Mostly war was boring. They kept odd hours and that was usually the most exciting part of the job. Dorcas, like everyone else would go on her rounds and collect information or just as often as not, probably, even more often, they did not collect anything at all.

In her fieldwork as an auror, even as far back in training, she had witnessed more consistently horrifying events. She talked people down from ledges, she nursed her bruises and the scars of others. There had been so much blood. When things became difficult, she called on the reserve from one of her first days out in the field and found whatever it was in herself to get whatever the job was, done. She went in with the intent to save the greatest number of people, to spare as many people pain. She did this often enough that it became second nature and she didn't have to call on anything because she was now that person. She had called on herself so many times that she recognized that she was always there. She was the woman and the auror she wanted to be. And she recognized, too, that people could and did get hurt. She was not there to save because she didn't have those powers so she just did her job as the person she imagined and one day she received an owl from Alastor Moody. She had met him several more times since he had visited the flat she shared with Lydia and other former schoolmates but this would be different. She was different now. He noticed. She smiled easier, she already knew Professor Dumbledore so maybe that helped. By the end of their conversation, when she agreed to be in the Order of the Phoenix, she had thought she understood what they would be doing. She understood why she'd been chosen but what is this saying about expectations? Learn to swim, even gillyweed fails.

After she was called to use the very same skills that made her a great auror and just as things were starting to take a turn for the worse or better (depending on who you spoke with) they got very dull, very quickly. She didn't want to have to do her job but as some of us know what use are you without the use of your gifts with no opportunity to use the things that make you who you are. She was an auror and there would always be use for her gifts. But there was a time during the war, when that was not the case. They felt like they sat around a lot, they would get information on the whereabouts of some one person or another and find they were too late. They would get there and find this small group of people already dead and the Order and Dorcas were to play defensive when she was so used to stopping things ahead of time or preventing violence from escalating or standing in between the source and object of the violence. She was asked to be reactive because they didn't have enough information, they didn't have the resources to do otherwise. She stared at these dead people feeling nothing.

What could be done at this point? Nothing. What was the point of a revelatory spell? She knew who was responsible for this violence but, she did it anyway, a reflex. How had they even learned to break up the Dark Mark? They had done it so many times. It was all so boring. Maybe this could be said another way. The major difference between her life earlier and the war was that there were so many more dead people. More dead people than she could count in every state of dead one could hope to never imagine. Take my word for it, most of the violence and death was senseless in the truest sense of the word. What did any of these people have to do with any tactical advantage? None. They didn't even serve to hinder the opposing side, they were just dead and it had something to do with the other side being just as bored as the Order or angry. Angry at what Dorcas couldn't fathom. All of them, most of them had grown up in the wealthiest households had every convenience known to the magical and to muggle alike and then this. An entire war over wanting more of what you already had? They were violent and bored already, so when everyone was dead, how much more violent and bored would they be? How much more could they be? And then what?

They were at someone's house again, for the umpteenth time, and had found, yes, someone had died. Dorcas set to breaking the mark up above them while Gideon pointed his wand to the ground. They heard a thump and smelled the acrid muskiness of the punctured gas main. The muggle authorities would show up and think there had been a gas leak. That would make them mad. The other side. It should probably be mentioned that at the time, the term "dark arts" had fallen out of favor. It was too… Too… non-descriptive. It was not until much later that it came back in style with the rise of Lord Voldemort but it was argued, certainly in that time, that there could be no such thing. So much wizard magic had to do with the wizard or witch who did the magic. Anyone capable of doing any magic might do so and so one could not do "dark magic" or be a "dark wizard". Many wizards and witches of a certain generation grew up not saying things like that. It was the other side. And while the war raged on, people thought maybe that was too clunky but people were dying too quickly for semantics so they defaulted back to the "dark". But depending on when the witch grew up, as in Dorcas' case, they would always be considered the "other side". And maybe they shouldn't have done that, bait the other side but whether they did or not was not going to stop them from killing more people anyway. They might as well give the families some peace. They might as well give the neighbors some peace. A gas leak was terrifying, yes fine but the alternative would have broken centuries' old rules and what would they say?

These people, they want you dead because you have less power than them and they don't know what to do with their own.

These people, they have lots of money but no imagination so you are somehow a threat for some inexplicable reason.

These people, they are mad and evil. You exist and are therefore in their way. They actually did you a favor. Now you no longer have to die because you are already dead.

Gas leak it was.

