Beyond Hogwarts & More- Chapter 42

-= Beyond Hogwarts & More; Chapter Forty-Two=-

They stepped out of the main Malfoy fireplace into a completely empty entrance hall in a few moments, trying to swallow the ash that had flung itself inside their noses and mouths, or at any rate not to sneeze violently.
   “Okay,” Fabian Prewett whispered, eyes watering from the soot and wand at the ready. “Where to now?”
   Lily nodded towards the door of the drawing room. “They took her in there while I was still here. But quiet!”
   The warning was unnecessary; every one of them had the sneaking feeling that every breath they took was magnified to a hundred times its usual volume, and that the soft clumps of their feet against the stone floor could be heard miles away, let alone in the next room. When they formed a small half-circle around the drawing-room door, each of them looked at the rest, stood for about a split second, and then, without having coordinating anything previously, they struck.
   Both of the Prewetts and Remus bellowed “Reducto!”, pointing their wands at the lock. The combined force of the three spells drove through the ebony doors and blasted the iron locks at least ten feet inside the room, as the rest of the Order could see as they shoved the doors open ceremoniously and began shouting hexes as fast as they could manage.
   Mortifer Malfoy was in the room, a man at least fifty years old but as upright and virile as his son, who was standing beside him. Two of Anne’s guardians had left, but the other two were still there, one of them with a fist-ful of Anne’s hair clutched in his hand and the other drilling his wand at her, as she lay sprawled on the floor, eyes closed. Three hooded and robed men were standing with Rabastan Lestrange, who was there as well, standing off to the side in the shadow, a lock of black hair handsomely falling over his eyes.
   Caradoc charged forward, shouting, Stunning the man who was pulling Anne’s hair with his wand and delivering a faultless blow to the jaw of the other man. Gideon Prewett followed his lead, leaping aside from everyone else and sending a Body-Binding Hex at Rabastan, who deflected it effortlessly. Gideon’s eyes sparkled, and he drew even closer to Rabastan, until he was standing just fifteen feet away, both of them with their wands raised.
   Lily saw the beginning of their duel, and then her hands were full, for it took less than no time for Lucius to de-Stun his confederate, and then there were seven fighting against twelve. For all that, though, the Death Eaters were nothing if not well trained, and Mr. Malfoy was quick to seize his opportunity and blast Caradoc into the drawing-room fireplace, slamming his head on the edge of the mantelpiece. Caradoc fell to the floor, a thick stream of blood pouring down the back of his head, onto his neck, and staining the silver-green rug.
   Sirius shot towards Lucius, Peter at his side, and the three began to duel, but Peter could not hope to hold his own, even though he had been practicing as hard as he could with Sirius and Remus. Rigid as a board, he tumbled against the back of a high arm-chair and rolled onto the floor, and Sirius and Lucius were left to it.
   As far as Lily could see out of the corner of her eye while trying to down one of Rabastan’s newly acquired henchmen, it promised to be quite an interesting fight. Sirius, she thought composedly, was probably Lucius’ equal as far as duelling was concerned—they both were about the same height and build, and they were both very quick on their feet. Each of them, moreover, possessed an almost infinite knowledge of spells, and Sirius, having been around Dark magic for more than half of his life, knew how to perform quite a lot of it, even if she had never known him to put that knowledge to use. But now—
   Lily ducked under her opponent’s arm, elbowed him in the stomach, and sent a Full Body-Bind Curse up his left nostril, spun out of the way as he fell, and took in her friend’s fight for about a split second. Now, she came to realise, his family had made him absorb so many things she had had no idea of.
   The Shield Charm he conjured up, for example, was in no way a usual charm that would be incorporated into the Hogwarts curriculum; when Lucius’ curse hit it, not only did it rebound, but it multiplied itself several dozen times, so that at least thirty shafts of bright red light streamed back towards Lucius, who conjured another shield of the same kind. He threw what was almost a blinding sphere of red light, measuring about one foot in diameter, back at Sirius, who tilted his translucent but spark-spitting shield at an odd angle; the enlarged mass of light that was almost white by now flew up and into the wall above and next to him, blasting an enormous hole in the stone and sending splinters and bits of wall down on the heads of everyone in that half of the drawing-room.
   Nearly stumbling over Sturgis Podmore, who was out cold on the floor, Lily darted out of the way of a malicious-looking blueish hex, but the cold blue eyes of another of Rabastan’s men were far more threatening as well as far more inescapable. She fired a quick Manacle Hex at his right arm, magically binding it to his left, and he snarled quite unattractively, let his left hand dangle, and pointed his wand straight at Lily’s throat.
