Scenes from a War: The Marriage of Alice and Frank

This is another one of those little Mary Potter background bonus stories. It's MP Canon, and has actually been referenced a couple of times already in the main fic. There will probably be an aftermath scene from someone else's POV eventually, just to wrap things up, because it ends somewhat abruptly.

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Two women – one a fiery redhead with cold green eyes who looked to be about nineteen, the other serene and silver-haired, though her face was nearly as youthful – sat at a table for eight in the middle of a kitchen which might have been some sort of movie set. There were walls, giving it a sense of being no larger than the average kitchen in a moderately well-to-do suburban home, but these ended abruptly about eight feet up, revealing that it sat at one side of a warehouse, the ceiling hidden beyond several suspended lights. A careful observer might have wondered exactly how these lights were suspended, given that there was no convenient scaffolding or the like to run cables along. In fact, that same careful observer might also have noted that the 'refrigerator' was not plugged in to anything, and (despite the slow-simmering pot of stew on the back burner) neither was the range connected to any gas line. The sink, they would have noted, was really only a basin, and there were no taps. The only apparently functional aspects of the kitchen (simmering stew notwithstanding) was the (admittedly comfortable) expanse of counter-tops and cupboards, and the table itself. A very careful observer, or one who knew what to look for, might have spotted the runes carved into the cooking surfaces of the range or the coils of the fridge, or the fact that the lights tended to bobble a bit and waver as the concentration of whichever witch had conjured them was otherwise occupied.

Of course, that very careful observer would likely have long since noted that the witches in question were discussing, or debating rather, the point at which reviving a heart that had technically stopped beating counted as necromancy, which would have rendered all such observations rather superfluous. The conversation would also have revealed that the two witches were Lily Evans, a trainee healer and researcher for the vigilante organization known as the Order of the Phoenix, and Pandora Sage-Willow, who had just finished her own Healer's training only months before. Their very strange, rather Spartan accommodations were the product of the Order's hasty efforts to establish a series of anonymous safehouses throughout the UK. This one was the closest they had to a secret hospital, the finer points of décor (and function) neglected in favor of necessities like potioneering supplies and reference texts, and filled in as needed by magic.

"So are you going home tonight?" Lily asked with a yawn. They had been talking for hours, almost since she had arrived, exhausted and starving after a twelve-hour shift at the real hospital where she was properly apprenticed, and they were quickly approaching the point where she should go to sleep in order to be reasonably well-rested before returning to St. Mungo's in the morning.

Pandora shrugged noncommittally. "Xeno was following up a lead in Birmingham tonight."

Lily nodded. She understood well her companion's disinclination to go home alone, especially since Pandora wasn't and would never be a fighter. Not that her boyfriend, Xeno, was much of a fighter, but there was still a measure of security in company – safety in numbers, and all that. Thankfully, the converted warehouse that was Safehouse Four had plenty of beds. It also had strong wards, and three full-time residents: Lily herself and two younger muggleborns who had gone to bed at an altogether more reasonable hour. "Well, there's no patients tonight, so you can have any room you like."

Before Pandora could accept her offer (which Lily knew she would), a series of alarm klaxons began blaring, alerting the safehouse to the fact that its wards had been breached by unexpected (but recognized) visitors. Above the wailing of what sounded like an air-raid siren, a young man's voice shouted a recorded quote from an all-too-appropriate American television show: "Attention all personnel! Incoming wounded! Both shifts to O.R. on the double! Incoming wounded!"

All thoughts of sleeping arrangements vanished in an instant. The witches lurched to their feet and ran for the main room of the warehouse – their reception area and operating theater in one – as the unmistakable sound of James Potter wailing for his fiancé's attention joined the usual cacophony. "Evaaaans!"

Pandora cut the alarms. Lily hardly noticed them anymore once the adrenaline of a job to do kicked in. And unfortunately it was a job, not just James and his best mate, Sirius Black, dropping by for a late-night snack after their patrol rounds, though both wizards were present, along with nearly the full complement of Auror Order members, variously injured and collapsed around a pair of port-keys.

Five of the eight wizarding detectives (and trainees) were apparently unconscious: Julian Kerr, James' mentor and the most senior of the group; Alastor Moody, Sirius' mentor; Sirius himself; Edgar Bones; and Frank Longbottom. Wait – strike that – Pandora had cast a quick series of status charms at the downed men: Kerr was dead, and for all Lily still thought that restarting his heart wouldn't really count as necromancy – he couldn't have been dead long, after all – she couldn't waste time trying to revive him when Edgar was seizing and Moody was bleeding heavily from a gash like a claw mark that had torn open his robes and Frank seemed to be somehow dissolving all over his junior partner and fiancé, Alice Diggory. Lily was absolutely certain she had never seen anything like that before.

James was still on his feet, with a broken arm and a somewhat delirious expression, wild-eyed. Lily didn't have time to deal with him, at the moment. Marlene McKinnon, Edgar's junior partner, was scrambling to her feet as well, though she moved with the very distinct jerks and tremors of someone who had been recently subjected to the Cruciatus. Alice was trying futilely to lift Frank from the cold floor, obviously in shock if she hadn't thought to use her wand.

Lily took over that task at once, levitating him to the nearest examination table. As was their established procedure, she would map out the curse(s) on him – the highest priority patient due both to the severity of his injuries and the unknown, but obviously progressive nature of the curse causing them. Pandora would treat those with more obvious diagnoses in order of urgency, probably beginning with Edgar – seizures were never good. There were several popular curses that could cause them: she simply needed to determine which it was. The kids – she looked around, and yes, okay, both Jessie and Becca had arrived, tousled and yawning, but upright and ready to help – they would deal with the lower-priority patients.

She turned her full attention to the man before her, his skin sloughing off even as it devolved into a greyish sludge. She vanished his robes and as much of the gunk as possible, but whatever the curse was, it wasn't stopping there: it had begun to eat into the muscles of his right upper arm, even as it continued to spread superficially over the rest of his body. That must have been the point of impact.

She began casting diagnostic charms at it, gathering information on its progression (exponentially worsening), the exact nature of the changes (breakdowns on the fucking cellular level – what kind of spell could…?), the nature of the curse (destructive – no surprise there) and Frank's vital signs (faltering). Stasis spells had no effect whatsoever. His heart-rate was increasing and blood-pressure rising with his core temperature as his extremities began to blacken and wither, even before the dissolution reached them. His magic was flaring wildly, causing micro-tears and fractures within his own muscle and bones. His lungs were filling with fluid as his blood pressure increased and, yes, if she wasn't mistaken, the blood vessels that facilitated oxygen exchange in the lungs were beginning to deteriorate, too. She siphoned the excess fluid out through his mouth, but that did nothing to solve the underlying problem, even if it did let him breathe somewhat easier for the moment. The brain scan was particularly disturbing, revealing the exponential proliferation of some sort of… malicious protein molecule? (Her diagnostics were not designed to deal with this…) And there were increasingly obvious lesions in the frontal lobe. His stomach seemed to have been punctured, allowing its acid to begin eating away at the surrounding organs. That, at least, she could neutralize, and did.

But there was no spell she could think of that would result in this sort of damage to so many systems at once, and she couldn't even find the bloody edges of it to try to unravel it with Frank's magic flaring as it was. Even if she could, there was a very good chance that Frank would die of the symptoms before the curse could be lifted in order to treat them individually.

It wasn't often that Lily Evans admitted to being outclassed, but by the time Sirius appeared at her side, she was considering not the best way to go about breaking the curse, but the logistics of getting Frank to St. Mungo's and into the hands of a proper healer. She was good – very good, even, given her extensive investigations of… extralegal treatment options over the past few years – but she wasn't fully trained by any stretch of the imagination, and this was well beyond her pay grade.

"Evans!"

