Chapter Text
The worst part about being in the Order has always been the meetings, and that’s coming from a life-long Ministry of Magic employee. Hell, Arthur himself has called a fair number of meetings that could have been memos over the years, but somehow even the worst of the worst meetings at the Ministry (he once had a six hour meeting with the Department of Magical Transportation about font choices on their floo directory) pale in comparison to Order Meetings.
The summer seems to stretch endlessly before him as he floos to Grimmauld after work. Just a few weeks ago, he and Molly were full of plans. They had put away a little bit of money, and Muriel had supplemented, and they were going to try to coax a small holiday on the Isle of Mann— Harry had apparently never seen the ocean. And even the normal evenings at home over the summers held a simple, clear joy for him, now: Hermione would happily explain the muggle paraphernalia he’d brought home, and Ron and Ginny always wanted him to sit and listen to matches on wireless, and Harry seemed genuinely interested in how the Ministry worked. They’d planned to have the Grangers over for some tea, and Sirius, and from what he’d seen of Severus and Harry’s interactions over the past few years, neither of them would probably ask to see the other, but they’d appreciate it all the same.
And instead, his family is pretty much camped out at Grimmauld for the summer, which is also the Headquarters for the Order. Despite Minerva and Sirius’s best efforts, the house is still infested with dark artifacts and decay, and Molly and the rest of the family were working on tackling that, though he’d also been present for a screaming match between his wife and the most powerful wizard of the generation as he’d explained various concerns and conditions for the summer, including his worries over the apparent vulnerability of the Burrow, his desire to keep Harry out of the loop, and his apparent lack of care for their previous summer plans. All in all, it had been exhausting, and since it was Dumbledore, the plans were exactly the same as when they had been first proposed. The Weasleys would be at Grimmauld for the summer, with Sirius and Harry, supporting the war effort; Hermione would be over for the week while her parents worked, and in Birmingham for the weekends. Her parents, who had put out on a lovely tea service for him and Molly when they’d visited them in Birmingham, had been distressed by the war and saddened by the summer— they too had had plans for when Harry and Ron would inevitably be over.
Arthur walks through the halls of Grimmauld— the lower living spaces, and a few of the bedrooms are the most habitable, though from what he’s heard over dinners, there are some drawing rooms that are still full of rattling dressers and cursed wallpaper, the attic and basement haven’t been touched, and McGonagall openly announced over dinner last week that she wasn’t going into a particular fourth-floor closet without assistance from Bill or Moody, ideally both. The twins and Ginny are nowhere to be seen, which probably means they’re attempting to spy on the Order meeting (though Arthur wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy), but Harry and Ron and Hermione are in the most livable of the sitting rooms, with Remus and Sirius. Sirius and Ron are playing chess— Ron is beating the living daylights out of the man, Arthur observes with a curl of pride— Hermione is reading a thick tome from Grimmauld’s libraries, and Harry and Remus are in deep talks about defense magic. They all look up when he comes in.
“Hey Dad!” says Ron. “Work alright?” Arthur nods.
“Meeting’s soon, then?” asks Remus, standing; he looks shabbier then he did the last time Arthur saw him. He won’t pretend to understand the man— surely he knows he has people who would be more than willing to help him, werewolf or not? Sirius, in particular. Arthur shakes the thoughts away, focusing on the more important people in the room— Remus is a grown man, and can make his own choices, but the children here are still his responsibility.
Ron seems alright— Sirius says, “Meeting already? We’re in the middle of this!” and Ron just shrugs and goes, “We don’t have to be, it’s checkmate in ten,” and Sirius looks between him and the board and then throws up his hands in mock frustration. Hermione is engrossed in her book, even taking notes, but Arthur doesn’t miss how her shoulder is pressed up against Harry’s, or how Ron’s eyes keep flicking over to him from across the chess board. And as Remus and Sirius stand to gather their kit for the meeting, Sirius ruffling Harry’s hair and taking a peak at Hermione’s notes— “You’re a Ravenclaw alright, sheesh, kid,”— Arthur doesn’t miss the conversational poise side off Harry’s face as he slumps back down next to Hermione, or the clenched jaw and flash of rage at the exclusion from another meeting, or how Hermione’s arm comes up instinctually around him. He doesn’t know much about what happened in the graveyard— only that Harry and Cedric had gone, and the Dark Lord had risen, and just Harry had come back alive— but he’s sure it must have been traumatic.
And from the way Ron and Hermione have stuck to him like shadows these past few weeks, he’s sure they feel it too.
