War
A/N: Warning, this chapter contains mentions of death, violence, and mild gore.
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1940 – 1945
For the rest of his life, Septimus was only ever able to recall bits and flashes of the years of the war. Cedrella had a somewhat more coherent memory of those days, but not too terribly much so. Harfang had the clearest memory of those years, but Septimus didn't find that out for well over two decades, as the three Marauders rarely rehashed the war years. Some of the memories they had of those days were good and many of them were bad. A few memories were outright horrifying.
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Among the good memories was the time spent on the firing range in the early days with Harfang, Charlus and the other wizards. They spent nearly as much time laughing and playfully taunting each other for their poor aim as actually shooting. Septimus also rather fondly remembered sitting side-by-side with them as they learned to deal with grenades and other muggle weapons.
He definitely remembered smirking at the other wizards who mocked Cedrella and Callidora when the women joined them for the hand-to-hand and melee weapons practice. He remembered being torn between fierce pride and uproarious laughter as he watched the two women trounce everyone save the expert that had been brought in to teach them with remarkably little effort. Mostly by dint of simply being women and the men's reluctance to attack them. He remembered his amusement at the womens' total disgust and disdain at being treated like delicate, helpless flowers and their pleasure at having the expert treat them as being dangerous opponents after watching them trounce the other men.
He remembered gathering in the main mess tent in the evenings to learn German from Karl and Georg, refugees from their own country. He remembered Karl and Georg laughing themselves sick more than once at how some of the words got mangled, and refusing to tell them what they'd actually said versus what they'd meant to say, even as the two men corrected their pronunciation.
He also had fleeting memories of many of the evenings they spent learning a stunning variety of spells from the various wizards in the group. He remembered teaching them the finer points of the spells he knew in exchange, and watching Cedrella and Callidora do the same. He remembered realizing, on one particular evening, that the women had been accepted by their group as equals and trustworthy fighters, and trying not to hurt his face for grinning so hard.
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Unfortunately, the bad memories far outweighed the good ones. He remembered one of a number of running firefights between their group and a unit of Grindelwald's followers in a small rural village in particular, though he's not sure why, as it hadn't resulted in horrific injuries on their side. He remembered ducking and swerving away from spells as the raced around and through the buildings without having time or opportunity to throw up a shield. He remembered managing to walk away from the fight with everyone alive and well, but leaving fire and devastation in their wake … and a burning funeral pyre of the dead bodies of their opponents.
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One of the worst things he remembered was of being ambushed by a contingent of muggles and wizards on their way back to camp. He remembered the horror of realizing in the midst of fighting for their lives that the contingent had come from the direction of the camp. Harfang must have realized it at more or less the same time, as they had promptly gone into overdrive, mercilessly slashing, hexing, and punching their way through the ranks of the enemy in an near-frenzy. It had taken Charlus and the others a moment to realize why he and Harfang had gotten so brutal, but the second they had, they had redoubled their own efforts in the fight to get back to the camp, hoping against hope it wasn't too late.
He remembered the horrified, agonized grief he'd felt at finding the camp razed to the ground and fully half their support staff lying dead in the snow. Several of them had been hexed so badly they were almost unrecognizable. The rest had been shot repeatedly and/or blown to pieces. He remembered the sorrow that hit when he realized that Georg was among the dead, one hand still clinging to a gun even in death mute testament to his not having gone down without a fight. Worse, he remembered the complete terror and blinding rage that consumed him when he realized Cedrella and Callidora weren't among the dead - and the contingent they'd slaughtered hadn't had either woman in their custody.
He remembered the desperate, determined hunt to retrieve Cedrella, Callidora and the rest of their company before something truly horrifying happened to them. He remembered marching for days without sleep, using every trick at their disposal to find some scrap of evidence as to where they'd been taken.