"Black! What the hell is going on? Why are you all here? Frank needs St. Mungo's, and a Cursebreaker-Healer. I don't even know what this is. It's like his magic is turning against his body. There's at least six different symptom-sets and stasis isn't doing a damn thing, and–"

Sirius was shaking his head slowly. "It's the Aniquilaram, or something like it."

Lily felt herself go lightheaded. "Are you sure? I've only read about…"

Sirius nodded grimly. "I've seen it cast before, and it's not exactly the sort of thing you forget."

The witch definitely was not going to ask the circumstances under which he had seen a demonstration of the kind of curse that turned its victim's magic against their own magical signature, attacking their fundamental identity. She would admit that that could conceivably lead to the effects she was seeing at the cellular and molecular levels, but it was one of the darkest and most difficult spells she knew of – the sort of thing that took fifteen minutes of incanting to cast, and definitely wasn't suited to battle – she hadn't even considered it in the differential for that reason alone!

He must have been able to read her doubt from her face, because he added: "Tipple cast it as a death curse."

Well. That changed things. It was almost common for a wizard's dying act of will to break the normal laws of magic. The formation of ghosts as a lasting impression of their character was the least of it.

"Frank killed Tipple?" she confirmed.

The wizard nodded again.

Fuck!

That meant the curse would almost certainly be far stronger than if it were cast conventionally, making it almost impossible to remove. St. Mungo's wouldn't even try – the counter for the Aniquilaram (for the whole class of curses that triggered magical auto-immune responses) was soul magic, black, and every bit as illegal as the Aniquilaram itself, not to mention it was designed to be used on oneself, not someone else. But Sirius was looking at her strangely, as though he was expecting…

Oh.

Oh no.

He couldn't want her to actually try to adapt the Întunericul care Arde on the fly, could he? "You – you're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"

He didn't even have the good grace to pretend he didn't know what she was talking about. "Yes."

"The counter for this is – you can't be serious, Black!" The Întunericul was reputedly akin to using fiendfire to 'cleanse' the soul: a brute force method for overwhelming dark magic with even darker magic. Even if she could figure out how to do it on another person… "With this degree of damage – the pain – he could lose his mind!"

Not to mention she could lose her mind, if the Dark overwhelmed her. Channeling that sort of raw magic was insanely risky. And this was coming from someone who practiced both Black and White magic with what most wizards would consider to be disturbing regularity.

"I know. I've – Trixie did it for me, once. Believe me, I know."

Lily refused to be side-tracked by this fascinating nugget of Black Family history (had he had the Aniquilaram cast on himself?), even if it did explain why Sirius was under the impression that the spell in question could be used on someone else.

"And that's not even considering that it's a death curse," she continued, "and I don't have anything like enough power to counteract something like that!" She might have the strength of will to oppose a death curse, maybe, but the rule of thumb was that three times as much power was needed to dispel a curse by brute force than to cast it, and with the power of Tipple's life behind it, it would take… Gods and Powers – she didn't even know – a power sharing ritual, maybe? Tapping directly into a ley line? It was absurd even to contemplate doing it without any preparation whatsoever. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't just cast the Mercy Spell on him and put him out of his misery!?"

"You owe me, Evans!"

If she had been angry before, now she was furious. "I do not! You said we were even after the polyjuice thing!" She still didn't know why Sirius had needed her to impersonate him with the aurors, but spending eight hours convincing both James and Moody that she was Sirius had more than repaid the one time he had allowed her to escape auror custody after she was caught in disguise in a Knockturn raid, especially since she had escaped him before the 'opening' he was planning to give her.

Sirius cowered, his taller frame seeming to collapse in on itself. Lily suspected her eyes were doing the thing again, the one the Marauders called the Death Glare, because generally speaking, Sirius Black was not easily cowed.

Alice grabbed her arm, thoroughly distracting her from her anger at the idea that Sirius would put this on her, especially when he knew what he was asking. All at once, she realized she was being incredibly selfish: the love of Alice's life was dying in front of her, and all Lily could think was that it would be kinder to put him out of his misery than to try to heal him.

"Please, Lily – you have to! I can't lose Frank. I – I just can't. Siri said you…"

Her head whipped back to the errant Black. He better not have said anything compromising! That was the entire basis of their deal! "What? What did you say, Black?"

But Sirius didn't look guilty. He looked old, and tired. He looked like a man fighting a war, for once, instead of an overgrown child playing pranks on the enemy. He met her eyes solidly and said, "I told her he'd need a miracle, and you are the only person on our side who might be crazy enough to try it."

Taken with the fact that he had admitted that the only other person he knew who had done it was the Blackheart… Well, if that wasn't a backhanded compliment, Lily didn't know what was.

Alice spoke again before Lily could tell him to go fuck himself, recalling her again to the situation at hand. "Lily, I'm begging you! I'll do anything – if there's any chance at all…" Her expression was pathetic. Absolutely hopeless. As though the fate of the most important person in her world hung on Lily's next word (which it did), and she already knew what it was going to be.

Lily hardly knew Alice – they had been in the same year, of course, but Alice was a Hufflepuff, and she had associated mostly with the aurors-in-training, whom Lily had avoided until the second half of their seventh year – but she couldn't quite bring herself to ignore the pain in the other woman's eyes. (Well, she could have done, but she recognized that that was the difference between being a monster and a hero, and Sirius was still staring at her as well, weighing her silently, all too ready to find her wanting…)

Then, too, there was the fact that her mind was already slipping into a higher-efficiency, problem-solving mode at the hint of a real challenge, of taking on an impossible task against an equally impossible time limit, inventorying her resources and presenting potential first steps, not to mention the thrill of the prospect of trying to harness the primordial dark to her bidding. If Alice was really willing to do anything, they might have a chance…

Pandora glanced up from checking Jessie's work on Moody. She raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly, as though to say, 'What are you waiting for?'

That decided her as much as anything. If the resident white mage approved, Lily certainly wasn't going to linger on questions of right and wrong and efficient use of resources and why she should or should not try.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, offering a silent prayer to the Powers, begging their mercy should she bugger this up, then a second, centering herself and dismissing her (highly reasonable) fears for her own safety and sanity. One could not approach the Powers with any doubt of one's confidence in mind. She let the excitement she felt at actually performing a spell that was more like pre-Merlinian magic than anything she had ever done wash away her hesitation with manic giddiness, and turned her thoughts to the logistic difficulties of the task at hand – it would not do to forget that there was a purpose to this, after all.

She opened her eyes again, feeling an involuntary grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. Fuck it. She couldn't bring herself to care what they thought of her now, when they were all about to see what she was capable of, anyway. She didn't even try to suppress it as she answered Alice's plea: "Then let's make a miracle."

From the slightly terrified looks Alice and Sirius (and Becca – what was she doing just standing around?) gave her, there was something off about her tone, but she didn't care to think about what at the moment. The first major problem at the moment was that they needed more time, and Frank's condition was worsening so quickly that she estimated even Pandora wouldn't be able to heal him if they didn't lift the curse completely within fifteen minutes or so. There just wouldn't be anything left worth saving. And stasis spells weren't working, so…

A temporal excision circle should at least stop him from getting any worse, if only because nothing changed outside of time. As for the Întunericul, that would require power, and they should probably take some kind of precautions against Frank losing his mind from the pain… where had she read… oh, of course.

"Becca! Fetch enough salt for a circle; powdered moonstone, petalite, hematite, and amazonite; all the Flying Oil; the dragon's blood and an eye-dropper; my peridots; and the book I told you never to touch." The girl nodded and turned to run to the supply cupboards. "And my athame!" Lily added belatedly. Pandora hated it when she used blood magic as a ritual shortcut, but in this case, well, time was of the essence.

