The rubble of the Muggle houses were still smoking, the tendrils glowing green in the ghastly light cast by the Dark Mark floating above the block. Snow had been falling haltingly for some time, enough to lightly dust the remains of the homes and mix with the ashes.

Frank Longbottom straightened, running his hand over his mouth and chin as he grimaced. "Another one," he called, swallowing hard against the lump of rage and sorrow in this throat. A shadowy shape came to meet him, and as he walked into Frank's circle of wandlight, Frank recognized Remus Lupin.

"Oh," Lupin said softly as he looked down at the body. Frank nodded silently. The little girl was wearing pink thermal pyjamas with feet, printed in yellow and blue stars. She could not have had more than seven years to her name. Half her brown hair had been scorched away, and the flesh of her face and hands was livid red.

"Children," Frank found himself saying. "I suppose they're just as much sport as grown Muggles."

Lupin nodded solemnly. "I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been for her. Sitting up waiting for Father Christmas and getting Death Eaters instead." Wordlessly he lifted his wand and created a white silken shroud that cocooned the young girl's corpse, hiding the horror from the eyes, but not the mind. Frank could still see her every time he blinked.

"There can't be many more," he said, trying valiantly to distract himself. "We've been through these ruins so thoroughly. Do we know who did it?"

Lupin shook his head. "Either they were distracted or they've stopped leaving their little signatures. I'm betting on the former. Bones is talking with the Muggle police chief right now... what we're going to tell them, I have no idea." Lupin ran a hand through bedraggled hair. "You should go home. There isn't much else any of us can do now."

Frank gazed helplessly around the suburban block, fallen walls doing little to impede his view of the destruction. "The Dark Mark?" he asked.

"Dumbledore will take care of it," Lupin assured him. "Go home, Frank."

Frank nodded absently. "I'm glad Alice didn't see this," he said quietly, almost to himself. His gaze caught on the front door, still all in one piece, blasted by considerable force through the hallway into the sitting room of this house. The evergreen Christmas wreath mounted around the knocker was untouched, its pinecones and red ribbons deceptively cheerful. The incongruity of it made Frank's head swim.

He did not Apparate straight home. Headquarters was little more than a nondescript flat on the outskirts of Islington, but it had a shower. Alice was made of tougher stuff than Frank often gave her credit for, but he knew if he showed up at home at two in the morning covered in ashes and blood she wouldn't react well. He supposed he could have used a cleansing spell, but something in him felt as though he would never be clean unless he scrubbed, under good hot water, and even then he suspected he'd not feel clean. Not after what he'd seen over the past several years.

He did not want to admit to himself that they were losing this war.

The thought came unbidden anyway. Frank tried to ignore it, lathering the soap and scrubbing roughly. It didn't matter if they were losing. What were they going to do, let Voldemort win? Not fight? Preposterous. But it was wearing them all down, he could tell. Recruitment had dropped to nothing - was negative, if one took into account the deaths they'd had recently. They no longer had the resources to spend doing reconnaissance, and most of what they did was purely reactionary.

They could hold on, for a while. But if Frank was honest with himself, he no longer thought they could foil Lord Voldemort's plans. All they could do at this point was delay him, perhaps get a few more people to temporary safety.

It was a terrible thought, one that Frank tried to dash from his mind as he splashed water on his face. What he needed was to go home, crawl into bed, and sleep. In a few hours Alice would wake up, and they'd go downstairs and exchange gifts, their first Christmas morning together. The notion had once stoked a warm glow within him; now he simply felt hollow. He convinced himself he'd feel better once he'd gotten some sleep, and he pulled on his robes - cleansed of the ash and blood, they still felt filthy - and left Headquarters, walking down the dark and quiet streets until he gauged he was far enough away to safely Apparate home.

He failed to slip into bed without Alice noticing. She turned over and opened her eyes blearily as he pulled back the duvet. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. She met that with a very small smile and he pulled her close to him, burying his face in her hair and breathing deeply. She smelled like lavender and peppermint and clean sweat and sugar. He closed his eyes, willing away the images of the previous hours and focusing on his wife beside him, grasping for some sense of normalcy in the small hours of Christmas morning.

