The air base in Hahn becomes an abandoned shack in the outskirts of Nuremburg, where the weather warms; becomes a train to Munich in new anonymous disguises, Lily with dark skin beneath a stratosphere of curls and Sirius' face square and blunt and bald (This city is beautiful, Severus-I don't know where you are, so I can't say I've been-I'll tell you later, I've just had the best pastry I've ever gotten from a traincar); another train and another set of faces to Salzburg where they stay the night in a run-down hotel on the outskirts of town (Severus, I'm going to come back smelling of cabbage after sleeping here-I shall prepare a quarantine) and Lily spends over an hour washing her body of four days of travel.

As they traveled, Lily and Sirius have gone down the list, between them, of their classmates and the Order members, their faces floating clear to the surface of her memory. It's a grim accounting. The best among them are missing or dead-most the latter. Her old friend Mary Macdonald was charged with some new crime and executed for putting up a fight while trying to flee the country; Edgar Bones and his family were murdered in their home, though there are rumors Amelia made it out; the Prewetts, Molly's own twin brothers, had been killed, and Lily surprises herself by remembering them, their enormous laughs, the silence their absence had left almost as vast as the silence at her side with its hand on her knee, snipped cleanly away from the memory; Emmeline Vance had gone to ground at the same time as Alice and Frank Longbottom and their child, which no one thought connected until Vance turned up dead the next year along with Alice after a skirmish with giants. Their child-another child the same age as Harry-was either dead or in hiding, somewhere, with his father.

(Is my mother alive, Severus?-I don't know.-Is my sister alive?-I can't find that information without raising too many questions.-How many of us did you kill?

He doesn't respond again until she writes the inverse beneath it: How many of you did I kill? -and he answers after a few hours with two numbers divided by a violent slash of ink, and it doesn't really matter which belongs to whom when the numbers are that close. Lily doesn't realize how badly she wanted the number to be zero on each side until she reads something that isn't.)

In peacetime, Lily and Sirius could take a train the rest of the way and then fly or apparate across the Adriatic; as it stands, Italy admits no one from either East or West Germany and there are sufficient wardings along the border that would be inconvenient to bypass. Lily buys old bomber goggles and scarves to protect her face from a charming old woman in Budapest. From there it is South on brooms, scarves wrapped across their faces and whipping in the wind. They pass slavic towns nestled in the hills, tripping into the USSR at some point Lily is unsure of, her knowledge of Muggle politics being woefully incomplete even before it was several years out of date and a war had utterly mucked up the map in her mind. Three more days of flying and camping, and they stopped in Dubrovnik for a meal not cooked over a campfire and another wash. Every night, a few messages exchanged with Severus on the parchment-Where?-Not telling. The pet?-It eats the violets as fast as I can grow them.- underneath, the current of I miss you I miss you I miss you that she both can barely tolerate and cannot ignore and certainly does not want to feel as a warm glow nested in her chest every time she can see it pressed into the dot of the i in her name when he writes it.

And finally, with spring sunshine warming their faces, they cross the border into Albania.

The map they carry has three vast swaths of forest that might contain the diadem based on all the information they could gather. The first forest is also the smallest, the furthest north; they canvas it in a day, Sirius dog-shaped and Lily Disillusioned at his side. There's no trace of dark magic anywhere, nothing that sets off their many and sundry Dark Detectors, nothing that stirs any of their spells, nothing for Sirius to sniff out but voles, and they make camp beneath a copse of trees as the sun sets.

"So. Nothing, but I guess it's always in the last place you look. How's the, uh-" Sirius gestures, passing a hand across his face. "The thing?"

"The thing?" Lily is summoning firewood into her arms for their stove inside the tent.

"You know. The-the thing sleeping in your bed back home." His face goes dark, and pauses removing the tent from his bag, growling, "Or maybe not your bed, come to think of it."

"At the pace Severus is writing me? I think he's quite sick of dealing with how stupid the thing is, even if he were taking liberties, which I'm certain he isn't. But he's not trying to chivvy me back to Cokeworth, if that's what you're looking for." She sets the firewood on the ground and the tent fabric is drawn up from where it's been packed with a flick of her wand.

Sirius grunts, "I suppose."

Lily and Sirius lift their wands simultaneously, and the tent spreads gently, the fabric unfurling. "If you can get the poles in, I can hold this," Lily says.

Sirius pushes one into the pocket designated for it, seating the pole in the ground and sending the ropes and stakes flying taut into the ground with a thunk. "So what are you writing the git about?"

"He wants to know where we are, I'm not telling him. I think it makes him angry but he won't let it show."

Sirius nods approvingly. "Anything odd?"

She thinks back. So little of it has been relevant; she gives him little and in turn he gives her less. But there was something. "Actually, there was. He asked me about the Potter estate."

"The Potter-" Sirius curses as he catches a finger between two tentpoles. Shaking his finger out, he looks over at her. "Why didn't you say?"

She shrugs awkwardly, wand still in the air holding up the tent. "Didn't seem important at the time. I've been trying to work it out but I come up blank."

