March 23 of 1979 – Shiftings

There was a good chance that they probably shouldn't have even tried lightening the mood because of what was going on in the outside world, that there was something a bit more serious and intense that was lingering in the midst of this war, but everyone was more than grateful for the distractions that the Marauders and the Prewett brothers were giving everyone. Granted, she also hadn't expected the fact that they would be turning a section of her hair bright purple, but she supposed that was a danger that she was going to have to live with from this point forward.

There was also the good possibility that she should blame James that a stripe of her hair was purple, or that she had somehow managed to have that happen and still wasn't entirely sure how it was that she was standing here like that. Instead, Emmeline didn't have the heart to squash their fun in the midst of this.

It felt like it had only been days since Azkaban had been broken into by Death Eaters publicly won a large battle and more than a few witches and wizards quickly went into hiding, even though that it had been weeks since the attack. Even she had limited contact with her parents these days and there was the distinct likelihood that even her family would venture into hiding until this war was over. If this war was ever finished, that was.

Logically, she should be glad, relieved even when it came to that and that they would be safe but it made Emmeline's stomach lurch and her heart ache at the thought. Emme didn't want to lose some of the only family she has left. Everyone had already lost so much, and it felt like this was just getting started and there was nothing that she could really do to stop it.

An explosion in the manor caused her thoughts to halt and her to start down the hallways towards the sound, half terrified that the Death Eaters had found their little hideaway in the countryside and were attacking before she heard Lily yell James' name is something that was definitely nothing like panic and was certainly a little bit more like scolding. The relief that washed over her took more than a few seconds, though the slow in her step was immediate. Never, in her life, would she have said that there was a good chance she would be spending the majority of her time with a bunch of impulsive Gryffindors who apparently were not particularly good at dealing with Exploding Snap.

Emmeline rounded the corner into the large library that acted as a planning room, and certainly the room that the majority of them spent most of their time to find two distinct groups of people: those that were in the midst of strategizing in the back half of the room, the walls lined with maps of London and even Azkaban, and those that were just trying to escape. Unsurprisingly it was the group that had been trying to find a means of relief from the intense pressure they'd all been under that was a little worse for the wear. All four Marauders were covered in soot, and there was a section of poor Peter Pettigrew's blonde hair that was clearly singed and was letting off a bit of smoke.

Both James and Sirius were laughing at the sight while Remus was licking his fingers and putting out the few little pieces that must have still had a bit of flame to them before shaking his head and patting Peter on the shoulder. There certainly was a very clear reason as to why Emmeline wasn't fond of Exploding Snap, and the fact that there was pain involved was certainly one of many reasons.

Still, it was the quiet hush in the back of the room that pulled her attention away from the grouping in the front. The fact that both Caradoc and Benjy were having a quiet argument while pointing at one of the maps and shaking their head when the other spoke. She sighed softly as she stepped further into the room and squeezed Lily's hand as Emmeline passed the redhead who was still scolding all four of the Marauders and sat down in a chair across from Benjy, nudging the man with her foot.

There was a stutter in the conversation when they both realized that the former Slytherin was sitting with them before starting back in on each other. "You can't just expect the Ministry to explore whatever whim comes into that pea-sized brain that you have, Fenwick!"

"Oh, but your particular little chess moves should be explored?" Benjy rebutted, cocking an eyebrow as his arms crossed against his chest and a heavy silence in the small group for a few moment before the men broke eye contact and Caradoc was pointing back at the board of maps.

"Merlin, it was one bloody time, Ben!" Caradoc growled, tossing a quill in the general direction that Benjy was standing before Emmeline reached up and snagged it from the air before it landed on the ground.

"Bloody hell, are you seriously arguing about something this ridiculous?" Emme said, shaking her head for a few moments before turning at a noise she heard from the back corner, smiling softly when James stood next to her chair before bumping her hand against the Potter heir's hip and pointing at the maps, "The maps don't have that underground tunnel that goes from Mungo's to the Ministry," she commented lightly, pulling the attention from the small group to her as they blinked at her.

She would never say that she specialized in that had to do with plans or battle attacks, and Emmeline wouldn't dare imply that anyone was better suited for something like that than Benjy and Caradoc because realistically they weren't. But there were bits and pieces of information that Emmeline still had access to that Caradoc wasn't able to get his hands on, and apparently the fact that the tunnel underneath Mungo's hadn't been closed up like the public was told wasn't something he had access to quite yet.

"'line's right," James said, his voice light and happy as he shrugged his shoulders, "There should be a supply room somewhere in the middle too, you know… in case of an attack that results in a lockdown."

"You're talking about the one that they filled when Gellert Grindelwald was trying to take over?" Caradoc said, standing and walking over to one of the tables that had piles of paper and starting to shuffle through it. "That should have been closed… Merlin, thirty five or forty years ago."

"Political rumor," James said with a shrug, ruffling Emmeline hair before catching a couple strands of the purple color and grinning as he tugged on it. "Officially it's been closed off, but if there was an emergency we could use it, it's worth noting on those pretty little maps of yours."

"Cut it out," Emme bit out, swatting at his hand before he gave another sharp tug and she shoved his torso away from her, rubbing her scalp where the hair connected and glaring in his direction for a few moments before looking back at the pair. "What's the plans for? I thought we weren't doing any attacks yet."

"Contingency," they said together, shrugging their shoulders before pointing at a map that looked like it was Saint Mungo's and causing Emmeline to stand and walk over to them, crossing her arms in front of her for a few moments before nodding.

