WHO: Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet and Remus Lupin WHAT: The professor has some words of wisdom to share with Angelicia WHEN: 20 January and 29 January WHERE: Order safehouses WARNINGS: None!
The tea kettle gave a merry little whistle, indicating it’s readiness and Remus Lupin turned and poured the scalding liquid into a pot. After the pot received the appropriate number of warming charms and a tea cozy for good measure, he pulled down three oversized mugs and placed them all on the table in wait for Angelina and Alicia. The conversation was only growing more dreadful and serious. He knew that it was time to get down to brass tacks.
But he prided himself on being the person to go to in straits so dire. And with experience - with his skin crawling every time he thought about Peter Pettigrew hiding in the Weasley house. He could imagine Alicia and Angelina’s fears and questions.
Of course he had a few of his own.
Angelina was very quickly running out of things to say, but the silence she’d lapsed into while Remus prepared the tea was making her squirmy.
“So, I was thinking,” she finally blurted out, glancing over at Alicia, her light tone indicating that she was barely serious, “maybe we could just live at the pitch. It’d be like a film. No one would expect us to live in the smelly locker rooms.”
“I could probably make a locker pretty comfortable,” Alicia said, slanting a grin at her friend. “A few cushioning charms would go a long way to making a bench or the bottom of a shower stall feel more like a bed.”
There was some use to being the old guy. A little intimidation, maybe? He definitely wondered if that was what was going on here. But Remus turned round with both cups of tea and placed them before the young women. He then resumed his seat and gave a mild smile.
“Undetectable extension charms on your unplottable lockers, perhaps?”
“And a kettle,” Angelina said, lifting her tea to their professor with a grateful smile. “But that goes without saying.”
“It’s starting to sound like home already.” Alicia leaned over her tea, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Even smells a bit like it. Just needs more dirty laundry.”
A short laugh. These two were still young, still funny and sweet and a million things the Death Eaters could steal from the world within a blink of an eye. But they were also driven. And Remus remembered what all of that felt like. He was closer to it than some, which was why he wanted to help them.
“Extension charms and kettles notwithstanding,” he began, circling his index finger round a knot in the woodgrain. “Let’s acknowledge that the person(s) who tracked you had to know you, have access to you and the motivation to continue to monitor your whereabouts.”
A shadow crossed Angelina’s face and settled there. Her tea was suddenly very interesting. Finally, “Yeah, we know.” She turned her mug so the handle pointed directly at her, mouth twisted thoughtfully. She glanced at Alicia. “We’re being careful who we’re around now.”
Alicia nodded, a sigh exiting her lips before she spoke again. “We’re trying to think of ways to narrow it down without letting whoever it was know we’re onto them. And if they show up to our flat looking for us, they’re going to be disappointed.”
“ … to be fair, I thoroughly understand where you are right now. I spent thirteen years blaming the deaths of my friends on the wrong man. And we all believed his lie. Those we love can have the most damning impact on us. I just --” he paused, leaning his cheek into an open palm. “It’s something I don’t want for you.”
A pause. “Think about how many people have been in your house in the past 12 months. Start a list. And then consider who could be subject to the Imperius Curse. Have you got failsafes in place with one another? Key phrases?”
“Nooo,” Angelina said slowly, a little sheepishly. “But we could start.” She didn’t want to believe it went as deep as Professor Lupin’s situation had gone. “With Fred and George and Katie? And Rolf?”
“That’s a start,” he nodded. Though he wished that she’d told him the failsafes were already in place so he could tell Aberforth to keep his ‘Imperius sweeps 2k18’ shirt on. “Who are your closest non-Order friends?”
Glad for the opportunity to think about something other than history repeating itself with her and Angelina at the center of it, Alicia jumped to tick off their friends’ names on her fingers. “There’s Patty Stimpson, Layla Fairbourne, Becca Dunstan, Roger Davies…” She cut a glance at Angelina as she added, “And, I guess, Eddie Carmichael.”
