Wild Children

by Flox Polimon

A canon-abiding tale of love, life, and friendship. When you track and interlace the stories of Lily, the Marauders, Severus, Petunia, members of the original Order, and the more shadowy characters of Hogwarts; an image of The Wizarding World in the 1970s can be conjured. And when you do so, you end up telling the story of the wildest of children. Build up to the first war.

2. Prologue II - Love rears its head

Prologue - part two

The summer of 76 is coming to an end, and love is rearing its head…

Spinner's End was a long, winding neighbourhood if you asked anyone from Cokeworth. They would tell you it stretched from Sewit Street all the way down to Lawrence Crescent, covering all of the town's south end. Cheap brick houses had been commissioned by the council to be built when the small industrial town started to expand in the late 1950s, due to all the new factories that were being set up in the area. And, indeed, the houses had been built; as quickly as they were inhabited, uniform and narrowly spaced, like stacked dominoes of blackening brick. The cluster of winding streets that were born from such expansion were all colloquially dubbed 'Spinner's End', for it was one of the street names, which all looked very similar, and it was right on the edge of Cokeworth.

But, actually, if you checked any map, Spinner's End was technically only one street. The first one that had been built and perhaps the muckiest of them all. Damp and dingy - it made the other streets in the neighbourhood look like comfortable suburbs. And it was down one of its dark and gloomy alleyways that Severus Snape could be found on a late August evening, loitering in the hopes of wasting the last bit of his summer holiday.

The sun was setting and it was still sweltering, it occurred to him, as he grew increasingly uncomfortable in his stuffy robes. He was sitting on a pavement ledge, barely what you would consider higher than the ground itself, his long legs bent awkwardly so that his knees towered over his middle. The bins from last week had not been collected yet again and the smell was repugnant, exacerbated by the heat. It was probably not the council's fault, either - he wouldn't put it past the pea-brain muggles on his street to have mixed up the collection days… again. And now he had to live with the consequences of their insolent level of intelligence. Which was the story of his life, really. Always having to painfully bear the burden of the incompetence and injustice around him. In fact, he was bearing evidence of such burdens at that exact moment; a fresh cut, just below his shoulder, courtesy of Tobias Snape's brute use of a glass bottle.

It had been meant for his mother Eileen, as usual, but aim must be hard when your two brain synapses are not used to touching, Severus supposed. And when you were drunk - that couldn't help things, either. If it wasn't for the idiotic rules imposed by the twits at the Ministry, Severus would've been able to show Tobias what proper aim looked like years ago. As early as when he was six, in fact. He had known plenty of nasty spells by then. Severus closed his eyes, rolling his wand between his palms longingly, and indulged in his fantasy for a brief moment.

He is in his living room, wand at the ready. He can see Tobias from his position by the doorframe, from where Snape looms forwards, sneering at the silhouette of his father. Tobias' body is spread over the springy sofa in front of their television, sinking into the material as if chemically bonded to it. Tobias reeks of alcohol and his chin is crawling with unkempt stubble in the same way ants crawl over a dropped piece of bread. He is shouting something venomously at Eileen, who is somewhere else in the house, so his voice grows louder to make sure it reaches her. He slams his fist against the grey sofa, angry, like a provoked primate. His words are irrelevant, because it all comes out as one incoherent growl, as if he was never taught language and is forced to communicate through grunts. He is so annoying, so arrogant, so stupid and so unaware of it; believing himself immortal and all-mighty, like he isn't a muggle. A disgustingly ordinary, bleak, inferior muggle that knows nothing about a whole other world that exists outside of Cokeworth; one that is rich and ancient, and brimming with power and wisdom. He can never touch it, he isn't allowed - yet he shouts and bangs things up, like he owns the place. Like he has any right to. It's laughable.

So Severus laughs. Earnestly, hard - it rattles Tobias, who notices him by the door. Severus then lifts his arm up, and points his wand at his father, whose eyes widen in fear. A million curses race through Severus's pulsing mind, like an encyclopaedia flicking its pages quickly. Severus has been studying curses since he learned how to read. He was only able to practise them when he got to Hogwarts, but no one could stop him from memorising them like mantras before then. All the dusty books that Eileen Snape kept, all divinely dark, taught him magic that could blind Tobias in pain with a single word. Magic that was capable of pulling his tongue right from his mouth, lifting up his gums and uprooting all his teeth. It could make sure the oaf would never be able to sleep again, kept awake by perpetual nightmares. It could make his nails grow towards his body, puncturing his organs. It could make him sorry for the first time in his life. Sorry to have lived.

A jet of green light bursts from the tip of Severus' wand. It hits Tobias square in the face, and he screams, for the curse burns his skin. The flesh there starts to dissolve, crinkling away, changing colour to a chromatic brown, crunchy, like chipped wood. As his entire body starts to transform, Tobias starts to beg for his life. Severus merely laughs in his face. Tobias begs for help, for mercy - he assures Severus of his superiority, of his power, hoping this will save him. It's too late for him, he should've thought of that earlier. Tobias turns into a cockroach before Severus' very eyes. Human-sized at first, then shrivelling to the size Tobias was always meant to be. No bigger than any regular insect, scattering about uselessly.

The cockroach twitches incessantly as Severus approaches it. He lowers his boot on it, crushing Tobias with the weight of his strength.

Ah, that fantasy was a good one. The young wizard had many variations of it - one for each curse that he knew, but they all ended in much the same way. Eileen had of course used magic to attack Tobias in their many fights - each had their own weapons, magical or otherwise - but her attempts were feeble, Severus thought. Nothing on what he was capable of, anyway, if he was only given the chance. He could make his mother's maiden name proud - the only name worth carrying, in his eyes. A true Prince, destroying a worthless muggle Snape, a parasite on the purest of blood, with beautiful dark magic.

Severus looked up at the stretch of sky visible from his position on the pavement. It was hardly enough sky to contemplate: a sliver of dull yellow between the two brick walls of the alley. Cokeworth's ugly answer to a sunset. His mind drifted to where it always drifted to when he wasn't careful - to a girl not very far from the alleyway. Was she looking up at the same sky in that moment, too - one clogged with fumes, its light dying away at the rate of the summer?

What was she doing? He could picture her if he tried, for he knew her so well. She was probably helping her mother set the table for tea, at this late hour. That was easy enough to imagine. Severus had seen her do it once before; stretch the cloth over the table like the wings of a pegasus, smooth it over, set the cutlery on top, chat away about something on her mind to her vacuous mother. Maybe she would be chatting about the many potion uses of toads, because she always liked to talk about that. If someone didn't stop her, you might never hear the end of it. Severus never stopped her.

Why would he - when she was talking to him like nothing in the world mattered as much as him, her, and the potion uses of toads. She talked in a voice so clear, so musical, so fresh - like clean air from a prairie injected directly into the dust-ridden oxygen of Cokeworth. She often smiled mid-word when she spoke. She would sense his amusement at the fact she found the collection of toad slime interesting, or something equally as endearing, but she wouldn't acknowledge it directly - the smile was enough, it was a private understanding that it was funny. That was them: communication beyond words. She would also always tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear when she felt she needed to assert a point more clearly, which she didn't realise was totally counter-productive, as it made Severus lose his train of thought almost completely.

And when she asked him a question, her innocence and naivety were precious. Severus gave her answers like they were treasure, like he was gifting her the moon - like he was capable of wrapping it up and presenting it to her with a pretty bow around it, making her look up at him in awe. Lily Evans really was an angel, mistakenly dropped on Earth by God, who had sweaty hands and was a clumsy idiot (or whatever muggle folklore said about God and angels, he didn't really know or care).

He looked up at the sky again. It had gotten significantly darker since the last time he had examined it. The air seemed crisper. Night would soon dawn.

Begrudgingly, he stood up. His legs ached almost as much as his stomach did, hollowed out with the pangs of hunger. As he did so, Severus kicked a lone clump of asphalt onto the road. He watched it roll until it ran out of momentum, halting abruptly. It had rolled for longer than usual. It had been a lonely summer for him to be able to notice something like that.

It was always lonely, but without Lily to soften the hard edges of Cokeworth, the solitude was almost unbearable. Severus liked to think that being at Hogwarts would solve this problem; that being in muggle England with no company would naturally be lonely, and that it wasn't all that linked to not being friends with Lily any more. But deep down, Severus worried that he would never stop feeling lonely. At Hogwarts, after Hogwarts, for the rest of life - without Lily.

He had been lonely before he'd met her. A miserable child, deprived of love, denied connection. Then, after meeting her, he couldn't remember the meaning of the word 'lonely'. He suddenly knew love, and he learnt connection.

Now, their friendship vapourised, he was promptly reminded of the precise feeling of loneliness, that old friend of his. He felt its mechanical muscle-memory working once again, angry to have been forgotten for those few golden years; felt how it feasted on his soul, how it chilled his bones. He was now forgetting connection - it was slipping away as quickly as it had first appeared. But he couldn't seem to shake away love. It looked like that one was here to stay, though this time it hurt, and smelled rotten. It was more than welcome to leave.

There was a before, a during, and an after when it came to Lily in his life. It had only been a few months but, Merlin, Severus already felt the impact of not having her around. He had tried not to open the Pandora's Box of his feelings for her during their friendship, scared of what that would mean, and what it would do. It was far too scary a box for so many reasons - terrifyingly, it trembled with its own force, one which threatened to unhinge the box's lid with a violent swing, seeking no permission to reveal his heart, exposing it to the danger of being trampled. Now that his guard was down, the Pandora Box was opening up - he could feel it.

The sky was now a deep grey. Outside of the alley, in a more open part of the street, Severus spotted an owl crossing the sky, flying amongst the chimneys. It was unmistakably Peach, Lily's owl, who he had memorised the plumage of (down to the markings along her belly and her curved beak). Severus couldn't help but obsess over everything that concerned Lily, even her owl. How it thrilled him to see a trace of her after being deprived of her presence for so many months. The owl flashed above him like a guiding star.

Only a few more sleeps until the Hogwarts Express would embark to the Scottish Highlands, taking him to her side once more. They might even touch elbows in Potions, or lock eyes across a corridor. Perhaps, not all hope was lost between Severus Snape and Lily Evans.

---

"Augusta!" Euphemia Potter greeted, having opened the great, big oak doors to her manor with wandless magic. "What a delight - to what do I owe this visit?"

It was a hot evening. The sun was setting on a clear sky, the last one of the year that would belong to August, and Mrs Longbottom basked in the dimming light on the Potter's doorstep. The last wisps of the summer cast long shadows on her sour face, which was fit under an extravagant hat and nestled on top of a matching fur coat, both electric blue and fuzzy.

"I was in the area visiting the Cauldrons," the witch explained, "and they gifted me a bottle of Dragon Barrel Brandy, you see - and I just detest the foul thing. But I thought maybe Fleamont might be partial to it," she said, holding up the large amber glass bottle to the older witch.

Euphemia took the offering. "He is indeed, thank you Augusta. Mind you, I will stow this somewhere safe, so my Jimmy doesn't get his hands on it. Do come in!"

"Oh, it's late. I should be heading off."

"Nonsense - come in. We've just done up the parlour and it would be a shame for you not to see it before it gets destroyed by my son crashing a broomstick through the window, or something to that effect. New chandelier and everything! Just floo home when you get sick of my company."

"Which will happen soon enough," Augusta replied, taking her elaborate hat off as she entered the Potter Manor. It was an impressive, Jacobean estate - light, spacious, and inviting. Portraits lined the hallway that led to a fine wood staircase, spiralling elegantly upwards.

"Charming as ever, Augusta."

"Where is that hellraiser son of yours? It's awfully peaceful."

"Yes, well spotted. Fleamont poured a generous dose of Celeste's Calming Concoction into the boys' pumpkin juice, and they've been knocked out cold so they can get up early tomorrow. Wouldn't want them missing the Hogwarts Express."

"The measures you take - my Frank never caused such trouble!"

"Yes, I know," Euphemia said, utterly proud of the fact. "What were you doing at the Cauldrons, then? I wasn't aware you were close with my neighbours. They usually keep to themselves."

"I'm not," Augusta clarified immediately, "though they are certainly putting in admirable effort to make it so."

"Oh?" Euphemia asked, intrigued. The two women made their way to the parlour, where Euphemia stopped to show the younger witch her new chandelier. It was golden, high up in the carved wood ceiling, and held dozens of candles perfectly in place ("Lovely, Euphemia - but what was wrong with your old one?").

Augusta took a seat on a mustard-coloured Chesterfield, and began her sour explanation. "Been getting owls non-stop from the Cauldrons as of late. You must join us for a dinner party, come try our new bellyberry brew with us, oh you simply must join us for the Hag Opera at the new moon - doing my head in, I'll tell you."

"Well that's nice, isn't it? Seems like a lovely thing to do - inviting someone to enjoy their company - are you familiar with the concept?" said Mrs Potter, poking fun at the grumpy witch.

"Except it isn't. They're just trying to get me to hand over my son to their no-good daughter."

"Agrippa! What on Earth is wrong with Geraldine Cauldron, Augusta? She's a lovely girl!"

"No, she isn't."

"Why ever not?"

"She's not good enough for my son!"

"You will never think anyone is good enough for your darling Frank," Euphemia accused.

"There's a bloody good chance there never will be anyone good enough for my son, so I'm well within my right to think as much!"

"That's nonsense - does Frank like her?"

Augusta clenched her jaw. "I suppose. But she came onto him like a wild chizpurfle! Frank is too polite to reject her advances and embarrass her. Bless him…"

Euphemia rolled her eyes. "Yes, bless him. Now, I'm sure that is not the case. And even if that were true, then it's Frank's problem to sort out, don't you think? He is certainly old enough to hold his own."

"I just don't think they're a good match - I'll know my daughter-in-law when I see her!"

"What a thing to say! Never knew you were into Divination, old friend. Tea?" Euphemia offered, getting up to head to the kitchen.

"It's not any Divination poppycock - it's a mother's intuition. And yes, no milk," Mrs Longbottom said snappily.

"You wouldn't recognise a girl as your daughter-in-law if she gifted you the sun, Augusta - she'd be lucky not to have you spit at her!"

"True," Mrs Longbottom sniffed.

"Well, that's hardly fair - I'm sure you are still able to cast your mind back to being a young witch - meeting the parents for the first time - how nerve wracking it all was, especially meeting Olga Longbottom, hard as she was to impress…" Euphemia reminded her, her voice reaching Augusta despite having disappeared into the corridor.

"Call it keeping up the family tradition, if you wish!" Augusta called out. "And Olga adored me instantaneously, don't you know."

"I certainly don't remember it that way," Euphemia's voice rang down the corridor.

"What do you know - you're as old as Merlin, Euphemia! You're practically delirious!"

"Precisely. I'm old and I knew Olga well, and don't you forget it!"

Augusta fiddled with the fur collar of her coat, rather miffed at Mrs Potter's astute point. "The perks of being a relic, I suppose. What's your point - was Olga not fond of me?"

After a brief pause, Euphemia's voice reached the parlour again. "Eventually she was."

"I see," Augusta huffed. "No matter - the fact is, the Cauldrons don't have to so much enamour my son, as they have to enamour me. And so far, they are yet to be successful."

From a distant part of the house, the gentle sound of porcelain clinking could be heard. "May Circe help them beyond the grave - they have a hell of a task ahead. And what must they do to be successful?"

"Merlin knows! Because I don't much like their daughter, to be honest, so they're off to a very turbulent start indeed."

"You don't say!" Mrs Potter called. "Augusta, need I remind you that it will be Frank dating Geraldine, and not you."

"I'm well aware, thank you Euphemia!"

"Well then," Mrs Potter said, reappearing in the parlour with a steaming teacup of fine china in her hands, "I don't see why your opinions on the matter should weigh so much."

"Why?" Augusta spluttered, aghast, snatching the teacup away fiercely. "Why? Why ever not, when I am the mother of the man in question!"

"Let him get on with it, Augusta, he's no longer a boy you can suffocate."

Mrs Longbottom made a sound of protest. "Now, that's rich. Let's not pretend you wouldn't be the same with your darling James, Euphemia. You coddle that boy!"

"I don't deny it. I do coddle him."

"Well, I'd like to see what you're like when he starts bringing girls home. I will laugh my hat off when that day comes. Hell - I'd be shocked if he wasn't seeing one right under your nose and not telling you about it!"

A cloud seemed to pass over Euphemia Potter's features. "That's absurd - Jimmy would've told me, he tells me everything!"

"Are we referring to the same boy here, Euphemia, or do you have another son you call Jimmy? Because the one I know is on the road to be made an honorary poltergeist. You seriously think he is obedient enough to tell you everything he is up to? He's never up to any good!"

"And he tells me as much, Augusta."

"Oh, yes I'm sure he confesses his wrongdoings daily to you - repenting!"

"He's mischievous, I'll give you that - but if he liked a girl he would tell me. He would!" Euphemia said, but her usually confident expression faltered slightly.

"And has he?"

"Well…no…"

Augusta took a sip of her tea, satisfied. "How very interesting."

Euphemia scoffed. "It just means he hasn't liked a girl yet!"

"Don't be a fool, Euphemia Potter, it does not look good on you!"

"I'd forgotten how lovely your visits were, Augusta, you must come round more often," Mrs Potter muttered darkly.

"That boy is dealing with witches - and you don't even know who these girls are!"

"Please, your own hysteria will not affect me, despite your best efforts. I don't care."

"Are you not curious as to who these girls are? What they are like?"

"Yes, I would be curious, of course…"

"Because you want to know if they are good enough!" Augusta Longbottom concluded, happily.

"Naturally, but I would not be a lunatic about it."

"Oh, yes you would. I know you, Euphemia Potter. We are one of the same - I know what it's like to have an only son. "

Euphemia scoffed. "Oh, please…"

And yet, long after Augusta Longbottom had returned back to her house (complaining about her mild allergy to floo powder all the while) her words remained very present in the Potter Manor, and they still, annoyingly, rattled Euphemia Potter. While the older witch got ready for bed, plaiting her grey hair and slipping a velvet nightgown on, she turned to her husband in the room next to her luxurious bathroom, wishing to soothe her niggling worries.

"Monty, darling," she asked, performing a wordless face-washing spell, "you do think James would tell me if he liked a girl at school, don't you?"

"Oh, no chance in hell," Fleamont responded automatically, his voice indicating he was close to snoozing. "The boy is sixteen - why would he? Unless it's serious, and even then - fat chance."

The bedroom door burst open, and Euphemia's very angry face appeared, making her husband yelp. "WHAT. Tell me you are joking, Fleamont!"

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Is the sky blue!" Mrs Potter shrieked.

"Agrippa, it's the bloody truth! I did not alert my mother when I fancied a girl back at school, Euphemia. That's the last person I thought of informing. Did you?"

Euphemia ignored the question. "But - he has to! I'm his mother - Jimmy would tell me!"

"Angel, you know he would've by now. It's not like it's early days - James is nearly a man, I'm sure he's fancied many a girl."

"But - but why wouldn't he have told me?"

"Because you'd bloody scare the girls away, that's why."

Fleamont suddenly realised how likely it could be that his wife was part dragon, for he swore he saw fire come out of her nostrils. "PARDON? HOW DARE YOU!" she bellowed.

"I was only joking, Euphemia - good Godric!"

"Well it's not funny, Fleamont! This is very important to me!"

"His special ladies would love your sweet and mellow temperament, my dear."

"FLEAMONT!"

"Merlin - it's a good thing I was a Gryffindor, only the bravest would dare marry you - you're going to take my eye out with that wand!"

"Do you think James has already been interested - been involved - with people, Fleamont, and he's not told us?" she demanded shrilly, ready to attack.

"If I lie but give you the answer you wish to hear, will you still hex me within an inch of my life, angel?"

"Find out for yourself, dearest!" Euphemia roared.

