May 21st, 1982: Frank Longbottom

"Let's just—let's go over the timeline again," Frank says.

It's late, pushing seven o'clock in the evening, and Frank knows he and Alice don't have to still be stuck at work going over the timeline for just about the billionth time since they started working this case together a couple of months ago. Cheap-ass Runcorn's new policy states that nobody is paid for overtime work unless a superior requests it of them, which their boss, Moody, hasn't. They're just—here. They owe it to Doc to be here, even if the case has gone cold—even if they aren't ever going to find him.

Ever since Alice moved in with them, Sirius and Remus have been collecting Neville from Mum and looking after him in the evenings whenever Alice and Frank end up working past business hours. Frank knows Mum wouldn't mind keeping Neville for such long days. She loves him dearly, even if she's stricter with him than Frank would like. But like he said, she is stricter with Neville than Frank would like—and he doesn't even want to know what she'd have to say about Frank and Alice working together at the Ministry hours after they're technically off the hook every other night.

Part of the problem is that they can't really talk freely until after everybody else goes home. Though they could use Muffliato to conceal their conversations, it would look horribly suspicious for them to do that every time they're in the office, where there aren't supposed to be any secrets between Aurors. They can't even leave most of their physical materials near their desks; they have to Vanish them and then conjure them back up again whenever they find space alone to work. Too much of the timeline they've put together would out Doc's vigilante work to the rest of the office if it were visible to them.

Between pulling insane hours at the Ministry and covering orb duty as often as he can, Frank is starting to get absolutely exhausted just living his life every day—and it doesn't help that he's in his ex-wife's company nonstop during his work shifts. On the one hand, it's helped their investigation into Doc's disappearance significantly in that both parties working on it can talk freely to each other about Doc's involvement in the Order and how that might have tied in. On the other…

They've got this weird split going on where they're constantly together at work and then pretend like the other doesn't even exist outside of it. For a while there, Alice was pushing for them to stop skirting around each other so much, and Frank's made concessions—allows Alice to actually come to his flat when it's time to trade Neville instead of handing him off to other people to act as middlemen. After all, he's not mad anymore. Really, he's not. Enough time has passed, and he's worked with her closely enough on Doc's case that—

It's not that he doesn't want to see her outside of work. It's just that he's a little afraid she's going to want to move back home if he gets too friendly with her, and he can't do that to himself or to Neville, not when she's already broken their hearts once.

But it's confusing as hell when they're in the office because they make a fantastic team—always have. All it really does is remind Frank how much he's missed having more than a surface working relationship with her. He's not saying he wants to give their marriage another go, but…

"We've been over the timeline every day for the last two months, and we haven't had anything new to add in weeks," Alice sighs. "He came to work that Thursday—we both know that; he was here in the Auror Office with us—and then left at six o'clock sharp. He got dinner with the Muggle woman who lives in his building, and she says she walked him right to his door—which makes sense, as he wouldn't want to Disapparate anywhere in front of her. She heard a faint crack coming from next door ten minutes later, but it was soft enough that she didn't think anything of it, probably because Doc had put Silencing Charms on the walls of his flat. We can't say for sure where he went next, but we're fairly certain it was to the other Muggle's flat—Frances Hodges's—the one we know from the Order was under the Imperius Curse. She lived alone, so he wouldn't have needed to go to an Order safehouse, and nobody saw him at one, anyway. And then—blank."

Frank rakes a hand through his hair and sighs almost as big as Alice just did. "So we interview Hodges again. We've got no other leads. If she doesn't remember anything this time, we can go back over it again with everyone else who lives in her building—all of her coworkers—her friends and family—all the people we interviewed last time. Wipe their memories of it after, and—"

"We'd be wasting our time, Frank," murmurs Alice. "If they didn't remember anything last time, they're not going to remember anything now."

Frank frowns—and then it hits him. "It could be that Hodges remembers something but didn't trust us enough to tell it to us. If we compelled her to talk—"

"With what, exactly? Veritaserum? Any testimony or evidence we get from anybody under its effects won't hold up in court. You know that."

"Then we don't do it in our capacity as Aurors. We do it in our capacity as vigilantes. We're both, and if Auror protocol isn't getting us any closer to finding him… We're already using Order information that we can't share with the Wizengamot, so what's one more stretch?"

Alice squeezes her eyes shut. "But Dumbledore decides the missions in the Order, and if we went to him, he wouldn't even want us spending time trying to trace Doc. He'd say that it's a cold case by now and that we ought to be prioritizing people we know are still alive and in need of our help. If we go rogue here, we're not following anyone's command."

