Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons

Chapter 17: Til Death Do Us Part

In the unsafe world that whirled around us, most of us grabbed whatever we could to hold on to in the madness -- each other, usually. Young, quick marriages became more common. I had one myself, and still the only explanation I can give is that if we were to die, we wanted to have everything before we did. Stewart Cauldwell, A Shadow Cast By Green Light: A Wartime Memoir, 1984.

March 1981

Julia was okay with being slightly pathetic when it came to opportunities to see Jeremy. She stayed at the Den more often than she did before, increasing her chances to see him. She wanted to see him badly, it almost hurt her. She had long given up on knocking and let herself in by the front door. For early evening, the house was strangely quiet.

She glanced into Owen's office where he sat scribbling at the desk. He glanced up at her, and without salutation or preface, said, "He brought two." He looked back down. "He was hoping it would be more, but he brought two."

She was okay with being pathetic, but apparently not okay with being transparent. Her face blushed pink and she ducked her head, letting her hair fall in her face. "Two."

"He was going to leave again, but Brighid got scary and ordered him upstairs to rest," he continued. "Granted, I'm pretty sure it's not happening."

"No, probably isn't," she said, pulling the sleeves of her jumper over her hands. He was upstairs.

"Second door on the left." She nodded, but couldn't seem to get her feet to move. When Owen looked up again, Julia was still standing there. "Julia, get out of my office," he said, but with a touch of humor.

Taking his meaning, she backed away and found the stairs, taking them two at a time on the way up. The second door on the left came, and she stopped with her hand raised, ready to knock. She could hear his voice on the other side of the door. The words were indistinct but it was his voice, and every part of her body seemed to jump and start. She waited until her heart started beating again, and knocked.

It was the end of a long week for Jeremy. It started with a full moon, continued with a close call with Laurel, and then the long trek to bring any unnameds he could manage to smuggle out without notice to the Den. All this and Jeremy ached in places he didn't even know existed before he'd begun this whole insane plan. He was tough, though. Jeremy Curenton, saboteur extraordinaire, could take a week of living hell, even if his mother hadn't thought so and sent him to his room as though he was a fifteen year old upstart again.

It turned out very little had changed, besides circumstances and proportion of trouble.

Rest was a waste of time, though, and the risk of being caught by his mother was worth some extra work. If he was going to be here, he was going to be doing some good, and so he began a quiet discussion on wizards, werewolves and the troubles between them with Zachary, a particularly wary unnamed. Midsentence, Jeremy stopped as there was a knock at the door. "One second," he added to Zachary, and went to answer it.

Julia kept her hands on the strap of her bag to keep them from doing something else, and her heart sped up again at the sight of him as the door opened. "Hi."

She was the person Jeremy had expected least to see, likely a good indication of how pessimistic his viewpoint was these days. Stunned, he looked at her for a moment before finally echoing "Hi." He had almost forgotten what she had looked like. He reached out to touch her arm in a quick show of affection, and without moving, said to Zachary, "I'll talk to you later." The unnamed darted out of the room without looking at Julia, and left them alone.

She held her breath until they were standing alone in the doorway. He did look exhausted, but not as bad as she might've thought. So much from keeping her hands from doing anything, they were busily working the strap of her bag. "Your dad said you brought two this time," she said.

He watched her fiddle with the strap, both endeared by it -- it was amazing how you missed the little things when you didn't see someone every day -- and finding it surreal. Each time he saw her, she was more of a witch and he was more of a werewolf, whatever that meant for them. "I meant to bring four. Wesley killed one and the other fled. Still, it's something."

"Right," she nodded, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to let it go slowly. She hadn't thought about what after. "I guess -- it's so wonderful to see you," she blurted out.

He took her hand and found himself smiling, then laughing to himself. "You. You are beautiful," he said, then replayed that in his mind. "I missed you. Come in," he finally decided upon.

Julia blushed pink again, but squeezed his hand, nodded, and walked past him into the room. She released his hand long enough to lift her bag off her shoulder and faced him again. "Well, you've got me now."

He closed the door and allowed himself a smirk, placing his other hand on her hip. "Lucky me," he teased her, and went on, "did you miss me?"

God, she could cry. "Yeah, I missed you!" she said, exhaling heavily. "What else d'you think I get up to with my time?"

He couldn't allow himself to feel guilty, so he had to joke. "Taking pictures, playing a bit of football, that sort of thing," he said, smiling.

She nodded slowly. "Well. There is a lot of the former, less of the latter." She concentrated on his hands, where they touched her body, and touched his cheek affectionately. "Doesn't sound like anything compared to what you get up to, though."

This wasn't going to be casual, he didn't know who he was trying to kid. "It is what it is, I don't overthink it. I just do it. You know?"

