Elinor Stewart and the Moonstruck Marauder

Prologue -- Elinor Darcy Stewart

*

How dare they ... Vomere Proici ... Conlabra ...

But ... Not this boy, who had been so nice to her all year.

"It was you?"

He'll tell his friends and they'll kill me. I'm a disgrace ...

"Bullies."

"Don't tell, please don't tell anyone."

I wasn't brave. I'm no better than they are.

With a gasp, Elinor Stewart awoke out of her nightmare, flinging the covers off of her body. She sat up in her narrow bed, breathing deeply, trying to calm her jerking heart. It was a dream, it's in the past, she reminded herself. They can't hurt me now. It wasn't a nightmare so much as it was an awful experience she'd had, something she'd done. She still dreamed of it, even now.

She looked at the clock next to her bed and grimaced. She'd be getting up in a half hour anyway. But even if it was only midnight, Elinor doubted she'd be willing to surrender to sleep again. Not tonight. Not after this dream.

Need to look, she decided. Come on, Elinor, just look, show yourself they have no power over you. The woman wrapped a quilt around her shoulders and got out of bed. She went to her bureau and found a photograph under her socks and stockings. Unlike most photographs taken by wizards, this one was a still snap; she'd forgotten to ask her father to have it developed in Diagon Alley.

It showed a girl of eleven with wild brown hair, her arms thrown about the neck of the older boy upon whose back she was riding. A happy light shone out of her dark eyes, and her little mouth curved upward in a bashful smile. The boy's arms were looped under her knees. He looked back at her with a big, horsy grin at the moment the photograph was taken. His hair was shaggy, his eyes crinkled with laughter. The boy was tall for fifteen, and very lanky. They stood on a broad staircase.

Merlin, she had adored him.

Elinor tucked the photograph back under her socks. Tea, she decided. Yawning, she pulled out a pot, filled it with water, and set it on the stove. As the water for her tea heated, Elinor thought again of shaggy, light brown hair that flopped into a pair of kind eyes. He wasn't kind, though, he sat by and let them do it.

But he didn't tell on me, she reasoned as she sipped her tea. I thought I was dead after he caught me.

"That's enough," Elinor said aloud, gritting her teeth. It was no good getting worked up over something that happened twenty-one years ago. She sighed and began her morning routine.

*

The first part of Elinor's work day consisted of gathering information from two different departments in the Ministry, getting a pot of coffee from the refectory, then heading to her office in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She held a pile of file folders in one arm and the thermos in her other hand. She used her elbow to press the down button for the lift, then straightened as five Interdepartmental Memos flapped idly about her head.

Ding. The lift doors opened to reveal one occupant, Lucius Malfoy. Elinor stepped into the elevator and said, "Three, please."

The icily handsome face curled into a sneer. Other than that, he didn't move a muscle.

The lift doors were still open; she would have to ignore his rudeness and push the button herself. "Volitare," she murmured to the coffee pot. It hovered obediently by her shoulder. Elinor pushed the button for her floor and grabbed the pot as the lift began to move.

She didn't say anything more to Malfoy as the lift continued its ascent. She studied his face in the polished doors. Elinor knew the type; pureblood snobs who cared for little but their exalted lineage and advancing their own interests with those in power. He'd just be irritated if she tried to be polite, never mind that he was chummy with her boss, the Minister for Magic. But she was determined to dig him a little.

"Have a good day, Mr Malfoy," Elinor chirped as she left the lift. An arrogant harrumph followed her down the D.M.A.C. corridor, and she laughed out loud once the doors closed.

*

"Stewart, I need these reports done by the end of the week. You'll have to go to St. Mungo's to get some patient information."

"Yes, sir," she replied. Elinor set aside the work she was doing, took the files from her supervisor, and flipped through them. She wondered why Mr Brandon had bothered to promote her, since she was performing the same tasks that she had been doing since she came to the Ministry. Maybe it was that the Assistant Head of any Ministry department was expected to take more and more work, without complaint, like some kind of initiation.

*

Elinor leaned against the doorway of her father's office, folding her arms. "Hi, Dad."

"Elinor, what a treat," Healer William Stewart exclaimed. He stood up and embraced her.

