CHAPTER TEN- The Curses of the Father
Why?
It is a big question, requiring big answers, and it took me quite some time to realize my "why" was being answered, and quite neatly, by the glassed-in prisoner of Cell 1 in Azkaban.
The only trouble with my "why" was the number of implications of it. I had started out asking because I wanted to know his motivations, his thoughts, his actions. I had, on the surface, wanted information to take back to my colleagues at the hospital.
At what point did my "why" become more for me than for him? At what point was I asking myself why I went, asking why I was drawn to him?
And how many times since then have I asked myself why? How many times have I asked myself and him and faceless powers?
Countless times.
There are countless answers in this world to the question of "why".
You just have to learn to listen to all of them, whether you like them or not.
~~~
Two twins worked with their brother in a shop made for the joy of others, but there was little joy to be had on the particular day in question, the Third Day of Speech, as one of the twins called it in mocking tones of false hilarity.
A father and son worked side by side in a place so vast and all-encompassing neither of them would ever truly know its bounds; their duties to the Ministry would end before they'd even covered half of what the Ministry really meant.
A mother wandered Diagon Alley, picking up supplies and looking worriedly at her own reflection in storefronts, the face so like her daughter's but advanced by age.
And as these redheads and others, much known and much-loved by a great many of the British wizarding world, worried and fretted, the object of their worry made her way from home to work to prison, ever her last stop of the day.
There were no reporters this day, and though Ginny had no way of knowing it, her father had been responsible for that small miracle. The Ministry had put forth an official decree at his direction, and reporters were banned from the prison grounds. Though Arthur had made a good show of things, spouting off numerous reasons why Azkaban should be free of reporters, he hadn't quite managed to fool himself.
He didn't want his little girl gracing the front pages of the papers, peeking furtively through her fingers, ducking quickly behind the arms of Kingsley Shacklebolt. And was there, underneath that well-meaning, fumbling demeanor, perhaps a bit of shame? A bit of hesitance because his daughter appeared to be growing chummy with an established enemy?
If there was shame, Arthur would have had a hard time unearthing it from the mounds of guilt he felt. Wasn't it he who had established visitation?
Wasn't it his fault his daughter had the capability to visit the enemy?
Of course it was, just as it had been his fault his lovely, loving daughter had been forced to purchase used books back in school.
Would she not have noticed a worn diary in a cauldron full of new books?
In such days, it was easy to point fingers, even at one's self.
~~~
His memory was long and seemingly flawless.
He did not remember things such as his first flight on a broomstick, the first time he'd seen someone Apparate, the first butterbeer he'd ever had. If he remembered them, he did not relate them.
Instead, he remembered the first time he'd seen his father curse his mother, the first time that silver-topped cane had come down on a fine-boned wrist, the first time he'd been forced, as an adolescent, to stand before Lord Voldemort simply for Lucius's amusement and the Dark Lord's approval.
He'd had nightmares ever since, and the boy he had been had cried himself to sleep for two weeks hence, casting feeble silencing charms around his room to save himself from whatever punishment a weakness such as tears would merit.
In a heart where fear is a necessity, where it overflows and makes the blood shiver, love leaves to make more room for the fear.
Draco could see the flat disbelief in her eyes, the joint horror at his tale and disagreement at his assessment.
"You think me wrong," he said on that third day of speech, when he'd only gotten so far as to tell her a few of the things he remembered most about his beloved father. "You think love exists, Weasley, and you're just itching to tell me so."
Her face flushed under the myriad freckles and Draco smirked, eyes narrowed into amalgam slits. "Don't like when I'm right, Weasley? You'd best get used to it."
"You're not right," she burst back, shocked at herself for speaking so. Wasn't she just here to do the right thing? To help? "There's love, and plenty of it. I can hardly explain it to someone who doesn't want to believe it. You're like a Muggle watching a witch fly; you'll make up any excuse to disbelieve."
"And you're like a child listening to overblown legends," he shot back. "You'll make up any excuse to believe."
The two sat in silence for a long, stretched moment, eyes combative, bodies tense with the rigors of their convictions.
And then he broke his stance, letting his head droop and his eyes shift away. "Read," he said, lazily lifting his fingers at the paper.
"I'll not take commands from you," Ginny insisted, but she knew her claim was belated; after all, he'd been commanding her from the very start. He just hadn't been doing it with words.
"Read," he repeated, and he kept his eyes away from hers. Talking about it-talking about his father-had proven to be too much for him at this particular junction. He could do no more that evening, with she who had undoubtedly been coddled and loved sitting before him and trying to lecture him on something so alien as love.
"You're not finished with what you were saying," she said, and then he was up and at her, standing so close to the glass he was nearly touching, but no hands this time, no palms resting futilely against the barrier.
