Chapter 36: In the Darkness

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the original Harry Potter characters.

Note: Sorry for the hiatus.

Gen awoke in the middle of the night with a start. Her eyes scanned her bedroom, seeking out what had stirred her. She was taking quick, shallow breaths, as if she had been running for miles.

The room was empty, and as far as she could tell, undisturbed. Reaching for her wand from her bedside table, the end illuminated with a soft glow. Pointing it about, her eyes confirmed that she was alone in the room.

She stared then at her bedroom door, which was ajar as she had left it. Since she lived alone in the apartment now, there was no sense in keeping it closed all the time. She had even taken to leaving the bathroom door wide open when using the toilet because no one was there.

Something in her gut was still unsettled, so she rose quietly, and made her way from her bedroom, listening intently for any sound of an intruder. She paused in the hallway, standing near the open bathroom door, looking out into the dark and silent kitchen. Long moments passed, but Gen heard nothing. She shrugged and turned back into her bedroom.

Going bonkers, darling, she thought to herself as she wiggled back under the covers.

"Nox," she whispered, and placed her wand back on her nightstand.

The last thing she focused on as she drifted back to sleep was the tiny porcelain elephant from Thailand, pacing pack and forth rather anxiously.

It had been doing that for weeks.

The following morning, as Gen ate breakfast and readied herself for a day at work, she failed to notice that several things were slightly askew. The fruit bowl she kept on the kitchen table was pushed up against the wall, as opposed to being a few inches away. Her shoes near the door had been kicked up, as though someone had stumbled over them in the dark. She failed to notice that one of the windows in the living room had been unlocked.

Gen carried on, business as usual, barely noticing that her shoes were upturned.

That evening, Sirius was over for dinner. They sat together on the couch, his fingers running through her light brown hair, talking quietly.

"Have you found anyone to take the rooms?" he asked. Gen sighed. Her roommate search had become her least favorite subject – especially with Sirius.

"No. Muriel from the Department of Mysteries was supposed to send her friend Rebecca by, but she has been avoiding me the last few days. So, I don't think that's going to happen."

"I don't like you being here alone, Gen," Sirius said. She could hear the tension in his voice.

"I know, Sirius. I am trying to find people," she answered, trying to keep her voice level, not wanting to argue.

"I don't understand why you won't move in with me," he continued. Gen closed her eyes, trying to keep her head.

"Because I can't afford your apartment, Sirius," she said.

"You don't have to pay anything!" he said. His fingers stilled in her hair, and Gen looked up at the ceiling in frustration. He was exasperated, and so was she. She refused to live in his flat without paying half of the rent, and he couldn't understand why that was such an issue for her.

"Sirius, I'm not going to tell you again." She sat up, lifting her head off his lap and standing. She cleared the dishes from the table while he sat there, fuming. Gen washed the plates by hand, waiting for him to explode.

"Thirteen women around your age have gone missing or been killed, muggle and magical alike," he said.

"Yeah, Sirius, I read the same statistics that you do," Gen said, somewhat bitterly.

"Then why do you insist on living here alone?" he yelled. Gen heard him get off the couch, and three quick strides later he was spinning her around by the waist to face him.

His mouth was downturned in anger.

"I'm not insisting on being alone! It's temporary while I find new roommates!"

"You don't need to stay here!" he countered, his grey eyes fixed intently on her own.

"I don't need to live somewhere I can't pay for, either!" she cried, throwing the forks she had been holding on to into the sink.

"Who cares, Gen?!"

"I care! I'm not going to live off the fortune your uncle left you just because you say it's okay," she snapped, walking away from him. She tucked her hair behind her ears furiously.

"Your safety isn't as important as living within your means?" Sirius shot at her, the idea sounding incredulous in her ears. Gen looked at him again, shaking her head.

"Why am I so unsafe here? I don't see any reason this place is so unsafe just because I'm alone," she argued, throwing her hands up.

"Because when people are being killed and taken every week, being alone is the worst place to be," Sirius said, heat radiating off him. His face as twisted in outrage, but Gen could see the fear in his eyes. Sirius was a thousand times more agitated and dangerous when he was afraid than any other time. She closed her mouth and swallowed the quip she had prepared. She walked to him instead, reaching out to take his arms. Lifting them, she draped them over her shoulders and he hugged her to him in response.

