WHO: Alice Longbottom & Lily Potter
WHAT: Warding Bess' house turns into something a little more dangerous
WHEN: Today!
WHERE: Bess' house!
There shouldn't be anything
exciting about warding a house to protect its inhabitants from death eaters attacks. This was supposed to be worrisome and scary, but Alice was so stupidly
thrilled to be helping the Order and doing
something that she couldn't help the vigor at which she was performing the magic. She hadn't done a thing for the Order in what felt like months (other than confirming that Caradoc Dearborn's body really
was Caradoc Dearborn's body), and she was stuck in the lab until Nigel was born, and probably a bit after that.
Not that she didn't like the lab, she did, and was glad to be able to still work, but Alice was an
auror. She was so used to moving and jumping and fighting, hell, she was a
Gryffindor. When she wasn't in action, something was really wrong.
She'd been more than happy to take on the monotonous duty of warding the Order members and their families' homes and flats. After the past few days it was becoming apparent that the death eaters were not going to waste anymore time in defeating the Order, and it was time to step up the security for
everyone.
"I can't picture Fabian in a garden," Alice murmured, stepping around the carefully laid patches of flowers in Fabian and Bess' backyard. The reasoning behind the order of the warding was that---Fabian had already been attacked this week, it was very unlikely that they would try to get him again.
Like Alice, Lily had been nothing short of euphoric at the idea of being able to do something to help out the Order. Even if it
was just putting up wards, it was better than sitting around and knitting and being nothing more than a lump on a log. For the past five or so months, she had felt utterly bloody useless--and it had only gotten worse since James had come home after Dorcas' murder.
She was used to coming home
with him all bloody and messed up, if not with the satisfaction of having won the battle than at least having known that they had gotten each other through one more. Now she sat on the sidelines, unable to do a single damn thing to help ensure he'd come home the next time, and it was driving her up a wall with fear and anxiety. But as much as she wanted to, she was on the bench as far as the fighting went.
It was understandable why, then, she had jumped at Dumbledore's asking she and Alice to work on wards. It wasn't combat, but this week had been devastating in the number of attacks against Order members, and Lily was dying to do anything that she could to help. It didn't matter how tedious and long putting up wards was, she was just glad to be doing something that made her even the least bit of use to this organization she'd practically helped
form.
"I don't know," she told Alice, unable to keep back a chuckle at the idea of Fabian gardening. Even this ridiculous work had her feeling better than she had in weeks. "Maybe he's got a feminine side we just haven't had the privilege of seeing yet."
"Maybe all that manly quidditch is a cover."
Alice stopped and covered her mouth, surprising herself with the joke.
But there was only Lily to hear her, it wasn't as if Fabian was going to come and defend his manhood at the moment. She really shouldn't be making fun of him at this time, anyway, but maybe she was taking a cue from Frank and James and the rest of the boys; life was better when you made it into a bit of a joke. Her eyes behind her hand betrayed the fact that she was trying to hide her laughter, and Alice allowed herself to laugh, letting out a breath.
She arched her back for a second, unable to get herself used to the stomach she now had. You would think she
would, seeing as she had every day to get used to the little extra weight and feel of the baby belly under her robes, but it just---wasn't that easy. She was doing everything right, though! By the book, at least. So. Alice figured she would get the hang of all of this by the time Nigel made his debut.
Before Harry, or else Frank was going to be stupidly grumpy. Not that Alice cared! She really didn't, she just wanted both boys to be healthy and
not the savior of the wizarding world, so she didn't care if Nigel was three weeks late.
Well, no. She cared about that. She didn't want to be pregnant for any longer than she had to be.
"I think working from the back around to the front would be best, because then we could simply stroll out down the pavement like passer bys," she said, though she fiddled with her invisibility cloak. The neighborhood
was rather quiet, but it was better to be prepared.
"Sounds like a plan!" Lily answered, the remnants of a laugh from Alice's joke before still in her voice.
It was weird sometimes to think about how in school she had rolled her eyes at Alice and thought what a flaky, silly sort of person she was on a daily basis. Of course, there were still remnants now of that girl that she'd been in Hogwarts, but on the whole Alice had really surprised her since their graduation nearly two years ago, since becoming a part of the Order of the Phoenix. Even with Liz knowing about everything, Lily would say that Alice had been climbing for a long time to a spot next to her best friend as one of the people she most liked to talk to and be around.
Then again, when your friends and family kept dropping dead left and right, you did come to treasure the ones that you had left.
---oy, there she went with the depressing thoughts again. She'd been doing that too much lately, thinking things like that to herself and getting all upset. This was no place to get upset, not with Alice here---Merlin only knew how loudly two pregnant women could get wailing once something like that got brought up. So for now she would have to force those thoughts out of her mind and think---about Fabian sitting right here in gardening gear, planting begonias!
The mental image did the trick, eliciting one more little laugh out of Lily before she returned her attention to Alice. "I guess we should start on the back of the house now, pretty sure
noone's going to get their Voldemort-loving feet into Bess' tulips after---"
Lily didn't get to finish her sentence as her head shot suddenly upward and towards the interior of the house, her brow furrowing in concentration. She could have sworn she just heard the front door being opened--not just being opened, more like it was thrown open, actually--and like something had crashed off a wall. She couldn't hear it well, not from this distance, but---was she going crazy? But Bess wasn't supposed to be home until they were finished warding the place, right?