Maybe they were looking for something. Maybe they could find something. The thought crossed her mind the first time, the second, the third, the fourth the. After searching the homes, sometimes for hours, going back in the quiet of the night to find a clue they would usually find nothing. She enlisted the help of specialists. There was always nothing because there was nothing or the thing had been taken but really there was nothing. The bodies were the things to be found, the bodies were the clue. People were going to keep dying because of some reason called war. She would keep watch and yawn through her shifts as everyone else did. She would be called to look for information in places where life had left. She would sleep. She would wake up; she would do the job and then do all of it all over again the next day. People still had to eat, sleep, drink, shit, laugh, cry as necessary or when they could or not at all. Everyone would end up only a few of several ways with one destination.

Someday they would all die. Someday they'd all be dead, dead, dead. Whether they would find the remains or not, dead. Did the family know or not? Dead. Fighting for either side? Dead. The work became harder when Philippa left which coincided in an uptick in violence. The direct confrontations started again. There were many more bodies that the members of the Order of the Phoenix had to meet before they died. Lots of things happened all at once all together and she reflected after one such meeting in particular that this was a waste of time. They had pointless jobs, everyone would end up the same way. She knew what Alastor wanted to say to this and he knew that she knew so he didn't say it. He had a feeling then, that she didn't mean it but another idea started to form about her, several ideas. He tried to understand them all and put them in the correct order. Then they received word. The old channels spoke and Lupin heard and soon after , they held something like a meeting to determine what they should do to protect Dorcas since Lord Voldemort was looking for her. If he knew about the Order, he did not care but she was now being hunted and that should have made her afraid. Instead, it was comforting. She really was good at her job, then.

Maybe excitement isn't the right word but she felt prepared. All of her training had led up to this. Lord Voldemort wasn't so threatening in the city with everyone so close by. She did not want to die but maybe she wouldn't. Or rather, maybe she could defeat him. She would end the war. That's what it had felt like. This was the final test of her will and her training and she would not fail. But Alastor got yet another idea which he did not have time to understand. It was only right that he be the one the idea visited. He had recommended her to be in the Order and now he insisted that she go into hiding. She must go into hiding. He became paranoid and that unsettled her but there were more disturbing things. He had assumed that she hated the way he did it, the way he said it but that she made peace with it in the cottage as scared as she was as paranoid as she, too, became.

Emmeline, long after Dorcas di-. Emmeline had asked Alastor. All of them had wondered but she had needed to know. How did he get Dorcas to leave. What had he said to make her pack her things and go hide? They could understand other people going into hiding, they could even understand the threat of Lord Voldemort but she hadn't been afraid, had she? Dorcas, like all aurors, lived with some mild, low-grade fear constantly, no? What had he said?

"What did you say to her?", Emmeline had screamed, taken over by some hysteria. Anyone who saw her then, anyone, would have said that her pupils had turned a different color, she was that enraged.

He had sent Dorcas away, not because of Lord Voldemort, though that was reason enough, but because he thought she was losing her mind. She recognized too late what his paranoia must have meant. He thought that she had been moved by what he had said. He would have let her stay if she had been anyone else, if she had just been an auror. She had been once but now all there was was the tubular sound of air trapped in one end of a wave being pushed out of the other. She would fight Lord Voldemort down when the time came. But being out in the water, swimming in the sea and the taste of salt reminded her, as it did that she could do great things as a human. She did not need to be anything more or less than that. She would try to defeat him, she would try to fight him off but he did not lose. His spells did not miss, they were not easily deflected. If she ended the war, that would be ideal. She would retire and never speak to Alastor Moody or anyone in the Order ever again. She would find Philippa. They would have a proper funeral for grandpa. She would come back to this cottage to burn it down and then build something new in its place. She could not imagine that she would ever want to come back to this exact one though the location was beautiful. Lupin had done an excellent job. Hm, maybe, on second thought, she would keep in touch with him. He wasn't so bad.

Dorcas trudged out of the ocean even as it tried to pull her back in. She loved that feeling on her heels. It made you feel wanted. She would make herself something to eat when she got back, she thought. She felt pretty good today. She savored the clean feeling of the cold, the ringing in her ears dropped in an out as she sat on the cool sand to stare at the waves. She decided to lay down and make a sand angel. She got up to inspect it, smiling. As she head towards the cottage, the thought of Lord Voldemort drifted back to her. She would fight. That's the type of person she had taught herself to be and then maybe she could let that person go and die, figuratively speaking of course. She could do this everyday without the threat of the war and she could teach herself to be bored which became easier and easier. She could teach herself to be someone else.