He paces a circle around her, looking up and down, hands grasping one another tightly behind his back. She stands perfectly still and almost expects him to open her mouth to inspect her teeth, like racehorse. He rubs at a smudge of soot on her shoulder, and then presses his wandtip to it. It disappears. The crackle of magic so close to her skin is still intoxicating, despite the fact that she's had her wand back for weeks now.
"You'll need a cloak," he says, and strides to the closet. He removes an older one of his own and shakes it free of dust. He points his wand at it and it goes from black to green, with a subtle and beautiful pattern of waving snakes across it. He mumbles more incantations, and the green darkens, almost to black. He reaches into the closet again and plucks a cloak pin from one of his own.
"Here," he says, offering the cloak.
She is shocked with how soft it is when she takes it. "What is this made of?" she asks, before she can help herself.
"Puffskein wool," he says. "Regulus' cloak is made of the same." He looks immediately as if he wishes he hadn't said it, and his mouth turns downward again, to the haughty, cold mask that reminds her fleetingly of his mother. The implication hangs in the air: that he noticed she liked it.
"It's lovely." She swirls it around her shoulders. It comes precisely to her ankles.
When he reaches forward to pin the cloak shut with the snake with emerald eyes, she doesn't flinch. She watches his face for movement.
"Well, I feel ready. Do you feel ready?" Her brightness sounds forced, even to her ears.
He stops his hands, and then shakes his head and finishes pinning her cloak shut. The weight of the heavy silver snake drops to her breast, just over her heart. "You don't know what they're like," he mutters. "I don't like exposing you like this."
"It's necessary. You know it. We've done everything we can here Now it's time to go out and find them."
His frown deepens into a full scowl.
"Come off it. With my wand, I can defend myself if it becomes necessary." She puffs out her chest and thumps it with a fist, striking the snake. "Gryffindor, remember?"
"Reckless." But his look softens. "Only as a measure of last resort." There is an unspoken promise there, too: if she draws her wand, the cover is blown for both of them. They are both doomed. He would have to fight at her side. The look on his face tells her that he knows exactly the extent of what he is doing, and he is still, even now, unsure if it is a good idea to trust her with so much power over him.
She beams up at him, and takes a step closer, taking his hands from his sides. "I promise I will be careful. I'm just as sneaky as you."
He lifts their joined hands, as if to ensure she will keep the distance. He looks down at her fingertips, hanging from his hands as if she were a climber and he were a cliff. "If you want to go with Sirius and Regulus, I won't stop you. I could get another, keep them safe from the worst of it-"
She starts, and her hands fall. "Why would I leave you?"
He purses his lips and appears to be choosing his words carefully. "I do not wish to keep you here against your will."
She raises her eyebrows. "You couldn't."
His mouth is visited by the barest ghost of a smile before he grows serious again. "That defiance will have to at least look stamped out of you."
"Has it ever been?" she asks with a laugh.
His brows draw together. "Yes. Once."
She opens her mouth, but closes it. She knows when he was talking about. Her hand, almost traitorous, reaches forward and tucks a stray bit of hair behind his ear and withdraws, barely having touched him at all. "I'll be okay. I promise."
It's been weeks, and with hours of daily training, she's managed to get up a rudimentary form of Occlumency. Nothing nearly so good at Severus' own skills, of course, and nothing that could fool the Dark Lord himself, but enough to keep the basic fumbling of most of the Death Eaters out of her mind and their shared secrets. After all, who would bother to sift through the mind of a slave?
And it will have to be enough. When the invitation to Malfoy Manor came, it seemed the perfect opportunity to perform reconnaissance. Severus himself could not be seen to go through Lucius' things, let alone searching for a horcrux. But she could be less watched than he would be-invisibly, charmed so or with the cloak Sirius had given her that Severus still didn't know about-could look around the Manor with the eyes of a servant in hopes of finding something, maybe in Lucius' papers, maybe somewhere else. Lucius was arrogant. Reckless. His security would be lax, and the rewards of this opportunity were great. And for an event like this, it made sense for some Death Eaters to bring their own personal servants. Though Malfoy Manor was well staffed in mudblood servants, bringing one's own servant to an event like this could be a sign of prestige. And, Lily began to understand, his ownership of her was a unique mark of favor-a former member of the Order of the Phoenix, a confidant of the deceased Dumbledore and mother to the Dark Lord's prophesied destroyer. She was the kind of reward only the most loyal servant of the Dark Lord could ever hope to receive. It made sense to show her off.
