"Potter, you idiot"

James Potter poked his head out from under the blankets that covered him. It was almost two in the afternoon but he'd managed to keep the room completely dark so he could sleep. After getting in at about dawn and promptly falling into his bed, he'd been falling in and out of sleep blearily for most of the day.

Andromeda Tonks yanked back the heavy dark green velvet curtains from around his bed and stared at him expectantly. James tried to focus on her and could see that she was carrying a tray of food.

"What…?" he mumbled, rubbing his eyes and grouping for his glasses at the bedside table.

She just sighed and set the tray on the bed next to him. She sat down as well and said. "We were beginning to think you'd died."

"No," he coughed and squinted at her. "Not quite yet"

"Oh shut up, have some breakfast" she said, and then added quickly. "Not that I'm going to be bringing you breakfast in bed from now on, or anything."

James smiled. Andromeda had become significantly more maternal since she'd had Nymphadora two years earlier. She was still the same rash, opinionated hurricane of a woman but now she was rather the unofficial den mother to the younger members of the order of Phoenix.

"Thanks Andromeda" he said softly, sitting up and looking at the oatmeal and toast she'd brought him.

"Yeah, you're welcome" she nodded and tucked a piece of mousy brown hair behind her ear. "How's it going with the Malfoys?"

"Ridiculous. They're covering their tracks well. If I spend one more bloody night outside their house listening to tapped floo's without hearing anything evil related, I'll go mad"

The idea behind his current mission was to get to Voldemort through Lucius Malfoy. Elphias Dodge stalked him during daylight hours while James and Mundungus Fletcher staked out the Malfoy Manner at night. It was a good idea in theory, but Malfoy was just going about his life as if there was no war on.

Andromeda left him and James took his time crawling out of bed and into the shower. After standing under the hot water for an indulgent amount of time he dried off and got dressed in the black robes of an Auror. James wasn't an Auror, there hadn't been enough time between graduating Hogwarts and fighting the war to train.

He had a few hours before he had to go back to Malfoy Manner. James considered spending it holed up in his room where he wouldn't have to see anyone. The new headquarters for the Order were his Parent's home in Buckinghamshire. It wasn't so much as house as a small castle; it was even still outfitted with battlements and cannons. It had been in the Potter family for hundreds of years and almost everyone in the Order called it home. They'd managed to hide it with cloaking devices and it was now one of the safest places in England if you were hiding from Voldemort.

He wondered if Remus was back with the book, or even if he'd found it yet and picked his way downstairs.

Sure enough Mooney was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee and talking to Alice Longbottom, who was knitting.

"You really don' have to, Alice" he was saying to her. "I mean thank you, I just don't need a scarf in June"

"Oh shut up, let me make you a scarf" she said, waving him off. "You can always wear it later."

Remus rolled his eyes but was smiling.

"Find it?" James asked, sliding into the chair next to Alice.

Remus patted the Flourish and Botts carrier bag. "Yeah. Did you know Flourish and Botts have a restricted section?"

James shrugged "You can't exactly leave ancient books on dark magik laying around next to Quidditch strategies 101, can you?"

There was a pause where Remus stared at him as if he'd just grown a second head. He made a disbelieving sound and pulled the book out of the bag and let it fall onto the table with a thud.

"What?" asked James. "What's pshhh?"

"Nothing… well" Remus hesitated. He had decided not to tell his friend that he'd run into Lily Evans. She'd been perfectly nice the rest of the afternoon although when Remus asked her if she wanted to grab lunch she'd looked flustered and declined.

"What?" James pressed

"Er—well, you see Lily Evans is working at Flourish and Botts and she said the exact same thing you just did, Prongs. Sorry, it's just, you know, ironic." Remus watched James's reaction carefully. His face went blank and he leaned back in his chair mussing his hair nervously as if Lily were actually in the room.

"Oh, how is Lily?" asked Alice. "I haven't seen her in ages. She's lovely."

"Er—engaged"

"Engaged?" James said, sitting up and slamming the front legs of his chair down on the floor noisily. "To whom?"

"To Thomas McCarthy. Auror apparently…"

"Oh I know Thomas McCarthy." Frank Longbottom said, ambling into the kitchen with a half eaten apple in his hand. "Good guy," he said through a mouthful. "Great Auror. He was Head Boy when we were in fifth year Alice, right?"

"Oh yes, he's lovely" Alice said, looking down at her knitting and away from James.

"Great." Said James quickly, "Well, I'm glad for her then. What's going on Frank?"

Frank swallowed what he was eating and inclined his head out of the kitchen. "Ted wants a word. Apparently we're ugh—'infringing on the privacy of Mr. Malfoy and his family'."

"What?"

"We don't have a warrant or anything, Malfoy's been paying off everyone and everything that could possibly give us an excuse to search his house. We aren't an official agency of the Ministry. We could basically get sued if we don't lay off stalking him."

"We aren't stalking him!" said James. "He's evil, it doesn't count if he's evil!"

Frank made a face "I don't know, talk to Ted, he's the barrister."

James groaned

"That's bloody ridiculous, that is" said Remus over the rim of his coffee cup.

"And Sirius needs you to wire him a couple hundred galleons."

"Why am I not surprised." James sighed.

Sirius was in Prague, helping to hide Dorcus Meadows, a young witch whose Aunt had been a fantastically wealthy antique collector. For some reason that no one was quite sure of yet, she had been one of Voldemort's prime targets for almost six months. She'd been in hiding in Prague for almost three months with Sirius as her Secret keeper but even that was getting to dangerous. Sirius was supposed to bring her back to Buckinghamshire but he kept getting detained.

James stood up. "Sirius needs money, I'm getting sued for stalking a Death Eater and Evens is getting married." He said shaking his head, "I'm going flying."

-

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