we will r i s e

Why Father wanted her to be comfortable in the Ministry of Magic was beyond her; Narcissa did not want to accompany him to the offices of the investigators who handled cases of thievery and damaged property, and she had told him as much, but still he had insisted. She was very nearly a woman now, mere months away from being of age, and she had to learn to handle responsibilities like this. People like them had incited jealousy and covetousness in others, Father explained to her gently; when a Hit Wizard ruined the hedges and broke a window allegedly chasing after a target, he couldn’t just sit by and let the Ministry dismiss the injury to their pride and property.

Narcissa, freshly out of school and perturbed about not being permitted to go to Spain with the Selwyn girls on holiday, accompanied her father only grudgingly. Everything, today, was going to be unpleasant for her, she had decided, and if she couldn’t convince her father to allow her to go to Spain then she was going to make him feel guilty for it.

Alice was still unsure whether she enjoyed it or not. On the one hand, it felt good to have everything organized and ready to consult, if ever anyone happened to need it. But on the other hand, would anyone ever need it? Cases were rarely ever the same, most similarities being coincidental. As she filled out the forms for someone else's completed mission --- one Frank Longbottom, it seemed --- she wondered whether all these details would be anything more than words on parchment.

They'd given her two hours to fill the forms out, but Alice made quick work of the pages, finishing with more than an hour to spare. After placing the forms in an envelope and leaving them on Moody's desk, Alice left the office. She closed the door shut behind her, turning around to find a familiar face.

They had made their first round when Remus finally stopped. Leaning against the brick wall he waited, sipping his disappointing coffee, wondering if Alice would come closer for a chat or keep her distance to maintain the illusion of being strangers. She approached and he smiled in greeting. Again there was no pretense, no pointless greeting, Alice simply dove into her line of questioning. Though he knew the question was innocent enough Remus could not help but feel as though he was being interrogated.

Remus chuckled softly at her question. "Well, you know James and Sirius." He shrugged a shoulder casually, grinning as he talked about his best friends. "Once they’ve set their mind to something there’s no stopping them. Me and Peter just followed along." It was not quite the truth but not entirely a lie, but it was just enough of a good story that most Order Members usually would drop the subject.

In the end, however, it was their decision. She'd fought hard for the choices she'd made, often even after she thought the deal had already been closed. She couldn't fault them for wanting to fight; it was a noble cause, the Order. They could have made a worse decision. "Yes, they do seem a gregarious pair. I was uncertain, at first, about your friendship with them, but I see how it made sense." Alice smiled. Their friendship was something almost unfamiliar to her, not because she never had friends, but because she'd never had the opportunity to be in a group of any sort.

She took a sip of her coffee. It was almost stale, but not quite. Alice swallowed it slowly, willing it to keep her awake. "It never felt like enough." It still doesn't feel like enough, being an Auror and an Order member. Nothing will feel like enough to Alice till at the prejudice is eradicated, which is never. Alice was eleven years old when she first realised what her mother was fighting for. It was almost instinctive for her to take it up as her cause.

Because I wanted to see something that really got into the nitty gritty details of a character.

I tried to organize it into sections and equalize the amount of writing you’d be doing each day, but obviously that’s going to vary from character to character. Good luck, and may the force be with you.

"Alastor Grumpy-Face Moody.

Wear something nice, the note he’d sent her had ended, and it was only after it was out of his hands that he’d realized that was probably not the best way to finish that off. Fuck it. After the Head flat-out asked him if he had a problem with a woman in the office, a question where a quickly snapped I won’t coddle her like the rest of you was the only appropriate response, he had tried to watch what he did and said around the new anomaly. A more optimistic man might have taken the fact he’d been assigned her to help deal with an investigation as a gesture of trust, but Moody was neither optimistic nor too terribly trusting; he knew it was a test for them both, one to try their patience, the other to test their competence. Which test was for which person was less obvious than it might have seemed upon first glance.

