THANK YOU SO MUCH again, Aurora, for your help with this chapter and for being so sweet as usual.
One by one, the young Aurors rose to their feet. In a silent agreement, they all took time to shake Sirius’s hand and to wish him "good luck", as if he was about to break through the enemy’s line himself.
“Here,” Alice Longbottom handed him her last Drooble’s Best Blowing Gums, “use them sparingly until we’re back, OK?”
“Don’t worry, Sirius,” added her husband, Frank. “With your luck, the Death Eaters might come right here for their meeting.”
“And he’ll get all the fun, as usual!” Remus Lupin said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “See you later, mate.”
“I’ll be fine,” Sirius repeated over and over to his friends. “Watch your back out there!”
The four apprentices, however, stayed away from the man who had called them “midgets” at their first meeting. They glared at him, feeling slightly satisfied he had been excluded from the patrolling teams.
Then, Moody waved at the apprentice named Downey, and introduced him to Sturgis Pudmore. They immediately departed for their mission, rapidly followed by Remus and the Longbottoms with their teams.
While James went to talk to Sirius, Lily turned to the last apprentice who was standing in his corner, staring unblinkingly at the dancing flame of the fireplace. She must agree with Moody, Aurors recruits did look younger year after year. This one in particular, with his kind face and military short hair, reminded her of a sixth-year student at Hogwarts.
“You must be Anderson,” she said with her hand held out. “Nice to meet you, I’m Lily Evans.”
Anderson took her hand without a word, frowning as if he was trying to remember where he had met her. The effort he made accentuated the tiny wrinkles on his forehead and on the corner of his bright blue eyes.
“We have to patrol the South side of the clearing together,” Lily reminded him, smiling encouragingly. Anderson’s palm was very sweaty. He must be nervous, she thought, remembering how anxious she had felt at her first mission.
“The South side … Oh, of course …” Anderson uttered, “uh, nice to meet you too, Evans, right?”
“Hi, I’m James Potter, your other teammate,” James said pleasantly as he joined them at the fireplace. “And this is my friend Sirius Black, the best watchdog you’ve ever met.”
“How do you do,” Anderson answered, regaining his composure as he shook the other men’s hands.
Lily managed to keep a straight face as she watched James and Sirius exchange a knowing look and discreetly wiped their hands on the side of their robes. Anderson glanced at the black board on the wall, where the map and their names were still neatly written.
“Ready to go?” James asked on their way out. “Are you nervous, Anderson?”
“I’m all right, just can’t wait to get some action!” said the apprentice.
Outside the cabin, darkness had already fallen over the woods. The three Aurors stepped into a dense fog that immediately nettled them in its cold embrace. Lily glanced at the starless sky; she could barely see the moon through the heavy clouds. It was one of those gloomy Halloween nights that she has always dreaded. She kept her pace close to James, who was leading their group through a winding path they had never followed before. She shivered under her cloak, trying to shut off the haunting feeling inside her chest.
“Freezing night for a raid, isn’t it?” Anderson asked her in a low voice.
“Freezing, yes. But tonight’s mission is not a raid,” Lily corrected gently. “Moody had insisted on that, don’t you remember?”
“Of course,” he said, shaking his head in excuse, “sorry, I just forgot! Would you mind telling me why we have to head north again?”
Lily glanced intriguingly at Anderson, but decided to attribute the apprentice’s strange behavior to his nervousness. Patiently, she began to brief him on their mission. Anderson understood easily everything she said. However, he often interrupted her with the same questions, as if some bits of information just passed, unregistered, through his mind.
After a curiously long silence, James joined in their hushed conversation. He started asking Anderson precise questions about their plan, to which the apprentice gave curiously the same wrong answers again.
“Tell me Anderson, how old are you?” James queried suddenly, looking straight at Anderson.
“Nineteen!” he answered quickly. “Why?”
“You see, I have some doubts about your real age. I want to know how old you are if you don’t take the Aging Potion!”
“Are you out of your mind? It is illegal, don’t you know?” Anderson snapped back, even though Lily clearly caught him flinch at James’s mention of the Aging Potion.
“Illegal indeed, especially when someone is using it repeatedly to stay on the Auror’s Training Program while he’s underage.” James stated without raising his voice.
“You are mental, Potter! Who would do such a stupid thing?”
“Mental, you said? Then please, explain to me why you are sweating so much- even though you are not at all nervous about your first mission-, why you’ve got wrinkles at such a young age, and why your memory kept playing tricks without warnings. You’d better tell us the truth before we go any further with this mission.”
