It is an understatement to say that Severus does not like Lily's plan.
When they bring it to the Black brothers that afternoon, for a meeting long planned to discuss this very matter, Regulus laughs. He then expresses a profane and visceral revulsion it once he realizes it is not a joke. Sirius doesn't like it either, not even when she fleshes it out, no matter how enticingly reckless and temptingly destructive she suggests its turns could become.
"This has none of the qualities we required from a plan. There was no structure to it, no failsafes, no escape routes that leave us unscathed and covers intact should it all fall apart. It's barely a plan at all," Regulus rages. He's been going on for minutes like this, and showing no sign of stopping. All things told, Lily takes this as a good sign-for what little she knows of Regulus, he rages for as long as he has to and then collapses, spent, into the arms of inevitability. And for all its faults, something must be done to prevent the cup from leaving the country with Bellatrix.
"It's more creating of a window of opportunity than a plan," she admits.
"You're mad," Sirius says, sounding more awed than dismissive.
Running into the gap Regulus has left for the first time in what feels like forever, she barrels forward, standing. "I've already run it through. She comes-you said a week, right Sev?-we start a week-long treatment course. I've got an idea for what, too. The the standard course from St Mungos for psychic trauma, and I've almost done working on another one that should be able to block visions, memories-that's the real treatment. It's like drinkable Occlumency, almost. Not as good as the real thing, not able to be controlled so well, but I think I'm quite close."
"An experimental potion! Of course! Should I have expected otherwise? Dare I ask how long you have been working on this? And who have you been testing this experiment on?" Regulus says, with a shrill little laugh.
She spreads her hand across her chest. "Myself, naturally."
Regulus and Sirius are both gawping like fish and for all their differences they look like brothers in this moment. No one is looking at Severus except Lily, so she is the only one who sees him start and narrow his eyes at her-not in cold fury so much as confusion, as if squinting could render her more clear. He grips his chair tighter, knuckles flashing white.
With their full attention, she continues. "I started working on it weeks ago. Figured it would be useful to put up blocks, and it might help stem the flow of memories while my memory charm breaks down. I don't much like the stuff but the detections say all the right things, and I'll take it in place of madness if that's what it comes down to." She doesn't say, I am willing to bet Bellatrix would too.
"I still think the House of Gaunt bears-" Regulus starts in, at the same time a Sirius says, "What side effects-"
Lily holds up her hands and speaks over both, deciding to address Sirius as he, perplexingly, shares Severus' clear concern. "It makes you a bit stupid and sleepy, but it anchors you to the present moment well enough. It's based on Dreamless Sleep, actually, because if you can block dreams-"
Severus is clearly following the logic of the potion and Sirius looks troubled, but Regulus interrupts, voice pitching louder still. "The House of Gaunt bears greater inspection. The lineage traces itself all the way back to the Peverells and the Founders of Hogwarts, which means the number of artifacts are too many to name and too many to trace, all of which will need-"
Lily bangs a fist on the table to silence him. "It doesn't matter if we find the Dark Lord's baby socks fallen behind the Moldy Chest of Drawers of Gaunt. If we lose control of the cup, if she's hidden away out of the country on some Unplottable farm on the continent, it's all for naught. This is the only plan fast enough, and it can be done while maintaining our covers."
She doesn't say, and it gives Severus work that isn't murdering innocent children. She has learned not to say a great many things, living alongside Severus all these years. In another time, another life, it all might have come spilling out, but here-she tucks this and many other thoughts down below her tongue like so much tasteless chewing gum.
"It only works if you survive it," Sirius mutters. "Listen, Lily, I know once you've set your mind to something you're like to follow through on it, but-what happens if you actually succeed? If you actually do make her better?"
She avoids Severus' gaze as it needles her. That was his concern, too, and she doesn't need to make a point of himself and the elder Black son agreeing. She shrugs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. "Then she gets sent to the front lines, where hopefully someone rips her guts out."
It doesn't bolster her in the least that all of them look unconvinced, and a bit queasy besides, at the prospect of a healthy Bellatrix in her prime.
The planning happens around her, by the two men more familiar with the outside world and the world Bellatrix belongs to, both of whom despise the very thought even as they shape it into reality. The Dark Lord cares where she stays, cares-Severus assumes, and she agrees-where the cup is allowed to stay, at least. But Severus has been a diligent servant, and has become an innovative healer over those years of service. It tastes bitter but it's true, and if anyone is permitted to take Bellatrix in order to heal her, it would be him. It's not as if she's useful to the Dark Lord as anything but a guard dog after those long weeks with the Longbottoms. Sometimes she can achieve a frenetic kind of action when her routine was disrupted, or when a vision or a paranoid thought was there to be ferreted out-how Lily had seen her at the Manor-but more often she is slackjawed, recalcitrant, a silent vengeful ghost stalking a world she has relished to crafting with violence but now has no sense of how to live inside of.
"I almost pity her," Lily says, offhand, while she washes up from their dinner late that night, after the brothers are gone. Her wand spins in lazy circles, and bubbles swirl down the sink. "Was she like that before?"
