January 24th, 1983: Lily Potter
Lily doesn't get much sleep, not after the Canadian Ministry owl wakes her at four o'clock to inform her that Wizarding Canada has declared war on Wizarding Britain. The Canadian Ministry isn't open for visitors at this time of night—even in Ontario, it's only six in the morning—but she knows there are people inside it if they made the decision just minutes or hours ago to declare war. The only good thing is that they think they've gotten word of the declaration of war before Britain, since Vancouver is somewhat closer to Ontario than London is: the owl to the Order will have arrived slightly sooner than the owl to the British Ministry will.
After telling Alice what's going on, she only pauses to Apparate to Sirius and Remus's flat to let them know the news. When she does, they're both expecting her to stay in British Columbia, help notify everyone what's happening and make plans for an emergency meeting, but Lily has more pressing things to do. Specifically, she needs to get down to the Canadian Ministry right now and have a conversation with Riya bloody Tremblay.
Lily hadn't been totally sure what to make of Tremblay when she first met her. Tremblay was friendly, poised, seemingly receptive to others' ideas—but Lily and Reg had vehemently argued against a Canadian-British war when the subject arose, and, while Tremblay had listened to their pleas, she hadn't exactly agreed that Canada would back down. Now, Lily is pretty convinced that Tremblay was never willing to hear them out—that she'd only listened to support the illusion that Canada hadn't already made its mind up that it wanted war.
She doesn't know why Tremblay bothered, really. Why designate liaisons from the Order of the Phoenix at all if the Canadian Ministry had no intention to listen to them? As far as Lily is concerned, Canada only ever intended to use her and Reg's information to further their own goals, never to give either of them any input into what those goals ought to be.
At nearly seven in the morning, the Canadian Ministry is closed to visitors, but a little thing like that isn't going to stop Lily from getting in. She killed Lord Voldemort singlehandedly, evaded capture by the British Ministry, and busted almost the entire Order of the Phoenix out of imprisonment in Azkaban: something as trivial as a locked door isn't going to keep her away from enacting justice.
As expected, there are Anti-Apparition spells on the building, the fireplaces are disconnected from the Floo Network until business hours, and Alohamora doesn't unlock the front doors when Lily tries it. No matter: she can see the lights on up on the fifth floor where Tremblay, the Minister, and whoever else from the Department of Magical Community Safety must be meeting, which means there's got to be some way for her to get in.
She tries Reducto on the doors, but they must be magically reinforced because the spell does nothing to break them. What it does do, however, is set off a blaring alarm that sets off a sharp and growing pain in Lily's ears.
Good, she thinks. Maybe that way somebody will come open these doors and talk to her.
She only has to wait a few moments before a witch in burgundy robes Apparates a few meters outside the doors, her wand raised. "The Ministry will reopen to visitors at nine o'clock," she says coolly. "In the meantime, the attempted destruction of the Ministry building is a criminal—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, my name is Lily Potter, and I'm one of the refugees from Britain. Your country just declared war on my country, and I need to talk to Riya Tremblay about it."
The witch in burgundy wavers. "I'm here to arrest you, not cut deals like you're some kind of—"
"Ask Tremblay," says Lily. "She'll vouch for me. Anyway, if your lot can bomb the shit out of innocent Ministry officials in my home country, then I'm certainly within my means to deface a little bit of Canadian—"
"Listen, I don't make the laws; I just enforce—"
"Yeah, I get it. It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault, right? Albus Dumbledore is dead, and there's nobody in this whole bloody country to blame for it, is there?"
The witch narrows her eyes. "Fine. I'll check with my superiors, but I'm still going to have to detain you." She pulls out a pair of handcuffs.
Right—she must be whatever Canada's equivalent of a Hit Wizard is. "By all means," Lily scowls, and she holds out her wrists.
The witch takes Lily's wand before handcuffing her to the handle of one of the doors leading into the Ministry building. Without her wand, Lily feels naked; apparently, the years of raids for the Order have sensitized her to feeling like she's in danger at every turn, even here in Canada where Death Eaters can't touch her and the worst the Canadian Ministry might do to her is arrest her for attempted destruction of property. It's still pitch black outside, and she keeps whipping her head around, looking for threats, even though she knows she technically doesn't need to.