Of course, Lily asked why he hadn't brought her with him before. Of course, his mouth went all flat and his brows had gone up as if to say, you know why. And the answer wasn't because it was disgusting, or because she was a person and not a thing. She was a gift he had been given and, like any valuable gift, he was keeping her locked away. Safe.
She tried to remember how good he was to her, then. She tried not to be repulsed by him and how easy he found it to treat her like a thing. Tried not to remember that he had everything he ever wanted except her own self completely cowed enough to be happy with the way things were, or willing to pretend.
It didn't entirely work. But it didn't make it harder to act like a thing, either. And this act-this humble and smiling servitude she has to display-would make him all the more terrifying to his fellow Death Eaters: what must he have done, what must he be capable of to break a woman such as Lily Potter?
That is what is going through her mind when Severus opens the front door for her, and she steps through and sees the creatures before their carriage.
"Severus-what are-are those thestrals?"
He shuts the door behind her and locks it without answering. His face is already a mask, his spine stiff and movements precise. He descends the stairs to the carriage door without sparing a glance for her.
She almost trips following him down the stairs. Stupid, she thinks. One foot out the door and you're already gawking like a First Year. Be the broken girl, Evans. Be what everyone expects you to be. Be what he needs you to be for now and maybe he will be what you need him to be when-
She doesn't let herself finish that thought.
Once the carriage door is shut behind him and a series of wards has been cast to discourage eavesdroppers, his spine slouches a fraction. "Yes," he murmurs. "They're thestrals. I suppose you remember what kind of creature they are. Who can see them."
"Those aren't the only deaths I've seen," Lily says, quickly. Too quickly. Without even being spoken aloud, the names of Harry and James are hanging over both of them again, clouding the air like their breath in the frigid air. "We were fighting a war."
One eyebrow twitches. His voice is almost inaudible. "Were?"
She nods, conceding the point. "Are." After that, silence seems more comfortable.
Out the window, snow dusts down from the slate gray sky like powdered sugar on a dessert. The streets are quiet, orderly, but as the carriage progresses further and further from the town-what town? she suddenly realizes, what town have we even been living in? Cokeworth? My world has been so small-the signs of war are apparent. One house in a row of otherwise perfect brick townhomes is a blackened heap of blasted rubble, the wound of its absence hanging like a lost tooth. An abandoned public school's flag is ripped to shreds and half-mast; the other flagpole flies a skull and snake made of shifting smoke, lit green from within. Not a school anymore, then. Or a different kind of school. Lily doesn't ask which.
Once they are in the countryside, the pace seems to pick up, and the countryside becomes a frozen blur. Darkness begins so early this time of year, and that is true whether you are at war or not, Lily knows, so when darkness begins to fall she is grateful for it. It seems more appropriate to be entering enemy territory at nightfall.
The mansion that appears out of the falling gloom is dark and vast, vaster even than the place given to Severus-five times as large, maybe more, she can't tell even as they come up the long and twisting road to the door. She couldn't fathom, before, how it was possible to need the number of servants the Malfoys supposedly had. Now, seeing the Manor, she wonders how they could possibly clean it all.
She looks to Severus, and he looks back. Something flicks behind his face, and it seems he's about to say something, but instead his mouth seals shut and the mask falls once more. Lily takes a deep breath and prepares her own mask, her own character for the viewing: a pleasant and pretty creature without desire, without hope. A vast empty field of snow with no footsteps, beautiful and empty.
One of them answers the door. For some reason, Lily hadn't expected men, but of course there were muggleborn men whose wands would be taken as well. He is well-dressed and handsome enough, if only he would meet their eyes. His mop of long curls falls over one eye and he doesn't brush it away. As things stand, he is courteous to a fault, directing the invitation to enter to Severus' shoes and offering to take his cloak.
"She will take it," he says, and brushes past the man, not even shortening his stride from the sprawling walk. His cloak, unfastened, is suddenly in her hands even as the door behind them clicks shut. "Mind the snow on it," he says, leaving her there in the entryway.
And for a moment, she's glad of those years pretending in front of Death Eaters in their own home. She knows exactly how to begin brushing the snow off the wool so it doesn't track water in, knows how he likes the cloak hung to avoid wrinkles and where to check for dampness inside the hood and at the hem. She doesn't even have a moment of pause to be furious that she knows this. If the war were last week-if the war were even last year-she might wish for a wand or betray herself with a look, but three years has been more than enough time for the muscle memory of service to overtake any habit, and a short few weeks of having her wand back hasn't changed those instincts.
"Where shall I hang this?" she asks the butler.