He remembered damn near falling to his knees in relief when they finally found Cedrella, Callidora, and the pitiful remnants of their support staff three days later and twenty miles away from the burned-out remnants of their camp. The group had clearly somehow escaped their captors, as all of them sported bruises and cuts, only Cedrella and Callidora seemed to still have a wand, while the rest were making do with what looked like the two womens' cache of small, sharp weapons and a handful of stolen German guns. They'd been backed against a rocky promontory, Callidora and Cedrella at the front, faces fierce and grimly determined as they hexed everything in sight.
He remembered Jinx, who had probably been the cause of the group's escape, standing between the two women. He'd had his hands up, projecting a shield for their company to shelter behind, face twisted in a feral snarl as he fought in the group's defense. Septimus remembered the blood that had been pouring from a gash near Jinx's temple that Jinx was completely ignoring, mute testament to his determination to protect their group.
He remembered realizing that if it hadn't been for Jinx, the group would have been slaughtered. Not even Cedrella and Callidora, for all their skill with magic, could have fought off such a large group without a lot of help.
He remembered the short, brutal, bloody and deadly fight as he and the others had come up behind the kidnappers. He knew for a fact that he'd taken absolutely no mercy on any of that lot. He was equally sure that Harfang had been as unforgiving.
He remembered curling around Cedrella that night after it was all over. Lying there under the stars with his face buried in the crook of her neck (and her face buried in the crook of his) and not being able to tell which of them was shaking – or crying – harder. He remembered that both of them had known Harfang was mere feet away doing the same with Callidora. And he remembered that the only reason any of the four of them were able to relax was Jinx standing between them, vigilantly watchful, sporting a bandage on his head but unwilling to rest, even when Charlus had tried to order him to.
He remembered Jinx's teary-eyed pleasure over the next month at becoming the group mascot in the wake of the attack, and the resultant little gifts and friendly attention from everyone. He remembered the amusement he'd felt when, after they'd managed to resupply themselves, Jinx demanded that he take over the cooking and cleaning duties for their entire company.
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He remembered the frustration of standing over an injured Harfang and being unable to help him. He'd been back to back with Charlus as they concentrated on fending off their attackers while Harfang patched himself back together. The incoming fire had been so heavy that diverting his attention would have meant exposing himself and Charlus to serious injury as well.
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He remembered being the one Charlus and Harfang were standing over, defending him and unable to help. He remembered being half-blind with pain and barely able to breathe as he fumbled at his belt for potions. He'd been desperate to get himself patched together fast and allow them to get the hell out of there. He also remembered managing a scrap of gratitude that he'd not been hit by a Dark spell, merely a rather painful regular one.
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He remembered the day he'd stood alone over both Harfang and a gravely, possibly mortally injured Charlus. His magic had been singing in his veins, burning like fire as it responded to his demands as he fought with everything he had to defend the men he considered brothers. He remembered having a completely time-inappropriate realization that the spells were coming faster and easier than they ever had. Which had immediately been followed by the equally time-inappropriate thought that there might be something to the old saw about blackthorn wands only truly coming into their own after their owners faced great adversity.
He remembered the blinding relief when he realized that Charlus, while gravely wounded and in need of better healing than was available in the field and a long recovery time, would live to tell the tale. Things got very fuzzy after that as the exhaustion had set in once Charlus had been safely evacuated to England for further treatment. That was followed by a fleeting memory of everyone scrambling towards him as he succumbed to magical exhaustion.
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He remembered himself and Harfang laughing themselves sick months later after getting a letter from Charlus wherein Charlus mentioned meeting another of the Black daughters - Dorea. The way Charlus had gone on about her, it had been pretty obvious to the two of them that Charlus was falling for her ... and didn't yet realize that he was.
He remembered returning briefly to England for Charlus' wedding celebration two months after getting that letter, and the happiness of knowing Charlus had finally found his match. He remembered meeting Dorea for the first time and realizing she was practically a clone of Cedrella and Callidora in temperament and outlook. He also remembered himself and Harfang teasing Charlus unmercifully about 'finally joining the club' and having his hair hexed green for a week by Dorea in retribution.
