Chapter 2: A New Situation

Disclaimers & A/N: The usual. J.K.Rowling, Chiho Saito. Take your pick. This prequel is based off the same series of stories mentioned in "Cupid's Egg." The names of the stories were "Cupid's Egg" and "Cupid's Night" (or maybe, more directly translating, "The Night Cupid Arrived"), which is why I've titled them thus. Believe me, if I could think of something better I would totally go for it. Until then, though, here it is. I promise I'll go back to "Cupid's Egg" now. I've got a decent number of pages written for it, but I haven't included all the events I'd planned, yet, so it's still coming…

Lily woke slowly and immediately panicked.

She was in an unfamiliar room, richly furnished. She was wrapped in silk sheets—also unfamiliar. It was also not her usual habit to sleep in the nude, which she had apparently been doing. As she started to sit up to look for her clothes (she moaned in pain…she was sore everywhere!), though, she discovered the most disconcerting thing about the situation: the fact that there was someone else in bed with her.

She turned and almost screamed. She restrained herself at the last minute, but not before a frightened squeak escaped her. The man next to her shifted, and his eyes opened. For a second, he blinked at Lily (who was staring at him as though he was some sort of freakish monster), and then, without warning, he smiled. It was an adorable, lopsided grin. It completely threw her off.

"Good morning," he said cheerfully, as though nothing was wrong and it was entirely normal for him to wake up in bed with strangers. His eyes traveled slowly down from her bare shoulders and his smile abruptly went from cheerful to wolfish. Lily crossed her arms over her chest as a reflex.

She opened her mouth to speak—closed it again—opened it again—clamped it shut. Her voice, when it finally came out, was several octaves higher than usual. "Who—what—how—WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?? Why am I here? Who are you?!?!?"

He blinked again, then chuckled as he got out of bed. Lily noticed, with the tiniest bit of relief, that he was wearing pajama pants. She clutched the bedsheet to her chest and frowned at him, waiting for a response. Her eyes searched the room for anything she could defend herself with—her clothes weren't around, and neither was her wand, but that lamp on the bedside table looked like a possible weapon…

He was fumbling around with his cloak, which was draped across a chair. The black hooded garment reminded her of the figure showing up in the doorway last night, just as she was recovering from the pain of the Cruciatus Curse—and suddenly the memories of the previous day came rushing back.

She weighed the possibilities, and as Jean (that was his name, she thought she remembered) pulled a wand from his cloak pocket, she made her move. Within two seconds, she was out of bed (sheet still clutched tightly to her chest) and had thrown the lamp at him.

He ducked—just barely. The lamp missed him by inches and shattered against the wall behind him. By the time he looked up, though, she had the sheet wrapped securely around her body and was holding a number of objects from the bedside table—a book, a vase, a funny wizard timepiece—and looked ready to send all projectiles his way.

"Stop, stop!" he cried, holding his hands up in the universal 'I surrender all' gesture. "Don't throw anything else! I won't hurt you!"

As he was still holding a wand—two wands, she noticed, one probably hers—she found it a little hard to believe his claim of goodwill.

"Catch," he said hastily, throwing one of the wands at her. She dropped the book just in time to catch the wand neatly in one hand. The familiar feel of the polished willow in her hand reassured her somewhat, and she ducked down on the other side of the bed.

"Explain," she said, hoping her voice sounded menacing. It didn't; he laughed again and slowly lowered his hands. But he stopped laughing when he saw where she was aiming the wand.

"Well…" he began, seating himself in the chair. Lily didn't budge from her position behind the bed. "I must begin by apologizing about your clothes. They were in shreds after the—ah—incident in the Madeleine's storeroom last night…and absolutely filthy." Seeing the look on her face and the threatening swishing motion she made with her wand in the air he sat up, alarmed, and hastened to assure her: "But I didn't see anything, I swear! Well, not much! I mean, I turned my head away when we were, um, cleaning you up…it was a simple Scourgify charm, and I levitated you into the bed, and…I would never…" His voice trailed off lamely as he watched Lily with her wand.

