Lucius Malfoy apparated back home with a crack, stumbling onto the carpet. The first light of dawn was peeking through the curtains. He had been up all night.

"Lucius!"

Narcissa took hold of his arm, steadying him until he could settle into his green wingbacked chair and retrieve his cane. Though she looked as elegant as ever in her fine robes and neat chignon, she had evidently been sitting here for hours, waiting up. She raised her wand as if to begin a diagnostic spell, but he reached for her arm and brought it down.

"I'm fine," he said.

"He didn't—" Narcissa began.

"Just the potions," Lucius said, taking them— three in quick succession, as she procured them. Cruciatus potions, a family recipe. There was nothing to be done for the pain of the curse, but they went a ways in repairing the nerve damage Cruciatus wrought.

"Lucius…" Narcissa said, taking his hand. "I was thinking, maybe, we could take a vacation. Take Draco, go to Cannes, or Naples for a few months…"

For a moment, Lucius actually considered it. Himself and Narcissa on a beach somewhere, little Draco running around in the sand, away from the madness of Great Britain's power struggles.

After a moment, he shook his head, dismissing the fancy.

"If we flee, there will be no returning. We stay in Britain."

"Lucius, you have a nine-month old son," Narcissa said, gripping his hands with her own own white ones. "You cannot keep playing these games."

She didn't understand.

"That is exactly why I must!" Lucius said, extracting his hands and standing up. "Don't you understand? If we are not standing on the winning side when this all blows over, we have nothing. Draco has nothing."

"That's—"

A crack sounded in the center of the room, cutting Narcissa off. It was a very bedraggled house elf, who looked guiltily up at the couple.

Lucius heaved himself up and walked over, leveling his cane at the elf's midsection.

"What is it?" he hissed.

"Dobby is sorry, sir!" the elf said, twisting his ears pathetically. "It is being a visitor, sir!"

He pushed the cane forward into the elf's ribs. "Who?"

"It's me," a pleasant voice said, as Loki appeared in the doorway. "I hope you don't mind that I followed your servant."

Lucius drew himself up, biting back a curse.

"Not at all," he said, dismissing the elf with a wave of his hand. Narcissa left too, sending him a betrayed glance.

Just perfect.

Lucius sat down, gesturing to the another seat with his cane.

Loki picked his way across the room like a bystander in the aftermath of a battle. He raised his eyebrows at the empty potions bottles, but didn't deign to comment. At last, he sat down in Narcissa's seat and Lucius relaxed marginally.

Even wandless magic was more difficult to perform seated.

As if to refute that notion, Loki conjured a small green flame, idly passing it around his fingers.

"What is the Dark Lord planning?" he asked.

"There was the attack yesterday," Lucius hedged. It took some effort to avoid looking at his own hand, where Loki had inscribed an invisible glyph on their first such meeting. 'To keep an eye on you,' he had said. He was in deep. Narcissa didn't know the half of it. Lucius broke off that train of thought, straightening. Now was not the time for fear, no matter how cruciatus-addled his brain was.

"I wasn't involved— it was more the… less valuable people. I believe there was a tip-off from a new source."

"A death eater?" Loki asked, looking bored.

"Not necessarily," Lucius said. "We have sympathizers." And of course, people could be made to talk.

Loki changed the subject.

"Tell me about Severus Snape," he said, flicking the flame from his left hand to his right.

"What interest could he have for you?" Lucius asked, allowing a hint of his disdain to show on his face.

He knew, of course.

Snape had told the Dark Lord about the successful Sectumsempra, the first time Lucius had heard him speak in weeks. He had been even more reserved than usual lately, though Lucius didn't know why.

"A poor halfblood," he said at last, his eyes flicking to Loki, trying to catch a reaction. The strange man smiled blandly. Lucius continued. "He was acquainted with Narcissa at Hogwarts. He joined us— the death eaters, rather, right out of Hogwarts."

"And yet he knows how to create spells," Loki said, his expression unreadable in the flickering green light.

"Hmm," Lucius said, surprised. He hadn't known that. "He's the youngest potions master in the century."

"What is his relationship to the Dark Lord?" Loki asked, and Lucius almost laughed.

"That of a servant, of course," he said. "The Dark Lord cares no more for him than for anyone."

Loki nodded, absorbing the information without comment.

It had never bothered Lucius to serve a person like Voldemort. It was easy— easier than a lot of his relationships at the ministry. Loyalty and value were what counted, and Lucius had always been good at making himself valuable. He tried not to imagine what would happen if the Dark Lord heard about this little soiree.

"And to Dumbledore?" Loki asked, to Lucius's surprise.

"Nothing," Lucius said. "That I've heard of."

"What are his weaknesses?" Loki asked.

