One | Allegiance

"Open the damn door!" The pounding ricochets through her skull like a sniper's bullet, a whiskey headache all the way from Belfast with love. Ginny rolls over the side of the bed, grabbing Seamus' .44 Magnum from the bedside table. He's taken the only wand they have between them, and she still isn't entirely comfortable with the thick metal in her hands, remembering belatedly to chamber the bullets with a loud click.

"Open this bloody door or I'll break it down!" The pounding resumes, and Ginny vaults over the mattress, a lumpy futon pad she and Seamus 'liberated' from an alley after their arrival back from Bosnia some three months previous. At the time, they'd been living rough, and even a lumpy mattress that reeked of cat piss and mildew was a luxury. They'd joked that nothing would truly make it clean, short of burning it.

Ginny has a feeling she's about to find out just how prophetic those words are.

With her back flat against the wall, she holds the gun in one hand, trying to catch her breath as she checks her leg sheath to make sure her blades are still there. She's only been living like a Muggle for a little over a year, but she's already learned to kill like one. She'll be damned if any Death Eater is going to get the jump on her unprepared.

Like Harry...

The door crashes open, nearly coming off its hinges, and a stream of green light slams into the center of the mattress where she lay only seconds ago.

Ginny pivots on her heel and extends her arm, pulling the trigger in one smooth motion. The force of the shot nearly dislocates her wrist, and when she steadies herself, she looks down to see the prone figure of Titus Avery lying flat on his back in the hallway, a perfect hole smoking in the side of his head. There is a ringing in her ears.

The old killer wears an expression of faint surprise, under all the blood and gore. The splatter is all over the hallway, and Ginny abruptly falls on her knees and vomits in the corridor. Muggle killing is always so nasty. She's never gotten used to it, not even after all this time.

"If you hadn't shot him, he'd have done for you, Red." Alec Donnelly is out of breath, like he's run up two flights of stairs, and he probably has. Alec is Seamus' best mate from his Muggle childhood, a tall boy with a thick Belfast accent and a shock of dark hair that reminds Ginny of another friend, another life. "Christ Almighty!" He looks down at Avery, registering the gunshot wound, and has to look away, blanching. "Who's the geezer?"

"That was a dark wizard named Titus Avery. He was here to kill us," Ginny says flatly. She needs Seamus' arms around her. Things aren't right with the world when he's gone. She feels naked and adrift without his presence to steady her, and she doesn't like it. It's been fifteen months on the run, of falling apart and holding together, ever since they lost the Battle. Ever since Harry and her family died, and their world went to hell.

"Where's Seamus, Red?" Alec spits on Avery's body. A silvery wisp is rising from the corpse, but being a Muggle, Alec can't see it, and Ginny doesn't want to deal with it alone. She wonders where Avery's partner is. Usually these bastards work in pairs. She grabs Alec and pulls him into the room, slamming the door behind her. "I don't know where he is." The impact of it hits her all at once, and her legs fail her. She sits on the bed with her head between her knees.

They are going to have to run. But there is nowhere to go. She lifts her head, meeting Alec's grave expression with a wretched look.

Ginny realizes that she is shaking. It's all over. She is going to start wailing any minute. She needs Seamus here, to fight her or fuck her, to slap her and jolt her out of it. If he doesn't come back soon, she doesn't know what she'll do.

She should call a meeting of the DA. The impossibility of the task before her hits her like a rogue Bludger. Hermione and Neville are in Paris, Ernie, Susan and Cho in Orkney, and the rest so far flung across the globe that international Apparation would be a nightmare of epic proportions.

She can't make her brain work, she doesn't know where Seamus hid the damned DA coin, and Pidwigeon was lost to her long ago; so she's going to have to do it the Muggle way and ask to use Alec's 'mobile', a funny little black rectangle he claims can talk to anyone in the world just by pressing a button. Her father would have loved it, she thinks with a stinging sadness.

Alec places a cigarette between her lips and lights it. "Smoke that, an' I'll call th' lads an' all to help with the body. We'll drop it in the Lough tonight."

