November 28th, 1981: Alice Longbottom

"It's so good to see you outside of the cottage," says Alice.

Lily widens her eyes as if to say, Tell me about it. They're sitting in a café in the heart of Vancouver while James and Remus are watching Harry for the afternoon—or at least, it's the afternoon here in British Columbia; back in Britain, it's only a couple hours before Alice's bedtime.

Back at Hogwarts, Alice usually felt like she was in competition with Lily. Even in sixth year, when they became real friends, all of Alice's interactions with Lily were colored by the security that Lily wasn't a threat to her because Alice had the prefect badge and higher marks. That all changed, of course, in seventh year when Dumbledore named Lily Head Girl. Alice had to come to grips with the reality that she'd been bested at something—that, to be Lily's friend, she had to see herself as Lily's equal, not her superior.

She's grateful now, though, to have the confidence of someone who also knows what it's like to be a recent graduate raising a one-year-old while trying to fight in this terrible war. Lily just gets it in a way that nobody else can—and Alice hasn't forgotten how kind Lily was to her when Alice was facing the shock of getting pregnant out of wedlock two years ago.

Alice still feels like she's done something terribly, terribly wrong to have gotten pregnant with Neville when she did. Sure, she and Frank are married now, but she's always going to feel ashamed when she looks back on her old wedding photos and sees the baby bump that her dress couldn't hide. She's always going to know that they rushed into this because of the baby, and she's always going to second guess whether they would have ended up married at all if they hadn't accidentally started a family together.

How is Alice supposed to slow down and take care of another human life? She can barely take care of herself—constantly finds herself retreating inward and trying to shut everybody else out in order to cope.

It's not that things are going badly between Alice and Frank, either. Things are actually going remarkably well, considering the circumstances. They'd already been happily living together by the time Alice got pregnant, and so it wasn't a huge leap to get married—after all, what's marriage besides just a sheaf of parchment? Still, it feels like Alice's entire life lately is Frank and the baby, and she's afraid she's jumping in too deep, that she won't have anybody left to pull her out if and when it all goes wrong.

"James started sneaking out at night a little toward the end there," Lily admits, "but this week was the first time I got out of that house since we heard about the prophecy. I feel like I never want to go indoors anywhere again. I just want to feel the sun on my face all day long."

Indeed, they're eating outdoors on the terrace of the café, and even in the overcast weather, Lily looks radiant being out of the house again. "So Canada, huh?" says Alice with a grin.

"We wanted to go somewhere that we could speak English easily—I thought about France, you know, after my internship there, but James wouldn't hear of it; he can't speak the language—and we thought the United States would be too obvious of a choice, so instead, we're here. We'll see how this winter goes, though. We might end up moving to Australia or something in a few months if we can't stand it."

Alice wouldn't say it's much colder, per se, here in Vancouver than it is right now in London, but there's certainly a lot more snow on the ground. "At least we have magic. Can you imagine driving a car through all this ice?"

She keeps her voice low, as they are eating in a Muggle neighborhood, after all. Alice knows she's not great at blending in—Frank was as useless as she felt when she was asking his advice and trying to pick out clothes to wear today, and she can tell that the plush bathrobe peeking out from beneath her cloak doesn't match what anybody else here is wearing—but she at least knows well enough not to go shouting about spells within earshot of just anybody.

"I don't envy the Muggles," says Lily, and her voice is quiet, too.

She gives Alice a darkly significant look, and Alice knows they're thinking the same thing: that they don't envy Muggles' position in the war, either. "I still can't believe it about Crouch," Alice says. "I'm not saying he was my first choice for Minister—that would have been you, obviously—but if he'd been the one in office, at least we would have known that the Minister of Magic was somebody who wanted Voldemort dead and the Death Eaters disbanded."

That, as it turns out, appears to be why the Death Eaters killed Bagnold: they thought that, if Crouch were appointed as interim Minister, they could use his son secretly being a Death Eater as leverage against him. They didn't bank on him actually having integrity, turning his son in as soon as he found out, and getting pushed right out of office.

"And now we have Runcorn," Lily says, rolling her eyes. "He may not be a Death Eater, but I'll bet you anything that he's taking money from them. All that stuff Mad-Eye says he has in the works?"

"The only reason they're not planning a Muggle and Muggle-born genocide," says Alice, "is because then there would be no one left to rule over. I think it's going to be a Grindelwald situation all over again—I think Runcorn's going to defect on the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy."

"And then Voldemort won't just be Britain's problem anymore. I told the French Ministry," says Lily, her eyes popping a little. "I told them. Better to get involved early before something like this happens."

"Well, as long as he's just the interim Minister, he won't do anything that major. I wish you were running in the special election. The only good part of Runcorn running is that he splits the vote for Malfoy, but it's not like anyone decent is running against either of them."

"Have you had any success with trying to get Crouch onto the ballot?" asks Lily with interest.

