Let the shiver of it sting you, fling into battle, spring to your feet, boys.
Never hold back your step for a moment
Never doubt that your courage will grow
Hold your head even higher as into the fire we go.
“This meeting of the Order of the Phoenix will now come to order. Of the Phoenix.”
“That was not funny, you know.”
“Well, give me a break, I was out ‘till three in the morning rescuing people.”
“Only because you were delayed by some really good French food.”
There were eleven people clustered around the table, their faces tired and drawn in the glow of wandlight. But however tired they looked, they were enthusiastic and relaxed, chattering away and sharing a plate of snacks.
“Nice new headquarters, these. Although everything’s covered in dust and it smells like cats in here.”
“I know, I can’t stand cats.”
“Hey, I love cats. They taste great.”
“That’s revolting! Stop it!”
“Yeah, stop it, you’re making me hungry!”
After several minutes of this, a man cleared his throat and said, “Okay, listen, the Cairnwrights”you know, those two idiot Death Eaters who were supposed to kill Ted Tonks and his family”are doing special work for Voldemort now, so watch out for them. I overheard them last night.”
“Do you really think they’re going to be a problem?” asked a woman skeptically.
The man shrugged. “You never know. The dad doesn’t seem to have two brain cells to rub together, but that also means he’s too stupid to know how to be afraid, so he’s probably not one to give up a fight, and that’s dangerous. And I went to school with the boy. He’s a pathetic coward, probably wets himself when people jump up and yell ‘boo’ at him, but he’s not easy to fool. He isn’t dumb. So they balance each other out.”
Another man sighed and said thoughtfully, “You know, we’re looking out for a lot of people. All the known Death Eaters, Snape, Lily Potter, and now those two…”
“Well, everyone’s looking out for us,” said a man across the table. “And not all of them just want to give us a slap on the back and congratulations.” He tilted his chair back onto its back legs and turned toward the man nearest him. “So, tomorrow you’re taking Raphael Smitts over into France, huh? You look like a wreck; I can’t believe you’re risking it again so soon.”
The man rubbed his chin. “Ah, well, no one ever said being the Phoenix was an easy job.The pick-up and drop-off all the time is the easiest part, actually.”
The chair tilter nodded gravely. “Hmmm. Well, in that case, can you pick me up some French food and drop it off at my place?”
“Get me some, too! And lots of wine!”
“Yeah! And some of those great chocolates!”
“Ooh! Me, too! And six cats!”
There was a long pause.
“Taking it too far?” said the man meekly.
Lily hated riding the Knight Bus. This had a lot to do with the fact that she had quite liked her lunch and was in no rush to lose it. But she had no alternative, because the Ministry monitored the Floo network and Apparition, and it was too cold to fly a broom… and her driving was, if possible, even worse than that of the Knight Bus driver’s.
So she sat queasily in her seat as she was jarred and jolted like a piece of gravel rattling around inside a shoe. It had been four days since that fateful Christmas party at the Diggory household, and she was still in an incredibly bad mood.
The choice Snape had given her seemed so simple”just say no to Voldemort, kids”but surely she wasn’t the only one who had been given this task. If she didn’t find the Phoenix, someone else would, and that person’s family would be spared while Petunia and her obnoxious husband would die.
Lily was in desperate need of a great big bowl of chocolatey ice cream.
Though she quickly lost her appetite as the bus came to an innard-scrambling halt. She felt her intestines perform amazing gymnastics and her spleen and pancreas get a little friendlier than usual as her body was slammed up against the side of the bus. She groaned, trying to keep from vomiting, as a young man got onto the bus.
“The Leaky Cauldron, please,” said the man quietly, handing his money to the lanky youth who served as the conductor.
The conductor bit down on the coin to see if it was real and winced, massaging his aching tooth. “Thank you,” he moaned.
Lily looked up as the young man who had just boarded the bus sat down in the seat next to her. “Hello, Lily,” he said.
“Remus!” she exclaimed with her first real smile in about four days. “Nice to see you!”