Lily decided she had bigger things to worry about than why she woke up naked. It didn't seem they'd done anything…she'd been out cold, and he didn't seem sick enough to make a pass at a comatose woman. In another life, a small voice in the back of her head snickered, she might have actually enjoyed getting involved with a man who looked…but that was completely irrelevant. What she REALLY wanted to know now was why the hell she had been tortured.

"What pensieve were they looking for?" she asked bluntly. "And why did they think I would have it? What's Chartier got to do with any of this?"

Jean looked at her thoughtfully. "You are Lily Evans, are you not? Terrence Carruthers' daughter?"

"Adopted daughter," she stressed, eyes narrowed. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Well,…I'm not sure either." He shrugged slightly. "All I know is that…ah, I suppose we had better start from the beginning."

Lily quirked an eyebrow at him in an "I'm not amused" sort of way.

"My full name is Jean-Pierre Laurant. The people you met last night consisted of my…associates…in our little group of…researchers…"

"Researchers?? Looked like a group of mercenaries to me."

"Well…we research all brands of magic. That is, well, of recent years, we've been mainly concerned with learning more about the Dark Arts…the history, the spells, the connections with other types of magic, and methods of defense…"

"Isn't most of that sort of thing illegal? It is in England, and I'm certain there were similar regulations for France…"

"Yes. Which is why we're forced to conduct most of our…research…in secret."

"So this is some sort of underground Dark Arts society? Oh, great. Wonderful."

"I wouldn't put it like that. The Dark side is rising, as you know, and we just thought we ought to be prepared. For whatever comes next."

"By learning to become proficient at the Dark Arts? So, what, you can join with Voldemort and torture innocent Muggles?"

He looked startled, and then he smiled again. "It's good to hear you say his name aloud. Most people won't, anymore. It's not our intention to join the Dark Lord, though he did send a sort of envoy to recruit our members…"

Alarm bells went off in Lily's head, and she did her best to remain calm. "An envoy?"

"Yes." His brow furrowed as he remembered their visit. "I believe they were two well-to-do British wizards…a haughty-looking blonde man, and another, younger man with dark hair and a slight build." He paused, thinking. "The younger one was named…Lesta…Lestrange, yes."

Lestrange…and the other HAD to have been Malfoy. Wait until Terrence hears about this! Lily thought gleefully, before remembering that she had to find a way to contact someone in England, or find a way back herself (preferably), to tell anyone anything.

"Anyway," Jean continued, watching Lily more closely now. His expression had changed from lighthearted to deadly in a split second. "The two of them proposed a lot of empty, stupid-sounding ideas and told us to let them know our answer. We've decided not to join them …I believe there are some major discrepancies between our core values and theirs, and we have no interest in taking part in some sort of messy, violent movement centered in England. Meanwhile, we're trying to find ways to prepare for what might come. Given the current state of affairs in the French Ministry, we're not sure it will hold up if Voldemort gains significant power in Britain. Right now, the Ministry is refusing to acknowledge Voldemort's existence."

Lily shivered, and remembered she was wearing just a sheet. She was too proud and too greedy for more information to ask for clothes at this point in the conversation, though, and motioned for him to go on. "What about the pensieve?"

"Our society has recorded most of our doings in a communal pensieve…or something very like a pensieve. It disappeared a few days ago. In it are the names of all the members of our group, as well as all the information we've collected and records of all the experiments we've done. We couldn't afford to have this fall into the wrong hands. We had news that it in the possession of a M. Chartier. I believe you know—knew him?"

"Yes, but—wait, what do you mean, 'knew'? And how did he get the pensieve?"

Jean looked vaguely uncomfortable. "He was murdered yesterday evening, while you waited for him in the restaurant. We believe that whoever did it has the pensieve now."

Lily gasped. Chartier…dead?? She hadn't known him well at all, and hadn't particularly liked him, but still…

His expression changed from discomfort to plain anger. "Apparently, he had a contact that knew how to get the pensieve from our hiding place…which could only mean that we have a traitor in our midst. Someone is trying to release the information we have to an outside party.

"We contacted him earlier in the evening to find out what he'd done with the pensieve. I must admit we threatened him quite a bit before he told us you had it. Then we staked out the restaurant and waited for you. We waited to see if Chartier would show up, but he didn't, so…"

"But I DON'T have it!" exclaimed Lily, outraged. "I didn't have any idea! Why should Chartier push this onto me?!?"

