Written for the All You Need Is Love Competition; for the Triwizard Tournament Competition; for the Pick a Card, Any Card Challenge. I hope you enjoy and would love feedback!
1
Diagon Alley was exceptionally crowded, but it would have been a surprise to anyone who didn't know Wizarding Britain to see a single person meandering about a street like this one. Although the sides of the narrow cobblestone pathway were crammed with tiny little hastily-built shops, both to the left and to the right, and the buildings' windows advertised such fantastical things as screech owls, magic wands, and chocolate fudge ice cream, the place had a feeling of grey-brown gloom that was evident on the anxious faces of rushed mothers and the subdued expressions of their quiet children.
It showed in the shopkeepers, who were normally friendly and genial, yet who now sat solemnly behind their counters and looked up only when they heard the cheerful, out-of-place ring of the bell at their door, giving the weary customer an unconvincing smile and a downcast "Can I help you with anything?" It showed in the absence of any chatter between the families who noiselessly passed by each other, perhaps with a nod from one older man to another but with nothing else to distinguish that they had noticed anyone crossing their path. It showed in the demeanors of the thirteen men and women who stood still near the door of every few shops, who wore calm expressions but were biting their lips or tapping their feet or clutching their own wrists.
The place would ordinarily be alight with the sounds of children laughing and owls hooting and old friends greeting each other as the pleasingly bright colors of broomsticks, books, and magical perfume bottles shone through the windows, yet Diagon Alley felt dismal, dreary, and absolutely uninviting, and Alice Fawley had the idea that she and the other twelve Aurors weren't helping a bit.
She looked to her right, where Elle was stationed by Eeylops'. Although Alice tried to catch her attention, getting bored of standing motionless in front of Rosa Lee Teabag and waiting for Death Eaters, Alice's best friend didn't notice her. It seemed like Moody was giving her instructions.
Frank was to her left, near the entrance to Scribbulus. He grinned at her, and she returned his smile, wishing she could be where Frank was, looking at all those quills - and the inks! Scribbulus had fantastic inks. Practical black inks and beautiful royal-blue inks and metallic inks and color changing inks and inks that made people believe whatever you scribbled down on your piece of parchment. What she wouldn't give to be standing there in front of Scribbulus Writing Instruments, stealing glances at -
The parchment!
Alice would love to be stealing glances at the parchment. Yes, that would be nice. They had lovely parchment. Thick parchment and purple parchment and travel-size parchment that expanded to the regular size when you needed it to and parchment made from the accidentally recycled papers of Orabella Nuttley, Order of Merlin, First Class. Stealing glances at the parchment would be absolutely lovely, as long as she had the time and didn't have any prior obligations, such as defending the wizarding world from being killed by the Death Eaters.
(Oh, wait.)
It wasn't as if she was going to be stealing glances as anything but Scribbulus parchment. If she was going to be stealing glances at anything else, it would definitely be Scribbulus ink, and it certainly wouldn't be Frank.
Alice had been repeatedly denying a crush on Frank Longbottom since she first started talking to him in sixth year. And in sixth year, her denial was absolutely genuine. It was genuine in seventh year, and the year after, and the year after, and the year after, all the way up to Alice's twenty-fifth birthday last winter. Ever since February, however, she wasn't so sure if she was telling the complete truth. It wasn't like she was going to admit that to herself, though.
"Oi, Alice! Take your eyes off your bloody boyfriend and give me a moment, will you?" It was Elle, and her voice was too half-serious - uncharacteristically serious for Elle - for Alice to protest Elle's reference to Frank. "Moody's told me to tell you to tell Frank to keep passing it down. We've 'received the intelligence' that Death Eaters 'may be near the premises,' so we've got to be on special watch right now." Alice nodded, and Elle turned away, apparently trying to catch the attention of the handsome man who was currently striding into Gambol and Japes across the street.
Alice turned back to her left, calling, "Hey, Frank!" Frank's head whirled around, eyebrows raised questioningly.
"Yeah?"
"I'm supposed to let you know that there might be Death Eaters near Diagon Alley, not just in Knockturn, and we're worried about an attack, and you're supposed to pass this down to everyone else." Frank told her later that there was a bit of a shake in her voice. Alice then guessed that she just hadn't noticed.