She nodded slowly, and for the first time since she came in the room felt compelled to glance at her feet. "I know."

Jeremy decided to speak so he wouldn't just snog her. "I'm thinking I might sneak out the back a bit early," he said. "I can get sleep back at the pack, it's a non-issue. I'd rather be doing something while I'm out and about." He hesitated and kissed her forehead, feeling the wolf stir at a sense of home.

Her eyes closed when he kissed her, and she bit back a sigh. "They're just worried about you, is all," she said, forcing herself to stay then and there.

"It doesn't matter if I'm tired or -- or whatever Mum said." Jeremy rested his forehead against hers, not wanting to move away. "I'm fine. I can do what I have to do, that's what matters. Who cares if I'm tired?"

Given how she thought Brighid had felt about her years ago when she'd first knocked her head against the grate in the kitchen fireplace, Julia couldn't believe she actually felt completely accurate with her next statement. "It's mostly for her peace of mind rather than yours. Trust me," she said with just a tinge of her own worry.

She was worried, and now Jeremy was worried. Not for himself, no, for her. He looked at her, actually looked at her for the first time in a very long while. "Julia." He spoke more softly now. "Julia... I'm sorry. I wish it wasn't like this. I'm so sorry."

"But it is," she said, not angry or accusatory, just matter of fact. She qualified it as fast as she could. "I mean. I might not know a lot, but I know this is important and even if I want... it's okay. But I think the hard part is just not knowing how you are."

Jeremy scoffed, touched her face, and spoke next in complete grim confidence. "You don't want to know how I am out there. You're better off with your imagination."

She chortled in return. "I don't know, I have a pretty active, morbid imagination."

"Forget it," he said quietly, wearing a strange sort of smirk as though it was good he could win the 'no, it really is worse than you think' game. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she said quickly. "Lots of pictures to take, and lots of people willing to pay for me to do it. So... I've been keeping busy. Your parents have been amazing to me." She was edging on babbling, so she stopped herself from saying anything else.

Jeremy closed his eyes just to shake the feelings creeping into his mind and agitating the wolf, and restored himself to a calm and neutral place. "It's good they're here for you," he said. "And it's good you can help them. I mean. They ... they can't be used to an empty house, I suppose." How awkward. "I don't know how much longer this is going to take. I thought this might be ... it might take longer. A lot longer."

She wasn't sure what to think. She wanted him with her, but knew it was pointless to ask. Instead, she nodded and disentangled herself from him to sit on the edge of the bed. "Yeah," she said, so he wouldn't think she wasn't acknowledging it. "So. How are things?"

He went to sit next to her without hesitation. "It's been easier ever since the Carrows got pulled. I have his heir as my ally now, so it's easier to cover up the competent rebellion with an incompetent one, so he'll think he has things under control while we're moving the unnameds here behind his back."

"An incompetent rebellion to cover up the real one," she said as her brain wrapped around it. It was... very Jeremy.

Jeremy couldn't have been more pleased. "Exactly. It would be suspicious if nothing happened. It all works out, Julia. We can do what we want and they don't even see it."

She crossed her legs, and studied his face for a moment before speaking. "So. What has happened?"

He had to remember that not everyone knew what he was up to, which was good, if he thought about it. "We've been doing some things badly on purpose so Fenrir has some sort of revolution to squash."

"And then you can do your thing behind his back, right," she said. "A fake rebellion that he's got under control and is crushing and the real one he's not."

"Yeah. It's nothing you need to worry about," he concluded. "I'm not making any stupid mistakes, I can't afford to."

Julia wasn't even thinking about that -- not now, anyway, although that had been enough to confirm her suspicion that his nose had been broken at some point -- but what she was thinking about... well, she didn't really know. She wasn't used to her brain working at this speed. "What's the decoy rebellion been doing?" she asked, twisting a piece of hair around her finger.

Jeremy considered how to say it. "They don't trust me. I let word get to Fenrir's personal enforcer that I was causing trouble. Seeing a bastard get crushed under his foot, well, that made Fenrir's people just that much prouder, and more arrogant." He dismissed that one with a gesture. "Then we had someone try to attack the new Death Eater. He didn't get anywhere close, didn't die, but it was close enough that it made some of the unnameds nervous. I'm not worried, they'll get used to the risk soon."

She was silent for a moment, considering it, and speaking when she reached the breaking point with her frustration at herself of being unable to make the connections meet where she wanted them to. "It sounds like... It sounds like you need to... I don't know," she finished.

He put his arm around her, leaning close just because he could -- because he couldn't most nights, after all. "No. Go on. I want to hear. You are a Slytherin, after all," he added wryly.

"I don't quite know what I'm thinking," she confessed, adjusting herself so that she could lean back against him. She stared at his hands covering hers, and spaced out while she tried to put pieces together and make them fit in her head. It was a long process that felt like it slowed with every second that passed.

