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[succintsilence]

She didn’t see him approaching so much as she felt him draw close. The air changed when she knew Frank was near. She leaned, almost imperceptibly, into the motion of his hand on her shoulders; they gravitated toward each other as naturally as the waves enveloped the sand, flowing again and again despite the efforts of the tide to pull them apart. Like the shore, Frank and Alice had their cycles: they fell in and out of each other with inconsistent regularity.

Alice had never been one for predictability or routine. That was Frank’s comfort, his standard of normalcy. She would set routines, follow routines, settle easily into Frank’s schedule, but she would never set a pattern for him to follow. Having been together for so long, though, she was aware of his need for the predictable, and when Frank went lax on his routines, she automatically reinstated them. If he would not wake up to greet the sun on his own, she would take him there for the sun to greet him.

By way of answer, in place of words because Frank had never needed her words, Alice adjusted the scarf around his neck, ensuring that it was tucked properly into his sweater to prevent a draft. Her Frank wore cardigans in the summers and scarves whenever the wind blew too hard. Alice had spent too many of her summers rolling through the hills of Ireland through pelting rain and bitter wind with Aisling, grass cutting her bare legs, to feel the chill now. Her clothes here were roughly made but thick, and the hours of walking the perimeter had warmed her blood already.

Alice twined her fingers in Frank’s and studied the dark circles under his eyes, thrown into deep shadows as the sun lit his face. It did not take sleeping in his bed to know that he was having nightmares again.

And the Sea Remembered || Fralice

[succintsilence]

♡ jealousy

One of the girls in her dorm was crying in her bed, two others soothing her, with Aisling bobbing around offering help in her usual unusual ways. Alice sat on the floor nearby because there was no room on the little four-poster, cross-legged and still as Aisling was restless. She grabbed her friend’s hand when the girl came near and pulled Aisling down to sit beside her, feeling the tension building around the small group huddled on the mattress.

A first boyfriend, a first love, a first betrayal. Alice said nothing by way of comfort or condemnation. She was occupied mulling the situation in her head. The boy her friend had been sleeping with had slept with another girl. Her eyes on Aisling, Alice moved her fingers from twisting hands to gently stroke her friend’s hair. Aisling was her lover, but they had both brought others into their beds, sometimes independently; she puzzled over what about them made things different. Why did they not cry when their lovers varied from the other?

Frank, the boy Alice had been most recently seeing, was a more permanent addition to her life, but Aisling did not exclude him nor express any desire to stop Alice from seeing him. And Frank had been with another girl before–the Travers one with the dark eyes–yet Alice did not rage at the idea of them together.

What was this betrayal, then? Why did her friend not see her relationship the way Alice and Aisling did?

Aisling’s head rested on her shoulder, fingers moving to toy with the hem of her shorts. The spectacle was growing tiresome, and Alice had nothing to contribute. Jealousy was not a concept that came naturally to her.

[succintsilence]

flowers grow back even after they are stepped on and so will I

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Send me ♡ + a word, and I’ll write a headcanon.

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And the Sea Remembered || Fralice

@frankmathew

She did not enjoy cutting Frank’s hair by any means. She enjoyed spending time with him, mundane moments between the lines, routines that everything fell into place around. But her cuts were imprecise and his hair always ended up uneven, somewhere: he always swore he didn’t see it but she’d bite her lip when she noticed it for the next week and a half, until it grew out enough that his curls covered the slanted lines. She liked his hair longer.

But she was his wife, his partner of many years, and she knew everything there was to know about Frank. He had stopped asking her to cut his hair; it was beginning to curl. The night patrols had halted; he was less consistent at waking up before her every morning. His time in the garden was less calming: he jumped more often, dark circles were forming under his eyes. Vivienne Travers was in his head. The stress of inventing a cure caused tremors in his hands. Her Frank was dissolving.

Moody gave her the night shift infrequently. He preferred her on her feet during the day; Alice functioned inconsistently on little sleep, and since she’d discovered her condition she’d noticed a fatigue setting in at odd times. Her mentor had given her an odd look when she’d volunteered for this shift.

