Her demands have been simple, straightforward, a bulleted list easily written out on parchment: Show me what you're up to in the Potter estate. Help me investigate Little Hangleton. Help me find the last horcruxes. Help us defeat him. Then get out of what's left of my life. It's simple when he follows orders, simple when he can be bid, simple to carry on moment by grating, unpleasant moment. It is not easy, but it is simple. Every interaction with Severus is a raw nerve, so she assumes the mien of a general. It clearly chafes but he shows her the obedient cold-eyed soldier he has been quickly enough. He asked for a day to prepare to take her to the Potter estate, the easiest of the list; she gives it because it's better than clawing his eyes out and will make less of a mess on the carpet.
Lily takes the day to study further on bindings, to make a list of questions for Severus about the nature of the Dark Mark-a neatly printed list being preferable to asking in person-and to master herself, to take all the hate and anger and grief and freeze it out with Occlumency, to whittle herself down into the sharpest possible point, to craft herself into a more effective weapon.
As it turns out, Severus was right. It is much, much easier like this, to pull the sheet of ice over herself and pin it there with the two sparkling little deaths inside her around which all else rotates. An agony can craft its own prison after all. It is simpler to work this way without distraction, without love or lust or feeling. There are certain liabilities; she hasn't eaten all day, for one. The second her mind catches hold of the idea of hunger it gets sucked under and becomes unimportant. Which, on the whole, feels like a potential issue; oblivion is too greedy. She also sharpened a quill so violently that it shaved a thin swath of skin from the length her index finger, and she hadn't even noticed until the blood stained the parchment. It isn't foolproof, either; it requires vigilance and Severus' face has a way of making her spiral, making all the ice crack. But it is altogether an improvement over the previous two days of violence and drinking and despair, and in the cold light of day Lily accepts it as better than laying abed and weeping. Almost anything would be.
Severus puts her off for most of another day of study before he thrusts a vial of Polyjuice into her hand and says, "Drink. It will last two and a half hours only. That is what I am giving you."
Easy enough. Trust is mutable and self-preservation is a far-gone thought. She drinks.
The woman she becomes isn't so different from herself, physically. It's easier that way when running in disguise-a lesson from her Order days. Lily doesn't care where she is, though, or who. The hair goes a dull, dun color, thin as paper. Her face shifts in ways she can't see and doesn't care to.
"The Potter Estate," she asks in the stranger's voice.
"Yes," he says, and downs his own vial, turning into the gray-bearded man she had very nearly attacked in the entryway so recently.
If the age on Severus' new face and the sense of her own sagging lower is any indication, she'd place the age of both around fifty. A glance in a window's reflection confirms it. Much older, then.
"Who am I supposed to be?" she asks.
He can stand to look at her like this, as someone else. "Mariposa Stapleton. Half-blood, colleague, member of the new order. I will make introductions."
They leave Disillusioned through a servant's exit through the kitchen, and he grasps her arm and holds it fast so he can, utterly without warning, side-along her with him.
She almost vomits. It's rude, and cruel, and: fine. She'll pay him back in triplicate.
The Potter Estate was always beautiful, if quite a bit more modest than Malfoy Manor and less corrupted by ancient pureblood residents than Grimmauld Place. The lawns have gone to seed, though; Severus parts a path through the tall grass and ensures that behind them it returns as it was, leaving everything undisturbed.
In the foyer, the disguised Severus gives a series of complex movements, and then another door is revealed to kitchens, where someone too familiar stands, pacing, holding a child.
Frank Longbottom looks up, half a smile frozen on his lips the second he sees Severus is not alone. But it's just a momentary stiffness; Frank was an Auror before everything went to shit, and a good one. He knows how to play it cool. "Hey, Septimus," he says. "Wasn't expecting you."
"I need to introduce you to my colleague," says the gravelly voice next to her. "She may be performing duties from now on. Mariposa, this is Frank Longbottom."
And isn't that an opportunity to twist a knife. "Don't be so cold, darling." She seizes Severus' hand and twines her own around his. "I'm his wife, not colleague. Pleased to meet you, Frank."
