Davey lounged back on the few steps leading up to Dorcas's house. The excited energy that drove him outside to keep from driving her parents crazy had faded into something more manageable under the warmth of the sun. It would only last so long before he was up again, but for now, he was content to stretch out and add to the freckles he always amassed this time of year.

He sat up for the second time at the sound of footsteps—the first set had belonged to the postman, and while Davey had an endlessly warm smile for him, it was nothing compared to what he gave Dorcas now. 

Davey leapt to his feet and met her halfway down the path with a tight hug, laughing against her. "Hey," he said into her hair. "I've missed you." That didn't feel strong enough. Two weeks with next to no contact was harder than he thought it would be, and while he knew the Cup and camp would be similar, it was still an adjustment. Especially when they didn't have a place they could just be them when they were back together.

Which he was hoping to change.

"I'm sure this isn't quite the reunion you were hoping for, but we have to go somewhere," Davey said. There was no hint of imposition in his tone or his grin, and he was banking on her meeting him there. Whenever they went apartment hunting, the last one always seemed worse when spirits were low after seeing a half-dozen duds. Even if he hadn't seen it, just seeing her was enough to lift him into the right, optimistic mood. "I promise, it's worth it."

LOCATION: Order Headquarters DATE: Saturday, 22 July 1978

It had been quiet at Order Headquarters for the last week – Gretchen assumed. 

That was how she always pictured the creaking old building when she was away from it: frozen in time, dust undisturbed, the meetings halted and comrades awaiting her return to liven things up. 

It wasn’t true, of course; if staring up at musty ceilings while she was sleepless and undercover and simply imagining things could will them into existence, she’d have no debt to her name and a great deal fewer breathing enemies. 

The illusion was shattered from the moment Gretchen stepped over the threshold of Chalet Moody. Her boots hit the ground and life was suddenly all around her. People shuttled from room to room, some meeting having just been let out; papers exchanged hands and waves greeted her and—although she couldn’t pinpoint where it came from—someone in the house was injured, because the whole foyer reeked of isopropyl alcohol and yet-unfaded healing charms. 

Gretchen inhaled deeply, taking extra pains to pause wipe her boots on the welcome mat. It was not politeness so much as theatre – equal parts wanting to be seen returning, mysterious and triumphant, from the classified undercover mission that’d kept her away from her favorite haunt...and a desire to hide how stiff her limbs were when they moved; how badly purpled her eye was beneath her sunglasses; how her normally lithe motions were blunted with a limp. 

All she needed to do—beyond reporting to Moody that yes, she was alive and no, she hadn’t lost any of her increasingly, gratuitously complicated codes—was drop off her charmed compass, borrowed on the sly by Moody from the Auror Department, and sneak a few heavy-duty vials of medicinal elixirs into her bag. That much, even injured—even hiding it—was doable. It was all she needed to do, and she was determined to do just that —

—until she caught sight of a familiar face, about to turn the corner at the end of the hall and wander deeper into the belly of the house.  Gretchen pressed her stride forward, trying (quite unlike herself) to avoid attracting attention, even as she caught up to her target and grabbed them—urgently, but not roughly; she didn’t have the strength—by the elbow. 

“I need to talk to you,” she said, voice low. “Privately, pretty please.” 

Lily was not one to get overwhelmed easily, but she was overwhelmed now. It was in the best way, she was positively buzzing with excitement, but she was still overwhelmed by her first meeting with the Order of the Phoenix. She was full of too many feelings to sort out, she’d have to make a list of them once she got back to her flat. She was definitely honored to be there, to even have been invited and passed the rigorous entrance interview, but she also felt like a little bit of an imposter, sitting at a table with Minerva McGonagall like they were equals. Lily did not like feeling like an imposter. 

She’d been mingling hesitantly since the official part of the meeting ended, sticking close to James and letting him do the lion share of the socializing for her. It was incredibly convenient to have an obnoxiously extroverted boyfriend. But then he’d gotten distracted, and she’d gotten distracted, and somewhere along the way they’d gotten separated. She didn’t want to feel like some desperate school girl looking for her boyfriend, so instead of asking around for James, she turned to the person next to her. “So, how long have you been in the Order?” She winced, realizing how dull a question that was. She was quite off her game. “Is that something we’re allowed to ask, or would you have to kill me?” She turned it into joke with a small laugh.