Frank approached, as he always did, at sunrise by the beach. His routine. She was waiting; her watch ended twenty-five minutes previous. Emmeline had already taken over for her. This morning, she’d watch the sunrise with him.

[succintsilence]

like cracking eggs || alice & charity

@charityxxburbage

In Ravenclaw, everyone was her friend from the moment they were Sorted. Even when they did not get along, the ‘Claws were a House like every other Hogwarts House. Alice had never struggled to make friends, no matter where she was; she had a tendency to fall into groups that melded. The Aurors, and then the Order of the Phoenix, had accepted her. She had never truly felt the need to approach someone to solicit their friendship.

At Port Montrose, things were different in so many ways. The group had started out entirely made up of faces familiar to her already. The strangers had come along later. People whose names she did not know, even in passing; war-torn individuals gone ragged and sour from what they’d experienced. And Alice, who was wary of beginning new relationships when her old ones had so recently been torn from her, avoided them for longer than she had right to.

They were all guarded, closed within their groups and unwilling to open themselves to new vulnerabilities. The longer they stayed, though, the more Alice found it impossible not to befriend them.

One of the strangers, Charity, had drawn Alice’s attention when she was caught stealing strawberries from Frank’s garden. Frank had found it amusing, so Alice did too; they were both good-natured types and Frank enjoyed having one with a greener thumb than his wife helping in the garden. She found Charity in the kitchen, washing up the berries freshly picked from Frank’s plants. Alice lingered in the doorway, glad that Charity’s focus on the task at hand meant that she did not notice the slight brunette lurking behind. Before she’d decided what to say, Alice decided to move closer, into Charity’s line of sight in what she hoped was a non-threatening way.

[succintsilence]

The scent of blackcurrant jam came to her memory almost instantly at its mention. Its swiftness disturbed her, but she had found the broken jars in the grass, with sticky residue still clinging to the inside, and her tours of the town borders always seemed to leave her hunting for berry bushes when her mind wandered. The smell of fruit was strong in the minds of the refugees since the arrival of the woman with her silver eyes.

She was a delicate woman, but Regulus’ portrayal, but Alice doubted that anyone delicate could survive in Port Montrose this long, especially if she was a ghost-woman like they said. Regulus did not believe her to be a ghost, though, and neither did Alice; if she did exist, she would be flesh and blood. Human as the rest of them. Ghosts did not exist in Port Montrose: only in the minds of its inhabitants.

Her brow furrowed, she contemplated Regulus’ reveal, the revelation just escaping her mind but leaving hints of its existence in the channels of her thoughts. No one else had mentioned the message, so Regulus must have been listening to the radio alone, and his monitor had let him alone with the radio--their only form of communication with the world outside. Regulus could have very well sent a message himself or could be lying about this one. Alice would defend him, but she would not trust him.

But Regulus had been the one to bring the Death Eaters to surrender, so he had no motivation to bring more enemies to the door. It would be easier to kill them all as they slept rather than wait months to contact allies outside. It was not practical, and Regulus was practical.

"What did the commercial say?” Exact wording: figs and jellies were an unusual assortment to offer together. Fig jelly would be more likely, or fruits made into jellies. Alice would be surprised if Regulus did not remember the exact wording of the message. They heard so little from the radio, after all.

Save Our Sanity || Regulus and Alice

When Alice replied no, Regulus continued to paint, shading in the fine features of the woman’s face. She was almost too fine, cheekbones like marzipan, but her eyes showed strength that belied the tired hollows in her face. 

His brush paused as he thought, then continued again. “I’m not sure. I have a feeling, though…” He trailed off, unsure if he would really tell Alice anything about his life, as small as his life was here at Port Montrose. Particularly because he wasn’t certain he was allowed in the lighthouse, and he certainly wasn’t allowed up there alone. 

“I heard something on the radio,” he let her know. “It was far too clear to be accidental.” Another pause as he defined the line of the woman’s jaw, then shrugged. “Wasn’t anything but a commercial for figs and jams, though. Must be why she smells like black currant.”