It seemed as though it had only been a few minutes, but had obviously been much longer, when Alice was shaking him awake. "Up you go, lazybones," she said playfully, but even half-asleep, Frank could hear that it rang slightly hollowly. He knew she'd be fighting guilt that she had not been able to go along last night, her stomach bug keeping her abed and vainly attempting to keep down bread and ginger ale. He also knew that despite the cheer they'd try to drum up in the next few hours, he'd have to tell her about what happened. This, more than anything else, made him want to stay abed, but Alice was insistent, and he found himself coming fully awake in the sitting room next to their tiny Christmas tree.

There was a parcel from his mother, of course, and one from James and Lily, and a card from Lupin and Black. Wartime had been hard on everyone. Frank was surprised to see anything at all from anyone other than his mother, who, practical as always, had sent them both wool cloaks - dark navy blue, with permanent Impervius charms woven into the fibers.

"It's not much," Frank mumbled as he handed the small box to his wife. "But you liked it so much when you saw it, and - I know you were disappointed you couldn't have it to wear for the wedding -"

"Frankie," Alice breathed as she opened the box to reveal the bracelet, tiny lustrous pearls woven around each other in delicate strands. "I can't believe you remembered it."

"I wish you could have had it months ago," Frank said. "Funny story about how I finally got it, actually. At least, I keep telling myself it's funny. That one night, when you were called to Dover and I had to stay and keep watch over that safe house in Bath? One of the refugees was this jeweler. We got to talking. I told him how much you admired his work." He gestured at the bracelet. "This came by owl to Headquarters not a week later. It's as much a gift from him as it is from me."

"It's as beautiful as I remember," Alice said, watching the candlelight reflected as tiny points of light on the pearls. Frank felt a small pang as he realized that there would be no event she would be able to wear it to, no special dinners or parties where they would put on their best dress robes and be a blissful young married couple out for an elegant evening. There was little room for such frivolity in their lives. Suddenly his gift seemed crass and inappropriate.

Alice put the box to the side and looked at him with soft eyes. "I'm afraid I couldn't find a gift for you," she said, taking his hand. "But I did go to the Healer yesterday, to see if there was anything she could give me to shake this stomach bug."

"And?" Frank asked. The way Alice was speaking, her voice trembling, hinted that there was something beyond the bald facts she was laying forward. His suspicion was confirmed by the way her eyebrow quirked mischievously.

"Let's just say that it's a thing that will pass in its own time," she said loftily, tossing her head to flick her fringe from her eyes. Frank managed a small grin. Alice had a terrible poker face.

"Which means?" he pressed. The smile Alice had been trying to bite back bloomed full on her face and he was taken for a moment by how beautiful she was.

"Which means... you're going to be a father. I'm pregnant."

"Oh," Frank said, feeling the blood drain from his face. Then, "Oh." He gripped her hand hard with both of his, his eyes darting between her face and her midriff. "You - you're serious?"

"Yes," she responded, laughing and placing her other hand to her belly. "A little boy. We're going to have a little boy."

"Amazing," Frank breathed, his mind spinning and having a difficult time finding a place to settle. "Absolutely incredible." He glanced around their sitting room, at the windows, at the front door. "We're going to need wards."

"And a nursery," Alice added, and Frank nodded distractedly. Dumbledore could help with setting the wards, he knew how to protect a house as well as anybody. And Evans - Potter now, of course - she'd been fantastic at charms, she probably knew a few tricks even Dumbledore didn't...

He blinked. Alice had been talking. "What?" he asked stupidly, wrenching his consciousness to the present moment.

"I said, aren't you happy? You look so grim." His wife looked concerned, her brows drawn together and lips in a tight line.

"I'm... of course I'm happy. But I'm realistic, too." Frank gestured around them. "We have to keep him safe, and it's getting harder and harder to do that now."

"If he's the same terror growing up as your mother swears you were, he'll probably be able to make Voldemort beg for mercy all by his lonesome," Alice said dryly.

Frank shook his head slowly, a notion blooming in his head and suffusing every thought. "No. No son of mine is going to grow up in a world that has Voldemort in it." He stared intently out the window, suddenly feeling inexplicably energetic and light. "He's going to have to go. That's all there is to it."

Alice said something else, but once again, Frank didn't hear. All the thoughts that had been deluging him for several months, causing some dark depression to make him see the worst of everything, seemed to have been swept away and replaced by determination firm as stone.

He wasn't going to let his son live in that kind of world. Losing the war wasn't an option anymore.

He brought his wife to him in an embrace and he felt her relax into it, and was slightly surprised to find himself relaxing as well, for the first time since this whole war had began. "Merry Christmas," he whispered into her hair. "You got me a new reason to fight."