Dorcas wiped the sweat from her brow and got back to her feet. She hated training sessions with Mad-Eye, but she knew she needed it as much as anyone, probably more than some. She gritted her teeth together and didn't bother to brush the twigs off her clothes. If he gave her the time for it, it meant he thought she was soft, and she didn't want him to think that.

"Better," he snapped.

Mad-Eye had long been one of Dorcas's favorite people in the Order. He didn't mince words. Nothing was wasted be it time, breath, energy…. After living with Rachel who was often a personification of excess, it was a refreshing change.

"Now," Mad-Eye said as she pulled her blonde hair back into a pony-tail, "Dumbledore says that we need to get you to your best shape for the next mission."

"When is it?"

"Well, I don't bloody well know, do I? It's secret for a reason. I'll probably know when you disappear for a week or two again."

Dorcas smirked a bit, easily blocking the Imperius Curse he sent in her direction. She'd been practicing fighting it like Dumbledore had said, but it was so much easier to just block the thing than to let it into her mind in the first place.

"Good, but you need to work on fighting it, Meadowes. Have you been practicing?"

"Yes," Dorcas groaned.

Strangely and perhaps a bit uncomfortably, both Sirius and Rachel were very good at the Imperius Curse, and she had them help her practice when Moody wasn't around. So it wasn't strictly legal. A lot of things could be forgiven in wartime, and it's not as if anyone would ever find out they'd done it. She wasn't about to turn them in.

"Are you sure Chaplin won't join?"

Mad-Eye had met Rachel when he was delivering some things to Dorcas for a mission, and he was impressed by how carefully she handled the front door, especially with a stranger. He thought she had enough paranoia to be in the Order, but Rachel had declined.

"She won't. You can keep asking, but it won't change. She rather likes being…out of it all."

"No one's out of it, Meadowes," Mad-Eye barked. "Now, up. Let's try this again."

This could have meant anything, but as it turned out it was a series of Dark Spells that Order members had been hit with during duels. Some of them were just slightly unfortunate. Others, no one who had actually been hit by them that she knew had survived. Those were better to simply avoid than anything else, and her ability to dodge was constantly being tested. The best thing about working with Mad-Eye was that he pushed her limits, constantly taking what she was good at and forcing her to be better.

Constant Vigilance.

She, like so many of her friends, had laughed at that over-used phrase for a while when she joined the Order. Moody's mantra was a bit of a joke between them all. The joke ceased to be funny after the third funeral, however, and Dorcas now took it so seriously that it was a credo for her life. This was why she, like Caradoc, was trusted with incredibly difficult missions: Dumbledore knew she could handle it because she lapped up Mad-Eye's every word and improved herself constantly. And she was proof that they hadn't needed to get rid of their friends to be truly effective in the Order. She was one of the most effective members, and she shared a place with a non-Order member.

At the end of the practice session, Dorcas pressed a towel to her neck to rid herself of the sweat.

"You're allowed to use the shower, Meadowes," Mad-Eye said, his voice full of amusement.

Typically, that was exactly what Dorcas did. She would shower at Headquarters and go home or wherever from there. But she had a dinner, so she wanted to shower at home where she could change right into her things and not get herself dirty again with dirty clothes. She shook her head, went out to the kitchen for a glass of water, and ran into Lily.

"Oh, still brewing, are you?" I asked. She gave me a wry smile.

"Seems like I always am since you and Caradoc have gotten back," she teased. But I knew I'd been in worse shape than Caradoc the last time. That curse Rosier had hit me with had me unconscious moments after arriving back at headquarters, and I wasn't conscious again for a week. Lily had to use up half the store of Healing potions in one go. My head still didn't feel quite right, although I told everyone but Lily that it was fine. She gave me a potion for it once a week, and I had convinced myself that it was getting incrementally better. "Have you got any missions coming up? Anything I should fortify the stock against?"

"I know it looks like I'm annoyed," Dorcas teased, "but inside I'm actually laughing. I promise." Dorcas washed her hands, pressed a cool, wet towel against her neck and said, "Any messages for anyone before I go?"

"What, are you having a dinner party tonight?"

Dorcas gave her friend a wry smile and said, "Actually, I'm going to Edgar's for dinner. His sister is going to be there, apparently. Ah, no, I just wondered more generally. I don't know when I'll next be at headquarters."

She didn't listen as Lily muttered something about Dorcas's frequent stays in their makeshift infirmary, pulling on her jacket and walking out into the cool air of the early evening. She took a deep breath, feeling a bit of lingering sweat evaporate as she stood there, and then she turned on her heel and Disapparated, focusing on the street where she and Rachel lived in her mind's eye.

Dorcas had just enough time to scurry up the stairs and yell a greeting to Rachel in the kitchen, while pulling off her coat, when someone knocked at the door.