"Since when does that matter?"

"Since we took oaths! We may be flagrantly breaking our oath to the Ministry every night, but what we do here, we do by the book, and what we do on our own time, we do by Dumbledore's."

Frank says quietly, "I seem to recall that things went down differently in sixth year."

"Yeah, and it got two girls dead because of us—"

"We're not risking anyone's lives here but our own," Frank points out. "And a bit of Veritaserum wouldn't even do that. Please, Al. We owe it to Doc's Muggle relatives and to the Order to get some closure—find a body—find out what happened to him."

There's a short pause. "I don't like it, Frank."

"Doc doesn't need you to like it. He just needs you to say yes."

Alice narrows her eyes—and then relents. "Fine. Yes. Okay? I'll do it. Lily's got a stash back at her house that we can dip into. I'll fetch some from there and meet you outside Hodges's flat?"

"You can meet me inside. I'll go in and Stupefy her before you get there."

Feeding it to her while she's unconscious is the only way they're going to avoid a struggle. They'll wipe her memory of the whole thing after. It's standard Order procedure for when they have to do this, but Alice still looks pissed. "Fine. I'll meet you inside."

So Frank Disapparates alone to the abandoned alleyway a few blocks from Hodges's building, then sets off in pursuit of it. It's warming up considerably outside now that it's May, and he's a little sweaty and gross by the time he makes it to the building, Alohamoras the lock on the front door, and edges his way inside. For a moment, he debates whether to break into Hodges's flat inside the same way or to knock on the door and let her invite him in first, ultimately deciding on the latter. She's less likely to make a scene if she doesn't, you know, step out of the bedroom to find a strange man waiting for her, wand raised, in her living room.

So he knocks—but she doesn't answer. He knocks again. Frank's almost decided to break in anyway and wait for her to come home inside when he hears footsteps coming from inside—and then—

"Frances Hodges?"

"Yes, that's me," she says with a frown playing on her lips. "If you're trying to sell me something—"

"No, I'm—"

He attempts to think up an excuse to come in, fails, and then pulls out his wand. Hodges's beady brown eyes follow it, then widen in panic—and she turns around and runs across her living room and around a corner as fast as she can.

Right. Doc must have left her enough of her memories to make sure she'd be afraid of anybody who ever tried to curse her again.

Fortunately, she's running down a corridor that doesn't round any corners, so Frank's able to easily lunge into the living room and aim his wand at her. "Stupefy," he whispers, and she instantly keels over and lands in a crumpled mess on the carpet of the corridor.

Surreptitiously, Frank sticks his head back outside and glances around to make sure nobody's there watching, then, once satisfied, edges into the flat and closes the door behind him. He has to wait about fifteen minutes before Alice appears with a crack holding a vial of the colorless liquid. "Sorry for the delay. I got held up talking to James and Harry."

"No problem. Ready for this?"

"No," says Alice. "Help me get her sitting up."

They end up propping Hodges against the wall, Frank sort of holding her in position so that she doesn't tip over on either side. Still looking sort of resentful, Alice tips a few drops of Veritaserum into Hodges's mouth, tips her head back, waits a second—and then Ennervates her.

The effect of the Veritaserum is obvious: she's emotionless, rigid, totally unconcerned with the intruders in her flat or the fact that one of them just knocked her out. Reaching into his pocket for a fraying moving photograph of Doc from a couple of years ago—in it, he's sitting with Marlene and smiling, jostling Marlene's shoulders as he hugs her with one arm—Frank says, "Tell us about the night you met this man."

"I don't remember much of it," says Hodges flatly.

That much isn't a surprise: Doc would have wiped her memory of being Imperiused, or at least enough of it that she wouldn't go panicking to any Muggle authorities. It's tricky. When they Obliviate Muggles, they try to wipe the details of how it felt to be cursed and what they did while cursed, but leave them enough of a memory to be able to recognize if they're in danger again down the line. Doc is—or was—one of the best Obliviators that the Order had. It's one of the reasons that he got assigned to un-Imperiusing duty so often: he knew how to leave essential traces. Frank's just hoping that one of those traces will be the tip that he and Alice need.

"I remember I was here at home, waking up in my bed. My whole body was sore, and my arms were red and chafed. The strange man was sitting in a strange chair at my bedside looking at me like he was worried about something. He asked how I was feeling. I told him I didn't know what I was feeling. And then everything goes blank for a moment, and then he was gone."