"Are you fit?" she asked Sirius, examining the traces of diagnostics still clinging to James and Alice. Every plan Lily could think of required the assistance of almost everyone present. Well, everyone conscious. Basically, if she could use them, she probably would. But Alice especially would be important, from what she knew of the Întunericul. It required conscious acceptance of the intrusion of the Dark and the accompanying pain, and since Frank was in no state to do that for himself, they were going to have to get… creative.

"Fit enough," he grinned.

"McKinnon, any damage?"

"Cr-Cr-Crucia-tus."

"Besides that?"

Marley glared at her. Lily rolled her eyes. Their friendship, such as it was, had fallen apart over the course of their final year at Hogwarts, as James renewed his interest in Lily. Lily wasn't really sure why. James had very clearly been treating Marlene like a sister since they were about twelve. In any case, this was not the time for her jealousy to rear its ugly head. Lily glared back.

"N-No."

The healer nodded. "Dora, I need Alice and James fighting fit. Jessie, run and fetch all the Power Up we can spare." The sixteen-year-old followed his younger flatmate out of the treatment area in search of the potion, a custom blend of focus and power enhancing elements. It was a short-term solution with a major crash afterward, but would allow most wizards to function at peak ability in a pinch, overriding the limitations their bodies naturally imposed during healing. It would set the other aurors' recovery back a few days, but might give them the edge they needed to pull Frank back.

Pandora paused in her work on Moody long enough to perform her strongest all-purpose healing charm on Alice and James. Their faces took on similar expressions of agony as the damage to their bodies repaired itself, followed by heady relief as all that pain vanished, leaving a soft white glow in its wake. They sagged, Sirius and Marlene supporting them awkwardly.

Jessie reappeared with four small flasks of the required potion – all that was left after the last major battle. That had been weeks ago, but unfortunately it was relatively low on the brewing priority list.

"Great. Jess, help me check this lot for time-delays and escalators." It wouldn't do to have any of her resources cut out from under her at a vital moment.

She ignored the conversation the patients struck up between themselves, in favor of casting diagnostic charms as quickly as she could and considering the problems presented by the task at hand.

She was recalled briefly from her thoughts as Jessie spotted a Blood Vanishing Curse on Marlene. Sirius ripped it out of her with a stunning degree of viciousness (enough so that she collapsed from the shock as it was pulled away from her magic) though he hesitated when it came to unmaking it. Lily glared at him as Alice stared in horror at the isolated ball of curse-energy and James rushed to revive the fallen witch. She knew he hated using dark magic, but she also knew he did know the appropriate counter, and Jessie hadn't mastered it yet, and she was busy with a subtle sterilization curse on Alice that was that might become permanent if allowed to set properly.

"Now is not the moment for your fucking histrionics, Black," she warned him, picking apart the knot of 'threads' around Alice's womb. "Suck it up!"

"I'll switch you?"

"Black!"

"Fine! Abolefascio," he cast, grimacing dramatically as the curse was neutralized with a flare of magic bordering on subsumption.

Just then, Lily found the root of the curse on Alice and began murmuring the Light counter to dissolve it without harming the organs it had wrapped itself around, soothing Greek tripping off her tongue in calming repetition.

Well, Lily found it calming.

Alice herself was, if anything, becoming more irate with every second Lily's attention was 'wasted' on her and the other aurors rather than focused on Frank. It had only been a few minutes, but she was right – each one counted. There was just nothing they could do for him yet. A plan was coming together, or at least the basics of one, but Lily needed more information.

Fortunately, none of the others seemed to be harboring any curses that would result in a major weakness – no additional delay there. Becca returned with the alchemical supplies just as she finished verifying Marlene's condition, and Jessie double-checked Alice.

The boy examined the ingredients Becca had brought, and reached the correct conclusion about Lily's intent: "Hey boss-lady, you want me to drop the hero here out of time?"

There was a chorus of confusion from the aurors, who were promptly ignored, and who, equally promptly, demanded an explanation of what Jessie was doing to their comrade.

"I can do it!" Becca protested, but Lily shook her head.

"Jessie has better timing. Becca, observe. Sirius, tell me everything you remember about the Întunericul. And everyone else, shut the hell up!" It was probably a mark of their desperation that the aurors did as she said, even Sirius, though he shivered a bit before he opened his mouth. Jessie set about preparing the circle with admirable focus.

"Întunericul care Arde – it's soul magic, essence magic. Dark and burning. For… purification. If you can call a dark spell purifying. The dark sets your soul on fire, burning out any… contamination, like the Aniquilaram."

"I know all that. It's also meant to be used on yourself. I need to know what Bellatrix did when she did it to you – give me some idea of where to start from," Lily interrupted almost at once, simultaneously flipping through the grimoire in search of, well… torture spells and potions, technically. There was a whole section devoted to maintaining a man's sanity as he was tortured past the point where his mind ought to break. She had even brewed one of them, though she hadn't had the opportunity to test it yet. She just needed to check a few details to verify that it supposedly worked in the way she thought she remembered. Where was it…?

The man swallowed hard and nodded. "It hurts worse than the Cruciatus. Far worse."

It was Marlene, still recovering, who said, "No-no-no-th-thing h-hurts wor-worse th-tha-"

Sirius gave her a look of pity, but cut her off. "You have no idea, luv. The Cruciatus is physical. It's the worst possible physical pain. Întunericul care Arde is – it burns through your magic and your soul. Like being destroyed by Fiendfire from the inside out. It's a whole new dimension of pain."

"Is that what –" Alice started to ask, but James cut her off.

"Holy shit!"

His exclamation drew the peanut gallery's attention to Jessie's completed task: he had levitated Frank over to a free patch of floor and activated the circle. The space within it, now a dome, had been replaced by a sickly-looking, shimmering, octarine fog.

"We only have enough dragon's blood for about thirty minutes," he said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the eye-dropper. Every thirty seconds, the circle needed another drop. When it ran out, normality would be restored, but for now, Frank was frozen in a place where it was impossible for him to change and therefore get worse. (Theoretically.) It was terribly strange to experience (Lily had done it only once) but luckily for Frank, he was already unconscious.

"Talk fast," Lily advised Sirius, ignoring James.

Alice and Marlene didn't, though. "W-wha?" the latter stuttered, while the former rushed toward her vanished lover.

"Don't cross the circle!" Lily, Becca, and Jessie shouted as one. Alice froze, her auror's instincts bringing her to her knees next to the boy. Lily sighed slightly in relief. This was not the time to find out exactly what happened if the boundary between planes was disturbed.

"Jessie's buying us some time," she offered to the other aurors, as the boy in question began to quietly explain the possible consequences to the auror at his side. She gave Sirius a pointed look before returning to her book.

He hesitated.

"Details, Black!" Lily demanded. "You know as well as I do that the Aniquilaram is progressive. We're running out of time! How did Bella use it on you instead of herself?"

"Fuck, Evans! I was seven, okay? It was – I told Reggie what happened in our family Yule ritual, and my father caught us and he lost his temper and cursed me. Reg ran off and fetched the girls, and Bella dueled Father until Arcturus showed up… then he hit me with… not the Aniquilaram, but something similar – one of the soul-rotting curses. I'm not sure what Bella did next, because I was too busy dying."

"Just a mo," Lily interrupted. She had finally found the potion she was looking for, and it seemed it did work as she had thought: it couldn't help with the cruciatus, because that attacked neural connections directly, but it should be able to help Frank (and Alice) survive the coming ordeal, minds intact. "Becca, run and fetch me a potion from the Experimental shelves. It's labeled 'Third Lock.' Black, with little silver bubbles in suspension. There should be half a dozen vials. Bring them all. And grab a Blood Replenisher for McKinnon, too!" she added as the young witch took off running again.

She closed the book with a snap. "Okay. Sirius. You were seven. You had no idea what was going on. You had been hit with this curse, and…"

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply as he tried to remember. "I – Bella was yelling at Orion and Arcturus. I was lying on the floor, and… she slit my wrists. I still have the scars." Lily looked. There were, indeed, a pair of short, pale lines on the soft side of Sirius' arms. "And… then she was in my head. She was – it wasn't quite like legilimency, but…"

"Sympathy?" Lily speculated as he trailed off.

