Previously in the Darklyverse: After over a year in hiding, Lily and James evaded death when Peter came clean and refused to do the Secret-Keeper switch. Mary ran Lily's Minister campaign and rejoined the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius accepted a job as Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts while Dumbledore took a leave of absence.

xx

November 7th, 1981: Mary Cattermole

"Do you ever notice how Dumbledore never signs up for orb duty?" asks Mary.

She's sitting with Lily at Lily's kitchen table in Godric's Hollow, on account of Lily not being able to leave home. Frankly, Mary doesn't know how Lily hasn't lost her mind, gone out, and gotten herself killed by now. She and James have been locked in this house for, what, almost two years now? Or, at least, Lily hasn't left the house. Lily admitted to Mary a few weeks ago that James has been sneaking out a little, or at least that he had been until Dumbledore asked to borrow his Invisibility Cloak.

Baby Harry has never seen the world outside this cottage, and Mary can't even imagine how that must make Lily and James feel.

"Well, he's a busy bloke, isn't he?" replies Lily, setting down her mug of tea. "Before you joined the Order, he was away running Hogwarts with McGonagall, and now, he's on a leave of absence doing—whatever it is he's doing to try to take down Voldemort. He's got places to be."

"But McGonagall has gone on raids," Mary presses, "even though she's teaching at Hogwarts, just like he used to. I know he's trying to track down You-Know-Who, and I know that's got to occupy a lot of time, but doesn't it seem selfish of him to put the danger of fighting Death Eaters onto everybody except himself?"

"What he's doing instead is probably perfectly dangerous. We may not always know what he's thinking, but that doesn't mean he's not doing good work here. Besides, the person with the plan shouldn't be in harm's way so that we don't lose the plan along with them if they get taken out."

But Lily looks like Mary's maybe started to convince her otherwise, trailing off and staring pensively into her tea. As far as Mary can tell, there are a lot of things about how the Order runs that people have just been blindly accepting without good reason, and not just Dumbledore not fighting on the front lines. It's Dumbledore not sharing that plan Lily mentioned with anybody else, so that everyone else is operating in the dark with no idea how much longer this might go on for. It's the history that Mary's been able to glean of Death Eaters playing with their food for years before abruptly starting to kill in the last few months, like they're getting bolder, like it's time for them to take out the competition so that they can enact whatever it is they're going to enact. It's nobody knowing You-Know-Who's endgame and nobody ever complaining about it…

"But listen, Mare, that's not why I asked you over here. There's something I wanted to ask your advice about."

Mary raises an eyebrow. "Sure. Hit me."

She seems to be Lily's replacement for Marlene ever since Marlene died, and she's not entirely in a position to complain about it: Lily has been Mary's replacement for Marlene for months now, ever since Lily ran for Minister and named Mary her campaign manager. She feels like she's even deeper in the fold now that she's back in the Order, and it's a weird feeling. It's kind of nice knowing that her old mates still like and respect her enough to loop her in on what's going on now that she has the clearance, so to speak, but it also kind of makes her feel like they only are bothering to keep her around because she made the decision to rejoin the organization. If Mary had stuck to her principles and stayed out of the war effort—

But she didn't, and now if somebody in the Order gets killed because she screws up on a raid, that's on her head. She wonders if wanting to protect other people from herself is noble or if she just wants the culpability to be on somebody else.

After Peter turned out to be a spy for the Death Eaters (which she still can't wrap her head around), she just—even if Mary does screw up now that she's back in, at least she has the right intentions. You know? If the Order is running short on people who can be trusted, at least Mary can be one more body working toward the safer future that Wizarding Britain desperately needs.

"James and I are thinking of moving," Lily says now. "Out of Britain. Resetting the Fidelius Charm so that nobody outside of wherever we go knows where we are."

"Is that even possible?" says Mary. "I mean, in a technical sense? If the Fidelius Charm means that nobody can know your secret, and your secret is that you live in, you know, Spain or India or wherever, can you work the spell so that people in Spain or India can even interact with you? Because the way it's set right now, nobody can even see you in this cottage if Sirius hasn't told them that you're here."

