61

Lily woke suddenly, wrenched from a nightmare about Dementors into a nightmare of utter agony. Her every nerve ending seemed to be screaming; a distant shriek echoed frighteningly around her, full of shadow and sharp fear and horror. She kicked out wildly, gripping blindly around her for something to make the pain stop, to shield herself, to escape, to die.

Then it lifted, and she lay panting and shaking uncontrollably, her throat sore from screaming, the last echoes of her cries still chasing each other across the cavern walls. Her fingers were bleeding from her efforts to grip the rough stone beneath her; she could feel bruises on her knees. And the shadows around her were still there, moving, laughing, or muttering angrily.

"Dob–" she tried to whisper, but her tongue suddenly wrapped around itself, twisted at a choking angle against the back of her throat. She gagged, and the laughter around her echoed again.

"You tried that before," a cool voice informed her. "Using my house-elf against me… certainly a trick worthy of a Mudblood."

Lily was beginning to remember. This was not the first time she had woken up to the Cruciatus Curse, nor the first time she had tried desperately to call Dobby's name. How long had she been here? It felt like years, but surely it had only been hours? They hadn't fed her, and she wasn't hungry…

Or had they fed her, and she had just forgotten?

"My dear brother-in-law is erecting wards against house-elves as we speak," Lucius Malfoy continued. "No one is coming to rescue you, Mudblood."

Lily shivered. She didn't want them to see that she was afraid, but her body seemed out of her own control, trembling and sweating, her breathing coming in short bursts. She believed him: who could rescue her here? She didn't know where she was, but she was sure it was warded, and she vaguely remembered them taking her coin. And even if the Order did locate her, how could they rescue her? You-Know-Who himself was here.

She was afraid to look around and see if he was in this cavern with her, but the idea of not knowing was worse. Turning her head to the side, she glanced around, taking in the ragged robed figures lounging around the cave, some of them eating, some of them drinking potions, some of them testing out new wands from a pile laid out on velvet on a flat rock.

They were still recovering from the attack on Azkaban – from their escape. She counted at least seven Death Eaters in the cavern with her, and she could hear a distant murmur, and see a distant light flickering on the cavern walls, that convinced her there were more Death Eaters beyond this cave. Lily wondered how many had escaped. It was obvious the Order's efforts had been in vain. You-Know-Who had his army again.

You-Know-Who himself wasn't there with her. Among those she could see, Lucius Malfoy seemed to be in charge, though he looked haggard, his cheeks unshaven and dirty, his hand shaking slightly around his wand (or, more probably, someone else's). Disgust and weariness lined his face, and he looked much older than he had when she had been a first year, and he Head Boy.

One of the other Death Eaters, one of the Lestrange brothers, she thought, stepped away from the wand pile with three in his hands.

"Can't decide," he said, showing them to Malfoy. "Think I'd better test 'em out."

Lily knew immediately what he intended, and jerked away. Lestrange laughed.

"Skittish, aren't you? Crucio!"

Lily screamed and screamed, feeling like her flesh and bones and blood had all vanished, leaving only nerves, tormented nerves, as she writhed and sobbed on the floor. Then it ended, and Lestrange said casually, "Not sure about that one. Let's try another, shall we?"

Lily barely had time to breathe before it started again, the curse jerking her across the stone floor like a worm dying in the sun. When it ended, she couldn't catch her breath, and lay there wheezing and crying, refusing to beg, but not strong enough not to sob pitifully as Lestrange pulled out his last choice. "One more," he said cheerfully.

Just one more, she thought. I can survive one more.

But it wouldn't be only one, and she knew that. They would keep torturing her until she died.

Just let me die now, she thought. Just let me –

"But what's this?" Lestrange said, and his voice had changed, full both of shock and the beginnings of glee. "Why, Mrs. Potter, what has your husband been doing to you?"

She shivered at his tone, remembering in a flash Severus's desperate warning, all those months ago. What was Lestrange talking about?

The other Death Eaters were drawing near, too, abandoning their food to stare down at her. They looked angry and surprised and disgusted.

