Chapter Seven: Tu Xiong Bi Xian

The wet night air had exploded into torrential rain. Solid drops pounded like stones on the roof, and, glancing up, she prayed the ceiling would burst, water flooding in, drowning them all.

But Malfoy Manor stood, unswayed, and the two men seated with her in the waiting parlor seemed wholly unaware of the tempest roaring past. Walden Macnair, seated beside her, examined his wine glass apathetically while exchanging terse words with Jeremiah Avery.

"Well, I can understand that," Avery replied, leaning against the mantle and dismissing Macnair's comment with a flippant turn of his head. "But my point is, you can't just ignore the fact this his grandmother was a squib—and a Muggle-lover if there ever was one."

Mancnair grunted, whether in assent or protest, Lili couldn't tell.

"I mean, I sent my children to Durmstrang precisely to keep them from the sort of Mudblood, Muggle-loving filth you find at Hogwarts these days," Avery continued, seeming to ignore the glazed look in Macnair's eyes. "And I'm supposed to accept the fact that my daughter goes and finds the one wizard in the whole place without a completely solid, respectable family line?" He snorted, pulling down a large gulp of whatever white liquid he'd poured for himself. "She keeps feeding me all this nonsense about how it's been so many generations, and he's not at all like that. Well, I said, do you know what your grandmother was? –The wife of one of the most influential Ministry heads that ever lived? And a formidable witch in her own right…"

Avery paused for another drink, and Macnair shot Lili a look. Neither of them chose to point out that this was a blatant lie.

"I mean does she really want to risk having a squib?" The alcohol in his glass sloshed as he gesticulated wildly. "Even the slightest hint of weak blood in a family used to be enough for any sensible witch to pass a man by." He sighed.

He seemed to have finished his tirade, and Lili was glad as both her liquor and patience were running low.

"Look at Malfoy's new daughter-in-law," Macnair said, leaning back into the sofa with a throaty sigh. "Now that's a good match. The Morrighans are a good family, and they've always stood firm and had their pride. And that girl did well enough in school; seems amiable."

"Yes," Avery agreed, languidly, pursing his lips. "And gorgeous too."

Lili's stomach turned. She stilled it with a long swallow of brandy. Macnair, having seemingly exhausted his opinion, settled into his normal grunts of assent.

Avery sighed. "And what do you think, Lili?" He arched an eyebrow in her direction.

She felt a sneer crawling across her face. "Well, Jeremiah, Dia's not really my type."

She was rewarded with a nasal laugh. "No, no. I mean about marriage. Would you marry for love," he spat this word out distastefully, "no matter what?" His eyes met hers with a surprising intensity.

She swallowed another mouthful of her brandy. "Frankly, I don't plan on marrying at all—no matter what." Doing the best she could to stare back at him with equal force, she leaned back in her chair, searching for something else solid, strong. "I've already pledged my loyalties to one man. No need to complicate things."

This seemed enough to silence Avery for a greater length, and Lili sighed, unsure whether to feel relieved by the quiet or more disturbed by it. Avery's rant had at least distracted her slightly; now she found her mind whirring again, sweat rising hot under the bends of her knees.

Only the sound of assailing rain roared through the room.

Where was everyone else? She'd been sitting in the waiting parlor for almost an hour now, and only Avery, Macnair and two houselves had joined her.

And, more crucially, where was Severus? Did this early call interfere with what he'd planned? Or was it because of his plan…

Her heart hammered, muscles beginning to ache with weakness, stretched painfully tense.

Where is he?

The door opened with one long, smooth creak, and she found herself jumping to her feet, stomach roiling with nervous anticipation. Avery and Macnair followed but with considerably greater calm.

Lucius Malfoy adjusted his cloak a moment before dragging a tight smile across the room. "Ahh good. All here I see."

"All, Lucius?" Avery said, setting his glass down on the mantle with a sneer. "I count three here. Surely our Lord's numbers aren't so depressed."

"Ahh, no. We've only one who's turned, don't worry." Lucius matched him, sneer for sneer. "This little gathering is not meant for a wider audience; it's by invitation only." He held out his upper forearm to show his mark, too, still slightly red on the skin.

Lili's heart leaped up in her throat, fluttering, pounding against her tongue.

Some invitation, she snarled inwardly, trying with all her might not to imagine what possibilities an elite Death Eater meeting could have in store.

She dug her heels into the ground, relaxing her aching body as best she could.

Take deep breaths. Long, deep. That's good. Remember what he used to say.

Pretend you're blind, Miss Lee. If you don't see anything horrifying, it's much easier to drown the rest out…

She blurred her vision slightly, relaxing, sinking more into the floor.

