Disclaimer: Heavens, no! If I owned Harry Potter, why would I be on a fanfiction site? Lol.

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The next morning, Lily kissed James goodbye as she left for work. For the past several years, she had been working at the Ministry of Magic, in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures three days a week - Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. There were many different sections of the department, each dealing with a separate magical creature. However, the section Lily worked in was the "Miscellanious" section. The witches and wizards who worked there studied the interactions the different brands of magic each species of creature had on one another, and on humans. Each section of the department also had their own boss, which set their employees certain tasks throughout the day.

As a Hogwarts student, Lily had always been fascinated by the different magical species. How amazing was it that the creatures in the fairytales she used to read as a little girl were actually real? Dragons, unicorns, and centaurs were not just fantasies - they were real.

She would never forget when the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, Professor Kettleburn, showed them unicorns. Lily thought they were absolutely beautiful, the true representation of innocence. She loved all the other creatures she learned about as well; each one was unique in its own way. She was just glad that there had never been a dragon at Hogwarts; that would just be asking for trouble.

"Nah, that would be fantastic!" She recalled Sirius Black's chortle when he'd overheard her saying that to Alice. "Where's your sense of adventure, Evans?"

"It's not my fault that you want to get yourself killed, Black," Lily had snorted. "You don't know the difference between adventure and stupidity."

"Ha, ha," had been Sirius's sarcastic response. "Very funny."

Unfortunately, magical creatures could be used by dark wizards, too. At many an Order meeting, they discussed how Voldemort wanted the goblins, dragons, werewolves, vampires, dementors, and any other creature he thought could be useful, to support him. This was a particularly touchy subject for Remus, since he was a werewolf. Some of the Order members looked at him with suspicion and mistrust once this started being mentioned, and it made Lily furious. Hadn't Remus already proven himself to be loyal to the Order?

She had also heard about experiments that had been conducted on magical creatures, mainly house-elves. She had been shocked to discover that almost all of the chores at Hogwarts, such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, making the bed - they were all done by the tiny, cheerful creatures. She had learned the secret (which wasn't really a secret at all) to getting into the kitchens, and the place had been absolutely bustling with the elves. She couldn't even count how many there were. The moment she'd walked in there for the first time with two of her dormmates and best friends, Alice and Marlene, the elves had put such a feast in front of them that it was astounding. All three girls had been given a mug of hot cocoa, and there were biscuits, cakes, brownies, muffins, donuts - there was enough to feed an army.

"Don't you get tired of doing this every day?" a twelve-year-old Lily had asked as she looked at all the food in amazement.

One of the elves had glared at Lily, looking truly offended that she'd said such a thing. "No, miss," she had squeaked. "House-elves never get tired of what they is supposed to be doing, Miss. House-elves is supposed to be working, and serving schoolchildren like Miss Lily, Miss Marlene, and Miss Alice."

"But don't you ever wish you had days off?" Lily had persisted, paying no attention to the creature's anger.

One of the other elves had stamped his foot. "DAYS OFF?" he had shrieked. "Dippy is not ever taking days off, Miss! Dippy is not knowing why Miss Lily is asking such questions, but Dippy is not liking it at all!"

"Sorry, Dippy," Lily had mumbled, taken aback by the fierce passion in the elf's voice. Several other elves were glaring at her now, and she was starting to realize that she'd truly made an error by questioning anything the elves did directly in front of them.

Once they had left the kitchens, Marlene exclaimed, "Lily, why did you ask the elves things like that? They like doing what they do, don't you understand that?"

"But it's wrong!" Lily cried in exasperation. "They don't get days off at all, not even when we go home for the holidays! I was told they don't even get days off when they're ill!"

"Lily," Marlene had said with the air of a person who was speaking to someone who knew nothing about anything. "House-elves can't let something like illness stop them. They're expected to fight through it, and do their work anyway. It's considered a sign of weakness for an elf to neglect their work because they don't feel well."

"But that's madness!" Lily shouted, her emerald eyes flashing. "That's just cruel!" She was almost shaking with rage. "How can you talk about it like that's normal?"

"Because," said Marlene, "in the wizarding world, it is normal. That's just the way it is."

"Well, it shouldn't be just the way it is," Lily had said, a nasty edge to her voice. "It's just ridiculous. That's more than just having high expectations. It's barbaric!"

