"Necessary Lies"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

He's said this too many times; he's had to. So many times, one necessary lie.

"You're going to be fine," he tells the students who lay dying upon the battlefields. Always, somehow, it is one of his students- one of the ones he taught when Dumbledore convinced him to go back to Hogwarts, or else one of his Aurors, a member of that last class he trained. He'd never thought to have an impact on so many lives, even as they fade, but somehow it is always him they look to when they fall, so terribly wounded...

"You're going to be just fine."

He speaks the lie, and sometimes they believe it. Some of them do, at any rate- the youngest ones, and the most innocent ones- the healers and the historians, the office workers and the schoolteachers, all of the ones who shouldn't be here, except that they're getting desperate. Desperate enough to take on anyone who's willing to hold a wand and fight.

They trust him, and he is abusing their trust when he tells this lie. He knows it- sometimes they do too. But he has to try. Sometimes that lie makes their passing easier.

He dreads the day the one dying before him is one he cannot lie to. In his nightmares it is Penelope, her spirit and fire bleeding out of her with her life's blood, and all he can do is hold her, whisper that he loves her...

In reality it could be any of them. It could be her. It could be Susan or Neville, any of the children of his old friends who call him "uncle", any of the students, any of the Aurors...

"You're going to be fine..."