Previously in the Darklyverse: Hogwarts locked down in fear of Death Eater retaliation after Vicky leaked Canadian newspapers to the student body. The Order began kidnapping Aurors in order to protect Canadian officials. Peter obtained visitation rights.
xx
January 29th, 1983: Alice Abbott
This isn't sustainable, Alice tells herself for the billionth time in the last couple of days. It's a numbers game: there may not be many more Aurors than there are vigilantes, but once they've imprisoned all the Aurors—if their plan succeeds, that is—Malfoy will just send Hit Wizards and Obliviators and others from the British Ministry to replace them. The Order can't take the entire British Ministry captive; their flats are already bursting at the seams with prisoners.
Besides, one of these days, Canada is going to figure out what the Order is doing and come try to murder all the Order's prisoners themselves. So far, the Order has managed to escape Canada's notice by only making captures while protecting Canadian Ministry officials in their homes at night, when the Canadians have got no idea that battles are raging outside their homes as they sleep. It's meant that the Order can't protect them during the day, but that's just as well: Canada has made it clear that it doesn't want the Order's help. Hell, Alice wouldn't be surprised if half the Canadian Ministry were itching for an excuse to lock up everyone in the Order themselves, asylum be damned. It's not like most of the country doesn't think the Order is working with the Death Eaters or anything.
Since Frank and Dirk's flat has been overtaken by Aurors, Alice and Lily have got Neville to themselves full-time, at least for now—which means that Frank has to come over to their place anytime he wants to spend time with his son. In a way, Alice is glad for it. She had plenty of time at Grimmauld Place to get used to being around Frank, and this way, she doesn't have to bump into Dirk when she and Frank trade Neville between themselves. Alice hasn't seen much of Dirk since they moved to Canada; when she has, their interactions have been stilted and awkward.
Right now, Frank is in the living room playing with Neville and Harry, leaving Alice and Lily to sit together in the kitchen and sip tea as if all of this is normal, which Alice supposes it is now, really. As horrifying of a thing this war is to get used to, she's used to it. "Bad news from Vicky yesterday," Lily informs Alice, stirring her spoon around and around her mug. "She leaked some Canadian papers to the student body, and now Hogwarts is locking down. Sprout's afraid that the British Ministry will find out and take it out on the students and staff."
"Damn."
"I know. I understand the impulse, but as if we didn't already have enough people against us…"
Alice purses her lips. "It's not such a bad thing in the long run, though, is it? I mean, think about it. The more people in Britain know what's really going on, the more likely they are to be on our side if Malfoy's administration falls and needs to be replaced, and—"
Lily interrupts, "You're thinking about us taking over the government? With everything going on—all the lives we're trying to save—that's where your priorities are?"
"I know it's awful," sighs Alice. "I know that. But we can't just devastate the British Ministry and leave them all in the lurch when this is over. You should know—you're the closest thing we have to a politician."
"The whole reason I wanted to be Minister was that I didn't want to be that kind of politician," Lily mutters.
But honestly, Alice thinks Lily is being rather naive here. Somebody's got to be thinking about what comes after all this. If Britain wins the war against Canada, it's going to be bad news for the Canadians, for the Muggles and Muggle-borns across the ocean—and for the whole damn wizarding community, if Malfoy does what he threatens and egregiously breaks down the Statute of Secrecy. Alice doesn't know what they're going to do if any of that comes to pass. But if Canada wins, what's going to happen to Britain? Will Canada install its own people in the British Ministry? Colonize Britain? Based on what Alice knows of Muggle history, that would be ironic—and, more importantly, she doesn't trust any Canadians who might try to rule Britain as far as she can throw them.
On the other hand, how could the Order possibly be the ones to take over Britain if Britain loses? For all they know, even if Malfoy falls, Canada could remain at war with a Britain controlled by the Order—could insist on prolonging the fighting until it takes over the island. The Canadian Ministry doesn't exactly trust the Order. Besides, the Order probably has no legitimacy left with Wizarding Britain: who's to say the Order could seize the British Ministry without facing uprisings from British witches and wizards?
Sometimes, Alice wishes she were still a schoolgirl, preferably before sixth year—before Voldemort really had taken hold of the country, before she was a vigilante, before the fate of her country was in her hands. Everything was so much simpler when she was fifteen. Then again, if Alice were fifteen again, she wouldn't have Neville, and she'd still be a prejudiced arse, even if she hadn't realized it at the time.
xx
Remus turns her down when she asks him to go with her to visit Peter again. She's not exactly surprised: he'd felt conflicted to begin with the first time they went together, and she knows he's facing pressure from Sirius to turn Peter away. For her part, Alice doesn't know why she won't turn him away. He deserves to rot away alone and miserable. Marlene might still be alive if it weren't for him.
It's just—she knows Peter, and she knows he would never go dark or betray his friends without a very compelling reason, even if he didn't have a good one. He's spent all these months in captivity just wasting away—in Canada, in Azkaban, even at the Order's own hands in Grimmauld Place—and he's taken it without complaint, even handed himself over to the authorities in order to do his penance for his crimes. When he wanted to mourn James, they turned him away. When he tried to bloody kill himself in that attic, they still didn't show him even one whit of humanity.
