Marauders - Always - Part One

Can I Talk To You, Potter?

When Frank Longbottom got home from work on the third day of training on the mordefinite, he was a wreck. He walked up and down the cobblestone street outside a few turns, looking at the water passing under the walking bridge and leaned against the wall of it staring down until he'd cleared his head a bit. His hands were still shaking when he went inside.

To find chaos.

"FRANK HONEY HI!" Alice all but danced over to him, the room's furniture had been magicked to the center and she was speckled with paint, wearing a pair of worn denim overalls she'd tied at the waist with a ribbon. Her hair was up in a knot with a bright pink scarf, and the walls were a myriad of colors splotched about. "I was hoping you'd be home soon to have a look-see and help me choose which color!"

"I - I thought we were painting this weekend?" Frank asked.

"I couldn't wait, darling."

"Oh." Frank looked around, unsure where the couch even was, and awkwardly lowered himself onto the surface of their old steamers from School, feeling supremely heavy. Alice's buoyancy kept her fluttering about the room, not noticing Frank's lack of enthusiasm. "I thought, too, it was only the baby room?"

"I got carried away once I went to look at paints and all I could think is how lovely these colors could ALL look in our home. How cheerful is this one?!"

"It's... very pink."

It looked like the dust that the dummies gave up when they were properly hit with the curse. Frank hated it.

"It is, isn't it?" Alice said. "But we could have a girl..."

"In the living room?"

"Could be anywhere, really!"

Frank nodded.

"Have Lily and James painted yet?"

"Dunno," he murmured.

Alice was flipping through a book of swatches. "What about green, Frank? You love green." She held up a swatch.

Frank nodded, "It's nice."

Alice paused, her eyebrow raising, and she stopped her dancing motions and dropped the book onto a table, making her way over to her husband and tilting her head to one side. "Frank? Baby?" She stepped up to him and her bright, wide eyes stared up at him. "Something's the matter."

He had managed to keep things smoothed the first several training sessions, but today was the first time Frank himself had cast the spell, the first time he had felt the weight of killing magic. And that bloody pink dust that had risen out of the dummie had been, while not realistic, unexpected and very sobering. He had managed to push the thought of what they were training to do until that moment his magic had hit the dummie square on the mark and a great puff of pink had emitted from it's cloth chest. It seemed none of the aurors training were expecting it - McKenna Johnston had screamed.

Frank's voice trembled, "It was a very... very hard day at work," he answered.

"What happened?" she asked. He hadn't even come home this shook the day the Minister had been killed. Upset, sure, but now his palms were clammy and his eyes were profoundly sad. She ran her hand over his chin, cupping his face. "Baby?"

"This new curse they're making us learn," Frank murmured. He didn't dare tread too close to the whole truth. There was no need to divulge the spell itself, of course, which was the punishable bit, but he still wasn't sure how much he could say, how much he wanted her to know. She would worry if she knew. "It's just very hard right now."

"I'm so sorry, Frank," she whispered.

He nodded. She was comforting him, her touch always did, but there were things crawling under his skin he needed to talk to somebody with. "I - we ought to go and talk with the Potters," Frank suggested.