Alice is far too pregnant for this! (no_wonder) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-04-08 18:57:00 |
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The idleness of the days spent wandering back and forth between the Longbottom home in Ribble Valley and Gairloch was truly beginning to wear on Alice. Auror work, she thought, was so much more rewarding than this. Subtly trying to work behind the scenes, mold people's opinions and perceptions, and moreover, waiting, it was all so frustrating. And yes, it did all have a point, but if the last three months had taught Alice anything about herself, it was that she was a much less patient person than she wanted to be. Oh, yes, she was very good at hiding her restlessness. But she hadn't been Sorted into Gryffindor for nothing, after all, and while she could be extremely patient with people, being patient with the world at large was much more difficult. Charging into battle seemed so much more rewarding. Not that she could very well do that now, Alice thought bitterly. She was standing at the sink in the kitchen, washing dishes by hand. The baby -- though she sometimes called it 'Hippo' affectionately, there was still no name that struck her, so 'the baby' he or she was -- was kicking away, as he or she (she hated the uncertainty of the baby's gender, thinking he or she constantly) was wont to do, particularly in the mornings when things were still lazy and listless. The kicking had, of course, at first been a harbringer of joy and happiness and excitement, but weeks later, they were just a normal part of life, a reminder that she was too pregnant to be of much use in a battle, anyway. Anyway, despite her desire to fight, she knew that the health of their child was more important. No victory would be worth any harm to this particular life. Alice put the last of the dishes from breakfast on the counter, laying them out to dry, and saw Shaggydog looking up at her, tail wagging against the kitchen floor, with an expectant expression on his features. "Oh, alright," she said, and petted him affectionately. "What on earth am I going to do with you?" Even if their lives were characterized by things other than exile, terrorists, and coups, the high-point of these past three months still would have been marked by a single event of joy and excitement. That it came to be in a world of fear and taut nerves was unfortunate, if only because it could be among the positive events that Frank could count with one hand... but even so, feeling their baby kick for the first time was the highest of high-points. So much so that he'd even ignored all sense of personal space and had stayed there, hand on Alice's tummy, for longer than was probably polite. That was a good memory. The rest -- no. Like Alice, Frank found himself growing ever more frustrated as the days trickled by. He didn't fool himself into thinking that they were the only ones who felt this antsy; obviously the Order was, as evidenced by his conversation with Marlene; and the settlement at Gairloch was a place he gradually coming to loath for all the pent-up energy it contained. In some ways, both the Order and the Army were broken, hairline fractures deepening in parts while others miraculously held as people tried again and again to shake them from their semi-paralysis. A paralysis that Frank, with equal measure of shame and irritation, found that he had, through some fault of his own, succumbed to. What he really wanted to do was exclaim No more! as he walked into the kitchen, but the sight of Shaggydog shamelessly garnering his wife's attention caused him to chuckle instead. "I don't know where we went wrong." "I think we spoiled him a bit," Alice said with a sigh, and scratched behind the dog's ears. A part of her wondered if this was what having children -- actual children, not the kicking fetus -- was like. They probably gave you hopeless, desiring looks that were impossible to resist, too. And Shaggdog was, after all, just a dog. "Though I suppose there are worse things to be spoiled for than affection." For a moment, she contemplated putting the dishes away, but it seemed like boring work, so she sat down at the kitchen table, Shaggydog flopping down at her feet, as if standing had suddenly become far too much work. There was a moment's pause. She had dressed in work clothes and her traveling cloak hung on the wall, ready to be used. But she did not really want to go to Gairloch today -- or any other day, for that matter. "Are you planning on going to the camp today?" she asked. Her tone was neutral, but she was thinking, and if you are, what is the point? Besides reminding everyone that yes, the Aurors Longbottom still existed, and still were fighting on their side. It frustrated Alice that they had to work at that. Frank gave her a look -- not one that was particularly long or sharp, but a look nonetheless -- as he crossed the room to pick up where Alice'd left off. "Maybe later," he replied, his tone as neutral as hers, but beneath which lay grinding teeth. What had happened? The day of the takeover was still a memory he could clearly picture, as were the words one or the other had said: the Order came first now. So why had they hit the brick wall of perceived helplessness and not recovered yet? Why? They were the Aurors Longbottom and-- Suddenly, dishes safely stored away, the cupboard door was slammed. He rapped his knuckles on the wood in a single one-two beat, then turned to look at Alice with a frown creasing his expression. "We need to do better," he said -- blurted, even. "We can't work like this anymore. I'm talking about the Order, not Gairloch -- that's not my priority anymore. It's the Order, and we need to get things moving." Alice blinked for a moment, surprised by her husband's tone and sudden anxiousness. Well, not... surprised per se. She wasn't surprised that he was frustrated. More that he was showing the frustration so openly. It was largely unspoken between them, not because, for Alice, she didn't feel as though she could share her frustrations with Frank, but because at this point, there was no point in them. They were always the same. "We're supposed to be lying