I have a lot of headcanons about Australian wizards and their similarities to our muggle politics/society, so I'll try and give you some history and context as I go, but let me know if it's too heavy-handed or if you just wanna see the fluff.
Anyway, this is fun! Thank you for coming back or joining this ride with me.

|| Chapter Two

Lucien Blake absolutely loved being a half-blood. Not a lot of people did; they warred with being caught between two worlds, like a heightened form of being bilingual. (And he was that too, so he should know.) But where others saw chaos, confusion and a lack of identity, Lucien Blake saw opportunity. His mother taught him this, in their short time together; an exotic French witch who chose (chose, people used to whisper, their tone derisive) to marry a muggle and settle into ordinary life in a sleepy Victorian town. She showed him it was possible to not fall to one side or the other, but to have both, equally.

He didn't always love it, of course. There were times he hated it, in fact. Like when his muggle wife was killed in the crossfire of a duel, fascist wizards across the globe indiscriminate in their agony during the second war. They'd been twenty-six and afraid, a toddler in tow, and despite keeping a low profile he couldn't protect her from a stray curse in the back streets of Singapore. He hadn't loved being a half-blood and helpless on that day. When his three-year-old daughter was ferretted away to hide in a muggle household for her own safety at the height of the war, his promises to return for her sounding empty; he certainly hadn't loved it then either. And when his ailing father was dying and begged him to come home, to be immersed in the muggle world again where his spells and potions couldn't be used to help him… no. It was true that he hadn't always loved being torn from pillar to post, caught between two worlds that were determined not to co-exist.

Sometimes he thought the old-school Americans had it right. Complete segregation or nothing.

But Australian wizards and witches were too laissez-faire for that. They came and went with lethargy, whether because of the landscape or because some of the earliest white wizards on the continent were criminals, he couldn't be sure. Maybe it was just their way. The Aboriginal cultures co-existed for the most part with their magic folk without any segregation at all, and everyone just accepted that there were some people in this world who were different, though they could never pinpoint why. The land itself helped; endless miles of emptiness that made hiding easy and almost unnecessary. After all, who would go looking for a magical school in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but desert and gum trees all around? No, the Australian magical community didn't need to hide itself quite as much as those in Europe, and so entire towns of mixed bloods flourished because the quiet country life provided the perfect cover.

It was that same attitude – that easy way of living – which gave him the freedom to periodically flit between the two halves of his whole, and twenty years after the second war he was finally settled enough in spirit to enjoy it the way he had as a boy. The years had tempered down his pain and he learned that he did, in fact, enjoy his blood status and the opportunities it provided.

And he knew Jean played a big part in that joy.

She came from an old wizarding family, humble and hard working. They'd been in Ballarat for generations; the town was a notorious magical hot-spot, and even more so since the discovery of gold brought people in droves back in the 1850s.

Jean loved his two halves, even if she didn't fully understand them. She loved that he loved muggles just as fiercely as anyone; that he spent so much of his time tending to their ills and ailments where his magic couldn't be used to fix everything. She loved that he cast no judgement upon anyone for their background, and that his enquiring mind always found a way to bend the rules so that magical potions could make their way to the sick regardless of which world they lived in. She loved that despite his troubled past – a long-lost daughter, a dead wife, the haunted years of his twenties during Voldemort's second rise – despite all that he was gentle and soft-hearted. He acted rashly sometimes, but always in pursuit of a greater good. He was a good man, and that mattered more than any blood status or magical ability.

And he loved her because she kept him in line and kept him steady all in a single breath. She was simply the best person he'd ever know, magical or not, and she put up with him more often than she didn't, which was no small feat for anyone. She was the first full witch or wizard he'd met who made the idea of settling in the magical world an attractive option and not a cross to bear.

Which was why finding out his childhood friend was also a wizard, and was an Auror at that, had been one of the happiest moments of his life. The circumstances left something to be desired; being called into the hospital early in the morning to tend to a Yowie injury was never fun, but seeing a long lost face on the operating table had been a shock. Yet it was fate as well, that brought Matthew Lawson to his neck of the woods and his operating room.

The leg was saved and a friendship rekindled, and throughout his recovery Matthew had come to learn all about Lucien's life in Ballarat.