   She dodged the bright green thread of light, but barely, and it bored itself into her shoulder, cutting into her flesh and ripping the nerves. She cried out, both in pain and in shock, and clutched her shoulder convulsively as she fell to one knee. Her wand fell out of her hand; a shaking, needle-like stabbing sensation was boring its way down her arm, and she couldn’t keep a hold on it. Her fingers refused to pick it up; they refused to close, but in compensation, they started to shudder uncontrollably.
   “Goodbye, then,” her hooded adversary grinned, and he raised his wand again.
   And, just at that moment, a horrific squeal split every molecule of air in half for miles.
   Everyone froze immediately, most of them vaguely wondering if that had been a sort of alarm system that the Malfoys had set up, and the Malfoys hoping to goodness that it hadn’t been that, because if it was, they had no idea how to switch it off.
   The next instant, everything was explained, as James Potter took the moment to blast Lily’s would-be assassin off of his feet, into the ceiling, through a formerly intact stained-glass window, and headfirst into a stone birdbath that had been purchased with a label reading: “The Venus Flytrap: Never Be Bothered By Pesky Twits Again”. Then he leapt outside, took the unconscious Death Eater by the small of the back, who had mysteriously shrunk to half his usual height, cracked his spine one way, flipped him around, cracked him the other way, twisted him into a mass of splintered bones and black robes, and flung the entire collaboration of what had once been human into the flesh-eating birdbath, which immediately proceeded to swallow its after-dinner snack.
   Actually, what happened was more along these lines, although to Lily, who was seeing double and hearing greatly unnerving bits of static-like fuzz instead of the expected whooshes of light and yells and bellowed curses, the above might as well have happened:
   James, having just been magically punched in the abdomen, wheezed a few times in the manner of a hopeless asthmatic, conjured up a medium-force Shield Charm, and looked on, satisfied, as the jet of red light rebounded and hit his opponent squarely in the chest. The other man keeled over, just in time to present a spectacular view of what threatened to be Lily’s last living moments. James didn’t have time to yell out a Shield Charm or simply a different spell to deflect the soon-to-be curse, much less the presence of mind, and all he could manage was what he intended to be a terror-inducing yell, though, owing to his current state of not breathing, it came out rather higher than had been expected.
   The effect was brilliant, however. Astounded, every face in the room turned towards him, and, taking advantage of the completely nonplussed state of Lily’s attacker, he bellowed “Expelliarmus!” as loudly as he could; the hooded man flew a few feet backwards into a window, shattered the glass—the clear, unstained glass, as a matter of fact—and fell into the garden with a muffled thump just below the windowsill, with one leg lying at an unnaturally twisted angle.
   On the other side of the room, Sirius copied his friend almost exactly in that he took the chance that Lucius was offering him by temporarily forgetting that he had an opponent with a raised wand. “Stupefy”, he yelled, and Lucius had just enough time to look both startled and mortified before he fell to the floor, his grey, insensitive eyes staring blankly at the stone ceiling.
   Looking up, he saw that James had been knocked off of his feet by a well-aimed curse from Lucius’ father, and, as he leaped to his feet again and faced the cool, malicious older man, Sirius saw at once that he was in absolutely no position to help Lily, either now or in the near future. He managed to slip to her unscathed, as everyone else was too bound up in duelling to be able to spare one stray hex towards him, and pulled her backwards a few feet and out of the shattered window, catching her neatly as she rolled out. Picking her up, he carried her a few feet away from the window and the unconscious Death Eater, where no stray curse could reach them, and set her down on the grass.
   “Lily,” he whispered, shaking her unpierced shoulder. “Lily, are you all right?”
   “Hi,” she managed, her eyes fluttering open. “You’re one of three triplets, did you know?”
   “Their names are Angus and Gallius,” he reassured her. “You’re not seeing things.”
   “Wonderful,” she smiled, trying very hard not to wince as he sat her up against the wall, as he had kindly managed not to bump her shoulder in the process. “You three spell ‘SAG’.”
   “My mum didn’t much fancy us,” he grinned back. “Listen, I’m going to put a temporary ward around your shoulder; that should stop the bleeding.”
   “I’m not so much bleeding as growing very, very cold,” she admitted. “I can’t feel my arm; it’s gone all numb, except when it gets banged, and I couldn’t hold my wand.”
   “Oh,” he frowned. “I—hum. What did it feel like?”
