13 October 1978—The Daily Prophet reports: The Ministry faces building rage from the community as a third case of kidnap goes unsolved. Like the previous cases, the victim—in this case, six-year-old Cora Bailiff—was taken from her home in Martindale and her parents, Tony and Demeter, were found viciously slaughtered elsewhere in the house. Only one parent has survived these horrific killings. Geraldine Spindle, twenty-seven, pleads with the unknown kidnappers to return her young son Charlie, who was taken from his room two weeks ago during her shift at the local pub: "Whoever you are, my Charlie is all I have. I'll pay you anything—I'll do anything you want to have him home again. Please."
In late October, Remus sent a tantalizingly brief letter:
"I'm doing fine, Love to all."
Six little words to account for weeks of mysterious travel.
Dumbledore had not been helpful when they brought the letter to him. They cornered him after that day's Order meeting to ask if Dumbledore knew anything about Remus's departure or where he had gone.
The three of them piled frantic questions into the headmaster, who finally lifted one long-fingered hand to quiet them. "I understand you are concerned for your friend. That is a credit to you. But Remus's affairs are his own business, and he may share them with whomever he chooses. I assure you, he seemed quite well and very capable of making his own decisions when I saw him last."
Sirius stormed away, silent with barely-repressed rage. They heard the door slam and, a few moments later, the rev of his motorbike.
James pushed his glasses up into his thicket of black hair and rubbed his eyes wearily. "I'm sorry, sir."
"It's quite all right. Remus is well aware of the risks he is taking in this…uncertain time, and he is equipped to handle himself. I trust you have faith in your friend's abilities." He peered over his spectacles meaningfully.
James and Peter exchanged a guilty look. They hadn't intended to suggest that Remus wasn't capable of taking care of himself. Chastened, James and Peter waved Dumbledore goodbye and waited for Sirius to return from his ride.
Outside, the leaves had turned and fallen. The crumpled husks skittered through the gutters like spooked horses.
The moon had risen completely by the time Sirius finally returned. Wordlessly, he entered the parlor and sat down. James and Peter, who had been speculating about the meaning of Remus's scant correspondence, did not bother to question where Sirius had come from. Upstairs, Dorcas was hemming Lily's wedding gown.
James studied Remus's handwriting in the light of the fire. They had already tried all the revealing spells they knew, but the words remained resolutely the same, and resolutely six. "How on earth will he get through the change?" James wondered. "Unless wherever he went has a cellar with particularly thick walls and a padlocked door."
"No idea," Peter shrugged, flipping through an old book about magical botany he had grabbed randomly from one of the bookshelves. "I did read something in the Prophet the other day—they're trying to make some kind of medicine for werewolves. Maybe he went to test it out?"
Sirius made a humming sound in the back of his throat. "Doubt it. You know Remus—he can be a bloody martyr when it comes to his lycanthropy. Sometimes I think he secretly enjoys being all dark and tortured—"
A terrible scream shattered the night.
The boys exchanged looks of horror before James and Sirius fled towards the sound.
Oh shit.
Instead of following them, Peter's feet hammered up the stairs.
I'm going to die. They've found us. What did Alice say about that spell? Shit, they're going to kill me.
He reached the top and turned frantically in every direction.
Now what?!
He stood very still, listening in the half-darkness of the landing. There were no sounds of pursuit, nor were screams of pain coming from the direction James and Sirius had run in. His heart rate slowed, and the panic started to fade.
God, I'm an idiot. Way to look like a fucking wimp, Wormtail.
At that moment, the bedroom door opened and Dorcas swung out into the hallway.
Yes—the girls. "Dorcas! Lily! Are you all right?"
Dorcas looked past him, over the railing. "We're all right, Peter, thanks. What WAS that?!"
Lily's face was pale and startled, peeking just around the door frame. "Where's James?"
Peter sagged against the wall, feeling slightly sheepish. "He, er, went to check things out with Sirius."
Dorcas inhaled sharply, throwing down her scissors. "Stupid! If Sirius gets back here alive I'll kill him!"
Lily was still pale, but she had donned a rigid mask of calm. "Thank you, Peter. For looking in on us."
Peter nodded dumbly, a fiber of guilt threading its way through his stomach. Better to look chivalrous than cowardly.
The front door opened again, and a stern-faced James stalked to the parlor. Peter descended the stairs in time to see him throw a handful of powder into the now-roaring fireplace. "Dumbledore!" he called, his voice thick with anger. "There's been an attack."
A young man and his wife were dead, just one block from the Potters' mansion. The Dark Mark hovered over them like smog in the orange light of the streetlamps.
