"Trading Places: The Auror's Journal"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

When I was younger, I might have said that I wanted to trade places with my best friend, Tara. Tara always seemed to have all of the things that I didn't. She came from a long line of purebloods. I was Muggleborn. She had two parents who loved her, while I lacked even one. She had a younger sister who was sweet and funny; I had only a small army of malicious cousins. Tara's aunt was a famous Auror, the sort of relative I thought I would have loved to have.

Mostly I just wanted to be part of one of the old blood families, like the Adlers. I wanted to have as much of a place in the world as Tara did. People looked at her, heard her name, and she had a leg up in the world. She was welcomed with smiles and open arms in places and by people who wouldn't have given a Muggleborn nobody the time of day.

I found out, though, that it isn't any easier being Tara than it is being me. I envied Tara her family, but the Adlers had their share of problems. Her parents are often very busy with their work. Nearly every time I saw her mother, Sarah, we had to go to St. Mungo's to do so. Her father was home more often, but really just as absent.

As I learned, anyone with a younger sibling can tell you that it isn't always fun having them around. I couldn't help thinking, though, that in Tara's world, she and Liz had the luxury of being at odds with one another. I knew that if I'd had a sister, a sibling, particularly one who shared my magical talents, they would have been as much an ally as anything else. And no matter how irritating Elizabeth sometimes was, I couldn't help thinking that it might have been nice not to always have to stand alone. Would my family have been able to do to two children what they had done to me all those years? I don't know. I know that patterns are more obvious than isolated incidents, and I could hope that someone might have noticed something.

Of course, none of it would have happened if I had been Tara.

Then there is Tara's famous aunt, the Auror. I admired her record, but the record wasn't at all the same as seeing that formidable personality in the flesh. I admired Lillith Adler, but I was probably never going to like her. More often than not, Tara didn't either. Lillith has no children, so instead she puts on Tara the kind of expectations and pressure that one imagines she might on her own daughter.

So it isn't nearly the picnic that I once thought it was, being Tara.

Sometimes I thought I wouldn't mind trading places with Percy. He came from such a large, close family, and I always wanted that for myself. It only took one visit to the Weasleys to debase me of this notion. They might have been close, but they weren't close to Percy. The jokes they told didn't include him; in fact most of them were about him, and Percy wasn't laughing.

As much as I loved Percy, I wouldn't have wanted his life, or his family, even for a day. I came to this conclusion even before I found out his parents had accused him of being a spy. I couldn't understand that at all- Didn't they understand, didn't they realize he loved them, and only wanted to be loved in return.

It's all most people want, really.

No, I wouldn't want to be Percy for a day, either, unless I could spend that day booting his relatives upside the head.

A few years ago I might have said that I wanted to be one of the senior Aurors, with their years of experience and knowledge. I know many of them too well by now to ever want to trade places with them. I can wait, I think, until I earn my own share of nightmares and haunting memories. It'll happen soon enough, there is no need to rush it.

I think about the seniors, both the ones who have taught me and the ones I have encountered in my own work. I think of what I know about them, the reasons that every apprentice knows their names and their faces and their careers. Most of them have lost a lot to get to where they are. Most of them have paid for their ranks in blood and tears and scars, some of which never heal.

Alastor was a senior- still is, in a way. As they say, once an Auror, always an Auror, and that is, I think, more true for him than most. Alastor was a senior, and he earned that badge a hundred times over.

Even before I knew him, I wanted to be like him. Because he was a legend, because he had seen and done so much. Because he made a difference. People will insist on laughing at him, mocking his paranoia and his scars, mocking the price he has paid for what he's done, but the truth is that even while they're laughing, these people, all of us in fact, are a lot safer for everything he's done. They ought to be grateful that someone was willing to take those risks, pay that price- and that he is not alone in this.

If I could, I might trade places with Alastor for a day. Not, as I might have with Tara or another of my friends, for something I believe he has that I don't, though before I knew him I might have done so for such a reason. For the things he knew, the knowledge he had, for the knowledge of his experiences, I might have wanted to take his place.

Now, I make the same choice, not for these reasons, but to better understand someone I love. I know there are things he hasn't yet told me, things he may believe I am not yet ready to know about him, about everything he has been through. And I do not want to know these things for their own sake- it's never been my way to quest after the secrets of people I trust- but because I want to understand.

I once told him I wanted to know the story behind every scar. I meant it.

I also have to admit to another, rather more selfish, reason for this. I want to understand what he sees when he looks at me. I want to understand how much he loves me, how and why. I want to know and to understand the things which he simply does not know how to say, the answers to the questions he cannot speak aloud.

(And when I ask them, he only smiles and ducks his head, shuffles his feet and blushes, and this is something I understand, an answer I can read like one of our codes.)

I want to know if there are words buried somewhere in there, that he is simply too shy to tell me.

I don't even think it necessary to know the words, or to learn them. All I wish to know is that they exist.