#wiltimelines

It sure felt too hot to be the middle of March. The trees were bare and the sky gloomy as ever, even as the first day of Spring was fast approaching, every indication it was still crisp and cool outside. Yet Lily broke a sweat doing just about anything. It had been that way for the past four weeks or so now, and the little one in her stomach was certainly to blame. According to the Healers, the symptom wouldn’t last long, but Lily was starting to give up hope on that. Now, at half way through her pregnancy, it only felt as if more symptoms were popping up each day.

In addition to being particularly warm, Lily’s mouth was unrelentingly dry today. It didn’t help that she was rubbish about drinking enough water due to being annoyed with how frequently she peed. It was as if every horrible stereotype about pregnancy was coming for her one by one. But Lily didn’t let her frustration show on her face, or at least not often. Today, the baby was getting the best of her as she sunk down into a chair, resting her hands atop her growing stomach. “Please tell me you have some water on hand. A gallon of it preferably, I’m feeling a bit faint.”

The past month had been spent driving her parents up the wall through constant begging. The second three owls had sailed through the windows of the Avery Manor, Ava had been ready to go get her school supplies. She had waited for this moment for years, the last stretch up until September first felt like a lifetime. It was finally happening; it was finally her turn to board the crimson train with her brothers by her side, off towards the castle they’d been told about all their lives. The letter, neatly kept on her nightstand, had been the catalyst but now Ava wanted more. Sage kept off on the trip to Diagon Alley, promising that they’d go soon, but soon was too far away. 

After a morning of pleas and promises that they’d all be angels all summer, Sage had packed Ava off and sent her on a playdate. Normally Ava would have protested a playdate (she was eleven, after all) but an afternoon at the Rosiers didn’t sound too bad. She’d had every discussion about Hogwarts that she could think of with Aiden and Archer, and now wanted Evan’s opinions. 

So she went along, practically skipping up to her friend, starting right on in lieu of a proper greeting. 

“What animal are you thinking of getting?” she asked him, knowing her mom would be horrified of the lack of hello and not finding herself caring. Soon Sage wouldn’t keep track of any of her bad manners, and the thought both worried and excited her. “For Hogwarts, I mean. I’m thinking an owl would be fun, but I also think a cat would be nice. Anything but a toad- Evan, if you chose a toad we can’t be friends anymore.”

“Oh, hello there,” said Dorcas. She looked up from the book she’d been pouring over, an ancient tome with pages that threatened to crumble beneath her fingers. It was also amazingly heavy. Not too heavy to lift up onto the table that the Order’s miniature – and shrinking, shrinking by the day – research dedication used as their home base. But Dorcas was using that as an excuse anyway, more content to sit on the floor with the comforting weight of the book in her lap and her back against the worn wood of Moody’s walls. 

If anyone walked by, they wouldn’t easily spot her here. 

If Moody walked by, she allowed herself to think as it was only inside her head. 

Benjy was in the doorway, caught between her world –– of books, spells and exhaustive research that never seemed to provide answers as quickly as they were needed to actually save lives –– and the rest of Headquarters, full of politics and mind games and violent drills. And the pacing, always the pacing, of the house’s owner clunking about and grumbling orders at the soldiers that (for the baffling most part) revered him as a god. 

Dorcas and Moody had exchanged harsh words – his harsher, by a mile – two days ago. After leaving the and room in tears, she had been avoiding him ever since. It wouldn’t last long, it never did, but she was making the most of her uninterrupted time. 

“Are you looking for me, or...?” she asked, voice pleasantly trailing off as she took stock of Benjy. Of how tired he looked, of how stoutly he stood now instead of trying to look taller and more imposing. “I haven’t seen Vince all day if he’s who you’re after.” 

It rarely occurred to her that she would be who someone was looking for, even when experience had proved otherwise time and again. 

There was nothing Emma loved more than a good Quidditch game, especially now that her tenure in the DOMGAS allowed her unfettered access to the exclusive – though never quite elusive, when you were Emma Vanity – Ministry box. 

It had been a while since she’d made an appearance at a game. A few weeks, maybe just shy of two months by her count. In the summer, it wasn’t so unusual to sit a few out. Especially this summer. Paranoia and public sentiment about the war had reached a fever pitch, keeping even the most faithful sporting fans away from large public events. The guards stationed outside the door to the Ministry Box wouldn’t stand a chance against Death Eater threats or the Dark Lord’s public displays of power. They were there to keep non-ticketholders away, which they did an exceptional job of. as well as the paparazzi out. The guards weren’t doing as remarkable a job with the latter, but Emma didn’t begrudge them for it. Not today. 