"In theory, it will work—as long as we don't become public figures, I suppose—but I guess we'll find out when we redo the charm—if we redo the charm. We can't tell anyone where we're going until after it's done, of course. If somebody found out outside of the charm, they'd be able to tell anybody they wanted, and after Peter, we just can't take that chance." There's a pause, and Mary is sure that Lily is thinking the same thing she's thinking. "I've never imagined myself ever leaving Britain before, but Harry needs to get out of this house. It's not healthy for him to grow up like this. And we can still keep in touch—you and everybody else can Apparate over to us whenever you'd like."

"But you won't be here to fight in the war. You'll have to stay out of the country."

"We already can't fight in the war while we're stuck in here. At least this way Harry gets to have something of a normal life."

Mary smiles. "It feels like you're going to be so far away, but that must be the Muggle in me talking. We have Apparition. I'll still be able to see you."

"You better," says Lily with a grin. "You've been out of my life for entirely too long already."

xx

It turns out that Lily, James, and Harry aren't the only ones leaving the country. When Mary Flooes home after tea, she finds Reg with Gilderoy in the living room, totally engrossed in conversation. "Mare!" Gilderoy exclaims, immediately jumping up to go clap her on the shoulder. "And how is my favorite Gryffindor this fine Saturday afternoon?"

"Hey, Gilderoy," says Mary, pulling him in for a quick hug. "I thought you weren't coming for lunch until next weekend."

"Plans change when you get your calling, my friend. I leave Britain tomorrow!"

"Wait, back up. You're moving away?"

"Traveling! To Turkey!" cries Gilderoy, beaming. "There's no time like the present."

Reg adds, "Especially when your roommate bails and sticks you with double the rent on your flat."

"So that's what this is about?" says Mary, a little amused. "You couldn't find anyone to take over Sirius's room? It's only been two weeks, Gil."

"It's just the excuse I need to live my dreams," says Gilderoy. "I never really felt I could live my full potential at Hogwarts, and I'm certainly not living it in the Ministry. I'm off to find myself, Mary! I'm off to make the world my oyster!"

"Well, good luck with it," Mary says, trying not to laugh.

She still hasn't quite figured out how she's going to juggle her Order duties with her marriage, particularly as she doesn't plan on letting Reg know that she's become one of the vigilantes that he so disapproves of. Mary has had orb duty twice so far in the two weeks that she's been back in the organization, and she claimed to be sleeping over at Lily's both times. This excuse went over the first time she used it, but the second time raised questions that she wasn't able to answer—literally—when Reg casually asked her where Lily and James had disappeared to in the last year or two. She tried being vague about it—saying that they're taking time off work to spend time with the baby while living off of James's enormous fortune—because it's not like she could be specific, even if she had wanted to betray their trust like that, with the Fidelius Charm in place. Reg, though, hadn't seemed convinced that she was telling him the whole truth, especially as she tried to worm her way out of his suggestion that they have James and Lily over for supper later this month.

Reg raises the issue again after Gilderoy leaves, saying, "You're really jumping back into your Gryffindor days, aren't you? Are you sure that's—well—wise?"

"They're my friends," says Mary simply.

Reg looks at her like he's expecting that sentence to continue, but she doesn't know how else to justify herself to him. "Most of them have ignored you for years," he pushes in his not-quite-pushy, gentle way. "Lily only really seemed to care about you when you were running her campaign for Minister. And now they're suddenly having you for sleepovers and dinner dates and all of this? Something doesn't sit right about it, Mare, and you know I'm only saying that because I love you and I want what's best for you."

"I guess we want to be close with Marlene gone. They understand, you know." She hadn't wanted to play this card, especially given what Marlene meant to her—and that Reg doesn't know what Marlene meant to her—but she's not sure what else to say that would sound plausible.

How do people do this? How do Sturgis and Arabella and even Mundungus manage to convince the people they see the most that they're not off fighting in a war they're supposed to have nothing to do with? Mary's the only one of her friends from Gryffindor who has a spouse who's not in the loop, and it's just another thing making her feel like they can't understand her, whatever she says to Reg about it.

She has to make up another bald-faced lie to get away the next weekend for the next Order meeting, telling Reg that she's meeting Alice for dinner. She does, of course, see Alice there, but it's along with another dozen people, and they're not there to eat, at least not until after they take care of business. It's only been a few weeks since she saw everybody at the last one of these—less for those she's been on orb duty with and for some of the Gryffindors from her year—and the sudden inundation of people in her social circle is a little overwhelming. She nods kind of shyly at everyone who greets her and collapses into a seat next to Sirius in Alice and Frank's living room, where the meeting is being held.

