On some level, Marietta was glad that she had the world turning upside down as something to blame her life choices on, because otherwise she'd have to admit that she'd really been spending too much time with the Gryffindors.

Not that this didn't speak to her own house: the refusal to give up what she'd spent so long working on was at least in part a result of habits picked up after years in the Ravenclaw dorms, where projects—even the ones that seemed least promising—were highly valued. And this was promising. She wasn't sure if it was useful to her, but she was determined that it wouldn't be around to be useful to the Death Eaters.

It was an unfortunately long process to remove her notes, and an unfortunately difficult one to hide. The physical notes had been easy enough to come by, but the ideas they carried had been added to the web of research done by the department, which had been described to Marietta as a pensieve for words, taking the notes of the Unspeakables and arranging them in the most promising order. Marietta had to extract each thread, unwinding them from where they'd become intertwined with others. Some were barely connected to anything at all and were simple to remove; the worst to remove were in the center of a cluster of ideas, serving as a connective tissue. There were only a handful of these, and Marietta took special note of them, reckoning that they were most worth further examination, and found that they could be divided into two broader subjects: the compression of space and the use of spells across a pre-determined space. Despite the challenge removing these ideas created, Marietta felt a sense of pride ripping them out, and in watching as the other ideas drifted away from each other. It made her feel as though this was actually causing some blow to the Death Eaters, making them lose out on something necessary.

At the very least, she hoped it would give Rookwood a headache.

/

Adrian hadn't had plans to move into the Order's Headquarters, but it had become clear after the first week of moving Frank and Alice into their new room that he'd be spending half his nights there, making sure that someone was around if they needed something.

"I've got the space," Sirius had told him, voice firm, and between his work with the Longbottoms and his continued efforts to put up new wards around Pucey House, Adrian had been too exhausted to protest.

"I think you'll be fine in here—we've cleared it out, so the worst thing that'll happen is Kreacher telling you off for invading Regulus's space." A funny look had passed over Sirius's face, and Adrian hadn't quite been able to place it.

"For what it's worth, I don't think Reggie would mind," Sirius had added.

The second night he slept over, Adrian was woken by Harry Potter knocking and telling him breakfast was ready, only to cut off in the middle of his sentence, let out a curse, and run off somewhere—presumably to find Ron, Hermione, and Sirius, as the four of them were all missing from the breakfast table. Adrian passed them on his way back upstairs to bring the Longbottoms their food, sitting on the floor of the study around Kreacher, who was audibly sobbing. Taking in each of their expressions—each having some degree of discomfort or pity, though Sirius's most clearly expressed regret—Adrian decided that it really wasn't any of his business, and that he had no intention of making it so.

Professor Lupin—Remus—joined him shortly after Frank and Alice had eaten, talking with them for a while. They showed some signs of recognition whenever he came, like they did with Andromeda and Ted. Sirius hadn't yet come in to see them while they were awake; Andromeda was afraid that they would not only recognize him, but be afraid of him, as their last clear memories of him would be his supposed betrayal of the Potters.

"Were you close with them?"

"In a sense, yes," Remus said after a moment's consideration. "Frank and Alice were a few years above us at Hogwarts,and most of my interactions with them there were on the receiving end of a detention. Even after everything, I couldn't have told you much about them as individuals beyond the surface level. But I would've trusted either of them with my life. And I did, a few times, just like they did with me."

The idea of fighting in a war still felt impossibly distant to Adrian, no matter that he'd already been in a battle. He wondered what it was like for so many of the members of the Order, who'd celebrated bringing about peace only to pick their wands back up just over a decade later to fight the same battles they'd left behind. He wondered if, two decades from now, he'd be doing the same.

/

Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes was gaudy. It was noticeable, and—if Blaise wasn't mistaken—it was being observed. Those were three of his least favorite attributes for a building to have, and if he hasn't had a message to deliver, they would have deterred him from going in.

