interlude
Dorcas Meadowes learns she can only rely on herself at a very young age.
She knows this when she is four, and her mother forgets to feed her.
She knows this when she is seven, and she walks home from school to find writing on the walls.
She knows this when she is ten, and her mother screams in different languages at herself.
Dorcas learns to cook, to scrub down the walls, to bring her mother to bed.
She pores over books at the library over an hour from her home, steals medications from local pharmacies to try. She watches her mother’s mouth foam from an overdose, because Dorcas does not understand why one pill will not save her.
Somehow, her mother does not die. Perhaps, like Dorcas, she also has a stubborn will to live, deep down.
Dorcas becomes sneaky. People do not notice her. Well, they do, as a dark-skinned Black girl in Britain, but she learns how to maneuver around them, how not to make a sound. She knows how to elude suspicion at school, when she comes in wearing the same clothes days in a row, or how her mother never shows up to get her. Dorcas learns to forge signatures, too.
She gets a cleaning job at the local supermarket when she is eight. By this time, Mum doesn’t leave the house much anymore. Dorcas spends her nights scrubbing, and her days barely scraping by at school. Eventually, she stops showing up there as well, and nobody notices or cares.
Dorcas knows none of this is normal. That doesn’t change a thing. She hears classmates talk about going up to France for holiday and she does not get jealous. It is useless to be jealous. Dorcas pours all her energy into keeping herself and her mother afloat. Nothing else matters.
When the first letter arrives, left on the doorstep, inscribed with her name in cursive, Dorcas ignores it. In her head is a list of priorities, which she adheres to with the strictest rigor. The letter means nothing to her.
More start showing up. She tosses them out with the scraps of paper Mum has scribbled nonsense on over and over.
Importantly, she never opens the envelopes. Something deep down inside of her knows the contents of the envelope would change her life. Dorcas, who lives day to day, cannot afford hope. There will always be a reason for things to stay the same, to chain her to this life so she can never leave. Whatever dreams of greatness she once had are gone now. To hang on to them any longer is simply unkind.
Early in the morning, one July day, as Dorcas is coming home from work and the sun is rising slowly behind her, she discovers a man in her kitchen.
She freezes in the doorway. His back is to her, she could easily reach for a knife and stab him. Did he see Mum? Where is she? Thoughts flood Dorcas’ mind. The only priority is protecting her and Mum.
“Your mother—I presume she was your mother? She went into the other room. I am not entirely sure she noticed me.” The man says, just as Dorcas has creeped closer, holding a small knife in her shaking hand. He glances at her over his shoulder. His hair is long and grey, but it is his strange, twinkling blue eyes that catch her most off guard. “You can put that down, or don’t. whatever you wish.”
“What did you do to her?” Dorcas hisses.
The man’s eyes widen slightly, shock or surprise, maybe? Dorcas doesn’t care what he thinks. “Nothing. She seemed rather agitated. I wished instead to speak to your father, but…”
“You speak to me.”
The man tilts his head. “How old are you, Dorcas?”
Dorcas lifts the knife higher, her arm straight out. The knife tip brushes against his strange purple robes. “Money is in the safe in the bedroom. If you don’t get out of my house in five seconds, I will stab you.”
“Dorcas—”
“That’s not my name.”
The man flicks a glance over to the stained countertop, where a fresh letter sits. Dorcas stares at it, trying to remember if it was there when she left.
“I believe that says Dorcas Meadowes, no? it would be a true shame if we’ve been sending them to the wrong address all this time.”
She lifts her gaze back to him. “You sent those?”
The man nods, and slowly moves his hands to the sky as though to signal he is not a threat. Dorcas does not put the knife down.
“I simply wish to talk to you. Is that alright?”
“How do those letters keep getting here?”
“We have our ways.”
“Who’s we?”
“Dorcas, this is going to sound very strange, but you are a witch.”
Dorcas’ hand just barely twitches. Her mother says all sorts of strange things constantly. She wonders if this man is just as sick as she is.
“I run a school for young witches and wizards like yourself. We would like you to join us. We will teach you a great many things.”
Dorcas sneers. “Suppose I believe you. Do you think its appropriate to break into my house to… recruit me for your cult?”
The man tilts his head at her. “You’re very intelligent. We would be happy to have you.”
“I’m going to kill you.” Dorcas announces and plunges the knife into the man.
At least, she gets close before it is snatched from her hand and goes flying backwards, lodging in the wall.
Dorcas stares at the handle, vibrating slightly from the sudden movement.
“I’m afraid it will take much more than a kitchen knife to kill me, Ms. Meadowes.”
She turns slowly to look at him.
“How did you do that?”
The man smiles, and pulls a long stick from his sleeve, offering it out to her. She stares, mind working a mile a minute, but does not take it.
“I think you understand that I am not lying to you. Here, take it. See what you can do.”
Dorcas thinks about running. She thinks about grabbing her mother from the room and taking off. Where would they go? There is nowhere for them. Nowhere besides here, with this man.
Perhaps she can appease him. He is clearly dangerous, and probably quicker than she anticipated given his age. The knife thing perplexes her, still. But she has learned it is sometimes easiest to play along with insanity.
She takes the stick.
A shower of red sparks shoots out from the tip. Dorcas instinctively ducks, covering her head, her body cowering as her knees hit the ground.
“Impressive. I haven’t seen a beginner successfully cast magic with another’s wand.”
Dorcas, crouched on the ground, looks up at him. The man is smiling. Smiling. Something strange and angry curls in Dorcas’ stomach. She is afraid, and she hates it.
“Please leave.” She hates the way her voice trembles. This vulnerability, something nobody has been able to draw out of her for years, placed on full display. “Leave us alone.”
Silence. Dorcas glances up. The man, watching her, carefully sets another letter down on the countertop, next to the first. “I understand.” His voice is gentle. “Please just consider it.”
Dorcas doesn’t move until she hears the front door close behind him. In a flash, she is running to the bedroom, trying desperately to get in. it is locked.
“Mum! MUM!”
She hears crying, muffled. Dorcas pounds on the door.
“Let me in!! It’s me!! The man is gone, please Mum!”
Nothing happens.
Dorcas slams her hands and legs against the door, trying to get in. Eventually, she finds herself sliding down to the ground, back against it, utterly worn out. Holding her knees to her chest, she sobs bitterly, curled up into a ball, still protecting the door.
~*~
Dorcas reads the letters.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Whatever it is, it sure looks official, but strange. Cauldrons and robes and wands on the list, books she’s never even heard of.
Dorcas folds the letters and leaves them tucked in a hidey-hole, where Mum can’t find them.
The letters stop coming. Dorcas continues her regular routine, but something has shifted. She thinks of the red sparks, of the warmth that spread through her entire body at the feeling.
This is why she avoided it: hope is a dangerous thing.
When the man returns, a month later, Dorcas is ready.
She can’t quite explain how she knows he is coming, but she does. She skips her shift, gives a few rare sleeping pills to Mum to knock her out. Dorcas is well-versed in covering her tracks, hiding any loose thread so nobody has a chance to pull it.
When the man returns, Dorcas is sitting at the table, waiting for the soft pop she doesn’t realize she is expecting.
If he’s surprised, seeing her like this, ready to confront him, he doesn’t show it.
“You’re Albus Dumbledore.” Dorcas says, arms folded on the table. “You apparently run this crackpot school.”
The man – Dumbledore – shrugs. “If you can call it running. Crackpot, certainly, though perhaps not in the sense you mean it.”
“What was the trick with the wand? Why are you targeting me like this?”