Once the authorities had taken the bodies away, James, Lily, and Dumbledore strengthened the wards on the house three times over. Dumbledore anointed James' and Lily's heads and doorposts with what looked like blood—an ancient magic, he had assured them solemnly. He chanted some strange old words in a language Peter did not recognize, although the meaning of the words seemed to call out to him. By the time the chant was finished, their lintels and foreheads looked clean, as if the blood and its protection had been absorbed into them.
Moody had been with Dumbledore when James called and was now puffing a pipe at the kitchen table, where everyone was gathered under the single pendant lamp. The yellowish light gave every complexion a sickly cast.
"They're getting bolder," Moody said gruffly, pausing to exhale blue smoke. "Right out in the open like that and we didn't even get a whiff of it. How the devil did we miss this, Albus?!" He pounded a fist on the scarred table.
Dumbledore's face was blank. "I'm not sure, Alastor. I plan to examine the scene further before I make any judgments."
"The attack might not have happened here, though," Dorcas broke in, nervously spooning far too much sugar into her teacup. "They could have brought the bodies here to scare us? Right?"
Moody grunted in annoyance. "Miss Meadowes, the fact that they know enough to lay the bodies where they did—whether they killed them here or not—is cause for significant alarm."
Dorcas shared an uneasy glance with Lily, who squeezed James's hand. Next to James, Sirius was cleaning his nails with his pocketknife. "But why didn't they wait to get the drop on us?" He flicked a speck of something away. "If they know we're close by, all they had to do was wait behind a tree or something."
"They haven't been fighting openly," James observed, rubbing his chin. "They sneak into people's homes, they kidnap. They probably waited out of sight for their chance, caught them off-guard, then Disapparated the moment they cursed those poor people. They leave a mess sometimes, but they don't leave themselves open to being potentially overpowered."
Dumbledore nodded. "At this point, our best ally is information. Let's see what we can do to set up an information exchange. I think it's also time we established a night watch of some kind, so we can respond to whatever information we receive as quickly as possible."
"Here," Lily remarked stiffly. It seemed more like a statement than a question.
"Naturally," James replied, releasing her hand to place his elbows on the table. "We can set up a home base in the parlor. My dad had some old two-way radios—I imagine they're up in the attic somewhere—and we can give the other end to a field team or something—"
"And they can radio in with tips," Sirius finished, pocketing his knife. He and James shared an eager look.
"We'd have to change the field location sometimes," Moody warned. "Can't get complacent."
"We can change it based on the tips we get—" James stopped himself, then turned to address Moody directly. "I know the Ministry won't let you and the other Aurors investigate Voldemort and stuff…but is there any way you could get information to us? Does anything make its way in?"
James' hopeful and slightly pleading look was disarming, and he knew it. It was the right balance of forceful idealism and vulnerability that cracked even the toughest teachers.
Except Dumbledore, of course, Peter thought, recalling that late, unpleasant visit to Dumbledore's office in fifth year.
But that time, he'd turned himself in. James had not intended to escape that particular tight corner.
And it had gotten him a Head Boyship, Peter recalled with slight envy.
Perhaps Dumbledore had recognized James's quality despite being unmoved by his manipulative charm: James was a natural leader. He'd had a way of persuading even the most reluctant students to go his way, whether he was shepherding a first year into bed or luring the target of a prank to the right spot.
Or getting beautiful girls to give him a chance, Peter thought. His eyes flicked to Lily, who was looking at James with consternated affection.
Moody exhaled with a groan. "Oh, very well. I'll see what I can do." He stood heavily to leave.
Sirius and James exchanged a brief look of triumph. "Thank you, sir," James finished, suppressing a megawatt grin. He surreptitiously tapped his knuckles against Sirius's.
A natural leader, and Sirius was his natural lieutenant. Dorcas watched Sirius sideways, eyes clouded.
Dumbledore rose as well, looking preoccupied. "Thank you for contacting me so quickly, James. We all need a bit of rest after that."
"Certainly, sir," James added seriously, grin disappearing. "Good night."
And so, every night two Order members would come spend the night in the parlor. Lily and James did their best to make the team comfortable with self-refilling pots of tea and as much Wizard Chess or Gobstones as they wanted to play. The wireless radio buzzed faintly in the background—the corresponding radio was with another team who kept watch in the field.
Moody would wring as much as he could from his coworkers without attracting suspicion. Unfortunately the tips were few and far between, and most shifts provided nothing except several wasted hours of wireless static.
Since Remus had gone—and since both the public discomfort and body count were rising—Peter , Sirius and Dorcas had become fixtures at James' and Lily's place. Sirius called it "helping to look after things"; Peter and Dorcas called it "helping to look after Sirius."
