CHAPTER TWO- The Pace of Life
I had nothing.
You understand, of course, that life goes on. It is not only a Muggle cliché, but a wizarding one, as well. A universal one.
But I had nothing to return to, nothing 'went on' for me. For me, life had consisted of the sheltered existence of the Burrow, followed by the-mostly-sheltered existence of Hogwarts, followed by a brief, gleaming stint as a warrior in the battle to end all others, in a battle that broke lives and hearts and even the strongest of men.
After that, what use had I for a sheltered life?
I had been exposed. In exposition, I longed for purpose. I longed for risk.
The greatest risk is knowledge-the greatest risk is setting out to know, to banish your ignorance and deny your bliss.
~~~
The novelty of the situation wore off, as all novelty inevitably does. Life went back to some semblance of normal for those still living, work went on and play went on, and everyone forgot about the people held accountable for those dark years, those darkest times.
Or they told themselves they forgot, and ignored those thoughts that plagued them when the nights were dark, or cold, or long, or lonely.
Of course, nothing is that easy for everyone, and the casualties of any war are never totally immediate or totally obvious.
The Weasleys returned to life as best they could, a hardy family, a family of born survivors. Arthur and Percy returned to the Ministry as Ambassadors to Azkaban; Bill resumed his post at Gringotts. Charlie, intuiting his family needed his presence more than he needed to travel, accepted a position at Hogwarts, where many of the professors had been wounded or worse. The twins enjoyed a resurgence of business twice what they'd had before the height of the war, their business enlivened in those maddened weeks of restoration. How desperately people wanted-needed-to laugh in those weeks.
How desperately to know they still could.
The silent partner of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes finally stepped forward and claimed some manual responsibility, taking a clerk's position. After all, what had the Boy Who Lived to do now that the balance of his whole life had shifted? And it gave Harry more time to spend with Ron, who had also joined the twins in a limited capacity. Time with Ron, Harry had realized, was a commodity.
Loss… or near-loss… was yet another reminder of what people possess.
That first day, that day where things returned to "normality," Ginny remained at the Burrow with Molly. After a few hours, she wondered if the strain, the physical, lethargic weight of inactivity, affected anyone but herself. She wandered around the house, she cleaned everything in sight, and then she went outside to weed the nearly nonexistent garden.
"There were times when you'd all gone off to school," Molly said without preamble, watching Ginny weed like a madwoman, "When I thought I'd go mad from the quiet, and the boredom, and not having all of my chicks around me." But she'd had things to do even then-Howlers to write, worrying to do, the long-distance mothering that Molly excelled at. Her daughter, however, hadn't even started on a life of her own, and already things were different for her, were difficult.
Perhaps they'd been difficult from her first year at Hogwarts, Molly reckoned, when a bad man with a tricky diary had stolen her childhood.
"You'd started some training at school," Molly reminded Ginny gently, shaking herself from her woolgathering and holding the Daily Prophet out to her daughter.
Mediwitches and wizards needed, the advert read, its words stark and simple.
Of course there were Mediwitches needed, Ginny thought. The whole damned world had been turned upside-down.
Medicine had been the only thing she'd truly considered, and had been considering for quite some time.
She had unlimited visions in her head, unlimited memories from a hovering point of view somewhere outside her body, pictures of her friends petrified and wounded because of something she did, a chamber she opened. With those images in her head, she'd wanted to help.
Now she had her chance.
~~~
"What's he doing?" Arthur stood behind Kingsley Shacklebolt, his eyes focused warily on the cell in front of him.
Kingsley, an interim Azkaban guard until they could find more suitable wizards and witches to take the positions, crossed his massive arms over his chest and spoke sotto voce to his fellow Order member, both their eyes affixed to the young man in front of them. "Nothing," he said honestly, his voice rumbling through the stone corridors. There were few, precious few prisoners in the enormous building. So many of the evil had died, so many had fled.
But not this one in front of them.
The young man sat on the small cot he'd been provided, a Muggle contraption down to its last rickety screw, his knees drawn up to his chest under the distinct ruby robes, his eyes cast blankly on the wall opposite him. He had done the same thing for nearly a month. Daily he woke, used the small lavatory in the corner of the cell, then sat on the cot and focused somewhere-inward, outward, no one could tell-until meals came. He ate little as quickly as possible, returning his tray to the southern stone wall, where it would be taken away through the tiny slot provided for it.
