DISCLAIMER: Everything in the Harry Potter universe belongs to JK Rowling.

Chapter 1

The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.

He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand . . .

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Hold him off, without a wand in his hand?. . . . He laughed before casting the curse. . . .

"Avada Kedavra!"

The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut. . . .

[...] He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in. . . . She had no wand either. . . . How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments. . . .

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand . . . and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the last sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead. . . .

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside now."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—"

"This is my last warning—"

"Not Harry! Please . . . have mercy . . . have mercy. . . . Not Harry! Not Harry! Please— I'll do anything— "

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

He was irritated. Three warnings he had given her, and still she defied him. He should kill her just for refusing his so rarely bestowed mercy. Surely Severus couldn't expect him to spare the girl after having annoyed him so much...

On the other hand, it would be a far worse fate for her to be handed over to the man that had condemned her son to death. And Severus did deserve a reward...

"Stupefy!"

The woman dropped like her husband, only less dead.

The child had not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib and he looked up into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty light, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing.

He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face. He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry. It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage.

"Avada Kedavra!"

And then it was done.

When Lily woke up, she was lying at the feet of Lord Voldemort. She was no longer in her cottage, but somewhere else, and there were several dozens of masked Death Eaters forming a wide circle around them.

Tears began falling and her entire body began to shake as Voldemort merrily informed her that her husband and son were both dead. Her scream when the two lifeless bodies were unceremoniously dropped before her seemed to erupt from her very soul and was met with a cruel round of laughter. She didn't care about the danger surrounding her as she dragged herself towards her little baby and picked him up, wailing in despair when she saw his open eyes were glassy and empty. Clutching Harry against her chest she reached for James with her other hand and wished for death to take her too as she cried for her broken family.

She went berserk when two Death Eaters tried to take her baby away, her hysterical screams and wild struggle earning her angry insults followed by excruciating pain. When the Cruciatus Curse was finally lifted and she regained her bearings, her arms were empty and she was again lying at Voldemort's feet.

Lily eyes desperately searched for her son, her baby, and saw that his tiny innocent body had been placed on top of James. No doubt the pose was meant to be heartbreaking, and it was, but she found a small measure of comfort in the sight of them together in death. If she could just curl up at James' side and rest with them forever...

"You might be wondering," said the monster in his cold, high-pitched voice, "why you are not dead too, Mrs. Potter."

She didn't have to wonder. There was only one reason why Voldemort would have kept her alive: so he could have some fun with her before he killed her. Even though she didn't care much what happened to her now that she had lost it all, Lily was filled with dread at the prospect of being tortured and humiliated in every possible way for the entertainment of a crowd of Death Eaters. She envied James for the quick death he had been granted, but at the same time she felt overwhelmingly grateful that neither he nor Harry had suffered.

At least she hoped that her baby had not suffered. That Voldemort had just kill him without Harry even understanding what was happening.

"You have been a thorn in my side for too long," he continued, starting to pace around her. "Not only you befouled the ancient halls of Hogwarts with your filthy blood, benefiting from magical knowledge you have no right to and even sullying the position of Head Girl... You also dared to marry into an old pureblood family, contaminating one of the last pure lineages in Britain... You defied me over and over again fighting for the Order of the Phoenix... even tonight, when there was no point in resisting anymore, you stubbornly refused to stand aside at my command..." Voldemort sounded increasingly irritated, which for a moment gave Lily hope that he would kill her on the spot without subjecting her to any lengthy punishments. "I am, however, feeling unusually generous tonight. Everything has gone according to plan, thanks to an early warning I could make sure your child will not grow up to be a threat to me or to my rule, and the loyal servant who made this possible deserves a reward..."

Lily's head jerked in his direction, for the first time since she had woken up anger overcoming her grief and fear. Peter. She hadn't had much time to assimilate the fact that they had been betrayed by one of their closest friends, but now she did, and she was furious. Voldemort smirked cruelly at her.

