Harry Potter: "Live Every Day" by mindabbles
Title: Live Every Day
Author: mindabbles
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/characters: Alice/Dorcas, Alice/Frank, Alice/Lily, Remus/Sirius, Lily/James (Alice-centric)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Harry Potter and everything associated is the property of JKR and Scholastic.
Prompt: # 74. coming out is a continual process, and sometimes it just gets *tiring*. Where people find the energy to keep going.
Summary: There are all kinds of families. She knows that better than most. Sometimes it is love that ties them together, and sometimes it's comfort or needing each other. Sometimes it's music and stories shared around a fire.
Warnings: canon character death, infidelity, angst
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to elizassecret for her help with this. Thank you to the mods for running this wonderful fest.
The dream is always the same.
Colours, rich and vibrant, swirl before her eyes. The music is bright and alive and the sensuous dance thrums through her every nerve. She feels her magic like a sixth sense, as acute as her vision and as personal as a touch to her skin. A woman who does not belong here, but who does belong to her, is dancing just out of her reach. The woman's presence brings a flood of warmth to her cheeks and she reaches out, coming away with nothing but three strands of flame-red hair. It's the same colour as her mother's, but it can't be. Her mother no longer belongs here either. The woman turns and dances away before Alice can see her face.
Alice rolls to her side and turns her burning face to press against the cool surface of her pillow. The dream is always the same, and she always wakes from it fidgety and feeling as if she is in the wrong place.
The dream is always the same. It has been since she was fourteen. It probably will be until she dies.
***
"I don't want to go," Alice says, irritated at the high, whining tone that creeps into her voice.
The grey streets of the little wizarding village, with the dark castle looming in the background, make Alice's heart ache for the carnivals and street fairs she is leaving behind, and her mother with them. The people walk about in black cloaks and robes as if they are going to a funeral.
"I want to stay with you," she says. "I want to learn to see. Don't leave me here."
"Alice," her mother says, taking Alice's hands in hers and pressing them against her brightly embroidered blouse. She shakes her head sadly. "It's a different time. Our way of life is dying. I've let it go far too long. You are fourteen and if you don't begin a proper education soon, it will be too late. The headmaster has been kind to give you a place. You can continue to develop the sight, and you will learn so much I cannot teach you."
"But Bata, I don't know how-" Alice stops. The list of the things that will be expected of her now that she does not know how to do is almost too long to contemplate. She doesn't know how to sleep in a bed so high off the ground that she might fall off. She doesn't know how to eat food-that was not cooked over a fire-at a long table. She has no idea how to be in the same place day after day and confine her magic to prescribed lessons. She doesn't think she can talk to these other girls and boys who have rules for everything.
"My little bird, you will be fine and they will be better for your presence. I know," her mother says. She leans to kiss Alice's forehead, hands Alice a sack full school things, and strides down the high street, a faint tinkling from her ankle bells wafting through the air. Serge and the others in the troupe are waiting for her at the edge of the woods. They will fly off to the next town where Muggles need love potions and good luck charms, and to be told that their fortunes will soon be made.
Alice can see that she is off to a dodgy start if she wants to fit in. The other students will arrive on the train escorted by parents, not on brooms with her rag tag version of a family. School will not start for a week.
Alice looks into the bag her mother gave her. It contains: a cauldron; some heavily used textbooks; black robes with multi-coloured birds embroidered on the sleeves; a poke of Droobles Best Blowing Gum; and a note that says, Take what joy you can find in these troubled times, find comfort wherever it comes and live every day, little bird.
She sets off to the woods to find a place to camp until the first of September.
***
Lily's hair glimmers like flame in the low lamplight. Alice wonders if she were to reach out and run her hand through it, if the dreams will stop.
Lily sits, in rapt attention, while Alice tells her of the carnival they worked last spring in Marseilles. She never tires of the stories, and sometimes Alice has to stop to breathe and beg Lily to tell her something of her life. Lily never seems to understand that life in a Muggle town, with the same schedule every day, and the same friends for years, is as exotic to Alice as never having any of that is to Lily.
"We did so well there that Mum took me to Corsica on holiday," Alice says, blushing lightly at the memory. She can see Lily trying to work out how a holiday would be different than every day life had been for Alice.
"It was lovely. We slept on the beach and explored the town, never once worrying about how many people would need their fortunes told that night." Alice pauses, unsure if she wants to share the precious memory that makes her cheeks glow every time she thinks of Corsica. Lily's beautiful face is bright with interest and gives Alice the final push. "And that was when I met someone."
Lily grins, delighted conspirator, and Alice knows that it will feel so good to have a friend in whom to confide.
"Who? Tell me," Lily breathes.
"We met on the beach, of course," Alice says, catching Lily's grin. "Mum had gone to town for the evening with an old friend and we met as I was walking in the waves. We walked and talked for ages, and it was like we'd known each other all our lives. Watching the sun go down, we kissed." Alice closes her eyes for a second, remembering the feel of the soft lips and the cool sea breezes.
"Oh, how romantic," Lily beams. "What was his name?"
And how is it possible to feel so close to someone and yet be so out of sync?
"Um, her name is Marielle," Alice says, plucking at a loose thread in her robes.
"You kissed a girl?" Lily asks, and Alice who has studied Lily's expressions, finds surprise but not judgement.
"Yes," Alice says. But that doesn't say it. It isn't something to be taken lightly. "I was in love with her."
"Oh," Lily says. "I understand, but you probably should be careful who you tell."
"I am."
Lily smiles, happy to be trusted. Alice knows her well enough by now to read her expressions. She can see her friend cataloguing this piece of information along with all the other bits of Alice's strange and wonderful former life. It goes on the shelf next to bathing in a stream with the others in the group, eating with her fingers, and never going to a school with desks.