If Regulus was allowed to go anywhere other than the abandoned cottages the Order had made their own, he might have some better idea of who from the village might be haunting their little spot. But he didn’t. Even the ghost was more free than he was, a thought that made Regulus smirk wryly as he continued, now working on her hair.

[succintsilence]

the thing with feathers || self

“You remember me.”

I could never forget family, no matter how distant.

Tragedy had a way of bringing people close who never expected it. They had not been close as children, but now Alice found herself clinging to this remnant of her past, the only one left who bore similar memories and may have news of relatives living or dead. The shape of Arabella’s face was like hers, her mannerisms reminiscent of their grandmother; Alice felt relief in her presence, as if the souls of their family surfaced when they were together. She clasped her cousin’s hand with happiness she had not felt in months. Not since she had first touched the flesh of Remus Lupin and Alastor Moody upon arriving in Port Montrose.

We need family. I need family.

The first words spoken about her pregnancy were in Arabella’s presence, with tea and jam before them, above the greengrocer’s with Frank and Tamsin quietly guarding below, trusting in Alice until she returned. Arabella knew about the baby she had lost. Arabella had been a part of the small retinue for the wedding, provided a few jars of jellies in anticipation of Alice’s cravings, but all contact had been minimal; Arabella had not been among those Alice had pushed away after the stillbirth because they had never had enough of a bond to sever.

Her heart swelled with Arabella in the room; she felt a piece fall into place inside her, filling a small part of the gaping hole that was her loss over the past year. Arabella explained, and she listened, and they planned, but they moved to reminiscing and spoke of the baby Alice had not told anyone about yet. She was not ready to tell anyone yet outside of Arabella, and her cousin understood.

Alice charmed the pins--and had Remus secure her magic and add safeguards, so that no one could use the pins other than trusted Port inhabitants--and watched her cousin return to the town with a wrenching feeling inside. Frank’s arm on her shoulders did wonders for her cold spirit but Arabella was all the family she had, out here in the Scottish countryside. And Arabella was at risk, being here. Alice could not increase that risk by bringing her to the Port more often. She restrained herself from touching her stomach, where a life stirred faintly, for now; she was not ready, still.

[succintsilence]

argentum ex tenebris ;

a harvest mouse goes scampering by,

with silver claws and a silver eye;

and moveless fish in the water gleam,

by silver reeds in a silver stream.

— walter de la mare

Frank clutched his teacup with taut breath as he listened to Marlene’s recounting: And she had these eyes, these silver eyes, almost glowing… 

He looked at his wife. Alice’s eyes were divination crystals, morning frost, streams dappled with reeds. And sometimes, indeed, they glowed. 

But not like he’d seen them then.

Dusk had settled in, but he’d remained outside, working. Spring was at its turn, a gentle warmth lingering as the fitful moon rose to grace the sky. Frank was dressed in one of his oversized jumpers, frayed-wool sleeves engulfing his hands. He’d taken to them recently, to their comfort, their protection. Some were even knitted by Augusta: ancient relics of a life lost. 

They reminded him of being young; of being whole.

He’d also taken to wearing his hair differently, now. Untrimmed, the strands had begun to show a curl. He let them graze over the tops of his ears, appreciating the added warmth.

He was coming apart.

More and more, in the weeks since Vivienne’s arrival, he was prone to visions of them: nightmares, waking ones, throat-choking blood-soaked hallucinations which left him trembling in the mud. He could always feel their approach. A chill would tinge the air, and lace daggers into the breeze. And there was always a horrendous scent, too, in the moments before his nightmares; a sourness of something once sweet: rotten fruit, burnt jam. 

He could smell it now. He dared not even blink, lest the memories unleash upon him in the fraction of darkness. Instead Frank lifted his sights to the skies, to the thick forest—

Alice in the trees. Alice, hair tangled, eyes phosphorescent. Watching him with one hand against a tree trunk, clothes frayed, stare so piercing that it left him hollow. 

He shouted out to her. “Alice! Alice, what are you—?”