"What the hell could he want with the Potter estate?" Sirius muses, picking up a tentpole. "Not as if he could-" But his face adopts an abstracted look as if he's just put something together, and he throws the tentpole in his hand to the dirt and curses a blue streak.

Lily lets him run himself out, counting down from one hundred. She maintains the levitation on the tent, switching arms at seventy-six. When she hits fifty-three, Sirius goes silent and looks at her again, brooding.

"It's low, even for him," he says.

"Catch me up?"

Sirius runs his hand through his hair. "It's his, now. Snape's. The Potter estate belongs to him by right."

Lily doesn't bother keeping the incredulity off her face. "How do you figure?"

He bends, picks up the fallen pole, sets it in the dirt and in the fabric before answering. "It's all about line of inheritance. Lots of old families have their estates warded the old way-oldest son or oldest heir gets the family seat, and there's no fighting it, and if there's no one to inherit then it takes a team of cursebreakers to get in past the wards. That's how the Wilkes estate ended up going to the Carrows, if you didn't know about that-last of the Wilkes died off in the war and they hired the people to bust in so they could say they have an estate like a proper Pureblood family that didn't buy its way into the Directory after the Statute by getting in favor with the Notts." He seats the second pole in the dirt with vengeance and it sinks several inches deeper than the other.

Lily tils her head. "For someone who doesn't buy in, you certainly know a lot about this."

Sirius stops moving. "Is that an accusation?"

"Just an observation."

"Here's another," he snaps, snatching another pole from the ground. "For someone who you think isn't such a bad bloke, Snape sure acts like a bad bloke."

Lily can't disagree with that. "You haven't gotten to what you think he's done. I don't even know where the Potter estate is, and Severus hasn't hired any cursebreakers."

"That's the thing. He doesn't have to." Another pole, seated, and he takes up the last. "The Potters-senior, your mother and father in law-were more modern than all that, when they were alive. So they had the wards set up such that the line of inheritance was more flexible, kept up with modern law. Probably cost a fortune but they were insuring that someone-someone like you-would inherit even if they and James kicked off."

The tent falters, and Lily bolsters its height again as Sirius plunges the last tentpole into the ground. "So I own the Potter estate?"

Sirius sends the final stakes flying into the earth. "Not exactly. It keeps up with modern law, and according to modern law, you're not a person who can inherit. So my guess is that it's gone to the only person legally related to you who can inherit."

Lily drops her arm and the charm at once. The tent fabric sags against the poles dangerously for a moment, but it holds. "Severus. He inherits everything."

Sirius watches her face and seems satisfied with what he sees there. After a moment of silence, he ducks his head. The tent falls into place before them, and the tug of magic before them tells her the extension charms are in effect. "The wards were also meant to admit me. As family, as an heir. Did it back when I got blasted off the family tree. They took me in." He rubs his hand across his face. "But legally, I died two years ago. Which means Reg probably owns it too. Should have thought of it earlier. I didn't-I mean, it happened so long ago."

It's a mess as far as apologies go but an apology isn't what she needs. They stand before the tent in silence as the last of dusk trickles from the sky. Lily wraps her arms around herself and shivers. It might be spring and they may have gone south, but without the sun it's still cold.

"What could they be doing with the Potter estate?" she asks finally, turning back to Sirius.

"I don't know. Anything. Everything. Could burn it down or blow it up or turn it into a hideout or-anything. I didn't know much about the house except the fact that it had a big enough backyard to fly one-on-one Quidditch." He shrugs. "We were kids."

"Anything of value? Not gold, but magically? Anything Regulus would be looking into, anything that-" she still doesn't know how to refer to the Dark Lord- "he would be looking for?"

Sirius spreads his hands. "Like I said. We were kids. Anything like that would have been locked away. Maybe James would have told Dumbledore."

She hears what he hasn't said, bending to pick up the firewood. "Or me."

His lip quirks underneath his seven-days beard growth. "Or you, if you could remember it."

She nods, then ducks into the tent. "All right. What do you have in mind?"

Sirius looks bewildered as he follows her in. The lights hung along the inside of the tent illuminate at his behest. "What?"

He isn't keeping up. A flash of annoyance sears through her and she tamps it down, bending to cram the firewood into the stove. Showing him her temper-so like Severus', with the exception that she is capable of leashing it slightly more often-won't serve her here. "You want me to try? To remember the Potter estate?"

"How?"

She rocks back on her heels and peers at him over her shoulder. "Maybe tell me about him. Tell me what I'm supposed to remember." She comes to her feet, pointing her wand into the stove and kindling the fire there. "Tell me what you know."

Sirius sinks slowly into a chair at the table, brow drawn together and fingers steepled before him. He's rubbing his chin with his thumbs, brushing through his whiskers while he thinks. She lets him do it.