"Whether this is a change of her nature due to the torture or intrinsic to her character is besides the point." Severus despises it entirely, and has made no secret of it, so the pinched mouth and dour tone coming from the slouching figure against the far wall is no surprise. "Since her torture at the hands of the Longbottoms, she had not been given any task, any mission, and no matter how fervently she worked to serve her paranoia. Everything she brought to the Dark Lord has been largely ignored for some time, and all of it filtered through Fenrir Greyback."
"Because it sounds like nattering of a madwoman, likely enough," Lily says, drying a plate with a towel. "Has anything she's seen been proved out?"
"Some, to a degree. But never precisely in the way she believes it. Everything is a threat to be destroyed to her, which makes it difficult to suss out the truth of a vision." He pauses. "There is a spell that could act as a final safeguard, the conpartior lux-"
"No," Lily interrupts.
"Will you listen? The life force of two or more wizards can be entangled, it allows one wizard to wield the power of both in battle, and it allows one at the brink of death to be sustained by the other for exponentially longer than they might survive otherwise-"
"That's Dark if I've ever heard of it."
"The Dark Arts are simply tools-"
"-tools that will not be used to protect me, Sev, no. You can do whatever you are going to behind closed doors, heaven knows I can't stop you from doing that, but you won't get my participation. The cost is too high. The recoil too great. I know what you look like after you've gone to some great conjuring at the Dark Lord's bidding, and if you want to tell me this spell is easy I'll know you're lying. I know enough about the Dark Arts to know that. There's no use in sharing power if you're weakened by it and Bellatrix might notice a change. It's too risky."
His face twists. This rejection hurts him, even as it spares him pain. "If you lay dying at Bellatrix's feet, you would not even siphon off the merest moments of my life to keep your own self alive? You are helpless without your wand."
"I can handle her with or without a wand." Lily thrusts her chin toward him defiantly.
Severus' eyes flash. "Arrogance and naivete. I have seen the woman burn a muggleborn servant alive for the insolence of speaking in her presence."
She rolls her eyes as she turns to put the plate away, not giving him the satisfaction of her horror. "They I won't talk."
He's on more familiar ground, here. "No, you'll simply steal her most prized possession out from under her nose, will you?"
She gestures with a fork still wet from the rinse. "You're angry." A few droplets of water fly from the tines. "Because you're scared. I'm not afraid of you and I'm not afraid of Bellatrix Black."
He looks mutinous, flushed and more furious than ever, his mouth a severe thin line below his hooked nose. "You should be."
She would rather it sounded less like a threat, but she controls her temper. She puts the fork down and rounds the table to where he stands. He'd look frightening to a child, perhaps, or if he hadn't cut himself shaving on his adam's apple just below where his collar is buttoned to, or if there weren't a persistent lock of stringy hair fluttering in his face and moving with his blustering rapid breath. Lily absent-mindedly reaches out, tucks the lock of hair back behind his ear with the rest. "Do you trust me?"
"I trust myself," he snaps, utterly unsoothed by her touch. "If she tries to hurt you, I won't be responsible for what I do."
Her eyebrows shoot up. "Don't lay your tactics at my feet."
He rises from his position at the wall, and makes her feel his full height. "You can't mean that."
"You know as well as I do that she'll likely have a go at me, and that's a risk I'm willing to take. Maybe put me under the Cruciatus, maybe she'll break some bones, who knows. I've broken bones before. You can fix those. But if you interfere too much, everything we've done is worthless." She narrows her eyes. "What, were you planning to kill her the first time she laid a finger on me? How were you planning on getting away with that?"
He doesn't answer her question, just turns an uglier flush atop his pallor. "You ask me to listen to you scream in agony and do nothing?"
Lily grinds her teeth. "I'm not asking you to do nothing. I'm asking you to do your part. Treat me like what I am. Protect me the same way you'd protect-the carpets in the library."
For once, he doesn't try to storm out and start shouting. Sugaring the facts with the memory of the wild, free morning has done the trick. He steadies himself against the table, jaw working, glaring at his splayed hands on the tabletop.
She lays one gentle hand atop his, pushing down the cruel whisper of a thought that he would likely rather she stayed just as docile and his as the carpets while the world outside spun on. But he belongs to her just as much as she belongs to him, now, each in the power of the other utterly. And he can't deny her what she wants. His guilt is too great-almost as great as his care for her. She sees it clearly, now, the thread of a strange sort of love, stitching in the seams of every gentleness given, every touch to her hand, and every fit of rage that has sent him storming from a room. She does not wish to pull at the string that holds him together, and so Lily tries to be kind as she can.
"Bellatrix is a stepping stone to the real fight. Nothing more. And getting to the real fight is all that matters."
"It's not," he mutters, sounding like a petulant child being forced to swallow a thick and bitter medicine.
Her hand closes on his, peeling up his stiff fingers and curling around them in fierce, almost cruel insistence. "Yes. It is."