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[miss-dorcxs]

mxrlenemckn​:

Now that was a million galleon idea, much better than the self-driving broom idea she had had with Sirius the night before.  Maybe she’d visit people more often if she were greeted with a shot of nice firewhiskey.  “If you paten that you better be thanking me in the footnotes,” she chuckled.  “my stress-fueled drinking may have just inspired greatness.  Hit me up with the prototype, yeah?  Although, maybe not.  That might get more people come to see me.”  She paused, reaching out for Dorcas’s hand, squeezing it carefully.  “You can come anytime though, whiskey or not.”  It was an uncharacteristic show of affection, especially from 1979 Marlene, but she needed to know if Dorcas remembered, despite her inability to just ask.  That last night together still weighed heavily on her.  The awkward silence, the way Dorcas’s expression changed from contentment to pity.  The realization that she may have fucked up one of the best things in her life by simply acknowledging its existence.  Nothing in the world could convince her that she had been wrong.  There was something between them.  The only mistake she made was expecting Dorcas to be anyone but the person she knew that she was.

“We could use cups.  We could also just drink straight from the bottle.  It’s been that sot of a day.”  She didn’t wait for an answer on the pizza, twisting the nob to preheat the oven.  She was hungry enough that she could easily eat the entire thing on her own if Dorcas didn’t have an appetite.  Unwrapping the clingy plastic from the frozen pizza, she just tossed it onto the rack, not having the patience for the oven to fully preheat.  

She grabbed the bottle, downing a sizable amount before sliding it back toward Dorcas.  It would be easy.  Do you remember?  Simple.  Three words.  Do you remember how I ruined everything?  

A laugh nearly slipped out at Dorcas’s question.  She had no idea how frustrated Marlene was when she considered that fact.  She had worked hard, for three years, and was days away from graduating and become a fully qualified Auror when she had been killed.  And now, here she was, at the start of it all with only a few days of training under her belt.  It was frustrating to be hindered by training wheels when she knew she could be so much more of an asset.  She was ready, but the rest of the world didn’t know that.  “Yes,” she confirmed. ”Which is part of the reason why I’m drinking straight from the bottle.”  The other half was to drown out the memories of her death, of the deaths of her family.  That was the memory that felt like yesterday, not her Hogwarts graduation, not spending time, young and naïve, with her friends.  She remembered the screams of her little sister.  The horrifying silence that came just after.  She remembered the red on the knife just before it… she shook her head, wanting to think about nearly anything else.  “What about you?”

Do you remember?

*

Dorcas grinned, “Deal.  That’s true, maybe it needs to be invisible to anyone that hasn’t been invited over, then stupid wankers won’t stop by and steal doormat whiskey from people they don’t even know”, she joked.  It felt nice to joke.  Natural, even, though internally she felt like one giant fucking question mark.  “We’re clearly onto something.  Maybe I can even stop waiting tables and become an inventor.”  That was nowhere near what she would have ever wanted to do with her life, but hey, clearly her life wasn’t meant to last long.  May as well have some fun while she was back at it.  Winking at Marlene, she smiled, “Thanks, babe.”  Dorcas didn’t feel the need to tell Marlene that she was also welcome any time - she figured that it was more than implied.  Were they being more friendly than they ever had been in 1979?  It was difficult to say, all together too difficult to sort through the memories and put them in chronological order.  Damn, she almost needed to make herself some sort of timeline so that she could keep things straight.  

Even if Marlene did remember, Dorcas was dead set against revealing anything first.

“That was my thought”, she laughed as she set the glasses down onto the counter, feeling too tired to even attempt to use magic.  Laughing even longer when Marlene didn’t wait for her to even start to pour before taking a swig out of the bottle, Dorcas lifted the glasses up in both of her hands as though to say ‘what about these?’ and then left them on the counter.  Whatever, it wasn’t like sharing drinks was out of the ordinary for two people who had hooked up.  Even though technically they hadn’t hooked up yet.

Staring at Marlene out of the corner of her eye, wanting to look at her for as long as she could but not wanting to be too obvious about it, Dorcas took a long gulp of her own, letting out a quiet, “Ah”, as the alcohol burned her windpipe on the way down.

