Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

15 March, 1995 - Stress (II)

Lavinia was in a thoroughly bad mood when she came home from work one evening in mid March to find Remus sitting on the couch, as usual. It hadn't really been a terrible day if she was honest. Nor had it been a terrible week or month or much of anything, really. Not that it had been a good week or month or anything either. It felt to Lavinia rather as though ever since the Triwizard Tournament had started, things had begun to go downhill. 

It wasn't just the usual things, either, though those had made their presence known as well. Miriam and Kama had almost managed to secure an adoption before being denied at the last minute. Remus had been denied the opportunity to much as apply for a job he was more than qualified for thanks to his condition. Heather had gone through a bad breakup. None of which was terribly out of the ordinary, but all of which were more than enough to make the months seem longer and harder than they perhaps should have.

And then, in case the small injustices of life in general weren't enough, there were also the unusual things. Nothing major, nothing big enough to cause much alarm on it's own, but... but last time it had started with little things too and Lavinia wasn't stupid enough to ignore these. Nor was she foolish enough to brush aside the fact that Dumbledore himself was worried.

What made it worse, really, was the reality that there was nothing at all to be done about it. Not that Lavinia ever wanted it to get to the point where things needed to be done, but... but she hated the sitting around. She hated knowing what was coming and not being able to stop it. She hated that she didn't know how to protect her friends this time anymore than she'd known how to last time.

Of course, she'd done exactly as Dumbledore had asked of her and kept her ears open when she was in the hit wizard's ward, an activity that had done absolutely nothing for her morale. It wasn't that the hit wizards had anything shocking to say. Really, they didn't have much information to begin with, but what they did have were the rumors that it seemed The Daily Prophet was being rather careful to keep quiet. First it had been the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins, who had yet to be found. Then it was that the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a muggle was being canceled because no matter what Dumbledore said, there was simply no evidence of magical involvement. After that, it was that Barty Crouch kept failing to turn up to work and no one knew why.

None of these events was particularly notable on its own and Lavinia kept trying to tell herself that she was being silly even as she wrote to Dumbledore anytime they let slip new information. It was nothing, she repeated over and over and over. Nothing at all. Even if muggle disappearances were how it had started. Even if Bertha Jorkins had been well known for having an annoyingly good memory while she was at school. Even if Barty Crouch hadn't missed a day of work in his life.

But... but it could have been nothing. Certainly, no one besides Dumbledore seemed to think anything of it. The hit wizards certainly did. They put the muggle disappearance down to normal muggle things that were beneath their pay grade. Bertha Jorkins, they said, was as scatterbrained as a goldfish and had probably gotten lost. Tragic, certainly, but no cause for alarm. And Crouch, they pointed out, was old and his glory days were over. This last observation was usually followed by a long winded reminiscence of those supposed glory days at the end of the last war when hit wizards had had nearly free reign to do whatever it was they pleased.

Lavinia personally wouldn't have called those days anything near glorious, but she kept her mouth shut and her ears open and repeated those words over and over in her head.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Even if she knew this was about as far from nothing as it was possible to be.

Strangely contrasting the sort of news Lavinia informed Dumbledore of and its rather unpleasant implications, was the filler stories the papers kept running. Normal news. Normal life. Normal everything. Interspersed among all this was news of the Triwizard Tournament which Lavinia followed rather reluctantly because she wanted to make sure nothing awful had happened while simultaneously maintaining that the whole thing was just one massive and unnecessary clash of overinflated egos. But, ridiculous or not, the second task thankfully passed with no one dead or grievously injured and news of the Tournament had faded until this day in March when Lavinia entered her house with perhaps a little bit of aggravation.