FIC: "Interrogations" by snuggle_muggle
To: ladysugarquill
Title: Interrogations
Author/Artist: snuggle_muggle
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13, only for suggestive language
Word Count: 3435
Summary: Harry has an unpleasant duty at work and Ginny's going to have to come clean with a secret she's held for a long, long time. Things go downhill from there.
I hope, ladysugarquill, that I've done justice to your prompt. You asked for keeping secrets at work, Dark wizards keeping secrets, a mysterious case with Dark magic. I hope it doesn't have to be too dark! And I did manage to squish Harry's Muggle lock-picking in. And I never once used the name "Gin." I'm sorry it's late and I appreciate r_becca's patience and gentle pushing on me to get this done.
When Harry walked into the interrogation room, he stopped dead in his tracks, then turned around and walked back out.
"I'm not talking to that bitch," he said to his supervisor.
"She says she'll only talk to you and we need to put some pressure on her to find out where her brother is. It's your job. Now get in there and do it."
"She probably killed him and ate his liver. And I don't really care-"
"Look, Potter. I don't really care about your personal feelings, either. Get your ass in there and interrogate her. But I'll tell you what, since I'm a marshmallow, I'll look away if you want to use a few unorthodox methods in questioning her."
Somewhat cheered by the thought he might be able to get away with torturing her a bit, Harry walked back into the interrogation room and faced Alecto Carrow. She'd been on the run for years now after somehow managing to escape her trial at the Ministry after the Battle of Hogwarts, and she looked the worse for it. Not that she'd ever been even slightly civilized looking. To Harry, she had always looked like some sort of mutant swamp creature and she and her brother were a matched pair of horrors.
"Afraid, Potty?" Her voice was high and wheezy and sounded like she was gasping for air. Harry categorized that thought as possibly useful for later, when the torturing began.
"Since I'm the one with the wand in the room, I hardly think I'm afraid of you."
"It's been years, hasn't it, Potty? Oh, those were good times back then. Was the last time I saw you when Dumbledore died? Hmm. Perhaps. But I know you were there when that filthy werewolf and his freak-" Her mouth kept moving, but no words came out.
Harry vowed to keep his wand closer at hand. He refused to hear any of her reminiscing about those she had seen killed or helped kill back at Hogwarts. He wondered if the marshmallow outside would complain if he just killed her. No, supposedly they were looking for the brother. Not that she would give anything away, he was sure. "I know very well who you hurt and who you killed. If you mention any of my friends' names again, you will regret it."
Her defiant gaze met his and she made a rude hand gesture. He took advantage of her silence and cast a low Cruciatus on her. She screamed, silently, and flopped around in the magical restraints that held her in her chair. Harry raised an eyebrow and pointed his wand at her again. She shook her head. He removed the silencing charm.
"Grown up a bit, I see. How's your pretty wife? We didn't silence her, of course, when we used that spell on her. And that was good, 'cause she sure talked a lot when she was done with the screaming. Ask her who she betr-" Harry slammed the silencing spell on her again and walked out of the room.
"Put her back in holding. I've got to do some research to find out what I can use for pressure. She's never going to tell me anything just to play nice." He went back up to his office and sat down at his desk, staring for a long time out the magical window. He picked up the Auror standard-issue guide to dark wizards on the run and the supplement on it Hermione had given him and Ron when they were accepted into the program. She had interviewed a lot of the students that had been there that year and at the battle and a lot of the grown-ups who had "worked" with them under Thicknesse, to discover all she could about them as well as make a historical record of the wrongs the followers of Voldemort did before people forgot or stopped talking about them.
He flipped to the Carrow section. There was quite a lot of information on them as far as atrocities they committed that year at Hogwarts. Harry read over it quickly, familiarizing himself with it again. Not that he ever really forgot it. How could he? He flipped over to Ginny's interview, took a deep breath, and read it quickly. It was long and detailed and it was more horrible than he had imagined. He didn't even ask permission before he Apparated home.
Ginny was singing softly in the hallway when Harry apparated into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. He smiled tightly. She never sang when she thought anyone could hear her but he loved to listen, even if she was off key. "I'm home, Ginny."