As it was, he took the precaution of a color-changing charm on his hair and a basic glamour over his features, entering the store in a hunched, quick walk which he would never normally use. They were tricks he'd used since he'd been able to seek out a way to do them, first for slipping out of parties his mother had dragged him to once he no longer wished to be there, and then for remaining at those parties, but unrecognized, a means of getting information out of their guests.

Both twins were at the counter when he entered, looking surprised and suspicious at his presence. He didn't blame them—Diagon Alley had been noticeably lacking in foot traffic.

"I don't suppose you could deliver a message?" he asked mildly, raising his wand and removing his glamour, just for a moment.

After a brief conversation which he wasn't able to catch, they turned back to him.

"A message to who?"

"Ginny—if she'll be at Hogwarts, that is."

"Saying what?" The lack of outright confirmation of Ginny's plans wasn't lost on Blaise. He wasn't sure whether it had been an intentional omission, an accident, or whether Ginny herself simply wasn't sure what she would be doing, but he was proud of them for it regardless—of all the Gryffindors he'd met, Fred and George Weasley were the only ones he could imagine making it as Slytherins.

"I spoke with Daphne after the…situation at Hogwarts was in the Prophet, and we couldn't see any way around the fact that it's going to be absolute hell. We wanted her to know that whatever resistance the Gryffindors come up with, we're with them." Bluntness seemed the best course of action, if he wanted his message communicated to Ginny. It was also the best way to keep their attention on what he was saying, not what he was keeping secret, because he had no intention of telling them about the other things he and Daphne had talked about, namely the houses ready for them to escape to should the need arise.

"Out of the goodness of your hearts?"

"Believe it or not." The twins examined him closely, and Blaise wished he had his own face rather than the glamour, which he wasn't as used to controlling. They must have found—or not found—whatever they'd been looking for, because they agreed quickly enough, and proceeded to force Blaise into a sale of Peruvian instant darkness powder, claiming that it would look suspicious if he left without purchasing anything. He acquiesced without complaining, because he wasn't hurting for gold, and registered two thoughts: first, that it was good he was being careful, as the twins also appeared to believe the shop was being watched, and second, that they really would have done quite well as Slytherins.

/

Marietta's second heist of the week was less stressful than the first had been, but enormously more guilt-inducing. She was acutely familiar with the charms her father had used to ward Wizeacre's, and it was almost upsettingly easy to get in without setting any off. At least, she thought as she went around the store, collecting tents and maps and a number of other useful-looking objects, the theft may make her father increase his security, which he'd seen no reason to do the previous summer, even though Marietta had begged him to for a month before finally giving up, finally accepting that, even in the face of everything, of confirmation that Voldemort had returned, her parents weren't going to do anything about it.

"What good would it be for us to get involved? As long as we stick together, we can take care of each other." Fantine had been unyielding in this view, and, halfway through July, Marietta had given up on convincing her either, fleeing to Alicia's new apartment for the rest of the summer. She'd only seen her parents a few times since—once at Christmas, when she'd stopped by to give them their gifts, and once after graduating, letting them know about her upcoming interview and letting them know that she had an apartment. They had all been perfectly civil to each other, and nothing more.

She'd never wanted to leave her parents behind, never wanted to turn her back on them, not even when they'd been so adamant that Cassius had died as a horrible accident during the Tournament rather than as collateral damage in the new beginning of an old war. But in the end, the choice had been to stay with them, hiding out and keeping her head down in relative safety, or joining her friends, pushing for what she believed in and likely jumping into danger in order to get other people out of it. Had she been faced with such a thing a few years before, Marietta wasn't sure what she would have chosen. But after everything—first Cassius, and then the DA and the fight in the Forbidden forest and the forming of the Guard—something had shifted. And when the time had come to make the decision, she'd found that it was really no choice at all.

"It's for you, too," Marietta whispered as she left the shop, as though her parents would hear her. "Even though you think you don't need anything, and that we're overreacting, or seeing something bigger than what's really there. All of this is for you, and everyone like you."

Making sure no one was outside, Marietta ducked back through the side doors she'd used to enter and reconstructed the spells she'd disarmed, leaving no trace apart from the empty shelves that she'd been there at all.