In the shower, Bess wondered if she should stay where she was. She'd only just woken up and although she knew that all of her injuries had been cured while she'd been in her long sleep, she felt weak under the weight of the water flowing over her. Almost as weak as when she'd woken up in St Mungo's all that time ago.
She was lucky that Sirius had been charm-washing her for so long - it meant she didn't have to do too much to feel like she was clean, instead spending most of her time to let the warm-hot water warm her from the outside in.
She let herself stare in the mirror once she'd finished in the shower and had brushed her teeth slowly.
She knew they were going to be even later, but still, she stared at herself, tracing each scar. They were a reminder of what she'd been through and she now used them as a map to remind her of how hard she'd fought and how much she would need to endure still before the war ended.
Her most recent injury was still pink even a month after it had occurred but the edges of the claw marks which had plagued her for months had finally faded to silver. She twisted her upper body and winced, feeling the tug of the now-too-tight skin as it pulled. She knew she'd have to stretch that out.
Closing her eyes, she placed her hands on the rim of the sink in front of her and took in deep, steeling breaths.
Behind her closed eyelids her vision began to turn from vague lights to a grey and white pattern and her body suddenly felt like it was floating. She gasped and fell to her knees, opening her eyes to find something to stare at even while her vision was clouded.
Tingles flowed through her body and her grip began to weaken on the sink. Still, she held on until the dizziness passed and she felt better.
As she stood weakly she wondered how she would be able to go to the meeting physically - would moving so much take a toll on her? Would she be alright or would she suffer from this? Would Sirius berate her once more for going somewhere so exposed as a meeting?
She didn't know if she could take any negativity over her appearance or her being there. She was on the cusp of tears anyway, and the thought of Sirius being angry with her made her tear up properly. She blinked quickly to stop the tears from falling, and looked up, training her eyes on the place where the ceiling met the wall as she took deep, slow breaths.
There was a knock at the door, followed by Lily's soft voice asking if she was ready. She sounded anxious, and Bess knew she wanted to get to the meeting before they were too late.
Bess called back and eyed up the pile of clothes sat on the countertop near her sink. She stood slowly from her crouched position and swallowed thickly to try and starve off her nausea.
When Bess emerged from the steamy room, having somehow managed to wrestle her weak limbs into her clothes, she found that rather than being anxious Lily looked as if Bess' waking had been the fuel her fire needed.
Lily told her that she'd explained to Euphemia and Fleamont that Bess was awake, and where they were going. They'd been overjoyed. Lily had been overjoyed.
Bess forced a smile on her face. She didn't want to let Lily down now. So she accepted Lily's proffered arm and, after saying a quick hello and goodbye to James' parents before they departed, walking through the flat to Apparate from the front step.
She put one foot in front of the other and tried not to think about the circumstances of her last visit to the flat, nor the visit before that. Yet a shiver of fear made its way from her head to her stomach as she walked, and she had to breathe deeply to stop herself from worrying. At one point she even had to hide the fact that she fell into the hall wall, having suddenly felt woozy and faint.
When she arrived at the Order meeting, still being helped along by Lily due to her numb, tingling and weak legs, Bess found herself in the unenviable position of being stared at. By everyone.
Jasper wasn't there. Neither were Sirius or James or Remus. She felt less confident without them there - more exposed, more unsafe, and the staring didn't help at all. She also felt a rush of anxiousness. If Sirius wasn't there, she wouldn't be able to ask him about the sleeping potion... ask him why he thought she'd had such a vivid dream of him.
Silence filled the room as Bess and Lily made their way to two spare seats towards the front of the room, next to Frank. As Bess walked, she was very aware that for her it had been mere hours since she'd fought Voldemort and fainted. For the rest of the room, it had been over a month. Things, people, and The Order had moved on in that time. She just wished she didn't feel so out of the loop and powerless as she did now.
There were less people at the meeting than Bess had ever seen before - key players were missing, Kinter, Jasper, Sirius, James, Remus, Fabian and Gideon... She wondered where they were. At work, on a stakeout like James and Sirius, or worse? She didn't allow herself to dwell on the latter.
Instead, she allowed herself to feel safer when she sat down next to Frank, even though he stayed quiet.
Lily shifted in her seat and whispered, "I thought they'd be back by now." Bess watched Lily as she moved away, crouching next to an older wizard who she began a whispered conversation with. A minute later she returned and said, "Yeah they're still at their stakeout. Hopefully they'll turn up later."
"Moody's running late, so we haven't missed anything," Frank said on Bess' other side. She turned to him and whispered thanks, and he grinned in reply. "Good to have you back," he said, before he turned back to Alice on his other side.
Bess smiled gratefully and then turned back to Lily. "Where's Jasper?" she asked quietly.
"He's with James and Sirius," Lily replied with a smile. "Which is how I know they'll all be fine."
Bess nodded and nudged her shoulder against Lily's.
A door banged open somewhere in the distance, and the inhabitants of the room dragged their eyes from Bess, staring at the door instead. Moody stomped through a mere minute later and nodded around, before he caught sight of Bess and stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened.
