Alright, here we go! Originally for the Dumbledore's Army Competition on the HPFC forum, but I just like it a lot in general!

Hope you like it too!

Alicia stood on the edge of a dense forest near a small pond. She surveyed her surroundings for a moment, looking around carefully. This was the place Carrie had told her to come to, wasn't it? Carrie had said the first time that she'd apparated out here she'd ended up right in the middle of a small pond. So this had to be it. The trees, the pond, and even the large boulder matched the description Carrie had given her.

She took a few cautious steps into the forest, leaving the little pond behind her. The petite cottage had to be around somewhere. A drizzling, cold rain caught her attention as the drops started to fall on her head, and looking up at the sky she acknowledged the absence of any sunshine that might have helped her find her way. The dense trees darkened things even more, so that it was difficult to make out much of anything. She squinted around, looking for any sign of her friend's temporary home.

A sudden loud crack echoed from somewhere off to her right. Alicia froze in her tracks, staring over in that direction. She couldn't be followed. She absolutely couldn't. But it probably wasn't anything… It was most likely some forest animal. A deer or a fox. Definitely not a Snatcher. Or worse…

She focused her attention on finding her destination, and after a few more seconds of squinting around she managed to spot the little cottage, half hidden behind a thick grove of trees. With one last look in the direction of the mysterious noise, she rushed as quietly as she could to the little building, knocking on the door as soon as she reached it.

The door cracked open almost immediately, and she could see her friends' curly blonde hair and wide brown eye peeking through the crack. "Allie?" she whispered, and Alicia nodded.

"Yes, yes, it's me," she whispered back quickly.

"How can I be sure?"

"Because I know that the necklace you've got around your neck right now says 'hope'. And I know that I saved up for months to buy it for you when I was eight," Alicia answered hurriedly, looking back around behind her.

The door shut for a moment before it opened completely. Alicia swiftly stepped through the door, and it shut behind her as soon as she was in. She turned and watched Carrie doing up a few different locks on the door, in place to keep out any… unwanted visitors.

After a few seconds, Carrie finished with the locks, and she turned to look at Alicia. The two girls instantly hugged, both saying something along the lines of "It's so good to see you, I missed you so much, it's been too long, I've been so worried about you!"

The two were close friends, and had been since they were little. Carrie was a few years older than Alicia, but it didn't affect their relationship. Even when the two had been at Hogwarts, Carrie would always make sure to take the time to talk to and hang out with her younger friend.

"How are you holding up?" Alicia asked as the two separated and went to sit down.

"I'm doing alright. It's hard staying so secluded, but it's necessary if I don't want to be caught," Carrie said, shrugging.

"You're still on the wanted list. The list of the muggle-borns who haven't turned themselves in," Alicia stated, pulling a newspaper out from her pocket and handing it over to her friend.

"Of course I am. I would never turn myself into that Muggle Born Registering Committee or whatever it is," Carrie said firmly, flicking through the paper. "We all know what happens to the wizards who do! They get their wands taken from them before they're put under 'questioning'. Then they get thrown in Azkaban!"

"Exactly. I just wish you didn't have to stay in hiding. Have you had any trouble?" Alicia questioned nervously.

"Oh, not a lot. This place is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I don't think they'd look into my family enough to know that my grandfather's deceased friend owned a little cottage in the middle of a dense forest, either," Carrie added, frowning at one of the stories in the paper.

"Still. There are groups of lowlifes running around called Snatchers. They look for people who haven't turned themselves in, who are in hiding or on the run. And they get paid for dragging them into the Ministry," Alicia informed her.

Carrie looked thoughtful. "You know, I think I might have met a group of them a few weeks ago."

Alicia gasped, making her laugh. "You met a group of them?" Alicia asked immediately.

"Yeah, but you needn't worry, Allie! I can handle myself! They were complete buffoons. I just stunned them all and modified their memories. They went tottering off in some random direction without a clue, bless them."

Alicia cracked a little smile. "That sounds exactly like something you'd do."

