September 17th: Alice Abbott

War Stories' first meeting is at eight o'clock tonight, and Alice couldn't be more anxious. She's positive that opening with a direct mention of Liz and Millie will immediately open the door to questions that they aren't prepared to answer, but what are they supposed to do? Ignore the elephant in the room? And what if no one comes forward to share their experiences when prompted? Alice knows that Peter and Lily have been working on preparing stories to read out if needed, but what if they're the only ones who do?

Socially, Alice doesn't know what's happening with the Gryffindors anymore. For a while there, it seemed like Remus was her ally, while James and Lily were paired off with Sirius and Marlene, and Mary was tagging along with Peter and Emmeline. Then Marlene and Sirius—didn't split up, but decided to take some sort of break?—and Remus and Sirius seemed to make up, and Alice doesn't really know where that leaves her.

Not that spending all her time with Remus last week wasn't confusing, too. They haven't really talked about the fact that Remus is a werewolf since Alice found out last winter. After her parents' bad reaction to finding out about the Wolfsbane Potion, she kind of wants to sit Remus down and ask him a bunch of questions about anti-werewolf legislation, but she's been too afraid of making things even more awkward to actually do it.

Instead, she's been spending most of the last few days with Dirk Cresswell, which has been—yeah, she likes him, but it's been a little disconcerting to go from never speaking to the guy one-on-one to being around him from dawn 'til dusk. Worse, Dirk and Frank Longbottom are pretty good friends, which means seeing a lot of not just Frank but also Frank's girlfriend, Dana Madley. Alice has always kind of thought of Madley as being vapid and rude, and she tries to be nice for the sake of keeping the peace, but sometimes she just gets impatient with the way Madley just—hangs off of Frank like a fifth limb and talks over anybody who tries to get a word in edgewise.

She gets a rare moment alone with Frank outside the ladies' room while Madley powders her nose in there and Dirk is off in the library working on a Charms essay that he's got due on Monday. "How're you doing, Alice?" Frank asks with a little half-smile on his face.

"Oh, just fine," says Alice dismissively, but Frank adds—

"You just seem quieter than usual lately, that's all. And I'm sort of wondering if—if you've been spending all this time with us because you're avoiding the other Gryffindors for some reason?"

"Oh, it's fine. I mean, things with Lily are a little—"

She breaks off as Madley emerges from the bathroom and simpers, "Frank, honey, did you still want to go outside to work on that Defense essay?"

"Uh, yeah, of course. Coming, Alice?"

"Oh, no, I…" says Alice, suddenly feeling like she doesn't belong with the two of them here without Dirk around. "I should be getting back to my common room. But I'll see you at the meeting tonight, right?"

"We'll be there," says Madley.

"Dirk's coming, too?"

"Yes. Yes, he'll be there," Alice says. Given that Dirk is Muggle-born, Alice expects that he'd be interested even if Alice weren't going, unlike her suspicion that Madley is only going for Frank.

She doesn't go to the common room, though, instead doubling back and finding Dirk in the library. He grins at her when he sees her, this big smile lighting up his whole face like she's just made his day, and Alice feels the twinge of guilt she always feels when Dirk pays her a compliment. Sure, she likes him well enough, and she's been getting used to the idea of being his girlfriend for the last month and a half, but she can't say she ever would have noticed him if he hadn't sought her out, and she's not entirely sure to what degree she's been spending time with him just to avoid being left alone entirely by her fellow Gryffindors.

Peter didn't spend all his time with Siobhan when they were dating, Alice reminds herself. He found a way to balance having friends with having a girlfriend. Of course, this is the same Peter who proceeded to get dumped by Siobhan when she found out that he and Emmeline had kissed…

"You ready to do this thing tonight?" says Dirk, bringing Alice back to reality.

"Yeah, it should be interested to hear what everyone has to say," says Alice.

She hasn't exactly told Dirk that she's one of the people behind the event. Now that the Order has merged with Dumbledore's fighters, they've basically joined a clandestine team of vigilantes, and they need to do everything they can to prevent others from figuring out that they're all involved directly in the war effort. The more time passes, as they become of age and leave school, they're only going to dive deeper into the resistance, and it could be dangerous for word that they're all in on something together to leak out and reach the wrong person's ears.

