There are about a dozen ways that could have ended in just as much heartache, I think. They'd have had to know they could trust me in order to make contact, and I was doing my absolute damnedest to make sure everyone thought I was loyal, since I was trying to join MLE. So they might have been out there, but convinced I was the person I pretended to be. My contact with the Order came just a little over a year before the end of the war, and by that time, nearly all the pre-war Aurors who'd gone on the run had died in action. Imagine how that would have felt, if I'd found the Order only to discover that my parents had died a year earlier.

If I'd known they were alive, and if they'd made contact with me ... I don't know. I might have joined the Order years earlier, but I'm not sure I'd have had the stomach in that case to join MLE, and I think I was useful there.