He still doesn't meet her eyes as he turns. "This way."
Despite the vastness of Malfoy Manor, the servant's corridors still manage to be cramped and overwarm. She hangs her own cloak next to Severus' in the coat room, and pats her pocket to reassure herself that the wand is still there. It is. It nestles safely into the bunched folds of the invisibility cloak.
"Come along," he says to her feet. "Dinner will be served soon. The masters will want their attendants." He glances up as he turns, and the hair falls out of the way for just a moment, and Lily almost starts; he is missing an eye. And recently-the hole is jagged, almost wet, not bleeding freely but bleeding recently enough, glistening in the dim torchlight.
In this moment, Lily Potter knows she is at war again.
He leads her to the dining room in silence and she takes her place behind one of many tall-backed dark wood chairs and waits, thanking her forethought in wearing her most comfortable boots. The others don't look as lucky, as they filter in silently. One of the women is so thin she's shivering, even standing near the chair closest to the hearth. One of the other men has a black eye. Another has two arms full of scars in various states of healing. One has been burned-horribly burned, maimed so badly she has no hair.
They are mostly women. These are the personal servants of the highest ranking men who overthrew both magical and muggle leadership in Britain and half of Europe. Of course they are mostly women. A few of them even look vaguely familiar. Their eyes stutter when they notice her and she stares right back, blank and pleasant and blank. Fresh snow. Soft and empty.
The generals announce themselves with the approach of sound and laughter and Lily realizes that not one of these servants has spoken a word. It's Macnair, the elder-his son dead in the war, Lily remembers-a large man with a booming laugh, responding to some jest the younger Lestrange brother has made. Rabastan? Yes, Rabastan, followed by his brother Rodolphus. Faces remembered from surreptitiously taken snapshots, remembered in flashes and fragments from Order missions long locked away, but the names are there. Selwyn deep in debate with Yaxley and Macnair and a gray-haired woman. A bearded group of men she has never seen before, speaking a language she can't understand with Mulciber and Nott nodding along in the center of them. An ancient-looking Rosier elder and his son, and another man-a boy, really, so young he must have been the third generation. And behind him, a darker-skinned man and woman laughing high, tinkling laughs, and finally-Lucius and Severus, deep in conversation. She doesn't dare look at him directly; she lets her eyes slide past him as the rest of the party took their seats at the table. No Regulus, she notes with some small portion of alarm. He would have been invited. These are the noble families and Black is just as noble as Malfoy. Perhaps he is away on the Dark Lord's bidding. Perhaps he is away hunting for a horcrux. Perhaps he is dead.
But there is no time to worry. There are glasses to fill with wine and water, plates to serve-from the left, always from the left-and empty things to be whisked away to the kitchen. This makes sense. This works. The muscle memory helps her. Service at this level is some of the most challenging, though, and she almost makes several mistakes-plates from the left, always from the left-but she follows the smooth, precise movements of the young, dark-haired, heavy-browed girl serving the elder Rosier to her left and manages to correct in time. Severus does not look up at her, not once, but she notices the eyes of the other Death Eaters unabashed, searching her body, curious of this new feature accompanying her master-she doesn't let herself think friend. She keeps her smile bland and clean and empty and her eyes moving across them or on the floor. This, too, is a form of espionage.
At the end of the meal, Lucius stands. "Gentlemen," Lucius calls from the head of the table. "Ladies. We have invited you tonight to celebrate our impending victory over the last stronghold of the West: Beauxbatons."
A polite smattering of applause. Some surprised murmuring. The servant to her left goes rigid. Lily wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been watching her all night for cues.
"We have attacked them on all fronts to no avail. We have taken hostages; they have not opened the gates. We have killed hostages; they have given us not an inch. We have thrown effort after effort at their walls. And now, finally, we have found a weakness."
The red-faced elder Rosier lets out a rowdy here here! and others lend their voices to agree. The woman to Lily's left begins to tremble and Lily suddenly wishes she knew the woman's name. She wishes she could tell Severus that something is about to go wrong, horribly wrong. She wishes she could draw her wand and wipe the smug smirk off Lucius' face. She stays still.