Much safer to frame War Stories as a couple of people's idea rather than a meeting organized systematically by a group like the Order. They decided to let Lily and James spearhead it—it sends a good message showing the Head Boy and Girl united; Lily can share her experiences as a Muggle-born witch, and James can relate to other purebloods who might initially be skeptical of the extent of wizarding purism in Wizarding Britain. It's just one more item on the list of lies Alice has to tell Dirk and Frank and everyone else not in the Order, and she feels like she's going crazy not being able to be with the people who know what's happening at this time in her life.

She works on her Arithmancy homework while Dirk pokes at Charms. Eventually, he finishes the essay and starts on his Transfiguration homework—practicing Conjuring Spells—and Alice allows herself to get sidetracked helping him with his wand movements and giggling at the mice without tails or with wooden little legs that Dirk generates.

"I swear I was getting this better when we did this in class," Dirk wheezes after Vanishing his latest attempt.

"You'll be fine. You just need to focus."

"It's pretty hard to focus when I'm around you," Dirk admits.

It looks like this was a slip of the tongue that Dirk hadn't intended to say, because he claps a hand over his mouth and looks at Alice with wide eyes. She's once again slammed with the feeling that she doesn't deserve this boy, this beautiful boy who loves her more than she can give back, and that's when it occurs to her: instead of fixating on how she doesn't care for Dirk enough, maybe she can solve all her problems by putting her energy into treating him the way he treats her.

She reaches up to pull Dirk's hand away from his mouth, and they sit there with their hands entwined on top of the table, Alice tracing the lines on his palm with her thumb. "You're not helping," says Dirk with a weak laugh.

"Probably not," agrees Alice, and she leans in and kisses him.

She's kissed Dirk before, but it was always fleeting things, little pecks on the lips that didn't last more than a second. She's never really kissed anybody before, so she doesn't really know what she's doing as she moves her lips back and forth, but Dirk doesn't seem to mind. He groans a little in the back of his throat and scoots his chair toward hers, pressing their thighs together side-by-side, a hand moving up to cradle her cheek. It feels good, better than Alice would have thought it would feel, and she's just starting to think she's getting the hang of it when—

"Honestly! The things people try to get away with! Out of my library, now! OUT!"

xx

They'd originally planned to reserve a classroom to meet in, but as word buzzed around the castle about War Stories and they heard more and more about people interested in coming, they ended up talking to Professor McGonagall about using the Great Hall. It's not jam-packed when Alice and Dirk walk in, but it's maybe at twenty-percent capacity, which is still pretty impressive and big enough that it's hard to hear much of anything over the chatter.

Alice tugs on Dirk's hand and leads him over to the Gryffindor table, where they grab seats next to Remus and Marlene. They've been sitting there for maybe five minutes, Alice holding Dirk's hand under the table, when she hears James yell from the end of the table, "Oi!" and then give a searing whistle.

Talk from all sides dies down at once. "Thanks everyone for coming to our first meeting," says James, a little quieter now that he has everyone's attention. He stands up, as does Lily. "I'm James Potter, and this is Lily Evans. For those of you who don't know us, we're in Gryffindor, and we're Head Boy and Girl this year."

"Since this is a meeting for people with concerns about the war, and it's the war that took these women's lives last year, we thought we could start with a moment of silence for Elisabeth Clearwater from Hufflepuff and Mildred LeProut from Ravenclaw," Lily adds. "You all know Liz as Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and Millie as our Quidditch commentator at official meets. This year, Liz would have been a seventh year, and Millie would have been a fifth year. Even if you didn't know them personally, their memories will live on at this school as brave warriors who stood up to evil and were taken from us too soon, and one of the reasons we're gathered here today is to fight together for a world where what happened to Millie and Liz will never happen again. Please take the next moment to reflect on their lives and their legacy."

To everyone's credit, they do wait a while before anyone interrupts. It's not until James wraps up the minute and starts to introduce the next activity that somebody says, "You're really not going to talk about what happened to them? You're really going to try to save your own arses on this one?"

Alice recognizes the voice: it belongs to John Dawlish, a sixth year Hufflepuff prefect whom Alice knows from prefect meetings. Truth be told, Alice is a little surprised to see him here, at a meeting about Muggle-borns' rights. He's always been so—well—politically correct all the time; he's not someone she would think of as being outspoken on behalf of anybody.

