Previously in the Darklyverse: Kingsley helped Alice cope during Azkaban. With Lily stuck recovering in Zoudiams, the Order petitioned Canada for political asylum. Following the Order's first raids since their imprisonment, the Order captured several Death Eaters and rescued Dirk Cresswell and a family of Muggles.

xx

December 8th, 1982: Alice Abbott

Wizarding law is a tricky thing. It's like Colloportus: you can charm a door not to let anybody through, but anyone who knows Alohamora can just as easily reverse the lock. Certain laws are magically binding, but as long as you know the countercharm, you don't have to follow the law. People who do abide by laws generally aren't doing it because they've been forced to: adhering to a law is like respecting that the person who locked the door doesn't want you to come through it, even if you know how to unlock it.

If Lily gets asylum in Canada—if they all get asylum in Canada—it won't just be a symbol: it'll be a magically-binding contract by which no agent, contractor, or bounty hunter from any foreign government will be able to kill them or remove them from the country. Asylum, however, can be undone just like any other spell. The question is whether the Death Eaters will be willing to go so far as to find the loophole they'll need to be able to violate international law just so they can murder or imprison what's left of the Order.

The biggest problem Alice foresees with the asylum plan is that it wouldn't go down quietly like the Fidelius Charms have: the Canadian Ministry would make its intentions publicly known, including to the British Ministry and, subsequently, the Death Eaters. Sure, she's hated being trapped in Grimmauld Place for the last two months, just like she's sure Lily and James loathed having their growing family stuck in Godric's Hollow for literally over a year—but at least this way their safety has been guaranteed as long as they stay put. If they leave the country, and the Death Eaters figure out a loophole to the asylum, all bets are off.

But they didn't have a choice: Lily would certainly have died if Kreacher hadn't taken her to Zoudiams, and now that she's there, asylum is probably her only legal way of staying out of Wizarding British custody. Plus, even if it's technically safer to stay at Grimmauld Place, the Order can accomplish a lot more if they loop someone like the Canadian Ministry in on what's happening on the ground in Britain. After all, Alice knows just as well as anyone that, if the Order tries to make guerrilla attacks all by themselves, they're going to get picked off one by one in a matter of weeks, and then who will be left to save Britain?

This isn't to say that Alice doesn't have her apprehensions about involving foreign governments in the war. What Britain really needs from the outside is a safe place to evacuate refugees like Dirk, but the Order isn't inside the Canadian Ministry and can't control what measures they're going to take if they decide to involve themselves in a war that isn't theirs. Besides, Canadian witches and wizards are pissed about Runcorn embezzling the funds they gave them that were supposed to bolster the war effort: if and when they find out that Death Eaters have taken control of the British Ministry, there's no telling how ruthless of actions they're going to want to take against them.

But what else is the Order supposed to do? The Death Eaters have backed them into a corner, and they've got no means of educating the British public about what's really going on in their country. At a certain point, all they can do is accept that they need help and try to find some.

Alice desperately wishes she could Apparate to Zoudiams, where Lily's got to be going out of her mind for want of any connection to the Order. She and Alice haven't been close in a long time—maybe they never really were close to begin with—but Lily's still supposed to be one of Alice's best friends, and Alice doesn't like the thought of Lily being stuck in there with no information and no one to let her know they haven't forgotten about her.

In the meantime, raids have ground to a halt without a Healer on hand in case anybody gets injured. If only Lily had stayed behind, then she wouldn't be in this mess right now. Then again, if Lily had stayed behind, three more Muggles could have died last week. Dirk could have died last week.

Alice still hasn't had Remus loop Dirk into the Fidelius Charm protecting her in order to allow them to talk. Quite frankly, she doesn't know what she's supposed to say to Dirk. He never wanted her to be a vigilante, never approved—but he's got to be grateful for the Order now that they've quite literally saved his life. Then again, despite her history with him, Alice wasn't one of the ones to rescue him. Does he resent her for not saving him, or does he still wish she'd never tried to save anybody at all?