"Listen, you mad witch!" Fleamont started, protecting his head with his arms from the wrath of Mrs Potter's blue pom-pom slipper, which she had promptly substituted for a wand as her preferred weapon. "I can't know for certain, since he hasn't told us! But, truthfully, Phemia - I think he most definitely has. Almost with complete certainty, in fact. Now thump me with that daft thing so we can go to bed."

Like a sedated beast, Mrs Potter lowered her slipper and tried to calm her heaving chest as she searched Mr Potter's face. "Well," she panted, "that simply will not do."

"Take a page from my book, angel, and worry not. It's nothing but schoolboy adventures, so you can rest easy. What does it all matter?" he reasoned, snuggling under the covers and inviting Euphemia to do the same.

"I don't care - I want to know all of it! Jimmy is my son and I deserve to know about the young witches at Hogwarts."

"I am struggling to see the connection between the two. Dare I ask why you feel you deserve to know about the young witches at Hogwarts. Are you conducting a survey?"

"Because - well - I just do, Monty! I'm not one of your potions - you can't find an exact magical explanation for why I care, I simply do! I am a mother!"

"Merlin. Whatever curse hit Augusta Longbottom years ago must have struck you down too. You sound just as mad as she does."

"You know how I've always been about Jimmy, Monty, this is hardly novel. I've always been mad when it comes to my boy!"

"Well, yes. We spoil him rotten - we always have. But we've always given that boy a lot of freedom, as well - we pride ourselves on it. Let's not end our happy tradition prematurely."

"I will find out, you know," Euphemia promised, joining her husband under the covers of their ostentatious bed. "I need to know what they're like - these girls - if there's any - if any of them are good enough. I don't like to be kept in the dark."

"Bloody hell. Goodnight, Augusta."

Mrs Potter swatted her husband's back, but chuckled. "You know," she told him as she dimmed the lights with her wand, "I have a newfound appreciation for that woman."

"Now there's a chilling thought," Mr Potter mumbled, drifting to sleep.

The next morning, Mrs Potter woke up to the natural alarm of James and Sirius creating obscene amounts of havoc as they attempted to pack at the last minute what was to be a year's worth of personal belongings. Owl screeching, tremendous crashes, peels of laughter, a dungbomb or two - there wasn't an incredibly telling sound-effect that Mrs Potter didn't hear above her head that morning as she yawned her way to the dining room. After the unmistakable sound of two bodies toppling down the stairs had died out, she was soon joined at the dining table by her son and his might-as-well-be-her-son-at-this-rate roguish best mate.

"Morning, mum," James greeted, with hair that looked like he'd walked the distance of Devon to Leeds doing a headstand. "I can't find my glasses, shoes, Charms book, or muggle trousers. Oh, or cat."

"Or hairbrush," Sirius added.

"That one is long gone, mate."

"You can't find your glasses, Jimmy?" Euphemia asked, worriedly. "That's no good - you're nothing without them!"

Sirius snickered. "Quite bleak for a Saturday morning, mum - steady on," James quipped.

"And where on Earth is the cat?"

"Probably had enough of this one chasing it pretending to be a dog," James said, nodding towards Sirius.

"I can be a very convincing dog," Sirius spoke with a mouth full of fried egg.

"Poor Piers - what a troubling life for an old, innocent, house cat," Mrs Potter lamented.

"His first trouble was being named Piers, poor bloke," James pointed out.

"I expect his second was playing Quidditch in the garden," Mr Potter contributed, joining the table, "which a cat doesn't tend to do, for good reason."

"He can take it. Cats used to fly on broomsticks in the olden days," Sirius said.

"Yes, as cats, not as quaffles," Fleamont Potter corrected, smirking amusedly. "But what a goal Piers did score!"

"It was a beauty," James agreed.

"Perhaps it's a good thing if Piers doesn't show up," said Euphemia. "Merlin knows what treacherous things he is forced to experience at Hogwarts - he'll enjoy a break here at home."

"Nah - all the girls fuss over him, so he loves it," Sirius informed the witch.

"Yeah, he lives the high life in Hogwarts, Piers does," James added, piling sausages onto his plate.

Fleamont watched, terrified, as a sharp thought, clear as day, flashed across his wife's eyes. Good Godric, he thought to himself.

Euphemia cleared her throat, setting her porridge to one side. "So," she said, "speaking of girls. Anyone would like to tell me about the girls at Hogwarts, then?"

James and Sirius gawked at Mrs Potter, frozen in place. "Smooth, mum - have you considered working in the Department of Mysteries?" James finally said, providing no further comment.

"Anyone?" Mrs Potter pressed on. "We can take it in turns," she offered.

"Oh, do you have something to say about the girls at Hogwarts?"

"Come on," Euphemia snapped, "it will be fun."

"We can only remember them all if we think back to a seating plan, I reckon. Alphabetical order?" smirked Sirius.

"Starting with Transfiguration - there's Mildred Abbott, who's a right geek, then to her right is Tallulah Arthur, who once coughed up a mosquito… "

"Boys!" Euphemia barked. "You know what I'm getting at!"

"Would it kill you to elaborate, mother?"

"Come on, are there any girls at Hogwarts I should know about?"

"Tallulah Arthur, who coughed up a mosquito."

Mrs Potter sighed, ignoring her husband's unhelpful commentary ("This is painful, Euphemia"). "I'm just very curious about what the witch pool is like! Any attractive witches for my two boys? Anyone take your fancy at school? Oh, don't give me those looks, it's only natural I wonder. I did birth you, Jimmy - and with great difficulty, might I add. Indulge me, either of you - keep this poor old lady entertained. Take pity!"

"Well, there goes your dignity, my angel," Fleamont announced into his fork.

"I reckon I'll assert my right as a visitor and exclude myself from this conversation, if I may," Sirius suggested.

"You may," Mr Potter conceded.

"Bollocks," James breathed, casting a dirty look at an ever-smug Sirius. "Prick."

"Jimmy, darling - you can tell me about any girl. It doesn't have to be anything serious, I just want to be informed. I'm nosy! And have too much time on my hands!"

"At least you're self aware."

"Monty - " Euphemia warned through clenched teeth.

James made a show of chewing his next bite of sausage languidly, like there was no train to be catching in forty odd minutes. "Why would I tell you if there was?"

"So there is someone!" Euphemia yelped, sounding a lot more accusatory than she had intended to.

"No," James rebutted quickly, "but I wouldn't tell you anyway."

"Jimmy," his mother gasped, "that's cruel!"

"There is nothing to report back, Mrs Potter," Sirius piped up, much to James' horror. "He wasn't so lucky, but he gave it his best go. Ask him again when he starts to grow tentacles."

"You twat," James said pointedly to Sirius, but they both wore identically stupid grins.

"Why? What does that mean?" Euphemia inquired with an intense stare.

"I'm saying that the one bird that matters could not hate the sod more, so you can rest in the knowledge that he will die alone," Sirius explained.

"Well, now I'm interested!" voiced Euphemia.

"Oh yes - now you are," Fleamont muttered.

"Who is this witch, Jimmy?"

"No one, mum - why would you believe anything that comes out of that git's mouth - "

"Why does she hate you?" Mrs Potter demanded hotly.

James rolled his eyes. "She doesn't hate me - " he started, slipping up.

"You fool," Fleamont reprimanded his son, having walked right into Mrs Potter's very basic trap.

"Who is she?" Euphemia all but screamed, giving Tipsy quite the fright as she came in to refill the jug of milk.

Sirius and James grinned mischievously. Watching Mrs Potter descend into madness was fairly entertaining. "Mum, your eyes are going to pop right out of their sockets."

"What does she look like?" she demanded.

"Long, greasy hair - big fuck off nose," Sirius supplied unhelpfully.

"Just my type," James voiced seriously.

"I see. You're having me on, aren't you?" Euphemia tutted, undeterred. "What's her name?"

"Mum, come off it," said James.

"I might recognise the family name, you never know - and I want to picture her."

"That's just bloody weird. And it's no use, you won't recognise the name."

"You underestimate me!"

"She's muggleborn, so you won't - which is brilliant, since there's no chance of you meddling."

"Oh," Euphemia pronounced, for that had been her plan precisely. She huffed, annoyed.

"And that's as much as you will be getting from me, dear mother," James said, with a note of finality. "Have your old lady needs been met sufficiently or would you like me to fetch you some knitting needles?"

"Hardly," Mrs Potter complained, "but I'll live."

And live to see Kings Cross later that morning she did. Though she was fairly morose all the way there, even if it had been a rather brief floo journey to an Inn nearby the station. Augusta Longbottom's paranoia was too damn contagious and it still rang in her ears like the after-effects of an explosion! Euphemia should not really have cared about what this mystery girl was like; not when her son had been so tight-lipped about everything, it was probably an altogether inconsequential affair. But for some demented reason, not knowing anything about this girl tormented the older witch like a bad dream. What if this schoolgirl was snooty? Or of bad manners? Maybe she was a bundle of kinetic energy, much like James, that played Quidditch and was an incorrigible trouble-maker. What if she was all looks and no substance, and was actually downright horrible? What if she was cripplingly shy and never looked up above her nose? Where was she from? What was her voice like? Favourite colour? Best subject? Augusta Longbottom - you torturous fiend.

Past the barrier at Platform 9 and ¾, as James and Sirius dashed off, Euphemia Potter took her chance to scan the crowds of students, trying to imagine which of the spritely young witches that pushed through the hordes of bodies could be the subject of her son's attraction. Could it be the girl dragging her luggage on the far end of the platform? The ends of her brown hair were curled upwards, and she wore a cream-coloured skirt as she struggled to lug the huge thing around. She looked very prim and proper - Mrs Potter somehow felt that this manner was unlikely to draw her troublesome son's attention, but you never knew!

Perhaps it was the girl on the exact opposite side of the platform? She was no doubt a muggleborn, based on the way she was dressed. She looked very sweet as her great big eyes searched the mass of students, her mousey hair gathered in a soft ponytail on top of her head, held together by a wand. She waved at someone in the epicentre of the chaos, and Mrs Potter thought that her smile was very endearing.

It could very well have been the other girl that the sweet-looking teen was waving at that was actually the answer to Euphemia's search. She was a witch with straw-coloured hair framing an impish face - a face which split into a cheeky smile as she hugged her friend tightly. Then they both nodded a hello at a third girl from a distance, and Mrs Potter wondered if perhaps this was the person her son fancied. This third girl nodded back to the other two - tucking her long, silky black hair behind her ear - and returned to her own friends, two girls with identical honey-haired bobs and blue eyes.

Maybe, instead, it was the freckled ginger witch that had accidentally knocked over a tiny little student with the broom she had slumped over her shoulders. Or perhaps, even, it could have been the girl with the ash-grey fringe, button nose, and violently purple tights that was stepping into a carriage. There was every chance that it might have been the petite girl with a full head of delicate ringlets, however; she weaved through the crowds expertly, her pale eyes never ungluing themselves from the latest edition of Witch Weekly. It could've been any of them! Why were there so many faces everywhere, all of a sudden? This was quite ridiculous - it was hardly reasonable to have so many faces in one place! Just as Euphemia Potter started to feel a headache coming on, a small toad jumped up onto her right shoe.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry," a student told her, approaching her instantly. "She does that at the worst moments," she excused, scooping up the toad in her hands apologetically. The girl was pale and had watery, green eyes, enveloped in a great big cloud of dark, red hair. "Bad, Clover."

"You're alright, darling - it's what toads do," Euphemia dismissed, ready to resume her brief people-watching mission, which was doomed to end in a minute's time, when the train departed. As the girl vanished into the crowd, Sirius reappeared by Mrs Potter's side.

"What are you doing, Sirius?" Euphemia said, pulling his arm, "You'll miss the train!"

"One last goodbye," he answered. "And a thank you - for letting me stay the summer," he added sheepishly.

"My sweet boy, of course!" Mrs Potter gushed, squeezing him. It was an odd sight; the impossibly cool Sirius Black being snuggled by an elderly witch. "You're due back at Christmas, alright? Remember what I told you - we are family. I don't want you going back to Grimmauld Place while I draw breath."

Sirius smiled deeply as he backstepped, heading towards the Hogwarts Express. It was the type of smile that was capable of reaching your most inner organs with its total sincerity. "Are you sure that's alright, Mrs Potter? I know I'm welcome, but I don't know when I'll be able to leave - it's a big ask to -"

"Sirius," she interrupted sternly, grabbing his arm, "I always wanted one other son. This is your home."

A thousand emotions swirled in Sirius' handsome face, so complicated and so raw that even Euphemia was taken aback for a moment. "Thank you, Mrs Potter. I will write to you," he promised a bit croakily, and a bit shily. Euphemia felt tears prick at her eyes. "Oh and by the way - y'know the girl with the toad - the one that jumped on your shoe - that was her. That's the witch that James has lost his head over - the twit," he added, slinking away into the thinning crowd as soon as he'd finished.

Euphemia's eyes widened. "What?" she asked no one in particular.

"Ah, there you are, angel," Fleamont Potter said, seemingly emerging from thin air. "Just had a lovely chat with the Prewetts about the final this weekend. They think the Ballycastle Bats will cream the Caerphilly Catapults," he snorted at this. "Hysterical."

"That's nice, dear," whispered Mrs Potter, absently.

Euphemia distantly watched Sirius hop onto the train and wave goodbye at them before his figure was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Steam filled the platform, and with a gentle mechanical sound, the train picked up speed. And so, like every first of September, the majestic red machine began its journey up North, departing from King's Cross - though this time it left Mrs Potter totally speechless in its wake, trying to remember with total exactness what that girl with the wandering toad had looked like.

---

Upon pushing the door open, Frank Longbottom found the Auror Office to be enveloped in almost total darkness. The drawn blinds and blown candles made the usual purple-brick walls fade into a pitless black, and the furniture was almost indistinguishable in the gloom. Hoping not to trip to his death (a rather pathetic way to meet his end as a risk-taking Auror), Frank cast a spell to make the blinds swing open, letting the light of midday London leak into the room.

As he did so, a soft startled noise suddenly sliced through the silence, and Frank whipped around to find Alice Fortescue lifting her head from a desk on which she had no doubt been snoozing mere seconds ago.

"Merlin, Alice!" he breathed. "Did you stay here all night?" he asked, incredulous.

Alice rubbed her eyes and looked around as if she had just been dropped into her surroundings. "What?" she mumbled.

Frank waved his wand to turn on the office's copper kettle and started magically clearing Alice's desk of the many scrolls and files that were littering it. Alice watched on as Frank's magic made the mug in front of her lift up and travel all the way to the kettle on the other side of the room.

"What time did I leave the office? Must have been half eight last night," Frank said. "Did you ever go home? Please tell me you're just an early riser."

"No," Alice whispered, shaking her head. "I um - I never left, no. Too much to do," she explained before yawning deeply.

"You slept here?"

"Well, the plan wasn't to sleep. I was working."

"You mad witch! There is no sense in spending the night. You just exhaust yourself -"

"I had to, I was getting somewhere. I only fell asleep in the last couple of hours or so, before that I managed to - "

"Alice, go home. Alright?"

"Home?"

"Yes. You need to rest. You need to be properly energised, or you won't be alert and responsive. Or lucid," he added, watching as Alice's elbow sunk into an ink pot perfectly.

"I can't go home," Alice blubbered, straightening herself up unaware of her inky elbow. "Is that coffee you're making? Brill, that should do it - "

"Absolutely not - this is suckleroot brew, Alice, so you can go to bed. No caffeine for you. I encourage you to put some sleeping draught in there as well," Frank suggested, adding purple tea leaves into a mug. It was a chunky ceramic thing - chipped and stained and adorned with a moving design of a mandrake across it.

Alice fought the urge to close her very heavy eyelids. "I might as well stay seeing as I'm already here, don't you think? Saves me the commute. Besides, I made some interesting connections between the disappearance of Barnaby Blythe and Fungus Robertson, that would be a shame to -"

"I will review and catch up on all your work while you catch up on your sleep," Frank said pointedly. "You should head off. I'll take over."

Frank started to worry his very collected and matter-of-fact manner was coming across as disapproving as he noticed his fellow Auror gaze up at him and nod nervously. Alice's blonde hair escaped its loose braid ever so slightly as she did so, and her peachy face looked even rounder than usual in the afterglow of her brisk nap. Her big eyes, too, seemed sleepier. And dreamier, Frank noticed. Cute.

"Sorry - I know it's unprofessional - not to mention fairly reckless - to pull an all-nighter like this," Alice apologised. "I should've known better. It won't happen again. What is wrong with me - "

"Oh, no no - don't worry. I know it's all down to dedication," Frank tried to mend a bit frantically. "I didn't mean to - I'm very awed you did stay the night, is what I meant. It's only fair I return the favour while you go home," he clarified.

Alice nodded hastily. "Yes, sorry - I wasn't thinking -"

"I'm not one of your superiors, Alice, I wasn't trying to tell you off," Frank told her. Even more gently, he added, "I could never do such a thing."

"Oh - thanks," she said softly. After a brief pause she shook herself. "You're right, I should go - I'll leave now."

"I wish you would've told me you were planning on staying, actually. I feel rather guilty knowing you were up working alone for so long," he continued.

"I didn't know I was staying until I just did, to be completely honest. And I didn't realise it was an all-nighter until I checked the time and it was half five in the morning," she confessed. Frank laughed at that. "I was so concentrated. I really think that Barnaby Blythe and Fungus Robertson knew each other, you know. That's what I was starting to put together last night. Their cases are connected. They both happened to work at -"

"Go home," Frank cut-in, hoping he was sounding as gentle as he felt looking at the magic in her round, brown eyes. He never meant to say things in such a loving manner on purpose, but those lovely eyes of hers often loosened his tongue against his best efforts to keep it in check.

Luckily, she returned the look with something very akin to tenderness. "Okay."

There was a brief pause. The kettle started to whistle.

"It will be nice to see your uncles during the day for a change, anyway. When was the last time you've seen them awake - you're always on an assignment now," Frank said encouragingly, magically pouring hot water into the mandrake mug. "Do say hello to Florean from me if you see him around the shop."

"I will," she said, never breaking eye-contact with Frank. "And now that I'm aware of your interest, I will be sure to let you know of my next sleepover at the Auror's Office. I wouldn't mind the company."

"Oh, Morgana. Will there be more?"

"Knowing me, it's all too likely - but don't tell Moody or he'll think it's a witch thing."

Frank chuckled. "How many more sleepovers, just so I can pencil those in?"

"As many as you'll join," she joked, or so she planned, but the statement came out far too sincere to sit comfortably in the stale dawn air of the office.

"Then I will try to attend them all," he retorted, only increasing the tension. Afterwards, a significant silence hung between them, and they never seemed to blink, though neither of them really noticed they were doing so. The intimate moment was interrupted by an elegant, snowy owl with black eyes bounding in through one of the windows with a gigantic flap of its wings. With a magnificent screech, it dropped a letter at Frank's feet. As he picked it up, Alice noticed the envelope was made of fine dried orchid petals. Magenta cursive writing across its front caught her eye.

From Geraldine Cauldron, it read.

"Oh, what's that?" Alice let slip out, and she considered herself lucky that she hadn't asked who is that, instead, which had been the real sentence on the tip of her tongue.

"Personal post," Frank answered, totally bewildered and fairly flustered. "Strange it was owled to me here. I'll have to tell her not to - unprofessional…" he muttered to himself.

Alice had to yet again fight the wildest of urges to ask who this correspondent was, but decided, for the time being, to pretend not to be closely watching him as he tore the envelope open.

It was slightly embarrassing, frankly, that from that moment onwards she struggled to go to sleep at night, unable to rest as her mind raced thinking about the mystery of the identity of Geraldine Cauldron. Was she family, perhaps? Could it be someone of high rank in the Ministry? But the notion that truly kept her up was, of course, none of the above. It was in actual fact the dreaded theory that perhaps the name belonged to some sort of lover of Frank's that she was not aware of. Alice had to perish the thought, for it made her heart positively sink. Her curiosity burned like an unscratched itch, however, which she couldn't ignore forever.

"Do you know of any Cauldrons, Ferdinand?" she finally asked her uncle one day, finally giving in to her restlessness.