It's a testament to Severus' abilities that only Lily can feel the jolt that runs through him where her body is pressed to his side, when his fingers spasm around her own.
Frank nods, though he clearly doesn't like it. "I'd shake your hand but-" he gestures to the boy. "Neville here's about to go for his afternoon nap." Frank refocuses up from his son. "Bringing your wife around, Septimus, is that wise?"
"I doubt it, but she would not be put off," he says. The stiffness in his voice is a thing well-buried, but Lily can hear it. "Regardless, someone must ensure your safety if I were to become incapacitated."
"Still," Frank says. "I don't like it." He looks to the boy in his arms, face shifting to a softness, an affection Lily must look away from. "All right, Neville, you ready to nap? Daddy has some guests to take care of."
The boy looks over his father's shoulder at the two of them and then nods to his father.
"Back in a minute," Frank says, and disappears out the door through a corridor.
The second the door swings shut, Severus tears his hand from her own and says in an icy whisper, "What are you playing at."
"If I know you, you've told him nothing about this Septimus character. This is a way to establish trust, you absolute idiot."
"You have no idea what I'm doing here. I have explained nothing."
She snorts. "You've let slip more than you know, and it doesn't matter. Last I checked, Frank is my friend and a fellow Order member. You're the Death Eater here, unless you've forgotten."
The face might not be Severus', but the look of barely-contained fury is all him.
Before he can retort, Lily takes his hand again and grins broadly-a dead thing, more a baring of teeth than a true smile-and says, "Now be kind to your wife in front of the guests, darling."
Something behind the borrowed eyes in Severus slams shut like an iron trap, and the stranger's face is impassive and cold again, his hand loose and dead in her own even as she digs her fingernails into the back of his palm.
Frank returns, rubbing his hands nervously on his thighs. "So, Mariposa," he says. "Let's get down to business. What has Septimus here told you?"
"Nothing at all," she says brightly. "Have you, sweetheart?"
He gives her a fleeting, dark look. "It is safer that way," he says in a clipped tone to Frank. "The wards around this place are quite secure. Our home, however, is potentially less so."
"Do you think you're being watched?" Frank asks sharply. "Do they know?"
"Anything is possible," Severus says with a sweeping gesture. "But I doubt it. I have been exceedingly careful."
Frank looks to Lily and then back to Severus, taking a seat at the kitchen table. "How'd you keep it from her, then?"
Lily takes a seat across from Frank and Severus follows suit beside her. She pats the back of his hand, still clenched in her own. "My Septimus has always been a secretive man, though this quite takes the cake. Do tell me, is it just you and the boy, Frank?"
Frankl looks startled. "Merlin, you really haven't told her anything," he says, shaking his head. "No, there's a group of us, we've been on the run after Alice-" He swallows. It must still be difficult. Lily's heart gives a momentary clench of sympathy before it goes frosted with ice. "My wife, Alice, died. Along with Emmeline Vance. We've been going from hiding place to hiding place as best we can, picking up some others along the way. But Septimus here found us a few weeks ago-we were about to be discovered by Death Eaters-he hid us for a time, and then brought us here for something longer-term. We're the last of our cause."
"And what exactly is your cause?" Lily asks, though she suspects she knows the answer.
Frank looks back up at Severus, who nods imperceptibly. "Have you ever heard of the Order of the Phoenix?"
Lily could almost laugh. She will likely never hear the end of the Order of the Phoenix. "Perhaps, but why don't you tell me, Frank?"
Frank tenses up before her, and glances at Severus again. All his instincts must be screaming against telling her anything, it's such a bald incision; but there's no door, Severus has given her nothing to work with, so her fumbling attempts at spying must be enough.
"Are you sure," Frank asks him. It's almost comforting that he isn't a complete fool, isn't willing to give everything up right away.
"Would you like me to prove this is my wife? Or her dedication? I believe I can prove both in one," he says in those silken, Occluded tones he uses on other Death Eaters. He lifts their joined hands to the table and looks her in the eye. His face says, you started this. "My love, tell me about your first son. How he died."