"What?"

"That was probably a sympathetic binding," the witch explained. "One body, one mind, one magic sort of thing. Okay. That makes sense. She must have drawn on the Dark and then passed it onto you through that connection. That's really clever, actually. And she leveraged it to overrule any objections you might have had, right?"

Sirius smiled slightly. "No, actually. She showed me what was happening and told me she was trying to save my soul. I told her to do whatever she had to, rather than let Orion win. And she told me not to let them break me."

The witch frowned. "So you did consent?"

He shrugged. "I mean, I was seven. I don't think I really could… but sort of. I guess."

Lily snorted. Personally, she thought that seven-year-olds were perfectly capable of consenting, at least when it came to ritual magic, but most purebloods put the mark at thirteen or fifteen. "Okay, let me think for a second."

Consent was a major element of the Întunericul. It was essential that the caster actively and consciously invite the Dark into themselves, to do its work. Frank was unconscious, which meant he wasn't able to consent, and while Lily was fairly certain that she could set up a binding like the one Bellatrix had used on Sirius, she was also fairly certain that she wasn't about to risk tying herself that closely to a man under that kind of curse: if the Întunericul failed, it would spread through the binding, and she really didn't fancy dying like that.

Fortunately, Alice had already volunteered to do anything, and Lily had already half-suspected that it would be necessary to bind them together so that Alice could consent to the Dark. But she almost certainly didn't have enough of a connection with the primordial darkness to, well… calling it in the first place more or less equated to offering oneself as an avatar of the Darkness, and she would still have to retain enough awareness to impose her will and limit its effects.

Lily knew that was why Sirius had brought the problem to her in the first place: because out of everyone associated with the Order, she was the only one on the short list of people who (probably) knew what the Întunericul even was (Sirius, herself; probably Dumbledore; Pandora and Moody maybe) who was dedicated as a Dark Witch and therefore actually stood a snowball's chance in hell of making it work. (Whether she could get it to stop working, even she wasn't sure. But that was half the fun, wasn't it? Wait, no… bad train of thought…)

Anyway, she needed a ritual form that allowed her to facilitate a connection or binding between two other people without actually getting caught up in it herself.

Which, when she put it like that, was fairly simple. Or rather, it was going to be fiendishly complex to manage without killing all of them or turning herself into a vegetable or possibly losing herself to the Dark, but the point was, there was a whole class of binding rituals designed to work in exactly that manner: marriages. The bond between Frank and Alice might end up being a little more permanent than the one between Bellatrix and Sirius (or at least, she hoped there wasn't still some lingering connection between those two – she should probably check later, for the sake of Sirius' tenuous sanity), but she kind of doubted that anyone would complain. The only reason they weren't already married was Frank's mother's disapproval, and well… quite frankly, Lily didn't much care what Augusta Longbottom thought of her. If push came to shove, she, Alice, and Frank could blame everything on Sirius, who would think it a great joke. He was a good scapegoat like that.

So really, the trick was going to be pulling together enough power to fuel the Întunericul (at what point was it no longer the same spell, and just a weird sort of proto-malaficium counter-curse loosely inspired by the Întunericul?) and overwhelm the Aniquilaram. And to do that… she would probably have to enlist the help of the others… four would be ideal – making herself a double-focus of two power-sharing triads, and back-strapping the others in a Ptolemy configuration to help bleed off some of the inevitable processing overload. Pandora was out, because she was pushing the boundaries of her Patron's good will simply by associating with Lily most days. Sirius, James, Marlene and… Jessie would have to do: Alice would be needed elsewhere.

Which meant the real trick was going to be convincing James and Marlene to cooperate. She sighed. She hated cooperative magic, mostly because it meant having to explain what she was doing and why to other people who were almost certain to object to one point or another. In this case, James was bound to hate the risk she was taking on herself, and the fact that it was dark magic. Marlene was just a contrary bitch who hated being told what to do.

"Okay, everyone!" she announced after what could not have been more than a minute or two. "Here's what I'm thinking: We bind Alice and Frank as one person so she can consent for them; I'll call the Dark and direct it, but I'll need back-up. I'm thinking –"

"Wait a second – what do you mean you'll call the Dark?" James asked confrontationally.

And so it begins, Lily thought, suppressing a sigh. "Sirius, brief Alice on her role," she ordered before turning back to her fiancé. "I mean I'll invite the Dark Powers into myself and imbue the Darkness with my intent, which will be to destroy the curse on Frank. Then I'll direct the magic through a secondary connection into Frank-and-Alice. Technically, I think it will count as a curse in its own right, but think of it more like… directing the magic at a wedding, or something like that."

"Inviting the Dark Powers… into yourself? How does that even work?"

"Gods and Powers, how can you have grown up in Magical Britain and not know this?!"

"Well excuse me, but it's not like all families are the motherfucking Blacks!"

Sirius looked up for a moment, smirked, then went back to talking to Alice without contributing anything of use. Bastard.

Lily resisted the urge to point out that James' mother had been a Black, and should have taught him these things, but this was most certainly not the time to criticize her dead in-laws' parenting decisions. "I cannot even begin to explain high ritual to you in the next ten minutes! You find the part of yourself that resonates with the darker aspects of magic, and you encourage it to take you over, and Sirius Black if you don't stop fucking laughing, I will hurt you, I swear it!"

Before she could make a move in his direction, Alice slapped him. "FOCUS, Black!" she snarled at him.

"Ow! Allie! Come off it! It's just – Okay, you know what, never mind. I was saying…"

James, meanwhile, was speaking stubbornly again: "Encouraging dark magic to take you over just sounds… dangerous."

"Just. Sounds. Dangerous," Lily repeated, fighting the urge to laugh herself at the undoubtedly unintentional understatement. "Yes, you could say that. And fucking difficult. I'm going to need your help," she nodded to include Marlene as well. "All of you – you're going to have to… support me and lend me some of your magic, or it's not going to work at all."

"H-h-how d-do we d-do –"

Lily cut off the stuttering auror's suspicious question. "Power sharing bond. It's temporary, and you won't be anywhere near the dark – that's on me, Alice, and Frank."

"Alice? What does Alice have to do with…?"

The healer suppressed a groan. "She has to accept the dark for herself and Frank. She can't call it, because, let's face it, she's almost as light as you, but –"

"Wait, but you can?"

Lily pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture she had inherited from Severus and never quite managed to shake. "Yes." Had that not been clear from her earlier explanation?

"L-Lily?" he asked hesitantly. "Are you… a dark witch?"

Was it really worth it to try to explain the dual dedication she had made in her fifteenth year, and the nature of magical ambivalence? No. Definitely not. Was it the sort of thing one could reasonably hide from the man one was planning to marry in less than a month, especially when he asked directly? Also no, she decided reluctantly. "Yes and no," she answered quickly. "And no, we don't have the time for me to explain that."

James looked betrayed. Marlene looked furious. Sirius, who was obviously eavesdropping as well as filling Alice in, called over, "I told you so, Prongs!" with a mocking laugh.

"Can we focus on Frank here?!" Alice exclaimed. "Go over it again, Sirius!"

"What is the likelihood that this is actually going to work?" James asked warily, keeping his voice down.

Lily shrugged. "Do you really want me to tell you? I mean, even if we do lift the curse, there's still a chance we won't be able to heal him."

"Yes, damn it! I – You admitted it's dangerous – you'd be risking yourself as well as Alice and only maybe saving Frank…"

The witch grinned. "No worse than the odds at the First Battle, or Imbolc."

"I-I-Im – Artemis w-was you?!" Marlene's jaw dropped open.