She fled. He leapt to his feet, catching his shoe on a root and stumbling forward: then he heard a voice, her voice, echoing up, from the cottages behind him. 

“Frank!” Wrapped in a white woollen knit, she was shadowed by Remus in the cottage doorway, calling him for dinner. No silver eyes, no frayed clothes.

He cast a final glance at the woods behind him. No ghost. 

[succintsilence]

thrown here or found // al & af

Port Montrose had a way of drawing people in. Magic, Alice imagined, did that: its inexorable force would bring everyone together when it needed to. Like most magical folk, Alice was superstitious, and she found it hard to believe that Port Montrose did not know what it was doing when it opened its wards to refugees. Places steeped in magic breathed the life of their inhabitants; Hogwarts was enough proof for her. The history of the Port and the circumstances of its use now--it was enough for Alice to believe in ghosts with silver eyes.

Pregnancy made her superstitions worse, but the strange part of superstition was the affect it had on a mind susceptible to it. Alice would have never considered coincidence a viable explanation for anything: superstition opened her mind, and the Port whispered in her ear.

Jams and jellies. Broken jars with sticky residue and half-crushed berries still clinging to the inside. Marlene had seen a silver-eyed woman and Alice had not believed her. Greta’s note should have scared her--it had scared everyone but her. The silver-eyed woman existed, and she knew Alice by sight, and she had pins that should have only belonged to the Order, and Regulus had drawn her face. And still Alice had not been willing to believe.

The radio and the message. Jams and jellies. The girl from the greengrocer was the silver-eyed woman, and Alice knew who she was. Had she ever intended to stay anonymous? Had she been trying to attract the Order’s attention since she came to the Port? Waiting, perhaps, for Alice to know her. It was a cryptic method of introduction, but Alice had no reason to judge her cousin yet.

She believed in the silver-eyed woman; she had a harder time believing that, after everything, her cousin could have found her in Port Montrose.

Figg’s Jams and Jellies, the radio advertised, and only Alice could have recognized it, her aunt’s married name and the daughter they had refused to let be a disgrace. It had been Fortescue’s Jams and Jellies when her grandfather had owned the shop--the ice cream was more popular for Alice and her friends, but Arabella had always loved the jams.

Who else, then, could be the preserves merchant of Port Montrose, the new arrival whose gooseberry jam made Alice inexplicably think of a countryside cottage and ever-sticky hands.

Moody would have never let her go, had she told him. Not alone, at least, and certainly not in a gesture of peace. He would have suggested wands drawn, on the attack, ready to kill or capture as necessary. But if this was Arabella--if this was her cousin--Alice would not use magic to approach her. If Arabella needed her family as desperately as Alice needed hers right now, she would understand.

Frank and Tamsin kept the greengrocer occupied while Alice meandered her way to the back, located the staircase, and climbed--quietly, guilty of casting a whispered Silencing charm to the staircase below her--looking for a door or window or any sign of movement. The smell of gooseberries got stronger on the fifteenth stair.

“Arabella? It’s Alice--do you remember me?”

[succintsilence]

Not someone he knew, just someone he’d seen. So he’d seen her, like Marlene had claimed, fueling the whispers of ghosts and Vanished women. Alice did not, or would not, believe in a spy: a trick of the light, a susceptible imagination, the effect of the fog and the Scottish countryside. “No.”

But the image looked familiar, nonetheless. All Alice had was a handful of broken glass with half-dried fresh jam crusted to the inside to prove that anyone had been skulking around the wards, and she wad never likely to cry wolf. Only Marlene knew she had found the jars--Marlene and Frank, of course, though Frank went without saying. She told him everything.

(Everything except the pregnancy, apparently. She tried not to think about that.)

She must be falling into the same trap as everyone else: believing she knew what the woman looked like because they all described her. Silver eyes and an elfin face. Beautiful and intense. Ethereal, apparently, or else they would not be calling her a ghost.

Regulus was a better artist than she had expected. “Who do you think she is?”