"Decided to join us then, did you?" he asked in a gruff voice once he'd caught his bearings.
Bess let out a sigh of relief and smiled slightly. Moody was the welcome strength she needed and the leadership the Order needed.
Quickly, Moody began the meeting, saying that just because he was late didn't mean they had all the time in the world. One by one the others offered their reports. Bess listened in carefully, noting all of the instances of unusual activity, and trying to think around the reports of disappearances. It didn't sound so far as though Voldemort knew of the prophecy, or of Harry. But she knew they only had a year and a half before he would begin his brutal search for James and Lily's son.
She was still thinking over something that Alice had reported on, when she heard Lily's soft voice next to her, sounding slightly unsure. Bess frowned at her friend, who repeated her sentence; "You did, didn't you? Earlier you said not to say Vol-"
"Stop," Bess said loudly, covering Lily's mouth with her hand. "There's probably a taboo on the name now."
"A taboo?" Frank asked quickly.
Bess lowered her hand when Lily licked her palm, and wiped her appendage on her trousers with a grimace. Then she turned to Frank. "Yeah, you know, say the name and snatchers will come and get you."
"I know what a taboo is," Frank said, as someone else asked, "Snatchers?"
"Yeah, snatchers," Bess replied, frowning. "Maybe you'd call them something different... They're the people working for the Chief Death Eater who round up Muggle-borns and anyone who breaks the taboo and says his name."
Frank turned to his wife and swore loudly, as did Alice. "That's how they got McNamus!" he said, paling. "They didn't know he was going to be there. It was-" Frank swore again.
"So Harrington is working for the other side. Good to know," Moody muttered, but he looked anything but happy about the news.
The room filled with urgent whispers around them.
"How didn't you know that," Bess whispered to Lily, who also looked paler than usual.
"I told you," Lily whispered back, "loads has changed. It's hard to figure out who's working for who already. Harrington... he's... he's a Muggle-born."
Bess' eyes widened and she stared at her friend. "Who is he? Is he the new Minister for Magic?"
Lily shook her head quickly. "He's the new Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Office. They're the ones who would have done the Taboo. They voted him in two weeks ago."
"Who did?" Bess asked, glancing at Frank next to her, who looked distraught.
"The whole department. He used to be an Auror. Their voices were the loudest," Lily whispered back.
"Not all of ours. But we didn't fight it," Frank said in a monotone voice, indicating Alice with a tilt of his head. "I just thought he had a suicide wish. Couldn't have been more wrong. He knew exactly what he was doing."
"Unless he's been under the Imperius curse?" someone asked.
Frank shook his head. "There were tests. Especially after what happened with Fish," he said.
Bess looked to Lily, who quickly looked away, shaking her head. Bess wanted to ask her what had happened but she thought she knew the answer already. The Head of the Auror office had held back his Aurors publicly when Voldemort had been in Hogsmeade. He wouldn't survive that politically.
Bess swallowed thickly. His failure to control the crowd probably wouldn't have gone down with Voldemort well either.
"Does Harrington have young children?" Bess asked quietly.
The blood drained completely from Frank's face as he nodded quickly.
"Do you have tabs on Fenrir Greyback?" Bess asked slightly louder. She was sure her face betrayed her intense sadness at her own words, and the implication. She looked up at Moody, who waited a beat before answering.
"We have a man on the ground," he said, and Bess bit her lip to stop it from wobbling as she nodded. Of course Remus would have agreed to go undercover to help. She just hoped he was okay, and not suffering. "Intel is he's setting up a camp in a forest outside of York at the moment.
Bess sniffed in a long breath. "He's working with Vol- sorry. He's uh, he's working with him. And he'll become more of a problem soon, as at some point I'm sure that Greyback will be a snatcher," she said, trying and failing to keep the emotion out of her voice. "If he's not already one, then that's good. It means they're not operating properly yet so we're ahead of them at least. The Chief Death Eater is or will be paying them gold for undesirables." When Lily's frown deepened, Bess added, "Undesirables are anyone they think are... yeah, undesirable in the new world order. It'll start with anyone who will say that name... so defiant Muggle-borns, members of The Order, pe-"
"Don't they call him Lord hmm?" someone called, trying not to say even, 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'.
Bess frowned. "To his face, his followers call him The Dark Lord," she replied. She wanted to ask if the person was new, but she didn't want to be rude. How did they not know this? she wondered.
"We've had our suspicions about all of this," Moody answered her unasked question, "but nothing's been confirmed. We've been distracted by the attacks."
"Attacks?" Bess asked, glancing between Alice, members of The Order, Moody and Lily. "What attacks?"
"They've been all over. Families, Muggle, Squib, Goblin, House-Elf, Centaur- you name it, he's recruiting and if you say no..." Alice said, trailing off. "It's not everywhere. Not everyone. But he's doing the rounds of... 'persuadable people'. At least the Ministry hasn't fallen."
Bess fell silent then. The implication was that it hadn't fallen yet.
Bess allowed them to resume the meeting, and listened instead. She felt a wave of guilt through her stomach, making her feel nauseous. She hadn't warned any of them of this. She'd told Sirius, James, Lily, Remus and Jasper the basics about the Horcruxes and where they were, but she'd never found the time to explain what happened to the Wizarding world after Voldemort's rise. They'd been unprepared and it was her fault.
