28 Oct '78: Fragments of Memory

[Alice Longbottom]

the morning after this

It was cold and dark, a light rain misting on the street. There had been reports of gunfire - was that why there was smoke in the air? A little further down the street, there was a firetruck, so maybe the smoke was from a burning building. It was chaos, there were people screaming and running, and she stuck to the shadows with her hand tightly around her wand. There was no way to know who was responsible for this chaos - but she shouldn’t have come alone. She should alert the Order, alert the Auror department, or someone.

A cold laugh pulled her eyes behind her, a cold and familiar laugh, and then unimaginable pain.

Alice sat up with a gasp, hands going to her stomach. She wasn’t bleeding, she was so sure she had been bleeding. With a deep breath, she looked down at her hands, before looking around the room. She wasn’t on the street corner, she was safe. She was alive, and her husband was in a chair in the room with her, wand tight in his grasp. Alice sighed, running her hands through her hair. That laugh, she knew that laugh. It was one she had heard before, but she just couldn’t place it. Did it matter if she could? These days it didn’t seem like anyone trusted the memories of anyone else, and Alice could barely remember where she was. It had to be Roderick’s, bits and pieces of the night before flooding back into her memory. She’d been attacked, Frank had found her, and Mary had come.

“Frank?” she said quietly, hating that she was waking him. She doubted any of them had slept well last night, and while she had slept the same vision kept replaying in her head. A familiar laugh, indescribable pain, blood everywhere. Today would be a day of questions, from both of her jobs. She knew Fabian was probably already up and being questioned, and while she understood everyone would be angry with him she would be damned if she held this against him. They all knew better than to go into the field alone, and she shouldn’t have insisted that she go by herself. She would answer what she could, but before that, she wanted to know what everyone here knew. Roderick would have seen her wounds, Bill was probably on the scene and had details. “My love, I’m sorry to wake you. Could I have some water?”

[Frank Longbottom]

Frank bolted into wakefulness at the sound of his wife's voice, in a manner only slightly more composed than the last few abrupt calls to attention during endless nights at headquarters. and smiled. While he was kicking himself already, for how could he have fallen asleep for even a moment when Alice could have needed him at any time during the night - he smiled and pushed himself up from the chair, shaking wakefulness into and a dull ache out of his limbs. She was awake, and that was all he could ask for.

"I'll get you anything you want, Al, never be sorry for waking me," Frank promised, groggy and relieved and his heart trapped in a vice as he blinked her into focus. As if he needed any reminder that they weren't here for a social call, her careful words in the thin, gray light of morning were it. He didn't want to leave her side, not yet, and sat himself at the edge of the bed, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple. Frank fashioned a glass with a simple Switching Spell - cleaner than any mugs or bottles cluttering the few surfaces in the room, and he doubted either of the blokes would question why there was an alarm clock in the glasses cabinet - and filled it. Glass handed over, Frank took her in, heart racing to escape the vice's grip.

Alice was here. Alice was here, and recovering. There were two accomplished medics in the next rooms. The worst hadn't happened. It hadn't - the worst hadn't happened, and it wouldn't. They wouldn't be here again, not like this -

You don't know that.

"You scared the hell out of me, lovely," he whispered through a tightening in his throat, hiding his wavering smile in another kiss. They would get to the bottom of what had happened, they would move forward, he would take her home and she would heal and they would figure out what came next, together. And they would all, Frank prayed, heed the warnings of their superiors more strictly. Answering a call with a partner wasn't a guarantee of safety, but it at least gave you someone to work with, someone to call for help if you couldn't, someone to witness... It was something of a miracle that she'd survived, that he'd gotten to her in time, that Roderick had been home and was as successful as he'd been. Did she know, did she feel that too? "I'll get Rod and Bill, and Mary," he continued, head leaned to hers, knowing the lot might very well be camped out on the other side of the door already, "they'll want to check in on you. And we'll go home and rest, okay? How do you feel?"

[Alice Longbottom]

He looked like he’d barely slept, and Alice understood. If it had been him on this table, she wouldn’t have left his side or been able to sleep. Her head was pounding, which she was sure Roderick would be able to give her something for. She didn’t remember hitting her head, but she was slowly realizing she didn’t remember much of what had happened. She gave him a weak smile as he came to sit with her on the bed, already worrying about him and her sister. Had they called Mary to come? Alice was sure they had, Roderick wouldn’t keep this from her. As much as he wouldn’t want to hurt Mary, Alice was sure Roderick had learned a lesson about trying to protect Mary when he’d spent years missing out on being with her. She took the glass that Frank offered her, taking a sip to let her body adjust to drinking. Her stomach hurt, but not in a way as if she’d eaten something foul. It ached like scratches had been dug deep into her skin.

Alice felt badly that she had scared Frank so much, and she hoped he could feel the apology on her lips as he kissed her gently. She knew how scared she would have been if the situation was reversed, and she didn’t know how Frank could be so calm right now. Not when she’d almost died - and even if he hadn’t said that she knew it. She knew she wouldn’t feel this terrible or hurt this much if her injuries hadn’t been serious. Roderick was an exceptional healer, and Alice knew he’d done everything he could. He’d probably have more medicine for her this morning, but Alice smiled at Frank as he rested his head against hers and talked about going home. She wanted nothing more right now than to do just that.