"Well, yes. I have a cast iron one somewhere if you need -"

"No, as in the Cauldron family. Do you know of a Geraldine Cauldron, maybe?"

"Geraldine Caul - no, don't think so."

"Florean?" Alice tried, turning to her other uncle.

"What was that?" the ancient wizard asked his niece as he poured over a newspaper in the Fortescue kitchen.

"Do you know of a Geraldine Cauldron?"

"Ah, yes - Godfrey Cauldron!" Florean exclaimed in his thick cockney accent. Alice sighed at the miscommunication, although at least his recognition seemed somewhat promising. "He must be as old as the hills, that chap."

"Is he older than you, uncle Florean?"

"Merlin knows he must be! He was a Director of Magical Security at one point - 1938 or something, I think. Archibald Alabaster was Minister at the time, so it sounds about right."

"I see."

"Good to know the man's alive!"

"I don't really know if he is, uncle Florean - I was enquiring about a member of his family. Geraldine?"

"Josephina Honora?"

"No - who - I said Geraldine -"

"Josephina is most certainly dead - she was about seventy two when she taught me at Hogwarts. And she made putrid potions - they smelled foul, don't you know, foul. Ferdy here actually downed one, didn't you, at one point - thinking it was a tumble down the sink…"

"No, uncle, I said Geraldine," Alice said with patience so great Ferdinand nearly clapped her on the back in admiration.

"Geraldine?"

"Yes. Cauldron."

"I have a spare one -"

"Do you know anything about Geraldine Cauldron, uncle?"

"Who in the hell is that?" Florean said chirpily. "Though I'll eat my hat if she hasn't passed through the doors of the shop to get the finest ice cream Diagon Alley has to offer! She has, hasn't she?"

"I'm sure she has, uncle Florean," Alice said sweetly, leaving his elderly uncle to resume his careful scan of the Daily Prophet in peace. The wizard had a couple of screws loose, understably at his old age, but he was a lovely man and even lovelier ice-cream maker.

"You know," Ferdinand considered out loud, stopping the blonde witch in her tracks, "if anyone remembers names and faces, it's Ollivander. Especially to aid an Auror inquiry such as this - he'd be happy to help, I'm certain," he added, solemnly.

"Oh - yes. Of course, a good idea, uncle Ferdy," she choked out, thoroughly embarrassed that this was in no way related to fighting magical crime. It felt rather pathetic to go all the way to visit the wand-maker (albeit it was down the street) to simply quench her thirst and paranoia about Frank's letter, especially under the guise of some kind of work-related investigation, but Alice found herself before Ollivander ten minutes later all the same.

"Ah, yes. Geraldine Cauldron - of course I remember. 11 inches on the dot, unicorn hair core, maple wood, very pliable. Good for wordless charms. Why do you wonder, Miss Forestcue?"

"Oh, err - I'm inquiring about the family history of the Cauldrons for an… Auror investigation. You would know best, Ollivander, with your splendid memory," she lied with terrible difficulty, already totally ashamed of her out-of-character actions. There was something in Ollivander's expression that told her he had not bought her tall tale. "Godfrey Cauldron was a Director of Magical Security, was he not?"

The wand-maker's golden eyes flashed, and Alice felt for a moment as though her body was totally transparent and being scanned by the wizard. "Yes, Mr Cauldron did indeed occupy that position for a time. Dragon heartstring, oak wood, 13 inches and three quarters, bendy. Notoriously apt for memory spells."

"Are they an ancient family?"

"They stretch back centuries, as do most pureblooded magical families if you trace them correctly. Though Miss Cauldron, if she marries, will cosign the name to oblivion as the last heir to the line. Such is the fate of witches."

"Yes. How old is she?"

"Lots of trivial questions, Miss Fortescue," the wizard stated evenly. Alice swallowed thickly. "Not yet thirty-one, much like her wand which happened to be crafted on the week of her birth."

"I'm interested in what you said about the name, Ollivander," Alice decided to change tactics. "It would be a terrible shame to lose it - is she planning on marrying soon?"

"I am a wand-maker, Miss Forestcue," Ollivander pronounced with an impassive tone. "I don't uselessly familiarise myself with the personal excursions of my customers. For salacious gossip, you would find Madam Malkin on the street over a much more useful interviewee."

"Sorry, Ollivander. I didn't mean for these questions to sound inconsequential, or…offensive," Alice said hastily, surprised at the snipe on Madam Malkin's character. "Is there any other information you could share with me about the family history of the Cauldrons?"

His amber eyes flashed once more. "Nothing of use for an Auror investigation. They lived in York for many years. That's where Godfrey was based after his retirement, and where I collected his wand when he passed. I'm sure it's no longer the case. That's as much I have to offer, Miss Fortescue."

"Thank you, Ollivander. This has been, err - tremendously useful."

"Yes, I'm sure," the man uttered, an all-knowing note in his voice effectively scaring the living daylights out of Alice. Thankfully, Madam Malkin proved to be much more educated on the matter of Geraldine Cauldron.

"I've certainly heard that Mrs Cauldron all but sleep talks about her Geraldine not being yet married. She's had many suitors, don't get me wrong - she's a very fair witch. Turn around for me, lovey," the witch instructed the very small child standing on a stool in front of her, who did as he was told to allow Madam Malkin to pin the backside of his cloak. "But she never really settled for one, you see. And Mrs Cauldron is an impatient woman. Let your daughter live a little, I say, she's only young!"

"Ouch!"

"Well, lovey, if you keep wiggling like a flobberworm you will get pricked, won't you?"

"Yes," the little boy huffed.

"I did hear that Augusta Longbottom and Mrs Clarice Cauldron have been fraternising lately," Madam Malkin continued, and the world seemed to stop. Alice was sure that had she been consuming liquid at that moment, she would have spat it all over Madam Malkin's floorboards.

"Oh?" she asked weakly.

"Oh, yes. Two good families, noble and ancient - it's a sensible couple. I'm sure Mrs Cauldron is most pleased. One can only assume that Frank Longbottom is the latest lovefool after Geraldine Cauldron's heart, what with all of the dinners the Cauldron's have been hosting for the Longbottoms. Maybe he is a tad younger than her, Frank Longbottom - but I've always said that wizards could learn a thing or two from a more mature witch, don't you think?"

"Are they dating?" Alice said in a voice that was far higher than usual.

"I'm not sure, dear - I've heard this all from Renata Creamfield who speaks more than she breathes, that silly cow - so not the most reputable of sources. But I think she knows all of this business because she's keeping close tabs on the situation. Renata is rather miffed Augusta Longbottom is the only one invited to these dinners, if you ask me. She's a dignified witch, but has always been as bitter as gillyweed. "

"Right."

"Ouch!"

"You'd been warned about the wiggling, my dear!"

"Well, er, thank you, Madam, for your help."

"My dear, are you sure you have all the information you need?"

"Err - yes."

"That was only the superficial stuff - I never even told you about the Cauldron family history! I know quite a bit about it, you know. Was that not the sort of thing you wanted to ask me about - oh, stop wiggling, Hector! Do you want to become a pin cushion?"

"Oh," Alice, her cheeks heating up. "Yes, yes, of course - I thought Geraldine's love life was as much as you knew. Do continue, Madam."

The young Auror then had to bear the consequences of her actions, which came in the form of a painful twenty-five-minute-long rant that showed just how much the robe-maker knew about the Cauldrons. Which, apart from some basic facts, turned out to mostly revolve around things Renata Creamfield had told her during her weekly fittings. It was as Hector finally wiggled himself free of Madam Malkin's poking grip that Alice was hit with the full-blown impact of her humiliating search for answers. How pathetic am I, she asked herself as Madam Malkin droned on about the disaster dinner-party that caused the untimely death of Etheldred Cauldron the II in the mid 1800s. She should never have stuck her nose in other people's business - it was only going to hurt her. And all over a man, no less! She grimaced, reminding herself that she was supposed to be a fearless, crime-fighting witch, and not some sop who misused Auror resources for ridiculous purposes. Enough was enough.

"Imagine! Wearing velvet robes to the Ministry Ball of 1939! Everyone knows it was a terribly muggy April, my dear - and Godfrey sweated so much they called him Godfried Cauldron Cake for a while. Because in the heat he shone like one of those fried cauldron cakes you used to be able to get, you see, that were very glossy. The nickname wasn't particularly clever. Oh, but Renata thought it was a hoot…"

"Thank you so much, Madam, this is all great - but I should be heading off. Thank you for your cooperation," Alice told the other witch, cutting her short, feeling utterly stupid.

"Oh, yes - certainly. May I ask, Miss Fortescue, if the Cauldrons are in any trouble?" Madam Malkin asked hungrily.

"No, not at all. It is a very boring investigation, I'm afraid. In fact, basically totally pointless and quite the waste of time. But you have been a great help, Madam, although I will have to ask for your discretion. Don't go around telling someone like Renata about my line of questioning…"

"Why, I'd never! She would tell everyone in the bloody continent sooner than you can say filibuster!" Madam Malkin cried out in offence. "My lips are sealed - this is not my first investigation, I'll have you know. I do know an awful lot about what goes on, actually, it's part of the trade. Everyone wants to interview me about all sorts. I'm perhaps rivalled only by someone like Tom, which he likes to remind everyone of," she added in a clipped tone, referring to the Leaky Cauldron bartender disdainfully.

"I'm glad to hear it. All the best, Madam," Alice sing-sang, making her way out of the shop, happy to be free from her horrid predicament, which was much too humiliating of a reminder of how little control over her feelings she truly had. I'm such a colossal idiot.

"Likewise. Oh and Miss Fortescue - I can be very discreet!" the seamstress called out.

"Excellent, Madam - that's precisely what I need," Alice said from outside the shop, walking away.

"I will keep this very private!" Madam Malkin insisted out the window. "Just as I will keep how saddened you were to hear about Frank and Geraldine's entanglement very private, my dear! Don't you worry, sweetheart, I'm as trustworthy as they come. I'll keep that one to myself!"

Alice stopped in her tracks. She whirled around to gawk at Madam Malkin, who looked awfully pleased with herself. Her complicated bee-hive up-do made her plump frame seem tall and imposing all of a sudden, and her painted crimson lips twisted into a little smirk.

"What?" Alice choked out.

"My dear, your face was a mirror. I'm hardly an expert on occlumency, but there was no such need for it, I'll tell you that much. You looked like a lost niffler!"

"Madam, I was not saddened - that's ridiculous!"

"The shock on your face when I mentioned his name was unmistakable, lovey, no need to play this old game. Now, I don't blame you. Here you were, investigating, just doing your job - and then I dropped his name, out of the blue, unaware that you were smitten! Goodness - you had no control over how your face was betraying you, sweetheart. I never knew, mind you. Why would I, when I didn't think you two ran in the same circles - oh, wait - but of course - you're both Aurors, aren't you! Oh, it makes all the sense now!" Madam Malkin monologued, carefully assessing Alice as if she was a hat brought to her shop in need of repair.

"Madam," Alice sighed, "I don't want to -"

"No, I understand, Miss Fortescue, completely. You must remain professional! It is an investigation, after all, however insipid it might be, and now that he's come up you can't offer comment…"

"Yes - right."

"Oh my dear, I'm sorry. Well, it doesn't have to be true! You know - about Mr Longbottom and Miss Cauldron. It did come from the mouth of Renata Creamfield, of all people, so pigs would sooner fly, dear."

Alice looked down and suddenly felt a strange urge to open up to the elegant witch before her, who was no stranger, but was no confidant either. It seemed like the perfect mix - distant enough to balm the humiliation of confessing her deeply troubling feelings towards Frank Longbottom. The upset in her heart was too painful to bear alone. It was begging to be shared.

"You know, I have a feeling it might be true," Alice said sadly, thinking about the letter Frank had received from Geraldine. "That they are seeing each other. But it's a free world, isn't it? And anyway, it's only a silly little attraction to a colleague. I'm an Auror, I have no time for romance, so this is for the best, really…"

"Oh and is Mr Longbottom exempt from this Auror rule, hmm?"

"Well - yes. I have to prove myself, Madam."

"Ah yes. I did hear you're active on the field. Finally - it has been too long since witches have been given proper missions, if you ask me. Ten years or so. That Alastor Moody scared all the witches out, that misshapen troll! No female Aurors since Augusta Longbottom retired, in fact."

"Yes, precisely. I should not be thinking about wizards at all, Madam, unless they are of the dark sort and I'm meant to be arresting them. I have big shoes to fill."

"My darling, don't you deny yourself the earthly pleasures of this world out of pride!"

"Not pride - out of practicality, actually…"

"No, lovey, this is pride."

"I have a duty to protect the Wizarding World, Madam - I think I can afford sacrificing ever so slightly liking someone in exchange for helping the population."

"Well, when you put it like that -"

"Someone involved with someone else, at any rate, so there's no fuss. It's in everyone's best interest," Alice explained gently, leaving Madam Malkin looking quite sour with her arched brows knitted together. "Anyway, have a good rest of your day, Madam."

"This isn't the 1600s, my dear, no need to pretend there is some stupid little code of honour you need to abide by as if you were a stupid knight!"

"Madam," Alice nearly squeaked, increasingly aware that they were communicating through a window. "I am not entirely sure of the point you are trying to make."

"If not Mr Longbottom, then there are many other charming wizards looking for a spunky witch such as yourself. Even in those robes of yours - "

"What?"

"- you deserve to experience love! And your job should not stop you, dear. Whether you are some sort of hero on a wage, or not. In any case, I shall keep all of it a secret."

"What's wrong with my robes?"

"Periwinkle purple, darling? It might as well be the 1600s!"

"I don't exactly have time to stop and browse for clothes," reasoned Alice, for she had spent the last month hunting down dark wizards and fighting shady characters without having had the luxury to think about her hair or clothes once. "I didn't know purple was out of season, or whatever!"

"That is utterly baffling, my dear - don't you have eyes? Can't you see how everyone is wearing olive green?"

"No, if only! I live in my Auror robes, Madam."

"Well, I'm certain Geraldine Cauldron does not, Miss Fortescue," Madam Malkin said pointedly.

"Yes, that would be fairly surprising if she did, Madam, since she isn't an Auror."

"Oh, you are as thick as peppermint creams, dear. I am making the point that Miss Cauldron takes care of herself, which is probably why she's managed to attract Frank Longbottom. She cares about her appearance and is open to the possibility of romance, darling, unlike yourself."

"How do you know I'm entirely closed to it?"

"Will you change out of those robes?"

"No -"

"Will you pursue Mr Lonbottom?"

"No - he is involved with someone else, is he not?"

"Really, Miss Fortescue!" Madam Malkin heaved with exasperation. "Renata Creamfield believes in the Chamber of Secrets - I would sooner wear periwinkle purple than have her testify in front of the Wizagamot to save my life. The witch will say anything!"

"Despite that - it is not wise. We are colleagues. We have to be professional."

"You are closing yourself to love, Miss Fortescue! You've answered 'no' to all my questions! Deary me - I am not sure why I care so much, but I am all riled up from this dispute! I am never wrong!" the seamstress tutted, waving her head about in a way that made her bee-hive hair wobble dangerously. "This is what happens when all the students go off to Hogwarts. Too many slow days, and a witch loses her head over someone else's love life."

"Couldn't agree more, Madam - don't work yourself up! There are bigger fish to fry for us both, I'm sure."

"Yes, lovey," conceded Madam Malkin, before speaking in a much sweeter tone. "But I cannot lose this argument, darling, it is my hubris. Will you allow me to set you up with someone, dear, for my own sanity? Just one date, so I can rest easy!"

Alice chuckled. Then, Madam Malkin chuckled. Soon, Alice's tinkling laughter grew into a full-blown hysterical laughing fit, and the seamstress let her own chuckle die on her lips. "You can't be serious! What in Morgana's name - I do not have the time to go on a date! Blimey, that's probably the reason why I even like Frank - I have no choice but to see him all day at work."

"Miss Fortescue, be sensible! It is a job, at the end of the day. You must find the time to do other things."

"It is not just a job -"

"If you do not enjoy the date, then so be it, darling - I am not about to arrange you a wedding! But go on one date. I cannot have you leave this place with the impression that I have given up, dear. It's my most awful habit, but it might very well kill me inside if I do."

"This is fairly demented, Madam Malkin - good day!"

"It is to prove your own point, darling!" Madam Malkin shouted after her. "You said you weren't closed off to love!"

"I'm not!" Alice said. "Why do you care - Madam, this is all quite random!"

"I know a wizard that you might hit it off with! Cassian Bones! I can put in a good word, dear, his older sister has an appointment later today to fix her shawl."

"FINE, Madam, fine! Do as you wish. You are awfully stubborn - Merlin. I really must go!" Alice grumbled, caving in.

"Fantastic, darling! I shall owl Florean's once I arrange it!" the older witch hollered, unable to see the spectacular eye roll Alice was giving her when her back was to the seamstress. "Do wear something else, though, sweetheart! Let's give you a fighting chance…"

---

"Tuney, what was wrong with the old wallpaper?" Mrs Evans asked, a laundry basket resting on her knee as she peered into her eldest's bedroom.

The walls had been papered in peach-toned floral patterns ever since Petunia's thirteenth birthday, when she had begged her mother to be spared from the living hell that was sharing a room with Lily. And she had loved that wallpaper for many, many years. However, as September rolled around, it seemed Petunia could not think of a more vile thing to cover her room - hence why she was now scraping the wallpaper away furiously, kneeling on her floor amidst the discarded sheets.

"What wasn't wrong with it?" Petunia sneered, scrubbing at one particularly stubborn splodge of plaster. "It was so immature, mum! Need I remind you I am a full adult woman, and my walls should reflect that!"

"Well this is hardly better, is it?" Daisy Evans quipped, looking around at the damaged walls. "We can't bloody afford a new one and now it looks like a robbed hospital."

"Not after I'm done with it, it won't. I've only just peeled it off!"

"It looks like shit, to be honest, Tuney."

"Who bloody well cares!" Petunia snapped. "With any luck, I won't be living here much longer!"

"Well thank you for destroying my walls," huffed Mrs Evans, narrowing her eyes, "and then leaving me to deal with it."

Petunia whirled around. She was wearing what she would normally consider social suicide and was very glad that the only witnesses at the minute were her mother and an unsuspecting toad that was hopping across the landing just behind the scowling woman (this house is a joke). Lily's wardrobe had been raided and so her dungarees hung over Petunia's bony frame, as well as an offensive polka-dot headscarf to protect her strawberry blonde hair. These clothes could get wrecked under the manual labour she was conducting on her bedroom, as far as Petunia was concerned. She adjusted the headscarf primly, glaring back at her mother.

"Isn't it so funny how Lily could genuinely blow up the house, and you would practically give her a standing ovation," Petunia muttered. "And yet when I decide to do-up my room, I've crossed some sort of line!"

"Don't get stroppy now, Tuney - Lily has never done that. And she hasn't ripped off her wallpaper, either."

"UGH," Petunia groaned. "Of course she hasn't! Little miss perfect doesn't even have wallpaper, because little miss perfect is so perfect that she had the bloody perfect insight to not want it in the first place. Well! Isn't she bright!" she bit venomously.

"Tuney, do not raise your voice at me."

"When will I stop being treated like a child!" Petunia wailed desperately. "Don't you see! This is why I'm getting rid of this horrid wallpaper, and it's why I got rid of my Bay City Rollers posters!"

Mrs Evans looked a bit put-out by this. "Oh, I liked them. Those lads were quite gorgeous."

"You can have them then! Fish them out of my bin and put them up in the living room so you can pretend you're bloody sixteen - honestly, mum…"

"So is this why you've cut your hair so suddenly? And why you've thrown out so many of your clothes? Because you want to be seen as an adult?"

"I am an adult, mum - do you even know my age?"

Mrs Evans laughed humorlessly. "Treated like one, then."

"Yes."

"Well, I'll tell you something," said Daisy Evans. "Getting a bob and a new vest won't do that, darling. To be treated like an adult, you need to act like one."