"Harry! What are you doing here?" She was carrying a vase of flowers and she put them down on the table, looked at them critically, moved them slightly then turned and hugged him. "What a nice surprise this is." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Don't suppose you're home early for a bit of a tussle upstairs?"
Harry shook his head and tried to relax. She was here, she was fine, and she did not need him to bring back all those bad memories of her sixth year at school. "No, unfortunately. I just . . . I needed to see you for a minute."
"Is something wrong?"
"Not really. Nothing important." When he had come here, he had thoughts of asking her again about what had happened that year, just so he could be better prepared when he faced his prisoner, so that she couldn't say anything that would surprise him or shock him. But now that he was looking into Ginny's smiling face, he couldn't stand to bring up the subject. They'd both spent their fair share of time crying the year or so after . . . the Battle. They both had their own sets of nightmares. They both had their own regrets. They both had their own secrets. He wrapped his arms around her. "I was just thinking about you and wanted to see you."
Ginny leaned back in his arms, looking up into his face. "You look upset about something."
"It's better now."
"What are you not telling me, Harry?"
"I . . . It's really nothing. I was kind of stupid to come home, I guess."
Ginny wrapped her arms tighter around him. "Well, it's never stupid to come home. And I'm glad that whatever you needed, you found. Now get back to work before you get canned." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. "You can always talk to me. I'm tougher than I look."
"Believe me, I have no doubt about that." Back at work, he spent the rest of the afternoon skimming through the students' descriptions of Amycus and his tortures as well as Alecto's. He even read through the Slytherin students who had oftentimes been their assistants. He had never read those interviews through before because he didn't care about them before now. By quitting time, he was physically sick and didn't think he'd be able to hide it from Ginny, especially when he turned down dinner.
Ginny fussed over him when he claimed nausea, just like he knew she would. She put him right to bed with some soup and some kind of nasty potion that she claimed would help although he didn't know how. He laid in bed for a long time in the dark pretending to sleep, thinking about what had happened to Ginny that year and reliving, despite his deep desire to avoid it, what he and Hermione and Ron had gone through at the same time. He also thought about things he had never told Ginny and things she had never told him.
After a couple of hours, the sliver of light under the door was extinguished and the door opened quietly. “I know you’re not asleep, Harry.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Can I come to bed?”
“Of course.”
“Did you want to talk?”
“I don’t know for sure. I kind of do, but I kind of don’t.”
Ginny chuckled. “That’s the Harry I know and love. Your sickness has not affected your brain at all. So what do you kind of want to talk about?”
Harry swallowed. He hated to even bring it up, really. He knew this would be unpleasant. “Uh, I’ve got Alecto Carrow in a holding room at work and I have to talk to her tomorrow. I started today but I had to get rid of her because she started talking about you.”
There was dead silence in the room for a few minutes and then Harry felt her weight depress the side of the bed. “Oh. What did she say?” Her voice was slightly tremulous but he heard that thread of steel that always ran through her voice when anybody talked about that horrible year, even casually.
"It wasn't her words so much. It was . . . well, she said that when they . . . crucio'd you, they liked listening to you scream."
"Yeah, they did. I'm sorry if that upsets you, Harry, but considering that I was sort of your girlfriend and Dad's daughter, you can't be surprised." She stood up again and Harry could hear her walking the floor. He knew if he could see her, she'd be wringing her hands in that way she only did when she was really upset. Damn, he was a cad.
"I'm sorry, Ginny. I didn't want to mention it, you know?"
"So, why did you? What was the point of this little discussion?"
"She said you talked afterword and then she used the word 'betrayed,' love. They taught us in training that suspects will guide us the way they expect interrogation to go. It's subconscious and they don't even know they're doing it. She deep down expects she'll betray her brother. Maybe she even wants to. I can't imagine that she's very happy she got caught and is facing life in Azkaban while he's drifting around scot-free."
"So you think I betrayed someone? You believe that crazy woman? She's insane, Harry. Totally insane! I don't think any great Auror rules of interrogation apply when you're dealing with a mad person!"