Lestrange crouched down beside her, and she tried to flinch away, her skin crawling, her stomach twisting, but rather than assault her in any way, he gripped her hand almost gently.

Her left hand.

Where the ring on her finger was glowing.

Blue, she thought, not processing for a moment what she was seeing. Blue for…

"Pregnant," Lestrange said. A sickening grin spread across his face. "What do you think, Mrs. Potter? Did my curse give you just the right nudge?"

Lily fainted.

Severus choked his way into consciousness, his mouth full of liquid, his throat rebelling against the sudden intrusion. He struggled, trying to cough, but some irresistible force pressed down on his throat, and he swallowed, before retching whatever it was up again with a sour edge of bile.

"Aww, does little Sev not want his medicine?"

Severus tensed at the sound of that voice, but the spell was already forcing him to swallow again, bile and all. He coughed and tried to vomit it up again, but Bella, sitting beside him, made him swallow again and again until the torture of it made his eyes water and his legs jerk in helpless agony.

"There, there," she mocked, finally relenting. "It's just a little healing potion. Couldn't you tell? Aren't you supposed to be good at potions?"

Severus's mouth was too tainted with bile to detect the flavor of whatever potion she'd given him, but he was suddenly aware of the throbbing pain in his back, lessening with every second.

He glared at her, distrusting her, still more than half convinced he'd been poisoned.

"Oh, you didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" she said, obviously guessing his thoughts. "No, the Dark Lord wants you alive, Snape… for now, at least." She flashed him a twisted grin.

He was still breathing hard, his throat aching with the memory of choking, but as Bella stopped speaking he heard a scream echoing from somewhere else in the cave – a woman's scream.

Lily, he thought, and, quite involuntarily, tried to sit up. It was then that he discovered he was tied down.

Bella had noticed his attempt to move, however, and smiled viciously. "Yes, we have your little Mudblood… well, one of your little Mudbloods." Her finger stroked his left hand, where the ring was. "A different Mudblood is wearing your ring, isn't she?"

Severus had to forcibly repress the memory of kissing Hermione, and the fear that surged through him at the mention of her. Bella had said the Death Eaters only had one of them – they only had Lily.

Severus felt a strange mingling of shame and guilt and confusion at the realization that he was glad it wasn't Hermione here.

But Lily – Lily wasn't as strong as Hermione. Lily wasn't as brave. And if they were going to have any chance of escape, Lily was a far lesser ally than Hermione would have been.

But escape how? He was in a cavern, dimly lit with strange purple lights, and Lily, he judged by the echoing screams, was in another cavern nearby. But how far were they from the entrance? No doubt there would only be one, closely guarded. Bellatrix was not the only Death Eater to escape Azkaban alive. There would be others, many others perhaps. Severus was wandless, weaponless, and he could feel that his pockets had been turned inside out, even those hidden deep within his robes. The coin was gone.

Bellatrix was watching his face with hungry amusement, her fingers still stroking over his ring finger. He resisted the urge to twitch away from her, but she made his skin crawl, and the light scraping of her nails against his skin might as well have been the screeching of nails against chalkboard.

He heard another sound nearby, a soft whisper of robes, and Bella looked up immediately in both fear and pleasure.

"Leave us," a cold voice spoke.

Severus remembered, in a vivid rush of emotions, the hours he had spent on Lucius Malfoy's carpet, waiting to be brought to the Dark Lord, to be tortured and murdered. He had resigned himself to it then; what had there been to live for, anyway? But there was no resignation in the terror that seized him now, and that frightened him almost more than anything.

He could not resign himself to this. He could not accept it. He wanted to live, to get back to Hermione, to see his older self and even Hermione's Gryffindorish friends again. There were so many possibilities that had just opened to him, so many hopes he had been suppressing for years, all still fragile, all delicate, yet beginning irresistibly to awaken from those long months in Azkaban, and the longer years of despair before that. He wanted to know what it felt like to be happy, to have friends he trusted, a fierce and loving woman, a full and fulfilling life. Until the past few weeks, his future had seemed like nothing more than a long, endless winding of twisted shadow and darkness, of pain and regret and shame, and now -

"I have waited many months for this," the Dark Lord said, gazing down at him where he lay bound and defenseless.

