A/N: This is a new project for the 'Album Challenge' on the HPFC. I will be writing a collection of stories based on the Clannad album 'In A Lifetime'. Each story will have the title of one of the songs on the album. If you're not familiar with Clannad's work, go listen, it's amazing!

I've decided to write my stories about the various members of the first Order of the Phoenix. This first chapter, Northern Skyline, is also for the Snakes&Ladders challenge, where my given character was Lily Evans/Potter.

Disclaimer for the entire collection: Anything HP related belongs to JKR, the album and song titles of course belong to Clannad. The only things that are mine are the plots.

Lily stared in the distance. James was out with his friends again, roaming the forests to keep Remus in control. She didn't want to be jealous, she really didn't. But it stung that they could still have fun while everything inside her was numb.

It was a cloudless, bright night, but she didn't see the beauty of the darkness, didn't register the many stars. The sky was painted with one of the clearest Aurora Boreales Northumberland had seen in years, but she chose to ignore the green curtains on the horizon. They reminded her too much of the other flashes of green. Sometimes, she doubted her decision to join the Order, and tonight was one of such nights. She'd watched it happen right before her eyes. She absentmindedly rubbed the arm that had been grazed by enemy fire. It didn't hurt, not really. Not as much as the hole in her heart anyway.

A hand on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts and she made a little jump.

"Constant vigilance, Evans," Alastor chided. "How can you hope to defeat You-Know-Who when you don't even watch your back?"

Lily didn't reply. She'd grown accustomed to his constant reminders to be vigilant and his habit to call her by her maiden name.

"What were you doing out here anyway? Admiring the view?"

She shook her head. "It's too green."

He raised an eyebrow and then he nodded. "I see."

He went to stand beside her, and for a while they just stood there, leaning on the banister of the balcony, neither of them saying a word. When she first joined the Order, Lily had been scared by Alastor's stern appearance, but once you looked past that, he was actually quite good company to be around; as Auror, he had seen and done many things and every now and then he told her and the others about it. He also knew when not to speak, and she was grateful that he remained silent.

"Do you ever hesitate, Alastor?" she asked after a while. "Do you ever wonder what we're doing it for? All of this?"

"No."

"Not once?"

"We're fighting Dark Magic. We're trying to rid the world of You-Know-Who before he takes over and kills us all. Surely that's reason enough?

"I know." Lily sighed. "But I can't shake the thought that it isn't. It feels like they're always one step ahead of us. Like we're running to keep up but not quite managing."

"This is about Marlene," Alastor stated.

He didn't need to ask, and she didn't need to answer. He knew what haunted her sleep, and she knew that he knew. The way he had understood why she didn't like the Aurora Borealis confirmed that.

Up on the balcony, with no one around but Alastor Moody, she finally spoke out the thought that had been plaguing her since that fatal night. "They knew we were going to be there."

He didn't reply, but she read the response in his eyes – or eye really, for his other eye was still covered in bandages after his run-in with Rosier.

"So you're thinking the same thing?"

"Yes," he said grimly. "I think we have a leak."

Hearing it confirmed by Alastor somehow made it more real, like when the shimmer you see on the horizon suddenly turns into an angry, fire-breathing Hungarian Horntail heading your way.

"Who could it be? I've been going over and over it in my mind but every name seems more absurd than the other."

"Why confide in me? For all you know, I could be the leak."

"I don't think it's you."

"You can never know for sure," he scolded. You really oughtn't trust anyone, Evans. No exceptions."

"What about James? Alice?"

"No one."

"Come on, Alastor, I know James. He would never do anything to harm us. And Alice? Have you seen how devastated she it? She would never cause her sister to die like this."

"Not on purpose, no. But we mustn't rule out the possibility that our leak isn't operating on his or her own account. If they've managed to put one of us under the Imperius…"

Lily shivered at his words. She didn't know which of the two options scared her more: someone knowingly betraying them, or someone acting under the influence of the Imperius Curse. Either way, it meant no one in the Order could trust any of the others, and how could they function as a group if they couldn't even rely on each other to have their back?

"What about Dumbledore?" she questioned. It had been a while since she left Hogwarts, but she still couldn't bring herself to call him Albus, like he insisted she did. "Surely we can trust him?"

Alastor was silent for a moment.

"I think that if you want to place your trust in anyone, he'd be your safest bet," he eventually said. "Godric knows You-Know-Who has tried to talk many of our side into joining him and if Albus were to be the leak, he'd have made us all desert our ranks a long time ago. "

"That's what I thought. Nonetheless, that doesn't bring us closer to a solution. There is still someone among us who could betray us any moment, and that thought is really giving me the creeps."

"That's why you should always be prepared and always…" Alastor began.

"…be vigilant, I know. You keep telling us that, Alastor, and you're right of course, but what good will it do us in the end? Marlene was always very careful, and look what happened to her."

"We're in the middle of a war, Evans, they want us dead as badly as we want them dead, probably even more. They're in it for the kill; one millisecond of distraction could cost you your life. However, that doesn't mean you have to go down without giving them a run for their money first."

"Oh, I'll give them a run for their money alright," Lily said grimly, "But I have no intention of going down at all."

Alastor grinned approvingly. "That's the spirit," he said. "They'll know the Order can't be messed around with. And we'll get that traitor, mark my words."

Lily nodded. She hoped Alastor was right. In the morning, she'd talk to Dumbledore about her suspicions.