“That was magic.” Dumbledore looks her in the eyes, lifts his palm, and suddenly a small bubble of light floats up from his palm towards her. Dorcas watches it, attempting to conceal her awe.
Still, a strange, crashing feeling hits her. This must be how Mum feels, seeing things that don’t exist, can’t exist. Oh god—
“School begins in a month. We can provide you lodging, of course. We would bring you to our street to get your supplies.” Dumbledore seems to see right through her. “This isn’t a trick, Dorcas, nor are you seeing things. This is simply an opportunity. You are gifted. We can provide you with a new life.”
I hate you, Dorcas thinks. She wants to go back to months ago, when she was still in pure survival mode, back when she never knew there was another option.
“I can’t leave my mum.”
Dumbledore nods. “She’s ill, isn’t she.” Dorcas doesn’t respond. “My sister was ill, also. Perhaps not the same, but I understand the responsibility you must feel.” A pained look flashes across his face and is gone. “I can promise you that I can ensure her safety in the months you are away.”
Her chest cracks open. “She needs specific care—”
Dumbledore nods again. “I understand, Dorcas. I will do what I can.”
She stares down at her hands, curled and trembling.
“You want to come, don’t you?”
Dorcas will regret this moment for the rest of her life.
“Yes.”
~*~
Diagon Alley is grand and beautiful and dangerous.
Dorcas feels it, the magic, thrumming through her veins. It is so close, and so prevalent, and the power she feels in her hands is overwhelming. She hates the lack of control this place seems to present to her. She shoves her hands into her pockets and keeps her head down, looking for each possible exit in every room.
She gets lost from Dumbledore pretty quickly. By lost, she means escaped. She refuses to be near him any longer. She has decided she hates him. Holding the bag of coins he’d given her – the strange names of which escape her—she buys items and wanders, keeping a sharp eye on everyone and everything.
She spots an auburn haired girl kicking her legs at an ice cream stand, chatting happily with two brown haired boys and a silver haired man serving them. Dorcas scowls and keeps moving.
In her hand, she keeps her wand. Dumbledore had brought her there first. The old man had given her a few to try, seemingly looking for something. This wand pulsed in her hand, like all the magic around her, and she’d created a storm cloud in the room. The man and Dumbledore had shared a glance.
Acacia, dragon heartstring, 11 ¼ inches. It fits into her palm carefully, not assuming that she will hold it. She likes that.
The further she walks, the more the buildings shift from brick and warm to dark and wooden. A strange chill settles in her chest. She moves carefully, against walls, refusing to be noticed, until—
“What’re you doing down here?” A voice barks behind her, and she startles, glancing back. A grizzled man is standing there, leaning heavily on a cane. One blue eye spins in its socket, but the other is locked on her.
Dorcas breaks into a run, running deeper into the labyrinth of buildings and streets. She can hear something behind her.
“Stop!” The man yells.
Dorcas doesn’t. She sprints down alleyways, ignoring any faces she sees. Her heart is pounding.
She skids to a halt against a wall. Desperately shooting a look at the man closing in on her, with no way to get out, Dorcas does the only thing she can think of: she points her wand at the man.
A beat. Then, the man freezes. Literally stops dead in his tracks, as though every muscle in his body tenses up all at once. His eye bulges out of his head, the blue one spinning rapidly. His wand drops to the ground, utterly useless.
Dorcas doesn’t stop to think. She sprints past him around the corner, running as fast and as far as she can. She doesn’t know when the effect will wear off, and she doesn’t intend to stick around to find out.
That blue eye sticks in her mind as she runs. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, pounding like her feet against the ground. Screw Dumbledore and the wand and this stupid place. Dorcas intends to board a bus or – fuck it – hitch a ride home, back to Mum, back to normal life. No future for Dorcas Meadowes, no greatness or promise, just home.
“Dorcas!”
She’s burst onto the main street, and Dumbledore is standing at the entrance of a shop, staring at her. He puts out a hand as though to stop her. He’s looking at her so strangely, and she hates it. She means to keep running—
But she’s stuck.
No no no, fuck, shit. Dorcas screams internally, willing her muscles to move. People are looking now, whispering. Dumbledore moves closer, carefully, as though she is a wounded animal.
“Dorcas, you’re bleeding. We need to get you cleaned up.”
They end up at the inn on the street. Dumbledore doesn’t leave her alone until they bring her to the room. She tries to get out through the window, but it won’t budge. She’s trapped, and by this point, incredibly exhausted.
Dorcas falls asleep on the floor, curled in a fetal position, dried tears down her face from weeping for her mother.
~*~
Year one passes in a strange sort of blur.
She sits alone on the train, staring out the window. A hat screams “SLYTHERIN” at her, and she slowly walks to the table, ignoring the stares and whispers. Nobody reaches over to high five or congratulate her like they do the others. She sinks into her seat and thinks desperately of her mother. Has she noticed Dorcas’ absence? She doesn’t know what Dumbledore did to her. She thinks of this when Dumbledore, at the head table, winks at her before his speech.
It is strange, not having anyone to take care of. Dorcas does not take to it well. She doesn’t really sleep, instead spending the first few nights holed up in the dormitory with those other girls. They giggle and gossip and introduce themselves by their last names as though that means something. She’d simply blinked at them when they’d asked where in the wizarding world Meadowes came from.
Eventually, she ventures out past curfew. Apparently, this is not allowed, but Dorcas has always been good at not being caught. She explores every corridor, every hiding place. She refuses to let anything in this place catch her off guard.
Schooling is strange. Dorcas, already a year out from basically quitting school back home, does little practice. She skips lessons, preferring instead to hide in small areas in the quiet, and darts from view. Her wand and school supplies sit unused in the dorm. Nobody seems to notice or care. It is as though Dorcas does not exist.
She hates it all. She hates coming back and finding her clothes laundered, the bed made, the food so readily available. She resents it, the ease of this world. She doesn’t understand how it all happens, where it all comes from. Facts elude her grasp, and it is terrifying to lose control here.
She thinks often of that blue eye. Nothing ever came of it. She wonders if that man is still stuck there. She hopes he is. That eye haunts her in every waking moment.
Dorcas doesn’t see Dumbledore until early December. She has not been to a single class, she barely speaks to anyone, she rarely sleeps, she becomes a ghost.
Dumbledore finds her in one of her corners. It is behind a tapestry, where a small nook in the wall lies. Dorcas is curled up there, chin resting on her knee, when the tapestry moves, and she startles, snapping up into a defensive position.
Dumbledore’s eyes crinkle. “I was wondering where you were, Ms. Meadowes.”
“Kick me out.” Dorcas says immediately, realizing her chance to go home is here, now. If she plays gentle, plays young, maybe he will listen. “I haven’t been to class. I haven’t practiced any spells. I should be failing. Kick me out.”
Dumbledore smiles. “Ah, but it isn’t that easy, Ms. Meadowes. You have a gift, and I would hate to see you waste it.”
“Please.” Dorcas is not one to beg, but here she is young and homesick. Longing for her mother, for home has gnawed a hole in her chest, and she is hollow.
“How about we make a deal. You stay for the rest of the school year. Then, you decide if you want to return next year. We don’t usually accord this kind of decision to a student, you see. But it will be your choice, provided you actually try this year. If you fail, we will have no choice but to readmit you for your first year again. Does that sound fair?”
No, Dorcas thinks, but she is not in a position to argue.
Over winter break, nobody tells her she can leave, so she stays. The castle is quiet and empty, and the ever-present tension in Dorcas’ back starts to ease ever so slightly.