The cruelty of it steals Lily's breath away, and she could kill him for it. Right now, right here. He cannot do this-not here, not now, not with his hand wrapped firmly around her own and his eyes boring into hers and Frank Longbottom looking on the whole time. She could do it, the hand in her lap is already reaching toward her pocket where her wand is, she could tell Frank everything and stay here, she could be done with Severus and bury his corpse in a shallow grave, throw dirt on his face and make it disappear from her life-
Lily breaks her gaze first, looks to the table. Swallows the hailstone of anger and pride forming in her throat. The charade must be kept up if she's to get what she's asked for and she intends to get what she's asked for. She'd paid for it enough.
"My son died," she says, and her voice has a hoarse sincerity. It's the truth, all she can tell in this moment. "The Dark Lord murdered him in his cradle. My first husband angered him, you see. And he killed him and my son."
"I'm sorry," Frank says, with all the kindness born of a man who has seen and known endless swaths of tragedy.
The clock on the wall ticks off thirty seconds and Lily sniffs, regaining a little composure, a measure of dignity. "It was a very long time ago." Lily takes her hand out of Severus'-gently enough for the show-and scrubs at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, like a child. "I wish you wouldn't bring that up, you know how it upsets me," she says. Her voice quavers-not with emotion, but with the repression of it, but it serves all the same.
"You see why I've brought her in," Severus says after a breath, folding his hands before him.
"I suppose I can," Frank says, and his ease tells them both the ruse has worked.
There will be time to kill Severus later. Looking up, still slightly clouded with repressed tears, Lily asks. "So. Tell me about your ragtag bandits that my husband has saved from certain doom."
It turns out-through roundabout deduction-that they had been in hiding but been found out. The last of the Order. Severus himself has asked not to know the remaining identities as a security measure, so she won't meet them; Frank is the remaining face of the organization. Severus-in the guise of Septimus-merely brings them news, brings them supplies in the abandoned mansion, heals them when they are hurt.
This is the grand sinister plan Sirius had worried at, the secret use of her husband's family home. Supporting the Order in secret. Providing a base. It's what James himself would have done, had he been given the opportunity, which is both bitter and true.
When Frank is done explaining, Lily finally asks it-the real question weighing heavy on her mind, beyond everything else. "And when the Dark Lord falls. You will be prepared to make order? A new government? Liberation?"
Frank looks startled. "Merlin, is that-are you working on more than I know about?" He leans close. "Is it-I mean, I had heard there was talk of the Deathly Hallows."
It takes a second for her to remember, but, yes: Minerva had said, even James had said, it was a story she had read to Harry about the Three Brothers. The Cloak, the Stone, the Wand, the Deathly Hallows, and the legend as it existed for the adults as a quest, as a thing to search for.
God, it's been a hundred years. "He has the wand."
Frank nods, knowing. "But if we could find the Stone- Dumbledore used to search for them. It's said the Stone could bring someone back from death." There's a hungry look in Frank's eyes that becomes all to familiar. "It's supposed to be small, black, it's what we've been looking for all this time since Dumbledore died. It's all he left us."
"Dumbledore," Lily lies, mouth dry. "You'd want to bring back Dumbledore with the Stone, to fight?"
It's clear he doesn't. The face of the person he'd bring back is just as clear as the face of her own choice, were it possible.
"Yes," Frank lies.
It's hard to disappoint him, but she must. Lily cuts a glance sideway to Severus, but he gives her nothing. This is hers to divulge or not; she's made it clear this is her war, now. "There are-rumors of another way to defeat him." She shrugs a shoulder. "If nothing else, he is a man. He must die someday." An old woman's lie, but it suits.