She’d always gotten along well with Remus Lupin, and it was nice to see an old friend who wasn’t trying to sell her to the Dark Lord. However, like Snape, he didn’t look too well. Always thin and pale to begin with, his face looked gaunt and his eyes were ringed with dark circles. His long light-brown hair looked disheveled and wanted cutting, and his hands were bandaged. His clothes were neat, but on closer inspection, they were heavily darned and patched.
But everyone knew Remus was sickly, though nobody, not even James, seemed to know exactly what disease he had. For some reason, though, he’d never been able to secure a job for long, and while James, Lily, and Sirius had given him money to support himself for awhile, he’d decided shortly after James and Lily’s wedding that he would take care of himself.
Lily was regretting agreeing to this, because he looked like something that had crawled out of a grave.
“So, what are you doing here?” asked Remus in his soft, hoarse voice that always sounded distinctly as though he’d been eating tin cans all day. “I’m guessing it’s not to enjoy the smooth ride?”
Lily sighed as the bus went over another particularly nasty bump. “Believe it or not, I’m just going to get my hair cut. I can’t Apparate or Floo anywhere anymore… that’s the problem being a Muggle-born when the Death Eaters are controlling the Ministry. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m just… looking for another job,” Remus replied vaguely. Lily could understand why he didn’t elaborate. She’d heard him say he was going to the Leaky Cauldron, and if he was applying for a job there, he was really getting desperate.
“But why the Knight Bus?” prompted Lily. “You’re half-blood, you’re safe.”
Remus shrugged. “There are aspects of my life I don’t necessarily want the Death Eaters to know. I always feel a little paranoid when I think about the fact that they can track me and know where I’m going.” He paused. “And, wonderful, now I sound like I go to questionable parts of town and get involved with all kinds of illicit activities in my free time.”
Lily laughed. The idea of relatively mild-mannered, even-tempered Remus getting involved with illicit activities of any kind was pretty humorous. But she was also a little irritated that Remus didn’t come right out and tell her what he was doing. She’d known Remus for years, and her husband was one of his best friends. It wasn’t like he had anything to hide from her.
“I missed you at Amos and Claudia’s,” she said, changing the subject. “Mainly because James and Sirius and Peter could have used your good influence.”
Remus looked slightly pained. “Ah. Were they, by any chance, singing ‘Voldy Got Run Over By a Hippogriff’?”
“Er, actually, ‘Frogs Go Pop’, ‘Roadkill Stew’, and that delightful Shaving Cream Song.”
Remus raised his eyebrows. “Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I miss it.”
“Oh, believe me, it wasn’t once-in-a-lifetime. James was singing the Shaving Cream Song all last night. Did you know it has seventeen verses?” Lily gave him a rather desperate smile. “I haven’t seen you with the other guys as much lately”not that I blame you. What have you been up to?”
Remus raised and lowered his shoulder noncommittally. “I’ve been pretty busy,” he said. “This and that. I’ll be at the Oggs’ New Years party, though.” The bus lurched, then crashed to a halt, giving Lily a delightful idea of what a fly on a windshield might feel like.
Remus gathered up his bag and his internal organs. “Well, this is my stop,” he said mildly. “I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” said Lily as Remus climbed dizzily down the steps of the bus and walked into the Leaky Cauldron.
She sat back in her seat. James, Sirius, and Peter were acting like idiots, Snape was blackmailing her, and now Remus was being distant and vague. Given the pattern, she was sure her hairdresser would do something horrible to her now. And what was with Remus, anyway?
Suddenly, a small folded scrap of paper caught her eye on the seat opposite her. She didn’t know what it was about it that made her pick it up and open it, but she did in any case.
And felt her heart jump into her throat for reasons entirely unrelated to the Knight Bus.
The paper read:
“Order Members-- I’ve been really busy, and I know all of you have questions for me. I will be at the Oggs’ New Years party if you want to talk to me. Come to the spare dining room at exactly eleven o’ clock. There are spies looking out for me and the Order members, and it’s hard to tell who is a friend and who is a foe.
Be careful, because things are getting even more dangerous now. But remember, we’re called the Order of the Phoenix for a reason! And our motto is not “Into the fire we go,” just because we’re pyromaniacs! Well, only some of us, in any case.
--The Phoenix.”
