Sirius and Regulus depart through the Floo. The Dark Lord already knows they've been here and there's no need for secrecy. They don't say they need to put their affairs in order and plan for their own potential deaths because it does not need to be said. There are documents to destroy and trails to cover and a home they likely cannot return to even in the flush of victory. Sirius jokes that they might as well burn this house down when they leave it to make their move at dawn, just to be sure, and Lily nods, and suddenly that is the plan as well: to burn the home she and Severus have shared, the kitchen where they fought, the lab with all its half-finished work now drenched in the blood of the construct's messy destruction, the hall where the Death Eaters tracked the blood, the library where her blanket still lies wrapped around the impression of her own body, the bedroom where-
Lily wants to think the bedroom where he loved her because it's a kinder thought than the vulgarity Sirius might put to it, if he knew. But no, love happens wherever he goes. He carries it with him like a millstone round the neck. As does she.
When Sirius and Regulus are gone they turn to one another. Severus looks as if he's made of stone. "We will work through the night," he says, and turns from her before she can reply.
Almost all work is already done, in Lily's notes on bindings, on the Mark. How it functions, how it draws magic from every man and woman who has taken it; how the spider's web of Death Eaters is all interconnected at the apex, at the Dark Lord who draws upon them. How such a draw might turn into a tear. Might rip the very magic from them. Might kill them, doing so. The issue has always been finding a way to access it, keyed as it is to the Dark Lord. They converse in academic terms, referring only to the controller, the controlled, the replacement controller and not the Dark Lord, me, you, though that is all it has ever been. They need only produce an hour's adjusted arithmancy, and compound an ash.
The Dark Lord's soul may be split, but it remains his soul, and part of it resides in Lily now. This very fragment of soul was even part of him, when he Marked Severus-and presumably others. If it works, not only Severus' power will be hers to draw upon; the theory indicates the Mark should serve both fragments of the soul equally, giving each equal ability to draw upon the power of all Death Eaters. And potentially their lives. If it fails-there are accounts of men who have tried to swear two contradictory oaths like this, tracing back even to the conpartior lux. The accompanying illustrations are gruesome. Lily had stared at one in mute horror until Severus has snapped the book shut in front of her. "Acceptable risk," he said. "As it is mine, and I accept it."
"And my risks?"
He hadn't responded, merely bent once more over the Arithmancy, leaving Lily to wonder how this is going to play out.
Severus and Sirius won't let her die, not unless she can trick or trap them into it and stay their hands. Regulus would help her do it, but he would need a plan-a real one, and a permanent solution, and he's not fool enough to think the three of them could defeat him when Lily is gone. The ability to draw from the same well of power is too much opportunity to give up.
It's not even a choice. Lily requires a permanent solution, carefully timed, that leaves the Dark Lord dead for once and all. No half-measures will satisfy her, even at the cost of her own life. N The faintest candle of an idea begins to burn, and while Severus does the Arithmancy, Lily watches him write and rises to her feet.
"I need a break," she lies. "I'll be back in a bit."
It takes fifteen minutes to make her final preparations in secret. When she returns to the library she says nothing, merely bends over her work. When he finds out, he'll be furious-or worse. But she won't suffer for it.
By midnight, there is nothing between them and attempt at tricking the Dark Mark, and Lily feels no triumph, no anticipation. Only a sick, deadened sort of hollowness in her chest.
"The process is simple. Most of what is required is-intent." Severus is moving as he speaks, pulling down ingredients for the ash and a basin to burn them in, as if stopping will make him think too much about the implications, the task ahead. He shoves a dagger toward her, all business. "It requires a drop of your blood."
"A drop," Lily says, working the blade beneath the disguise in her hand, cutting away the leathery fabric Sirius transfigured to reveal her ruined hand so it can better hold the knife with more precision. It feels like getting undressed-something too vulnerable, too revealing to be done so casually. "Just one? You're sure?"
"Yes. One from you, three from me."
She positions the tip of the knife carefully against her thumb and presses. "I still don't like it. It'd be safer to just give one from you. It only reduces the likelihood it would work by-"
Severus cuts her off with a glare. "No. Now stop delaying."
They had agreed, and it was stupid to make one final push. Acceptable risk. Lily squeezes one bright droplet of blood into the bowl in his hands and looks, finally, to the drawn and severe contours of his face. "What was it like? Did he-do this? In front of you? You'd think it would give the balance of power away."
He takes the knife and pricks his fingertip, prodding it rather harder than she did her own. Three drops fall from his finger into the bowl easily, and a few more spatter the tabletop. "It wasn't-" His mouth goes thin, and there's a flash of anger, but tamps it down with visible effort. He presses the cut closed with his thumb. "It wasn't like that."