"Of course. This old toad isn't going to get her hands on me if I have anything to say about it," Carrie said, flashing a grin and holding up a black and white picture of Umbridge from the paper. Alicia laughed.

"Did you know that she ended up teacher and headmaster of Hogwarts a few years ago?" Alicia asked.

"I do remember reading that somewhere. Wasn't she there your seventh year?"

"Yep," Alicia mumbled sullenly.

"Oh, you had to actually see her in real life? I'm so sorry," Carrie said jokingly, putting her hand on her chest, making Alicia laugh again.

"I actually did join a sort of rebel group against her, though," she confessed, feeling slightly reminiscent.

"That's the spirit!" Carrie exclaimed, grinning widely. "What did you and this group do?"

"Well, she refused to teach us any Defense Against the Dark Arts, her class was entirely rubbish. All we did was read in a book, we had no hands on experience with any of the things we were 'learning'. So Harry Potter taught us," Alicia answered.

"Harry Potter?" Carrie repeated curiously, her eyes flicking up to look at her friend for a few seconds.

"He's really good at Defense. He knew how to do more jinxes and curses than anyone else, so he was our sort of teacher, because that old hag didn't do anything."

"How did you manage to do that right under her nose? Surely she would have put a stop to it," Carrie asked curiously, still grinning proudly.

"We met in a hidden room, and we never had regular meeting times. They always varied from week to week. In fact," Alicia said, digging in her pocket again and producing a galleon. "I still have this."

"A galleon?" Carrie questioned, looking quite confused.

"Not just any galleon," Alicia said, getting up and handing it to Carrie. "Each of us got one of these. The numbers along the edges would change and tell us the time and date of the next meeting."

"That's really clever," Carrie observed, examining it and looking impressed.

"It was. It was the perfect arrangement. Until we got caught, because some Ravenclaw sneak told on us," Alicia said grumpily.

Carrie was just about to hand the galleon back, when a sudden loud banging came from the front door. Both girls immediately gasped and jumped off their seats, standing in the middle of the room and watching the door carefully.

"What was that?" Alicia whispered anxiously after a moment.

"You weren't followed, were you?" Carrie inquired calmly, slipping her wand out of her pocket.

"No! I was…" Alicia started to say; before she remembered the cracking noise she'd heard when she was searching for the little place. "I did hear something… but I thought it was just an animal."

"Well, wand out Allie. It's no problem. We'll just have to take these idiots down," Carrie announced, grinning over at her. Alicia nodded nervously.

She pulled her wand out of her pocket, following her friends' example, and barely a second later the door burst open. Three men came barging into the room, all wearing dark clothes with a dark red piece of cloth tied around their arm. Snatchers.

Carrie was skilled at dueling, Alicia knew. But she still didn't like the looks of the intruders. This looked like it could be one of the few groups of Snatchers who weren't complete dunces.

Carrie and Alicia stood, wands raised, the three men stopped just inside the door. "Excuse me," Carrie said jeeringly. "You seem to have forgotten to knock. Where are your manners?"

The three intruders looked somewhat affronted, before one of them said in a gruff voice, "Oh, I know you. You're Carrie Fletcher, aren't you? You're a muggle-born. And you haven't registered with the Commission yet."

"Yeah, well what's it to you?" Carrie said derisively.

"What's it to us?" another of the men said, sounding terribly like he was growling at them. "It's our job to drag you into the Ministry, you mudblood."

"You wish," Carrie sneered. She shot off a curse towards the men, who suddenly had their wands drawn as well. The curses began flying back and forth at an alarming speed.

"Incarcerous!" Carrie shouted, managing to take down one of their opponents. The man was thrown back against the wall, ropes binding him tightly. He slipped to the ground and lay there, struggling against the bonds as the four remaining duelers battled.

A bright green jet of light shot directly towards Alicia, and she dodged out of the way, the curse barely missing her. But the next jet of light, this time orange, hit her in the stomach, knocking her breath away and making her stumble to her knees. She quickly got back up, wheezing slightly, and continued casting curses.

