A/N:
Hello everyone! As always, I hope you're all safe and well. (I'm not going to mention the election, but I hope you're happy with the results whatever they turn out to be).
Once again, I apologise for the delays in updating, but hopefully I'll have a good backlog of chapters soon as I'm doing NaNoWriMo with this story. So yay to 50k words!
Without further ado, on with the story! I hope you enjoy.
It wasn't possible. Rose just couldn't believe it. Well, maybe she could. But the very thought- It was unthinkable. Wasn't it? If what James, and to a lesser extent Sirius, was suggesting was correct, then the wizarding world was in even greater danger than they had ever thought possible. Recruiting at Hogwarts? Under Dumbledore's nose? Things were going to get very complicated for them. If Rose was understanding correctly. "Voldemort is recruiting at Hogwarts?!" Rose demanded, unable to believe her ears. An image of Voldemort posing like Uncle Sam on Death Eater recruitment posters popped into her head, and she tried not to laugh. It really wasn't the time for that. She was too furious anyway.
"Not exactly" James hedged, sharing yet another significant look with Sirius. Secretive gits. "We think-" James turned to Sirius for aid, clearly unable to phrase it in a way that would actually explain something.
"We think that he wants to recruit at Hogwarts" Sirius clarified, shooting a burning glare at James. "Given how fanatical some of the Slytherins are, he could be looking at his own little battalion in the Dungeons."
"We have to tell Dumbledore" Peter announced, speaking up for the first time since the bombshell dropped. "We owe it to him to keep him informed. We have to do-"
"Nothing" Remus interrupted firmly. "You know what Dumbledore is like about his students. We don't have enough information to go to him. We have heresay and suppositions, not hard evidence."
Rose was not in the mood to listen to this bickering. She scrubbed her hand across her face, then abruptly jumped to her feet. If this was going to go the way she thought it was, then she needed another cup of tea. It might not be quite Dutch courage, but it certainly was British fortitude. She drank a cup, listening with one ear to the bickering going on in the other room. When there was nothing but dregs remaining, she gently put the cup back in it's saucer, and retook her feet.
"What I want to know" Rose began, crossing ever so slowly back to the living room. Silence happily followed the sound of her voice. She noticed Remus tensing slightly at her cold tone, but ignored it stubbornly. Like he wasn't thinking the same thing. "Is-"
"Yes?" Sirius drawled, absolutely not helping the situation one iota.
Rose shot him a fiery glare, the dog animagus not even having the decency (as James did) to look somewhat sheepishly at the floor. She pressed on as if the interruption had never occurred. "How long did you two keep this suspicion of yours from us before you had proof?" Her hands found her hips and she cocked an eyebrow in silent demand. "Days you were out there surveilling, days! How long did you keep this secret from us? And don't lie, we can always tell."
"It's difficult to say exactly, Rosie" James hedged, shooting significant looks out of the corners of his eyes at both his co-conspirators.
Sirius, naturally, paid not the slightest bit of heed to this warning. He settled back on the couch, folded his arms across his chest and smirked just a little. "Three days."
"Three days?!" Remus' growl was exactly what Rose had known was coming, but somehow it wasn't what she needed to feel some measure of calm at the secrecy. Keeping the existence of the Order of the Phoenix a secret for a while she could just about understand (overprotective as they were), but this? This was their entire future, their safety, their fault almost. They deserved to know.
"Right, Remmy, James, Peter: take a walk."
"What?" Peter squeaked, looking from Rose to James as if James would somehow countermand the order.
James frowned suspiciously, undoubtedly having noticed the key admission in the dismissal. "Why?" he asked slowly, flickering hazel eyes towards his best friend.
"Because Sirius and I are going to have an argument, and I'm not going to have it out in front of the peanut gallery" Rose replied seriously, turning her own gaze on her own best friend. "Remmy, and I mean this with all the love in the world, get them out of my sight. Now, if you please."
"You heard the lady" Remus announced, clapping his hands a tad too cheerfully. "Let's go for an ice cream and a butterbeer in the Leaky Cauldron." With that, he ushered Peter gently but firmly to the door.
James didn't move an inch. His attention was fixed entirely on Sirius, whose expression remained as nonchalant and unaffected as ever.
"Pads?" James asked, his chivalrous nature unwilling to leave his friend if he had need of him.