Her voice was rising in pitch and something in Harry's brain pitched in with a comment. You've hit a sore spot, my boy. If she were a suspect he was questioning, he would know he was onto something and he would press forward relentlessly until she spilled her guts. However, this was his wife and he tamped down his inner Auror. "I don't believe her, Ginny. There's nothing to believe or disbelieve. I just need to know what happened so when she starts blabbering, I can turn the tables on her."
"Well, I have nothing to say about that. Nothing!" She left him lying there in the dark and Harry heard her crying for a long time. He wanted to go to her, but he wasn't sure whether he would be welcome and couldn't bear the thought of her turning him away.
The next morning, he stood and watched her for a few minutes. She looked so vulnerable and young. She wasn't old by any means, but after she had been crying like this, he was always pulled back to that summer after the Battle and she had looked so very young that summer, when she wasn't looking old beyond her years. He grabbed a biscuit for breakfast and left without waking her, hoping that he could stay awake 'cause he didn't think he had slept more than five minutes the whole night.
When he got to work, he delayed and dithered and found interesting things to do that did not involve the insane woman in the holding cells. He dreaded hearing what she had to say. Finally, he knew he could delay no longer. He took a deep breath and walked toward the interrogation rooms. "Bring the Carrow woman up. I'm ready to talk to her."
She arrived chained, spelled, and silenced and the Auror in charge of prisoner control redid the spells and bound her to the chair. "Good luck with her. My brother was in Hogwarts that year . . . I'd kill her for what she did to him if I thought I could get away with it."
"Yeah. It's crossed my mind. And I wasn't even there." He walked into the room. She glared at him. "I'm here to find out where Amycus is, no more, no less." He flicked his wand, lifting the silencing spell.
"So, did you ask your pretty little wife about the fun she and I had together? I'm just wondering if she spilled all her little secrets."
"I'm not talking to you about Ginny or anyone else. I'm talking to you about Amycus. The ministry is prepared to offer you some incentives to talk, both for you and for him. We can take execution off the table, for both of you. You know we'll find him soon, Alecto. It'd be better to tell me now. Make it easier on both of you."
"Is that what your little red-head thought when she betrayed her friend? It's better now than later? They'll find her anyway?"
"I'm talking to you about Amycus, Alecto. Amycus. Not Ginny. Not any fictional friend . . . ."
"Fictional?" She cackled. "Fictional. You think I'm lying. She told you I'm lying. But she's lying to you, Potty. Lying to her beloved Harry." She cackled again.
Harry flicked his wand and silenced her while she laughed to herself. He could see her repeating the word "Fictional" over and over again. After a few deep breaths, he released the spell again.
"I'll tell you what, Potty. You come in here with a name - the name of the girl she betrayed and some details. And I'll tell you where Amycus is. Now have them take me back to that sweet holding cell you've been keeping me in, 'cause I'm not saying another word until your wifey comes clean. Maybe the world isn't quite as black and white as you Aurors like to think it is."
Harry scrubbed his hands over his face. It would be easier to get Ginny to talk than it would be to torture Amycus' location out of this madwoman. If she had anything to talk about, of course. He half-hoped she didn't. He left the interrogation room and Apparated home.
Ginny didn't look so happy to see him, this time. There was no question of heading upstairs for some afternoon lovemaking. She had dark circles under her eyes and she looked at least a decade older than she had yesterday. There was no singing. "You're back."
"Yeah."
"You left this morning without saying anything."
"I didn't want to wake you. I knew you hadn't slept well."
Her finger traced under his eyes. "You didn't either."
He took her hand. "I love you, Ginny. You know that, right?"
She nodded.
"Nothing you tell me is going to change that. Nothing."
"I wanted to be brave, Harry. As brave as you were. But I couldn't. . . . I . . . was weak."
"You are anything but weak, love. Anything. You put up with the torture for months. I read your interview with Hermione yesterday."
"You've read it before, certainly?"
"Nope. Couldn't bring myself to."
"But . . . I told you, I mean, I told everyone what had happened."
"I know." He wrapped his arms around her. "But I was weak, Ginny, and somehow seeing it in black and white made it worse, as I suspected it would. And I would admire you even more, now, if it were possible."
"You shouldn't, Harry. You shouldn't." She clutched his shirt-front. "I . . . I've never told anybody. I . . couldn't bear for someone to know."
"Nobody has to know but me."