Now, as Lily made her way to her department, she knew that idealistic young girl who'd had hopes and dreams for the future of house-elves was gone, taken over by someone who just went through the motions, surviving each day as best she could. The horror of war had taken that idealism away from her. The old Lily Evans would never have apologized to anyone, least of all James bloody Potter, for arguing with him about house-elves. Truthfully, Winnie and Ravvy were two of the very few beings who could put a smile on her face these days. She and James never mistreated them, and they seemed perfectly content to do the jobs they were told to. If anything, they were always asking to do more, especially for "precious Master Harry", as they called him.

The old Lily would never have dreamed she'd be where she was today. True, she had the job she had always wished for, but it was nothing like she'd imagined it would be. Once upon a time when she wasn't constantly having to worry about the lives of her family, when she didn't have to worry about her son's life being taken in an instant because some madman got it in his head to care about a damned stupid prophecy, she thought she would be helping everyone to understand that creatures like house-elves should get sick days, holidays, and personal days, just like any human employee. But instead, she was sitting at a desk reading tedious, boring papers, and learning that many werewolves, vampires, and other various creatures were being recruited for the army of the very monster she and James were fighting.

She hoped that one day, she could move up in the department, and actually be the one to speak to the magical creatures in order to learn more about them. She hated being stuck reading papers and filing reports for other sections of the department. James always told her to be patient, that experience would help her move up the ladder. She knew he was right, but patience sure as heck wasn't her strong suit.

"LATE AGAIN, POTTER!" barked the grating, unforgiving voice of her boss, Kathryn Templeton. "Your constant tardiness is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!"

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Lily looked at the clock hanging on the wall. The time was 9:02 AM. Damn it, she was two minutes late. She always tried to be on time, knowing her work was important, but it seemed as though she hadn't gotten it right yet again. Almost every single day she came into work, she got the "LATE AGAIN, POTTER!" treatment. True, it wasn't a good thing, but Ms. Templeton was acting like it was the worst thing to possibly happen in her life. "Sorry, ma'am," she muttered.

"No, you're not. Get to work," snapped Ms. Templeton. "I need you to read these." Her face still set in a glower, she thrust a sheaf of parchments at her. "Do not dawdle."

You're lucky you have me as an employee, you stupid, ungrateful bitch, thought Lily mutinously, biting her tongue to avoid saying the words out loud as she walked to her desk and sat down, placing the papers upon it.

"Morning, Lily," said Felicity, one of her coworkers. A pretty young woman of twenty-five, she had been in the department for about as long as Lily had. Lily had gotten the job in January of 1979, and other than the three months of maternity leave she'd received around Harry's birth, she'd been working there ever since. The fact that she only worked three days a week meant that she got Friday through Monday with James and Harry. James did not have a job, which was a blessing because that meant he could be a full-time dad. There were so many times during a week that Lily would give anything not to have to work here, with the boring, humdrum work and her excruciatingly rude boss. She missed Harry terribly when she was away from him.

"Morning," Lily replied. At least Felicity was one good thing about working in this place. The two women got along very well.

"Sounds like Ms. Templeton gave you a hard time again," Felicity said in a tone of commiseration. "I don't think there was anyone in the bloody ATRIUM who didn't hear her," she added under her breath. It was obvious Felicity disliked Ms. Templeton as much as Lily did.

Lily snorted. "I know, right? Honestly, am I really late all the time?"

Felicity smiled apologetically at her. "Truthfully? You're always one to five minutes late," she said. "But she acts like you've committed the worst transgression in human history."

"Damn," Lily said. "I knew I was late more times than I should be, but I didn't know it was that bad."

"It's no big deal, really," Felicity said. "It's not like you don't do all the work she tells you to do, is it? Is she literally watching the clock to see what time you walk in? I only started doing it because I wondered why she always bellowed at you every morning."

"She can think what she wants," Lily said tiredly. "I guess I'd better get to this pile of bullshit, then, eh?"

Felicity laughed. "Tell us how you really feel," she grinned. "I have my own pile of that to deal with, although I always call it hippogriff dung, myself."

Lily smirked at her friend. "Well, it's that, too," she said as she picked up the first piece of parchment from the stack and started reading it.

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When lunchtime came, Lily was relieved to discover she wasn't quite as bored as she thought she would have been. It turned out that some of what she had read was actually pretty fascinating. As she and Felicity walked to the Ministry cafeteria to get some lunch, she began telling her all about it.

"Apparently, it's been discovered that goblins can do pretty interesting things with their magic that witches and wizards can't accomplish," she stated.

