thrown here or found // al & af
Port Montrose had a way of drawing people in. Magic, Alice imagined, did that: its inexorable force would bring everyone together when it needed to. Like most magical folk, Alice was superstitious, and she found it hard to believe that Port Montrose did not know what it was doing when it opened its wards to refugees. Places steeped in magic breathed the life of their inhabitants; Hogwarts was enough proof for her. The history of the Port and the circumstances of its use now--it was enough for Alice to believe in ghosts with silver eyes.
Pregnancy made her superstitions worse, but the strange part of superstition was the affect it had on a mind susceptible to it. Alice would have never considered coincidence a viable explanation for anything: superstition opened her mind, and the Port whispered in her ear.
Jams and jellies. Broken jars with sticky residue and half-crushed berries still clinging to the inside. Marlene had seen a silver-eyed woman and Alice had not believed her. Greta’s note should have scared her--it had scared everyone but her. The silver-eyed woman existed, and she knew Alice by sight, and she had pins that should have only belonged to the Order, and Regulus had drawn her face. And still Alice had not been willing to believe.
The radio and the message. Jams and jellies. The girl from the greengrocer was the silver-eyed woman, and Alice knew who she was. Had she ever intended to stay anonymous? Had she been trying to attract the Order’s attention since she came to the Port? Waiting, perhaps, for Alice to know her. It was a cryptic method of introduction, but Alice had no reason to judge her cousin yet.
She believed in the silver-eyed woman; she had a harder time believing that, after everything, her cousin could have found her in Port Montrose.
Figg’s Jams and Jellies, the radio advertised, and only Alice could have recognized it, her aunt’s married name and the daughter they had refused to let be a disgrace. It had been Fortescue’s Jams and Jellies when her grandfather had owned the shop--the ice cream was more popular for Alice and her friends, but Arabella had always loved the jams.
Who else, then, could be the preserves merchant of Port Montrose, the new arrival whose gooseberry jam made Alice inexplicably think of a countryside cottage and ever-sticky hands.
Moody would have never let her go, had she told him. Not alone, at least, and certainly not in a gesture of peace. He would have suggested wands drawn, on the attack, ready to kill or capture as necessary. But if this was Arabella--if this was her cousin--Alice would not use magic to approach her. If Arabella needed her family as desperately as Alice needed hers right now, she would understand.
Frank and Tamsin kept the greengrocer occupied while Alice meandered her way to the back, located the staircase, and climbed--quietly, guilty of casting a whispered Silencing charm to the staircase below her--looking for a door or window or any sign of movement. The smell of gooseberries got stronger on the fifteenth stair.
“Arabella? It’s Alice--do you remember me?”