"I know you're worried. But you have to believe that I can take care of myself. I wouldn't be an Auror if I couldn't, and you know that. I'm not going to move in with you because I would rather be able to save my money and have a beautiful home one day than struggle to pay half of your rent, or feel incredibly guilty and awkward in your place. I don't want to feel like a guest in a place that I should feel at home in." She looked up at him, and managed a smile. He scowled, but the anger was fading from his face.

"You're annoying," he said, finally. Gen laughed, and tried to pull away. He held her tightly, and let a smile cross his lips.

"You're a butthead," she answered, pressing her cheek to his chest.

"A beautiful home, eh?" he asked after a long pause. Gen smiled.

"Yes, one day," she answered.

"Do I get a say in what this home looks like?" he asked.

Gen felt her heart stop.

Of course, she wanted to say.

She had imagined what their children would look like, let alone that he would be the one who she came home to every day. She peered up at him, unsure of how to feel or respond.

"I-I-I don't know," she said. "Do you want a say?" He gazed down at her from beneath his long, dark lashes, a content smile on his face. She felt her throat drying up a little.

"Yes, I should think so," he responded. "I am going to be looking at it every day….aren't I?"

His question lingered in the air, pregnant with talk they hadn't broached before. Talk of the future, and what they would mean to each other. Gen shied away from all that talk, not wanting him to decide she was moving too quickly, but she had held all that hope in her heart. Gen was rendered speechless, and as the moments passed his smile changed to a smirk, enjoying whatever expression, or expressions, were on her face.

He's toying with me.

She scowled, and pulled away from him, walking away to her bedroom.

"Gen!" he called, elongating the vowel in her name.

"It's not nice to tease people, Sirius Black," she chided, not bothering to look over her shoulder as she began to take off her t-shirt and grab her pajamas.

"What?" he asked. "I wasn't teasing you!"

"Oh, please," she said, pulling down her shorts. "You were making fun of me. Saying you'd like to live with me, and make a home with me. Well, fine! See if I ever visit you in your bland, boring and gloomy house!"

As she reached for her pajama bottoms, Sirius scooped her up and on to her bed. Her made short work of his own t-shirt, and Gen was suddenly faced with his naked and relatively hairless chest. He placed a knee on either side of her so she was stuck between him, helpless.

"You really shouldn't have worn this pair of underwear, darling. They're my favorite," he said.

"Really?" Gen asked, brow furrowed. "They're just pink."

"Really. Now, should the situation ever arise that I am not your boyfriend and you're not completely mad for me, here's a bit of advice: men never joke about things as serious as a future home with girls. They always mean it if they're saying it, and if they're not talking about it, then they aren't ready or don't want to have a future home with you. Got it?"

Gen stared up at him, and considered his advice.

"Then why were you smirking at me?" she demanded.

"Because I have been wanting to talk to you about the future I have planned out for us from the moment you were drunk on my sofa in my flat," he said, moving his legs and lowering himself down beside her. "And watching you face go from confusion, to joy, to dread, to anger is very amusing."

Gen was still for a long time, staring at him.

"You want to have a home with me?" she asked. His hand slid under the hem of her shirt, and wormed over her warm skin.

"Gen, I want more than a home with you. I want a life with you."

Gen slept soundly in his arms that night, but up the hall in Lily's now empty bedroom, another window unlocked.

The clock couldn't wind down the last five minutes of their training any slower than if it has been cursed to make each moment feel like an eternity.

Gen wasn't looking to go anywhere, she just wanted to leave.

They had entered a new phase of training – an intense and rigorous exploration of "traditional" dark arts.

Gen understood that "traditional" dark arts where what she had learned at Hogwarts, essentially, but they were expanded and gone into detail in her new class. "Non-traditional" dark arts, as she had come to realize, was everything that Voldemort and his Death Eaters were using and that she fought against every day. Moody was so infuriated with the things Gen and Sirius were being forced to sit through 13 hours a week that he nearly blew the instructor – a haughty and dowdy Freda Trimly – to bits.

"Teaching people who are supposed to be tracking down a criminal outdated, archaic and useless magic is a waste of bloody time!" he had shouted at her after Gen and Sirius reported they had spent their first week of class covering the various uses of troll bile.

Moody had apparently gotten word from someone above him in the chain of command to give it a rest, because he stopped making a fuss three weeks in.

So, here Gen and Sirius sat, in a classroom with Lily and James and a few others. 3 hours after they were supposed to have gone home. She had taken to drawing a tree on the side of her parchment, which wasn't being used for its note-taking purpose anyway.

