January 27th, 1983: Septima Vector

Vicky's excursions to Canada are happening daily now that the bloody British-Canadian Wizarding War of 1983 is underway, which means that her absences from the castle are getting harder and harder to hide. Tonight, for example, she'd been planning to check in with Minerva in between dinner and War Stories, but Helen Brown sidelines her on her way out of the Great Hall and fixes her with such a withering stare that it's obvious Vicky can't shake her off if she wants to maintain any kind of illusion that she's not in cahoots with the Order of the Phoenix.

As much as she wishes sometimes that she weren't, Vicky is very much in cahoots with the Order of the Phoenix. Thanks to the Fidelius Charm protecting her membership, she couldn't tell this outright to Helen even if she wanted to, but just because Helen can't officially get confirmation doesn't mean she can't make deductions on her own, and it feels like she's been deducing the hell out of Vicky's entire private life lately. Hell, Vicky wouldn't be surprised if Helen figured out one of these days that Vicky and Minerva are in a relationship.

Trouble is, Minerva's going to worry if Vicky just fails to show up for their appointed dinner. Their countries are embroiled in a war, after all, and if Vicky goes missing even for the three hours it might take her to talk to Helen and then run the War Stories meeting, it won't be unreasonable for Minerva to assume that something terrible has happened to Vicky that's delayed her.

"Can we talk after the meeting?" says Vicky, but it's no use: Helen's scowl says it all.

"Why?" she retorts, "so that you can show up twenty minutes late for mysterious reasons like you did the day Canada declared war on us?"

Vicky breathes out slowly through her nose. It won't do to get impatient with Helen. Helen hasn't done anything wrong; Vicky is the one acting suspicious, and if she were Helen, she'd be pretty fed up with herself, too, for all the secrets she's been so obviously keeping. Helen is just a kid whose best friend was murdered at age, like, twelve by Death Eaters just because that friend's sister was a vigilante. Helen wants answers. Helen deserves answers. Vicky reminds herself of all this, and then she says as patiently as she can, "What is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Helen's expression falters a bit at this. "I wanted to get your advice, you know, facilitator to facilitator. I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to be the student lead for War Stories, but everyone—everyone—keeps turning to me like I have all the answers and a cure for their grief, and I don't. I mean, I'm still not over losing Meredith. I don't know how I'm supposed to…"

And Vicky's starting to crack. She can feel it. She literally can't share her involvement in the Order—the Fidelius Charm has seen to that—and she knows she told Minerva that she'd respect the Order's vote that she not involve the kids, but there's got to be something she can say to Helen to assure her that somebody who cares about her is still out there fighting the good fight, that there are people who give a damn who weren't forced to run away to Canada and leave the rest of the country here to deal with the mess that remains.

She casts a look around them. Nobody is particularly looking their way, but they're still standing in a crowd of people leaving the Great Hall. "Follow me," says Vicky.

"What? Where?"

"We can't have the conversation we're about to have in front of the student body."

Helen's eyebrows furrow, but then she seems to catch on. "Where are we going?"

"My office, but there's something I'll need to do when I get there before we can talk."

Vicky's heart is pounding. After all these weeks of secrecy, it's hard to believe that she's going to break her promise to Minerva and clue in one of her school kids—but it's a bit of a rush, too, breaking the rules. Minerva's one to talk about sticking to the straight and narrow. It's not like she did so when she ran off and joined a vigilante justice group without even telling Vicky what she'd gotten herself into.

Helen has come to Vicky's office before, but it was always to talk about Arithmancy or War Stories. Technically, what they're about to talk about follows under the umbrella of War Stories, but it's not like it's in Vicky's job description as faculty sponsor to the group to share with Helen things about the war that Vicky only knows by virtue of being involved with the very same vigilante outlaws that got Minerva thrown in Azkaban and subsequently on the run on another continent.

