The next day, with Mary there to help me prepare, was a lot less stressful. She tutted over the dress I'd worn the day before, saying we'd have to blend styles now otherwise it would look weird if I dressed too modestly. Sirius rolled his eyes at that, but the dress Mary stuck me in was a bit more comfortable - for me, at least. The skirt was still absurdly short, but it flared out so it wasn't hugging my thighs quite so much, and the bodice was tight but runched so it wasn't as figure-baring. This dress also had sleeves that went to just above my elbow. Unfortunately, the heels that went with it were strappy and pinched my toes, so Mary made me walk in circles around the hotel room until I'd gotten a hang of it.

"Let's leave your hair down," she said, after studying my face in the mirror and lifting my hair off my neck to test.

A brief panic flicked through my stomach. It took me a minute to pinpoint it.

"Actually," I said, "I think it should go up."

When Mary opened her mouth to argue, I shook my head. "I know as far as style goes you know best, Mary, but there were at least six people I recognized from Hogwarts last night. There might be more tonight. They all saw me with my hair down, but I doubt any of them ever saw me with my hair pulled back or up."

"Or in a dress," Mary added, "or with makeup." When my expression didn't change, she sighed. "Fine, we'll put your hair up."

Mary went bolder than Lily had with makeup, so though my dress was a faded slate color, the nearly magenta lipstick drew attention away from what could have been a boring outfit. And when I walked into the venue for the night's ceremony, I did feel a bit more comfortable in my disguise.

Athena saw me when I walked in, and she waved me over to the wizards she spoke with. I took an offered glass of sparkling champagne and drifted through the milling people to her. When I saw who she spoke with, I nearly turned away, but it was too late.

"Twylla," Athena greeted me with an air-kiss beside my cheeks, "this is Pius Thicknesse, and this is his fiancée - I'm sorry, what was your name?" Heat flared on Athena's cheeks at having made such a faux pas, forgetting someone's name, but at least it gave me a second to collect myself.

"Tammy," Tammy said. Her dark cheeks turned a shade paler, her eyes wide as she stared at me.

"A pleasure," I murmured, hoping to still the beating of my heart, which somehow had migrated to my throat, as I offered my hand to Pius first. To my surprise, he did not appear to recognize me. All it would take was one word from Tammy, or one hint of recognition from Pius, and I would have to disappear faster than anyone could react. My fingers ached to grip my wand which was strapped to the outside of my thigh beneath my dress.

"The pleasure is ours," Thicknesse bent over my hand. "We heard there was an Ollivander here and hoped to meet you. Isn't that right, dear?" He squeezed Tammy around the waist, possessively. She looked like she wanted to be sick.

"That's right," she murmured. As she spoke, the trilling music drifted off to announce the start of this night's ceremony.

"If you'll excuse me," I murmured quietly to Athena, "I actually hoped to freshen up before the ceremony."

"Of course," Athena smiled at me. I bared my teeth back at her, hoping she saw a smile and not panic. "I'll save you a seat, shall I?"

"That would be lovely."

I wasn't in the restroom more than two minutes before Tammy barged in. She looked different than she had when we were fifteen and friends. Now, her bones stood out against wiry thinness, and her lips were drawn down at the corners even when she smiled. She wasn't smiling at me, though.

"Genre!" she snapped. The tightness in her voice could have been fear or anger. I couldn't tell.

"Excuse me?" I said. I couldn't play dumb, I knew, but it was the first thing that came from my lips.

"Oh, don't you try playing dumb," Tammy said, confirming my thoughts. "We were friends long enough for me to recognize you even if you tried dressing like a real person for once."

Well, that stung a fair bit.

I made myself titter the way the girls used to at Hogwarts when they were being particularly vicious and looked her own outfit up and down. How many times had Penny and Linda done that to me during our sixth year?

"I don't know what you mean," I told her. "Beauxbatons had a very strict dress code."

"You need to leave before someone else finds out who you are," Tammy hissed.

I stilled, eying her warily. It was fear, I realized, not anger, making her voice all tight and high like that. Fear of what, exactly?

