Previously in the Darklyverse: The Ministry awarded seventh years and a select few sixth years year-long internships, including an Auror program to which Alice, Frank Longbottom, and Kingsley Shacklebolt were admitted (CH11). When the Gryffindors began a series of war-awareness stunts that set the foundation for the Order of the Phoenix (CH26), including a common room lockout that landed the whole student body in the Ravenclaw Tower for the weekend (CH29), Dorcas Meadowes approached the Marauders, suspecting them as the source of the moment and asking them to join her in moving beyond awareness and terrorizing the Death Eaters (CH30). Belby's latest modifications to a potion to counter lycanthropy left Remus painstakingly half-aware of his facilities while transformed (CH30), and Alice and Sirius fought over politics as Alice battled the prejudices against werewolves she was raised to believe (CH27).

xx

March 6th, 1977: Alice Abbott

"We'll be working on the basics of Stealth and Tracking today—can't have you prancing around right in front of the enemy, can we, so before you go anywhere you'll have to know how to disguise yourselves. Disillusionment Charms first, then: doesn't conceal you entirely but just lets your body take on the images behind it, makes you a sort of walking window, chameleon-like. Clear enough?"

Alice blinks and blinks, scribbles, spills black all across the parchment.

"Why Disillusionment, sir, if it isn't entirely effective?" Frank says with a frown.

"Can't do it," answers Williamson. "Highly advanced magic, that. Dumbledore's been spearheading some research into invisibility lately that they're saying he'll have published within the next few years, but it's all Disillusionment and Demiguise hairs unless he gets it right."

"Demiguise hairs?"

"Tailors will weave it into Invisibility Cloaks sometimes, since the Demiguise can make itself invisible—I believe that's the basis of the research being done, studying how the Demiguise cloaks itself and finding a spell to allow wizards to replicate the effect. But Disillusionment Charms are your best bet for a start—you can use it to enchant cloaks yourself, and it's the dirtiest way to conceal yourself if you're in a bind and don't have the proper equipment on your hands. Of course," Williamson adds sharply, "part of your training is to always prepare yourself so you don't need to rely on patchwork, but it's necessary to know, at any rate, in case you do find yourself in trouble."

He's leading the way past rows of cubicles to the back of the floor, where they all shuffle into the dank practice room that's been designated for the Hogwarts Auror interns. By some Sunday mornings, Alice has half forgotten that she and a sprinkling of her classmates even have Ministry internships, what with all the blasted distractions up at the castle, but no matter: she doesn't have time; she can't be concerning herself with petty upsets when she's got Auror training to do.

"It's easier to do on others than yourself, so I'll have you start out charming one another and go from there," says Williamson. "The motions are simple enough, just a sharp rap on the head, but the focus it'll take gets a little complicated. It's one of the few spells for which we have no incantation, sort of this paradox where, to hide yourself, you'll need a spell that itself can't be perceived directly—that can't be heard aloud, then, as one consequence. If we consider the theory…"

And he sprouts a chalkboard with a wave of his wand, dragging his hand from high above his head to the ground as the board materializes in its wake, and begins to write. Alice glances right, then left, then catches Kingsley's gaze and drops it.

A quarter, a half, of an hour passes, and Alice's eyes do not leave her parchment or her inkwell or Williamson's chalky hands—

"Williamson?"

He drops in the middle of writing a differential equation: Dawlish's voice at the door is terse. When Alice rests her quill on the desk, it's parallel to her folded arms. "Now? It's barely nine."

"Moody's calling us all in, it's urgent. You're going to have to leave them," says Dawlish. "Morning, Shacklebolt, Longbottom, Abbott," he adds, milder, after a short pause.

"Right. All right. Can you send in Dearborn, then? Or—"

"Can't, all hands on deck."

Williamson stammers a moment, then sweeps the board back into his wand and smiles weakly at the three of them. "You're out early, then, I suppose. Catch a nap, practice on each other at home, be prepared to show me next week? Sorry to run out—you know how to show yourselves out," he says, swooping toward Dawlish.

"No—there's no time—does one of you know how to Disapparate?" Dawlish looks to be growing hysterical; Kingsley half raises a hand. "Take them with you? Here?" he instructs, and he hovers in the doorway until the three students vanish with a crack.

"Where d'you reckon they're off to? It's got to be a high priority mission," muses Frank as they straighten out in the shadow of Dervish and Banges.

"Hope there's not a lot of casualties," Kingsley says, and Alice wants to consider the possibility but can't.

"Ten Galleons says we don't see Dumbledore at lunch today."

Kingsley waves goodbye as he stops off at The Three Broomsticks, and then Alice and Frank are alone, winding their way toward the castle in the fresh wind, Frank's hands shoved in his robe pockets, Alice's clasped together and twisting.

"You're not saying much today," remarks Frank, smiling gently.