Jean nodded sadly. "We searched your hotel room and your baggage, and didn't find anything."

"See?!" Lily was getting angrier and angrier. Had they NO respect for other people's privacy?? You didn't just go and root through someone else's belongings with practically NO evidence that what you wanted was even there! "This has nothing to do with me! I'm in France investigating some rumors we'd heard about Dark Arts activity—"

Suddenly she realized that she had been sent to investigate the group Jean was currently involved in. By the looks of the meeting last night, actually, he was probably something like the ringleader. And if what he told her was true, they weren't another sort of Voldemort support group springing up in France…but once Voldemort found out that he couldn't have their support, what would he do? Grow angry, certainly. Go to drastic extents to extinguish them? Perhaps. Or would he have to, once he got hold of something like the pensieve, which recorded everything the group had ever done…

Jean was watching her warily, an indecipherable look in his eyes. "You're here investigating us, aren't you?"

Straight to the point. "I don't think that's necessary anymore," Lily said stiffly. "If you could just return my things to me, I would be delighted to take myself back to England."

Jean shook his head slowly, eyes on Lily all the while. "I'm afraid not, Miss Evans."

Lily stopped and stared. "What??"

"We can't let you go anywhere, now," Jean said. "I've told you a lot of things about our organization that no outsider—hopefully!—knows. AND you now know about the missing pensieve. Oh, no, Miss Evans, I couldn't possibly let you go home now. You must know that as soon as you were confronted by my associates last night, you have become a target."

"A target?? To whom? And what?"

"A target to those who want to get their hands on the pensieve…or who might already have it in their possession. Did I forget to mention this to you? Since the pensieve disappeared, our numbers have been decreasing steadily."

Lily sat with her mouth wide open in shock.

"Don't worry," Jean said, a sardonic smile twisting his mouth. "I won't let anything happen to you. But all the same…you'll have to stay here for now."

He opened the door. As he left, he called over his shoulder, "We'll be moving to a bigger flat shortly. Until then, though, we might have to continue sharing a bed." He shut the door behind him before Lily could begin to yell.

Lily woke the next morning shivering. She had forced Jean, on pain of castration, to move to the sofa and let her have the bed. However, there weren't enough blankets for the both of them, and she seemed to have gotten the worse end of the deal; the wool coverlet that had looked so warm the evening before was really not so great. She looked over at Jean, sleeping on the sofa, and scowled. He looked perfectly warm and comfortable.

As if he knew she was thinking about him, he opened his eyes and smiled at her. "Sleep well?"

"No," she said bluntly, still shivering. "Do you think I could get a warmer nightgown? And maybe some more CLOTHES?"

"Your wish is my command," he said, getting out of bed and leaving the room.

"I wish he wouldn't just leave like that…" she muttered.

"I didn't mean 'buy the whole boutique'!" Lily shrieked.

She and Jean had just arrived at Jean's new flat. Apparently, he had lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment by choice, not for lack of funds. The new place was spacious and lavishly furnished. In the center of her room was a pile of boxes taller than she was, and she recognized some names of fashionable (and expensive!) clothiers printed on their sides.

"WHAT a waste of money!" she ranted, turning to Jean, her eyes flashing.

He simply smiled at her and shrugged. "You might have to stay here for a long time." He turned away, hands in his pockets. "Besides, like I said earlier, it's not like I lack the funds."

"That's not the point!" she stared helplessly at the pile of boxes. "I don't want to rely on you for everything!"

"But I like having you rely on me for everything," he said. Something in the tone of his voice made her look at him sharply, but his eyes slid away from her gaze.

There was a tense silence.

"Anyway," said Lily finally, a little more calmly, "it's not like I can go out, so no one will see the clothes I wear anyway. Besides you."

"Besides me," he agreed.

"And don't you have to go out sometime, too?" she demanded. "You haven't gone further than 10 meters from me at any given time within the last few days. Don't you have better things to do than sit around and watch me?"

He grinned—the adorable, lopsided grin that made her heart skip a beat once again. "No," he replied, as he leaned against the doorframe. "No better things to do than sit around and watch you."

It was a simple enough statement. But something about the way he said it made her blush. She turned abruptly to hide it and left the room.