Sirius was seated in front of her, so she didn't even have his face to stare at. He reached his hand back, scratching at his shoulder, and casually let a small, folded piece of paper slip from his fingers on to Gen's desk. She grinned, and put her hand over it before Trimly would notice. Careful to be quiet, Gen unfolded the small paper.

I can't wait to kiss you.

Gen smiled to herself, and closed her fingers around the paper. She reached her fore-finger forward, tracing a heart against Sirius' back.

"All right, everyone" Trimly finally said, "that's enough for today. I'll see you all next week."

Gen shot up out of her seat, grabbing her bag and shoving the parchment inside. Sirius was up, too, and he looked at her with a crinkle of smile in his eyes.

"Ready?" he asked. They followed Lily and James out of the room, trying to contain themselves in front of Trimly. Once in the safety of the elevator, however, James and Sirius let loose.

"This is the biggest waste of time," James said.

"It's like they have no idea what we do every day," Sirius added, a dark edge to his voice. Gen and Lily looked at each other, both dying to talk about anything else. As the boys walked from the elevator through the deserted lobby of the Ministry, Gen linked arms with her red-headed friend.

"How are you doing?" Lily asked.

"I'm all right, how are you?" Gen asked. Lily paused.

"Honestly, I'm worried about Remus," she answered. This caught Gen by surprise.

"Why? What's wrong?" Gen asked, looking at Lily. Her green eyes did indeed look concerned, and she seemed unable to fine the words to explain.

"I haven't seen very much of him lately," she said.

"Do you think something has happened to him?" they paused and separated, as James and Sirius were standing in two different fireplaces. James and Lily were to go to their new flat towards Bromley, and Gen was to go with Sirius back to his flat. Lily gave Gen a conflicted look.

"No, I think he's fine. He came for dinner a few nights ago. But, I feel like he's very unhappy, and is slipping away from us," Lily said. She leaned forward and gave Gen a peck on the cheek while Gen absorbed her words.

Remus, she thought, slipping away?

"Oi," Sirius said, "Proctor!" Gen rounded on Sirius, the unsettled feeling Lily had given her still dominant.

"What?" she asked.

"Let's go!"

When back in Sirius' flat, Gen felt distracted. She was there only a few minutes before she felt like leaving.

"I thought you were going to stay here tonight?" Sirius asked. Gen scrunched up her face as she headed towards the door.

"Suddenly, I feel like going home," she said.

"Did I do something?" he asked. Gen chuckled.

"No, darling," she replied. "I just feel like going home."

"Gen," Sirius said, putting himself between her and the door. "It's late. I don't think it's such a good idea for you to go home."

"What?" she asked, thrown off by his actions.

"I don't think it's wise for you to be out alone this late to go back to an empty flat," he said. Gen heaved a sigh.

"Sirius, come on. Don't do this with me right now."

"Do what, try and protect you?" he demanded, raising her voice.

"We've been over this a hundred times! Now, unless you have a valid reason as to why I can't go home right now and sleep in my own bed, let me go!" she said, flustered.

"Your flat felt strange last time I was there," Sirius said. Gen looked up at him.

This is unbelievable.

"Strange?" Gen asked.

"Yeah, like someone was inside of it," Sirius clarified.

"Someone other than you?" she asked, her arms crossing over her chest and looking up at him. Her words were marinated in sarcasm. His face flashed with annoyance.

"Yes," he snapped, "someone other than me and you."

"And how do you know someone was inside of my apartment?" Gen demanded, her voice challenging.

"I don't, I'm telling you how it felt," Sirius answered. Gen rolled her eyes, and moved to get by him.

"This is ridiculous," she said, reaching for the doorknob. "You are the last person who would go off how something feels unless that feeling is good."

"You go off feelings all the time!" Sirius yelled.

"Yeah," Gen said, looking back at him from beyond the threshold of the door, "and I feel fine!"

She closed the door before he could say anything else, and she apparated before he could chase her.

She was in the alley beside her apartment building, looking through her bag for her keys. Walking to the sidewalk and turning the corner, Gen reached the main entry door to find that it was already unlocked. Pulling it open and heading up the few steps to the first level, she was suddenly awash with a terrible feeling.

In fact, it was not unlike the feeling she had when she had woken in the middle of the night with but a few days before. She slowed on the first flight of stairs, listening intently. As she rounded the corner to the second flight, she could make out an unfamiliar voice.

"How could you be so stupid?" the voice asked.

"Hey, I don't see you out there tracking her!" responded another in a forced whisper. Gen climbed a few steps so she could see up the hallway. She kept low to the ground, her hands on the edge of a step so all she had to do was duck her head if they looked her way.