The distantly flashing cameras – working hard to capture any sight of someone important, anything they could spin into salacious gossip – were part of the reason she felt so safe here. 

Though her eyes carefully followed the action and the Arrows were making quick work of embarrassing the opposing Wasps, Emma was having trouble concentrating. 

Her distraction didn’t show, but it buzzed around her head like a fly she just couldn’t swat away. It had nothing to do with her pregnant stomach, more prominent by the day and feeling heavier than four-months-along in this phenomenally heavy August heat. It had nothing to do with sweet Gus bouncing in his seat beside Emma, swinging his legs that were too short to reach the floor and humming a repetitive, off-key song of his own composition. It had nothing to do, either, with Hana – still shy of a year old and sleeping in the crook of Emma’s arm like she didn’t have a care in the world. 

Hana was a fussy, scowling baby, but Emma took her cues from the infant now. Not a care in the world. That was how she was attempting to look and perhaps she was just being hard on herself, because she was doing a very convincing job of it. Her hair was blown straight, her sunglasses dark and resting comfortably on her face. When the Arrows scored another goal (bringing their total to a game-changing 300), she smiled and lifted her free arm in celebration, taking care to flash her white teeth and pretty face within shooting distance of the cameras and sports reporters clustered by the door. 

You look well, more than one person had told her when she walked in.

I feel well, she had replied each time, feeling the knife in her stomach twist a little bit further.

What she’d really wanted to say was: I’ll feel even better soon.

When a box attendant passed with a tray of drinks, Emma accepted a sparkling water for herself and drank it too quickly, wishing it was a cocktail. The commentator, voice magically broadcast throughout the stadium, said something witty, and Emma threw her head back and laughed. Her free hand hovered over her son’s head and mussed up his hair affectionately, on autopilot. Gus reached up to pull it away, but only so he could hold it in his lap and poke mysteriously sticky fingers against the blinding shine of her engagement ring. The Arrows scored again, and Emma began a conversation with Leonard Fryer from the DOMGAS’s two-man accounting operation. She wasn’t normally so talkative during games – unless it was about Those Fucking Refs – but she wanted to talk to everybody today. 

All normal behavior, she assured herself. There was no rulebook for how to act when you knew that, at any moment, the Ministry would be storming her home and taking her husband into custody for a double murder. 

A double murder, she thought grimly even as she grinned at a bad joke Leonard told, and gods know what else, depending on how deeply they’ve dug on their own.

Emma only realized Davey was coming up behind her because of the elongated, angular shadow that fell over her. 

“Hi, hon,” she said, sounding distracted – hopefully he would attribute that to the game – and calm, as she pushed her glasses up atop her head and reached out a hand to squeeze his. It was affectionate, especially for her, but they’d grown even closer over the years and, besides, it was easier than getting up to hug him. “Come, help me shuffle Gus around and you can sit down here with us.” 

The house was familiar. The halls intimately so. The portrait on the wall of his - his his his - study even moreso.

It was Antonin Dolohov’s face looking back at him; painted, stately, eyes a shade of green that surely had to have been magically mixed to achieve.

Antonin Dolohov stared back. It was him, but it wasn’t. At the same time. His head was cocked to the side, studying the piece, roving the sharp lines and angles. His hand came up, steady fingers tracing the path of a cheekbone, down a jagged jawline, through a knotted beard.

The boy in the portrait was clean shaven.

The house was quiet; it was large enough to not necessarily be odd for it, but three teenagers - was Patrik a teenager? What was his name, again? Emmett? The boy looked more like Emma - surely weren’t typically this quiet. If he strained he could hear soft whispers, the sort of quiet clinking and careful movement that made it clear that great pains were being taken to make the house so silent.

It was deafening. Antonin continued to stare. Slowly he rolled his shoulders, felt the gravel-crack of his joints popping, clicking into painful place. The escape from Azkaban had been long, arduous; he’d nearly splinched himself attempting to apparate for the first time in over a decade. But he’d made it home - home - in one piece.

The Dark Mark on his arm itched. He imagined his Dark Lord was giving the devoted escapees a few nights to find home, to clean themselves up, to find him. He had always been gracious that way.

