I Know The World's A Broken Bone

He thought about the question as he looked at the deer and he saw only one logical solution. The Killing Curse. He didn’t think it would spoil the meat, because he’d never heard of anything happening like that, but then again, he’d never met anyone who had killed an animal before — and if he had, they hadn’t told him about it.

"Well, in that case…" He aimed his wand at the deer. "Avada Kedavra." A familiar green light hit the deer and it dropped to the ground. Barty knew that he’d used the Killing Curse before and he’d always thought he’d have a hard time doing it again, but this was only a deer, not a person, so he figured that it didn’t matter that much. "Now, the only question is, how are we going to take this with us? Because I don’t think that shrinking it would do any good to the meat." He frowned. "I don’t fancy carrying it around until we leave, either, so we should probably hide it and come back to pick it up before we leave, yeah?"

"I liked the first order just fine," Barty said, chuckling, though he knew she was right. Medicine would be more important than alcohol, even if it was Muggle medicine. "Don’t think there will be much left of it, though. The Muggles probably used most, if not all, of it when they were still living here."

"Just..." Emmeline hesitated to finish the admittedly stupid sentence but did. "...proise me you won't use that on a human, okay? We hunt animals, not people."

She helped him hide it and took a minute to stand quiet and listen to their surroundings. 

"Huh.. Barty, do you hear that? Silence," she whispered to interrupt the eerie dead silence. "That deer had to be an anomaly in the area, there's literally no movement. The only thing is I'm not sure how long the town has been abandoned. Worse comes to worse we can break into people's hoes and see if there is anything useful. The only thing is where do we start? Where do you propose?"

Blackburn looked exactly like what most Muggle towns looked like to Barty. There were a few stores, a few houses, a Muggle apothecary and a church. Barty thought that this town would have looked boring to him even if there were people around. As it was now, with no one to be seen, it was almost spooky; a ghost town.

"I don’t believe in hell," Barty said with a shrug. "But if I did, I’d say that we’re already in it, what with all those undead roaming around." He pulled his wand from his pocket and gripped it tightly as he walked. He wouldn’t be one of those idiots who went into an infected place unarmed.

He tensed when Emmeline spoke and turned around quickly, aiming his wand at the approaching walker — except it wasn’t a walker, it was just a deer. Barty breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t think he would’ve been ready to blow its brains out if it had been a walker.

"Didn’t see that one coming," Barty said dryly. It was rather surprising to still see a living deer around. It was a good sign that it was still around, though, Barty figured; it meant that there was some food to be found around here. "Can’t we kill it and bring it back with us? Looks like it has some meat on it." Barty didn’t know anything about processing the meat, but there had to be someone in one of the compounds who did.

Her mouth watered at the thought of venison as opposed to their steady diet of chicken, whatever freshwater fish could be found, and woodland creatures. The number of squirrels she'd eaten meat from was disturbingly high. 

"Deer meat," she sighed, a hint of longing in her voice. "Barty have you ever eaten deer? It's heavenly. But, uh, one question. I don't think I brought any of my guns...how do you suggest we kill the deer?"

She paused briefly and gestured to the pharmacy. "Our priorities, and yes, in that order, food, liquor, medical supplies. Well, all right, maybe swap the order of the last two."

It was also nice to get out of the Manor for a couple of hours. Some days he felt like he would suffocate if he spent another day in his room, but the thought of going out on his own didn’t appeal to him either.

The WWN broadcast had been a perfect excuse to go up to Hogsmeade. He was glad when he ran into Emmeline and she accepted his offer of accompanying him — he didn’t think he’d have gone to Blackburn with anyone else. He’d always known she was a capable witch and after Blackpool, he trusted her. She had saved his life multiple times, after all.

He gave Emmeline a little wave as he approached her, feeling an involuntary smile tug at his lips at her cheerful grin. “Figures you’d be smiling when we’re going on a supply raid, of all things,” he said, rolling his eyes playfully.

Barty caught the bag and looked at it for a moment. It truly was ugly and a few years ago, Barty wouldn’t have been caught dead with it, but the undetectable expansion charm would surely be useful, so he just stuffed it into his coat pocket and shrugged. “All right then. Let’s go.”

The town, eerily silent, seemed as if it were frozen in time.

"D'you think we'd go to hell if we stole the Communion wine and waffers from the church?" Emmeline joked blandly.

Despite making the comment about the church, she didn't plan on entering it first, or at all if she could help it. The church wouldn't have anything aside from possibly the two items she mentioned so there was no use.

She turned to Barty and began to ask him where he wanted to start, but he eyes widened and anxious heat rushed to her cheeks when something moved out of her peripheral vision. The witch unsheathed a knife from around her waist and prepared to throw it at the walker -

"No, uh-uh, feasting on my friends' brains is not allow-"

...only to discover that it was a deer and not an undead out for her brain.

"Ah, okay, a deer. Deer still exist, noted," she cleared her throat, admittedly embarrassed to have made the mistake, and finally asked her question. "Where do you propose we start?"

She was dead. Petunia wasn’t surprised…. No, actually, Petunia was very surprised. As Emmeline had said, she’d been a very talented wi— what?

Petunia starred at Emmeline for good long, silent moment after….after—Oh goodness, she was alive. That was… w-was… 

The woman turned around abruptly and looked into the woods behind her, staring hard at the bare, leafless ocean as she held strong. A storm of emotion battered against the wall that she’d been building for the near month and a half since she’d begun travelling to the portkey. The rollercoaster of emotion and loss has been far too much for the woman who had finally gotten used to the idea of being alone in this world.