Severus could see the terrible scarring around the Dark Lord's eyes, and realized at once why the light in the cavern was so dim, so oddly tinted. Voldemort was nearly blind.

But not so blind that he didn't see the quirk of satisfaction at the edge of Severus's mouth, the reckless smugness in his eyes.

"Crucio!"

Severus jerked against the ropes, screaming aloud, conscious even in the vicious throes of his pain that his voice was echoing around him, eerie and broken at the edges. When the Dark Lord lifted the spell, he lay panting, the wound in his back throbbing anew, his limbs raw and sore where the ropes had cut into his twitching form.

"Painful, isn't it?" Voldemort asked, and Severus couldn't help but wonder if anyone had ever cast the Cruciatus Curse on him; if he himself would ever dare.

"It could have been different," Voldemort continued, the disappointment in his voice a mockery of the tone Dumbledore so often used. "You need not have suffered. I was prepared to offer you everything - even the Mudblood you so foolishly desired - and yet you turned away from me. That was a mistake, Severus."

Severus's skin was crawling far worse than it had done in Bellatrix's company. How could he have once wished to join this wizard? How could he had ever been such a fool?

And to think his other self had joined him, had allowed this creature to touch him, to mark him, to dominate him…

But Severus would not be dominated. Terrified though he was, anguished at the thought of losing everything he had finally been on the verge of gaining, he nonetheless glared straight into Voldemort's eyes and said, "It was you who made the mistake."

It was foolish, perhaps, to sneer at the wizard who was torturing him. But Severus remembered the absolute shock on Regulus's face when he had insulted the Dark Lord, and he felt a defiant urge to evoke that same shock in the dark wizard himself.

But Voldemort did not look shocked. He looked sharply eager, searching, as though he thought Severus had some secret to reveal. Severus felt the serpentine strike of a cold mind sinking into his, and resisted.

"What is it you are hiding from me?" Voldemort said. "What further treachery…?"

Severus felt himself balancing on the edge of a dozen thoughts, resisting the lure of the Horcruxes and the gates, but holding tightly - yet subtly, he must keep his thoughts subtle - to the knowledge that if Voldemort was searching for something, he, Severus, must find a way to use that.

But what was the Dark Lord searching for? And what could Severus give him?

"It was not you who Obliviated Bella," Voldemort said. Severus resisted every impulse of surprise. "I have performed Priori Incantatem on your wand; I know it was not you."

So they had his wand. That was better, he reflected, than if his wand had been abandoned in Azkaban, hundreds of miles away.

"But you know who it was," Voldemort continued.

It was only because his mind was still gripping Severus's that Severus was able to feel the tremor of doubt in the Dark Lord's thoughts. Voldemort believed Severus had this information, but he didn't know. He was troubled.

"And if I do?" Severus said, projecting contempt into the jaws of the Dark Lord's mind.

Voldemort's face twisted, as if he had tasted something bitter. "Then you will tell me… willingly or otherwise. Legilimens!"

What had before been a venomous pressure around the edges of his mind became suddenly a crushing force, so intense that Severus cried out. He had been expecting it, of course, but the pain of it, the realization of his own weakness and weariness, shook him badly, and he writhed against the ropes, trying vainly to pull away.

Fragmented thoughts were torn out of him - Hermione's otter Patronus, flickering out - Dementors everywhere - the stunning pain of the knife in his back -

Severus forced his writhing body to fall still, forced his mind to equal stillness. The Dark Lord wrenched his suddenly clear mind this way and that for a moment longer, then withdrew.

"You are trained in Occlumency," Voldemort murmured. "Lucius did say you were resourceful… A pity you have not put your talents to better use."

"Isn't that the pot calling the cauldron black?"

Voldemort's red eyes flashed. "Do you feel I have wasted my talents?" His mouth might have been curved in a smile, if the expression had not been so full of rage. "I have freed my servants, murdered your allies, and captured you and one of your Mudblood whores. The entirety of Wizarding Britain is bound to me through the marriage law…"

Severus felt his heart miss a beat. The ring! He had forgotten its power, its true power, its true purpose. If he took it off, the Aurors would know his location instantly. They would come for him.