Lily smirked. "That would be the 'no' part of 'yes and no.'"

"What?" James asked, utterly lost.

"It's not funny if I have to explain it. So are you going to help me or not?"

James scowled. "I don't think we should. It's – you shouldn't be messing around with that sort of magic, especially if it might not work. What happens, if it goes wrong? Have you even thought about that?"

"Of course I have! But –"

"No, Lily – if you can't heal it with conventional magic, maybe… maybe it's just not meant to be."

Marlene bit her lip indecisively, but nodded along with James.

Lily glared at the pair of them, noting that he had made sure to say that quietly enough that Alice wouldn't overhear. "Don't say stupid shite, Jamie."

"Bu-"

"Don't 'but' anything, you fucking hypocrite. If it was my life on the line, would you be saying, oh, it's just not meant to be?" James hesitated long enough for Becca to return. Lily took this to mean he more or less agreed. "Good!" she said firmly, "Let's get started."

"Haven't you been listening to a word I've said?" James asked. "It's too dangerous! You'd be risking Alice and yourself as well as Frank, and -"

"And nothing, James Potter! Alice knows the risks. She said she would do anything to save Frank!"

"You can't do it alone. You said you need us. If we refuse –"

Lily cut him off again. "If you refuse, Frank dies. You're right. I don't have the power to throw myself against a death curse. Not alone. And there's no time to figure out another way. So yes, you can refuse, and that will stop me, and Alice, but you – both of you – are the ones who will have to face her every day. You'll have to live with the question of whether we could have saved him." A flash of doubt flickered across Marlene's face. Lily took this to mean that she was at least tentatively convinced, and focused her full attention on James, lowering her voice intensely and striking viciously at his weakest points: "I'll sleep just fine, knowing I did everything I could. Don't forget, Jamie, you have to live with yourself when the war is over."

That was a low blow, and they all knew it, but it was also effective: James, far more than Sirius or Lily herself, or even Pandora, most days, was always looking toward the future, with an eye on what life would be like afterward, leery of making too many hard choices because he wanted to be the sort of person who could look himself in the eye in the mirror when it was all said and done, if he lived.

Emotions flickered across his face, almost too quickly for Lily to recognize: anger, betrayal, resignation, admiration, defeat. Love, or maybe hatred: he was backed into a corner, and he couldn't bring himself to strike back against her. She knew she was right when she said that he would do the same for her as Alice would for Frank.

Marlene rubbed his back comfortingly, apparently of the opinion that Lily had gone too far: "Ssss-such a f-fekin' b-bitch, Evans!"

"Not. The. Time. Marley," Lily ground out. She didn't take her eyes off James, and he was clearly ignoring Marlene's efforts to comfort him.

There was something like despair in his voice when he finally spoke. "Fine. But whatever happens… it's on you, Lils."

Fabulous. She let her excitement well up within her again, buoying her against the knowledge that he was right, actually – this was incredibly dangerous and not at all the sort of thing they should be trying off the cuff – and grinned, daring the universe to try to stop her. "Like I said, let's get started! Oi! Black! Alice!"

The two hurried over, Sirius looking uncharacteristically serious, and Alice slightly terrified, but no less determined than she had five minutes before.

"Black, you know the runes for the Focus Trimaguum and Ptolemy's Pentacle, right?"

Sirius shot a slightly guilty look at James before he shrugged. "Yeah. We only have, what, four of us, though, since Alice is with Frank?"

"Five," Lily corrected him. "Jessie can help. He'll be the fourth Leg. You up for playing battery and anchor, Jess?" she called toward the circle.

"Sure thing, boss-lady!"

"And Frank and Alice make seven."

"Ah… what?" James asked. Marlene and Alice looked just as baffled, and Sirius was giving Lily his best evil-eye.

Lily smiled innocently at him. "The problem, here, is three-fold. One: there's a serious risk of the pain involved driving Frank and Alice mad. Two: I don't have enough power to drive a ritual like this myself. Certainly not enough to overpower a death-curse.

"We already established that Alice will be bonded with Frank to help him manage the pain, and because the target has to be conscious for this to work properly. I've got a potion that should – could – will theoretically – prevent madness. A Deux-Trimaguum set up will solve the second problem.

"That brings us to the third problem: acting as a triple-focus might, possibly, um… literally melt my brain out my ears, a la Cruciatus. However," she said, speaking over James' outburst at that statement, "back-strapping the four datores as anchors in the Ptolemy configuration should distribute the strain enough that, well… enough."

"You're a fucking lunatic, Evans," Sirius said with a harsh bark of un-amused laughter. His expression was caught somewhere between admiration and horror.

Lily just raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to be the focus? Because that would be better, balance-wise… or else you can go kidnap Bellatrix in the next… How long, Jess?" she called over to the young wizard, still seated on the floor by the circle.

"Twelve minutes!"

"Right. Twelve minutes to come up with some other option, and then probably another five before Frank is beyond even Pandora's healing abilities. So…"

Sirius scowled. "Alright, fine. We'll do it your way."

"You didn't think miracles were easy, did you?" Lily grinned.

"I-I-I sss-till d-don't un-der-sst-stand."

"Me either," James added petulantly. "How do you even know this stuff?"

Lily ignored the question, certain he didn't really want to know the answer.

"Is that really important?" Alice asked, clearly anxious to get it over with (and save Frank), but Sirius spoke over her.

"Some of us are motherfucking Blacks," he smirked. "Do you know how many years I spent hiding in the library at my parents' house, Prongs? Anyway, this is like, quick and dirty, primal shite, mates. Alice and Frank get bound as one 'person.' Me, James, Jess and Marley funnel our power into Lily. Lily ties the strain of the working to us as well as her, so even though we're not directing anything and won't be touched by the dark, the mental effort of it will still come from us, as well as the magical strength. Then Lily also links herself to Alice-and-Frank, and invites the dark to set all of their souls on fire, and they burn the shite out of the curse."

James and Marlene looked like they now understood, because they were just as terrified as Alice, and not nearly so resolute. "There was a reason I didn't describe it like that," Lily hissed at him.

He shrugged unrepentantly. "Some bandages are best torn off quickly. And we don't really have time to coddle les bébés de la Claire," he sniffed.

Lily almost laughed at the absurdity of Sirius calling anyone else a Light baby given his own general reluctance to use the Dark Arts, but restrained herself. He was, after all, the only one who was really on her side at the moment. Strange as it was, she felt they had grown closer since graduation. He still clearly didn't like her, but… out here in the real world, in the war, it was clearer that they had more in common than he had ever thought in school. Besides, he couldn't hide the fact that he was just a little eager to try the solution she had proposed, no matter how much he might deny the darkness in his blood.

"Might I make a suggestion?" Lily had not noticed Pandora's approach.

"Of course, Panda-bear," Sirius answered, with a reflexive grin.

Lily nodded. "If it's quick."

"You're going to be dark-heavy," the older healer explained, speaking over Lily's look of irritated outrage. She didn't like to be corrected, even by the more experienced ritualist. "I know, that's what you want, because with death curses, it's Fate that's causing harm, but with six for dark and only two for light, you're out of balance."

"It's three light, Dora."

"No, Sirius Orion is correct – Alice Anne and Franklin Justinian will be bound as one, just as you will be counted thrice, leaving you at six and eight, three-three against two, not seven and nine with three threes." She sketched power-diagrams with her wand as she spoke.

"Well, then, what do you propose we do?" Lily scowled, furious with herself for overlooking such an elementary numerological mistake. "We can't risk throwing more power in on the light side – that would support the curse." Death curses were tricky, on a fundamental level. In a sense the basic expression of malicious intent ought to define them as the very darkest sort of magic. A similar curse cast in different circumstances would be automatically considered the heart of Malaficium, the core of the Dark Arts. But the circumstances did matter. A death curse inflicted against one who was responsible for one's death wasn't only about causing pain and suffering – it was rooted in restoring balance: order. So despite its dark intent and destructive nature, it was backed by a Light Power. Which really just meant that it would resist the Întunericul even more strongly than if it were purely dark. There was a very real chance that even the strength of five wizards might not be sufficient to break it, even without adding another light element to the mix.