"Will you tell her? She'll have to know, won't she?"
"The crazy woman. Yeah. She insists that she won't say anything until I tell her who you . . . talked about. But then she's off to Azkaban and I don't think anyone's going to take anything she says seriously after that."
"No. But I need to . . . I need to confess, Harry. I need to tell her, at least. Luna needs to know." She sobbed brokenly, and her knees shook. "Can we sit down?"
Once they were sitting safely on the couch, Harry patted her shoulder with one hand, holding her snuggly with the other. "You said something about Luna?"
"Uh-huh." Ginny sobbed again for a few minutes, then composed herself and wiped her eyes on the Kleenex Harry produced from his pocket. "It was right before Christmas. Luna . . . Luna had sneaked onto the train. She was going to go home and probably not come back. Once you're on the train . . . you know, generally, you can hide easily enough. And she knew . . . . She said she'd hide in the luggage compartment if she needed to. But I . . . I . . . I told them that she was on the train and they went on . . . and took her." She buried her head in Harry's chest. "I couldn't believe it. The words just came out. I wanted to take them back, but I couldn't. They told me they'd killed her."
"Oh, my God, Ginny." Harry wrapped his arms around her. "It's time to forgive yourself, now. Without Luna there . . . Maybe it was for the best." He thought back to the insanity that was the dungeon under the Malfoy's house and the time afterwards at Shell Cottage. Luna and Dean and Mr. Ollivander. He hated to think about those days, even now, so many years later. But Luna had been useful there. And she had come out okay on the other end. Maybe a little more haunted, a bit more jaded. No more talk of everything coming back to her in the end. Maybe she knew now that innocence, well. It never came back once it was gone. He felt the prickle of un-shed tears in the back of his own throat and kissed Ginny's hair, inhaling the sweet smell of her shampoo.
"Don't say that, Harry, trying to make me feel better. I betrayed her. And I've lied to her, all these years. She even asked me once, if I knew how they found out she was on the train, and I lied. I told her I didn't know." He gave up trying to hold back the tears and they cried together for a while, for the loss of all their innocence, and the loss of everything that will never come back.
*!*!*!*!
Three days later, Harry and his team of Aurors stood in front of a grungy Muggle cottage. Harry approached the side door, and turned the handle tentatively, half expecting a bolt of magic to come out of the lock. But none did. He squatted down and pulled the lock-picking set out of his pocket, smiling briefly. "Thanks, Fred. You and George did good, buddy." He slipped the first tool in, and a few seconds later, heard the click of the tumblers. He opened the door and his team moved in.
The extraction was almost surgically clean and Amycus Carrow, who looked like nothing more than a sick old man, was arrested with hardly any fuss at all. The Muggles nearby didn't even come out of their home to see what was going on with a bunch of men dressed in black standing in a semi-circle around the little run-down place.
Harry suspected that Amycus had wanted to be caught at that point. It made him wonder what sort of sick relationship the brother and sister had, that he completely gave up after she was taken away from the shop where she had been trying to find Muggle medicine for him. Maybe they had their own secrets. As he sent them off to Azkaban, he set it up so they wouldn't be anywhere near each other. Maybe that was punishment enough. And he didn't feel bad about it, either. For Ginny and Neville and Luna, for all the little first years who lost their innocence two weeks after starting Hogwarts, for Dean. For Snape. They deserved everything they got.
When he got home that night, Luna and Ginny were sitting on his couch, both sobbing. He fixed them some tea. Secrets had been shared and somehow, somehow, things were better.
Title: Interrogations
Author/Artist: snuggle_muggle
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13, only for suggestive language
Word Count: 3435
Summary: Harry has an unpleasant duty at work and Ginny's going to have to come clean with a secret she's held for a long, long time. Things go downhill from there.
I hope, ladysugarquill, that I've done justice to your prompt. You asked for keeping secrets at work, Dark wizards keeping secrets, a mysterious case with Dark magic. I hope it doesn't have to be too dark! And I did manage to squish Harry's Muggle lock-picking in. And I never once used the name "Gin." I'm sorry it's late and I appreciate r_becca's patience and gentle pushing on me to get this done.