"Well, they do think they're supreme to us, don't they?" Felicity replied. "Why do you think there've been so many darned goblin rebellions?"

"Don't remind me," Lily snickered. "It's all Binns ever droned on about. Our class always used History of Magic as a synonym for naptime."

Felicity laughed too. "Binns," she snorted derisively. "I bet that in a hundred years, that bloody ghost will still be putting students to sleep talking about them. What a colossal bore." She and Lily both giggled at the memory of their ghost History of Magic professor. "Anyway," she continued, "what did you read about goblin magic? I'm curious."

"Apparently, they can perform charms on humans that really help disguise them," Lily said. "Like glamor charms and such."

"Glamor charms? Hmmm. I never really learned much about those. I know they were covered in seventh year with Professor Flitwick, but he said many of them that we witches and wizards can do were too complicated even for that age."

"Yeah, that's what he said to our class too," said Lily. "But I always wanted to know more about them. Charms was always my best subject at Hogwarts. James's was Transfiguration."

"Mine was Defense Against the Dark Arts," said Felicity. She laughed a little as she went on, "I still can't believe you married James Potter. I didn't run into you a lot during our school years, 'cause I was four years ahead of you, but I do recall hearing your infamous rows with James Potter. Do you have any idea how often you were talked about in the corridors? We used to take bets about how soon you'd start kissing one another instead of rowing," she teased.

"Oh, stop it," Lily said, mock glaring at her coworker. "We weren't that bad, were we?"

"That bad?" Felicity stared at her incredulously. "You'd shout, "POTTER!" at him so loudly that my ears would ring! Why he continued to purposely annoy you, I have no idea. You were bloody scary when you were mad at him."

"Uh, thank you?" said Lily, phrasing it as a question. "Should I take that as a compliment?"

"Take it however you want," Felicity laughed. "No one else wanted to get on your bad side."

"Did you really take bets about us?" asked Lily as they entered the cafeteria.

"Duh," smirked Felicity. "Constantly." Her smirk then turned into a genuine smile. "I'm happy for you," she said sincerely. "And Harry sounds so adorable."

"He is," said Lily, her face immediately softening as her heart overflowed with love for him and James. "He's perfect."

"Of course he is," Felicity smiled back.

While they were eating their lunch, Lily continued to fill Felicity in on the information she had read that morning. "I'd honestly like to learn more about this goblin magic," she said. "There's more I'm going to read through this afternoon."

Indeed, the information had truly piqued her curiosity. With the war always on her mind, she was constantly thinking of ways in which to help stop Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Goblins could tap into much more sophisticated magic than witches and wizards could ever perform, and it honestly made her wonder if they would be willing to help in the war effort. If the Order could get the goblins to come to their side rather than Voldemort's ... the possibilities enthralled her.

"You've got that look on your face again," Felicity said gently, all the levity from earlier gone. She looked very serious now as she placed a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder. "It's the war, isn't it?" She sighed, a sound that was filled with an infinite sadness. "I think about it all the time, too," she whispered. "With Joe always in danger."

Felicity's husband, Joe, worked as an Auror. "I know," Lily said sympathetically. "It's not easy, is it?"

"No." Felicity shook her head. "Some nights I can't sleep, because I'm worrying about whether he's going to live to see tomorrow. But I'm proud of him, too. He's doing his part to make the world a better place." She looked at her friend meaningfully. "As are you, although I know you won't talk about what you do."

"I'm sorry, Felicity," said Lily, truly meaning it. Felicity knew she did something important in the war, but she hadn't told her specifically that she was a member of the Order. "It's not that I don't trust you, but ..."

"It's all right, Lils," Felicity told her immediately. "I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. You do something secret, and that's okay. You have your family to think about, too."

Lily nodded, her throat tight. Indeed, it was not that she didn't trust Felicity. It was just that she had been told not to reveal anything about the Order if she could help it. Dumbledore personally invited people to join, and the less information that got out to the general public, the less of a chance there was that it would be infiltrated by Death Eaters. "Thanks," she told Felicity, appreciating it more than the other woman ever knew.

As Lily returned to her desk to continue her work day, she was actually looking forward to reading the rest of the information in front of her. For the first time in a while, she felt motivated and purposeful. Maybe, just maybe, she could find something that would help her and her family, especially her Harry, get through the turmoil ahead of them.

Maybe, just maybe. ...