At her turn, Lily startled at James’s pertinent description of Anderson’s symptoms. Giving it some thoughts, she immediately recalled Professor Slughorn’s words about an excessive use of the Aging Potion:
“This potion enhances a temporary, but immediate aging process of the body. If taken repeatedly over a long period, it forces the body and the brain to make continuous adjustments. The effects of this unnatural time traveling, if I dare put it that way, are increased sweating, wrinkles, blood clotting disorders, and sometimes, sudden partial or complete loss of memory.
“Keep that in mind, Lily, because my little finger tells me that there might be a question about the subject at this year’s N.E.W.T. exam.”
Lily had, of course, remembered that precious hint and had spent long hours coaching James on a subject he had never been fond of. Their hard work had finally earned him a glorious “Exceeds Expectations” in Potions, which turned out to be a requirement to become an Auror. Perhaps that was the reason why James still remembered these notions so accurately.
Lily turned to James, nodding her agreement with his actions. In front of them, Anderson had obviously shifted to the attack mode: he had crossed his arms, and his eyes were burning with defiance.
“I owe you two no explanation at all!” he fired at them. “Who do you think you are to question me that way?”
“We are your teammates, and we are about to walk into the enemy’s lines,” Lily answered before James could. “In your case, we reasonably think that your memory loss will endanger your safety and compromise our mission.”
“Therefore, we have the duty to report our doubts to our Team Leader and recommend your exclusion from tonight’s operation.” James added. “Game is over, Anderson. If you have something to say for yourself, do it now!”
But the apprentice remained lips tied, glaring at James and Lily with an open hatred. He paced the ground like a cornered animal, mumbling words they could barely understand. Then, just as James and Lily brought their hand to their wands, Anderson stopped on his track and hit the nearest tree with his angry fist.
“They killed my parents!” he cried.
“Who did?”
“The Death Eaters,” Anderson’s voice was distorted by unrestrained anger. “It was two years ago. I was twelve then, and was supposed to spend the Christmas school break at home. I showed up just in time to see Voldemort’s boys leave our house, laughing and boasting about the way they had tortured my Mum and Dad before killing them.”
“I am truly sorry,” Lily said, but he did not hear her.
“They called my parents ‘blood traitors’ and other horrid names I had never dared think about,” Anderson continued, probably talking about his nightmarish memory for the first time. “I spent the following weeks hating myself for doing nothing that night, asking myself why my parents had been murdered. They were both gifted Healers, and had spent their entire lives helping other people. Their crime, I understood later, had been taking care of Muggles and pure-bloods with an equal dedication, and treating them with the same respect. I can never forget what a Death Eater had said that evening after they killed them, ‘I chopped their filthy hands off … served them right for touching the Mudbloods’.”
Lily repressed a gasp of horror, and James silently took her hand in his. He looked at her, a mix of love and determination glowing in his hazel eyes. I know, James, this is why we fight, she returned his gaze, squeezing his hand tighter. Innocent lives are lost and bright futures are shattered, but for them we will keep marching on with our heads held high.
“Have you got any help, from your family or your teachers?” asked James with concern.
“No one could help me!” Anderson shook his head, leaning against the leafless tree. “I had fled after my parents’ funerals. There was no use to return to Durmstrang; the teachers’ pity was definitely not what I needed to avenge my parents. So I decided to act alone, nicked a large flask of Aging Potion from an illegal drugstore, and got myself enrolled in the Aurors’ Training Program.”
Lily and James had no difficulty to figure out what came next. Anderson was smart enough to fool the recruiter with fake NEWT results; then, he had taken on every activity of the program with a recklessness only a twelve-year-old boy could muster. He had thus earned a good reputation among his colleagues; and his instructors, impressed by his sheer determination, could not ignore such a promising prospect in their recommendations to Alastor Moody.
“Please, Potter, don’t make me go back,” Anderson pleaded. “I’ve gone this far to make the Death Eaters pay for their crime. By the way, my memory loss is just temporary. You know, I just … fall out of focus … from time to time, that’s all. There’s nothing to worry about, really!” he added, with a glance to Lily, hoping she would confirm his own prognostic.
The Marauder in James truly understood Anderson’s quest for justice; he could not blame the young boy for wanting to avenge his parents’ murders. However, the former Hogwarts Head Boy urged him to act with prudence. Could he let Anderson “fall out of focus” at the wrong moment, in front of an enemy who would surely show no mercy?
“Anderson, I’m sorry, but you will have to go back to headquarters now,” James decided. “I don’t like the idea of a fourteen year old wizard risking his life under my responsibility!”
“AND I DON’T LIKE YOUR HAIR!” Anderson shouted back feverishly. “Does it mean that I can ORDER you to shave your head? You can’t make me go back, Potter. You have no right to make them throw me out of the Training program. I have gone too far to loose everything now.”