"His part in the war is minimal," Lucius said, concealing his impatience. "He has some talent for potionry, but he's not a leader, or even much of a threat."

Loki didn't comment, his face in polite but obvious disagreement.

"Anything else you can tell me?" he asked.

Lucius hesitated. Should he?

It was a little bit of insurance, something he'd been keeping to himself. It was what he always did, seeking all the information he could so he could predict when things were going badly. To keep alive. Everything else he'd done, he could pass for double agency to the Dark Lord. He would be ostracized and punished, but he would live. But after this… there was no going back.

Loki raised his eyebrow, passing the flame from finger to finger.

"There's a prophecy," Lucius said at last. "Snape delivered it. I don't know what it says, or who it's about, but I believe it concerns his defeat." He glanced sidelong at Loki's face.

Loki smiled widely, extinguishing the flame.

"Tell me more."

Lucius kept a blank expression, explaining the little he knew, despite the pangs of worry spreading through his stomach. Like he'd told Narcissa, a person had to take risks. And Lucius had seen something that no one else had. His killing curse had hit Loki in the leg.

Loki's rooms were as bland and neat as they had been on his first day. No clothes filled the little oak bureau; no photographs or paperweights graced the desk. Cold starlight shone through the open window and a lazy current of magic drifted around the room.

Loki exchanged his clothes for his soft nightshirt and pushed back the coverlet. He let his boots unlace themselves and drop to the floor, then crawled beneath the covers and extinguished the candles with a wave of his hand, feeling a slight twinge in his chest as the magic left his body.

The pillow was soft. Loki turned his head, looking out the starry window. How long had it been since he'd slept?

Too long, said the voice in his mind that reminded him of Frigga. But his mother— not-mother, had never approved of his sleeping habits. He remembered the debate they'd had during the renewing of the wards a couple of years back.

"A month of nights in the library," she had said, her normally gentle voice reproving. "Is it too much to ask that you get one rest a week?"

"I'll try," Loki promised, though they both knew he wouldn't.

Frigga had just sighed and shook her head.

"It must be the Allfather's influence," she'd murmured. "Both of you seem to think that if you don't work at all hours of the day and night, the kingdom will fall apart."

Loki angrily banished the memory, twisting in his covers. He'd been so pleased by the comparison. How had he gone all those years and never known? How could they have hidden it from him?

His hands were twisting knots in the blankets; he let them go, trying to relax. Sleep. He could do that.

A cool breeze blew in from the window, drawing sparks of magic off the current and sliding over his skin. If he looked down, he could see the smaller eddies of his power reserves, sluggishly circulating his body. Some sunk into his heart, the inches-deep gash that had yet to fully heal. What a drain.

He hadn't slept since Asgard, already one month ago. If not for the injury, he probably could have gone another month. Just one more reckoning for the curse-maker. Viciously, he imagined slashing a knife across Snape's chest, watching the wound spill over with blood and the horrified expression on Snape's face, which, for lack of imagination, took on Odin-like features.

Not an unfavorable transformation.

Maybe if he cut deep enough, he'd find his answers.

How come you never told me I was a monster? Was my life just a trick to you? Pretending that I was ever— that I ever could be as great as Thor.

He imagined putting a knife to the old man's throat and shaking the life out of him, but even in Loki's mind the answers never came, just a sad expression that remained even as his body sunk down the wall and the light faded from his eye.

I never saw you as any different, Odin said. Ha! His whole life had been in comparison to Thor's, one in which he had always fallen— in which he had been destined to fall— short.

Loki pulled the covers up, trying to force his mind to retreat. Sleep, he thought desperately. Don't dwell. It didn't help. His eyes stayed wide open. The swirl of magic in the room was throwing off sparks.

What did Thor think now? Was he disavowing Loki to the court, proclaiming his innocence of the ruse?

He pictured Thor addressing the nobles, a serious look on his righteous face.

I never knew he was one of them, he would say. I, too, was fooled.

Loki flung back the covers, rolling out of bed. Enough of this. He might as well get some work done at this rate.

He swapped and relaced his boots, ignoring the thinned-out feel using the magic gave him, and took to the corridors.

He stalked through the darkened hallway, his head still stinging with the faces of his faux-family. He was walking so quickly, he would have missed Remus Lupin entirely if not for an exclaimed, "Loki!" and the pattering of feet.

He paused.

Though the man himself looked only faintly agitated, there was a silver corona of magic around Lupin, sparking crazily. Loki had never seen an emotive aurora so powerful, never mind one attached to such an unassuming figure. Was he right in the mind?

On a better night, he would have questioned the phenomenon, but tonight it only reminded him of all the time he was wasting on this realm.