Lily gasped. “Remus…”
And at the front of the bus, the conductor was watching her very closely. Desiderius Cairnwright adjusted the stolen Knight Bus uniform and smiled to himself. The Phoenix had had a good idea in this disguise business. It worked like a charm.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” James called, slamming the door loudly.
Lily looked up from her book. The one she’d been trying so hard to write and had just gotten into the groove, the groove that had been spoiled when James had slammed the door. “It’s really late, James. Where were you?”
“Working late at Zonko’s,” James chirped. Lily knew exactly what ‘working late’ usually meant, but this was James, and he had exactly the kind of juvenile mind that delighted in messing about with biting teacups until three in the morning. “And then the guys wanted to go to Hogsmeade, so we did.”
“I saw Remus on the Knight Bus today,” noted Lily casually.
James flopped onto the sofa and put his muddy old shoes up onto the table. “Yeah, he doesn’t hang out with us as much anymore. He’s out at night a lot. We reckon maybe he’s got some new night job… or a girlfriend.” He made a noise that, on a prepubescent girl, would have been a giggle. “Love a duck, it’s about time.”
Lily wished James wouldn’t say ‘love a duck.’ It was quite possibly the stupidest saying she’d ever heard, and thusly, James’s favourite. And it was spreading. He seemed to be starting a trend, because she’d heard other men around his age using it as if it didn’t make them sound like eighty-year-old women.
“A girlfriend for Remus would be nice. He doesn’t look too good,” said Lily. “I really hope he’s okay.”
James nodded thoughtfully. “We,” he said in a slow and contemplative voice, “should really get an air hockey table.”
“Do you know what air hockey is?” Lily inquired politely, being of Muggle stock and aware that a pureblood like James probably had no more idea of what air hockey was than of who John Lennon was.
“No. But it sounds kind of cool.”
Lily sighed. She was not feeling her best, and James didn’t really help, unless she needed help with the Let’s See How High We Can Get Lily’s Blood Pressure To Go Game. She knew that made her an awful and cruel person, but she couldn’t deny the fact that her husband was the kind of man who was entertaining in very small doses, in a “at least I’m not married to him” kind of way, and, well, she was.
And she, unlike James, had a lot on her mind. She knew she hadn’t seen the last of Snape, and she hoped she hadn’t seen the last of Remus. Snape had convinced his pal Voldemort to spare Lily’s life, along with the lives of her whole family, in exchange for information about who the Phoenix was. And now she was fairly certain she knew who it was.
Remus Lupin was not the most intelligent of the group of men who liked to refer to themselves as the Marauders in order to sound like edgy, authority-flouting pirates or something. James and Sirius had been the really bright, creative, talented ones in school, believe it or not. But Remus was the practical one, the one who had a mischievous streak as opposed to James’s tiny sliver of sanity embedded in the ooze of wackiness that was his mind.
And Remus was the only one who talked politics. Sirius was the one who really tried to be edgy and authority-flouting and attractively disestablishmentarian, but Lily was sure he didn’t know what he was rebelling against, and not in a rebel-without-a-cause kind of way.
And Remus was the sensitive one who really got upset about things like discrimination. He was in Gryffindor. He was resourceful. He was looking haggard, spending less time with his friends, keeping secrets, unemployed, running places at night.
All the pieces fit. He had to be the Phoenix.
And if Lily didn’t turn him in, someone else would…
Suddenly, Lily knew what to do. She was just as much of a Gryffindor as Remus. If he could be the Phoenix, so could she. She would turn in his name to Lord Voldemort, but before he could get his scaly hands on Remus, she would rescue him. And then she would take over his job.
Maybe she could fake her own death so no one would suspect her. The one thing everyone seemed to know about the Phoenix was that he was male, in any case. She would be safe, Remus would be safe, Petunia and her creepily-mustached husband would be safe, and her conscience would be secure.
But she had to take it slowly. She had to make sure she was right about Remus. First, she would go to the Oggs’ New Years party and go to the spare dining room at exactly eleven o’clock and see for sure who this Phoenix was.
“Lils?” James was waving a large rubber chicken back and forth in front of her face, his voice sounding concerned. “You okay?”
