Frank Longbottom stared into Alice's eyes. Alice stared back into his.

"You ever used polyjuice before?" Alice asked.

Frank shook his head.

"Lily says it's not a big deal. She's used it."

"Yeah, James said that, too. And of course I've studied it at the training center... Only top investigators are issued polyjuice though. It's a restricted potion."

Alice pulled the bottle from her pocket and turned it over, watching little bubbles rise up inside the vial slowly. It was goopy and brown, like something a little kid would make while playing in a mud puddle. She looked up at Frank. "Do you think it'll work?"

"The polyjuice or the mission?" Frank stared at the muck in the vial. He couldn't believe he was going to go on and drink it.

"The mission, I know the polyjuice will work," she said.

Frank drew a deep breath. "I don't know Severus Snape well enough to make a call," he said. "But Lily seemed pretty confident."

"Yeah, well, Lily's made excuses for him for a lot of things in the past," Alice said. "What did James say when you were talking?"

"James very plainly said he didn't want to speculate on Snape. He says he's liable to get himself in trouble if he comments."

Alice snorted. "That sounds like scared hubby language for Severus Snape's an arsehole and I can't say it because Lily will kill me."

"I thought so too."

"Do you speak Scared Hubby fluently?"

"Naahhhh," Frank answered and he smiled. Then he paused and looked at the vial. "Bloody hell this is going to be weird."

"Yes, probably very weird; it would be weird for any of us, but I know it's especially weird for you," Alice agreed. "But you're the only one with the training."

"I know," he said with a sigh.

"You tested the hearing ear?"

"Yeah. It worked amazingly far apart actually. I hope the Prewetts don't notice I knicked it. Dumbledore said he'd talk to them if they did but its best if they don't know about this mission. He's worried the Ministry will get involved and the vampires will make a rash decision... or act out in spite."

Alice shivered.

"I love you, Alice," Frank said.

Alice pulled Frank into her and kissed him. When she let go of the sides of his face, he was smiling stupidly, knocked goofy by the kiss. Alice laughed. "More where that came from when you get back, loverboy."

Frank grinned. "I best be off, then."

Alice looked at the vial again, then looked up at Frank. "Well, then, babe - bottoms up?"

Frank nodded, took the vial, popped the cork, and poured the potion into his mouth.

Lily Potter walked down the road in Spinner's Lane, the invisibility cloak pulled close 'round her shoulders. It was dark, clouds moving overhead, half obscuring the moon. The house windows were pale yellow squares in the houses that loomed over the narrow street. The houses were run down, shabby little fences blocked off the yards and she heard a dog barking somewhere behind one of them on the other side. Cars were parked on the edge of the road, the sidewalk was cracked. Everything about it screamed squalor.

She turned into the yard of the little house she was looking for, jumping over a murky puddle of mystery liquid that had pooled 'round one of the stepping stones through a dead brown garden. She moved up the stoop to the door and knocked through the fabric.

The door opened almost instantly.

The dark form of Severus Snape stared out and his eyes raked about the empty space before him.

"Severus, it's Lily. Let me in," Lily's voice whispered from the empty space.

Severus hesitated, then stepped back, pulling the door opened, and moved just enough for her to slip through. His eyes remained on the street outside for several moments, then he backed in and closed the door. He hissed the incantations to lock it up, the bolts clunking heavily and a chain sliding. He turned 'round, and stared into the dimly lit room.

It was odd, not seeing her, but hearing her breathing. Odder still was how he could not see her mind clearly, either.

There was a meager fire in the hearth, barely enough to warm the immediate area around the front of it, and the candles in the sconces were low. A chair by the hearth had a book hung open over the arm, and a tiny side table held one long tapered candle, and a coffee mug of what looked like a lumpy potato stew of some sort. It was a sad place.

Lily asked, quietly, "Is anyone else here?"

"No," Severus said, still standing by the door. "Have you been learning occlumency?"

She shrugged off the invisibility cloak, hanging it over her arm, and looking around. "Some. Why? Am I getting good enough to stop you from looking at my mind uninvited, Severus?" she asked.

"What are you doing here, Lily?" Severus asked, ifnoring the jab. It had aways been a sensitive line, what he could and couldn't look at in her mind...

"I came to see you, obviously," she answered.

He sighed. "Why?"

"I think you know why, Severus. We need your help, the good side needs your help."

"I can't help you."

"Can't or won't?" Lily demanded.

"Can't," he answered firmly. "Lily, you don't understand my situation and --"

"I don't because you won't explain it to me. Maybe if you explained it I could understand or I could help you. But unlike you, Severus, I can't read minds. I don't know what you're thinking, all I know is that there's a version of you that I used to know that I trusted and that I loved very dearly as my greatest friend and despite everything that's happened between us - despite everything you've done to me and to the people that I love - I still think that there's some bit of you that could be good if you'd just try it on for size. Why I think this, I don't know, but I think it for some reason and I madly have come, acting foolish and insisting that old you is still in there after all this time."

Severus stayed very still by the door. He watched as Lily walked toward the hearth and stared down at the one log smoldering in the grate, then up at the empty mantel. He wished she wouldn't look around his hovel. He knew it was nothing, knew it was dirty and ugly and empty. It was just like him, the inside of himself reflected on the outside in this place. He wasn't feeling sorry for himself, just bitter that she was here and looking at it, as though she'd splayed him open and laid him out with his chest carved.

She turned around and looked at him.

"I know you, Severus."

