Chapter 1
In the last couple of years since the war began, Dorcas Meadows has worn black more than any other colour. Whether it was for a mission Dumbledore sent her on in the dead of night to make sure she blends into the shadows or to one of her friend’s funeral. Either way, she had started to grow a great disdain for the colour.
She had only just gotten back from another funeral, her body felt unusually lighter after the amount of tears she had wept. She threw her bag lazily onto one of the sofa’s and stared into the living room. All around her, around the room, there were memories. Memories of her.
How could she be gone? It felt like you were dying, another part of yourself was ripped from you because it was.
On the countertop in the kitchen was a hairbrush full of blonde hair. I’ll clean it out later, the ghost called out to her. And make sure you put it back in the bathroom, Dorcas heard herself scold the ghost.
Dorcas barely smiled at the brush. It will never leave the counter again.
Photos on the walls smiled down at the woman. The bookshelves were lined with books Dorcas’ heart will never read, never have the chance to read.
This isn’t right, Dorcas thought.
No, because it wasn’t. Life without Marlene McKinnon would never be right.
Suddenly, the room seemed too small, so cluttered and empty of the one thing that Dorcas needed most. The memories of Marlene’s coffin being lowered into the ground along with the rest of her family’s beside her. How Dorcas had tried to open it to get one last look at Marls before her own death. Then the gentle hands of another pulling her back.
“Dorcas,” Mary whispered. “You know you can’t open that.”
Dorcas did know that. She knew why. Because Voldemort and his group of terrorists had abused and tortured Marls and her family so badly that none of them could be recognised by their face.
When Dumbledore took Dorcas into the McKinnon’s house, blood spattered across the walls and in them was written BLOOD TRAITORS and DEATH TO MUDBLOODS. The house smelt and the smell still lingered in Dorcas’ nose. The smell of death, of rot. In the upstairs hallway underneath on of the tables was a small body underneath a white sheet. Marlene only had one younger sibling. Madison McKinnon. She was about to start her 3rd year at Hogwarts.
Dorcas wondered how Marlene’s room might look. Seeing the rest of her childhood home and what sick art work the Death Eaters made it to be. Marlene was the only one in the family actively fighting against them. Her parents were both healers and helped the Order when they weren’t working at St Mungos, often only earning 2 hours of sleep between the two on them. Her older brother Matthew worked as an Unspeakable and fought the Death Eaters behind the shadows. Everyone of her family were true Ravenclaws but not Marlene.
No, not her Marlene. She was a Gryffindor through and through.
But when Dumbledore opened Marlene’s bedroom and found no blood on the walls, no broken furniture or words carved into her walls, Dorcas felt relieved. Maybe she got out. Maybe she escaped.
But that fantasy only lasted a second because behind the door lay another body covered by a white sheet. The ends of blonde hair spilt from beneath. Then one of the aurors that Dorcas didn’t know, bent down and pulled some of the sheet aside and pulled out her arm. Dumbledore mumbled something but Dorcas didn’t pay attention. Because she saw it.
On the arm that the auror pulled out was paler than it should’ve been. Blood splattered like freckles on her skin. And a tattoo, Marlene’s tattoo. She had gotten it done 2 months in from joining the Order. A vine of leaves and flowers, enchanted by magic to move as if in the wind. But they no longer moved. Instead, the leaves and flowers were dead and falling from the shrivelled vine.
Dorcas choked back a sob.
She looked up at the face, fully expecting to see Marlene looking back at her with a smile on her face, laughing about how good she is at jokes. But she wasn’t. There was only the white sheet. And then Dorcas saw it. Unlike the other bodies Dorcas had walked past, Marlene’s parents, Matthew and Maddy, the sheets didn’t fall onto her face like it should have been.
No. The sheet concaved in.
Dorcas spun around the room.
She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breath.
Marlene was dead, she was gone and she was dead.
Dead.
Marlene’s never coming home.
Never. Again.
And then that was enough for Dorcas.
She started with the sofas,. She threw them over and ripped the cushions, spreading the filling out onto the floor. Then she smashed the glass from the coffee table. Then the books in the bookshelves. The pictures on the wall. Even the window she destroyed. And when there wasn’t anything left in the living room to tear apart she went into the kitchen, then the bathroom, the guest room and destroyed it all.
