*TW: this chapter contains descriptions of a murder.

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Chapter 37 - Blood is Thicker Than Water, Pt 2

The front room was in chaos by the time the trio apparated to Edgar's house. Several Order members were already present and more were showing up by the second, all soaking wet and freezing cold. Not many had come out of this battle unscathed - Edgar's wife was nursing a wound that had torn up Elphias' shoulder while Frank examined a gash on Sturgis' forehead. Others were mending each others' broken ankles or busted lips.

Lily, who'd been waiting at the house for the others to return, leapt up from Dorcas' side when she saw her husband arrive. Almost as soon as he landed, James moved quickly towards her and clutched her in a tight, grateful-to-be-alive embrace. He kissed her earnestly as he held one hand against her small but perceptible bump, as if to extend the embrace to their child in utero. When she'd concluded her reunion with her husband, Lily rushed to hug Emmeline as well. Together, they surveyed the rest of the room.

"Marl-lene? S-sirius?" Emmeline stammered, her teeth still chattering. The dry, crowded room did little to quell the shivering, which felt as if it went all the way down to her bones.

"They're fine," Lily assured her, covering her with a blanket from the sofa. "Doe said Mad-Eye asked them to help comb the dock."

Emmeline heaved a shaky sigh of relief. At least they'd round up the remaining death eaters. "The Prewetts were back in the maze of containers-"

Before she'd finished her sentence, Emmeline heard the whoosh of an apparation behind her, then two disconcerting thuds. Everyone in the room gasped as James grabbed Lily and Em to move them away.

Both Gideon and Fabian lie dead in the middle of the room.

It was immediately apparent that they'd suffered from something other than a standard killing curse; their knit jumpers were drenched in blood, which, by the looks of it, they'd vomited up. Fabian's jumper was raised slightly at the bottom, revealing an unnatural purple hue lurking under the skin of his torso. Even their eyes, once the warmest shade of blue, were now colored crimson from burst vessels. They'd been made to hemorrhage to death, but by what sort of foul curse, nobody knew. There holding on to each of the brothers were Marlene and Sirius, both looking considerably pale after having to escort their bodies back.

No one said a word for quite some time, even as the stench of iron began to overwhelm the musk of drenched wool lingering in the air.

Finally, Marlene spoke up, her voice thick as if she were suppressing a gag: "Somebody needs to let Molly know..."

"We should have gone with them," Emmeline whispered to James, her lip quivering. She did not see his hand tighten into a fist at his side.

Another whoosh followed by a thud drew everyone's attention to the dining room, where they were met with an equally disturbing sight: In hobbled Mad-Eye - his face smeared with blood and a sizable chunk missing from his nose - with the lifeless body of Evan Rosier in tow. Rosier's loyalties played no part in how unsettling it was for many of his former classmates to see him dead on the floor, too.

"Longbottom, we need to-" Moody began, but stopped suddenly when he saw the twins lying butchered in the middle of the room.

One might've thought Alastor turned to stone the way he froze up at the sight. Nobody dared to speak or even audibly breathe as he looked back and forth between Gideon and Fabian, assessing the damage done to them. Judging by his reaction, he'd never seen this curse before either. After an achingly long silence, Alastor bent down and waved his hand over Gideon's face, then Fabian's, closing their eyes forever. Mad-Eye was normally mostly unfazed by death - he had to be in his line of work. But as he struggled back to his upright posture, his face lifting back into the groups' view, he looked as if he was about to howl. He had been very close with the Prewetts.

"What. Happened."

"...Someone must have told him we were coming-"

"I don't mean tonight, I mean TO THEM!" Mad-Eye bellowed, cutting off Sturgis' meek attempt at an explanation.

Neither James nor Emmeline spoke up at first, as they were coming up with the right words and they feared that Mad-Eye might maim them in his rage.

"...WELL?!"

"Alastor, we-"

"They fought off five death eaters to save us," Emmeline interjected, saving James' breath. "My group was ambushed before we reached the signal point and trapped in one of the shipping containers. Gideon and Fabian sacrificed themselves so that James, Peter, Dedalus and I could escape with our lives."

"Where are Pete and Dedalus now?" Alice asked worriedly.

"Dedalus took a curse to the leg and wasn't able to walk. Peter took him to St. Mungo's."