Alice doesn't know if she'll ever understand exactly why Peter did what he did, but she does know she doesn't want him to still be locked in indefinite detention the day he dies. Trouble is, this isn't Grimmauld Place anymore: it's not up to the Order what happens to Peter (or to Snape, for that matter), and after the Order's successful breakout from Azkaban, the Canadians are going to be extra wary of any measures Alice might try to take to cut him or Snape free.
So she goes alone to see him that Saturday evening. Like last time, it takes a while for them to bring her, then him, into the visitation room; she's guessing that getting Peter some company in lockup isn't exactly at the top of the Canadian Ministry's to-do list. While she waits, she sits there folding her hands over and over themselves in her lap and worrying—about Peter, about Britain, about what's going to happen to Frank and Neville when all this is over.
Finally, a couple of guards escort Peter into the room. He looks thinner than he did last time Alice was here, which wasn't even that long ago, and she wonders how much they're feeding him and Snape in here. "Alice," he says, his face positively lighting up, and he hurries forward and takes a seat opposite her. "How are you? How are our friends? What's going on out there?"
"I'm okay. They're okay. There haven't been any more Order casualties, but…"
Alice hesitates, mindful of the guard who's still hovering in the doorway and fully aware that there are probably others listening in on this conversation. She can't tell Peter in front of them that the Order has been secretly defending Canadian Ministry officials as they sleep—that they've been taking British Aurors prisoner in their own flats in a desperate effort to cut their losses—and she definitely can't tell Peter in front of them that Narcissa is planning on taking the whole Malfoy administration down behind Canada's back. In here, she can't tell Peter much of anything.
He looks at her eagerly, like he's going to cling to every last morsel of information she can give him about anything happening outside these walls, and she says, "Lily and I moved in together."
She's pretty sure Peter wasn't expecting that to be the first thing to come out of her mouth, but he takes it in stride. "You and Lily?"
"And Harry and Neville—well, Neville is with us half the time, anyway. Frank and I are sharing custody. The other half of the time, Neville is with him and Dirk."
"Dirk Cresswell? That's a little weird, Al, even for Dirk, that he's raising your son with your ex-husband."
"I know," Alice laughs. "It's like one big club for Alice Abbott's exes. I think it's working out okay, though? I don't talk to Dirk much, but Frank and I see each other around a lot because of Neville and because of—" Right. She's not supposed to be talking about Order meetings in front of the Canadians. She clears her throat and continues, "Anyway, Frank says it's going fine over there. It might be a little sad for Dirk—Frank says he always wanted kids of his own—but Neville is giving him a trial run."
"How much is Neville talking now?"
"Just one or two words at a time. His vocabulary's getting bigger, but he's not as far along as Harry, even though their birthdays are one day apart. I just want… I'm trying to be careful, you know? I want to encourage him and praise him when he does well, but even if he's a little behind, I don't want to put pressure on him to live up to some standard that Harry sets. I don't want him to think I won't love him if he isn't perfect."
"Did you ever feel that way when we were kids?" asks Peter. "Like nobody would love you if you weren't perfect? I know I did—until I came to Hogwarts, anyway."
This surprises Alice: Peter was one of her best friends, sure, but they never talked one-on-one enough to have any deep conversations about their emotional setbacks. "Yeah, I did feel that way," she admits. "I love my parents, but they… they were only ever happy with me if I met their expectations. I felt like I had to keep meeting them, like if I let them down even once… I mean, it was hard when Lily made Head Girl over me. They didn't come right out and tell me I was a disappointment to them, but they may as well have."
"And now you share a flat with her."
"And now I share a flat with her. Honestly, it's a miracle we get along as well as we do. She was off on her own with Snape the first five years we shared a dormitory, and everybody knows we were kind of rivals at school, although I—think I kind of condescended her at first. I didn't take the threat of her seriously. I regret that."
"Well, you weren't supposed to be threats to each other at all, were you?" Peter says. "Rivalries are so… we should be helping each other, not tearing each other down. James always went out of his way to help me in Transfiguration and stuff, even though he didn't have to."
It's a little rich of Peter to be preaching to Alice about healthy relationships, considering everything he's done, but surprisingly, she doesn't mind it. It's actually kind of nice, shooting the shit with Peter as if there's not a war going on out there and they can just be twenty-somethings trying to find their way in the world for a moment.
"I'm sorry you weren't at James's memorial," she says quietly. "I know it was important to you to—to honor him."
"'S fine," Peter dismisses. "I got what I deserved, right? I made some really terrible choices, and now I have to own up to them."
But Alice—looking at Peter right now, Alice isn't sure that he made those choices consciously. She doesn't think he sat down one day and decided he was going to sabotage the Order and get his friends killed. She thinks it's a little like her marriage to Frank, like Peter just—got in too deep, like things cascaded when he wasn't looking before he could stop them.
She hopes this war is over soon. She hopes Britain survives it, and she hopes there's enough of her left at the end of it to do something for the boy she used to call one of her best friends—to get him out.