Ron notices him looking, and gives him a nod, as Remus and Sirius head past him to the dining room where they hold meetings. It’s Molly’s look on his face: they’re mine, I’ve got this, but the subtly is all his, and he feels so proud he can’t keep the grin off his face. It’s something, at least, to carry into the hell-scape of the meeting.
The dining room still reeks of dark magic, and Arthur takes a seat between the two people least likely to cause problems: Flitwick, who is here from his usual summer haunts in Switzerland, and the unflappable Amelia Bones. Molly comes in with a tea service and pointedly sets it in front of a drawn-looking Severus— is it just him, or is his hand shaking slightly as he takes a cup? Tonks’s arrival is heralded by the shrieking of the infernal portrait none of them can figure out how to unstick, and Hestia and Sturgis Podmore are standing by the window, smoking muggle cigarettes, until Molly levels them with a ruthless glance and they stub them out and take their seats. McGonagall taking a seat next to Sirius will hopefully forestall his and Severus’s now routine jabs, but Moody and Augusta Longbottom are sitting across the table from him and will likely spend most of the meeting glaring at him. Though, Sprout showing up from a break in a collecting expedition and sitting next to him seems to have put him slightly less on edge. Kingsley, at least, isn’t here to cause problems, and Emmeline Vance is talking to Feivel Goldstien and Andromeda, while Charlie talks to Remus and Bill tries to make polite conversation with Mundungus Fletcher, who Arthur makes a mental note not to let the twins interact with— Merlin knows what things he could procure for them for their slightly dubious endeavors.
A motley crew, to be sure— several powerful witches who’ve been through multiple wars already; the full spectrum Gryffindor offers, from light-fingered thieves to brash charmers to kindhearted cowards; the Heads of all the houses at Hogwarts; half of the modern Auror office. And him and Molly— two parents caught up in the wash, just trying to make the world a better place— and now their children too.
All of them, eventually, except— he feels another dagger in his heart as he thinks of that final horrible screaming fight with Percy, and swallows down rage, and terror, and grief.
Here they are, Dumbledore’s army. The best there apparently is to fight the Dark Lord. While they wait for the arrival of the man himself, Arthur looks around the room, his eyes catching Molly’s for a moment and conveying what he knows she’ll want to know— the Trio’s fine— and then alighting on Sirius leaning over to whisper something to Remus as Snape’s eyes track the room like they’re all threats. He rehearses his report about the state of internal Ministry affairs, and his efforts to recruit, but all he can think about is the three of his children back in the sitting room, Harry’s head against Hermione’s shoulder, hair lank and hands shaking. He knows he’s doing the best he can, in this war, but he keeps weighing his skills against the Dark Lord and finds them coming up short— finds the skills of the whole Order coming up short.
He hates these meetings because he’s been through this before. He remembers it like it was yesterday— the bright faces of young recruits, the ranks studded with war-torn veterans, and then slowly their hope bleed out from them and there was only exhaustion, until so often there was a grave.
And this time around, the people he buries could be his own children.
Albus sweeps in, wearing subdued purple robes and lacking any sort of twinkle in his eyes, looking every inch a powerful wizard, and Arthur steels himself for a long, long meeting, full of orders and discussion that ends in ultimatums and the concerning updates on You-Know-Who’s movements and the inevitable moment when someone questions Severus’s loyalties.
He hates Order meetings for many reasons, but mainly because in Ministry meetings, even if they’re six hours about font choices, he never has to worry if this is the last time he’ll see the people alive.
______________
There is a moment, every morning— usually while shaving— when Remus stares at himself in the mirror and considers running. What bonds are keeping him here, anyway, crashing at Sirius’s house and working Order missions? Severus is supplying him with Wolfsbane again, a kindness of Dumbledore’s, and it is a creature comfort but far more than he really deserves. Sirius is gentle and warm; Molly and the Weasleys are kind and don’t seem to care about his afflictions; Harry is—
It’s a special sort of joy to get to know Harry, who in another life would have been something like a nephew. He is curious, powerful, and kind; he doesn’t care about the nature of his condition and only cares about learning magic, or hearing stories about James and Lily, and spending time with him.
Maybe, if it weren’t for the war, he could draw himself together. Sirius has enough money to pay a brewer for Wolfsbane, and though he’d argue the point to hell and back, when the man set the course of potions before him, he’d take them without complaint. Sirius has enough money, and love, and brash Gryffindor stupidity for the both of them; he could supply the domesticity of making soups and reading books and remembering things like appointments. Maybe, with enough time, they could unwind the hitch between them— I left you there for twelve years; I thought you were the traitor— and figure out if the sort of love they have is the sort that means they should get rings and plan a wedding, or if they should just platonically overlap for the rest of their lives, like Harry is doing with Weasley and Granger.