Save Our Sanity || Regulus and Alice

Done with the eyes, Regulus wished for a pencil. Starting with the eyes was never best when it came to outlining a face, and he was loathe to allow a technical error to destroy what he had started.He looked down at the paper for a long moment, trying to picture the guidelines in his mind until his eyes glazed over and he shook his head lightly. After a moment of thought, he improvised. He dipped his finger lightly in water. It could leave an impermanent guide if he worked quickly enough to follow it. 

He quickly outlined the face, lines fine enough that he often had to use his nail, then traced over the darkened paper with a light grey. With that done, he went back to his painting, mixing now a grey even more transparent than the last–the silver of her skin, only seen when the moon fell just right or when her haze shimmered in the corner of the eye. 

So lost in his work, Regulus was startled when Alice spoke. His glance up was quick and almost guilty as he realized again where he was, but the expression quickly clouded back over as his usual mask hid it from view. He shook his head. 

“No. Just someone I’ve seen.” He glanced down before looking up at Alice again. “Haven’t you seen her?” Almost everyone had. Regulus had been one of the very last. 

[succintsilence]

Port Montrose had started out as a small group of survivors, a commonality of mind and motivation, mostly friends and members of the Order of the Phoenix. She’d trusted them so easily upon arriving here. Mostly, of course, because she’d known them before, but even the ones whose friendship had not been immediate--she trusted them. They were too small a group and too ragged a band to risk not trusting each other.

She wished she could trust the newcomers as easily. The Mud Club, they called themselves. Alice wasn’t sure if it was intended humorously or not. Who had come up with the name originally? Someone with a dark sense of humor, she would think. Groups like theirs needed names to bring about a sense of camaraderie. Without a name, they were uncomfortable strangers forced into hiding together. Without a name they were reminded of their real title: hostages. They were alive because the world had either forgotten about them or found them easier to contain than to kill.

Perhaps the time spent in the Port had trained her mind to look inward. The villagers were not potential friends or allies but ignorant dangerous pawns. Her friends lied and stole and deceived because they could not let any outsiders know what was really happening--who they were--what they were hiding from. It was too risky to let anyone in, so Alice had become guarded. Alastor Moody was rubbing off on her.

She wanted to trust Greta, not least because Greta had information important to her. Important to them. “No,” Alice answered, delivering only one word because it was necessary that she answer, still considering a follow-up explanation or question long after she had spoken it. Small talk did not suit her; she would spend hours debating what would be best to say next and by then Greta would have gone. There were worse fates than silence. Most people would have been able to develop a bond with Greta with only an exchange or two. Warming up in the conversation was a way to open a companion to revealing information. But Alice did not have the time or ability to spend on slow bonding. “Is this where you found the note?” She had to find out what Greta knew.

:// fishing worries :// alice

THE SILHOUETTED stranger  e m e r g e d  from the fog, a voice carried by the wind found way to greta’s ears with ease. ‘it’s alice.’ simple and sweet. a rather silly introduction for someone to make as they stepped from the [ fog’s curtains ] to reveal their face. greta pressed her lips into a smile, her eyes  f o c u s i n g  on alice now rather than the line cast into the water. she was  b e a u t i f u l , greta admitted – though she was no doris. this strange [  o b v i o u s  ] revelation caused her heart to sink, a rock dropped into the ocean of  g u i l t  and now  s o r r o w . the smile she forced faded into her now blank stare. “hello,” she managed, returning a glance to her line, the bobble still floating, rolling with the waves. “i’m fishing.” it was rather  o b v i o u s , greta admitted, but there was nothing much to say to alice – a fragile being. 

GRETA REMEMBERED the note, another  s i n k i n g  feeling, more rocks falling into the pool of worry and sorrow. she felt it tugging at her, an inside voice screaming at greta to go. just go, greta, please!! no not now, she could not run now. the note in her pocket felt like  [ d a g g e r s ], the words painted in black ink – yet felt like it was  b l o o d   of an enemy to write these observations. they were watching. the note spoke of her, the [ pink-haired ] one by the docks. the note spoke of frank and of alice and moody and even vivivenne. they were watching… but  w h o  were they?? the sudden answer peaked curiosity. 