She chuckled. "I see you three times a week, you make it sound like it's the highlight of your life whenever I show up." She kissed her father's cheek.

William's eyes twinkled. "I can't sound enthused to see my favourite daughter?" He gestured to the chair in the corner of his office.

"Your only daughter. How's Mum?" Elinor slumped into the smelly old leather armchair and watched her father root through a filing cabinet.

"Lovely, she performed a surgery yesterday and assisted another." The healer directed his attention from the task at hand long enough to look at Elinor and wrinkle his nose. "Amazing, that they're able to heal by cutting people up."

"She had a good day, then," Elinor mused. If she had a Knut for every time her father had shared his views on the subject of Muggle medicine with her ... "How're Jack and Ryan?" she asked, to get him off the subject.

The smile vanished from William's face. "They're your brothers, my dear. Find out for yourself."

Elinor sighed. "They're uncomfortable around me, Dad, you know that. Most Muggles are."

William pulled a file out, looked through it, and shoved it back into the cabinet. "You'd think I'd have organised better, it looks like a house-elf and a chimpanzee put these files in here," he grouched. He returned to Elinor's last comment, as it was a more pleasant topic of conversation. "Your mother is a rare one, isn't she?" he asked, smiling.

"She is that, bless her," Elinor said; her grin was identical to her father's. "Thank goodness."

The healer tried a different tactic. "I wish you'd take on patients, light of my eyes."

She wrinkled her nose at him, mirroring his own expression from the previous minute. "You know why I work at the Ministry, Dad. Speaking of which, I need some information about that Muggle they brought in last night ..."

*

Flames shot out of Elinor's fireplace, followed closely by the petite form of Olivia Connery. Elinor stood back, letting Olivia get to her feet and brush herself off, then embraced her best friend of twenty-one years. "Olivia, how are you?" She glanced back at her fireplace, then added, "No kids tonight?"

Olivia shook her head. "Geoffrey needs some quality time with his sons," she said, smirking. "Feed me, dearest, I'm starving." She patted her stomach with gusto.

"I still don't see how you can be so tiny after two kids," Elinor complained. "I'm getting chunky in my old age."

Olivia wagged a disapproving finger under her friend's straight-cut nose. "First of all, we are in our thirties. Our early thirties." She grabbed Elinor's robes and bunched them in her fists. The cloth pulled tight against Elinor's softly rounded belly, chest, and hips. The taller woman squeaked at the surprise attack. "You are not chunky, look at that little waist," Olivia commanded, pointing across the room at a large mirror. "You're feminine. And unlike me, people don't need a microscope to see your figure."

"Okay, let's trade. I'd love to be pretty." Elinor shooed her friend's hands off her, laughing. "You don't happen to remember Switching Spells, do you?" She walked into the kitchen and stirred the pasta sauce.

"You have a pretty face, Elinor." Olivia examined herself in the mirror she'd just forced her friend to confront a moment earlier.

Elinor smiled; Olivia would never change. "No, cute is the best I can hope for, and you know it. But being your friend at school, I got enough attention to satisfy mousy me. I'm still waiting for your answer on Switching Spells."

It was Olivia's turn to laugh, huge brown eyes twinkling. "The kids'd be too confused if their mum showed up in Auntie Darcy's body. So would Geoffrey," she added slyly. She wriggled her hips suggestively.

Elinor felt ill at the implications, and was grateful that her friend knew her to well to take her seriously. The thought of ... Yuck. Elinor sighed. "I do wish you wouldn't have the boys call me that."

"I love the name Darcy, it isn't so stuffy as Elinor," her friend protested.

Elinor grabbed a large knife and held it threateningly. "If you lay off, I promise to name my first daughter Darcy Olivia ... Whatever, okay?" Olivia could be so demanding sometimes, it was woven into her personality, and a trait of the Hogwarts House she'd inhabited. But somehow she could carry it off, and make people around her love her anyway.

"I'm going to hold you to that, love," Olivia snickered. She summoned a handful of olives off the cutting board and popped one into her mouth. "Why do you cook like a Muggle? It would be so much easier with magic."

Elinor chopped the rest of the olives as quickly as she could. "Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?" She winked at her chum. "You know my mum. It isn't that she doesn't trust magic, she married a wizard after all, it's just that she does it her way, and that's how she taught me."