When Harry walked into the interrogation room, he stopped dead in his tracks, then turned around and walked back out.
"I'm not talking to that bitch," he said to his supervisor.
"She says she'll only talk to you and we need to put some pressure on her to find out where her brother is. It's your job. Now get in there and do it."
"She probably killed him and ate his liver. And I don't really care-"
"Look, Potter. I don't really care about your personal feelings, either. Get your ass in there and interrogate her. But I'll tell you what, since I'm a marshmallow, I'll look away if you want to use a few unorthodox methods in questioning her."
Somewhat cheered by the thought he might be able to get away with torturing her a bit, Harry walked back into the interrogation room and faced Alecto Carrow. She'd been on the run for years now after somehow managing to escape her trial at the Ministry after the Battle of Hogwarts, and she looked the worse for it. Not that she'd ever been even slightly civilized looking. To Harry, she had always looked like some sort of mutant swamp creature and she and her brother were a matched pair of horrors.
"Afraid, Potty?" Her voice was high and wheezy and sounded like she was gasping for air. Harry categorized that thought as possibly useful for later, when the torturing began.
"Since I'm the one with the wand in the room, I hardly think I'm afraid of you."
"It's been years, hasn't it, Potty? Oh, those were good times back then. Was the last time I saw you when Dumbledore died? Hmm. Perhaps. But I know you were there when that filthy werewolf and his freak-" Her mouth kept moving, but no words came out.
Harry vowed to keep his wand closer at hand. He refused to hear any of her reminiscing about those she had seen killed or helped kill back at Hogwarts. He wondered if the marshmallow outside would complain if he just killed her. No, supposedly they were looking for the brother. Not that she would give anything away, he was sure. "I know very well who you hurt and who you killed. If you mention any of my friends' names again, you will regret it."
Her defiant gaze met his and she made a rude hand gesture. He took advantage of her silence and cast a low Cruciatus on her. She screamed, silently, and flopped around in the magical restraints that held her in her chair. Harry raised an eyebrow and pointed his wand at her again. She shook her head. He removed the silencing charm.
"Grown up a bit, I see. How's your pretty wife? We didn't silence her, of course, when we used that spell on her. And that was good, 'cause she sure talked a lot when she was done with the screaming. Ask her who she betr-" Harry slammed the silencing spell on her again and walked out of the room.
"Put her back in holding. I've got to do some research to find out what I can use for pressure. She's never going to tell me anything just to play nice." He went back up to his office and sat down at his desk, staring for a long time out the magical window. He picked up the Auror standard-issue guide to dark wizards on the run and the supplement on it Hermione had given him and Ron when they were accepted into the program. She had interviewed a lot of the students that had been there that year and at the battle and a lot of the grown-ups who had "worked" with them under Thicknesse, to discover all she could about them as well as make a historical record of the wrongs the followers of Voldemort did before people forgot or stopped talking about them.
He flipped to the Carrow section. There was quite a lot of information on them as far as atrocities they committed that year at Hogwarts. Harry read over it quickly, familiarizing himself with it again. Not that he ever really forgot it. How could he? He flipped over to Ginny's interview, took a deep breath, and read it quickly. It was long and detailed and it was more horrible than he had imagined. He didn't even ask permission before he Apparated home.
Ginny was singing softly in the hallway when Harry apparated into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. He smiled tightly. She never sang when she thought anyone could hear her but he loved to listen, even if she was off key. "I'm home, Ginny."
"Harry! What are you doing here?" She was carrying a vase of flowers and she put them down on the table, looked at them critically, moved them slightly then turned and hugged him. "What a nice surprise this is." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Don't suppose you're home early for a bit of a tussle upstairs?"
Harry shook his head and tried to relax. She was here, she was fine, and she did not need him to bring back all those bad memories of her sixth year at school. "No, unfortunately. I just . . . I needed to see you for a minute."
"Is something wrong?"
"Not really. Nothing important." When he had come here, he had thoughts of asking her again about what had happened that year, just so he could be better prepared when he faced his prisoner, so that she couldn't say anything that would surprise him or shock him. But now that he was looking into Ginny's smiling face, he couldn't stand to bring up the subject. They'd both spent their fair share of time crying the year or so after . . . the Battle. They both had their own sets of nightmares. They both had their own regrets. They both had their own secrets. He wrapped his arms around her. "I was just thinking about you and wanted to see you."
