A/N: Mattia's POV. This chapter is dedicated to Missing Triforce, who is my inspiration for Mattia. Enjoy!

-C

I hadn't exactly threatened Sirius, I told myself as Betsy poured me a glass of wine and my eyes darted around the kitchen of their place. It was basic, modern, with rather unattractive yellows and blues and oranges everywhere. Still, it was a place to live.

No, I had simply…encouraged Sirius to satisfy my curiosity and invite me over for a bit. Betsy seemed none the wiser, anyway, and Sirius didn't look as nervous has he had when he invited me.

And I didn't feel guilty, so I hadn't exactly threatened him. Nothing wrong was done.

"Are you still working?" I asked as Betsy poured her own glass. Sirius was swirling the wine around in his glass with a distant look in his eyes. He was worried about James, who was doing something for Dumbledore with Claude. It probably wasn't anything dangerous, but I couldn't blame him for worrying.

"No," she said, smiling. "Thankfully, Sirius's gold is enough to keep us going for a while, and Dumbledore has a stipend for all the Order workers who don't have jobs. Plus Mrs. Potter keeps showing up with food. There really wouldn't be much of a need for me to work."

Sirius seemed very pleased and proud that he was keeping Betsy from a summer of work. I wondered how much he told her about the work he was doing to earn his keep, the work he would be asked to do in the not-too-distant future. Or perhaps he just kept his secrets and allowed her to enjoy the illusion of peace they had created in their private space.

In a way, I was a bit jealous. I didn't have the luxury of pretending as they did. The conversation I'd had the evening before with Dumbledore was still too fresh on my mind, the secrets he had divulged in exchange for some secrets he wanted from me. I had always known that secrets were a valuable and sometimes necessary currency, but I never realized where such forms of currency would lead me during the war. I was so naïve before.

"What about you?" Betsy asked while Sirius took a long drink of wine. "Have you heard back from the program?"

"Alyson and I have both been accepted," I said, unable to suppress the smile that replaced the shudder I'd been holding in. "We haven't been placed yet, but we're Curse-Breakers."

"Oh, how exciting," Betsy said, eagerly pouring my next glass of wine.

Sirius stood to take the pasta off the burner.

"Will you be separated?" he asked over his shoulder.

"No idea," I lied easily, taking the glass from Betsy and tilting it at her slightly in thanks before taking a drink.

In truth, I'd collected a reasonably credible rumor that the new recruiting class was almost always sent off for at least a few months to the same location, just to get them used to the job and to assess them all at once. While I was moderately confident that this rumor was true, I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it wasn't.

I watched Sirius stir the sauce into the noodles over the rim of my wine glass while Betsy chattered away happily about something Lily had said when they went to the Potters' with Lily and James for Sunday brunch. He seemed happy, carefree. Did I look like that? Remus did, but then I had only seen him without Susanna Zola's wedding. Maybe he still had the goofy smile in her company.

"I certainly hope you're together," Betsy said, frowning. "It will be strange, not having you in England. They don't have any posts in England, do they?"

"Not at present," I said, shrugging. "Mostly China and Egypt, occasional postings elsewhere. I guess the really coveted jobs are in Mexico, but they're so hard to get, you know."

Betsy nodded as Sirius sat down, setting the now-mixed pasta on the table and Summoning the plates.

"Is Dumbledore going to give you work abroad?" Sirius asked. "Or will you only do work on your time off?"

"Dunno yet," I lied. "He's been pretty vague to all of us, I think."

I could still recall the turning in my stomach as he sat me down, taught me the codes I would have to use in letters back to base headquarters from wherever Gringotts sent me. I couldn't get out of my head the mental images of those files he showed me, information only three other people in the Order knew, information that could shake the wizarding world to its core if they ever learned.

And then being told that we couldn't tell them, at least not now. How could he do it, knowing information that could change everything? How could he stay silent, I asked.

The Greater Good, he answered.

The Greater Fucking Good.

Even though I understood what he meant, part of me wanted it to be more complicated than that. After all, someone with his power, his convictions should have stepped in sooner during the issues with Grindelwald, as many historians had pointed out for decades. The public had called for his intervention for years before he finally stepped in. Would he do the same with Voldemort? Would he force Britain to suffer for…what, selfish reasons? Cautious reasons?

I had always thought of myself as reasonable, cautious, the voice of realism cautioning the passionate plans of my friends – especially Susanna. I was the cool head in the room. But looking at Dumbledore, I felt like I was the passionate, crazy one running on my emotions and rage, like he was a head made of ice and I couldn't fathom how all the chaos hadn't melted him yet.