"It was part of that life," Lily says, the information in its place.
If that's what Lily needs to make the most important moment of Alice's life a romantic adventure, a part of the whole exotic picture, so be it. In a way it was true. The rules that boys must be one way and girls another had been more fluid in that life. It wasn't everyone, but it was certainly not uncommon for the adults in the troupe to trade lovers as things changed, and gender was not the deciding factor. Alice had always known that she was attracted to girls as well as boys. And while it had always seemed like an option, she had never told anyone then, either.
"Yes."
***
The language of friends, girls her own age, talking late into the night is one of the things Alice has learned these two years. The troupe had been family, adults and children of all ages. Around the fire it had been music and singing, talk of the next town, and staying away from the police.
Here they sit in a circle as well. The fire is a candle and the wine is Butterbeer. The song is their lyrical voices, soft in the dark, talking of hopes and love and what it means to be alive.
Jeanna is telling the tale of her first kiss, romantic, under the stars, with a boy from her village. Deirdre has already told, pain fluttering across her face as she said the boy she'd fancied for a year finally took notice. But then he had groped her-and she stopped, leaving the rest hanging in the air.
Alice wonders how the girls can think this will only be a light hearted game as she watches the circle move around to her. But then, she supposes, she's heard more of the pains of first loves than the average girl, sitting first under the flowered cloth on the table that held her mother's crystal ball, and then at her side, learning and watching the swirling mists.
"What about you Alice?" Jeanna asks, lips still curved and stars in her eyes, almost as if her curly-haired boy had just kissed her. "Your first real kiss with someone you fancied."
Alice listens to her heart beat and remembers how the sea breezes cooled Marielle's skin.
"You don't have to," Lily says. "No one does, if she doesn't want to say."
"No, we didn't set any rules," Alice says, smiling at Deirdre.
The heaviness in the air that crept in when Deirdre spoke settles in like a fog as Alice's silence stretches out. And she can't bear for them to think it was something awful. She can't do that to Marielle, even if she will probably never see her again.
Lily leans forward just enough to catch Alice's eye. "The one rule should be that nothing we say here is repeated and nothing we say here makes us stop being friends."
Alice takes a breath.
***
"Alice," Lily says. "You have to get out of bed."
Alice groans and wraps her pillow around her head. She tries to force herself back into sleep where she can pretend that Tuesday never happened.
"Do not," she grunts in to the mattress.
"It has been three days," Lily scolds. "It is not going to get better by falling behind in lessons."
No. No it won't. But if she never, ever gets out of bed, lessons will eventually cease to matter.
The pillow is cruelly yanked off of Alice's head and unreasonable amounts of light assail her eyes. She starts to snap at Lily, but then she sees her friend's concerned face.
"Ellie Wood is an idiot," Lily says firmly. "She should be chuffed someone like you would even look at her and there was no call to do what she did."
Alice had been an idiot. She had made assumptions about Ellie that she would have taken anyone else's head off for making. She hadn't asked, she had just acted and kissed her after Quidditch practice. Ellie had gone off in what Marielle had once referred to as "straight-girl-panic," and told the entire team that Alice had jumped her.
It had caused McGonagall to have a talk with Alice, during which there was a great deal of throat-clearing and Alice left with the distinct impression that McGonagall had more than a passing knowledge of how Alice felt.
Lily had been her stalwart support, taking on anyone who said anything derogatory about Alice. And now, looking at her friend's concerned eyes, she is not sure she can find the words to tell her what it means to her.
***
Life has changed so quickly in the last three months that Alice wakes some mornings uncertain if this is real.
Worries about marks, and the power of the Ellie Woods of the world to hurt her, seem like the concerns of some distant childhood memory. It has all been replaced by a fierce desire to impress that nutter Moody and to stop an evil that is deeper than any she had ever imagined.
Order meetings have replaced the late-night talks in the dormitory and Alice finds herself once again with friends who make her laugh and would do anything for her, but where she always feels just this side of the periphery-still the girl who arrived a week early for school in an odd fashion and with a poke of blowing gum in her sack.
Alice is early. She is waiting for Lily, as she always does. But she is also waiting for Dorcas, something new.
Dorcas fairly bounces into the room, rubbing her hand through her newly shorn hair. Muggle jeans hug her hips, the flared legs ending in heavy boots. The boyish hair and clothes, layered over the pretty face and womanly curves, make Alice's mouth water.
Sirius strides over to her and slings an arm around Dorcas' shoulder. "Decided to go for it, eh?" he asks. Dorcas smiles and he leans close and whispers, "You look smashing."
Dorcas throws back her head and laughs, deep and throaty. Remus is there in a moment, leaning possessively against Sirius. The three of them speak in conspiratorial, hushed tones, moving to the table as others begin to trickle in to the meeting.
Dorcas sits next to Alice and, laughing, continues the conversation that Alice didn't hear.
"Don't get me wrong. You boys are lovely, only it's a bit tiresome being the only woman around here who's not straight."
"I'm not straight, actually," Alice says.
The three look at her with the same surprise she feels and Dorcas gives her a puzzled little smile that makes Alice's fingers tingle.
Frank, lovely sweet Frank, comes in and sits on Alice's other side, with a hopeful look and a leaned-in hello.
Dumbledore calls them to order.
***
Dorcas' hands are sure and strong on her skin. Her lips follow the trails blazed by her fingers, down Alice's throat, across her chest. Warm lips linger at a nipple, gently pulling until Alice arches up, moaning for more. Alice's fingers clench the sheets while Dorcas' move across her belly, wickedly tickling between legs.