"What was it like?" And for the first time it's spoken without accusation; it's with a sincere curiosity. "I need to know."
He glances up at her once, quickly, taking her measure. "I am capable of compounding the ash without your assistance," he says finally. "Fetch the pensieve and you can see it for yourself."
When she does, the long strand of memory comes free from his temple and drops into the basin without ceremony. "This will tell you what to expect," he says shortly.
Lily suspects it will tell her rather more than that, and he knows it. But she watches him work for only a second longer, watches him lift a dried stem of amaranth and set it alight. He drops it in among the dried snapdragon buds and aster leaves, lighting them, too. He looks up and finds her watching and she looks away, caught, before pushing her face close to the shimmering water, closer, closer, until-
It's night in the memory and night where she came from, but outdoors. The woods whisper with a chill fall breeze and Lily sees Severus-he must be eighteen, god he looks so young-emerging into the clearing, led by a masked young man shorter but stockier than he.
It's strange, overlaid with her own memory of seventy-eight. They were still using masks, then. James was alive and Harry was less than a thought.
James. The thought threatens to pull her under, to pull her out, to send her spiralling. But he is not who she is here for-or he is exactly who she is here for. She locks the thought away as best she can.
"Where is he," Severus says impatiently. He's rubbing at his arms-he's cold, and his coat is too thin. She hates that his coat is too thin still, even here, even in this memory.
"He'll come in his own good time," the guide says gruffly. If she had to make a guess, based on build and voice, she's say the younger Mulciber, Donovan. "Or he won't come at all because you're just a skinny little half-blood. Either way, you're waiting, aren't you?"
Lily thinks that the best thing she will get to do before she dies is to rip the magic from Donovan Mulciber. For bringing Severus here to take the Mark, for making him wait for such an awful thing that he so clearly wants so very badly, for being possibly the worst person she's ever had the displeasure of knowing between Hogwarts and here-for every reason she can think of, Lily hopes it kills him. She won't regret having Donovan Mulciber's blood on her hands.
This younger, hungrier version of Severus looks just as furious as Lily feels, but he waits in patient silence, shifting from foot to foot and trying to keep warm by rubbing his arms. The memory blurs, shifts forward. She can't say how long; in the way of memories and dreams, she understands time passing but does not sense it. Leaves stir, and a faraway owl makes itself known, and the moon ascends into the sky in a graceful arc, illuminating them all.
Across the clearing, a clot of shadows seizes, and the memory slows. And then, slow as water saturating a cloth, the shadows coalesce and take form, take shape, find legs and arms and a vile half-handsome face. Still half-shadow and half-man, Tom Riddle steps forward into the moonlight, towards Severus, and Mulciber drops to one knee in deference. He looks the same as he had in their lab, illuminated by moonlight, carved by ancient and dark magic-and yet, still, the ghost of a handsome young man worn like a mask. The kind of thing Severus has always wanted to be.
"Severus Snape," Tom Riddle says, smiling, evaluating.
Severus has stopped rubbing at his arms. He seems frozen, for an instant, and then strides forward, jerking himself free of Mulciber's tangible radius. He looks back at Mulciber's still-kneeling figure but does not kneel himself. "My Lord."
The wand in Tom Riddle's hand never stops moving, pulling shadows away from his legs and hands and then allowing the cloak behind him to unfurl. It is a king's entrance, a planned thing. "You are the one who developed that delightful curse that cuts and cannot be healed?"
"I am," he says bravely. His spine is straight and tall and something inside of Lily is twisting, burning, hating every instant, so proud of his courage but so ashamed of who and what it's for.
Tom Riddle continues to circle towards Severus and toward the masked and kneeling Mulciber. "And are you the one who has brewed Veritaserum for your friends among my ranks without question?"
Severus smirks, proud. "Not without question, my lord, no. But I brewed it all the same, because I knew who it was for and why."
"I wonder, though," Tom Riddle says, "If you are capable of more."
"I am," he promises, looking hungrier than ever. "I'm capable of much more, if you'll only-"
"I have already made my decision, Severus." The soft voice is just as effective as a shout at interrupting Severus. "You would not be here if I did not want you among my ranks. Now kneel."
Severus blanches.
Tom Riddle sees it, and smiles. "You must only kneel once. And then never again to anyone but me."
And what other promise than this could bring him low like this one?
Severus sinks slowly to his knees in supplication. There's still suspicion in his eyes, but there's a greater measure of greed, of ambition, and an unquenchable hunger for power. When Tom Riddle steps close, she wants to look away, but she knows she can't.
"He has bled?" Tom asks Mulciber, not taking his gaze away from the kneeling form before him.
"He has, my lord. I made the ash myself," Mulciber says, producing a small cloth pouch and extending it up towards his Lord, who lifts it from his hands.
"Leave us, then."
