Eight Found Dead After a Meeting Gone Wrong
The headline popped out at Alice, her stomach turning. More than a meeting, it had been a group of muggle-borns. They'd gathered together in a sort of support group. Alice had been one of the first on the scene. She'd walked into the room,similar to a small conference hall - a long table with chairs surrounding it. There'd been a tray of tea and scones.
It had looked cosy. Alice was certain that every other Sunday they had gathered it had ended cheerfully. Not this time, though. Beyond the warm tones coming in through the window and the smell of fresh coffee there was chaos everywhere. Eight bodies were strewn around the room, dead. Tortured. Left as though they were nothing more than a plaything.
"We just talk," the woman Alice interviewed had stuttered. "We just t-try to help each other out. It has been b-b-bad for anyone who is muggle born. We were s-s-supposed to b-b-be a support system."
Alice couldn't help but feel bad as she watched the woman's hands shake, her eyes drifting over her shoulder every once in awhile, watching as a group of Aurors covered one of the bodies with a blanket when they'd finished examining it.
"We're going to need your help identifying them," Alice had to tell her. She was one of the last three of the group left standing.
Sometimes Alice hated her job. She woke up in the morning and found it difficult to peel herself from bed when she knew that the only thing waiting for her at work was another disaster. She hated the look on people's faces as their loved ones were pulled away and she hated more the fact that she'd grown numb to the constant news of death that surrounded her.
"Planning to go home anytime soon, Longbottom?"
Alice looked up from her desk to find Dorcas looming over her shoulder, her bag already in her hand, ready to go. Time had seemed to slip away carelessly and Alice had barely noticed the clock turn to eleven – the rest of the office long gone.
"I lost track of time," she admitted, running her fingers through her short hair.
"Focusing on it doesn't help anyone." Dorcas looked down at the newspaper cover Alice had been fixated on. She reached out a hand, snatching it away. "You can't save them."
"What about the ones who haven't died yet? Can we save those ones?" Alice felt herself growing more cynical by the day.
Dorcas gave her a long stare before sighing, pulling up a chair from the desk across from them.
"It's a hard job," she admitted. "You don't think about all the failures when you sign up. You just let your head get fat with the idea of being some kind of hero. You imagine all the lives you'll save and the bad guys you'll defeat. Sometimes it's just really bloody exhausting."
Dorcas leant back in her chair, her lips drawn in a tight line. "I know how it feels," she promised Alice. "Your first year is the hardest, but this-" she motioned to the paper, "-is not how you feel better."
"Yeah, well, nothing else is working," Alice complained, rubbing at her aching forehead.
"Why don't you start by going home and giving that handsome husband of yours a visit?"
Alice laughed at the suggestion. She might have found the idea enticing if Augusta Longbottom hadn't become Frank's full-time nurse while he recovered from his injuries. He was off work for two weeks and Augusta had decided it best for her to move in to make sure he was never alone and that Alice never wanted to go home.
"Oh, come on," Dorcas urged her. "I'm sure he's dying to see a someone other than his mother."
"Oh, I'm sure he is," Alice agreed, finally lifting herself from her chair. She put her things into her bag, tossing it over her shoulder before flicking off the desk lamp. "It would be nice if she just came by for the day," she complained, Dorcas leading the way from the office.
"That's the way it goes with in-laws, my friend."
"Just be glad you haven't had to deal with it yet," Alice grumbled.
Lily opened her mother's closet door timidly. She sighed with disappointment as she stared into a dark abyss of hangers and clothes. She didn't know what she'd expected, perhaps some sort of great surprise to lift her spirits and help her forget what it was she needed to do.
Two weeks now she'd been living in her family home alone. Well, alone wasn't exactly an honest statement. She'd spent only a handful of days in the house alone – mostly spending her nights with James to avoid the way she felt when she closed her front door and was all by herself.
She felt each time as though she should expect some kind of bustle from inside. Her mother whipping up dinner in the kitchen, her sister watching TV much too loud. It was all gone now, just like the family she'd been raised to think she'd have forever.
Lily began the tedious process of packing up her mother's clothes, folding and layering them in a tall cardboard box. It was hard not to tear up as she remembered seeing her mother in all the outfits she put away for charity. The purple dress she'd worn one Christmas as the family had sat around the table, her father carving the perfectly browned turkey in the middle of the table. The blouse Lily recalled her wearing frequently – one of her favourites. Her nurse uniform.