DID THEY go to hogwarts?? were they a [ death eater ] or perhaps a member of the order?? did they believe in  n e u t r a l i t y  and only wished to join the ranks of the port montrose misfit gang if it meant actual safety?? greta pursed her lips in thought, eyes  f o c u s i n g  on her fishing – her terrible fishing skills – so  m e d i o c r e . greta almost forgot the woman sitting next to her now, then she could feel her thoughts only focusing on alice.  w h o   w a s   s h e   exactly?? it was no lie that she and greta rarely spoke in their hogwarts days, [ perhaps ] now was a perfect time to speak of nostalgia?? no not now. “do you know how to fish??” she asked, brown eyes glancing over, but got  d i s t r a c t e d  by the strands of pink hair that fell from her messy up-do and  o b s c u r e d  her vision. 

[succintsilence]

In true Alice fashion, she had no interest in making Regulus more comfortable at Port Montrose. She had no desire to be his friend or protect him from the suspicion of her companions. That she defended him in meetings and prevented others from directing vitriol at him was practicality combined with human decency. As far as Alice was concerned, the consequences of his actions were things Regulus needed to endure by himself; she stood as an ally only when he was made the scapegoat for the actions of others. Regulus could only be held responsible for his own actions.

She cared little for his personal happiness because she cared little for him as a person; she had never gotten on well with his brother, and this pureblood fanatic version of Sirius never appealed to her sympathies. But she endured him perhaps more than the other regular monitors did, and her impassive silence never faltered when he needled her. They had elapsed more recently into a less hostile relationship--his decision to trade his annoyed monitor out for Alice on his own volition must demonstrate something positive about her treatment of him. The others, in her opinion, had a habit of forgetting the ex-supremacists were as susceptible to suffering as them.

It was only pragmatic to offer him the paints when her creativity failed her. They were a precious gift, one not to be wasted on a jumbled mentality; Regulus had clearer eyes as he touched the brush and mixed the paints, and she alternated between watching the wall and watching his hands as he moved to create the picture in his head. The pictures in her head might as well be pencil scribbles for all she could make of them.

The baby. The baby. The baby. The baby. Thoughts throbbed in her head like the patient urgency of a heartbeat. Nothing settled anymore, not her stomach nor her mind, pulling Alice toward the chaos of Port Montrose and its curiosity about the ghost-woman.

Alice hadn’t seen the woman yet. The ghost, the specter, the spy; her eyes apparently haunted everyone who had seen her, enough to convince them all that she was real and not a hallucination brought on by hunger and weather conditions. Port Montrose had a way of making you see ghosts.

One was staring at her from the table, eyes boring straight through her but inscrutable. Silver eyes, or grey, perhaps someone from Regulus’ family or an old friend. Something too familiar, though, once the rest of the face started to appear under his concentration. Alice leaned closer, turning her head to see it from his perspective without getting in his way. “Someone you know?”

Save Our Sanity || Regulus and Alice

Regulus Black was difficult to shake. He hadn’t cried since he was five. He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. His hands never shook. It took three or four cruciatus curses as punishment before he would scream. The pace of his steps never faltered nor hurried. But his eyes showed everything, and when Alice silently pushed the paints toward him, Regulus kept his gaze down so that she couldn’t see how much it meant. He had a feeling she knew anyway. 

When he glanced up, slightly more in control, she was still watching him. Her own eyes were tired, resigned, but behind that he could tell she meant it. There wasn’t pity or irritation. It wasn’t just to get him to stop staring the paints down or to get him to leave. It was simply a gift. Gratitude and disbelief flickered in his eyes before he looked down again, hand over the paints as though they were something sacred. He didn’t pick up the brush until he knew exactly what he would do. 

In the silence, he began mixing. It seemed aimless at first as he swirled blue into an empty slot, then softened it with water. Next grey, even less of this. Then a burnt red-brown, only a dot. Between each color, he made a quick experimental stroke on the paper until he had it: a translucent silver with a silken sheen. It was a silver that could once have been blue. Like the palest grey eyes, paler even than Regulus’ own. 