"Thanks, Alice," he replied, grimacing in what was clearly intended to be a reassuring smile. "I'll be sure everyone else gets the message."
Alice half-smiled, nodded her thanks, and turned back towards Elle. It seemed that she and the attractive Gambol and Japes patron were hitting it off quite well. Bored and trying not to drift off due to the heavy fumes emnating from the tea shop behind her, Alice listened to Frank calling down to Paola Barker, making sure he was telling her the right thing. "Alice said that there might be Death Eaters near us, so if you could - "
Frank stopped. Alice wondered why for a moment, but it wasn't a long moment. After half a second there came distant shouting from her left, far back at the end of the line of Aurors that had been assigned to protect Diagon Alley from an event that everyone doubted would happen and yet was happening.
"Everyone get inside the shops, please! Yes, nothing to worry about! The shopkeepers will be perfectly willing to Floo you out! If it is available to you, yes, Apparition is absolutely acceptable! Wizards and witches, we are trained Aurors! Please do not remain in the streets!" Moody was barking out orders, Paola surely echoing them down the line.
Alice drew her wand, the newly polished cherry wood trying to slip through her suddenly sweaty palms. She checked to be sure Frank and Paola and Elle and Mad-Eye had drawn their wands, and while three held theirs tightly, Elle was waving to her new friend, one of the last to find his way out of the streets.
"Elle! Draw your wand, Elle!" Alice shouted.
"Right, yeah," Elle nodded, trying to grin as she pulled the strip of mahogany out of her pocket with a flourish.
Although the street was nearly empty now, its patrons having become fearful faces that watched from the windows, it suddenly seemed more crowded than ever as jets of purple and red and - Alice shuddered - green whooshed narrowly past their heads, hitting the doors and the windows of the shops, shattering glass and smoldering wood.
For just a moment, Alice Fawley froze. Suddenly, all those years of Auror training seemed to fall away, leaving only a short, scared little girl whose thin brown hair just barely hid her face from the horror story that was surely unfolding on the left side of the street. Her eyes were closed, her face scrunched up tightly. She couldn't do this. Why was she an Auror? She couldn't raise her wand anymore without imagining one of those masked men who were advancing on the Order accosting her and saying, "Alice Fawley, I'm going to kill you." And she'd be powerless to stop it; she'd huddle in a corner, very much afraid, and they'd whisper, "Avada Kedavra." And she would be dead.
"Alice, come on, you can do this, you have to do this," said a voice. Was it the voice that sometimes popped up in the back of her head? Yes, she supposed so.
She wasn't going to die today, Alice decided. She opened her eyes. There was Frank, right in front of her. Oh. She supposed he was the voice in her head. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" she yelled shakily. She and Frank and Elle and Moody seemed to be the only ones not fighting, as Moody had instructed them prior to coming out to Diagon Alley ("Don't all go out there at once! We can soon overpower them if we don't let them know our true strength at the start."), but Alice was pretty sure everyone else needed their help.
An awful spectactle was splayed out before her. Order members and Death Eaters duelled each other, the Order very much outnumbered, flashes of blue and green lighting up the walls of the alley. The last few faces of panicked parents and their children still remained in the far corners of the shop windows. And as Alice watched, Sarah Capper fell to the ground, clutching a bloody side, and all of a sudden there was a yell of "Avada Kedavra!" near her and a shop window was illuminated with green and Sarah was on the ground and someone was yelling, "Thad, we can't do anything!" and her murderer turned, aiming for a new target, and Alice had to stop him, but she couldn't hurt someone, and what was she supposed to -
"Obliviate!" she shouted all of a sudden, without even telling herself she was going to. The man stopped in his tracks and fell, unconscious.
"That's one hell of a memory charm, Alice," Frank said, awed. The pair of them stepped in with Thad Fletcher, who was duelling three Death Eaters and had seemed in shock since Sarah's head hit cobblestone.
The situation seemed unreal. A simulation maybe, a training excercise, but it was hard to accept that one - two - three Order members were no longer breathing and a remainder of ten Death Eaters still rapidly twirling their wands at the ten left in the Order.
But however depressing their situation was, however dangerous and dire, there was something to be said in that the Death Eaters seemed to be falling back, moving closer and closer to where they'd come from, apparently aiming no longer to retrieve whatever they had come for.
