A/N: This chapter picks up directly where chapter 15 left off (although it's not necessary to read that one to understand what's going on here).

~ With Me, Into The Dark ~

As Severus faced off against the remaining boggarts, he felt Lilith's hands clutching at the back of his robes. She trembled with fear even now, when the creatures had already transformed from her worst nightmare into his, and were quickly and skillfully vanquished.

Lucius, having taken nearly as long to banish a single monster as it had taken Severus to defeat the other four, now crossed the room to join his Death Eater companions. He arrived next to them just as Lilith collapsed against Severus, mumbling something Lucius couldn't quite catch.

Severus knelt awkwardly - careful to keep the unconscious witch from sliding off his back onto the ground as he did so - until he was in a position where he could contort his torso in a way that allowed him to get a proper hold of Lilith and transfer her from where she was plastered against his back into a position where one wrong move would not send her crashing to the rotten floorboards. (And of course, Malfoy offered no assistance during the entire ordeal, despite the fact that he was standing right there and easily could have helped - not that the thought of doing so was likely to have even occurred to him.)

Considering how reckless Lilith was in battle, fainting in fear like some distressed damsel from a cheap romance novel was not something Severus would have ever expected of her. It seemed her phobia of phoenixes was more severe than it had first appeared.

"What did she say?" Lucius asked, his curiosity getting the better of him despite the seriousness of the situation.

Severus looked up at the older man, his expression caught somewhere between bewilderment and worry, and replied, "She said, 'the whole world was fire'."

"What happened?" Azalais asked as Severus carefully settled Lilith's limp form onto one of the infirmary beds.

"She fainted."

"That doesn't sound like her," Azalais replied, frowning. "Unless the three of you were drinking?"

"No. We ran across a nest of boggarts."

The healer's frown deepened.

"I thought it was an information gathering mission. Weren't you at a bar? How did you just happen to run across a nest of boggarts?"

Snape bristled at the healer's scathing tone.

"Lucius wanted to check and make sure the information we got was authentic before we reported it to the Dark Lord," he explained. "We were searching the ruins when we were attacked by a family of boggarts." He paused, debating whether he really wanted to attempt to discuss this with her or not. He knew the two women were childhood friends, but Azalais was overprotective of Lilith and might react badly to someone digging for personal information if he did not go about it carefully. "The ones that attacked her turned into phoenixes."

"That's odd."

"How so?"

"Her mother's familiar was a phoenix. When Adelaide died, the phoenix stayed behind to watch over the children."

"And Lilith wasn't afraid of it?"

"Not a bit! The phoenix would even sit on Lilith's shoulder sometimes and Lilith would pet it..." Azalais trailed off and looked at Severus thoughtfully for a moment.

This is the critical moment. She does know something, I'm sure of it.

And he had one more card to play.

"There was something else," Severus said slowly. "Before she passed out she said, 'the whole world was fire'."

The healer's expression momentarily twisted into something akin to fury, but she quickly schooled her features into a blank mask.

"You should leave," she said coldly.

"Why?" Snape asked, deciding against his better judgment to push his luck.

"It's none of your concern. And you are not to ask her about it." When it looked as though he was going to argue, the healer drew her wand.

Severus decided that a tactical retreat was in order.

Once Snape was gone, Azalais went to Lilith's bedside and reached down to smooth the older witch's hair back from her face. Even in her unconscious state, Lilith seemed agitated. The younger woman knew that Lilith had repressed memories having to do with a fire which had destroyed half of the Goyle mansion sometime around ten or eleven years ago, but she didn't know the specifics of what had happened that day.

The healer was not yet a master Legilimens, but she had been studying the art and was somewhat proficient. What she found in Lilith's mind would make her wish she had never learned the skill...

It came to her in flashes, not as a single coherent scene.

Twelve-year-old Lilith, distraught over the loss of her spirit eyes, taking up the tarot deck...

Thirteen-year-old Lilith spending countless hours looking through ancient tomes of dark magic in her father's library, until one day she finally finds-

... painting a complex pattern on the floor in her woman's blood while chanting an incantation in a long-forgotten language...

... her mother's beloved phoenix fighting the demon - protecting both children, as the girl had contracted with the demon to exchange her brother's soul for otherworld sight, not knowing the demon would simply have taken her soul as well after she sacrificed the boy...

... the demon's laughter as it summoned another handful of black flames...

... the tiny body crumbling to ash in her arms, no hint of a spark remaining...

And then the demon was cleaved in two by the black blade of a scythe. A figure cloaked in black robes sat astride a rearing Thestral (much larger and more fierce-looking than young Prince Asphodel), and the girl was so happy to see him that she nearly forgot the sorrow of losing her treasured protector and the stinging pain of the Covenant of Damnation which was newly burned into her back with demon flame.

"... and then the whole world was fire," murmured Death Himself, pressing a soft kiss to the girl's forehead. When the child woke, she would remember nothing of her contract with the demon, the only remnant of it being the rose-shaped brand between her shoulder blades and a vague memory of fire. She would also forget her childhood crush on the Reaper, as well as her quest to regain her spirit eyes. Unfortunately, she would also have to forget her mother's phoenix, because the inter-connectivity of the memories could bring everything crashing back if one string were pulled...

~end of scene~