Lily felt wrong leaving the hangers in the closet bare and the racks empty. She felt like her mother would come home any day, show up and wonder where all her things had gone. Why was her room bare? Why on Earth had Lily sold the house to some strangers?
Lily had sat down only a few days ago with her mother's lawyer and Petunia to discuss the will.
"The mortgage for the home has been paid in full by your parents. So, she leaves the house for the two of you," the man wearing a stuffy business suit had informed them from across the table.
"I don't want it." Petunia had shrugged. She turned her head away, eyes facing out the rain stained window that looking down upon a busy London street.
"No." Lily had nodded, remaining very formal. "We'll sell it, split the profits. That's what they'd want. They'd want to give it to another family, let someone else be happy in it."
"Fine," Petunia agreed, as though numb to everything happening around her.
Lily hadn't been, though. She'd felt everything with great intensity. It felt now that her mother was gone she missed her father the way she had when he'd first died. She carried the grief of two dead parents, her heart heavy and her eyes tired – always.
After nearly an hour of removing clothes, folding them up, and tucking them away into boxes, Lily noticed the garment bag in the back of her mother's closet.
She pulled it out and laid the bag on the bed so she could unzip it. Her mother's wedding dress lay inside. Lily remembered it from all the pictures she'd seen – and the countless descriptions her father had given her of it – but it had been years since her mother had allowed her to pull it from the closet and gawk at it.
"It's like a princess dress!" Lily had squealed, staring at the large skirted and sparkly number that her mother had hung on the back of the bedroom door for her to adore.
Just eight, she could hardly wait for the day she got to slip into a big white dress just like the one before her. To have her dad walk her down the aisle and cry the way her mother described Lily's grandfather crying.
"That's the idea," her mother smiled, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Everyone gets to feel like a princess sometimes."
"I can't wait till it's my turn!" Lily exclaimed, doing a little twirl before rushing into her mother's arms.
"Oh, I can." Her mother laughed. "You won't be getting a turn for a long time." Lily pulled away from their embrace, pouting.
"Are you sure I'll get a chance, mummy?" Lily worried. Her nose was crinkled with concern as she thought hard about the prospect of her big day.
"I'm certain you'll get the chance, Lil," her mother promised, stroking her hair comfortingly. "You'll look just as beautiful as I did, probably more so." Lily lit up at the prospect of that. "And your father and I will be standing right beside you, proud as can be."
Lily smiled widely, turning around to face her mother's wedding dress once more. "I want to wear your dress when I get married," Lily announced. "So I can look just as pretty as you did."
Her mother wrapped her arms around Lily from behind, pulling her back in for a tight hug. "I think that can be arranged," she whispered into her daughter's ear.
Marlene and Emmeline had decided to give the training room in the Auror office a visit for the afternoon. Moody had given the Order members permission to use it for practice as they all needed to be in top shape to spend their days chasing down Death Eaters.
Marlene wore a pair of heavy red boxing gloves, ramming her fists into a punching bag at high speed. She'd been working out as often as possible since the Healers had given her the okay to return to physical activity. After the attack she'd encountered in Paris she hadn't felt like she was up to her full strength.
She could tell the people around her were concerned about how hard she was pushing her body. She knew sometimes she was meant to slow down when she couldn't, not as the war ramped up around them and people went missing on the regular.
"You're going to murder that inanimate object," Emmeline noted, watching as Marlene sent her fists flying into the punching bag, sweat dripping from her forehead. "Mar?"
Marlene couldn't pay attention to her friend, her focus centred on the bag in front of her, her hands and legs flinging threateningly at it.
"Hey, hey!" Emmeline gripped her by the shoulders, pulling Marlene from her trance, the blonde stumbling backwards, wiping down her soaked forehead. "You okay?"
Marlene doubled over, hands rested on her thighs. She breathed heavily, shaking her head.
"I need to get back to where I was."
"You need to give yourself a rest," Emmeline advised her, handing over a bottle of water. "You had a serious accident Mar, you're not going to be able to jump right back—"
"Yeah, I know," Marlene snapped, rolling her eyes with irritation. "Everyone has been saying the same thing for weeks."
"Because it's true. No one's questioning your strength, McKinnon, but if you keep pushing yourself like this you're headed for serious trouble." Emmeline looked down at Marlene like a concerned mother, hands on her hips, ready to begin a scolding. "Sometimes it feels like you think you're invincible."
"Oh, believe me," Marlene scoffed, "I'm not."
"Good. Then let's see you smarten up a little. We can't have Lily walking down the aisle without a maid of honour."