Be a part of Sirius’s life, and Harry’s life.
But that life seems so far away from the present it’s laughable, and he scraps the razor over his haggard face and thinks of exits, instead of building things.
Dumbledore has set before him an impossible task: recruit the werewolves. It will likely end in failure, if not death. And yet it feels like a glorious exit: the seedy corners of Britain and the Continent; flop-houses and ruins and dens and all sorts of illicit characters. He belongs there, really, he knows, and the thought of slipping back to those crevasses feels so much more real than staying here, playing house with Sirius and the Weasleys and Harry Potter, who has no right to be his.
Maybe the war itself is an exit, of sorts. Like it was the last time. No need to confront the demons pacing your chest when you have the defeat of the Dark Lord to worry about, right? Even now, sitting in the drawing room and talking to Harry about defense, he feels the itch building in his blood, the desire to cut and run.
He cuts his talk short when Arthur comes in and heads into the Order Meeting, sitting down next to Sirius, who has situated himself so as to have the best angle on Snape. The man certainly looks worse for the wear, Remus thinks— the years haven’t exactly treated him well, but at Hogwarts he at least kept himself rigidly composed, with billowing robes and combed hair. Maybe it wouldn’t be apparent to the Order at large, but to Remus— and to Sirius, he’s sure— it’s clear the man is strained, his face more ashy than sallow, and though the shadows seem to congeal around him in his corner, his hair looks tangled and more greasy that normal.
He knows some of the Order has their doubts about the man’s loyalty— and Sirius is still struggling with his bone-deep grudge against the bastard and the fact that he was the one who provided him with lodging last summer— and he himself vacillates. On the one hand, it’s Severus Snape they’re talking about— Slytherin enough to be Head of House, cunning beyond measure, inventing Dark curses before they’d even taken OWLs. If anyone could pull off the triple-agent play, it’s him.
But on the other hand, the motive eludes him. Snape’s slippery, but he’s also a Slytherin, priding survival and practicality. Why put himself through all of this— he remembers how the man had looked at the re-establishment meeting, like hell warmed over, sitting in the shadows next to Minerva, coughing up blood— if it wasn’t real?
He shakes thoughts of Snape away, and looks around the rest of the room, feeling a pang of ache. There was a time when Order meetings were fun— it was like a Gryffindor Class of ’78 reunion, really, and they’d played quite a few pranks on the Aurors, even in the dead of war. And then, slowly, the empty chairs, and then the empty tables. When did pitched duels in dark woods stop being fun and start being choked with fear?
When did they stop trusting that he would die for them?
Sirius reaches for his hand under the table, and he squeezes it before pulling away. Sirius, being Sirius, doesn’t mind it, but all Remus can think about is how much the war took from him last time. As he looks around at the bright young faces around the table— Tonks, he thinks the woman with bubble-gum pink hair is called, and the oldest two Weasleys— all he sees is the gravestone at Godric’s Hollow, and he swallows heavily.
He doesn’t mind if he doesn’t make it out alive, this time, really. If victory is bought by his sacrifice, he’ll pay the price. But the idea of— of trying again to build something, only to have it ripped away—
It’s a relief, to inform the Order of his plans to head out to the dales of Scotland in the next few days, make good on his contacts with the werewolf community. Molly gives him a sympathetic look, but inwardly, he’s almost counting down the days.
There’s a war on. Love— and something that maybe could have been a kind of family, in another timeline— is not something he can afford.
______________
As much as she supports the Order and wants He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to be wiped off the face of the earth, Minerva finds the Order meetings a colossal waste of time, worse even than faculty meetings. At least faculty meetings have potential— if Albus is indisposed, and they conveniently forget to tell whatever hag is DADA teacher that year what time it’s at, she’ll bring scotch, Pomona and Aurora bring gossip, Sybil brings mead, and after a couple of drinks Severus actually starts verbalizing his dark sense of humor and even Septima and Filius will laugh.
Drinking before she arrives, it will have to be— and Severus looks like he could use some, sitting in the far corner so he can keep an eye on the whole room. As much as she loves Sirius, she hasn’t appreciated watching the two of them interact— the sight of the other seems to send both of them back to the seething rivals they were in fifth year, any trace of the complex and mature men they’ve both become forgotten.