When we finished dinner, Sirius walked me out while Betsy gathered the dishes up for washing. As soon as we left the kitchen, his whole face changed. On his doorstep I said, "You tell her nothing, do you?"

He snorted and said, "How can I possibly? I love her, you know. She's…she's so strong, she's been through so much. But I don't think she could take much more, you know?"

I nodded. I understood completely. Betsy had a fragility to her, and I sensed, as he did, that another loss or two and Betsy would snap, would totally lose it. What good was it, putting her on edge before the losses that were sure to come?

"I can't even comprehend how you feel," I said, frowning. "Leah doesn't want to know, but I think Remus tells Suzy everything he's allowed."

"She's strong," he said slowly. "She'll join, I'm sure, when she graduates. I'll recommend her myself. But when that happens, Remus is going to be the one who can't cope. He can't lose her. It would break him."

I nodded again. Susanna would resent the suggestion that she not take dangerous missions. She wasn't especially skilled with dueling, but she was excellent with subterfuge and thinking on her feet, an asset to any undercover mission. Just the sort of mission that could end as an "accidental" death not worth investigating by Ministry standards.

"You'll be at the meeting?" he pressed. "Or are you going to be away?"

"I should be there," I said slowly. "I'm really not sure yet. Why?"

"Lily said she felt lonely," Sirius said, his lips twitching. "Who would have thought there would ever come a day, right?"

For a moment I thought he was talking about Lily being lonely, but then I realized he was referring to his calling her by her first name, perhaps even referencing his being the upcoming best man in her wedding. I nodded again, acknowledging the strangeness of it. If someone had told me first year where we would be after graduating I wouldn't have believed a word. James and Lily marrying? My joining a top-secret organization to battle Dark wizards? Leah not joining? It was all a bit surreal, even standing on Sirius's front step.

"Tell Alyson I said hello," he said softly.

"Tell Suzy I said hello," I said, raising an eyebrow.

He did blush slightly, obviously aware that I knew full well that he and Susanna were sometimes at his place without either Remus or Betsy around. They weren't doing anything they shouldn't, but I didn't think either of their significant others would take kindly to finding out.

"We haven't done anything."

"Tell that to Remus."

Sirius went so pale I thought he would faint, but he said softly, "Don't, Mattia. Don't. My even being friends with her drives him crazy. He keeps it to himself, but he's very jealous of any guy who talks to her, much less—"

"Former snogging partners, yeah. I won't say anything, Sirius, but you two need to behave a bit more…sensitively. Just keep that in mind. Remus has very acute senses, and Betsy isn't stupid. Secrecy will only make it harder when they do find out."

He looked sick to his stomach, but I left him without another word, Disapparating.

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A/N: Claude's POV

Living on my own was a strange feeling, but there were some positives. Coming back from Order meetings, I didn't have to explain to my parents where I'd been or what I'd been doing, for one. Also, I had somewhere with peace and quiet to come down from missions and long days at work – my own little haven.

I dropped my stack of paperwork and turned the kettle on after a long day at work. This was how I knew I was an adult, mountains of meaningless paperwork between me and tea.

Working as a mediwizard was always my dream, but I never expected to be certified so quickly. Everything was sped up in the war, and mediwizards had a notoriously short life span compared with Healers. Working in the field at emergency sites opened up risk to lingering Death Eaters. A few went missing just the week before I joined, possibly victims of the Imperius Curse, or worse.

The list of the verified dead was bad, but the list of the missing was so much worse.

I hadn't been in my flat for over twenty-four hours. I had a daytime shift at work the day before, then dinner and a meeting at headquarters to go over a variety of things, and then from there we went straight to a raid in a village in the north. I had barely left the raid – bloodied and bruised, but otherwise no worse for wear – and stopped to get a bite at a café when work tracked me down to call me in to the hospital because of the very raid I had been at, and they were low on qualified staff. When I finished there I went to give a report to Dumbledore on work and the raid and slept about an hour and a half on a sofa at headquarters before going straight back in for my day shift, which I'd worked long on.

I was tired. I was sore. I was starving. I had a haphazardly Healed shin that Sirius had taken care of in the heat of battle that I would have to try to fix, and I would have to reapply burn and bruise paste to my forearms after I'd gotten something to eat.

And this was not an unusual forty-eight hour period.