Then he returned to his routine, staring, staring, endlessly staring, and never once facing the glass wall that would allow him visual access into the corridor, to his guards, occasionally to fellow prisoners.
He was solitary by nature, and he was solitary by choice.
The damned suffered alone.
"Perhaps he's thinking about the things he's done," Arthur said, but he could not seem to dredge up the fierceness the rest of his family found so easily. He was just tired, so very tired. "See to it that things are done as I asked earlier. I gave a statement to the Daily Prophet, and doubtless people are reading it right now." He spoke with an authority unfamiliar to his lips, and when he walked down the corridor, it was not the walk of a successful man, but a worn one, and Kingsley couldn't help but wonder how this was all going to work.
Muggle prison tactics in a wizarding world. It would be a wonder, Kingsley thought, if disasters didn't start happening soon.
~~~
She wandered through the broad corridors, the sounds of hundreds of voices, some suffering and some comforting, assaulted her ears. Her heart constricted in her chest, one powerful, painful squeeze, and for a moment she wanted to be a coward, wanted to turn tail and run back outside and back home. But things at home were no better, she remembered-only constricting in a different sort of way. Limiting.
What Ginny Weasley wanted were answers, and all she was given at home were more questions.
She followed the signs until they led her to an office of sorts, where several brightly robed Mediwitches snacked on sandwiches and pored, as a group, over one copy of the newspaper.
"Here, see, I told you-Weasley's gone and implemented a visiting system for the Azkaban prisoners." One of the witches jabbed at the paper with a plump finger, a satisfied look on her face. "I told you so, that's precisely how it's done in the Muggle world. Pay up, Yasmine." The witch, a pretty woman with a round face and an extraordinary cloud of blonde hair, twitched her fingers impatiently.
Yasmine, a dark-haired witch of dark complexion, grumbled and slapped a few coins into her coworker's hand. "Bloody Muggle-borns and their stupid bets."
Ginny stood transfixed in the doorway, her ears still hung up on the conversation's onset. Her father had given prisoners visiting rights? To what end?
"No one's goin'ter visit 'em anyway," another witch said with finality, standing up and stretching. "Like 'at one," she nodded down on the paper. "Who's goin'ter visit 'im?"
Yasmine laughed. "'s a point you have there, Lizzie, darlin'. Why is it 'e's the only one they ever show?"
Ginny was propelled into motion then, her tongue hot with anger. Her father hadn't told her-hadn't told any of them what he was doing. And neither, for that matter, had Mum, and she'd surely known, holding the paper out to her daughter as though not a thing in the world were amiss, all while that article was on the front- that article on the front, that picture of the scarlet-clad Malfoy heir, sitting in his prison cell.
"Perhaps it's because he's photogenic," Ginny said, her chin raising a bit, her ire spilling out, misplaced. "After all, he probably looks a great deal better than the other prisoners in that place. It's easy to exploit a pretty animal with a broken spirit."
Eyes sparking, glinting with-sweat? Tears? Surely not the latter. Evil men didn't cry-body tense with fight, moon-colored hair wild and unruly.
Yes, Ginny was willing to bet he probably looked a great deal better than the other prisoners. Evil didn't always have an ugly face.
Tom Riddle, after all, had been a handsome young man. Who could have known how black, how infested he was inside?
When she spoke her opinion, the gathered witches turned to look at her, shock written all over their features. Who dared say such a thing? None of them had seen her when she'd entered, so engrossed had they been in their gossip.
Finally, a smaller witch toward the back moved forward, her glossy hair piled into a haphazard bun, her exotic features showing surprise. "Ginny? Ginny Weasley?"
And Ginny smiled weakly at the girl, wondering if the world could possibly get any smaller, or her mouth any bigger. "Hello, Cho."
~~~
In looking for purpose, I could not have found more.
In looking for knowledge, I'd certainly found a wealth of it.
My actions-my thoughts-in the tearoom at St. Mungo's are a little blurry, my motivations lost in time passed and actions since taken. Most of this seems a bit muddled in my mind-after all, who among us remembers everything with crystalline clarity? There are only moments so lucid, only small, fragmented pieces of life we remember perfectly, like the smile of your mother, like a hug from your father, like the look of terrible pain on your brother's face, like finding beauty in the midst of a battle, beauty in the unwavering dearth of light.
Like finding beauty in your worst enemy.