“That bad, huh?  I’m sure it’ll get better.  Don’t tell me, you’re in training with a massive twat who thinks that they know everything?”  Whatever had happened that was so bad Dorcas couldn’t anticipate, which felt foreign in and of itself.  Usually, she could anticipate what Marlene was thinking and how her day had gone by the look on her face alone.  It felt strange to have her friend standing right in front of her, but feeling like there was a massive distance between them.  Waving her hand in the air as though to signify that it wasn’t anything special, she shrugged, “Just another day pouring pints.  Nothing to write home about.”  She’d have liked to work for the Department of Mysteries, one day.  But her dream career had felt really insignificant in the face of a war.  She realized that she was hogging the bottle, and offered it back to Marlene.

So far, so good.  She wasn’t giving any information up.  At least, not first.

[miss-dorcxs]

mxrlenemckn​:

Her day had consistent of nothing but tears and painful conversations.  James, that morning, had reignited her guilt for having died before things had gotten truly frightening for he and Lily, but had equally reminded her that some things never really changed.  Alice had done what Marlene had known she would do and recounted the worst of it for her, which broke her and helped put her back together all over again.  And Amelia had sparked hope inside of her where none had been before.  Marlene had always admired her, and if she thought there was hope she couldn’t  help but at least consider the possibility.  It had been an exhausting day.

Seeing Dorcas at her door brought about a new set of feelings – embarrassment, apprehension.  Things had been so easy between them back in 1981, before she had opened her mouth and ruined it all.  She knew how Dorcas felt about the war, she knew, and most days she felt similarly.  Most days she was perfectly content to their little routine, wild independence punctuated by occasionally falling together at the end of it all.  It had been a comfort as the war heated up around them, as good people died and their friends were tucked away into hiding – when she was with Dorcas she had felt invincible in a way she couldn’t fully put to words.  But it seemed as though the war saw fit to take that from her too.

She hadn’t meant for that conversation to be an ending.  If she had known that it was the last time they were going to be able to speak she wouldn’t have said anything at all, she would have just allowed them to settle into the comforting familiarity, the safety, of it all for just a little longer.  She wouldn’t have ruined it.

She stood there, a little too long, and just looked at her.  They had been friends long before they had been anything else, before feelings had morphed into something confusing and unfamiliar.  But, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what their relationship had been like in 1979.  Was her presence here a sign that she remembered?  Or was this what they were like before they became something else – something that neither one of them had wanted to acknowledge, something they hadn’t been brave enough to define before she died?  She didn’t know.  A small part of her hoped that Dorcas didn’t remember.  That that awkward conversation and uncharacteristic confession of feelings had died when she did.  But another part of her, a part that she thought may be stronger, desperately wanted things to be where they were before she died.  Even if they didn’t define it, even if they continued to see other people – she wanted the comfortable familiarity she felt with Dorcas, no matter what that looked like.  As long as they were in each other’s lives Marlene was content.

Looking over her shoulder like she couldn’t believe Dorcas was referring to her, she turned back and cracked a small smile, reaching out to help her up.  The smile on her face grew though, as she saw the smile on Dorcas’s.  The girl’s energy always had been contagious.  “Come on then.  You won’t find the whiskey under the welcome mat.”  Pulling the door open, she stepped aside so Dorcas could lead the way.  She momentarily considered whether she should check to ensure that this really was Dorcas, but she shook off the thought, unsure if she would be able to separate the confusing timeline in her mind.  Besides, if the Death Eaters had already come to kill her, she supposed that would answer a lot of questions about who remembered what.

She smiled again as Dorcas took a few of the bags from her, warmed by the familiarity she had been craving but that she was too frightened to ask about.  She knew she should be asking if she remembered, or at the very least shooting out some pointed questions.  And she would.  But right now, all she wanted was this moment of normalcy, or, at the very least, what would become normal between them.  “Alcohol is above the sink,” somethind the Dorcas of 1981 knew well.  Was that a sign she didn’t remember?  “Are you hungry?  We could put one in now if you wanted?”

*

“D’you know what, that’s not a half bad idea.  We all should start keeping whiskey under our welcome mats.  Or on top of.  We deserve it.”  Dorcas joked, sticking her tongue out at Marlene.  Not that getting drunk would solve any of the problems currently being posed, but you know what, she’d come back from the dead, she was allowed a night.

Awkward as she felt internally, she was doing her best to act normal, realizing that she could suss out the situation and see if Marlene let anything slip to let Dorcas know one way or the other.  Part of her hoped that Marlene didn’t remember anything, and that she was the only one who did.  It would be lonely, sure, but at least everyone else would have been spared.  But the other, more selfish part, hoped that Marlene did, so that she had an ally.  Sure, there were so many things left unsaid between the two of them, but even facing uncomfortable feelings felt like it would be worth it.  