She opens her first textbook and starts to read. Once she does, she doesn’t stop. She is fascinated, utterly entranced, far beyond any ability to be disgusted at herself.
She practices spells based on the books, and silently thrills at their success. The hum of power makes her entire body shake.
It is as though a switch has flipped coming back from winter break. Suddenly, the little Black Slytherin girl is attending every class, mastering every spell before anyone else, constantly reading. She ignores everyone just the same, but people begin to take notice of her.
It is near the end of the school year when someone shoots a hex at her in the hallway, taunting her about blood status. Dorcas has read about this in the books and feels a strange wash of shame despite herself. Her mother, what these people call a mudblood, and her father, non-existent. She is a perfect target; ambiguous and isolated. She refuses to be knocked down though, and learns how to perform as many jinxs as she can muster.
When Dumbledore summons her to his office on the last day of classes, she can barely look him in the eye. She is ashamed of her thirst for knowledge, the deep desire for power. He smiles when she tells him she will come back, and he sends her on her way.
~*~
Home is as though she has never left.
Her mother screams at voices Dorcas cannot hear, refuses food, scrawls strange symbols on the walls. Dorcas is plunged back into a world she used to reside in, except it feels all wrong now. She has grown soft and content with the promise of a future, and this small place simply is not enough for her.
She hates herself for it.
It is this summer that she begins drinking alcohol. She nicks a bottle of it from the supermarket and nurses it quietly in the kitchen. She likes how it numbs every angry ashamed part of herself, quiets any voices she might hear. In these moments, she has the peace of mind to wonder if these conflicting emotions were how it started for Mum.
~*~
She goes back to Hogwarts in the fall. She hitches a ride into London, walks all alone on the Platform. New supplies had arrived at the house for her, without a note attached. Dorcas supposes Dumbledore hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen this time were she to go back to Diagon Alley.
It is worlds different from first year. She is thrown headfirst into her studies, reading all night and barely sleeping. People look at her now, and she gets more curses, but she keeps her head high. She hides a little less, but barely speaks. She is strange and perplexing, and people take notice.
It comes to a head when she sees that blue eye in the halls. Dorcas, heading to Transfiguration, lurches to a stop when she spots him, that man, speaking to McGonagall. His blue eye, still spinning, suddenly latches onto her.
Dorcas, as is typical of her, runs.
She runs down the halls she knows so well, feeling that strange sinking feeling of repetition. She refuses to be caught by him here, not where she knows every hiding place, not where she has the upper hand.
Dorcas hides in a tiny crevice down in the dungeons, near the common room. She doesn’t emerge for hours, hidden in place, refusing to move. Terror grips her body.
Nobody comes for her.
It is night by the time Dorcas crawls out, joints painfully cramping. Even though her heart continues to race, she sneaks into the common room and spends the night on a couch, eyes wide open, refusing to even rest. She stays like that until the sun begins to rise and light fills the water all around them.
She learns that the man is Alastor Moody. She hears whispers of him in the days later. He is an Auror – something Dorcas fervently checks in her books about – and is apparently adored. Dorcas has spent years avoiding regular police; she refuses to let this one get any closer.
One of the girls from the dorm, Florence Shafiq, starts smiling at Dorcas here and there. She rarely responds, but Florence keeps smiling.
Professor Flitwick gives her a book on complex charms to read, and she devours it in a night. His mustache twitches with a hidden smile when she performs a spinning levitation charm in front of his classroom.
Dorcas doesn’t think of home. It doesn’t even cross her mind, as though it has been wiped from her memory. Everything is about Hogwarts, magic, potential.
When summer comes, and Dorcas finds herself back where she began, resentment begins to bubble uncomfortably in her stomach. She screams at her mother when she doesn’t listen, punches a wall so her fist bleeds, and steals old bottles of whiskey. She hates who she becomes here, but that doesn’t change the truth of who she is, where she comes from.
~*~
Dorcas gets taller this summer, and people begin to see her clearer. Florence begins walking with her to classes, quiet and shy at first until she slowly begins tittering in a high, thin voice. Professor McGonagall casts her strange looks in class. The quidditch captain, Steve Laughalot, recruits her to the Quidditch team after watching her practice late one evening on one of the old training brooms.
She likes the feeling of soaring through the sky, the weightlessness of it all. Freedom, she thinks, gliding through the air. The bat in her hand feels right, like the wand, filling her with power.
She still avoids the team, though, after games. She hates their stares, their hexes. It is easiest to continue keeping her distance.
Dorcas figures out where the house elves are. She brings little trinkets she magicked up for them, and they let her take bottles of alcohol off with her. Mealtimes become irregular; she steals down to the basement to grab snacks from the elves.
She finally begins sleeping again. It is jarring, to wake up clear-eyed. Dorcas had spent so long barely sleeping, that the sensation of it is so alien and distressing.
Over Christmas, Dorcas reads and roams the halls and practices hitting Bludgers, and it all feels right.
That is, until late one evening, as Dorcas sits alone in the garden, watching as the snow falls around her, when she hears the crunch of snow and whirls around.
Blue eye. Alastor Moody.
He holds up a hand. “At ease, soldier.” His voice is gruff and harsh-sounding against the cold winter air.
Bile rises in Dorcas’ throat, and she wants to run, but finds herself unmoving. Fear of this man, this cop, what he could do to her, it is paralyzing. Does he remember her?
Moody points to the bench. “Can I sit?”
Dorcas stares, certain that if she says anything, it will come out in a rush of vomit and blood and terror.
He walks stiffly to her, something she hadn’t noticed at Diagon Alley. Easier to run from him now, she thinks. She can’t see his wand, but it must be somewhere easily accessible. Dorcas’ wand is in her sleeve, ready at a moment’s notice. His eye keeps spinning, but he doesn’t face her. He just sits facing ahead of him, hands on his thighs. She watches him carefully, willing her body to reactivate and whisk her away. Alarm bells sound in every part of her brain, different versions of herself screaming to run.
The man keeps his eyes ahead. “You have been very difficult to track down.”
Dorcas’ finger twitches.
“Dumbledore had suggested as much. Still, I was surprised. You’re very good at evading notice.”
Her face feels warm and wet.
Moody finally looks over at her, silently crying without any expression on her face, and his eyebrows knit together. “I’m not going to hurt you, Meadowes.” He says harshly.
Dorcas sniffs a little. “I don’t regret hexing you.” She whispers, coating her words in all the venom she can muster.
Moody laughs. He laughs! Dorcas stares in horror. “Of course you don’t! Why would you?”
“Why are you following me?”
Moody’s face twists into something unrecognizable, something she can’t read. “I wanted to meet the kid who managed to hex me.” He glances sideways at her. “I wouldn’t recommend trying it again, Meadowes.” He stands up. “Keep learning, kid.”
He hobbles away. Dorcas stays sitting on the bench, waiting until her entire body thaws out.
Books start showing up in her dorm room, stacked neatly on her table. Florence raises her eyebrows as the stack grows larger. Dorcas guesses who they’re from, and she resents them. She stuffs them under her bed next to the empty bottles, but the urge grows stronger. When she finally cracks them open, she does so in secret. Nobody would even understand, but she refuses to let anyone see her give in. she builds the walls tighter around Dorcas Meadowes, so nobody can get in.
~*~
She punches Amycus Carrow after he calls her a slur at the beginning of fourth year. She wants him to hurt, even more so than just a hex. She wants his blood on her knuckles, she wants to shut him up.
It doesn’t help that she is a little drunk; the first time she’s drunk during classes. Amycus Carrow, with his beady little eyes, leering at her tauntingly, deserved it.