"You don't understand," Ginny says hoarsely. "They'll be sending someone when he doesn't come back. It's not safe here anymore." She inhales greedily on the cigarette, a Muggle brand. It doesn't make her hair turn purple, or give her wings, but she feels a lot calmer for certain. "I don't know what Seamus has told you..."

"That he's a wizard, yeah? Don't forget, Red, me an' Seamus have known each other since we was tykes. He's like a brother to me." Alec plucks the cigarette from her fingers and takes a puff. "So that peeler out there, he a wizard too?"

"He's not ... police." Belatedly, Ginny recalls the Muggle word for Auror. She busies herself packing a rucksack. Between herself and Seamus, they don't have much. When they ran, they only had the clothes on their backs, and one wand between them. Hers was lost during the battle, and she hasn't been able to get another without rousing suspicion. Magical Belfast isn't a place kind to outsiders, especially not if they're English, and most definitely not Sacred Twenty-Eight blood traitors. "He is — he was — a monster. A murderer. He was a follower of the Dark Lord — the one who did for my whole family." She realizes she's never shared this with Alec, never said their names. She's been pushing it away since it happened, doing anything she can to forget. The Battle for Hogwarts, the Troubles, Kosovo... they slip through her memories like water, tamping down the grief she feels after each fresh death. So many gone, leaving the living broken and empty.

Alec is staring at her with wide grey eyes, the cigarette growing a long ash. "Feckin' Christ, Red. You ok?"

Ginny grabs it from him, flicking it and putting it back between her lips. "Like I said, we've got to get out of here. I'll just wait for Seamus, and — "

Alec claps a hand on her shoulder. "Red. Breathe. Seamus wouldn't want ya to wait for him. He'd want ya to be safe."

"Don't presume to speak for Seamus." Ginny prickles. Even if they are friends — and who else would have taken Seamus and her in all those months ago except a true friend, a brother? — even if, she is still an English girl to him, a stranger. She's a witch, and she knows he doesn't know quite what to make of the pair of them, only that they're soldiers of fortune, fighting alongside Alec and his mates in the Troubles.

"You don't feckin' know anythin' about Seamus, ya eejit," Alec says scornfully. "You don't think he doesn't protect what's in front of him, then ya don't deserve him. 'Alec,' he says to me, 'you send her to ma old gran's if anythin' happens.'" Alec stubs the cigarette out with his boot, then drops it in his pocket. He pulls Ginny up with one hand, and gives her a hard shake. "Come on, Red. I'm takin' ya to Granny Mab, and I won't take no fer an answer."

XxX

Thorfinn Rowle stares in disbelief at what was once Titus Avery. There are maggots, and a lot of them. The back of the old bastard's head is split apart and all over the floor in a black sticky mess of brains and skull fragments. His eyes writhe with maggots, and in the side of his head is a perfectly round hole. If Thorfinn didn't have the presence of mind to throw his sleeve up over his nose and mouth, he's sure he would lose whatever contents are in his stomach like young Pettifer, the junior Auror forced to accompany him.

"A Muggle fireleg did this?" Thorfinn lets out a long whistle. "Shit."

"Yes." Pettifer wipes his hand on his mouth, covering the two of them belatedly with a charm to block the stench.

"Who was he supposed to be capturing, and why for fuck's sake did he go first into that room? What happened to the other Snatcher?" Thorfinn waves away the bluebottle flies, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Mr Avery was supervising an operation to apprehend the remaining Undesirables from 'Dumbledore's Resistance Army'. They've been stirring up unrest amongst the population," Pettifer says, clearing his throat. "The body was brought to our attention by a half-blood, a Mr Zacharias Smith. He buggered off as soon as the Muggle weaponry discharged." He stares at the body in revulsion. "This is the work of savages, no doubt about it. Do you think..." he tugs at his collar and turns greener, if that's possible. "Will the Dark Lord be..."

"Livid? Enraged? Ready to curse the messenger? Yes to all of the above." Thorfinn toes the body lightly. It lets out a whoosh of rot, and groans in protest. "Where's his wand?"

Pettifer points. It's clenched in Avery's fist in a death grip. "Not it, sir."

"Accio wand." Thorfinn raises a brow at the younger man, who swallows visibly, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously. "Prior Incantatem."