But it still wasn’t enough.
The only room left was their bedroom and when Dorcas walked into it, with her hair now a mess, her coat gone and her shirt torn from her body, she imagined the furniture all trembled at the sight of her.
Oh how Dorcas wanted to tear this room apart too.
But she was too weak, she could barely catch her breath and she was shaking. So, she pulled her wand from her pocket and a glare from her tearful eyes, she silently cast bombarda and the room tore itself apart.
***
Dorcas didn’t know how long she was on the floor for or even when she fell down. It could have been hours or days. But all she knew was the sky outside had fallen into the deep darkness of the night and so did her apartment.
She contemplated staying there on the floor. Letting the world consume her into nothingness. She already felt numb so what was the harm she wondered? But she let out a breath and pulled herself up.
The apartment was more of a mess then she realised. Dorcas had to hold herself up with the wall to stop her from falling over though it seemed she had forgotten all the books she had thrown onto it and in another step, she slipped.
All the air was knocked out of her and she almost started crying again. For what? There was nothing left to cry about than she already had.
Dorcas felt her pants for her wand. It wasn’t there anymore. It must be somewhere in the bedroom. She groaned as she pulled herself up. She held out her palm facing upwards and whispered “Lumos.”
A ball of light appeared in her hand and she through it at the ceiling where it stayed and lit the room.
With another sigh, Dorcas got ready to pull herself up from the floor but she stopped.
Underneath her hand was an envelope. One that she hid a long time ago and had hoped to never see again. Dorcas picked it up and rested back onto the floor. The cover only said her name and the back had nothing other than the unbroken wax seal of the House Black emblem.
Dorcas remembered the day when Pandora Lovegood gave it to her. Dorcas didn’t know how Pandora had found her and when she did, she was torn between hugging her and cursing her. One side of her was happy to see her alive and not dead like so many of her friends. The other had resented her for staying out of the war and remaining neutral. Pandora had been different to the rest of their group, like Dorcas. She didn’t believe in blood superiority or genocide.
But she still refused to join the Order, to join Dorcas.
“What are you doing here?” Dorcas asked her, barely able to say her name.
Pandora’s soft smile fell at the sound of her friend’s monotone tone. She took a deep breath and with tear swollen eyes, she held out her hand to Dorcas.
In her fingers was an envelope. On it was written Dorcas Meadows in neat and fancy looped writing. One that she had grown to know quite well.
“So is it true then?” Dorcas asked, still staring at the envelope and still not reaching out to grab it herself. “Regulus is dead?”
When Dorcas looked back up at her once friend, she now noticed how her white blonde hair was a mess, falling out of her ponytail as if she had slept in it for the last month. Dorcas also noticed her bright redeyes and her puffy face.
Pandora tried to saw something but her trembling lips refused her and instead she just nodded. Dorcas looked back down at the envelope, finally grabbing it. “So what’s this then? His suicide note?”
“Stop it Dorcas,” Pandora cried. Her eyes already full of tears. “Reg is dead. You should be laughing about it.”
Dorcas wasn’t laughing before but now she did. With a chuckle she said, “No. I suppose it isn’t but what I do find funny is how Death Eaters are getting what they deserve and how I’m expected to be sad about it.”
“Regulus was your friend!” The tears fell freely from Pandora’s eyes now. “He was our friend. You know he wasn’t like that.”
“Do I? Because I don’t remember ever seeing him at one of the Order’s meeting. Ever fighting along side him during the raid. Only against him. Again Crouch and Rosier too.”
Pandora looked at Dorcas as if she had a realisation. That sort of realisation that the person you thought you knew was actually a stranger. The woman looked down at her empty hands and quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks and looked back up at Dorcas.
“If our friendship means anything to you, if your friendship with Regulus meant anything. Please,” Pandora begged. The tears ran down her cheeks again but she didn’t wipe them away this time. “Please Dorcas. Just read the letter.”
Dorcas just nodded to Pandora’s words. “Well I suppose I will never know what Regulus ever wrote me then,” she said before she turned away from Pandora and before she could see the gut wrenching look of horror on he friend’s face.