"Did you hear that?" she asked Alice in a whisper, not taking her eyes away from the house.
Alice had been stock still for a few seconds now, eyes locked onto the back window they were near. They weren't directly in front of it, a bit to the side thankfully, but she was still able to see into the house from the angle she had. Please let them both be crazy,
please let their hormones have completely addled their brains so that they thought they heard doors slamming and hexes being jolted throughout the interior of the house.
Her narrowed as she continued to watch the window, praying that they were both just losing their minds. There wouldn't be a shadow passing through the light bouncing off what seemed to be a curio of figurines (Merlin Bess really
did have Fabian wrapped around her finger). There would just be those little angel things sitting there, illuminated by the kitchen light, there wouldn't be---
"
Fuck," Alice hissed, finding herself squaring her shoulders into the traditional dueling stance she'd mastered in the past two years. Except---she winced at how heavy her front was, and was immediately startled at the fact that she would not be able to handle anything like a duel right now. Her mind had gone completely into auror-mode and had forgotten that she was nearly six months pregnant. Pregnant! Her heart, which had already been pounding furiously, began to bash harder against her chest, and she felt Nigel's protests against her stomach.
"There's definitely someone in there, we have to call the others," she said with a grimace, pushing forward to lean against the house. Alice put a hand to her stomach, hoping the pressure would calm Nigel (but mostly herself) down.
Lily followed Alice, flattening herself against the side of the house, as her mind raced and leap-frogged itself in between her hard-learned battle instincts and her newly-acquired mother instincts. If she were totally honest, Lily could not say that earlier on, when she had been only two, three months pregnant--she could not say that she had put as much consideration as she should have into this life inside her when there was a potential combat situation. She remembered clearly the multiple arguments with James over the Mungo's invasion and how recklessly she had wanted to go and help---her husband had been more important at the time than the little boy that she could not see or even feel yet.
But now... Now it was not the same. The larger she grew, the realer Harry became, the more protective and worried she began to become over his safety. All this week, with everything that had been happening and Death Eaters coming after Order members and their families like all Hell had broken loose, she hadn't uttered a
word about wanting to take out her wand and hunt them down. Because---she was all that her son had. It was her job right now to protect
him, not her friends, not even James.
So it was an immeasurable, absolutely foreign fear that had her heart racing now, realizing that she was six months pregnant and there were Death Eaters on the other side of this wall. What could she do, what could Alice do, like this? They could shoot off spells, but could they duel? If it came down to it, Lily was sure that she could force herself, but would Harry be hurt in the process? And she certainly couldn't move with her regular swiftness, so what happened if she got hit? She was no stranger to being hit with jinxes, hexes, curses, even at normal capacity--the possibility that they could hit her now was alarmingly real.
"The others may not get here in time, Alice," Lily muttered. It was the scary truth. "We can send off a Patronus, but then they'll know we're here. If they see, we'll have to run or face them until someone can come."
They could run then, too, Lily knew, but then they would be leaving Bess to potentially come home to a house full of Death Eaters; the exact thing that they had set out to prevent by being there in the first place. Her mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour, trying to formulate a plan, a plan that wouldn't get them killed or hurt in the process.
"Maybe if we---you send off a Patronus to Frank and James, and at the same time---I'll try to hit them through the window. Then we can---we'll have to run, probably---we can split up, each go around a side of the house and towards the front walk." If they could get that far, they could hope that any Muggle presence would halt the Death Eaters for at least a second. Maybe by then their husbands could get there.
Maybe.Alice was listening to Lily, she was hearing and absorbing all of what her partner (that's what they were, now, partners) was suggesting and the ideas she was throwing out. Alice
heard them, and she agreed that they were probably going to have to go with the route Lily was creating, but there had to be something
more. She was an auror, damn it! This was her job, this was what she was supposed to be an expert at, and it just wasn't
happening. Her shoulders tightened along with her fists, and Alice kept her eyes on the shadows moving in the window, her head nodding slowly at Lily's words. There had to be something else, there had to be an easier way.
This was insanity. They'd come here to keep death eaters
out, and the bastards had gotten
in before they could even start. She wished she could just lock them all up at once, find some sort of evidence that would send every mask wearing terrorist straight to Azkaban,
trapped.
Trapped!
"We can trap them," Alice said suddenly, the tip of her wand spinning in quick circles toward the ground, her patronus slowly forming. "We can reverse the wards, keep them in
there and then the aurors can get here---Frank can get here, he can say it was his doing and---"
She bit her tongue; it would be better than starting a fight, wouldn't it? It would bring less attention to the house, it would let the death eaters sit inside and think they were hiding,
waiting for Fabian and Bess to get home. It wouldn't be
easy, there was an apparation ward that they'd have to completely remove to replace with an anti-apparation one,
but---if Frank got here with backup before the death eaters could figure out what they were doing,
then this would end up much better for the Order's sake.