Ginny leaned back in his arms, looking up into his face. "You look upset about something."
"It's better now."
"What are you not telling me, Harry?"
"I . . . It's really nothing. I was kind of stupid to come home, I guess."
Ginny wrapped her arms tighter around him. "Well, it's never stupid to come home. And I'm glad that whatever you needed, you found. Now get back to work before you get canned." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. "You can always talk to me. I'm tougher than I look."
"Believe me, I have no doubt about that." Back at work, he spent the rest of the afternoon skimming through the students' descriptions of Amycus and his tortures as well as Alecto's. He even read through the Slytherin students who had oftentimes been their assistants. He had never read those interviews through before because he didn't care about them before now. By quitting time, he was physically sick and didn't think he'd be able to hide it from Ginny, especially when he turned down dinner.
Ginny fussed over him when he claimed nausea, just like he knew she would. She put him right to bed with some soup and some kind of nasty potion that she claimed would help although he didn't know how. He laid in bed for a long time in the dark pretending to sleep, thinking about what had happened to Ginny that year and reliving, despite his deep desire to avoid it, what he and Hermione and Ron had gone through at the same time. He also thought about things he had never told Ginny and things she had never told him.
After a couple of hours, the sliver of light under the door was extinguished and the door opened quietly. “I know you’re not asleep, Harry.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Can I come to bed?”
“Of course.”
“Did you want to talk?”
“I don’t know for sure. I kind of do, but I kind of don’t.”
Ginny chuckled. “That’s the Harry I know and love. Your sickness has not affected your brain at all. So what do you kind of want to talk about?”
Harry swallowed. He hated to even bring it up, really. He knew this would be unpleasant. “Uh, I’ve got Alecto Carrow in a holding room at work and I have to talk to her tomorrow. I started today but I had to get rid of her because she started talking about you.”
There was dead silence in the room for a few minutes and then Harry felt her weight depress the side of the bed. “Oh. What did she say?” Her voice was slightly tremulous but he heard that thread of steel that always ran through her voice when anybody talked about that horrible year, even casually.
"It wasn't her words so much. It was . . . well, she said that when they . . . crucio'd you, they liked listening to you scream."
"Yeah, they did. I'm sorry if that upsets you, Harry, but considering that I was sort of your girlfriend and Dad's daughter, you can't be surprised." She stood up again and Harry could hear her walking the floor. He knew if he could see her, she'd be wringing her hands in that way she only did when she was really upset. Damn, he was a cad.
"I'm sorry, Ginny. I didn't want to mention it, you know?"
"So, why did you? What was the point of this little discussion?"
"She said you talked afterword and then she used the word 'betrayed,' love. They taught us in training that suspects will guide us the way they expect interrogation to go. It's subconscious and they don't even know they're doing it. She deep down expects she'll betray her brother. Maybe she even wants to. I can't imagine that she's very happy she got caught and is facing life in Azkaban while he's drifting around scot-free."
"So you think I betrayed someone? You believe that crazy woman? She's insane, Harry. Totally insane! I don't think any great Auror rules of interrogation apply when you're dealing with a mad person!"
Her voice was rising in pitch and something in Harry's brain pitched in with a comment. You've hit a sore spot, my boy. If she were a suspect he was questioning, he would know he was onto something and he would press forward relentlessly until she spilled her guts. However, this was his wife and he tamped down his inner Auror. "I don't believe her, Ginny. There's nothing to believe or disbelieve. I just need to know what happened so when she starts blabbering, I can turn the tables on her."
"Well, I have nothing to say about that. Nothing!" She left him lying there in the dark and Harry heard her crying for a long time. He wanted to go to her, but he wasn't sure whether he would be welcome and couldn't bear the thought of her turning him away.
The next morning, he stood and watched her for a few minutes. She looked so vulnerable and young. She wasn't old by any means, but after she had been crying like this, he was always pulled back to that summer after the Battle and she had looked so very young that summer, when she wasn't looking old beyond her years. He grabbed a biscuit for breakfast and left without waking her, hoping that he could stay awake 'cause he didn't think he had slept more than five minutes the whole night.
