Disclaimer: Not JKR. Not Making any money off of this.

In her dreams that night Lily was standing by the fence where she first met Sev as a child. The trees rustled their autumn leaves; the air was drowsy with the drone of insects. She was only a little girl but she had a wand and she knew he was coming - when his face appeared in the gap in the fence her heart leapt.

And then she waved her wand and cast the blindness curse and blood poured out of his eyes, his beautiful dark eyes, streaming over his face and down the front of his shirt, and he screamed and screamed and scre-

Lily sat up, her sheets twisted, her body coated in sweat. She knew she'd had worse dreams but this one had been the most vivid, as bright as Technicolor and so strong that she could still smell the tang of blood on the air, the smoky wisp of falling leaves.

Lily leaned her head against the wall and waited to catch her breath. She checked the time - quarter past midnight. She could still hear Sev screaming inside her head. She doubted she would fall asleep again.

God, she wanted to sleep.

She pushed out of bed and padded into the kitchenette. Aguamenti'd some water in a glass and sipped at it. The room was brighter than it had been three nights ago, because of the full moon, because of the snow.

Lily sat down at her table and stared at the bottle of Sev's potion, glimmering there in the weird pale night time. His hair gleamed. She reached across the table and picked it up and it was soft to the touch, like a whisper. She ran it down the length of her arm and wondered what his fingers would feel like in its place.

Stop it. He's a Death Eater -

Yeah, well, you are supposed to be seducing him.

Lily set the hair aside and dragged the instructions over to her side of the table. There, in the light of the snow, she read:

Dip one of my hairs in potion. Don't use your own (the last part underlined twice). With wand, cast Sleeping spell three times - yes, THREE TIMES. Here the handwriting changed, became thicker, blotchier. Use hair to place one drop of potion on each eye. Sleep will come immediately, so do before bed.

Lily leaned back in her chair, her heart pounding. She wondered if Sev's hair was meant to serve as the sacrifice - all Dark Arts required a sacrifice, isn't that what Remus said? She wondered what would happen if she used one of her own hairs. Would it counteract the effects? No, probably something worse. She'd fall ill, the nightmares would become even more monstrous.

He'd used Dark Arts to heal her arm. She didn't even think that was possible, for the Dark Arts to heal, and yet she had seen it with her own eyes, she had lied about it to Albus and Filemina when she wrote to tell them that her arm had cleared up on its own - Must have been a delayed reaction from Horatio's potions. She wondered if Albus would know better. Part of her wished she could have told them the truth. But the Dark Arts were what evil wizards did, and Lily was not evil.

Neither's Sev.

He's a Death Eater! He hates Muggle-borns.

But he saved me.

With shaking hands, Lily pulled out one of Sev's hairs and dropped it in the potion. She cast the sleeping spell three times. She dropped the potion onto her eyes.

Sleep came on hard and fast, and Lily didn't bother to stumble off into her bedroom. Instead, she curled up on her couch beneath an old quilt her grandmother had made. When her dreams came, she was a little girl and Sev was a little boy and they were standing next to the fence - only this time she cast Avis and birds filled the air, and Sev laughed, and all of it was far, far, far away.

She slept straight on through to morning.