"I do!" Petunia screeched, and she stomped her foot.

"You do not. You're ridiculous."

"I need to make my material things match who I am, mum, because… well, because they never do, and it's important. It's what people see, when they don't know me," explained Petunia, returning to her work.

"Who the bloody hell is seeing your room that doesn't know you?"

"Everything counts, mum! I've already started sorting out the most obvious bits - like my hair, my clothes, my makeup - I now put this dark eyeshadow on, see? Proper smokey. And no silly blue nail polish - honestly, what was I thinking? So now, I'm moving onto the rest of my things - like my room."

"Right. And for all the trouble it's caused you - has anyone actually noticed these changes and started treating you as more of an adult?" asked Mrs Evans.

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Petunia sniffed, smugly. "Bet you were expecting me to say no. Wrong! Loads of people have noticed. Our sister construction company down in Surrey have been travelling up to have meetings with the managers, and everytime I go into the offices to serve tea at the meetings, everyone treats me like a lady. Especially one of the Surrey salesmen," she added dreamily.

"Oh, I see. Smitten are we?"

"It's early days but - perhaps," said Petunia.

"Alright, pet. It's your life. Just don't…" Daisy Evans looked around thoughtfully, searching for the right words. "Don't lose yourself, alright? You love the Bay City Rollers, and your blue nail polish and your frilly dresses, and your magazines. You always have - it's who you are. Don't lose that, you know. Any of it - your youth, your playfulness. It makes too dull a life, darling, if you throw it all away. Too sad. And don't throw it all away to impress some posh men from Surrey. We gave you a flower name for a reason - we wanted you to flourish, and be colourful and beautiful and wild! Don't resist that, because being ordinary is not all it's cracked up to be. You're special," she finished, staring at her daughter carefully.

There was a pause. Petunia blinked. "Didn't dad say 'Petunia' was the first word you saw in the paper the day I was born, so you thought 'might as well'?" she muttered reproachfully, though Mrs Evans swore she heard a definite wobble in her daughter's voice, pushing through the indifference.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Well, mum, I think being ordinary sounds wonderful, actually. It's all I ever want to be."

"But you're not ordinary, Tuney."

"Yes, I am!" Petunia all but roared fiercely, and for a moment it almost sounded like she was angry about the fact, which confused Mrs Evans slightly.

"No one is! Everyone's got things about them - you know, little quirks."

"I'd rather not, thank you very much. I want no quirks, a husband, a pretty house, a rosy-cheeked child, to live in a good catchment area, and a perfectly ordinary, happy life. Any problems with that?"

"No, of course not. That sounds great, darling."

"Great."

"But that doesn't make you ordinary…"

"Mum!" screeched Petunia. "WHY ARE YOU SO HELLBENT ON CRUSHING MY DREAMS?"

Mrs Evans sighed. "If it's really what you want… being ordinary… then, alright - yes, that sounds great and perfectly ordinary, Petunia. Better?"

Petunia said nothing, but stuck her nose in the air and once again resumed her intense scrubbing of the wall. It was a shame, in fairness, that they couldn't afford new wallpaper to cover the great big stains and chipped marks that her bedroom wall now bore. She hadn't thought that one through, really. But it was better than that positively wretched excuse for a wallpaper that she used to have. And Petunia could safely say this applied to many of the things she had binned in the last week. Sure, she was now down to not much more than two blouses, but it was a much more attractive prospect than keeping hold of her old childish lemon yellow cardigan (or - God forbid - her knitted green hat!). Her wardrobe was now a consistent rotation of smart and simple grey-scale tones, crisp white blouses (two of them!), and sensible shoes.

And my - did it work a treat! Crowley Industrials had decided to extend her contract and bump her up to personal assistant for the personal assistant of the rather boring Senior Executive Manager, a spidery man with a thick Brummy accent called Patrick Bevan. And Petunia suspected this was no coincidence, and very much all down to her grey pencil skirts and tidy, scraped-back hair she was now sporting. Who could resist such a tempting offer in clean, no-nonsense professionalism? The summer had taught her a thing or two, even if it had been the hard way, and she may or may not have worn a touch of red lipstick on her interview day. And ridden up her skirt. Just a tad. All worth it though - for she was quite sure there had been no such thing as a personal assistant for a personal assistant until she'd come along.

The job was alright, if not a little bit dull. Being the second-in-command personal assistant meant that she was delegated to making tea and coffee, and not much else. There was some filing here and there, and the occasional pulling Patrick Bevan out of a meeting with a Mr Fitch is on the phone, sir, he says it can't wait (which was actually quite thrilling, as Mr Bevan would hurry out of the meeting trailing after her looking quite worried). Which is why when the managers of the Surrey branch of Crowley Industrials came up to Cokeworth for the company's annual briefing, the head of staff thought it the perfect strategy to use Petunia as much as possible in the week-long event. Petunia could certainly be spared.

"Make sure you look nice," Mrs Rottering, head of staff, told her, "you will be the face of this branch. And we've had a rough year compared to Surrey, so we can't let them think we don't hire top staff just because of our little scandal in the accounts department in March, which we are not to bring up under any circumstance, alright - "

Petunia merely nodded her head vehemently and wondered what the hell the scandal in the accounts department had been.

Her first job would be to make sure that everyone's drinks were topped up at the mixer with the managers of the Surrey branch, and to assist all of the guests present. She wore her pencil skirt again (rolled up), and her white blouse with the massive bow at the front, paired with big, acrylic pearl earrings and sheer tights. Crowley Industrials had booked out the little golf club that overlooked the old mines (hardly what you would call scenic, but Cokeworth had a talent for holding space for eyesores) and had filled a couple of tables with prawn cocktails, upside-down pineapple cake, tuna canapes and plenty of Pimm's and shandy. Luckily, it was early September and it was still rather hot outside despite the bleak sky that stretched above them, and the Surrey people seemed to enjoy mooching about the fields and talking to their Midlands colleagues about, mainly, golf, since it was such an obvious choice of conversation.

Someone called Mark Bullard, who Petunia learned worked in the Operations Management department in Surrey, trapped her in a conversation about what made the perfect stroke. "It's nothing to do with wind," he scoffed in the poshest accent Petunia had ever heard. "That's what golf amateurs like to think. It's all about angle."

"Miss Evans," a voice belonging to Nigel Timber from sales called. "Are we all out of Pimm's?"

Petunia heard that sentence as if it was an echo. The echo of the church bells of her funeral.

Out of Pimm's. Surely not.

She hurried to Nigel Timber's side immediately, practically distraught that it did indeed look like Pimm's, which was her responsibility to stock up on as personal assistant to the personal assistant, was dangerously low in supply. "Oh God," she nearly wailed. "I will have to check the back! What a disaster!"

"It's just that my friend here," Nigel patted a younger man beside him on the shoulder, "needs another glass, don't you think? Loosen him up a bit. Teach him the Cokeworth ways. And there's none on this table, it seems."

Petunia felt the world closing in on her. "This will not do! It can't be the last of it - oh my God - I will have a look!" she squeaked, and whirled to face the younger man. "This is unacceptable! I will get you Pimm's! Excuse me!"

And she dashed off, an angry look on her face as she demanded the fifteen year olds behind the bar inside the golf club where the hell they kept their Pimm's ("Err - wait, let me ask my manager…"). What a total calamity. She could wish her new job goodbye - her days as personal assistant to the personal assistant were numbered. No Pimm's? On her watch? Might as well check herself into a benefits scheme now since no one was ever going to hire her again, just to get ahead of the curve. It must have been divine intervention, because after three agonising minutes, one of the spotty fifteen year olds emerged with a dusty bottle with bright red letters reading PIMM'S, and a jug of lemonade to dilute it with. Petunia snatched it off his hands with force, "Took you long enough!"

"Ah! Fantastic, Miss Evans," Nigel greeted her when she appeared, still reeling from the adversity she had just faced. "And plenty for you too, Steve - you bleeding drunk!"

"Well, don't hog it then, Nigel," an ageing man, presumably Steve, responded good-naturedly, cracking open the bottle Petunia had set aside with a huff.

She reached the younger man that had been waiting beside Nigel for his drink ("he's probably going to report me for this wait! I bet they never do this in Surrey!"). He was quite beefy and had a pink face twisted in a scowl of impatience.

"I am so sorry!" said Petunia, taking his glass off him. "Let me get that for you," she offered, hastily filling it up with some of the Pimm's and some of the lemonade. "You must be so thirsty - oh, dear! It really is unacceptable. If you need anything else, do let me know - those dolts behind the bar are totally useless, and I've let them know as much, so they will be sure to give you a glass of wine on the house, if you ask. Or I could ask, in your name. Do let me know if you, err, would like that. Prawn cocktail?" she finished in one breath, handing him back his glass as well as a small plate of the food, which she had pulled out from a tray behind her.

The man narrowed his already narrowed eyes, and sniffed the plate suspiciously. Petunia was certain he would scoff in her face, but then: "Thanks," he grumbled, before introducing the whole thing in his mouth. He slurped the last bit of prawn and licked his lips.

"Still hungry?" Petunia asked, offering him a piece of upside-down cake as if having apparated it magically from behind her back (perish the thought!).

"Yes," he said, and took the piece of cake, wolfing it down in much the same manner.

"What do you think?" Petunia asked, a bit awkwardly.

"It's fine."

"Well, I personally think it's quite dry," Petunia sniffed, despite herself. "Whoever made it has not a clue what they're doing. Mine is far better."

"Is it?" the man asked, and though he was still scowling, his eyebrows shot up to indicate an intrigued sort of scowl.

"Yes," Petunia continued, dusting her hands to get rid of any crumbs. "And so is my prawn cocktail. You can tell that they didn't use enough mayonnaise. Or that it's the cheap stuff, which makes all the difference," she added, despite having no clue what she meant by that - it just seemed like a good thing to mention in front of someone from Surrey.

The man stretched out a big, meaty hand out to her. "Vernon Dursley," he huffed.

Petunia stretched out her own, much bonier hand and shook his. "Petunia Evans. And my upside-down cake is a lot richer, too. I cream the butter and mix the wet and dry ingredients separately, so none of this foul graininess. And I add vanilla extract. It's quite bad that you can tell they've used tinned pineapple, don't you think?"

"I'll have to try your cooking sometime. It sounds like I would like it," said Vernon, adjusting the collar of his shirt, which was straining against his rather large neck.

Petunia blinked at the compliment, her previous bravado dissolving. "You - you think so?"

"Sounds like it could run circles around this stuff," he remarked, holding up a tuna canape, and then plopped it into his mouth.

Petunia sniffed happily. "Yes, you should really try it! It… it does. Would you like me to get you some shandy to wash all of that down with?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes, that would be good," Vernon replied, his beady eyes falling on another tuna canape. "And, er… get some for yourself, too."

Petunia was suddenly aware she was smiling so much her cheeks ached. "I would love that! I'll be back!" she squeaked, and practically galloped away. Sounds like it could run circles around this stuff, he'd said. Nothing she ever did was generally classified as the best, and she usually only toyed with the idea in the hopes that someone would agree on a whim. And someone actually had. Someone called Vernon Dursley, no less - sounded well posh.

She returned bearing two pints of shandy, and a cheek-splitting grin. "So, are you from Surrey?"

"Yes, I am. Best county in England, if you ask me," said Vernon gruffly before taking a big swing of his drink.

"Oh, I bet - what's it like?" asked Petunia, dreamily.

Vernon thought for a moment, and his face started to sweat from the exertion. "Very normal," he finally said, and Petunia felt her heart melt. "I like it - quality produce, top schools, the finest houses in Britain. Loads of new M&S shops everywhere, too, which are really a cut above the rest," he added, proudly. "You would fit right in, actually."

"Really?" Petunia gasped. "Oh, I would give anything to leave this place and go somewhere where I fit in. This town is," she wrinkled her nose, "putrid."

"You never know, we might need a new secretary down at Crowley Industrials in Woking."

Petunia blushed. "Gosh - don't get my hopes up like that, Vernon!" she exclaimed, throwing her head back with a shrill, high-pitched laugh. Somewhere in Cokeworth, a dog whined at the sound. But in front of her, the beefy man smiled down at Petunia, chuffed at having made a pretty girl laugh (yet not remotely surprised by his natural charm). "You're too much, honestly! The things you say… More tuna canapes?"

Vernon reached for the small bite-size dish that Petunia was holding up on a tray to him, as if they were made of solid gold. "You really are a cut above the rest," he told her.

And as he scoffed every last morsel, Petunia felt something she had not felt in a very, very long time. Special.

---

"On my count," Kingsley Shacklebolt said, his low voice carrying all the way to where Marlene and Dorcas stood. "Three, two, one…"

"Appare Vestigium!" both Doracas and Marlene yelled, causing a ribbon of golden dust-like particles to swirl up in the air and then scatter on the ground. Before them, small footprints on the grassy field started to reveal themselves, claw-like, mimicking the way a small creature would make its way over the hill and into the small cluster of birch trees just beyond.

"Alright, so that one works," Kingsley said, briefly. He was a very brief sort of man. "That spell is for tracking magical creatures, mostly. Those footprints over there probably belong to a Niffler - I don't know, I never took that subject at Hogwarts."

"But would it track a spell?" Dorcas asked sceptically.

"No. Professor Flitwick has suggested an adjustment to the original charm, one which was tested a long time ago by an ancient Arithmancer. But it's a bit of a mouthful. And it hasn't been cast in over a hundred years, which is why we're in a field for extra precaution."

Kingsley was a tall, strong man who had just turned thirty. He was well-respected among the Aurors and within the Ministry, all due to his calm, level-headed persona that exuded total certainty that he could get a job done. And well. Presently, he had taken new recruits Dorcas Meadowes and Marlene McKinnon under his wing and was involving them in his assignment to investigate a new, sinister advancement in the world of the Death Eaters. Over the past few months, the dark group had taken to casting a chilling signature above their attacks, proudly assuring themselves they were credited for their work. It was a looming luminous skull, glowing acid green against a night sky, with hollow eyes and a fanged serpent emerging from its hung mouth. The Dark Mark, they were calling it.

While the thing was rightfully terrifying, it had inspired an idea in Moody: tracking the mark, as if it were a spell (which they were certain it was), would mean Aurors could appear at the place of an attack within seconds of it occurring. Furthermore, if the spell could be tracked, it could be traced. If it could be traced, culprits could be caught. Charms experts across Britain had been working tirelessly to ruffle up some spells that could aid in the mission of tracking the Dark Mark, and Kingsley had been tasked to test them all.

"What's the adjustment?" Marlene asked, a bit tired. They had just tried out almost every variation of a Revelio charm known to civilization on a pretend-mark of their own - to no avail, for no discoveries were made. She felt like she was back at school trying to transfigure a duck into a desk.

"There's two. One is Umbra Appare and the other is Appare Signum Tenebris. We will test both with our make-shift mark," Kingsley stated, making a shape appear in the sky over the field. It was meant to be a scary imitation of the Dark Mark, but it looked like a snowman made by a child that had stuck two snowballs together and jammed a carrot in it. It had a dopey smile. Dorcas and Marlene looked at each other, trying to hide their smirk for the millionth time that day. It looked so stupid. "The first translates to roughly 'track shadow' and the second to 'track dark signature'. We'll see how they perform," he continued seriously.

Marlene and Dorcas then proceeded to the pronunciation portion of their training, where they had to repeat the spells time and time again. With them being experimental charms, it was imperative to not botch the latin, less Kingsley's hat turned into a ball of thread or he started to make donkey noises, which were the accidents that had happened earlier that morning.

"Ready," the witches announced.

"Alright, McKinnon. You're up."

She tossed her glossy hair over her shoulder and lifted her wand, pointing it at the goofy doodle in the sky. "Umbra Appare," she cast silkily. Her wand vibrated slightly, but no visible evidence of magic was seen.

"Unload," Kinsely instructed.

Marlene brought her wand down to the ceramic teapot resting on a frilly little table beside the Aurors. The two objects had been a tree stump and a rock an hour ago, but Kinsley had had other plans for them. She tapped the wand on the teapot. "Nocam Indicat," she said, and the teapot shook slightly.

Kingsley vanished the mark from the sky. "I'll cast it again. Meadowes, watch the teapot."

Once the silly snowman was floating up again, Kingsley waited for a response from Dorcas, who was crouched down by the small table.

"Nothing," she remarked, bored.

If it had been anyone but Kingsley, a frustrated grunt would have been expected by now.

"Let's move onto the next one," he said easily.

Dorcas sighed, pushing her sleeves up. "Appare Signum Tenebris," she cast, and nothing happened.

"Unload."

She tapped the teapot. "Nocam Indicat."

Nothing but a slight ceramic clink. Kingsley vanished the mark, only to make it reappear again.

"Anything, McKinnon?"

"No," Marlene replied, eyeing the teapot.

"That teapot's not tracking shit," Dorcas summarised.

"It won't be the teapot, it's the spells. I suggest you try the incantation in unison before we scrap it entirely," Kinselky said, matter-of-fact, looking through the scroll of spells Flitwick had passed on to experiment with. "We'll do the last one, and if it's no good we still have about four other incantations left on the list."

With great pains and not a drop of hope, Dorcas and Marlene straightened their arms and pointed at the mark. When Kingsley looked down for a moment to sneeze, Marlene stole a quick second to wink at Dorcas before resuming her professional facade. Dorcas squirmed.

"On my count," Kingsely said. "Three, two, one…"

"Appare Signum Tenebris!" the witches bellowed together. After a beat of absolutely no activity, the wands started buzzing, and a great big fountain of golden sparks shot out from both tips.

"Alright!" Kingsley said, a pleased look in his eyes. "Not bad. Unload."

They ran to the teapot and pressed their wands to it. "Nocam Indicat," they muttered in perfect unison after looking at each other to coordinate the spell.

Specks of gold burst from the wands and fell around the teapot, which shook and opened its top like a mouth, eating the dusty magic up until there was none left.

Kingsely wiped out the mark and cast it again, looking over at the teapot with so much intent there was every chance he had caused that magical reaction with his stare alone. For one exciting moment, all three of the Aurors held their breath waiting for the teapot to…

…do fuck all.

Marlene screeched and Dorcas pulled her own hair, both of them suddenly bursting with frustration and anger. "WHY WOULD IT SHAKE LIKE THAT THEN, IS IT TRYING TO MAKE US LOSE OUR MINDS?" Marlene screamed into the abyss that they were in (it was actually a field in Wiltshire).

Kingsley said nothing, too enraptured in his list as he scanned for the next set of incantations to try.

"You know what," Dorcas said, rubbing her face, "I reckon it's not even the spells. It's that mark that's trying to pass as dark that we're playing with," she accused.

Kingsley looked up. "What?" he uttered, although not sternly.

"We're not tracking that mark because we're saying signum tenebris, not signum cuddly little face, which is what that is," Dorcas continued, pointing at the looming snowman.

"If that were the case, then the spell would not have caused any sort of manifestation. It was trying to track the signature, and it produced sparks," Kingsley reasoned.

"Well it clearly didn't track a thing," Dorcas insisted.

"Why don't we try and make it a bit scarier?" Marlene suggested. "Kingsley, you're obviously too nice to create something dark, but I've been known to be a bit of a bitch, so I can give it a go."

With a lot of effort - and standing adorably on her tip-toes, Dorcas noted - Marlene managed to shakily conjure a poorly drawn cloak with a Slytherin House shield on the friendly mark, as well as give it angrier eyebrows.

"Oh yeah," Dorcas choked back a laugh. "Super spooky."

"Guess I'm not Death Eater material!" Marlene said in mock despair.

"It needs red eyes, I think," Dorcas offered, grabbing Marlene's hand to force her to add her suggested edits to the shape. "Like a reptile."

"Fine."

"And vampire teeth…just like that. Anything else?"

Dorca's steady hand directed Marlene, which added the new features to the smiley face, and the witch looked up at Dorcas through her spidery lashes. "Anything you want. I'm happy to keep going like this," she whispered breathlessly, turning her head fully around to try to press her nose against Dorcas' shamelessly (yet with the hope that Kingsley Shacklebolt wasn't looking at them).

