Previously in the Darklyverse: Mary, Emmeline, and James were killed in the lead-up to Lily killing Voldemort. Lily, Sirius, and Reg planned to break the rest of the Order out of Azkaban using Portkeys Reg would smuggle in under guise of a guard job.

xx

October 3rd, 1982: Alice Abbott

The first thing that happens when Alice tries to Apparate back to Mary's flat is that she drops about twelve meters in the air. Mary's supposed to live on the fourth story of her building, but the building has no stories anymore, like it's got nothing left to say—it's just rubble and ash and roaring flames that lick Alice's robes as she breaks her fall on a jagged piece of wood that she thinks used to be Mary's coffee table. The wood slices open her hand, but she can't smell the iron over what she identifies a moment later as charred flesh. She doesn't know whose it is, at first, but that's when she sees the Muggles carrying a thin blonde girl out of the debris on a stretcher.

The flesh is Emmeline's.

The flesh is Emmeline's, and Alice can't break down, no not now, because Emmeline doesn't exist in Muggle records and Alice has got to magic her away before her corpse exposes the whole damn existence of the wizarding world, and why does it always have to fall to Alice to hold other people together when she is fractals of mayhem, asymptotes of failure? Here she is now, propping up Jacqueline Vance through black curtains and caskets, dodging Frank's disappointed eyes in the workday, as if Alice doesn't already know that she's a botch. Alice knows she's a botch. Look, Alice! See your son wail as you deliver him to a home that you no longer inhabit; bow your head low below the haughty gazes of bystanders who know your deficits better than you know yourself. Neville is getting older every day, and—

—that's only if Neville's still alive, isn't it? She can see him now, skin yellow-green and peeling, or perhaps ghost-pale; there are a thousand ways she's imagined this moment, and if she's not careful, it'll catch up to her—he'll burn before her like Em burned—she'll bury him in the graveyard of the phoenix, and—

"Alice?"

She knows that voice like she knows Frank's freckles, but how can it be here where Neville is twisting in thorns—?

"Alice, it's Kingsley. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Remember me? We've been friends since we were prefects together at Hogwarts. We were in each other's Auror internships. Your friend Mary recruited me to the Order."

Mary! At the end, when the Death Eaters were through with her (with it), Mary's body looked no better than Emmeline's. It took Alice and the others a full day to find it, and when they did—

"I need you to come back, okay? When you scream, all I can think is…"

Is she screaming? She supposes it makes sense that the earsplitting whine in the room is coming from her. She stuffs a fist in her mouth, but it doesn't muffle the sound.

"Please, Al." She knows that voice, knows the cadence of its anxiety and the lull of its anguish. What did he say his name was? "It's just Azkaban. It's just the dementors talking. You can't let them do this to you—you need to hold on."

Azkaban? And then Alice remembers—the arrest, the interrogation, the island. The taking away of her wand. The taking away of her liberty. The—

—hard concrete is sending stabbing pains into her hipbone, and there's something slowly drying on her robes and leaving them crusty. Did she piss herself? Is the scratch in her throat from screaming or from thirst?

"STOP IT!" roars another, angrier voice from somewhere in the distance. "STOP IT STOP IT ST—"

"Don't listen to her, Alice. Listen to me."

The whine has gone softer and morphed into a moan. That's good—it means she can hear Kingsley's voice a little better, even through the shouting. He's still talking, but Alice doesn't think he's talking to her anymore. "Get Alice first. I think it's a bad day."

"Scourgify," says another voice, a less frantic voice. Alice recognizes this one, too, but only distantly. The stiffness in her robes is gone, and a moment later, there's a bowl of gruel in front of her. "It's time to eat, Alice. Can you open your mouth for me?"

Alice stares blankly back into the nice man's face. He sighs and sticks a hand holding a spoon through the bars, dipping it into the gruel and lifting it to her face. With his other hand, he gently pushes her bottom lip down so that he can slide in the spoon.

