WHERE: The Ministry
WHEN: Summer Gala; evening
WHO: @ofamelias
There was a time in his life where Alastor enjoyed these sorts of events. Where he would long for them. The thrill of coming here, for finding a hot date for the evening and mingling with the Wizarding World’s best and brightest used to be enough to get him excited. Now? the glamour had all but faded, and the lure of these things was gone. He attended out of duty, and spent most of the evening watching the seconds on the clock tick away. Smiling and nodding and acting like the dilligent soldier he was...
Until she walked in.
He hadn’t been able to get to her immediately, but he knew the second Amelia had entered the Gala. Heads turned her way, and the energy around his body shifted and changed. There was little that excited him any more, but that woman in that dress? Yeah, that’ll do it.
He had been leaning casually against a column, talking to a dignitary when they had to excuse themselves. Someone else had demanded their attention and he couldn’t have been more relieved. A moment later, Amelia stepped into his line of sight. The smile that stretched across his lips was unflinchingly hers. “Well if you aren’t the most beautiful one here...” He said in greeting, one tattooed hand gripping her hip, the other sliding across her neck, tilting her head up to place a kiss on her cheek. “You almost make this whole thing worth it.” He added with a cheeky wink.
Lily had needed a break. Work had been exhausting, trying to come up with a wedding plan even more so. So the party at the Three Broomstick was a welcome relief. She scanned the room for any familiar faces and caught sight of her fiance. The sight of him sent a jolt of happiness through her and she made her way over to him. “Hi, handsome,” she said.
There was a strange sense of relief and of happiness in the air. After months of nothing but fighting, it seemed the near future held at least a little respite. There were birthdays coming up, Christmas too, but first - of all things - a wedding. Hagrid’s wedding. Who’d have thought it?
It left Harry with a distant sort of happiness, a lingering smile and a far easier disposition - though perhaps that was Madame Rosmerta’s mead. He only wished he’d had a suit or something with him, as throughout both the ceremony and now the feast, he was left in the same long worn outfit he’d worn at least twice a week since his arrival.
That was the only facet that let down the day, however. Otherwise it was...magical. Unusual for most, largely due to the height of the bride and groom, but probably the most enjoyable occasion he’d certainly had in the better part of a year.
For now, a little flustered by the activity and unusual mood, Harry hovered at the end of a bench, largely ignoring the surprisingly lavish food in favour of his mug. His mind felt strangely empty without the looming stress he had grown accustomed to. There was no pit in his stomach, no knots in his muscles. He felt at ease.
“Oh my god,” Molly groused. “An alarm was not the wedding reception soundtrack I was hoping for.” Personally, she was mightily indignant on Hagrid’s behalf; he was the loveliest person in the whole world, probably, and she thought he and Olympe deserved the best day ever, and instead-—this?! “If it turns out someone did this intentionally,” she said, sounding right put out about the terrible turn of events on a day of love and celebration, and perhaps not quite as concerned as one should feel at the idea that the wards were deteriorating when there were zombies possibly waiting around, “I’m going to stomp on their feet with my scary heels, I’m so mad.” She didn’t even feel particularly bad about the idea of breaking their feet.
Under the cut you will find a summary of what happened to Lily during the event! If anyone wants to complete any threads we had planned, I’m completely down! Or we could just do a post-event thread, I’m up for anything but here’s the summary just so we’re all on the same page. 👌
When the wards came down, Lily was in the Great Hall, as she was assigned to security for Hagrid’s wedding. Just before she left to do reconnaissance, she noticed Alexander Ollivander, who was about to attack the guards so he could leave and find his girlfriend, Valeria Carrow. Lily did her best to stop him, not wanting her friend to rush into harm’s way, and promised she’d find Valeria for him, using her Marauder’s Map. Someone had told Lily that her best friend, Celeste Seong, left the Great Hall with Val earlier that night, both of them rather inebriated.
Lily was unable to locate them on her Marauder’s Map at first, probably due to the influx of names, but she couldn’t help but fear the worst, worrying that her friends weren’t appearing on the map because they were dead. In her haste to find them, she ran into Dorian Shacklebolt who hadn’t seen Val or Cel either but offered to help her look for them. Eventually, they ran into Sebastian Moreno, who was also trying to find Celeste, and together Lily and Sebastian finally located her in the Room of Requirement, safe and sound. Zombies weren’t able to access the room, and after they asked the room to shield them from the Death Eaters, it was completely inaccessible for anyone else.
Comforted by the fact that no one would be able to hurt her friends, she told them to wait for her while she left to go find Val, as she’d finally found her name on the map, right beside Amycus Carrow. Valeria’s name was flickering, as though it was about to disappear, meaning her life was in grave danger. It was an enhancement that she figured out how to add to the map shortly after she arrived at the sanctuary, to try to reduce the amount of lives lost. However, it hadn’t worked completely as she had intended it too, the magic only extending to people she has a direct connection with, instead of working for everyone at Hogwarts.
Lily sprinted as fast as she could to Val and Amycus, arriving just in time to see Artemis Carrow killing her father to save Valeria’s life. (She later testified to witnessing this in front of the Order of the Phoenix, in hopes of strengthening their trust of Artemis.) Artemis and Lily escorted Val to the hospital wing, as she was significantly injured, and once she was confident that her friend was in safe hands, she left to return to Celeste and Sebastian.
But on her way back, she noticed another name flickering on the map, Vincent Caine’s, still in his cell. She rushed down to the dungeons, where she found a horde of zombies that had just broken down the barrier between them and Vince, who was weaponless, dehydrated, and malnourished, having not been checked on since the wards came down. He had managed to climb the wall though, hanging on for dear life, but the inferi were at his heels.
Tossing him a knife to defend himself, she worked as fast as she could to individually kill each zombie with the Sectumsempra curse, but she was considerably outnumbered. Just as two zombies cornered her to a wall, in an adrenaline rush, Vince jumped to the floor and cleaved their heads off. Together, they decimated the remaining zombies, and after killing the last one, Vincent finally collapsed to the floor, exhausted. She dragged his unconscious body to Scorpius Malfoy and asked him to heal the prisoner as a favor. Scorpius placed him in a magically induced coma so he could be sure he was receiving all of his nutrients and then moved him to the hospital wing.
And finally, Lily returned to Sebastian and Celeste, where they waited out the remainder of the lockdown together. Since the wards have been recast, she has been alternating her time between taking care of her friends and family and assisting however she can in hunting down the escaped Death Eaters.