She's exhausted, but she can't slow down; it feels like adrenaline has wired every nerve in her body. Dumbledore is dead, and Britain is at war with Canada, which means that no one working for the British Ministry—not even the ones who hate the Death Eaters, not even Agatha—is safe.
Shit. They're going to have to warn Agatha. For that matter, they probably have to warn the entire British Ministry to be on their guard—but how can they? The only people who can spread word around are the Order's agents who are still in Britain—the Weasleys, Augusta, Vector, and Agatha—and, if any of them try to circulate a message from the Order, they'll almost certainly be identified by the British Ministry as Order spies and imprisoned or, worse, executed like the Death Eaters did Dumbledore.
She's expecting the Hit Wizard to come back and to have to fight for her right to see Tremblay; she's not expecting for Tremblay to be the one to personally come out of the castle to greet Lily. Tremblay is wearing a nervous smile as she leans back against the door to which Lily isn't handcuffed with her arms crossed in front of her. "It couldn't wait until morning?" Her voice is shaking.
Lily is bursting with things to say, but the first one that comes out of her mouth is, "You knew. All this time, all along, you knew you were going to declare war if Britain executed Dumbledore, and you didn't say anything to us."
"It wasn't my decision to make," says Tremblay apologetically, seeming to resign herself to having a confrontation right here on the front steps of the Canadian Ministry. "It was a decision made by the whole department, along with our Minister of Magic. When we made up our minds—"
"You should have included me and Reg in that process. We should have been right there in the room during the deliberations. Wasn't that supposed to be the point of having our input? So that we could use everything we know after all the years we've been fighting to talk you out of making stupid-arse decisions like—?"
"It's not stupid," murmurs Tremblay. She pulls out Lily's wand, uses it to unchain the handcuffs, and hands the wand back to Lily.
Lily rubs and flexes her wrists. "Riya, listen to me. You can't hold the entire British Ministry accountable for a few Death Eaters' fault—"
"But it's not just a few Death Eaters," says Tremblay. She sounds like she's pleading with Lily, which is ridiculous: Tremblay holds all the cards. "You've said yourselves countless times that Death Eaters took over every significant leadership position in the Ministry of Magic when Malfoy took over as Minister and ousted Runcorn's entire regime. Anybody who's a part of that system—"
"There are hundreds if not thousands of witches and wizards in that system, and the majority of them are certainly not Death Eaters. If you want to identify and target the Death Eaters, that's one thing—hell, I'll help you do it, give you all the information we have—but you can't just indiscriminately label every person in the British Ministry a Dark wizard. It's not their faults their bosses got replaced by Death Eaters. What were they all supposed to have done? Quit their jobs? Their futures are uncertain enough right now without taking away their livelihoods, and, anyway, some of them don't even realize what's happening. You don't know who you can trust—the news won't report the truth—"
"Lily, you don't understand," Tremblay begs. "You don't know what it's been like here the last year. People were scared enough of the No-Majes—there was a lot of pushback over our agreement to provide aid to Britain to specifically help the No-Majes affected by your Death Eaters—"
"My Death Eaters?"
"—and then, the money we gave was embezzled, and your Minister was ousted. The next thing we know, we have vigilante fighters showing up in our hospital and asking for political asylum, talking about how your whole Ministry is rotten and plans to overthrow the Statute of Secrecy. People want to see Britain burn before they reveal themselves to the No-Majes and they take us down—"
"So you're just going to have anybody who could possibly act as an agent for the British Ministry killed?"
"I didn't say that," says Tremblay. "I agree with you, but—"
"If you were planning on containing this war to only hurt Death Eaters, then why weren't we included in the discussions? Why make Dumbledore's execution your ultimatum to the Death Eaters and not even tell us that you're planning to declare war if they go through with it?"
Tremblay hesitates. "It's not that we're planning on disregarding the advice you've given. It's just—not everyone within the Department of Magical Community Safety thinks your faction is… trustworthy."
"My faction?" echoes Lily. Then she snorts and says, "What, do they think we're going to turn around and report every decision Canada makes behind closed doors back to the British Ministry?"
Tremblay doesn't answer.
