"Look at you all grown up!!" beams Peggy Sr., gazing delightedly. She was, if she's honest, a little worried that taking her fifteen-year-old daughter at her word that she was all grown up, mom, god, I don't need you hovering over my shoulder while I do the safest thing in the bloody world, go do something useful and leave me alone would be, you know, wildly irresponsible, especially with a very stupid war in the process of breaking out, but she'd have meant it and been right, at that age, and of course she would have dropped this whole operation and come back the minute she was summoned, and in fact Peggy Jr. did not at any point call her, so. "Of course I believed in you but I am still very impressed that you won your war all by yourself, love." 

She is possibly blushing furiously now. Embarrassing. "I mean, really it was Dumbledore's war and Evans and Potter won it for him, I just - you know - helped." 

"Yes, yes, but you didn't need my help. How were your NEWTs?" 

"Same as yours." 

"Excellent. What're you planning to do next?" 

"That was um. Sort of what I was hoping to ask your advice on actually." 

"Oh, yeah?" She really is all grown up and not just a little taller. "Why, what's the trouble picking?" 

"Everyone else in the Order who lived is... having babies and planting gardens and writing books and building government coalitions and things and I just. I don't want to? I kind of... miss the war." 

She has absolutely not admitted this to anyone else but she thinks maybe her mother will understand. 

"Ah." 

She gathers her daughter's hands into her own, sympathetically, and stares down at them for a minute, and then sighs. 

"Well. If you were literally anyone else I would advise you to try to find a hobby, or possibly a therapist, but if someone had told me that when I was twenty I'd've probably hexed them, so. You want to try to contact my old friend Dottie? Suspect she's in Afghanistan right now and could find you something useful to do if you can find her." 

There is probably something terribly wrong with her that this prospect makes her feel about ten times better. But whatever it is it's wrong with them together, so maybe that's all right. 

"Yeah, I'd - I'd really like that, actually, thank you." 

So she rattles off a bunch of last known one-time-owl-addresses, and passwords, and advisories about her friend's general, you know, being evil.

"....and you are therefore recommending her to me why?"

"Ah, that would be because her evil is currently pointed towards the Soviet government since they stopped giving her money."

"Right. So, uh, you used the word 'friend', does that mean if she starts being evil in a less convenient direction you'll be mad at me if I kill her?"

"Nah. But be warned, I tried pretty hard and did not manage it."

"Yeesh, okay, consider me warned. Oh, speaking of warnings, heads up if you ever get done this project and go back to our house, I fucked up resetting the wall of knives situation in like sixth year, there's axes now and the passcode's the same but backwards." 

"Axes," she giggles, charmed. "Good to know." She glances at the sun. "And I think our time's up. I love you."

"Love you too."

And off she goes to fight a different war.

Ten years later, there's a very polite knock on the Carters' door.

"What on Earth do you want."

"Rest of the Order's dead. Did you know you are a bloody impossible person to get hold of?"

"Yes, I work very hard on thORDER'S WHAT?"

(approximately a week prior...)

Voldemort has been cackling with villanous glee for a solid, like, five and a half minutes. 

Peter really thought he would feel good about this and he's sort of resignedly surprised to realize that he's not, actually. It feels awful. James' kid is lying dead on the ground, looking exactly like him, and it doesn't feel like winning because he is the strongest Marauder after all. It mostly feels like a sort of creeping sick feeling in his gut that somewhere he's fucked up and it's much, much too late to go back. 

"So uh, boss," says - damn, is that Rookwood, he thought that fucker died at St. Augustine - one of the Death Eaters, once the cackling has reached a low, horrrible giggle. "What's the plan?" 

"Why, my dear friends," says Voldemort, smiling a wide horrible smile with way too many teeth (wasn't he supposed to be human again? wasn't that the point of this ritual? maybe he never was, really). "The plan is that we go to Hogwarts." He gestures at the glittering golden trophy, lying abandoned next to the Hufflepuff boy that Harry had arrived with, sparkling with magic yet unactivated. "My most loyal servant, you see, has given us a gift." 

Once in a multiverse, sometimes stupid evil plans actually work. 

Albus Dumbledore is normally competent to defeat Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange, and any three other Death Eaters in arguably single combat without even really breaking a sweat. He's also normally approximately impossible to assassinate. Unfortunately, he put a little too much faith in Alastor Moody, who normally more than merits it, but unfortunately had himself gotten very unlucky nine months ago when he took one (1) thirty-second break from maximum paranoia to drink one (1) beer and immediately got got by Crouch Jr. (a prodigiously talented duellist) and Pettigrew (an illegal Animagus who knows a way above-average amount about Moody's personal habits), a combination of things even he had not actually expected to encounter even though he was normally very good at being prepared for arbitrary bullshit. 

So Alastor Moody, one of the very few people Dumbledore trusts to sit behind his wand arm, isn't himself. 

And Albus Dumbledore, looking away, his habitual baseline defenses aimed everywhere else, is not ready for a Killing Curse to the back of the head, just as Voldemort and a dozen Death Eaters teleport past the wards and directly into wand range of a crowd of undefended civilians and students. Something like half the Order (or what would have been the second version of it, if they'd ever started having the second war instead of lost it in its opening volley), unprepared, is scattered through the audience, desperately spinning up enormous shields to try to protect the kids, but there's too much attack surface. 

Even Minerva McGonagall cannot win that fight when it's handed to her without warning. 

"Most of the students have been evacuated," explains Remus, back in the present, tightly, "but Hogwarts is lost and so is everyone else who might have been interested in defending it and-- look, I know you don't like me but you're all we've got left and your family is famous for pulling absolute bullshit out of your back pockets when the chips are down, so I'm asking. What have you got?" 

(Who, her? Pulling absolute bullshit out of her back pocket? Lies, heresy, and fiction. She had nothing whatsoever to do with any of those things that happened during various wars that would definitely for sure have been Statute violations. She is very respectful of the Statute.) 

"Right. Well. I feel as though I should be offended but in fact I did recently acquire about 97% of an absolutely unhinged research project on changing Time," which Yelena would absolutely have finished if she hadn't finally managed to murder her, her mom had mailed her a congratulatory bottle of really good firewhiskey about it, "and if I remember your Runes specialty correctly, I suspect you might be able to put together the other 3% and use it without blowing up the bloody planet." She sighs. "Able and willing, however, differ. How do you propose to convince me that you will not use it to blow up the planet." 

"You have what--" (no, stupid question) "-- how-- why--" (nope those are not helpful either) "--of course I won't blow up the planet! I live here!" 

"He says, with all his friends in Heaven and all the monsters here." 

Wow he does not like feeling that seen. Fuck. 

"... point taken." 

"Got a better answer, or am I thanking you for the information and--" kidnapping and Imperiusing Rookwood, probably, oof, that's going to suck massively-- "trying something else?" 

"Right. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by claiming to have Lily's ethics. My real answer is that I'm a coward and I would actually rather live the rest of my life depressed and alone than find out where I go if I die in the process of committing that many murders." 

... okay that tracks. And is depressing as all get out, but that's rather the Marauders for you, isn't it, either blindingly privileged glittering perfection or breathtaking tragedy, there's never any middle ground. 

"Could not be me," she says dryly, "but yeah, all right. Come in, let me show you the notes. Mind the third stair, it will try to kill you."