Lily's patronus, when she sends it to Sirius and Regulus, comes out different. Pointed. At first she thinks something's gone wrong, that the monstrosity she's become is manifesting; that even the innocent memory she's chosen-one of her father and a field on a bright spring day, just the two of them-is tainted but no-no.

It is the same patronus, merely-antlered.

Like James'.

Severus says nothing of it, but turns away from the starlight-bright stag. Once it's gone, they resume work as if it was never there.

The pages of the book rustle like leaves in an unfelt wind, and then catch fire with a shrieking hiss, leaving nothing but a burnt shell of the cover.

The cup fills with blood and then cracks down the center. The blood takes an hour to scrub from the floor.

The diadem screams.

And when Regulus finally arrives, Sirius in tow, the locket burns, too.

James doesn't return with any of them. Any wish to have him return with any of them is crushed as far down as she can keep it. It is difficult, still, to remember that the thing she saw wasn't James; that her husband is dead, and loved her-died loving her-and cannot know what she's done and what she has become.

Severus looks wrung out but victorious, evaluating the line of ruined and priceless things before them. Lily feels the same. Regulus and Sirius both have the same wary look in their grey eyes.

"We aren't finished," Lily says when the locket stops smoking, an ache starting in her temple. "The last. What do you have?"

Regulus opens his mouth, and then shuts it, looking at his brother.

"Your hand," Sirius says, which is not an answer. He's said it before and she'd put him off, but now he looks like he's ready to insist and Regulus is with him. "What happened?"

"A curse. Severus is working on it." Which isn't exactly a lie, and Severus won't deny it. There is time left for it to become the truth. Lily rubs her forehead, headache intensifying. It's a distraction from the constant ebb-and-flow of grating pain in her hand, like having a thousand ants pricking the inside of her skin. "It's not important. We need the last horcrux, and we need it now."

"All I have are guesses," Regulus says, wringing his hands.

"I'll take guesses over nothing," Lily says.

Sirius interrupts, "We'll have to disguise that hand. If any other Death Eater sees you've got a curse scar, you're finished."

Lily offers the dead and blackened thing mutely, and Sirius produces a length of fabric torn from his own sleeve that he wraps around her palm. Lily looks back to Regulus as Sirius works, and says, "Talk." After a moment, she softens her tone; he's not the enemy here. "Please, Regulus. We're so close."

Regulus swallows and looks to Severus, and something passes between them-some kind of permission. Then Regulus looks at the floor. "Severus and I-for the past weeks, since you stole the book from Malfoy and figured out the cup was with Bellatrix, Severus and I have attempted to ascertain under which parameters the Dark Lord rewarded his servants with the protection of the horcruxes. Lucius brought money, Ministry influence, and legitimacy to the Dark Lord's claim, and brought him numerous followers-myself and Severus included. Those numbers kept the war in balance against your efforts with the Order." Regulus flicks his eyes past her, delivering the rest to the ceiling. "Bellatrix-has always been a warrior. Adding the Black and Lestrange names to the Dark Lord's cause are not insignificant, but the opponents she removed from the war were more so. And she did suffer torture for him." There's a breath of tense silence and Lily watches Sirius' progress in transfiguring the length of cloth to a glove, the color fading, the texture blending into skin. Then Regulus says, "There are only a few who have served him so well. Rosier, who captured Mad-Eye Moody, which led to the eventual breakdown of the Order of the Phoenix. He is also among the most loyal, as he is a second generation Death Eater, his father Dearborn being part of the original cadre. Yaxley, whose position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement allowed him to create the Muggle-Born Registration Commission in '82, whose work created the status quo you see in the world following shortly thereafter, and-" Regulus looks at Severus, swallowing.

One of Severus' thin hands spreads across his chest. "Myself."

Sirius has finished the transfigured glove; it looks well enough like flesh, and Lily flexes her hand beneath it, then holds it up to compare to her intact palm. It looks close enough, but anyone who touched it would know. "The prophecy," she says, voice harsh, not meeting Severus' eyes.

"Not just the prophecy," Regulus goes on, almost sounding excited. "Severus' position at Hogwarts was instrumental in its fall and led directly to the death of Albus Dumbledore; that's why-"

"I know," Lily says sharply, and her grim look cuts Regulus off.

"Lily, that's why we came to you in the first place," Sirius continues urgently, sizing up Severus before looking back to Lily, capturing her uninjured fingers and wrapping them in his own. "That, and I wanted to help you, if I could. But if anyone has the final horcrux-the one he made from Harry's death-it'd be you."