After a silence that had lasted several minutes but during which he had waited patiently for her, she said, "I don't know if this is going to work," and she didn't, all she knew was what he had told her, "but it sounds like you haven't gone for Fenrir yet. You've involved others around him, but... it hasn't hit him yet. If you go after him and let him think that he's totally crushed your rebellion, then he really won't look twice at you. You'll be able to bring people faster and with less worry."

Jeremy stared past her and toyed with her fingers a bit in silence as he considered it. There was a long moment where the wolf tensed his shoulders and forced his heart into his throat as he dared to consider such an idea. Patricide, even if it was false. "You're right," he said finally. "We try to kill him and we fail."

There are so many ways for it to fail. She made the words stop before they could cross her lips. Failure was not an option for Jeremy, Julia wasn't sure he even knew how to fail. "Once he thinks he's destroyed you, it'll be easy to bring them out."

"Yes," Jeremy agreed, and brushed her hair away from her cheek to kiss it. "Yes. And then I'll be here more," he added more casually. "Not long, not... too long, but if the suspicion is gone, then maybe I could take an evening. We could ... we could be normal. Get a drink."

As much as she wanted to cry before, now she wanted to laugh. And she did so. "God. I wonder what being normal feels like."

"Nothing we've ever felt I bet," he laughed. "The werewolf and his witch, a pair of activists, asking for trouble, seeing each other once in a blue moon."

Julia settled against him, fitting comfortably with her head in the crook of his neck. "I don't mind being your witch. Really."

Jeremy chose not to disturb the moment with a kiss. There was this sense of calm, of real peace settling over him, and he realised with shock that it was a moment of silence and union with his wolf, while he was with Julia. This was new. "I didn't mean to say it that way," he said, just to say something, "but that's how they think of us. That and the opposite, a witch and her werewolf. We're rare."

"Rare, but not impossible," she said quietly. If something else had entered her mind as often as the possibility that he might not come back at all, it was he could return but not want her. Thankfully, it didn't feel like that was the case at all.

"No," he said, astounded at the very idea that they would run into any difficulties worth consideration. "No. You're pack."

A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, she was unsure of whether she was amused or simply happy for the moment. "Pack, huh."

He couldn't help but feel a bit dazed. Weird. That was just weird. "Yes. Yes you are. Finally."

"Finally," she echoed, and closed her eyes briefly to rest.

Yeah, this was pack, he thought, or as close as he'd get. He was here with her, and comfortable -- but he couldn't lose his head. He had too much at stake to get lost in himself and in her and in them. "I'll stay for a while longer," he said. "But I'm not staying the night."

She gave a short nod. "It's okay. I get it," she said.

Jeremy nodded slightly, glad to be spared from the guilt for a moment. He stayed close to her, quietly resting and trying not to let the exhaustion set in. He stroked her hair and gained a faintly troubled look as he measured his words, and only then did he speak. "Would you marry me, Julia?"

It took a moment for the words to permeate her relaxed state of mind, but once they did she sat up and looked at him. That moment was the one where she fully grasped the words. "I would. In a minute, I -- Jeremy, yes!"

He couldn't do anything but grin, although his excitement was tempered with doubt and fear of obstacles, but he kissed her anyway. Upon pulling away he said, always the bloody chatterbox, "It'll... it'll be a lot of work, don't think it won't be, there's a lot of paperwork and technicalities we'd have to dodge. And we might -- I don't know, we might do best to wait until I'm back for good."

"It'll be worth it," she said quickly, before throwing her arms around him. It wasn't something she'd even let herself think about, and she wanted it more now than she'd ever wanted everything. "They won't stop us," she said. "Let them try."

Just the idea that she would accept him not only as a werewolf, but as one with the life he'd chosen, was insane, but that she had only made him more sure. "All right," he said, resolute. "We'll do it. I..." He was planning even now, planning too much, this wasn't a chess piece to be placed. His marriage wasn't something to be factored in, or was it? "I don't know. We should tell them," he realised.

"Tell th -- your parents?" she asked, pulling back slightly.

He nodded. "Unless you don't want to, I dunno. I won't be back for a while, I have an assassination to plan."

The more she searched for one, the fewer reasons she actually found to keep this quiet from Owen and Brighid. "No, we can -- we can tell them." She gave him a short kiss and then extricated herself to stand. She doubted she could keep it to herself that long, and he deserved to be there when they heard it.

"Yes," Jeremy agreed, and stood as well, anxiously going for the door. He was engaged. "And if there's time we can sneak back up here." He glanced back at her with a smirk.

Her smile returned, in full force. "I see. Lure me to bed with promises of marriage."

"Ah, you know what they say about best-laid plans," he said, grinning widely.