Assuming there were any left, after the attack tonight. Assuming they would want to waste time on a mere marriage violation arrest.

His heart was beating faster, and Voldemort must have noticed the sudden energy in him, though he tried to hide it. He cleared his mind, wishing the idea away, but Voldemort, too quick this time, struck out and caught it.

Far from being alarmed, he tilted his head back in a cold, high laugh that echoed far more ominously than any screams.

"You wish to remove your ring, Severus? By all means, do so."

Severus felt a cold unease ripple through him. "The Aurors…"

"No Aurors will come." Voldemort's mouth twisted into that angry smile again. "Your location - and the location of your beloved Mudblood wife - will be transmitted to the Marriage Law Implementation Unit, who will determine whether to forward it to the Aurors - or to me." His eyes glittered redly.

Severus's unease was changing rapidly to fear. What if Hermione tried to find him by taking off the ring? What if she brought the Death Eaters straight to her?

"Shall we see what happens?" Voldemort asked, his fingers ghosting over the skin Bellatrix had caressed. This time Severus did flinch.

"It would be amusing to have both of your Mudbloods in my possession. Perhaps you could choose which will die first?"

In what he knew was a futile effort, Severus clenched his fist around the ring, willing it to stay on his finger, willing it to bind itself to his very flesh.

"Tell me about Bellatrix," Voldemort said - triumphantly now, clearly believing he had won.

"I didn't Obliviate her," Severus replied.

Impatience burned in the Dark Lord's eyes. "As I said, I am aware of that."

Severus, of course, didn't have the faintest idea who had Obliviated Bellatrix or why. He couldn't imagine why anyone, even the gentlest Order member, would choose a Memory Modification Charm rather than a lethal or at least debilitating spell.

"Maybe it was one of the Death Eaters," he said spitefully, before realizing, with a plunging sense of regret, exactly who it must have been.

The Dark Lord caught his sense of realization, and also his sense of regret. Before Severus could guard himself, Voldemort was in his mind again, a terrible crushing force that seemed to break the walls of his mind faster than he could build them.

And Severus was aware, keenly aware, that by protecting that piece of information, he was endangering Hermione (and, no doubt, Lily), and yet also aware, with equal force, that if Voldemort gained this answer from him, he was as good as dead.

But he could not withstand the pressure. He was not the Occlumens his older self had become. Fiercely, with as much terror and hatred as he could muster, he pictured -

"Wormtail?" Voldemort hissed, drawing back in astonishment.

Severus took care to let resentment and regret fill him, along with all of the fear he truly felt that his life was rapidly coming to an end.

"Wormtail is mine," Voldemort said, sharply, denying the supposed truth Severus had shown him.

Severus said nothing, letting the idea take hold.

"The Dementors claimed that the betrayal was motivated by family…"

Severus was about to tell him that Pettigrew thought of his worthless friends as family, when the Dark Lord got there himself.

"But Potter and Black were his family," he said, pacing away from Severus. "He referred to them as such the first time I captured him, I am sure of it."

Back and forth he paced, his robes casting slow black shadows on the violet-lit walls of the cave.

"And Bellatrix was torturing Black… his friend… his brother, in his eyes… but would Black have forgiven him? Yet perhaps Black does not know all that Wormtail has done… Perhaps I shall have to enlighten him…"

Severus held his breath, willing himself to make no sound, to draw no notice. If the Dark Lord would only go after Pettigrew - before killing Severus, before killing Lily - if he would only give Severus a few more hours, even a few more minutes to live, to think, to escape -

Voldemort wheeled on him suddenly, red eyes glinting. "But how do you know this?"

Severus was prepared for this. "I saw them, on broomstick…"

It was no lie. He had seen Black and Potter, and even on occasion Pettigrew, on broomstick often enough over the years.