   “Rem armus tetigisti,” Lily grimaced, shutting her eyes tightly and then opening them in the hope of making herself see only one Sirius. Not that three of them was an eyesore, but the ability to walk in a straight line was something of an asset while duelling. “I think that was the curse he used. Horrid corruption of the Latin phrase, though,” she managed, trying not to garble her words. “Ow.”
   “You’re brilliant,” Sirius exclaimed under his breath. “That curse was a handy accessory of my father’s. ‘You have hit the nail on the shoulder’, except this makes it literal.”
   “And painful,” Lily said, gritting her teeth. She was quickly losing the strength in her back to keep her shoulder away from the wall, and she kept falling into it, with excruciating results. “I’m—“
   “Shh,” Sirius ordered. “Hold still.”
   He raised his wand, touched the tip of it to the comparatively bloodless hole in her robes, muttered “Ablegatio Clavus Exsecror”, and withdrew his wand backwards, in a straight line, bringing a nastily long nail made of brilliant white-blue light out of her shoulder. It hung in midair for a few seconds before clashing to the floor, where it splintered into dozens of bright wedges of light that rapidly shrunk and before vanishing altogether.
   “Phew,” Sirius exhaled heavily. “It seems my father’s taught that curse to others, then. Come on,” he added, “you can stand now.”
   To her surprise, Lily found that he was quite right, as she grasped the outstretched arm that heaved her to her feet.
   “I’ve got your wand, too,” he offered, holding it out to her; “it was just sort of lying next to you.”
   Gratefully, she smiled at him, slipping her wand back into her left hand. “You really are wonderful, you know that?”
   Caught off guard, Sirius flushed. “Er—no, not really; it’s just the sort of thing anyone would do…”
   “It most definitely is not,” Lily said firmly, placing her hand on his shoulder to stand on her tiptoes and kissing him on the cheek. “You are an amazing person, Sirius Black, and don’t you ever forget it.”
   “You are, too,” he said softly, placing his hand on hers, which was still resting on his shoulder—a light, thin hand, but by no means fragile. Try as he might, he could not keep his fingers from trembling; she was, in that moment, so different, so lovely, despite the hood and the wisps of brown hair that a faint wind wafted across her face. “I—“ He paused, and then took a quick breath of determination. “Lily, listen, there’s something I want you to hear…”
   Gently, he smoothed out a wrinkle in the collar of the robes that hung lopsidedly around her neck, and his nail caught on the cloth and drew it backwards, plainly revealing a white label on which someone had drawn, in black ink and carefully distinct block letters: James Potter.
   And, in that moment, any instinct that he had had to tell her anything, anything at all, sputtered and died. She belonged to James, she always would, no matter what he said to her, ever. And he had no right to tell her anything; he had been too late, and he could never get over those ten wasted minutes at their seventh-year ball that had changed both—all three of their lives forever. If only—if only he had been able to talk to her before James had—maybe, just maybe, things would have been different. But he hadn’t, he hadn’t, and now he was useless to her. She had James, after all, his own best friend, whose right it was to envelope her just as his pair of ridiculously oversized black robes did.
   “We’ve got to get back,” he whispered, collecting himself with an effort and gesturing towards the Malfoy drawing-room. “I’m sorry—stupid of me.”
   “Come on, then; we’ve dawdled long enough,” she grinned with a wink, only subconsciously aware of the private struggle that Sirius had just managed to fight. Drawing back her hand, she darted back through the window and into the fray; though Sirius stood alone in the garden for a few difficult seconds before shaking his head determinedly and following the whisk of James’ billowing black robes.
   Hardly aware that Sirius was watching her, Lily had placed a light hand on the splintered windowframe, slipped through the opening, succeeding in not cutting herself on the shards of glass that were still embedded in the painted wood, and faced the clash of duellists once again. Her eyes flashed from one person to the next, trying to decide where her help would be needed the most, which was not particularly easy, but pleasantly so; the Order, at least temporarily, was winning.
   Lucius’ father, Rabastan Lestrange, and two hooded, unknown wizards with corduroy trousers were their only opponents that were putting up a fight, and Fabian had joined his brother to fight Rabastan, who looked somewhat the worse for wear; a long, bleeding gash was cut just above his cheekbone, and it looked as if his sleeve had caught fire. Fabian was developing a black eye, but Gideon only sported several scraped knuckles.
