Letters to Lily

Early June, 1980

Somewhere in Eastern Europe

Dylan was waiting for his partner at a table outside of the dragon pens. He watched as Evan James approached, retying his long black hair and wiping the charred detritus from his robes. When he sat down, Dylan fixed him with a worried, disappointed glare. "What's going on with you, James? You could have done some serious damage up there."

His partner's large, green eyes were heavy with apology. "I'm sorry, Dylan. I know I dropped the ball. Or the egg, so to speak." Dylan quirked his eyebrow and went back to picking the prickly burrs from his robes, grimacing at the pain that shot through his torso when he stretched his arm too far. "My mind is somewhere else today."

"Home, you mean?" The other man nodded and looked away. Dylan let out a slow breath. He was aware that he was on dangerous ground. After working together for a little over four years, he had, in bits and pieces, gathered much of his partner's astonishing story. Evan rarely talked about his life back in England, the past, or the future. With Voldemort making waves, though, it was becoming increasingly more difficult for Dylan to contain his curiosity, not to mention his worry. He had family all over Great Britain - witches, wizards, Muggles, and Squibs. Dylan dreaded the day a delivery owl would show up with a note from....

Dylan sighed. This getting distracted is exactly what's been getting us into trouble, he thought, bringing his mind back to the task at hand - Evan's lapse in concentration had let that Horntail notice him as he tried to put the egg they'd been testing back in her nest. She'd just recently arrived and wasn't taking well to being handled.

Being that they were dragon handlers, this was sort of a problem for them.

Dylan figured he'd probably cracked a rib or two when the blasted thing's tail had connected with his abdomen. He'd anticipated the blow, which helped to cushion it, but he figured he was still gonna be all kinds of sore for the next week or so. It had been an entire month since he'd visited the mediwizard's bungalow; and they were probably starting to miss him.

Dylan looked at Evan, but his partner was busy staring at the wooden table, picking splinters out of the wood, probably lost in the depths of his past. Or was it his future? Dylan thought it best to leave the intricacies of time travel to the Unspeakables. Dragons, well, Dylan could talk about dragons for days. And he had. Many times. With Evan, even.

Dylan knew Evan relished their job. He supposed his partner found peace in the focus required to work with dragons. It was harder for Dylan: his imagination had a tendency to run away with him. He and Evan made a good pair - what Dylan lacked in concentration he made up in instinct. Unlike James, he'd grown up with dragons and knew how to be quick on his toes. Accidents meant lives out here, and Dylan O'Brien was quick with a wand, sure, but nobody can be that quick all the time. If Evan was distracted, especially while they were working, something was definitely wrong.

"Care to talk about it?" Dylan asked, failing to sound nonchalant despite the carefree lilt he'd tried to interject.

Evan looked up and brushed the hair that had fallen out of the ponytail out of his face. He sighed in resignation. "Next week is my birthday," he began, and then paused. "It's-" Evan shook his head and tried to focus back down at the wooden knot he was slowly pushing out of the table. There was loneliness and sadness on his face, and Dylan thought, amused at the comparison, that Evan looked like that baby Ridgeback they had just taken out of the nursery. Left on its own for the first time, the dragon had moped around for days trying to find a comfortable niche in its new environment.

"How old are you going to be? Do you have plans?"

"No, Dylan," his partner reiterated, looking Dylan straight in the eye for the first time since he'd come over to apologize. "Next week is my birthday." Dylan noted the emphasis on the first part of the word 'birthday' and exhaled softly.

"I see."

The two men looked at each other in silence.

Evan averted his gaze and looked over Dylan's shoulder. Nearly seven hundred miles in that direction, somewhere outside of London, James and Lily Potter were eagerly awaiting the birth of their son, Harry James Potter.

Absentmindedly, Evan reached up to the scar on his forehead. He did that when he thought of them, Dylan mused. It was how he'd learned the story in the first place. One night, after a few too many scorch marks had led to quite a lot of firewhiskey in the local pub, Dylan had asked how come he'd got a lightning bolt on his forehead.

"'S'a curse scar," Evan explained. "Got it when he killed my parents."

"Oh," was Dylan's articulate reply. "Who's that, then? I mean, 'm sorry your parents are dead. Did they get 'im?"

Evan blinked, apparently deciding how much he should say. This was a much easier decision to make after you've been drinking very strong alcohol for three solid hours. "Voldemort. When I was a baby."

"He's been around that long?" Dylan was confused. This was also a much less of an accomplishment after seven rounds of firewhiskey. Well, there were at least three rounds. After that, it was anyone's guess. But there were a lot of shot glasses on the table, Dylan realized, trying to focus on Evan's funny scar through the half-full one he was currently holding up to his own forehead.