She’s defending herself, and she’s defending her mother, with her sunken eyes and garbled speech, glaring at Dorcas from the floor while Dorcas ignores her and drinks. Nothing else matters as Dorcas smashes her fist into his skull.
She gets sent to Dumbledore’s office first, while Madam Pomfrey heals Carrow’s cheekbone. Horace Slughorn walks her down there himself, hand firmly on her shoulder. Apparently, she’s got a reputation for running. Dorcas, blood simmering in her veins, thinks of kicking his knees out, hopping on a broom and soaring across Scotland, but that doesn’t much help the situation at hand.
Dumbledore arches an eyebrow at her once she’s seated by Slughorn and dismisses him with a wave of the hand. Dorcas, sunken low in her seat, glares at the phoenix in the corner. This is the first time since the end of first year that she’s seen Dumbledore face to face, usually preferring to avoid him whenever possible. There is little room for escape here. No knives or wands to fight back – Dorcas had her wand confiscated by Slughorn pretty expeditiously.
“You’ve assaulted a fellow student, Dorcas.”
Dorcas says nothing, running a finger along the broken skin on her hand.
“This isn’t the first time either. I’m under the impression that you’ve been given detention more than a number of times for hexing students, isn’t that right?”
She thinks of one of the kids at school back home, who tried to cut off pieces of her hair in class, how she hit him so hard his entire face looked bloody and pulpy. How nobody came to collect her, weeping and hands-stained scarlet, and she’d walked home alone once it got too dark for the school to stay open for her.
“Though, I am aware you haven’t had the easiest time here. Your head of house reports a great deal of conflict coming your way, which you have been responding to.”
The phoenix makes a strangled caw. Dumbledore ignores it.
“You’re gifted, Dorcas. There is no denying that. I’ve heard much of your prowess, despite your… reticence from student life.”
The amount of times Dorcas has had to clean up a bloody mess left by her mother is incomparable. The metallic stench, looking at her mother on the floor, arm or thigh mangled by some attempt to let the voices out. She wonders if Dumbledore has ever tasted his mother’s blood on his tongue.
“I’d like you to begin private tutoring lessons with Alastor Moody.”
Dorcas’ head snaps up. “No.” She says before anything else can come to mind. No no no
“He can teach you to defend yourself more adeptly. You have a future, Dorcas. You’ll learn more with him than anyone else.” Dumbledore leans in, lowering his voice. “I trust him. He can teach you anything.”
I don’t trust you, Dorcas thinks. A fire burns low and steady in her stomach. But I want to know more. Let me know more.
Besides, does she even really have a choice? The twinkle in Dumbledore's eye suggests she doesn't.
And that’s how, with the two factions of Dorcas warring at once, she ends up spending every Friday evening in an empty classroom with Alastor Moody.
He doesn’t get close. His hands remain in view at all times. He shows her proper duelling stance and curses that not even the DADA professor would dare to. He gives no smiles, no encouragement. He is harsh and drilling.
Dorcas likes this, the lack of warmth. Here, the focus is on skill, no friendliness. It is protecting.
The world seems to even out in a strange way. Florence’s eyes light up when Dorcas speaks, low and quiet. She slams a bludger into Stephen Gould’s head on the pitch. She keeps a spare bottle in her nightstand, spare swigs taken here and there.
Word spreads fast that a fourth-year Slytherin is being tutored by the greatest Auror alive. Amycus Carrow glowers at her every chance he gets. The other dorm girls crowd around her, asking what Moody is like. The attention, for a kid used to dodging everything and everyone, is destabilizing, but something seems to click in her head. This is what it’s like to be a regular student here. Here, she isn’t Dorcas Meadowes, daughter of a mentally ill woman, school dropout, alcoholic. She’s Dorcas Meadowes, a force growing stronger constantly.
She kisses Florence at the end of fourth year, pressing her up against a wall and devouring her lips. Dorcas doesn’t much care for romance, for closeness, but she likes the heat of it all, the dark pools of Florence’s eyes when she pulls away.
Moody gives her homework over the summer, nodding begrudgingly at her progress. She keeps a running list of his weaknesses: his overcompensation in one leg when standing, the exposed part of his neck left unguarded. She has a feeling he is doing the same for her, and so she tries to hide every vulnerability away so he cannot fight it. It is inevitable, vulnerability during a fight, but Dorcas protests nonetheless.
She watches the castle and Hogsmeade fade from view on the train, and feels a terrible sense of loss.
~*~
Mum is quiet and subdued, a grey tinge to her skin. Dorcas wonders not for the first time what Dumbledore has done to her for these years.
She spends her time outside of the tiny house, exploring old mines and abandoned factories. She smashes bottles on the concrete for fun. This whole place seems foreign to her now.
She lights fires here and there with a lighter. It is satisfying to watch the flame catch, the burning. She tamps it out afterwards but leaves the scorch marks as a sign. Dorcas was here.
It begins to feel like eyes are following her. Dorcas ducks from view, but the eyes remain. She hates it, an ugly and ferocious part of her rising up. She casts spells and nobody from the Ministry ever comes for her.
This summer, Dorcas begins considering what loneliness is. She has been lonely all her life, and it is safe. But there is no one to talk to here. A part of her misses Florence, and Moody. A body claws out of her body late one night, very drunk and sprawled in the grass one night, and she decides never to speak to them again.
When Mum doesn’t emerge from the bedroom for days, Dorcas doesn’t care. She gets into fights behind the bar up in town and drinks until she blacks out. She pretends she is somebody else, somebody with no fucks left to give, not a kid just trying to do her best. Nobody seems to remember her anymore, and that’s just fine. Dorcas dances and drinks and kisses boys on the lips before knocking them out cold later that night when they try to grab her tit.
It’s fine. It’s all fine.
~*~
Dorcas comes back to Hogwarts in a pair of stolen Doc Martens, a curl to her lip, and a goal to cut out anyone who has ever shown her attention.
It is a wicked part of her that takes over this year. Dorcas, stuck inside herself as a little girl, wishes her mother would hold her with any semblance of authority and love. This Dorcas, fifteen and angry, has decided the only way to protect herself is to burn the entire world down.
Florence follows her around with puppy dog eyes until she realizes Dorcas won’t break and kiss her again. Amycus Carrow is hit with a non-verbal curse so bad he spends several days in the hospital wing. Dorcas scrawls bullshit on scrolls smeared with globs of ink and submits them for homework, ignoring the confused furrowing of brows from the teachers. This Dorcas is a Prefect, but there is nothing kindly about her. She swings her bat with controlled strength on the pitch. People get scared.
She keeps going to the tutoring sessions, though. She is relentless, pelting Moody with curse after curse without warning. He doesn’t ask what she is doing, just deflects every single one and tells her she’s getting sloppy. Dorcas wants to hurt him, almost desperately, fervently. Her wand thrums in her hand, urging her forward.
Moody disarms her one session, though, catching her wand in an outstretched hand, his wand still pointing directly at her. Facing it, a primal rage suddenly soars in her body, and she lunges forward, trying to claw at Moody’s non-flesh eye.
“Stand down!”
Grips like vices grab her wrists, force her down onto the ground, still thrashing.
Dorcas, Dorcas, Dorcas.
Dorcas had to hold her mother like this on more than one occasion, sobbing as her mother ripped and tore and shrieked for help from her evil, evil daughter.
The body pulls back, and Dorcas slumps down, smashing her forehead against the cool marble of the floor.
“For fuck’s sakes.” Moody growls, somewhere far away.
