The Last Lieutenant

Christmas Eve

She'd kept an hourglass on her windowsill, counting down the hours, ticking away the seconds grain by grain. It was specially enchanted to count down to any time or date the owner told it to, and when people asked, she told them all it was counting away the days until Christmas.

It wasn't even that much of a lie.

Emmeline doesn't ask her where she is going but it's clear that she knows, or at least suspects.  For once in her life, Audra doesn't care to give a cover story, because if she does not at least allow herself this night, she is afraid that the reason for fighting might slip out of her mind and this life would wear her down, until she is a carbon copy of her Aunt Bellatrix, just as used up and worn down.

Audra can't forget her reason to fight.

It's the only way for a person to really keep going.

"Fred?"  Her apparation was clumsy and she stumbles a bit, feet tripped on the tree root twisted earth.  "Are you here?"

"I'm here."  He steps out of the shadows.  "I brought a friend."

She's about to get angry, her wand already half raised, but then George steps up beside him and two identical grins shine down at her, like the best bandage for all the wounds she had collected over the past few weeks.  She gets enveloped in a hug and it does not feel like being strangled, it feels like coming home, and Audra finally lets herself breathe.

"I missed you,"  She said, whispering the words into their necks and they just hold her tighter, the three of them wound toghether in the middle of this forest.  "It feels like forever."

"It feels like a lifetime,"  Fred agrees.

"I love you."  The words come out too intense and she feels strange for a moment, turning away from Fred to give a hug just for George.  "And you.  Both of you.  So much.  I hate being apart from you, I-,"

I want to come home, she almost said, a conclusion that she had come to the night before, an idea born out of both Emmeline's insistence that Clary was someone that they had never cared about and Bellatrix's warning from the week before.  She did not want to end up as some story that people carried down, even if she died a hero.  She did not want to give herself over to this fight.  She wanted to live, and if that meant running, well- she had finally found a use for all that money underneath the floorboards.

All she needed was to convince a few people to come with her.

But she never got the chance.

"Oh, god."  The voice was instantly familiar, and for the first time in months, Audra was caught off guard.  "Emmeline was right.  You really are in love with him."

She turned around, the twins drawing their wands on either side of her, and she thought she might be sick, right there on all of their shoes.

"Draco."  She knew how bad this seems.  She could not think of any solutions.  "this isn't what it looks like."

"It looks like you've been meeting with them the whole time!"  He was panicked.  He had not really thought that she was meeting them, she realized, he had taken her side in an arguement and intended to prove that she was every inch the death eater that the Dark Lord thought she was.  And he turned out to be horribly wrong.  "It looks like you're in love with them."

"Draco."  She held out her hands to him, wandless, trying to calm him down.  She would not deny it.  She has seen what that does to a person.  "You're overreacting."

"Am I?"  He jerks his head at her, and his wand spits sparks.  "You're wearing that necklace.  You just said that you loved them.  This isn't part of a mission anymore.  So what the hell am I supposed to do with that?"