"Read, damn it all!" he shouted, grating his teeth together. "I'll finish talking when I'm ready, and right now, I just want…" He shook his head then, started to turn away from her, and thought better of it. He pointed then, a long, slim finger directed at her accusingly. "You… it must be so easy for you to be right, to know you're right. You've never had anyone tell you otherwise, have you? You've always been right, and good, and loved, and saved."
"And what of it?" Ginny asked, chin jutting proudly into the air.
"Just read your bloody newspaper," Draco said, and sat on his cot.
He was done talking for the day.
~~~
She was exhausted, wrung out, by the time she got back to the Burrow. If she only scratched the surface of her honesty, the barest parts of her true feelings, she would say she didn't want to know how he felt, didn't want to feel sorry for him, to sympathize.
But if she were wholly honest, she was too empathetic a person not to want to know at least a little bit. He was suffering-she hadn't allowed herself to see it before, and likely would be able to shunt that particular realization back if she tried hard enough, but it was the truth. Somehow, he who had caused suffering for many was suffering himself. And wasn't that the point of imprisonment? Wasn't that the price of getting caught?
Even the innocent suffered mightily throughout their lifetime, so it was only fair the wicked should suffer, as well.
But as Ginny let herself in, she knew he'd suffered lifetimes, as well.
And what of it? she asked herself insistently.
"Gin?" The voice, thrown somewhere from the deepening shadows of the kitchen, startled her, and the green robes she'd been holding on her fingertips, ready to hang up, slipped off and puddled on the floor.
"Ron!" she responded in a gasp, picking up the robe and crouching down beside him beside the fireplace. "What are you doing?"
He smiled up at her then, the badly guttering fire sending red-gold glints from his hair to her eyes, the good humor that had so long been missing restored. "Trying to get this ruddy fire started," he said. "Mum and Dad are out, and…" he trailed off, poking his wand gingerly at the fire, making it spark weakly. "Well, I've never quite gotten the hang of the fire."
Keeping her eyes on his, Ginny pointed her wand casually and sent the hearth ablaze easily. "It's all in the wrist," she said loftily, suddenly fiercely glad for the easy moment of camaraderie.
"You sound like Hermione," Ron grumbled, and stood. He was actually proud of that one small feat-it had been months since he'd been able to move without groaning. He knew where she'd been-it was all his parents could talk about, and the twins weren't much better-but at the moment, it was hard to care.
Life was getting back to normal, and Ronald Weasley wasn't precisely willing to shake things back up.
"Tell me you can fix some supper," he said pleadingly, sitting down at the table and tilting his head back. "I'll waste away if you don't."
Ginny edged around the table, laughing but cautious. What was it her father had asked her? If she thought about Ron? "You're a man grown," she teased. "Surely you can manage a bit of supper." She put a pot on the stove by hand, never having caught Molly's knack for magical cooking, and as she turned away from the warming stovetop, her face was serious.
"Ron…" What was she supposed to say? Sorry months of your life were torturous hell, but I'm trying to do something with mine? "Do you… do you want to talk? About things?"
Ron kicked back in his chair and regarded his sister with bunched brows. He'd been nudged, hinted at, pushed and petted, all regarding this one thing.
At the moment, with an empty stomach and a comfortable moment with the young woman who had, for all intents and purposes, been his best friend growing up, Ron most certainly didn't want to talk about Draco Malfoy.
Things had not always been easy for the Weasleys, but things had worked out. Charlie and Bill, so close in age, had been fast friends and quick competitors. Percy was the solitary type, and the twins were basically one person. So that had left the two youngest siblings to either fend for themselves or come to a wary truce.
Ron had no urge to break that truce, not just yet.
"No, I don't want to talk," he finally said. "Talking's for girls." But his eyes grew faraway. "Maybe some other time."
"Maybe," Ginny responded, and in her heart of hearts, she wondered how things would have been if she and Ron hadn't had one another, if Arthur or Molly had been bad instead of good.
Would they have had the chance to be who they were now?
Would they have known the differences they so needed to know?
As she sat down and ate supper with her brother, Ginny tried not to know. Ginny tried not to care.
And across from her, Ron saw her fail miserably in her attempt at carelessness.
~~~
There is a saying in the wizarding world, and when I tell it, you'll likely recognize it-most people have their own form of it. Curses of the father, it's called, the idea that the collection of horrible things someone has accrued in their life can be passed on to others around them.
To children.
To the innocents.
And this makes sense to me, that this can happen, and we can never truly be innocent. For our judgments are colored each day, with each breath, by the days and breaths of those around us.
Curses of the father, yes, but also of the mother, and curses of the neighbor and classmate. Curses of the beloved and the hated.
My judgment has been so colored by those around me, so colored by those I care about-so colored by him whom I was unable not to care about-that it's a wonder my judgment isn't black.
Or is it?