Epilogue

Lily Isabelle Potter, youngest daughter of Harry Potter and Daphne Potter, stared out of window of her kitchen looking into her sister's well-kept garden but never truly seeing it. It had finally come. The day she had been dreading. Her final chance to say goodbye. Rain splattered on the thick window panes, it always seemed to be raining. So much for an English summer.

"You ready?" Evelyn, Lily's sister, asked from the hallway. Her blonde hair, which was usually so meticulously crafted and curled so as it fell in a beautiful cascade down her back was instead pulled into a tight ponytail. Probably hiding the fact that she hadn't been able to dedicate the many hours that she usually did into her appearance. Where Lily had never cared about anything like that, failing to be obsessed with femininity, Evelyn had gone down that path ever since they were kids. Just one of the many differences between them. Lily rather liked the fact that where her sister resembled their mother, she had inherited her father's hair colour and emerald green eyes. No-one would look at them and they were sisters.

"Yeah," Lily nodded, tearing herself away from staring out into the dreary world. "Where's Mike?"

"Gone with the kids," Evelyn explained, her husband never had been one for sitting around. Far more the man of action than the man of thought. It was what made him such a good auror and why their father had placed so much trust in him when he had been head of the auror office. "I think everyone else is pretty much there."

"Guess we'd better get going then," Lily said letting out a sigh as she did so. She didn't want to go. Then it would be real, over and he would be gone forever. She didn't want to say goodbye. Saying it would be admitting that he was gone. She wanted to keep on pretending for as long as she could. Her father had meant the world to her. He had been the one to push her towards her dreams. The one who would always be there when she fell, when her heart had been broken, and he had been the one who had wiped away her tears when she needed him to and celebrated with her when they had cause. She had shared everything with him. But who would share things with now? Who would she call? There was no-one. No-one like him anyway.

The weeks leading up to his death had been the worst of Lily's life. They had known it was coming. But that hadn't made it any easier. It had still torn her heart out. If anything it had been worse. Watching helpless to do anything to prevent it. But that hadn't even been the worst of it. At least then she had something to focus on, the days that she could spend with him. No. Losing him hadn't been the hardest. It was the all days after. The days that he missed. The days that he stayed gone.

Lily walked in silence with her sister as they headed out of the house. She couldn't bring herself to say anything. Evelyn, at least, could understand. While she had always been closer to their mother, Evelyn knew just how much Lily missed their father. She had never pushed Lily to talk about it. Instead, she had simply been there for her sister. Waiting. Everything that Lily had needed, much she knew to Mike's annoyance. Unlike Evelyn, Mike failed to understand why Lily had taken up residence in their guest room, why she couldn't go back to her lonely apartment. Lily had heard the arguments, snippets before Evelyn put up the charms that their father had taught them. Lily wished she could leave, wished she could stop being a burden. But she couldn't. She couldn't face being alone.

The rain followed them to Godric's Hollow. Evelyn threw up a quick charm as soon as they appeared, shielding herself from the cascading water. Lily didn't bother. Her mind too preoccupied on the reason that they were there to care about water.

"Finally," Mike said loudly and obnoxiously from outside the front of the church. "Thought you were never going to get here."

Lily ignored him, pushing past him and into the safe confines of the church. It wasn't that he was a bad man, in fact quite the opposite. But the last few weeks had put far more pressure on him that he had been expecting. The press had had a field day when the news that Harry Potter had died. He had been the youngest ever head of the auror office, one-time vanquisher of Lord Voldemort – who had been nothing but a story when Lily had been a child – and a public promotor of muggle-borns in a society which had been geared towards the protection of pure-blood rights for so long. Add on top of that Lily's arrival in his house and the pressure of an intense job, it was little wonder that Mike was snappish and brusque. Lily couldn't blame him, but that didn't mean she wanted to subject herself to his attitude nonetheless.

The church was practically full with the family and friends of Harry Potter. The Weasley's occupied almost an entire half to themselves. Only Charlie, who lived out in Romania and was looking less and less likely to ever return to England, was missing. Everyone else was there. Percy, Bill and his wife Fleur, Fred, George, Ron, and even Ginny – who had never seen eye to eye with Lily's mother – as well as their respective families. Only Ginny hadn't kept up the Weasley tradition of having more than one child, primarily due to her Quidditch career and the lateness with which she married. Lily wished she had been old enough to see that particular wedding. Molly Weasley had apparently lost her mind when she found out that Ginny was set on marrying Blaise Zabini.