Sirius gave him an easy sort of grin, calm radiating from his body. "Trust me mate, you don't want her to be angry with you too. Get out of here."
"But Pads-"
"Now, James." Sirius' tone, like his expressions, brooked no disagreement. James went.
As soon as the front door closed on James's retreating back, Rose turned away from the living room. It was as if she could feel her anger coursing along with the blood through her veins. She caught her reflection in the polished metal of the kettle, and was forced to concede that Remus was correct when he said her eyes seemed to spark when she was furious. Still, she said not a word. Her tongue would form no sound, her lips admit no syllable to pass, such was the feeling that gripped her. At the same time, some small part of her was conscious of her redheaded temper and it's tendency to make mountains out of molehills. She had always been too quick to anger, and when angry equally quick to vindictiveness and pettiness. It was a fault with her, indeed, but she had never claimed to be perfect. In her silence she tried, perhaps vainly, to attain some measure of calm, or, failing that, of control over her temper. Sirius, however, seemed disinclined to allow this to happen.
"You are angry with me." The words, delivered in Sirius' most infuriatingly calm and even tone, broke the silence that had descended since the departure of the other Marauders.
"It's no wonder everyone calls you a genius" Rose replied, words drenched in sarcasm. "Those deductive powers of yours rival Sherlock Holmes, really they do."
"I don't want to argue with you, Rosebud" Sirius announced quietly. If she was in a better, more forgiving, mood she would admit the same.
"Unfortunately, Sirius, it is too late for that" Rose replied just as softly.
"I'm not going to fight with you" Sirius rephrased, his gaze soft but stubborn and utterly unapologetic. "But" he shrugged "there's clearly something you have to say, so by all means." With that, he leant back against the back of the couch, crossed his arms and ankles, and fixed her with a patient (and utterly irritating) gaze. It ready did nothing to calm the rolling boil of her temper, but she knew Sirius was aware of that and had undoubtedly decided to provoke her. Nonetheless, if he wanted to hear it, she would happily oblige - but only because it coincided so perfectly with her own intentions in the matter. She took a few more minutes to decide where exactly to start, then took one look at the affected patience on Sirius' face and snapped.
"What in God's name happened to the 'no more secrets' promise?!" Rose demanded, hands flying through the air in vicious exclamation. "You, James, all of us, we promised that there would be no more secrets between us. And yet, here we are now discovering that you both conspired to keep another one from the rest of us, and then dragged poor Peter into your conspiracy as well!" Rose paced back and forth through the kitchen, glad at both the fact that Sirius had the good sense to stay in the living room, and at the knowledge that she'd left her wand in her room and thus would not be tempted into doing anything that she would definitely come to bitterly regret. As it was, she couldn't entirely trust that her temper would'nt betray her and make her say something in the heat of the moment (which this certainly was) that she would regret. "How can you expect us to be equals when you keep things from us like we are children? How can you expect me to trust you?" This last question Rose whispered at a volume barely audible to her own ears, but she knew Sirius had heard it. That, at last, managed to break through the Godric-damned unflappable calm Sirius had been projecting. He flinched, a faint flicker of pain crossing his warm grey eyes.
Sirius, when he managed to speak, sounded sad but certain. "You can trust me. You can always trust me."
"Can I?" Rose wondered aloud, carding a distracted hand through her hair. "Maybe. I don't know." Her anger rapidly seemed to be replaced with confusion, she hated the way it settled heavy in her stomach. It really didn't help that Sirius was looking at her with that bloody understanding gaze. Unbidden, she remembered his birthday and the subsequent weeks in the hospital wing, and swallowed down bile. "Of course I can trust you" she whispered, struck by a different, more horrible thought. "Do you trust us?"
Sirius, wisely, didn't ask her how she could ask him that, but did fix her with a glare that spoke volumes on his disbelief in her intelligence for the question. "After all we've been through, I think it's obvious that we trust you."
"You can't say you trust us and then keep things from us! That isn't trust, Sirius! We're supposed to be equals for Godric's sake!" She shook her head, dashing away an angry tear with the palm of her hand. "I haven't seen much evidence of that lately."
Sirius took a step towards her. That first tentative step towards bridging the literal and emotional distance now between them. In his eyes she could see how much he hated this argument; hated that he caused it, hated that it was happening, hated that it hurt her (he was always, always far too good for her). "Rosebud-"
"If you don't want to fight with me, Sirius, for Godric's sake explain yourself!"
