CHAPTER FOUR- The Intentions of the Overlooked
Perhaps it was intentional, somewhere in the maze of thoughts and emotions. All I knew then-and all I really know now-is that, at the time, in my brain, I did not intend for what happened to happen.
In my heart, I do not know. I have already told you about such duplicity, about the separate coexistence of the parts of a person. On the surface, I was driven by anger, by need.
Deeper, I was driven by need, as well, but… more.
All speculation, you see, speculation after the fact, because regardless of what I intended, paving my own road to hell, certain things happened.
I don't believe in accidents.
~~~
He heard her before he saw her.
Kingsley Shacklebolt laid down that day's copy of the Daily Prophet-just as well, he thought, since the reporting was shoddy, as always-and stood from his post outside the single corridor of occupied cells. Doors slamming wasn't necessarily an odd occurrence at Azkaban, but on a day like today, with the announcement in the paper, the Auror was a bit concerned.
The last thing they needed, he reckoned, was a lynch mob coming in to "visit."
And then he looked through the door's window and saw her, compact body moving at a fast clip down the hallway, red hair bannering out behind her, the other guards and staffers nodding politely, greeting her as she went past. After all, she was more or less the boss's daughter.
The enormous ebony-skinned guard opened the door as she approached, afraid for a moment that she'd not open it herself but merely break through the thick oaken door. "Virginia!" he boomed heartily, shooting an uneasy look over his shoulder at the cell where Malfoy sat, staring at the wall like a halfwit. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Ginny kept her eyes on Kingsley's, though her curiosity, ever straining at the boundaries of reason, was trying to pull her eyes farther down the corridor, to the first cell on the right.
His cell.
"I wish to speak with my father, Kingsley," she said, widening her eyes in a show of concentration. She would not look elsewhere.
Kingsley's brow furrowed and he shifted his considerable weight from one foot to another, not wishing to anger the young miss. With all that fire and all that anger snapping in her eyes, he could easily see where, once upon a time, Molly Weasley had taken Arthur down without so much as batting an eyelash. The Weasley women were beautiful in the grip of their emotions.
They were also, Kingsley suspected, dangerous.
"Ah… Arthur is gone for the day, I'm afraid. You may try him back at the Ministry."
She cursed softly under her breath. Of course he was already gone. And how should she know where he was at what time?
It was just one more thing about her family she didn't know.
"What do you know about this?" She snatched up the guard's copy of the Daily Prophet off the desk where he sat and waved it under his nose. "This?" To further make her point-as though it were the slightest bit unclear-she jabbed her finger at the picture of Draco. As though in response, the photo prisoner shuffled slightly, making his way to the outside edges of the photograph, and though it was against her better judgment, Ginny reflexively looked up at the real prisoner and saw that he, unlike his pictorial counterpart, was completely still.
The paper drooped slightly in her hands as she stared intently into the cell, at the juxtaposition of the whitest of whites and the reddest of reds, his skin healed from the hours of battle, translucent against the ridiculous brightness of the robes he was forced to wear. His hair drooped slightly into his face, his eyes fixed on-something, nothing. As though burned, she jerked and looked back at Kingsley.
"I don't know anything about it," he said honestly. "Ginny, you can go ask your father at the-"
"Save it," she said, her voice far away, her eyes drawn back.
Whatever was he looking at?
Did he deserve to be so peaceful?
Still holding the paper, she took a few steps toward the glass front of the cell, her head tilting slightly.
"Who's goin'ter visit 'im?" The Mediwitch's voice careened in the corners of Ginny's mind and she stepped even closer, wondering if he'd notice, or if his concentration was so great that he would not stir. Hadn't she seen him once in a moment of such concentration? Hadn't he killed Neville and nearly killed Ron in such concentration?
There were questions, she realized, thousands of them circling through her head in a maddening and maddened whirl. She'd came with queries for her father, and now that she was here, they seemed inconsequential compared to the questions she had for this man.
She could ask why, that much she knew. She knew also, however, that there would be no answer. As he had given no answer to those deciding his fate, he would give no answer to her. She could ask what he felt, if he felt guilty, if he felt just and right sitting behind those spells and that glass, but again she knew there would be no answer.
A man such as this had no answers for the righteous-he never had. He'd never had to justify himself, and she didn't see why he would start with the biggest wrongdoings of his life.