"The resistance in the castle will be defeated. Through a combined effort of all the Death Eaters-almost everyone here, in fact-Beauxbatons will fall within the month. That is what we are here tonight to celebrate. I ask that you all lift a glass-"
The assembled lift their glasses, and a waterfall of glasses clinking rings throughout the dining room as the woman to Lily's left begins to cry-at first silently, but slowly louder and louder, her sobs interspersed with French too garbled with tears for Lily to understand-
-Of course. The girl is a captive, a muggleborn graduate of Beauxbatons. Hogwarts fell long ago, but the candle of hope had not gone out in this girl until now. Her heart is breaking for her school, for people she loves still there, fighting and hiding and dying in that school. She couldn't be more than twenty. She knew their names, their faces-the professors fighting back are her professors. The people Lucius speaks so casually of defeating-murdering-are people she knows and cares for.
The Death Eaters are beginning to notice. Severus doesn't turn, exactly, but he does shift his shoulders and tilt his head imperceptibly toward the door. The door to the servant's exit.
Lily has only moments to act. Too long of a wait and they will deal with her themselves. Too long of a wait and she will will waste this chance. They created of many options, many ways to slip out and explore unseen, and this offers one. She seizes the opportunity.
Just as the elder Rosier begins to turn toward his weeping servant, Lily steps smoothly to the left, seizes the girl's upper arm in a visegrip, and begins marching her to the end of the room.
"What is the meaning-" he begins, but Severus interrupts.
"My servant will take care of the interruption," he says in silken tones.
If there is more, Lily doesn't hear it. She is through the door, it's shut behind her and she's still walking, and she doesn't know where she's going but she keeps marching the girl along the corridor, until they are well out of earshot, around a bend and near a drawing room furnished in white silk and intricate rugs. She drags her in and shuts the door. The girl's grief is free, now, and the smattering of French under her tears sounds like a prayer or a curse. Lily whirls to face the girl she's been dragging, surprised at her own anger, and gives her a shake by her shoulders.
"Be quiet. Be quiet," she demands.
"Ils sont mauvais," she wails. "Ma maison, ma maison sera détruite."
This plan's execution came together quickly and is threatening to dissolve just as quickly. Lily looks around one last time, forcefully seats her on a white chaise, and steps behind her, removing her wand from her pocket with one quick motion. "Somnium," she whispers, and the girl slumps, her sentence trailing off, her tears sliding down her cheeks slowly and then, finally, the flow halting.
Lily takes a breath. She takes another. And that's the end of it. The wand goes away, the cloak comes out, and she dons it. She has to be gone. She has to be gone now. Hopefully no one will find the girl out of place here, but this can't be helped. She can only shut the door and hope for the best. And the final thing, as she invisibly shuts the door: she quaffs a vial of a golden potion.
The halls of Malfoy Manor are twisting and vacant and full of gloom. Every door leads to three more. If she didn't know what she was doing, she would be doomed. But the potion she quaffed took weeks to brew, and it guides her-good old Felix Felicis, on hand because Severus was nothing if not prepared. She knows what she wants right now. Tomorrow is infinitely distant. Why Severus has surprising quantities of a notoriously difficult potion hanging about is buried under an avalanche of purpose. She doesn't have to trust him. She trusts Felix. And Felix takes her by the hand.
Up the stairs. Right. Left. Right again. Duck into a dusty hall closet and wait for the footsteps to pass-the carpet is so thick she didn't even notice them coming until they were almost on her. They seem wrong, too close together, like a child's running, but she doesn't think about it. She doesn't think about anything. She moves out and into the hall again, ducking past portrait after sleeping portrait of sad and tired Malfoys. The carpets are increasingly plush and the decorations increasingly lavish. And there is a grand door, with snakes for handles, and she discovers why she has been hurrying: the door swings open, a man steps out, looking for someone, anyone in the hall. After a moment's surveillance, he steps back inside.
When the door shuts behind him, she is in the room.
"We can't linger long," the man says. He looks feral, unusually ungroomed and hirsute for such surroundings. His teeth are filed to points, and with that she recognizes him. Fenrir Greyback. The werewolf who bit—-who? Remus Lupin or Peter Pettigrew? She couldn't remember.
She lets the memory slip back under again. There is no time for it.
"It's here," says a voice that chills her bones from somewhere around the desk. The voice is high, abstracted, different than the last time she heard it. The last time she heard it, it was screaming a spell, and Gideon Prewett flew back and slammed through a brick wall, and then the voice was laughing—
She has to focus. Felix is tugging at her and she is fighting it, and she doesn't dare take a deep breath to steady herself.
"Bellatrix," says Fenrir. "Someone will notice you are not in your chambers."
Beneath the desk, Bellatrix Lestrange chides him in a singsong tone. "They're eating, eating and drinking."
"Not for much longer," Fenrir growls. The warning seems almost half for Lily.
"I know what I am looking for," she hisses. "I saw something precious being torn to shreds."