Voldemort's eyes narrowed. "Wormtail did not fly away with Black. He is here, in this cave…"

"Obviously, he didn't want you to know," Severus said, trying to make his voice sound weak rather than condescending. "Why else would he have Obliviated Bellatrix?"

"But why return? If he has truly betrayed me -"

"Because of what you said," Severus said, still trying to sound weak, beaten. "Black wouldn't have forgiven him, not even if Wormtail helped him escape. He would need to prove himself -"

"To spy?" Voldemort said, outraged.

Severus said nothing, just let his eyes fall half-closed in apparent exhaustion.

And it worked. Voldemort turned away, sweeping out of the cavern and out of sight.

Breathing freely again, Severus began to look around.

When Lily opened her eyes, she knew at once that her fainting spell had not lasted long. The Death Eaters still surrounded her, their positions unchanged except perhaps by an inch or two, their expressions still largely of disgust.

And the ring - the ring was still glowing. She was still pregnant. Pregnant.

Lucius Malfoy bent over her, and she flinched as his wand curved and flicked through the air above her abdomen.

"Don't hurt it," she whispered, unable to stop herself from begging for the child, even if she hadn't begged for herself.

Malfoy's cold gray eyes met hers for the briefest instant, but she saw at once, with a pang of shock, that he had no intention of hurting the baby. The spells he was casting, she recognized after a moment, were diagnostic.

"Is Potter the father?" he asked, in a cold, sneering tone.

"Is - of course he is!" she snapped, not so beaten that she could not feel indignant. "How dare -"

"You were known to be a favorite of Snape's," Malfoy said, to sniggers from the others.

"Snape and I never - how dare -"

"Stop pretending to be virtuous," the Lestrange who had tortured her said. "We can all see you're not." He lightly kicked her left hand, the way he might have kicked an animal out of the way.

Lily drew the ring close to herself, almost protectively, as if by shielding its fragile blue glow she could protect the little life inside her.

Oh, but what about all the people who were linked to her ring? Would they all show up as pregnant? What would this do to them? Had Hermione's spell accounted for this at all?

Would they know where she was, with the ring? All those tracking spells the Ministry had put in place…

Except it hadn't been the Ministry. It had been the Death Eaters.

Lily flinched as Malfoy stood up, and hated herself for it, because it was not out of fear of him but out of fear at losing his shelter. The clinical hostility in his eyes had been vastly preferable to the outright hunger in Lestrange's.

"How many Crucios you think it'll survive?" he asked. "Anyone care to bet?"

"Don't be absurd," Malfoy said, and Lily could clearly hear his distaste for the man beside him - his brother-in-law, wasn't he?

"Absurd?" Lestrange echoed, rather dangerously.

"The child is Potter's. A half-blood - magically powerful, or the ring would have prevented its conception. It would be foolish to kill it."

Lestrange was looking at Malfoy as if he'd grown a second head. But Malfoy, Lily could see, had reached a line he was not willing to cross.

"She's a Mudblood," Lestrange said.

"As I said," Malfoy said slowly, as if speaking to a half-wit, "the child will be half-blood."

"Half-blood scum," Lestrange said, turning his head and casually spitting on Lily, who cringed.

"But half-blood nonetheless. There are other half-bloods in service to the Dark Lord, are there not?" Malfoy turned his head as he said it, and Lily knew he was speaking directly to the half-bloods in the room, of whom there must have been two or three, judging by the answering glares.

Lestrange, who had looked ready to murder Malfoy a moment ago, suddenly laughed. "Little baby Potter's going to serve the Dark Lord, is he?" He cackled. "How d'you like that, Mudblood?"

Lily didn't answer. Malfoy was protecting her child, out of whatever twisted excuse for a moral center he had, and she wasn't about to compromise that by provoking any of the other Death Eaters. Especially not Lestrange.

There was a strange gasp, a gasp that might have been silent outside, but that in the confines of the cave echoed dramatically. The Death Eaters turned, and a sunken figure cowered against the wall at the entrance to the cavern, his watery eyes fixed on the blue glow Lily was cradling to her chest.

"Wormtail!" she snarled, half-sitting up, her resolve of a moment ago not to provoke anyone instantly forgotten. This was the vermin who had brought Death Eaters to her wedding. This was the traitor who had gotten dozens of her loved ones killed.

