✰Never Speak Ill of the Dead✰

The Children Are Armed

Alice POV

September 1, 2021

I was called to see Rose in the early morning. I first checked the Ravenclaw dorm and then the library before realizing this was an Elemental situation. I headed to the room of requirement and realized I was not listening when Rose explained how to open it. I tried ramming my body into the door, saying "open sesame" a few times and gave up. Eventually, Daisy showed up and helped me into the room. Rose and Scorpius were already there.

"Yo." I finger-gunned.

"Yo?" Rose repeated awkwardly. "We are here to go over the plan. Where is everyone else?"

I shrugged. "I'm not responsible for them."

"I know, I just—" but Rose was quickly cut off by Lily busting down the door to the Room of Requirement.

"Sup fuckers!" She yelled. She was closely followed by Lucy and Hugo.

"Lily!" Rose exclaimed, "Where is everyone else!?"

"Dunno." She said simply, before sitting on a rolling chair and spinning it in circles around the room.

Ellie and Freddie came next. Barely looking at the person behind her, Ellie said, "I'm not here with him." Which made Freddie frown.

Once everyone arrived, Rose stood up and cleared her throat. She always had an impressively commanding aura, but now it seemed even more commanding, if that was possible.

The room held its breath as Rose began to speak, "Hello. Welcome to the first official meeting of the Elementals. Yes, that is what we are called. No, Lily, you cannot call us something else." Everyone turned to stare at Lily, who looked extremely disappointed at the idea of being unable to come up with a stupid name.

"As you already know, the Death Eaters have returned. It is up to us to stop them. Today we will begin training." Rose stated.

A hand from the back of the room shot into the air. Rose glanced at it and then sighed, "Yes, Daisy, what do you want?"

"Why is it up to us? Why couldn't someone else do it?" She asked. Her curly hair fell to the side as she tilted her head, and a small spaceship hairclip softly landed on the ground.

Rose stared at her for a minute. I could see the wheels turning in her head. She had told me an answer to that exact question the day before, and it wasn't pleasant. It took Rose some time to come up with a plausible lie: "We are the ones with the magic; no one else is more powerful than the Death Eaters."

That was part of it, but it wasn't the whole truth. The truth was that the death eaters were magical beings. Voldemort started the Death Eaters, but they truly started to flourish after his death, under a new ruler that none of us knew. The death eaters could only be fully defeated by the elementals; as long as anyone else did it, they would keep coming back over and over again. Generation after generation. The truth was that the elementals were, and always had been, the most powerful creatures, and therefore tasked with neutralizing every threat, every problem, no matter how young or inexperienced they were. But if Rose said something like that, half of the people in the room would run and never return. The more pressure put on them, the more scared they would be, and we all knew that fear was the biggest threat we would ever face.

"Today we will be finding weapons." Rose snapped, and two shelves of assorted weapons grew from the ground.

People around me gasped. I glanced around and saw everyone else marveling over the weapons. Lily looked like she was about to cry in happiness at the large selection of bombs. Lucy had already found the guns and was holding around 5. Daisy was looking at decorated bows.