Still in silence, he began to trace, light and quick, the shape of an eye. And then another. He did this until she shone out of the paper as though holes had been cut into the canvas from which she gazed out at them. 

He’d only seen her once, for barely a second, but she had been striking. And he’d begun to understand why the others might be taken in by her. It was her eyes. They were piercing, knowing, and yet gave nothing away. The eyes of silence. Regulus understood that look; saw it in the mirror each day. It made him wonder: what was she hiding?

[succintsilence]

thelumag:

My lunch break at @reformation in LA 😍🙌🏽 if everyday could be like that.. Hair by @julieferrante make up by @mnorth

[succintsilence]

the waves have a redder glow // alice & alastor

( @markedmanmoody )

Watching the paranoia grow in an environment that fostered nothing but would have been worse if she were not already accustomed to the feeling. Surviving a war had a deadening affect on the feeling of impending disaster. With the Nox Division incoming, and their silver-eyed woman identified, Alice felt calmer now than she remembered feeling in months. She had never fallen prey to the wild speculations about the ghost. Once you held a newly-murdered woman’s body in your arms and used her as a gruesome mannequin to stage your own suicide, you learned to turn your panic into something more productive.

Knowing that their shy spy was her cousin warmed her, but only to an extent. Alice did not know her cousin very well, whatever familiarity the two women adopted now.

It was that doubtful judgment that drove Alice to search out a more skeptical mind than hers. Moody had been her partner and sounding board for too long for her to not solicit his opinions now. Up until recently, their opinions regarding Port Montrose and its inhabitants had been shared--the Mud Club, Vivienne, and the Nox Division had changed too much, and Alice could not be sure what Moody thought any longer.

She found him making rounds, pretending as always that he was not watching his neighbors as closely as he was looking for intruders. Out of earshot of the rest and not close enough to the wards to attract attention if a certain silver-eyed woman were nearby, Alice fell into step beside him. The sound of the waves was overpowering for the first few moments, but proximity acclimated her ears. It would drown out any voice spoken in the right tone. She would have been surprised if Alastor had not chosen this route for that exact purpose. It seemed more prediction than coincidence that she’d found him here. He knew the risks she’d taken finding Arabella.

“She should stay in the village as much as possible. They accept her there.” The resident jam-maker visiting the craggy, haunted coast too often would draw attention to them. With more people arriving every day, Alice’s concern fell to keeping her friends safe--and her cousin.

[succintsilence]

The ocean’s proximity made her nervous; the shore was never a safe place for Alice. For all its expanse kept out any intruders incapable of surviving miles of choppy seas and unwilling to take the route that left them open and vulnerable to eagle-eyed scouts policing the beaches, it still felt too open and unprotected. It wasn’t the branded enemies she worried about finding them, anymore. Watching the crashing waves and distant fishing boats made her nervous for reasons she could never fully explain.

It wasn’t without reason, then, that she made her way to the shore today, steps made to seem meandering taken with more deliberation than they were worth. She had to attribute her increasing anxiety to a combination of Vivienne’s untimely and unwelcome arrival and her unexpected pregnancy. The combination of complications could send her head spinning for weeks. Alice did not, however, have weeks to consider--she would be lucky if she even had days before her shape risked giving away her news before she could announce it. Loose, bulky clothing was normal for most of the inhabitants of Port Montrose, but Alice was small. Close quarters and multiple lovers brought her dangerously close to discovery.

Greta’s pink hair was distinguishable atop the dock, poised where Alice had expected her--fishing, fruitlessly searching for an alternative to the half-spoiled meats they’d been scrounging from the nearby village. Everything tasted of salt. Greta’s stance shifted, reacting to the ominous shape Alice must have cut in the murky air between them. If not for her vivid hair, Alice would not have recognized the girl; in a shapeless sweater and hair tied back as successfully as she could manage in the wind, Alice was likely a silhouetted danger approaching. Especially given what Greta had reportedly found.