low," she said, cautiously. "Fliers, buttons, boycotts..." Alice's voice trailed off into an uncharacterisatically bitter laugh. "A hell of a lot of good the two of us boycotting anything does. It's not as though anyone expects us to walk into their stores, anyway. Not these days." She thought distantly of the former Aurors and Hitwizards in the Scottish Highlands, and the Order members tucked away at Hogwarts and in various little homes across the countryside. It would be so much easier if they all banded together, and that would never happen. No one in either group trusted each other, and so the Death Eaters outnumbered them. And the Death Eaters didn't need trust -- they had fear, and fear was enough to bind them together. "What do you suggest?" she finally said, dragging herself out of her thoughts. Even as he nodded, Frank brushed away the idea of lying low. There was a time and a place for that -- for reconnaissance, for moving pieces into place, for waiting. But they had waited; too few pieces were in place; and they were already getting as much information as they could. It was time, Frank believed, to swing to the other end of the spectrum. The Phoenix rises again, indeed -- and again, and again, as far as he was concerned. They could boycott and pass buttons until they were all blue in the face, but he and Alice were trained for more than that, and although Dumbledore had made his thoughts on unnecessary violence absolutely clear, Frank saw no reason why the skills that they'd originally brought to the table should gather dust as they had been doing. "With our faces on those posters, I don't think lying low is as easy as it sounds," came the wry response as he moved beside her to give Shaggydog a pat. "We need to reorganize. We're working on that raid idea now and Christ if I'm going to let us wander around picking targets at random. I don't--" even know if it's worth trying this approach anymore, he almost said; instead: "I'm not sure what the others will think of it, but... We're trained Aurors. We know how to work alone, but we also know how to work within a group, and I think applying some of the elements we were trained in will, at the very least, get us working better. There's so much that can be worked on; this is just where I would think to start." A frown passed over Alice's face, and she blanched slightly as she took in what Frank had said. We know how to work alone, the words passed through her head and she wondered, sometimes, if, in the end, it would only be Dumbledore, and Voldemort, and everything they did was a stupid, petty game. The Order, Gairloch, and the Death Eaters might just be pieces on a chess board, useful in some ways, but not necessary in and of themselves. Where once, Alice might have believed that she and Frank constituted the queen, that indispensible piece that was such a blow to lose, right now, she felt more like just another pawn. The chess metaphor sounded tiresome, even in her own head. "Maybe it would be better if we did start training again," she said, thinking of how they used to run classes in Hogsmeade. That seemed like a very far-off country now. Those rooms in Hogsmeade might as well be in Australia. "These raids... I like the idea, in theory, but I don't know. It makes us seem a little barbaric, doesn't it? And if we don't damage purist businesses, what's the point? We have to make sure that it's crates of their things we're dumping in the ocean. We need to get our spirits up again." What tired Frank was his reply: "Small steps." Christ, fine, nothing worth doing was accomplished overnight, but he was getting plenty sick of that particular mantra. With a shake of his head and a small wince as a joint in his back cracked, he lowered himself onto the floor, so that he and the ever excitable dog were practically eye-to-eye. What could they do? What could they do that Albus Dumbledore hadn't already thought of and discarded as an idea that was not worth (or impossible) to pursue with his ragtag group? "We're mostly sloppy," he muttered. He was never the teacher -- that was Moody's terrifying specialty, really -- but there were always skills to learn, to master. "The school is ours, so why not use it for what it's meant for? As for the raids, ideally we'd strike more than once, on an irregularly regular basis, to keep the purists both guessing and hurting. Obviously we'll get labeled as thieves and vandals, but I guess that's what those posters and fliers are for. And the radio. To tell our story." Alice watched the exchange on the floor with what might have, in a better mood, been amusement. She almost smiled, and thought of getting down on the floor, but on second thought, that likely wouldn't do anything particularly kind to her knees and back, so in the chair she stayed. "I suppose that when everyone thinks that you're a terrorist who tried to overthrow the Ministry, being a vandal as well isn't so bad." How had they done it, she wondered. Managed to turn the whole world upside-down in what had been only a few hours, soiled her reputation, so carefully crafted and worked so hard for, was gone. It was difficult to believe. "We might as well start teaching the Order members combat again. Dumbledore may think that we can win this fight with love and rainbows, but at the very least, they need to know how to protect themselves better. We can't afford to lose anyone else." "That, and after the scare with Remus--" Frank broke off with a grimace, which momentarily became a small and crooked smile as he peered up at his wife. "Is it very condescending and counter-productive of me to want to gather them all up and tell them to just stay put so that they won't get hurt?" For Alice, the memory of the scare with Remus just meant remembering the rather ugly (for them, at least) argument they had had just afterwards. Well, thank Merlin that Remus wasn't dead, but that didn't make her doubt any less that if Frank said the wrong thing, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he could be sent to her in a porcelain vase. And the real him, too. "Not condescending, but they're young," Alice said, and though she was insisting they weren't condescending, she certainly