*snarl* “Well, if it isn’t Potter. How perfect! The perfect end to a perfect day, and it isn’t even noon!”
”… Malfoy. Why are you all wet?”
“Don’t ask me questions! Don’t expect me to be rational! I’m spitting here!”
“What, all over yourself? Quite a talent.”
“Oooh.”
“What?”
“I am quietly boiling from my insides out with sheer rage.”
“It’s not all that quiet.”
“Oooh.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Can’t it? Oh, but I think it can. I have two words for you, Potter. Two vile, disgusting words. Communal showers.”
*helpless laughter*
“Stop it! This isn’t amusing! Larry the troll and Confucius the ogre. I have to shower with them. Do you know what happens when you drop the soap? Sometimes you have to open your eyes!”
*helpless laughter*
“I wish I was dead.”
“That’s constructive.”
“I wish they were dead.”
“What a happy thought.”
“I wish you were dead.”
“Saw that one coming. If it bothers you so much, skip some showers.”
“Skip some—Potter, you filthy, unwashed peasant. I don’t want to hear another heretical unhygienic word out of you.”
“Malfoy, I’ve seen you crawl on your stomach in the mud.”
“That was quite different. Mud gives the skin a fresh and youthful glow. We’re talking grime here. Grime, Potter.”
“A fate worse than death, I’m sure.”
“You’re bloody chipper today, Potter. I think I liked you better the other way.”
“You never liked me at all.”
“That’s not true. I liked you before I met you. I was under the grossly mistaken impression that you were going to be cool. And I didn’t mind you for the first ten minutes I knew you. And I recall being atrociously drunk in the truce camp and not minding you, but then that was alcohol-induced universal goodwill.”
“I remember that.”
“No you don’t. Shut up.”
“I remember quite clearly telling you that drugs and drink do not mix, and not to make a fool of yourself and undermine the authority of both of us as officers.”
“Well, after that, what’d you expect me to do?”
“I didn’t expect you to do a little dance.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“In front of everyone. There was a routine. And a shimmy.”
“Shut up a lot.”
“And then you hung all over everyone. You were very affectionate. And vocal. You brushed people’s hair. You brushed everyone‘s hair.”
“I hate you. And I can’t hear. I’m not listening.”
“Then you sang a little song.”
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
“It was very touching. Colin took a lot of pictures.”
“Oh, my God. I bet you still have them. To laugh and scorn and mock and scorn. I hate you.”
“I burned them.”
“Thank Christ.”
“After the truce was over. I burned them all.”
“You… sound almost sad about it. You liked it, didn’t you. You liked that war.”
“It was—simpler. Simpler when I wasn’t facing people I knew, people who I’d gone to school with. When it was us against them. It’s—so much easier to kill strangers.”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t about secrecy and evil and politics. It was us against them, and it was survival. It was—you said it yourself.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t want to be put in a camp with your side. I didn’t care about co-operation and necessity, it already felt as if I had fought a thousand wars and I didn’t want to do it. But everyone had to obey orders. My squad—we’d been all round the world, and I was always bone tired and everything was bitter. And I was sitting on a bench in a tent, and you came in and sat down so casually, as if it was Potions class, and you said ‘I suppose we’re in this together.’”
“Marvellous things, drugs. I don’t really recall.”
“I remember. There were no conflicted loyalties or spies or—or anything. Things were easier, everyone had a common enemy and we were fighting for our lives and there wasn’t a doubt. And there was you. I didn’t have to be as good at war then. I—like I said, you were a good leader.”
“I did what I had to. But you. You loved it. The pure clean edge of desperation.”
“I… You can’t be kind, can you. Not unless someone is desperate.”
“I’m never kind. Sometimes desperation makes people delusional. And you always liked your delusions, didn’t you? You’ve been fighting something since you were born. You never even knew what peace was, you didn’t know how to want it. The lack of dilemmas, the pure instinct to hunt and the blood on your hands—that was the closest you ever came.”
“And what about you?”
“Why was I good at it? You were born for it: I was brought up for it. I could taste the coming war my whole life. It was all I ever expected my future to be. And now it’s over, but in the end you forget how to live any other way. Even still, I can’t remember.”
”… Yes. It wasn’t that I liked it. Any more than I like air. It’s just that now, I can’t be anything else.”
“And what a pair we make. Enough to make a devil weep.” *pause* “Do you think Dumbledore would weep?”
“Don’t say his name.”
“I think he would, for you. He had such faith in you, didn’t he? And it was just an extension, an intensification, of that beautiful naïve faith that he had in almost the whole world. That people could be trusted to do the decent thing. You had that too. Must have been painful when it burned away.”
