Attacked

(_)(_)(_)

1975 June

Cedrella waited beside Septimus at the station to greet the children.

It had been an incredibly busy and chaotic six months. No less than a dozen very low-ranked Death Eaters had been caught and prosecuted under the new laws in the last few months. Cedrella wasn't all that pleased that it was only the low-levels that had been caught, but she could understand why it was being done that way. The dedicated anti-Death Eater squad had needed time to get to know each other and work out the kinks in their battle plans. The best way to do that was to cut their teeth on fairly easy targets.

Things would step up considerably over the summer. For one, the newly trained Aurors would begin to be sworn in and put on rotation over the summer as they completed their compressed training. That would increase the coverage the Auror department had significantly, allowing them to join in on the fun. Plus the warmer weather would bring the Death Eaters out in greater numbers. The bitter cold winter months did tend to put a damper on anyone's enthusiasm for running about causing mayhem. They'd already begun to see an upswing in activity in the last month or so due to that factor.

They'd had no joy figuring out who Voldemort was. While the house elves had been willing to help, that only went so far. They recognized people by their magical cores - which meant they had to have encountered that person before. While there were apparently quite a few house elves who'd been within 'detecting' distance of Voldemort, none of them had ever heard any other name used for him.

While they'd checked with the Hogwarts elves, they hadn't gotten anything there either. The primary problem from that end being that any one Hogwarts house elf encountered literally thousands of witches and wizards in their lifetime of service at the school, and remembering any one person out of that mass was difficult unless they did something rather memorable, or had some unique characteristic. Family elves had it easier when it came to identifying people because they rarely dealt with more than about twenty people regularly, and briefly encountered another twenty or so.

Speaking of Hogwarts - from the letters they'd gotten from the children, the school was nigh on to a war zone. The rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin had gotten more severe than ever, to the point where wands were frequently drawn - and used - whenever members of those two Houses encountered each other in the corridors. Worse, attacks - perpetrated by both sides of that conflict - were being dismissed as 'pranks'.

The kids, under the aegis of the Marauders, were doing what they could to punish the guilty on both sides of the fight, but they seemed to be the only ones doing so. Slughorn was far more interested in currying favor than with discipline, and while McGonagall was apparently quick to remove points and assign detention when something was brought to her attention, she had a tendency to punish the Slytherin without first ascertaining whether or not they were actually at fault. Worse, the kids had heard rumors that if a Gryffindor was punished by a teacher, the punishment would frequently be lessened. Not by McGonagall, but by Dumbledore.

Unfortunately, there was no real proof of that, only unproveable rumors. That seemed to be a specialty of Dumbledore's ... to not leave any real evidence of potentially shady doings behind. It aggravated the elder Marauders and their wives no end.

They had so many suspicions regarding Dumbledore. Like Septimus thinking that maybe Fawkes was not with Dumbledore of his own free will. But how in the name of everything did they find that out for sure? None of them even knew for sure how a phoenix became a familiar, or ended up hanging out with a human. Oh, there were rumors that they could be forced into someone's company if you found their ashes and kept them with you, but really, that was just a rumor. There was no actual evidence for it being true.

Virtually every other suspicion they had suffered from the same sort of problem. Things Dumbledore did looked fishy as all hell, but finding out if they actually were or not was virtually impossible. It was enough to drive them all mad.

At least the kids were out of the school, and its increasingly poisonous atmosphere, for a few months. They planned on spending much of the summer either at Potter Castle or Longbottom Manor, both of which had the room necessary to host their rather large company in toto.

With the war heating up, Septimus, Harfang, and Charlus were more adamant than ever that the kids be taught to defend themselves. It helped that they were getting to an age where they could learn heavier-duty spells now, too. So much of the summer would be taken up with that, though they did still plan to have a good bit of fun as well.

Cedrella knew that Septimus was still working on trying to become an Animagus, as was Harfang. Their progress seemed to be pretty slow. It was probably more an effect of their ages and being somewhat set in their ways, rather than any lack of power to achieve the accomplishment. Cedrella herself had joined in the meditation sessions, mostly out of curiosity as to what she could become, if she could in fact become something. Both Callidora and Dorea had opted not to try for it. In Dorea's case, mostly out of sympathy to Charlus, who couldn't attempt the transformation for fear of his old war injury screwing up an attempt at transformation, or making being whatever animal he could become useless if the transformation itself didn't get messed up.

Cedrella did entertain herself with her private bets as to what Septimus might become. Her favorite choices were a lion - more for his violently protective streak than for the Gryffindor associations. Her other favorite choice was a wolf, again because of the protective streak, and in their case, the 'cooperative hunting/raising kids' thing. Because male lions mostly didn't do cooperative hunting or raising the kids. They left that to the females for the most part. Male wolves were far more involved in the day-to-day life of their pack.

The train arrived and the kids all piled out. It took a few moments for the confusion to die down enough for individuals to be spotted in the mass. While some of the kids were acting just shifty enough to activate Cedrella's 'kids up to something' detector, the first she really knew of trouble was when a scowling, fuming, clench-fisted Sirius found them.