"Oh, you're so wet," Dorcas moans as she slips a finger into Alice's folds.
Dorcas moves over her and her soft breasts press into Alice. She rocks her hips onto Dorcas' fingers, stroking faster until pleasure spreads like crimson through her body.
Gentle hands push the hair off Alice’s forehead. "I've fancied you. I never thought I had a chance. I thought you were...I thought you and Frank..."
Alice sits up and pushes Dorcas back on the bed. She kisses her way down the curve of her belly, and across her thighs, nudging them apart with her hands and her lips. Dorcas lets out a strangled moan at the first touch of Alice's tongue.
***
The next morning, Dorcas disappears. Not in the way that you just didn't have proof that the person was dead yet, but in on-duty-for-the-Order way. At least that's what Alice hopes-Dorcas brings colour to this grey time.
***
The rolls of parchment stacked on her desk threaten to topple over. The number of cases has doubled, and along with them, the reports.
"Fuck," she sighs as she brushes her hair off her forehead, smearing her face with ink. She likes the new hair cut. The closely cropped curls change the figure she cuts so that from a distance, you can't be certain if she is a woman or a man. Ironic then, that it takes more care and fussing than long hair that could be pulled back in a bunch ever did.
"Longbottom taking you to the thing tonight?" Wayne asks her, leaning against her desk, irritatingly close to the precarious stack.
"The thing?" she asks, barely suppressing the irritation in her voice.
"The dinner. At the Leaky," he says.
In a fit of uncharacteristic cheer, Moody had insisted they all attend a dinner to welcome the new Auror trainees.
"I think I can manage getting there on my own, thanks." Alice rolls her eyes and the man walks away, muttering bitch under his breath.
She wishes Dorcas were still around. It is a small village, this community of wizards, and when people thought she was seeing a woman people like Wayne didn't bother her with their oily-smile questions.
Who she is, where she fits in this world, shifts depending upon whom people think she's fucking. One rumoured date with a man, and she's straight and game for the attention of Wayne and his ilk.
***
Frank breathes softly beside her, his face a study in relaxation. She trails her hand along the soft skin of his upper arm.
Take what joy you can find in these troubled times, find comfort wherever it comes and live every day, little bird.
Frank is solid and comforting and here.
This has to have been the worst day in her adult life. The scene they had come upon in Cheltenham was grisly beyond belief. The Death Eaters were no longer just killing.
She and Frank and James and Lily hadn't known what they would find. They still didn't know what Voldemort was looking for in the home of the used book dealer, but whatever it had been, they had arrived in time to thwart him. Lily and James and Frank had held Voldemort off while she had looked for anyone left alive. She found a man, dead in front of a wall safe, in a misguided, middleclass act of desperation-saving his few valuable things when he should have been worrying about his life.
Alice clutched the girl, the only apparent survivor, and turned to Apparate just as she heard the eerie howl of rage and saw the hood slip from his face. She would remember that face, a parody of a handsome man-like the statues she had seen the one time she had visited Madame Tussaud's as a child.
Red had always been a colour of celebration, of the carnival. No more. And when Frank offered to see her home, she pushed him into an alley and squeezed her eyes shut as she kissed him until the red beat hot in her veins and she said, "No, I'll see you home.
She likes Frank. He is a good man. She likes him and as she sat astride his narrow hips, moving her body so that he rocked inside her, she could erase for a moment the horrors that people would visit upon each other. Find comfort wherever it is.
But she was born to a seer and she has more of her mother in her than anyone knew, and she knows this was not just any night.
***
The close and smoky air in the Leaky Cauldron is doing nothing for Alice's nausea. Neither is Dorcas' sudden return from the dead-for Alice had begun to believe that Dorcas was dead.
"If every one of us left the Order, its strength would be cut by a third," Sirius says, looking about the table and doing a head count. He looks at Alice and does a half-nod. "Dumbledore would listen. He'd have to."
"Sirius-" Remus says, frowning.
"Moony," Sirius interrupts. "I'm not saying we all should. But think about it. You, me, Dorcas, Fabian, Emmeline, Al-"
"It's not the right time," James says firmly. "You know I agree with you, but we're talking life and death every day now."
Sirius takes an irritated swig off his pint. The man can say more without words than most people manage in an hour of talking.
"When's the right time, James?" Dorcas snaps back. "If our rights aren't even in the initial discussion of the problem how are they going to suddenly be in the solution?"
"We put them in when the discussions are to be had," Remus says. "I agree with James. The thing now is to defeat Voldemort. We have a part in the victory. We'll have a part in the rebuilding."
"You've been awfully quiet," Sirius says, looking right at Alice.
"I-" Alice begins. Remus looks away. Dorcas bites her lip and looks like she wants to run. "Of course," she continues. "Of course I want our full equality in the new society. But-"
"But it's not really your fight anymore, is it?" Dorcas spits out, with a hard voice Alice has never heard from her.
She can't breathe.
"That's not fair, Dorcas," Remus says softly, the prince of fighting other people's fights, of waiting for his turn.
Alice gets the sense that Lily and James and Sirius are holding their breath, too. Perhaps they've all been waiting for this.
"What's not fair is that after hardly any time together, they are fucking legitimate; that she can trade the last name of a man she hates for the one who knocked her up in less time than you can let a flat; that she and that baby will have all the protections of being a perfect pureblood family."
Dorcas' face is red as she stops for a breath. A wave of nausea threatens to overcome Alice.
"How long have you two been together?" Dorcas demands, gesturing at Remus and Sirius. They're sitting next to each other, as they always do, and Alice knows that under the table, their fingers are laced together. "It's easy to always say that now is not the right time when you're straight. It's easy to say be patient when it's not you."