He doesn't say it'd be Severus, or even it would be the pair of you. He says her. It is less an accusation and more a hope, and Lily covers his hand with her injured one, the disguised one. It feels like leather brushing against her fingertips, not flesh, and she muscles under the sensation as best she can. "You have helped me. Both of you, more than I can possibly describe. It might be something of Severus', perhaps, but there's nothing from our home in Godric's Hollow, I didn't bring-"

"There are two items that came on your person that you still possess," Severus says quietly. "I'm not sure where they are."

Oh. Lily stares at him in mute realization. Of course.

"Beneath the bed," Lily mutters, pulling free of Sirius' grasp and pressing both fabric and flesh fingertips into her eyelids. "If you wouldn't mind. I've got the detector here."

Severus sweeps from the room without a backward glance, and Lily wonders what she's revealed.

When she lifts her hands from her face, Regulus is watching Sirius and Sirius is watching her. He's working through it, leaning against a wall and looking suspicious, as if evaluating her from a new distance. Any hope of keeping the nature of her relationship with Severus a secret from him dwindles to a pinprick. Lily focuses her energies on Regulus, on using his knowledge and regaining the trust she has rightfully lost. "I don't know if Sirius told you about this. Severus and I modified a Dark Detector," she explains, turning to open the drawer where it's stored. "It responds only to horcruxes, but it only works for me, when I'm holding it."

Regulus' fretful reverie on Sirius is broken by that, and when she offers it to him he plucks it forth, bringing it to his eye. "But that should not work. That isn't how Dark Detectors function at all. Horcruxes wouldn't read on the detector, and modifying the enchantment to do anything that specific, you'd have to have it on a source, an example. I'm shocked Severus didn't say-"

"Why's it under his bed, then?" Sirius asks.

"It's a long story," Lily says, trying to keep her voice even.

"We've nothing but time," Sirius growls, levering himself forward and moving towards her.

"I'm not sure we do," Regulus says, looking back and forth between them both. "Considering. The curse, I mean."

Sirius screws up his mouth but stays silent. The fight he is ramping towards is interrupted by Severus entering the room, fist extended as if he'd rather not be touching the treasure within at all.

"Here," she says, plucking the detector back from Regulus' fingers and moving close to the rings as Severus sets them on the bench.

Lily holds her breath and presses her thumb into the depression of the Detector, waves it close-closer-taps it against the stone of the overlarge diamond.

"Nothing," she says, and the very air seems to sag in disappointment. No, not sag-bend. Something is wrong, and it hurts deep in her skull, something is very-

The crack of apparition sounds in the entry hall. Once-twice-three times, like bullets against a brick wall. It coincides with a stab of agony inside of Lily's skull that makes her muffle a cry and weakens her knees, forcing her to catch herself on the tabletop. Sirius lets out half a noise that could be her name, but he's too smart to let it ring free. When she opens her eyes, the diamond is glittering inches from her face before Severus' long fingers sweep it away, into a hidden pocket in his robes, along with the Dark Detector.

"The others," Regulus whispers, voice high, but Sirius has already pointed his wand-at first to vanish the lot, which fails. They are too enchanted and still too powerful, even broken like this. He attempts three other charms before finally sweeping them into his arms and shoving them as quietly as possible into a cupboard right before his body blurs into the familiar black dog and moves to stand at attention at Regulus' side.

Everything is moving too fast and the waves of agony in her head, screaming infinitely louder than the pinpricks in her hand, are slowing her down too much. Lily comes halfway to her feet, soles of her shoes slipping on the freshly-scrubbed laboratory floor. She pulls her wand from her pocket, extending it to Severus across the table. There isn't enough time to change into the proper servant's garb-there isn't time for anything, the sound of voices and footsteps are advancing up the stair-but there is time for this, to give back her wand, to deny at least that much treason. He snatches it from her without hesitation, slipping it up his sleeve beside his own.

And then the voice calls-the high, cold voice from her worst memories, the ones she hasn't let herself relive. "Severus," it says, calling her friend's name-her lover's name-as if it is her own when he enters the laboratory.

The Dark Lord knows where the laboratory is, has known where it is the entire time. This house is a gift from him, to Severus. This house belongs to him. This world belongs to him.

"My lord," he replies, and goes to his knees across the benchtop from her. Regulus does the same; only Sirius stays standing, four legged, watchful yellow eyes following the man and he sweeps into the room, trailed by two Death Eaters. The agony in Lily's head makes it easy to follow suit and kneel, to crumple to the floor. Severus' eyes are on the tips of his boots and his hair curtains around his face and she watches, angling her eyes beneath her lashes to watch.