And he was quietly furious, furious in the way a man felt something important to him had been insulted yet was choosing to do something about it rather than say something could be. That the last time he’d been assigned a partner, as the Head was so quick to point out, had ended so well had been nothing but a fluke, an outcome no one could have predicted, and how dare he throw Shacklebolt in his face like that. This situation was worlds different. He was not some cocky young Auror who needed a partner to help temper his more unrefined qualities, he was a Senior dammit, and while he worked from time to time with Aurors under him, they were always lads he picked and put where he felt they would be best, not arbitrary Juniors pulled from the Academy with leashes still caught around their their collars. He was not a bloody baby sitter, and woe be it to this woman if she thought he was going to hold her hand through it all.

Speaking of— Moody flipped the page of the newspaper he was not reading so much as he was staring blankly at, the action allowing him a moment to glance up and down the street. It was one of the less-frequented corners of Knockturn, (though all of Knockturn came with it a sense of desolation that he wasn’t so sure all the foot-traffic in the world could ever really cure,) and as such, that it was currently quite empty was only worrisome in that he was waiting for the younger Auror to come meet him one block down from the store he’d listed in the note, Curios Cabinet. He’d thrown together a plan, but to pull it off, he needed someone who was less easily recognizable as law enforcement, and who better to fill such a niche than a young woman still fresh from training?

He hadn’t gone to excessive means to disguise himself, knowing too much effort was just as bad and drew as much attention as not enough. His usual coat had been (begrudgingly) swapped with a black great coat and grey scarf to help ward off the gloomy end-of-winter chill and damp that was the rule in London, and he’d refrained from shaving for a few days to look scruffier than usual. A sprig of spearmint still filled one cheek, the scent of it barely powerful enough to mask the scent of cheap grain vodka he’d rubbed into his wrists and onto his neck like awful cologne. All of it combined to give the impression of a nobody, just some barely-functional alcoholic doing nothing with his time except waiting for someone else who was also probably a nobody, and as such, he drew no attention; he was worth no one’s time; he effectively blended in with the stone walls behind him and the filthy cobblestone beneath his feet.

It was a different kind of discouragement she faced in the Ministry. The first two years of Auror training were nothing, but becoming a Junior Auror had shown her the misogyny that was deeply ingrained in the Ministry. The higher you went, the stronger it was; Alice began to wonder how hard her mother must have worked in order to have fought against this. Her admiration for Mother shot up ten-fold; not only was there the effort to do one's work well, but also the ever-present need to prove herself worthy. One of the worst of them was a man her mother had spoken very highly of: Alastor Moody. Mother had still been an Auror when Moody was a Junior, and she'd regaled Alice with tales of their missions with as much detail as she had the liberty to share. It was a slap to the face when, after the very first Auror briefing, she'd gone up to Moody, expressing her admiration and excitement to work with him. His reply had been terse, to say the least, and he'd given her a scowl before walking away.

After that, it seemed to Alice that he was purposely making things harder for her. Moody had a reputation of not being easy to please, and it was true for the boys. For her, however, it was like he was hellbent on making her quit, catching the smallest of mistakes in the rudest of ways. Throughout her Junior year, she had tried to prove herself to him time and time again, yet nothing fazed him.

She had been waiting for this moment. Here was a chance for her to finally prove herself to this man who so wholly rejected her and what she stood for. Alice was not used to being refused. It never happened, especially when people were rational, which Moody seemed to be. As she read his note, she decided what to wear. She was putting on her suit of armour, her warpaint. Alice put on a dark green coat and decided to braid her hair before tucking it into a bun. Before leaving, she took a pair of glasses her father had left in her flat and charmed the lenses to make her eyes look bigger than they were.

Feeling suitably disguised, Alice Apparated to a spot one block away from Knockturn Alley. She walked the rest of the way to Curios Cabinet, glancing quickly at her watch to see if she had made it on time. She had meant to be early, but it was two minutes till the agreed time. Alice swore under her breath.

He nodded as she spoke, placing the coins on the top of the counter. It was lovely to see the younger woman, especially in a place where she wasn’t in the usual Auror state. “Oh good, that’s ace then really.” Art looked down at his boy, interested to see his answer. 

"Well uh, I we got shoes and it’s been hard for the day but we’re getting ice-cream now… Thank you!" Arthur had looked down at his boy with the perfect amount of ‘you need to say thank you’ to ‘you will say thankyou’. Almost like he had a choice. 

