Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

16 October, 1979 - News

As summer sank into fall, the days and weeks started blurring together for Lavinia and things started to feel normal again. Or as normal as they could under the circumstances.

For the most part, her days were just as they had been before. She went to work, she cooked and cleaned and life went on. But every once in a while, the loss of Regulus hit her with all the force of a piano falling from the sky and she was breathless with the pain of it. It happened less and less often as the weeks went by but it didn't go away. His name would come into her head and the void would yawn wide beneath her feet. But it was rarer every week and Lavinia was left to wonder if this was what everyone meant by "coming to terms with it".

Out in the rest of the world, it felt rather like everything had come to a stalemate and no one was making any progress. Everyone Lavinia knew in the Order would freely admit that things weren't going well, but they also weren't going horribly. The ministry still refused to launch a large-scale response to the Death Eaters, but the Death Eaters also seemed to be a bit stuck. That is, if you could call muggle killings 'stuck'.

Even so it wasn't until October that anything really changed and even then, it seemed to Lavinia to be an expected progression. Not that that made her feel much better about it, but all the same. She'd known this was coming. And until that evening, she rather thought they all had.

It was a breezy, early fall sort of day when Lavinia unfolded The Daily Prophet to a rather disturbing headline. It was a Tuesday, thank Merlin, and Lavinia was waiting for the others to get back from their Order meeting so they could all just enjoy a day off. Peter, James and Lily were planning to come over and Lavinia had been rather hoping for a lighter day than she usually had.

She loved her work but she couldn't deny that it was heavy sometimes and they often dealt with patients who were on the edge of death. To say those patients were draining was an understatement and though Lavinia had learned how to go to a place where she was nothing more than a healer and they were just patients, it didn't stop the exhaustion from setting in.

And so, on her off days, Lavinia often hoped for a day without such morbid concerns. Where death wasn't going to touch her in the slightest. Where her biggest worry was what she was going to make for dinner.

But today, apparently, was not going to be free of worries because there, on the front page of the Prophet was a picture of the dark mark over a house and the headline, "Disowned Member of Pureblood Family Found Dead". Lavinia read the article quickly, her eyes skimming over the lines to get the gist of the article. Elizabeth Rosier, who had been disowned as a blood traitor before Lavinia had even been born had been attacked and killed and the dark mark had been left over her home. This, the article pointed out, was the latest and most violent in a series of attacks that suggested the Death Eaters were expanding the scope of their movement to include hunting down known blood traitors.

Lavinia sighed and tossed the paper back onto the coffee table, not wanting to see more. She should have known better than to read the news. These days, it was never good. And though this too was far from good news, Lavinia honestly didn't really know what to do with such information. It was predictable. Awful and disgusting and worrying and predictable. But what further measures could they take? Short of fully going into hiding, there was little left for them to do. But... well. She, Sirius and James were all blood traitors in the strictest sense. Not that it would add much worry for James because Lily was still in far more danger, but it wasn't going to make anything easier. And as for Sirius and Lavinia... Sirius was in the Order and Lavinia... Lavinia had expected this. She was ready for this. Or as ready as she supposed anyone ever could be for such a thing.

When the others got home Lavinia greeted them as she waved her wand vaguely at the kettle to set it to a boil.

"Tea anyone?" she asked, glancing around at them as they gave their answers and pulling down the appropriate number of mugs.