"Will you let me explain without interrupting until I'm finished?" Sirius asked, a wry quirk to his mouth.
"I suppose that's fair" Rose conceded, sitting down at the kitchen table as if to say 'go ahead'. Sirius stared at her and seemed to judge that it was safe for him to take a seat at the kitchen table. He poured the last of the tea into their cups and swirled his around, as if searching for the right words within the liquid.
"The day after Moony's birthday, we (James and I) followed Travers back from the Dagger. He was about one drink away from being pissed as a newt; loose-tongued and even more stupid than usual. He met up with Higgs - who was similarly inebriated - and they slipped into an alley off Knockturn to share the remains of a bottle of Ogden's. Unfortunately, they can't hold their liquor, so we didn't get much sense out of the babble they were spouting. We managed to hear something about Hogwarts, but it was so slurred it was all but unintelligible."
Rose inclined her head, silently conceding Sirius' point that they didn't have enough information to worry them on that first night.
Sirius managed an odd flicker of a smile, leaning back a little in his seat as he continued. "The next day, we followed Travers again, managing to catch him sober, and while he was meeting with Higgs and Reginald Aubrey (Bertram Aubrey's older brother, if you remember him)."
Once again, Rose inclined her head. As a matter of fact, she did remember Reginald - smart and ambitious in the way that only a Slytherin could be, last she heard (eavesdropping on the Snakes was an invaluable source of information) he had managed to work his way into a position at the Ministry - Department of International Magical Cooperation, if she wasn't much mistaken.
"They started talking about how Higgs and Aubrey still had siblings at Hogwarts, and given the approaching spring holidays, it might be a good idea to set the plan in motion while the Snakes were at home and malleable." He frowned apologetically, Rose internally bracing for something she knew she wasn't going to like hearing. "This morning, James and I decided to risk entering the Dagger under the cloak. We told Pete, after making him solemnly swear he'd keep his trap shut, what we were intending, so we would at least have some back up eventually. Prongs and I are both of pure blood" Rose noted the way his mouth twisted in disgust as he said so. "So we were able to slip past the ward with no one any the wiser. Prongs managed to get us in position to eavesdrop on a private room. Malfoy was in there, talking about how inconvenient it was that we were in Hogsmeade when Bella attacked, and how 'the Dark Lord' had decided it was about time they evened the playing field. It wasn't specific, nothing confirmed, but he said that Voldemort wanted three of them for every one of us." Sirius cleared his throat as if that would vanish the bitterness from his tone. He tried on a smile and gave his voice a levity that didn't reach his eyes, guilt weighing heavy in the moment. "That's when we came back to tell you lot, and got the Spanish Inquisition."
"Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" Rose offered weakly, still trying to process what he had told her. There wasn't really an explanation on the face of his words, but knowing him as well as she did, she understood. Mischief makers though they were, they also had the propensity to go guilt tripping into the next galaxy when the mood took them. James and Sirius were protecting them again, and they would never really stop.
"I can't change who I am, Rosebud" Sirius murmured, his tone saying all his words couldn't. "I'm always going to try and protect you, and you're always going to fight me on it. It's who we are." And that was a truth that Rose couldn't deny.
"I hate it when you keep things from us" Rose announced, utterly seriously. "I hate it, Sirius. So I'm going to suggest a new Marauder-wide rule." Sirius raised an eyebrow, curious but not outwardly expressive. "If it's time sensitive, you tell us immediately - no matter if you think you're protecting us or not. We are all in this together, so we all have the right to know. Otherwise, if it's something you need to investigate first, and we have the time to wait, you have three days to do that and tell us - no more, understood?"
Sirius glanced at the door, appeared to weigh up the consequences of agreeing to this without the others, then nodded once. His eyes, when they met hers, were filled with that intensity she knew too well. "I solemnly swear."
"Well, okay then" she grinned, taking the unbreakable promise as the end of their argument. She caught Sirius' hand and pressed a kiss to the knuckles.
Sirius followed her actions with a rather bemused smile. "There's nobody in the world like you, Rosebud, and I truly don't understand you sometimes."
"Well that's good" she smirked. "I'd hate to be predictable."
"Anything but, sweetheart" Sirius agreed, still somewhat bemused. "Anything but."
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