At least one of the group would stay behind at the end of the day and sleep in a guest room or on the parlor sofa. Lily and James half-heartedly argued that it wasn't necessary, but it wasn't hard to see that they were comforted by it. Strength in numbers, Lily would repeat as she turned down the covers of a guest bed.
Remus had not sent any other messages since last month, and the tension of his steady absence—not to mention the growing horror of even more reported murders and disappearances—was starting to fray everyone's nerves.
Sirius especially was looking for something to hex (or hit), and often went out on long, aimless motorbike rides in the middle of the night. He usually didn't return until morning, where an anxious and irritated Dorcas was waiting for him at James' front door.
"We went through this with Remus, didn't we?" she'd lectured after the fourth time. From the kitchen, Lily and Peter heard the door creak closed and the clunk of Sirius' helmet on the floor. "He'd disappear out of bed at all hours, too."
"C'mon, Lark. You know this isn't like that—"
"Well, how should I know?! You don't tell me anything about how you're feeling! In fact, you've barely spoken to me for weeks! Don't talk." Her voice got low and deadly. "I don't mean when you crawl into bed with me after you've had a few Firewhiskys. I don't mean the little 'my meadowlark's and 'darling's that you think make everything all better!"
Her voice was rising now, carrying with it all the building rage that she had gathered as she paced the foyer, awaiting his return. "It doesn't! It doesn't make anything. All. Better. And I've let you get away with it for too bloody long!"
Peter had never heard Dorcas so fierce. He and Lily exchanged a surprised look as they sipped their tea.
"I don't think I've ever heard her yell before," Peter whispered, as though Dorcas's ire would fall on him as well if he spoke too loudly.
"Me neither," Lily agreed, and gave him a satisfied smile. "About time someone told that boy what's what."
He wondered if Lily knew that James would occasionally slip out of bed to join Sirius on his jaunts, then slip back in the wee hours before his fiancée awoke. Peter doubted it. He doubted even he was supposed to know, but he had stayed in one of the spare bedrooms for the last six nights and had spied James and Sirius jetting off on the motorbike from his window. The rev of the returning bike was not hard to miss; Peter had always been a light sleeper and true rest was harder and harder to come by these days,
Dorcas burst through the kitchen door, her purple dressing gown hanging from one plump shoulder. "That man!" she huffed, slamming a mug down and sloshing tea into it.
"You didn't Stun him, did you?" Lily asked warily, craning her neck to see out of the swinging kitchen door from her spot at the head of the table.
"No…but I should have! He went up to bed. He'd get perfectly good sleep if he wasn't running around at all hours of the night!"
She sat down heavily at the end of the bench between Peter and Lily and glared into her cup. After a moment, her shoulders sagged; she put her face in her hands and started to cry.
Lily slid off her chair and kneeled at Dorcas's feet. "Ooh, no. Sweetheart! Don't cry! It'll be all right!""
"He d-doesn't understand! We've been together for nearly a year, and I don't think it makes me an idiot to be concerned when I wake up to find my boyfriend gone when there's murderers on the loose!""
Peter and Lily exchanged a pitying look over Dorcas's bent head.
"Sirius sometimes forgets that he isn't the only one who cares about what happens to Sirius Black," Lily said, petting Dorcas's tangled hair.
Peter patted her shoulder hesitantly and made a rather idiotic tutting noise.
"Well, I do," Dorcas said, lifting her head to reveal swollen, red eyes. "I do care. And I worry. He's so bloody stubborn and sometimes I think he wants to get into a fight when he's out on those rides! I think he's looking for it. Sometimes I think he doesn't love me anymore. Sometimes—sometimes I think he doesn't even like me that much!"
A wave of sobs overtook her, and she bit her forearm to keep from wailing. Peter's stomach clenched; he flinched away and immediately felt stupid for doing it.
"Did he ever love me?" Dorcas mumbled in a small, pathetic voice. Lily gathered Dorcas up into her arms and glanced up at Peter, who was looking helpless. She smiled sadly and nodded toward the door. Peter sighed with quiet relief and stepped gingerly over the bench to leave.
Peter pushed through the swinging door, out into the corridor.
Sirius was bent over the railing, brow furrowed in concentration as he eavesdropped. When Peter met his eye, Sirius straightened up sharply and started to turn, as if to dash up to the guest room. Instead he steadied himself and held Peter's gaze, even as a blush crept up his neck and spread over his cheeks.
Dorcas's sobs were barely muffled by the kitchen door.
Their eyes met for a long moment before Peter turned, without a word, and walked out the front door.
