I — the darkest side
Summary: Alice doesn't know how much more she can take.
Disclaimer: No characters belong to me.
Written for: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments):
365 Prompts: 125. (Event) Pregnancy
Assignment #1, Sex Ed, Task Two (write about someone getting pregnant)
Insane House Challenge: 58. (Pairing) Alice/Frank
Bath Bomb Appreciation - Azure Skies (set your story on a beautiful sunny day)
Fanfic Resolutions Challenge - Fic set in Marauder Era; Collection based around the Order of the Phoenix
Writing Club - Restriction of the Month - no characters older than 20 (prompt: word - smile)
Word Count: 733
Her alarm is beeping.
Sighing, she rolls over and turns the damn thing off.
It takes her a while to actually get out of the bed — staring up at the ceiling, she wonders when her body will cave in, and simply refuse to keep functioning anymore.
It's a question she asks herself almost every day — how much longer?
(Until the war ends.)
(Until the Ministry is overthrown.)
(Until they win.)
(Until they lose.)
(Until she loses all shreds of the eager hope she once possessed, the freedom that she thought would be granted to them once outside the spiraling towers of Hogwarts.)
(Until they give up.)
Until it's too late.
Faced with the brutal reality of the world around her, it's hard for Alice to see her happy ending.
She doesn't know how much more she can take.
They fight, but what Dumbledore neglects to see is that they're just kids.
Of course, they're considered to be adults by the rest of the Wizarding community — but there is still a certain shield they expect to continue to be put up around them.
Instead, they have to experience the masses of terror and confusion that are characteristics of all-out war — that is their reality.
Barely nineteen, and yet expected to be able to cope with death — death after death after death after death after death until Alice feels like she's drowning in pure air.
War consumes her, consumes them, and they keep fighting, like there's a chance that any one of them will make it out alive.
She needs to see a therapist.
Alice skips breakfast. She finds herself doing this almost every morning now — unless Frank gives her a better reason not to. But he's hardly here now —
Mission, after mission, after mission. Alice doesn't understand why she isn't permitted to accompany him — after all, she's only a year behind in training, but she knows, just like everyone else, that her abilities are level with many of the fully-trained Aurors.
Sighing, she stuffs her wand into a pocket in her robes, and leaves the apartment.
The sun is bright outside. It's almost ironic. With all that's been going on lately, Alice expects the weather to fully reciprocate her and the rest of the Order's mood.
She apparates into Auror headquarters, the picturesque blue sky, with a mass of cotton-candy clouds, floating gently above her.
At work, much is the same —
Training, then
Eating, and then
More training.
It's nothing new.
And then it happens —
As she casts a defensive spell at a dummy, painted to resemble a Death Eater —
A sudden wave of nausea washes through her body, eliciting a gasp from Alice's mouth.
She stumbles slightly, and the dummy's own defense mechanisms kick in. Barely dodging a red flash of light, she hurtles to the side, simultaneously switching the dummy off and clutching her stomach.
But just as quickly as it came, the pain vanished altogether. Brushing it off as a lack of food, she continues to send spells flying across the room at her artificial enemy.
A minute later, however, it happens again — this time, Alice is sure she's going to be sick. Hurtling to the adjacent bathroom to the training hall, she frantically yanks her wand out, casting a quick revealing spell to find the source of her nausea.
And it's not —
It's not —
Possible?
Not what she expected, in any case.
Because it seems —
It seems like she has found solace at last, in a world cracked and torn by war.
Because the emptiness in her heart is filled almost instantly by the results of the spell.
They're going to have a baby.
Frank is elated, naturally. When he comes home, there is a joy that seizes them both simultaneously, and suddenly they're laughing, and crying, and wondering how the hell they're going to raise a child in the midst of possibly the most dangerous war the Wizarding community of England has seen in a long, long time.
Frank tells Alice it doesn't matter. He laughs again, tears leaking out the sides of his brilliantly blue eyes.
A smile appears on Alice's face, despite the unease nestled deep inside her.
A child, she thinks.
Maybe she'll get her perfect ending after all.
But outside, the war rages on, and they can't ignore it forever.