On the other side of the church were the Blacks, James and Andromeda, or Andi as she preferred to be known. Sirius Black, despite his age, hadn't settled into the traditional middle aged lifestyle when he had been pardoned by the ministry in Lily's father's fifth year at Hogwarts. Instead, Sirius had dutifully spent the next few years catching up on lost time. First by taking his role as godfather seriously and providing a home for Lily's father and secondly by leading what could only be described as an active life with women a lot younger than he was. The result had been James, Andi and a particularly awkward Boxing Day meal when Evelyn had asked why Camille Black, Sirius's wife, was so much younger than her husband. Well, awkward for Camille, Sirius had just laughed. It was part of what Lily had loved about him. He had taken so much joy from life. She had always look forward to the days that she was to visit the Black household.

Next to James and Andi and her family, was Lily's mother, Daphne Potter. Lily had never been exceptionally close to her mother. It wasn't for lack of trying, but Daphne Potter had always been far more career driven than maternal. That wasn't to say that she didn't love her children, when provoked she could be very defensive of both Evelyn and Lily, but she wasn't exactly blatant with her affection something which Lily had struggled to come to terms with growing up. Her father had always so warm, caring, accessible. Her mother, on the other hand, had been about as accessible as Hippogriff. That was until her father had been taken to St. Mungo's. Then it was as if some switch had gone off in her head. Gone was the somewhat distant mother of Lily's youth. It had been disconcerting to say the least. But welcome.

Behind them was Teddy Lupin whose hair was black for the occasion. Next to him was his mother, Nymphadora Tonks who was sporting mousy brown hair in place of her usual wicked pink, and some of her father's old colleagues and school friends. Neville Longbottom, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Luna Lovegood. Even Lily's uncle Draco had made an appearance, though Lily suspected that this was only because her aunt, Astoria Malfoy, would have killed him if he didn't. While her sister was calm, collected and played a masterful long-game against her opponents, Astoria was fiery, brash and most definitely short-term.

"Hey Lils," James Black said in greeting as she shuffled up on the pew to make room for Lily, much to the annoyance of his sister who scowled at him. "You holding up okay?"

"Guess so," Lily shrugged, not wanting to give James the real answer of 'no, how can I be anywhere near okay?' Lying, Lily had come to learn, was sometimes better than the truth.

"We're here if you need anything," James told her softly, giving her arm a gentle squeeze.

"Yeah just say the word, Lil," Andi said in a rare moment of agreement with her brother. The two bickered far more than they did agree. Andi led a content, settled life as the Potions professor at Hogwarts. James, instead, had opted for the life of reckless abandon that his father had always advocated. It was little wonder that the two barely ever saw eye to eye. But, in a way that only siblings ever could, they still loved each other. It was a bizarre relationship.

"Thanks guys," Lily attempted to force a smile, but her face seemed unable to grasp the simple movement so instead she probably looked like she was grimacing.

"Where's Eve?" James asked in a blatant attempt to change the subject. He never had mastered subtly.

"Probably bollocking Mike," Lily answered glancing over her shoulder to see a very sheepish looking Mike and his wife enter the church with their two children, Emily and Joseph. Emily was approaching her seventh birthday, while Joe was just turning four. Where had that gone? Lily could remember them both being born, holding them at the hospital. She remembered her father's smile as he watched her with them. He had never said it, but Lily knew that he had always wished that she had been able to have a family of her own. He wasn't the only one. She was thirty-four. The last thing Lily should be doing was being shacked up with her sister. She should have a family of her own, a husband she loved, and kids she adored. But Lily had never had any luck with men. The ones she had fallen for had either not been interested or complete and total losers or worse bullies. None of which worked well for her.

"He still giving you a hard time?" James asked, his voice going hard. James had never gotten along with Mike. Male ego coupled with James's protectiveness where Evelyn and Lily were concerned hadn't been a good mix. "I can hex him, I don't mind."

"He'd arrest you," Lily pointed out.