Wormtail tried to withdraw, but Lestrange, obviously sensing the tension between them, even if he had been in prison for its cause, called out, "Come in, Wormtail. Let me have a look at you. You've always been wearing the mask before."

Lily blinked, startled. Had the other Death Eaters not known who Wormtail was?

Evidently most of them had not. Lucius Malfoy didn't look remotely surprised to find Peter Pettigrew in their midst, but most of the others seemed to have no idea who he was, until one of them - a Slytherin a few years older than Lily, whose name she didn't know but whose face she instantly recognized - said, "Weren't you Potter's friend?"

"He was," Malfoy said, when Wormtail, still cowering against the wall and staring at Lily, didn't answer. "His beloved, trusted friend - weren't you, Peter?"

Peter flinched at the use of his first name, his gaze finally darting from Lily to the other Death Eaters. Feeling pity for him was so ingrained in Lily's nature that, even here, surrounded by the Death Eaters he had betrayed her for, she felt a sudden irrational sense of compassion for his obvious fear of them.

She banished it quickly, but it had at least served the purpose of cooling her fury. She swallowed back the urge to confront him, and lowered herself back to the stone floor, trying not to draw anyone's attention now that they were all looking at this new object - this new target.

For it was plain none of them regarded him with any respect. Whatever role he had played in their meetings until now, masked or otherwise, had obviously drawn their scorn and disgust. Malfoy turned away from him, as if he found his presence even more distasteful than Lily's. Lestrange, on the other hand, looked amused and eager.

"Why don't you come and play, Peter?" he said. "We caught a pretty little Mudblood. Guess you already know her."

Peter's gaze was flickering between Lestrange and Lily with a kind of guilty horror mingled with a look she didn't understand. Curiosity? Hope? Whatever it was, he shuffled forward from the wall, eyes still turning more to Lily than to Lestrange.

"Hello, Lily," he said quietly.

If Lestrange hadn't just spat on her, she would have spit on Peter in that moment. As it was, it took all of her strength to hold still. She wanted to attack him.

Her expression must have shown it, because Lestrange laughed again. "She doesn't like you very much, Peter."

Peter flushed, but Lily thought it was less from shame at what he'd done to her than from humiliation at the mocking tone Lestrange had used. It sent a chill through her: this was Peter, the Peter she had known for half her life. Had he always been like this? Had this always been inside him, waiting to emerge?

For a strange moment, she compared him to Severus: both outcasts, both unpopular, both poor, both far from handsome. Yet, though Peter had found friends to protect and love him, Severus had ultimately had nothing, no one. But when he was tempted to join the Death Eaters, he resisted. He had protected her. He had fought by her side. The difference between them - the strong, fierce, foolish boy she had rejected, and this cowardly cringing wretch she had befriended and trusted - was striking.

Merlin, but she'd been a fool. James, Sirius, poor Remus, even Dumbledore - all of them, really. Severus might have been a git in their fifth year, but they'd had a bloody psychopath sleeping in their dorms and joining their secret wartime meetings and none of them had noticed.

But was Peter a psychopath? Had he not just been frightened into this, tortured and coerced?

She searched his face, as he was searching hers, and still she saw no shame, no remorse, just a cringing sort of resentful guilt, as if he'd been caught doing something wrong and was more upset about getting caught than doing wrong.

People had died because of him, and it couldn't have been plainer he regarded it as an embarrassing inconvenience.

Her hatred for him was overwhelming. Would it destroy the baby, all this fear and hate? Its first moments of life were all horror, anger, despair, terror, contempt, loathing. Would it be evil, like this creature in front of her? Was Lestrange right? Had his Cruciatus Curse caused this conception? Would it hurt the child? Would it rot away in her womb?

But no, it was just a baby - a poor innocent baby - she wanted to shower it with love and happiness, safety and hope. Was she destroying it? Here, surrounded by evil and darkness, was there enough good left alive in her to keep the baby full of light?