So Sarah and Thad and Malcolm and Eliana and Victor weren't laying forever motionless on the ground for nothing, or so Alice told herself.
Alice was locked in a duel with a tall, slim Death Eater whose movements were smooth, graceful, and dare she say it, almost beautiful - fluid and crisp at the same time. In comparison, the swishes of her wand were awkward and clunky. Just watching him made her certain that she didn't have a chance of defeating the man.
Elle was duelling next to her with a man whose movements were just as quick, but Elle, too, was a graceful duellist. As Alice watched, the man sent a jet of white light towards her that she surely couldn't block -
But she did. And yet something seemed wrong, something seemed off…
The Death Eater that Alice was duelling with had taken advantage of her momentary terror at her friend's battle and shot a jet of green light that was only a second away from reaching her. Alice was stunned. It was going to hit her, there was nothing she could do about -
"Protego maxima!"
It was Elle, and as the jet of green soared back towards her attacker, Alice turned to give Elle a quick smile of thanks, but Elle's face was frozen in a terrified grimace, her dark brown eyes staring without seeing as she fell with a thud to the pavement.
Elle.
Unlike when Alice had witnessed Sarah falling to the ground, when she had heard Thad's piercing scream of anguish as he was overpowered, when she had seen Frank trip, horrified, over the motionless body of Victor Stainwright, Alice was not disheartened by the idea that she'd never again be able to invite Elle to Christmas or simply sit around the Minas' breakfast table drinking coffee after a night spent watching old Muggle films.
No, Alice was angry.
"Stupefy!" she shouted, and her curse soared over to the Death Eater who was aiming at Paola. It hit him before he could cast his own curse, and he crumpled, unconscious. "Furnunculus! Obliviate! Incendio!"
She was yelling out all the curses she could think of at the man, and he was unconscious and covered in boils and his cloak was actually burning and yet Alice's anger wasn't satisfied. There were only a few Death Eaters left fighting, the rest either having been defeated or having Apparated, and even as Alice advanced on them, eyes wet and vision blurry, they all turned, and crack, they'd Apparated away.
The remaining Death Eaters were either killed or unconscious, and the man on whom Alice had cast a memory charm at the very beginning was coming to.
"Oh my God," he said as he viewed the scene in front of him with an appalled expression on his face. "Oh my God. These people are dead. I'm sorry, but what's going on?"
2
"Come on, Alice, it'll be fine," Frank assured twenty-seven-year-old Alice, who was sitting at the Longbottoms' coffee table, fuming.
She glared at him. "No, it won't." Frank opened his mouth to speak, but Alice continued. "They're completely inexperienced. Just got out of Hogwarts in June!"
"Both with Os on their Defense NEWT, Alice," her friend reminded her. "They did better than Lily Evans. You know her - the redhead?"
"The wizarding world is home to a strangely high quantity of redheads," Alice grumbled.
"You know who I'm talking about. James' girlfriend."
"You're not telling me Benjy Fenwick and" - Alice laughed - "Sirius Black did better than her!"
Frank nodded seriously - and Frank didn't have much of a sense of humor.
"Okay, still. Shouldn't someone a bit older have been assigned to steal something from the Averys? They don't know anything about how the Order of the Phoenix works! Not a thing!"
"They've studied up," Frank said uncomfortably.
"Sirius studied, you say?" Alice replied, eyebrows raised, trying to suppress a laugh.
"Erm... no, but they'll still be fine. I'm sure of it."
"They won't, though! What if they're killed, Frank? What if they never come back? And all because we were too assured of their exquisite brilliance to say, 'These kids shouldn't be doing this yet!'"
"But if you kept saying that, we'd never let them do a thing."
"Yeah, but - "
"Alice, we can't change what Moody and everyone've said already."
"Fine," Alice grumbled. "You're lucky I like you."
"Am I ever," said Frank, kissing his girlfriend.
And so the pair of them ended up, two weeks later, disguised as Death Eaters alongside two inexperienced eighteen-year-olds.
"Benjy - " Sirius began.
"Theodosius," Benjy said haughtily. He had been insisting that the four of them stay in character, acting always like their Death Eater personas, as if everything was just a game to him.