sounded it. They seemed decades younger than her, Marlene and Remus and Lily and James and Sirius and all of them. But really, it was less than ten years. "They still haven't learned how to pick their battles. After she thought that Remus was dead, Marlene was prepared to just run after Lestrange and Tabitha Pryce and make them pay, even if it meant her life. We can't have that. I don't agree with Dumbledore, we have to fight, but sensibly." Sensibly. Fighting wasn't sensible at all, what was Alice saying? "That's just it, though, isn't it? Defining what's sensible." Little of it was, really; Frank didn't need the benefit of hindsight to know that that all this conflict stemmed from differences in blood was the furthest possible thing from sensible. If anything, it was insane. His thoughts ran briefly along lines similar to Alice's: did he really want to do that much fighting (sensible or otherwise) when the lives of both her and the baby were at stake? They'd gone over this before, agreed that getting rid of this madness was bigger than the both of them -- but they were only human. Worrying that Alice would be the one in a vase due to something they did -- or, worse, simply for being a blood-traitor in the eyes of those now in power -- was only too easy. "It was foolish to stop the training," he said in agreement. "We shouldn't think for a second that they've stopped drilling their little sycophants now that they're in the Ministry. Yeah, I think we need to resume that. I also think we need to keep on top of different projects more, and use what relevant information we get from Gairloch to speed things along." And keep everyone alive. "Marlene has been taking on a lot lately," Alice said pensively, thinking of all the posts, all the fliers, all the buttons the girl made. She soldiered on tirelessly, more tirelessly than Alice did, at least. That was the benefit of youth, she supposed. They didn't know when to stop, whether be stop charging or stop hoping. "I should really take the load off of her shoulders, she has enough to deal with." This was said as though Alice had very little to deal with, which, in reality, she did. "Nothing will ever happen if everyone's not more hands-on, more willing to work together. "We've been overlooking what we do have, too," she continued, thinking of what meager advantages the Order seemed to have. "We have Hogwarts, still. The safest place in Britain. We have the listening devices. And we have a lot of people who are very dedicated, and not just because of fear. You can't leave the Death Eaters, after all." That was probably, he realized, their greatest strength: that they stayed on because they believed, and not only because the threat of death hung above them should their views come to change. "We need to remind ourselves of that more often," he agreed. "Counting the negatives is easier, but we have our own advantages and we shouldn't forget that. We can still move in the Muggle world when and if we need to. And Hogwarts, you're right -- we can use it for drills, like I said. Already we're using it as a haven for those who need it." In some ways, counting the cards they had in their hands was not all that encouraging. They seemed so few, and so small, and yet, they were something. All they had, it seemed, really, at the end of things, was dedication. She couldn't even say that they were right, because although she knew that they were, she also knew that the Death Eaters believed just as much as they did that they were in the right. That was, she supposed, a benefit of having grown up in their world. She knew full well that they did not continue out of blind hatred and sadism (well, most of them, anyway), but out of a feverish belief that they were doing the best for themselves and their families. The idea of it was a little sad. "We should bring up training to the Order, and to Dumbledore," she said, with confidence that belied all the insecurities she still felt. "I know that Dumbledore doesn't want to work with violence, not now. But we need to keep on our guard, remember how to defend ourselves. They won't stop coming for us, and when they do, we can't afford to be sitting ducks." Training would, at the very least, keep them all active -- physically and magically; it would also keep them actively focused. It was not that he thought that any one of them would (or even could) forget that they were embroiled in a war that was messy and that they, at this moment, were losing -- but there was a difference between sitting quietly and mulling over such bleak facts, and constantly putting themselves through their paces in artificial scenarios with a mind toward applying whatever they got out of it to whatever real situations they-- Frank stopped the thoughts with a slight shake of his head (everything that'd been said on his first day of Auror training was absolutely clear in his mind, even today) and after a final scratch to Shaggydog's ears, rocked himself from his knees onto his feet. "We'll get that set up, then. Organise the raid, continue our work of the rail-road--" a slight pause as he stumbled over the bizarre term, "keep the radio going. Listen." Now that he was listing things aloud, it sounded as though they were more active than they all thought -- but those goddamned lulls weren't factored in, and they were things that always made Frank feel particularly useless. "Yes," Alice said, sounding resigned. There was still much to be done, and that was both encouraging and... not. Because these days, much seemed to mean so little. "We'll do all of that. I'll write to the Order and see what they think of training later this week. If we're going to be raiding ships, we'll need to be on watch, know defensive spells. It's only best." She leaned over and rubbed Shaggydog's belly (with some difficulty, considering how large her own was becoming). She tried to remember a time when she and Frank had just sat around and talked about normal things, like the latest WWN programming and where they would holiday next year. She wasn't sure they ever had, not really. Then again, she and Frank were not exactly a normal couple, especially not now. They had so very much work to do. |