"I'm not straight." Alice says. Her voice sounds smaller than she meant. Each word Dorcas has spoken has landed squarely in her chest and dampened her voice as it made its way up.
"Lay off her, eh?" Lily says quietly, but with an authority that bears no questions.
"I'm going to talk to Dumbledore," Sirius says. His voice is calm and holds no accusation. "Anyone can join me. It's just a talk. That can't be so dangerous."
Alice catches Dorcas' eye and mouths, "I'm sorry."
***
Frank’s hands soothe away the pain in her shoulders and the crick in her neck. Another long day, first at the Ministry, and then the Order. But they are all long days now.
"You should stop this soon," he says, voice full of concern. "Take leave."
"I'm pregnant, I'm not ill," she says. Her eyes drift shut as he rubs his fingers over her temples.
"Quite a meeting, eh?" he asks, tentatively, giving her the chance to back out of talking about it.
"Dorcas is still angry with me," Alice says. She opens her eyes. When she closes them, all she can see are the hurt and accusing looks as Dumbledore announced that, while many issues were important and would definitely be a part of the rebuilding, any discussions that distracted from strategy and ultimately finishing Voldemort and the Death Eaters could not take place now. "She thinks that if I had stood with them, that would have been enough to convince Dumbledore to talk about gay and lesbian rights now."
"What does it matter what she thinks?" he asks, his calm voice beginning to hold the edge of irritation. When she doesn't respond, his hands still on her shoulders.
"No, I think she's right and I no longer know why I didn't."
"She and Sirius wanted all the gays and lesbians to walk out," he says. He takes his hands off her shoulders. "You're not a lesbian."
"No," she says. "I'm bisexual. Because I'm with you now, doesn't make me straight, Frank. I'm one of them. And that had nothing to do with why I didn't. It was about strategy. I agreed with Dumbledore."
"So, you did it because it is not as important as defeating Voldemort," he says, as if that settles the matter.
"When I was fourteen, my mother told me that I was coming to Hogwarts," she says. "I learned how to live in that world. I loved Hogwarts. That didn't make me any less the daughter of a carnival fortune-teller."
***
When Dorcas is killed, Alice has many thoughts, but cannot think how to feel. This is the second time she has been in a room with Voldemort and made it out alive where others didn't. She is pleased that Dorcas was killed by Voldemort himself, and not some half-arsed lieutenant. Dorcas would have appreciated the grandeur of that.
Alice can't go home.
Lily opens the door. The redness in her eyes makes them even more vivid green. She pulls Alice in and locks the door.
Lily's arms wrap, strong and solid, around her. Alice closes her eyes when the flame-red hair falls in front of her face. She doesn't want to think of her mother right now.
She can feel the tears on Lily's soft cheeks against her own and she kisses them away, salty and warm on her lips. She pulls back to look and Lily closes her eyes, like extinguishing a candle, and kisses her, licking their tears from Alice's lips.
Lily's breasts are full and firm against her own, their newly-rounded stomachs press against each other.
"Lily," she says, trailing fingers along the curve of Lily's breast.
"Shh," Lily says, her eyes still closed.
"Lily," Alice says again. She won't have Lily thinking she's a stand-in for Dorcas. "I've loved you for so long."
"I love you, too," Lily says. But Alice knows they don't mean the same thing and this is just for now.
Joy in these troubled times.
"Let me make you forget," Alice says, smoothing her hand over the swell of Lily's arse and leaning to kiss her way down her neck.
Lily sighs like music when Alice licks her just there and presses her fingers inside her.
After, when they lie tangled together on the settee, Alice gentles her hand through Lily's hair. A few strands cling to her fingers, bright against her pale skin.
"You won't tell James," Alice says. She knows it's true before Lily responds.
Lily shakes her head and bites at her kiss-stung lips.
"I have to tell Frank," Alice says.
Lily looks alarmed. She opens her mouth and then closes it without saying anything.
"I don't have to tell him about this. I have to talk with him about me," Alice says. "I'm sorry I came here, Lily. You don't need this."
"Don't be sorry," Lily says. "Where else were you going to go?"
"Oh," Alice says. She doesn't expect Lily to say she was glad they'd made love, to have some great epiphany.
"I didn't mean that," Lily says, taking Alice's hand. "I don't know-"
"This was no more than it was," Alice says, squeezing Lily's hand. She is almost surprised to find that she means it. "You're my best friend. Comfort where we find it."
Lily straightens her robe back down over her hips and legs and hugs her-sister of her heart, first real friend.
***
Alice wakes alone in her and Frank's bed. She wonders if Frank, in his childhood bedroom, is sleeping any better then she is. She hopes he is.
Together they had put extra protections around the house. "I need to think about this," he said, when they had finished.
"I know we'll be all right," she had said. "Whatever we decide." He had kissed her cheek before he left.
She is more certain than she's been in ages that they will come to something that will be right for them all, that they will be a family no matter what. There are all kinds of families. She knows that better than most. Sometimes it is love that ties them together, and sometimes it's comfort or needing each other. Sometimes it's music and stories shared around a fire.
Alice feels for her wand, the wood cool and comforting under her fingers. She smoothes one hand over her stomach, searching for movement, as she lets her eyes drift shut.
Colours, rich and vibrant, swirl before her eyes. The music is bright and alive and the sensuous dance thrums through her every nerve. She feels her magic like a sixth sense, as acute as her vision, as personal as a touch to her skin. A woman who belongs, belongs with her, belongs here, is dancing just out of her reach. The woman's presence makes her heart swell and she reaches out, coming away with three strands of dark auburn hair, bright against her pale skin. It's almost the same colour as her mother's, as Lily's, but with a deeper, richer tone. The woman turns, still dancing. Alice reaches out to take her own hand.