"Yes. No. I mean..." he trailed off. "It's real complicated," Evan pronounced with some difficulty, grammar gone the way of clear vision and good balance.

In lieu of a reply, Dylan half-nodded and put his head down on the table. He promised himself he'd think to ask about it again at some point, probably when he could actually think. For now, the table was awfully comfortable.

Dylan smiled as he recalled the days that followed that revelation. In truth, it was more of a grimace than a smile; Evan and Dylan had needed to use Bubble-Head charms for three days because the smell of the dragon pens was so offensive to their hungover olfactory nerves.

"I don't know what to tell you, man," Dylan said, his tone regretful. "Since visiting them's obviously not an option-" Evan snorted "-maybe you could send them a letter?"

"How's that better than visiting them?" asked Evan skeptically.

"Well, they don't have to know it's you, do they? I mean, you changed your name, right? Would they recognize it? And it would probably make you feel better than doing nothing but brooding about it and getting me thwapped in the gut by an angry dragon." Dylan's levity helped Evan feel better about the afternoon's incident. He tucked a strand of loose hair behind his ears and gave Dylan a rueful smile.

"Maybe you're losing your touch, man," Evan teased, clearly testing the waters.

"Another good hit like that and I probably won't be around to touch anything ever again," Dylan shot back. Although Dylan didn't really hold a grudge, he wanted Evan to know that he'd appreciate it if this didn't happen again. Ever.

Indeed, Even knew that he would have to be extremely careful and conscientious for the next few weeks in order to regain his friend's trust. "Still, James," Dylan continued, "I think you should owl them."

Evan - no, Harry - thought about this. He'd chosen Evan James as his alias in homage to his parents, of course: Lily Evans and James Potter. Dylan was right. Would they notice? The name 'Evan James' was slightly (alright, very slightly) less conspicuous than James Evans, the name he'd first considered, but if they were paying attention, Harry didn't think it would fool them for long. No one had ever accused the Potters of being particularly obtuse. He sighed.

He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

It wasn't as if he'd be using Muggle post. That was one bonus to staying in the wizarding world, even if he was half a continent away: owls. It was much easier to maintain anonymity with owls. Harry apologized again to Dylan, who waved him away with his hand while wrapping his forearm with gauze. "Go," Dylan said with compassion. "I'll cover for you. It's just paperwork left anyway, and then I've gotta see the mediwizard. Meet you at the pub later?"

Harry gathered his thoughts, stood up, mumbled something along the lines of "Thanks, mate," and headed off to the bungalow he'd shared with the other dragon keepers since he'd run away from Hogwarts and the pseudo-identity (he thought of it as his practice run) he'd used there more than four years earlier.

Most of the time Harry was good at being Evan James. He liked being Evan James. He liked it much better than being Harry Potter. There was no Voldemort (at least, not here, not yet), no crazy Daily Prophet Animagus reporters, no fame, no fortune, no prophecies, no pressure. Except for staying focused on the dragons so as not to get your own hide - or your partner's - battered and scorched beyond all recognition.

Harry idly wondered if there would be a market for genuine Harry-Potter-leather goods in the future, if it came to that. Bad joke, James, he chided himself, using the name he'd grown used to but seemed to be having a hard time with today.

He cursed himself again for letting that Horntail get away from him. A rookie mistake, that's what it was. Attention. Concentration. The principles that Dylan himself had drummed into him when they first started working together. Granted, Dylan wasn't always the best example of said principles, but that was why they worked so well together, and they both knew it.

By the time he returned from the showers, Harry Potter had once again transformed himself into Evan James. He sat down at the table in the center of the room with a quill, some ink and some parchment and started to write what was possibly the most difficult letter he had ever written.

To Mr. and Mrs. James Potter,

Godric's Hollow

England

He crossed that out. Too formal. Too stuffy. He wasn't applying for a job. What was it he wanted to say to them? Something about futures? About love and parenthood? A warning? No, not that. He'd had enough of time-travel paradoxes to last, well, two lifetimes. Non-continuous ones at that. Maybe he'd just write to Lily instead. He'd avoided James Potter during the brief time he was stuck at Hogwarts when he first arrived. Out of fear of recognition, to be sure, but also because he still wasn't quite sure he'd forgiven him for acting the berk in the memory he'd seen in the Pensieve. He'd been drawn to Lily, though, as a friend and sometimes-confidante, and even though their acquaintance had been short, he'd enjoyed the idea that after all that time without her in his life, he'd finally made a connection with his mum.

Evan sighed again in frustration. Afraid that if he thought about it too much he'd lose the nerve to write the damn thing at all, he tore off the crossed-out portion of the parchment and tossed it to the floor. Then he began again:

Dear Lily

...to be continued...