It was a little hard to even accept that her friend was really standing in front of her.

With every memory that came flooding back, she started to wonder if it had even happened at all.  It was all very complicated and confusing and hurt her brain.  Dorcas was a logical person, when she was faced with a problem, she problem solved.  Sometimes she leapt into action a little too recklessly, or picked a fight for no real reason, but she was perfectly capable of logic.  There was no logical way she could think of to approach whatever was going on, and so, she had decided that she would suffer in silence.

Watching Marlene out of the corner of her eye, she leaned back against the counter, folding her arms across her chest.  “Right, thanks.”  She remembered, of course she remembered.  Sliding the little footstool across the floor so that she could step up and grab the nearest bottle of whiskey, she contemplated taking a swig right out of the bottle before she decided that might be a little rude.  “Cups?”  Waiting until she was pointed in the right direction even though she knew where the cups were kept, she grabbed two and filled them up a little more than was probably called for.

“So.”  Dorcas took a small sip of her drink, resisting the urge to chug the entire thing in one gulp.  “What did you get up to today?  You’re in Auror training right now, yeah?”

At the very least, she could reorient herself to 1979.

[miss-dorcxs]

ameliajbones​:

Date: January 2nd, 1979 Location: Diagon Alley Tagging: @miss-dorcxs​

Amelia felt like she was living in a whirlwind the past two days. From waking up and remembering it all, to meeting up with multiple others who remembered, making her both emotional and more determined than ever. They were here to change things, that she was sure of, and she would do everything in her power to save as many as she could. She wasn’t going to take a backseat this time and hope the Ministry could handle it, because she knew for sure that they bloody well couldn’t handle anything.

Luckily enough for her, the cases she was currently working on were ones she’d already done, and she knew exactly what to do to prove her point in them. That left her more time to focus on writing down everything she could remember in a notebook that she kept close to her chest. She would do as much planning as she could, to keep these things from going that way. Sure, it wasn’t a guarantee that it would keep it from happening at all, but the point was, she was trying.

Back in Diagon Alley again for more supplies, Amelia was walking a little more carefully this time, when she spotted someone she recognized again. Dorcas Meadowes. Her heart ached a little at realizing it was her, remembering the news when she’d heard of what had happened to her. She had her name on the list, of course, and that was one thing she had to keep from happening again.

“Dorcas!” She called out then. She hoped that the girl would either remember her from Hogwarts, or perhaps if she remembered knowing her in the next year or so from their friends. Mostly, she just hoped that Dorcas would be one who would remember everything too. “Do you have a minute?” She asked then, as she caught up with her.

*

It was a jarring feeling, re-living things.  It was only the second day, but Dorcas couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing it all completely wrong.  There wasn’t exactly a guidebook on how to act, and she was trying to navigate it with all the overwhelming feelings that accompanied.  She’d never been great at working through her own feelings at the best of times, and would have been truly content to shove them all in a box and then never open the box again.

The way she saw it, she only had two years left to live.  She didn’t even consider the possibility that there was a way to change the future.  She truly believed that she was destined to live out the rest of her days knowing exactly how and when her death would come, along with the deaths of some that she cared about.  There were so many missing pieces to fill in, and it was all of those questions unanswered that kept her in her flat.  She was happy to stir up as much shit as she could in the time she had left, but she felt like she needed a minute, first.

Eventually, she realized that she needed to go outside.  Finding herself in the heart of Diagon Alley with no real destination in mind, Dorcas found herself mindlessly wandering until she heard someone call out to her.  Taking a moment to register the familiar face, she eventually placed her and forced a wide grin, “Amelia, hey!  Long time no see.”  If that was actually true, she had no idea.  “I’ll always have a minute for you, what’s up?”

[miss-dorcxs]

[miss-dorcxs]

mooneychild​:

who: @miss-dorcxs​ when: 3rd January 1979 where: a pub

Remus still felt like the reality of this new world hadn’t fully sunken in yet. Even if everyone seemed to be living the same altered reality that he was, it just seemed so hard to swallow. He wanted more concrete answers, but he didn’t even know where to begin. Something about time turners? Maybe a really niche section of magic that he’d never heard of? As much as he wanted to go into full research mode, he didn’t think locking himself in a library was what he could take right now. And if he did, he thinks he’d need some help first.

He had been up for hours, just wandering for no apparent reason, when he realized he should probably eat something. He thought about apparating back home, but he had some money from James and wasn’t really in a huge rush to get back home. It felt all too empty these days. He wasn’t sure how he’d ever stood the loneliness. He ducked into a pub, sat down at a table and tried to remember the last time he’d been in this particular establishment. Was it still around before he died? Did he like it at all? Would he run into someone he knew?

