A/N: This is so ridiculously seasonal. And well, other things, a lot of too-much in one package. Hope you like it some anyhow. Please leave a review- it means a lot.
The Order of the Phoenix was still drunk on summer halfway into October of '78. September had been warm and dreamy, and the younger half of them slid through it, only starting to feel that wrongness of being somewhere they shouldn't, as if there was a red train they were supposed to be riding, twin-sized beds they should be sleeping in. Instead they weren't getting much sleep at all.
The dark was coming early, now, with the long hours of summer closing shut. The new crowd fought for spots on the sunset patrol, which took over watching the hotspots at seven and almost always was freed of duty by midnight, leaving plenty of the night for fun.
Later they would almost forget, but it was fun, in the beginning, for the ones who were eighteen and just-past twenty. They were fresh and aflame and spending their nights shoulder-to-shoulder with their best mates, and so they laughed too loud and sometimes went out after and mixed war with their usual life. High on living dangerously, they'd say, since by large they weren't from a world measured in adrenaline and endorphins, but one where luck and fear and passion could all be bottled, and sometimes mixed and swallowed by the shot.
In 1978, they were young, and they were new. Potter and his friends and his girl, the Prewetts and theirs. Pure-blood volunteers, mostly, for a war they didn't have to make theirs.
Dorcas was young, too, but beside them she felt out-shined and tired and very, very sober. Her first night actually alongside the new lot, they ended up protecting a Muggle street from bored Death Eaters who hadn't even started school when she was graduating. James Potter, all of eighteen, made the pin oaks and chestnuts along the street bend back like slingshots. With a shout from Potter and a flash from his wand, the solid trunks shot forward, creaking, to hurl the masked figures into the air and face first into the pavement.
McKinnon, who Dorcas hadn't pinned as much of a witch, took aim at the leaves tumbling off the bowing trees and turned them, red and rustling, into a phoenix-shape that swept the Dark Mark out of the sky.
The smoke lingered in wisps, as did the dispersing leaves, floating gently back down. It was a pretty, clever bit of spellwork and Dorcas wished she'd thought of it first.
While she had her head tilted up at the sky to watch, Dorcas took a hit straight in the stomach and was thrown back. Her head and her right shoulder hit something solid and scraping. She heard an unpleasant pop.
"Alright there, Madam Meadowes?" said Potter, suddenly swarming her vision and politely extending his hand. He had to be less than a decade younger than her.
"Fine," she tried to say, but let out a hiss of pain instead as he tugged on her arm to help her get to her feet.
"Sorry!" said James, wincing. She wasn't wincing, Dorcas thought grouchily, and it was her who was hurt. They didn't need wincers.
Carefully, she turned her neck to see what she'd slammed into. It was a birdbath.
"Oh God," she said, disgusted with herself, before nailing Potter with her gaze. "What hit me?"
He didn't so much wince this time as pause reluctantly, while taking a moment to check to make sure Black and one of the Prewetts had their back before answering. "Ah- I reckoned it was the Knockback Curse."
"Oh God," said Dorcas, with finality. She'd have hit herself on the head if it didn't look so dramatic, and if her shoulder didn't hurt so much.
There was a horribly happy sort of whoop from behind her. "I think we've done them all," shouted Prewett, jogging up. His hair was strawberry under the streetlight and stuck to his sweaty forehead. "Mack!"
"Yup?" said Marlene, turning the toe of her foot against a downed Death Eater's back as one might put out a cigarette butt. She stepped over the masked figure, one of the few remaining, and placed her wand hand against her hip bone, waiting.
"Pretty piece of work there," said Prewett, pointing up at the square of sky where the stars of the Dark Mark had been.
"Ah, only a cheap trick, Gid," Marlene said, and maybe flushed, Dorcas couldn't tell with the dark and the color she had on her cheeks already. There was a blush in her voice.
"Yeah, but we're all for cheap tricks," said James.
"Think of that yourself, Mack?" said Sirius Black lazily, coming up behind him. He was rubbing his head slightly; Dorcas had seen one of the Death Eaters yank his long hair in the fracas.
Marlene made a face at him. At least, thought Dorcas, she didn't stick out her tongue. God, they were kids.
He shrugged. "Just asking."
"Alice had a thought in it, too," she admitted, amused, shaking her head a little.
"Well it's good," said Sirius, casually, and Dorcas couldn't help but notice the way Gideon Prewett's eyes were flickering between the two, watching McKinnon watch Black. No, not kids- teenagers. Literally.
Dumbledore really had finally cracked.
"Don't you think, James?" added Sirius, taking his place at his friends' side.
"Wish I'd thought of it," said James, "and that's saying something. Could almost be signature."