"Just thinking about the lesson," she says, returning it. "It's frustrating we couldn't, you know, accomplish much today, but the theory's all very interesting—at least I've always thought. Transfiguration, I mean, because it really gets at the root of where magic comes from, trying to figure out when you get deeper into the math even though you can't." Sort of like God or Muggle physics, the push-and-pull. "Not that I'd rather talk semantics than fight the Dark, but at least we were able to get something out of it."

"You're so bright, Alice." He lets his arms swing loose, and when his fingers accidentally brush hers, she feels a flicker of—something. Something that she doesn't allow herself to entertain. "You're not saying much lately in general, either."

"No, I suppose not." She clears her head of veelas and werewolves and faces.

"Whatever's up, just don't bottle it in too much, yeah?" Nod. "And you know I'm here?"

"I know. Thank you. I'm here, too."

Full lips, round eyes. "Anyway, I think it's rubbish we get sent home for the day instead of sent to do—something, I don't know, anything. There's a goddamned war going on, and you heard what Dawlish said, all hands on deck."

"I know," Alice says again. "I know, I think it's rubbish, too, but they've probably got protocols to follow dealing with minors. They're liable to Dumbledore, to the parents—our parents—if something happens—of course they're not going to send us out."

"Yeah, but even if they don't send us out in the field. They could fill us in on the situation, couldn't they? Leave out the names and locations and let us do something at least in the office, listen in on strategizing, anything. Don't they want people to know what's going on, what's wrong, defend ourselves? Take care of each other? It just seems so…"

"Stupid," supplies Alice, and he laughs. "I reckon you're appreciating the Phoenix stuff around the castle, then?"

"That propaganda? Sure, the thought's there, but I'll buy it when I see it at work, mate."

The grounds are beautiful, beautiful, against the owls flooding the sky with little black letters, and Alice assures him, "Mention it to the right crowd, Frank, and I expect you'll be hearing from them soon enough." He raises his eyebrows, goes to ask after her, but she's walking backward toward the castle, breaking out into a rare, real smile; turning and skipping into the sun.

xx

They can't meet all together, not yet, with Remus bedbound in the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey would have a field day if eight visitors showed up to talk to Remus all at once, so Peter ducks in there before leaving for the Ministry and brings Sirius a full report to relay to Alice. "Physically, he's better off than normal—fewer injuries, probably few enough that he'll be released by lunch, Pomfrey told him—but he's in a bad place, Peter said. Apparently, he was half conscious all night but not enough to keep control."

"That's awful," Alice says. "But Belby must be onto something, right? If Remus was at least partly aware of himself, compared to—normal."

"Yeah, well, if it's going to be like this until he gets it right, it better not be too many more months before he perfects it. Remus says it's worth it long-term, but he assumes Belby's going to eventually succeed."

"And you don't."

"Not really, no."

She looks down, back to the Daily Prophet in her lap that's not yet flooded with the cautions and obituaries that she's sure will come tomorrow. "You're back early," says Sirius.

"Williamson got called in for a mission. It sounded bad. Sirius…" He looks at her, and his face is hard and Alice is not what he wants, stubborn but frail and wordless and not big enough for him—at least, he seems to think she's not. "I hate this war as much as you do."

"Sure you do," he tells her, but she knows he doesn't mean it, and so must he. He's always liked her least, chubby Alice with the ringlets and books, nose in her wand and mouth on her prefect's badge, chin always pointed up above the masses, and this is Alice take it or leave it, but is it really, honestly? She likes novels and walks and dipping her toes in the lake, but she's not sure it matters anymore, and she's not sure where to find herself in there, so long she's spent attending balls with her parents and writing essays in the library in neat, neat print. None of it feels real, and she's not sure why she wants to be an Auror, maybe to try to put some of those essays to good use, maybe to make them real, maybe to feel like she's real.

"I was like you once," Sirius continues, and Alice looks up. "My family and I didn't always hate each other. We got on all right in the beginning, but I started listening to what my cousin Andy—you know, Professor Tonks—had to say about Muggles being people, too, and they didn't like that. They didn't like me getting Sorted into Gryffindor, either, and it messed me up because I still wanted their validation. What made me not want to be like them was getting to know Peter."

"Peter?"

"After our first week at Hogwarts, I told him he was 'pretty cool for a Muggle-born,' and James ripped into me so hard I probably still have scars from it. It's easy to think you're progressive without realizing all the little ways that you're putting down Muggles and Muggle-borns—and, yeah, 'half-breeds' like Remus, too. When I found out he was a werewolf, I tried to put on a supportive face, but on the inside, I didn't exactly react well."

"I just don't understand how it's possible to become that—that thing every month and not have anything evil—or, or at least violent—inside you."

Sirius's face hardens. "Then I have nothing to say to you."