Alice shakes her head. "Not yet. He's not ideal—he lost a lot of political capital when he turned in his own son like that—but he's the best high-ranking Ministry official we can find who holds much public respect who's willing to make a run. Not that he even wants the Order's help—he'd throw us all in Azkaban if he knew who we are, I'll bet you anything. The only reason he listens to me and Doc at all is that he doesn't know we're vigilantes."

There's a long pause, and Alice casts her mind around for something else, anything else, to talk about that will distract them from the political reality. Lily seems to be thinking the same thing, because she says, "But enough about them, anyway—how are you doing?"

"I'm…"

She doesn't really know what to say, to be quite honest. Things are… fine? Frank is good, even though they hadn't planned to get married; Neville is good, even though they hadn't intended to have him; work is a disaster, given how badly they're losing this war, but Alice and Frank haven't gotten themselves killed yet, which is something. But Alice? Alice is—lonely. There's no other way around it.

Like always, she's in the position of looking for somebody to cling to, somebody who doesn't already have a best friend to put before Alice. This time around, that person is Emmeline, considering that Em just lost Peter in one of the most horrific ways Alice can imagine. But a small and vocal part of Alice keeps screaming that she's just using Emmeline's pain so that Alice doesn't have to be alone, and she suspects that Emmeline suspects her of the same thing: she hasn't exactly been forthright about what she's going through whenever Alice has tried to talk to her about it.

"…Fine," Alice eventually says. "I'm just fine."

Lily looks doubtful, but Alice is spared by the timely arrival of the bill; she does some quick math and forks over a handful of gold as Lily fishes out her wallet and counts out the right number of Muggle bills. "Must have been a pain trying to get what few pounds you had converted to Canadian dollars from the confines of your home," says Alice.

The corner of Lily's mouth turns up. "Don't tell anyone, but they're counterfeit. I'll exchange some pounds officially later. I just used a Summoning Charm and then a quick Geminio; no one will ever be able to tell the difference."

Alice laughs. "I won't tell, I promise."

Back at Lily's new house, Alice gives James and Remus each a quick hug before she goes to play for a while with little Harry, whom she finds keeping busy by dumping a large bin of plastic blocks all over his body. It feels a little strange that Lily and James have spent so much time raising Neville while Alice has hardly seen Harry, but that's the way it shook out when Lily and James were unemployed in hiding and Alice was juggling her Auror job with the Order of the Phoenix. Harry has seen his Auntie Alice enough times to recognize her, though, and he giggles at her when she helps him make snow angel motions in the pile of blocks now scattered across the ground.

Truth be told—Alice had never wanted to have children. She's always been so focused on her ambition and her academics and her career that having kids was never on her mind. She adores Neville, but if her life had played out the way she'd wanted it to, she wouldn't be spending all of her off-work hours covered in spit-up, obsessively reading parenthood books to see if her son is developmentally falling behind.

When she gets home, Frank immediately hands Neville over to her so that he can head over to orb duty, and she braces herself for another evening full of diapers and peek-a-boo and picture books. It's not the life she asked for, but it's not such a bad life, not really.

xx

It's not that Frank is such a terrible husband. He's not—not at all. If Alice were to make a list of all the qualities she'd want in a life partner, Frank would tick all the boxes. But sometimes, after days upon days of working together at Auror Headquarters and taking care of Neville at home, Alice is grateful to have a night off from Being Frank Longbottom's Wife when one of them has orb duty without the other, even if Alice is the one stuck at home with their son.

Frank has orb duty again the next night, though he leaves earlier in the day for it, barely stopping home for an hour after work before heading out again. He's been gone for an hour when the doorbell rings. Alice frowns (she wasn't expecting company), kisses Neville on the forehead, and leaves him in the living room to play while she rushes to the door. She swings it open and comes face-to-face with Dirk Cresswell—yes, that Dirk Cresswell, the one she dated for two years when they were still at Hogwarts.

She gulps.

"Oh, hello," says Alice, standing there awkwardly in the doorway. She hasn't really seen much of Dirk since they broke up; Frank has kept in touch with him, as they were close during the school years, but Alice usually limits her conversations with Dirk to very brief hellos before Frank heads out with him. "Did you want to see Frank, or—?"

"We were going to get a late dinner," says Dirk. "Is he home?"

"He must have forgotten to tell you," Alice apologizes. "He's actually out for a while. Uh—he's…" She doesn't want to say that Frank is sleeping over with one of his Ravenclaw mates, because Dirk could easily realize she was lying if she did, but where else can she claim that he's gone? "Some Hit Wizards called him in late."

"Another attack?"

"I don't know if anyone got hurt, but they caught a lead on one of his cases, I think," Alice invents wildly. "He might be gone for a while. I wouldn't wait up for him."

"Of course," says Dirk. "I know how it is." He sounds like he means it. "Are you—are you doing all right, Alice? You look a little…"

She's going to tell him everything's fine, of course, because everything is fine: what does Alice have to complain about? "I'm just tired," she says. "Neville hasn't been sleeping well, which means I haven't been sleeping well, which means… I'm just tired, Dirk."

"I'm sorry."

