Priori Incantatem [HARRY POTTER FANFICTION]

Chapter 49: Uncharted Territory

Chapter 49: Uncharted Territory

When they'd initially found out they were going to have a baby, Lily and James had both been inclined to view it as a good thing. But as the weeks went by, they started to feel like they just may have gotten in over their heads this time.

Lily visited a Healer at St Mungo's and a Muggle doctor, both of whom confirmed that she was in fact pregnant and that the baby would be due in early to mid-August. Excited though they were, Lily and James decided to put off telling people for a bit in order to give themselves time to get used to the whole idea. However, it turned out that keeping this particular secret wasn't in the cards.

It was during one of their semi-weekly Friday night dinners with their former fellow Gryffindors at the Leaky Cauldron that Lily inadvertently announced their secret. The conversation was centred almost exclusively round Frank and Alice, who had been the subject of last week's emergency Order meeting. They'd been on a routine Order mission the night before, tailing Lucius Malfoy in the hopes of catching him attempting to recruit Death Eater spies.

After countless nights of pointless or dead-end tailing, they'd finally struck it lucky; Malfoy had been meeting with a group of four masked, hooded Death Eaters. Before they could come to their reason for gathering, one of them, a short, rather round figure, had whispered something to Malfoy. Apparently it'd been something along the lines of "Frank and Alice Longbottom are spying on us," because the five Death Eaters had attacked them.

Frank and Alice had defended themselves well enough; one of the Death Eaters had managed to escape, but they'd incapacitated two of them and were duelling with the remaining two when another Dark wizard joined them unexpectedly. Lord Voldemort himself, to be precise.

He'd immediately launched a string of hexes on Alice and Frank unmercifully, keeping them so occupied that the other Death Eaters managed to escape with the injured two. Voldemort himself had disappeared shortly after, leaving Frank and Alice with a few bruises and minor curse aftereffects, but essentially all right.

"One thing's certain: Voldemort didn't want us to see whoever was behind those Death Eater masks," Frank concluded as he finished telling the story for the umpteenth time. "It definitely looks as though we may have stumbled upon our spies."

"And it also seems like that short one who knew you were there was one of them," Kathleen put in shrewdly.

"Why are you lot so sure Malfoy was meeting with spies?" Peter asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "It could've been any sort of Death Eater business at all; I'm sure there isn't much of it that Voldemort would want us to see."

"We think Malfoy was meeting with spies because we asked him politely and that's what he told us," Alice snarled sarcastically, glaring at Peter. "Honestly, you were AT the bloody Order meeting, Peter! Clean out your ears once in a while!"

"The short one did rather seem to know someone was there," Frank explained patiently, shooting Peter an apologetic glance. Catching sight of Alice's face, however, Frank turned the glance into a very unconvincing yawn. "We just aren't sure whether that means he or she was the actual Order spy or if they'd just been warned by the Order spy," Frank finished, eyeing Alice warily.

Ever since she'd become pregnant, Alice, generally sweet-natured and only rarely irritable, had undergone what seemed to be a personality reversal; she was inclined to bite everyone's head off for no apparent reason most of the time and only nice on occasion. Everyone and everything appeared to annoy her, especially men; she tolerated Frank rather begrudgingly and other males not at all, especially Peter, James, and Sirius. Most of the others privately wondered how poor Frank was coping, but no one dared ask for fear of Alice overhearing.