Aurors rarely settled in one place for long, called away to all corners of the country to perform their duties. But with Rose only an hour away in Melbourne it made sense for Matthew to set up a base back home in Ballarat. And given the spare rooms left idle in such an expansive house, it only made sense for Lucien to offer use of one.

And so Matthew started coming and going as his work allowed.

He would return with tales of his adventures, and would often employ his friend as a consultant on cases where potions or injuries from mythical beasts got the better of his investigative powers. And where the boys would joke about goannas and jumbucks and the ridiculousness of a common wild platypus, Jean would give them context for magical critters they never hunted as children. Bunyips were real; the Babadook was not.

Matthew and Lucien delighted in sharing their common past, and took solace in the company of someone who understood what it meant to be raised non-magical. They each struggled, in their own ways, when it came to fitting into the wizarding world, and having someone who didn't need that to be explained to them was more comforting than words.

So when Matthew came home one day and mentioned Alice, with a casual air and sense of familiarity, Lucien's ears pricked up.

Alice, mouthed Jean in question, one eyebrow raised, and Lucien shrugged at her.

Thus they began a little investigation of their own.

"I didn't realise how many cases you had out near the school, Matthew" said Jean while serving up dinner. They were all at home for once on a quiet night, which was rare and lovely, and Matthew was recounting another trip to northern Victoria as he served himself some peas. He only grunted in response, not willing (or perhaps embarrassed) to be interrogated about any personal recreational time he was taking as a little detour from the actual place of incident.

"There's an increased presence at the moment, for all of us" he said, to ward off further questions.

"Because of the anniversary" added Lucien, less of a question and more confirmation. Matthew just nodded at him. He looked thankful for his friend's interjections, unaware that Lucien was equally intrigued about his rediscovered friend. It was cruel to lure him into a trap, but Lucien didn't care that much when he had so many questions about this mysterious Alice.

"Seems like a lot of jumpiness for no good reason to me" said Jean, shrugging her shoulder. She sat down next to them as they all started to eat their dinner.

"I'm not sure there's no good reason" said Matthew with a small frown. He understood the need to ramp up security, even if it was annoying having to respond to a series of hoaxes, student pranks, and general harmless mischief.

"The war was twenty years ago and we've been in peace time ever since" said Jean sharply. "And if there was going to be any kind of resurgence, don't you think Hogwarts would be the most obvious choice? Or perhaps anywhere else in the north? Not here"

She was still bitter over the war years. A lot of people were, at least in more remote countries. Voldemort should have been dealt with when Harry Potter first told the Ministry of his return, or better yet, a more thorough investigation should have been done when he vanished in the first instance. But it wasn't; his followers were allowed to flourish in back alleys and basements all around the world, and he eventually came back to wreak more carnage, far beyond the borders of the British Isles. Good men – men like her husband – got inspired to join the counter-movement against him; signed up to haphazard government programs as investigators and analysts, and were killed for their efforts. The seeds of evil were sprouting in every corner while the British Ministry remained idle, and the actions (or lack of action) in Europe only sent the message that such horrible activities were acceptable.

Christopher got caught up trying to fight the good fight in a war that wasn't even theirs to begin with, ill-prepared and under-skilled, barely out of school himself. It'd taken six months for the Australian authorities to tell her he had been killed, and even then they never divulged the kind of work he did. But she knew he hadn't been properly prepared for whatever the Death Eaters and their followers were planning. She would always hold anger at that, and sadness that he felt he had to get involved at all.

Matthew knew enough not to get into a fight with her about inter-governmental cooperation. He just shrugged and softened his tone.

"Maybe not" he said. "But Melbourne is taking directive from London on this one"

Lucien scoffed, his mood caught part way between amusement and derision.

"Yes. They sneeze and we catch a cold" he said, eyes dark.

The room went quiet for a moment. They were all aware of his past; they all knew about the work he had done during the war, spying for the government because of a localised conflict on the other side of the world. While the threat was evidently real, there was disagreement and dissatisfaction throughout the wizard world over just how much other jurisdictions should have been involved in the resistance.