As he let his eyes wander around the bar, he heard the voice of a server asking for his attention. He looked up and met the familiar eyes of Dorcas Meadowes and all over again, it was like seeing a ghost come back to life. That’s where he knew this place from. “Dorcas,” he breathed out. “So good to see you.”

*

It was strange, remembering that she had a routine to stick to.  Sure, serving in a pub had never been her life’s ambition, but it was appreciated in that it both helped to pay the bills and got her out of the house, giving her something else to focus on.  Dorcas had almost forgotten that she’d been working at the pub around the corner, and would have not shown up for her shift if it weren’t for the hastily scribbled calendar that had been stuck to the door of her fridge with a very permanent charm.

What she hadn’t expected was for Remus Lupin to swing by, and when she first saw him, she almost hid in the back.  Chiding herself, because hello, that wasn’t mature, she forced a grin onto her face.  Acting normal around the people she cared about couldn’t be that hard, even if she still had a million questions that would probably never be answered.  She didn’t need to put that on anyone else.  It looked like Remus was a little out of sorts, too, and for a brief moment she wondered if he also had distinct memories of the future, but shook the thought away immediately.

“Hey, nerd, it’s good to see you too.  How’ve you been?”  Dorcas couldn’t recall how long it had been since they’d seen each other in this timeline, but that was a perfectly normal question to ask even if they’d seen each other the previous day, right?  “Are you here just for a pint, or for some food too?”  At least serving still came naturally.

[miss-dorcxs]

mxrlenemckn​:

@miss-dorcxs

Each day felt ​like a lifetime.  Each day brought new information, the ways that people she cared about were killed or the horrible trauma they endured if they survived.  The guilt ebbed and flowed, never disappearing, but lurking below the surface in the best of moments.  Speaking with James and Alice that morning had taken a lot out of her.  Learning exactly how her family died had devastated her.  But it was also the start to rebuilding what had been broken in the past forty-eight hours.  She had to know what had happened to fix it, to repair what had been broken.

As she walked up the stairs toward her flat she was thinking about cracking open the whiskey she had bought the day before, along with a handful of other groceries – if microwave popcorn and frozen pizza could be called groceries.  Her mind was on a million other things, which was why she didn’t notice Dorcas, sitting on her welcome mat, until she had nearly tripped over her.

“Dorcas?”  Her voice was faint, questioning.. unsure.  Did she remember too?

—

It was the end of July, the warm breeze blowing in through the open window.  There was a sort of floral scent in the air from the blooming bush a story down.  It was nice.  Summer had always been her favorite time of year – full of opportunities and new beginnings.  She supposed that should have been how the new year felt, but as a fairly recent graduate, in her mind the year began and ended with the new school year.  Three years hadn’t been quite enough to break her mind out of that habit, especially with Auror Training following a similar schedule.

She would have slept later, but the smell of pancakes got her out of bed.  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, watching Dorcas move about her kitchen.  “Morning,” she yawned, walking toward the coffee maker and flipping it on.  “How’d you sleep?”

“Not as well as you, apparently.”

Marlene smirked at her, sitting at the stool at the counter as the coffee brewed.  There was something comforting about waking up to Dorcas making breakfast.  It felt right.  They had been doing this for awhile now – falling apart, falling back together.  Others had come and gone and come back again, but no one had been as consistent a partner as Dorcas had.  Sometimes it made her wonder what it would be like to see what there could be between them if they tried for a bit of consistency.

“Do you – ever think about this?  Us?  About… trying to be a bit more exclusive?”  The words tumbled out of her mouth before she even fully realized what she was saying.  Exclusive felt wrong anyway.  It had been months since she had been with anyone but Dorcas.  But it was the best she had to ask for what she wanted.  

“Mar –”

“No,” she shook her head, standing up abruptly, embarrassment flooding through her.  She knew Dorcas’s thoughts on the war, on losing focus on what’s important, on opening yourself up for even more pain in a world where that was more or less a constant.  She knew, and she shared most of those thoughts.  “No you’re right.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  Not enough sleep I guess.  I’ve got to get ready for work.”

Without waiting for a response she turned and headed into her bedroom.  She tossed on a white tshirt and her leather jacket, shoving a pair of trainee robes into her backpack.  Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and within five minutes she was ready to go.  “Lock up when you leave, would you?”