Emmeline wrapped an arm around Marlene's shoulder, guiding her back into the change rooms where the two girls showered and changed before returning to the real world. They indulged in some tea and scones at a tea shop up the street from the Ministry; the shop reminded Marlene of Madam Puddifoot's space. It brought her back to those painful dates she'd endured during her years at Hogwarts.
"It's funny, isn't it?" Emmeline reminisced. Marlene turned back to face her, her attention drawn from the couple she'd been watching enjoy a romantic meal. Their hands were locked across the table and they couldn't seem to wipe the lovesick grins off their faces. For them, life was good.
"What?"
"That a year ago things were a hell of a lot simpler."
"A year ago this time I was being kidnapped," Marlene scoffed, stirring a spoonful of sugar into her tea.
"You know what I mean," Emmeline sighed. "We had a bubble in Hogwarts, we had the luxury to be foolish."
"We're still foolish."
"I'm trying to be deep here," Emmeline reminded her friend. "Now we're all weird and grown up. I mean, Alice is now a Longbottom for Merlin's sake, who saw that coming after the year we had?" Marlene couldn't disagree with that. She'd been convinced that Alice and Frank would never reconcile after their blow up.
"Do you feel old, Emmy?" Marlene teased her friend, sipping out of her rather large tea cup.
"I feel nostalgic," Emmeline corrected her. She dropped her eyes and sighed heavily. "I just feel that…it's all about to change."
"It isn't," Marlene assured her.
"You're wrong. Seeing the cover of the Prophet today made me realise that. Things are getting serious."
"Things have been getting serious for a long time, Em—"
"Marlene, you almost died," Emmeline finally snapped, her warm tone breaking. Marlene realised, with a nervous gulp, that her friend was not playing around. "I mean seriously, I thought you would. Before that you were gone for months, just disappeared, I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. Things are not the same."
It was Marlene's turn now to bow her head now, a sombre look on her face. "Well, I'm back now—"
"I don't trust it."
"Em…"
"Seriously. You get scared and you run. I love you but it's true, and now you're back and things are going good but are they going to stay that way?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Marlene huffed, growing defensive. The happy couple that had been caught in a blissful bubble moments before were now very aware of the conversation taking place on the other end of the shop, both glaring heavily in Marlene and Emmeline's direction.
"You and Black are shagging again," Emmeline stated bluntly.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Look at you! You can hardly cop up to it. I mean, Jesus, Mar, you let me shag the guy before admitting to the fact you had a history!"
"You walked yourself into that one without any help from me," Marlene reminded her friend bitterly. She tried hard not to remember the fact that one of her closest friends had shagged Sirius.
"Well, I wouldn't have had you taken any time to mention that you'd been sleeping with Sirius Black for over a year!"
The woman behind the counter gasped, staring at the two girls in horror. Neither Marlene nor Emmeline paid her any mind, too lost in the argument to notice the disruption they were causing.
"Listen, my point isn't to yell at you or drudge up past events I'm sure we'd both rather forget," Emmeline explained, diffusing the situation. "I just mean to say…you're falling into old patterns; what you're doing with Sirius scares me. I just got my friend back and now…"
"You feel like I'm going to run again, when things go south with him," Marlene filled in the blanks. "It's different this time, Em, really."
"Prove it," Emmeline pressured her. "Make roots. Show us that you actually want to be here. I mean, where's that Marlene McKinnon I spent the past seven years with? The one who never shut the hell up about how she was going to be the best goddamn writer the Daily Prophet ever had? The one who was going to buy her dream flat in downtown London and show us all how far she was going."
Marlene hated nothing more than being scolded by her friends, especially when she knew they were right. She stared across the table at Emmeline, smiling sheepishly at her, and rolled her eyes.
"Finish off your tea, then," she instructed her friend. "I've got a job to go apply to."
James, fast asleep in his bed, woke up to the sound of someone tiptoeing across his bedroom floor – a rather difficult feat seeing as the hardwood floor could take barely an ounce without creaking. He cracked open his eyes, looking around the room to see Lily changing from her clothes and into the spare pyjamas she kept in James' room.
"I thought you were spending the night at your place?" he asked with a yawn, rolling over in his bed to make space for her. She jumped, startled by the sudden interruption.
"Sorry," she apologised, James shrugging. "I, um…I did try," she explained.
"It's okay."
"It doesn't really feel like my place anymore."
"Everything that made it your place is gone."