"No, you're right… I think you need to add another axis."

"Axis?" James asked. Sirius muttered a brief explanation about ritual power and symbolic balancing to all three of the others. Lily rolled her eyes. They were all purebloods. They should know this sort of stuff. It was moments like this that she rather thought the Dark Lord had the right idea, at least when it came to loosening the restrictions on 'dark' magic.

Pandora ignored them, continuing her explanation. It wasn't as though they needed to know, anyway. "Right now, you're looking at Light-Afflicted versus Dark-Alleviators, all in the same plane. I think you should add Rebecca Kay. An innocent child with an observation role against experienced adults with active roles. She will bring an undeniably light element without adding to the curse –"

"And the secondary-axis vector will force an oscillation in the overall power-flow increasing the impact peak while bringing us up to seven-nine!" Of course, it would also result in more difficulty timing her attack on the curse, and probably result in a major crash-and-burn for all of them except Becca, regardless of whether they succeeded, but when she did make contact, it would be with a hell of a lot more magical 'force' than even the five of them would otherwise be able to muster. "That's bloody brilliant, Dora!" Lily even knew which spell she could use to establish the connection with Becca.

"Right. So it will be three-three against two offset by one. But it's really a two-one-two against one offset by one."

"Perfect! And you'll pick up the pieces after?" She had better: it was her idea.

Pandora smiled. "Of course."

"So, um… what do you guys need me to do?" Becca asked.

"Start setting up a Holston Ward. Make the circle large enough for all of us to sit inside." Lily ordered, and the girl took off running again. "Right. Now that's settled, Sirius, help me with the runes."

"What's the order?"

"I'm focus for both. You're with Jessie for one Trimaguum. Jamie and Marley are the other. You and Jamie are anchors for Ptolemy." Sirius winced. "You two are the best matched, and you know it," she pointed out, stripping off her shirt.

"Lily!" James objected.

"W-w-we've all ssseen it b-be-fore," Marlene commented as drily as she could through her stutter.

"Shush, you," Lily glared, drawing her athame from its sheath. The black blade, finished with dragon's bone, drank in the light as she carved a rough gateway rune over her breastbone.

The others looked faintly ill, including Pandora, though Sirius quickly smirked, attempting to lighten the atmosphere: "I do so love finger-painting," he drawled in his poshest tone, startling a snort from Lily as he swiped trickles of red from her skin. "Come on, strip, you prudes. And, um… one of you help me off with my shirt. I didn't really think this one through…" he added, looking from his bloodied fingers to the already-ruined fabric of his trainee uniform.

After a quick discussion of the runes to ensure that they (or at least she and Sirius) were on the same page, it was a matter of minutes to trace them out, linking the other four to Lily and each other, despite James and Marlene's obvious discomfort. Lily allocated potions (Power Up to each of the four supporting players, and a double dose of Third Lock for both herself and Alice) and ran through the plan again. By the time Becca finished preparing the Holston circle, they were as ready as could be without bringing Frank back. Sirius even managed to get most of Jessie's runes drawn between his periodic renewals of the temporal circle.

Lily couldn't help but feel energized as they approached the moment of truth. Pandora was speaking quietly to the younger witch by the time she bounced over to join them, most likely explaining her role in the ritual. The prematurely silver-haired healer was rather accustomed to filling in the gaps for their less experienced assistants as Lily foraged on ahead. It made them a good research team.

"Are you ready?" she asked without preamble. "This is going to feel kind of weird, but it shouldn't hurt, or anything."

"Um… what's going to happen?" the girl asked.

"It's kind of like legilimency, and kind of like possession, but only barely. You get to be me, basically. Well, you get to watch me be me. It's kind of hard to explain."

The younger witch hesitated, and Lily reached out to take her by the hand. "It'll be fine, trust me."

Becca nodded hesitantly as Pandora glared at her for her blatant manipulation of the girl. Lily ignored this. Time was truly getting short, now.

The incantation for the mind-marrying charm she planned to use was very long and rather complicated. She had learned it for the sake of curiosity, to experience something like natural legilimency after Severus had finally admitted that he was, in fact, a legilimens, but had not had much cause to use it since her fifth year. Still, she never forgot a charm once she had mastered it, and after a minute-long Arabic recitation, she felt the connection take hold, drawing Becca's consciousness into her mind-space, even as it tried to pull hers toward the girl. Of course, Becca's flailing and loss of balance were an excellent indicator as well.

Lily resisted, even as she occluded gently, pushing Becca's awareness back toward her own senses. It wasn't a very strong spell, but as soon as she dropped her occlusion, it would almost certainly draw Becca's mind back in, allowing her to fulfil her observational role. She sketched a 'watcher' rune on the girl's forehead for good measure, and directed her to sit beside the candle she would need to light to activate her Holston circle, ignoring the wary look the teen gave her.

"Two minutes!" Jessie announced loudly.

"Places, everyone!" Lily demanded. Sirius led James and Marlene into the circle and seated them within arm's reach of each other before returning for the increasingly nervous Alice. He had oriented them such that the entire formation would align along the north-south axis, whereas she would have used east-west, but she didn't think it mattered enough to switch them. Pandora had returned to Moody and Edgar, who appeared to be stabilized, though Lily hadn't taken the time to actually check on them.

"Jess, as soon as you give the circle that last drop, you run to Sirius, he'll get you in position and finish your runes. Got it?"

"Got it," he repeated with a firm nod. Good lad. He did so like being useful. He squeezed the last precious drop of dragon's blood (she would have to ask Peter to try to get another flask, though she knew it was terribly expensive) onto the crystalline line that defined the edge of normal space and rolled away from it, scrambling to his feet.

Lily, alone for these last few seconds, closed her eyes and breathed deeply, reaching for the part of herself that resonated most strongly with the Dark. Time seemed to stretch as she fell into her magic and her thoughts. It probably said something that the only part of this whole ritual she was completely certain about was the fact that she would be able to call upon the darkness. She had done so only once before, when she made her dedication at the age of fifteen, but it had left its mark on her soul.

She had spoken honestly when she told James that she was and was not a dark witch. Young and stupid, she had constructed a ritual – one of her first – around the idea of Morgana's Recalling of the Dark and the little she had known about magical alignment at the time. She had given herself over to the Light at Mabon, and then attempted to polarize her magic in the opposite direction six months later, on Ostara, in an effort to enhance her connection to all magic, rather than just one side or the other. It had kind of worked. She was definitely able to use both Light and Dark Arts with equal ease, at least, but it had hurt worse than anything she had ever imagined, and it had had a detrimental effect on her ability to cast the more neutral spells that made up the vast majority of everyday magic. She could still do it, but it felt… unnatural: flat, and far more difficult than it ought to do.

She had been complimented many times since her OWLs on her precision with the charms that were so essential to the healing arts, but the truth was, the only way she could get them to work at all was by maintaining the utmost control over both her magic and the spells. There was no artistry in her conventional healing, not like in her rituals, or her frequent forays into more extreme magics on both the Light and Dark sides of the spectrum.

In a way, this spell was exactly the sort of thing she was best at, even discounting the ritual aspects of the multiple bindings and power sharing. Quick and dirty, primal shite, Sirius had called it, and she couldn't say he was wrong, but she didn't think he knew exactly how right he was.

Well, maybe he did. For all he hated his family, the more she got to know him, the more obvious it was that he had been well and truly indoctrinated at one time, and had never quite relinquished the lessons he had learned in his childhood. Case in point: Bringing Frank here, tonight, and taking up the role of her assistant with only the slightest hesitation.