But now…

Fingers pressed to her lips in an attempt to hide the shaky breath that burst forth from her lungs—  uncertain if it had been a laugh or a sob.

Either way, it was enough of a release to square her shoulders as she turned to Emmeline once more, a small suppressed smile on her lips.

"That’s…I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear that," She said with honest gratitude before retreating back into her normal, stony armor.

That wasa good question, an excellent question, with only two possible answers but oh how awful she'd feel if she told Petunia Evans one thing when the truth was another. Granted, telling her Lily was in Godric's when she was really in Hogsmeade and vice versa wasn't exactly an unforgivable sin, but Emmeline also wasn't stupid.

Petunia could hide her feelings all she wanted but the little bits she had let slip had revealed plenty for her to form her theories. 

"That's a question I only might have the answer to," she said, briefly frowning but quickly returning to grin. She might never get a chance to deliver happy news again, so really, why ruin it just because she was a tad unsure about Lily's exact location?

"There's a 50/50 chance of her being here in Hogsmeade, and a 50/50 of her being in Godric's Hollow, the other open settlement free of the undead," she replied.

"I don't know where Lily actually lives between the two - I'm a healer, and my house is here in Hogsmeade, but I'm like most everybody else in the settlements and split my time about evenly between the two. Lily, I've seen her around both here, and in Godric's."

Speaking of which—

"I’m her sister."

"Is she famous? I wouldn’t be surprised. Lily was always so…bright and likeable," Petunia muttered, nose wrinkling as if each of those traits were in anyway shameful. Perhaps because Petunia, herself, was neither of th—No, shut up.

Whatever disdain or disgust she’d been expressing didn’t hide the hopeful thought that smoothed out her face as she asked, “…..Is Lily alive?”

"Well, Lily's certainly well-known, she's a talented witch. Alive? You want to know if she's alive," Emmeline grinned, finally able to deliver good news for once in a tragically long while.

"You bet your white-girl self she's alive! Lily's very much alive and well," she said.

That burned her but she said nothing of it. At least the witch understood how under appreciated muggle advancement was to many wizards, but she disagreed wholeheartedly at that statement. For every carefully designed circuit, advancement, technology, or innovation that Muggles made, wizards would be a step ahead with their magic. How any Muggle invention might integrate into a magical life was beyond her.

Aside from pens. Bloody show offs with their fancy quills.

Use a pencil, for heavens sake.

"—saved magical lives"

Magic might have saved many muggle lives too. But it hadn’t and Petunia was alone. 

"I could have been a Death Eater," She finished for the woman, drumming her fingers on the side of her thigh as her arms fell to her sides once more. "I’m aware of your war—and from the breath I still draw, you’re not one of their supporters. I’m…relieved, I suppose."

As she spoke, she did not shake this Emmeline Vance’s hand but did nod in acknowledgement.

A disgusting thought, the heart being an organ, but the most beautiful phrase of her childhood, a Muggle phrase, one that she was still determined to learn about. God, what she would give for medical textbooks, cardiology textbooks...she might have been a healer in this war on the undead but to be a doctor would be the most magical thing she would ever experience.

Maybe someday.

But not this day.

"Well, we're at a sort of cease-fire, the two warring sides," she explained."No use killing each other when there's brain-eaters running 'round, is there? Even so, you are correct. How fortuitous that I'm the definition of blood-traitor, raised on the beliefs that Muggles are just like us, people, humans, just with doctors instead of healers, pills instead of potions, and no magic."

"Evans? Would you...happen to be Lily's Evans's...well, a relation?"

Emmeline knew very little about Lily (Evans) Potter, only that she was English and Muggleborn. Evans wasn't an entirely unheard of surname, but it's not like Evans was "Smith" or "Jones" in frequency. 

"Why would a—a witch need a gun?” Petunia said, a particular word falling off her lips with a thick, dripping bitterness. It didn’t make sense. Wizards were so damn dependent on their magic—pathetically so— that why they would need muggle weapons didn’t make sense. They could cast death with a single word or induce torture with a thought. 

Her shoulders squared at being asked why she was there, eyes narrowing. “I have as much right to seek sanctuary as anyone else,” She snapped, shifting her weight from sore foot to sore foot. 

"Portkey. I used a portkey. Bloody coffee tin disguised as litter. Disgusting"

She clicked the safety on her gun and put it back in its holster.

"I’ve long since learned to appreciate muggle innovation. I wish the bloody International Statue of Secrecy were a bit more lax…muggle technology could have saved magical lives," the last bit, she said overly cheerily so as to hide the sadness behind her personal reasoning for thinking it.

"Sanctuary…"

"You’re right, you absolutely deserve to seek it, it’s just…there aren’t any muggles in Hogsmeade, and you’re welcome, but we can’t throw caution to the wind. You could have been-"

She shook her head. Going on about the last war was pointless - ‘you could have been a death eater with polyjuice potion, blah, blah, blah.’

The woman wasn’t a walker. She wasn’t an inferius. That was all that mattered.

"Forget it, it’s the furthest thing from important."

After a short pause, she properly introduced herself.

If she shot now, the other girl would be dead before pulling the trigger. It only took a swift yank down to aim the barrel up if she wanted to blast through the jaw and into the skull… She’d done it plenty now and still had the ammo to spare.

Petunia instead clicked the safety back into place and lowered the weapon, albeit keeping it in her grasp. 

"No. No, I’m not going to shoot. I’d appreciate the same from you."

When she lowered the weapon and told her she wouldn't shoot, Emmeline removed her gun from the stranger's abdomen, but kept an ironclad grip on it.

"Okay, then," she said, offering a small smile. "I won't shoot."