“I’m surprised,” Antonin said suddenly; his voice soft in volume, hoarse and uneven in shape. He’d heard the subtle shift in air behind him, the gentle slide of a body lightly against doorway. His voice was his own but wrecked from years of near disuse; he’d heard it upon arrival, and it had taken a moment to place as his own. His lips flickered into a broken smile; freedom would take some getting used to, as would all its pieces fitting back into place. 

He didn’t turn to face her, not yet. He wasn’t quite done studying the portrait - it was one Amirah had had made of him, soon after graduation. What a vainglorious display of pride, of perceived immortality, to hang it in his own office. An office, it seemed, that was shockingly more or less the same as he last remembered it.

(He’d been standing here, hadn’t he, when the Aurors came. The blood on his hands, still there if he looked hard enough, always there, had stained his fingers despite his best scouring attempts. Antonin had laughed when they arrived, asked if they knew any good cleaning charms as they placed him in handcuffs.)

“I... thought you might have rearranged in here.” He finally finished, head quirked to the side. Emma was still behind him. He’d gotten used to knowing when silent, watchful things were behind him: real or not. “It looks the same.”

There was no hiding the fact that Evan was searching the castle for Sirius, just like there was no hiding the fact that the Marauders were no more. Best of all, it was his wretched second cousin who was on the outs. 

The whole school knew the famed foursome had a falling out. From what Evan knew about Sirius (quite a bit, thanks), James (considerably less), and Lupin (meh), he hazarded to guess that it was Sirius who fucked up. At the very least, he was the one the others seemed to be most angry with.

The following was what Evan had gleaned from sharing a dorm with Severus: Sev was involved, somehow, was visibly upset, and was more tight-lipped about it than a muggle’s marble statue. 

The truth of what happened was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, but it was a riddle Evan could use. He would take this mysteriously gift-wrapped box of riddles and use it to beat Sirius with. Metaphorically, of course. Evan would never sink so low as to strike another wizard with a present. 

Stepping outside, Evan turned a corner, deviating from the path, and found who he was looking for. Of course, it wasn’t entirely a happy accident. Evan had asked around, put some feelers out, and well, ask and ye shall receive. He smiled terribly. People like Sirius and he did not smile as a show of harmlessness. They bared their teeth. 

“So what happened?” he asked, sauntering, no, gliding, toward Sirius. He came to a stop directly in front of his former best friend. Suddenly, his whole demeanour changed. Voice quiet and tender, he said, “If you ever need someone to talk to, don’t come to me; I know firsthand how it feels to lose a best mate. Betrayal hurts. But you’re really good at that, aren’t you?” Evan gave Sirius a reassuring smile (no teeth) and pat him gently on the shoulder. 

Evan took a step to his left, Sirius’s right. Then another. It was a steady pace, step, step, in time with his own heartbeat. “Let me guess: you did something that made your friends realise you’re a Black through and through.” 

“Want to know how I know it’s you who fucked up?” Evan took a step closer to Sirius. In a harsh stage whisper, he said, “Because you’re the only one with a history of turning on friends.” He straightened up and returned his tone to normal. “Potter and Lupin and Pettigrew are steadfast. But you?” Evan simultaneously chuckled softly, shook his head, and bit his lip. “No such luck.”

“So what happened?” he asked casually, lighting a cigarette. “You can tell me; after all, I’m the only person in your life who has never run as fast as they can away from you after seeing what’s truly in your soul.” Evan’s lips twitched upward as he stifled laugh. “Well, your mummy doesn’t run, does she?”

Once upon a time, Sebastian couldn’t have imagined ever feeling comfortable in the cavernous, untouchable splendor of Malfoy Manor. Now, with his head bowed close to Lucius – their voices lowered to whispers but still carrying high through the cathedral ceilings and laced with anticipation – it seemed remarkable that he could not remember the last time he had felt uncomfortable here. There was a thrum of expectation that seemed to pulse through the house like a heartbeat.

In the knowledge that he was about to face Antonin Dolohov, among others, for the first time in years left Sebastian feeling the way he had during the days of their initial friendship – days he’d thought of as ‘carefree’ until time and distance shifted the narrative, driven by relief. Like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like the run under him only remained in place by the grace of someone else’s preoccupied hand.

There was comfort in sidling up to Lucius, in talking about their sons and the easier, pettier drama that had marked the passage of time for them. Their eyes were not haunted; their cheeks were not sunken. Sebastian was clad in his finest suit, but he’d slipped into it that morning without favoring it for that reason. It was just the comfortable skin he’d grown around himself now. His hair was shiny, his teeth while, his hand molded by muscle memory to shake other hands instead of shaking nervously inside the folds of his robe.

