When Lily goes to sleep that night, she dreams vivid dreams full of battle, flashes of green light and running, always running, firing hexes over her shoulder, running but getting away and disapparating into twisting darkness.
It dissolves, and there is a face-messy dark hair and round glasses sliding down his nose. His mouth is moving, he is saying something, and smiling, and then he is kissing her, and then-
She is aware she is dreaming. She can feel her hands fisting in the sheets. It doesn't make the dreams any easier to bear. She wakes up in a cold sweat.
The face is only somewhat familiar-it is the natural extrapolation of James Potter from the young man she knew at school into the man she had married. He is older than she knew him at sixteen, his face hollowed by maturity, his jaw wider, and there is something in his eyes she can't quite put her finger on. But the dreams are just a series of pictures, just her mind replaying whatever old film reel it can dig up. The person she is now has nothing to do with this ghost, but something stirs inside of her, as if someone else's heart is breaking inside her chest.
When she wakes up, Lily relaxes her hands as best she can, rubbing at the back of her neck as if her chin had been tilted up to allow for the ghost of James to reach her throat. She dresses quickly, pulling out old blue jeans and a t-shirt instead of the formal servant's dresses she is normally forced into.
She steps into the kitchen, swinging the unvarnished wooden door open, and stops on the threshold. Severus is already there, pouring himself a cup of tea.
Lily clears her throat. "I could have done that, you know. You could have woken me."
He inclines his head. "I could have. But you made it quite clear that you're no longer my servant."
"That doesn't mean you have to-what have you done?" Something blackened seems to be seething with its own life in a pot on the stove. She peers into it with apprehension.
Severus' mouth twists. "My cooking charms have never been very good, and I haven't had much cause to practice them."
"I don't think I ever learned them. I just do stuff the Muggle way." She flicks her wand and smiles into the now-empty pot, pleased with her Vanishing charm. "I'll show you a thing or two. For this morning, I'll play house-elf and you watch."
It is unreasonable for anyone to have so much trouble with cooking eggs, but by the end, he's managed not to break a yolk as he flips it. It takes quite a while, eating his failed over-easy eggs as they continue to try.
"There's got to be an easier way," he finally mutters, piling the last of white and yolk both onto buttered toast as they sit over tea.
"I'm sure there is, but magically-cooked food always tastes a little strange. You can just go-" she waves, emulating a wand, "bang, and turn an egg into this, but it'll taste a little weird. To me, anyway. It's always got a weird crackly taste, like how ozone smells. That's why you just enchant the knives to slice stuff up, or a spoon to stir, instead of just using the spell to turn ingredients into food."
He shrugs and takes a sip of tea, and with his face half-hidden with the teacup, he asks, "I thought you said you never learned them."
She tilts her head and chews, but there it is: to cook a piece of meat, it's a circular motion, and carnecium. The width of the circle described with the wand controls doneness. How does she know this? There's a flash of an old woman with Potter's nose smiling at her and moving her wand in a circle. She swallows the bite. "Interesting. I guess I knew it before and it's leaked through. Now that I know what's missing in my head, maybe the charm's weakened."
His eyes are on her face and sharp. "Are you feeling all right?"
"I'm fine." She waves him away as he rises from the kitchen table and pulls his wand from his sleeve. "I had a dream, I think it was memories. Potter talking at me. He looked older."
Severus' face crunches up for a second with dislike, but it relaxes back into a more usual frown. "No pain? No headaches?"
"Nothing." He looks like he doesn't believe her, so she takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. "If anything important comes through or hurts, I promise, you'll be the first to know. "
His brow unknits himself, and he holds onto her hand for a moment and then lets go, as if he's just remembered he shouldn't touch her. "Good."
"Don't get all professor on me. I saw that face, that's your professor face."
"I was only a professor for a few years," he protests.
"Who's at Hogwarts now, doing Potions?"
"Slughorn again," Severus says, sitting back down and taking up his tea.
"Still?"
Severus takes a sip, as if he's considering how much to tell her, but he relents. "The Dark Lord has indicated to me that this post is as much so he can keep an eye on Slughorn as it is because of his teaching skills."
Lily's eyebrows shoot up. "Why?"
Severus shrugs, his shoulders spiking up in his robes. "It is possible that Slughorn taught the Dark Lord when he was a student. His older supporters-Nott, Avery, perhaps Mulciber-I believe they knew him before he . . . took his title."
She almost wants to tease him, to ask him to say the name, but she resists. If he's giving her information, she doesn't want to jeopardize this openness. Instead, she latches onto a different name. "Mulciber?"
"Father to the one we know."
"You knew. I didn't know him at all."