And yet they were still more prepared than Harry had been. Sirius had said before that they'd all grown up with this war. It wasn't a surprise for them that it would come to a head and they would have to fight.
She stayed silent for the rest of the meeting, and once it ended she dragged herself as fast as she could to the door. She got outside and threw up into a plant pot by the door. She hadn't eaten anything and the taste of the acidic bile made her throw up again.
When Lily got to her, she helped Bess to wash her mouth, and then took her quickly back to the flat to rest. Bess ignored the other Order members who wanted to ask her questions, or to speak to her. She knew their hope, as Lily's had, had been reignited now that she was back but she didn't have the strength to try and be positive right now.
Back in the flat, she sat down on the sofa and stared at the fireplace. She tried to tune everyone else out as she tried to think of what she was missing.
Euphemia and Fleamont, who seemed to understand that Bess was trying to figure everything out, left her alone. Lily hovered for a while, but eventually decided to help with dinner as she was so restless that James still wasn't home.
Bess' mind moved from what was coming, to what had passed, and she found herself ruminating on her conversation with Sirius in the Hospital Wing. She thought about his words and actions, and how they had affected her. She thought of the sleeping potion and how he knew she hated having her mind clouded.
Eventually, when the sun had set, dinner had long grown cold, and Bess had begun to understand that the man she'd spoken to while in the Hospital Wing had not been Sirius (and was in the process of trying frantically to work out who might have known the answers to her questions if not Sirius), the door to the flat opened and closed, and two male voices called out, asking if anyone was awake.
She listened as Lily called back and raced to where James and Sirius were. She heard the moment Lily met James. Bess wanted to call out for Sirius in that moment but she didn't, choosing to continue to stare at the wall, her eyes filling with tears now. She covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a sob.
"Bess?" Sirius' shout moved with him, and she could hear his running footsteps. "Love!" He shouted and she knew he saw her then. "You're awake! Oh, Love!"
"Bess? Love?" Sirius said anxiously when she didn't reply to him. He appeared next to her and she felt his hand on her thigh, grounding her while her head felt as though it was floating high above the clouds. "Bess, you need to look at me. Are you-"
Bess didn't move, but Sirius came to kneel in front of her, right in her sight-line.
He looked tired, but just as handsome as he always did and she felt worry seep through her as she thought that someone could have so convincingly imitated him. Now, she only trusted that it was really him because of the Fidelius Charm. She allowed herself a moment to take in his face, and then she focused on his eyes.
"Oh," she whispered, blinking rapidly. She placed a hand on his cheek and moved a little closer as she realised her mistake, and finally realised what she'd been missing. "I think-"
But she paused. Sirius wouldn't want to hear this, would he? Not when she'd only just woken up and he'd just got her back.
As she thought of how to word her thoughts, Sirius waited. Just as he'd waited for seven months for her to reappear. Just as he'd waited a month for her to wake up. He waited, silently, patiently, staring at her with a look of concern and love, his eyes betraying his elation that she was awake.
"You have two dark specks in your right eye," she whispered, pausing to take another shaky and deep breath. "Regulus has one."
Sirius nodded but his gaze hardened when she said Regulus, and his jaw flexed.
"Oh Pup," she said, dropping her hand from his face. "He pretended to be you, and I wanted to believe it so much. I'm so sorry, I was so stupid."
"What? When?" Sirius asked, alarmed, moving closer to her. He slid his hands over her thighs, coming to rest at her waist, holding her.
"We're either too late to help him or too early or he's off on his own," Bess said, staring down and around as she tried to think. "No, if he knows there's more than one he'll not go to the cave, will he?" she asked no one in particular. "No, he-"
"Bess! When?" Sirius asked, grabbing her face between his hands to focus her eyes on him. "When did you talk to Regulus?"
"When he visited me," she said, insistently. Why didn't Sirius understand? She'd just said that, hadn't she?
Sirius looked over his shoulder and then back at Bess, and she frowned at the confusion she saw still on his face.
"From the start, Love, tell me from the start," Sirius said. "Spell it out for me, okay?"
Bess blinked rapidly and nodded. She knew she could do that. Sirius brought one of her hands to his chest and began to breathe in and out slowly. Bess was grateful for this, and began to do the same.
Eventually he asked her once more, and she said slowly, "In the Hospital Wing, I- I think-"
"It's okay," Sirius said, tapping her hand which was still held to his chest. "Focus on my breathing. Take your time, Love."
Bess nodded and continued to breathe, trying to take the emotion out of her voice. "Regulus pretended to be you," she explained eventually. "At least I think he did. I think it was him-" She stopped, closed her eyes, and continued to breathe slowly. "He knew about Courting. He told me why you thought- He told- He told me why you thought I'd died even with the marriage bond. He was kind to me. And he- he made me drink a sleeping potion."
When Bess opened her eyes, it was to see such anger and horror on Sirius' face as she'd never seen before. "He. What?" he asked, his anger barely controlled in his voice.