A loud and disturbing rattling noise got in the way, however, and they both whirled around to look at the table where the teapot resided. It was shaking uncontrollably, ceramic rattling against itself as if there was an earthquake only happening in the square metre under the two objects. The lid of the teapot suddenly exploded open, and a torrent of gold particles erupted from within it, as if vomited out. They shot out into the sky.

"It worked?" Dorcas shouted, dumbfounded that the cartoon vampire incisors she had added were dark enough to provoke such a powerful trace of magic.

Kingsley scratched under his hat, staring at the teapot and then back up at the ridiculous mark. He looked utterly bewildered, and he narrowed his eyes at the goofy unibrow Marlene had given it. "It looks like it," he conceded thoughtfully.

The golden vomit seemed to die out as the teapot burped its last fleck.

"That was like you after a night out," Marlene laughed, and Dorcas did not think twice to shove her.

"I did not make the mark reappear," Kinngsely mused, still scratching his head.

"That is strange," Dorcas agreed, trying to ignore Marlene's giggles without her face splitting into a massive smile.

An orb of silver light zoomed across the faraway outline of the birch trees, racing closer and closer to the spot where the Aurors were working, and all three of them straightened their spines, watching it cautiously.

"A patronus," Kingsley announced, watching the orb stop just in front of him. Moody's gruff and crackling voice boomed from the inside of the body of light.

"Report immediately to The Auror Office. Death Eater attack in St Sturgeon, to the South of Blackpool. Report immediately," the voice growled, disappearing along with its silver orb.

"Let's go," Kingsley ordered at once, vanishing the teapot and the table with an easy flick of his wand.

"Yes, sir," the witches replied, totally sobered from the light-hearted atmosphere of before. With impressive coordination, all three of them apparated away from Wiltshire and into the Auror's Office in London at the same time, wasting not a second. When they arrived, Gideon was finishing magically fastening his deep blue uniform on, and already disappearing away, clearly headed to the magical fishing village of St Sturgeon.

Moody bounded towards Kingsley the minute he saw him. "Shacklebolt," he barked, "you are to find any witnesses and bring them to me, understand?"

He nodded and they all apprated, wands at the ready. What struck Marlene the most when they all landed with a dizzying flourish on the St Sturgeon bay, was the incredibly potent stench of fish.

"Morgana," she wheezed, pinching her nose.

"There it is," Kingsley said, walking on the harsh pebbles towards a dishevelled hut with the blaring Dark Mark hovering over it, the snake inside of the skull snapping its jaw as if hissing. The sky around the mark seemed darker than the rest of it - it was more shaken up too, with snaking swirls of clouds, as if it had been beaten black and blue.

"Pales in comparison to ours, don't you think?"

Kingsley smiled grimly at Dorcas' sad joke, and they continued to march towards the hut. At least four other people in midnight blue robes were milling in and out of it, already hard at work. A few other witches and wizards were present as well - they wore bright green robes and hats, all labelled with an emblem of a wand crossed with a bone. Healers.

"Kingsley," Frank Longbottom said, jogging towards the Auror. "We only just arrived. Two dead, one injured. A boy, already taken to St Mungo's - he was de-gnoming, and was blasted to the floor from the impact of the curse. That's what he told Fabian," he informed his colleague.

"Casualties?"

"Not identified yet. Two men."

"Alright. McKinnon, please head to St Mungo's to watch over the boy. I'll patronus you with any information as and when I discover it. Interview him for any information when you can. Do we know his name?"

"We don't have any knowledge of it," Frank explained.

Kingsley nodded to Marlene and she nodded back, lifting her glowing wand up and disappearing in a flurry.

"Merlin, it really does stink of fish in here," Alice's voice was suddenly heard from within the hut.

"It's actually quite unbearable," Fabian was heard agreeing, making a retching noise shortly after.

"Meadowes, investigate inside. I'm going to the neighbouring hut just over there," Kingsley told the young witch beside him. "I will come back and we will both go comb the grounds, see if any pixies or water creatures saw anything. Even the gnomes."

Dorcas lit her wand and headed inside of the hut, where a big blackening hole had been freshly created on a wall at the very entrance. The ghastly after-effects of a killing curse.

"It's worse the more you sniff it."

"It's repugnant - dear Merlin - I'm going to be sick -"

"I agree, it reeks," Dorcas said, interrupting Fabian's wheezy tirade.

"Dorcas!" Alice greeted, a bit too brightly considering they were standing in a room that had just witnessed a cold and violent murder.

"Hello, Alice," Dorcas greeted back warmly, magically producing a clipboard and quill from the pocket of her robe. "What do we know so far?"

"Death Eaters and killing curse. It's all we have," Fabian explained, as Gideon entered, a camera hanging from his neck. "Did you cast the shield over the hut?"

"Yes, and it's a good thing too 'cause it's started chucking it down. Again," Gideon huffed, and Dorcas tuned into the increasing sound of rainfall. She went to check out the front door.

No signs of a forceful opening, she noted down. Could've been magically opened. She knelt down to look in through the lock. Intact, she added.

"Appare Vestigium," she cast, suddenly remembering the charm she had learnt previously that day. Many small but significant things started to happen at once. Two sets of footprints, wet from the rain it seemed, started to materialise on the floor, leading to a small rug where the owners of such footprints had presumably wiped their shoes. Simultaneously, a small stream of golden dust left Dorcas' wand and swished to a rickety cabinet in a far corner of the room, where it curled against the door, and then dissolved. From somewhere nearby in the hut, the gentle sound of glass being tapped was heard.

Quickly, Dorcas got to work, fiercely scribbling down what she just experienced in barely legible writing. "Gideon," she said as she hurried towards the cabinet, "could you please take a photo of those footprints by the entrance?"

"Blimey!" Gideon whistled, making the small metal machine flash. "When did those get here?"

"I've just revealed their trace," she explained, creaking the door to the cabinet open.

"Brilliant stuff. They're big, aren't they? Could be big, wizard's boots."

"Yeah," she said absently, reaching inside of the cabinet and pulling out a tall, thin bottle half-full of a dark green liquid. Dorcas checked the label - Dragon Tempest: the classic monstrous moss-infused blend of ale and goblin wine. Sounded abhorrent. She checked the back. Once opened, consume within 12 hours as per with all products containing goblin wine. Must have been opened today. Unless it had been festering there for longer…and it wasn't meant to be green. She squirmed in disgust.

Dorcas opened the door further. The inside of the cabinet was dusty and it only had two shelves. The one where the Dragon Tempest had been resting, and one just above, lined with a row of tulip glasses. She noticed that the caked dust avoided two perfectly circular spots next to the glasses - a gap where two of them were missing, glaringly absent from the row. "Gideon, could you also take a photo of this?"

Consumed Dragon Tempest, likely recently. Two glasses missing, she wrote on the parchment.

"Of the cabinet?" he asked sceptically, although he compiled anyway. "Bloody hell, Dragon Tempest, that stuff is nasty. Proper old-school. And it goes purple when it goes bad - absolutely grim."

Dorcas scribbled out the word 'likely' from her notes. The camera flashed.

"Were any of them old?" Dorcas asked, referring to the casualties.

"Er, I think I heard Alice say one of them was old, yeah."

Dorcas noted that down. "My spell made some glass clink. Somewhere over there," she pointed at a door just to the left. "I'll go have a look and see what it revealed."

"Shout if you need anything," Gideon said cheerfully, holding up his camera before returning to the very entrance of the hut, where Fabian and Alice were still absorbed in their work. Dorcas offered him a polite smile.

She turned the doorknob and stepped into a damp room that made the previous stench of fish seem like light, delicate floral notes. Dorcas had to physically restrain herself from lurching forwards and imitating what the teapot in the field had done when it had detected the mark. The room was a small kitchen of exposed stone walls. But beside the pots and pans suspended in the ceiling, it was closer to a brewing dungeon than a kitchen. Cauldrons and vials and beakers and chopping boards and gloves and discarded herbs and jars of eyeballs and flobberworms and pewter stirrers and, worst of all, fish. So much fish.

Suspended from the ceiling, hanging from a line as if they were drying, piled in towers, skewered on the wall, stuffed in barrels, poking out of crates, salted and submerged in brine. Their bones in jars, their heads on the counter, their tails sticking out from under heavy books. And on a faraway table, two tulip glasses with a ring of Dragon Tempest collected at the bottom of them.

Guests? Amicable visit gone wrong? Dorcas wrote. Potioneer, she added on a separate line. Interested in fish. It certainly seemed like someone was having a nice drink of Dragon Tempest with someone, and then things had taken a twist. Were the victims also Death Eaters, or had they perhaps been deceived into letting someone who looked like a friend inside their home? She noted this thought down, too.

Back in the living room, it seemed Alice had moved her work from the entrance to near the cabinet. She was sat by a long lump covered in a lime green sheet, and she spoke with a Healer in a hushed tone.

"Hey, Dorcas," Alice said. "Under here is one of the casualties. Kingsley is bringing the neighbour to identify the body. Healer Hooper has been inspecting the traces of magic and we can say with certainty this man was struck with a killing curse about fourteen minutes ago."

"Not long ago," Dorcas noted, scratching her clipboard with her quill.

"No, not long," Alice agreed, sadly. She looked at the covered body.

Dorcas cleared her throat. "Alice, I have reason to believe he might have been connected to the Death Eaters responsible for his death. This man. There are signs all around the house that he let the killer in through the door and had a drink with him. Well, killers, maybe. There were two sets of footprints," Alice was looking at Dorcas with devoted attention and so the young Auror ploughed on. "Either that, or the killers were disguised."

Alice nodded, her lips set in a grim line. "That is always a possibility. Good work, Dorcas. By all means, if you need to conduct any investigation on the body, it is here. It's quite macabre, though, seeing it," she warned.

"It's alright," Dorcas said, steeling herself as she shakily flicked her wand to cast away the lime green sheet. She opened one eye, daring to look. She was met by a sleeping man that looked no more than forty, with a round chin and freckled skin.

"It's always hard to see someone dead so close," Alice sympathised. "Thankfully, the healers shut his eyes, because - well - it was just quite difficult to look at him. We've taken their wands. You can have a look at them if you report to Frank."

Dorcas swallowed. Alice had such a sweet, round face, she thought. It was a weird thought to have at that moment, but it was true. Like a little angel in those great, big muggle paintings on the ceilings of important religious buildings. She seemed totally out of place in this dimly lit hut, reeking of rotting fish and cruelty, with the harsh sound of rain as a backdrop. Despite it all, there she was - determined and efficient, yet impossibly soft. It was almost a more difficult sight than the corpse between them.

With another subtle flick of her wrist, Dorcas magically started to push up the sleeve of the dead man's grey robe, shuffling it up his forearm. It didn't take much inching to start seeing the bottom of an imposing tattoo on the inside of his arm, on the lowest part. Dorcas' breath caught.

"Is that -"

"A Dark Mark," Alice gasped, getting up on her feet immediately.

Dorcas furiously wrote down the words, nearly breaking the clipboard under the pressure of her quill. "Gideon!" she called, making the young ginger man scurry to where she stood, camera at the ready.

"Sweet Merlin," he whispered weakly, flashing his camera to immortalise the harsh lines against the waxy flesh of the man's arm. It was a Dark Mark, as clear as day: a skull bearing a snake inside its mouth.

In that moment, a fox of silver light trotted inside the hut, floating down onto the floor, careful not to tread on the muck that covered every inch of it. The patronus sniffed the air with distaste and then spoke in Marlene's silky, feminine voice.

"The boy's name is Emil Johnson. He is a wizard not yet nine years old who lives just up the road in St Sturgeon with his parents and older sister Camila. He says he de-gnomes his neighbour Bertram Hawk's garden to earn some extra galleons. That's what he was doing this morning when he saw two men knock on his neighbour's front door. Betram Hawk opened it and greeted the men as friends. Even shook hands. Then they went inside. That's all Emil said, as he's been taken to a different ward to try and sleep off the shock before he is interviewed further. No lasting injuries. I will keep you all updated. If there are two casualties, I can assume that the other must be one of the friends Emil was referring to."

And then the patronus dissolved, and the hut felt significantly darker. Dorcas was writing down all of that information like a madwoman, barely looking at the clipboard.

"One of the friends," Alice repeated, breaking the silence. She glanced down at the body. "That must be him. I'm almost certain the body Frank is inspecting with the other healer is - oh, what was his name?"

"Bertram Hawk," Dorcas supplied, reading off her notes. "I wonder if they were actually friends, or if they were disguised as his friends."

"Any concealment charms or polyjuice potion effects wear off with death," Alice said, covering the body with the lime green sheet with her wand. "Hopefully the boy can tell Marlene about the wizards' appearance when he wakes up, and we can see if the descriptions match."

Gideon snapped another photo of the body before the sheet covered him up completely. "Dark Marks in the sky photograph like shit," he informed the group casually. "This is better."

Kingsley appeared at the front door, wincing at the stench of the hut slightly, accompanied by a tall witch with a deep red hat and an even taller wizard with a balding head.

"These are the Wozniaks," Kingsley announced. "Priscilla and Darren - they are the closest neighbours to the hut. Live just over there, further up the bay. They've come to identify the bodies. And to answer a few questions."

"Thank you for coming in," Alice told them, shaking the wizard's hand.

"S'Alright - Merlin - it's terrible isn't it?" he said, looking around the hut shakily.

"It's awful," the witch with the hat whispered, her voice breaking. "So close to our house…"

"This is the worst bit," Alice assured her, taking Priscilla Wozniak's arm to guide her to where Frank and Fabian were keeping the other body. "You are being so brave for coming in - it really is such a great help. This is the hard part, we will get it out of the way for you…"

Kingsley gestured forwards to Darren. "Meadowes will uncover the body for you, Mr Wozniak."

Dorcas nodded solemnly and steadied herself. With a flick of her wand, the sheet was stripped back once again, and the resting body of the man was revealed. Darrren Wozniak flinched. After an intent moment where he was eyeing the body nervously, he spoke up. "I don't know who that is."

"That isn't your neighbour - Bertram Hawk?" Kingsely asked simply.

"No," Mr Wozniak spluttered. Dorcas and Kingsely wrote this down on their clipboards. "He's young - and Mr Hawk was quite…old. The man was well into his seventies, I would say."

"Alright. Have you seen this man before - around the village, in the company of Bertram Hawk?" Kingsley inquired.

Darren squinted, leaning closer to the man's face. "I can't say I remember him from anywhere. He has a very plain sort of face, I suppose - I might have, but it must not have been a very memorable encounter, I don't think. As for seeing him with Mr Hawk," Mr Wozniak continued, "I certainly have not seen him before. I would have remembered. Mr Hawk had only a very select group of people that visited him since I've known him."

"And it did not include this man?" Kingsley asked.

"N-no."

"Alright," more writing from Dorcas and Kingsely. "When you are brought into the Auror Office, we will be asking further questions about this group of visitors, as you've called it. Does that sound good to you, Mr Wozniak?"

"Yes, that's fine."

"Good," Kingsely said evenly. "We can now move -"

"Just one more question before we move on to identifying the second body," Dorcas interrupted firmly, locking eyes meaningfully with Kingsley. "Do you recognise this tattoo?"

She levitated his arm slightly, which had been tucked away behind a section of the lime green sheet. The material fell, and the Dark Mark seemed to glow with visibility. Kingsley raised his eyebrows, and Darren furrowed his.

"Yes! That's the same as the thing above the hut, the thing in the sky. The one in all the papers!" he exclaimed, clearly a bit proud to have put some pieces together.

"Yes, it is. It's a Dark Mark. Have you ever seen it before today?"

"All over the papers, yeah."

Dorcas pressed her quill to her clipboard. "In person?"

"Blimey - no, only in the Prophet."

She jotted it down. "That's all my questions."

Kingsley nodded at her. "Follow me, Mr Wozniak. Fortescue," he called, "when you're ready, you can take Mrs Wozniak over to identify the remaining person."

Dorcas soon learned that the second body indeed belonged to Bertram Hawk, who had been a stout man with a crown of white hair and just as white and bushy eyebrows. It was a ghastly sight, seeing the recognition in Darren Wozniak's eyes as the body was uncovered. Seeing the look of misunderstanding in them - of not being able to reconcile having seen the old neighbour with liquid life pulsing through his veins just this morning, yet watching his shell drained of blood now before him.

They took the couple to the Auror Office to interview them. Kingsley had managed to convince a group of sea-salt-fairies to offer their account of the events, which they claimed to have witnessed all the way from the bay. But the fairies spoke in such cryptic and downright unhelpful terms that Dorcas worried Mad Eye's vein would actually escape his throbbing forehead by the end of the interview, and splatter all over the desk.

"And then the skinned visage appeared, with a rabid ribbon, looking like a shelled crab guarding a mother pearl, owning a treasure at long last. It called on the chilling waves to tower above us all, splashing I and Marigold with an icy blast, sweeping sweet droplets into a premature night fast! And then, the winds of the East picked up bravado and viciously cast, the darkest of blankets like a pirate ship's mast. Indeed, the Hierophant warned no one about such a wave in the past!" one of the fairies squeaked.

"'T'was indeed the chilliest of waves, as we learned the sea to no one it behaves!" Marigold, another fairy, assisted. "A master it has not, its mother is born a hell bubbling hot! Such is the course of the sea, it dares not rest like a lazy lake be! And it was also just quite windy, to be fair, so it was a big wave…"

"Blooming fuck!" Moody yelped, finally having enough. "Out. All of you," he growled at the tiny fairies, all wearing silver and blue raindrop dresses.

They huffed in annoyance. "How rude! How crude! A heart that is nude!" one squeaked.

"NOW!" he barked. They all flew out with a buzz of their wings, looking testy.

"Gideon, apparete the sea-salt fairies back to St Sturgeon," Kingsley ordered. The ginger Auror scrambled to his feet. "Thank you for your service, ladies, your assistance is appreciated."

"No, it bleeding isn't," Moody growled. And once Gideon had managed to get all the fairies to sit inside the biscuit tin portkey that would take them back to St Sturgeon (they kept cooing and twirling his 'coral locks where fishes may play'), Moody continued his riot. "From now on, we are not interviewing magical creatures for an Auror investigation. This isn't a bloody menagerie - when has a ruddy kneazle ever testified before the Wizengamot! Bloody circus."

"Moody, that rules out such a large sample of witnesses for magical crimes!" Alice reprimanded him. "I refuse!"

"Well I bloody refuse, Fortescue, how about that? I can be a petulant child, too," the Auror snarled. "You take care of the pets, Fortescue, if you wish to waste the little time we have. Bring me real witnesses, Merlin's toe! Witches," he added with venom.

Alice's angelic face clouded over, and Dorcas felt her own expression harden. "I should remind you, Moody, that it was indeed my idea to bring back the sea-salt-fairies. I was even trying to get a hold of a garden gnome or two," Kingsley said calmly.

Moody spluttered incoherently, his chest heaving as he adjusted his eye patch. "Garden gnome or two!" he repeated, beside himself. "You're a bloody imbecile, Kingsley."

"Take your calming draught, Moody - the medication for your eye is strong stuff and you know what the healer said," Kingsley reminded him evenly.

"WILL EVERYONE MIND THEIR OWN BLEEDING BUSINESS!"

"Okay, Mad-eye," Fabian grumbled from somewhere distant within the Office. Moody twitched at the comment but swallowed the curse he had ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue.

"Send the Wozniaks through," he barked. Alice sighed and complied, exiting onto the corridor to retrieve the married couple.

Marlene apparated in a corner of the Office, an event which was ignored largely by Moody and Frank at the interviewing desk, but she was quickly approached by Kingsley and Dorcas. Perhaps Dorcas had smelled too much fish today, but seeing Marlene so abruptly made her head spin slightly. She looked good in her Auror robes.

"McKinnon," Kingsley said. "Take a seat. Tell us all your information."