Author: mindabbles
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/characters: Alice/Dorcas, Alice/Frank, Alice/Lily, Remus/Sirius, Lily/James (Alice-centric)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Harry Potter and everything associated is the property of JKR and Scholastic.
Prompt: # 74. coming out is a continual process, and sometimes it just gets *tiring*. Where people find the energy to keep going.
Summary: There are all kinds of families. She knows that better than most. Sometimes it is love that ties them together, and sometimes it's comfort or needing each other. Sometimes it's music and stories shared around a fire.
Warnings: canon character death, infidelity, angst
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to elizassecret for her help with this. Thank you to the mods for running this wonderful fest.
The dream is always the same.
Colours, rich and vibrant, swirl before her eyes. The music is bright and alive and the sensuous dance thrums through her every nerve. She feels her magic like a sixth sense, as acute as her vision and as personal as a touch to her skin. A woman who does not belong here, but who does belong to her, is dancing just out of her reach. The woman's presence brings a flood of warmth to her cheeks and she reaches out, coming away with nothing but three strands of flame-red hair. It's the same colour as her mother's, but it can't be. Her mother no longer belongs here either. The woman turns and dances away before Alice can see her face.
Alice rolls to her side and turns her burning face to press against the cool surface of her pillow. The dream is always the same, and she always wakes from it fidgety and feeling as if she is in the wrong place.
The dream is always the same. It has been since she was fourteen. It probably will be until she dies.
***
"I don't want to go," Alice says, irritated at the high, whining tone that creeps into her voice.
The grey streets of the little wizarding village, with the dark castle looming in the background, make Alice's heart ache for the carnivals and street fairs she is leaving behind, and her mother with them. The people walk about in black cloaks and robes as if they are going to a funeral.
"I want to stay with you," she says. "I want to learn to see. Don't leave me here."
"Alice," her mother says, taking Alice's hands in hers and pressing them against her brightly embroidered blouse. She shakes her head sadly. "It's a different time. Our way of life is dying. I've let it go far too long. You are fourteen and if you don't begin a proper education soon, it will be too late. The headmaster has been kind to give you a place. You can continue to develop the sight, and you will learn so much I cannot teach you."
"But Bata, I don't know how-" Alice stops. The list of the things that will be expected of her now that she does not know how to do is almost too long to contemplate. She doesn't know how to sleep in a bed so high off the ground that she might fall off. She doesn't know how to eat food-that was not cooked over a fire-at a long table. She has no idea how to be in the same place day after day and confine her magic to prescribed lessons. She doesn't think she can talk to these other girls and boys who have rules for everything.
"My little bird, you will be fine and they will be better for your presence. I know," her mother says. She leans to kiss Alice's forehead, hands Alice a sack full school things, and strides down the high street, a faint tinkling from her ankle bells wafting through the air. Serge and the others in the troupe are waiting for her at the edge of the woods. They will fly off to the next town where Muggles need love potions and good luck charms, and to be told that their fortunes will soon be made.
Alice can see that she is off to a dodgy start if she wants to fit in. The other students will arrive on the train escorted by parents, not on brooms with her rag tag version of a family. School will not start for a week.
Alice looks into the bag her mother gave her. It contains: a cauldron; some heavily used textbooks; black robes with multi-coloured birds embroidered on the sleeves; a poke of Droobles Best Blowing Gum; and a note that says, Take what joy you can find in these troubled times, find comfort wherever it comes and live every day, little bird.
She sets off to the woods to find a place to camp until the first of September.
***
Lily's hair glimmers like flame in the low lamplight. Alice wonders if she were to reach out and run her hand through it, if the dreams will stop.
Lily sits, in rapt attention, while Alice tells her of the carnival they worked last spring in Marseilles. She never tires of the stories, and sometimes Alice has to stop to breathe and beg Lily to tell her something of her life. Lily never seems to understand that life in a Muggle town, with the same schedule every day, and the same friends for years, is as exotic to Alice as never having any of that is to Lily.
"We did so well there that Mum took me to Corsica on holiday," Alice says, blushing lightly at the memory. She can see Lily trying to work out how a holiday would be different than every day life had been for Alice.
"It was lovely. We slept on the beach and explored the town, never once worrying about how many people would need their fortunes told that night." Alice pauses, unsure if she wants to share the precious memory that makes her cheeks glow every time she thinks of Corsica. Lily's beautiful face is bright with interest and gives Alice the final push. "And that was when I met someone."
Lily grins, delighted conspirator, and Alice knows that it will feel so good to have a friend in whom to confide.
"Who? Tell me," Lily breathes.
"We met on the beach, of course," Alice says, catching Lily's grin. "Mum had gone to town for the evening with an old friend and we met as I was walking in the waves. We walked and talked for ages, and it was like we'd known each other all our lives. Watching the sun go down, we kissed." Alice closes her eyes for a second, remembering the feel of the soft lips and the cool sea breezes.
"Oh, how romantic," Lily beams. "What was his name?"
And how is it possible to feel so close to someone and yet be so out of sync?
"Um, her name is Marielle," Alice says, plucking at a loose thread in her robes.
"You kissed a girl?" Lily asks, and Alice who has studied Lily's expressions, finds surprise but not judgement.
"Yes," Alice says. But that doesn't say it. It isn't something to be taken lightly. "I was in love with her."
"Oh," Lily says. "I understand, but you probably should be careful who you tell."
"I am."
Lily smiles, happy to be trusted. Alice knows her well enough by now to read her expressions. She can see her friend cataloguing this piece of information along with all the other bits of Alice's strange and wonderful former life. It goes on the shelf next to bathing in a stream with the others in the group, eating with her fingers, and never going to a school with desks.