It was the kind of day that made Ofelia miss Spain, but only privately. On the outside she was smiling, just as excited by the weak sunshine as those around her. On the inside, she was not quite triste, just sombria. Glum, the word came to her after a moment’s thought. It was delightfully British, an ugly word for an ugly feeling, better than sombria, which was too beautiful for its meaning. Yes, the weak sunshine of Britain made Ofelia glum, because it made her miss the true sunshine of her home country. But, only privately.

Publicly, Ofelia was out for a walk with Ekaitz, enjoying the weather for all the world to see. It did, at the very least, give her a good excuse to wear a lightweight, white dress that had been languidecer, languish, in her closet for too long. It was nicer than anything she had ever owned before she married Quentin, but now it was a day dress. It was the kind of dress you would walk a dog in. It was still difficult to get used to being rich, even though it had been many months. 

Ekaitz himself seemed happily unaware of his owner’s true mood. He was trotting along with his tail held high, a black flag waving and shining in the breeze. It made Ofelia feel better, to see him so joyful, and her heart became a little bit lighter. The puppy was her closest companion these days, since April wanted little to do with her and society in general seemed to not know what to make of her. It had been Ofelia’s experience, so far, that her husband’s society would rather speak about her than to her. 

Ofelia was lost in her glum thoughts and not paying enough attention to Ekaitz when he saw something that caught his eye on the other side of the street. He lunged in that direction with enough force to drag Ofelia with him a couple of steps before she could bark out a sharp, “Detener, ven!” At her command, Ekaitz trotted back to Ofelia’s side, equally content to follow her orders as he had been to chase whatever had caught his attention. She paused to give him a small treat as reward for his good behavior.

With a tight grip on the lead, Ofelia stepped back onto the sidewalk and straight into another passerby. “Ay! I am sorry, mi perro, my dog,” Ofelia tripped over her English in her embarrassment. “I was not paying attention, I am sorry. Are you fine?”

When Amelia took the assistant’s position, she never imagined how many rooms it would allow her access to. Amelia had assumed it would be more on the side of coffee runs and scheduling, not intense note-taking during meetings of high importance. The latter was something Amelia would consider to be her personal expertise. What Amelia loved most was the debriefing that came after those meetings. Sitting with her boss, drinking coffee while they went over her notes from the meeting and the conclusions they can draw from them. After adding in their debriefing notes, Amelia complies them into a neat and easy to read organizational system that allows both her and her boss to go back to them as needed. More often than not, Amelia took the notes home to compile. There was something all together satisfying about working in the home office she’d set up to her specific tastes. 

Waking up to the sun shining through her window, Amelia should have known it wasn’t going to be a good day. After discovering the fatality in her kitchen (her coffee pot of all things), she rushed to get ready faster, knowing a stop to the coffee shop was in her immediate future. Still, she tried to get back on track to her morning routine. Getting ready in record time, she took a few moments to jot down her day in her planner, before putting it and her notes inside her bag. After a mental battle of wills, she dug the pills out of the side pocket of her bag and took one. She couldn’t have her morning coffee, and she wasn’t going to risk her morning getting worse with an unbearable headache. Looking at her watch, she realized she had just enough time to stop in to grab coffee before she needed to head into work. 

Heading into her favourite coffee shop, she couldn’t help but internally groan at the line being slightly longer than normal. Amelia understood why; a sunny morning in London wasn’t something to waste. However, it did nothing to improve her mood, and she mentally cataloged all the reasons the universe might be trying to punish her personally. When she finally got to the register, she was careful to keep her personal frustrations at bay as she ordered. Amelia even put a couple pounds in the tip jar to help ensure someone’s day wasn’t going as poorly as her own. Walking down to the pick up area, she collided with the person turning the corner from the bar with all the coffee additives. 

Looking up at the ceiling in resignation, she muttered, “Goddamn it.”

Shaking her head, Amelia looked down at her bag and groaned. Coffee was spilt all over the front of it, and by the looks of it, managed to get on the inside as well. It just had to be sunny today. Swallowing down her extreme frustration, she looked at the person in question and asked, “Are you okay?” 