There's something hard in the gruel, and she pushes it out with her lips and lets it drop to the floor. The movement makes her think about when she dropped to the ground, on top of the wood, in the burning rubble, where Mary's flat should have been, and Alice—

"Let's try again. I know it's hard, but it's very important you get this down, okay?" The hand is rummaging on the ground for the bead—plucks it up and drops it under her tongue. She doesn't spit it out, but she doesn't swallow it, either. "Let's try it with some water this time, all right?"

When he raises the glass to her lips, she doesn't drink it at first—but when she starts, she guzzles the whole thing down in just a few gulps. The bead, however, remains under her tongue. The nice man presses her jaw down and looks inside her mouth for a moment, then sighs again. "Try swishing so you can get it down this time, all right? Aguamenti. Here."

She doesn't want to swallow the bead—the bead is hard in her mouth, and she doesn't like it—but the man, although nice, is insistent. She manages it eventually, when he takes away the water and spoons some more gruel into her mouth—she can concentrate on the lumpy texture of the porridge and not feel the weight of the bead on her tongue so much. "That's really good, Alice," he praises her after inspecting her mouth again. "How about we finish your breakfast, hmm? I really need to make sure that everybody eats today, but after I've made the rounds, I'll come back and help you wash off a little; how does that sound?"

xx

When the fog starts to lift, Alice doesn't know what's happening. One second, she's curled in a ball on the cold ground, groaning under her breath. Then there's a pulling sensation somewhere in her belly—a rush of color and swirl—and she feels herself land hard on a wooden floor and skid a meter back, knocking her head against something sharp.

She opens her eyes.

Familiar figures surround her: Sirius Black is helping Professor McGonagall up off the floor, while Reginald Cattermole (Alice finally places the nice man's face) is fussing over Sturgis Podmore and Molly Weasley. Mundungus Fletcher and Hagrid are sitting up and scratching their heads, while Lily Potter is pointing her wand at Peter Pettigrew and muttering, "Immobulus!"

"You can see why Reg had them eat the Portkeys," Sirius calls to Lily as she's levitating Peter out of the room. He waves a hand in front of Sturgis's face and receives a blank stare back. "Some of these blokes are pretty out of it—they probably wouldn't have the presence of mind to remember to be holding onto the things all night."

"Alice?"

And Alice recognizes this voice—knows it intimately, just as well as she did when it said her name in her wedding vows, when it cried out for her in the bedroom, when it welcomed her son into the world. She doesn't know a lot anymore, but she knows this voice.

She starts to cry.

"Alice!"

Frank is at her side then, scooping her up into his arms and rocking her gently. "It's okay, Al," he soothes. "It's over. We're out. We're out of Azkaban."

"Frank," she sobs. "Frank."

It's the first coherent word she's said in she doesn't know how long. It feels good to say, and she says it again and again, fighting to get it past her blubbering lips. "Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank—"

"I'm here," he promises her. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere, okay?"

And then he starts to cry, too.

They sit there like that for a while—Alice doesn't know how long; she lost all track of time in Azkaban—and she's crying, yes, but as she does, she feels like something inside her is releasing. She can hope again. The dementors are gone—the war might someday end—Neville might not be dead—

"Neville!" she says suddenly. She drags herself out of Frank's arms and looks around the room as if she'll sight on him hidden in some corner. "Where is—how—?"

"I don't know," Frank admits.

"The war—Voldemort—"

"I don't know, Alice," he repeats.

"Voldemort's dead, but the rest of the world doesn't know that," interjects someone else familiar—Alice whips around to find Remus sitting on the ground behind her. "He killed James, but Lily killed him. The Death Eaters are keeping themselves running now."

She feels like she can't form full sentences—it feels strange to talk and even stranger to try and follow the thread of any conversation. She doesn't parse half of what Remus says, but two parts sink in. "James?" she says. "Cattermole? But he was—"

"Working for Azkaban, yeah. He got the job so he could get us all out."