"Yeah, well, you're worth getting arrested for," James shrugged, "that, and it'd be nice to teach the smug prick a -"

"I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you, James," Lily's mother interrupted before tilting her head slightly to indicate the arrival of said 'prick'. James had the common decency to look a little sheepish as Evelyn and Mike took their seats on the other side of Lily's mother, who had tactically placed herself in the middle of the pew so as to make sure that Lily got some respite from Mike. Lily wasn't even slightly surprised. Her mother had been a Slytherin for a reason after all.

"Mum, who's that?" Evelyn asked after a long moment of silence on the front row. Lily turned to look where her sister was pointing. At the back of the church, a few rows behind the cluster of family on their side, was a black-haired woman. Lily had never seen her before. Unlike the rest of the congregation, this woman was dressed in a black dress, the only muggle clothes in a sea of wizards. A black jacket was slung on the back of the pew. Her arms were muscular and toned and she seemed to Lily somewhat uncomfortable in her dress. Only one other person in the church even noticed her, Ron Weasley was staring as Evelyn did at the strange woman. The woman, for her part, didn't bother looking at any of them. She just stared at the altar, waiting for the funeral to begin.

"Unpredictable," Lily's mother told her eldest daughter with the ghost of a smile on her lined face as she looked at the young woman. But that cleared up nothing. If anything it just made more questions. Who was this woman? It was clear that she knew both of Lily's parents for no stranger could elicit such a reaction from her mother and strangers were expressly banned from what was a private gathering. The only way she could have gotten in was with an invitation. But who was she?

Unfortunately at that point, the sound of music broke the light chatter that had broken out across the church. It died almost instantly as everyone got to their feet and the coffin was carried in. At each corner were one of her father's old colleagues, ex-aurors who were as strong as they had been in their golden years. All eyes were fixed on the reason that they were all there. It was as if nothing else mattered, for nothing else could in that moment.

Lily let the rest of the proceedings wash over her. Ron, who was uncharacteristically sombre and serious, was the only one who rose to his feet during the service. Lily couldn't bring herself to fully let his speech reach her. Instead she just stared at the coffin. It was taking all she had not to cry. Any words about how kind her father had been, how much of a good friend he was, and how he and Ron had stuck through everything together would set her off. She couldn't let them see how much his death had gotten to her. Then would come the pity. The apologies. The offers of kindness. There was nothing worse in the world than pity and Lily for one did not want to have to see it in the eyes of the people she loved most.

She was barely aware of rising to her feet and following the rest of the congregation outside as the coffin was lifted and taken to the grave. Everyone gathered around the hole in the ground, none of them saying anything, all of them trapped inside their own minds as they watched the coffin be lowered into the ground. Somewhere along the line Ron had joined her mother. They stood together watching as the man they both loved most in the world left them for good. Solidarity in grief. Ron's head was slumped on her shoulder. Even from where Lily was standing she could see him shaking as the tears wracked his body and the pain washed over him. Her mother, for her part, wrapped an arm around her husband's best friend. A simple show of affection to most, but a gesture which spoke volume to anyone who knew her. As soon as the first piece of earth had been thrown onto the coffin, Lily watched as her mother guided a sobbing Ron away.

"How you doing?" Evelyn asked from Lily's shoulder, gently touching her sister's arm.

"No idea," Lily answered honestly. There was too much going on inside her mind. She couldn't process it. Any of it. The only constant was the gigantic hole in her chest. The one which had been there ever since his death. But it was wider than ever, making her feel hollow, alone. It was a pain that she doubted could ever be healed. But everything else was too much. The people. Her family. Seeing Ron like that. All of it. For the first time, Lily just wanted to be left alone. "You?"

"Okay actually," Evelyn nodded, a sad smile forcing its way onto her pretty face. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled or anything. But I've already said my goodbye, maybe you should too?"

"It's not that easy," Lily confessed.

"No, but we can't hold onto him forever, no matter how much we might want to." Evelyn said sombrely, before turning to the grave itself. She stepped forward, her hand tracing the words on the headstone that had been erected in his memory.

"Love you dad." She muttered softly. "I'll come back and see you soon, okay?" A solitary tear trickled its way down her cheek, but Evelyn brushed it away quickly, probably hoping that Lily hadn't seen it. She had always been like that. The protective big sister. But this was one thing she couldn't shield Lily from, even if she might want to.