Interrogated her and then and subsequently wiped her memory, probably, but it's what she remembers from before that that Frank and Alice are interested in. He turns to Alice, but her lips are pursed and unmoving. Right: apparently, if Alice disagrees with this line of questioning, she's not going to participate in it.

Frank turns back to Hodges. "I want you to think back across the couple of days leading up to this. What do you remember? Do you remember anyone hurting you?"

"Yes," she deadpans, and Frank's heart leaps. "There were two men outside my flat. I was uncomfortable. I wanted to leave, but they kept jeering and blocking my path. I thought it was strange that they were wearing cloaks and masks. One of them was holding a stick just like yours—" Hodges points up at their wands without raising her chin or looking up from her lap "—and pointed it at me. The man in your video said to hide if I ever see either of them or anyone else aim one of those at me ever again."

"That's good. You're doing great, Frances. Keep thinking about those two men. Did you see their skin tones, at least, or maybe get a glimpse of their faces? Did either of them have a name?"

"Yes," Hodges repeats. "They had white hands. One of them called the other Jugson."

"And which one was holding the stick?—Jugson or the other?"

"Jugson."

Frank and Alice look at each other. She may not be happy about the circumstances of the interview (if you can call it that), but even Alice has a glimmer of thrill in her eyes. Frank says, "You've done so, so well, Frances. Now, I'm going to make you forget all about this, and then we're going to leave you be for the rest of the night, okay? Alice, you ready?"

She's better at Memory Charms than Frank is and knows it, so she doesn't protest at getting involved, at least for this part. "Obliviate," she murmurs, aiming her wand just a centimeter or two away from Frances's forehead.

They Disapparate quickly: they don't want Hodges to remember their faces after the initial confusion of the charm wears off. Alice does it and Side-Alongs Frank back to the office—back to the table from which they Vanished their timeline under an hour ago. "Jugson," mutters Frank once they've gotten their bearings. "Jugson. Do we know of a Death Eater by that name already?"

"From Snape," says Alice disgustedly. "He works for the Ministry in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. We've been keeping an eye on him, but…"

Right. Since they wouldn't have any justification for the Ministry to arrest him if they handed him over, there's been nothing the Order could do short of kidnapping or killing him—and that's not how the Order works. They operate outside the law, sure, but there's still a code to follow. "We'll track him down—see if he might have found out that Doc was the one who severed his Imperius Curse."

"How could he have?" asks Alice. "We know that the Death Eaters have so many potential targets that they're not bothering to curse their victims again after they get free—they just go after whoever's next on the list, whoever's easiest. Besides, it's obvious Jugson didn't go after Hodges to find out who freed her. If he had, he wouldn't have left her alive."

"At least it's a lead," Frank argues. "We haven't had a real lead in months."

Alice purses her lips.

"Look," says Frank. "It's after hours, but not so late that the Death Eaters are out there killing anybody yet. Jugson's probably at home. We can break into the Administrative Registration Office, get his address, Apparate there—"

"And what? He's not going to take kindly to intruders suddenly showing up wherever he lives, and there's no guarantee that we'd come out ahead of him in a duel and manage to Stupefy him."

"But if we do manage it—I mean, we still have Veritaserum left. We can get answers, Alice, real answers—and not just about Doc."

For a second, he's sure she's going to refuse—and then Alice sighs. "We should Apparate a distance away and knock on the door properly. I've been practicing my wandless magic enough that I think I can manage to Stupefy him without raising my wand and getting him suspicious enough to try to duel us."

Frank grins. "We've got this. Come on."

But getting Jugson to talk doesn't turn out to be so easy, seeing as he's not even home when they swing by his house. When no one answers the door, they go so far as to break in and check for him themselves, but no dice.

"We could stake out his house for the night," suggests Frank, but even he knows it's a losing battle. He's got to pick Neville up from Mum and take him back home, and Alice isn't going to want to do this without him.

Sure enough, she tells him, "You have Neville, and we're on the buddy system ever since Emmeline, remember? If you leave, I have to leave, too."

As much as Frank doesn't want to let it go, he's got a one-year-old kid waiting for Frank to take him home, and he can't ask Alice to put herself at risk here without a partner to watch her back. "Monday instead?" he suggests.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay," says Alice. "I was going to swing by the Canadian Ministry at five o'clock on Monday—that will be business hours for them by then—but I could sync back up with you after?"

"The missing money thing?"

"Yeah."

Frank consents, "All right. That will give me time to get Neville from my mum and give him to James or someone to babysit when we get back to it." He pauses. "We're going to find out what happened to Doc. I promise we'll figure it out, Al."

But she doesn't look convinced. Truly, neither is Frank.