She and Pomona have spent the last month crossing the country, knocking on the doors of their former students, sitting down to tea and asking them if they are interested in fighting the Dark Lord. There have been no lies, not from her, about what the war might entail— which she is sure Albus does not appreciate, if their low recruitment numbers are anything to go by— but she will not weave tales of honor and glory. War is about suffering, and attrition, and death, but maybe, just maybe, they can wrest a better world out of it—
Some of them, already too far gone after reading the Prophet, refused to believe that he’s back. Some of them twisted their hands and looked at the floor, or at the pictures of their significant others or children on the walls. And a few— a rare few— had said yes. Yes with the manic loyalty of a Hufflepuff; yes with the ragged righteousness of a Gryffindor; yes with the hungry striving of a Ravenclaw; yes with the bloodied love of a Slytherin.
(And every one of them Minerva wishes had said no.)
She looks around the table now, at the reconstituted Order. Old friends, old students, new allies. Twenty years and change ago, when they’d done this the first time, she’d left a major Transfiguration conference and a new flame to sit at the table in the backroom of Hogshead, and she’d felt drunk on more than Aberforth’s decadent liquor— between all the power in the room, surely the growing horror of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would bend before them.
If only it could have been that easy. There were vows, and betrayals, and her hands coated with blood in the woods on moonless nights; there were the dead by her hand and the dead she hadn’t been able to save; there was magic beyond anything she’d ever seen and grief like a spring tide and fear like a living thing.
She had been naive then, despite it being her second war. She had assumed that the first war with You-Know-Who would be like the war with Grindelwald— Grindelwald who killed, of course, but not how You-Know-Who killed. Grindelwald was a dark wizard, but he had a kind of practicality to him, preferring subjugation and imprisonment and labor camps over murder and torture. If you were magic, you were useful; if you were muggle, you were meant to be ruled. Evil, unquestionably so, but not—
Not unhinged and genocidal. Not powerful beyond the pale. Not burning slave brands into his followers’s arms and torturing even them the second they stepped out of line.
She hadn’t been ready for it, she can admit that much to herself, now. Maybe it hadn’t hit her how much it had shaken her, in the process of it, until years later, when the horrors kept her company during her long patrols of the castle at night. The war ruined something within her, she knows now. The war, and then the letdown of grief in the aftermath— she loves and has loved many people, but James was her protégée, maybe the closest she’s ever gotten to a child.
But the thing that had risen within her when she’d learned Sirius all this time had been innocent has come to the forefront in this last month, like a thunderhead rising above the front range. How easy it has been, as one term turns into another and the grief flocks like the sparrows through her blood, to forget what she is. What she is capable of, when she reaches out and pushes. Three weeks ago, once the students were on the train, she had gone out to the forest with her dueling gloves and high-collared coat and cast an Avada Kedavra so strong it had split and killed a tree on impact, and she’d stood there in the shadows, the last patches of snow still clinging to life in the shade, and felt the crash and burn of what she was swell like a symphony.
She looks around the dining room of Grimmauld, still reeking of dark magic despite her and Sirius’s best efforts. Sees the lines cut into her mentor’s face; sees the twitch in Severus’s hands and the exhaustion writ in Augusta’s stance. Darker and more terrible than before, Sybil had apparently prophesied, and now here they were, trying to keep another Sybil prophecy out of the monster’s hands. The irony, when the women was the single most annoying colleague she’d ever had, Gilderoy Lockhart perhaps excluded.
She’s not sure where this resolve that has crusted over her chest like sea ice has come from, when she knows how much all this will hurt. When she knows full well that there are people in this room right now she will have to bury, Severus probably chief among them.
She knows what the war will do, what it will take; if she lives through it, the nightmares will haunt her for the rest of her life. But she’s done being the frail and exhausted Gryffindor Head of House. She’s done being a reclusive Master Transfigurationist and a grieving teacher. It had taken nothing from her, to cast that Avada in the forest, and she doesn’t want the war— of course she doesn’t want the war— but here it is, nevertheless.
No more hedging. No more pacing the battlements in mourning, letting her power stagnant. He’s back, and there’s no more time to wait around, not when there are people in this room that need her. People who she might have to bury, but she’ll do her damndest to make sure not.
By the time this is over, you’ll be coming to kill me in person, you sorry sod of a Dark Lord, she thinks, and around her the air hums with the sheer force of her magic.
______________
(Order Meetings: a necessary evil, for Albus. To consolidate information, to evaulate the players. Some light legilimency at times, to check loyalties. He’s well aware that one of his worst faults as a leader is to endlessly see the best in people, to assume loyalties are settled, simple things, and to love despite red flags. But not this time around. This time, he’s going to bring them all in every week or every two weeks and force them to meet his eyes. You were wrong before, you can be wrong again.)