"Just a moment!" she called, pulling out her wand and moving toward the door. "Who is it, then?"

"Erm, it's…Fabian."

"You don't sound very sure of that."

Her voice was teasing, but she was mostly very serious. A Death Eater would probably sound surer of themselves, but better safe than sorry.

Constant Vigilance.

"It's me, Dorcas," he said, slightly annoyed. "Ask me whatever you want."

Dorcas licked her lips, thinking of the best, most embarrassing question she could to come up with the proof of his identity. She smirked.

"You were stung by a doxy where?"

"Like, where was I when it happened?"

"What body part?"

She could almost hear him paling on the other side of the door.

"Dorcas, that's not funny."

"You've got to say or I won't let you in."

He cleared his throat, and she heard his voice, soft, right next to the doorframe.

"My bum. Now let me in before I break this door down."

She just laughed, opening the door for him, taking his coat.

"That wasn't so hard, now, was it?" She was grinning up at him, but his ears and neck and cheeks were red, and he wasn't amused. "So, what did you want, then? Something about the Order?"

"If it were you would have just wasted so much precious time trying to embarrass me."

"It's not trying if you succeed," she teased. "No, but really, though, because I've got about ten minutes to shower before I'm wanted at Edgar's place for dinner. Something important?"

"Ah, actually, I was here to see…. Is Rachel in?"

Dorcas blinked at him for a moment, letting these words process before she grinned, wondering how late she could be to dinner and say it had something to do with Mad-Eye before Edgar wouldn't believe her.

"She's in the kitchen," Dorcas said with a sly grin, winking at his confused face and dashing to the bathroom to get that shower over with as quickly as possible.

She'd gotten good at being quick about showers. When you traveled for days on end with nothing but very quick showers, you learned not to be too particular about them. As long as you were more or less clean, you were fine. This was especially helpful in that moment, when all she wanted to do was run back out and plaster her ear to the kitchen door so she knew exactly what had prompted Fabian to visit Rachel.

Dorcas quickly dried off her hair, and pulled on fresh clothes before running out on her tip-toes to listen at the kitchen door. She checked her watch. She could get away with maybe five more minutes, but then she would have to leave for the Bones'.

"And then I thought about it some more," she could hear Fabian saying, "and I think you can take pretty good care of yourself."

"What gave you that idea?"

Rachel's voice was amused. She'd always been pretty good at defending herself. Dorcas liked to think that somehow that was something she could congratulate herself on, but Rachel was tough from their first meeting.

In most ways.

"Stop that," Fabian said, his voice tired and sad.

"Sorry," Rachel muttered.

She sounded sincere, and perhaps she was sorry, but Dorcas knew right away what Rachel had been doing, although she'd never been able to comprehend why. And Dorcas also knew that Rachel would do it all over again, probably sooner than later.

"I wish you would quit that," Fabian sighed. "It's…. Well, never mind."

Dorcas licked her lips and leaned against the wall. She knew exactly what Rachel had been doing, but she knew that Fabian asking her to quit was useless. She and Fabian had been trying to help Rachel for years, but nothing seemed to do much good.

"It's not that easy," Rachel said softly.

"I know."

"No, you really don't know. Nobody knows. And that's the problem. Have you ever tried to quit pulling at your shirt when you're anxious? Or do you remember what it was like when James was trying to quit running his fingers through his hair whenever Lily walked in a room?" It took a lot for Dorcas not to laugh at that. She had almost forgotten how James used to do that, although it seemed strange that she would have forgotten so quickly. That was what a stressful, fast-paced life could do to a person, she supposed.

"I know," Fabian said softly. "I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything, but you know you should stop and it's painful for me to watch."

Dorcas glanced at the clock and winced. She wouldn't have time to listen to the rest of the conversation, but she hoped against hope that Fabian would break through to their friend. She pulled on her coat quickly, dashing out into the night air, grumbling under her breath at the sight of teenagers hanging about on the corner. She would have to walk down the alleyway up the block to Disapparate, and she was already running late. Still, she didn't want to attract attention, so Dorcas shoved her hands in her pockets and stalked forward, facing ahead, not glancing at the teenagers. If they felt ignored, they would ignore her in return. If she walked into an alleyway with purpose, it didn't look odd for a woman to walk down a dead end and not resurface for a few hours.

She Disapparated, landing again with that uncomfortable internal feeling in a neighborhood she had only been to a couple of times. She'd met Edgar here, delivered news and information to him here, but he'd never had her for dinner. Edgar was nervous about getting his family too attached to any Order members, and Dorcas could understand that, what with the way they were dropping like flies. She didn't think, if she had children, that she would have had Order members over, either. Rachel did feel like her child sometimes, like a sister at others, but everything was different there, unnecessarily complicated.