He gives her an inscrutable look, but concedes the point. "Fine. Yes, the Mulciber that I knew. The younger died in the war, but the senior is still living and serving."
Lily takes this in. "It might be worth talking to Slughorn, then. He might be able to point us in the right direction for the horcruxes."
He considers this. "We will have to manufacture a reason to visit the school."
"Easy. The poison. You'd want his advice, naturally. He'd be flattered. More so if you promised him some of the elf-made wine we've got in the cellar."
He hesitates, but doesn't speak. She can read it clear enough, though.
"You hate the idea, don't you?"
"It is risky. If Slughorn is loyal-"
"Since when has old Sluggy ever been loyal to anything but his own preening ego? He was my favorite teacher, but goodness, Severus, you act like he's dangerous. Don't act like you and I can't play the fat old man like a fiddle."
He lets out a snort of almost-laughter. "I suppose."
"He can't have changed that much, can he? I've only seen him a few times since I graduated. You would know better."
"No, I think not."
"Invite him over for supper."
"He'll be busy with classes."
"Do you honestly think he'd turn us down? His two star pupils?"
"You can't think of it that way." He shakes his head. "I'm his star pupil. You're a servant who's lucky to be alive. Even if he doesn't want to treat you that way, he will, in front of me."
"In front of any original Death Eater, you mean." But she nods along. "No, I'll play the part."
He takes her hand across the table. His fingertips are cool in her palm. "I'm sorry."
"You say that every time."
"I'm sorry every time."
"Don't be. We're going to fix things instead of just being sorry for them."
She didn't mean the words to sting as they so clearly do, but he needs to know the truth, even if it hurts-particularly because it hurts, in fact. He withdraws his hand, and, for lack of something better to do with it, she pulls out her wand and clears the table with a wave. The dishes fly to the sink and begin dutifully scrubbing themselves.
"Floo him. I'll get in touch with the Blacks when you're done." She opens the fridge and begins chewing her lip. "I'll start something for dinner now. A ham, maybe, with pineapple rings. He'd find that delightfully quirky, I think." He still looks a little hurt when she looks up from the fridge, but she beams at him, leaving it to hang open and putting her hands around his neck. "Don't look so glum. We're moving forward. We've got ideas. We're gathering information. We can win."
"Or we're going to die horribly." But there's no acid in it.
"Of course we're going to die horribly. What ever gave you the impression that I didn't know that?"
When Slughorn arrives, he looks around the house and Lily is there, smiling at his feet, curtsying, taking his coat.
"Ah, this house is as lovely as ever, Severus." In her peripheral vision, she can see Slughorn's eyes linger on her, sweeping her body, looking for-what? Bruises? Bandages? Scars? To see if she looks starved or beaten? She doesn't dare look up-no servant of her birth trained as well as Severus must claim she is would ever have the gall to look up unless ordered to-but her smile widens. He finds nothing, naturally. Lily knows that this only makes it worse in their minds; when a servant bears no signs on her skin, it's only possible that the harm lies deeper. They must think him such a monster, she thinks, hanging Slughorn's coat. Such a cold, heartless monster, to take his childhood friend and put her in the servant's dress, to make such a cowed creature out of brazen, loud rebel Lily Potter.
The dinner moves smoothly, with Slughorn complementing Severus' ridiculous but delightful choice of main course- "Such cheek!" he exclaimed, and his eyes flicked over to her again, as if he knew, he must know that this was her doing, her cheek, her cleverness. And then there was his constantly filled glass of excellent elf-made wine. They didn't dare adulterate it; Slughorn is, for all his faults, a master potion-maker with a refined palate for wine. He would be able to detect anything that would be potent enough to drag information out of him. Wits alone would have to suss it out. But it seems to be working. The effects of old camaraderie and wine are making themselves evident in the flush in Slughorn's cheeks and the breadth of his storytelling.
Severus leads him up the steps to the laboratory. When they're out of range, Lily draws her wand from its hiding place up her sleeve, flicks it, and the dishes march obediently down to the kitchen to scrub themselves clean. She creeps up to the door and listens, balancing a tray with more wine in one hand as a cover for her spying.
"-and Pollux Mulciber, being not the sharpest boy, you remember, adds the osmanthus and the whole thing went up in smoke!" Slughorn declares with a broad, ringing laugh. Severus responds with the throaty noise, almost a cough, that passes in the stead of a laugh. She recognizes it from a thousand times when she made a joke and it was too public for him to really laugh, or a thousand Slug Club parties where he had to feign interest in the stories of others. It is familiar and strained and it broadens her smile to hear it, the familiar sound of his polite tolerance and indulgence for some reason other than his own entertainment.