Her apartment door was open, and a light from inside poured out into the carpeted hallway.

There were doors being closed, and drawers being yanked open by a person in search of something.

"She's not stupid enough to keep it written down somewhere, Dolohov," a third voice said, belonging to a woman.

"How do you know she didn't keep a letter from Dumbledore or something?" one of the men asked, not bothering to keep his voice down.

"Because no member of a secret organization just keeps that lying around!" the woman answered, her voice sounding almost bored. "She should have been home an hour ago, which one of you is supposed to be out there tailing her?!"

An argument between the two men broke out, quickly escalating from a forced whisper to shouting. As Gen looked on, pulling her wand from her purse slowly for fear that any sound would give her away, a second light filled the hallway. One of her neighbors had opened the door, marching out into the hall in his bathrobe. He was clearly intent on telling the three of them to keep it down, because good, hard-working people were trying to sleep.

Gen realized what was about to happen too late.

"Good Lord! What are you doing?" he cried when he saw whatever was happening inside of her apartment. Gen watched his eyes fill with terror, and he turned his body to run back to his apartment. "I'll call the police!"

He had turned his back and was running to his open door. Then, a man with dark hair, dressed in what looked like a suit, stepped out of her apartment and pointed his wand at the unsuspecting man's back. Suddenly, a bright flash of green filled the hallway and Gen watched as the man fell, stiff, to the ground.

Before she could react, a hand clamped down over her mouth and pulled her down the half-flight of stairs.

"Shut it, Gen," whispered the voice of Alastor Moody. He pulled her into the shadows and then disapparated.

When she opened her eyes, the hand was lifted from her mouth and she was forced into a chair. She looked around, and recognized Sirius' kitchen.

And then it hit her.

"We have to go back!" she cried. "What are we doing here?"

"Don't even think about getting off that chair, missy," Moody barked, coming into her line of sight, his figure intimidating. Gen sought out the other faces in the room. It appeared that Gen had been brought to a mini-Order meeting. James and Lily were present, as well as Remus and Peter and Kingsley. Dumbledore was standing calmly before her and behind him, pacing furiously, was Sirius.

"Why are we just sitting here?" Gen demanded. "That man was murdered!"

"What did you see?" Dumbledore asked. Gen looked at him again, and leaned forward in her chair.

"I came up to the door of my building and found that the door was unlocked. As I climbed the stairs, I heard forced whispers. I heard a man ask who was supposed to be out tailing me. They were looking through my apartment for something, I think anything that would indicate where headquarters is. I heard a woman tell Dolohov he was stupid, and that I wasn't stupid enough to keep those things around the house. She said that I should have been home an hour ago, and they started arguing. Then, my neighbor cam e out of his apartment to tell them to keep it down, I presume, and when he realized that it wasn't me or anyone that lives there, he threatened to call the police. As he was running up the hall back to his door one of the men came out and killed him," Gen recounted.

The air was vibrating with the emotions of the group, but not one of them breathed a word. Gen looked from face to face, trying to comprehend why none of them where being driven to action.

"Is there anything in your apartment that would implicate anyone in the Order? Any names?" Dumbledore asked. Gen met his eyes, searching her mind frantically.

"No, sir."

"None of our correspondence, or anything you may have taken from out meetings?" he asked, urgency in his voice. Gen searched her mind again.

"No," she responded. "I'm not one for holding on to papers."

"You must be certain, Genevieve," he said.

"I'm sure! What I'm not sure of is why we're all just standing around when there are Death Eaters in my apartment murdering innocent people!"

"Because there are other people we need to make sure are safe, first," Dumbledore answered, maintaining his calm air. His gaze silenced her, but she did not look away. Dumbledore turned away from her, and spoke quietly to Kingsley and Moody. The two men then turned and headed for the door.

"She sleeps here, Black," Moody said to the pacing Sirius. He nodded to him, and then Moody turned to Gen. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Now, I suggest we all return home," Dumbledore said. "Let Genevieve and Sirius get some rest."

"That's it?" Gen demanded, rising from her seat. "I'm just supposed to go to bed knowing that three people who may or may not still be in my apartment right now killed an innocent man? One of those three I can identify!"

"Yes, you are supposed to go to sleep. The rest of us will take care of it," answered Dumbledore.

"I didn't become an Auror and join the Order to be coddled, Professor!" Gen yelled.

"No one is coddling you, Gen," Dumbledore replied. A flash of anger crossed his face. "We're doing this to keep you safe."

