Being a Greengrass after all should sound pretty serene.
But being a part of "the Emeralds" should not, especially when hearts become entangled with the infamous Regulus Black.
Goodness, lawfulness, or evilness. Which path will they tread in the ti...
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August 18th, 1978
A month with the Order had changed Avery in ways she was only beginning to notice. The first few weeks had been fueled by adrenaline. Everything had felt urgent then: the missions, the secrecy, the realization that she was finally part of something larger than herself. Now the novelty had worn away, leaving behind routine. Training sessions stretched late into the night, and debriefings ran for hours. Moody found new and inventive ways to remind everyone how easily they could die. She was already significantly better than she had been a month ago, more confident in a real duel and less likely to freeze when things went wrong.
None of it stopped her from looking up whenever she heard an owl. Still no letters from the people she was expecting the most to write to her. After a whole month of nothing, she found herself less concerned for their safety and more tempted to murder them all on sight the next time she saw them.
Now, a long table dominated the center of the room, and every seat around it was occupied. Moody stood at the head with a weathered scroll spread open before him. The parchment looked damaged, its edges blackened as though someone had tried unsuccessfully to burn it.
A weathered scroll lay sprawled across the table, its edges still smoldering faintly with curse residue. Ink shimmered in patterns that shifted when looked at directly, like a mirage on heat-warped cobblestones.
"We recovered it this morning," Moody was saying as Avery slipped into an empty chair. "Same style as the message intercepted in Bruges."
James leaned forward. "And nobody's figured out what it means?"
"If we had," Moody replied dryly, "we wouldn't be standing here."
A few people laughed. The scroll itself was strange. Symbols crawled across its surface in shifting patterns.
Emmeline folded her arms. "It's definitely encoded. The symbols aren't stable."
"They're meant to move," Lily said. "I've seen defensive enchantments do something similar."
"Not like this," Moody replied.
The discussion continued around her, theories piling on top of theories, but Avery found herself staring at the parchment instead. Something about it bothered her. The symbols seemed random at first glance, yet they repeated too frequently to be truly chaotic. Certain characters always appeared together. Others never appeared beside one another. She reached for a spare piece of parchment and began copying them.
Dorcas glanced over. "You see something?"
"I'm not sure."
Everything continued shifting across the original scroll. Avery copied them anyway, ignoring the movement and focusing on the underlying pattern. After several minutes, the realization came so suddenly that she sat up straighter.