Mulciber rises as if he is expecting it-he must, he has done this himself-and his footsteps crunch away in the fall air until they are inaudible and Tom Riddle stays watching and Severus stays staring up at him.
Finally, Tom Riddle says, "The price of my Mark is three truths."
Lily sucks breath through her teeth. Not three memories, or three teeth, or three of any other thing that could be returned or removed to break the bond-any of them would have done-but truth. Making the bond unbreakable.
Severus opens his mouth slightly, lets it hang open a moment in confusion. "Is that all? My Lord?"
"That is all you must do, Severus. But know that if is not the absolute truth, the spell will know and fail. And I will know, and you will suffer for it." The smile Tom Riddle gives is enchanting, cryptic, as if the rest would be beyond Severus' reach until he takes the Mark. He loosens the throat of the bag and dips a finger into the ash there, rubbing it between his fingers. "Give me your left arm."
Severus fumbles with the cuff of his sleeve and shoves it roughly up. He extends his wrist without hesitation, and the Dark Lord wraps one long-fingered hand around it. The fingertip, darkened with ash, hovers above the bare skin where the Mark does not yet reside. "Begin. Your first truth, Severus."
"I want to fight for you," Severus starts on, fast, sure of himself. "And I'm valuable. I have talents that your organization does not yet possess, Dark magic I have developed myself, you've seen-"
Severus is interrupted with a rapid intake of breath in pain. The Dark Lord's fingertip draws one jagged line across his forearm, crossing the blue veins there. The ash burns bright, a dark flame flickering, and it must burn, the way Severus' breathing hitches.
"The first truth," the Dark Lord says, visibly pleased at the result. "Now, a second."
Severus swallows, but continues, more hesitant this time. He hasn't prepared this, but he's quick enough on his feet. "I am a half-blood. My-my mother is a witch-barely magical-and my father is a muggle." He takes a steadying breath, looking up into the Dark Lord's face. "I despise them both."
Another bright burning line of flame draws across his arm, this one expected, but no less painful for it. "As it should be, Severus," the Dark lord intones. "And the final truth?"
And here, Severus smiles. It's a cruel, cold thing, and this one is prepared as well, ready, an exchange. "You have a spy in your midst. Benjy Fenwick. He has been hanging about several of your Death Eaters, trying to curry your favor through them, all while feeding information to an organization called the Order of the Phoenix, which seeks to resist your work."
And Benjy died, Lily remembers. There wasn't even been enough of him left to bury in a teacup, let alone a casket.
If there really is love in her heart for this creature on his knees making an oath to the man who murdered her husband and son-it is poison. It is an ownership that recognizes that snake and skull tattooed now on his arm more than his soul-a litmus test that proves that this will work, could work. It's nothing else. Nothing. Nothing. It can't be anything else.
The Dark Lord pauses, clearly surprised. "Fascinating," he says, drawing the third and final line. "How did you come by this?"
"Overheard," Severus gasps, still in pain and drawing his arm back to his chest but following Tom Riddle's movement with his eyes. "My Lord. I met him-with the others-and I suspected. I followed him, and he left a note in the knothole of a tree. A note which the Auror Longbottom came to fetch not an hour after."
"Indeed," says Voldemort, pushing up his sleeve. "I thank you, Severus. And now, in exchange, I offer you one truth of my own." He dips his fingertip one last time into the ash and then lets the satchel drop to the ground with a soft puff of powder. Fixing Severus with his eyes, the Dark Lord says, "I killed my muggle father and my witch mother both. I am free myself from the failure in their blood. You will do the same, I think." His face splits into a smile. "A truth, and a gift."
With his fingertip he draws a single long line, elbow to wrist, on his own pale skin, and it burns, too. He seizes Severus elbow while the flames smolder, pulling Severus' hand to his own upper arm, like some kind of brother's handshake that presses their forearms together and reignites all the other ash on Severus' own arm. The sound of pain that slips through Severus' teeth makes is ice in her heart.
It only lasts a moment, though. When it's over, the Dark Lord frees him and Severus is released to the forest floor, gasping.
"You knelt as Severus Snape," Voldemort intones with all the weight of a ceremony that has been performed many times. "Rise, my Death Eater."
And Severus does, staggering slightly, the familiar skull-and-serpent inked on his arm below the smudged ash. He looks more proud and triumphant than she's ever seen him in his life.
-Lily comes up from the memory feeling sick. She watches the bowl, watches the Dark Lord and the man before him swirl away into the silver mist, and then looks up.
This older version of Severus, the one she knows now, looks pale-paler than usual, and just as sick as she feels. He knows what she has seen. What she must feel.
There's a thousand questions competing for space in her mouth, dominant among them why, why, why- but it answers itself, that look of hunger he knelt with, the look of triumph he rose with. Lily knows why.