"Shame it's only good for autumn," said Dorcas serenely and they all looked at her. Prewett looked almost poised to object, but ripping off fresh foliage to leave trees strangely barren in summer or spring for a phoenix that would only be as green as the Mark seemed off and it would almost be too much trouble to summon them up out of season in stark winter. They could all see that at once and it was somewhat disheartening. James shifted from foot to foot and glanced at Sirius, who rolled his eyes.
Dorcas cleared her throat, feeling as if she'd ruined something and very out of place, like it had all been better when they'd forgotten she was there.
Thankfully Lily Evans Apparated into their midst, breaking the unease with a loud pop and her immediate smile as she returned from the other end of the street. "I think we've won," she said, as if confiding in them.
Their faces lit again and Dorcas breathed.
No one, though, lit brighter than James Potter, who practically lunged forward. "You need to think about it? I'd say it's rather obvious who won, Lily- and we've got two of 'em too," said James, practically crowing as he pulled her to come look at the one Marlene had been stepping on. "Give a look at the height on this one, I'll swear it's Rowle-"
"Or we could pull his mask off and see if it actually is Rowle," said Lily. "Obviously."
"Oh, right, we could- ah, I'll let you have the honors…"
"You mean the dubious honors."
"Yes, but isn't dubiousness the best part of any honor…?"
They were making eyes at each other over an only temporarily downed foe, another kid pulled into this mess who on some other day they might've killed. They were too precious. Dorcas vaguely wanted to kill them all herself, but that was possibly the pain talking. Possibly.
"You're hurt," Sirius observed abruptly, prodding the shoulder of the arm Dorcas was clutching to her chest.
She jerked away, which seemed to amuse him, since the bored look switched to one of speculation. "Mack," he called, and she swiveled at once from murmuring with Gideon Prewett and gave Dorcas a once-over.
Marlene moved closer to the older woman's side and frowned. She waved Sirius back, sparing him a smile, and tapped Dorcas' arm with her wand. "Loosen up," she said warningly.
Dorcas thought Marlene was plenty loose enough for them both, but since the young woman was about to pop Dorcas' arm back into its socket and only had to move her wand a few inches to have it at her throat, she refrained from saying as much.
It slid back in smoothly, without pain. "Thank you," said Dorcas. "You're very good," she added, with effort.
"Pssshh," said Marlene, smiling in the dark. "I'm only a dab hand with cheap tricks."
Sirius had drifted over to James and Lily but Gideon was waiting behind her and laughed at that. "Yeah, well," he said. "They come in awful handy."
"At least in autumn," said Marlene, making another ridiculously juvenile face at Dorcas. Dorcas couldn't catch the laugh that shot out of her throat and Marlene looked pleased, Gideon Prewett surprised, as if he'd thought Dorcas too stuffed to laugh at all.
She blamed him for starting all this Madam Meadowes business. She had maybe eight years on Gideon, less than a decade on the rest, but it felt like more. She wondered if this was how Edgar Bones and Moody had seen her when she joined up or worse, even now. Perhaps how Dumbledore saw them all. So young.
"Good weather for turning tricks," said Gideon cheerily, with a wink that was meant for Marlene but swept Dorcas too.
"Watch yourself, Prewett," said Marlene, turning to stab his chest with her wand, and he raised his to parry, setting off sparks.
Sirius Black's barking laugh rang out, loud enough to probably wake the street. His head was thrown back at something it seemed Lily had said and his hand was on James' shoulder to steady himself and they might all have been having a good time in some local pub instead of standing over an unconscious and unmasked former schoolmate. Dorcas half wished she could join them and half wanted to shake them, say something like, tonight, tonight we got here before anyone died but there was green in the sky and the air and they're shooting to kill you, you pretty idiots, we're out-numbered and it's only starting. She let them laugh instead, before she shouldered the awkward role of grown-up again and told them to grab up Rowle and the other and make the switch with the next patrol, Caradoc's sunrise shift waiting to do all the Ministry squads couldn't or wouldn't. They all still looked raring for the next fight and that somehow felt reassuring, that they were ready for more than just retiring to a soft pillow and hot cup of cider after all that. Maybe they needed this young crowd in the Order of the Phoenix, to fire them all up again and keep them burning throughout the war to come. Maybe they could outlast it, they certainly thought so. Even though she wasn't sure what was funny about it all, Dorcas suddenly found herself laughing with them.
For now it was 1978, still time for banter and cheap tricks and the hope they'd have this all done with for good before the decade was out, and a phoenix didn't look out of place against an October sky. They weren't falling yet like leaves pulled down in summer storms, too-soon and sudden and leaving spaces in what once flared beautifully.
There seemed to be so many autumns ahead.