BERNANT EVANS

Evans is a lucky man. He has relative wealth; the country would have rioted if people like him didn't. He is short some fingers, but he has a quick mind that landed him a good job as an accountant. He has a beautiful wife who put him on the right track again, and he loves one of his daughters. But Bartie cannot be called a man at peace.

This night, his mind chose again, against his will, to remind him of that. He's deep in the streets of Berlin, and his past comes back to him. He was 16 when he faked his age to enlist at the start of WW2. How foolish he was, how arrogant he was, how stupid he still is because of that choice. He turned 21, and somehow he didn't die. He didn't die in Ireland when his platoon was sent in an emergency to deal with the almost sporadic German troops there. He didn't die when, in someplace that was once called France, he tasted the wonders of German chemical weapons. He remembers that blue fog; he remembers how it peeled the face of his second-best friend.

On his 22nd birthday, he remembers staring at the barrel of his rifle, how close he was, how desperate he felt that the shivers of that night sometimes happen when he hugs his little girl. Why didn't he take the shot? For the first time in six months, the mail came to the front. His mom somehow sent a photo and a letter.

But tonight he is 23, and he is tired, but also angry—angry with himself, angry that he enlisted, angry that he didn't accept the return home when he got wounded, angry that he has not eaten well most of his adult life, angry that the smell of rot and decay doesn't bother him anymore, angry for the lost ones, and angry that he is taking pleasure in each German he murders.

So he keeps fighting, taking a corner together with a Black American soldier. They peek and see some German soldiers. They are wounded, the bastards try to raise a white flag, they don't care. They ended the fight; nobody celebrated.

ROSE EVANS

She feels the bed shake, a little bit sluggish, and with practice, she rises up and picks her trusty long (cushioned!) pole that is beside the bed. She stands close to the door and pokes (carefully!) her husband.

"Bertie, darling, you are dreaming again!" And she pokes him again.

He opens his eyes and jumps out of the bed, tense like a hosed cat. She notices that he almost screamed, confused and in terror. He looks around, and when he sees his wife going for a third poke, he avoids it by just sitting on the bed, hands on his face.

Getting closer, she hugs her husband. It had been a while since he dreamed. She tries to not remember the last time it happened. Petunia was at fault that time.

"Darling, has something happened that you didn't tell me?" She felt him tense again, but a quick exhalation later, he took his hands out of his face and returned the hug of his wife.

"No, Lily is in that magic school, and I am just still a little bit spooked from the talk we had some months ago with that Mrs. Minerva."

"She's a professor, darling," she admonished him.

"Right, I really appreciate how straightforward she was with the situation in the magic world and Hogwarts, and frankly, I don't know how you convinced me to still send Lily there."

At that, she indeed feels a pang of guilt and worry. When that woman came into her house and started telling them that her daughter was a witch, she almost asked her husband to throw the crazy hag out of the house. A transformation to a cat from the hag part, an instinctive impulse to grab the first thing made from iron she saw and at last an ominous warning about skipping education, she asked to tell Lily the news. She almost threw the woman out again at that, but she saw what she had done. She remembered her grandmother's lessons about the pagan and how much a rattan cane stings. She hated her grandmother.

Somehow, she convinced her husband. Her daughter began to practically glow in delight when the professor brought the news that she was a witch. Rose didn't have much when growing up, only sharing stories with her friends in the woods. She wanted to give this to her daughter, and being honest, the situation in the local schools is not so dissimilar to the one in Hogwarts. It appears the war was universal.

Still hugging him, she lays both of them in bed, and she tangles her feet with his. He recoils a little but quickly melts in the gesture.

"I worry too, Bertie, but she will be fine. The professor at least swore that she would see for her in school. The thing I hate is that if we deny her from going, it is possible that they would have still taken her and if what the professor says is true, if we flee 'the others' will begin to hunt us."

Bertie frowns but doesn't say anything.

A thought comes to her, and it brings her shame. "I hope Severus protects her."

Bertie snarls. It takes some time to calm himself. "That boy deserved so much better."

Both don't dare to say more. They still grieve their oldest.