"What's wrong?" Loki said impatiently, as Lupin strode up the last few steps.

"Dumbledore is gone and Sirius is missing," Lupin said. "I need your help."

Loki bristled.

"I am neither Black nor Dumbledore," he said. "Do not presume to have my service just because of the company I keep."

Lupin's aura prickled, throwing out silver spikes, and he stepped up to Loki, speaking quick, sharp sentences.

"I don't care if you're human or not— far be it from me to judge. But you said you were on our side. Sirius is the best junior auror we have, and last week he may have saved your life. If you have the gall to back out after that, then you can take your allegiance and stuff it."

As he spoke, his magic loomed around him, rising until he stood, panting, fists curled, in the shadow of a silver beast.

Careful, Loki thought, raising an eyebrow. Don't provoke the man-monster.

"I didn't say I wouldn't help," he said. "Just that you should not presume. Explain the situation."

The creature shrunk back down to that prickling aurora and Lupin coughed, apparently unaware. "Sorry," he said.

"Not at all," Loki said with exceeding pleasantness.

"I'll tell you what I know on the way."

"Go ahead."

Lupin turned back towards the stairs, talking as he went. "The issue isn't fighting the death eaters to get him back— we have plenty of fighters, thankfully. But you can't fight what you can't find," Lupin said.

There were spells for finding people in the Asgard libraries without having tracked them first— dangerous, complex spells that Loki had never interested himself with. He was generally more concerned with finding things.

"Where was he captured?" he asked, following Lupin around a sharp corner.

"I don't know," Lupin said. "When I came over, Peter— the friend he was staying with, said he walked down the block to get some air yesterday and disappeared."

Disappeared? Sure, Loki thought. He put on a gentle expression though, for the sake of the man-beast.

"It may be… difficult… to accept, but if he was captured by death eaters, it is likely Mr. Black is no longer living," Loki said.

"That may be," Lupin said, somberly, his silver aura dimming to an outline, "But I believe Voldemort has reason to keep him alive, and it is the other thing I need your services for, if possible. Sirius Black is currently the only person alive who can reveal the location of the Potters. If Voldemort knows this, he won't just stop at Sirius— he'll go after James and Lily too."

"What do you mean the only person alive?" Loki asked. "What about you?"

"I used to," Lupin said, climbing down another set of stairs. "But it's hidden by a charm."

Loki frowned, bothered by that for some reason. He latched onto another thought instead. The Potters had thought they might be betrayed. So had Black- he'd talked to Lupin about it in the Hospital Wing and-

Loki stopped short. "It was Peter," he said.

"No," Lupin said, paling.

"Think about it," Loki said. "The Potters didn't trust him- they charmed the knowledge away. But when they left their safehouse, they were attacked. Not extensively; Voldemort didn't trust his source enough to commit his better warriors, but it was still enough to make Black suspicious that he had known somehow. And who better to suspect than the absent friend? Pettigrew must have panicked and called the death eaters, or perhaps killed him himself," he mused.

Lupin's face had progressed to the color of old milk.

"He wouldn't," he said again. "He's one of our closest friends— we'd, any of us would trust him with our lives."

Loki shrugged. He'd nearly gotten his closest friends killed several times in recent centuries, and been happily repaid in kind.

"Why would he do that?" Lupin said, his voice almost pleading. "It doesn't make any sense." He took another few steps after Loki. "Perhaps… the Imperius Curse…"

"Nevertheless," Loki said impatiently, "If you want to find Black, find him."

Lupin nodded, still looking like he'd been hit by a wampus.

"In the meantime, tell me what you know of the Potters' location," Loki said. "Perhaps I can find Voldemort and intercept him."

"You'll go?" Lupin said faintly. "They're- they were, near Dumbledore's house. Godric's Hollow," he said stopping by the fourth floor bathrooms.

Loki raised his eyebrows.

Lupin took a breath, seeming to find some inner reserve. "Come along," he said, pushing open the door. They walked to the far, mirrored wall, meeting dark, grim reflections. Loki glanced away from his.

"The passage to Hogsmeade is through here," Lupin said. "We can apparate from there."

"Fine," Loki said.

Lupin looked up, pausing a brief millisecond, then clasped Loki's hand. "Good luck."

"The same to you," Loki said, stepping back as Lupin walked through the mirror.

Loki waited a moment more, shaking his head. Lupin was on a fool's errand, he thought. But if Voldemort would be drawn out to the Potters… perhaps he could actually accomplish something tonight.

A/N: Hello!

This chapter comes again with thanks to the Prevaricator's Penchant, and to my few, valued reviewers. Let me know what strikes you- likes, dislikes, warm and fuzzy feelings, feelings of abject horror... Let the review window be a window of opportunities for you, dear reader.