"Septimus! Cedrella! Thank goodness. You need to come on the train. Someone hexed Severus and Lily pretty bad. We've done what we could but there were no adults on board and we didn't know who to trust of the older kids."

Septimus growled angrily and tore towards the train. Cedrella hesitated just long enough to send a patronus message to the rest of their group, who had spread out along the train platform so as to keep an eye on any trouble among the students. Then she too raced towards the train.

They found Severus on the floor of one of the girls' bathrooms, covered in blood. James, Regulus, and Remus were outside the bathroom. Lily, while bleeding, was at least still on her feet and was hovering over Severus, caught between tears and sheer, undiluted rage.

"One of the older Slytherin girls decided to make an example of me." Lily said when Septimus and Cedrella piled into the bathroom.

She didn't need to clarify why the Slytherin would want to make an example of Lily. Cedrella privately fumed even as she and Septimus began throwing spells around, checking just how bad the damage was and slowing or stopping what bleeding they safely could without exacerbating spell effects.

"I tried to fight her off, but she was a seventh year." Lily continued.

A fourth year, even a well-trained one, wouldn't have much of a chance against a seventh year. Especially if the seventh year was from a Death Eater family or a Dark supporter family and therefore knew a lot of Dark Arts and were willing to use them.

"Severus came looking for me because I was taking so long, and ... " Lily swallowed hard, visibly fighting tears. "Between us, we almost had her. Then some of her friends showed up."

"That's when we came on the run." James said. "We could hear all hell breaking loose. It took us a while to take them down. They're in the baggage car." He all but snarled the last. "Severus got the worst of it. None of the prefects showed up to help, either. Though they might have been in a meeting."

Well, that would make sense - attacking when the only 'authority', however marginal that might be, was otherwise engaged. And if anything, James had understated how bad Severus had gotten it. The poor boy was covered with cuts, bruises, and odd growths. Fortunately, it didn't look like any of the really nasty curses had been thrown - the seventh years had probably been cautious of possible monitoring on the train - but the damage they'd managed to do was bad enough.

Right about then, Harfang, Callidora, Dorea and Charlus arrived. Cedrella nodded to them before turning her attention back to the kids.

"You were wise to only do what you could, and not attempt to reverse this mess yourselves." Cedrella said. "Now, let's get him to St. Mungo's and get him fixed up."

"I'll just go check the baggage car." Harfang said.

Cedrella blinked. Harfang was by far the gentlest of the three elder men. She'd never heard him sound so venomous. Not that she blamed him a bit for the reaction of course, it was just a bit jarring and alarming to hear a normally peaceable man sounding like he wanted to hex someone into flinders.

"No, old friend. As much as I don't blame you, you need to go with Severus. You're his guardian." Septimus said, clapping a sympathetic hand on Harfang's shoulder. "We'll contact the Evanses as soon as we can so Lily can have her parents with her."

Harfang looked briefly mutinous, torn between the desire to help Severus and hex his attackers. Then he relented. Probably because he knew Septimus and Charlus would deal with the offenders - and if they didn't, Cedrella, Callidora and Dorea most certainly would.

Septimus and Cedrella worked together to maneuver Severus out of the bathroom and into the corridor where there was a bit more room without exacerbating his injuries. From there, Septimus quickly created a portkey, and Harfang disappeared with Severus and Lily to St. Mungo's. Once he'd taken off, Charlus called Jinx.

"Jinx, I need you to go to the Evanses, and tell them they're needed at St. Mungos." Charlus told him when Jinx popped in. "Tell them Lily is not badly hurt, but she is very upset. I'll meet them outside the building so they can get in." Charlus told him. Jinx nodded and popped away.

That left the rest of them to go ... interview ... the suspects.

James led the way, as he knew where the perpetrators had been put. When they got there, James pulled his wand and started fingering it like he wanted to hex them all over again.

"Easy, son. They'll get what's coming to them, one way or another." Charlus said.

The three were trussed up to a fare-thee-well, and everyone portkeyed to St. Mungo's. Callidora was holding court in the arrival room when they arrived, filling in three Aurors that had been called in.

"Here are the perpetrators." Septimus growled. "Our children were forced to subdue them themselves." He glowered at the four seventh year Slytherins. "Other than an incarcerous to ensure they wouldn't escape easily, no one has cast a spell on them since they were knocked out, to my knowledge. I cannot speak for the period of time between the attack and when I first laid eyes on them."

"We didn't touch them." James growled. "Not for lack of wanting to, I can tell you. We just had bigger concerns on our minds."

The Aurors checked everyone's wands. That caused more than a few concerned looks as the Slytherins' wands showed at least one borderline Dark spell each. The Aurors interviewed each of the kids separately. By the time that was done, the Evanses had arrived. Or well, the parents at any rate. Lily's sister Petunia was conspicuous by her absence. Not that Cedrella had expected anything else. They'd all become aware of the rift between the sisters over the last few years. Unfortunately there was nothing they could really do about it.

Two of the Aurors remained at the hospital to stand guard over the accused Slytherins while the third went to report in on the incident. The four teens would be charged and facing trial by the end of the day, in all likelihood. If they weren't, Cedrella would find out why in an all-fired hurry.