"Theodosius, you're with Frank," continued Sirius, rolling his eyes, "and I'm with Alice. We all knew that, yeah? Everyone's got what they're doing?"
The other three nodded, and so they set off. It was hours later that they returned to the headquarters of the Order, and the sight of them was horrific.
They hadn't been able to get what had needed to be retrieved; as it had turned out, half the Death Eaters were at Avery Castle that day - too incredibly many - not that they had known, of course, and that made it so terribly worse, so terribly hard not to be discovered. Alice had been the least injured of the four of them, with several scrapes on her hands and forearms; her poor Frank had hit his head rather hard in a nasty fall; Sirius had a large gash in his leg.
Benjy Fenwick was a few bits and pieces of what he had once been.
It was a terrible curse that split a body into a million pieces, but Death Eaters could sink low enough to use it, and Benjy Fenwick was its horribly unlucky victim.
Poor, poor Benjy.
"Alice," Frank said softly as they left the Order's meeting, where they had broken the appalling news to them. "Alice, I'm so sorry."
"It's my fault, Frank."
"It's not your fault at all! It's not close to your fault!"
"It is. It is. I should've said something…"
"You did, Alice. You did, and nobody listened. You have to understand that."
Alice began to cry, and without even realizing it, she started to shake uncontrollably. Frank wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in a wonderfully tight hug, stabilizing her, keeping her from falling, grief-stricken, upon the ground. It was a beautiful moment, she would think as she remembered it later, and then - "Marry me, Alice."
"What?!"
"I'm sorry, Alice, I'm sorry, I know that was sudden, I just - I love you. I love you a lot, Alice, and I just… I can't even think about what life would be without you. So, er, will you marry me?"
"Yes," Alice said quietly. "Yes, of course," she continued, the volume of her voice rising, "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
"Good," Frank happily replied. "I love you."
"I love you too."
"Just know that I'm here for you, Alice, yeah?"
"Frank, I love you so much."
3
Alice understood why the Order had to protect St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. If the hospital was breached and the Healers killed, chaos would surely ensue; nobody would be cured of diseases or injuries, and wizarding Britain would be decimated. She just wished that it didn't have to be her protecting it - especially after the Death Eaters did indeed attack and she ended up the most injured of them all, with gashes across her forearms, her legs, her chest, her stomach, her face. If they had not been meters away from St. Mungo's, she likely, said the Healer that was taking care of her, would have died.
"Mrs. Longbottom?" said the Healer, a lovely young lady called Viola.
"Yes?" Alice replied as she grinned at the name. Even after eight months married to him, being called Frank's wife made her spirits rise instantly.
"There's… er… something I've got to tell you."
"What?!" asked Alice loudly, suddenly scared out of her skin.
"What's happened?" Frank wondered aloud from the other side of the room.
"You're… erm…"
"What?!" the Longbottoms said in unison.
"Well," said Viola, "you marked on your form that you were without child."
Alice nodded. "That's true."
"Actually, the exams we've given you suggest otherwise."
"Wait, really?!"
"Oh my Merlin!"
"Yes, Mrs. Longbottom," Viola confirmed with a smile. "Congratulations to the pair of you."
The pair of them spent the next several months entirely consumed in the soon-to-be life of their child, and for the first time in a long time, Alice Longbottom felt completely, wonderfully, entirely happy.
3.5
She saw him, over there, opposite her. He was a truly beautiful man. She wished she could speak to him. She thought that his name was maybe Frank. What was hers? How would she introduce herself?
"Frank," she called over to him. "Frank."
He didn't reply.
"Frank, Frank," she kept saying. "Frank!" She was yelling now, and there were a pair of men in white coats that were trying to keep her quiet, but she didn't care, because this man was a beautiful man.
"Frank!" she screamed, and the man turned. He looked scared. Was he scared of her? He couldn't be; he was beautiful. So she kept screaming his name, Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank, and the man began to scream, not her name but only noise, a regular scream.
"She's delusional," said a woman who was wearing another labcoat. Maybe she was a man. They were all the same.
Frank only screamed louder.
"Shh, shh, honey, she's delusional, shh," the woman continued to say to Frank, trying to console him, but before one of the men drew his wand and cast upon her the sedative spell she thought she heard the tiniest whisper from where the beautiful man lay.
"Alice."