"It might flatter you to know, Mrs. Potter, that the only boon my subject asked in return for the information that led me to hunt down your little family, was that you be spared and given to him for his personal pleasure." The disturbing red eyes glinted evilly. "He was quite eager to see you widowed, and I dare say he is more than eager to plant his own child in you."

Revulsion turned Lily's stomach. That disgusting rat! How had she never suspected what a disloyal pervert he was? Her indignation was cut short when Voldemort's words fully sank in, though, and she realized in horror that she wasn't going to be allowed to die any time soon. Instead she was going to be given as a reward to Peter, the filthy traitor who had gotten her husband and son killed, to be used as a whore and...

Lily leaned forward and threw up. Oh, God. Nauseating images of Peter touching her, spilling his disgusting seed inside her, forcing her to carry his bastard, kept her retching even when she no longer had anything to expel.

"It appears that Mrs. Potter doesn't find the prospect appealing," drawled Voldemort in a mocking tone, eliciting another round of laugh. "Although I don't think she has yet figured out who her new master is, perhaps she won't be quite so disgusted when she realizes..."

Feeling extremely weak and slightly confused, Lily struggled to sit up and warily surveyed the encircling Death Eaters. They all looked exactly the same, and at the moment most of them were whispering to their neighbours or craning their necks as if also trying to figure out who Voldemort was talking about.

"Severus," hissed the evil wizard, his cruel eyes still fixed on Lily, "step forward."

A whole new level of grief was layered over her already devastating world of misery when she heard the name and quiet steps instantly responded to Voldemort's command. Lily watched in horror as a tall figure detached itself from the circle of whispering Death Eaters and glided forward, his identity concealed behind the same dark robes and white mask that all the others were wearing.

Severus.

If something could have hurt her further at this point, seeing him here dressed as a Death Eater definitely was it. Lily had suspected for years that he had joined Voldemort, but she hadn't been sure, she hadn't wanted to believe it. Even now she was desperately hoping she had heard wrong, that it wasn't him behind that creepy mask.

And she was confused. Why had he been called forward instead of Peter? What did Severus have to do with anything? It had been Peter who had betrayed them and told Voldemort where to find them.

Unless...

Realization hit Lily like a bucket of ice. Dumbledore had told them that according to a report Voldemort had singled them out as targets because he believed that their child could be a threat to him in the future. Had Severus put that idea in his head? Had he plotted the deaths of her husband and son so he could claim her as a reward?

She felt as if she were drowning, so painful it was to breathe. The old wound in her heart that had never fully healed flared open and threatened with shutting her entire self down at the idea that Severus, whom she had loved and trusted, could have hurt her this way.

"My Lord," said the Death Eater as he submissively knelt before Voldemort. The voice was graver than Lily remembered, but it was definitely Severus' and the sound of it reverberated painfully inside her evoking a multitude of childhood memories.

At a sign from Voldemort, the servant lowered his hood and removed his mask, revealing Severus' familiar black hair and hooked nose. Lily noticed that he had changed since she had last seen him, though, the lines on his face having become sharper and his features less youthful, making him look more like a man and less like the boy she remembered.

"My dear Severus," purred Voldemort, "you have served me well. I promised you could have the woman once the child was dead, and Lord Voldemort is a man of his word, so here she is, yours to do with her as you please."

"Thank you, my Lord," said Severus fervently, his tone and expression saturated with devotion as he addressed his master, "you are most generous."

"I suspect Mrs. Potter will find hard to forgive your role in her family's demise," commented Voldemort with an evil glance in her direction, "it might take some persuasion to get her to come willingly to your bed."

"I don't require her willingness, my Lord," said Severus smoothly, the corner of his mouth twitching as if repressing a smirk, "but I intend to make sure she understands she belongs to me now."

Voldemort's eyes glinted with dark satisfaction as he regarded his follower.