Helen takes a seat in the wooden chair opposite Vicky's desk like usual, but instead of sitting on the other side of the desk, Vicky drags her own chair around so that it's side by side with Helen's. Vicky takes out her wand. "Expecto Patronus Nuntius," she mutters.

Helen's eyes go wide as the silvery cougar leaps from the tip of Vicky's wand to hover next to the door, watching them. "Everything's fine," Vicky tells it, "but I'm being held up by a student before the meeting, so I'm going to be a few hours late. Don't worry. I'll tell you everything when I see you."

Nodding once, the cougar leaps straight through the solid door and is gone. Helen's mouth is gaping. "How did you—?"

"Never mind that," Vicky sighs. "Listen, Helen, there are still going to be things I can't tell you."

"But—"

"I mean I literally can't tell you them. There's magic that's going to stop me from being able to say it."

"I don't understand why—"

"You-Know-Who is dead," she interrupts. Helen goes silent again, her eyes round as saucers. "Lucius Malfoy is a Death Eater—one of the very highest ranked, in fact—and so is everyone in the entire administration he put in place when he ousted Runcorn's people. Terrorists are one hundred percent in control of our government."

Helen breathes, "I knew it. I knew The Quibbler was right. I knew there was a conspiracy."

"It gets worse," Vicky continues. Helen's eyebrows are knitted together. "The Canadians—they're not the good guys here. I don't think there are any good guys anymore, except maybe the Order, but even they…"

"What's wrong with the Order?"

"It's not their faults. It's just—they're not getting much done over there without being able to come back here to intervene during Death Eater attacks like they used to. They're doing what they can to protect the Canadians, but—"

"Yeah, since when are we not on the Canadians' side?"

Vicky sighs again. "It's not that we're not. Their grievance against Britain is valid—we did embezzle their war aid—and I don't know if anything short of foreign intervention was ever going to stop the Death Eaters. It's just—the Canadians—they don't trust any of us, not even people in the Order or on the Order's side. The Order tried to partner with them, but they didn't want the help. They're not even really going after the Death Eaters—they're going after the Aurors first because the Aurors are the feet on the ground actually going after the Canadians, and it doesn't matter to them that the Aurors have been forced into it."

"Since when have the Aurors been forced—?"

"They can't quit," she says plainly. "If they do, it's considered desertion. There's a lot going on in this war that the Prophet isn't reporting on."

Helen whistles. "Not that I'm not happy about it, but why exactly are you telling me all this? I mean, on your end, what does it help?"

Vicky has to think about that one. "I'm sick of secrets," she says finally. "I'm sick of watching people struggle to form opinions on what's going on without having all the information. I'm sick of everybody lying and hiding and—and the Death Eaters controlling the narrative. I can't ask you to fight in this war, Helen, not you and not anybody else in War Stories, but I can at least make damn sure you know the whole story and—and whose side you're supposed to be on."

"And whose side is that?"

Again, she pauses to consider this before answering. "Yours," she says finally. "Ours. Everybody who didn't ask for this war and doesn't want to see any more people die."

"And who's fighting on our behalf? If Canada's not doing it, and the Order isn't doing it, and the Ministry certainly isn't doing it…"

"That's the million Galleon question, isn't it?" Vicky muses. "Who indeed?"

Helen frowns. "What are we supposed to say to the rest of the organization in tonight's meeting? I can't just leave my friends in the dark about what's going on out there. We all wanted answers. We all deserved them. Not just me."

Vicky hesitates. "We can't do it in front of Horace," she says finally. "He doesn't… I just mean, he's not…"

"When, then?"

Vicky holds up a finger, gets up, and disappears through the door that leads to her private quarters. It only takes her a minute to rummage for what she's looking for and bring it back out to a confused-looking Helen. "These are newspapers from Canada," says Vicky. "They're biased, but they're at least better than the Prophet, and anyway, it shouldn't take a lot of work for people to figure out that the side of the story they'll get from these is very anti-Britain—not just against our Ministry, but against all of us. How fast can you circulate these to the student body?"