Julia gave a sound that was half a groan and half a laugh. "I guess if we didn't know, we would be about to find out," she answered, resting her hand on the doorknob for a second. "I love you," she added.

"I love you, too." Jeremy stole one more kiss before they left the room.

They made it back down the stairs before stopping. "Well, your dad was in the office but I didn't see your moth -- OH," she interrupted herself, stumbling slightly backward when they rounded the corner, very nearly running over a rather unamused Brighid. He automatically steadied her, and she covered her fluster with, "Brighid."

Brighid inspected her son closely, and put her hands on her hips, staring him down. "I thought you were going to get some sleep," she chided him, and added to Julia, "he's been sleeping less than five hours a night, can you believe that? With all that he's doing?"

Julia hardly needed to look up at Jeremy to know what kind of look he had on his face, but she did all the same. "Yeah," she said simply, her face breaking into a grin at the sight of his. "I can." She impulsively grabbed one of Brighid's hands. "Come on. We need to talk to you."

"Yeah," Jeremy said, helpless to his own grin. "Come on, we have to talk to you and Dad, have you seen Dad, where is he?"

If that grin of the girl's hadn't surprised Brighid, Julia's reach for her hand certainly had. "Working, where else," she answered Jeremy, then sent Julia a smile and squeezed her hand. Naturally she was suspicious, but they'd find it all out; Jeremy couldn't keep anything from his father. "I'll come along then, we've all some work to do yet tonight, though, so you'll have to make it quick."

"It won't take any time," Julia promised, and pulled Brighid along with them. "Owen!"

Owen was exactly where Julia had left him, behind the desk, and he looked up again, except this time his son and his girlfriend had his rather abashed wife in tow. "Well. Hello," he said, a little amused.

Jeremy was really trying very hard not to be visibly thrilled, but it wasn't working, only because the confusion of his parents was admittedly funny. "Hi Dad," he said. "Ah, Mum, you might want to sit down."

Brighid sat down next to Owen, staring now with utter suspicion at her son. "I don't like the looks of this," she said to her husband. "They're being very secretive. And giving each other looks." If Julia was pregnant, Brighid was going to have kittens.

Owen gave her a smile. "We did no less when we were their age," he reminded her, before looking at Julia and Jeremy. "Well. You have us waiting, you two," he added to them mildly, looking between them.

Julia looked at Jeremy, and he was giving her an expectant look back. "He..." She faltered after a moment, looked back at Owen and Brighid, and kept her hold on Jeremy's hand. "Jeremy's asked me to marry him and I said yes."

Brighid's hand flew to her mouth and she instantly looked at Jeremy. At the sight of his stupid grin, she knew she couldn't have imagined hearing that. "Oh my dear lord," she exclaimed. "You two!"

"Oh, what extraordinary news!" Owen exclaimed at the same time, rising from his seat to embrace them both.

Jeremy found himself and Julia in the middle of a family group hug, apparently, as Brighid joined them. "It'll be a battle but we're willing to fight for it," he said to his father once the rejoicing was settling.

"As is everything worth having," he replied, touching the rising blush in Julia's cheeks with a measure of fatherly affection. "Congratulations."

Jeremy struggled for a moment with his comfort and his duty -- this was pack, this was what he had been missing, but he had other obligations. Big obligations. He smiled nevertheless. "Thanks for sending her up," he quipped to his father.

"You're welcome," Owen said amusedly, and looked to Brighid, who had been strangely quiet. "B?"

"What?" Brighid looked up, quickly wiping her eyes. "What, I'm fine."

It was an awkward place to be standing, but Julia was happy where she was right then. She leaned against Jeremy and said, "Well... that's all we had."

"That's enough, I think." Brighid looked at her son and, well, his fiancee, and smiled. "We do all still have work and rest to get up to."

"Right. Rest," Jeremy said, not looking at Julia, really. "Sure, I'll catch some sleep."

Owen seemed to know better, giving him a look that suggested he at least lock the door first. "You do that, then," he said dryly.

Jeremy sent his father an innocent look. "I need to get some sleep. I'll see you both -- all of you, I mean -- before I leave. I might even get a whole six hours of sleep for the day," he added with a look to his mother.

"Of course," Owen replied. He could already see Julia edging out of the room, Jeremy following, inch by inch. "Good night."

"Goodnight," Jeremy concluded with a bright smile, and left the room, unable to hide a smirk as he glanced askance at Julia.

"...Bye," Julia ended the conversation and let Jeremy pull her behind him. They went to the stairs again and it was a moment before she laughed and said, "My god, Jeremy, we're doing it."

"That's right," he said, looking back at her slyly. "We're engaged."

"Yeah," she said, feeling her heart speed up, and she smiled back.