He’d won reelection to his office nigh on a year ago. The next reelection campaign needed planning now, even if he held an eight-year seat. Things never stopped, but that seemed alright to Sebastian – who actually liked what he was doing, now.

Two newspapers laid on the polished, mahogany dining table in front of him. One, the Daily Prophet, featured a rather large and handsome picture of himself – in these increasingly turbulent times, constituents take comfort in the steady hand of perpetually smiling political wunderkind Sebastian Nott, droned on the opening-line, as though it was Sebastian’s boyish charm and not his middle-thirties age that defined his success as remarkable.

The other, a smaller and less credible paper churned out by some conspiracy theorist, was the only one still discussing the mass breakout that had rocked Azkaban and returned Sebastian’s friends unto him. Even this one cited Sirius Black as a possible ringleader of the prison desertion, which would have been laughable if Sebastian didn’t think he’d now have to manage that fact reflected back on the once-proud faces of Antonin, Bellatrix, Rowle…

No one would be pleased about it.

Sebastian was not pleased about it – any of it.

Nobody would know that by looking at his face, however. There was the sound of footsteps and shadows began to fall across the doorway. Sebastian had been seated beside Lucius, at his right hand, but he raised to his feet with a blithe smile to greet the newcomers.

A scraggle of dark, matted hair caught his eye. Sebastian blinked, trying to place it. When he looked at Antonin again, he saw a face shaven, curls returned to their former shape – if not their shine. He was mixing up mugshots and reality again, though he hardly thought he should be blamed for it. Antonin’s eyes were as large as ever, but if they were registering Sebastian, he was not sure of it. He’d always used to be sure of it. There used to be no mistaking the hawkish glare that marked both halves of Antonin’s marriage bed. But Emma’s eyes had softened and Antonin’s had disappeared altogether.

Call on Emma later, Sebastian reminded himself. He did so, often, but that was to deliver Theo for a playdate with Gus, or to pick up Hana for a ferreting around the Ministry so she could decide where to suffer through her future internships. He and Emma did not talk about how she was the chief reason he’d avoided suspicion, avoided jail time, avoided answering for the crimes that now shackled his ankles and dragged him back underwater into this circle of ‘friends’. 

They did not talk about the last war at all. They did not talk about the fact that it was all happening again, even though they’d just gotten their lives back. Or, at least, it felt like they just had.

Sebastian had to suppress a private laugh when he remembered that one of the further pages of the newspaper, immediately following the pages dedicated to his political success, speculated about his relationship with The Widow Vanity (she’d paid a reporter heartily to get that nickname started in the press, and it’d caught on like wildfire over the years). It featured pictures of them on outings together with their children; consorting at work; whispering private commentary on others, out of earshot. It hadn’t harmed him in the polls. Nobody was calling him The Widower Nott, but any association with a stable, gunning force like Emma Vanity was a boon for him. 

Would it be for Antonin? Had he seen her? Would he tear down everything Emma had worked to build over the years, just as Sebastian was afraid for his own, budding, Real Life? 

Sebastian leaned down low, to whisper something into Lucius’s ear with a smile and a laugh. Then he patted the peaky, blonde man on the shoulder and strode off across the room.

“Hello old friend,” Sebastian greeted Antonin with the charm that had bookended their teenage years. He was still some feet away, however. There was a difference between befriending the wild and walking directly into the jaws of a starved bear.

One step closer and he was near enough for a handshake. Flinching from hesitation for the first visible time, Sebastian made the move to do so – he held his hand out at an unnatural angle, needing to reach as he did. Reach through the feet between then. Reach through the years that had made all of them – these two men the most, in opposite directions – unrecognizable.

“There’s some time before we begin,” added Sebastian, acting the host and ever the pretender. He’d only gotten better at it with age but coming face-to-face with Antonin regressed him. He felt fourteen again, standing here trying to make his effortless face look unrecognizable. “Fancy a walk around the grounds?”

It was not an invitation. Sebastian was already taking a step toward the doorway to make it happen.

He’d learned that from Antonin himself, when he used to be…well, not this.

What was he? Calling him a ‘husk of a man’ seemed too cruel an irony, when he looked more husk than man. 

Sebastian smiled again, like a Cheshire Cat deeply touched by the fateful return of the Antonin Dolohov they were all pretending didn’t set their already-frayed nerves over the edge. 

September 1976