Amelia turned a corner to find Alastor Moody leaning against the wall of the corridor. The last three years had not been kind to him. He had accumulated a few more scars and lost an eye.
"I heard you're back," he said, his electric blue replacement eye spinning around, taking in her appearance, before rolling into the back of his head and then spinning forward again.
"You heard wrong," she replied calmly. She should have realized she wouldn't be able to come to the Ministry without talking to Alastor. As much as she had tried to avoid him, he was not the type to be deterred.
"Really? 'Cause I never did peg you for a quitter. You never were the givin' up type, as I remember."
"I didn't give up. I walked away." She made to walk past him, but Alastor stuck out his wooden leg to block her path. He'd also evidently lost a foot; he'd had two the last time she had seen him. Amelia scowled at him.
"Nice claws."
Moody nodded to her, tapping his wooden, clawed foot once in acknowledgment. "Heard you were an Animagus now."
"At least some of your information is correct," she said flatly. He was good. She had only just registered as an Animagus. Very few people knew yet. It figured Alastor would be one of the few.
"You were a good Auror even before you could disguise yourself as an owl," Moody continued. "The Auror Department still has a spot for you. It's been there since you walked away."
"I'm not coming back," Amelia insisted.
"These young'uns don't fully understand what it is they're up against. You did."
"I'm not coming back," she repeated.
"I understand you took the Longbottoms hard, but you are needed here."
"Everything's quiet now. I'm not needed. Your 'young'uns' can handle this stuff fine; Voldemort's gone. His followers are either dead, imprisoned, or trying so hard to pretend they never knew him that they aren't likely to cause trouble. It's been over four years now he's gone." Amelia crossed her arms. This was exactly why she hadn't been back to the Ministry. If she hadn't needed to register her Animagus form, she wouldn't have returned at all.
"And it has been over three years now you've been gone. How long you plan on hiding?"
"I'm not hiding," she retorted. "I'm sure the Ministry knows exactly where I am."
"Yeah, seems you're living with Muggles these days."
"And?" she said archly. "My father was a Muggle, my brother is a Muggle, and my mother spends most of her time pretending to be a Muggle."
"You are a witch and one of our best Aurors – "
"Well, I'm not an Auror anyone!"
"It never leaves you!" he insisted. "Constant vigilance! It isn't the sort of thing you can just walk away from!"
"No?" she said sourly, losing her patience. "Watch me." Amelia turned on her heel and marched off. There was more than one way out of this place, after all.
"Told you this wasn't the sort of thing that you could leave behind," a voice said behind her.
Amelia turned to see Alastor, looking a bit the worse for wear. "No, you said I couldn't walk away from being an Auror; you said nothing about the Order. We had already disbanded by the time I left. And you retired."
"I did no such thing!" Moody growled.
"Ah, that's right. They retired you."
"I'm no sheep to be put out to pasture!"
"No, you are a crazy old wizard who thinks dark wizards are lurking in every shadow."
"There are!" Amelia raised an eyebrow. Moody huffed. "Sometimes," he grumbled.
"That's what I thought. Smash any carriage clocks lately? Oh, right, you couldn't. Mr. Constant Vigilance was caught off guard by two second-rate wizards. I wouldn't have figured you to be surprised by a pair of supposedly dead wizards. You're getting old, Alastor. Old and sloppy."
Moody huffed again. "Don't I know it. It was never the same after you left the unit, Amelia. You weren't the only one left broken. You just never tried to fix the pieces."
"You lost a few pieces yourself there."
Moody laughed. It was a dark, harsh laugh that could send more timid people running. Amelia just laughed back and let him embrace her.
"It is good to see you back, Amelia," he said. "It really is. Although it seems the whole country is going to hell again. Dead wizards are back, fugitive wizards are not guilty, and certain Ministry wizards prefer to believe in a conspiracy even I would find farfetched instead of facing the truth."
"Just another day," Amelia shrugged.
"Damn did I miss you!" Moody laughed again. "I want to introduce you to your replacement." He motioned to the pink-haired witch standing behind him who proceeded to threaten Moody with her wand. "Don't say it, Alastor."
"Yes, Amelia, this is Don't-Call-Me-Nymphadora Tonks, who would rather her first name was never spoken again. Tonks, meet Amelia Zeraff."
"Nice to meet you," the pink-haired witch said. "And I mean it! I don't ever want to be called by my first name! Only a fool would name her child that."
"Tonks . . . why does that name sound familiar?" Amelia asked.
"Uh-ho! You have forgotten a name?" Moody challenged. "Ha! Knew you would forget one eventually! I don't see how you could have forgotten this one though. Andromeda Black caused quite a stir when she married Ted Tonks. Not a single magical relative in his bloodline. Quite a stir, indeed. I believe you are acquainted with her cousin, though, are you not?"
Amelia smiled. "Would that be the, uh, 'fugitive wizard who isn't guilty'? Yeah, I know him. Knew him before, and I know him now. And considering where we all are, I would have to say you know him too."
Moody's blue eye spun around, taking in their surroundings. "Yes, well, er, this place certainly has, er, character."
"Have you met Mrs. Black yet?" Amelia asked innocently.
Moody grimaced and Tonks flushed. "I tripped over the umbrella stand," the young woman admitted.
"She was always doing that, wasn't she?" Sirius asked.
"Clumsy as anything, but such a personality." Amelia sighed. "I think I might have liked to see her as an Auror. There is something genuinely personable about her."