   Elphias Doge was lying in a corner, propped up against a stately and slightly cluttered sideboard, his odd, crumpled hat thrown a few feet away from his inert body, but he was not bleeding, as far as Lily could tell with a desultory glance. In front of him, James and Mr. Malfoy were still battling, and Lily saw with a rush of pride that, while James’ hair was scorched slightly just above his left ear, Mr. Malfoy bore several minor scratches on his jaw, and a line of blood was clearly dripping through his moon-white hair.
   Without a further thought, Lily ducked under Mad-Eye Moody’s outstretched arm and rose to her feet to stand beside her husband, who, as she raised her wand, gave her a quick, startled, and relieved glance, recognising the way she moved and the squaring of her shoulders through the heavily draped black robes.
   She did not wait for the explosion, though; before either of them saw the result of the Stunners, she sent a Petrifying Hex towards him, which he evaded skilfully. Next to her, James shouted “Reducto!” at the same time that Mr. Malfoy bellowed “Imperio”, and the two spells ricocheted off of each other, one of them blasting a hole in a portrait hanging over an as yet unbroken window and the other striking the stone floor with such force that it scoured a pale grey spot in the stone.
   “You okay?” James hissed to Lily, breathing heavily, as he conjured up a temporary Shield Charm to block a vicious Blasting Hex.
   “Fine,” Lily replied, out of breath as well. “Sirius fixed my shoulder—duck!”
   Startled, James dropped to the floor, obeying both her command and the sudden yank she gave to his wrist. A second Banishing hex soared towards them, demolishing the magical shield-barrier and sending dangerous, broken bits of magic flying all over the room.
   “Thanks,” he breathed, squeezing her hand and then letting go swiftly as he leapt to his feet. “Incarcerous!” he yelled. Ropes flew out of the end of his wand and wrapped themselves around Mr. Malfoy’s left arm and his neck; he had moved aside too quickly to be completely encased. However, the ropes were cutting off his air supply, and, as he clutched at them, they tightened themselves even more.
   “Abeo!” he gasped, trying to pull away from the fetters that were giving his features a faint tint of blue, but no efforts on his part could make the strangling ropes pull away from him. And James, even if he had wanted to, could not have taken back the curse or reversed it; the powerful Expulsion Curse had hurled both himself and Lily into the air and against the wall behind them with a back-breaking crack.
   The pain in Lily’s head almost deafened her; it was as if the back of her skull had been driven forward and out through her eye sockets. She could not hear anything except a loud ringing sound that made her want to shriek and lash out at whatever was making that noise, to claw at it, to smother it, to kill it—anything to tear the agony into as many shreds as the laws of destruction would permit. Her arms flew into the wall just split seconds afterwards, sending an agonizing seiries of jolts through her body.
   She slid down the wall, bumping into something soft next to her that she guessed was James; when she opened her eyes, dark spots were ice-skating across them with razor-sharp blades, and she could see only specks of light here and there.
   Scrabbling wildly for anything to break her fall, something caught her hand; something cold and metallic and sculptured or carved. She grasped for it desperately, but her hand fell downwards as she did, and then her feet touched the sideboard.
   Startled, Lily did not at first realise what had happened; when she tried to stand, her knees buckled, and she fell backwards against the sculptured frame that she had grabbed at before. It encased something glassy—a mirror. However, just as that thought penetrated her mind, the glass dissolved and a whirlwind of sorts drew her through the mirror, the frame of which now only surrounded a thick, grayish-silver fog. As she fell, she vaguely felt something attach itself to her ankle—something alive, something that clutched at her as if she were pulling herself to the surface of a fathoms-deep ocean. Only now, she thought dizzily, it was the other way around.
   Lily had been clenching her teeth in preparation of some sort of impact or other, but nothing of the sort happened; a firm ground materialised gently underneath her feet, and she fell to her knees, weakly shaking her head.
   The firm clutch on her ankle released itself, and a warm body bumped into her, bringing her back to a more normal state of consciousness. She passed a hand behind her head, just where a throbbing pain was the most acute, and felt a mass of clotted hair and something wet and sticky. Blood.
   Her hood had flown off of her head as Lucius’ father threw her into the wall, but that was the last thing she was thinking of. The feeling of an axe cleaving her skull in two was receding somewhat, and, shakily, she got to her feet.
   Next to her, someone was doing the same thing, and, looking down, she saw James’ messy black mop of hair, with a streak of blood in it almost identical to hers, if she had known it. He struggled to a standing position and blinked a few times: his glasses were gone. Likely they had flown off during their hurtling journey through the Malfoy drawing-room, and now James was stranded who-knows-where with horrible vision.
   “Dear, dear,” a high, cold voice said, interrupting her thoughts, “what has Mortifer sent us?”