In any case, it was probably fair to say that what she was about to do bore about as much resemblance to the Întunericul proper as her dedication to the Dark had done to any of the Old Families' dedications. But then, that was fair: the curse on Frank probably had about as much in common with the actual Aniquilaram. All magic really came down, in the end, to power, control, and intent: she knew what was happening and had the vaguest idea of how to stop it. With enough power behind her, she could make it happen, she was certain.

There was a shift in the magic around her as the circle fell, and reality snapped back to normal. Lily opened her eyes to see the glow fading from the line that defined the circle, the powdered crystals which made it up blackening and cracking as the power ebbed from it. Frank was lying there, his condition no worse than it had been half an hour before, thank the gods. It would have just been embarrassing if he had dissolved into a puddle of goo outside of time.

She levitated him into the Holston circle and ordered Becca to power it up, lest they light up the wards on the safehouse like a bloody Christmas tree. The girl poured a bit of salt to complete the exterior line, lit the appropriate candle, and chanted the necessary incantation. Seven other flames flared to life around them, creating a barrier that would 'purify' or neutralize any magic moving across it. Technically it was intended to keep any undesired influences out of the circle, but it would work the same way in reverse. (Lily could only imagine how badly things might go if Dumbledore thought they were under attack and interrupted the ritual while she was channeling the Dark.)

Sirius was still directing Jessie in the runes he needed to complete, and arranging them in their places. They needed to be able to rest their arms on each other's shoulders, and also reach out to touch her with their free hands, for the power sharing arrangement.

Alice gasped when she saw Frank's state, her hands flying to her mouth in horror.

Lily drew her athame and unceremoniously slit Frank's quickly-deteriorating wrists (another two minutes, and she probably wouldn't have had to bother, given the rate at which skin and muscle were dissolving). A dark sludge seeped slowly from the cuts. Ugh. That would explain the increased blood pressure, though, she thought irrelevantly. "Alice, hands!"

The auror-in-training recoiled. "I – I have to…? What if…"

The healer groaned. "Yes, you have to. And yes, if we fail, that will spread to you. You will die every bit as horribly as Frank, here. This is the point of no return. Do you love him enough to try to save him or not?" Do you love him more than your own life? Did you mean it when you said anything?

The Hufflepuff's eyes hardened as she held out her hands, wrists upturned. Apparently she did. Lily would be lying if she had said she wasn't a little surprised. And a little charmed, too. She wasn't sure she had ever felt so strongly about anyone as Alice clearly did Frank. She had thought she loved Severus, once, but she had let him go when reality closed in around them and it became clear that she could not fight all the bloody Death Eaters for him. Somehow, she suspected that Alice would have died fighting, rather than let him go, if it had been Frank they were after.

Lily made the required incisions, and Alice pressed her wrists to her fiancé's without prompting, kneeling with her head bowed over his, locking her fingers around his arms. She was crying, the ritualist noted absently, tears falling onto Frank's face in a very private, very personal sort of aspersion. No doubt Reverend Sheridan would have excommunicated Lily for making the comparison to that holy sacrament if she hadn't resigned her parents' muggle faith years before in favor of the truth that was magic, but she rather thought she had never seen something so pure and beautiful before. This, she was certain, was what love looked like. She called the energy of the Binding and Deliberative Powers (two sides of the same coin, really) to mind, feeling magic twist around her, drawn to the pair before her by their very circumstance.

"Alice," she said softly, reluctant to break the moment between them. "One body, one mind, one soul. You are his and he is yours. Do you so will it?"

She did not need to hear the other witch's shuddering yes to know that she did: with her mind focused on the necessary concept and her entire being bent to the task of saving her beloved, no matter the cost, the magic sank into the couple without any direction on Lily's part. The ritualist cast a rune of unity over each of their hearts, marking them as one for the sake of formality, but she was pretty sure it made no difference.

Sirius touched her shoulder gently, and she turned to see the other four, sitting, waiting, their expressions a mixed bag: Jess was clearly keen to help, and curious – no doubt waiting patiently for the explanation that would follow when they were finally recovered from this ordeal. James and Marlene were caught somewhere between horror and disgust – he closer to the former, and she the latter. Oh well. It couldn't be helped, really. Sirius simply looked determined. He nodded, once, and she took her place at the center of the formation, their hands reaching out with various degrees of reluctance to rest on her shoulders.

The first step of the ritual was to activate Ptolemy's Pentacle. It was the most technical aspect of the ritual, the most complex with its Greek incantation and Egyptian runes, and more likely than the others to go wrong, for it was the only part she had never attempted before, in some form. She had simply never had cause to require a safety net against the mental strain of any of her workings. She was fairly certain that it had taken, though it would not necessarily be evident until they reached the point that she needed to bleed off power and rely on the others to support her focus. She was slightly more aware of the others behind her, at least. Sirius squeezed her left shoulder reassuringly as she hesitated, trying to feel out the binding, which she took to mean that he also thought it was working.

The Deux-Trimaguum, a Frankish adaptation of a very old Roman triumvirate power sharing ritual, was activated all at once. She and Sirius had explained the runes and the role of the datores as they had walked the others through painting reciprocal symbols in their own blood, and receiving the ones that marked them as Lily's to call upon at need. The former were already active, the magic of each pair flowing between them, each a single magical entity, now, with two bodies and two minds. She steeled herself against the shock she knew was coming, and pulled on the connection between her magic and her blood to activate the runes traced on the hands and chests of the four donor-mages.

The links between them snapped into place. Lily gasped, instantly aware that the Pentacle had worked, because instead of pooling in her and overwhelming her ability to think, the magic redistributed itself, bleeding away into Marlene and Jessie and running through James and Sirius before returning to her. She had shared magic before with Severus and Pandora (though not both at once). This felt at least an order of magnitude more powerful – though because of the sheer number of wizards she had to draw upon, or the more formal nature of the binding, she couldn't have said.

The physical world faded away in her perception, and she wondered, briefly, if this was how more powerful wizards, like Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, felt all the time, as though their material forms were completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and it was on a level of pure magic and power that they truly existed.

It was a heady experience, more like becoming the focus of Samhain or Walpurgis at Hogwarts than the smaller rituals she had devised for her own use over the years. Unlike Samhain and Walpurgis, though, she was actually intending to do something with all of this magic, not just let it have its way with her, which was terribly exciting in its own right.

Entirely consumed by the thought and the power, she hardly noticed Rebecca's gasp as she neglected to push the girl away from her mind. She did notice the new presence in the ritual, however, as the power orbiting around and through her began to destabilize, pulled out of its proper sphere by the child's presence as was the tide by the moon. It was a disconcerting sensation, to say the least, sitting at the eye of a building storm, letting the magic become increasingly unbalanced without doing anything to attempt to correct it – Lily had never intentionally flubbed a ritual like this before. Accidentally, yes, and the approach was theoretically sound, but in practice it felt wrong on a fundamental level. She shuddered, anticipating the backlash to come, but it was too late to turn back now: the magic had been raised and it must be used, and quickly – she really, really didn't want to see what would happen if this much power were to collapse on her or go spinning off wildly to unknown effect.

She gave herself over to instinct, allowing herself to fall into the Dark half of her soul, calling on the power she knew was waiting, just beyond her reach, to fill her and do her will, renouncing, for the moment, her connection to the Light in order to become one with it more fully. It felt… good, was really the only word she could think to describe it. Indulgent, as though the rest of her life was an exercise in restraint, and this the only moment she had ever truly lived. It suffused her mind entirely, blotting out her sense of urgency as she lost herself in the moment and the energy, positively reveling in the resonance between her magic – her soul – and that of the Universe.