"But the five death eaters...we stupefied them, they should have been there on the dock," said James. "Did you catch any of them?"

"They'd revived by the time I got to them. Only managed to nab Rosier here, and when he wouldn't come quietly...well, you can see for yourselves. Dolohov and the others got away."

"Dolohov? You're telling me Dolohov did this?"

"Who else? Sick bastard, he likes to make it as gruesome-..." For a moment, Moody's mouth stiffened up in a way James had never seen before, like he was about to cry. Then, he cleared his throat loudly, quickly doing away with that possibility, and his mouth returned to normal.

"Alastor," Lily muttered, approaching him with caution. "Your face-"

"I'm fine," he snapped. "As you can see, Rosier paid the price for it..."

Despite his rebuttal, Lily went to the kitchen anyway, fetching him a damp washcloth and bravely offering it to him for his nose. He accepted it wordlessly, but heaved a sigh.

"I'll take them to St. Mungos then go see Molly myself. She shouldn't see them like this."

"I'll come with you," Marlene offered.

"I appreciate that," he croaked, genuinely thankful for the company. Then, with what little sense of self-preservation he had, Alastor shed all sentimentality so quickly that it was frightening and got back to business. "Frank, you'll need to take Rosier's body to Crouch at the Ministry. The rest of you," he shouted suddenly, returning to his usual gruff tone. "We'll meet tomorrow in the forest. Midnight. We have much to discuss."

Alastor knelt down again next to Fabian, grimacing as he looked into his empty, bloodied face. Marlene followed suit and knelt beside Gideon, taking hold of his shoulder as the pair disapparated with their fallen friends.

"We should have let those death eaters drown," James corrected Emmeline spitefully as he steered Lily away.

Emmeline apparated home as the sun was rising with her hair in a stringy mess and her clothes not fully dried. Teeth still chattering, she went immediately upstairs, scribbled a quick note saying she'd be out sick from work, then sent it off with Orpheus straight away. She then peeled off her layers and crawled into the shower. Turning the knob to the hottest setting, she sat wordlessly on the floor of the bath, hugging her knees to her chest, letting the water rain down on her in silence. The way James had spoken to her...should they have let those death eaters die? More importantly, was the Prewetts' blood on her hands?

A few minutes later, the sudden swinging of the bathroom door sent her into a panic and she screamed inadvertently as the intruder tore open the shower curtain.

"Remus," she whimpered as relief rushed through her.

Distressed by her scream, Remus knelt down beside the bathtub and pulled her into his embrace, paying no mind to the fact that she'd gotten his clothes wet as she began to cry silently into his shoulder.

"How'd it go?" he asked, apprehensively awaiting a death toll.

"The operation was a failure, and the Prewetts…" She didn't have to finish. Remus understood.

He pulled away from the hug and stroked her cheek with his thumb. "I'm sorry, I should have been there..."

He'd been gone for nearly a month, about a week longer than he'd expected his trip to last. He would have come home sooner, but he felt that, after having spent a transformation with them, he had just begun gaining the trust of the werewolf pack in the north of Scotland. He thought it would be beneficial to linger to see if there was more information to be gleaned. It turned out that there was not.

Emmeline got her first good look at Remus' haggard appearance. His jaw was covered in stubble and his sleepless eyes seemed to have sunk into their sockets framed by tired, purple bags. The skin around his nose and mouth was chapped from the cold and dappled with cuts. New scratches and bites ran up and down his arms.

"You look awful..."

The corner of Remus' mouth turned upward, hinting at an amused smile. "Couldn't bring the potion, so the transformation was rather rough this time around."

"Did they hurt you?"

"No," he lied. She'd never notice that some of the bites on his arms and shoulders weren't his own. "Sorry to come home to you like this."

"I'm just so glad you're back." She pulled him back into the wet hug and buried her face in his shoulder. Remus held her tightly.

"You missed your birthday last month," she said sadly against his neck.

He let out an exasperated sigh, disappointed that he'd completely forgotten about his own birthday. "I'm sorry about that, too." Twenty years old should have felt like a milestone, but instead it just felt like another rung on an endless ladder leading nowhere.