Sometimes, when the weight of everything and everyone she's lost comes crashing down around her, Alice wishes she'd heeded Dirk's warnings when she was at Hogwarts—that she'd gotten out of her friend group of Gryffindors and stuck with the people and the lifestyle that would have kept her safe from Death Eaters. But it's way, way too late for that now.

"Auntie Alice?"

Alice's attention snaps back to Harry, who's sucking on his thumb as he anxiously looks up at her. Right. With Lily at Zoudiams, Alice has been helping Sirius and Remus take care of Harry; it hurts to help, but it gets easier every time Alice reminds herself that, if they do get asylum in Canada, Augusta will be able to bring Neville back to her and Frank. Maybe, now that they're on better terms—now that Alice has started to sort out some of the mess inside her that rendered her unable to be a good mother before—Frank will even agree to joint custody.

"Hey, kiddo. I'm sorry—Auntie Alice is just a little distracted, that's all. Are you ready for a snack? Here, let's go down to the kitchen and get you a snack."

When they make it down the staircase and cut through the living room, they pass Sturgis, Kingsley, and Reg, who are buried in conversation but fall abruptly silent when Alice and Harry pass them. This isn't anything out of the ordinary: most of what the Order's got to talk to each other about isn't really appropriate for a two-year-old's ears. To her surprise, however, Kingsley jumps up and says, "Hi, buddy! Al, would you like a hand with him for a while?"

"Sure, thanks. We were just getting Harry here a snack, weren't we, Harry?"

Alice has spent plenty of time with Kingsley since getting out of Azkaban—it's hard to avoid anybody when most of them spend most of their time on the main floor of the house—but Alice still feels like she, well, hasn't spent enough time with him. Kingsley played a big part in comforting Alice while they were imprisoned, and while they've talked plenty since coming to Grimmauld Place, they haven't really spent enough time together one-on-one for Alice to thank him properly for that.

She gets her chance half an hour later, when Sirius transforms into Padfoot and he and Remus take Harry off Alice's and Kingsley's hands. "Can I talk to you in private really quickly?" Alice asks Kingsley.

It's sort of ridiculous how nervously her heart is hammering just at the prospect of making this request, but Kingsley, of course, is unfazed. "Yeah, of course. Let's go up to your room?"

En route, they brush past Mundungus and Snape in the stairwell. Mundungus greets them cheerfully enough, but Snape keeps his head down and curls his lips in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Alice pushes down the twin surges of guilt and confusion that she always feels when she runs into Snape these days. His life choices, his history with Dark Magic and the Death Eaters, and some of the things Lily says he's said to her over the years still sicken Alice, but he did give everything up to save Lily's family—or to try to, anyway.

Up in Alice's room, Alice's and Kingsley's hands brush accidentally as they take their seats on top of her bed. She just barely shivers, hoping that Kingsley hasn't noticed this. "I just, er—I just wanted to say thank you for what you did for me in Azkaban. I was really messed up in there, and, um…"

Kingsley's eyes twinkle. "That's all? Alice, you've said 'thank you' half a dozen times to me in the last couple of months."

And that's true, but—it just doesn't feel like enough. She feels like herself again, finally, but for a long time, she didn't, and Kingsley was the one who was there for her through it, even though he was in dementor hell right along with her. It's like they're bonded somehow, and Alice feels like nothing she's done since getting out of there has been enough to show him how grateful she is—what he's come to mean to her.

"I know," she finally says, "but I just… you matter to me, Kingsley. You saved me."

"I didn't do much," he shrugs. "I wasn't the one who got us out of there. I couldn't even keep you… well…"

"Sane?"

He colors. "Yeah."

"Maybe not, but because of you, I wasn't alone. It would have been much, much worse if I'd been alone in there. I just don't know how to…"

Kingsley hesitates before saying, "Alice, you… know you don't owe me anything, right?"