"You're kidding me. How can you think that after all the trouble we went to to get asylum?—after the Death Eaters threatened to kill Dumbledore if they couldn't imprison us? My people spent four months in Azkaban, and you're saying we're not trustworthy?"
"I'm not saying anything—"
Lily scoffs, "Yeah, because not all Canadians are the same or agree with each other, right? Well, it goes the other way, too. Not everyone from Britain is on the same side."
The sun is starting to come up, casting a golden hue over Tremblay's face and the castle behind her. "We can't take it back," says Tremblay shakily. "We can't take it back now that we've done it, and all we can do now is make sure it's done right. Any information you can give us about how to make sure we're targeting the people we need to—"
"You're not getting it," says Lily flatly. "The second you declared war, you opened the doors for the Death Eaters to drag innocent Canadians out for slaughter. The only way this ends is with civilians on both sides suffering."
She's said—and heard—enough.
"Wait, no, Lily, please—"
"I have to meet with my people before our workdays start," says Lily. "Reg and I both have work at eleven o'clock your time, but we can come before that and give you what we have."
The last thing she sees before she Disapparates is the concern etched all over Tremblay's face. Good. If they have a chance in hell of keeping this thing from escalating, they'll need somebody in Canada to be on their side.
When she Apparates into her and Alice's living room, Alice is waiting stiffly on the sofa and straightens her shoulders at the crack that signals Lily's arrival. "How did it go?"
"It's hard to say. I don't think Tremblay is against us, but there's going to be opposition."
Alice purses her lips but doesn't push it. Lily knows what she's thinking—that Lily has just gone and done the exact thing Alice warned her not to. It's the reason Reg didn't want Lily representing the Order to the Canadian Ministry in the first place: she's confrontational; accusatory; in his words, antagonistic.
And yet—maybe somebody needs to be. Maybe the problem is the kind of diplomacy that Tremblay and her kin have been using on Lily and Reg, saying one thing to keep the peace while doing quite another behind closed doors. Sure, everyone has been perfectly nice to them during the meetings they've had, but what's the point of niceness if there's no respect? Who knows what ugly things the Canadians have been saying about the Order when Lily and Reg haven't been there to hear it?
A career in international magical cooperation feels like a pipe dream at this point, but it's exactly why she wanted to go into it: she wants to cut through the bullshit and make a difference. However, at the same time, she hates how much bullshit there is to cut through in the first place.
"Do we have a meeting scheduled for today yet?" she asks now.
"Remus Flooed over just before you got back to say that we'll meet at Molly and Arthur's house at seven. That should give you and Reg enough time to make it back to the Canadian Ministry before either of you has to work, right?"
"That gives us, what, about an hour until we have to go over there?"
"More or less. Neville and Harry should be up soon, so we should have just enough time to have breakfast and get them settled with the Weasley kids before the meeting gets started."
Getting the kids changed, dressed, and fed gives Lily a desperately needed moment of normalcy. She has to say, when she and Alice were competing for valedictorian and Head Girl back at Hogwarts, Lily never would have imagined Alice being her coparent to two small children—but it works. Alice is infinitely patient with Harry and Neville, even stepping in sometimes to take over for Lily when Lily finds herself getting frustrated with Harry's behavior. More than that, having Alice around makes Lily feel like she has a partner again for the first time since James's death. Harry isn't just Lily's responsibility: he's Alice's, too, just like Neville is Lily's when he's with them and not Frank.
Before asylum, Lily honestly never spent much time with Neville. Alice only rarely brought Neville to Godric's Hollow to visit when Lily was in hiding, and then Lily was on the run with only Sirius, Harry, and sometimes Reg for company while Alice and Frank wasted away in Azkaban and Augusta raised Neville alone. Even after the Azkaban breakout, whenever Augusta brought Neville to visit, he played mostly with Alice and Frank, not with Lily.
It makes her feel a little like raising Neville—especially disciplining him when he's naughty—is none of her business, but Alice works so hard to take care of Harry and often Neville all day while Lily is at Zoudiams that Lily feels it's only fair to help out equally when she's home with them. For her part, Alice seems to be grateful for the support.
At the Weasleys' house, Harry and Neville immediately gravitate toward Molly and Arthur's two youngest, Ron and Ginny. "One of these days," Lily tells Molly as she gratefully clasps Molly's hands, "Alice and I are going to repay you for all the childcare so that you and Arthur can have some time alone."