There is a scuff on the the toe of the fine wingtips the Dark Lord wears. They are worn; he walks, then, he does not fly or float, not always. And a faint dusting of earth is visible on the hem of his trousers.

He is not a god, or a demon, or an unmovable object. He is a man, and so very nearly mortal.

"Such formality," Tom Riddle chides, and fingertips cup Severus' sharp chin and draw it up, up, beyond the tabletop where she can see it. "My faithful servant."

Lily stays on her knees, eyes on the floor. Severus has taught her Occlumency-perhaps enough, perhaps, but nothing is sure-

"My lord has brought company. Forgive me, I am not prepared," Severus says, smooth as silk.

"You already have company. Quite a lot of it, it would seem. But we did not send ahead, Severus," he says. "I was very eager to see your work with the basilisk venom, as were Rosier and Yaxley here. Tell me, what have you begun? You appear to have nothing brewing."

There is a tense, throbbing breath of silence. "I have been planning, with Regulus' assistance," he says. Not a lie, not exactly. "The venom is a rare ingredient, and dangerous, and it would not do to make mistakes with such a gift. I am unsure if I have thanked you enough for providing it."

"You will when you provide its services to me," Tom says, smile evident in his tone. "Why is your pet here? Surely you do not let her assist in such matters."

She feels his scorching gaze turned to the back of her neck. Severus' pet. Herself. Her shoulder gives an involuntary twitch and she feels everyone's eyes rake across the movement-Regulus, Severus, the monster Tom Riddle and his two accomplices, and the dog named Sirius the only one who can look her in the eye.

"She is a servant," Severus says, and his tone is careless. "Not unintelligent, not without her uses. My lord knows the work I have wrought upon her. She is no threat to our task."

"Rise," the voice says with a new and chilly authority, and it stalls the breath in her lungs as she realizes that the word is meant for her. Regulus' knee twitches. Sirius bristles visibly before Regulus' hand descends, pressing a palm to his canine head. There is nothing for it; this death, this capture was always a possibility. Her feet go beneath her, numb, but she keeps her eyes on the floor and wraps both arms behind her back to protect, at least, that secret.

"Do you know who I am, Lily Potter?" the Dark Lord asks softly.

Harry and James are dead. One intact hand clenches the disguised and ruined one behind her back, and then relaxes. She tethers her heart to those deaths and lets everything crystalize around it, and then Lily lifts her gaze to meet his.

The face before her is handsome, but carved deeply; the cheekbones that could be beautiful gone hollow, the eyes that could be beautiful sharp and cruel. Women would have thrown themselves at him, in his youth, as the ghost she had seen in Albania. No longer. Any youth or beauty has been purged, twisted, burned away for the sake of power. Dark magic has its price, and he has paid it visibly, over and over and over again.

"Yes," she whispers. "I know you."

"You sound afraid," he says, amused.

It's pointless to lie. "I am afraid."

"Of me?" He turns further from Severus, taking a step toward her.

"Yes."

"And why is that? -No, don't look to Severus. Look at me. Why are you afraid of me?"

Her mind is utterly blank: a frozen lake in winter. She can feel him against her consciousness, rifling through her mind with a light touch entirely unlike Severus' brutality and force. There isn't much left to be found; long dazed days in bed in recovery, dutiful and thoughtless service. Severus' mouth moving: do not lie to Him. You may never lie to Him and live. Then: the carpets in Malfoy Manor, filling a glass of wine with care-but nothing more, the rest sucked under beneath the deaths she has tethered herself to. Bellatrix, laughing, and blood on the carpet, but no glitter of the gold of the cup. The dun fur of a doe. The fragrance of earth in a forest in winter, divorced from its location on the map. The sensation of a ring sliding onto her finger, but not who put it there or why. A glass full of liquor tainted with potion. And the truest thing: a traitorous wisp of Severus' cool and pale palm fisting in her hair as she moves atop him. The sound of his breath in her ear.

The sensation pauses at that memory and that one alone. And then it retreats.

Why do you fear me? There's a truth she can get away with. Perhaps once, before, but no longer. She has burned parts of his soul this day. "I don't know."

She can almost feel him inspect her words for truth or untruth. And his lip curls into what could almost be called a smile, on another face. "Interesting. Severus, is this your work upon the girl?"