My poor baby, she thought, and only narrowly resisted pressing her hands to her womb to cradle it. She didn't want the Death Eaters to see that - didn't want them mocking her, or hurting her, or hurting the baby.

It was obvious Peter was thinking about the baby, too, because his gaze kept flickering from her face to the ring to her womb and back again, as if trying to decide how to feel about it. It was creepy, almost creepier in its way than Lestrange's open leer.

"You're not going to hurt the baby?" Peter asked, suddenly glancing up at Lestrange and Malfoy.

Lestrange sneered, but Malfoy simply said, "No. The child will be a half-blood. It will serve some purpose."

"Is that so?"

The Death Eaters flinched as one, dropping to their knees and turning to face the entrance of the cave. Most of them were clumsy, still aching and weary from Azkaban and the duels they had escaped. Peter was uncomfortably close to Lily; she could see his untied shoelace, his dirty sock, his bare ankle.

And there, poking out of his pocket, his wand.

Her heart tripping over itself, her fingers shook, her head felt dizzy. It was so close - so close.

"You say the Mudblood is pregnant?" Voldemort asked.

"Yes, my lord," Malfoy answered at once, in a hushed, slightly hoarse voice. "The child is Potter's -"

"And you decided it would serve a purpose, did you, Lucius?"

A shiver ran through the Death Eaters. Malfoy kept his head bowed, his dirty silver-gold hair brushing the floor. "The child will be a half-blood, my lord. What better revenge than to raise it to defeat the cause its parents fought for?"

Lily's attention was split. She wanted the wand, badly. But she was also terrified of making a move, agonizingly conscious that her life, and the life of her precious baby, depended wholly on whether Voldemort agreed with Malfoy or not.

After a long silence, Voldemort said, "The child may be useful."

Lily tried not to sigh in relief.

"But you should not have made such a determination yourself, Lucius."

"My lord, I sought only to preserve a potential asset. I defer to you in everything. If you wish me to kill the Mudblood and her child, I will do so." Malfoy sounded desperate and tired, his voice growing hoarser by the moment, roughened after his months in Azkaban.

"Your loyalty is noted," Voldemort said. "The loyalty of others here... is less certain."

Another shiver ran through the cavern, this one more pronounced, more fearful. Lily at first assumed he meant her, but his gaze was scanning the other Death Eaters, with their bent, dirty heads, their grimy fingers, they ragged robes.

Without warning, he raised his wand and said, "Crucio!"

And Peter, barely a foot in front of her, let out a high-pitched shriek, toppled over onto his side, and jerked and twitched and rolled his way onto her.

Lightning-quick, her fingers darted into his pocket, gripped the wand, and slid it into her own robes, all before Peter's screaming stopped. He panted, sobbing, and she pushed him away from her.

"My lord," he gasped. "I am loyal - I am loyal! Have I not proven…?" He broke off in a choking, keening sob.

"You have proven nothing more than your capacity for treachery," Voldemort said, and Lily shuddered at the fury in his voice. "You are a worm."

"My lord, please… please! I am your loyal servant!"

"You have betrayed me, as you betrayed your friends. Crucio!"

But Peter was too quick. He transformed to a roomful of gasps, though whether the Death Eaters were gasping at his Animagus abilities or at the sheer audacity of trying to use them to escape the Dark Lord's punishment, Lily wasn't sure. Certainly it was unwise; only seconds later, with a look of such violent rage that Lily curled into a little ball to protect herself from it, Voldemort lashed out with his wand, screaming again, "Crucio!" and Peter's little rat form writhed back into a shrieking man.

"You dare?" Voldemort hissed.

"Please, please, my lord! I have not betrayed you! I have been loyal! I have been -"

"Avada Kedavra!"

Lily gulped back a little scream. The Death Eaters were all lit with a brilliant flash of green light, and she saw Voldemort squint his scarred eyes from the brightness of it. Then it was dark again, and Peter's slumped form lay motionless on the floor.

"Dispose of him!" Voldemort hissed, before sweeping out of the cavern.

The Death Eaters slowly raised their heads, glanced at each other in mingled alarm and relief, then hastened to obey.