He stopped, took her hands in his, and couldn't keep himself from kissing her. "I should go," he said immediately upon pulling away. "Soon. I can't get caught up in all this or I won't be able to go back."

"I know," she said. She did know it and she still hated to hear it. But once he did it... he could come back. Her only hope was to go along with it. "I know you do."

"I have to go back," he repeated, half to convince himself, and exhaled as he realised exactly what he was in for. Someone was going to die. "Will you forgive me for what I'm going to do?"

She touched his face lightly, so lovingly it almost hurt her to do it. "Don't even think about it. I mean, think it out, but... don't overthink it. Just get it done," she said quietly, but firmly.

There was no question in his mind, now, why she was pack. He smiled, if grimly, and pulled her close. "I love you," he said.

"You better," she replied with a tinge of humour in her voice, one arm around his back and one hand on his hair. "I love you, too."

Jeremy laughed. "Come on," he said simply, kissed her hand, and grinned. She grinned back and followed him the rest of the way up the stairs, for a few more moments of peace before he had to leave again.

~*~

Without Alecto, a lot of things had changed for Fenrir Greyback, but only him. Yaxley was sparing with details and explanation, and the question of the war that raged between the wizards became less of a curiosity than a vital piece of information with every week she was gone. He busied himself as the head of the unified pack and sat with the former Smith children and Wesley for a while, his hand on the eldest Bethany's light hair as he thought, and listened to Wesley speak gently to the children.

"Each full moon it gets better, it gets easier, so long as you just do as your wolf likes every day. Not everything, but enough. It's balance -- once you have that, you have everything," Wesley told Mercy. "It won't happen again for you, Mercy, I promise."

Mercy stayed upright more out of sheer stubbornness and will than feeling well enough to do so. She was leaning against little Josiah -- he seemed fine, and Bethany was fine, and she was going to have a new scar over one eye. She rubbed it tenderly, wincing at it. "Not again," she repeated. "It's hard."

"Don't touch it," Wesley chided her. "And the first few full moons are hard. All that trouble is just the wolf trying to settle -- it's scared, it's angry. It knows how you feel, and it feels the same." He touched her forehead, gingerly. "To control it, to make things better, you must control yourself."

"I like it," Bethany interrupted, but tensed as her Father's hand stopped on her head. "Once you've got it right, Mercy, it's -- " She laughed aloud at the feeling of the wolf and let it reach out to her sister's. "See? It's happy."

Mercy's wolf jumped to touch her sister's, and reached in all directions -- to Josiah, and Fenrir and Wesley as well. She braced herself on the floor to keep upright and took a deep breath. She tried reining it in, letting it touch Bethany's as it had wanted -- compromise. Control. Like Wesley said.

Fenrir grinned at the touch and gave a fatherly nudge to each of his children there. "Good, you've got it, Mercy. You've got a whole month to work." Bethany's wolf gratefully latched onto his after the touch, and he accepted it, taking her hand, but there were other things to consider. He reached out for Remus, and gave him a sharp yank, sensing distraction. Remus.

On the other side of the house, Remus stopped talking in mid-sentence to Briony. Whatever he'd been saying -- it seemed to have jumped out of his head -- it was unimportant. He swallowed and leaned his back against the wall before he looked back up at her. "It's -- nothing," he said at her concerned glance. "I'll come find you."

She recognised the look on his face, and knew what was likely behind it. "Don't keep him waiting," she nodded, and touched his arm.

He gave her hand a brief, grateful squeeze, and left her in the corner. It felt like his feet couldn't carry him to Fenrir fast enough for the wolf's liking, but he forced it back, staying calm. He stood in the doorway where he saw Fenrir with Wesley and the three Smith children.

"Oh, good, you didn't dawdle," Fenrir said acidly, but gave his son a wry smile. "The rest of you can go, Wesley, take them to join the others or something."

Bethany gripped his hand. "But Father, please," she pleaded.

He touched along their tie, sternly gentle, and she smiled; he released her hand. "Go, play with the children, go on, all of you."

Oh, this boded well. Remus stood aside while Wesley took the three Smith children, little Josiah eagerly leading the way. He tried to get a grasp on the tone in the room, or even just on Fenrir. The mixed signal was not a good sign. "I was just talking to Briony," he said, dismissive about it as anything.

"Were you, good, you're looking after her, keeping her out of trouble? Close the door," Fenrir added as an order, with a similar push along their tie.

He came in and pulled the door closed as he did so. "She's no trouble," he replied.

"No trouble, really, that's hard to believe. But maybe you're a good influence."

He might've laughed, if he weren't mildly terrified. "That must be it," he agreed instead.

Fenrir snorted, then sent his son a wry smile. "Sit, I've got a few questions for you." Remus didn't do so well with questions in general these days. Still, he didn't really have a choice in the matter, so he did as Fenrir requested. "Alexander was a politician, I know that much, what about you, did you ever think much about it?"