"Now, gentlemen—and lady of course— if you have finished your drinks, I believe our Lord is waiting." Lucius' steely eyes met hers, and he smiled.

She squeezed her glass hard, pouring the remainder of its contents, burning, down her throat. The deep heat drizzled through her, settling heavy and hot in her belly. Her palms were slick, and, cautiously, she wiped them on the insides of her pockets, fingers brushing briefly against the solid metal of Snape's ring.

Breathe. Breathe. It seemed that if she didn't remind herself, she would suffocate from the anxiety.

The four of them entered into the next room, the chamber normally reserved at Malfoy Manor for such meetings. She had first entered it two years before; she had seen him, slithering in the darkness, and, holding her arm above the fire, he had burned that black magic under her skin, eyes glinting like the lightning now staining the night sky.

But it was different tonight, different than it had ever been. The whole room was flooded with bright light, the fireplace empty, a cold gray box. She could see every fold in his robe, every vein under his skin as he turned from the naked windows, head silhouetted by rain driving against the glass.

He smiled. "Malfoy. Avery. Macnair. Lee."

Each of them came forward in the order called, bending to the ground and kissing the bottom of his robes with a whispered, "My Lord." It was something she had learned to do without much thought, but tonight she found herself concentrating hard, doing her best to seem as deferent and fawning as possible. Not, of course, that it would change anything, if Snape was right. She prayed again that he knew what was happening—that somehow, this was all a good sign…

"Miss Lee."

Her eyes lifted from the ground, meeting his blazing, serpentine glaze. "My Lord?"

"Happy Birthday."

Her drumming heart slowed, her muscles that had tightened in preparation to run, loosened in a flood of adrenalin.

"Th--thank you, my Lord." She backed away from him several feet before standing, careful to keep her eyes turned from his.

They all stood for several moments, watching him in tense silence. He had returned to his position at the window, turned half-way towards the four waiting Death Eaters and half-way towards the dark, pounding rain.

"Lay down your masks," he said at last. "You'll have no need of them after tonight."

Macnair and Avery looked at her questioningly. She shrugged, bending down to set her mask on the thick carpet, heart back, thudding, against her stomach. 

You won't need them after tonight…

She did her best to smooth her ragged breathing.

"No doubt you're all wondering why I've called you here," he continued, keeping his gaze fixed on the streaked window. "It will all be made clear." He paused. "In time."

Blood ran hot under her skin, rain striking the glass in tandem with the pounding of her heart. She wasn't sure how long she could wait without bursting into tears of frustration…

"First let me tell you about Junia," he began, leaning against the window seal and running a long, serpentine finger down the glass, tracing the path of several raindrops, before continuing. "No doubt by now you all know she was a double agent. For almost four years she told our secrets, even some of our names to officials at the Ministry…" His voice hissed low and dangerous, and Lili was quite glad that his flashing eyes were turned away. "I found out about her treachery through one of my Ministry connections. Needless to say I was deeply pained. I waited for several weeks, knowing that she had planned a holiday in France. We intercepted her there, and, on the way back to England –we were forced to take a rather inconvenient Muggle boat as poor Junia was in no shape to apparate—we came across a very interesting something." She didn't have to see his face to know the awful smirk curling across its thin, inhuman skin. "A tiny island in the middle of the sea—too small to be named, too small to be known. And guess what we found there, imprisoned on that island, dying, starving without human contact?"

But no one needed to hear his answer. The word was already in their mouths.

"The Ministry had placed the Dementors on this island after taking them from Azkaban," he continued, letting one of his nails scratch on the glass for a moment. "They were pitiful, starving for someone to feed upon. I gave them our Muggle captain but could not yet give them Junia, who they desperately wanted. We took this opportunity to question her, prepared to give her over to them when she was no longer of any use..."

Lili was shaking beneath her robes, fingers sweating yet cold as ice. She knew what "questioning" entailed and for the first time in several weeks, saw Junia's face, mutilated and wailing in pain…

"Unfortunately, it seems, she had a rather weak heart," he said, sounding like a man who'd had a prize pulled from his hands, "and she died before she could get her kissss." It was now that he chose to turn from the window, looking over their faces with wide, cruel eyes. "But she was able to give us some more rather disturbing information first…"

He was pacing in front of them now, meeting their eyes individually several times before continuing. "The treachery, it seems, went deeper than one."

Lili had forgotten to breathe. Her eyes met Voldemort's, sad, ready.