Lucien lost his wife and was veritably forced to abandon his child in South East Asia because of the whole mess. Li had grown up a muggle, showing no signs of being magical herself, and now didn't know her father at all. He was a stranger to her in more ways than one, an ocean away with her adopted family. She was all grown up and a mother now, and Lucien had missed it all. He would give anything to go back in time and tell the Australian authorities to jam London's problems up their arse. It was one thing that he and Jean agreed on unequivocally. (In his darkest moments, before he and Jean were truly happy, he'd considered pilfering a Time Turner on the black market and doing just that, consequences be damned. It was sheer luck that prevented the opportunity from arising.)

Jean shook off her foul mood and brought herself to the present. Matthew had a job to do, the anniversary would soon pass, and with any luck they would all get to meet this mysterious Alice they were so intrigued by.

"But you don't seem to mind going out there, Matthew" she said, taking a mouthful of dinner.

Matthew clammed up again, sensing an attack. "No. It's fine"

Jean ignored his caginess, feigning obliviousness. "In fact, if I had to guess, I'd even say you enjoy the time you go investigate near the school"

He grunted and took a large bite of dinner to prevent himself from having to answer.

Lucien smirked and tried to hide it behind his scotch glass, giving Jean a look from the corner of his eye. She was a talented gossip, that much he knew.

"So you knew this Alice when you were a student, Matthew?" asked Lucien. Not being a student in Australia gave him the perfect cover to ask about school years and wizards who were around during that era, and Matthew's hackles lowered a little, not suspecting an attack from both sides.

"I did. We were a year apart"

"I don't really recall" said Jean, genuinely thinking back to her school years for a moment. She didn't remember any Alice, but she'd also been caught up in her own little world back then – meeting up with Christopher, studying her plants in her free time, attending choir practice. She wasn't into sports as much, and preferred the company of a few close friends in her house. Even Matthew – two years her senior - had been a blip on her radar, and she only knew him as well as she did because her brother knew him through Quidditch.

"She was a good potions student" said Matthew, letting her a bit off the hook. "And some herbology"

Something about herbology clicked in her mind and her eyes went wide. "Wait! I think I know who you're talking about!"

Matthew looked surprised, and his expression begged her to continue. "Quiet girl. Brown hair. Often went off on her own after classes"

Matthew was uncomfortable discussing anyone else's habits, even ones from thirty years ago, so he didn't engage in the gossip, but he nodded his head in a way that might be construed as agreement, just to let Jean know she was on the right track. She didn't have many specifics, but she remembered Alice well enough. Matthew wasn't sure why it made him so glad. It shouldn't matter whether his housemates knew Alice Harvey, yet for some reason it did.

"Maybe" he said, downplaying the possibility Jean had run across her.

"Yes, I think so" she said. "I would see her around, but we never spoke much. I thought she always looked… rather sad"

Matthew kept his eyes on his plate. Alice had been sad, the few times their conversation touched on anything personal or holiday related, or any time another student mentioned that they missed home or wanted to visit cousins in another state. She'd looked sad and lost and maybe even a little bit angry. Though they never really spoke about it, he had a feeling that it related to her sister, who was a muggle like the rest of her family. He understood her sentiment – and the need to keep it private – all too well, and so kept it to himself.

Sensing he wouldn't divulge Alice's inner thoughts or feelings, Jean changed track.

"What was her surname again? I can't remember"

"Harvey" he said, his mouth full of peas. "Alice Harvey"

Lucien's head flew up, his interest suddenly genuine and inquisitive, and gone was his need to tease. "Alice Harvey?" he asked, eyes wide. "As in, the head of the potions department at the school, Alice Harvey?"

This time it was Matthew's turn to smirk. He'd been saving that piece of information for a few weeks now, intending to use it stealthily. He never mentioned that his new friend worked at the school, only that he visited her when he was working in the area. For all they knew she was a muggle woman from Merbein, and knowing that Lucien had worked with Alice on a number of occasions made the whole Spanish Inquisition they were giving him all the funnier.

"That's right" he said, smirking just enough for Lucien to notice. "I believe you've come across each other?"