"Perhaps you should make sure your brothers understand that too," he suggested, gesturing with his arm at the surrounding Death Eaters. "Some of them tend to ignore others' claims if they are not explicitly staked, as you well know."

"I doubt any of my brothers —or sisters," added Severus with a dangerous glare that seemed directed at one specific Death Eater in the circle, "would dare touching what's mine without my express permission, my Lord. But I would be happy to stake my claim right now... with Potter's still warm body lying only a few feet away."

A wide, cruel smile spread through Voldemort's inhuman face as excited murmurs and blood-chilling cackles rose all around.

"I'll leave you to it, then," said the evil wizard casting a last malicious glance at Lily before turning around and retreating to the edge of the circle, where Death Eaters scrambled to form a gap for him.

Lily watched powerlessly as her baby was levitated away and deposited in the arms of his murderer, who pretended to cradle him while rocking back and forward in a chair that he had conjured for the purpose. The Death Eaters seemed to have taken that as a sign that they were allowed to relax, and many were conjuring their own seats, removing their masks or changing places to chat with those that had been standing too far away.

She wrenched her eyes from the mockery her dead son was being subjected to and focused instead on Severus, who had already vanished her vomit from the floor and was now disrobing with slow and methodical movements, nothing about him betraying the slightest agitation. Lily suspected that she must be in shock, or perhaps descending into catatonia, else surely she wouldn't be so calm waiting to be raped by her former best friend. Severus' unexpected involvement in her tragedy had snapped something inside her, broken her in one too many pieces, fused her past, present and future in one indiscernible hell, and she felt as if she were losing her grasp on reality.

Finally, having removed everything but his shirt —which mercifully was long enough to hide from direct view his prominent erection— Severus turned to look at her. The audience disappeared into shadows as the lighting changed to focus all the attention on the circular dais where only Lily, Severus and James' body remained. Predatory black eyes watched her from above, and Lily had to acknowledge Voldemort's talent for choosing the most thorough method of torment for a specific person. After losing her husband and child nothing could have finished destroying her so effectively as this.

While Severus wasn't nearly as repulsive a rapist candidate as any other Death Eater she could think of, Lily would have preferred to be raped by anyone else no matter how brutal or disgusting. Because then it wouldn't have been so personal. Even Peter —was he a Death Eater too? was he watching now?— would have been preferable, since fury and revulsion would have no doubt pushed her to fight and curse him like a fiend from beginning to end. Severus, on the other hand...

After hearing what Voldemort and Severus had said, Lily understood that she should be raging and attempting to claw Severus' eyes out, that she should hate him and bristle at the thought of him touching her, but in her shocked state she still hadn't managed to move on from the ocean of grief that the revelation of her old friend's evilness had sunk her in. An overwhelming sense of defeat had crept into her as a result of the heavy blow, and she just couldn't find in herself the will to fight anymore now that it was abundantly clear that she had lost her personal war against the darkness. She had failed to stir Severus away from his dark path, all those years ago, and now she had paid for that failure with the lives of her loved ones and the freedom of her body.

To the victor go the spoils, the saying went, and clearly Severus was the victor here. He had won his personal war against James Potter, and he was now about to claim her as a prize.

Lily swallowed a lump in her throat when Severus approached her and knelt by her side. Contradictory impulses assaulted her at his proximity, an urge to slap the man he was warring with her longing to hug the boy he had been.

"Severus..." she whispered, trying to meet his gaze. If she could get him to look at her, really look at her...

"Quiet," he hissed as he grabbed the hem of her jumper and non-too-gently pulled it over her head. Lily struggled to keep her balance and continued trying to meet his dark eyes, which were now eyeing her body as if trying to decide what to do with her next.

"This is not who you are, Sev-"

Severus cut her off with a backhand blow that knocked her on her side.