Dorcas knocked on the door and was greeted by the friendly, youthful face of Edgar Bones.

"Dorcas!" he said merrily, hugging her. Edgar was a hugging sort of guy, hugged everyone he met and every time he greeted them. Sometimes, in the course of being around him, she would receive as many as five hugs in one sitting. She had thought that he must have been sick a lot as a child, but it wasn't comfortable to think of his being sick when she was about to eat at his house.

He ushered her inside, took her coat, and introduced her to his wife, his son, and his sister Amelia, who was apparently also staying for dinner.

"You work at the Ministry, don't you?" Dorcas asked, smiling brightly at Amelia Bones.

No one would think that Amelia Bones was the sort of person to be trifled with. Although she was warm enough, certainly polite, she had the air of a woman who knew what she was doing and didn't suffer fools. As far as Dorcas was concerned, that was the sort of person that ought to be populating the halls of the Ministry of Magic, but they were unfortunately rather scarce.

"Yes, that's right," Amelia said, glancing at Edgar and frowning slightly. It was fairly obvious to Dorcas that Amelia knew Edgar was in the Order, and that she at least suspected Dorcas was as well. She would have to be careful, in her position, that she not obviously align herself with the Order unless she was willing to actually join it. A lot of anti-Order sentiment was going around in the Ministry, in spite of all the good they'd done. Voldemort's supporters had quite a lot of gold to push into the right palms.

"I only ask," Dorcas said, with a smile she used to put people at ease, "because I often thought I would work there. Is it hard, these days, to work at the Ministry? I can imagine that the state of things makes life difficult."

"Well, I work in the office that deals with underage magic," Amelia said with a stern sort of smile. "Work in that office is much the same as it ever was, thankfully. But there is tension in the corridors that I imagine isn't always there."

Dorcas nodded.

The party all sat down for dinner, and Dorcas went directly for the soup. She paid careful attention to her manners. She'd never cared much about that sort of thing growing up, certainly not at school, and didn't bother with it at home, but Rachel – who also didn't bother with it at home – had been carefully school in manners by her mother growing up, and had passed on this education to Dorcas when she learned that Dorcas would have to be around purebloods and even sometimes go undercover as one.

You can't pass as a pureblood with your table manners, Dorcas. You'll give yourself away the second you pick up a salad fork, or use the wrong spoon.

Edgar's house wasn't so fancy as all that, but Dorcas liked to take occasion to practice when she went out anywhere, and Amelia seemed the sort of person who would remember someone's table manners as well as their face.

Clanking of silverware against the bowl was kept to a minimum, and Dorcas felt a little bit proud of herself, thinking how pleased Rachel would be to see her performance. Quite a lot of work went into using proper table manners, and by the time she moved on to her salad, Dorcas was mentally exhausted.

"So, how is Rachel?" Edgar asked kindly. He didn't know Rachel as well as their other Order friends, but he and Rachel got on famously whenever they'd been around each other, both being warm and pleasant people. He always asked after her.

"Oh, she's fine," Dorcas said, almost reflexively. And then her mind travelled back to the kitchen, where she hoped Fabian and Rachel were talking about how things were not fine, about things Rachel never wanted to discuss. But perhaps that was too much to hope for.

"Rachel Chaplin, right?" Amelia asked. "The spore specialist?"

Dorcas felt her eyes narrowing of their own accord. What would someone who worked with restrictions on underage sorcery know about Rachel's work? Why would she care?

"Yes," Dorcas said slowly.

"I bought her book," Amelia continued, as though nothing had changed in Dorcas's posture. "I'm a bit of an amateur Herbologist these days. She writes with a lot of clarity for someone in her field. I don't have any plants with spores at the moment, but I was thinking about getting some. Her book has been very helpful."

Dorcas relaxed only slightly. This story had a ring of truth to it, but she had gotten into the habit of trying to find the truth behind the words. It had her looking for things where things weren't. But there might have been something, and she didn't want to think well of anyone she couldn't be absolutely sure of. What with some of the things Dumbledore had been saying about her mission, about how secretive she had to be, her list of people she was absolutely sure of was a short one indeed, and it wouldn't be extending to Amelia Bones any time soon.

Dinner went on for another hour, and Dorcas found Edgar helping her with her coat at the end.

"I hope you didn't mind my sister. She's a bit…well, not unsocial, but she takes her work very seriously. She's a very responsible person. You know."

Dorcas did know, but she just nodded and smiled.

"I'm sure she's lovely when you get to know her," she said. "Just…. Well, she's very focused on her work, and my mind is pretty focused on other things…."

"Oh, right," Edgar said, smiling. "Your next mission."

She nodded. There was no use telling him her mind was in the kitchen with Fabian and Rachel. If it was on a mission, he wouldn't ask questions.