Angelina couldn’t help but pull a face, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure about Eddie yet. “Francine Goldstein and Cho Chang, too.”
Remus, too, was desperate to prove this wasn’t in the Order. There wasn’t another Peter. He didn’t want this for the organization - for these young women.
He pulled a notebook and a stub of a pencil from his breast pocket and scribbled down the names as they rattled them off. He nodded. “All right. A good list. So which of them has been to your house regularly in the past six months?”
Alicia looked at Angelina again as a chilling realization came to her. Her throat had gone dry by the time she said it out loud. “We have a problem, actually — we invited all those people and more over to our flat for mine and Katie’s birthday parties.”
A sigh -- “Very well. Then they’re all suspect. How many people have been to your flat more than twice in the time period? More than three times? We can at least organize our list in ascending order based on who has had the most access to you.”
With a sigh of her own, Angelina studied Professor Lupin’s notepad. “It might be easier if I just write them down for you.”
The ache in his shoulders and throbbing behind his temple assured Remus that he was no longer a teen dealing with his friends’ surety that he was a traitor, all while Peter hid beneath their nose, passing information back to his Dark Lord. Further keeping him grounded in present was the two young ladies whose feelings could potentially match those feelings of old to such a degree that he could scarcely bear it.
Shouldering a pack, he unwound the safehouse wards and announced his presence with a knock.
“I’ve got chocolate, potions and a broom repair kit!”
Alicia perked up from her perch in bed — there was little else she hated more than being confined to a mattress, and the sight of a visitor instantly lifted her spirits. The promise of gifts lifted them even more. “You may enter the recovery lair!”
Angelina, meanwhile, sank in her seat, her last conversation with their old professor sitting uneasily in her stomach.
Remus came in, pulling a lion’s share of Cadbury and calming draught from his pack. He also unloaded some crisps, a few tins of tea, a Wizard’s chess set and a broom repair kit. “Hello ladies,” he said, and gestured toward the table. “Recovery wishes and apologies - in the form thereof.”
He paused. “I’m sorry you found out about Layla this way.”
At the mention of their ex-friend, Alicia deflated slightly and sank back into her pillows. “Me too,” she said, dropping her gaze to her phone before she turned it face-down against her stomach. “But I guess it’s better to know than keep on falling for her best friend act.”
Though the promise of crisps had perked her up somewhat, Angelina slouched even further in her seat, her mouth twisting unhappily. Distance from the horrible moment when everything had sank in left her feeling lethargic about Layla’s betrayal, despite the sleep she’d tried to bury her sorrow in. “Yep,” she said quietly, talking mostly to the tips of her trainers, “I guess so.”
“ … it’s better to know,” he agreed. “Better to be aware in the long run because it protects you, the ones you love and it protects the Order, too.” He sat on the edge of a chair and let his forearms rest upon his knees. This was going to be difficult to say.
“Our friend, Peter Pettigrew, was in the Order. And he ended up being a Death Eater recruit. A few of the Order thought it was me for quite some time. Then, afterward, we all thought it was Sirius until Harry helped us uncover the truth. That was the year I was your professor. I’m saying all this because I want you to know that I understand - only slightly - where you’re coming from and how you feel betrayed.”
He took a deep breath. “But please be careful.”
Despite his words, Alicia was still a teenage girl looking at a full grown man — a professor, no less — and thinking he could never possibly understand what she and Angelina were feeling. Her limited perspective meant she heard him, but didn’t hear him. The first war had happened so long ago. Their betrayal was happening right now.
“Aren’t we already being careful?” Alicia glanced at Angelina for confirmation. She felt like they’d tried so hard — they’d changed everything stable about their lives in the name of caution. They didn’t even have Quidditch anymore. “We’ve figured out which one of our friends was messing with us. We moved out of our flat. I can’t even get owls anymore.”