“I’m going to have to answer questions,” she began quietly, hand reaching out for Franks, “And I don’t remember what happened. I remember the sharpness and the pain, and that it was absolute chaos.” Closing her eyes, she laid her head back as she tried to recall what had happened. “Fabian had told me there was a shooting - oh Merlin, Fabian,” she said as she opened her eyes. “It’s not his fault, god he’s going to blame himself for this. I was the one who said I’d go alone, it’s not his fault.” The captain had to be spiraling after this, letting her go alone, and she hoped he was with Gideon and Edward, the two would be able to calm him down. “Hopefully I’ll remember more, but for now, I’d like to see Mary.”

[Frank Longbottom]

Frank was much more accustomed to following orders than he was to giving them, and even less, straying from them. He'd never thrown in his cap for Quidditch Captain, just happy to hold his position and play with the lot. As prefect, he'd answered to his Head Students, Head of House, Headmaster. Even as Head Boy, the buck didn't stop with him. They'd been poked and prodded and knocked into toeing the line with the rest of the Auror trainees and Order Agents. They could hold their ideals, of course, and argue until the wee hours - but they weren't in positions to change the minds of higher ups, and rarely entertained fancies otherwise. Hell, his formative years at the etiquette school had taught him the right way to be - through repetition and rulers - and he hadn't fathomed questioning why until he was surrounded by dormmmates who spoke with their mouths full and - timidly, gleefully - once tried the same.

The people he'd chosen to work for, he trusted their visions. Frank trusted that they would guide them to the end of this unending, relentless darkness. He knew that they had procedures and protocols in place for reasons, that they had come by their own whys through impossible times where things went wrong. He knew that Alice had to report in. Answer questions. Face Fabian.

But it wasn't right.

It wasn't right.

Laying here in the guest bed, barely able to take in water, chancing just the slightest of movements as she tested herself, her words cutting to the bone - not today. They couldn't make her - he'd keep them away. They'd have to get through him to get to her, like it should have been last night. Frank set his jaw and resolved as much as she took his hand, so small within his own, and spoke with such worry. He hurried to smooth her hair, thumb away the sleep under her eyes, with his other, while his head and hand shook. "Fabian was here," he said carefully; his own memories of the Captain's intervention with him were hazy, he couldn't imagine just how much of the night was still a mystery to his wife. Had Roderick said anything about difficulty with memory? Or had it been too early to tell anything of the sort? "Roderick handled him. He handled everything brilliantly." Frank gave a wan smile - the praise was not nearly high enough, but all that their friend had done for Alice was something he was still coming to grips with. "Don't worry yet, love. Please, don't," he said, clearing his throat as his voice trembled. "About remembering, or the questions. Let me worry about that today."

Surely, the higher ups would understand. They wouldn't be so cold to demand her presence, knowing how terribly she'd been hurt, knowing that she had to have time to heal. Interrogating an Agent when she couldn't yet remember anything - what purpose would it serve, except making her feel worse? Roderick could give testimony to the extent of her injuries, Fabian could report on that and the spells they theorized were used, and that could suffice for today. Couldn't it? "I'll get Mary," he swallowed as he stood. "Can I get you anything? Do you think you could eat something?"

[Mary Macdonald]

"I don't how to bear this, honey." I don't know if I can. "How do you manage it?"

Not yet ready to face anything outside of the perimeter of his bed and not expecting much from her mainly rhetorical question, Mary rested her head on Roderick's shoulder, curled up tighter after her whispered admission. She felt hollow, worn through after this sleepless night, and so, so small. She'd doled out encouragement as best and as honestly as she could when Alice needed it last night, and they'd cried and made promises she'd never forget, for they'd replayed again and again as she watched the moon fall, the sun rise. But what did she know, really? Who was she to speak of the ways of war and the ways of the world? What did she know, in the grand scheme of things? She was just a girl wrapping her arms around herself and those she loved, as if that alone could shield them from the worst the world had to offer. 

Thoughts she hated herself for thinking had crept in as time ticked by. She had to believe, they all had to believe, that Alice and Frank and everyone else risking their lives for the rest of them - they had to believe that they would win. They had to believe that they would make it through. Just as she had to believe that Alice would always be careful and intent on coming back to her.

They'd promised.

Everything would be impossible to bear, if they stopped believing.

It wasn't naive to believe.

They would all look back on this one day. Raise a glass to the time, long gone now, that had tested them so. That they had conquered.

She could be strong enough to believe. She had to be.

But that didn't mean rushing back to Hogsmeade. While she may have imagined hearing a rustle of feathers, Bill's owl returning deep in the night, it had to be back. Bearing a message from Puddifoot that she didn't want to read.

"Mary? Alice is asking for you. Are you awake?"

"Yes! Yes - be right there."

Frank's voice and knock of the door shook her out of herself, and with a tremulous exhale, Mary rolled to press a kiss to her boyfriend's lips and sat up. She undid the tie and re-gathered her hair in a high bun, as if Alice hadn't seen her with the worst of worst bedheads. She grabbed her discarded sweater from the foot of the bed, pulled it over her pajama top, and turned to face him. "Tell me again, please, just one more time. She's okay."