"My friend Marlene died a few months ago," she adds. She doesn't know why she's still talking, except that this is Dirk and they used to be close and who else is she going to tell it to? Everybody in Alice's circle is burdened by all the same things; they don't have pity to spare for her.

"I heard about that in the Prophet. I'm so sorry, Al."

"And now Peter is gone. He was working with the Death Eaters, Dirk. He almost…"

But she can't tell him that Peter almost killed Lily and James because she can't tell Dirk that they're all vigilantes. Maybe he suspects it, but it's not her place to confirm those suspicions. She falters, feeling lost, and he twists his lips and gently puts his arms around her.

It's weird, hugging Dirk without the promise of something more underneath it. She doesn't love him anymore—not like that, at least—but after almost two years of having that intent, and then pretty much never speaking to him again for years, it feels strange to be in his presence just as friends (or something) and not treat each other the way they used to. He rubs her back in a decidedly platonic way. Alice buries her face in his shoulder.

"I don't blame you, you know," says Dirk. "For wanting to fight. For becoming an Auror or for—what happened at Hogwarts. It's not who I am, but it's who you are. I understand that now. Somebody's got to do it."

She lets go of him, mopping her eyes. "All day, I'm around it—the war, I mean. And then I come home and have to push it aside and be a wife and mother, and I don't know if I'm cut out to—I mean, I've never been very…"

It's more than she's admitted to anybody since that fateful day when she confessed her pregnancy to Lily, and she doesn't really know why she's telling it to Dirk, but he's here and she's tired and she doesn't have any books to hide behind anymore. "I'm sure you're a wonderful mother, Alice."

Are you? she wants to ask him. Are you really? But she just says, "Thanks."

"I… don't really know what else to tell you, but I'm sorry. Are you—you know—talking to people? Does Frank…?"

She shakes her head with a ridiculous little laugh. "I'll be fine. I don't know what's wrong with me. Everything is fine."

"I can stay and watch Neville for a little while, if you want," he offers. "You should take a hot bath—make some cocoa—go to bed early—you know."

"Oh, no. I couldn't. I'm sorry again about Frank; I'll have him write you."

"Well, if you're sure," hedges Dirk.

"I'm sure. Thanks again."

When she retreats back into the living room, Neville seems to pick up on the fact that she's upset, because his face crumples a little and he mumbles, "Mummy?"

"Everything's okay, darling," says Alice, smiling. "I love you so much. Can we practice with the potty again now, and then Mummy can read you a story?"

xx

In retrospect, Alice should have expected that Dirk would say something to Frank. They're still pretty good friends, after all, and Dirk is the kind of bloke who wouldn't want to hide it from his friend if he knew his friend's partner was struggling. But she still can't help but feel blindsided when Frank gets home from dinner with Dirk a week later with a scowl on his face.

"Dirk says you've been having a hard time."

"Well—I—"

"And you told him, but not me? He's your ex, Al."

"I wasn't planning to," she mutters. "It just sort of—"

"Popped out?" says Frank. "We've been working and living together for two years, and you couldn't find the time to come to me?"

It's Alice's turn to scowl. "What, so now you're jealous?" It's not like her to be so—so callous, but she feels like she's floundering these days, and it would have been nice for Frank to have more sympathy for that than he apparently does.

"I'm not jealous. I know it's over between you two. But Alice, I'm your husband. If you're in trouble, you're supposed to feel comfortable coming to me about it, especially if the thing causing you trouble has to do with our marriage or this family."

"There's nothing wrong with our family," Alice argues. "It's just—our friends are dying. Marlene is dead, Frank. And I come home from that every night and have to—to play house, and I—"

Frank looks more hurt than she was expecting—a lot more. "We're not playing house. We're raising a family. That matters."

"I'm not saying it doesn't matter; I'm just saying I'm not the right person to be doing it! This was never the plan. You know me," she pleads. "I hide from people, okay? I hide in my books, and I stay away from—from people who might love me. I don't mean to, but I do. And here, the only thing I'm supposed to be doing is loving people, and I…"

She doesn't see how that might sound until it's out, and the look on Frank's face is all that she needs to realize what she's just said.

"I do love you, Frank. I love you, and I love Neville. I just don't—I don't know how to do it the right way."

Frank shrinks back from her a little. "This isn't an exam, Alice. You don't have to prove anything to anybody."

"But I do have to prove myself. I have to prove every day that I can do this, and—"

"And you can't?" His voice is harsh. "You can't stay with us?"

"I never said that," Alice says quietly.

Frank is staring at her like he's never seen her before, and Alice doesn't think that's entirely fair. He knew her for almost ten years before he married her: it's not like he didn't know what he was in for. Even he considered giving the baby up for adoption when Alice found out she was pregnant. And now it's coming as a shock that she's letting him down so badly?

"I should put Neville down for bed," he says slowly. "And then I should go to bed. Don't stay up too late tonight, all right? It's your turn for orb duty tomorrow."

And he goes to Neville, picks him up, and promptly dashes into the nursery.