"Severusss Snape." The name was little more than a hiss, but it ripped through her skin, echoing through her ears like fire. Severus. Snape. Just as in her dreams…nightmares…

"She had been reporting to him for several years, and he, in turn, went to the Ministry, telling them all she knew." Voldemort's voice was raised now, his slit nostrils dilating with thin, sharp breaths. "He had, since even before the time of our last downfall, turned against us, working under the protection of that hooked nose fool…"

From somewhere outside herself, Lili heard Avery whispering something to Macnair. Tears were burning behind her eyes, her body seeming far away.

Severus. Snape. The name still hissed through her mind, her eyes quivering, covered, like the window, with streaking rain.

Severus. Snape.

Somewhere in the distance, lightning flashed, followed by the dull rumble of thunder. She felt it deep in the root of her heart.

"Kill him. We'll kill him, my Lord."

Voldemort continued, sweeping past them again, ignoring Avery's comment. "We have suffered for many years, my friends. We have been put down by Muggle-lovers, and Mudbloods, and wizards who've forgotten their pride—and now by traitors." His face itself was flat, but his eyes smoldered, the deep red of flames. "But no more!"

His voice shook her weak heart, and she felt the cruel sneer that slit his face ripping the last of her hope from her.

"The time, my friends, has come."

Every inch of her skin tingled, her eyes burning, her heart engorged with drumming blood and sorrow. She could feel her muscles groan, a faintness tickling the base of her skull. The pounding of her headache had returned.

"The four of you—Malfoy, Macnair, Avery, Lee—have been called here tonight to take the reigns of glory." He looked at them each slowly, fanatically, blood-lust and zeal radiating from behind his fiery eyes. "We will take out this traitor—but much more. We will attack him at his very home."

Ice. Ice in her veins, in her bones.

"Hogwartsss," he hissed, with a slitted, curling grin.

Her muscles snapped and only her bones of ice kept her standing.

"Even now, the armies I have been amassing for the last years are readying themselves." His words tumbled into one another in their excitement, and he did not bother pausing for breath. "The four of you have been chosen to head the attack, and, after victory, to take all the glory that is rightly yours. After Hogwarts is razed and that Muggle-loving fool killed, the rest of the wizarding world will know our might and will fall like trees in a mighty wind. And then no one will dare to stand against us!"

She was numb, her heart and lungs barely able to move under the cold, dead weight of her body.

Tu qiong bi xian. The map is unrolled, the dagger revealed.

"Many of the Aurors have been sent away," he continued, his smile growing with every new revelation. "We have, for several months, been sending the Ministry false rumors of threat through our inside contacts. Our reports seem to show that only half of their forces are close enough to aide Hogwarts. That is, if they have time to contact anyone once they realize what's happening…"

It was the first time she'd ever heard Voldemort laugh. High, pitiless, it hung like poison in the air.

It rang in her ears beside the buzz of a name.

Severus. Snape.

No hope. It was over. There was nothing that could be done.

She pictured him, slunk over his desk, grading essays in that dark red ink. The door fell in. Screams, blood. And Dementors floating in like black ghosts, white, horrible mouths closing over his…

She breathed in sharply, the air hot and full of poisoned shards of laughter. The wind picked up outside, throwing a fresh battering of rain against the glass.

"My Lord, we are amazed," Avery said at some length. "Amazed and overjoyed."

Macnair joined in quickly. "Yes, my Lord. You—we—have waited so long."

Malfoy merely smiled.

He knew all along

She swallowed the bitter mixture of bile and tears that rose in her throat.

"And what about you, Miss Lee?" He asked, turning and meeting her shining eyes with a gaze of fire. "What do you think of my birthday present to you?"

Her voice barely escaped, a rasp, a whisper. "I—I don't know what to say, my Lord." She swallowed again, forcing what seemed the last bit of strength into her lungs. "To stand among such company—it—an honor—"

She trusted herself to say no more.

His eyes held hers with the painful fierceness of a vice. He was looking through her, looking past her eyes into her mind. "You have earned it, Miss Lee," he hissed, gripping her thoughts in his gaze, squeezing, refusing to look away…

Let me go…please…please…

Her muscles shook with fear, weakness.

The names hissed again in her ear. Hogwartsss. Severus. Snape.

"You've all earned it."

His eyes drifted away from her, and she felt as she had so many years earlier—What only two?

A puppet with her strings cut.

But she stood, too empty and rigid to fall.

Severus. Snape.

And could she leave? Run? Apparate to him now?

And what then? She couldn't stand against an army. And, neither, she feared, could Hogwarts, even with Albus Dumbledore…

"You shall all retire now and look over the documents I've set aside for you," he instructed, turning once more to the battered window. "Get some rest and prepare yourselves. We attack at dawn."