The question came from so far out in left field, Remus wasn't sure that he wasn't being pranked. "I," he started, and took a moment to wrap his mind around the question once he realised Fenrir was awaiting an answer. "I hadn't... considered it, really, no," he finally said.

"Then I figure you're not really on a side -- well, you weren't, when you were acting as a wizard, I mean," Fenrir amended, idly considering his son.

"I was a teenager, it wasn't really -- " He stopped himself, and started again, "The things that have been happening, it's... polarising. Everyone's on a side."

"I don't care what side you were on before," Fenrir mentioned, not even bothering with subtlety. "You're on our side now. I need to know about this war."

And like that, Remus was working both sides. "About... the Death Eaters," he said, half a question.

Fenrir actually laughed at that. "No, I know the Death Eaters, I know what they tell me," he said. "I know the Dark Lord. That's all I know of wizards and their war."

"Then..." Remus hated having to guess where to go next, it was like guessing which wire needed cutting to neutralise a time bomb. "I'll give what answers I can," he said, figuring that was just honest enough.

"The Death Eaters are proud, not that they don't have enough to be proud of, or a choice in the matter with their Father's methods -- " Fenrir didn't like thinking about the cold grip of the Dark Lord in his head, but he could still feel it. "There are some fighting, some Aurors. Scrimgeour. The Longbottoms, Alecto nearly burst something whenever she mentioned them. But there are some she feared. Is there anyone but the Aurors?"

"The Magical Law Enforcement is split into other divisions. Patrol divisions are... well, they patrol, and are usually first respondents. Hit Wizards are... force, and Aurors generally handle the... ah. Larger crime," he said, though he knew that wasn't what Fenrir asked. But at the same time, he couldn't give away the secrets he'd been trusted to keep.

"Not what I meant," Fenrir said, bemused at least how Remus held back. "No need to hide what you know, Remus, in this case I won't punish your acting as a wizard. She mentioned others, outside of the Ministry, regular witches and wizards ... foolishly, I have to say, standing up to the Dark Lord. But you haven't heard anything of it?"

There was a need to hide what he knew. To protect them. He wasn't sure Fenrir could care one way or the other, but if Yaxley or Alecto heard about it.... There was really no such thing as being too careful. "It wouldn't surprise me if there was a group of citizens who did such a thing."

"Idiots," Fenrir scoffed. "They have no idea what they're dealing with. He made me kneel, Remus, he made me kneel in front of him and reached into my mind. I only mention in case I die -- you'll inherit that duty. No one envies you that."

Remus certainly didn't enjoy that thought. "Then you better not die," he replied dryly.

"I'm not dead yet and I don't plan on dying any time soon," Fenrir said, just as dry. "Does it make you squeamish, working for the Death Eaters?"

Squeamish wasn't the word Remus would have used if he had his pick of all the English language, but it would serve. "Yes."

"I thought it did. I know you better than you think, Remus. There's still too much of Alexander in you yet. We'll fix that." Fenrir leaned forward in his chair and looked directly at Remus. "You don't work for the Death Eaters. I work for the Death Eaters. The Dark Lord gives me numbers and strength, and once he's won, it's our turn. That's when our work begins, you and me, and the rest of the unified pack."

Remus looked directly back at him, and saw that he believed it. Death Eaters were a means to his end. "I understand," he said calmly, and for the first time when he said that here in the pack, he felt like he did.

"You returned to us. I know you understand," Fenrir said, utterly sincere. "After all, you recognised where you belong. Soon enough, so will all the rest. My Father's plans, finally on their way to seeing light."

Not if they had anything to say about it. He almost felt sorry, but thought of the packs he had seen torn apart, people killed, watching them die on the floor. This wasn't something that they could allow to happen, he knew that, just as certain as he knew that the Death Eaters couldn't win their war. "Soon enough," he echoed.

"You're a good son, Remus. I couldn't have done any of this without you." Fenrir sat back. "Know that. Go on, go back to that bitch of Conor's -- don't get too attached, she's only alive to keep him in line."

And everyone knew it. "She won't be trouble," he repeated as he stood and went to the door.

"But if she is, she'll die. Don't get attached," Fenrir repeated in kind. "Go on."

The wolf reached for its Father as he made his departure, and he let it, without turning around to look at him. He left the room no less secure than when he'd entered, returning to look for Briony where he'd left her.

~*~

Frank bit back a yawn and took another drink of his coffee. With that in hand, he picked up his brand new case file that had been waiting for him when he arrived that morning. He began to scan the details as he walked back to his desk, but was stopped with a hand on his arm as he walked past the lift. "'Scuse me," the fair-haired young woman who stopped him said.