The tent is modest in its expansion, just three rooms-a water closet lacking a crucial shower but at least sufficient to keep their ablutions from polluting the woods, a bedroom with two small but comfortable bunks, and a living area with a table, stove with hob, and a charmed cabinet to keep their foodstuffs cool. Sirius is just as useless at cooking as Severus is, so Lily puts water on to boil for pasta. Their excursion in the woods might not have turned up a horcrux, but she has the Herbology N.E.W.T. enough to know edible mushrooms when she finds them, and wild garlic scapes are abundant in spring, and that with some pasta brought from home and butter and cream bought in Salzburg makes a respectable enough repast.

Cooking has always been soothing for Lily; it reminds her of brewing, that calm and soothing act of creating a solution to a problem. And it is magic, in its own a way, the only magic she'd been allowed until recently. The garlic scapes frying in the butter fills the room with scent that speaks to home-all the homes she's ever had, all the people who have cared for her and she, in turn has cared for. Her mother, her sister, her friends, even the house-elves at Hogwarts, the house of Godric's Hollow for all its vagueness and disconnection, and-

It's odd, what a person can call home, but she indulges in few long breaths of affection for that scowling slice of shadow in that cold mansion, too. It's warmer than she expects, and she doesn't seek to name the feeling, doesn't delve too deeply, but suddenly the I miss you I miss you I miss you of Severus' missives don't seem so strange or so far away.

"Dinner's almost on," she says mildly.

Behind her, Sirius stirs, clears his throat. "I was the best man at your wedding."

Ah. That rather douses the whole feeling in cold water. Occlumency is so rote at this point it is a reflex, and she drowns the feeling in that river, freezes it under so deep she could forget his name.

She marshals her face, before she turns with a heaping bowl of pasta in hand. She sets his before him and her own before her own place, twirling a forkful before she speaks. "What was it like?"

"Nice." He shakes his head, takes a bite, speaks with his mouth full. "Actually, it was better than nice. I'm pretty sure everyone cried."

"Even Petunia?"

Sirius wrinkles his nose. "She didn't show."

"Figures. She always hated magic." Not that Severus ever tried to make her like it. Not that Lily herself ever helped her sister understand. Lily pushes the guilt under; it's not the exercise they are performing just now. "Who did?"

"Your parents, James' parents. Me. Peter. Remus. A few of your mates I didn't know as well, like Mary." He swallows. "You and James managed to compromise. Did it half-Muggle and half-wizard."

"How was the party?"

"Subdued." Sirius shrugs, stabbing a mushroom. "It happened during a war. You did your first dance to some Muggle song you'd gotten James into. Wouldn't truck with waltzing and James always hated that kind of rubbish anyway so he did it to make you happy."

Lily tries to sift through what little she has of those years to find a melody, any piece of a refrain. She comes up empty. "Do you remember what song?"

Sirius looks far away and shakes his head. "Can't do it. Out of my range."

"Oh, come on."

He forks more food up, as if it can stifle the song. "It is. It's one of those muggle bands, all falsetto. I can't do it."

"Try." There's a moment of silence, a few more taciturn bites. "Try? For me? Please?"

Sirius swallows. "It went- I don't remember exactly. But it was something about heaven. Nobody gets-"

Lily exclaims, a sound in her throat, and then pitches her voice up for the lyric. "Nobody gets too much heaven-"

Her voice quavers, and it's badly done even for an attempt, but both of them hear it, the notes she's reaching for, the words.

"Yes, that one." His eyes are lit up with the memory. "And then I made it play The Clash and your mother got quite cross."

Lily laughs. "Why?"

"I Fought The Law isn't exactly a tune for nuptials."

"Oh, god, she would hate that." She laughs again, forehead dipping to her arm. "What were you thinking?"

"James liked it. I liked it. Didn't go further than that." He gestures wide, careless, a bright fragment of the brash boy she can see in her mind's eye. "And then you got pregnant. Right away, almost, James was such a cad about it. You were enormous."

Her hand goes to her stomach. "Petunia and I were big when we were born. That last month was misery for my mother, especially with me." Lily wrinkles her nose. "She told me about it like she was pleased I got my comeuppance, that much I do remember." The memory is odd, muted, as if her body drops away below the neck, but she can reach it if she tries.

"James just about gave birth himself by the end. He barely let you walk up the stairs alone."

"I'm sure I loved that."

"You hexed him back down the stairs a time or two, yeah." He throws both hands in the air, pitching his voice up again in girlish pantomimed fury. "Honestly James!"

"Sounds about right." Lily lazily pushes a mushroom around the bowl. "And then what?"

"The usual-blood, screaming. James handed me your wand, looked like he was about to sick up his lunch on me. You cursed out the mediwitch so badly she almost left." He shrugs, playing with his fork. "So was told, anyway, I wasn't in the room. And then the baby came, and James asked me to be his godfather, and James cried and you threw a pillow at him for crying because it made you cry."

She can't imagine it. Can barely hold the thought in her head. If there is a memory of that infamous agony, she can't touch it. There's no tears she can muster, no wisp of feeling to grasp. She settles for the only she can remember, a fragment so small it must contain everything: "Harry."

Sirius nods, looking through her again, far away and sad. "Yeah. Harry."