But no matter how many questions she had for him, still the biggest question in her mind wasn't even her own.
Who was going to visit him? Who visited the damned?
"I-I'm sorry," Ginny said suddenly, turning away from the glass and raising wide, panicked eyes to Kingsley's narrowed ones. "I've made a mistake," she stuttered, wondering what, precisely, had taken hold of her for that instant. Thrusting the rattling paper into the Auror's hands, she left the way she came, her steps twice as fast.
And behind the glass, two silver eyes shot to the corridor, watching the fire recede.
~~~
"She's not come out of her room since she Apparated up there," Molly said, looking at Arthur worriedly. "I told her supper was ready, and not a word. I know she's in there. I'll bloody well blow the door down," she said, ready to pull out her wand.
But Arthur stayed her with a touch on her shoulder, his own shoulders slumped a bit. It had been his mistake, he knew, that had sent his daughter running to the prison. He'd gotten owl after owl at the Ministry when she'd left, first from the perimeter guards, then from the interior, and finally from Kingsley himself.
She'd been, he'd read, in a bit of a snit.
After talking with the twins, it wasn't hard to put together why.
It had seemed so fortuitous, this job, this wonderful chance to rebuild, reshape, rehabilitate after the world. Too good to be true, Arthur should have known. There were always hidden responsibilities, hidden prices to pay. But any price was worth it, and he'd told Dumbledore the same before accepting the job. Any price to repair the wizarding world of the scars and wounds it still bore.
Any price, including the further suffering of his own family. Including, of course, his own suffering.
"We didn't tell Gin, Molly. We told all of the boys what I planned to do-what I planned to allow-and we never thought to tell her. It seems a small thing…" He trailed off and shook his head, rubbing his grainy eyes wearily. "No, it doesn't. It involved all of us, and we didn't tell her."
For once, Molly had nothing to say.
She simply hadn't thought of it-and that thoughtlessness was galling.
They were both still standing at the foot of the stairs, hopelessly staring up as though waiting for the answer-or Ginny-to come down. Eventually, the latter happened, her face still and perfectly composed, the questions of earlier gone with a complacency she hadn't known she possessed.
Arthur had meant to broach the topic gently, to ease into the matter, but unsurprisingly, Molly did it for him.
"You were at the prison?" she asked, hands on hips.
"I was." Ginny didn't look at Molly but instead kept her eyes on her father. "Wicked accomplishment you've made out there, Da."
"Ginny, love-"
She pushed past them then, needing to not see that look in her father's eyes, that lost, hurt look. What she needed was that anger she'd kept so well up until the moment she'd stepped into that last corridor at Azkaban. What she needed was that anger to sweep away this confusion.
"Do you think anyone will visit them, then? Do you think anyone will visit him? I read in one of the Ministry papers-one you wrote, as a matter of fact-" she said, sitting down at the table and keeping her eyes on her water glass. "-That in the Muggle world, prisoners' rights help them to… what did you call it? Rehabilitate. Rejoin the ranks of 'productive society.'" She met eyes with him then, her usually warm brown eyes hard with puzzlement. "You think he'll ever rejoin society?"
"No!" Arthur burst out, coming around the table. "There are other prisoners than him, Ginny. Think of the time Hagrid spent, of Sirius."
"Oh, so it's all right for some but not for others. We believe in recuperation for some-say, Severus Snape? But not for others." She gasped then, putting her hand to her mouth. Where, precisely, had that nasty little tidbit come from? That defensive, subversive little thought?
What part of her was standing up for the deplorable evil behind that glass?
"Virginia!" Molly placed a hand to her chest, well and truly shocked by her daughter's words.
"My entire life you've told me to do what I think is right," Ginny spoke earnestly. "And now you tell me nothing. Well, I'm telling you this-I think if it's right to make a rule so outlandish that everyone in the wizarding world questions it, it should be right for you to stand behind it."
She pushed her chair away from the table, feeling ill, feeling dizzy, feeling as though she were pulled in a hundred different directions. Now more than ever, she needed her family.
It only seemed as if they had no need for her.
~~~
It all begins so, with misunderstandings, with the hatred and bigotry I spoke of.
We are all good people, somewhere in us. We have only to use what we see fit to use, and when we see fit to use it.
Cast out into my own morality, what choices had I to make? Cast out alone for what was surely the first time in my life, what had I to lose?
And what had I to gain?
Moreover, what did I have to give?