"Oh, it's no trouble," says Molly, blushing. "There are already so many kids in this house that what's a couple more?"
"Well, three more," says Arthur as he comes around to clap Lily and Alice on the shoulder. "Andromeda and Ted should be here with Dora—er, sorry, with Tonks—any minute."
"Are we waiting for anyone else?" asks Alice.
"Dung," says Molly, rolling her eyes. "I'll give you three guesses what trouble he's gotten himself into this morning, and none of them are good."
Ted and Tonks are the next to arrive; when Lily asks where Andromeda is, Ted just shrugs and says, "She said she'd be right behind me." Meanwhile, Mundungus stumbles in ten minutes after the Tonkses do, looking so exhausted that Lily feels sorry for him until Sirius whispers in her ear, "Don't bother. Reg said he got a good eight hours of sleep last night—he's just hungover."
Lily snorts.
"So we all know by now why we're here," says Reg after performing the Homenum Revelio. "I know most of us have been up half the night spreading the news to each other and to our contacts still in Britain, so thanks to all of you for showing up here on very little sleep. Where do we stand with our British members, anyway?"
Frank says, "I did a partial Floo to visit Mum and tell her."
"Same with my parents," Arthur adds.
"I wrote to Vicky, but we haven't spoken face to face," says McGonagall. "She will have been with students all day."
"We can't tell Agatha yet—she's surrounded by unfriendly Aurors during the day, and we didn't find out until her workday had already started—but she might already know from Pyrites, depending on what the British Ministry is willing to tell its employees," adds Moody. "Do we have any information on whether or what Death Eaters are telling people has happened?"
"My mum is working on it," says Frank. "If they can spy on us, we can send people to spy right back. She's going to Floo over to me and Dirk's place in a couple of hours to give us an update."
"Reg," says Lily, and he looks at her, "I told Tremblay that you and I would report back to the Canadian Ministry to share information after this meeting."
"You spoke to the Canadians?" says Ted eagerly. "What did they have to say for themselves?"
"I only spoke to Tremblay, who's the Head of the Department for Magical Community Safety. It was…" Lily sighs and closes her eyes for a moment before launching into the whole sad story—how Tremblay's people had been planning to declare war after Dumbledore's execution behind the Order's backs all this time and how the Canadians apparently don't trust the Order not to be secretly working in cahoots with the Death Eaters.
Silence rings out for a moment when she finishes talking. "That's effed up, man," says Sturgis finally. "Why the hell would we need asylum if we were on the same side as the Death Eaters?"
"I know," says Lily. She looks at Reg again. "I might have lost my temper a little. I'm sorry. I know you warned me that—"
To her surprise, Reg waves this off. "She needed to hear it," he says softly. "You were right to be straight with her that there are going to be too many innocent casualties on both sides of this thing as a consequence of their jumping into a war with the Death Eaters."
"Canada probably hasn't gone on the offensive yet," says Kingsley, "but do we know whether Britain has already begun to attack Canada?"
"There was nothing in this morning's Veritaserum," answers Arabella, "just the announcement of Canada's declaration of war."
Arthur asks, "What do you reckon a war between our countries is going to look like, anyway? Neither wizarding community has its own army, per se, so are we talking—?"
"Guerrilla tactics, probably," says Sirius. "The Canadian Ministry will go after British Ministry people after hours, and the Death Eaters will probably co-opt most of the British Ministry to go after—well—will they even restrict themselves to just targeting the Canadian Ministry, or are we talking civilians, too? Wizard civilians or Muggle ones? And—"
He's interrupted, however, by a crack of Apparition coming from the living room. "That's gotta be Dromeda," says Ted.
Andromeda doesn't walk from the living room to the dining room—she runs. Lily can hear footsteps pounding until Andromeda reaches the doorway, panting and brandishing a folded sheaf of parchment in the air. "I figured it out," she says breathlessly. "I figured it out."
Sturgis raises his eyebrows. "Figured what out?"
"The letter," she says. "The blank letter I got sent a couple weeks ago. I figured it out—I decoded it. I can't believe I didn't think of it before—well, actually, yes, I can, because why in heaven's name would Narcissa be writing to me?"