And she really, really did not see two pregnant woman beating angry death eaters in a battle.
Her lamb patronus was fully formed on the ground, waiting for the message to send. Alice looked to Lily; she needed to confirm anything, or maybe she would get shot down completely. Alice wouldn't hesistate with going with Lily's initial ideas, she just---this got her in trouble at training, she always had to find every possible route before executing her plans. Though, while Frank and Will were getting burnt and beat up, Alice managed to slip around the dangers. "What do you think?"
To be honest, Lily was so bloody
relieved when Alice mentioned another plan, an alternative to fighting because---well, she could put on a strong face all she wanted, but that didn't stop her from being scared out of her mind of battling Death Eaters in her current state. So she didn't even have to think about moving her head up and down to nod in response to Alice's proposal--hell, she didn't even need to hear an explanation, she just wanted to
do it. And get out of here, before they got into something that they couldn't hope to handle.
"That sounds brilliant, really," Lily assured her quickly as she stared down at the patiently waiting silver lamb.
Quite suddenly, she became aware of her palm sweating where she had apparently gripped her wand while explaining
her plan, and was surprised at how intense she'd felt just seconds ago. Surprised, because the intensity had drained away as quickly as it had come. She hadn't even noticed how utterly freaked out she was at what was happening until it was evident that there was an alternative to having to fight and
be intense. Lily felt like she was shaking inwardly, the fear that had been driving her before now more just--there. More evident and powerful.
But she couldn't let it hinder her now. She still had to have herself ready, to perform these spells and trap these Death Eaters before this grew worse. If she didn't, both she and Alice were going to be in a whole load of trouble.
Lily took a deep breath and tore her eyes off the patronus to stare into Alice's face again. "Let's do it."
A quick nod was all that Alice signaled to Lily before she sent off her patronus to her husband. Sometimes Alice fretted about telling Frank bad news, like when she'd broken dishes or ruined a pair of his favorite boxers in the laundry, but with these
important issues, she felt no qualms about grabbing his attention and letting him know what was going on.
Death Eaters in Bess and Fabian's house, Lily and I are going to trap them, but we need you to bring back up and arrest.It was very strange, how easy it was to press into situations like these. Alice did have the baby on her mind, he would always (literally) be there, but as they liked to call it at the offices, 'auror-mode' was very hard to get out of once you were in it. Alice whispered sharp instructions and directions toward Lily, somewhere in the back of her mind knowing she would apologize later for being so bossy.
Now though, they needed to get things done, and you weren't an auror if you couldn't take control of a situation with a civilian in the midst of it.
Though, really, Lily's probably seen more death eaters than a few of the men on the squad. She'd definitely met Voldemort more than 99% of the squad.
Alice took the initiative of warding the front of the house, knowing that the front door was probably blasted off its hinges. She crept around the corner and saw that there was indeed smoke slowly floating out of the open space in the---wall. They'd burst through the front
window, that was a much bigger hole then she'd have liked to deal with. Holding her breath for a moment, she quickly began to spurt out the spells and wards that would make the house impenetrable to escape. She watched the spells spiral up the side of the wall and over the ledge of the roof, noticing other random colors joining hers in the sky; Lily was hard at work as well.
This really couldn't be so easy, there had to be
something she was forgetting or
something the death eaters could use to break free, but she couldn't see it right now. She
could see the shadows of someone inside the house, moving closer to the window she was standing to the side of, and Alice shot off her last spell before sprinting (as well as she could) back around to Lily, "We need to get out of here!"
Had magic always been this tiring? Lily didn't think so, not before she'd become weighed down (literally) by supporting another life besides herself. She still remembered being in Hogwarts and learning these spells she was using now, and-- She was a proudly powerful witch. Lily
knew her bones had never ached so much from throwing spells, even this many and this quickly.
It was just another reminder that there was even more reason to hurry, to keep casting and go go
go--that she couldn't afford to get tired or worn, not until this was over. It was an annoying reminder as well, though. It was a reminder that her limits really
had been strained. Until just now, Lily didn't think she'd actually been in a situation that had tested her since getting pregnant. She always said things, always told James that she was good as always, that she'd be
fine if he'd just let her step back into action. It was all talk. It wasn't like she'd
believed she was perfectly the same (she was a perpetually pragmatic person by nature, after all), but she had never imagined just
how far off all that talk actually was.
Merlin, it was a brilliant thing that they weren't going to be fighting Death Eaters today.
Maybe.
She didn't have time to think about it any further than that as Alice came shooting (okay, shooting in terms of what she had ever dreamed a woman that pregnant could do) around the side of the house and Lily threw her energy away from her thoughts and into keeping pace. "Let's Apparate!" she gasped out through heavy breaths once they reached the end of the garden. Apparating was strictly forbidden by all the Healers, but Lily doubted that any of the Healers took into account a situation that had said pregnant women running for their lives.
She'd write in the clause to that rule right now, and she hardly doubted that Alice would protest. Coming to a halt, Lily closed her eyes and for a split second hoped to all god that she did not fuck this up, and just as quickly had vanished into thin air.