Lily watches the hope go out in Frank's eyes. He bends his head, rubs the back of his neck. "I don't know. We've been focused on lesser things. Survival, mostly, Septimus here can't get away that often and between us we don't have much-too few wands, too many children." Frank runs a hand through his hair. "We're refugees, not an army. I had hoped-"
"I know someone," Lily interjects, suddenly possessed of a thought and a need to expel it. "Perenelle Flamel. In Paris. Can you send messages? And her husband Nicolas, he's further away. I can't tell you where, but there is a colony of British men and women in exile, in hiding, they will need to be repatriated once the war is won-"
"The war?" Frank asks. "Mariposa, are you saying-"
"Don't ask me questions I can't answer, Frank," Lily says. "If there were a covert war we certainly couldn't risk it by telling you."
"If there were, of course." He nods, understanding. "I take it you've worked for Dumbledore. That's one of his tactics." And then he puts two and two together. "Nicolas Flamel?"
She grins, and for once it's sincere that he's cottoned on, even with a stranger's mouth it feels good. "Nicolas Flamel. A potential escape route, should you need it, and a potential ally if things go well. If the Dark Lord falls."
Out spills everything about the werewolf colony short of their location. She promises half the parchment-Sirius will have to share and Nicolas will have to accept it. And Sirius will have to be told as well, should anything happen to herself or the black cloud listening but saying nothing beside her. Through Nicolas, they can reach Perenelle and work together rather than separately. And with Sirius and Regulus' muggleborn smuggling, they've got contacts as well, sympathetic ones that could help them flee the country. Or return to it.
Separately, they are refugees, cowering in hiding. Together, they may be an army, a new government. Frank has crossed paths with exiled Ministry workers who could rebuild the thing brick by brick-people Regulus or Sirius or even Severus could reach out to, could work with. Severus himself even chimes in periodically with information: who can be trusted, who cannot, who could potentially be persuaded. It's almost civil with their cover, with Frank there to perform for, with the work of listing allies, locations, powers, places, people-a plan for the eventual downfall of the Dark Lord, a plan to retake the country from the remaining Death Eaters once Tom Riddle is gone. Slowly but surely, it begins to look like a network that could bring them to heel.
There's something almost buoyant, lifting her, that there are others who can and will fight-that the world is not entirely lost, that recovery is possible. It's almost like hope.
The time left on the Polyjuice dwindles rapidly. After two hours, the sun is setting, and little Neville wanders back in draped in a blanket. Frank scoops him into his lap with practiced ease. The boy leans up, cupping his hand around his mouth to whisper into his father's ear, and Frank smiles.
The balloon of hope pops and the rest of her mind goes cold and blank, because it must, because this is what is required of her, because the alternative is a red-limned screaming thing. "Look at the time. We'll be missed, Septimus. We should take our leave. We've stolen enough of your day."
"I certainly have enough to be getting on with," Frank says. "And Neville's just told me he's hungry. Let me just see the guests off, Neville."
He puts the boy back on the floor so he can come to his feet. Neville meets Lily's eyes and she realizes she's staring. She breaks the gaze before Frank can notice.
"If I didn't know better, Mariposa," Frank says, extending a hand, "I'd say you were in the Order yourself."
"If you didn't know better," Lily says, taking his hand and shaking it. "But you do."
"Best not get to guessing anyway," says Frank, "I'm sure Septimus here would have a fit."
"He would," she says. "We'll be in touch, Frank, but this is-this is more than I had even hoped was possible. And if something happens, if the Dark Lord falls-"
Frank nods, and shakes Severus' hand. "We'll be ready to move on the targets we discussed. The Ministry, the Floo Network, Azkaban."
Severus interjects. "McGonagall should be your main target, but if you can disable the Dementors-"
Frank holds up a palm. "I know. I'll tell everyone else, get us sparring. And if you can get wands-"
"We can," Severus says. Lily twines her arm around Severus' again, putting on the show but the message clear: I will hold you to it. His palm in hers twitches. "I will ensure it."
The side-along on the return trip is just as brutal, and the servant's entrance leads them straight into the kitchens. Once the door's shut, he tears his hand from hers as if she's burned him. The unfamiliar hand with the familiar wand trembles slightly as he turns toward the door, casts a few wards, and then turns back. "How dare you."