"I said quiet!" he spat, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling hard. Sharp pain shot through her scalp as he used the hold to turn her around and press her against his chest, his other hand circling around her waist to immobilize her. Pushing his erection against her lower back, he murmured into her ear, "You will learn to obey."

Visceral fear rendered Lily's emotional conflict suddenly irrelevant, and she didn't dare moving or speaking as she tried to come to terms with Severus' harshness. She didn't realize that his hold had relaxed until his hands reappeared in front of her and yanked her blouse open, buttons flying in all directions as her chest was exposed to the cold air of the room. One of Severus' hands then closed around her neck holding her head against his shoulder while the other pushed down her bra and began fondling her breasts to the loud encouragement of the jeering crowd. Lily couldn't see them due to the darkness that surrounded her, but she could imagine Voldemort leering from his rocking chair and knew that Severus was showing her off on purpose. Tears of humiliation began rolling down her face, but she let him do as he pleased and tried to ignore the surprizingly gentle treatment he was giving to her nipples. When his hand sneaked down and slid under the waist band of her jeans and into her knickers, though, beginning to rub circles around a very sensitive spot, Lily tensed and began to squirm.

"What's the matter?" whispered Severus' silky voice in her ear, slipping a long finger down her slit, "Afraid you might like it?"

She could hear people chuckling, which made her suspect Voldemort and the Death Eaters could hear even the lowest sound produced in the center of the room. Before she could dare responding, however, Severus withdrew his hand and forcefully pushed her facedown against the cold floor, his hardness now pressing against her backside as he removed her blouse and ran a hand down her spine making her shiver and unhooking her bra along the way.

He flipped her over just as roughly and unexpectedly as every other move he had made so far, and then she was lying on her back, naked from her waist up, with Severus kneeling between her legs. His pupils were dilated, making his eyes look darker than ever as he stared at her bare breasts, which Lily didn't see the point in trying to cover. She was at his mercy, with no magic, nor physical advantage, nor the slightest chance of escaping the circle of Death Eaters in the unlikely case she could escape his hold. Angering him would only earn her another strike, and Lily would rather be raped than struck by Severus.

So she didn't resist when his deft fingers unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them off. Her eyes were fixed on his as he finished undressing her, willing him to look at her, but Severus still refused to meet her gaze, as if she were just a sexual object that he wasn't interested in acknowledging as a person and even less as his childhood friend. Lily wondered if he was doing this because he wanted her or simply because he derived some sick pleasure from taking the wife of his school nemesis. Once upon a time she had thought that Severus fancied her, but his calling her a Mudblood had made her doubt that and until this moment she hadn't had any reason to revisit that intuition. Maybe she had been right? Or perhaps he just hated James this much. The mixture of lust and hatred in his eyes as he slowly removed her knickers supported either hypothesis.

Once her last item of clothing had been cast aside, Severus took a moment to survey her naked body with a hungry look in his eyes that made her stomach twist in anticipation despite herself. She held her breath when her thighs were spread wider and Severus positioned himself above her, pressing his dripping member against her entrance as he clasped her hip with one hand and took hold of her neck with the other.

The intrusion Lily was expecting didn't immediately occur, though. Instead, while his burning head pulsed eagerly between her lips Severus grabbed her by the jaw and turned her head to the left.

"Look at him," he growled in her ear.

Lily's eyes fell on the lifeless body of her husband, which laid closer than the last time she had glanced in his direction. Severus must have purposely repositioned her with all his manhandling so she could see James clearly simply by turning her head. Another wave of grief crashed over her, and she tried to look away.

"Look at him!" barked Severus, his strong fingers painfully digging into her jaw as he forced her to face James's body, "I want you to look at him while I fuck you. Look at that sorry excuse for a husband that failed to protect your child."

His words made Lily snap.