The wand gives up the ghost without a fight, and Thorfinn just looks confused.

"The Killing Curse," he says. "Sloppy. They knew he was coming."

"Evidence doesn't suggest that, sir," Pettifer whines. This auror is really starting to get on Thorfinn's nerves. If he could, he'd blast him back to next Wednesday, but he needs him, damn it all to hell. Needs must when the devil drives, and Thorfinn Rowle, for all the good it will do him, is trapped in the passenger seat.

"What does it suggest, then?" Thorfinn is starting to get bored, and it shows in his voice. "Out with it, then."

"There were two of them." Pettifer clears his throat. "See those footprints from the stairwell?" He lights them up with his wand, and they glow in the dust. "One killed Avery, then they smoked a cigarilly. Lumos." Two sets of prints, one large and one small. There is a copious pile of ash near the mattress. Pettifer steps into the room, gesturing for Thorfinn to follow. He's only too happy to step away from the bloated body of his former colleague.

"This is the worst excuse for a... They were living here?" Thorfinn studies the room. It's small and dark, with Muggle graffiti all over the whitewashed brick walls. Thorfinn is a big man, easily topping six feet, and when he stretches his arms out, he can touch both walls with his fingertips. At one end of the room is a small nook boasting just a bare mattress, lumpy, with half the stuffing coming out of the rightmost corner. A dresser, the drawers pulled half out and etched all over with runes, sits on the floor. "It's like a cell." Thorfinn suppresses a shudder. Throw in some Dementors, and this place could pass for Azkaban's redheaded step-child. The only source of light is from three small, circular skylights around the nook, one on the ceiling and two at either foot of the bed. "Whoever lived here was mad," he says in a quiet, even tone. He sits down heavily on the bed, plucking at the stuffing. The mattress has had cleaning spells all over it, but it still reeks of eau de kneazle, and Thorfinn stands up again, this time having to hunch over under the slanted ceiling. "What do those symbols mean?" He points at the faint writing along the wall, barely visible in the dim light. It is, he realizes, blood.

"I believe they are Ogham, which was a prehistoric Muggle writing system. I didn't join the aurors to solve Muggle crimes, Mr Rowle," Pettifer says snootily. "At least the rest is in plain English. 'Fuck the police'...'The only adventure left is to destroy society'...'Fall in love, not in line'...'Stop believing in authority, start believing in each other'. Pssht! Mr Rowle, these are not the words of stable people."

Thorfinn has been studying the room. It makes him sad, really, and that makes him feel deeply uncomfortable. Whoever they were... They shouldn't have been living like this.

Something shiny on top of the dresser catches his eye. It's a funny round disc on a black box, which has a long cord stuck to the wall. He picks up the disc, spinning it around on his finger. "What's this?"

"That is called...um. A wrecker. Muggles listen to music on them."

"Well, Pettifer, play it. If they're as unstable as you think, let's find out."

Pettifer shoots Thorfinn a look of deepest hatred. "I'm not a Muggle lover, Mr Rowle. I don't know how to... Let me see." He places the wrecker in the machine and hits 'play'. "Huh. It really was that simple."

The song begins to play, and from what Thorfinn can decipher, it's about the person who's left behind in darkness after their lover has died. What else did he expect — something cheery? "That's enough."

Let the dead stay dead and buried. Let whoever is running stay on the run. This Muggle music strikes a chord deep inside of Thorfinn, though he would never show it. Whoever shot Avery was someone desperate, someone who had no luck left at all.

Someone who should have been buried long ago.

Thorfinn pushes the machine over, and it falls off the dresser with a shower of sparks. "What else?"

Pettifer shakes his brown curls. "Nothing, sir. I'm just a junior auror, not a Muggle detective."

Thorfinn groans in frustration. Detecting isn't exactly his strong suit. He isn't even supposed to be here, but the Dark Lord wanted one of his "most trusted allies" to oversee the process of recovering Avery and taking over his project. There's been a shocking amount of incompetence regarding the registration of Muggleborns and the arrests of Undesirables in the Ministry lately, and Thorfinn may not be the best person to bring down Dumbledore's ragtag band, but he doesn't have much choice.