*snarl* “What about you?”
“Never had it. I would never have thrown the wizarding world to the wolves because of some stupid collection of beliefs.”
“It was because of your side—”
“No! I don’t care what we did. It was your leader who made the decision, who did the deed. He went to the government, went through every rank, and gave them proof of all our secrets and our existence. He convinced them, he had some ideal of wizards and Muggles living together in perfect harmony after they’d vanquished Voldemort forever.”
“I voted against it.”
“But you let him do it. I would have killed him before he could.”
“Go to hell. I could never have done that.”
“Couldn’t you, if you’d known the price? If you’d known about the reaction, the pronouncement that we were all dangerous and had to be exterminated, the mobs with all this new knowledge, the time when all anyone could do was panic and hide the evidence, disguise the deaths, and hope that they wouldn’t decide to tell the whole world? If you’d known that the Finnigans would all be slaughtered and that Dumbledore would be shot when he was walking into a conference in good faith?”
“I couldn’t have done it!”
“The terror made even the war stop; made us all band together like rats cowering in a single hole. So many memory modifications, we came so close to utter extermination—and it was his decision—”
“He had to do something! We didn’t begin the war!”
“Nobody began the war. It was always going to happen. It all started with sex.”
”… It’s so like you to say something like that.”
“I’m more observant than most. Haven’t you heard the stories, or was that dirty Death Eating propaganda? We started out different races, wizards and Muggles. Mudbloods and Squibs didn’t happen. And then we began to breed, and aberrations started occurring. How can a magical child be properly accepted into a Muggle family, or vice versa? They were changelings, and they bred hatred. Maybe people can accept a wizard in a tower, but nobody can accept one of their own flesh and blood being given something they can never match or understand—”
“Petunia.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What you people never understood was that it wasn’t like racism. Racism is the hatred that comes from unfair division of their world, more land, more rights, something that can be solved. Ours is another world, and they can’t touch it, we can’t ever give it to them and they can’t do anything but resent it and covet it and hate us, and we can’t do anything but fear them because they are so many. We were hunted once, and we had to hide until we became myths, and then well-meaning fools broke a hole in our cover and took in children who could betray us, and tried to make us believe that wizards never burned!”
“Hermione would never have betrayed us. She deserved to be in our world. She was a witch.”
“She shouldn’t have been! There shouldn’t ever have been a mingling. It wasn’t safe. You people always despised us for the importance we put on pure blood—it meant being safe. You want to know why I’m not being driven mad by the Dementors? I was born in a place that was bleak and waiting for war. The enemy was always within the gates for us, the magics used to protect us for generations had to be hidden under the dining room floor as our own kind turned against us and finally your merciful leader laid us all bare!”
“What are you saying?”
“I know all about grimness. I know all about fear. My father taught me we were in mortal danger before Voldemort ever rose again. Those Dementors can barely touch me. My memory is as tainted as our whole world.”
“We’re not in mortal danger.”
“Oh yes we are. Every moment of our lives. And you know it, you’ve always known it. That’s why it was good, because the endless hiding was over and we could fight. It’s always been us against them, and that was why it was simple, and that’s why it was clean.”
“I said it was better. I didn’t say it was right.”
“Nothing’s ever right. There’s no way to make any of it right.”
“And nobody’s to blame, is that it?”
“Oh, everyone is to blame. Always.”
“Dumbledore made a mistake. But he paid.”
“We all pay. We all bleed. And everything stays wrong, every mistake everyone ever made stays with us, we fought a war against them and we fought with each other and we all keep bleeding.”
“Malfoy? Did you… did you like the war against them more?”
“Certainly I did. If you’ll recall, it was the only one I won.”
”… Of course.” *quietly* “I was—looking forward to coming here. I wanted to.”
“And now you wish you hadn’t.”
“No. No. I prefer hearing you say it to thinking it. At least you’re able to bring it out in the light.”
“I have more time to think. You have to build bars for yourself. I have mine provided for me. And you’re not resigned. You still have to live.”
“Do I?”
*pragmatically* “Not that it can be much of a life, if you look forward to coming here. Well. At least it means you make the effort to dress somewhat decently.”
“Couldn’t drive a man to suicide, could I? Didn’t want that on my conscience too.”
“Indeed. And the cut is irreproachable. Just steer clear of olive in future, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Have you talked to Parvati yet?”
“I—no.”
“You should. Go to her, explain. Take a walk in a park with her. You can, why don’t you fucking well enjoy it?”
“Is this you being kind?”
“Is this you being desperate?”
*soft knock on the door*
“Give me a minute.”
“Get lost, Potter. You can’t bargain with Dementors.”