(He looks around the room, feels the war crack and splinter against his aging bones. Sirius has spent most of the meeting glaring at Severus; if Severus wasn’t clearly still dealing with the after-effects of a crucio and in need of about twelve more hours of sleep, Albus is sure he’d be glaring right back. Arthur has spent most of this meeting staring at his hands; Tonks is bubbly and excited and Albus wonders how long that will last.)
(Albus knows how long it will last— until the first casualty. Until the first casualty in front of her, possibly, if the Hat had considered Gryffindor before deciding Hufflepuff.)
(Order Meetings are tedious, but it’s nothing he hasn’t done before. None of this is anything new, not really— the recruiting, the manipulation, the research. The hours spent learning vast and immense pieces of magic to channel into the protection of the muggle world, which the Ministry is apparently content to let burn.)
(Burying the dead, when it comes.)
(Maybe it’s because he’s done this before, and knows so acutely what it will bring, that he’s found himself at Hogshead more often than not over these past few weeks, as the war has set, gravitating towards the rooms Aberforth keeps behind the pub, a ram-shackle dwelling even by muggle standards, with buckets to catch rain and drafts and always a goat or two.)
(Aberforth is many things: a brewer bar-none; a little too into applying magic to goats; unambitious to a fault, in the way only a Hufflepuff could be. But before Severus came to their side he was the best potioneer the Order had, and he still brews standard stuff for them. He passes along the sort of crumbs inebriated minor Death Eaters leave behind them at the bar. Aberforth is many things, but on a basal level, he is the only person in the world Albus trusts without reservation.)
(Which— maybe it’s an inane thing, the paranoia of a general, of an old man. Minerva has backed him for the last fifty years, even at the most fractious points; Severus is complex and impossible to truly contain, but won’t betray him, not now. Alastor; Pomona; Filius; Molly and Arthur— even some of the shadier members of the Order, like Mundungus, are people he trusts.)
(But Aberforth— Aberforth was there, when he was eighteen and everything went wrong. Aberforth doesn’t look at him and see Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age— he sees him as the arrogant older brother; the would-be Dark Lord; the monster. The idiot, the failure, the fool.)
(They didn’t talk for years, in the aftermath, but when Albus returned from Germany with Grindelwald imprisoned and the Elder Wand in one trembling hand, Aberforth had been waiting for him in his chambers at Hogwarts, with a jug of perfect malt liquor, and the look in his eyes had been one of forgiveness. I didn’t think you had it in you, he’d said, when they were both very drunk, and Albus had stared off into the distance and said I didn’t either.)
(The thing in his chest, now, when he goes to Aberforth’s and drinks as the summer light wanes, is of a different caliber. Resignation. Fear, too, maybe— last time, they were saved only by the sheer force of Lily’s love, and Voldemort’s inability to stun those he didn’t want dead, as Gellert had done. As powerful as he is, Voldemort is on a plane beyond him— or, well, a plane he cannot follow him to if he wants to remain something other than a Dark Lord himself. Alone in the shadows of Aberforth’s hovel with only the goats for company, no acolytes to lead, he can admit he has no idea how they’re going to pull this one off. The Prophecy says Harry, and as powerful and kind Harry is turning out to be, he is still a fourteen-year-old who his heart wants to keep far away from the war.)
(But what is Harry’s childhood and adolescence and maybe even life, if it means the defeat of Voldemort?)
(Later on, at the gravesides, he’ll stare down at dirt and the part of him that wants to remake the world will go you could afford to loose this one, they’re just a pawn, you can still win, and the part of him that looks in the Mirror and sees his family will say shut the fuck up, as deep and bitter as the sea. Later on, after the ring, with the curse burning holes in his magic but caged, for a year, in his arm, he’ll stumble to Hogshead and try to explain, and Aberforth will be angry until he understands, at which point he’ll still against the wall and then just say, in a soft, trembling voice did it work? Did you see her?)
(At the Order Meeting, feeling old beyond his years, he looks around the room, over the ranks— in another life, is he as Voldemort is, bending them to his will like wheat in a field— and feels only the resignation that is another war. Either they will end Voldemort, or he and the rest of them will die trying.)
(He does it, like only a general can. But how he longs for a drink, and way Aberforth will sit down on the coffee table across from him and top up his glass, talking in a low voice about business at the pub, like they’re normal, like they have any shot at a future.)