His face was earnest, and, for once, serious. Lily’s stomach squirmed as she looked up at his face. She knew he wasn’t classically attractive, but something inside her went twing at the sight of James’s thin, angular face, his long nose and wide smile, the way his glasses were always slightly crooked over his bright, eager hazel eyes. She even liked the way his hair perpetually looked as though it had been through a weed whacker.
Lily had a good memory. She wrote the romance in her stories from experience. James had always been clever and fun and witty and just sappy enough, just serious enough. She remembered what he’d been like just two months before, and then suddenly, he wasn’t anymore. This was the first time since they’d gotten married that he sounded anything like the old James.
She felt sad, hollow pangs much like the feeling she got every year shortly after New Years when she deprived herself of chocolate for a few days before breaking her resolution and binging on chocolate frogs. She missed James. She knew he was right in the same room with him, but apparently, his brain hadn’t followed him.
“Are you all right?” repeated James. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“Er… I’m fine,” said Lily. “Just thinking… do you want to go to the Oggs’ New Years Party?”
James grinned. “You know me. I’m the life of the party. Love a duck, I thought something was wrong! You looked so serious! Maybe I can wear my tailcoat with the fake plastic buttocks and””
“I think it’s formal,” Lily told him lightly.
“Maybe we should get a cat instead of an air hockey table,” said James. “Cats are cool. This one bloke in Slovakia got his jugular vein ripped out by his cat. Sirius told me.”
James had the attention span of a gnat. But at least he wasn’t talking about plastic buttocks anymore. “That’s actually a good idea,” said Lily. “I’ve always wanted a cat, but Petunia was allergic.”
James nodded. “Sirius hates cats. He’s more of a dog person. Remus, too”I mean, he probably eats cats, but he doesn’t like them as pets. And Pete… Pete’s scared of cats. He thinks they’ll eat him.”
Peter was a shy, well-intentioned, honest man with the unfortunate strong resemblance to a pregnant hamster. It made sense that he would be afraid of a cat eating him, sad as it sounded.
“I think we should name our cat something cool. Like Guadalupe. Or James. Or Balthazar. Or Jafar. Or James. Or Mister Mistoffellees. Or Tyrone. Or Mustapha. Or James. Yeah, I think I pretty much covered all of the cool names.”
Lily wasn’t paying attention to her husband’s rambling monologue of sentence fragments on the naming of cats. She had other things on her mind, like the Phoenix. She had a serious plan, and it wasn’t just one of her everyday games.
“I read the news today,” said James.
“Oh boy,” Lily replied absentmindedly.
It really was sad that James didn’t know who John Lennon was.
“The Phoenix is still at it. Wish I knew who he was.”
Lily laughed. “Me, too.”
“Yeah, you would.” Lily stared. Her husband’s voice was uncharacteristically harsh, his eyes cold… but it must have been her imagination, because when she looked again, he had the same expression of good-natured idiocy as usual.
“I think Harry is an awesome name,” James said. “’Cause cats are hairy, you know? It’s a pune, or play on words.”
“It’s pronounced ‘pun,’” said Lily, who was almost happy to see James return to being a pea-brained goofball. Although the mangling of words was an offense that, to Lily, deserved a public hanging at the very least.
James nodded. “Do we have marshmallows, ketchup, Swiss cheese, and bananas?”
“Er… I think so,” said Lily. “Is this the opening line of some kind of dirty joke?”
“No, I just want to make a sandwich,” James said merrily, heading for the kitchen. Lily checked her watch. Yep, she hadn’t been hallucinating. It really was after midnight.
“Don’t you want to go to bed?” she asked.
“Go on ahead,” James called from the kitchen, his mouth full of his horrific sandwich.
Lily picked up her notepad and her quill and yawned widely, starting her way up the steps alone. Her mind was full of so many thoughts that it hurt. She wished she could share them with James. After all, he had plenty of empty space available in his head.
Then suddenly, you changed, and now I don’t know who you are.
Or could it be that I never really knew you from the start?
Did I create a dream? Was he a fantasy?
Even a memory is paradise for all the fools like me.
Now remembering is all that I can do
Because I miss him so when I look at you.