"I have heard," Severus broaches, "that you have not only taught Mulciber, but every member currently in the Dark Lord's service."
"Quite right! Quite right. The core group, naturally, I never saw those who went through Durmstrang or Beauxbatons, of course." Through the door, Lily can hear the tink of an empty wine glass touching down on the bench. She will have to enter soon, to keep him at least off-balance with wine, but she would not interrupt this crucial moment for Severus. "Though none quite so brilliant as yourself, naturally."
"There are rumors," Severus continued, his tone still light, "that you taught the Dark Lord himself."
There is a moment of silence, and then Slughorn, sounding flustered, says, "Well, that's neither here nor there."
"Surely you remember him?"
"Of course!" Slughorn exclaims, too quickly, as if to say he is remembered, perhaps, rather too well.
"And this?" She cannot see it, but she imagines the broad, almost theatrical motion he might make to indicate the cooled poison in the cauldron, the arrogant and cold look he saves for fellow death eaters and strangers.
But Lily knows the silence is going on too long. The hidden conversation is becoming more and more apparent, and Severus is pressing too hard. Whatever he had done through the war, it must not have been this. She was always much better at this kind of thing, of course, which shocked all four of the Marauders, and in the war she herself had been-
She stops the thought, and for a moment, she almost wants to scream in triumph. The war. She can remember-nothing distinct, just flashes, but there are raised eyebrows over grey eyes, and a gruff voice-the voice of Sirius, with that same familiar intonation he used when he first saw her-saying, "Merlin, Lily, remind me to never get on your bad side." And almost-familiar brown eyes glinting behind circular glasses, a knowing smile full of pride at her cleverness and bravery, a warm touch-
She wants to linger here, explore this sudden trapdoor.
She wants to so, so badly.
But there is work to be done, and Slughorn stalling within, and the game is almost up, so she lifts the tray of wine and puts the brown eyes aside, and opens the labaratory door.
Severus looks surprised and almost angry at her intrusion, but she carries the tray in with grace and sets it before them on the bench. She makes a show of uncorking the bottle, pouring more wine into each goblet, saying, "Elf-made, 1945, sirs. Special from the cellar on Master Snape's request." She re-corks the bottle.
And carefully, purposefully, she looks directly at Slughorn, into his eyes perched like gleaming stones atop his flushed cheeks. And then she turns to look at Severus' dark eyes, with a small but brilliantly genuine smile. "Sorry to interrupt. I'll leave you to it."
As she exits silently, she knows there is nothing about it to truly give them away. If the Dark Lord searches Slughorn's mind and memories with whatever dark powers he has been rumored to possess, he will find nothing truly traitorous. Enough to cast suspicion, perhaps, but not enough to cause anything momentous. But this show, this display will allay Slughorn's fears for her. She can hear its effects even as she quietly shuts the door behind her and presses her ear again to the keyhole.
Tentatively, so quietly she can barely hear it, Slughorn asks, "Lily, is she-is she a good servant?"
Severus does not speak for a long moment, and then says, "The best."
She doesn't want to risk listening at the keyhole after that. Really, she doesn't need to.
Lily waits up for him in the kitchen, drinking her own glass of wine, poured from their bottle. When he finally enters, well after midnight, he shuts the door behind him and she rises to her feet. A rush of blood and alcohol rushes to her cheeks; he's been away for so long that she, feels a little wobbly around the knees for it. The wine loosened her muscles but hasn't helped her spinning mind.
"Well?"
He purses his lips, as if he is loath to share anything.
"Don't get that look with me. I clinched it for you, didn't I?"
Severus glances at the door again, as if he fears being overheard, but the tiny twist of his lips doesn't escape her notice. "Your appearance helped, yes."
She points to the chair. "Sit. Talk."
He almost looks about to protest, but instead he obeys the first of the commands.
She grins with purpled teeth and falls back into the chair, limbs askew, chin propped on her fist. "I was fantastic."
He snorts.
"Oh, don't even. You wouldn't like me if I weren't fantastic."
"Do you care to hear what I managed to get out of him, or would you prefer to continue to congratulate yourself?"
"I was enjoying it, yeah." She lifts the almost-empty wine bottle. "Want some more before I interrogate you?"
Severus withdraws his wand, thinks for a moment, and then flicks it. A bottle comes soaring toward him, nudging open the door to the table.
"Ooh. The 1962. You know I like that one. I'm that good? Twenty-year-old-wine good?" She raps the cork with her own wand and it wiggles itself out. She fills his glass, and then her own, and lifts hers in a cupped hand. "To the Dark Lord," she toasts, a smirk twisting her mouth.
He toasts with her. "All seven parts of him."