he walks among his peers unread;

[heardmermaids]

Who: Sebastian, Lily, & Sol
What: A conversation that starts on the network and then moves into a meeting over coffee and some home truths.
Where: A small café in Sobek Croix
When: The network call on Coardi and the meet-up on Shundi.
Notes: Forward dating for victory!

[Locked to Lily Potter:]
    I'm sorry I didn't check in earlier, but are you well?

Comments

[instead]

If she had been disinclined to believe Sebastian before, this picture would have convinced her that she was talking to her son. These people - she sees their parents in their faces, in the way they hold themselves. She can see Xeno Lovegood's dreaminess in his daughter's eyes, the set of Narcissa Black's jaw on Draco's pointed face, the good humor and all the bloody freckles that go along with being a Weasley in the boy named Ron.

"What did you do?" she asks, looking up again. "All of you, I mean? How did you fight him?"

[heardmermaids]

Sebastian frowns, confused by her question. How else does one fight a war?

"We avoided the Ministry, made deals where we could, and killed his people before they got ours," he says cautiously. Sebastian is concerned that it's not going to be the answer she'd like to hear, but he's even more sure that she doesn't want details about tactics.

[instead]

Lily smiles a little, awkwardly. She wasn't entirely sure what answer she was expecting, but that was a good one, she supposes.

"You said you had more pictures?" she asks, attempting to change the subject. "May I see them?"

[heardmermaids]

"Of course." He flips through the book and carefully removes a few more snaps, some muggle, some wizarding, and spreads them out on the table. In the photographs, the same group of friends ages, is injured, healed, acquires new allies, and loses members. Most of them seem to be taken in a series of poorly kept muggle flats with the occasional appearance of Grimmauld Place or some other Order hideaway.

Save Moody, there is a marked absence of anyone that Lily might be familiar with.

[instead]

They are, Lily thinks, all so young. So much younger than they should be, she corrects herself, since it looks like some of them are older than she is.

It's a cold feeling she gets in her stomach, when she realizes her son is now older than she'll ever get the chance to be in England.

She pushes a strand of hair back, looks up at Sebastian. "Where - may I ask what happened to the first Order? Where are they?"

Surely they can't all be dead, right? Alice and Frank were alive. Molly and Arthur, Emmeline, Professor Dumbledore, McGonagall - why aren't they in the pictures?

[heardmermaids]

Sebastian looks down at the photographs to hide his expression while he weighs various answers.

"Leading up into the second war going 'hot', the Death Eaters had years to work their way into government and discredit or remove the original members. Those that survived often, well, they weren't the sort of people who'd actually fight on the ground and they, they opposed Voldemort in other ways." It's a very careful bit of wording that avoids saying they didn't all support the second Order.

[instead]

Lily sucks in a breath through her teeth as she looks at the pictures. So, like the last time, the war was a young person's war. The first Order was comprised mostly of fresh Hogwarts graduates, and this one looks the same.

"I see." It's a sad sort of feeling, this utter lack of familiar faces, like this is happening in a world she doesn't belong in, one she lacks any sort of connection to. (She doesn't, she thinks. She's dead.) "At least you still had Mad-Eye with you."

[heardmermaids]

"He understood," Sebastian says with a smile for Alastor. "And usually managed to keep us from turning into small, greasy spots on the floor."

Usually.

"Anyway, the war is long over and I've made my peace with it."

[instead]

She smiles at him, though it's tinged with sadness, and squeezes that scarred, calloused hand again. "I'm glad. For both of those. How long have you been here?"