4 March, 1980 - War

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Lavinia didn't know how she got off that field. All she knew was that she had ended up in that little clearing with her head as silent as it had been in those first weeks after Regulus's death. Only this was a different kind of silence. This was one she had made because she couldn't - wouldn't - go through those thoughts in her head. She would not face that fear. Not now and not here. So she made the world silent and put one foot in front of the other and held everything together by sheer strength of will.

Her movements were robotic and simple as she went through the steps she knew were necessary. She used her wand to raise Sirius onto a cot, pulled her potions from her bag and screwed rationing because he had to fix him. That part was clear even through the fog over her senses. She had to fix this. And when he was resting and she knew he would wake up and be fine, if stiff and sore, she turned back to the rest of her patients and did her job, keeping her eyes carefully away from the valley below.

She didn't know how the battle ended or who won. She didn't care.

When wizards came to claim the injured and take them home, she didn't stop them. She just vanished the cots they vacated until there was no trace that any sort of hospital had ever existed in that little clearing on the hill except a bit of trampled grass. When Dumbledore offered to help her apparate Sirius home, she didn't object. And when Lily and James and Peter and Remus all appeared behind them in front of the little house by the sea, she said nothing.

There was a tinny sort of whistle building in her head and threatening to break through that silence, a rage she didn't have an explanation or outlet for and a fear that was nothing more than fuel to the fire. But despite it, or perhaps because of it, she was tired. Not just physically, but tired in her core, tired in her bones. She wanted to sleep for a long, long time.

And she would have just gone to bed once Sirius was settled in his room, would have apologized to her friends sitting in the living room and fallen asleep in her clothes without second thought were it not for Dumbledore.

As the old man left, he said two words that punctured the fog in her head and broke open the gates of that screaming, fearful rage.

"Thank you," the old man murmured, standing in front of the door.

Lavinia looked up from where she'd been staring at her hands, her eyes meeting his, blue on blue and the leash on her anger snapped with such a force she could have sworn she felt it. "Thank you?" she asked incredulously.

Thank you. Like she deserved gratitude for this thing she'd done. Like she hadn't hurt people. Like anyone would ever deserve gratitude for walking onto that field.

Which was wrong and she knew it was wrong but she didn't care. Right now she didn't care because there was an awful wailing in her head and that rage and that pain she had kept so well contained these past months was bubbling and boiling and she didn't know how to stop it anymore. She wasn't sure she wanted to, either.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows slightly, his face maddeningly calm. "You've done us a great service," he replied simply, one hand on the door knob. "We were able to fight longer and harder and more safely. So thank you."

The pit of her stomach was gaping wide and the only good thing about it was that the edges of her rage dulled, swallowed by the void. Longer and harder. Because of her. How many Death Eaters had been injured because of her? How many of them had been hurt or had died because of her? How many families would wait for a return that was never going to come? All because she was stupid and naive and had thought, for some reason she now couldn't fathom, that she could heal without hurting anyone. That she could heal them without picking a side.

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