Severus turns to her; the way his eyes move across her uncaring plucks at something frozen and gone just as deep as the deaths anchoring her thoughtlessness. "Perhaps. It is difficult to tell what is the result of her experiences and what is the result of my efforts."

"Extraordinary. She is almost completely hollowed out, you know." He glides closer, and the pain in her skull thrums louder and louder, chipping away at her like an icepick. Her heart drums in her chest, the pain echoing the sound of the soles of his shoes on the floor. "But perhaps this is not your work on her. Perhaps this is… something else." He reaches out one long fingertip to trace her cheek with a gentleness he wouldn't have given him credit for, and the fingertip feels like glowing metal charring away her skin.

Lily cannot help but flinch away at the sudden, incandescent pain.

One of the Death Eaters-Rosier, the younger one named Evan-lets out a soft laugh at her flinch. The other's face and square jaw don't move; Corban Yaxley's eyebrows twitch in surprise that she's been allowed to stay standing, to stay alive after such an affront. Regulus' hand makes a fist at the back of the dog's neck, pulling at the fur. Neither of them are fools, but neither of them is willing to risk the other either. Severus' face is impassive, carved from cold marble.

Tom Riddle reads the tight line of her mouth pursed in pain like an experimental result, and then seizes her chin in his fingertips. She doesn't dare struggle or pull away, doesn't dare unclench her hands held tightly behind her back even as the fingernails of each hand digs into the other, but her lips part in a grimace and her teeth grit hard against making a sound. Lily is sure his fingerprints will be scorched into her face indelibly, and then-after a hundred years of pain or perhaps only a moment-he releases her.

"A fascinating side effect," he muses.

A flicker of concern passes through Severus' eyes. "My lord?"

"None of your concern, Severus. You've found her satisfactory, have you not?"

"Of course," he says smoothly. "As I have said. My lord is most generous."

"It seems I was not misguided, though," he muses, tilting his head. Lily wonders if he will peel back her lips to inspect her teeth. "You do have need of further assistance in your work, and you require better than this." He dismisses her with a flick of his fingers. "Rosier and Yaxley here have expressed an interest in your experimentation, and I would like your work to be monitored more closely." His eyes narrow, and he glances, finally, back to Severus. "To ensure no further mistakes."

The air goes very, very still and very, very cold.

The Dark Lord moves, stepping lightly back toward Severus. "Rosier has even consented to stay for the duration of your experimentation, and Yaxley has agreed to make himself available to you as well, dawn til dusk." He nods to each in turn.

Yaxley is stonefaced, looking bored; Rosier has half a coy little smile. Regulus is no spy; he is visibly terrified and his hand is white on the fur of Sirius' neck. "My Lord," Regulus begins, voice hoarse. "I believe my assistance is sufficient for-"

"Silence," he snaps, and suddenly Lily understands the danger of being a Dark Lord, the danger of striking terror as the only tactic: he cannot tell the difference between the usual fear he strikes and this, the fear borne of true treason and the attempt to maneuver a desperate ploy to save them all and not a paltry grasp at selfish glory.

Tom gestures to his entourage. "I have informed both Evan and Corban that they are not to harm your assistant, of course, and if you find her useful you may naturally continue to use her. And Regulus as well-though I was not aware of this collaboration. I am pleased to see you taking such initiative, Regulus." Tom Riddle sweeps his gaze across the assembled. Regulus' eyes are fixed on the floor. Severus is still as a pillar. Lily shifts to bow her head, letting her hair fall in front of her face. "But do ensure Mrs Potter stays out of the way, and ensure she comes to no harm, or I will hold all of you responsible. Have I made myself clear?"

Herself? Out of harm? Why would his goals be aligned with Severus' own when she is just a mudblood, a reward for service, a servant herself? Unless-

"Absolutely," Severus says, bowing his head. "Thank you for your concern, my lord. Rosier and Yaxley will be most useful."

Unless-

Unless Lily herself is not just a mudblood. If she is something more, something the Dark Lord would protect, a precious object that he would instruct any Death Eater to protect.

-No, not just any Death Eater. A trusted one. One who has rendered great service to his Lord.

One who the Dark Lord knew already felt motivated to protect her.

Lily shudders, swallows and blinks rapidly, willing her face even, willing herself still and silent despite the roaring of her own blood in her ears. She takes one shivering breath and then another. Behind her back, her fingernails dig welts into her unmarred palm.

"You will forgive the intrusion," and it sounds more like an order than an apology. "Corban, Evan-I anticipate your reports. And your results, Severus."

The Dark Lord sweeps from the room, leaving behind the final piece of the puzzle.