Lily doesn't see him until almost midnight the next day. After their shouting match in the entry hall, she slunk off to her chambers to sleep off the exhaustion of the night. And the next day there is nothing to do again. There is an upper limit to reading one can do, she discovers, while she is trying to avoid a walking black storm cloud swooping around the house like some kind of skinny petulant bat, and his anger hasn't cooled. If anything, it's solidified. She feels oddly light and giddy over taking the diary, whatever it may be-even if it isn't a horcrux, it must be something of value, something they can use. But however large it may be, the house is not large enough to contain his anger. And bitter though it may be, it does better serve her purposes to keep him happy with her. She doesn't intend to apologize, exactly, but she doesn't intend to let things go on like this either.
When she finally does see him, it's in the laboratory. She ducks in to see if she could make something useful-anything useful, more Felix, polyjuice, anything!-and finds him there.
It is as if a terrible wind has swept through. The tables have been shoved roughly to the walls, stools and chairs at them tilted at odd angles and some upended entirely. The diary hangs midair, surrounded in a spherical grid of bright white light that rotates lazily on its axis. She recognizes it: the philosopher's bell jar, a kind of a shield charm that holds whatever it contained in a sort of a stasis. A tricky bit of charm work. She let out a whistle, impressed he managed it alone-typically four wizards are required to create a strong one.
Severus turns, scowling already. "Get out."
"How well did that work last time?" she challenges, lobbing an apple his way. She intended to snack on it herself while she rummaged for something to work on in the laboratory, but it serves her purpose, throwing him off and letting her closer to the diary in its shell.
Severus has never had physical acumen outside of dueling, but he does manage to duel the apparently threatening apple, sending a wordless jet of flame toward it. The scorched core rolls toward his feet and he bends, confused, to pick it up.
"You need to eat," she explains. "You haven't all day."
He scowls at the apple core and then at her.
"Good bit of spellwork here," she volleys, turning her gaze back to the book and its shield. "Bet it would have gone easier with two."
"I wouldn't have had to do it at all if it weren't for you," he snarls.
"Hmm," she says, not paying attention. "So, was I right?" She starts flipping through his notes, open on the table in a not entirely dissimilar-though less abused-notebook of their own. The letters T. M. Riddle are written large, in Severus' crooked cramped cursive. Above, the same letters, letters she hadn't noticed before, were written faintly on the cover of the notebook.
"Yes," he says, quieter this time, as if he's almost afraid to anger the thing. "It's a horcrux. There are layers upon layers of Dark magic on it. Too many to explain, but one of them-yes."
She looks sidelong, not turning to face him yet. "Did Regulus and Sirius tell you how to destroy it?"
"We know how to destroy it," he snaps, ever unable to leave an affront to his intelligence unchallenged. "The question is, how will it react when we do?"
She looks him in the eye, finally, and he's still clearly cross with her, but there's a puzzle before him and he's never been good at turning that kind of thing down. So she asks: "What do you mean?"
A professor's lecturing serves to soften his biting tone. "Horcruxes are not just objects that can be destroyed. They are resilient, they are self-repairing, and-most crucially-according to Regulus' research, in extreme cases they have been known to fight back against their own destruction. Of course, this is all based on recordings from hundreds of years ago, so it may be false. I've slipped Regulus a note in the Vanishing box, but I haven't had a response."
She looks from him to the book, now sinister, slowly rotating in its sphere. "Will he know? When we destroy them? There's more than one, if he can feel it-"
"We believe he won't feel it. That's the entire point of the horcrux, to shelter a portion of the soul completely away from the rest in order that, when one portion is destroyed, the other is left completely intact." He approaches her side, now. "I also have reason to believe that this was the very first he made, meaning it may be more powerful than some of the rest."
"Is that a historical fact, or speculation?"
"Speculation," he concedes. "No one has ever made more than one that I know of."
"That you know of." She nudges his shoe with her own. "Not a bad bit of speculation, though. Are you through being mad with me?"
He frowns. "No."
"Fair enough. I did go off plan."
He tilts his head as if he's surprised. She hasn't apologized, exactly, but it seems to be enough. She can feel his eyes on her again, and after a stretch of clean and not entirely unfriendly silence, he speaks, still with anger, but more quietly.
"I hated every minute of that. Taking you out. Showing you off like a racehorse. Putting you in danger. Making you serve me."
"I've served you before," she reminds him gently. "In front of many of those people, in this very house."