"You bastard!" she hissed. Fury finally flared inside her, whatever she might have felt for Severus in the past completely receding and leaving behind nothing but the deepest loathing. She struggled to turn her head so she could spit at him while she tried to wiggle her body from under his, but her efforts far from working seemed to be exactly what Severus had been waiting for to finally plunge into her, burying himself to the hilt with one swift, brutal thrust that made her cry out in pain.

Being violated just when she had gotten angry only made her more furious, the feeling of him inside her, claiming a place where only her husband and son had ever been, making her body vibrate with rage. She felt suddenly a hundred times stronger, and used that extra strength to try and fight him off while he began moving within her. The harder she struggled to break free, though, the firmer was Severus' hold on her, the relentless rhythm of his thrusts not disturbed in the slightest by anything she did. Lily thrashed, pushed, kicked, dug her nails on his arms and face, tugged his hair and tore his shirt, without managing even to break his painful grasp on her jaw. She was still forced to look at James while Severus pounded ruthlessly into her.

Her adrenaline rush didn't last long. She realized relatively quickly that not only it was pointless to fight Severus, he seemed to want her to fight him, her rage only serving to urge him on. When she arrived to the conclusion that he enjoyed more raping if the victim resisted, Lily stopped struggling and decided to just retreat inside herself and wait for it to be over.

But it wasn't quite so easy to escape her reality. The sight of James' body was a knife constantly twisting in her heart, a reminder of her dead baby and destroyed family, and of the fact that it wasn't him inside her now and would never be again. Lily couldn't help imagining how James would react if he could see this, and again felt grateful that he had been given a quick death.

She tried closing her eyes to escape all those painful emotions and thoughts, but then it was much harder to ignore the painful sensations all over her body. Her face hurt where Severus had struck her earlier, and her neck, and her hip that he was grasping with enough force to bruise bone, and her back for being constantly scraped against the hard floor. The worst sensation of all, though, was the one of Severus repeatedly stretching her open and filling her up. To her shame, she hadn't been completely unreceptive when he had first barged in, but it had still been a rough intrusion since Severus was bigger than she was used to and he hadn't entered her gently.

It was getting better, though. Of all her pains, the one caused by Severus' girth was quickly becoming the most bearable, to the point that it wasn't exactly unpleasant anymore. If she kept her eyes closed, she could almost pretend it was James, even though James had never been so rough with her and she had never been so uncomfortable during sex.

She didn't notice the moment when Severus let go of her neck, and desperate as she was to escape her misery she didn't notice either when heat began spreading from her core like a healing balm for the soul. When she realized what was happening it was too late to stop it, the pressure was already building up and Severus in his cruelty was determined to release it. One of his hands was now buried in her hair, pulling her head backwards, while the other mercilessly rubbed her left nipple, and his strokes were coming faster, each one of them feeding the fire, ruthlessly pushing her towards the edge.

Lily reluctantly reached climax and nearly blacked out, only retaining enough lucidity to hear Severus' throaty groan as he buried himself one last time inside her and filled her with his seed. There were a few seconds of complete silence, and then...

People began clapping all around. There was the sound of excited laughter, and voices congratulating Severus for a job well done. Others called Lily an easy slut.

Severus slipped out of her and went to retrieve his clothes, leaving her lying naked where she was. Lily turned on her left side and curled into a ball, her eyes falling over James' body in shame. She could feel semen trickling down her thigh, but worse than that she could still feel the afterglow of her unwilling orgasm. Her husband was lying dead right there, and she had enjoyed being raped by the man who had gotten him —and her son— killed.

If she had wanted to die before, now she was positively desperate to escape her filthy skin.

A few moments later, Severus appeared again in her line of vision, not yet completely dressed but at least wearing trousers. He looked in her direction once, and then pointed his wand at James.

When he saw the body of her husband burst into flames, Lily's first impulse was to crawl into the funeral pyre with him. She didn't manage more than two feet, however, before Severus pointed his wand at her and froze her in place with a Body-Bind Curse.

Tears ran down her frozen face while the man she loved slowly dissolved into ashes.