"Your visions aren't always—"
She shrieks suddenly in triumph so loud Lily jumps, wrenching forth something squirming, something alive—Lily almost thinks it's a child, but no, it's a house elf, clutched by the ankle so hard that her fingernails are threatening to draw blood.
"Dobby has done nothing wrong!" the thing cries. "Dobby begs you—"
"Silence!"
The house-elf claps his hands over his face in abject terror.
"There is something that snake has. Something of incredible value. More than anything else he owns. Something given to him by the Dark Lord."
Dobby shakes his head, beginning to moan.
"I have seen it. I have seen it in dirty hands. Filthy hands. Hands that don't deserve it. Hands that snuff out the brilliant light inside—"
"No, no, no," the elf moans through his fingers. Bellatrix gives him a shake once, twice, but he doesn't stop until her wand tip presses squarely between his eyes.
"Tell me," she coos, back to the singsong tone. "Tell Auntie Bella where the treasure is, child. Auntie Bella has a treat for you if you do."
"Dobby doesn't know any snakes," he babbles. "Dobby only wants to serve—"
She hisses a spell and the house-elf screams.
Lily's mind is blank under the cloak. Her eyes are scanning, searching for something, anything, that could lead her to the location of the horcrux while she listens. The only display box is next to Lily, and it is empty, and when Dobby's screams lessen, Bellatrix flings the house-elf toward it as if he is a rag. The thin and wailing creature lands at Lily's feet.
"Useless," Bellatrix grinds out. "Useless, useless, useless!"
Fenrir moves toward her and takes her firmly by the shoulder. "We are out of time, Bella."
She lets out a howl, animal and wild and full of frustration.
"Come on," he says, and half-carries, half-drags her to the door. "This is just another one of your dead ends and you know it." Behind them, the door creaks open and shuts once more.
In the silence, Dobby slowly rises to his feet, looking worse for wear.
"Will you tidy the room?" says a cool and wholly unfamiliar voice.
"Dobby kept the secrets," he house-elf says quickly, looking toward the empty corner that is the source of the voice. "Dobby did not—"
"I know you didn't." A woman she remembers slowly resolves from nothingness, dispelling her invisibility charm. Blonde hair, icy eyes, the matched pair born to marry Lucius, on the fringes during school and then, later, in files next to her husband. Narcissa Malfoy. Bellatrix's sister. Of course. "We must indulge Bella. She isn't well."
The house elf nods along vigorously.
"Is it safe?"
"Dobby kept it safe. Dobby always—"
"All the same, I would like to see."
The house-elf goes to the desk, an ache clear in his movements, and performs some kind of complicated, glowing gesture in the air above it. The top of the desk goes transparent and Narcissa reaches in with the tip of her wand as if prodding a dead thing. She touches what she finds within, and then shudders.
"Good," she says, turning away and moving to the door. "Tell me if you see anyone else in this room. Anyone at all." She doesn't wait for him to bring back the false top of the desk to cover the thing inside again before she leaves.
Well. The house-elf won't see anyone, then.
On silent feet, Lily creeps closer. Inside the desk is a book—just that. A ratty old book with a black cover. It certainly doesn't look like a treasure, but this is the object of Bellatrix's desire, and Felix is tugging her forward. He cannot be ignored. She has to take it.
She doesn't dare try to take it with the house-elf there, watching. But she doesn't dare let this opportunity slip. She moves quickly, pointing her wand and sending a heavy book book flying from a high shelf behind the elf. He whirls at the sound.
Another book is in her hand already, snatched from a shelf. The title--A Vampiric Compendium-disappears from the cover as she transfigures it as as fast as she can into a replica.
"Is anyone there?" the elf calls. Lily sends another book falling, this time in the corner. He follows, voice loud and braver than she would have thought. "Dobby is not scared."
She reaches in to take the book while his back is turned, but pauses before touching it with her bare hands. She takes out a handkerchief instead and plucks it out, sliding the transfigured book in its place. Tucked into the handkerchief, it disappears into her pocket under the cloak just as the elf turns and returns to the desk. He looks in, confirming the book is still there. Something curious passes across his face when he sees it. He looks thankful, but also repulsed, as if the book is a vile thing.
"Dobby is protecting an evil thing," he says to the room as he summons the top of the desk back to where it was before, sealing the false book away from view. He looks up, and seems to look straight at her, or through her. His eyes are huge and almost fierce, and it occurs to Lily that she might have more in common with the house-elf than she had thought. "An evil, evil thing."