Lily crawled into bed beside him, his arm wrapping around her as she cuddled up to his chest. It felt nice to have her resting there. James always felt better when he knew exactly where she was – nowadays that was no small comfort.
"I think I found my wedding dress," Lily announced.
"Really?" James had been a little concerned about that one. He hadn't been sure how normal it was for a bride to put off getting a dress just a month and a half before the wedding. "How'd that happen?"
"You'll just have to wait and see," Lily teased him.
"You're cruel, you know that?"
"It's what you love me about me."
"Oh, right," James scoffed, Lily reaching her lips up for his, tongues touching. James' hands moved slowly down her body. Grasping at her boobs, coming to rest on her hips, and moving along the surface of her ass.
"You know what we really need," Lily said, James' lips pressed into her neck. "Our own place."
Oh, James had been thinking the exact same thing since they'd returned home for the summer, back to the reality of parents and watchful eyes. He'd been working on the issue behind Lily's back for quite some time.
"Mhm," he agreed, rolling up her t-shirt.
"Not a problem for right now," Lily acknowledged, short of breath as James' head grew lower and lower, disappearing between her legs.
X
James couldn't be certain of the time when he was woken abruptly once more. This time Lily was curled peacefully into his side, and Peter's face was leaning over him in the dark, his eyes wide with fear.
"Pete?" James asked groggily, rubbing at his eyes.
"I'm sorry…I shouldn't have woken you…" James was starting to regret letting his friends know about the spare key his parents left under the back door mat.
"Everything okay?" James asked. He pulled his arm from beneath Lily carefully, grabbing his t-shirt off the ground before climbing out from under the covers.
"I just…needed to talk to you."
"Okay," James nodded. "Let's go downstairs, she's had a long day."
James led the way down the stairs, still half asleep as he did so. The two boys settled down in the living room, the lights all off around them as James' eyes were already well adapted to the dark.
"What is it then, Wormtail?" he asked, yawning widely as his friend sat in the armchair across from him, cross-eyed with worry.
"I…I think that something bad might happen…"
"What do you mean?" James tensed up.
"I…I don't know I just…I needed to…to tell someone," Peter stammered, rubbing his palms together.
"To tell someone you're scared?"
"You guys are just…you're all so natural at this and I'm…well…me."
"Pete…" James shook his head, watching his friend crumple up in front of him.
"I don't want to disappoint you guys."
"So what, it doesn't come naturally to you. You're doing a great job, Wormtail, everyone thinks so." James couldn't help but think his comment only made Peter look more terrified. "What is it, Peter? Is there something else?"
Peter bit his lip anxiously, looking across the moonlit living room.
"It's Aldora," Peter confessed. "James, I'm worried I've messed up. I didn't know who else to go to, who else to ask for help."
"Oh," James smirked, leaning back with comfort. "What kind of mess up are we talking about?"
"James…I…."
"Because flowers are always a good idea, with an apology of course. She won't know you're sorry unless you really mean it so you have to say more than just the words, you have to follow it up with actions that prove it."
"I don't think you—"
"Trust me, Pete," James assured his friend. "I understand girls."
Peter gulped, nodding his head. "Okay," he finally agreed.
"Better?" James asked his friend.
"Yeah…better."
"There's no problem we can't fix," James promised his friend, the pair standing up as he lead Peter to the door, arm wrapped around him.
Alice returned home from work late – for the third time that week – a rush of cold air breezing in the door along with her. She expected to find the lamp in the living room on – just as Augusta had left it for the past week – so that Alice could grab herself a quick bite to eat and slip up to her bedroom quickly. She found a little more than a lamp waiting for her in the living room, though.
"You're home late again," Augusta said, clearing her throat and startling Alice as she stepped into the living room. The young witch gasped, jumping backwards with fright.
"Merlin," Alice exclaimed. "I didn't see you there."
"No?" Augusta asked, face stern as though she were getting ready for a scolding. "It doesn't seem you've been wanting to see anyone in this house recently."
"Sorry?"
"Well, you come home every night after eleven and you always manage to be out of here at the crack of dawn—"
"Yes, well, my job requires long hours—"
"I'm no fool, Alice," Augusta warned her. "You're avoiding him."
"That's ridiculous," Alice rolled her eyes. She flung her coat over its hook on the rack, turning for the stairs.
"He's scared too, you know," Augusta called after her. "He's the one who's been bedridden all week, feeling positively useless."
"I know that," Alice grumbled between her teeth, back turned to her mother-in-law.
"He needs you, Alice, it's why he's married to you."