"That can wait, Kingsley," Moody barked from the other side of the Office. "Let's interview the Wozniaks first."

Kinglsey nodded. "Exchange notes," he instructed his protogees. "But first, I've had a think. I believe that the tracking spell we cast in Wiltshire this morning did not warn us about my…perhaps not so dark mark. I believe it actually alerted us about the real Dark Mark that was cast today after the attack. The timing makes sense - not long after, we received Moody's patronus."

Dorcas' cogs were turning. "That would explain why the teapot was triggered when you never made our mock-mark reappear."

"Exactly. It might have been a one-off, but I've put the teapot over there in that corner of the Office just in case. We will have to investigate further. For now, good work you two - and exchange notes until I come back," he told the witches.

Marlene sat down on an office chair as Kingsley marched to take a seat beside Moody, and she stretched across it, yawning languidly.

"I liked your patronus," Dorcas told her. "Didn't know it was a fox."

Marlene looked up and smirked. "What's yours?"

"It's an eel."

"Oooh," Marlene gushed, "sexy."

Dorcas felt her face heat up. "Is it? Is an eel sexy?" she scoffed.

"I feel like they are quite sexy, is that not what people say?"

"Yeah maybe kelpies do," Dorcas dismissed, causing Marlene to giggle.

"Ouch," she said. "Do I look like a kelpie to you?"

Dorcas gawked at Marlene. Her round cheekbones were perfectly poised above her grinning mouth - stretched out and crimson, revealing a row of glistening pearly whites. Her bouncy dark hair bloomed over her shoulders, looking like flower petals. There was a definite twinkle in her eyes, although those elongated brown eyes always had a foxy glint in them. It was probably because of her long, fanning eyelashes that she had that glint - those stupid things, always making her look so teasing. No, she didn't particularly strike Dorcas as a kelpie.

"Come on, we need to exchange notes," Dorcas snapped, pulling out her clipboard.

"Someone's in a bad mood," Marlene purred. She was staring at her steadily.

"Well I did just see two dead bodies."

Marlene said nothing, but raised an eyebrow. "So is your brother moving out of the flat?"

"Yes, they're moving out, him and his girlfriend," Dorcas replied through gritted teeth.

"Am I still okay to move in?" Marlene asked, still looking at Dorcas unblinkingly, which made the latter even more irritable.

"Yes," Dorcas snapped loudly. "Are you still okay to pay your half of the rent?"

"Yes."

"Then why would it have changed?"

"Because you're annoyed at me," Marlene said delicately.

Dorcas huffed looking up from her clipboard. "No, I'm not. I'm tired, Marly. I want to go to bed. It's been a long morning, and it will be an even longer evening."

Marlene perked up. "Good, I won't be homeless tomorrow! My tenancy is ending, couldn't really afford that."

"I wouldn't cancel your living arrangements just because you're getting on my nerves!"

"Aha! So I was annoying you," Marlene said silkily.

"No," Dorcas bit out, irritated.

"It will be fun living together - we can travel to work every morning, rather than apparating. I will be a London girl like you."

"You don't pass for a London girl, you're too chirpy," Dorcas grumbled.

"You will shake that out of me, I'm sure," Marlene smirked. "When we live to-ge-ther!" she sang.

Dorcas smiled in spite of herself. "Dunno what you're so excited about, you twat, it's not like you ever go home."

"Yeah, 'cause I live light years away. And I could apparate, or floo in, and I do - but you know I find it so disorientating to travel that bloody fast from place to place. Don't think we were ever meant to be in Cork one second, and then Wiltshire the next, then bloody St Sturgeon wherever the fuck that is, only to go to London, and back up to Cork again to sleep. Would rather stay in London, thank you very much, and save myself a couple of chunders."

"So you'll actually sleep in the flat you pay to sleep in?"

"Groundbreaking, I know. I'll be the first to do it," Marlene paused, then smirked at the figure of Dorcas, who was totally absorbed in transferring Marlene's notes to her own clipboard, writing with such concentration that her irises were glued to the parchment under her quill. "Are you excited?"

"For what?"

"For moving in with me."

Dorcas paused, scratching the quill against the parchment intently. "Yeah, of course."

"You can tell your face that, you know?"

"Helga's hat, Marlene," she burst, tearing her gaze away from her notes. "What do you want me to do? Throw you a party? Give you a big sloppy kiss to celebrate -"

"If you don't mind," Marlene purred, batting her long eyelashes. Dorcas felt herself burn up once again, and she rolled her eyes, hoping to disguise whatever involuntary reaction her face was pulling. "Only joking, Dory, you're so easy to wind up," Marlene laughed.

"Yeah," Dorcas mumbled, returning to her work.

Marlene sighed melodramatically. "Well I'm going to see if Kingsley would like a chat about Emil Johnson. Although he is nine years old, so he mostly wanted to talk about whether the Ballycastle Bats are going to win the cup," she snorted. "Fat chance. And not particularly helpful to this investigation."

Dorcas let out a breath she wasn't even aware she was holding when Marlene skipped away, twirling a dark lock of hair. Her emotions were so raw and high when Marlene teased her like that - it took so much willpower to keep her reactions in check and disguise them appropriately. If only Marlene could be serious for two seconds of her life - would it kill her? Would it actually stop her heart if she did not fake-flirt with every creature with legs? It just might.

Dorcas was excited beyond her years about living with Marlene, but she just hoped she could hide her attraction from her enough so that it didn't make her insides implode - or the friendship implode if she let her real feelings slip out. She loved Marlene beyond her pretty eyes and pretty mouth and curvy frame. She loved her as a friend, and as a confidant. She would not jeopardise that. Dorcas was rather shit at lying, but luckily her face could twist itself into an implacable picture of indifference fairly naturally. She could thank her father's genes for that one.

And with that very same facial expression slapped on, Dorcas returned her eyes to the desk in front of her and scratched away at the parchment, copying something onto her clipboard about how Emil Johnson felt a very cold wind just before he felt the shockwaves of the killing curse outside the hut, and how everything went very very dark.

---

"Allegra!" Belinda Scaleington exclaimed as Allegra Cresciente slid into the train compartment occupied by the sixth year Slytherin girls.

"Wow, your hair looks beautiful, Allegra!" Pearl Willaboo chirped, making room for her friend to sit next to her. "What did you do to it?"

Allegra tossed her perfect cinnamon-coloured ringlets over her shoulder, and adjusted her big feathered hat coquettishly. "A special treatment. Far too complicated to get into," she supplied, pointedly avoiding confessing it was all simply the work of Clementine The Capricious' Curling Cream, an easy over-the-counter fix.

"I would honestly crucio to have my locks styled like that," Ruby, Pearl's twin sister, sighed enviously. "I had our house elf spend over three hours on my hair once, and Pippin's work never once came close to yours!"

"What a shame," Allegra said, her sharp eyes delighted with the shower of compliments she was receiving only seconds upon making her entrance. "I wish I could offer some advice! But as I said, it's far too complicated."

"How was your summer, Allegra?" Pearl asked, eyes wide.

"No different than usual. Mother's been working tirelessly to set up my sister with the Greengrasses, so I'm fatigued from non-stop parties and dinners all summer long."

"Sounds exhausting!" Ruby remarked earnestly, shaking her head in sympathy.

"It really was. And all the robe fitting at Madam Malkin's made me think my arms would literally drop off."

"That's dreadful, Allegra!"

"I know!"

"You know, earlier, Hilda Chambers was in here showing us her newest set of robes," Belinda informed the exhausted friend, who was now fanning herself melodramatically.

"And?"

Belinda smirked. "Awful, cheap thing," she summarised happily.

"So ugly," Ruby agreed vehemently, "can hardly believe she was showing it to us by choice."

"I might have let that piece of cloth see the light of day in 1971," Pearl snorted, "and even then I would've done so in the darkest of alleys!"

"She is such an air-headed hag," Allegra spat venomously, "she really takes no notice of how we mock her. She is utterly delusional - parading her rags around…"

"Oh, but the delusion is half the fun," Belinda reasoned. "I do love to indulge her! It's so funny…"

"But we don't want her to become too full of herself," Allegra cut in, "she's just the court jester, and she should be reminded of that."

"And that makes you the queen, Allegra, if you think about it!"

Allegra sneered coldly. "Well it's definitely not Hilda Chambers, is it?"

The girls laughed at Allegra's cruel quip. Hilda Chambers was a keen second-year Slytherin that followed these particular girls around like a lost puppy. If Belinda wore her hair in sleek curtains, as did Hilda. If Pearl held her Transfiguration books in her left hand, Hilda would too. If Ruby cussed out someone in the corridor, Hilda's own insults would soon follow. And if Allegra threw herself off a precipice, there was no doubt Hilda would soon be merrily joining her. It was pure entertainment for the four girls. Ruby opened her mouth, ready to make an uncalled comment about an aspect of Hilda's physical appearance, but the compartment door slid open and the face of Lily Evans from Gryffindor poked in, making the remark die on the girl's lips.

"Scaleington," the Gryffindor said, looking at Belinda, not allowing any of the occupiers of the compartment time to formulate a sentence, "it's been ten minutes - we're waiting for you in the prefect's compartment."

"Oh, Morgana!" Belinda gasped, and swore loudly as she got to her feet. She pulled out a silver and green prefect badge from her pocket and fastened it to the front of her magenta robes. "How could I forget? Is Timothy there already?" she asked in a panic.

"Yes, all the Slytherin prefects are - Beesley, Tenebrax…"

Belinda huffed, and her face glowed a brilliant shade of pink as she gathered her notebook. "Well - how early - why would anyone - rather unprofessional - on purpose…" she grumbled.

As the young Slytherin made her way out, Pearl called out to Lily Evans before she could follow suit. "Evans," she screeched, a definite hint of maliciousness in her voice, "nice trousers!"

The girls looked over the muggleborn's flared jeans, and made a poor show of containing their snickers. The item was so downright muggle. How could Evans not be embarrassed, they thought - this was far worse than Hilda Chambers' vile robes, and that was saying something! She had some nerve, showing them around.

"Thank you, Willaboo, your boyfriend thought so too," Lily replied coolly, leaving the witches stunned in place. As if on cue, Wulfric Mulciber decided to appear at the door at that very moment, slipping past Lily to enter the compartment along with Avery and scanning her frame creepily as he did so. Allegra's jaw nearly hit the floor in rage. "Much to my disgust," she added. Lifting a brow, Lily spun in her heel and headed off, leaving the Slytherins to reel all by themselves.

"She is much to my disgust," Allegra snapped through gritted teeth, "the mudblood."

"Filthy little mudblood," Mulciber agreed, although Pearl could not fail to notice how he had watched Evans walk away with a snarl.

"Didn't stop you staring at her arse, though, did it, Wulfric?" Pearl hissed.

"Come off it, Pearly-poo," he said, planting a slimy kiss on her forehead. "It doesn't count when it's a mudblood."

"Still…" Pearl grumbled.

"There's something about that girl," muttered Allegra, "that makes me feel on edge. I don't like it. Not one bit."

Ruby smacked her lips in distaste. "So much for Hilda Chambers getting too big for her boots - she has nothing on Evans!"

"We ought to remind her where she belongs," said Allegra, her eyes twinkling up at Ruby and Evan. "I'm telling you - she's trouble."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hogwarts Express, Belinda and Lily were settling themselves into the prefect's meeting, led by Head Girl Ingrid Walpole. The Hufflepuff witch had a friendly face, marked by a sharp, sloping nose and framed by thin, wispy gold hair.

"Hello, Belinda - do sit down, you haven't missed much," she told the flustered Slytherin witch, who was mumbling away about shoddy scheduling. "I was just introducing our newest fifth year prefects to everyone," Ingrid explained. "Now, moving onto Ravenclaw - we have Dirk Creswell and Fiona Fairy - welcome both! Do follow Marcella Pluton and Mortimer Higginbotham's lead this next week as they guide you through your duties. And finally, we have our new Gryffindor prefects - Abigail Frogatt and Terry Pixton - I'm sure Remus Lupin and Lily Evans will be happy to show you the ropes."

Remus Lupin offered the pair a smile, and the fifth years beamed back at him. "If you're not busy getting into trouble, Lupin," Abigail whispered excitedly, and Lily giggled at the way Remus' face fell.

"I never mean to," Remus sighed, and he nearly sounded sincere.

"All right - that's everyone acquainted," Ingrid announced as she rolled up the scroll she had been reading. "Before I can bore you to sleep with the patrolling schedule, your Head Boy would like to pass on a message from McGonagall."

Ravenclaw's Waldo Scriven straightened up and cleared his throat. "Professor McGonagall would like to make it clear that under no circumstances is the bullying, taunting, antagonisation or torment of another student tolerated within the walls of Hogwarts, and that the responsibility of preventing and intervening in such events falls directly onto the shoulders of all the prefects present," he said quickly, in his characteristic nasally voice. "It seems incidents of this nature have risen dramatically in the past year, as many of the people in this room can attest to. Higginbotham over here received a nasty fish-lip jinx last March, for instance, in his attempt to stifle a particularly rough altercation during the Gryffindor-Slytherin match. But it was a valiant display of a prefect's sense of duty, Mortimer! Jolly well done."

Mortimer sniffed proudly, and rubbed his lips absently, as he recalled the ridiculous size they had ballooned to that fateful day.

"We hope things have calmed down a bit this year," Ingrid continued, taking over Waldo's speech, "so we can all avoid fish-lip jinxes. But perhaps the world is, you know, a tad more tense than it used to be, and so I think this reminder from Professor McGonagall is great advice! No need to put yourselves in danger - if you spot a student in trouble and the situation escalates, summon either Waldo or myself."

"Trouble? What does that mean?" Timothy Tenebrax, Slytherin's other sixth year prefect, muttered coldly.

"Bullying, taunting, antagonisation or torment," Waldo repeated mechanically. "As I said. Anyway, now onto the patro-"

"That's all quite subjective," Tenebrax insisted harshly. "I don't think our definitions of bullying quite line up, Scriven."

Waldo looked genuinely confused and close to asking Tenebrax to elaborate on his own personal definition of the term, but Ingrid interrupted such a question from forming. "I'm sure it's not that different!" she smiled dismissively, waving a hand. "We trust your judgement completely!"

Lily Evans and Remus Lupin exchanged a pointed look.

"And on that note, I am trusting you all with the responsibility of showing the first years the way to their common room and dorms, as per usual - they look particularly tiny and terrified this year, or maybe I'm just growing old!" Ingrid joked happily. "So do guide them, as well as giving them a hand more generally. You are also responsible for handing them their house ties once they are sorted."

"Remember to remind them to straighten their hats, tuck in anything that needs tucking, sort out any scruffy ties -"

"How can you expect Lupin to do that when it looks like he can barely dress himself?" Belinda sneered, glaring at Remus' untidy appearance. Unperturbed, Remus sighed.

"Same way Scriven's expecting you to prevent bullying when you're barely decent," Lily bit back. Dirk Creswell sniggered as Scaleington's face grew livid.

"No more arguing," Benedict Pewsey from Hufflepuff moaned, "you lot are gonna do my head in again this year."

"Shut up, mudblood," Tenebrax spat.

The uproar was immediate as four people at once got to their feet, all pointing their wand straight at Timothy Tenebrax.

"Wrong audience, Tenebrax," Pewsey snarled, trying to seem intimidating as he visibly trembled with rage.

"You can't say that word!" Tammy Knutton of Hufflepuff squeaked in horror, and Marcella Pluton started listing off reasons why the use of the word was so very uncouth, and so very against the school rules.

"Not very wise, is it, Timothy?" Waldo said, sounding very genuinely irked. "Now I have to report you to Professor Slughorn before term has even started - and it's a lot of bloody paperwork!"

"Oh, come on - it was a joke!" Tenebrax whined defensively.

"I'm in stitches," Lily said flatly.

"Alright - well - let's continue with the meeting - I'm sure Timothy didn't mean it," Ingrid said feebly. "In terms of patrolling, I thought this year we could maybe change the timetable every month -"

"Oh, he meant it alright."

"Can't anyone make a bloody joke nowadays?" Tenebrax demanded, decidedly ignoring the Head Girl's meek attempt to gloss over the tension.

"What makes you think that - I thought it was hilarious," Lily pressed on.

"You can't say that word, Tenebrax, and then pretend it was a joke to save your skin," Marcella Pluton scolded him.

"Yeah, like a coward," Benedict Pewsey echoed.

"Oh shut up, Pewsey. Honestly, all you do is complain, like a whimpering kneazle," spat Belinda Scaleignton.

"No one gives a fuck if I hurt your little feelings - you're the coward for being so sensitive, Pewsey," Tenebrax sneered.

"I care, actually," snapped Evans.

"As do I," someone echoed.

"I'm fairly invested, too…" a Hufflepuff fifth year prefect said from somewhere in the compartment, and many others muttered their agreement.

"You would care, wouldn't you, Evans?" Tenebrax spluttered maliciously. "Takes you right back to that moment by the lake last term, don't it? When you got all worked up over the word. Ruined a perfect little friendship with our very own Snape. Shame, really - he liked you as his mudblood plaything, but it was good on him to finally get rid of you."

Uncomfortable silence filled the compartment. Remus blinked, his wand never moving from its position in front of the hateful Slytherin's nose. "You are such an imbecile," he remarked calmly. A moment later, it was clear why this was the case - Tenebrax had dared to directly provoke Lily Evans, and she was bound to not take such a display of insolence lying down.

"Caecus Inanis," she uttered, and before Belinda could squawk indignantly, Timothy Tenebrax's eyes and mouth had shut firmly and suddenly against his will. He tried to scream, but it came out as a muffled sound.

"Evans - do not add to my paperwork!" Waldo yelped, beside himself.

"It won't last long, it's only a jinx" Lily informed him, as she watched Tenebrax struggle. Her eyes twinkled darkly, and Remus felt for the first time that she was a lot more unpredictable than he had ever given her credit for.

"Evans, this is quite - " Waldo started.

"I would make the most of his inability to interrupt if I were you, Waldo," Mortimer suggested. "Before it's too late."

Ingrid did just that, though Waldo looked overcome with stress. "We can change up the patrolling timetable every month or so," she said, wasting no time in following the advice, "meaning Hufflepuff will patrol every Wednesday and Friday in September, but will swap times with Slytherin in October - doing Tuesday mornings and Sunday evenings instead…"

Tenebrax's forced silence lasted a lot longer than expected, and by the time the meeting had finished, all he could do was continue to grunt as Scaleington guided him back to his compartment (which she was finding impossible to decipher the location of, given Tenebrax's inability to communicate with her). Waldo seemed reluctant to allow Timothy to wander off in such a state, but in the end he was very effectively persuaded by a seething Benedict Pewsey.

"Pricks, the lot of them," he spat, watching the two sixth year Slytherins stumble along the train's narrow corridor, followed by their fifth-year counterparts.

"They always want to cause a stir, but then hate the consequences!" complained Marcella Pluton. "Especially Timothy Teenebrax - I think it serves him right, honestly."

"I'll make sure he gets familiar with what the consequences are!" Abigail Frogatt beamed, twirling her wand.

"You will do no such thing, Frogatt," Remus Lupin told his fellow Gryffindor, "or you'll run Lily out of the job."

Lily let out a burst of sheepish laughter. "The aim is to not be hexing people at all, actually," she mused. Remus noticed she seemed just as surprised by her own behaviour as he was. "Though you'd never guess based on how these meetings tend to go. I'm sorry, Waldo. I shouldn't have jinxed him."

"In all fairness," Mortimer told the wide-eyed fifth-years next to him, "Evans is not our usual jinxer - and he absolutely deserved it on account of being a prefect who is meant to be setting an example. Like Marcella said, he knew the exact reaction saying the word would cause. It's against school rules. Not to mention, he went in for Evans. He can say whatever word he wants, if you ask me. I don't care - but if he can't be bothered to deal with the reactions of people, he shouldn't bother saying it!"

Benedict Pewesy grimaced at Higginbotham's explanation, but agreed all the same.