She looked familiar, but he was fairly sure that he hadn't seen her before. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yeah. Maybe," she said, twisting a piece of hair in her fingers. "Um, can I report a missing person here? If I'm not really sure they're missing?"

He was intrigued. And slightly confused. "What do you mean, aren't sure if they're missing?"

She twisted her strand of hair harder. "Erm, well, I'm a secretary in Magical Creatures, but I en't seen one of the guys there for ages."

"Okay," he said. His intuition was telling him this wasn't good news. "Come with me, just to my desk, Miss -- what's your name?"

"Fenwick. Nettie Fenwick."

Benjy's sister, then. That's why she'd looked familiar, she shared her brother's sandy hair and blue eyes. "Miss Fenwick," he said, seating her at his desk and hovering over her. He took one of the forms from his drawer and took out a quill. He kneeled beside the desk. "Well. Why don't you tell me what's going on."

Nettie eyed the direction they'd come from nervously, as if she were afraid that they'd been followed. "Well, em. I'm secretary at the front of the Department right, so I see people come in, and I usually say good morning to them and they'll say good morning back. I also get the owls if people owl in sick, but this is the third day I en't seen Elliot Pittiman and he en't owled in sick, either."

Frank's stomach immediately turned to ice and at the same time he could also feel his blood get pumping. With half a second of faltering, he began scribbling what she told him on the form. "So is there any reason other than that to believe that something may have happened?"

"Well, no. That's why I don't know if he's missing. But I owled yesterday around noon and there hasn't been any response. He's good about owling if he en't going to be in. And he might get past me one day, but not two or three," she insisted.

He knew with that kind of evidence, it didn't exactly make a compelling case, at least not one that would rise to the top of Departmental priorities. "Any other family you know of that he might be in contact with?"

"Well. I think his mum's still alive, and his wife might have some family," she said slowly.

Fuck. Frank finished the form. "Please look that over and sign and date it if that is all correct and what you have told me is the truth," he rattled off, indicating the space for her to do so. As she did, he said, "I can't make any guarantees, we're desperately short-staffed... if you do hear anything else, please share. My name is Frank Longbottom." He exchanged the signed form for his card.

"I will," she said, pocketing it after looking at it. "Ta, Auror Longbottom."

"Good day, and thank you," he nodded, indicating to her the direction of the lifts. As she left, he tried not to let his guilt overwhelm him. There could be a simple explanation. He and Alice had taken Marlene to Pittiman's house and put up every ward they could think of. It would have taken a very patient person to break through all of those, and it didn't mean anything. Maybe he left the country of his own accord. It wasn't precisely uncommon.

He filed the missing persons report before making a beeline for Alice's desk. He was relieved only slightly when he saw that she was there. "What are you doing this morning?" he asked urgently.

Alice had never quite got rid of the headache that Neville had managed to give her this morning and it was only getting worse. "Frank, I love you, but I have two separate leads to follow today not to mention that we have to check in with Susanna King later, and Merlin knows I have to be mentally prepared for that, what do you need?"

"Today is the third day that Elliot Pittiman has not come to work."

She felt the colour leave her face. "Oh dear."

Frank nodded. "Yes," he said simply. "I was just speaking with Benjy's sister, she's a secretary in Magical Creatures, she's the one who filed the report. We have to deal with this, Alice."

Alice grabbed her cloak. "My leads can wait, let's go."

He nodded again and wordlessly let her move past him, leading their way out of the Department. The lifts seemed to move at a painfully slow pace, both coming to them and on the way back to the Atrium. They Apparated out without another word to each other and just as Frank feared, he was able to make it practically all the way to the front door. "They ripped a hole right in the wards."

Alice stared at the house and bit her lip after a moment, only then steeling herself to enter. "Well, no Dark Mark," she said. "Unsurprising, I suppose. Shall we go inside, then?"

"Yes." Frank drew his wand and tried the doorknob. Unsurprisingly, and chillingly, it opened. The door opened to a house that was far too quiet for one that held three children. There was nothing in the foyer, except for the cloak rack, knocked over. "If they didn't want Aurors making a connection, they wouldn't leave the Mark."

"And this isn't about blood," Alice said quietly, hesitant to disturb the heavy silence. She exhaled and looked around. "I'll take the second floor?"

"All right," he said, moving for the front room where Pittiman had showed them all the information they'd gotten from him. "Be careful," he warned her out of habit.

"Of course, dear," she said and kissed him on the cheek as she always did, and hurried up the stairs.

He moved into the front room, and even though he didn't see anyone in there (the end table was turned over, cushions were torn off the couch, and the pictures on one wall were askew), called out. "Mr. Pittiman, it's Frank Longbottom. If you can hear me, please try to respond." The only answer was the eerie quiet, and the creak of Alice's feet on the staircase.