   Lily’s eyes snapped into focus; she recognised that voice. She couldn’t help but recognise it—she had heard it last in October, barely a few months ago. And no one that had ever heard that particular blend of sound could ever erase it entirely from his or her memory—it was sharp, biting, like a hailstorm whipped into a frenzy by a passing tornado, and it cut itself into the listener’s brain. It dug itself in and left a raw wound that would never heal, so that it was always exposed, present, there—it could haunt dreams, torment memories, agonize the subconscious. It was a chafing reminder of what magic could do to a person—for the Dark Lord had been a person once; he had been Tom Riddle, a boy who became a man that held a desperate love and longing for power, who harboured hatred so intense that it ate him alive, and to whom fear was both a tool and a toy. A man who had once had the clear voice of a child, but that voice as well as the humanity that lingered in his soul was wrecked, conquered, built upon, and dominated.
   He sat just four yards in front of them, on an elegant, expensive, garnet-encrusted chair that looked as though it had been stolen from a king’s throne room. He was flanked on either side by a tall window, hung with black velvet curtains that were pulled aside with silver chains to let the darkness seep inside.
   Next to him, a cloaked, hooded, and masked person was kneeling; he might have been receiving instructions on something before their unexpected arrival interrupted things, Lily thought distantly. He was a chubby man, though; that could be determined even through his disguise.
   “I have no recollection of anything of this kind,” the Dark Lord said coolly, yet with an audibly biting and alert undertone, as James, awakening from a temporary state of shocked paralysis, fumbled for Lily’s hand and realised with an immense feeling of relief that he had not dropped his wand; his sleeve had covered it. A quick glance to the side showed him that Lily had done the same to her own wand, and he tightened his grasp around her hand.
   For her part, Lily was much less terrified than James was; as his trembling fingers imparted to her, he was horribly scared, even though he had every intention to die fighting, if that was to be his fate. She knew quite well, that the former Tom Riddle did not intend to kill James outright, without untold agony, unless it was the only way, and she herself was hopefully not in an identifiable state. With that thought in mind, Lily reached behind her head to pull her hood up and over her face, but her fingers entangled caught at her hair, and, nervously, she pulled them away, letting a few strands come within the range of her vision. And then she understood that something was wrong; horribly, horribly wrong. The wisp of hair she had seen was a burnished auburn, the color of a very embarrassed rose.
   Merlin, she thought dazedly. The cosmetic charms must have been thrown off by the force of that Expulsion Curse…I—oh, no.
   A string of very rude words was running through James’ mind as he saw the calculating eyes of the Dark Lord put two and two together as he stared at them, most of the insults directed at Mortifer Malfoy, but a few well-chosen ones would have been addressed to their current nemesis if he had felt that it would not bring about their instantaneous deaths.
   “Up, Lestrange,” Lord Voldemort ordered, rising to his feet as well. “You are to communicate with Mortifer and request an explanation of this—gift,” he sneered, as, perfectly tailored black velvet robes gliding down the marble steps at the foot of his chair, he drew slightly closer to the two intruders. “Meanwhile, seal the exits. These two are not to leave here.”
   “Yes, My Lord,” the tubby man answered, bowing, and, as he walked past Lily, he paused, looked her up and down, evidently thought better of what he had intended to do, and passed her. As he did so, Lily heard the faint whisper of a spell she had not studied, and a cold breath of air began to tickle the hairs behind her ears and at the nape of her neck; it plunged into the wound on her head like the cold blade of a knife, and it hissed mockery with every tendril of magic that it possessed.
   The tall figure in the elegant velvet robes did not speak for a few minutes; he simply looked at the two of them. It was, as a matter of fact, more effective than other things he could have done, and he knew it.
   “So,” he said, finally. “May I ask what you are doing here?”
   “Hello, Tom,” Lily answered clearly, giving only the smallest of nods.
   “Mrs. Potter,” he acknowledged, every ounce of hate that he would have loved to spend in painfully murdering Lily’s companion represented in that one word—Potter.
   “I suppose it would be really, really pointless to tell you that we didn’t come here on purpose,” she offered. “Although you could always believe us.”
   As a response, he raised his wand, and a marble pillar appeared between Lily and James, and, with a jerk, another flick of his wand fettered them both to it.
   “Or you could chain us up,” Lily agreed, ignoring the black spots that danced across her eyes as the jerk of the chains crashed the back of her head against the pillar. “There is that.”
