We Regret To Inform You

"It'll never work, Caradoc," protested Frank Longbottom. "They're sure to have at least three guards, and we can't spare enough people to deal with that many." The Auror shook his head. "We'll have to wait."

"We can't afford to wait, Frank," Caradoc answered, pacing up and down the floor with his hands clasped behind his back. The tension in the room was palpable, and Frank's voice hardened with command as he continued.

"You can't go by yourself, Caradoc."

"We have to try now, Frank! Voldemort is not going to wait until we can assemble a team!"

"Call in some of the field agents."

"Can we trust any of them?"

"Can we not trust anybody in this organization? We are outnumbered ten to one, Caradoc. We can't afford distrust."

"I don't want to believe it."

"Then don't, damn you! And don't you dare go out on your own, man. You have a family!"

The night was dark and eerie in Scotland as a man slid noiselessly out of his front door and went down the front steps with a jump. He was probably in his late thirties, with faintly graying black hair. He wore a black robes and carried nothing, but one hand was held cautiously at his side as he paused on the street in front of his home.

He jumped at the slamming of a door behind him and again when a small weight attached itself to his legs with a cry. His throat closed up as he bent to pull the boy's hands away, lifting him up in a hug.

"Daddy, why are you leaving?" The child's innocent question was spoken in a sad, trembling voice that tore his heart apart, but he had steeled himself for this night, as he had for every mission before it.

"Daddy has to leave, little one. You have to stay here and be a man for your Mum, alright?" His son just stared at him with wet eyes, sniffing hard in an obvious attempt to hold back tears. "She needs you now, Reece, now that you're so big and strong." He shifted the six-year-old in his arms so that he could kiss the boy's forehead and let Reece see him smile. "Make sure she's happy, son. She deserves it."

"You'll come back soon, Daddy?" Reece's voice was resigned but still choked with tears as he attempted to be the man Daddy needed him to be for his Mummy.

Caradoc hesitated, and nearly choked on the promise he knew he had to make. The promise he wasn't sure if he could keep. "I'll come back to you, son. My Reece, my little one. I'll come back, and I love you, and I love your Mum. Never forget that, never." He hugged the small body of his son to him as the little arms curled around his neck just as fiercely. Slowly, reluctantly, he pried the boy loose and set him down with a gentle push in the direction of the house. "Go to Mum, Reece." His voice was different somehow, to the child's ears. It was harsh and sad and painful. The boy turned and ran for the house, through the door to his mother. Caradoc Dearborn turned and Apparated with a sharp crack. He was never seen again.

Caradoc leaned heavily on the wall as he crawled away from the house as best he could, bleeding from several wound and hazy with pain from Crucio. "Apparate," he breathed to himself, and with a crack, he disappeared.

A huge barn owl descended from the sky on the first day of November, a heavy letter on ivory parchment clutched in its beak. It dove through the open window of the farmhouse and dropped its burden onto the open cookbook as Melissa Dearborn was making dinner for herself and her young son. The bird flew away as quick as it had come, but the scream echoed in its head for hours.

Dear Mrs. Dearborn,

I regret to inform you that your husband, Caradoc Alexander Dearborn, disappeared during a mission. We are launching a search, but he failed to report to five different check-ins. He is not in any wizarding healing center in Western Europe. No body has been found, but there were signs of a heavy fight when we arrived at his mission destination. There were two dead Death eaters; unfortunately we were too late to Read them.

Caradoc was one of the best, Melissa.

With regret,

Albus Dumbledore

"Mummy?" Six-year-old Reece Dearborn leaned over the banister to see through the kitchen door, hesitant to continue. Mum didn't like it when he got up from bed. But he was hungry and he hadn't had dinner, and he'd heard screaming in his dreams. He wanted his Mum to give him a hug and a glass of warm milk, even if he felt in his boyish pride that he was getting too old for that sort of thing. Daddy had told him to take care of Mum and the house, after all.

There was no answer so he crept onward, sure to be as quiet as a mouse on the stairs. The light in the kitchen was on; she was still up. "Mum?" he called again, a quaver in his young voice. "Mum!" There was still no answer. Reece tried to run now, but when he entered the kitchen his socks caught on the rug and he flew across the room, bouncing harmlessly off the cabinets and landing on his knees in front of his mother's chair. She sat as still as death, her face white and streaked with tears.

"Mum?"

"Yes, dear?" Her voice was fragile as glass in the air, and Reece was suddenly more afraid for her than he had been afraid of the dark in the hall and the fall across the kitchen. Mummy was not supposed to be breakable.

Reece slid off his broom and picked it up, jamming the handle into the sling across his shoulders and starting up the hill behind the house. The windows were shuttered tightly and the whole building had a look of mourning and anger. "Well, I'm home," he said to the wind, which only whistled in reply and threw his hair every which way.

He walked up to the back door and put his hand on the lock. It recognized him and clicked open; he went inside and shut it behind him. The back room was silent, and so was the rest of the house, except for the rustle of Antigone's feathers among the rafters. "Mum?"

"I'm upstairs, dear," said a faded voice from the air over his head. "Don't eat too much before dinner. Dad is going to stop for take-out at the Ravenous Raven."

Reece shrugged off his broom and stowed it in the hall closet, heading towards the kitchen.

"Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Mr. Dearborn," said a quiet voice from the center of the room. Reece stopped in the doorway as Albus Dumbledore came forward. Behind at a long wooden table sat two men, one with long black hair and another with graying brown. "It is good to have you with us."

"My father died to save my generation. I want to save theirs," Reece said just as quietly, pointing to the Quibbler article pinned to the wall opposite, on which a picture of Harry Potter stared impassively, blinking occasionally.

"A brave thing to do, Reece," said Lupin from the table, a smile on his tired face.

"The only thing to do."