"Do you plan on outing me?" I asked, abandoning my charade. Tammy's mouth quivered. Her nostrils, turning white around the edges, flared. More than fear, then. She was nearly paralyzed with panic.

Before Tammy could answer, another witch entered the washroom. She gave us both a derisive look before patting at her cheeks in the mirror right between us. I stared at Tammy over the witch's back. Tammy stared back. And then, with the barest jerk of her neck, just a hint of her head shaking, she spun on her heel and left.

Relief flooded me. She might not like me. She might be terrified out of her wits about something - I didn't know what, yet - but she wasn't going to turn me in. The relief was so sweet and sharp it had my ears ringing. I shut myself in a stall while the woman finished touching up her makeup and once I finally had a hold of myself again, I left for the ceremony.

That night, when I wrote out my report and told Mary and Sirius what happened, the mission was nearly called off. In fact, Mary threatened to tell Lily, James and Pavi what had happened.

"You can't go back in," she insisted. "They'll kill you if they find out!"

"She's right," Sirius told me gravely. "They might torture you first, but in the end you'll still die."

"She won't turn me in," I said. Part of me didn't truly believe it, but enough of me did. "And the information I got tonight is too important to leave now. Who knows what we'll learn tomorrow?"

The information was important. Direly important, in fact. We now knew who was bankrolling the mercenaries. And I don't mean we knew the family name for who was hiring them for this war. No, I now had the family name for who had been supplying them seed money and sending them this way and that to make more. Athena, it seemed, wasn't so good at keeping family secrets secret.

Tammy and Thicknesse weren't at the ceremony the next night, or the night after. Not seeing them didn't stop my stomach from knotting every which way, but I couldn't leave the job unfinished. Being here had opened doors and unraveled information that before had been unattainable. But on the final night, the night of the actual wedding, they were back. Tammy followed Thicknesse very closely, nearly tripping him at some turns. They weren't the only nervous ones; in fact, the air was humming with nerves.

"He'll be here tonight," Athena confided in me. "I haven't met him yet, but my father told me I would be introduced finally."

She looked the best she'd looked all week, wearing a floor length black gown that spilled over her feet like a puddle of shadows. In fact, we all wore black tonight, except the bride and groom. Narcissa was in a gray so pale it was nearly white, and Malfoy wore a dress robe only a few shades darker than that.

When the guest of honor arrived, I felt it in the air. It was impossible not to. The nervous, cheerful chatter came to a brief halt, and then picked up again. It was forced chatter now. The figure I saw at the entrance, with individuals rushing over to greet him, was slender and somewhat shorter than I'd expected. From here, his features looked pale and sickly. Athena all but vibrated beside me.

"Oh, my," she said. "I can't believe I'm finally meeting him. Lord Voldemort."

"Oh, my, indeed," I said.

"He's so powerful," she chattered nervously. "He makes his own spells, even. And he controls monsters. Can you believe that?"

"It's unbelievable," I said, letting my eyes drift towards the exits. Tonight would undoubtedly be the night when the most information was spilled, as Sirius insisted that after the final wedding ceremony the families got toasted, but the atmosphere was too heavy now. Fear churned the air around us, fear and desperation and need.

"He's even a legilimens, my father told me. When father joined the death eaters, our Lord spoke to him in his mind. Can you believe it? We must go meet him."

And it was true. All the others our age were drifting nearer, the court's nobles going to greet their king. Athena tried to draw me away with her, but my feet were frozen to the ground. With a startled look over her shoulder at me, she left me to go join the progression. And there, standing alone as the crowd split between those greeting the Dark Lord and those joining the soon-to-be-married couple, the red eyes found mine.

It was a slippery feeling, oil and ichor dripping into my thoughts as red bore into my own dark eyes. And I knew, knew, he would figure me out. As soon as I knew it, so did he - his eyes narrowed. So I did the only thing I could and apparated.

Even in my panic, I wasn't stupid enough to apparate to the hotel room, my home, or the wand shop. He would have plucked the image from my mind and I would have lost everything. Instead, my feet touched down on the cobblestone at the corner where Aloys and I had first met in France. And then, just as I heard the crack of someone else appearing, I was gone.