Emmeline sat up out of his embrace and hugged her knees to her chest again. "Lily and James came over. We made a cake. I sliced up what was left. Saved it in the freezer for you."

With an exhausted chuckle, Remus reached over and turned off the water. "Is it chocolate cake?"

"Why would you ask a question you already know the answer to?"

"That seems like it'll make a decent breakfast," he decided, helping her up and wrapping a towel around her shoulders. Together they went downstairs, and as they ate the slightly stale birthday cake, she cleaned and dressed the wounds on his arms. Neither had the energy for conversation, but the simple pleasantries of birthday cake, bandages, and being with one another was surprisingly restorative.

"That was our ONE CHANCE! We knew he would be vulnerable. We may never get a chance like that again!" Alastor howled. His mood seemed considerably worse than usual in light of the Prewetts' demise.

"What would you have had us do?!" Edgar countered. "They were clearly expecting us!"

"Someone's been passing information to the other side again!" shouted Frank.

"They could have just spotted Mundungus, we don't know that," Dorcas interjected.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lily spotted Remus and Emmeline entering the clearing. Relieved to see Remus in particular, she trotted up to embrace him but stopped when she got a good look at his face. "You look terrible."

"So I've been told." He tugged his jumper sleeves down to hide his arms, then pulled her into a hug anyway, noting the growth of her stomach. "My my, I see the little one's gotten big."

"I'm honestly not sure if it's the baby or me. These days I'm always hungry."

Sirius followed Lily over and took his turn to embrace Remus. "Where've you been? I thought you'd be with us at the port last night."

"Business, for Dumbledore."

"Yeah, that's what Em said. What sort of business?" Too tired to remember the fabricated tale he'd come up with, Remus cast his gaze down at the ground. Sirius took notice and shoved his shoulder. "C'mon mate, it's me."

"I can't talk about it, I'm sorry," was about all the cover story that he could summon at the moment.

A flicker of hurt passed over Sirius' face. "Oh. I see."

Meanwhile, the adjacent argument was heating up:

"I know what I heard!" Mundungus was shouting up to Alastor now, thumping his own chest indignantly.

"Go over it for us again, if you would, Mundungus," requested Dumbledore. He held his temples with his index finger and his thumb, clearly upset but remaining composed.

"I told you," Mundungus began. "I was in Knockturn Alley a few weeks back an' overheard a conversation between Carrow and Avery junior outside Borgin 'n Burkes. They said You-Know-Oo would be on one of the ships at midnight because the ship was fortified 'nuff to protect him, but needed extra securi'y for some rich'ual that would make 'im vulnerable."

Mundungus' intel had prompted the previous night's failed attack. With no inkling of what this ritual may have been, The Order had planned to ambush Voldemort with the assurance that, somehow, he was going to be vulnerable.

"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Frank interrogated Mundungus, side-eyeing him.

Dung turned to him as if to punch his groin. "You think I would lie about this?!"

"I don't know, but someone tipped them off! They caught Dedalus' group and used our signal!"

"A possible coincidence, considering their extra security," Dumbledore noted, thinking out loud.

"We all heard him, right?" James asked suddenly, motioning to his head.

"I've suspected him to be a Legilimens for some time," said Dumbledore. "He must have honed the craft."

Emmeline shuddered, remembering how the raspy voice had infiltrated her mind. "When he said he'd been defied three times, what did he mean?"

"He's been trying to recruit a few of us to join him for some time now. Once last summer, once at the Minister's mansion, and again last night at the port," Alice explained.

"Even I heard it," added Lily, who had been at Edgar's house the whole evening.

"Because he spoke to us," James continued, "does that mean he completed this ritual, or does it mean he never got the chance?"

"It doesn't matter," Alastor snarled as he chucked a rock on the forest floor. "All that matters is we missed our opportunity to get the sonofabitch."

"Hang on, James has a point," said Dorcas, the cogs beginning to turn behind her eyes. "Perhaps we stopped him from getting to whatever this ritual was. Maybe last night was a success-"

"Gideon and Fabian are dead, do you reckon that's a success, Meadowes?!"

Dorcas swallowed her next words, and a silence fell over the group.

"May they rest in peace-"

"Don't, Albus," growled Mad-Eye.

"...So what happens now?" asked Sirius.

Nobody seemed to be able to answer the question.