"I don't think I had a chance to tell you welcome back before," Sirius tells her, "so—welcome back."

"Thanks. How's Hogwarts?"

"It's fine. The kids are little monsters. Everything they do is suddenly so much less funny now that I'm not in on it with them. Sucking up to Slughorn is a bore, but—"

He interrupts himself there, but the damage is done. "What are you sucking up to Slughorn for?"

"Nothing. I'm not. He just—uh—wants me to stay involved with his Slug Club, and I don't want to burn the bridge, just in case."

"In case of what?"

Sirius is rescued by Alice coming over to hug Mary hello, but it continues to weigh on her mind, all through McGonagall's announcement and even Mary's own recruitment update. She doesn't have much to report. Her one piece of news is that she's got two potential new members almost swayed to the Order's side: Molly and Arthur Weasley. Neither wants to take a very active role on raids as they've got seven(!) young children at home, but especially after the loss of Molly's brothers, Fabian and Gideon, both are willing to help with outreach and information-gathering.

But Mary's update is interrupted by the late appearance of Alastor Moody. Even his non-magical eye looks wild as he Apparates into the room with a crack and storms up to McGonagall, whispering something in her ear. Mary falters mid-sentence as McGonagall's face immediately turns worried, McGonagall nodding and stepping back as Mad-Eye turns to face the room.

"I only just got word," he says, "that Millicent Bagnold is dead."

Gasps go around the room, including from Mary. Millicent Bagnold, of course, was the witch who beat out Lily for the Minister of Magic post last year. Mary's first thought is holy shit. Her second thought is that if Lily had won, Lily could be dead right now instead—but then she reminds herself that Lily would have had to quit the job anyway once her family needed to go into hiding.

"What? How?" seems to be what most people are saying in the resulting uproar, but Mary hears Frank ask, "Who's taking her place?" as Doc says, "Why her? Why now?"

"Death Eater attack. Barty wants to keep it all hush-hush, of course," says Moody, rolling his good eye.

"Wha', Barty? Barty Crouch? Whass' 'e got to do with it?" Hagrid growls.

"He's the new Minister," Moody says disgustedly. "Interim. But I'll bet you anything he finds a way to make it stick."

She doesn't place the name at first, until she remembers back to staring at a newspaper in sixth year right around the time she and her friends joined forces with Dorcas to form the Order. "Wait, Crouch? Didn't he authorize the use of Unforgivables against suspected Death Eaters?" says Mary, the name clicking.

"And he stopped giving trials to plenty of suspects captured in battle," snarls Sirius, "even after we knew that so many of them had been under the Imperius Curse."

"But how does this play into Voldemort's endgame?" Emmeline points out. "Even if Crouch is too reckless of a choice, how is him getting the job good for the Death Eaters?"

"It's not," says Moody, "unless they've got him under the Imperius Curse, or plan to—or unless they know how to get him focused on using his power to hunt the wrong people."

"Or," Remus points out, "unless they've got something over him that they can use to make him do what they want."

The whole group seems keen to stay on the topic of speculating about this turn of developments except, oddly, for Snape. (Mary is more than a little surprised that Snape is being allowed to attend full meetings now—she knows from Lily that at first they just let him give his report at the beginning of meetings and then leave for the duration.) "Our attention is better spent elsewhere. It does us no good to idly wonder why they're giving Crouch this power until we have more information," he says silkily.

"Yeah, you mean until you go get that information," says Sirius hotly. "You know, Snivellus, I don't give a damn how long you spy for our side; you're never going to be as essential as you think you are, you goddamn bigoted—"

"That's enough," says Remus, and Sirius goes silent instantly. "We're not going to get anywhere until we find out what they're really planning with this, and we're not going to find that out by sitting on our arses. Shouldn't we be using our Ministry connections to try to learn more? Alastor, Alice, Frank, Doc—?"

"We'll start there," agrees McGonagall. "I'll get in touch with Albus."

But Mary sincerely doubts that anything Dumbledore can contribute will be useful—or, at least, that its usefulness will be immediately apparent. If Dumbledore's been off in his own world without looping anybody into his suspicions all this time, why would he treat the matter of Crouch's ascension to the post of Minister any differently?