The fire recedes from her limbs, leaving her sterile and cold. There is nothing powerful about Dorcas Meadowes here.
She stays like that for a long time. Nothing moves. Dorcas slowly inches up into a seated position, her head and nose aching.
Moody is sitting opposite her, watching her warily like she’s a feral animal. Dorcas resents it, despite herself. “Stop looking at me,” she spits, but there’s no venom left for her to use. She is shattered, broken, vulnerable.
“What happened, Meadowes.” It’s probably a question, but Moody says it so low and harsh that Dorcas can’t bring herself to answer. She feels at her nose, and her fingertips come away stained with blood. She laughs grittily.
“Look,” Moody says quietly, something almost soft in his tone. “I don’t care what you have going on up in your head, but it’s not healthy. You have to get a fucking grip, otherwise you’re gonna crumble. Do you hear me, kid? You’re smart, and talented, but you’re a mess. That’s not going to do you any good.” His voice drops even lower. “What do you want, Meadowes?”
She stares at him, exhausted. Her bones feel dense and unforgiving. But she knows the answer: “I want to be the best.”
Moody nods. “Alright then. Sort your shit out. If I get any inkling you’re losing control, this is over. I won’t be a part of your catastrophic decline.” He clambers to his feet, and casts a look down at her, pathetic on the floor. “Don’t waste this, kid.”
~*~
She dreams of her mother overnight.
Maybe this was once her mother. She’s young and healthy here, fresh dark braids down her back, eyes dark and glittering. Dorcas tilts her head at her, familiar yet unfamiliar. I know you, she wants to say, but does she? Does she know her mom at all? Did she ever have a mom at all?
This woman smiles, but her eyes are distant. Dorcas wants the woman to look at her properly. Her mother never quite looked.
She steps forward, reaches a tentative hand out. This woman, still smiling, pulls something out from her back pocket. A wand. She points it between Dorcas’ eyes and whispers.
And everything goes black.
~*~
She returns a demure, quiet version of herself, and people notice.
Florence is hesitant, seeing the dark circles under Dorcas’ eyes even though she’s been sleeping, but she moves closer once it becomes clear Dorcas won’t bite. Teachers give her a bit of lenience. Steve Laughalot tells her privately that she can take some time off the team if she needs, but she refuses.
When she turns back up the next Friday, Moody seems pleased. They go back and forth, training on defensive spells. She is exhausted, as though being occupied by the body within the body has drained her life force. She feels brittle and unreal, unable to fight.
For some reason, Moody becomes strangely caring. His tone softens, he brings her food to the lessons once it becomes clear she isn’t eating much and asks her how she is doing at the end of lessons. She doesn’t answer much of the time, but there is something touching in that he keeps asking. It feels cruel, but Dorcas is too exhausted to be angry. When she masters a tough spell, Moody lifts his palm in the air. And Dorcas, despite that warning voice in her head, high fives him.
That voice gets quieter. Dorcas goes back to classes. She makes out with Florence in their dorm during Christmas holidays. She drinks rum gifted to her by the elves to keep the anger at bay. She knows it will find her again if she does not work to push it away.
Somewhere, deep down, Dorcas is really tired of being angry and lonely.
~*~
“Can I ask you a question?” Dorcas asks softly, gnawing on a sandwich. Moody, sat on the floor across from her, grunts his affirmation. “Why are you doing this?” She leans forward. “Who’s making you tutor me?”
Moody glances at her, and away, reaching into his pocket to fish out a flask, which he takes a swig from. “Dumbledore called in a favour.”
“Is he trying to get you to spy on me?”
Moody shrugs, a weird and stiff motion. “He asked. I refused.”
Dorcas stares at him. “You refused?”
Moody takes another swig. “Didn’t seem fair to you.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Besides, seems like you’ve got enough shit going on. Now, finish up. Curfew is in a few minutes.”
~*~
“You don’t really open up to me.” Florence says, tracing lazy patterns across Dorcas’ bare chest.
Dorcas considers this, the hilarity of that statement, as though Dorcas Meadowes has ever been one to open up. All she says though, “There’s not much to say.”
Florence snorts. “Seriously? You spent the first part of the year threatening to pull out everyone’s insides just for looking at you funny. I don’t even know where in Britain you’re from, what your family’s like.”
That unpleasant feeling rises in Dorcas’ chest, tightening her body. She rolls away suddenly, making Florence sit up in confusion. “Sorry,” Dorcas says, trying for a smile. “I just don’t feel so well right now.”
Florence looks so sad for a moment, but Dorcas just turns away. Later, when she hears a rumour that Bertha Jorkins caught her kissing a boy behind the greenhouses, Dorcas doesn’t really mind.
Summer comes quicker than expected. Moody makes her agree to sessions in the summer, which she begrudgingly agrees to. Before she can react, he pats her on the shoulder before leaving, and the feeling lingers.
~*~
She knows something is wrong at the silence when she unlocks the door. Cups and plates are shattered across the kitchen. There’s a putrid smell in the air, and she instinctively reaches to plug her nose. A window is smashed in above the sink. Her wand slides into her hand.
“Mum?”
The bedroom door is closed. There is a sinking feeling in Dorcas’ stomach. The number of times she has stood on the opposite side of the door, pleading for it to open. There are claw marks and dents in the wood, years and years of fighting and screaming and pounding.
Dorcas’ life is behind this door. Everything she is, has ever been, or will be.
“Alohamora.”
The flies are the first thing Dorcas sees. Her vision splinters, and she stares at one on the tip of her mother’s nose.
Her mother.
Mother.
“Mum?”
~*~
Slamming, like a drumbeat. An explosion, footsteps.
“Merlin… what the fuck? Meadowes, where are you?”
The bottle in her hands, empty.
“What is that smell—oh. Oh no. Merlin’s beard—Dorcas! Where the fuck are you!”
She shifts her heavy head against the other wall.
“Fuck, Dorcas.”
That blue eye. He drops to his knees in front of her, hands scrabbling at her wrist, the pulse points. Her vision swims.
“Kid, are you with me? Shit—fuck—” Hands on her shoulders, shaking her. The world spins like a snow globe.
“Dorcas.” Her vision settles on the eye, suddenly steady. “Do you know what happened?”
“I was supposed to protect her.” Her tongue is thick and heavy in her mouth. “Dumbledore said he would.”
“Fuck.” Moody swears, head ducking before returning to her sightline. “How long has it been?”
Dorcas lifts a hand that is no longer hers, and makes a strange sign.
“I gotta get you out of here.” A hand under her knees, one on her back. Her head lolls unpleasantly. She feels herself be lifted, carried away. Her house, the front door flung open, fades behind her.
Dorcas leans into Alastor Moody’s coat, vomits all over him, and begins sobbing hysterically as she leaves the only home she’s ever had, and the only mother she’ll ever have.
~*~
Moody lives in the Hogwarts Valley, in a small cottage. Dorcas spends several days barely responsive, refusing to eat or drink. Moody takes to forcing spoons of broth into her mouth, even though she throws it up not long after.
Does any of it matter anymore? Dorcas doesn’t think so. The magic doesn’t matter, the potential doesn’t matter. Her mother matters. Did she know when Dorcas left? She thinks of the woman in her dream, and makes a strange, pitiful sound.
The first thing Dorcas does when her body finally returns to life is toss the bowl of soup at the wall. It splatters, china flying everywhere, glaring at Moody in defiance. Moody pauses, looks at her, and moves to clean it up. He makes her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich afterwards and watches her eat it in slow, absent bites.
Nobody tells her that she will be staying here, but Dorcas knows. Moody doesn’t much leave her side for those days, and she doesn’t understand why. Doesn’t he work? Why does he care?