With that he crossed to the door and left. Gen turned into the kitchen and slammed the chair she had been sitting in to the ground.

"Hey! That's enough!" Sirius yelled.

"What? You, too? Go ahead, Sirius. Say 'I told you so'!" she shot at him, her brow furrowed in a rage she hadn't felt in a long time.

"Oh, don't be so damn petty," he spat.

"Then you explain to me why, if I am trained to deal with these kinds of things and have dedicated nearly a year to an organization whose very purpose is fighting these crackpots, am I being forced to stay here?!"

"Because you were almost killed!" Sirius said. He buried his fingers into his hair, spinning away from her in agitation. There was anger in his eyes that she had never seen before, but it didn't make her change her mind. "Those Death Eaters were tracking you for days, and were sent there to torture and kill you."

"Don't be –"

"No! You listen to me. That's how this works. They go through people they know are in the Order and they torture you until you tell them what they want to know. They don't care if you die in the process – you're just one less person they'll have to fight. If you're not the one, they'll just use whatever tiny piece of information you give them to find the next person."

Gen fell silent, staring at Sirius as he began to pace around the apartment again, his enraged soul shaking in the shackles fear had placed around him. She turned towards him.

"That doesn't mean I should be prevented from doing my job," Gen said. Sirius rounded her.

"You are so irrational! It goes against every ounce of training you've had to have taken on those three alone," he said.

"I watched them kill a man. A man who had his back turned to his attacker, if he even had a chance to defend himself against their cold and ruthless magic. Irrationality and training have nothing to do with it what's right when the time comes," Gen challenged. She saw the flash of green again, and the man fall to the ground, his life suddenly and needlessly ended in a war that he didn't even know was going on.

"Which is exactly why you are here and the others are out there dealing with this," Sirius responded, absolutely incensed by her response.

"I shouldn't be kept in a cage for no reason!" she shouted, grabbing her bag and heading towards the door. Sirius ran at her, grabbing her wrist.

"When are you going to get it through your think skull that it's not for no reason?!" he asked.

"No one gave me a good one!" she countered. Sirius pointed his wand at his door, and Gen heard the door bolt itself shut as Sirius dragged her back into the apartment. He pushed her down on to the couch and stood in front of her.

"I'm not going to let you get killed! That reason enough for you?!"

His eyes burned into her, and Gen glared back at him.

"So help me if anything should ever happen to you, Gen." His voice was weaker, and Gen watched as his angry shell fell away to reveal her emotionally raw and fearful lover. He lowered his head when she didn't respond, his hand covering his eyes like a blindfold as he thought. Guilt and grief washed over Gen in a quick wave, and she leaned her head back against the couch as her eyes filled with tears.

"I'm sick of people dying," she whispered.

"I'm sick of you throwing yourself in harm's way with such little regard for your own worth," Sirius responded. He flopped down on the couch next to her, and enveloped her hand in hers. She stared at the ceiling for a long time, crying silently, until he reached up and wrapped his arms around her.

"I don't even know his name," Gen said. "But I know he has a small son. He comes and visits every other weekend."

"Your heart is too large to be a part of this war," Sirius said. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. She sobbed softly for her innocent neighbor, now face down in the dingy carpet of her apartment building. She cried for his son, who would never grow to know his father as a quality man, and she cried for herself. She cried that she lived in a time where her own people were endangered.

Slowly, she calmed down, and the emptiness she felt from crying was replaced with exhaustion.

"There was a column in the Daily Prophet by Georgina today," Sirius said, somewhat absentmindedly. Gen looked at him, surprised.

"What was it about?" Gen asked.

"She investigated one of the Departments for efficiency. She gave a less than glowing review," Sirius said, a small smirk in the corner of his mouth. Gen raised her eyebrow at the idea of Georgina Lockhart writing a newspaper column, but then shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Sirius," she said quietly. She shyly met his eyes, and he looked at her pensively.

"For?"

"Arguing with you. I should have understood how worried you would be," she answered.

"I'm sorry, too," he said. "We need to stop fighting." Gen nodded in agreement, wiping at her tired eyes.

"You're going to have to move out of this place," Gen said. Sirius gave her a curious look.

"Why?"

"Because I can't afford it. And if we're going to live together we have to have a place we both can pay for," Gen replied. A smile spread across Sirius' lips. "Besides, if they've been tracking me properly then they probably know where you live, too."

"We'll start looking tomorrow," he said, pulling her back to him.

That's all for right now. The next chapter will be up shortly.