But unfortunately she couldn’t apperate before she heard Pandora’s wails.
Looking down at the envelope now, Dorcas knew that if she really never cared about either Regulus’ or Pandora’s friendship, she would’ve incendioed the letter in front of Pandora. But she didn’t.
Dorcas didn’t have any final words or a letter from Marlene, not even a goodbye. But she did have one from one of her friends.
So she broke the seal and opened pulled the letter out.
It read;
Dear Dorcas. I’m very sorry.
I’m sorry that I was afraid and followed my family’s beliefs instead of my own. I’m sorry that I abandoned you then. I’m sorry for a lot of things and I hope that in the future, if I am to succeed in my own mission which I plan on doing, that we will build our friendship again.
But I do not know what is awaiting for me and I don’t know if I will live. I wished to tell you this information together, that together we might be able to take down the rat, but this mission is too much of a risk for that. And if I am die I need you to know this.
I’m not sure if Professor Dumbledore has figured it out yet or not but you have a spy within the Order. He has been feeding the Dark Lord many of plots and plans for sometime now. I knew for a while that there was a traitor amongst your midsts but I never knew who.
Until last week.
Dorcas. It’s Peter Pettigrew. He’s the rat. I don’t understand why he has betrayed you all, Sirius and James and everyone else. But he has.
I know it’s hard Dorcas, I do. But I need you to trust me. If you do, meet me at Hogsmede at the Three Broomsticks at 7pm on the 18th of December. So long as I live.
Together we can take them both down.
I hope to see you again.
Your friend;
RAB
Dorcas sat staring at the letter for a long time, more time than she knew. She reread it probably another 10 times after just so she can process the information. Could Peter Pettigrew really be the traitor? And what was Regulus’ mission. Was Reg telling the truth or was it just some big ploy of his and his Dark Lord?
But over the next two week, Dorcas found herself a new found motivation rather than just huddling in the corner of her apartment. She studied Peter. He took detailed notes of every plan and flinched every time someone mentioned Marlene and her family. He couldn’t even meet Dorcas’ eyes.
But all of that she could have believed that it was all grief. Afterall, Peter, Marlene and James were so close being childhood friends. But then Dorcas noticed him at the back of the rom one evening. Sirius had just returned from a mission an Remus barely there mentally with the full moon coming shortly. Everyone was tired including him.
Peter stretched out his arms and from underneath the sleeve of his shirt, Dorcas saw something black on the skin of his left arm.
Dorcas knew then that Regulus was right. He was right about Peter, about everything.
Why didn’t he say something sooner?
Why did he have to wait so long?
So long that Marlene was killed?
Why?
But Regulus didn’t wait that long. Dorcas did. The letter was written 2 years prior. All the loved the Death Eaters have killed since then. All the muggles, the innocents. Her friends. Fabian and Gideon. Edgar Bones. Matthew and Maddy. James and Lily are in hiding because of him. And Marlene.
All of that guilt felt like a mountain on her shoulders.
Dorcas couldn’t stand being in the room any longer. She would think back to this moment later on and ask herself why she didn’t just kill Peter then and face the consequences that the Order had for her then. But at that moment, Dorcas only had one thing on her mind.
Pandora.
She needed to find Pandora and she needed to do it now.
So Dorcas turned out of the room making sure to slam the door behind her as she did. She felt eyes of everyone in that room on her as she left and she couldn’t care less. She kept walking until she found the front door.
The cold London air felt sharp on her skin, like splashing cold water on your face first thing in the morning. The feeling almost hurt her.
From behind her, Dorcas heard someone calling her name. All the thoughts running through her head muffled their voice, making her unable to recognise who was talking to her.
She barely looked over her shoulder and saw Sirius chasing after her, his own face a whirlpool of his own mixed emotions. But she couldn’t deal with all of his problems, not now. She had to deal with her own first.
So Dorcas turned around again and kept walking until she was in the middle of the street, bare of any life other than herself and Sirius. She had been to Pandora’s new house once, a couple of years ago now so it took a while for Dorcas to picture it in her mind. But when she was confident, she apperated, leaving the Order and Sirius behind.