Vince was a champion lounger, a stunning example of making use of excess space.

The couch in Alastor Moody’s largest sitting room - one of many in the sprawling house, certainly passed down to the mean old bastard by much richer, hopefully more charming relatives - was the comfiest Vince had managed to find so far in headquarters. One leg thrown up lengthwise, the opposite arm hanging akimbo off the back; he was comfortable, but he was also quite focused.

That wasn’t so rare a state to find him in, honestly, as long as one walked in to the Daily Prophet in the middle of the day or visited his flat in the midst of a midnight-to-four-am sources binge, pinning articles and cards and sticky notes onto the long stretch of wall that divided his bedroom from the living room.

Today, on Vince’s half-balanced lap, he was squinting at a list of pureblood donors to a certain Society for the Upkeep of Wizarding Historical Artifacts, a private collection run by some DeRosier or distant Malfoy; something that sounded terribly made up and like a front for something more suspicious than it let on; or maybe it was nothing, just a list of purebloods who loved to throw their money around. But the names were always good to know, just in case they popped up elsewhere. It had been quite a get, and Vince was slightly puffed up to know he’d been the first one in mind to look it over once their contact had produced it for them.

A cigarette was balanced carefully between the fingers of the hand hanging off the back of the couch, auto-pilot the only thing keeping Vince smoking it as he memorized the names; until he heard the rustle of a fellow Order member entering the room.

“Before you ask,” he said, slightly sing-song in his tone, before looking up, “I know I’m not supposed to smoke in here, but if I don’t press the rules and antagonize Moody once a day or so I worry he’ll get rusty.”

Mary, for one, was more than willing to celebrate her personal accomplishments. She might not have left Hogwarts with a job lined up at the Ministry or embarking on some long and prestigious career path. But, not long after graduation and she was already set up with a job as a bartender and a small flat not three blocks from work. For a girl who hadn’t been sure a month ago where she was going and if she was destined to spend the rest of her life living with her parents and working on one of her father’s fishing boats, it felt like a win.

And Tilcott’s, the place where she now spent three to four nights a week, was quickly growing on her. It wasn’t quite as well known as the places on Diagon Alley, and it wasn’t nearly as flashy as the clubs she’d been hitting up in her new free time. But the small bar had a decor that seemed to have been untouched in at least four decades, music selection that changed by the night depending on which employee won a coin toss, and a cozy quality that had every drunk person stumbling through the door feeling like they have found their place of rest. It was kind of perfect. 

Even though it was approaching midnight, Mary felt far from weary as she got close to wrapping up her first week on the job. She wasn’t sure how long the excitement of the newness of it all would last. But, the whole living in the moment thing had gotten her this far and if it could push off a looming fear of what she was going to ultimately make of her life, she would certainly take it.

Now alone at the bar while Kian stepped out back for a cigarette break, she turned to new arrival with a signature chipperness that had already earned her some well-meaning jokes. “What can I get you?”

Harper was never really an animal person. That was one of the reasons she was never inclined to become an animagus, despite knowing that she technically could, and perhaps should. Not to mention her job owning the hotels was eventually inevitable, and there wasn’t much benefit that being or having an animal could provide in that context.

But loneliness sunk in, especially with her parents passing and her leaving Hogwarts, where there was nearly always built in company of some sort. She resigned herself to that loneliness for a while, but the idea of adopting a pet, having a built in companion, popped up now and again. Sometimes she’d walk through Diagon Alley until she reached the Magical Menagerie, where she would casually window shop. A bit overwhelmed by all the smells and noises, she rarely ventured deeper inside.

How… how did people go about adopting pets? Harper wondered to herself. Did they just pick their favorite looking one? Was there supposed to be some special connection? Was it supposed to be like a getting your wand experience, where your pet picks you?

Maybe she wasn’t ready for this after all. She imperceptibly shook her head. No, Harper. You’re almost 23 years old, and you have the means to take care of an animal. Plenty of other people do it, so you can too. Stop getting in your own damn head and just do it. She was about to mentally debate back to herself when she felt a presence at the window next to her. Looking up with wide eyes, she stammered “Um, sorry, I’ll get out of your way.”