"You coming?" Evelyn asked eventually. Almost everyone else had already turned away from the grave and had headed back up the winding back that led out of the graveyard. Lily watched as James forced her a small, concerned smile as he and Andi trudged up the path. Left unsaid was the fact that he was there for her, that he would listen if she needed it, and that he wasn't about to go anywhere. For all his faults, James Black was a good man. His father would be proud, just as Lily's had been of him.

"In a bit," Lily nodded, "just wanna stay here for a bit."

"Take all the time you need," Evelyn told her. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah," Lily said, turning away from her sister and looking at the headstone. She didn't watch as her sister walked away. Her eyes fixed instead on the words that her mother had decided on. Harry Potter. Husband, father, grandfather, and friend. On the road to the next great adventure. Lily couldn't help but smile at that. Her father had insisted on it. Albus Dumbledore, her father's old headmaster and later his very dear friend, had been the one to tell him that when he himself had been on his death bed. There was something rather touching about seeing how much the old headmaster had affected Lily's father's life. Just as he had affected hers.

"He was a good man," a voice said from behind Lily. She whirled around, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest and her hand clasped around the handle of her wand in the inside pocket of her robes. But she stopped, frozen as her eyes fell on the woman that had been sat at the back of the church. Her muscular arms had disappeared into the confines of her black jacket. The wind blew at her raven coloured hair, blowing it across her face as her dark eyes fixed on Lily. "Your father. Lily, right?"

"How do you know my name?" Lily asked when she had regained her voice and her heart had stopped hammering against her chest.

"I'm an old friend of your father's," the woman replied by way of an explanation. "I knew him back at Hogwarts, during the Triwizard Tournament. We became good friends. Hard to believe I know, but trust me, I really was there."

"But you look younger than I do," Lily protested, not entirely sure what game this woman was trying to play or what stunt she was attempting to pull. But whatever it was, it wasn't funny.

"I moisturise," the woman said sarcastically. "My name is Valkyrie Cain, I was the fifth champion."

"The sorceress?" Lily had heard of Valkyrie Cain, her parents had mentioned her once or twice. They'd even shown her some of the photographs. But Valkyrie had been their age. The woman standing in front of Lily looked to be mid-way through her twenties, late thirties at best. She should be far, far older.

"That's the one," the woman who claimed to be Valkyrie nodded. "Your dad might have mentioned something about my magic working differently to yours, aging is one of those things that's different. Wizards and witches, sure you guys age slower than – what do you call them muggles?" Lily nodded. "Yeah, well muggles age slower than you lot and you age slower than we do."

"How old are you then?"

"I'm seventy-seven years old," Valkyrie answered. "Told you, we age slower. Much slower. Back then it'd be fun, growing to be old like this. It's not." There was a pain in her voice. Raw. Genuine. She really was as old as she claimed to be. She was Valkyrie Cain. "Mind you, I think I'm looking good for it, don't you?"

"Why are you here?" Lily asked, ignoring the joke.

"To pay my respects," Valkyrie answered. "After everything, it only seems right that I say goodbye. Your mother told me once that he deserved that much. She was right then, just like she is now. She's the one that invited me, in case you were wondering." She paused looking at the empty space around them, everyone else had left now. "What about you? Why are you still here?"

"Same as you," Lily told her, "guess I'm just having a hard time doing it."

"It's not easy," Valkyrie agreed. "But you've got to at some stage. Everyone's going to tell you stuff like he wouldn't want you to live like this, that you'll get passed it and other generic, stupid rubbish. Truth is, it never goes away. That pain you're feeling right now. That's with you forever. All that's going to happen is it'll become tolerable and that's not a bad thing. Time will help, trust me, I should know."

"Doesn't feel like that,"

"It won't," Valkyrie assured her. "But it will. Saying goodbye helps."

"Maybe," Lily shrugged. She didn't want to find out. She didn't want to say goodbye. It felt too final, like the last chapter at the end of a book that she would be shutting forever. She just wanted to cling on to the last few pages. Savour them before they were lost. But there was no getting him back. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable. But how could she say it when she wasn't ready to let go?

"When I first met your dad, he was just a kid," Valkyrie said gently, tearing Lily from her reverie. "Young, naïve and one of the kindest people I'd ever met. You see, I was a detective, I say was, I still am. But the people I was used to meeting were not nice people. Then I was forced to go Hogwarts. I knew no-one and I sure as hell didn't want to be there. I wanted to back where I belonged. At least, until I met your dad."