He remembered Charlus returning to the front a month later, still a little pale, on the thin side and limping but determined to not leave Septimus and Harfang in the lurch … and bringing Dorea with him. He remembered the amused reactions of the rest of their group when they realized that Dorea was a cousin of Cedrella and Callidora's, and their near-instantaneous acceptance and inclusion of her as a member of their group of fighters.
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He remembered them accidentally stumbling across one of Grindelwald's strongholds, and their horrified realization that it held an army of inferi. He remembered the desperate scramble to contain that army and burn the stronghold to the ground with those foul creatures in it.
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He remembered watching the women tend the injured after battles, their hands kind and words gentle as they did everything in their power to heal the group's various hurts. And he remembered holding Cedrella tight and letting her cry on more than one occasion when, after a long battle to prevent it, she'd had one of their number die of their wounds under her care.
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He remembered the utter horror everyone felt when they stumbled across a huge fenced facility filled with people, muggles all. People who were almost skeletally thin, with haunted, dead eyes and most of them bearing grievous injuries. Worse, all of them bore numbers that had been engraved on their arms like they were cattle. He remembered most of the magicals not quite comprehending the wheres and whyfores of this horrible place until Karl, his voice strained and horrified, explained it to them.
He remembered wanting to find Hitler and blast him to atoms for that atrocity. Which had been followed by the grim, horrifying realization that this … this was something that could happen in their own world, if the extremist purebloods got their way. Harfang, Charlus and their wives hadn't been far behind him in the realization. Their wives might even have got there before he did, considering the history and reputation of the Black family. He remembered the grim, solemn vow the six of them had made to never, ever allow that to happen, whatever it took.
He remembered their group methodically tearing the place apart, killing every guard regardless of attempts to surrender. He remembered them making damn sure that the place was razed to the ground, incapable of being used for the same purpose ever again - and his somewhat heartbroken respect when most of the ex-captives lent as much of a helping hand as their poor condition permitted. He remembered gently shepherding the surviving captives to safety at one of the magical enclaves where the worst of the physical damage could be mitigated before they were obliviated of any knowledge of magic, and taken far from war-torn Europe where they'd hopefully be safe among their own kind.
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He remembered the jubilant celebration when Hitler was finally taken down. Their company had danced through the night, toasting the victory. He remembered the equally jubilant celebration less than a month later when word came that Grindelwald was in custody, his army broken.
He remembered sitting down and talking to their wives about their options, and agreeing to stay on for a month or two, to help track down and shut down what they could of Grindelwald and Hitler's followers, supply lines, and remaining bases. Then talking to the rest of their group and being more than a little amused at everyone's reluctance to part ways right away, and their eager willingness to help with the final stages of the war effort.
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He remembered their dismayed horror as they found base after base, evidence of a long-term, well-thought-out plan on the part of both dictators. He remembered having to dismantle the things, their knowledge of ward-breaking getting a workout the likes of which they'd not yet seen at Grindelwald's bases, as the man had clearly planned for the possibility of his bases being found by the enemy. Hitler's bases had been a lot easier to deal with, in part because there were no magical booby traps, and in part because the man had become seriously unhinged in the latter days of the war and his planning had suffered for it, which showed in the state of the bases' defenses.
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He remembered the white-faced horror the magical contingent had felt when word had come about the special bombs dropped on two Japanese cities. He remembered sharing a grim, horrified look with the other magicals, not quite able to squash the thought of such a thing being dropped on a magical enclave. He remembered a more than slightly sarcastic thought about the pureblood extremists thinking it was a good idea to antagonize people who were capable of such large-scale devastation.
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He remembered the relief and joy of finally returning home in the last days on 1945. All of them bore scars, both physical and mental, but they were relatively whole and ready to go on with their lives.
He remembered his and Cedrella's amusement when Jinx showed up two days after they'd returned to The Den, insisting on popping in on them once a month, to check and make sure they were in good health and not in need of assistance. He remembered talking to Charlus shortly afterward, and Charlus' amused permission for Jinx to do so. Charlus had simply being grateful that Jinx was only insisting on keeping an eye on the Marauders, and not the entire company, which was now spread all over Europe with the end of the war an the dissolution of their group.