"It's just classic serpent behaviour, innit…"

"None of that, Pixton," huffed Waldo at the fifth-year Gryffindor prefect that had just piped up. "I will not have mine and Ingrid's first meeting as Heads go down in history as an instigator of intra-House animosity, just as something else to add to the list. McGonagall will have my head on a spike!"

"I don't think you're instigating much that isn't already there, mate," Dirk Creswell pointed out.

"Well, it was still lovely to see you all," Ingrid said sweetly, trying to wrap things up hastily.

"And you, Ingrid!" Tammy Knutton exclaimed. "You will be a wonderful Head Girl - don't you worry about all this faffing! It's just a rocky start. I always think that if you get rid of the bad omens and occurrences at the start of an experience, only good fortune can reign from that point onwards! It's divine probability!"

"You got a T in Divination, Tammy…"

"Evans," Waldo piped up. "I know you won't do it until you think someone thoroughly earns it, but please do not take punishment into your own hands. That is what the Professors are for - we must follow protocol."

"You're right, I'm sorry," Lily apologised.

"But it's all worked out fine," Ingrid Walpole soothed, "and I am certain that by the next meeting, there will be no need for hexes!"

Lily and Remus exchanged another pointed look, sighing at the Head Girl's absolute delusion or painfully artificial optimism.

"Well said, Ingrid!"

"It was a very impressive spell, though, Lily. Really great wand work -"

"Ingrid!" Waldo screeched. "What are you doing, woman - we cannot reward this behaviour in any capacity!"

"I was just trying to find the positives, Waldo, it's called a feedback sandwich," explained Ingrid as everyone shuffled out of the compartment. "Merlin knows we need it," she added so only she could hear.

Remus Lupin shoved his notes in his satchel haphazardly as he bounded down the train's corridor. The paper crushed under the chaotic force. Ah, well - the notes he had taken were utter rubbish anyway. Ingrid Walpole was nice, but she had said a whole lot of nothing the entirety of the meeting. Even the patrolling schedules had been dished out with impressive amounts of fluff around them, and they were bloody useless when you distilled them. And Hufflepuff, if it's not too much trouble, will swap with Ravenclaw on Sundays. If that doesn't work, I will change it all up again. Oh, it really is fine, I'll do it. It's no trouble...I guess a rotation might be confusing, in fairness. Especially if it changes sort of randomly. Maybe I should design them so they shift with every term. Or is there much point? You'll get used to the times after months of them staying the same, and it will be hard to adjust… There goes my idea of shaking things up a bit! Morgana, I'm just waffling, aren't I? Actually, Benedict, give me that back - I'll start from scratch. His notes were more of a humongous scribble than anything else.

He found the door to the compartment his friends occupied and slid it open. Inside, parchment covered almost every inch of the seats, and his friends were all facing different sides of the compartment, sketching intently. They looked up at him.

"Moony!" Peter Pettigrew exclaimed through a mouthful of jelly slugs, so it sounded a bit more like 'money'.

"Back so soon?" said James Potter as he drew something on his parchment with such precision that his tongue stuck out. "Did being a ponce lose its shine?"

"Yes, it lost its sense of glamour after Waldo Scriven made us recite the Hogwarts manifesto in latin four times."

Sirius Black gasped. "Now that's Filch's wet dream!"

"I was joking," said Remus. "Although I wouldn't put it past the bloke. He's Head Boy - did you know?"

"I'm clutching my pearls in shock," James gasped.

"Being Head Boy's got to be the dullest thing I can think of," Peter mused, rubbing away a massive smudge of ink from his parchment. "Imagine spending your last year at Hogwarts barking out rules and chasing after people, giving detentions out!"

"Well it's a good thing they're always tossers, anyway. They get what they deserve for being such pompous twats," Sirius barked out, matter-of-fact.

"Moony better be careful he doesn't have too much of a wand up his arse," smirked James, "or he might find that Dumbledore has special plans in store for him next year."

"Dear Merlin, I hope he isn't so demented. I couldn't be Head Boy. It's bad enough he made me a prefect. All I've done is give you access to the patrolling schedule."

"Shame on us for corrupting such a little lamb!"

"Piss off."

"There's no way you'll get Head Boy next year - no offence, Moony," Peter started to reason, "not with the likes of Mortimer Higginbotham about."

"Yeah, Wormtail's got a point. You've been out-ponced!" cried James.

"Gotta step it up," said Sirius. "Start by wearing specs, that should do the trick."

James promptly sent a twitchy-ears hex his way.

"It wasn't all boring, you know. Evans actually jinxed Tenebrax something nasty in the meeting."

"Blimey!" James breathed, impressed. "Nice of her to provide the entertainment - must get quiet."

"Not as fun as it sounds," warned Remus, dissolving Sirius' hex before he scratched his ears off. "It's because he was throwing the mud-word around. Saying it to Pewsey."

Remus thought it best to leave out the part where Timothy Tenebrax mentioned the incident by the lake last term, but it seemed Sirius had other ideas. "Wait, hang on," he said. "Evans loved to get on her high horse last year when we hexed Snivelly for saying the word. But it's fine when she does the same in front of the swotty council, is it?"

"You lot jinxed Snivelly before he ever called Evans the word," Remus reminded him.

"So? We jinxed him after the fact, too."

"He shouldn't be such a slimy git if he doesn't want to be hung upside down!" Peter squawked, shoving more jelly slugs in his mouth.

"Evans is actually the biggest hypocrite I know," Sirius grumbled, ignoring Peter altogether. "For everything we've done that she's moaned to us about, she's done the same! Bloody wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Don't give her so much credit," said James, wisely. "She could never body-swap Peeves and Mrs Norris like we did."

"She lacks the vision," Sirius agreed.

"Very true, but I guess our eyes could never shine as brilliantly as hers," Remus mocked, referencing what James had confessed to them last year after consuming an unadvisable dose of truth serum, which they were testing after managing to swipe it from Slughorn's cupboard. It had been a stroke of utter brilliance when they realised they could slip it into Mulciber's fried eggs at breakfast and watch him give a run down of his favourite ballads by Celestina Warbeck when prompted - which turned out to be You Can't Magic Away My Love closely followed by No Sleep Without My Warlock.

"I'm sorry I had to compare, Moony, your eyes are lovely too."

"Thank you, Prongs."

"Do mine shine brilliantly, as well?" Sirius smirked.

"No, they creep me out to be honest. Put them away."

"I do have my mother's eyes!"

"How are the floor plans of the towers shaping up?" asked Remus after the laughter subsided, nodding at the sheets of parchment everywhere.

"Better if you started doing yours," said Sirius, "instead of ironing your shoelaces or whatever it is that you do at a prefect meeting."

"I'm no good with a quill," Remus complained. "You all scratched my drawing of the seventh floor!"

"Yes, because it looked like it had come out of my owl's bumhole," James pointed out.

"See? I would be of a lot more use reading up about tracking spells," Remus suggested, picking up the book he had been reading before being whisked away to the prefect meeting. It was a thick tome of Traces and Tracks: On Spells that can Follow by some chap called Lunden Hildebald, and it was dead useful for getting closer to discovering how to track the whole population of Hogwarts, which was the ambitious insight the Marauders were after.

"Oh yeah, put your feet up, Moony," said James. "By all means. Do you want a back massage?"

Remus stretched onto a seat and yawned dramatically, cracking the book open. "If you don't mind. Chuck us a slug, Pete."

Sirius laughed. "I'll chuck you a slug," he promised, conjuring a very real one with his wand and making it fly towards the thin boy, who shrieked upon contact with the slimy creature.

"That's a monstrous bastard!" Remus sputtered out, aghast at the size of the slug.

"It's massive," James looked inspired. "Wormtail, d'you reckon you could take it in a fight?"

Peter analysed it, contemplative. "There's only one way to find out."

The afternoon rolled on, whizzing past green pastures and winding hills. Outside the Marauder's compartment, their laughter could still be heard. It filled the train. The other passengers, however, had no way of knowing that what the Gryffindor boys were in actual fact laughing at was their illegal Animagus mate transformed into a rat, challenging an unsuspecting slug to a fight. And that was half the fun - every joke they had was like a secret. A hysterical and diabolical situation with high stakes, with the same special quality as laughing in a serious moment, or turning a dark memory into a funny story. It was bliss.

The other passengers also had no way of knowing that the rat was losing quite badly to the slug, which would not move from its position atop Peter's tail. And if there was one passenger who would have killed for the chance to know what the Marauders' were laughing about, it was Severus Snape.

He heard a particularly grating howl that belonged unmistakably to Sirius Black, one exclaimed in mirth no doubt, and Severus' fists started to curl involuntarily at the sound. "You would think they own the train," he spluttered in rage, trying and failing to read his book on spell etymology.

"Hmm," Phileas Avery hummed, concentrating on the wizarding chess board floating in front of him. He was playing against Anya Wilkes from the year above, and much like Peter against the slug, he was losing spectacularly.

"I don't have all day, Avery," Wilkes snarled. Avery was hovering his hand above his knight, not daring to move it towards the sea of black pieces belonging to the witch.

"Will you shut up!" he spat. "I can't hear myself think with everyone's yapping."

"Whatever makes you feel good about your incompetence," she laughed coldly. "I'm just buying my time until Evan comes back and I can play a proper game."

Avery gulped, flustered, still torn about whether the knight was his best bet, as it was blowing him a cheeky raspberry. "He won't return for a while. The man is probably hiding away from you and your slimy advances, trying to catch a bloody break," he mustered the cruelty to say to Wilkes, whose face fell.

Anya Wilkes raised her wand immediately and cursed the sixth-year Slytherin mercilessly, making Avery shriek in pain as boils started to cover every inch of his skin, throbbing painfully. "I dare you to repeat that," she breathed out in a dangerous tone. "REPEAT IT."

Severus looked up from his book, lifting an eyebrow. Avery did not repeat it, for he was writhing on the compartment floor in agony.

"I SAID, REPEAT IT," Wilkes demanded, increasing the number of boils on his arms.

"Arggh!" the boy groaned.

Wilkes laughed. It was a shrill sound. "Pathetic," she spat. Then, suddenly, the boils on Phileas Avery's skin started to disappear. "What the hell!" she screeched, whipping around to glare at Severus Snape, who had just finished muttering a counter-curse.

"I'm saving you the trouble, Wilkes," he explained, sticking his nose back into the valley of pages of his open book. "You know better than to give the prefects the perfect reason to expel you. They will hear you when they patrol down the train corridor."

A slow, chilling smile spread across her face. "Avery wouldn't let that happen to me, would you now, Avery? You would tell them it was all in good fun, and that you enjoyed it."

Avery nodded feebly, straightening his emerald robes.

Just as Wilkes was breaking out into ferocious laughter again, the compartment door opened and Evan Rosier's long face emerged through it, his dark eyes scanning the sight before him.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Torturing Avery to quench my boredom," she said smoothly. "But we're having fun, aren't we Phileas?"

"A-ha," Avery said weakly. He turned to Severus as Wilkes and Rosier nestled themselves into a corner by the compartment window. "Want to play a game?" he asked, gesturing to the abandoned chess board.

"Why not," Severus agreed unenthusiastically. It's not like I will be able to read now, he thought.

Avery scrambled to assemble the pieces, making a fuss about what colour he wanted to be, which based on his overwhelmed expression, would make anyone assume his life depended on it. Severus had to fight the cutting remark he had ready to throw his way (which was a thoroughly deserved one for being so impossibly thick), but he reasoned that the pasty blonde had probably experienced enough torment for one train ride.

Anya Wilkes tossed her short hair over her shoulder. "What took you so long, Evan?" she asked with a pout.

"Wulfric said Tenebrax and Scaleington never returned to their compartment - so I was just checking if I needed to curse someone's eardrums to a pulp," Rosier said in his usual threatening tone. Snape believed his every word - he had seen Rosier in a duel; the wizard was quick to anger, and everyone ought to avoid being on the other end of his wand.

"Did you find out what happened to them?"

"No, but I don't doubt it's nothing serious. They're probably sucking each other's face behind the food trolley."

Wilkes moved closer to Rosier. "Well, you know what they say," she whispered in a sickly sweet voice, "on the Hogwarts Express is where a love you confess."

"Is that what they say?

"Yeah," she breathed, caressing a stray curly hair on his forehead. "And there's also the saying: there's no better place for a kiss stain, than on the inside of a train."

"Never heard of those in my life."

"Is that suggesting to kiss a train on its neck?"

"Shut up, Avery, you worthless pit stain!" Wilkes shrieked, before clearing her throat and carrying on with her sticky tone. "It's a famous saying, Evan - I can't believe you've never heard it."

"Ah," Rosier said simply. "What do you want, Wilkes? A kiss?"

"W-what?"

"Because I'll give you one, just so you'll stop begging for it," he continued, rather harshly. "You've been doing this for the entire train journey so far - it's quite annoying."

"O-okay," Wilkes gushed, already puckering her lips and closing her eyes with excitement.

Evan Rosier looked her up and down mildly and then shrugged, like he was being offered a cheese sandwich. Who said romance was dead, Snape thought sardonically. Then Rosier leaned in, and he and Anya Wilkes kissed. Upon the contact, Wilkes moaned and jumped on him, intensifying the snog to an inappropriate level for a shared compartment.

Snape spied on the pair from the corner of his eye, gawking at the way Wilkes was pulling Rosier's hair, and the way Rosier's hand was grabbing a fistful of the Slytherin girl's bum. So this is what a snog looked like up close. It was so…odd. Severus could hardly imagine himself in that position - with someone atop him, kissing him ferociously, thrashing. It might feel nice, maybe. But he couldn't even picture who that other person would be like. Belinda Scalenington? He snorted at the thought - she was an unrefined cow. Allegra Cresciente? She was painfully stupid.

Catching an image of Wilkes momentarily, of her pulling back with a crazed look, only to return to attack Rosier's mouth, swallowing his mortified gasp with a shrill laugh - Severus had a brief vision. He imagined Lily in her place, pulling back from him - her cheeks flushed and her green eyes glued to his - smiling only to kiss him deeply, capturing his mouth.

Severus felt his body temperature shoot up like a comet. His insides buzzed with adrenaline, and he felt real sweat pool at his temples. His hands trembled with nerves.

"Your turn."

"WHAT!" Severus yelped, startled. His heart was beating inside of his ear by the sounds of it.

Avery blinked at him, confused. "I said it's your turn," he snapped. Floating between them, the chess pieces were tutting impatiently.

"I was thinking about my move. Not that you would know how to recognise what that looks like," Severus snarled at his Slytherin friend, his flustered demeanour easily turning into malice.

---

"Oh, what in Circe's good name are you doing, Alice?" the young Auror asked herself, scrutinising her image in the mirror.

Madam Malkin had unfortunately stayed true to her word, and proved that she was not joking about her inability to let go of subjects which did not concern (which were to be her downfall as a person, she admitted). And as such, she had owled Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour the very next day after their (in Alice's opinion) rather rotten encounter.

Dear Miss Fortescue,

I do hope this correspondence finds you well. You will be glad to know that after a lovely and most fruitful conversation with Amelia Bones yesterday afternoon, I was happy to discover that her youngest brother is as single as a Nordic kringle! He is a most accomplished wizard at his age - training up in St Mungo's to be Healer, don't you know.

I told her I knew the most suitable witch for him, and Miss Bones took little convincing to write to her brother Cassian, suggesting a date between the two of you (she referred to it as a 'blind date', as if this name were common practice. How very modern! Though I was a tad frightened at first of the implication that both of you were to be hit with an obscuring jinx, to be perfectly candid, to make the experience more interesting or some nonsense).

Miss Bones wrote me back just this morning, confirming that Cassian Bones is happy with this arrangement, and has asked for a suitable date to have a stroll around Muggle London, of all places! A bit bizarre, I must admit, but to each their own. Mind you, Amelia Bones' reply was very brief and I was rather miffed at the lack of precise detail. She is such a formal and concise person, I am not going to take it personally. I am sending you a pair of robes, dear - fresh from my yet to be released Winter Solstice collection, so it's all very exclusive. Now, I do want them back after the date - unless you like what you see and would like to purchase them. Then you'd have to wait until winter, like the rest of the population - my favours do know bounds. But you simply mustn't wear your own robes. I implore you.

Do write back with a suitable date.

All the best,

Madam Malkin.

The robes were of soft kaftan and earth tones, coming down to above her knees. Underneath them, Madam Malkin had provided a bone coloured (Alice sighed when she read the accompanying note explaining the pun on her date's name) linen dress that reached the floor, secured with a belt. It had been so long since Alice had worn anything but her midnight blue Auror robes, or her muddy apron and dishevelled hat that she put on to take care of her plants - which was the only downtime she could afford these days. It felt foreign to be wearing such brand spanking new attire.

They actually look wrong on me, she thought. Her face was so obviously out of sorts with the rest of her - so pink and raw and unkept. Wild eyebrows and swollen, dry lips. What did people do with their hair, anyway? She had no idea anymore, and so she pulled it into two loose plaits as she always did, and she briefly chewed on the realisation that she looked about twelve. Alice was sure that Cassian Bones would be able to spot the uncanniness of her appearance from a mile away. How obvious it must be that she was trying too hard to look normal in these silky robes. She sighed. Well, there was nothing she could really do about that.

Alice had long ago forgotten most of the beauty spells she'd used as a teenager back at Hogwarts - such as that under-eye-bag one, or the one where you would swish your wrist in a particular way so your hair would curl. There had been a point in her life where she had felt rather proud of losing engagement with that part of her brain; the part that lit up like a Christmas tree at the thought of presentability or being perceived by a man. It had felt like she was more authentically on the road to becoming a proper Auror when she renounced frivolous things like beauty, or clothes or music or idle chat or fun or…being a young witch. She had acted like those things were beneath her when she started Auror training, but right now she wished for nothing more than to have some hair accessories, for Merlin's sake.

Maybe Madam Malkin had a point. Perhaps she had been neglecting herself a bit.

With no clips or gems or anything at hand, and no spells to come to her rescue, Alice pulled out a few stems of chamomile flower from the plant pot next to her bed and threaded them through her plaits, cringing all the while at the reaction Cassian was sure to have. Better than nothing? Who knows. It smelled nice, at least.

Before dashing out, she took one last glimpse in the mirror. Her reflection grimaced back at her. "Be brave," Alice instructed, in what she hoped was an encouraging tone. She shook herself, attempting to shake any anxious thoughts away, and set her jaw firmly with determination. "Bye everyone!" she said to the jungle of magical plants in her room, before running downstairs to exit onto Diagon Alley ("Watch where you're going, child!" Ferdinand called out when she nearly made the pints of cream he was levitating collapse on the floor).

Outside, it was a rather windy day, though the sky was not entirely clouded over yet. Gazing into the window display of Flourish and Blotts (which advertised the bestseller Batsercise! Regina Bellina's secret to staying fit using your pet BAT as weights! by Regina Bellina, surrounded by lime green posters saying irritating statements such as Hello Bat Wings, Goodbye Bingo Wings!) was a young wizard with great brunette side-burns, and dressed in maroon robes.

"Hiya," said Alice, approaching him. This had been the meeting place they had agreed on via owl - and via Madam Malkin. She cleared her throat. "Are you Cassian Bones?"

The man relaxed and broke into a smile. "Yes, yes, that's me. Alice, I presume?"

"Indeed, yes. It's nice to meet you," she responded, timidly toying with the end of a plait nervously. "Interested in batsercising?" she asked.

Cassian looked puzzled for a moment, and then looked at the window display again, where he caught sight of the winking photo of Regina Bellina. "Oh, no. I don't have a bat, you see."

Alice laughed. "Well how on Earth do you keep in shape?"

"It's my fault, really - a massive oversight to get a cat when I was eleven," he said, delighting in her reaction, and Alice laughed again. "I was actually transfixed on that volume over there," Cassian added, pointing it out to Alice.

"Pixie proofing one's chicken coop: and other practical advice in our campaign against the fairy kingdom," Alice read. "Sounds like a fascinating read."