It was that note that Alice had come to inquire about. That it hinted at surveillance was all she knew--and Alice needed to see it for herself to ascertain whether it was threatening or coincidental. For all the time the Mud Club had been residents of the port, Alice had yet to develop any lasting relationships with most of the new additions; approaching Greta now was uncharacteristic of her. She’d reached a distance where the wind would assist the direction of her voice instead of carrying it away: “Greta?” she voiced as if asking, though it was never a question with that headpiece. “It’s Alice.” The introduction seemed unnecessary, now that she was standing a scant few yards away, picking her way down the dock to stand, and then sit, beside the other girl. She had no way to introduce her desire to see the scrap of paper yet, though, so calming Greta’s nerves seemed an appropriate beginning.

:// fishing worries :// alice

IT WAS a relatively slow day in port montrose, and greta wasn’t given a task, so she decided to give herself one: go down to the beach and fish, forget about the worries, forget about the note. she had done it plenty of times with her father ( fishing that is ), two summers back, though she found it relatively tedious – something that she wasn’t very pleased in partaking in. nonetheless, greta figured a hobby that was tedious was best for her in these current situations. her hand gripping onto the fishing pole, her knuckles turning w h i t e while the fishing line swayed in the breeze. she thought about the piece of paper she had found in the village the other night, perhaps going to the shore alone was a dangerous idea. it was a  s h a m e  greta didn’t listen to her own worrying thoughts which have been pushed far back into her mind. 

HER JUMPER was thick, almost too big for her petite body, and yet greta found comfort in this blanket practically wrapped around her small frame. a dull black jumper m i s m a t c h e d with ripped jeans, bright pastel colored socks and doc martens. this was an everyday look for greta, others found her style to be rather odd – oftentimes calling it very a l t e r n a t i v e , whatever that meant. her boots stomped onto the dock, her hair, now thinly coated with sea breeze, swayed cohesively with the fishing string. greta [ glanced ] over her shoulder, brown eyes staring through lashes to spot anyone if they had been following her. no one. 

A SILENT hum escaped her lips while she began to set up for an afternoon’s task of fishing, a grey steel bucket placed next to her in the same  f r e e z i n g  water below her feet. mid-february weather meant the water was going to be  d e a t h l y  freezing, and that ruled out the idea of spear fishing, which greta found to be an excellent pastime to try out later in the warmer months to come – that if she is still in port montrose. greta toss out the line, her eyes focusing on the hook and bait plummeting into the water’s depths, h i d d e n from sight now. the waiting game was the worst part, greta remembered this from her father’s lessons. even then they didn’t keep the fish to eat, instead they tossed them back into the ocean. 

GRETA GLANCED over her shoulder, the wind was playing tricks on her mind and whispered in her ears. this time there were no tricks. the sound of  f o o t s t e p s on the dock made greta stand still with fear. they were watching her. the torn paper pressed in her pocket like a wilting flower now felt like a weight, someone was watching them. someone was watching greta. the footsteps grew louder, a  s i l h o u e t t e  emerging from the fog….  

[succintsilence]

Like most of the ex-Death Eaters who’d made their way to the port, Regulus had more below the surface than he cared to let on. Unlike the others, however, Regulus had levels that seemed more suppressed than even he was accustomed to. She had learned from her tangential relationship to the pureblood high society and experiences with the pureblood rejects of Port Montrose that certain families came with the requirement of emotional suppression. The Blacks seemed to be the worst of it.

For all Alice kept her opinions close to her chest, she was never unwilling to speak her mind or unveil her heart. That she never spoke freely was due to an overabundance of caution, not fear, not in the way that Regulus tensed when Moody came too near or his mouth tightened when Sirius spoke. They were all cornered animals, one way or another, except Regulus was also caged. By his brother, his cousin, by all of them. She was his jailer more than his friend, a concept she tried to ignore in moments like this. Moments like this he felt as tense as any of the rest of them, nothing extra, nothing to remind her that he still might think of her as the enemy.

She pushed the brush toward him, toward his hungry eyes and eager fingertips. He had more plans for her paints than she could ever come up with. She could see the colors in his eyes. Alice considered words, but the action seemed enough.

Save Our Sanity || Regulus and Alice