“Marlene –”

She didn’t know why she was so embarrassed, but she felt her cheeks hot as she grabbed her keys from the small table by the door.  “Not right now, okay?  I’ll come by your place after work and we can talk.”

—

But she never had.  She didn’t stop by that day or the next day, and the day after that had been Maggie’s birthday.  She had died without ever having that conversation with Dorcas, and she couldn’t say that she would have had she survived.  

But what she did know right now was that she was happy to see her, despite what their last moments together had been.  

“Do – you want to come inside?  I was going to open a bottle of whiskey and turn on some music.  Maybe it’s less pathetic if I do so with a friend.”  She wanted to know if she remembered.  She desperately wanted to know, but she couldn’t ask her.

*

After waking up utterly bewildered, Dorcas had kept to herself, scribbling note upon note of all the questions she was craving answers to.  When she finally did decide to venture out in search of a friendly face, she decided to operate under the assumption that she was the only one who had been sent back in time - if that was actually what was going on.  It certainly was the easiest way for her brain to make sense of it.  The last thing that she needed was for someone to think that she’d completely snapped.  She could still be useful, even if she’d gone mad, and she wasn’t sure that she could handle a pitying look from any of the people closest to her.

Without really thinking about it, she found herself on Marlene’s doorstep, contemplating leaving when there had been no answer, but forcing herself to stay.  Sitting cross legged on the doormat, she leaned her head against the door, forcing herself to take deep breaths.  At the very least, it would be nice to see Marlene again after their last conversation that they’d put a pin in, and then  were unable to revisit.  Even if Marlene didn’t remember - maybe things could be different, this time.

It was complicated.  She’d felt like the world’s biggest asshole for making Marlene think that there weren’t any deeper feelings there, but at the same time, they’d been in the middle of a war.  It felt wrong to let herself fully fall into things that felt happy, like it would be doing a disservice to everyone who was working so hard to fight for the things that they believed in.  Self sabotage came to her naturally, and Marlene was usually the first person to give her a good verbal smack when she got that way, but this time it had been different.

And then Marlene had died.  Their last conversation had been a tense, awkward one where Dorcas hadn’t said anything of real substance, and she’d carried the guilt of it all with her until her own dying day.  Guilt always had come hand in hand with rage, of course, and it was a hell of a lot easier to feel angry than it was to feel anything else.

Dorcas had known it would hurt to see Marlene, real, alive, and standing right in front of her, but she couldn’t stop the sharp breath that left her as her heart plummeted to the bottom of her stomach.

Right, she could play it cool, even after her own body was traitorous.  “Hey, loser.”

Far too late, she realized that she was smiling like a big idiot, but she couldn’t help it.  It was so nice to see her friend.  Even if there was so much unsaid that she really couldn’t say now, not when the events that she remembered technically hadn’t happened yet.  Besides, she was unwilling to discuss her feelings at the best of times, especially unprompted, so she swallowed them down and leapt to her feet.

“Absolutely, I could use a drink right about now.”  That was a perfectly normal thing to say given the circumstances, right?  Dorcas grabbed the grocery bags from Marlene’s arms so that she could open the door, and then followed her in to the flat, depositing the bags on the kitchen counter so that she could start putting them away.  It felt like second nature to her, and in truth she probably knew how Marlene’s kitchen was organized better than Marlene did herself.

Except - was this how things were in 1979?  She couldn’t remember, and she took a step back, clearing her throat and offering up by way of explanation,  “Didn’t want the pizza to melt.  Then it doesn’t heat up well.  Where’s the alcohol?”

[miss-dorcxs]

“She was reckless. An unyielding storm. And you’d count your lucky stars if you got caught up in her.”

— Nicole Torres 

[miss-dorcxs]

where: dorcas’s flat, london when: january 1st, 1979 tw: death, mentions of torture

It was near the end of August that Dorcas Meadows met her entirely too early demise.  August had never been her favourite month, hot and sticky and never ending as it tended to be.  Ever since childhood, she liked the Fall best.  It brought about the feeling of new beginnings as the seasons changed, and it was really too bad that the previous Fall had been the last Fall she’d ever get to experience, and she hadn’t even realized it.  She’d even taken advantage of it.

Her capture had been quick, and she steeled herself for merciless torture from the Death Eaters, which did come.  What she hadn’t expected was a visit from You-Know-Who himself. It might have been flattering if it weren’t so terrifying, and different happy moments from her short life quite literally flashed before her eyes.

What was the Order going to do without her?