"It was part of that life," Lily says, the information in its place.
If that's what Lily needs to make the most important moment of Alice's life a romantic adventure, a part of the whole exotic picture, so be it. In a way it was true. The rules that boys must be one way and girls another had been more fluid in that life. It wasn't everyone, but it was certainly not uncommon for the adults in the troupe to trade lovers as things changed, and gender was not the deciding factor. Alice had always known that she was attracted to girls as well as boys. And while it had always seemed like an option, she had never told anyone then, either.
"Yes."
***
The language of friends, girls her own age, talking late into the night is one of the things Alice has learned these two years. The troupe had been family, adults and children of all ages. Around the fire it had been music and singing, talk of the next town, and staying away from the police.
Here they sit in a circle as well. The fire is a candle and the wine is Butterbeer. The song is their lyrical voices, soft in the dark, talking of hopes and love and what it means to be alive.
Jeanna is telling the tale of her first kiss, romantic, under the stars, with a boy from her village. Deirdre has already told, pain fluttering across her face as she said the boy she'd fancied for a year finally took notice. But then he had groped her-and she stopped, leaving the rest hanging in the air.
Alice wonders how the girls can think this will only be a light hearted game as she watches the circle move around to her. But then, she supposes, she's heard more of the pains of first loves than the average girl, sitting first under the flowered cloth on the table that held her mother's crystal ball, and then at her side, learning and watching the swirling mists.
"What about you Alice?" Jeanna asks, lips still curved and stars in her eyes, almost as if her curly-haired boy had just kissed her. "Your first real kiss with someone you fancied."
Alice listens to her heart beat and remembers how the sea breezes cooled Marielle's skin.
"You don't have to," Lily says. "No one does, if she doesn't want to say."
"No, we didn't set any rules," Alice says, smiling at Deirdre.
The heaviness in the air that crept in when Deirdre spoke settles in like a fog as Alice's silence stretches out. And she can't bear for them to think it was something awful. She can't do that to Marielle, even if she will probably never see her again.
Lily leans forward just enough to catch Alice's eye. "The one rule should be that nothing we say here is repeated and nothing we say here makes us stop being friends."
Alice takes a breath.
***
"Alice," Lily says. "You have to get out of bed."
Alice groans and wraps her pillow around her head. She tries to force herself back into sleep where she can pretend that Tuesday never happened.
"Do not," she grunts in to the mattress.
"It has been three days," Lily scolds. "It is not going to get better by falling behind in lessons."
No. No it won't. But if she never, ever gets out of bed, lessons will eventually cease to matter.
The pillow is cruelly yanked off of Alice's head and unreasonable amounts of light assail her eyes. She starts to snap at Lily, but then she sees her friend's concerned face.
"Ellie Wood is an idiot," Lily says firmly. "She should be chuffed someone like you would even look at her and there was no call to do what she did."
Alice had been an idiot. She had made assumptions about Ellie that she would have taken anyone else's head off for making. She hadn't asked, she had just acted and kissed her after Quidditch practice. Ellie had gone off in what Marielle had once referred to as "straight-girl-panic," and told the entire team that Alice had jumped her.
It had caused McGonagall to have a talk with Alice, during which there was a great deal of throat-clearing and Alice left with the distinct impression that McGonagall had more than a passing knowledge of how Alice felt.
Lily had been her stalwart support, taking on anyone who said anything derogatory about Alice. And now, looking at her friend's concerned eyes, she is not sure she can find the words to tell her what it means to her.
***
Life has changed so quickly in the last three months that Alice wakes some mornings uncertain if this is real.
Worries about marks, and the power of the Ellie Woods of the world to hurt her, seem like the concerns of some distant childhood memory. It has all been replaced by a fierce desire to impress that nutter Moody and to stop an evil that is deeper than any she had ever imagined.
Order meetings have replaced the late-night talks in the dormitory and Alice finds herself once again with friends who make her laugh and would do anything for her, but where she always feels just this side of the periphery-still the girl who arrived a week early for school in an odd fashion and with a poke of blowing gum in her sack.
Alice is early. She is waiting for Lily, as she always does. But she is also waiting for Dorcas, something new.
Dorcas fairly bounces into the room, rubbing her hand through her newly shorn hair. Muggle jeans hug her hips, the flared legs ending in heavy boots. The boyish hair and clothes, layered over the pretty face and womanly curves, make Alice's mouth water.
Sirius strides over to her and slings an arm around Dorcas' shoulder. "Decided to go for it, eh?" he asks. Dorcas smiles and he leans close and whispers, "You look smashing."
Dorcas throws back her head and laughs, deep and throaty. Remus is there in a moment, leaning possessively against Sirius. The three of them speak in conspiratorial, hushed tones, moving to the table as others begin to trickle in to the meeting.
Dorcas sits next to Alice and, laughing, continues the conversation that Alice didn't hear.
"Don't get me wrong. You boys are lovely, only it's a bit tiresome being the only woman around here who's not straight."
"I'm not straight, actually," Alice says.
The three look at her with the same surprise she feels and Dorcas gives her a puzzled little smile that makes Alice's fingers tingle.
Frank, lovely sweet Frank, comes in and sits on Alice's other side, with a hopeful look and a leaned-in hello.
Dumbledore calls them to order.
***
Dorcas' hands are sure and strong on her skin. Her lips follow the trails blazed by her fingers, down Alice's throat, across her chest. Warm lips linger at a nipple, gently pulling until Alice arches up, moaning for more. Alice's fingers clench the sheets while Dorcas' move across her belly, wickedly tickling between legs.
"Oh, you're so wet," Dorcas moans as she slips a finger into Alice's folds.