"I was trying to work out since when we were at war with the fairy kingdom," Cassian prompted.

"You must live under a rock!" gasped Alice in mock indignation.

"I'm certainly not coming across as the most worldly of blokes," Cassian pretended to scratch his chin. "But I'm deciding that I'm on the side of the fairies, obviously."

"Obviously - never the chickens."

And just like that, time passed Alcie by like it was in a hurry. Before she knew it, it had been nearly six hours and she was being walked back to Diagon Alley by Cassian, arms linked and bearing a weighty newspaper cone of fish and chips. Alice had come to find out that conversations with the young Bones wizard flowed effortlessly, and that he actually quite liked the flowers in her hair ("Thought I smelled something lovely, aside from the chips!"). They laughed about the stares they received in muggle London wearing their long robes, and he told her about his flat in Lancaster he had just inherited from his uncle Pascal ("It's awful, never visit," he assured her).

Never once did she delve into her job as an Auror - and it felt bloody fantastic. It wasn't that he hadn't asked - he had - but her answer had been rather cryptic. Something about just having completed a training scheme within the Ministry, which wasn't exactly false, and he hadn't pried. Perhaps out of courtesy, or perhaps because at that very moment they witnessed a car honk in the flesh - which was far too exciting to not fuss over immediately and abandon all previous thoughts. It had felt incredible to let go with such abandon of the massive weight of her profession, even if it was only for a few hours. She felt younger, or rather, her actual age - she felt…prettier, shinier. It was a new feeling, and Alice savoured it.

Which is why when Cassian lingered at the shop entrance of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour as he dropped her off, Alice decided to follow the impulses of a prettier and shinier new her.

"I would be Yarrow?" asked Cassian, amusedly. He leaned on the front door.

"If you were a magical plant, yes. It's in loads of ointments! And you're, you know, nearly a Healer," she explained, enthusiastically. "Achilles is said to have stitched the wounds of his soldiers with it, it's a great little plant."

"I'll take that as a massive stroke to my ego, Alice," he informed her.

"Please do, I meant for it to be a stroke to your ego," Alice giggled. There was a small beat of slightly uncomfortable silence. "I had a brilliant time today. What about you?" she sputtered out.

"I did too!" he assured her. "I didn't expect it."

"No, neither."

"I hope I haven't misjudged the atmosphere completely, but I would love to see you again," said Cassian.

"You didn't!" Alice exclaimed awkwardly. "I would love that, too."

And then, as her prettier and shinier impulses commanded her, Alice reached forward and kissed Cassian softly on the lips. When the wizard responded back with surprise, but then gusto, her softness turned more fierce, and the kiss became quite feral. She pulled back, breathless, and found that she had his robes bunched up in her fists, balled at his collar. The remnants of her fish and chips were sprawled on the cobbled street.

"Would you, er," she panted, "like to come inside?"

Cassian Bones blinked, just as breathless. "Yes," he said, almost at once, "yes, er - lead the way."

Goodbye, Frank Longbottom - Alice thought as she pulled Cassian Bones by his robes into the Ice Cream Parlour, and up to her room - you shall haunt me no more. My greetings to Geraldine Cauldron!

---

In an all-too familiar flurry, the Hogwarts students found themselves in the Great Hall much quicker than in previous years. Or at least it felt that way. When the final first year had at last been sorted (Sarafina Yarmouth - Ravenclaw!), many of the older students could've sworn that they had seen the new faces a million times before under the very same Sorting Hat. And yet, everything was always new in Hogwarts, too. There was always something waiting to be discovered - always a surprise lurking in an unexpected corner somewhere. Indeed, Nearly Headless Nick came close to making Cassandra Phorone choke on her potatoes with a revelation of his own during the feast.

"That's right, friends, 'tis love that has befallen on me! Love - that mysterious, wretched force - has indeed found a way to strike this old wizard's heart!" he announced, although the glassy quality of his eyes suggested that he did not think the force was all that wretched. "It was said in my time that to let a lady make one's spleen sickly with amorous desire was runious - but alas, Cupid is one devilish scoundrel!"

"You're in love?" Phoebe Cast sputtered out.

"Love - yes!" the ghost said with a sigh, and he floated along the table, passing through Bobby Hechizo's chalice of pumpkin juice and making the freckled fourth year go green. "I wake up every morn thinking about her, and fall into slumber every night in no different a mood! I would sooner stop drawing breath than cease dreaming about my sweet lady!"

Everyone within earshot thought it best to not point out that it had been a while since the Gryffindor ghost had drawn breath.

"Who is this lady?" Phoebe demanded.

"'Tis The Siren of Port Morado that has bewitched my soul!"

"Who?"

"She lives in a painting on the third floor, and she is as beautiful as the moon! Oh, how this Siren inflames my loins!" Nearly Headless Nick trailed off.

"Gross," Mary whispered.

"I shall make haste in wooing her! No doubt a creature as fair as my Siren is well acquainted with the courting of gentlemen, and I must slain my opponents in my quest to prove my undying love for her!" the ghost proclaimed fiercely.

"How exactly will you slain your opponents?" Peter Pettigrew asked from the other side of the table through a mouthful of mash. The girls rolled their eyes at having their conversation with the Gryffindor ghost be interrupted.

"Why - in a battle of arms!"

"Will you fight the Fat Friar?" he asked, and Mary laughed at the mental image.

"If need be!"

"What's the poor chap done to you?" James Potter asked.

"Oh - surely he's not your opponent?" Cassandra gasped. "Is he stealing the siren away from you?"

"That's just pathetic, mate, he's dead" Peter mused, stabbing a parsnip with his fork, ready to continue with the feast.

"Well, so is he!" Cassandra pointed out.

"On guard!" the ghost suddenly boomed, using his translucent hand as if it were a weapon, and pointing it at Peter, who squeaked in horror. "Too right! 'Tis pathetic! I shall make practice of you, young Pettigrew, so as to assure victory! I cannot let any of the hounds in this castle think they stand a chance against my wills. The Fat Friar is becoming much too of a bosom friend of the Siren for my liking, and this alone urges me to take immediate action!" he added wildly, his eyes bulging with fear at the possibility of Hufflepuff's ghost trumping his romantic efforts.

"Blimey, Nick, you're losing your head."

"Nearly, young Potter, nearly!" the ghost proclaimed, and he moved to James, who wasted no time in matching the duelling stance with a smirk, making a few students laugh. "If I was corporeal, young fellow, you would see just how much damage these hands are capable of enacting!" Nearly Headless Nick shouted as he brandished his hand ridiculously in the air.

"Sir Nicholas - you have not thought this one through. How will you woo her with no hands?" James reasoned dramatically, and Cassandra gasped at the rather naughty implicit insinuation behind his words.

"Why - I am not entirely certain," the ghost said, dropping his arms and looking overcome with worry. "Are hands important in the wooing of a damsel, James Potter?"

"In my experience," James said gravely, "all too important."

"We can thank Merlin your bird is a fish then, Nick."

"Black!" Phoebe choked out, shocked. "You dog!"

The four sixth-year Gryffindor boys exchanged amused looks, and James Potter stifled a cackle. "Isn't he just?" he remarked seriously.

"I shall just have to find alternative means of seducing the maiden my heart yearns for - preferably one that does not require the use of hands," Nick said thoughtfully.

"Ignore them - they're not trying to actually help. Just charm her with wit and intellect. She won't care about some fight," Lily offered the ghost, sensing he was actually getting quite panicked about his non-physical form.

"Yes! That is the way to a woman's heart," Mary agreed, in an earnest attempt to be helpful.

"Then how come we don't have witches lining up at our door?"

"Because she said wit and intellect, Potter," Phoebe retorted.

Potter threw a jinx at her, and the witch shrieked, ducking what was sure to be a hex that would make the girl tap-dance. Lily nearly laughed at the exchange, but resisted. Truthfully, she was still feeling a little awkward bantering after how terribly things had ended last term, and was unsure how to approach Potter in particular.

"Not sure if you know this, Potter," Phoebe continued, "but Lily likes sensitive men - as does Mary."

Lily blushed against her will. Shut up, Phoebe!

"Well, yes - who wants to go out with a barbarian?" Mary drew out with disgust.

Cassandra sighed. "There is a point in the middle, you know."

"Women love a sensitive man," Mary pressed on, informing Nearly Headless Nick of the fact, who looked close to grabbing a quill to write this all down with. "You need to approach this lady of yours and pour your heart out to her! Tell her your every thought as if the words were water rushing through you like the unstoppable current of a river!"

"Wh-what?" the ghost sputtered, terrified of the very idea.

"Sensitive? Then how come I've heard Evans hexed Timmy Tenebrax on the train earlier 'till the fella couldn't even speak," Sirius said, looking thrilled.

"Maybe I like someone who will balance me out," Lily sniffed.

James scoffed. "You'd eat a sensitive sod for dinner, Evans."

"Well, my sweet damsel may ravenish me if she wishes!" Nearly Headless Nick wailed. "For I am at her tempestuous mercy!"

"Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington," Professor McGonagall snapped, suddenly appearing by his side with a decidedly unamused look on her face. "Will you please refrain from proclaiming your love so loudly? It is hardly appropriate. Especially at dinner."

"Dear Professor, you shan't stifle my inflamed passions!"

"I will certainly try."

"On guard!" the ghost yelped.

"Don't be ridiculous," McGonagall said with a chilling stare.

"You're not really knocking a fool in love, are you Professor?" James asked.

"That's just not very welcoming for a welcome feast," Sirius reproached.

"Let him get his kicks!"

"I see you haven't matured one speck over the summer," the Professor remarked drily. "Though it's a mystery why I was holding out any hope."

"Bit harsh to say that about Remus."

"Yeah, he's so mature - his voice finally dropped," said James. Remus bit back a grin, and rolled his eyes.

"There's always next summer, Pete, your time will come…"

"How does one make one's thoughts flow like the unstoppable current of a river?" Nearly Headless Nick asked Mary quite loudly. "I wish mine to be a torrential cascade so my Siren may swim in them!"

"Any tips on that front, Professor?"

"Potter - the ice is thinning. And that is quite enough from you!" McGonagall snapped at the ghost. "I suggest you cool down, Sir Nicholas. Go off and tell the Friar about these desires of yours, will you?"

"Never!" Nearly Headless Nick screeched. "I tremble in fury at the sight of him!"

"Please let him continue, Professor," Mary told her Head of House with wide eyes. "We need to help him - he's in love!"

"You say it like it's a disease," McGonagall sniped. "Off you go, Sir Nicholas."

The ghost left the table, floating towards the Hufflepuff end of the Great Hall with an air of determination, grumbling about I'll show him all the while.

Professor McGonagall followed him with her steady gaze, and then returned it to the table with an air of annoyance. "Miss Evans, may I speak to you after the feast? I'm sure you know what this is about."

Lily Evans nodded quickly and looked down. "Yes, Professor."

"Very well. And as for the rest of you, do not indulge Sir Nicholas' nonsense any further! He has been unbearable about this silly fixation of his all summer, and patience is not one of my many virtues," she stated, and then made to return to the Professor's table with a swish of her cloak, though not before casting one last irritated glance at Nearly Headless Nick over by the Fat Friar, who he seemed to be trying to intimidate with crazy facial expressions.

"Causing havoc already?" asked Sirius, with interest.

"Do you think you'll get detention for cursing Timothy Tenebrax?" Phoebe wondered, gawking at her friend.

"What a daredevil you are, Evans," James smirked.

"Shut it, Potter," Lily cut-in. "This is terrible, I shouldn't have taken that weasel's bait."

"Lily, don't worry. It's you - I'm sure it was with good reason," Mary told her encouragingly.

Sirius threw his hands up in indignation. "Bloody classic!" he scoffed at the injustice.

After dinner, the girls scurried along to the Gryffindor Tower, leaving Lily behind to be absolutely creamed by McGonagall in the Great Hall. Bored and riddled with impatience for their friend's return, the witches turned unpacking their trunks into a race. Phoebe was very much in the lead, and had only sorting her socks into pairs left to do. The same could not be said of Cassandra, whose trunk was virtually untouched, as most of her time had been spent plastering posters of The Hobgoblins all over her side of the dormitory.

"You do realise kissing them won't make them come to life?" said Phoebe snidely, eyeing up the scowling faces of the band members, which were now covered in sticky lip stains.

"I think it looks wicked with those marks," Cassandra sniffed. "Personalised, and all that."

"My mum packed me bakewell tarts!" Mary gasped, pulling a wrapped package from her trunk. "I need to write to her - oh, these are my favourite!"

"What are they?"

"They're a type of muggle tart."

"Like you then," Phoebe joked, causing quite the boisterous laugh from Cassandra.

Mary frowned at the two laughing girls. "I'm not a muggle," she whispered.

"Well, yeah, obviously - you're a muggle tart!" Phoebe snickered.

"Yeah. Obviously," Mary repeated dryly.

"Come on, it was a joke, Mary! Bloody hell."

"Right."

"Get it - tart? Like the food, but also - "

"The tart bit was also a joke," Cassandra provided, unhelpfully. "Because you're our innocent little cherub!"

"Yeah I got that bit, thanks," Mary snapped. "It's a bit of a tired joke, though. The whole 'saying muggleborns are muggles' thing. It's not funny."

"Oh - what - I didn't - that's not -" Phoebe exchanged a bemused look with Cassandra. "Sorry, Mary - I didn't mean it like that!"

The muggleborn witch shrugged impassively and made a show of neatly folding up a knitted cardigan. "S'fine - don't worry about it."

"Well, they look really nice," Cassandra said brightly, gesturing to the bakewell tarts. "It was nice of your mum to pack them."

"Thanks," Mary whispered. "I think I'll give one to Lily - she'll appreciate it."

Phoebe and Cassandra shared another look.

Thankfully, the girls were spared from further awkwardness by Lily entering the dormitory with a small, bashful smile. "Hullo," she said. "McGonagall was actually really nice about the Tenebrax thing. She said she won't punish me this time, that it's my first warning - but that was about it."

"No way!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Did she not tell you off at all?"

"She said what I expected her to - that it was unacceptable for a prefect to do, improper use of magic, callous… But I thought for certain I was going to get a detention, or some points docked off at least. Nothing!"

"Seems to me like she maybe does think it was proper use of magic - secretly," Mary snickered. "Bakewell tart?"

"Oh, cheers," said Lily, grabbing the offered treat. "Love these."

Phoebe's jaw twitched as Mary hummed appreciatively at their red-haired friend. "I knew you would!" she chirped, casting a pointed look at her blonde friend.

"They don't actually look that nice," Phoebe suddenly burst out. "Not better than a cauldron cake, anyway."

"I mean," Lily attempted to say with a mouth almost totally full of pastry. "I like cauldron cakes, but these are nice too."

"But which are better?" sniped Phoebe, pointedly avoiding Mary's narrowed eyes. "One is obviously better than the other."

Lily seemed confused. She chewed. "They're both nice!" was her assessment, but Phoebe sighed impatiently. "I guess I like cauldron cakes more - but why does it matter? Are you thinking of opening up a bakery or something?"

"More like a pure-blood-patisserie," Mary spat, and Lily nearly gagged on her tart out of the sheer shock of hearing Mary say something so pointed.

"What?"

"Don't you dare accuse me of what I know you're accusing me of!" Phoebe screeched. "You keep putting words in my mouth!"

"No, you do a great job of that all by yourself! What was all that talk about cauldron cakes about, huh?"

"What the hell did I miss?" Lily choked out.

"I know what that meant, I'm not stupid!" Mary continued, her cheeks growing pink. "Quite symbolic, if you ask me!"

"Do you hear yourself? You sound like you've lost it! Doesn't she, Sandra?"

"No, no, no, no. I don't want any part in this," Cassandra spluttered hurriedly. "This is between you two."

Phoebe's eyes widened to look like saucers. "Don't leave me!" she pleaded.

"I don't want to say the wrong thing!"

"See what you're doing," Phoebe wailed, pointing an accusing finger at Mary, "you're making everyone paranoid!"

"Well, you're making me rethink who you actually are," Mary said with bite, and Phoebe and Cassandra both gasped, the former looking utterly wounded.

"What the hell is going on?" Lily screamed, looking between the three girls like they'd all grown second heads. "I was literally gone for twenty minutes!"

"Phoebe is a bigot," Mary replied coldly, causing shockwaves around the dormitory.

"Mary!" Cassandra breathed in astonishment. "You need to calm down!"

"What?" Lily nearly yelled, gaping at Mary.

"I mean that she's always making jokes about me being a muggle, and I've finally had enough of it."

"Key word in that sentence being 'jokes'," Phoebe sneered.

"That doesn't make her a bigot," Cassandra tried to reason.

"Yeah - and I said sorry! What is wrong with you, Mary?"

"And what's so offensive about being called a muggle, anyway? As a joke," Cassandra quickly clarified.

"What are you now, defender of the muggles? When was the last time you read the Daily Prophet, Sandra!" Mary squeaked, worked up into a frenzy.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Muggle attacks everyday in every page of the Prophet. Dark Marks above every single one of them. Not that you would have a bloody clue or care about any of it. As long as there are some muggles left to snog over the summer so you can be cool and edgy, it's all groovy! But, oh, now you care about their rights, when it's convenient to bring them up for your argument!"

"What!" Cassandra cried in genuine confusion. "What's come over you, Mary - have you been Imperiused or something?"

This seemed to be the last straw for the usually soft-mannered Mary, who started to heave shallowly and retreat backwards into a wall. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" she roared before dashing out of the dormitory in a whirlwind of broken sobs, all audibly caught in her throat. The girls remained planted firmly on the floor as their friend left, stunned into an empty and bewildered silence. Lily, who had been watching the exchange with her jaw wide open, managed to shake herself of her daze after a brief moment. She rushed to chase after Mary.

"I have no clue what just happened," she announced to the remaining two witches before disappearing out of the door, her calling of Mary's name growing fainter in Cassandra and Phoebe's ears as she descended the staircase.

Mary's sobs reverberated through the common room like a knife ripping through silk. The picture of a crying girl, chased hastily by a second one that was bounding down the stairs three steps at a time, bamboozled all of the students that were lounging - and Abigail Fogatt took great pleasure in saying "all right, nothing to see here!" in her newly acquired prefect tone. When she reached the common room, Lily turned Mary by the shoulder to face her.

"What happened? Are you alright?" she asked wildly.

Mary's lip quivered and she let out a shaky cry. "No," she whimpered, stifling another sob. Lily hugged her, and she allowed the next sob to jerk out of her freely, causing a great, deafening hiccup. "She - she - I'm just…ju- just so tired, Lily," Mary managed to stutter into her friend's hair, which she was soaking quite expeditiously.

"I'm sorry, Mary," Lily cooed, unsure of what to say.

"I feel like no one, under-stands m-me," she gasped between fat tears. "What I go through every d-day."

Lily hugged her tighter, and Mary cried harder. "I understand, Mary. It's horrible," Lily voiced, quite aware of how Mary in particular knew of horrors beyond Lily's experience of blood prejudice. She wasn't sure how it exactly linked to the feverish scene she'd just witnessed in the dormitory about baked goods, but it apparently did. "It's vile. I'm so sorry. Do you, er, want to talk about what Phoebe said? About the… bakewell tarts. Because I truly am mystified about this whole thing, and I want to know what's made you this upset."

Mary snuffled. "Okay," she sniffed. "It's loads of things th-that are making me," she wiped her nose, "this up - upset."

"I bet, Mary," said Lily as she rubbed what she hoped were soothing circles on her friend's back. "I bet."

"I'll tell you, but," Mary paused here, biting her lip as she eyed the common room. "I h-have to say, Lily - I'm scared. I'm really s-scared."

"Of what?"

"Of being mu - muggleborn," Mary whimpered.

---

Author's Notes

The following chapters will have an entirely different structure to the Prologues. Each will address a singular plotline separately (or very few of the plotlines together), and a bit more wholly.

Hope you enjoyed,

Flox