Empty Gold • d.meadowes

-52-

They were early to the meeting.

Quite early, in fact. Dorcas liked to arrive at least an hour before the meeting was to start, when the host, Gwen, would still be preparing the food and dusting the curtains and arranging and rearranging the chairs repeatedly. She liked helping out Gwen, who never complained about the unruly crowd invading her lodgings, although it was clear that she did not like having them. Dorcas wouldn't have liked it either if it was her own house. But sacrifices needed to be made for the sake of the war, as the frail old woman was constantly reminded of by her son.

The least Dorcas could do was make the job easy for her.

The house was empty, as expected. Closing the door behind her, she took a few tentative steps forward. "Gwen?" she called out.

"In the kitchen." A sharp voice rang from inside the house. Dorcas smiled at the familiarity and urged Maeve to follow her, who jumped slightly and hurried after her through the dim hallway. Cheesecake strutted along with them for a while, sniffing his surroundings, before he ran off in another direction.

"You seem jumpy," she observed, eyeing Maeve. "What's the matter?''

Maeve eyed the plastered walls around her, fixating her eyes on an abstract painting with the colours swirling serenely on its screen. "This is the headquarters?" she asked in a hushed voice like she couldn't believe that it was. "It's kind of creepy."

Dorcas smiled and linked their arms together like they used to do when they were in school. It has been so long; she could hardly believe that only a year has passed since their graduation. They haven't talked properly since then. Only a few letters have been exchanged and they were woefully businesslike.

Until those had stopped too.

It felt good to have her back.

"That's because no one's here yet," she reassured Maeve. "Just wait until people start trickling in."

When they reached the kitchen, Dorcas found Gwen leaning over the sink. She went over to take a closer look. A stubborn greasy mark has taken residence on one of the dishes, and Gwen was trying to remove it, only she couldn't remember the spell to do so. Dorcas took the dish from her and removed the grease with one simple spell.

"Thank you so much, dear," Gwen said with a broad smile. "I can never remember spells. Charms has always been my weakest subject."

Gwen was a small woman, hunched forward, and dressed heavily in wizarding robes. She was perhaps very old, although no one has ever been able to guess her correct age, and it seemed rude to ask her. They did have guessing games though, Alice Fawley being one of the most enthusiastic players. Their guesses, however, were widely deviated, starting from sixty to as much as a hundred and seventy.

The reason for this confusion among the Order members stemmed from the fact that Gwen possessed characteristics that were both stereotypical and unusual of people of her age. She was wrinkled and her hands shook, but she had a steady voice and a gentle, yet firm grip in her wrinkled hands. She adored Cheesecake, she liked feeding people, she adorned herself in oldfashioned attire and refused to even have anything to do with muggle clothes. But she was unusually strong for someone of her stature and showed genuine interest in the colourful robes that the younger ones wore, especially the women, though, they suspected, her primary intention was to set one of them up with her son, who kept insisting that he didn't have time for a relationship.

Dorcas took over the kitchen duties, ignoring her protests. "Why don't you go over and introduce yourself to Maeve?" she suggested. "I'll put all the dishes on the table."

Gwen complied with a sigh and trotted over to Maeve. Dorcas smiled slightly at the look of pure confusion on Maeve's face and turned back to the sink. Gwen had already prepared the meals, so she only had to bring out the dishes and cutlery from the cupboards and set the table. Several chairs were spread around the table, which was far too small for the number of guests who were to appear. No one seemed to mind the congestion, though. They were perfectly happy to walk into a crowded room, hunt plates out of the overflowing table and pull their chairs to different corners of the room. Dorcas hated mingling among them, which was the reason she arrived so early - so that she could get her share of the food and grab her own chair and her favourite spot in the room.

Chatting with Gwen was an added bonus. In fact, she was one of the two people in the Order who Dorcas didn't mind hanging around, the other one being Alice.

When she was done setting up the kitchen, she went over to Maeve, who was sipping on a cup of tea. Lemon tea with a dose of honey, she knew. It was Gwen's speciality, and everyone enjoyed it.

Upon spotting her, Gwen quickly stood up. "Well, I will leave you with your friend then. I have some chores to do upstairs. Do help yourself to some tea." She turned to Maeve. "It was really nice meeting you, sweets."

Dorcas sat on the chair previously occupied by their host, enjoying the expression on Maeve's face. She hadn't given her any information about the Order before, as was strictly instructed by Dumbledore. Now that she was inside the headquarters, she was free to tell her anything.

"Who is this sweet old lady?" asked Maeve once Gwen had disappeared through the door. They heard her calling for Cheesecake. "Why is she in the Order and what is this strange place?"

"She isn't in the Order," answered Dorcas. "She simply provided the lodgings for our meetups. She lives here, on her own, which is why this house looks so creepy and strange." She looked up at Maeve, who was staring thoughtfully into her teacup. "You have heard of Mad-Eye Moody, haven't you? Well, Alastor is his actual name; but we never call him that."

"I remember reading about him in the Prophet. He caught many death eaters."

"He did. He's an Auror, a highly skilled one, in fact. Pretty gruff and scary, and abides by the rules to the t. Even the toughest members of the Order are scared of him." She paused to look at her friend, giving her some time to take it all in. "Gwendolyn Moody is his mother."

Maeve choked on her tea. A series of coughs erupted and Dorcas slapped her back gently, offering an apologetic smile.

"That's not all." She took the teacup from her shaking hands, in case she choked again. "This sweet old Gwen you met, she was an Auror as well. And so was her husband."

Maeve looked at her with wide eyes for a minute. Then she smacked her on the arm. "How could you withhold this very important information from me all this time? What are you going to say next? This house is haunted by the ghost of their Auror ancestors who kick the walls and spill peeling paint on you if you act stupid?"

Dorcas found herself laughing suddenly. It felt strange, sitting in here with Maeve and talking freely. Nearly a year has passed since they had last seen each other, and certainly, a lot of things have changed between them. But she liked the way they were still able to make jokes and tease each other like they used to do.

"She retired ages ago," she continued her story once her laughter subsided. Maeve took the teacup back, though she refrained herself from taking a sip when Dorcas was speaking. "She lives here alone, though I think Mad-Eye comes and stays here when he isn't crushed by his obsession of capturing Dark wizards." She paused and looked down at her hands, lowering her voice. "She never talks about her Auror days. Alice used to ask her; she was very eager to know about her past and how she defied stereotypes and rose up the ranks in a heavily male-dominated job. But whenever she was faced with questions, her food would mysteriously start burning and she would run to the stove to fix it, even when there was no food on the stove. Then we stopped asking."

Cheesecake poked his head through the door, looked around the room for treats, but perhaps the silence was too much for him, for he left quickly. Maeve let out a breath beside her. "Wow. Of all the things I would have imagined of her, being an Auror with a Dark past wasn't one of them."

"Yes, I think that's why she puts up the pretence of a frail, oldfashioned lady who loves to cook and feed people. So that people don't question her past."

"You think it's all a pretence?"

"Maybe. Or maybe she is genuinely a sweet old woman. Who am I to assume?"

---

the first few chapters are going to go a bit slow, as it's a very new setting with lots of new characters so i would need to introduce them properly.

afterwards, i swear things will get more interesting (i hope)

anyway, i'm trying to take advantage of the quarantine to write more but who knows i've made loads of promises like this in the past

hope you enjoy <3