"Not like that. Not out of this place and its wards. Not surrounded by-"
"Other people like me? Other mudbloods? Other slaves?"
His jaw works again and it's a moment before he is done swallowing that. Lily can see five steps ahead in the inevitable sharpening of this same old hatchet, so she cuts him off before he can retort.
"I know you don't like it but I'm not a child, and I'm not a thing that needs to be kept safe. I'm a person, an adult woman, and I get to choose my risks the same as you. This is the world you fought to create, Severus, and if you don't like it-we have to change it."
His scowl only deepens. "I could do without the lecture."
Lily suspects suddenly he could probably do without being pushed to act at all, that he would be perfectly content to live out his days and her own the way they had been, making pleasantries over dinner and with her off-balance and scared and ignorant of half of her past, forced to cower under his protection. But it's the worst thing she could say right now. It's unkind, and unworthy, and if she's honest with herself she just doesn't like thinking that of him no matter how true it may be. She's can't fight the war alone. His help, his power, his access are the only tools she has.
"Severus-" she sighs, pushing her hair back. "You're all I've got."
And it's the truth. She means it. She does care for him, despite it all, more deeply than she can imagine caring for some long-lost husband or the ghost of a child.
His eyes go soft as a melting chocolate in her pocket, and all the anger is gone from him. His spine wilts like a cut flower. Severus looks as if he's about to speak, and she isn't a fool, she knows the shape of the monster in the room but can't bear to hear him say its name, so she turns from him.
"I'll check the Vanishing box. Maybe Regulus has responded." And she's gone, slipping through the door before he can say anything that will complicate everything even more-no matter how badly she might like to hear it.
Sirius lets out a long, low whistle. "No time wasted, Lily."
"Don't encourage her," Regulus snaps, eyes still on the philosopher's bell jar. He looks paler than normal, and his hands won't stop wringing. "What she did was reckless beyond measure. Possessing something like this is dangerous even if they hadn't stolen it from under the nose of the Malfoys."
Severus doesn't say I told you so, but she does meet his gaze and he twitches an eyebrow humorlessly. It had been a warm few days between them between the notes and this arranged midafternoon meeting, and Lily is willing to let him have his little victories. Frankly, once the Felix was completely out of her system, she was taken aback by her own rashness too, but what was done was done and what she had done brought them substantially closer to their goals.
"Still," Sirius says glibly, ignorant of the drama playing out behind her. "Can't argue with the result."
"It was Felix Felicis," she interjects before the Blacks could get to squabbling. "I don't think we should use it again unless we have to. Too risky, when the potion takes the reins; you can't always control what you want or how you get it. And overconsumption has its own dangers."
"Snape will just have to take it next time," Sirius says, grinning over his shoulder wickedly.
"I think he'd sooner drink hemlock."
Sirius laughs, but Regulus cuts him off, annoyance and a deeper fear clear in his voice. "If the bell jar will hold, then we should disguise it, hide it, and be done. It is likely aggressively cursed and should be far away from any living human so it harms no one, let alone put any of us at risk for discovery. We have other matters to discuss-Sirius and I have reached an impasse in our research. We have a list of items that are possible horcruxes but they are difficult to find. Impossible, some of them, without deeper research or a source closer to the Dark Lord than I, and such a search might prove fruitless if we are wrong. But with this, I think there may be other research to be done. Very, very carefully."
"You're talking as if you already have a horcrux of your own," Lily jokes.
Regulus shoots her a sharp, momentary look and returns to inspecting the bell jar charm.
"You're joking," she gasps, realization dawning on her suddenly. "You've had one and didn't tell us? When were you planning on letting go of that little gem?"
Surprisingly, it is Sirius who speaks up. "Reg doesn't like to talk about it."
"What is it? What did he use?" Severus demands, just as shocked, anger burning through his words.
Regulus dabs at his forehead with a handkerchief. "Salazar Slytherin's locket. Passed down through the family. We've been hunting for things associated with the other Founders of Hogwarts, but they-like Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, Gryffindor's sword-can't be found, or if they can, not easily. But there's only apocrypha. We could spend years chasing down-we have spent years chasing down dead ends-there are rumors and very little else to-"
"What protections were around it?" Severus presses, despite how ill Regulus looks.
Sirius steps between his brother and Severus, his face set, hand free to draw his wand if need be. "I said, Reg doesn't like to talk about it. Don't you get it? This upends everything we were looking at. Reg is right, this is just some ratty book, not a magical artifact."