Lily glances at Sirius, then back at Andromeda. "Narcissa?" says Sirius in a strangled voice.
"The code," says Andromeda again, looking straight at him. "The Black code, the one I used to write to you and that Narcissa used to write to Regulus back when we were at Hogwarts without your parents being able to see anything—"
"—but a blank letter," Sirius finishes with her. He looks like he's a million kilometers away. "I can't believe Narcissa wrote to you. She knows her husband and his buddies have probably tried to kill you a hundred times over on raids before, right? I mean, she's aware that he wants to sentence you to life in Azkaban or death? She's a bloody Death Eater, and—"
"She's not a Death Eater." Andromeda's voice is shaking. "She married one, but she never was one. Just—read this—"
She unfolds it and places it in Sirius's trembling hands. Lily reads along over his shoulder as he reads it out loud for the benefit of the room.
She'll give Narcissa this: it's a well-written letter. Narcissa claims that she still has purist beliefs, but she thinks the Death Eaters' and her husband's thirst for power have warped those beliefs out of proportion, which means that, at least in theory, the line she's drawn for herself seems plausible. She talks about not wanting her son to grow up in a war-torn world, and she expresses guilt for her involvement in the one Death Eater raid she ever attended. The emotion is there, but it's structured and articulated so clearly that it makes Lily question how authentic it is. If Narcissa were really as confused and desperate as she says she is, wouldn't she sound rawer, less polished?
Or did she slave for hours over how to word this letter before she settled on a draft she thought expressed herself how she wanted? Is the letter genuine? Is there a universe in which Narcissa Malfoy could regret her involvement in the Death Eaters?
"It could be a trap," says Remus quietly when Sirius finishes reading. "If it's a trap—"
"That's the thing," says Andromeda. "I don't think it is a trap. I know Narcissa, and she had no reservations whatsoever about cutting off contact with me the moment I got disowned. The only way she could ever admit she may have made a mistake is if she's really, really desperate. Otherwise, she'd be too proud to come back to me, even if it were all a ruse, even if she were keeping up pretenses."
Sirius is literally clutching his head in his hands. "We need to make a decision on this fast," he says, looking from Lily to Reg, and Lily understands that Sirius has no desire to be the one to make that choice. "If we believe her, Andromeda should go with you to the Canadian Ministry to—to vouch for her and strategize how to get back in touch with her—how to get information out of her."
"It would have to be one-directional," says Molly, crossing her arms. "We couldn't give her anything, not when we can't trust her intentions—and we can't trust her intentions."
"Agreed," breathes Andromeda. "Reg? Lily?"
They look at each other. "We need all the help we can get," says Reg, considering.
Lily doesn't like this. Sure, Narcissa can't hurt them, not with the asylum in place, but she or her peers could certainly orchestrate the harm of a whole lot of Canadian officials and civilians if they're not terribly bloody careful about this. And yet—Lily thinks back to the desperation she felt when she got Canada's letter at four o'clock this morning. If they don't use every potential advantage they can get, and Britain makes the first move, and thousands of innocent Canadians die—
"You should come with me and Reg to the Canadian Ministry when we're done here," she tells Andromeda. "You can plead her case to them."
"They won't like that. We agreed on appointing two representatives, not three," Reg reminds her.
Lily stretches her arms out in front of her, gets up out of her seat. "Let them complain. What are they going to do, throw us out? They haven't done any recon that we know of; if they want intel, they're going to need us."
Reg is still looking at her skeptically, but Lily has had quite enough already for one day of allowing Canada to make all the decisions. So she Side-Along-Apparates Andromeda with Reg to the exterior of the Canadian Ministry, smiling wryly in spite of herself when the double doors open properly for her this time.
They don't know exactly where Tremblay's team is meeting, but they do know where her office is and which conference rooms they've used to meet with Lily and Reg up to this point, so they've got as good a place to start as any. The conference rooms, however, are all empty, and when they swing by Tremblay's office, the receptionist just says irritably, "Do you have an appointment?"
"What?"
"With Riya. Are you on her calendar?"
Lily could scream with frustration. "She knows we're coming, if that's what you mean. I spoke to her this morning, right after she and your Minister declared war on my country."
The receptionist glowers. "Oh. That's who you people are."