At the first sight of what most certainly was blood in the littlest boy's bedroom, Alice began to hurriedly check each room upstairs, the signs of what had occurred all falling into place. She ran down the stairs, nearly falling and catching herself on the railing, her face flushed as she finally called, "Frank!"

As soon as he heard her call, Frank started from the kitchen back to the stairs. "What did you find?" he asked, taking them up two at a time.

"Blood, signs of a struggle," she said, as professional as she could be. "There's -- Frank, just come and look."

Frank went ahead of her up the stairs, and it was all there, as she said. He never thought he could be surprised at an amount of blood again, but found that a difficult oath to keep. All of the children's bedrooms were bloody and torn, and he stopped in the doorway of the master bedroom. "... Bodies," he completed Alice's list.

Alice forced her hand down from its place at her mouth and went instantly to go identify the shredded body ... of Elliot Pittiman. "It's him," she said upon finding her voice. She stepped back, briefly stung with grief and guilt. This was their fault. "It's Pittiman."

"And his wife." Or at least the hair on the woman in the bed matched that of the woman in the photographs downstairs. There wasn't really a face left per se to identify. He rubbed a hand over his face, and stopped. "Where are the children?"

She had thought about that, back before she'd seen the mangled bodies. "I didn't see them. They aren't in their rooms. I'm guessing they weren't downstairs..."

This was going from bad to disastrous in a very short period of time. "I'm going to look outside," he announced and turned back around and going down the stairs. There was no blood on the stairs, which meant no one bleeding had come that way. Alice nodded, took a deep breath, and began to survey the scene with the eye of an Auror.

Frank checked the downstairs rooms once more before he moved outside, looking for any place as far as the property extended where small children could have been buried. He looked for disturbed ground and checked for concealment charms. Though he somehow doubted if they'd left the parents to rot in their bedroom, they would be so careful with the children, he still hoped, prayed to find something, anything. The longer his search went on, the more frustrated he became as he tried not to sink into the guilt trap that had laid itself at his feet.

"If the Death Eaters killed them and buried them somewhere here then they've certainly hid it well," Frank fumed to Alice when he returned to the house. "There's no blood on the staircase, nobody got taken that way. They probably Apparated them right out if they did anything." Stupid Aurors, thinking they could outclever an army of Death Eaters and their favourite deadly weapon, he scolded himself.

Alice nodded silently and swallowed before she spoke. "Basic werewolf attack, two dead, three missing, presumed dead," she said flatly, and looked away, at the bodies, before leaving the room. "We have a report to write."

Frank set his jaw, and examined the scene one more time. Something was nagging at him, and the wheels in his brain were turning. "I think we should go see Susanna first. Now."

Alice paused, because that could only mean one thing. "Now? You don't think..."

"I think if they knew about Pittiman and could get to him and his family, then they definitely knew about Susanna and could get to her," he answered.

It was obviously a bad day if going to see Susanna King alive and talking was looking like the bright spot in it. Alice nodded. "You're right."

He took her outside, if only in order to shut the door again. "I'll see you there," he spoke quickly.

Alice Disapparated as soon as he finished speaking, outside of the house that Susanna King had moved into upon becoming a compliant witness. It was unlit, but only visibly, and she hoped against hope that Susanna was being particularly clever with her charms.

Frank was growing to hate being right. He hoped he wasn't right this time. The door was locked, at least, and he charmed the locks to open. "Miss King?" he called after a second thought and waited for a response. He also wouldn't put it past the Death Eaters to lay a trap.

After a long moment of silence, though, Alice glanced around what little they could see without entering. "There's a light on in the sitting room," she said to Frank.

"Yes," he said, and moved into the house to the sitting room, wand at the ready.

She followed, only to see Miss King just sitting there in a chair facing away from them. "Miss King," she called, a bit sternly. "You had us worried." She kept her wand at the ready, though.

The sinking feeling continued. "Miss King," he called out, moving fluidly around the chair. He lowered his wand as he saw the dead look in her eyes, and her blank countenance said all that needed to be said. "Damnit."

Alice stopped and stared, then gave a bleak laugh. "Still alive, no longer an informant," she said, "of course, they control the dementors, it's genius." She threw her hands up in the air. "What next, I ask you."

"I don't know, and I could live the rest of my life without finding out. Add an owl to St. Mungo's to our 'To Do' list," he said dryly. Children missing, their best witness dead and their informant good as, it was easily the worst day of his career.

"We should get back," Alice said softly, as though not to disturb Miss King, who was still staring blankly ahead, her chest evenly rising and falling. Oh, Alice just wanted to get back to paper trails.

He nodded, and left without another word, waiting for Alice to catch up outside. He'd never felt so utterly defeated in his life.