"You alright, Allie?" Carrie yelled over the whooshing noises the curses made as they were cast and the loud bangs and shattering sounds that were made when the ones that missed their mark hit something else in the room that shattered or cracked.

"Of course," Alicia said hoarsely. She caught a glimpse of her friend, seeing that there was blood soaking through her white shirt and her hair was looking distinctly messed up. "What about you?"

"Always," Carrie said, grinning over at her. "You don't have to worry about me, I'm-" Carrie started to say, before her sentence was cut short.

Alicia watched as another green jet of light sailed toward them, this time hitting Carrie straight on in the chest. She spun to the ground and landed in a heap, wand clattering away. She didn't get back up.

Alicia froze for a second. That couldn't have happened. That didn't happen. Carrie… she was fine. Just as she'd said. She was always fine.

But Alicia knew, in the back of her mind… Carrie was gone.

A sudden rage welled up inside of her. The grip on her wand tightened considerably, she gritted her teeth, and she raised her wand considerably higher. She dueled as fiercely as she could, and within minutes, both remaining men were unconscious on the floor next to their companion, who was staring wide eyed back at her. She stunned him as well, watching his eyes fall closed and his body go limp as the red jet of light hit him.

She stood there, breathing heavily, before her head turned to look over at Carrie. She was still crumpled on the ground, her arms and legs bent at odd angles, her eyes wide and blankly staring at the ceiling. Alicia took slow and lurching steps over, kneeling down next to her fallen friend.

Tears started to burn her eyes, and her throat constricted. "Oh Carrie, no…" Alicia croaked out. Her face screwed up, her body started shaking from suppressed sobs. She reached out with shaking fingers and brushed her friends' curly hair back out of her face, wiping a trickle of blood off of her cheek.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. If only she had realized that there was someone following her, if she'd done something more to make sure she wasn't followed. If she hadn't come. None of this would be happening. Carrie would still be grinning and laughing, her happy and cheerful self. She wouldn't be lying on the hard floor, broken… dead.

Alicia reached out and grabbed her friend's hand, holding it in her own, tears streaming down her cheeks, when suddenly… she felt something very warm. Carrie's hand was clenched, and as Alicia delicately pried open her fingers, she realized that Carrie was still holding her Dumbledore's Army galleon. And it was glowing hot.

She wiped her eyes off, trying to focus her vision as she picked up the warm coin. It was different than she'd ever seen it. Usually the numbers around the edge would change, but now the entire front of the large coin was covered in tiny words.

'It's time to prove your loyalty. Harry is back at Hogwarts. We're fighting. You can apparate directly into the Hogs Head; there's a secret passage to the castle from there. See you soon.'

"Merlin…" she whispered, staring at the coin in her palm. She wiped her eyes again, looking over at her lifeless friend. Alicia shoved the coin back into her pocket and leaned back over, gently closing her eyes and kissing her on the forehead.

Alicia was about to withdraw, when the silver chain around Carrie's bent neck caught her eye. The necklace that Carrie wore every day. The one she'd given her friend years and years ago. Hope.

With fumbling fingers she managed to undo the clasp, lifting the necklace away from the body. She fastened it around her own neck, grabbing the little chain and holding it tight in her hand, allowing just a few more tears to escape from the corners of her closed eyes before she wiped her face off again.

"I'm so sorry, Carrie. I will fight for you," she said firmly, standing up. She took a deep breath and walked out of the cottage, stepping over the unconscious men and resisting the urge to attack them further for taking such a precious life. And all because she was a muggle-born.

As soon as she was a few feet clear of the cottage, Alicia looked back at the little house one more time, wishing desperately that she could be bringing Carrie with her. Carrie, she knew, would have loved to fight alongside her and the rest of Dumbledore's Army.

Alicia took one last deep breath, before she focused as hard as she could on the Hogs Head pub, turning and vanishing with a loud crack.

I don't know how Carrie Hope Fletcher ended up being in this, she just kind of showed up, haha!

Anyway, reviews are always greatly appreciated!

xxx