The Ravenclaw common room is only sparsely occupied, most students probably still lazing around upstairs in their pajamas and drawing their curtains against the sun and its irony, so she's careful to lower her voice so it won't carry in the stillness. Flitwick expects to sort the common room passwords out by tonight, as he apparently announced at breakfast when she was at the Ministry, but Alice's considering resetting them herself after curfew if he hasn't gotten it resolved by then. Cramming every sixth year girl in the school into Dana Madley's dormitory to sleep is getting exhausting, and the inter-house unity message is starting to wear off, now that the whole castle has been waking in the mornings with sore backs and crusty eyes. "Have you heard anything else from Dorcas Meadowes?"

Shaking his head, Sirius answers, "No, not since Friday. She waved hello this morning on her way down to breakfast, but she hasn't come to talk properly at all. Probably giving it a few days to sink in."

"And how's it sinking?"

For once, the rigidity fades from his brow when he looks at her, not the other way around. "Heavy," he says. "It's—a lot, Al, what she's suggesting. And how well do we even know this girl? Can we trust her? She's a bloody Meadowes—"

"You're a Black," she reminds him, and he gapes for a moment.

"Yeah, well, she hasn't exactly been burned off her family tree, has she? Just because she says she wants to use her connections against them doesn't mean she's playing them and not us."

"All right, so how could she use this against us if we agree?"

A horrible brightness comes into his eyes, upturn upon his lips, and he lists off, "Frame us for crimes she plans and erasing any evidence that ties her to them. Giving false information so that we're accidentally injuring our side instead of hers. Setting us up to get us unwittingly killed—"

"Right," says Alice, not wanting to realize that a witch her age could be capable of murder, remembering Severus Snape. "Right. So we still keep ourselves out of it so she thinks it's just you four—give her as little information as possible—and—what else? Talk to Fabian?"

"And get another person close to her involved? Really, given the circumstances, you think that's a good idea? How do you know he won't just turn around and report back to her—"

"We don't. We can't, but we're going to have to give a little to find anything out about her, aren't we?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, maybe, but we shouldn't move too fast with this."

Alice concedes, "Of course. What exactly was she proposing again?"

"Tracking down meetings of Death Eaters or their minions and attacking them, basically. She sounded about ready to terrorize any gathering of purebloods she could find, and much as I wish it was that simple…"

"Not all pureblood families are necessarily Dark sympathizers," she supplies, thinking of the Potters, of herself.

xx

James makes great company for self-pitying, so she finds herself supervising his drinking in the Divination classroom most nights, incrementally swapping his Firewhiskey for butterbeer and ignoring his protests. "You can't even get tipsy off this stuff," he whines when by the end of the week she's confiscated all the liquor; he swigs a butterbeer regardless, sucks on the mouth of the bottle between swallows.

"Oh, come on, you're tipsy already. Tough up, you look pathetic like that," she braces him, Vanishing the remainder of the bottle she found him with.

"It's nobody's business but mine, anyway, and I didn't ask you to play bad cop."

"You know I'm only here because Sirius is getting worried. Sirius, honestly," she says, even though that's not entirely true.

"Well, maybe it's all bullshit. You lot make all these decisions for each other, you did it with Sirius and Marlene for years—"

"And you didn't?"

"Maybe I'm done, then. Maybe I've had an epiphany that—that—you're all codependent. You get sucked into each other and, and, you think you need to rag on each other all the time…"

"All right, James," Alice appeases him, laughing.

He frowns dramatically. "You don't care."

"It doesn't matter very much if you're right or not, since you're probably only thinking all of this because you're halfway to drunk."

"And coming back from it, thanks to someone in this room. So what if I engage in different extracurricular activities from yours?"

"Look at it like this, then: you're waxing lyrical over alcohol every night and passing judgments on everybody else's lives just to avoid your girl problems."

He doesn't even bother denying it, switching gears immediately and pouting over his bottle. "She's moving in with Sirius, Alice! His uncle left him a shit load of gold in his will, and he's getting a flat, and he asked her to live with him in it! All because she hasn't got any money and her family's dead! Won't even look me in the face and now she's hijacking my best mate's place, too! How'm I supposed to be able to see him in the summers now without her goddamn face chasing me around?"

"Sirius can come visit you at your parents'," Alice reminds him.

James hesitates, processing this new bit of information, but apparently deems it unsatisfactory because he carries on, "She's just everywhere, Al. She's just all over the damn castle, all the time. We get on, we don't, we're mates, we're not, we're snogging, we stop, and it's just—it's constant. Can't damn get away from her. It's like she's throwing all these scraps and I keep taking them and then she takes them away again… kind of like you and the Firewhiskey!" he adds, beaming as the connection occurs to him and then wagging his finger.

"Sure," says Alice. "If that's what's bothering you, then can't you just stop waiting for her to go out with you so that it doesn't give you such a hard time?"