"All right," she says finally, helplessly. "I know what to expect."
Severus extends the bowl with their own ash in it wordlessly and Lily takes it from his hands.
Then he kneels before her, and it's both like the memory and not.
He's not a supplicant this time. No-she has asked him for this and this is him, giving in, acquiescing. It's a grotesque parody of a proposal, Lily sees suddenly, overlaid with James, one-kneed, looking up with hope. The memory burns inside her traitor heart, and try as she might to douse it, she can't-she breathes in and her lungs are full of the smoke it makes. How full she'd felt then, as if her heart was a cup filled to overflowing. She tries to blink it back, exhaling sharply to push it out of her.
It only works by half, but at least she can see the man who is, still, before her. He is watching it play across her face-the memory, the pain. Perhaps not what it is for, not so specifically, but who-that would never be in question.
"Sorry," she says, scrubbing her sleeve across her face like a child.
He nods, smoothing his hands down his thighs, then lifts his wrist toward her.
She dips her fingers in and feels the grit of the ash between her fingertips, rougher than she had anticipated. Lily takes a deep breath, and then another, steadying herself, pushing away her grief, her twinned attachment for the dead man in her heart and the living one before her. It's like bailing a ship full of holes, but she does it anyway. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," he says.
He closes his eyes when she takes his wrist in her ruined hand, and when he opens them again they are fixed on her. Prepared, this time. "I will dedicate every effort I am capable off to your goals. To the destruction of the Dark Lord and the world he has built."
Which stops her heart but not her fingers. His wrist is in her hand, but the magic draws her forward, dragging her behind it. She can sense it, this thing that has been put inside of her, pushing close like a child's face to the glass of a window. It is a hungry thing, and it, more than she, draws the first glowing line across the throat of the snake. It shimmers, a keening thread of magic stitches them together, closer, like a hook anchored in his jaw.
It's working. It must be working.
"If I could," he says, through the pain. "If I could, were I capable, I would bring back your family. I would give them to you whole and alive once more. No matter the cost. I would give them back to you if I could."
The silence is awful, and she almost forgets herself. Her fingers tremble over the Mark, but her fingers know the way, she is barely in control of them. The thing inside Lily draws it, the second line. The bright hum of magic makes her teeth hurt as she does it, but it must be much worse for him-it burns, and he gasps.
Which means it's the truth. Her heart is in her truth, again, paid for in pain.
She hates it. She hates the pain it causes more than anything else she is capable of comprehending. Her focus is winnowed down to a point-less than a point. And for a moment, both of them merely rasp in and out breaths as best they can. A surge of fierce warmth, something full to bursting, runs through her like lightning. It's not drawn from anywhere but inside herself. Her traitor heart, the only thing left of her, beating a borrowed melody.
She knows what the final truth will be before he even speaks. She knows the pain it will cause him here is nothing, nothing in comparison the pain it has caused him before. And she knows how to answer it.
"I have loved you," he says finally. His glittering eyes are fierce and fixating. "More than half my life, I have loved you, and I would never deserve-"
She draws the line across his arm before he can finish-before he can turn it into a lie, before he can speak of what he believes he doesn't deserve.
Her truth is both a gift and a curse.
"You don't deserve it," she says, voice trembling, on the verge of tears, fingertip covered in ash hovering above the crook of her elbow. "But I love you anyway."
And she draws the final line, elbow to wrist, past where the curse took hold and ruined her, and takes Severus's arm against her own. The blackened skin of her hand stands stark against his pale skin. She pulls herself down to him, cradling their arms between their bodies with all the gentleness she has left inside of herself.
The magic between them feels like a riptide that will drown them both. She doesn't feel the pain of this thing they've done but the way Severus shakes against her, he must feel it for them both. She wraps her free arm around his back to press him close, pillowing her head on his shoulder. The magic binding them hums between their bodies, and she finds her mouth pressed to his throat and his spine curling around her.
His breath is ragged when the fire dies. His hand rises from her shoulder, pulling itself down her hair, down her spine. His fingers of his other hand tighten, momentarily, before prising themselves free as if against his own will. She pulls back and looks into his face.
He looks drawn, pale, weakened, and his eyes are only for his forearm as he rotates it free of the ruin of her fingers. There, the Mark is blurred, stretched-torn straight down the center with something paler than his skin, tight and shining like a healed scar. Not gone, never gone, but-changed. She can feel it.
And inside her, a spiderweb of possibility. A hundred other wells of power she can draw from. All the power the Dark Lord wields, hers to command.
None of it matters half so much as the man before her.
"I can't tell," he says absently, voice gone hoarse, staring down still. "I can't-"
"It worked," she says, with a certainty she presses to him with her fingers, "I feel it." And she pulls his mouth down to her own.