Dorcas moves over her and her soft breasts press into Alice. She rocks her hips onto Dorcas' fingers, stroking faster until pleasure spreads like crimson through her body.
Gentle hands push the hair off Alice’s forehead. "I've fancied you. I never thought I had a chance. I thought you were...I thought you and Frank..."
Alice sits up and pushes Dorcas back on the bed. She kisses her way down the curve of her belly, and across her thighs, nudging them apart with her hands and her lips. Dorcas lets out a strangled moan at the first touch of Alice's tongue.
***
The next morning, Dorcas disappears. Not in the way that you just didn't have proof that the person was dead yet, but in on-duty-for-the-Order way. At least that's what Alice hopes-Dorcas brings colour to this grey time.
***
The rolls of parchment stacked on her desk threaten to topple over. The number of cases has doubled, and along with them, the reports.
"Fuck," she sighs as she brushes her hair off her forehead, smearing her face with ink. She likes the new hair cut. The closely cropped curls change the figure she cuts so that from a distance, you can't be certain if she is a woman or a man. Ironic then, that it takes more care and fussing than long hair that could be pulled back in a bunch ever did.
"Longbottom taking you to the thing tonight?" Wayne asks her, leaning against her desk, irritatingly close to the precarious stack.
"The thing?" she asks, barely suppressing the irritation in her voice.
"The dinner. At the Leaky," he says.
In a fit of uncharacteristic cheer, Moody had insisted they all attend a dinner to welcome the new Auror trainees.
"I think I can manage getting there on my own, thanks." Alice rolls her eyes and the man walks away, muttering bitch under his breath.
She wishes Dorcas were still around. It is a small village, this community of wizards, and when people thought she was seeing a woman people like Wayne didn't bother her with their oily-smile questions.
Who she is, where she fits in this world, shifts depending upon whom people think she's fucking. One rumoured date with a man, and she's straight and game for the attention of Wayne and his ilk.
***
Frank breathes softly beside her, his face a study in relaxation. She trails her hand along the soft skin of his upper arm.
Take what joy you can find in these troubled times, find comfort wherever it comes and live every day, little bird.
Frank is solid and comforting and here.
This has to have been the worst day in her adult life. The scene they had come upon in Cheltenham was grisly beyond belief. The Death Eaters were no longer just killing.
She and Frank and James and Lily hadn't known what they would find. They still didn't know what Voldemort was looking for in the home of the used book dealer, but whatever it had been, they had arrived in time to thwart him. Lily and James and Frank had held Voldemort off while she had looked for anyone left alive. She found a man, dead in front of a wall safe, in a misguided, middleclass act of desperation-saving his few valuable things when he should have been worrying about his life.
Alice clutched the girl, the only apparent survivor, and turned to Apparate just as she heard the eerie howl of rage and saw the hood slip from his face. She would remember that face, a parody of a handsome man-like the statues she had seen the one time she had visited Madame Tussaud's as a child.
Red had always been a colour of celebration, of the carnival. No more. And when Frank offered to see her home, she pushed him into an alley and squeezed her eyes shut as she kissed him until the red beat hot in her veins and she said, "No, I'll see you home.
She likes Frank. He is a good man. She likes him and as she sat astride his narrow hips, moving her body so that he rocked inside her, she could erase for a moment the horrors that people would visit upon each other. Find comfort wherever it is.
But she was born to a seer and she has more of her mother in her than anyone knew, and she knows this was not just any night.
***
The close and smoky air in the Leaky Cauldron is doing nothing for Alice's nausea. Neither is Dorcas' sudden return from the dead-for Alice had begun to believe that Dorcas was dead.
"If every one of us left the Order, its strength would be cut by a third," Sirius says, looking about the table and doing a head count. He looks at Alice and does a half-nod. "Dumbledore would listen. He'd have to."
"Sirius-" Remus says, frowning.
"Moony," Sirius interrupts. "I'm not saying we all should. But think about it. You, me, Dorcas, Fabian, Emmeline, Al-"
"It's not the right time," James says firmly. "You know I agree with you, but we're talking life and death every day now."
Sirius takes an irritated swig off his pint. The man can say more without words than most people manage in an hour of talking.
"When's the right time, James?" Dorcas snaps back. "If our rights aren't even in the initial discussion of the problem how are they going to suddenly be in the solution?"
"We put them in when the discussions are to be had," Remus says. "I agree with James. The thing now is to defeat Voldemort. We have a part in the victory. We'll have a part in the rebuilding."
"You've been awfully quiet," Sirius says, looking right at Alice.
"I-" Alice begins. Remus looks away. Dorcas bites her lip and looks like she wants to run. "Of course," she continues. "Of course I want our full equality in the new society. But-"
"But it's not really your fight anymore, is it?" Dorcas spits out, with a hard voice Alice has never heard from her.
She can't breathe.
"That's not fair, Dorcas," Remus says softly, the prince of fighting other people's fights, of waiting for his turn.
Alice gets the sense that Lily and James and Sirius are holding their breath, too. Perhaps they've all been waiting for this.
"What's not fair is that after hardly any time together, they are fucking legitimate; that she can trade the last name of a man she hates for the one who knocked her up in less time than you can let a flat; that she and that baby will have all the protections of being a perfect pureblood family."
Dorcas' face is red as she stops for a breath. A wave of nausea threatens to overcome Alice.
"How long have you two been together?" Dorcas demands, gesturing at Remus and Sirius. They're sitting next to each other, as they always do, and Alice knows that under the table, their fingers are laced together. "It's easy to always say that now is not the right time when you're straight. It's easy to say be patient when it's not you."