Helen gives her a sly smile. "You do realize who you're talking to, right? Give me a day, and these will be everywhere."

Minerva's going to kill her—Vicky knows that much—but she thinks it might be worth it. She hopes it's worth it, anyway. She doesn't know how she would have lived with herself if she'd gone even one more day with lying to these kids—to Helen.

xx

Thing is, Minerva isn't the one Vicky gets in trouble with. When Vicky tells her what she's done a few hours later, Minerva just shakes her head and says that she's surprised Vicky didn't do it sooner—that, at least this way, an inkling of the truth will make it to Britain. No, the real trouble comes the next day.

Helen wasn't kidding: it seems by the end of the day like the whole school has read the copies of the Veritaserum that Vicky provided. From what isn't muffled by Muffliatos that keep ringing in her ears, it's all anybody can talk about during Vicky's lessons, and she's been catching glimpses of newsprint pages every time she's turned around all day. From what she's heard, people have picked up on how nobody in Canada apparently believes that the Order and the British Ministry aren't in cahoots in one big conspiracy to cheat Canada out of their lives and their money, and people are pissed about it—maybe even more pissed than they are at the acknowledgement that Death Eaters are running the Ministry.

It gets to the point that Pomona calls an emergency faculty meeting after dinner. Vicky crowds into the staffroom with the rest of the professors, Irma, Poppy, Rolanda, and even Argus; her heart is racing in her chest, and she wipes her sweaty palms on her robes. "I assume you all know by now why I've called this meeting," says Pomona, her voice shaking, "but in case you haven't heard: there are copies of a Vancouver newspaper that have been circulating across the student body today, and these papers contain accusations by Canadians that Voldemort is dead, our Ministry are being controlled by Death Eaters, and those Death Eaters are somehow secretly working with the escaped vigilantes."

"Right," scoffs Silvanus. "Do they really think that Minerva and Hagrid are Death Eaters? Or that Albus's execution was some kind of ruse?"

"Never mind that," Pomona dismisses. "We have bigger problems—like what's going to happen if anyone in the Ministry gets wind that news like this is going around Hogwarts. If Death Eaters really are in charge—and I wouldn't be surprised if they are; I've always trusted Albus's and Minerva's judgment—they're going to react with violence if and when they find out that Canadian news implicating them has reached the castle. All it takes is one student breathing a word of this to their parents to set off a chain reaction that we can't take back."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't take it back," argues Aurora, crossing her arms. "If everyone in Wizarding Britain is talking about it, they can't hurt all of us, can they? They've got their hands full already with the Canadians they're targeting."

"Maybe," says Aja, "but there's nothing stopping them from holding the faculty responsible for the leak and making an example of us. If the optics for them are so bad that people start actually holding them accountable for being Death Eaters, they're not going to care any longer about protecting their image."

"I might have a solution, albeit a temporary one," Pomona says. All eyes flick back to her. "Parents aren't expecting their children back until Easter, which means that there's nothing stopping us from locking down the castle entirely in the meantime so that no one from the Ministry can get in. Cancelling our remaining Hogsmeade visits this winter would be a small price to pay for our and our students' safety."

Shit. What Pomona is suggesting makes sense, but it also would mean that Vicky would only be able to keep in touch with Minerva via owl mail—if she were to leave to visit them in person, even just by a head Floo, she'd be unable to get back inside the castle. More than that, owls can be intercepted. It's why she and Minerva haven't been sending any: Vicky could get herself into massive trouble with the Ministry if they found out that she and Minerva have been corresponding. In effect, if Hogwarts locks down, Vicky will be entirely cut off from her partner and the rest of the Order.

But Vicky's thirst for information and desire to make sure Minerva is alive over there are less important than the entire castle's safety, she reminds herself. "Do it. Lock it down," she says quietly.

She makes eye contact with Pomona, then with Horace, but looks away quickly. If she wants Minerva to know what's happened to her, she's got to make it out there tonight, before Pomona puts the wards up.

She swallows.