“He means we shouldn’t have told everyone about Layla,” Angelina said, the laundry list of everything they’d lost and given up to protect themselves running through her head, as well. But there was a stubborn tilt to her chin and she finally sat up straight in her chair for the first time since he’d arrived. She respected Professor Lupin. Immensely. But she didn’t think she agreed with him.
“ … I think there were other ways. I don’t want to point fingers or make you angry, because you’re the ones who are leading the new world we’re building. But I think back to my friend and I wonder what we could have stopped had we done things differently.” He took a breath.
“And I wonder about what she knows, just by being your friend. She knows you’re Order, Alicia. We can contingency around her, but --” one shoulder rose. He didn’t necessarily think they wanted to hear about the potential of saving their friend. He remembered he’d been ready to kill Peter, he and Sirius together.
“You’re Order now. And we protect ours. But the Order needs a win. So, let’s take what happened and reposition it. We focus on the Wandless and on developing a list of outed Death Eaters for publishing and I have no doubt of your talent in that arena. Put her on it. But put the Lestranges, Malfoy, Avery, Montague. All of them.”
Angelina mulled over the professor’s words, glancing at Alicia and then up at the ceiling. She dragged her hands through her hair, arranging it on the top of her head as she tried to formulate a response. She was hurting too badly to work on lists or something as daunting as what the Ministry had set up around the Wandless.
“What if,” Angelina said finally, stretching her arms up and letting her hair fall around her shoulders, “I focused on making their lives hell? I’ll do whatever you want me to do with the Wandless and your list, but I want to get back at Umbridge and Bellatrix Lestrange for what they did to me. I have to.”
The muscles in Alicia’s jaw tightened as her friend spoke, and when it was her turn, she chose her words carefully. “A list is easy,” she said. “And what ifs are easy. I’m with Angelina.” She looked directly, maybe even a bit defiantly, at the professor. “We need to stop all of this at the source.”
Remus offered them both a mild arch of his brow. “Okay. Useful vengeance is always warranted. Particularly if it aligns with aims. And I’m not going to tell you to be careful. Only, if you get in a bind or you desire it, please tell us and we’ll do our best to help you.”
He paused, a small smile creeping into his face. “And for the sake of Aberforth, build some failsafes for potential Imperius so I can tell him you’re thinking about it.”
“We can do that,” Angelina said, returning the small smile. Some of her own stubbornness faded and she relaxed enough to sink in her chair again, just a bit. “We wouldn’t do anything reckless without telling the Order.”
But Angelina quickly amended, “Too reckless, anyway.”
“Can’t promise it won’t be a little reckless.” Alicia shot a grin at her friend before she nodded. “We know we’re not on our own, though. I don’t know if we even could do any of this on our own.”
“I have faith,” was said drily. Remus felt ancient most days but he could call back these memories with ease and his friends, youthful and idealistic, were built of much the same stuff.
“You could. We are quite lucky to have you,”’ said honestly, Remus then stood slowly, joints pointing to his age and the impending moon.
“ … oh, I brought a few books too. The good kind for convalescence. I’ll just leave the bag.”
“Thank you, sir,” Angelina said, staring up at Remus. It was a weightier sort of gratitude that could’ve meant any number of things, but that was as much as she was going to say. She buried it all by stretching for a packet of crisps and opening them loudly.
“Yeah, thanks,” Alicia echoed and sat up straighter to peer toward the bag. “There’s no guide to revenge in there, is there?”
“I suggest The Princess Bride.” Remus’ worry, written in a furrowed brow, was minutely spied as he shrugged into his overcoat and gave them both a nod. “Talk soon.” Then, with another turn, he found himself on the other side of the door.
Angelina pulled a face once she and Alicia were alone again. “I thought he was going to give me detention.”
“I always half-think he’s about to give us detention,” Alicia replied with a grimace. But the thought quickly passed and a beat later, she motioned to the bag the professor had left behind. “Didn’t expect gifts, but let me at that chocolate, will you?”