He's been on thin ice ever since the leaders of Dumbledore's Army slipped through his fingers after the Battle of Hogwarts. Even though Lucius Malfoy took the fall for his son for it, it doesn't take much to get into Voldemort's black books, especially not with a fork-tongued woman like Bellatrix Lestrange whispering in his ear. If Thorfinn had bent the knee to the woman who fashions herself the Dark Lord's Queen, if he hadn't rebuffed her advances, if, if, if. Thorfinn's prowess with the ladies is legendary, but his patience with a grasping bitch like Bellatrix Black Lestrange is nil.

And she knows it.

Which is why this little plum of a job has fallen into his lap: bring down the remaining members of the DA — or die trying. Any way you go about it, he's fucked.

"Methinks you doth protest too much." Thorfinn grabs Pettifer by his collar, hoisting him up. "I think you're a Muggle loving spy."

He points his wand in Pettifer's face, but before either of them can get another word out, a sudden chill comes over Thorfinn, and he drops the junior auror to the floor. Pettifer scurries to the opposite wall, shaken.

There is a wisp coming up out of Avery's corpse, silvery yet opaque. Thorfinn watches as the wisp coalesces into the shape of the dead man. Honestly, he's a bit intrigued. He didn't think a wizard could come back as a ghost after being blown away by a Muggle fireleg. The junior auror is petrified on the spot, holding up his wand as though it will save him from the monstrosity that was once Titus Avery.

"Little bitch..." The phantom hisses. "Where is she, the little bitch..."

"Where is who?" Thorfinn holds his breath as the small space is cocooned in an icy miasma. "The Muggle?"

"Little bitch... she fucking killed me. Blew m' brains out, Rowle. They're all over the floor, see?"

"Was she a Muggle, idiot."

Instead of answering, the ghost vanishes through a crack in the wall and goes howling down the pipes.

"Well, fuck," Pettifer says. "I'm fucking fucked." He pulls a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his robes, trying to roll a smoke with shaking fingers, and spills it all over the floor instead. Swearing, he tries again, making the worst excuse for a cigarette Thorfinn has ever seen.

"What do you have to be upset about? Quit your bellyaching, Goldilocks. Accio tobacco." Thorfinn sits down next to the mattress. "Let the Master handle it, Pettifer." As he begins to roll them both some smokes, a glint catches his eye. "Bingo." He waves his wand at the rafters above the bed. "Accio." Out shoots a wicked-looking blade as long as Thorfinn's arm. They both duck, as though in slow-motion, and it flies unheeded across the room to bury itself in the door with a twang.

"Would you look at that. Beautiful. I've just saved both our arses, Pettifer. Get a Trace on that thing right the fuck now."

The junior auror turns around to look at Thorfinn, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. "I'll handle this," he says in an arrogant tone, robes billowing as he strides up to the sword. "There's that Ogham again. Fuck me. Um, Transferendum? ...Who in fucking Merlin's fucking name is 'Fergus Finnegan'?" Pettifer reaches out to grasp the handle, and with a loud pop he winks out.

"A bloody portkey? You've got to be fucking kidding me." Thorfinn stuffs the tobacco into his pocket, and yields to his fate.

XxX

A/N: The "Troubles" were a conflict in Northern Ireland that supposedly ended in 1998, but splinter groups still exist and bombings have happened since. The 30 year conflict was regarding the constitutional status of Northern goal of the unionist and Protestant majority was to remain part of the UK, while the goal of the nationalist and republican and almost exclusively Catholic minority was to become part of the Republic of Ireland. Yet according to the BBC, it was "a territorial conflict and not a religious one".

Ogham is an ancient writing system that looks like tree branches.

The conflict in Bosnia was between two ethnic groups, the Albanians and the Serbs. Ginny and Seamus have been living on the run and fighting in other peoples' wars for fifteen months after the loss of their own.

The song that plays is "Paint it Black" by The Rolling Stones. I can't quote lyrics, but do yourself a favor and go check it out.

Updates will be on a more regular basis once I get a buffer going. I currently have 5 WIPs and am beta'ing a Hunger Games fic by theoryofmice called "Overproof", which you should all go check out!