"Where…?"

"I think we're in Sirius's parents' home, but I don't know why yet. Lily and Sirius and Cattermole are the only ones who know anything, and they're sort of—busy right now, getting everyone settled."

Alice shakes her head vehemently. "I have to find… I have to…"

"You don't have to do anything right now," Frank tells her. "Just rest, okay?"

"I'll go find Sirius—he and Lily are figuring out the sleeping arrangements," Remus adds.

She shakes her head again. "But Neville—"

"I'll ask Sirius," Remus says again. "Frank, can you get her on the sofa? You both stay right here, okay?"

It takes some effort, but Frank manages to get her up off the ground and onto the sofa. She doesn't stay sitting up, though—she curls into a ball in the corner of it and lets her eyes drift closed. Frank strokes her hair, lifting her head into his lap.

"Don't leave," she manages to say.

"I won't."

"Don't leave."

"I won't leave."

"Don't leave."

"I'm not going to leave, Alice."

It's an odd thing, being free of the dementors: her head is still a hellscape, but some of the pressure has lifted. Again, in her mind, she replays Mary's flat burning with Emmeline inside it—but this time, she knows it's over, that she's not still back there. She opens her eyes again—looking at her surroundings helps her stay out of her head a little.

It feels like an age before Remus returns. "Neville's okay," he says, and Alice starts to cry again. "Oh, no, Alice, don't…"

"She's okay," says Frank. "I think she's just relieved."

"He's living with his gran—Frank's mum. We can't bring him here—he'll have a more normal life on the outside, and they haven't figured out what to do with any of us yet. We're all going to be hunted by Death Eaters, obviously. Sirius said they had wanted to have an Order meeting tonight, you know, to fill everybody in on what's been happening and get a plan together, but they're reevaluating their timeline. Not everyone really… well, you know what it was like for us all in there."

She shudders. "I just… I…"

"And—there's a problem," Remus continues. "They couldn't free everyone. A few people passed away in there—Dedalus, Elphias, Aberforth—and, um… and Dumbledore's still stuck inside. I guess Cattermole didn't manage to get him to swallow his Portkey when he was feeding him today."

Alice starts to rock back and forth, back and forth; the rocking soothes her a little, but not much. "We should get you somewhere quiet so you can lie down and get some sleep," Frank murmurs.

"No. I…"

"I want to know what's going on, too," says Remus, "but I don't think you're in any condition to have that conversation right now. Hell, most of us aren't in any condition to have that conversation right now."

"Kingsley," Alice remembers suddenly. "Kingsley?"

"Kingsley? He's okay—he's with Andromeda and Ted. Why do you… were your cells near each other in Azkaban?"

She nods.

"I'll get him," Remus promises, and then he's gone again.

It feels good, letting Frank gently scratch her scalp. Nothing has felt good like this in—how long has she been in Azkaban? Has it been years? It feels like it's been years. Looking back on it, the closest thing she came to feeling like this in there was when Cattermole would bathe her for those last few days before they all got out, but at the time, she wasn't really able to appreciate the sensation of being cared for. Cattermole—she'll have to thank him, too, when she sees him, for cleaning off the piss and for whatever he's done to get her free.

"Alice!"

It's Kingsley, who's here with Remus. He rushes forward, kneels down in front of the sofa, and puts a hand on top of her hand. "Are you all right? You sounded… when we were in Azkaban, it seemed like…"

"Kingsley," says Alice numbly.

"She's not talking very much yet," says Frank calmly. "I think she just wants to hear your voice."

"I can do that. You know, it's good to see you two together."

"We're not… we're just…" Frank mumbles.

Alice feels her stomach turn over—she and Frank aren't what?—but she tries to focus on their voices, their hands. "Thank you," she whispers.

They sit there like that for a long, long time.