Alice cringed in disgust with every hand and foothold she had to use to climb down from this blight on existence of a statue, fighting back the urge to be sick as she got down off the head of the male odalisque but it was still a long ways down and she just could not bring herself to go any further and face each and every muggle and muggle-born imposed face. Squaring her shoulders, she tapped a feather charm on herself and leaped free, floating gently the rest of the way to the ground.
She found Frank at the bottom smiling at her. "You looked like a fairy." His girlfriend giggled and reached for his hand.
They hung on each other in comfortable silence as they went towards the elevators in hopes to get around. The doors opened, but they hesitated inside on where to go. The others could potentially be anywhere, and neither of them were sure they wanted to get involved with the Marauders right now.
"Going to get involved in Remus and Sirius' spat?" Frank asked indulgently as her hand hovered over level 2, the Auror office.
"Not sure," she was pretty confident they wouldn't be there. "I wanted to, but James kept it from escalating and I'm not even sure what they're fighting about." Her hand fell back to her side, she spoke distantly now as her mind clearly wasn't on this place. "I hope James will come and talk to me if it gets too bad again, but I'm not sure if I should get in the middle, you know? They're not, making it worse, handling themselves?" She worried she'd start coming across as forceful if she offered to step in every single time, even if she did consider herself friends with at least James now.
Frank's worry for Lily grew as he heard the locket wasn't even in Umbridge's office, and the interrogations going on with the Muggleborns. They didn't usually get dropped in a place they'd already been in, but they'd also visited the atrium once so clearly the rules of locations were starting to change. He tapped nine to get to the old courtrooms.
"I'm worried about Neville," Alice quietly admitted under the guise of the noisy lift trundling along now. "At school with Snape, those mandatory laws. It's worse than him being home all year with your mum," she finished in as light a teasing voice as she could even if she wasn't kidding.
He squeezed her hand, both had their wands drawn and were shifting wearily for whatever would come as Harry began his rescue. Now didn't really seem like the time, but as the numbers slowly ticked around the memory began unpleasantly rising to the surface and he explained, "listen, my dad was killed by Death Eater's when I was young. Right in the middle of Diagon Alley, I saw the whole thing." She gasped, but he squeezed her hand and tried to keep the briskness he'd inherited from his mother out of his voice as he continued, "I know she's a lot strict, but she does care about Neville and me. I know she comes on strong, but she'll love you when she meets you, it is because she cares."
Alice nodded and promised, "can't wait to get to that," as it came to a stop, but the doors didn't open. They both tapped their wands on the door in frustration, but then recoiled in surprise as the deep cold began seeping right through the doors. They looked at each other in horror and said together, "Expecto Patronum!" All that came out was a wispy fog that barely kept the dreaded memories at bay from the dementors on the other side.
Peter could suddenly hear Lily's voice telling of James's final moments with perfect clarity in his head, but now it all sounded somehow even worse than the first time he'd heard it, knowing it was his fault Prongs had to beg of his wife to take their child and fun for their lives. She was screaming as James was left behind, who always put himself in the middle of every fight and was the bravest person on earth had died because of him- and Regulus was shouting for help while being dragged into the inferi lake while Prongs was drowning and he'd truly never be any good to anyone, they'd all just keep dying and it would be his fault, over and over-
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All in the Family
Fanfiction"The title The Boy Who Lived dominated the chapter, but this meant nothing to anyone, so their eyes skipped down to just below that, which was under the date 1981. Six years from now." A reading the book style fic, except much more loosely based aro...