"I'm sure the Aurors would probably take you back, if you were really as good as Alastor reckons you were," Sirius offered.
"I don't want to go back," Amelia said quietly, pulling away from her memory-self. "It could never be the same." She scoffed. "And considering the Ministry morons last year, I'm glad I never went back. Dumbledore is . . ." she swallowed hard ". . . was . . . ten times the wizard Fudge will be. I just –" Amelia sighed. "I just wish things could have been different."
"A decade and a half of peace not agree with you?"
"Peace? There was nothing peaceful about that time!" she snapped. "Everyone and everything I knew and cared about was gone! My best friends – Frannie, dead – Alice, in St. Mungo's, probably for good. Lily, James, Marlene – I couldn't stand it! And the Muggles around me, blissfully ignorant, with their friends, and their children, and their friends' children, getting together for lunches and weekends and birthdays – all the things I will never have! How could I befriend those people when I couldn't tell them about myself? The people I'd lost? I couldn't even tell them where I went to school!" Amelia screamed. "You go to Hogwarts and you are next to incapable of dealing with Muggles instead of magic!"
Sirius looked taken aback by her outburst.
"Geography! Calculus! Politics! Economics! If it wasn't for William and my mother, I never would have known any of it! All of my wizarding friends were gone and there was a Statute of Secrecy and two decades worth of magic between me and the Muggles! I hated it! Why do you think I developed the more obscure, difficult magic – Legilimency, Animagus? I had nothing else to do! It was either that or go mad! Peace? More like isolation!"
Grey mists swirled around them, carrying scenes of Muggles to replace the memory of Grimmauld Place.
A trio of teenaged girls scurried down a street, shopping bags in hand, giggling. "Did you see her at the show last night?"
"Yes!"
"Wasn't her dress so posh?"
"I know!"
A mother scolding her son. "Behave! Or I won't let you go sleepover with Gregory!"
Couples walking hand in hand out of a theatre.
Women sitting outside a café, chatting amiably, and passing around pictures. "Oh, isn't she just the cutest thing!"
"Isn't she? Katherine says she'll be grateful when Molly finally starts sleeping through the night though. She was napping when I popped in for a visit, which my sister assures me is the only reason I can't wait to have one of my own."
"Oooh! And what did Ben have to say on that subject?"
"He said we can try!"
"Ooooh! I'm so happy for you!"
A pair of men in business suits. "Did you hear what the Soviets are doing?"
"It's unbelievable! After all that nonsense with the Yankees!"
Adolescents bent over tables, whispering and smiling and giggling.
A mother and her daughter. "What are you reading, Susan? Vampires? What have I told you about reading that nonsense?"
"But I like reading this!"
"You'll never get accepted to a good university if you keep wasting your time with these ridiculous books!"
"Ridiculous? Vampires? Damn, Amelia, Muggles are crazy wankers," Sirius said, breaking the flow of images. The mists settled around them.
Amelia sighed. "I know I am not the only person who lost a great deal, but . . . "
"You were as broken as me," Sirius said flatly.
Amelia turned away. Her shoulders slumped as she admitted, "Yes. I tried. But I could never move past it."
The grey mist broke over them.
"Yes, I know Mum turns sixty-five this year. I will help you plan the party. Huh?" There was a tapping at the window. "Oh, hold on a minute, Will, my newspaper's here."
Amelia tucked the phone under her ear and opened the kitchen window. An owl flew in, a newspaper clamped in its beak. It dropped the paper on the table and perched itself on the back of a chair. "Yes, Will, I'm still here," Amelia said distractedly as she rummaged in the back of a drawer for a bag of small bronze coins. She dropped a few Knuts into the small leather pouch tied to the owl's leg. With a clack of its beak, the owl flew back out the window.
"I am listening. I will book the room." Amelia unrolled the newspaper. "So you finally settled on a cater – "
The phone dropped to the floor with a clunk. On the other end a faint voice called her name in alarm, growing more agitated when she didn't respond.
The Daily Prophet dropped from nerveless fingers.
Amelia trembled as she bent down to retrieve the phone. "I'm sorry, Will, I'll have to call you back." She hung the phone up in its cradle. The headline hadn't changed. There was the picture of Sirius that kept appearing in the Prophet. The words, though – the words were chilling. When he was found – the dementors would administer their Kiss. The Ministry had given their permission.
Her wand dropped out of her sleeve and she set fire to the paper. It was a futile gesture. It wouldn't change the Ministry's decision. It wouldn't help Sirius. It wouldn't change the fact she didn't know how to help him. Or even find him.
"There was nothing I could do," she told Sirius forlornly. "I spent some time up at Hogwarts, but I could never find you. And even if I had, I had no idea what I could do to help you."
"I didn't exactly have much of a plan myself," Sirius admitted. "I reckon there wasn't much you could have done anyway. I, er, wasn't really being, er, reasonable at the time. I was more than a bit obsessed."
Amelia choked out a laugh. It sounded strangled. "I was just depressed."
Grey swirled. Images flickered around them. Classrooms and corridors at Hogwarts. The streets of London. Faces of people Amelia had met. Thick texts on magic. Newspapers, of both the mundane Muggle and moving Wizarding varieties. Headlines could be read through the mist. Things like German walls and politics mixed with celebrities and waving witches and images of the Dark Mark that appeared at the Quidditch World Cup.
The swirl shattered with a scream.