"How did you even get those?" she said quietly, brushing her fingers against the sketches before pointing at one of the floors, "They've changed this, just a couple months ago, broke down the walls and are using it for potion storage, saved a bunch of lives after the attack because we were running low, actually. I… you know, Mary would be better at looking at these and finding out what's different from what they have now," she said quietly, glancing over at James for a second before the man shrugged his shoulders and nodded in agreement.

There were a few moments of silence where Benjy seemed to be trying to communicate something to Emmeline without using words before letting out a sigh of his own and nodding his head for a moment, "Moody got the layouts from the Ministry so it doesn't look suspicious, but if we need Mary's viewpoint on this? It's going to be best to bring her into the Order now, it would probably be safer for her to begin with."

"No!" Emmeline said suddenly, shaking her head. "Look, is there another way that we can just… do this without her knowing what it's for?"

"Emmeline…" Benjy started before Caradoc interrupted.

"I can tell her that we're looking at it for the Aurors," Caradoc said gently, "It's realistic and would be more surprising if we weren't looking into things like that."

There was a hesitation before Emmeline nodded, Benjy stepping forward before she held a hand up, "She's safer not knowing what goes on within these walls, for now at least, please don't change that yet."

"You're ridiculous, Emme, she needs to know. Mary is safer knowing the whole picture and not walking blind with just pieces of it, she's involved whether or not you like it and she's going to come on board sooner rather than later, and you have got to get it through your thick skull!" Benjy said, the weight of his hand heavy against Emmeline's shoulder when it landed there, James standing silent in the group as Caradoc took a step back from the pair to give them some sort of peace in the midst of this.

Emme head was shaking in the middle of Benjy talking, not quite wanting to hear what the man was saying as he spoke and taking a shuddering breath as she tried to figure out what to say, how to explain what was going through her head as to why she didn't want Mary involved in something like this yet when all of their other friends were in the midst of this war in ways that no one could quite explain in an open forum. Their lives this past year had been full of quiet conversations and hidden meanings, and there was a large part of Emmeline that didn't want to live like that anymore when it came to her friends and her family, but there wasn't much of a choice if it meant keeping them as safe as they could be. "My parents are leaving the country, just… I need more time before Mary's in the thick of it, please. Just… just some more time," she asked quietly.

She hadn't been willing to break eye contact with Benjy, her mouth opening and closing for a few moments after her request before he was the one that pulled his eyes away from her and shook his head for a moment before walking off, neither James nor Caradoc quite sure what to do or what to say in the situation that they were in the midst of and letting out a heavy sigh. "You two are bloody batty," James said, nodding once to Caradoc before heading back to the group that had resumed a game of Exploding Snap, apparently with much more luck than the previous one, though it seemed as though Peter was being far more cautious after his most recent encounter with the cards.

"He's right, you know, Vance, we can't keep Mary out of this forever, she's going to find out at some point or another, this is just going to buy us a little bit more time," Caradoc said gently, sitting in one of the armchairs and pulling over a stack of parchment, dipping his quill into the ink and scribbling some words on the paper before looking back at her. "She knows there's something going on that no one's telling her."

Emme nodded her head for a second before moving over to some of the sketched out plans that the pair had sitting on the table, her fingers brushing against the ink covered parchment for a few moments before looking over at Caradoc, "Chess makes you good at this, huh?"

Caradoc let out a laugh as he glanced at what Emmeline was focused on before nodding his head, "It helps. I also was the Captain of my House's Quidditch team while I was there, so that probably helped more, Benjy is just sore that he's not thinking of these things before me."

"It's a Slytherin thing," she said off handedly, pausing only when Caradoc gave her a look and raised his eyebrow. "We plan. A lot of what we do is within self-preservation, but we pride ourselves in being able to figure things out from both sides, you've accomplished that without being a Slytherin, it would bug me too if I was in Benjy's shoes."

"That makes… a bit more sense, I'll admit," Caradoc said cautiously. "The Ministry isn't going to try to get Azkaban back, they consider it too much of a liability right now with their limited resources."

"They should have thought ahead, it was only a matter of time before they went after something big to make a point," she said as she ran a hand through her hair for a second before glancing back at the group that was still playing card games. "Why aren't you with everyone else blowing off some steam?"

"Because I can't tolerate it when the bad guys are beating us," Caradoc said, setting the papers of to the side, and following Emmeline's gaze towards the group, "What's going with you and Black?"

"It's…" Emme said, hesitating for a moment before shrugging her shoulders and letting out a heavy sigh. "Nothing." Emmeline shook her head for a few seconds before letting her gaze move to Caradoc, "There's nothing going on between him and me, the same way there's nothing going on between you and Adelais, right?"

"That's different," Caradoc said, a hard tone underneath his words, one of Emmeline's eyebrows raised in question before nodding her head. "It is completely different then whatever is going on with you and Black, and you have no business approaching that."

There was a moment of quiet where Emmeline wasn't entirely sure what to do or what to say, because she had clearly miscalculated something about what was going on between the two of them. Then again, she was fairly certain that she had seen them tucked away in a corner together at one of the pubs near Saint Mungo's, and it didn't help his case that he was listed as Adelais' emergency contact on her forms that had been dropped at the hospital. "Why do you keep it a secret?"

"Why don't you take a chance?"

For a few moments, Emmeline almost didn't even respond, considering leaving the room instead of dignifying his statement with something in return, and as a result? Well, Emmeline found herself shifting on her feet and running a hand through her hair before looking at the group for a moment and nodding her head, "This war changes everything."