretend she was sleeping and would wake up soon. She'd wake up and everything would be fine, as it should be. She'd make some silly joke about how red my face got when I cried and then we'd get up and just go and sit somewhere, pondering life and all it's big questions. But even with her eyes closed, the illusion wasn't enough to convince me.

I'd seen people die before but this felt different, like something had shattered inside of me. Anger and sadness mixed inside of me like a deadly cocktail, trying to make sense of why this had to have happened to her. She had so much going for her, she was too young with so much life to live. She didn't deserve to be here, lying dead on a field whilst evil people lived around her. In films when people died, rain would fall or something to mark the occasion but somehow the fading dim light of the setting sun was ever worse. It shouldn't be so beautiful when everything was so, so wrong.

"Lily..." I almost didn't hear James's voice behind me, so focused on the dead girl in front of me until he repeated it again, shaking me slightly, "Lily... we have to get out of here."

"But... Dorcas," Was all I could manage, holding her in my arms.

"Lily, come on, we need to go," He said urgently, "Lily, please."

Before when I'd fought people it had been a conscious decision but this time it felt like some primal part of me had been unlocked as I began to scream, the thought of leaving her like this was far too unbearable. I had to stay with her, I had to be there for her when I couldn't in life, I couldn't just leave her again.

"Lily, please, we'll die if we don't!"

"James, I can't, I can't do this! I can't leave her!" I began to scream, even after James gently let go, stopping his fighting. For a brief moment, I thought he was leaving without me before putting a hand on my arm as well as hers. It took me a second to realise what he was doing, clearly this idea had just occurred to him; she was coming with us. I wasn't leaving her after all.

Of all the places we could have gone, James took us to St Mungo's, apparating us into the lobby where several healers ran over to them instantly.

"What happened?" One of them asked.

"She's gone," I murmured, in response, "There's nothing you can do for her now."

Yet they took her anyway, took her out of my arms leaving me crying onto James. He held my tightly but it wasn't enough right now, I wanted her to be alive so badly it hurt. The staff at St Mungo's were clearly used to dealing with this sort of thing, gently guiding us over to one of the chairs so we weren't in the way before leaving us in peace.

"Lily, I'm so sorry," He murmured, holding me even closer, "I should have let you go to her when you wanted to."

"It's not your fault," I whispered back, "You did nothing wrong, nothing at all."

"This is going to be so hard," He whispered, tears starting to run down his cheeks too.

"I know," I whispered back, feeling so small and empty that if he wasn't holding into me, I felt like I was going to fall, fall through the cracks and never stop falling. As he hugged me, James slowly filled me in on what had happened whilst I had cried over Dorcas, that section had been just a blur. The moment things had started to turn ugly, Peter had ran back to them but being in rat form, it had taken a while so by the time they got there, she was already gone. The next part was apparentely chaotic to him too, just as much as it had been to him. Voldemort had been knocked flying and all hell had broke lose. Some good had come out of it, my Mother was in St Mungo's somewhere and she wasn't dead plus one or two minor Deatheaters had been captured. The last part felt like an add on, something for James to convince himself that Dorcas's death had been in vain. My heart sunk as from what he said, Glenn hadn't been among them meaning the man who emotionally twisted and abused her was still out there.

Eventually we were joined by Remus, Peter and Sirius, who assured me that other than Dorcas, there had been no major casualties.

"We spoke to a nurse for you," Remus said softly, "They said your mother should be okay other than some minor memory loss. They've erased much of this from her mind, altered her memories to minimise long lasting psychological damage."

"Can they do that to me?" I asked, quietly.

"Lily, you know that's not what it's for," He replied, in the same soft tone as before.

"Do you want to see her?" Peter asked, trying to sound vaguely enthusiastic but I shook my head.

"Not yet, not now," I replied, "I will soon but I don't want to move right now. It doesn't feel real, any of it. She didn't deserve to die."

"None of them ever do," Sirius replied, "But death doesn't work like that, it doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it just takes and it takes and it takes."

"Did you come up with that?" I asked, slowly.

"No, I thought it was fitting," He replied.

"Well, I hate it," I snapped, suddenly feeling an incomprehensible anger. I knew it wasn't directed at him but it had triggered it, "It doesn't fit at all, she wasn't a sinner or a saint, she was a person and we can't start idolising or her villainising her. She was just a person, a girl who made mistakes and once we start putting her into neat little boxes, she gets lost."

"Lily, I didn't mean it that way," He replied, softly but I just shook my head at him, suddenly wishing they would all leave, letting me and James just be alone (alone as we could be in the lobby, that is). Eventually they did go, first Peter and then Sirius and Remus, picking up that I didn't want them there.

"Lily, how do you feel?" James asked, breaking up the silence before it turned us insane.

"Shocked, it doesn't feel real," I replied almost instantly, "She's Dorcas, she's not dead. But it is and I know that too, and it just makes me so angry and sad. I don't want to believe she's just gone. Even if she came back as a ghost or something, she would never be back, she's just lost now. And soon, it won't be as painful and I'll just start forgetting like with my Dad. At first, he was on my mind every day and now he's not. I've forgotten what he sounded like, James, I can't remember his face unless I see photos and slowly that will happen to her."

"She'll always be with you, even if you just remembered one small memory."

"But I don't want her to live on in memories," I replied bitterly, "I want her to live on, full stop. That's it."

"It doesn't feel real," He admitted too.

"It was my fault."

"Lily, you know that's not true," He replied, kissing the top of my head, "You never could have known and even if you had, maybe it was deeply rooted inside of her already, maybe she never could have truly escaped. You'll never know."

"I could go back. Mess up time itself to save her."

"Terrible things have happened to those who messed with time," James replied.

"I know, I would never do that," I clung to him ever tighter, trying to face the world as little as possible.

Strangely as I lay against him, everything became a little clearer. I had played a part in her death, but I wasn't to blame, it was terrible circumstances. Usually when someone died, they say the worst part is not having someone to pin it on but I was beginning to realise this wasn't the case. I could trace her death back, even before Voldemort's killing curse. There was someone I could blame for this, someone I could release all my anger onto.

Glenn.

And with that, Part IV is over and we can only hope Part V will be somewhat happier. I mean, it sort of is... oh, even I don't know anymore - E x