"Then you know that this is what I am - this is what I will always be," he waved his hands around the room. "You are not safe here. Who sent you? Was it Potter? Sending you - alone - to do the business of a man... Why isn't he here? Why isn't he protecting you?"

Lily's eyes narrowed. "James would do anything to protect me."

Severus scowled. "He is changing you."

"He's not changing me," Lily answered.

"How dare he change what was already perfect."

Lily rolled her eyes.

Severus scowled all the harder.

"Look, Severus, if you don't want to help us - that's fine. We have other legilimens in the Order, we'll simply find another way to get the information, that's what we've been doing all along," Lily said, challenging. Her green eyes glinted at him. "But I wanted you to be the one to help because I wanted to be proven right, after all these years of defending you constantly, that you really do have the capacity to do good. But obviously I was wrong."

She started shaking out the invisibility cloak, started to wrap it 'round her shoulders, started to make like she was going to leave.

Severus snapped, "I am bound by oath, Lily."

"So break your oath."

"I can't," he hissed through clenched teeth.

"Fine." Cloak 'round the shoulders, she pulled the hood up and walked to where he stood by the door and she gave him a fairly good shove out of the way, starting to undo the locks. "We'll go on with our mission just as we originally planned, then. And if I die, then so be it."

Severus chilled. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"We know you're meeting with your... friend... again tonight. We even know who it is."

Severus raised an eyebrow.

"We know when and know where, and we're - we're going to go in and - and take control of the situation," she said primly.

"Take control of the situation?" Severus drawled.

"Yes. We've got it all figured out. It's a brilliant plan. James came up with it."

"Because Potter's plans have always gone so well," murmured Snape sarcastically.

"This one will."

And there was a flash. Nothing more than a tremor of her shields and Snape could see her, the pale skin of her neck exposed - bait - giggling and talking to the blood thirsty Matija Blagojevic, passing time for some hair-brained scheme that could never work to take place... He could almost feel the nervousness - and the image blustered away before he could see the details of the plan... only that it was weak at best.

"You cannot be anywhere near Matija Blagojevic," he hissed.

Lily lowered the hood of the cloak. "What business is it of yours?"

"You are the last person that should be anywhere near Blagojevic," Snape said and he pushed between her and the door, glaring at her. "Your husband has no mind if he thinks that for even a moment whatever plan he has concocted is strong enough to risk having you near that foul, stinking beast." Severus spoke with such passion that it came nearly as a growl.

"You think I'm weak because I'm a mudblood, is that it, Severus?" she demanded.

"No," he breathed.

Lily shrugged. "Last I checked you're supposed to be rooting for us mudbloods to get killed in the war. Aren't you? Isn't that like Death Eater 101 or something?"

"You're different than the rest of --" he stopped himself and clenched his teeth, closing his eyes in frustration for a moment, then tried again, "You're exceptional, Lily. You always have been."

"You can't love me but hate what I am."

Severus opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off:

"Severus, I'm giving you a chance to make the right choice... If you're not going to help me, then at least don't hinder me." She pushed him out of the way and finished the locks.

Severus tried to keep the door closed, but she pushed 'round him and stepped out into the dark street.

Lily moved without looking back, without slowing down, hurrying down the walkway, jumped over the puddle at the garden gate and started down the shabby street once again. She ducked down an alley between two homes, fairly certain that Severus Snape was still watching from his door, even if he couldn't see her because of the invisibility cloak. Once 'round the corner and out of sight, protected by the cover of the two houses, she paused and leaned against a dirty old fence, taking deep breaths.

She reached up under her hair and pulled out what looked like her ear - but was actually a very lifelike rubber ear cover. She turned it over in her palm, then drew her wand with her other hand and with a CRACK! had disapparated away.

She reappeared in Godric's Hollow in the cemetary by the old church, hurried out of the shadows and out through the creaky gate, across the street at a long diagonal and through the gate of the Potter Cottage.

Even as she walked, she was growing taller.

By the time the real Lily Potter opened the door, the Lily that had gone to see Severus Snape was back to being Frank Longbottom.

"Bloody hell, that was weird," Frank said, walking through the door without any other sort of greeting to Lily. He tossed the rubber ear onto the dining room table next to it's mate, which sat where Lily had been sitting, listening and whispering her responses to Frank for him to speak to Severus. "You women are mental for wearing these -" he kicked off the heels that he'd been balancing in as Lily and tugged at the hem of the skirt that was now way too tight 'round front of him, so that the fabric was taught 'round the bulge of him and only barely covered him up lengthwise.

"What's the matter, don't you feel fashionable?" James asked from his perch on a tall stool by the kitchen counter.

Frank snorted and reached for the pile of his own clothes that sat on a chair. "Honestly, my eyes are up here, Potter."

"Sirius will be quite sorry he missed all this."

"Maybe he'd appreciate my putting him in handcuffs if he saw me like this," Frank joked.

James grinned and chuckled, "He'd beg for you to do it again, Frankie."

Frank pretended to do a hair toss with hair that was no longer there - the polyjuice fully worn off - and carried his clothes upstairs to change with as much dignity as he could muster, ignoring James's joking cat calls as he went.

Lily shook her head, "You're such a toerag," she said.

James laughed.

"Now for part two," Lily said.

"Do you think Severus will listen?" James asked.

"I think we gave him the best go of choosing to help us we could. I think he'll do whatever he can to protect us tonight at least. Especially since he won't be sure which one is really me."

James nodded. "Then let's go catch a vampire."