"Right!" he exclaims, but his smile fades quickly. "Well, I tried that. Couldn't do it. It's always her who gets to pick, and I just sit here. Drinking. Do you ever try to do something you can't?"

"Sure," she says again, avoiding specifics.

"Anyway," he continues, "Sirius is still mad at you. I'm mad at you, too, if what he said about what you said about Remus is true."

Alice tenses, considers asking what exactly that is, and doesn't. "I don't owe you an explanation for anything."

"I guess not, but what was it you said I like doing? Judge the shit out of other people?"

If he Petrified her, right now, she couldn't get any stiffer. "I've never done anything to Remus, James. Certainly nothing on par with the things you've done to innocent people."

"Oh, really, like who?"

"Snape, for one."

He slams his butterbeer down with such force, she's surprised it doesn't crack. "Don't call that little bugger innocent, Alice, I'm warning you, didn't you see what he did to my face the last time we talked?"

"I'm not saying he still is," she grants him, "but he'd never done anything to anybody when he was eleven, and that didn't stop you then."

It's a low blow, maybe, but so was his, and Alice is tired of whispers and deaths and windows that won't open when she's sleeping, ones that suffocate, smirking, sparkling. Everyone keeps muttering that she's going to boil over if she keeps up like this, and maybe they're right; maybe they all can hear the whistling. She pops open her own butterbeer over the sound of his bleating and raises it to her lips.

xx

7 MARCH: BOTH SIDES SUFFER CASUALTIES IN SUNDAY MASSACRE AS CROUCH AUTHORIZES AUROR USE OF UNFORGIVABLE CURSES

Alice passes her copy of the Daily Prophet across the table to Mary to read; she doesn't need to do more than breathe in the headline, not yet, to know all she needs. "Shit," says Sirius. Marlene crowds Lily's shoulder for a look, cheeks paling, and Peter's entire head is buried behind his copy, pressed an inch away from his nose, only the topmost ruffle of his hair visible over the paper.

"The law only just passed on Friday," says Remus, looking a bit peaky—whether from the news or from the full moon, Alice can't quite tell. "Looks like Death Eaters heard about it and retaliated by storming the Atrium of the Ministry around nine o'clock, right when everyone was arriving to work. A lot of people got away by Disapparating, but it was crowded, some of the employees hung back to try to help the Aurors who went downstairs to sort it out…"

"That explains why Dawlish had us Disapparate upstairs instead of leave through the visitors' exit," says Alice. "Jeez. How many deaths?"

"They're saying dozens. More of us than them, but there were more of us on site to take out before anyone knew what was going on," Marlene answers. "Everyone was throwing Killing Curses, Aurors included. Dammit, I have to owl Doc, I have to…" She wrings her hands, pushes back her hair, pulls away strands and strands, shrugs off Lily's hand on her back.

"Everyone knows someone who works in the Ministry," says Peter. "The skies will be crowded, the school owls might all be taken by now—don't worry if you don't hear from him for a few days, yeah? He'll be all right. You'll be all right, Marlene, you will…"

Emmeline flings the paper away from herself, closes her eyes, stretches her neck as her head falls backward. "They don't have an official count or list out yet—there were too many. And some of the Death Eaters showed up in plainclothes, so they can't tell for sure which ones were Ministry workers who turned out to be working with You-Know-Who. But they don't think anyone there was in his inner circle—he must have known it would be a suicide mission, he wouldn't send out his most valuable assets."

"I think I'm going to be sick," mutters Mary.

Lily's rifling to the back of the paper now, skimming her finger down the editorials. "Look here, page 27—there's a quote from Dumbledore criticizing Crouch's ruling. Apparently, he's letting the Wizengamot make verdicts without trials now; they've already sent three people to Azkaban, the families are speaking out. They were all robed and they've got plenty of witnesses, but it's only a matter of time before…"

"Before they start apprehending the wrong people," says Peter.

Marlene interjects, "But using the Unforgivables… it makes sense, doesn't it? At least the Killing Curse does—if it means saving the lives of innocent people, of Muggles…"

"Some of them were using Cruciatus," says Remus, shaking his head. "There's no excuse for torture like that. No one should have the right to…"

"Shouldn't they?" demands Sirius. "You haven't met my cousin, you don't know what they're capable of, you haven't seen what they deserve!"

"And the Aurors won't let students help, and Dumbledore won't let us join him," Lily says. "Dammit, this is why I need to go into law enforcement—and Alice, you were right there. And I'm glad you got out and didn't get hurt, you didn't have the defenses to take them on, but…"

"We need to learn to take care of ourselves," she says quietly. They all go still, watch her. "What if we were still downstairs when it happened? What then?"

Slowly, all eyes flick to Dorcas Meadowes's seat at the Slytherin table.

xx

END OF PART FOUR