“I can’t let you go on with this mission!”
“Oh yes, you can, and you will! I’ll hex you, I swear, if you make me go back!”
In a blink, Anderson sprang to his feet, pointing his wand at James who kept staring back at him, an expression of “been there, done that” on his face. Then Anderson shrieked, as his wand slipped from his sweaty grip and flew swiftly into James’s outstretched hand. The young apprentice was shaking with anger, his pride seriously scorched by the easy defeat. James made a step in his direction, but Lily had already come to Anderson’s side.
“Anderson, please, listen to me,” she said quietly, a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Hexing James is not the solution; fighting the Death Eaters unprepared and ruining your health in the process, is not the way to avenge your parents either. They were gifted Healers, you said. They would certainly not let you risk your life that way.
“This is a long fight, you know it. And we all need the very best of our capabilities to defeat Voldemort. How do you want to face your parents’ murderers, Anderson? As a trained wizard, at the top of his magic skills… or as a brave, but weak underage Auror with a faltering mind?”
The young apprentice obviously refused to answer, so Lily continued in a calm voice.
“You still have a lot to discover about your magic skills. I know it is hard, but you have to be patient. A very powerful wizard had told me once that ‘one good wizard is worth seven Death Eaters’. And I know that if you take the right decisions and give your skills the time to develop, you will make those Death Eaters bite the dust sooner than even you can imagine.”
Something in Lily’s words stirred in Anderson’s confused mind, and made his blue eyes shine with a new light. He was still struggling in an inner battle, but a clear decision seemed to emerge as he touched her hand on his shoulder.
“A powerful wizard, eh?” he repeated in a low voice. “Is he always right about …what he says?”
“Yes, never missed a thing!” Lily assured brightly. “A powerful and exceptionally wise man, he is!”
A faint smile appeared on Anderson’s pale face. After some intense reflection, he simply nodded at Lily and, with a slight hesitation, he held out his hand to James. No one spoke, but the three of them just knew, deep in their heart, that they had achieved something exceptional. Greatness was about the small differences one could make every day, and at this right moment, they just felt they had taken a huge step in the right direction.
“Amazing … Did Dumbledore really say that about the ‘good wizard’?” James whispered to Lily, as Anderson was too busy to pocket his wand.
“No, I made that up,” she smiled, looking very pleased with herself, “but thanks for the compliment!”
Above their heads, the icy wind kept rustling through the bare branches. The clouds had moved aside, unveiling a faint moonlight through the mist. James suddenly stared above Lily’s head; all of his senses tense in alert.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lily in a low voice, following his gaze.
“I thought I saw … PROTEGO!” James yelled, shoving Lily behind him.
A jet of orange light had been shot from behind the tree, rapidly followed by other Stunning Spells. James and Lily stood back to back, their wands waving restlessly and their voice went hoarse with shouting the Shield Charm.
Somehow, they had walked straight into a trap, even though they had not yet reached the clearing as planned. Lily ducked a dash of greenish light that had missed James by an inch. She immediately lied flat on the ground, her mind racing to plan an emergency retreat. Judging by the unfriendly spells that were raining over them from all directions, they were obviously surrounded and outnumbered.
“LOOK OUT!” Lily shouted, as she saw a dark silhouette worming its way towards Anderson.
She threw a Disarming Charm in the direction of the attacker, but missed her target. Anderson never saw the jinx that had been shot from behind. The blast hit him squarely on the back. It sent him flying a few feet forward and crashing, head first, against a tree. Lily gasped as he slumped on the ground.
“STUPEFY! IMPEDIMENTA!” James cried, and finally, two black-hooded bodies fell out of their hiding spot.
“JAMES, THIS WAY!” Lily shrieked, edging through the dashing jet lights. Then she started to run toward the unexpected breach that had opened where the Death Eaters had fallen.
“DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY!” a high-pitched voice bellowed to its companions.
Lily kept running, oblivious to the crackling cry of the dead leaves under her feet. Vaguely, the sound of other steps echoed in her buzzing ears; their attackers must be on their way to chase after her. James, she thought with a sudden panic, she had not heard or seen him follow her out of the enemy fire.
Then, before thinking about the consequences, Lily looked over her shoulder, which was a gesture that she should never have risked under the circumstances. Yet, she realized it much too late.
The ground gave way beneath her, and the dark sky started spinning above her. She fell into a giant gap; her body sliding down the rocky slope.
“LILY!” she heard someone yell, before total darkness took over her.
A/N: THANKS for reading :) And PLEASE, take a few seconds to review and let me know what you think, OK??