Characters: Amarissa Cross, James Potter Location: Number 13 Grimmauld Place Date: Six Months after Spain (but diverging from the standard time line) Time: Afternoon Rating: PG?
Amarissa had managed to ignore the problem for the better part of the last few days. She had thrown herself into her work with something of a reckless abandon that was only made easier by the new agreement that England and Spain had come to over the recent... well, Amarissa like to call it a resurrection issue, but she knew others would call it a zombie problem. She had been tirelessly helping to bring in people that were resurrected, but was also attempting to try and reform some of the policies that were currently being used in Spain. She had actually had some luck with that so far. At least, she was under the belief that she had. As far as she knew, the branding that had been so prevalent while James and the others had been in Spain had now stopped. And there was a definite tilt toward actually helping people instead of studying them. More and more people kept returning, and as the population became larger, it was harder to conceal what they were doing. And it was much harder to view so many people as inhuman.
And, Amarissa had to admit, it was strange that if dark magic was behind their return, nobody had stepped forward to claim what they had done, and to efficiently use their spell. But everything was rather calm. In fact, the differences between the undead and the alive seemed to be shrinking. Amarissa wasn't entirely certain how she felt about everything, but at least it seemed to be working out in some way. In fact, everything seemed to be working out almost too nicely. Excluding the time that she was still missing from her memory, the last few months had been... well, Amarissa would be inclined to say wonderful, but that was perhaps a bit too strong of a word for her.
She had been waiting for the bottom to drop out.
And it had. There had been no doubting that it eventually would. Bad things were a part of life, and she was used to waiting for the next one to find her. She just hadn't expected it to come in the form of... this. Merlin, she couldn't even think the words. They were so ridiculous, incredulous, and perfectly impossible.
She had already notified Spain that she needed to see one of the Healers, but she hadn't explained why. She let them make whatever assumptions they wanted. And they were probably assuming that it was either about the scar on her side, or perhaps even some sort of check up. As for James... Well, ever since she had taken the first test, she had become rather busy with work. It wasn't that she was trying to avoid him, but all the cases she had been taking seemed to have kept him mostly out of her sight, which was a relief. She didn't have to think about it. She didn't have to think about telling James.
The problem was that when she returned from her latest case in full Auror robes, James was already in Number 13. She faltered for a scarce moment, and then shut the door, aware that she looked a bit disheveled. The ends of her robes were all signed, and there was a rather nasty burn from a hex on her right arm and over her wrist. Her hair was pulled back, but most of it had fallen back into her face because of how short it was. But then, if she could handle that, everything that she had been through so far, there was no reason that she couldn't tell James what was happening. Or at least, that's what she tried to tell herself.