   “I feel no need to admire your antics, though they may be braver than those of many others,” he said bluntly. “I am already quite aware that you are not of the ordinary. But you are going to explain to me exactly what brought you here. In detail. Correct detail, may I add, for if it is not, I will feel no remorse in torturing your husband to the brink of madness.”
   “I am in the room, you know,” James snapped, irritated.
   “That can be remedied,” Lord Voldemort offered. “Mr. Macnair has a collection of medieval torture devices in his home, and he has been longing to try out a particular pair of thumbscrews. Of course, there is always the option of remaining here and keeping your mouth shut under penalty of immediate magical torment.”
   “Yeah,” Lily said, looking bored. “Right. Your threats have improved vastly; all hail to the Dark Lord. Would you really like to know what we are doing here, or do you just want to whinge on with James about—“
   “Lily!” James hissed, surreptitiously trying to step on her foot. “Shut up!”
   “Oh, no,” Lord Voldemort said, shrugging elegantly and returning to his seat. “I know her perfectly. In times of danger, she grows increasingly sardonic. This is only a proof of how frightened she actually is. And she has good reason to be.”
   His ego doesn’t seem to have deflated, Lily thought tetchily. “If you think that’s the best sarcasm I can come up with, I will Avada myself here and now.”
   The Dark Lord struck a long-fingered hand against the arm of his chair, and a small crack appeared where the one ring he wore collided with the wood. “You are to disclose exactly why you are here and how you have come here, telling no lies and refraining from idiocy. Starting now.”
   Lily knew full well that she could not tell the whole truth; that would have been both betrayal and suicide. Closing her eyes to rearrange her thoughts, she remained silent for a few seconds, and then blinked and looked directly at Voldemort.
   “About an hour ago, we got a frantic call from a friend of ours that his girlfriend was in trouble,” she began. “He said that she was at the Malfoy manor, and he rounded up a few other people, too. I don’t know all of them. We took Floo powder into the manor and started duelling like mad with the people that were guarding her—or whatever they were doing. James and I were fighting Mortifer Malfoy; he Expelled us off of our feet and I fell through a mirror—at least, I think it was. James grabbed onto me—and, well, here we are.”
   “I see,” the Dark Lord said frigidly. “What a typically Gryffindor tale.”
   “Not that I understand the point of dwelling on old school Houses,” Lily riposted, “but that may be because we were, in fact, Gryffindors.”
   Next to her, Lily heard James whisper “Absolvo” almost inaudibly, and she felt the iron rings around her wrists dissolve. She kept her arms in the same position, but, seated in front of them as he was, Lord Voldemort could not see their hands.
   “You will be handed over to Mortifer as soon as he rids himself of your pesky friends, and I shall decide then what to do with you. You cannot, of course, Disapparate out of here, and I would like to advise you not to attempt it. We will investigate your story and see how much of it is true. Meanwhile—Custos!”
   In answer to what was apparently a summons, the outline of a door appeared in the wall to Lily’s right; it opened, and a person stepped out in the too-familiar mask and hood. He knelt down in front of the Dark Lord, raised the hem of his master’s robes to his lips, and kissed them in what was undoubtedly the most servile action Lily had ever seen anyone perform. “My Lord?”
   “Custos, you are to take these two to the dungeons. Search them. Make sure they have nothing about them that may aid them. However, you are not to harm either.” He shot James a very nasty look. “The man I would prefer to have whole before I torture him. I do not intend to kill him yet—“ his eyes raked Lily’s figure shortly, then turned back to his servant—“as the rumors look to be quite unfounded. As for the lady—I have made a bargain with her, and I have sealed it with my word.” He nodded shortly to Lily. “You are not to touch her.”
   “Very good, my Lord,” Custos bowed. He backed away on his knees until he was about two yards away from his master, and then rose to his feet. Turning, he pulled out his wand from some hidden recess in his robes, and started for the two prisoners—for that was what they were now, Lily realised.
   “Got a clever plan?” James breathed softly, not moving his mouth. “I’ve got a very Gryffindor one, but I think it’s the best we’ll be able to do.”
   “What, jinx him when he gets to close and then run like a bat out of Hell?”
   “I prefer to substitute ‘retreat in a dignified manner’ for that last bit. But yes, actually. It’s our best hope. There’s got to be an exit somewhere—I saw two doors behind us, on either side, when we first landed in here.”
   “Okay,” Lily whispered, sliding her wand into position. “Don’t tense up, don’t move your facial muscles…”
   “On the count of three,” James ordered, lightly squeezing two of her fingers. “One—two…”