Jean's brow furrowed and she turned to Lucien with a question in her gaze. Lucien didn't notice; he was too busy putting together the pieces and getting excited over his new-found information.

"Yes, we have" he replied, grinning widely. "She's consulted with me on many cases, when I needed a bit of help mixing a particularly tricky potion. In fact, she put together an amazing healing concoction for Mimi scratches only a little while ago"

"Wait" said Jean, pointing her fork between the two of them, working out the puzzle. "I think I have come across her. Lucien, didn't she call me for supplies?"

He nodded at her and chewed his food too quickly to try, trying to clear his mouth enough to speak. "Yes, you did – for that same potion. I believe she used your Snapping Kangaroo Paw"

Matthew watched them both with a smug grin on his face as they threw details back and forth between them, going over all the tiny ways they had run across this person Matthew was friends with. As often happened, they disappeared into their own little world just long enough for him to enjoy a few blissful mouthfuls of food undisturbed, too busy bantering back and forth as newlyweds were wont to do; it was endearing, really, and he was amused at their predictability. He knew this would be their reaction, and he felt rather gloating about it all.

"Matthew, I can't believe you never mentioned you were dating Alice Harvey" said Lucien with enthusiasm.

And like that the spell was broken and he almost choked on his dinner.

"Dating?" he wheezed, taking a long sip of water.

"Well yes" said Jean, her brown furrowing again in confusion. "What else would you call it?"

He looked at her with wide, frightened eyes. She matched is gaze with straightforward earnestness, daring him to argue that the many dinners, lunch outings, and adventures into Mildura to explore the muggle shops were anything other than dates.

It never occurred to him, as he was getting to know her better and spend time in her easy company, that there might be something more to his friendship with Alice; that the motives for enjoying her company might have a different conclusion down the line. He was alarmed to find the idea somewhat agreeable. He was certain Alice had no such intentions of her own – she would have said something if she did, or indicated it, such was her blunt and honest nature. But he was also fairly certain that if he called her up now on the muggle mobile phone they both liked to use, and asked her if she'd like to go for dinner with him on Saturday night – if he used the word date when he picked her up, and presented her with flowers – she wouldn't be opposed to the idea.

He had no idea how he felt about her in a romantic sense, or how she felt about him in return, but he did want to keep enjoying her company for as long as she would allow.

"You really had no idea you were dating?" asked Lucien, an incredulous teasing smile on his face.

Matthew met his gaze and shrugged. "I suppose I never bothered to give it a name"

Unlike the Blakes, with their slow dance around each other and eventual quick fall in love, his feelings were a mixed bag. It was too soon to tell where they would go. And yet he distinctly wanted the chance to find out.

"Well I suggest you give it a think, and then call that girl up and ask her out for a proper dinner" said Jean as she cut a piece of roast on her plate, face looking haughty, and popped it in her mouth.

He gave her a look as he turned back to his dinner. "Thank you, Jean, I think I can manage from here"

Lucien snorted. "Evidently not" he mumbled, and then hid his smiling face behind his scotch glass as his took a sip. Matthew shot him a look too for good measure, and then deftly swung the conversation back to their latest research project at the hospital. Lucien and Jean were developing a new species of medicinal plant, the name of which he couldn't pronounce, and they loved working together to research and develop just the right properties. It was quite endearing, watching them pour over mason jars and pipettes, and talking science in hushed tones as they each lent their expertise to the other.

He pondered on their easy partnership as they spoke, and found his mind meandering back to Alice again, and his relationship with her. They were easy too, in a different way. They had little in common in their work, but their manner matched. They seemed to understand each other on an energetic level, finding the same things funny or the same people unbearable. They both hated big crowds and false emotion. They both loved eating ice-cream cones on a hot day. They both got a kick out of playing muggle arcade games, just like they used to as children before the magical world came calling.

Alice understood him better than anyone, maybe even better than Lucien; Lucien, who always seemed to fit into both worlds, couldn't quite understand the uncomfortable tension Matthew felt when he drifted from one to the other. Alice did, and for so many of the same reasons.

They were two peas from the same pod, and he thought to himself, as he watched his friends in their comfortable nightly married routine, that perhaps he owed it to the both of them to see what they could make of being such kindred spirits.