And then, unexpectedly, Benjy speaks up. Alice hadn't thought he was planning on saying anything. "Elisabeth was my girlfriend," he says in a loud but broken voice. "I was in the Hospital Wing with her when Madam Pomfrey pronounced her dead. She was acting on bad information leaked to her and others on purpose, and she wouldn't have wanted anyone to expose themselves as targets to anybody whose word might get back to Death Eaters in some misdirected attempt to honor her."

"Like it's any more honorable to frame her death like an accident when it was clearly the fault of—"

"You're right," Benjy interrupts, sounding tired. "No one here is going to argue that her death, or Millie's for that matter, was an accident. It was murder, and we run the risk of following it up with more murders the more we point fingers."

"But you're lying!" breaks in someone at the Ravenclaw table that Alice doesn't know. "You know what really happened, and you're covering your arse, and you aren't just going to get away with it!"

"Anybody who is only here because they care about spreading rumors and interfering in other people's business is free to leave," Lily interrupts with a frown. "We're here to talk about the realities of living with prejudice against the Muggle-borns that Millie and Liz were fighting on behalf of when they were killed. If you care about having that conversation, then stay with us."

There's a long pause, and then Dawlish mutters something Alice can't quite catch, swings his legs over the bench he's sitting on, and marches out of the Hall. Half a dozen others follow him out, including (Alice cringes) Greta Catchlove and Pol Patil. The silence is ringing in Alice's ears by the time Lily says, "Well, with that, I think it's about time we get the conversation going. James, did you want to get us started?"

James nods, sliding a hand through his hair. "All right, now, I want everybody to come over here to the Gryffindor table. There's no need for us to stand divided today. Is there room?—can we fit everyone?"

Slowly, the students sitting at the other tables make their way over to the Gryffindor table and grab seats. Alice notes that there are a few people coming from the Slytherin table, thinks to herself that they're bound to receive a lot of flak from their fellow Slytherins for bothering to come.

"Great. Now, I want everyone to stand up right where they're sitting. Excellent. So I made this list today," continues James, pulling out a sheaf of parchment and waving it for a second. "I have here a list of statements that may or may not apply to you. The first time I read out a statement that has never been true of you and your life, I want you to sit down. Are we ready? Yeah? All right. First statement is, I have never lied about my blood status to others."

Lily is the first to sit down, followed hesitantly by about a third of the people at the table. James goes on, "I have never been called an insult based on my blood purity." A few more people sit. "I have never worried about being denied a job, position, or role important to me because of my blood purity." More follow.

"I have never been asked to speak on behalf of everyone of my blood status. I have never heard people of my blood purity spoken about as a voting bloc in Ministry elections. I have never had to ask for more information about a past wizarding event that someone brings up in conversation. I have never been told that I am smart or good or worthy 'for someone of my blood status.'"

James keeps going for something like twenty more items, and by the end of it, a good half of the room has sat down—has been sitting down since at least the second or third statement. "So the purpose of this exercise," says James, "has been to highlight for those of us who are pureblood or half-blood some of the challenges that we don't have to face because of our blood status. Lily was going to kick off a discussion about the exercise—everyone can sit down, by the way—"

All in all, the whole thing goes much more successfully than Alice predicted, even with the skirmish that lost them a few people at the beginning. Even Alice has to admit that Lily does a great job mediating the discussion, then facilitating the opportunity for people of all blood statuses to share their experiences. And what they talked about—she knows rationally that these problems and experiences Muggle-borns face aren't new, but she keeps wondering, have there really been all these prejudices all along? And if there have been, how did Alice miss them?

Is this what Dumbledore saw in Lily that led him to choose her for Head Girl? Alice will probably never know, but she still catches up with Lily when they get back to the dorm and says, "You did a really great job leading things back there."

"Thanks," says Lily, smiling a little.

"So everything went well?" Mary asks. She's in her pajamas, writing in a journal and petting Aquarius, who is curled up next to where she's sitting cross-legged on her bed.

"It went great," says Alice. "You should come to the next one! We're doing another one in about a month."

"Yeah, maybe," says Mary, shrugging it off, and Alice thinks she should probably push the issue, but can't bring herself to do so.