"How dare I? How dare you. I should have killed you then and there. If you ever so much as think to use my son's death as a weapon against me-"
"You could have completed it and killed them all as well," he sneers. "They are in hiding. You have killed them all by giving them that rubbish. As if a pack of werewolves and a woman in Paris you've never met can possibly make the difference."
"If you bring up Harry ever again, I won't be so kind." Her wand's in her hand, an open threat.
"Was that kindness? It looked rather like making me suffer."
She's spitting mad, furious, fingers white on her wand. "You deserve it."
"I have done this for you-all of it! For you!" The polyjuice is wearing off, barely; his eyes burn the whole way through her as they change back from the hazel to the familiar raging black, and Lily can feel her own face returning to its customary shape as well. "Is this not what you would have wanted?"
"And that's why you hid it from me, is that it?"
"If you were captured, interrogated, all of their lives would be forfeit. Even knowing Longbottom's face and location is too much for either of us. You'd prefer your self-righteousness to their safety?"
"I don't trust you," she says, biting off each word with fresh savagery. "I'm through trusting you with anything that matters."
"Yes, I suppose you must've learned that lesson from Pettigrew. Pity it taught you the wrong thing."
He parries the first hex she flings and the second. It takes the third-a particularly nasty curse-for him to fire back, but he does, though he loses ground doing it. He darts through the kitchen door and she follows at a dead sprint, flinging hexes wildly. He flies-that trick learned at Tom Riddle's knee again-to the banister and disappears up the hall, past the lab.
She roars a futile curse; Lily can't fly. The distance between them lengthens as she pelts up the stairs. She wants to hurt him and he's running away like a coward. It's unforgivable.
When Lily gets to the top of the stairs, breathless, she blasts open all the doors: empty, empty, empty, and she screams his name, curses it, calls him what he is: a coward, a cheat, a monster.
There is a single footfall overhead. No hesitation: she pelts up the stairs to the third floor, where he'll be trapped, then she'll be able to hit him and hit him and hit him until something is fixed.
The construct is cowering in a place she once called her room-the door is open. The closet is empty. Leaving only his bedroom. She strides in-
The Disarming charm hits her square and she curses again, snatching after the wand as it flies from her hand to his, but it's too late. He's got it and she's stopped, a few feet from him.
"There, is this what you want?" he snarls, and he throws something at her feet.
Two glittering rings. A gold wedding band, and a diamond the size of the nail on her pinky finger, something James got down on one knee and stuttered over because he knew it was too big, knew it was absurd, but it had been in the family for a terribly long time and-
In the memory, snow pours out of James' mouth instead of words, and then it all goes under glass.
Lily sees red. This is the line, and he's crossed it, utterly-she has known he was cruel, had known it even before, but this-
She charges him, and it becomes a physical brawl.
She's surprised him so much she is able to knock both wands from his hand and rolling across the room, under the bed, away from both of them. She bowls him over in a tangle of limbs on the floor but he is longer, taller, able to push and gain the upper hand once they hit the carpet. He holds one of her wrists to the floor, his mouth twisted in a vicious snarl, but the other hand escapes his grasp and her fist connects with his teeth, once, twice, three times. Blood blooms on his lip, down his chin-her knuckles are sliced open on his teeth-but he's so stunned by the pain that his grip loosens for a moment, and with both hands she wrenches him violently, rolling over him to straddle his waist.
Both her hands go to his throat and squeeze.
He's still snarling, not giving an inch, hands tearing at her hair, circling her neck, too-but he doesn't have it in him to really do it, to really hurt her. His hands are a toothless and idle threat, thumbs clutching spasmodically at her collarbone while she bears down on his windpipe. In that moment, she thinks she can do it, can kill him for what he's done.
-This is the most they'd touched each other since that night, since before. And her hands loosen, fractionally, thinking of it. Lily is panting and victorious and suddenly blazing hot, and the blood painting his mouth crimson, blood she put there-equal measure beautiful, satisfying a deep and violent urge, and horrifying-and god, is anyone who has ever loved her going to die? Is she going to kill him with her bare hands, like this? Is this what it's come to? Is this who she is, a woman so possessed of a thoughtless grief, a mindless rage, she might as well be a beast?
