Previously in the Darklyverse: In France, outside the confines of the Fidelius Charm, Lily met and fought with Snape, who admitting to being in love with her and to loving Dark Magic.

xx

February 21st, 1982: Lily Potter

We need to talk about Dumbledore.

It wasn't easy for Severus to get this owl to her. Because of the Fidelius Charm, he couldn't mail her directly, and apparently he had to try four members of the Order before he finally found one—Alice—who was willing to pass the letter along to Lily. It's short—all Severus has done is request a meeting and suggest a time and place—but Lily still stares at it for about two minutes straight before she folds it up and sets it aside. Alice is staring bullets into her.

"He wants to meet with me again," she says curtly.

"Again?" Alice echoes. Lily hadn't told anyone but Mary about their last meetup more than two weeks ago.

"There wasn't really a reason for it last time, but this time, he wants to talk about something to do with the war, I think."

"And you're going to do it?"

Lily shrugs. "I doubt that he's willing to talk to anyone else, and after how we left things, I don't think he would try to contact me if it weren't important. If he doesn't have anything valuable to give us, I'll just leave."

She's met Alice in downtown Vancouver, where she doesn't have to come clean to James just yet about what's happened between her and Severus. All month, she's been throwing herself into work and marriage and motherhood as if she can outrun what Severus has become—or, more likely, what he's been all along that Lily hasn't wanted to admit. He sickens her. Her heart aches for him. Why does she feel the need to show him another path? It's not like they didn't burn all their bridges years ago—like they're still anything resembling friends.

And yet here she is, running simulations in her head all the while of how she can persuade Severus to give up Dark Magic and—come home (there's no other way of putting it). She wonders if she's trying to rescue him because she cares for him or if she's just trying to convince herself that she didn't devote seven years of her life to someone who'd really been so evil all along.

"You haven't told James." It isn't a question.

"There's no need to upset him for no reason. If whatever Snape has to say is really that valuable, I'll share it with him—and with the rest of us, of course."

Alice purses her lips. "Just be careful, Lily. Snape is dangerous. Even if he's working for Dumbledore now, he's been working for Voldemort as well for longer."

"He won't try and hurt me," says Lily with a trace of bitterness. "That's why he jumped ship in the first place, isn't it? Because he wanted to protect me?"

"You say that like it disgusts you."

"It does disgust me," Lily admits. "It disgusts me that someone with such a love for hurting other people should place his loyalty in me, use me as his moral compass."

"Well, for whatever reason he's loyal to you, we can work it to our advantage," says Alice. "If he wants to share information with us, we might be able to use his Death Eater connections to figure something out about the Horcruxes."

"Maybe," says Lily. "Or maybe he's just trying to make himself look useful so that he can get close to me again."

If she's being really, brutally honest with herself, it also hadn't surprised Lily when Severus called her the woman he loved. She'd never felt any sexual attraction to Severus, but then, she doesn't really feel much sexual attraction toward James, either, or towards anyone she's ever known. Her attraction to James has always been much more romantic in nature: when she first had feelings for him, it was because he intrigued her, because she wanted to get to know him, because her stomach did little flips when she thought about the way he looked at her or the way they bantered right on the edge of emotional intimacy. Physical connection came later, but not because she liked his body—because, instead, it made her feel close to him.

Before James, had Lily ever wanted to feel close to Severus in that same way? She hadn't ever really considered the possibility of dating him, at least not consciously, but she had known somewhere that the way Severus looked at her didn't stop at friendly. If he had tried to kiss her, would she have let him? If he had asked her to love him like that, would she have fallen for him?

Because as much as she'd love to deny it now, she had felt close to him. He'd been her best friend, and she'd wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, if only as that. It was why she had thrown herself headfirst into people like Marlene and James when she lost the only friend she'd ever really had since Petunia—because it hurt too much to remember what he'd taken away from her. (It didn't matter that ending the friendship was technically her decision: he'd sealed it for her when he'd called her a Mudblood.) Would she have jumped at the chance to become that much closer to the person she'd loved most in this world? If she had kept making excuses for her bigotry—if she hadn't admitted to herself his interest in the Dark Arts—could a relationship with Severus have made her happy? Could it have lasted?

It doesn't matter. She didn't keep making excuses for him, and she knows now that the Dark Arts don't just interest Severus: apparently, they enthrall him. Anything they had or could have had has been over for a long time. She's happy with James, and she's satisfied with the relationships that she chose.