"It's more than that," Regulus adds, steadying himself on the table to strengthen himself against his unsteadiness. "It's-it's sentimental. Not just a… an artifact." He sways.
"What else are you keeping from us?" Lily demands.
"Keeping from you?" Sirius roars. "We almost died getting the last one. We both did. If it hadn't been for-"
Regulus is pale as a sheet and he turns, finding a chair to sit in. "Stop," he says, his voice hoarse. "Please."
Sirius is by his brother's side in an instant, hand on his shoulder. He glares fire at both Lily and Severus over his shoulder, but his attention is on his brother. "We can go. We should leave right now."
"No," Regulus says unsteadily. "I just … need a moment."
Lily isn't afraid of Sirius' wroth. "I'm sorry, Regulus, but it's obvious the rest won't be this easy, and the locket has done something to you, so if there's something we need to know-"
"Lily," and she's surprised that the hand on her shoulder and the voice belong to Severus. She's so surprised she falls silent, and he steps forward, speaking over her to Sirius. "If you can bring Regulus, there are chairs he can rest in in the library across the hall. I will make tea. I know how he takes it."
Sirius glares at both of them again, but nods, and helps Regulus to his feet. He walks like a man in a trance, staring not at but past them.
In the kitchen, she finds Severus putting the kettle on. "What did you do that for?"
"You were pushing him too hard," Severus says flatly. "Have a little tact. If he's hiding this from us, he could be hiding more, and pressing too hard will yield little."
"He lied. They both did."
"A lie of omission, but not an innocent one all the same." Severus retrieves the tea set. "It may explain why they seem unwilling to actually attempt to retrieve the horcruxes. It may fall to us to do that."
"Regulus does seem… fragile." Suddenly Severus' protectiveness doesn't seem so unreasonable. "Do you trust them?"
Their eyes meet over the tea set, and his are narrowed at her. "I have to, don't I?"
She snorts. "Here, give him some of the biscuits too, that might help."
It takes the whole pot of tea and half a packet of biscuits, but color does return to Regulus' cheeks, and when it does, he's ready to talk, no matter how Sirius tells him he doesn't have to.
"The Dark Lord created a trap. It was in a remote location. The locket was at the bottom of a potion that you had to drink. It makes you-relive things. Horrible things. Every awful thing you've ever done or seen, and more. And then you are dying of thirst, but- there was a lake." It comes tumbling out of Regulus, as if he has to be purged of it. "The lake was- we weren't alone. There were Inferi- Human corpses animated with Dark magic. Hundreds of them. I- I knew some of them. Remembered their faces." Regulus sips, and the teacup only rattles in the saucer a little. "We went in ready for anything, but not that. Never that."
"Had to drag him out," Sirius adds. "If I hadn't been there-" Sirius doesn't finish but the way he looks at Regulus, it's clear that the young man would not have survived. "But we left a decoy, same as you did, Lily. Transfigured a false locket and left it there. Quick thinking on your part. Won't fool anyone who knows what to look for, but it could fool a lot of others."
"How did you find out about it in the first place?" Lily asks, this time purposely gentling her tone.
"Our house-elf. Kreacher." Regulus shudders. "He tested it on him. All of it."
"And he survived?" says Severus.
Sirius grimaces. "Unfortunately."
Lily starts tapping her foot. She wants to pace but doesn't want to unsettle Regulus again. "All right. Thinking out loud, then. Of the six horcruxes we suspect exist, one is a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin. Makes sense, he's was originally behind the pureblood push anyway. The second is the diary-a common item, could have been hidden easily on a bookshelf, but instead left to be protected. So there are both items of magical significance and-what? Personal significance?"
Sirus nods along. "If it's something from his past, before he was the Dark Lord, Slughorn might know, same as before."
"No. We can't press him further about the Dark Lord. He can't be trusted," snapped Severus.
Lily tapped her lip with a finger. "Dumbledore would know. Dumbledore was at Hogwarts when the Dark Lord was, and never got taken in the way Slughorn did."
Sirius looks concerned. "Dumbledore is dead, Lily."
"I know. I know. I'm not losing it. But Dumbledore wasn't a fool, you remember, Sirius-he wouldn't have just let the information die with him. Someone else must know the things he knew. At least some of them. What about one of his most trusted advisors-one of the people who helped him run the Order of the Phoenix. She's still alive, isn't she?"
Sirius' face is marred with anger again. "McGonagall, you mean? Yeah, they didn't kill her. She's alive. In Azkaban."