Sirius hadn't taken on much heavy work yet for the war, mostly because he didn't want to worry Betsy while she was staying with him, but he'd told me how envious he was from day one that I was dealing with the "real" stuff.

I hadn't know how to react to that. It was real, alright, but I would have rather not had to deal with it. Being a mediwizard was bad enough in typical circumstances, but those were usually accidents and people being idiots. When I decided to be a mediwizard I hadn't planned on essentially being a battlefield medic.

The kettle began whistling and I quickly poured the tea, trying to decide what to make for dinner. Of course I would make a sandwich, but ham or turkey?

I only ever ate anything else at Order meetings or when we would grab food after a patrol or raid. Lily would make quiche sometimes, and a few of the older members with more experience at life managed to balance their time enough for cooking to bring along. They traded off the responsibility. Maybe someday I would be included with that, but as I often managed to irreparably burn toast I didn't think it would be any time soon.

Ham.

While my tea was cooling, I buttered some bread and dropped ham slices onto it haphazardly as I opened my work files. Eating could be cleaner if I paid attention to one thing at a time, but I rarely had enough time in my schedule to fit in eating at all if I tried to do that.

Most of my paperwork was pointless, if required. I hadn't expected that so much paperwork would be required as a mediwizard, which was part of the reason I wanted it over Healing. The hospital workers had twice my paperwork, but it felt like I must have been then only one doing any, as my workload piled higher and higher every day.

When I finished my sandwich and started to sip tea, I checked my wall calendar, which was coded in case Death Eaters raided my flat. My work shifts were listed, days when I was visiting Iris were marked as gym days with start times marked, meetings were put down as dinner with friends – various friends scattered throughout – and missions were drinks with whoever I was on the mission with.

Tomorrow I was supposed to have a day off, and I'd scheduled to see Iris in the afternoon. I was more likely to keep my dates with her during afternoons and mornings, because most crises happened in the evening or middle of the night. Death Eaters liked to attack in the dark because it increased the fear. Sometimes work emergencies still happened, and the war had us continually short on well-rested staff, so I'd had to reschedule a couple of times, but thus far she'd been very understanding. We scheduled to meet on all my days off anyway, and if it didn't work out, at least we did everything we could to spend time together before she had to go to Hogwarts. The likelihood that I would have time off when she was at Hogsmeade was slim, so it would be a year apart, essentially.

Paperwork would be done in the morning, until had to go meet with her. My mind wasn't in a place to do it now, not with the words blurring together on the forms and charts when I tried to look at them. Instead I sat in a chair I hardly ever had the time to use, put up my feet, and sipped my tea.

Dorcas Meadowes, a woman about four years older than us, had told me and Sirius and James to be sure to take time for ourselves, to keep our own sanity. I didn't know what she did, exactly, but it was dangerous and highly secretive. She and Caradoc Dearborn were often away doing very important things neither could talk about, and no one ever knew when they would be back. She never seemed very dangerous to me, but one of the other men, Diggle, assured me that Dorcas was one of the most lethal people he'd ever met.

It was just hard for me to imagine someone who always put too much sugar in my tea as lethal, I supposed.

I tried to take her advice, though. I tried to find time for myself, to relax, to not let my job and my Order work to take over every minute of my life. It wasn't easy, and with the responsibility I felt in both places it was too easy for me to be roped into extra time. Dumbledore was better about ensuring that we all had time off. The hospital didn't have that luxury.

In school I had always been able to tell myself that when things got difficult I could take it day by day, struggle through until whatever upcoming holiday there was. Life came in terms and terms had expectations and an end date. In life, even with scheduled days off, I didn't have something to look forward to in the big scheme, no extended break on the horizon. The war had become a part of my life as I knew and understood it, and the fact that the war had no end in sight should have maybe given me an anxiety attack.

The first file I would have to fill out in the morning was on a house we arrived at after a Death Eater raid. Two dead, three dying. I never found out why they were targeted. From what I knew they weren't a Muggleborn family, and no one was in politics or anything like that. The father was dying when we got there and two of the children. It looked like Bellatrix Lestrange's work, the way the wife had been brutalized and they were all just left there to die. Some people finished their food. Some people just played with it roughly.

I didn't think I would ever forget the way the six-year-old girl whimpered while I tried to deal with her many injuries with her father dying in the next room. We weren't able to save her father, and her brother would never be the same, his brain forever damaged by the Cruciatus Curse. That six-year-old child would be out of hospital in a week, all going well, and I wondered where she would go, and what her life could possibly be like in this world. It wasn't even safe for adults. How could it be safe for a child?