After an indeterminate period of time (probably not more than fifteen or thirty seconds judging by Frank's state and the increasing pull and pressure of the destabilizing, now Dark-tainted power, though it felt much longer) she was recalled to her body and the task at hand by a growling Focus, Evans! Think of Frank! in the back of her mind: Sirius, clumsily using the reciprocal connection of the power-sharing bond to approximate a legilimentic contact and effectively attempting the metaphorical equivalent of shouting at her over the garden fence. It was surprisingly effective. She obeyed reluctantly, pulling back from the Dark just enough to register fingers digging into her shoulder with bruising strength. She shook her head slightly, and Sirius' grip relaxed.

With difficulty, she forced her attention back to the dying man before her. On a scale of the entire universe and the magic that filled it, he seemed utterly unimportant. But then, the curse that was killing him seemed equally insignificant. If it was her will – and it was – she could remove it with a thought. It was simply a matter of direction – or more precisely, connection.

As she determined that she would destroy this curse, the Dark took on her intent and took over her body, moving to facilitate that connection and do her will.

It was a rather distant fragment of consciousness that noted as the knife in her right hand began to move with suspicious speed toward her left, that this was really going to hurt in the morning.

At the moment, though, pain meant nothing, even when faced with the sight of her left hand fully impaled by the athame or the altogether excessive amount of blood which welled forth when it was wrenched loose. This she held over Frank; fat, crimson droplets falling over his heart – or the place his heart would be, if it wasn't already so much decaying sludge. They sizzled where they fell, but she hardly noticed as the shock of yet another link falling into place shuddered through her and everything went very odd.

Her consciousness shattered.

Shattered wasn't the right word, but it was as close as she could think of – her mind split into several equally present points of view with startling suddenness – points of view which a distant, observing fragment knew would take hours or days to resolve into a single, cohesive experience afterward, assuming she survived and managed to regain control of her body and mind from the Dark.

She was the magic, bent on destruction, eager to be freed, to latch onto a target, to affect the mortal plane at its own discretion, in a way it so rarely was able to do, unthinking power on the verge of action which was inevitable, its course determined by its very nature, but at the same time, she was the will desperately attempting to keep it in check, the point around which it orbited, acutely, painfully aware that it was exceeding her ability to hold it, that in three circuits – two – one – it would be entirely too strong, too unbalanced, for her to hold onto (even with the counterweights holding her back, lending her strength, anchoring her), that her only choice would be when and where to release it before it tore itself from her or else overwhelmed her, leaving her a squib or a mindless vessel for the Dark.

She was the center of the ritual, the field of wildly oscillating magical power, lost in the midst of it, but she was also sitting at the very edge of it, hardly touched by the storm, though she could see it, through the eyes of a dumbstruck thirteen-year-old witch, black and red and nothing streaming around her as she knelt over the cursed man and his still-crying, terrified lover, blood dripping from her hand and the blade of her knife. She could see the way her body wavered, on the verge of collapse, could see the instability in the flow of the magic, visible only by its strength, could see the moment of release – there! (She felt the exhausted relief of no longer maintaining her hold over it, even as she attempted to direct it in its work.) – and the impact as it struck, the crying witch collapsing over her fallen love, the two of them blanketed in power, and then with a single, harsh, strained demand on Lily's part – an unspoken word, barely a ragged thought, a dogged, last-gasp act of will (BURN) – as it sank into them, eating away at the lesser magics infesting their bonded souls, seeping through them like acid.

She was the watcher, the impassive observer, but she was also the target. She felt Alice's scream as the magic ate into her in her own throat, felt the power burning through her own soul, affirming her allegiance to the Dark even as it corrupted the light hearts of her victim-patients, aligning their magic to its power, burning away every trace of lesser magics in its path. She felt the single-minded determination at the core of Alice's being – save Frank, anything to save him, yes – and the shock as the magic struck and thrust Frank back into some semblance of consciousness – albeit one which was a world of pain entirely unfocused on the physical world. She felt it as he felt the presence of his girlfriend's mind and magic, and clung to her, his own magic recognizing her as part of himself, irrevocably binding the two of them together as one in an instant of perfect love and perfect trust, even in the face of unimaginable pain, on the verge of death.

She was the target, but she was also the magic, coursing through their soul, encountering the curse that was killing them, tearing them apart at the deepest level, their magic turned against them. It was strong, the curse. She threw herself against it with the full force of the power behind her, her momentum hardly slowed by dragging the magic of the souls into alignment with herself. The impact flooded it, surrounding the foreign malicious intent. The righteousness of the balance of life for life resisted a moment longer, its power neutralizing hers, sapping her strength, but there were five mages behind her, five living mages, and self-sacrifice born of love, light power at the heart of the darkness, perfect counter to the light of balance at the heart of the lesser curse, and a single, spiteful wizard's death was a fleeting, momentary thing, unable to sustain it in the face of her unrelenting onslaught.

She was the magic, but she was also its caster. She felt the Death Curse fall beneath her, felt the target's magic fall into line, polarized, now to the Dark, as was hers. She knew that the purpose she had intended was fulfilled, that it was time, now, to reel in her magic – that she must reel it in, for the White Mage could not work her magic and heal the target while she was still interfering. She could not even come near, breaking the circle, without dire consequences. But she was so exhausted after fighting the magic to cast it, and it responded only sluggishly when she attempted to recall it from the target, bringing it back into herself with the intent to end it, like Fiendfire, to push it back out of the universe, to wherever it had come from. She ground down and pulled, but too strongly – the magic, the Dark, unwilling to go and fundamentally unbiddable, perhaps sensing weakness, turned on her, her feeble attempts to will it away entirely unheeded, and her own magic given over to it, invested when she called it to this plane.

She watched herself lean back from the target, lowering her athame, hand still bleeding, darkness crackling over her like a cloak. She felt the horror and terror in James and Marlene as she tried to rise to her feet, pulling away from their hands and turning to face them. ("Stop her! Don't let her go!" Sirius admonished the others, cringing as his fingers dug into the bruises he had left on her shoulder a lifetime ago, at the beginning of the ritual. His words were in vain, as his fellow aurors recoiled from the power rolling off her in waves.) She felt Jessie's uncertainty tempered by his faith in her and Sirius' longing for her – for the Dark – buried under years of hatred and the pain that her presence caused him, even now. That… yes, that was intriguing. She focused on him, the Dark speaking through her: "We know you, Sirius Orion of the House of Black. You were ours before you even entered this world."

He scowled. "I was," he confirmed, emphasizing the past tense. "I'm not anymore. I declared for the Light, by my own will!"

"Declared for them you may be, but you will always be ours. It's in your blood, little Black, you cannot deny it…"

"L-Lily," he said, voice shaking, hand trembling as she stepped toward him and he held her in place, refusing to back up and break the circle, even with her power creeping and swirling up his arm. "Lily, if you're still in there, now would be a really good time for the 'no' part of 'yes and no.'"

Without stopping to consider the consequences, she revived her connection to the Light. It returned with a blaze of phoenix song in her ears, undermining the very magic that had brought the Dark into being as it washed through her soul. She took refuge in it, disavowing the Dark, forcing her soul to become inhospitable to it, pushing through the pain of the dissonance this caused by sheer will as she collapsed to the ground, silently appealing to the Light to cast out the Dark.

For Sirius, she thought desperately. For Dora and the kids and Jamie and – fuck – for all of London, and Magical Britain – we cannot have the Dark running loose as well as the Dark Lord! I know I've tested your patience and your mercy far too many times, but if you won't do it for me, do it for them – for the ones who are loyal to you and the innocent and –

When the Light responded, it was not as a conflict within the battleground of her soul, but an annihilation, as though the Light had been called into being within her as well, but immediately come into contact with the Dark, and, on contact, exploded into undifferentiated, wild magic, all the backlash she had expected from the ritual and more, not only falling on her, but originating within her.

Her last thought before she collapsed was a semi-conscious hope that she hadn't just burnt herself out. People simply weren't meant to channel that much magic all at once.