She can hear him screaming at the fireplace one evening. Dorcas, her movements stilted and strange, hesitates outside the door. Her fingers twitch when she hears her name, but she barely processes the words.
She doesn’t sleep. Moody prepares the spare room for her, with clean covers that smell faintly of lavender, but she finds hiding places in the house to curl up in for hours instead. It is as though she has reverted to her eleven-year-old self, but not. Dorcas at eleven was used to taking care of herself. This Dorcas is a shell who can barely make it to the bathroom to piss anymore.
There is no alcohol in the house, and it is for that reason that Dorcas cries for the first time since leaving. Curled into a ball in the corner of the room, her body shakes and heaves. It is hard to remember the comfort of it now that it is gone.
Moody doesn’t speak much to her, and she doesn’t speak at all. Dorcas resents him. How dare he take her from her home, from her mother? How dare he see where she lived, how she lived? She hates that this place is quiet, all of the chores mysteriously done for her. She hates how he hovers, watching over her with something like concern. She wishes, not for the first time, that she died in that house.
Dorcas intercepts his post. If he knows, he lets her do it anyway. Curt, polite responses from Albus Dumbledore, stating “the matter of Ms. Meadowes is complicated, and best not discussed over post”.
She learns Moody has taken a sabbatical for the summer, for “personal matters”. She breaks a plate in response to this, and then feels slightly bad.
He doesn’t get mad, ever. He grunts and mutters to himself, but never to her. He just gets another plate or something. Not much here is magical, she notices.
She hasn’t seen her wand in a while, and its probably for the best. Anytime Dorcas thinks of magic these days, she gets violently ill.
When the owl comes with her OWL results, Dorcas panics fully and tries to get rid of it before Moody intervenes. It turns out she got all Outstandings, apparently very impressive. Moody’s eyebrows lift to his receding hairline and gives her a strange look.
Moody leaves the house one day, telling Dorcas to stay put. For some reason, she does, hiding herself away in a crevice between two rooms. It is harder to fit these days, almost 6 feet tall, but she does it anyway. It makes her feel safe and protected.
When he comes back, he has a thick book in his hands, that he hands her wordlessly. “A collection of art,” he says gruffly, turning away as though to give her the privacy to look.
The images are glossy and gorgeous, different eras of art. She doesn’t know why, or how he knew, but this becomes her lifeline. She holds the book constantly, flipping through the pages, memorizing the details. It is with this book in her arms that she finally sleeps through the night in mid-July, sweating through the sheets and waking up screaming, but she sleeps.
Moody sets up a game of checkers on the kitchen table one morning and does not explain. Dorcas, curious, moves a red one. Later, when she walks back, a black one is also moved.
And so, they play checkers, back and forth, never in the same room when they make their move. Dorcas begins to smile again.
He learns what she likes to eat and apologizes for being a bad cook. Dorcas still doesn’t talk, but the resentment starts to slip away, replaced by something strange and warm.
They orbit around each other in the house, careful not to cross any boundaries. Dorcas finally goes outside after Moody sets up a chair for her, so she can get some sunlight and fresh air. He lets her go through his small collection of muggle books. Eventually, her old textbooks and belongings find their way to the house, slowly as though not to overwhelm her. She bundles herself up in an old blanket from home on the couch and flips through the art book. She likes the Baroque stuff, all the lines and colours and drama.
There is one night that Dorcas crumbles. She can’t explain why, but the world feels so heavy and oppressive that she melts down into tears, hyperventilating to the point of pure panic. Moody, to calm her down, wraps his arms around her tightly, holding her until she quiets, teary-eyed and embarrassed. They don’t talk about it later, but Dorcas avoids his eyeline for several days after out of shame.
By August, Dorcas knows what is coming.
When she wakes up, Moody is sitting at the table, clearly waiting for her. Carefully, she sits down across from him, glancing down at the unfinished checkers. Her wand is laying on the table, in front of her seat. She takes it slowly, as though it will bite, and looks up.
Moody looks her in the eyes. “Dumbledore wants to know if you’re returning for sixth year. You can likely take until November if you want, call it sick leave. But I won’t be home everyday, and it might be good for you to go back. You need to learn, kid, stimulate that big brain of yours.”
Dorcas stares at him. Moody sighs. “I know you’re not much into talking these days, and that’s fine.” He casts a glance sideways. “I just need to know, however you want. Draw a picture or something, I don’t know. Whatever you want.”
“I’ll go back.” Her voice is rusty from disuse, strange in her throat. “But I need you to tell me what happened.”
Moody nods, rubbing a hand along his jaw, where stubble has collected. “Fair enough.”
Dumbledore wasn’t looking after Dorcas’ mum. She was alone for months, sustaining off of whatever she could find in rare moments of lucidity. He’d asked a neighbour to keep an eye, but that neighbour had stopped coming.
She’d been dead for months before Dorcas came home. And nobody cared.
“Why?” That was the question, wasn’t it? Why did nobody care about them? Why did the neighbour never care that little Dorcas Meadowes was raising herself, that her mother barely ate? Why did nobody come to them, pull that little girl kicking and screaming from the house, if only to give her a better shot at life?
Why did Dumbledore leave her there for all that time? All those summers, and he knew?
“I can’t believe he—” Moody scowls, blue eye darting. “Never mind.” He looks at her, and his face softens. “I’m sorry, Dorcas. That must have been a lot for you.”
Dorcas nods, eyes stinging. “Yeah.” Her fists curl under the table. “Yeah, it was.”
~*~
The first thing Dorcas Meadowes does when she gets to Hogwarts is march up to Albus Dumbledore’s office and point her wand into his face.
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. Those bemused blue eyes looking up at her. Dorcas realizes with a start that somehow, Moody’s blue eye has become more of a comfort compared to these.
“You left me in a house with my mentally ill mother for six years, and you didn’t even bother to honour your promise to me to look after her.” Dorcas hisses, keeping her hand steady. “Why? How could you?”
Dumbledore tilts his head a little. “Are you going to lower your wand?”
“You’re lucky I don’t blow your fucking brains out right now.”
Dumbledore smiles. “You didn’t carve me up at eleven, and so forgive me if I am not worried now, Ms. Meadowes.”
“Was it a power thing for you? You could have easily taken me out of there. You knew what it was like there, how I lived. And you chose to leave me there?”
“It was not my decision to make.”
Dorcas laughs. “Oh, really! And why’s that?”
Dumbledore’s eyes become flinty. “Because of the prophecy.”
Her hand trembles a little. “Prophecy?”
Dumbledore nods. “Your prophecy. I had little control, Ms. Meadowes. Now, I am not at liberty to discuss further. If you’ll excuse me, I believe the Feast is beginning shortly.”
~*~
Sixth-year Dorcas Meadowes is a fascinating creature. She stands tall and proud, prefect badge gleaming on her robes. She doesn’t speak to most people, usually only followed by a brown-skinned girl, yammering away and gazing at Dorcas with adoring eyes. She’s a powerhouse on the quidditch field, top of her classes seemingly without any effort. Everyone knows she has private lessons with Alastor Moody, and rumour begins to circulate that she’s going to go straight into Auror training after graduation; a feat which rarely occurs.
Dorcas doesn’t know any of this. Life continues in a strange sort of haze that has never quite lifted from the summer. But now, she dedicates all her attention to prophecies.
When she asks Moody, he gives her a strange look. “A prophecy? He said a prophecy?” He’d muttered something to himself that sounded an awful lot like “That fucker had better not be lying.”