"Why?"

"Because he made Hogwarts somewhere I wanted to be," Valkyrie explained. "I didn't go there expecting to make friends. I just wanted to compete and get out. That was the plan. But as you know, your dad never was one for sticking to the rules. Look at him and your mum. Mind you, he'd probably still blame me for that."

"You got them together?"

"No, not directly anyway. I made him late for class or something, they were forced to sit together and then the rest is history. But that wasn't the point of my story."

"You had a point?" Lily asked dryly. A small smirk pulled at the corner of Valkyrie's lips.

"That if he was anywhere near as nice and caring or even half the man that I knew, then I can understand why you miss him so much," Valkyrie replied softly. "But take it from someone who knows, letting yourself get consumed by pain isn't exactly the best course you can take. He had a good life. He was happy and he loved you. That's what matters in the end."

Lily nodded, Valkyrie was right. Lily knew it. He had been special to her, like so many others. He had touched and changed all of their lives and he was gone now. But that didn't diminish any of what he had done. If anything, it meant that it mattered more. Her father had been such a beacon in her life, a source of wonder, hope and kindness. Just because he wasn't with her anymore, didn't mean that that beacon had to die with him. She had been so focused on the days that he would miss, that she hadn't been able to cherish the days that she had had. In that moment, Lily realised just how fortunate she had been to be able to spend so much time with him. Saying goodbye wasn't about losing him. It was about saying thank you. For all the time that he had been there and for all the time that he would continue to be there in her heart.

Valkyrie had moved from her spot by Lily and had hunkered down in front of the grave, the ground had yet to be filled in and no doubt someone somewhere was paying close attention to the mourners and waiting for them to leave so that they could get about with their job and lay the rest of the soil in the grave. Valkyrie didn't seem to care though. No words escaped her lips as she looked at the grave. Instead, all she did was touch the headstone. Her jaw went tight and her eyes closed shut. She stayed like that for a long moment, before finally reopening her eyes and straightening up.

"He's all yours," Valkyrie said as she turned away from the grave. "It was nice to finally meet you. Your dad told me so much about you. You didn't disappoint."

Lily watched her go, a beautiful black car swung around in front of the gate. A tall, thin man got out. The two exchanged some words and then the man got back in the car and Valkyrie joined him before the car was driven away and the woman Lily's father had called a friend for so many years disappeared from his life for one final time. Lily knew they had kept in contact. She had seen some of the letters at breakfast when they had been delivered. It had been surreal to put such a young face to such an old family friend.

She turned back to the grave, there was so much she wanted to say, so much that she could never hope to put into words. All of it wanted to burst from her lips, like a grief filled waterfall. But he knew how much she loved him, how much her heart ached that she would never see him again and how glad she was that he had been her father. There was only one thing she could say. Only one thing that mattered.

"I'm going to miss you so much" Lily said her voice shaking as she did so, "but I just want to say thank you. For everything. You were the best dad, the best… friend and I love you so much and I don't know what I'm going to do without you. But… But that's okay because I'm just so glad that you were my dad and that we got to do so much together." Tears were falling freely from her eyes now but she brushed them away forcefully. "Goodbye dad. I love you."

And with that Lily forced herself to step back from the grave, to turn away and to walk back the way she had come following the footsteps of Valkyrie Cain out of the graveyard and hoping against hope that she was right and that time would somehow make it bearable.

AN: So I've been toying with the idea of an epilogue for this story for a long time. I wanted something that showed the changes that Val had had on Harry's life but that definitely left this story finished. This was always meant as a stand-alone story, though that said I did want to answer some of the questions that this story threw up about how Harry's life would be changed. To answer some of the reviews that have asked for a sequel the answer, I'm afraid, is no, there isn't going to be one. I know this is a somewhat delayed reply, but as I said, I've been trying to find the right way of making an epilogue for this story that made sure it couldn't be reopened. I hope that you all like this and that it gives some kind of insight into what Harry's life was like post-Val and post-Hogwarts. Thanks again to everyone who has been supportive of this story. For such a specific cross-over it's actually amazed me how much people have loved this story and I just want to say thank you. You've been amazing.