"I know. It's not that. I just…"

It's not until that exact moment that Alice recognizes the rush of blood to her head when she looks at Kingsley for what it might actually be. When she does, her jaw nearly drops to the floor. She hasn't even considered the possibility of ever seeing anybody else ever again, not since realizing a divorce was in the cards for her, and she doesn't—she's not—

"You know," says Kingsley now, and Alice panics at first because she's not ready for anything yet, not when she's barely had seconds to sort out how she feels—but then he continues, "if we get asylum in Canada, we're probably all going to have to find roommates. I think their Ministry would provide us with housing—at least at first, unless or until we're able to find jobs—but it might be pressing our luck for each of us to ask for our own rent-free flat."

"Are you—are you asking me to live with you after we leave this house?" asks Alice a little hysterically.

"Well, not just me. I was talking to Sturgis and Reg about it last night, and we all agreed we'd be happy to have you if—if you're interested."

"Really? If we're all going to be grouping off, I would have thought Frank would have called dibs on Sturgis."

Kingsley grins. "I don't think Sturgis would be too keen on living with a kid, and moving in with Frank would also mean moving in with Neville."

Oh. That makes sense. But—"It's just… er… you have to promise not to say anything to anybody if I tell you what I'm about to tell you—"

"What? I—sure. Of course."

"Right. I, um—I haven't yet, but I wanted to talk to Frank about… about keeping joint custody of Neville if we ever get him back. I was thinking it might make more sense for me to live with Lily—that way, Neville would have a friend to play with whenever he's with me."

"Sounds reasonable." Kingsley does a great job of masking the disappointment in his voice, but Alice is sure it's buried there somewhere.

"But—nothing's set in stone yet. I don't even know if Lily would want us to room with her and Harry. Either way, I appreciate you asking. Your friendship means a lot to me, Kingsley. And—it's not just that. It's more than that. I'm just not… ready."

Kingsley looks thrown by this. "I thought—but you and Frank—"

Alice snorts. "There's nothing going on between me and Frank anymore, and I don't think either of us wants there to be. Trust me on that. I'll always love him, but… I don't love him like that anymore, and I think I hurt him too badly for him to ever trust me in that way again."

"Right." Kingsley clears his throat. "I don't… I just don't want you to feel like I'm pressuring you into anything. If all we can ever be is friends—"

"I don't feel pushed, I promise. Just… give me a little time, okay? Just so I can make sense of everything."

"Yeah. Yeah, absolutely."

xx

There's no point putting it off any longer, so before the meeting that night, she takes Frank aside and asks him about custody of Neville. To her surprise, he's relatively amenable to the idea. "I'm open to that. I mean, I don't want to keep him from you or—or to hoard him," Frank says quickly. "It's just—do you feel ready? Because I know you left because you didn't feel ready, and Azkaban can't have made that any easier—"

"If Azkaban did one thing, it's that it made me realize how important our family is to us. You'll always be my family because we'll always be connected through Neville, and—I want to be connected to both of you. I'm tired of running from people. As long as I don't get chucked in with any more dementors anytime soon, I'm up to it. I swear."

Frank chuckles. "Fair enough. We should—"

But just then, Sirius calls the meeting to order; Alice hastens to lead Frank into the dining room, where she grabs the open seat between Moody and Arabella. Politically, the Order is pretty divided these days, with one camp led by Sirius (and, up until her hospitalization, Lily) and the other by Reg. Unlike Sirius, Reg doesn't seem to want the responsibility of leadership—but people, Alice included, are inevitably going to look up to him for his role in getting them all out of Azkaban, and he's become the symbol of the anti-assassination movement whether he wants it or not.

Honestly, it's a miracle that they're all still getting along socially, or at least that all of them besides Snape are. With how they go at each other's throats during meetings, it would be so easy for the fighting to carry over to the rest of their time cooped up in this house together.

"As you've probably all figured out by now, there's no update on the asylum situation," Sirius begins. "The Canadian Ministry said it would take at least two to three weeks for them to come to a decision, and it hasn't even been a week yet. When we hit the two-week mark, we'll start sending Kreacher out every few days to check for updates, since, thanks to the anti-owl spell we managed to get from Pettigrew, they'll otherwise have no way of notifying us of their progress. In the meantime, though—we've got to figure out what to do about the prisoners in the attic."