Lily doesn't want to kill him. It would be better to die-it's a siren song of an idea. If only Severus would close his hands around her throat, it could all be over so quickly. But he hasn't. He won't.
She bends, hands loosening to rest on his shoulders, something rising like tears in her throat, hair curtaining around her face to hide the transformation from rage to grief. It's cracking, all of it, all her carefully constructed rage and control, and she can't stop it.
He coughs beneath her and his hands on her collarbone are now far less a threat-they are very nearly a comfort. She despises it but she doesn't want him to pull away. He doesn't move them. "Lily," he says, sounding hoarse.
Lily shakes her head, tears bubbling up to the surface and making her voice muddy. "God, Severus-"
He loosens one hand from her shoulder, touching it to his broken lip experimentally. "It's fine."
"It isn't," she says, leaning close, brushing a finger across his lip. "I tried to-" Lily chokes on it, can't say it aloud.
"I said it's fine. I deserved that and likely more." And there's something in the set of his mouth that seems almost pleased they've finally fought, finally had this out, and now there can be a breath of honesty between them. "I did provoke you terribly."
"You're horrible. Why are you always so god-damn horrible." She lets out little sound that isn't quite a laugh and isn't quite a whimper and wilts, her head sinking onto his shoulder. If she doesn't look into his face she can stand it, can take the comfort, can take him. She mutters miserably, "How can you possibly still love me."
"Don't-" he says, going harsh. He puts one hand on the center of his back and levers himself up, sitting, and she slides into his lap. "Don't. None of this is your fault."
She chokes. "Enough of it."
Severus watches her face, his eyes opaque, cryptic. There's nothing he can say to solve it, nothing he can do to fix any of it. The decision comes across his face so quickly Lily doesn't even catch it, but later she wonders if he is giving the only thing he has to give.
He presses his bloodied mouth to her throat to capture the sob starting there and swallow it whole.
Lily's breath hitches and her hands make fists in the shoulders of his robes. When he pulls away, there's a warm imprint there, and she knows it's his blood, left there by his lips.
This is all they have ever done, hurt and been hurt by one another, over and over. This would never be any different. When he lifts his face back up to meet her eyes, she doesn't hesitate, she doesn't flinch, she kisses him back as hard as she can, hoping wildly that it hurts him or her or both of them in equal measure, that they can find exactly the punishment each of them deserve in the other.
-He knows, and he wants it too. There's teeth in the kiss he returns, the taste of blood on her lips from his. The hand on her back tightens against her spine.
It never really stops being a fight. Nothing between them ever has been anything less. Her clothes are already torn, and so are his, so a few more rips and tears don't make a meaningful difference; the sin has already been committed in his bed a few days ago so completing it again cannot possibly damn her more. Severus is so accustomed to violence that it is nothing to move from that to this; and for Lily this is, still, a kind of violence against herself.
They both keep their boots on. There's a flash of longing to whisper her dead husband's name in the throes of it just to hurt him, just to tell him this doesn't matter-he doesn't matter, this isn't about him-but that blade cuts them both, and her more deeply.
And it would be a lie.
It's entirely unlike the last time. He grips her hips so tightly it leaves finger-shaped bruises across her skin, no longer afraid to break her-it is impossible to break what is already so broken. And it's entirely like the last time, because it still, damnably, is lovemaking, makes nothing, only subsists on what is already in them both. It is better this way, at least, to offer her body than her undeserving heart. It is simpler to succumb to this perverse desire than to hear him say it, and he knows it. It is easier to accept his love when it leaves a mess between her legs.
When it is done, when she finds a moment of sweet and blank oblivion, when the hand on her back seizes her hair in a fist and he shudders breathlessly beneath her, the effort to push him away seems impossible. Lily can no more disentangle her body from Severus' than she can disentangle her life from his. Both of their wands stay under the bed, in a kind of truce, and he helps her to her feet and to the bed where he wraps his body tight around hers.
The last thing Lily thinks before sleep takes her is that blood in his mouth did not taste a thing like absolution.