(Dorcas didn’t get the impression Moody liked Dumbledore very much either, and that made her like Moody more)
Nothing seemed to change in their lessons now that Dorcas lived with Moody. He still drilled her hard, testing her constantly, only occasionally rewarding her with a half-smile that meant – for Moody at least – something like pride. Dorcas had never really made anyone proud before.
What comes back is the alcohol. The elves are just as generous as before, and Dorcas spends many nights sneaking around the castle with a bottle. This time, she doesn’t need to hide, but she still likes the secrecy of it all. Some habits can’t be easily broken.
It is this year that rumbles about a war begin to rise, but only among the older students. A group of seventh-year Ravenclaws murmur in a pack outside Charms, and quickly disperse once they see Dorcas listening in.
The Slytherins seem to be in favour of this. The attacks on muggleborn students increase; Dorcas only escapes them now because of some semblance of prestige. Still, they glare at her and mutter to each other. Other houses seem to lump her in with these people, scattering when they see her approach, but there has been a divide between Dorcas and everyone else for years.
But they seem… happy, about this “Lord Voldemort” guy. Dorcas reads about attacks in the papers, written off by authorities, and a shiver goes down her spine. She hates him, she hates him. Every bone in her body rejects this, the killing of innocent people.
No, Dorcas only condones killing if it’s justified.
When she brings it all up to Moody, he fixes her with a look and tells her to keep quiet. Yes, there is a threat rising. No, he cannot discuss it further. Still, she starts seeing newspaper clippings appear in her mail with more information. Dorcas devours this hungrily.
This makes the fire burn deeply in her stomach, the first time since the fall of fifth year. Finally, she has a cause, a purpose to put the flame to. She can fight, and she can do good.
Moody brings her a cake to their session the Friday before her birthday. Nobody has ever celebrated her birthday with her, and it is unfamiliar. She doesn’t even know how he knows, but he does. He refuses to sing her happy birthday but they eat cake side by side, and it is okay.
Florence begs Dorcas to kiss her, and so she does. She likes the rush of sex, the passion and the fervency. She’ll never love Florence, that’s true, but there are no pretenses between them. Florence has realized Dorcas will never open up, but she wants the affection anyway. Dorcas is happy to give it to her.
She keeps the art book on her nightstand, and holds it to her chest in sleep. She dreams about her mother constantly, that old house. Dorcas lives there in her nightmares, reliving the same day over and over again. She always wakes up before she remembers the sight of her mother’s body, but the terror remains. Needless to say, she begins casting silencing charms around her bed at night.
Maybe for the first time since she was eleven, the future rises in front of Dorcas, tangible and real, if she just reaches out to it. It is daunting, but Dorcas has a plan.
She goes up to Moody on their last session of the year, days before they are to go home. It is unspoken: Dorcas will go with Moody. Dumbledore and Moody have apparently “had words”, and Moody’s face twists at the mention of him. Whether he wants to take her or not, everybody knows Dorcas has nowhere else to go.
“I want to become an Auror.”
Moody gives her a strange look. “Well shit, I’d bloody hope so. Wouldn’t want all this training to be for nothing.” That rare half-smile again, a pat on the shoulder, and that’s that.
~*~
The summer is quiet, uneventful, and one of the best times of Dorcas’ life.
She goes out to explore the town of Keenbridge, where the house is. There is a strange sort of freedom in life, here. She reads books and practices spells. She eats and she sleeps, and she doesn’t hide so much anymore.
Moody teaches Dorcas to play chess. It is around this time that she starts to think of him as Alastor instead of Moody, and he responds when she accidentally calls him that out loud. He calls her kid, and it’s okay.
She learns that he only ever wears long clothing, never t-shirts and shorts. The flask he keeps with him at all times is because he’s terrified of being poisoned. He doesn’t use magic around the house because it’s “too easy”.
She doesn’t know anything about his past, really, and he volunteers very little. She knows his parents were Aurors, but she doesn’t know what house he was in at Hogwarts, whether he’s pureblood or not, where he’s from. He keeps his secrets close to his chest, and Dorcas respects it.
He doesn’t pry into her life, either. There is the sense between the both of them that he knows enough, and neither want to take a step further.
He’s away a lot, coming back at odd hours of the night, a bandage soaked through on an arm or a leg here and there. He always waves a hand at her concern and takes care of it himself. He lets her clean the dishes when it becomes clear she is itching for a task, but little more. It is infuriating on some level, but another part of her is weirdly relieved.
Dorcas thinks a lot about the prophecy. When she asks Alastor, he clenches his jaw and doesn’t say anything. She reads books on prophecies and tries to figure out what hers would be, what would be enough to make Dumbledore keep her in that house.
She hates Albus Dumbledore, that much is clear. But it sounds like he’s one of the few able to stand up to this Voldemort guy, and Dorcas hates it. But still, the more she digs, the more she comes to a conclusion: kill Voldemort first, kill Dumbledore later.
This is a reassuring plan.
Alastor notices her habit for setting fires and glares at her when she tries to go off and do it, but he finally creates a bubble just outside the house for her to cast fires in. She has to use spells – actual flame is harder to put out than magical flame, she learns – but it soothes that strange angry part of herself. She likes doing tricks with the fire, too. It makes her feel in control, powerful.
Florence sends her owls, and she responds. The word feels unnatural in her mouth: friend. But Florence is a friend, now, undeniably.
She’s also concerned about Voldemort, though she refuses to even write the name. Dorcas thinks it’s silly, but Florence has always been superstitious. She says her family has never been much for blood-purism because of all the racial undertones that arise from it, and that her dad is a vocal advocate for muggleborns. She apologises for letting Dorcas be harassed those first few years. After that, Dorcas feels comfortable calling her a friend, finally.
She tells Florence she’s living with a magical relative these days, but never says Moody’s name. this is a secret she continues to keep close to her chest, something only she gets to know.
Dorcas still has nightmares every night, that doesn’t change. What she realizes is that Alastor also gets night terrors, and so on their worst nights, they sit across from each other at the table drinking hot chocolate and playing chess silently.
By the end of the summer, the change is remarkable only to Dorcas herself and Alastor, perhaps even Florence. Seventh year Dorcas is the same cold, unapproachable bitch she’s always been, but something has shifted inside her. That fire has a goal, and she can control it now.
Dorcas Meadowes is in control, and unstoppable.
~*~
Seventh year passes like seconds, snapshots. Dorcas lives and breathes and time passes.
Florence kisses her temple gently during stolen moments hidden around the castle. The Quidditch captain, Emma Vanity runs to high-five her when they win a match. Slughorn stops looking at her like she’s a juvenile delinquent.
Dorcas is happy, in a weird way. Nobody knows, but Dorcas is happy.
~*~
Auror training is gruelling, and she loves it.
Alastor’s lessons definitely give her a leg up, but she likes the burn of it all. She ends up training alongside Frank Longbottom, the Head Boy and Gryffindor Quidditch Captain a year older than her, and his girlfriend Alice Fortescue, already a year above in training. Dorcas takes great satisfaction in beating them over and over again. They sleep in bunk beds in a secluded part of the Ministry for months and eat meals together every day. Once the usual discomfort fades, Dorcas finds that she doesn’t particularly mind either of them. She never lets them get close, but they seem to like her nonetheless, for some reason.
Part of the program is in-field training, and so Dorcas goes out on raids with Alastor. She kills a man for the first time, a Death Eater terrorizing a muggleborn family in northern Scotland, and she retches immediately afterward. The fire in her burns, though, and Dorcas knows this is what she must do. It gets easier over time, especially when Dorcas remembers Amycus Carrow’s stupid face pummeled to blood beneath her fists. He never shows up on these raids, such a shame.
