A/N: I'm traditionally bad at sticking with multi-chapter fics, but I'm really fond of this one, so I'm hoping to see it through. The early Order fascinates me and I adore the Marauders, and this is my first attempt at a Marauders-in-the-Order fic. Let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: JKR is fiction's queen. I bow before her.

Lily woke to the sound of dripping water.

At first, she couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from. Nothing made that noise at home. She opened her eyes and saw that she was in a cellar or something, which also didn't make sense.

She went to the door and opened it, and found herself in Diagon Alley, but the street was full of screams and explosions and jets of multicolored light, and now she remembered: the distress call from Benjy on watch in the Alley, rushing with James and Remus to the scene, finding Benjy pinned down by Death Eaters…

She threw herself into the fray, managed to disable a short Death Eater who was attempting – badly – to set fire to the Magical Menagerie. The kneazle in the window was screaming, and Lily put out the fire before blasting the Death Eater that was dueling Benjy nearly to Gringotts.

"Good show, Evans!" Benjy called, the blood covering half his face so thick it looked black.

She wheeled around, looking for James, and spotted him nearly at the turning towards Knockturn Alley – he was holding his own against two attackers, and she started to run.

There was a little girl in the street clutching a woman who wouldn't get up, and Lily veered towards her, crouching as another curse flew over her head.

"Sweetheart, come with me," she began, checking for a pulse in the woman's neck, and then the little girl screamed, and everything exploded in stars.

Lily woke to the sound of dripping water.

Her mouth was so dry that her tongue felt like carpet, but whatever water was dripping wouldn't be enough to drink.

She was in a cellar or something. She was looking at the ceiling, because there was a window near the top of it, which meant she must be lying down.

Lily closed her eyes and tried to think, but her brain felt like it was wrapped in gauze. She was aware enough to realize that this was probably a blessing, and also that she should probably get rid of it as soon as possible.

She tried to focus on her limbs and bringing sense back into them. After a few moments of concentration on her bare calves, she could confirm that she was, in fact, lying on her back. The floor was stone, but warm, which meant she'd been lying here for a while.

The brush of fabric on her thighs told her that her shorts were still on, which was a good thing – she'd seen some terrible mutilations in the last year that didn't bear thinking about. Her wrists were bound, which was decidedly not a good thing, but they were bound in front of her, which could have been worse.

Her body slowly came back together, reattaching itself bit by bit to her brain. As her stomach and throat returned, she found they were already tight with panic.

Lily tried sitting up, and then tried a lot harder when she heard something move behind her.

Struggling to her elbows, Lily craned round to see a figure squeeze itself deeper into the shadows. The person was so dirty and thin that it was hard to guess its age or sex at first, but the length of the hair falling in front of its face, and the maybe-pink color of its maybe-dress, made her guess young girl.

"Hello," she said softly. "I'm Lily."

"Lottie," the girl muttered after a moment.

"Where are we, Lottie?"

The girl's eyes went blank behind her curtain of greasy blond hair.

"Hell."

Lily's throat almost collapsed with panic then, but she took a deep breath and swallowed the cry that fought to get out.

"Okay. That was… slightly melodramatic."

Lily's neck was starting to cramp from craning, so she put a few minutes of concentrated effort into sitting up and scooting herself against a wall. Her bound hands didn't help, nor did the fact that all of her muscles still felt oddly like jelly. What had they done to her? It was much worse than a simple Stunning.

Lottie watched Lily's progress towards the wall with apparent confusion. In any case, she didn't offer to help.

"How long have I been here, Lottie?" Lily asked once she'd stopped panting from her crawl across the floor.

Lottie shrugged, chewing on the stub of one fingernail.

Lily, who really was doing her best to remain calm and friendly, rather than, say, vomit with terror, began to fray.

"Well, has it got dark since then?" she asked, nodding towards the window.

Lottie thought for a moment, then shook her head.

"Thank you." That was good. It meant the others might even know where she was, and still be formulating a rescue plan. Maybe. Somehow.

James. And Remus and Benjy – had they been hurt? Had they been taken? What would James say when they noticed she was missing?

No. Mustn't to think about James. It hurt too much.

"And who brought me in, Lottie?" Lily asked, distracting herself from the spiral of panic that awaited her, tugging at the corners of her mind.

"Dunno."

"Right," Lily said, her voice growing snappish. "How's this: instead of saying you don't know, how about you tell me everything you do know? Shall we try that? Now. Who brought me in here?"

Lottie looked startled, which was something, and appeared to think, which was better.

"Death Eaters," she whispered at last, cowering further and glancing towards the door. Lily's eyes flicked involuntarily to the same place. There was no lock, which meant it would be protected magically. She hadn't needed to check to know that she didn't have her wand. Its absence was gaping.

"Good. How did you know they were Death Eaters?"

"Because of their masks." Lottie's whisper was tight with dread, but Lily felt a surge of hope.

"Good! That's really good, Lottie!"

"Why is it good?" Lottie asked, showing a spark of something like irritation.

"Because if they still don't want us to see their faces, it means they think we might escape. Or they might let us go."

Not so likely, but worth a long shot in a dark alley, as her dad used to say. Thinking about Dad felt all right, somehow, so she did it some more.

Dad, a city man from birth to death, had loved the country with a passion, and taught his girls as much as he could about it in the little green patches around their corner of suburbia.

"What's that, Daddy?" they would ask, and he would answer without a moment's hesitation: vole or hawthorn or robin or clover or nettles or stoat or train whistle.

"Train whistle?" Petunia had scoffed once, ages ago, when she and Lily used to play at magic together. "It's a fairy horn, Daddy." And they'd called them fairy horns, just between them, until the Hogwarts letter.

Lily stopped breathing. Was it her imagination, or – no! There it was again! A train whistle, distant, but growing closer. They were near a rail line! It wasn't much, and hardly narrowed things down, but it was a link to the outside world. Life was still going on out there. Nothing had shattered when she was taken. Nothing had changed. James would come for her.

"Lottie," she said, then, "Lottie!" because the other girl seemed to have drifted off somewhere. "Listen to me. We're going to get out of here. We are."

"There is no out of here," Lottie whispered, her eyes half closed as though she were drugged.

"Yes, there is. You know how I know?"

The door swung open with a bang.

"Tell us, Evans," drawled a tall Death Eater, masked and hooded, standing silhouetted in the doorway. "We're all dying to know."

A/N: Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think!