Alastor had stopped trying make sense of Dorcas' and Alice's conversation. He drifted off into his own thoughts trying to figure out how he could get the former to go into hiding. He concentrated on the quiet sparkling of the city in the distance. Floating something like the mark over the house had crossed his mind but the thought turned his stomach. Firstly, he didn't even know if it would work and more important than that, they were close enough that he should be able to say something directly to her. He would just have to find a way to talk her into it. He was becoming increasingly jumpy, a feeling he was unfamiliar with and for all his talk about vigilance he realized now that he had developed his sense of focus through habit and practice. He couldn't remember a time even when he was younger that it didn't make sense to just do the right thing but now to do the right thing out of a feeling for someone? He couldn't follow her everywhere and he wouldn't dare to. It would have offended the both of them and their skill but today Alice was also there and he had just tagged along. He realized that was what he was doing.
"It's rose and lemon." Said Alice.
Dorcas brought her hands to face cupping her nose. "Divine!" she said and both started giggling. Alastor couldn't imagine what for.
"Alastor?" He looked up to find Alice turned around. "Hand cream?" she offered. He shook his head. Their voices dropped again and Alastor caught patches of their conversation floating to him as his mind wandered again.
Alastor looked up again when he heard a high pitched squeal rend the air. His hand flew by instinct towards the wand concealed in his jacket. He watched Dorcas and Alice in a hug rocking back and forth. Dorcas held Alice at arms length, "Congratulations, Alice! Congratulations to you and Frank and all of you!".
They hugged again. It was like he had vanished beneath a length of demiguise, like he wasn't even there. She's pregnant, he thought. Alice looked cherubic and sweet and younger in that moment than he had ever noticed. He watched the two women seated on the slope just below him.
Alice handed Dorcas the hand cream. "If you like it, you can keep it." Alice said. "Everything makes me so nauseous these days…" Alice effected putting her hand to her chest and the back of her hand to her forehead. She trailed off and they laughed again. Dorcas took the hand cream. Dorcas' back was to Alastor but he understood the gesture, she was wiping tears from her face.
"No, no, no!" said Alice. If you cry then I'll start crying." her voice crumpling. Now her arms were around Dorcas and then they were hugging but now they were both crying.
Alice and Frank had not originally lived with the Order. But now, Alice enjoyed being around Dorcas, Emmeline and "the boys" she would say with a fat-cheeked, sincere smile. Frank didn't care as long as she was happy and healthy. They were perfect together from all accounts even before they lived with anyone else and after they did, everyone could now confirm it. They smiled openly at each other, spoke to each other openly and warmly and made each other laugh and the way that Alastor had felt on the hill is how they could make everyone feel. Together, the Longbottoms could make everyone feel invisible, like it was a privilege and intrusion to witness the love they had for each other.
They maintained a small, cozy home for a long time and then lived with Frank's mother very briefly. Alice loved her husband and by extension his mother but not that much. The Order did not pay wages and they wanted to save a little money so they split their time between the Order and Marlene's palatial residence closer to the coast. Alice really was a mountain and hill country girl, and she loved a bog but one day, while looking at the slope of a hill, a wave of nausea so intense overtook her and put her out for several hours. Just the thought of it made her dizzy something the waves did not do. When they felt they overstayed their welcome at once place, they went back to the other and back and forth until shortly after the war when, well…
Frank loved the commotion. He really did. It surprised Alastor how naked Frank's enthusiasm could be. He enjoyed when he could sit at a table with Edgar and enjoy breakfast which Alastor did not participate in till he did and then it was just Frank and him and the comfort he felt in talking about nothing and everything. When had he ever done such a thing? He couldn't remember what they even discussed. Frank one day said, "I really enjoy this, lads. Thank you." he nodded his head and looked around the table smiling at Alastor and Edgar.
Alastor did not know what to say.
"I do too." said Edgar, lifting a mug. Alastor only nodded but he meant it.
The McKinnons weren't killed because the Longbottoms were there or traveling in between both places. They no longer were, they had a baby but that was one of the reasons. It was old news that the Longbottoms sometimes lived there. Marlene and her wealthy, well adjusted family were really enough but Alastor and Lupin had gone to look for them there too. Emmeline, had had a feeling, a hunch and she had called the remainder of the Order, whoever had been available to go. All of them. She had, unfortunately been right. She did find them, or rather Alice. Chubby, jovial Alice. Always smiling Alice. The light from Emmeline's wand dimmer than the remembered it. She caught a glint of something, unnatural. Cherub faced Alice slumped against the wall.
Alice did enjoy being around all of them, so did Frank and Emmeline could not do what Edgar could do. Edgar was everyone's friend. Dorcas was everyone's friend but even Alastor enjoyed their company and could admit it. Emmeline had not meant to say what she had said to Alice in the way she had said it. But she had had to say it still. She had cornered Alice, found her and asked her out of earshot because she didn't want to embarrass her. She really wanted to give Alice and opportunity to tell the truth.
"How can you bring a baby into all of this? The Potters are children themselves! But you, Alice? You and Frank aren't so young. How can you be so stupid?"
If it had been Sirius they would have escalated to a shouting match. If it had been Dorcas, she would have been half way down the hall and an eye roll mid-way Emmeline's first sentence but Alice had cocked her head and smiled. She had rubbed Emmeline's arm and Emmeline's indignation melted into what it actually was, deep, real fear and confusion.
"Emmeline, thank you for telling me how you feel but please mind your business." Alice said warmly. But she knew, of course she did. Alice wrapped her arms around Emmeline who stood straight not hugging her back. She sniffed and took in a whiff of Alice's hair wash, something clean and plain, inoffensive. Alice felt as warm and soft as she looked and Emmeline, in that moment, had never wanted to push anyone down a flight of stairs as badly as she did now.
That night, Emmeline wrapped herself around Edgar and Edgar wrapped himself around her and in the morning was either downstairs with Frank and Alastor or with his family, it didn't matter. She was glad he wasn't in bed when she woke up later so she could replay the moment when Alice had finally uncoiled herself from around Emmeline like a chubby python and look her tenderly in Emmeline's watering eyes, rub her arm and walk away. Emmeline sat in bed replaying Alice's little waddle, over and over again, stoking the flames of her fury until they were a raging, proper indignation.
"Idiots," she muttered to no one. "So irresponsible."
She got out of bed, washed up and put on her clothes for the day, hoped to hope, and against it, she wouldn't run into anyone downstairs where she could eat alone and in peace and then go flying over the English countryside to calm down since she knew that, even as she ate a late meal in agitation that that morning, she was looking for a fight.