She smiled at Charlie. "You're welcome, little man. I hope you enjoy your ice cream." She handed Art his own cone. "Is it nice?" Alice said, uncertainty clear in her voice. "Having children, I mean?"

Remus shook his head with a sigh, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. "Relax, Longbottom. I’m only joking." He soothed. "Fairy lights. Are you happy now that we have completely given ourselves away?"

She took the cup from him and breathed in its warmth. The likelihood of Remus being a fake was close to nil, but that miniscule chance kept Alice on her toes. "Thank you, Remus. Titania and Oberon shall be pleased." That was the reply they'd decided on at the last meeting, as the last book Alice had read was Midsummer Night's Dream. Alice bit her tongue, keeping herself from saying that they changed the code words, or were supposed to, at least.

It had been a long day, and she was sure Remus felt the same. There was no reason for them to talk, so she inclined her head toward the street, motioning for Remus to stroll ahead. Patrolling was inherently a suspicious-looking practice, so they needed to make it as casual as possible. She walked a little behind him, watching her surroundings. 

As she watched his back, she wondered: why did he get entangled in all of this? James and Sirius, she understood; the fires of youth seemed to burn in their blood, and the need to prove themselves and to save the world, to be heroes, was written in their actions. Alice had never been able to think that way; it was impractical to her. Remus seemed much inclined to Alice's own thoughts, yet here he was all the same, on patrol. 

☂ - Our characters get stormed in together

☏ - One (or both) of our characters is using the telephone for the first time

✎ - Our characters are supposed to be doing homework but get bored and/or distracted

∞ - A scene between our characters 10 years from now, if the war ceased to exist

☒ - My character is the reason yours dies

♚ - Our characters have a night in the pubϟ - One of our characters has a panic attack

☼ - Our characters have a child together

✪ - First date

❣ - “Because I’m love with you, idiot!”

⚥ - One of our characters is caught in a compromising position.

➳ - Our characters serve detention together (or one of them is supervising the other’s detention)

❝ - Reference to Remus’s “furry little problem” 

✈ - My character’s first time riding a broom (or another experience, feel free to specify)

✿ - Headcanon: My character’s first kiss

♥ - The moment my character realizes they’re in love

☯ - Flash forward AU: our characters’ children get married 

☢ - “If you don’t tell him/her, I swear to god I will!”

▲ - My character confesses something to yours

♭- Both of our characters as muggles

☾- One of our characters shows up to the other’s place drunk.

↮ - Our characters are trapped in a broom closet (or other small space) together

★ - My character having a fantasy/wet dream

♠ - Love potion: My character is slipped it and comes on to yours

♜- Midnight snacks

✂ - Divorce

☺- Kiddos: how our characters would have acted (or did act) together as children

☞- Our characters move in together

✖ - Envy

ღ - Desire

☌ - Insecurity

✔- AU where one of your character’s ships is now a student/teacher relationship (you pick who is who)

Σ - My character comes back to teach at Hogwarts

ø - My character suffers from amnesia and can’t remember yours

¢- Someone loses a bet

⚔ - Adrenaline

♫- Five songs I think of when you think of my ship

♩- Five songs I think of when I think of your ship

✛ - Dreamcast my character’s kid(s)

☸ - My character at their lowest of lows; your character encounters mine (opt)

☮ - In a perfect world…

✑ - An entry from my character’s journal

❦ - My ship doing something that should stay behind closed doors 

✯- “Before you, I didn’t have this problem!”

♙- My character dreams of their future

♟- My character dreams of your character’s future

♣ - Felix Felicis 

♦ - Our characters during a raid

➤ - 13 Going On 30 AU: My character wakes up 7 years from now with no recollection of what has happened in the meantime

❄ - Mistletoe

☃- Our characters act like they’re twelve

℉ - Dog days of summer

≠ - Cutting loose ends

ℳ - Marry me

⌘ - Our characters dance together

✌ - Winning

♛ - “Screw this!”

✞ - Our characters attend a funeral or visit a tombstone

♮- Our characters as old geezers

♯ - Babies

☟ - “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

☀ - Pets

♞ - Dark Horse: Your character surprises mine (specify how)