"Pack!" I gasped, twisting my ankle as I landed funny on the carpet in the hotel. "Quickly!"

Mary and Sirius, both looking suspiciously guilty, dodged out of Sirius's room through the adjoining door.

"Hurry!" I snarled, using my wand to direct all my clothes and belongings into my bag. "We've been compromised!"

There was no way to know how much Voldemort had pulled from my mind, and so we scurried like mice from a fox.

By the time I sat down, along with Sirius and Mary, to make my report to Aloys and Pavi, I started thinking I had overreacted. Voldemort was, after all, just a man. A powerful wizard, maybe, but human nonetheless. The look on Aloys face made me happy I'd reacted so instinctively.

"He should not have been there," Aloys told me grimly. "Someone of Malfoy's age and rank should not have necessitated an appearance by their Dark Lord."

A shudder ran down my back, seeming to bounce from one shoulder blade to the next. Without the overwhelming feeling of his power, just the memory, I assessed his looks. Pale, so pale he was waxy. Lanky and gaunt and skeletal, in some ways. An attractive face, even with the hollows beneath his cheekbones. And then, those red, red eyes. Terrifying and merciless and predatory.

"He can't read my mind now that he's seen me and read it once, right?" I asked plaintively.

"Not from this distance, no," Aloys assured me. "But it is even more imperative than ever that you stay out of the public eye. If any of them should recognize you, now…"

"Tammy did," I said bleakly. "If he thinks to question the people I spoke to while I was there, she won't be able to hide it."

Sirius cursed, loudly and fluently. He hadn't thought of that. Pavi picked up where Sirius left off

"If she's smart, she'll get out," Mary said in a little voice. The blue eyes that met mine spoke of little hope. I didn't say it, but the thought hovered in the air between us: If Tammy was smart, she never would've been with Thicknesse in the first place. It was too late for me to go back and warn her now.

With little choice, the five of us settled in for a long discussion of worst-case possibilities. Worst case was that Voldemort plucked my true name and image from Tammy, tortured her and killed her (though Pavi rudely pointed out that was hardly a problem we could take on), and then came after me himself or by proxy. Tammy did not, I was pleased to report, know where I lived or what had happened to me in any sort of detail since our last friendly day at Hogwarts - more than two years ago, at this point. But she did know my siblings' names. And if the mercenaries that were being hired included my siblings, which we all suspected was true, then they had a pretty decent idea of where to find me. At least at work.

"You won't be able to come into the shop anymore," Pavi said, folding his tattooed arms over his chest.

"It's my shop," I said fiercely.

"No," Aloys interrupted before I could get my tirade going, "he's right. The shop is still yours, you can still make the wands. But you can no longer be at the shop."

"And what?" I snapped at Pavi. "It'll be safe for you?"

That was a sticking point. If Voldemort came himself, my life was forfeit. Pavi knew too much about me. But if it was anyone else, Pavi could defend himself and escape.

"It's unlikely to be Voldemort," Sirius said after we'd argued in circles. "You don't send in the king to take out a pawn, right?"

"I'm a pawn, now?" I snarled, outraged.

"To him, you are." Aloys calm eyes met mine, taming the anger that was beginning to spill out. "To him, everyone is a pawn, except maybe Dumbledore. Everyone is to be used and then discarded."

"Don't worry, Genre," Sirius said in a mock-friendly voice, "you're at least a rook to us."

"Wanker," I muttered. But that light bit of teasing took the edge off the anger. I couldn't defend my den - the wand shop - they were right about that. But I could still defend my home.

"I'll make wands at home," I told Pavi. "We'll leave some of the supplies at the shop as a decoy, but I'll take the majority with me. But we won't be able to do on-the-spot repairs anymore."

"We'll make do," Pavi assured me. He leaned forward and pat my hand lightly. "Merlin, my uncle just had to stick me with you," he complained after he'd leaned back into his seat. "'Stay out of trouble, Pavi.' Obviously he didn't know you well enough."

"His loss," Mary said, tossing an arm around my shoulder.