She gets recruited to the Order of the Phoenix, a secret resistance organization. Alastor, pressing his fingers together on the table, tells her she is under no obligation to join, but she insists on it.
Dumbledore is the head of it, because of fucking course he is. Dorcas contents herself during meetings by imagining cutting his head off in various different ways. She hopes he can see those images playing across her glazed eyes.
She goes on Order missions too, usually with Alice and another girl, Maria-Gabrielle, a year younger and clearly fragile. Dorcas looks at her and she sees her mother, and it is awful. But behind the glaze, there are stars in her eyes. Dorcas cares for her in a way she hasn’t cared for anyone in years, not since that summer. She wonders sometimes if MG is the key to understanding her mother, but that is a terrible thought. She settles for braiding her hair instead, with as much gentleness as she can muster without collapsing completely.
People start calling her the “Queen of Death” because of how many kills she accrues in training. They are right to be afraid of her, she knows they are whispering to each other. She likes the power, the protection it provides.
Alastor loses his leg in February of 1977, over a year into Dorcas’ training. She isn’t on mission with him, but Frank is. He apparates Alastor directly to St. Mungo’s and sends a patronus to her and Alice. Dorcas doesn’t cry, doesn’t vomit, doesn’t shatter. She goes to St. Mungo’s and spends days by Alastor’s side, leaving only briefly to shower and change her clothes. She doesn’t return to training until the nurse says he’ll live.
He's noticeably weaker in the months following. Dorcas takes care of him at home, apparating back and forth every day. She makes soup and watches him eat it in slow bites. She thinks constantly of that one summer and pushes it out of her memory.
Alastor begins using a wooden prosthetic, and waves off her concern. Back she goes to training, to days and nights of studying spells and practicing concealment and blowing up Death Eater camps.
She likes to mock Dumbledore in Order meetings, wherever possible. One of the things she has never been able to shake is a wish to watch the world burn, and it is easiest to laugh in the face of it all than actually live in it. It is easiest to be unapproachable and intimidating than to be loved.
Dorcas carries that shit deep in her chest.
~*~
Florence dies on Christmas day, 1977, slaughtered by her Death Eater older brother in her sleep. Dorcas reads about it in the Prophet, and something cold and numbing spreads across her limbs.
Gentle, needy Florence Shafiq, the first person to extend Dorcas any sort of kindness without repayment. The girl who ran her hand along Dorcas’ face and asked her for something, anything, of her life. The girl that Dorcas could never say yes to.
She drinks more than she has in months and ends up sprawled on the bathroom floor, staring up at the ceiling and hallucinating Florence kissing her jawline.
Dorcas graduates from Auror training in May; one of the youngest Aurors in modern history. Alice claps her on the back with a grin. Alastor looks at her, and she lets herself be hugged. Her body protests, but her heart sighs.
She hears about a new group of kids joining the Order. Alastor grumbles about it, something about “inexperienced kids getting involved in something they shouldn’t”, but there’s a tension to his shoulders. The war is not going well, and they need bodies to fight.
Dorcas doesn’t particularly care either way. She has what she needs, and that’s it.
When Dumbledore comes to the house that June, she isn’t surprised that he wants something. He kicks Alastor out, which is interesting. He shoots her a look that promises he’ll be listening, though, and Dorcas gives the slightest of nods.
Dumbledore glances down at the unfinished game of chess. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Perpetually.” Dorcas says in a bored tone, glancing around lazily to distract from the thrumming in her heart. Never has she outgrown her instincts to run; she just hides it better now.
Dumbledore finally sits, folding his arms on the table. Dorcas remains upright.
“I’m pleased to hear of your success in the Aurors. Alastor speaks quite highly of you.”
She gives a half-shrug. “As well he should.”
“You continue to resent me.”
“You’ve given me little reason to stop.”
He nods, slow and methodical. She hates him. She wants to wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze. “I understand.”
“Do you? You’ve never explained why you left me in that house.”
“Will you only believe me when I tell you the prophecy?”
Dorcas pauses. A bargaining chip, she knows. “That’s not why you’re here.”
Dumbledore inclines his head. “I have other motivations, certainly. But I’m willing to offer you this information in exchange for your cooperation.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “Alright.”
“An all-woman alliance, more secretive than the Order, composed of the brightest witches of our time.”
“And? What’s the catch? You won’t let them opt out, right? No choice but to fight your war?”
Dumbledore’s eyes narrow, scrutinizing. “You’re smarter than people give you credit for.”
“Insulting from the man who begged me to join his crackpot school.” Dorcas says coolly, her mind going a mile a minute. Of course, of course this man will give no choice. He gave her no choice to go to Hogwarts, no choice to leave, no choice to be mentored. Dorcas’ entire adult life is because Dumbledore didn’t give her a choice.
But this alliance gets her closer in, gets her closer to slitting Dumbledore’s throat at the end of all this.
And, above all, Dorcas wants to kill some motherfuckers.
“Fine, whatever. Information, now.”
Dumbledore smiles faintly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “A source gave me a prophecy many years ago: ‘A child on the outskirts of the magical world holds the power to defeat the greatest threat, many years from now, though resistance holds her back, remaining in her other world. She will be fearsome and meet him in a battle of wits and strength, but not both can survive.’” He pierces her with those blue eyes, cold and sharp suddenly. “You see, if we are to have any chance of defeating Lord Voldemort, I had to ensure you stayed.”
Dorcas stares at him and begins to laugh.
“Do you seriously expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“And you think I’m this mysterious threat? That’s why you put all your eggs in my basket to get me to go to Hogwarts?”
Dumbledore’s eyes are unreadable. “I had to ensure our victory.”
“Yeah, okay.” Dorcas straightens up, wiping a tear from her eye. “You can go now. I think we’re done.”
The prophecy is undeniably horseshit. Dorcas appreciates how much effort he put into selling it though. It makes her want to kill him even more, and that suits her just fine.
She doesn’t tell Alastor, though. This is hers to turn over, ponder. She trusts him, but nobody can know what her plan is at the end of all this. Secrecy is of utmost importance with a matter as serious as this.
Dorcas is good at keeping secrets, after all.
~*~
When Dumbledore gathers them all in an old safehouse, Dorcas is beyond amused.
(She’s also drunk, but what do you care?)
All of these kids, these girls, looking up at him with such uncertainty, believing any of their decisions or opinions matter. They don’t, she wants to shout, he’ll use you anyway! But that gives away the game, doesn’t it?
That little blonde girl – what’s her name, Marjorie? – keeps looking at her, almost pleadingly. Dorcas sees how she itches to fight. She’s a fucking idiot. Dumbledore will chew her up and toss her out so quickly. She remembers that kid distantly from Quidditch games, a Gryffindor beater. No matter. Dorcas expects each and every one of these girls to crumble, and she doesn’t dare feel an ounce of shame or regret.
When the girl volunteers first, without information, Dorcas’ façade cracks just a slight bit. You are playing right into his hands, she thinks, watching as the girl’s eyes dart to her quickly and away again. You are going to die, and none of you see these games.
All of you will die because you trusted him. Isn’t that what happened to Dorcas’ mother?
No, Dorcas does not care. She does not care what these kids do, what they think, what they want.
What matters is winning the war.
What matters is that Dorcas Meadowes finally gets to slaughter Albus Dumbledore at the end of it all.
Dorcas allows herself a slight smile.
Yes, that’ll feel pretty good, won’t it?