"And Dirk and the Muggles," pipes up Sturgis.

"Well, that's easier—there's nothing stopping them from up and moving to Canada just like Lily, James, and Harry did last year," Reg points out. "The transition will be smoother, of course, if the Canadian Ministry is on board and willing to officially take them in as refugees—help them find housing and, for Dirk, employment—but even if they deny us asylum, they'll most likely agree to help the others."

"Even if they don't," Sirius adds, "they probably can't go back to Britain, not yet. This isn't like it was a few years ago, when people we broke free of the Imperius Curse or whom we took care of on raids could just go on their way when we were done with them. The Death Eaters have taken the Ministry, and they're getting bolder."

"So the prisoners," says Moody, "are we talking just the three from last week or Pettigrew, too?"

"Well, that depends on what we want to do with them, doesn't it?" drawls Snape. "I'm still all in favor of killing all four of them, but—"

"Harsh," snickers Sturgis, "considering three of the four used to be your best pals."

Andromeda cuts in, "We need to be practical about this. If we kill four people in cold blood, even if they're Death Eaters, that's not exactly going to reflect favorably on us in the eyes of the Canadian Ministry when they're deciding whether to grant us asylum."

"Does the Ministry have any way of finding out we've killed them, I mean, if we do kill them?" says Frank. "For all they know, we don't even have any prisoners."

"The British Ministry will realize it was us. Who else could it be?" Alice retorts. "Not that we're expecting the Death Eaters to try to work diplomatically with Canada, but if we give them any leverage over us—"

Ted interrupts, "I still don't see why we can't just Obliviate the lot of all their memories and Side-Along-Apparate them to a field somewhere. If they don't remember that they're Death Eaters or even that they can do magic—"

"We don't have that right," growls Moody. "There's a whole faction of people who think Obliviate ought to be an Unforgivable Curse, and—"

"Never mind the ethics of tampering with people's memories," Sturgis says. "Who's to say they won't still be evil even if they forget there's a war going on? They may not know that they're Death Eaters anymore, but they could still become murderers or rapists or—"

"Peter wouldn't." Reg says this quietly, but the muttering that's broken out around the room draws to a grinding halt as soon as he does; all eyes flicker to him. "Peter only went dark because he was pushed. If we gave him a second chance—"

"Let me get this straight," says Molly. "You're saying you agree with wiping them of their memories?"

"Well, does anybody have an idea that doesn't involve Obliviating or murdering them? We can't hand them over to the British Ministry, and no other government would be able to prosecute them, not when their crimes didn't cross international borders."

Silence rings out around them. For not the first time—not even close to it—Alice wishes Dumbledore were here to tell them all what to do, even if Alice doesn't agree with handing that much power to just one person.

"We'll put it to a vote," Sirius decides.

"Yeah, but plenty of people aren't happy with either option, from the sounds of it," Reg sighs. "It won't hurt us to hang onto them for another couple of weeks, at least until the asylum point is decided. We should at least include that as a choice."

Sirius scowls. "Fine. We'll vote on Lestrange, Carrow, and Rookwood first. Those in favor of killing them?"

His own hand goes up, along with Snape's, Sturgis's, and Frank's.

"Those in favor of Obliviating?"

Kingsley, Reg, Ted, Andromeda, and (to Alice's surprise) McGonagall all raise their hands. After a moment's consideration, Alice puts her own hand up, too.

"And those in favor of waiting?"

Remus, Moody, Arthur, Molly, Mundungus, Arabella, and Hagrid put up their hands. Remus, Alice notices, is staring fixedly at the dining room table and not at Sirius.

"This is bullshit," Sturgis mutters. "We can't just avoid dealing with any of our problems and wait around hoping that the Canadian Ministry will fix everything for us."

"I know," says Reg softly, "but we voted. We've worked very hard to make this organization a democracy."

Sturgis rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

So that's it, Alice realizes. She knows she voted in favor of inaction when it was about whether Vector should involve kids at Hogwarts or whether the Order should be going on raids, but she's starting to feel awfully cornered—like there's no way out of this war they've plunged themselves into.