"I'm not straight." Alice says. Her voice sounds smaller than she meant. Each word Dorcas has spoken has landed squarely in her chest and dampened her voice as it made its way up.
"Lay off her, eh?" Lily says quietly, but with an authority that bears no questions.
"I'm going to talk to Dumbledore," Sirius says. His voice is calm and holds no accusation. "Anyone can join me. It's just a talk. That can't be so dangerous."
Alice catches Dorcas' eye and mouths, "I'm sorry."
***
Frank’s hands soothe away the pain in her shoulders and the crick in her neck. Another long day, first at the Ministry, and then the Order. But they are all long days now.
"You should stop this soon," he says, voice full of concern. "Take leave."
"I'm pregnant, I'm not ill," she says. Her eyes drift shut as he rubs his fingers over her temples.
"Quite a meeting, eh?" he asks, tentatively, giving her the chance to back out of talking about it.
"Dorcas is still angry with me," Alice says. She opens her eyes. When she closes them, all she can see are the hurt and accusing looks as Dumbledore announced that, while many issues were important and would definitely be a part of the rebuilding, any discussions that distracted from strategy and ultimately finishing Voldemort and the Death Eaters could not take place now. "She thinks that if I had stood with them, that would have been enough to convince Dumbledore to talk about gay and lesbian rights now."
"What does it matter what she thinks?" he asks, his calm voice beginning to hold the edge of irritation. When she doesn't respond, his hands still on her shoulders.
"No, I think she's right and I no longer know why I didn't."
"She and Sirius wanted all the gays and lesbians to walk out," he says. He takes his hands off her shoulders. "You're not a lesbian."
"No," she says. "I'm bisexual. Because I'm with you now, doesn't make me straight, Frank. I'm one of them. And that had nothing to do with why I didn't. It was about strategy. I agreed with Dumbledore."
"So, you did it because it is not as important as defeating Voldemort," he says, as if that settles the matter.
"When I was fourteen, my mother told me that I was coming to Hogwarts," she says. "I learned how to live in that world. I loved Hogwarts. That didn't make me any less the daughter of a carnival fortune-teller."
***
When Dorcas is killed, Alice has many thoughts, but cannot think how to feel. This is the second time she has been in a room with Voldemort and made it out alive where others didn't. She is pleased that Dorcas was killed by Voldemort himself, and not some half-arsed lieutenant. Dorcas would have appreciated the grandeur of that.
Alice can't go home.
Lily opens the door. The redness in her eyes makes them even more vivid green. She pulls Alice in and locks the door.
Lily's arms wrap, strong and solid, around her. Alice closes her eyes when the flame-red hair falls in front of her face. She doesn't want to think of her mother right now.
She can feel the tears on Lily's soft cheeks against her own and she kisses them away, salty and warm on her lips. She pulls back to look and Lily closes her eyes, like extinguishing a candle, and kisses her, licking their tears from Alice's lips.
Lily's breasts are full and firm against her own, their newly-rounded stomachs press against each other.
"Lily," she says, trailing fingers along the curve of Lily's breast.
"Shh," Lily says, her eyes still closed.
"Lily," Alice says again. She won't have Lily thinking she's a stand-in for Dorcas. "I've loved you for so long."
"I love you, too," Lily says. But Alice knows they don't mean the same thing and this is just for now.
Joy in these troubled times.
"Let me make you forget," Alice says, smoothing her hand over the swell of Lily's arse and leaning to kiss her way down her neck.
Lily sighs like music when Alice licks her just there and presses her fingers inside her.
After, when they lie tangled together on the settee, Alice gentles her hand through Lily's hair. A few strands cling to her fingers, bright against her pale skin.
"You won't tell James," Alice says. She knows it's true before Lily responds.
Lily shakes her head and bites at her kiss-stung lips.
"I have to tell Frank," Alice says.
Lily looks alarmed. She opens her mouth and then closes it without saying anything.
"I don't have to tell him about this. I have to talk with him about me," Alice says. "I'm sorry I came here, Lily. You don't need this."
"Don't be sorry," Lily says. "Where else were you going to go?"
"Oh," Alice says. She doesn't expect Lily to say she was glad they'd made love, to have some great epiphany.
"I didn't mean that," Lily says, taking Alice's hand. "I don't know-"
"This was no more than it was," Alice says, squeezing Lily's hand. She is almost surprised to find that she means it. "You're my best friend. Comfort where we find it."
Lily straightens her robe back down over her hips and legs and hugs her-sister of her heart, first real friend.
***
Alice wakes alone in her and Frank's bed. She wonders if Frank, in his childhood bedroom, is sleeping any better then she is. She hopes he is.
Together they had put extra protections around the house. "I need to think about this," he said, when they had finished.
"I know we'll be all right," she had said. "Whatever we decide." He had kissed her cheek before he left.
She is more certain than she's been in ages that they will come to something that will be right for them all, that they will be a family no matter what. There are all kinds of families. She knows that better than most. Sometimes it is love that ties them together, and sometimes it's comfort or needing each other. Sometimes it's music and stories shared around a fire.
Alice feels for her wand, the wood cool and comforting under her fingers. She smoothes one hand over her stomach, searching for movement, as she lets her eyes drift shut.
Colours, rich and vibrant, swirl before her eyes. The music is bright and alive and the sensuous dance thrums through her every nerve. She feels her magic like a sixth sense, as acute as her vision, as personal as a touch to her skin. A woman who belongs, belongs with her, belongs here, is dancing just out of her reach. The woman's presence makes her heart swell and she reaches out, coming away with three strands of dark auburn hair, bright against her pale skin. It's almost the same colour as her mother's, as Lily's, but with a deeper, richer tone. The woman turns, still dancing. Alice reaches out to take her own hand.