Alice was exhausted and sleep deprived and she couldn't get the image of a crying mother out of her mind – a woman who had come by the office to speak to one of the Aurors who had discovered her son's body. She didn't have the patience to deal with a scolding she was certain she didn't deserve.
"I am here," Alice snapped. "Frank knows that. If he didn't he would've said it—"
"He has said it," Augusta countered, arms crossed. "He hasn't got the heart to tell you that you're being selfish because he sees it in your eyes every morning, he knows why you can't be the one to stay with him."
"That's a terrible thing to say," Alice warned her, turning around to look her mother-in-law in the eyes. Neither woman dared back down in fear of being proven wrong.
"You forget that I was married once too," Augusta reminded her. "To someone who worked in a profession where he was prone to injuries." Alice's stomach sank, her gaze falling.
"I never meant to…"
"Of course you didn't, darling," Augusta nodded. "Of course."
Alice leaned back against the wall feeling like a defeated soldier, her shoulders fallen limp. Slowly Augusta moved towards her across the room, lips pulled into a tight line.
"I can't lose him," Alice confessed, her lips trembling.
"I know."
"He's all I've got. He's the only family I have…"
"Darling, you're the most important thing in the world to him," Augusta reminded her, offering the most comfort Alice thought she ever had. "My son has never loved anything in this world as much as he loves you."
X
It was an hour later, after a long chat in the living room that ended with a pot of tea, that Alice crawled up into her bedroom – the one she shared with her husband. Frank slept peacefully, his eyes delicately shut, as Alice crawled in beneath the covers with him.
She felt him stir from beneath her as she cozied up next to him. Slowly his arm wrapped around her, his lips finding her forehead.
"Hi baby," he whispered, Alice giving his hand an affectionate squeeze.
"How was your day?"
"Riveting. Mum made me pea soup and let me have dessert. It was wild."
Alice snorted, pulling Frank a little closer to her, soaking in the warmth that radiated from his body and the smell of the grey shirt he slept in.
"How about you?" Frank asked her.
Alice pressed her lips together, conjuring up an answer. She hadn't enough time before a sob escaped her lips, the weight of her conversation with Augusta catching up with her now.
"Hey," Frank spoke soothingly, sitting up. "Hey, what's going on?"
Alice could hardly keep it together as she let her husband run his hand soothingly along the surface of her back.
"I watched a woman crumple in front of Dorcas' desk today as she told her about how her son had been murdered," Alice admitted. "And I realised that we sit around all day and deliver this bad news to other people but one day…we're going to be those people, Frank," Alice confessed tearfully.
"Hey," Frank calmed her. "Don't do that."
"We couldn't even take you to the hospital," Alice reminded him, salty tears dripping into her mouth as she spoke. "I watched as Mary patched you up the best she could on our dining room table. The table we bought together and the one I imagined us hosting dinner parties around and one-day having family dinners at with our kids and your mum…" Alice choked back the tears that came spilling down like a volcanic eruption.
"I know it was scary," Frank nodded, stroking her cheek delicately. "I'm okay though, Al, I going to be okay—"
"This time," she pressed. "This time we made it. This time we survived. We're living in a fantasy world thinking that we can watch everyone else lose what they love while we get by without a scratch."
"We haven't been untouched," Frank assured her. "We've all lost plenty and I swear to god you will not lose me too," he promised her. Alice knew it wasn't a promise he could keep but she let it comfort her anyway. She closed her eyes and swallowed back her fears, letting Frank hold her close to him. "They'll have to drag me off this Earth before I leave you, do you understand me?"
"Yes," Alice chuckled, nuzzling her head into Frank's chest.
"We've not gone through all of this, a whole mess of a year, to lose it like smoke in our hands. I didn't marry you to get just a few years; I demand a lifetime. Full of lazy Sundays and commutes together to work. We'll get a cottage by the beach and once we have our three kids we'll go up there every holiday to get away from the world for a little while. We'll tell them all kinds of great stories about the grandparents they didn't get to meet over the campfire as they roast too many marshmallows and you shake your head and realise they're just like you. We're going to die very old in our bed together, laughing at the fact that we ever thought that forever was not a possibility between us. Do you understand me, Alice Griffith?"
Alice stared into Frank's milky brown eyes with a big goofy grin on her face. She couldn't help but fall more in love with him every word he spoke.
"I think you mean Longbottom," she corrected him, her stomach filling with butterflies.
In that moment, there was not a worry she could have in the world.