Lily tries to level with him. "Look, we got word of this at three in the morning, and we've all been in crisis mode ever since. We have information that Riya's team is going to need if they want a chance in hell at surviving a war against Death Eaters, and if you don't point us right now to where we need to go to find her—"
It takes the receptionist entirely too long to rattle off directions to the conference room where Tremblay, the Minister, and the rest of the bigwigs are meeting. "Throw in a trick step, and it would be exactly like bloody Hogwarts in here," Andromeda mutters as they wind across corridors and up enough flights of stairs that they find themselves panting for breath.
Lily snorts. She's never quite gotten past how weird it is to work with Andromeda as an equal, not after Lily's first introduction to her was when Andromeda was Lily's Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in sixth year.
None of them has ever met the Canadian Minister of Magic, Sinnie Barlow, before—probably in part, Lily realizes in retrospect, because none of the real conversations about what to do about Britain was happening in front of anybody from the Order. Barlow turns out to be a silver-haired, elderly woman with a scowl permanently fixed on her face; the first words out of her mouth when she sees them are, "I don't recall giving you Brits three delegates."
Lily can't help but think, great, that's exactly what the Order needs: someone who's against them from the start. Reg stamps on her foot (Lily rolls her eyes) and says, "This is Andromeda Tonks. She… well…"
"I might be able to give you a spy," says Andromeda. "My sister—she's married to the British Minister of Magic, and she reached out about—er—wanting out."
Barlow's eyes slide straight from Andromeda onto Reg. "You let the sister-in-law of the Death Eater in charge of your government into your organization?"
"I didn't—that's—" Reg splutters.
Stay calm. Reason with her, Lily reminds herself before saying, "Andromeda has been doing this for longer than Reg has, and her family disowned her years ago for marrying a Muggle—I mean, what your people would call a No-Maj. Trust me: they've done her no favors. She was thrown into Azkaban same as everyone else when we got caught."
"But you weren't," says Barlow. Lily raises her eyebrows. "I've done my homework on you, Lily Evans—"
"Lily Potter," she corrects quietly. "I'm sorry, but are you implying that I managed to evade capture because I was working in cahoots with the Death Eaters when they took over the Ministry?"
"Let's all just take a breath," interrupts Tremblay, who's watching this exchange with a rather nervous look on her face. "Sinnie, I know the Brits are… but these ones are here to help. If they really can give us a spy—"
"If we want her help," says Reg, "we should act fast. Britain will know by now that Canada has declared war, and they're probably already organizing their first attack, and—"
"They've already organized their first attack," says a white-haired man Lily recognizes from previous sessions with Tremblay.
Lily goes cold. "What?" says Andromeda blankly.
"We've previously fortified this building against attacks, but five of our Investigators were targeted in their homes before their shifts here were supposed to start, and three of them are dead. The only reason they probably haven't gone for Sinnie yet is because she's been here since before we declared war."
"Listen to me," Lily begs. "Individual attacks? That's child's play to these people. Behind the scenes, they're probably coordinating something major, something systemic. If we can get ahead of it with Narcissa's information—"
Gwen Attica, who made the pumpkin juice at Lily and Reg's first meeting with the Canadians, snorts. "The Minister of Magic's wife is named Narcissa?"
"And what do you propose that we get from this witch, precisely?" asks Barlow.
"Names, meeting places—"
"Who's to say she won't just turn over names and locations of witches and wizards the Death Eaters find inconvenient?"
Reg says, "We can have Severus Snape, a former Death Eater, corroborate as much as he can—"
"Severus Snape is in indefinite detention by our hand," points out another wizard. "He won't exactly be looking favorably on us. Heck, he'd probably be eager to screw us over with the way we've treated him."
"Yeah, and whose fault is that?" Lily mutters.
Reg stamps on her foot again. "We can pool what we remember of Severus's information prior to our imprisonments, if you'd like. We'll be missing some names, but we can at least give you a starting point to target."
"We don't need a starting point," says Barlow. "We don't need you. Get them out of here."
But Lily knows exactly what that means: Canada's already got a starting point, and that's the whole damn British Ministry, guilty or not. She flashes Reg and Andromeda a desperate look, but there's nothing to be done: they know as well as she does that none of them is welcome here.