But once…

And her own ability to have cared for someone so dark, so cruel, disturbs her.

You were my greater good, he had told her, and she hadn't known how to feel. She'd turned him away. She'd been horrified. But she'd also, in a twisted way, felt validated that she had been right about him somewhere deep in her subconscious mind—that she hadn't imagined the intensity of their friendship—that for all his flaws, Severus was capable of love.

And now, with all that swirling in her mind, she's supposed to see him again. She's going to see him again and pretend like she can set all that aside and talk only of the war. She could back out, but she knows she won't.

What is wrong with her?

xx

She meets Severus somewhere in France again, this time in a little Muggle bookstore in the port city of Saint-Malo on the coast of the English Channel. The moment she's within meters of him, she casts a quick Muffliato, not caring how much the ringing noise is going to irritate the people around them trying to read. She's not supposed to go out of Canada, and as far as she's concerned, she got lucky when no Death Eaters tracked her to France last time she saw Severus.

If they make a habit of this, it would really be more sensible to loop him into the Fidelius Charm so that he can visit her at home, but she doesn't want to admit to herself that she might make a habit of this, that any of her visits to Severus may not be her last. Besides, even though she highly doubts that Severus would turn her over to Voldemort if Sirius were to die, she can't know that for sure—after all, she had highly doubted when they were friends in school that he would someday become a Death Eater, and she'd been dead wrong about that.

"Lily," he breathes as she walks right up to him with her arms crossed. "I mean—Potter." She doesn't miss the disdain dripping from his voice. "How—?"

"Just get right to it," says Lily, sighing.

Severus doesn't complain. "I spoke to Dumbledore last week," he says curtly. "Your friend Cattermole has been particularly vocal in recent meetings about you Gryffindors' frustration with him for not being more forthright about his plans. He—assigned me a task, so to speak, and I thought you might be interested to know what it is."

Lily nods. She's still sure that all this is just a ploy to spend more time with her, but she can't deny that knowing what other missions Dumbledore is delegating might be instructive. "What kind of task are we talking about?" she asks.

"He wants me to look for things," he answers. "Objects. I don't know what objects, exactly, but I don't think Dumbledore knows what he's looking for, either. He asked me to speak to others in the Dark Lord's innermost circle to see if any of them have been entrusted with any heirlooms to protect."

"And have they? Been entrusted with any objects?"

Severus smirks thinly. "I can't just methodically go to them one by one and demand to see any objects in their care. I've only just received the assignment, and if word gets out among the circle that I'm looking—"

"Yeah, I know, it'll look suspicious," says Lily. "So that's it, then. He's looking for…"

He waits, but she doesn't finish her sentence. "It will take me some time. I may not have an update for weeks or months."

"You can give your update to Alice. She'll make sure it gets back to me."

"Li—uh. I just mean… it doesn't have to be like this—you and I. We could—"

"We could what, Snape?" she says coldly. "We've already established that you have no morals. You hate my family, and you hate the cause I've devoted my life to. The only reason you're even helping us is because Voldemort will probably eventually kill me if he's not stopped, and for some godforsaken reason, you want me alive."

"Lily, I want you alive because I—"

"Potter," she corrects him. Severus looks like he's about to tear out his hair with frustration, but he doesn't argue. "We have to stop meeting like this," she continues. "I'm supposed to be—not here. If anyone with any connection at all to the Death Eaters were to see me…"

"Right," says Severus softly. "We can't have that, with the measures to which the whole organization has gone to protect you."

Their eyes meet for a moment, but Lily can't stand to look at him for long. "I have to go," she whispers, and she flees to find a place deserted enough from which to Disapparate.

When she gets home, James smiles brightly at her and pecks her on the cheek. Harry is in the nursery making so little noise that Lily is sure he's down for a nap. "How was breakfast with Mary?"

Lily's stomach churns. She did meet Mary for breakfast downtown before heading to France, that's true, but that wasn't exactly all she did. "Breakfast was fine," she says in a voice shaking with nerves, "but France was…"

"France?" says James sharply. "You went to France with Mary? Why the hell did you leave Canada? Don't you—?"

"I didn't go to France with Mary," Lily says heavily. "I needed someplace where he could see me without adding him to the Fidelius Charm. He could have put it all in a letter, but if it meant seeing me again…"

"Lily," James says. He speaks slowly and deliberately, and there's a furious gleam in his eye. "Who is 'he?'"

Lily's smile doesn't reach her eyes. "We need to talk."