minnow // sirius black

fifty-five

I knew the risks, and so I refused to take them. 

We had been arguing over my lack of involvement in the Order for weeks at that point. I was completely over it by the middle of October, and despite finally having a vision; and several after, I was still prohibited from going to a meeting. The first vision came a few days after Esme's birthday, and I waited for Sirius. We apparated together, and barely in time. We managed to grab the target, and apparate out of there before anyone saw us. It was a very close call, and we both knew that we needed to be quicker. 

So I began to grab him and apparate through the wards on our home. We gave Dean two seconds of warning before leaving, so he didn't think we'd been kidnapped. He was incredibly frustrated, but he was glad that I wasn't going alone. There were a few times that I was forced to grab Dean, or go alone, either because Sirius was busy, or because I knew there wasn't time. 

I only lost one person, and that was the first murder of twelve in one sitting. A large group of Death Eaters were going to attack a Church in a town nearby Lily and James. The first death was the minister, and I had made the decision to take Dean. While Sirius was just as capable of holding his own, I trusted Dean to be more aware, and able to protect himself just as much as he was protecting me. I knew Sirius would be too focused on keeping me safe, and would end up hurt. 

Besides, Dean was better with physical altercations, and with nine Death Eaters swarming us, I figured punching one or two would be easier than using magic for all of them. I had told Sirius to send a Patronus to James and Remus. I needed Remus for back-up, and I needed James to know that I wasn't alone. He then sent one to other order members, and halfway through the fight, Remus arrived with four others. 

Alice and Frank were easiest to recognize. I had seen them at the few Order meetings I had been permitted to attend. Alice and Frank had also taken shifts off of Dean a handful of times, primarily while Kayla was pregnant with Max. I had grown very fond of Alice, and considered her a friend. One of the other two was another Auror that had been assigned with protecting me when Dean wasn't able to. He was four years older than me, and had been able to fast-track his Auror training due to being incredibly intelligent.

 All of the magic swirling around me was almost overwhelming. I wasn't accustomed to Alice and Frank's magic the way I was accustomed to Dean and Remus'. Every time Alice let off a spell, it took all of my willpower to not react to it the way I would a Death Eater's. I was unable to rely on being able to feel magic in order to have better reaction times, and so I was forced to slow down and assess where the different magic was coming from. I could easily tell that the magic was being done by a Death Eater if it was clearly an Unforgivable curse. Magic that dark had a different feeling, a different frequency. It felt like ice in my veins.

I hadn't seen the fourth person until she darted across my line of vision, her scarlet hair distracting me for the shortest of moments. For a moment I was extremely concerned that it had been Lily, but the hair was pin-straight, longer, and much redder. 

She had moved too fast for me to get a glimpse of her face, but I recognized that hair. 

It was the Slytherin Muggle-born witch I had saved from one of the Orphanage fires. She was the girl who would have died to save the younger children with her. She was the one who would have taken on six Death Eaters, on her own, with much success. Albus had told me that she entered the Auror program after she graduated, the year before we did, and was doing very well. I had not expected her to join the Order, but I wasn't surprised she did.  

There were seven of us against nine Death Eaters. It wasn't a difficult battle, as the Death Eaters always seemed to be subpar wizards. They seemed to send the disposable ones on missions like this, entirely because of me. We had caught many of them over the years, and eventually Voldemort stopped sending the one's he was unwilling to risk losing. They had a few really talented members, and it seemed that when the Death Eaters were talented, they were overwhelmingly talented.