She glanced over, through bubbling eyes, at the standing clock that now chimed, loud and menacing.

Eleven o'clock, and all's well…

She turned, knowing that, if she didn't move, she would surely faint.

Where she was going, she didn't know. She was lost. Lost. But she had to walk. She had to do something….

An icy grip wrapped about her arm.

"Lili, I hope you'll let me escort you to your room." Lucius Malfoy's fingers burned cold against her skin. "Of course you can't stay with the three of us men. We've had your old room prepared specially."

Very kind of you. She spoke the words as she thought them, mind and body only briefly meeting. She had looked for hope from Snape two years earlier; written him from that room. She had poured out rivers of sweat and tears into those sheets.

She thought briefly, randomly, of Artibius pressed up against her chin, clicking consolingly.

She hadn't seen him before she left…

The mere thought seemed to topple the little fortitude she'd been clinging to, tears stinging in her eyes, and she turned away from Malfoy long enough to wipe them away.

"All your documents will be on the writing desk in your room," he informed her, nearing the door and shooing away some houselves who were scurrying about with tea and papers. "We'll be reassembling at three—the rest of the Circle will be present then."

All but one. And he'll be dragged out soon enough…

"I'll be there." Her voice was no longer hers, her heart no longer beating.

Malfoy smiled again, brushing his fingers down her arms as he let her go. "Get some rest, Lili. You're not looking well."

"I'll be ready."

At some point he walked away. At some point the houselves had dispersed. At some point, she had collapsed into the desk chair, eyes alternately crying uncontrollably and scanning the lists of creature and men in Voldemort's army.

The list went on and on. Her hopes dissolved.

There was no way Hogwarts could survive this attack, not without warning.

But how?

She had no means of contacting them. She couldn't use any of the Malfoys' mail owls. Besides, there wasn't time.

She had only two choices.

She could stay, lead the army, and do her best to weaken Voldemort's position from that end.

A face appeared in her mind, unbidden. Slick with black blood, skin pale as death, voice desperate, screaming her name…

What would they do to him? What would become of him if she didn't…

Her fingers had moved, without her knowledge, to the ring in her pocket. She pulled it out, watching the light dance over the thin cut letters manically.

Outside, the rain assailed the Manor, trying to drown it and its vile inhabitants.

If Hogwarts can be saved, I'd be glad to drown.

Knees shaking, heart burning with fear, she picked the papers up from the desk and tucked them under her arm. She pulled the ring on her finger, staring out the window at a bolt of lightning slicing white across the night.

It's over, Lili. The farce is over.

They would come to her room at three o'clock and find it empty.

****************************

The rain had soaked through the ground, and her feet sloshed deep in mud as she ran, falling, crawling, doing all she could though blinded by drops assailing her eyes.

The tall metal gates were locked, and she shook them, desperate, weak. She had run from Hogsmeade, her lungs burning, her heart taut to the point of excruciating pain. Gasping, she ripped her wand from her heavy, sodden robes and blew the gates apart in a rain of sparks.

She cut through a small edge of the Forbidden Forest, ignorant of the eyes watching her, or the voices and creatures following on her heels. The blood pounded so hot in her ears, the water stung in her eyes—she saw only the castle and its doors.

She ran past Hagrid's hut, screaming his name; but she did not stop. She slipped and pulled herself up without even realizing it, feet set on her path.

Trying to wheeze out a cry for help, she pounded on the tall doors. Doom. Doom. Doubled over, her tiny, cold fists pounded again and again, each time threatening to be the last she could manage. Doom. Doom.

The doors opened with a creak, and Minerva McGonagall, clad in her red and gold pajamas, held out her lighted wand in alarm.

Lili crouched on the ground, panting, barely able to see the blur of light through her stinging, dripping eyes.

"Miss—Lee?" Professor McGonagall could hardly recognize her, soaked and heaving, almost in a breathless heap on the ground.

She nodded, pushing at the curls plastered wet across her face. "Y—yes," she huffed, swallowing mouthfuls of rain as she tried to stand and speak. "M—must—warn—Dumb—le—"

She stopped, and took a deep breath, her lungs aflame.

"I must speak with the Headmaster," she cried, meeting the old witch's wide eyes with streaming tears. "They're coming…"

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A/N: Well, only a day past—not bad! I hope everyone enjoys this chapter. It's getting intense, and I hope that I'm still pleasin' as well as teasin' ;o) The next chapter will be fun. And the one after that, well…we'll just take it a step at a time…

Please let me know what you think! I'm starting the next chapter as we speak…

Tentative date for Chapter Eight: Monday, October 28