Immobilized by some invisible spell, she forced herself to meet You-Know-Who’s eyes, determined to seem braver than she felt even though her heart was hammering itself around inside of her chest so loudly she wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it.

Bracing herself for more pain, Dorcas was entirely surprised when You-Know-Who tried to reason with her, instead.

“There’s still time to join us.”  He told her, in a voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. “You could prove useful.  And use gets highly rewarded.”

“You can go and fuck yourself”, Dorcas spat back, a line that may have been a lot more impressive if her voice hadn’t cracked.

“Such a waste.”

A bright flash of green took over, and everything went dark.

-

Dorcas opened her eyes, and immediately furrowed her brows into a deep, confused frown.  

Something wasn’t right.

It was dark and cold, but she was surrounded by something soft and plushy.  Did pillows and a duvet come in some sort of bizarre afterlife starter package?

Was she a ghost?

No, that couldn’t be, she wouldn’t have ever tried to come back.  Death was terrifying, sure, because it was so unknown, but she wouldn’t have ever purposely elected to hang back and become a ghost.  She would have wanted to go onto whatever was next.

Was she in some sort of purgatory?  

Determined to live the same day on a loop, reliving her death over and over again?  That may have been a distinct possibility, but she didn’t fear death so much that that would be her torture cycle.

Had she thought about getting killed so often that it was starting to show up in her dreams? That was surely a possibility, but even in her wildest dreams she wouldn’t have placed You-Know-Who as her murderer. Besides, it all felt too real to be a dream.

Dorcas let her hands pat around her body – she felt real enough.  Tangible, there in the flesh.  She pinched herself, then smacked her cheeks and still got the same results.

There was absolutely no way that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would have cast a spell that sent her home to her perfectly comfortable bed.  Something more sinister had to be going on.

Slowly inching out of the bed, her bare feet hitting the cold floor so unexpectedly that she shivered, she stood, leaving the bedroom in search of the kitchen kitchen, running her hands under cold water from the tap.  She splashed a little on her face, deciding that she was real enough.  At least that crossed off one of her many burning questions.

This was her flat, there was no doubt about it.  It felt comforting and familiar, which was helping to cut through the confusion and dread.

A discarded newspaper lay, tossed haphazardly aside on the counter, and she picked it up, eyes nearly bulging out of her head at the date.

December 27th, 1978.  

She knew that she would never have clung to an entire paper from nearly three years ago.  Certain clippings she may have saved, surely, but not the entire thing.  That indicated to her that it was either late 1978 or early 1979.

What the actual fuck was going on?!

“This is completely normal.  Right on”, Dorcas muttered to herself as she rummaged through her cabinet for the first food item she could find.  Settling for a bag of crisps, she ripped them open and started shoving them into her mouth at rapid speed, rocking back and forth to at least attempt to ground herself.

“Totally and completely normal, everyday stuff, really.”

She’d always thought it would take her longer to snap, but here she was, absolutely out of her goddamn mind.  Pinching the bridge of her nose, as if that would help her make sense of things, she sighed, “Okay, there has to be some perfectly logical explanation for all of this.”

Here she was, speaking entirely to herself with her mouth full of crisps.  Maybe she had lost it a little.

Her go to was usually act first, then think and ask questions later, but this was all so confusing and complicated that even Dorcas found herself taking a pause to mull it all over.

She had so many questions, and found herself reaching for a scrap piece of parchment so that she could write them all down.  Was she at St. Mungo’s in the brain injury department, making this all up in a fantasy land inside of her mind?  Was she the only one who had been sent back?  If yes, why?  Was she the only one who remembered the next two years?  If yes, why?  Had she even died?

Were they destined to live everything the same, all over again, or was there a way to change the way that the future was written?!

If she really had died, her own death didn’t matter, not really.  Not in the grand scheme of things, not if she’d helped the Order.  She knew that there was no way she’d change her actions, there was no chance that she’d ever be quieter just because she knew that death was a possibility.  It had always been a possibility.

The fear of death wasn’t reason to stop living.  The fear of death wasn’t reason to stop doing what was right.

As confused as she was, she couldn’t help but feel a thrum of excitement radiate through her. Even if she were destined to die in the same way at the same time, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t stir up as much shit as possible before she did.

Question after question came pouring out of her, straight from her brain to the parchment.  The only way she was going to be able to answer any of these questions was if she tracked some people down, and she knew exactly who she was going to try to find first.

Marlene McKinnon.

Dorcas wanted to see if she’d been brought back from the dead, too.