When he got to work, he delayed and dithered and found interesting things to do that did not involve the insane woman in the holding cells. He dreaded hearing what she had to say. Finally, he knew he could delay no longer. He took a deep breath and walked toward the interrogation rooms. "Bring the Carrow woman up. I'm ready to talk to her."
She arrived chained, spelled, and silenced and the Auror in charge of prisoner control redid the spells and bound her to the chair. "Good luck with her. My brother was in Hogwarts that year . . . I'd kill her for what she did to him if I thought I could get away with it."
"Yeah. It's crossed my mind. And I wasn't even there." He walked into the room. She glared at him. "I'm here to find out where Amycus is, no more, no less." He flicked his wand, lifting the silencing spell.
"So, did you ask your pretty little wife about the fun she and I had together? I'm just wondering if she spilled all her little secrets."
"I'm not talking to you about Ginny or anyone else. I'm talking to you about Amycus. The ministry is prepared to offer you some incentives to talk, both for you and for him. We can take execution off the table, for both of you. You know we'll find him soon, Alecto. It'd be better to tell me now. Make it easier on both of you."
"Is that what your little red-head thought when she betrayed her friend? It's better now than later? They'll find her anyway?"
"I'm talking to you about Amycus, Alecto. Amycus. Not Ginny. Not any fictional friend . . . ."
"Fictional?" She cackled. "Fictional. You think I'm lying. She told you I'm lying. But she's lying to you, Potty. Lying to her beloved Harry." She cackled again.
Harry flicked his wand and silenced her while she laughed to herself. He could see her repeating the word "Fictional" over and over again. After a few deep breaths, he released the spell again.
"I'll tell you what, Potty. You come in here with a name - the name of the girl she betrayed and some details. And I'll tell you where Amycus is. Now have them take me back to that sweet holding cell you've been keeping me in, 'cause I'm not saying another word until your wifey comes clean. Maybe the world isn't quite as black and white as you Aurors like to think it is."
Harry scrubbed his hands over his face. It would be easier to get Ginny to talk than it would be to torture Amycus' location out of this madwoman. If she had anything to talk about, of course. He half-hoped she didn't. He left the interrogation room and Apparated home.
Ginny didn't look so happy to see him, this time. There was no question of heading upstairs for some afternoon lovemaking. She had dark circles under her eyes and she looked at least a decade older than she had yesterday. There was no singing. "You're back."
"Yeah."
"You left this morning without saying anything."
"I didn't want to wake you. I knew you hadn't slept well."
Her finger traced under his eyes. "You didn't either."
He took her hand. "I love you, Ginny. You know that, right?"
She nodded.
"Nothing you tell me is going to change that. Nothing."
"I wanted to be brave, Harry. As brave as you were. But I couldn't. . . . I . . . was weak."
"You are anything but weak, love. Anything. You put up with the torture for months. I read your interview with Hermione yesterday."
"You've read it before, certainly?"
"Nope. Couldn't bring myself to."
"But . . . I told you, I mean, I told everyone what had happened."
"I know." He wrapped his arms around her. "But I was weak, Ginny, and somehow seeing it in black and white made it worse, as I suspected it would. And I would admire you even more, now, if it were possible."
"You shouldn't, Harry. You shouldn't." She clutched his shirt-front. "I . . . I've never told anybody. I . . couldn't bear for someone to know."
"Nobody has to know but me."
"Will you tell her? She'll have to know, won't she?"
"The crazy woman. Yeah. She insists that she won't say anything until I tell her who you . . . talked about. But then she's off to Azkaban and I don't think anyone's going to take anything she says seriously after that."
"No. But I need to . . . I need to confess, Harry. I need to tell her, at least. Luna needs to know." She sobbed brokenly, and her knees shook. "Can we sit down?"
Once they were sitting safely on the couch, Harry patted her shoulder with one hand, holding her snuggly with the other. "You said something about Luna?"
"Uh-huh." Ginny sobbed again for a few minutes, then composed herself and wiped her eyes on the Kleenex Harry produced from his pocket. "It was right before Christmas. Luna . . . Luna had sneaked onto the train. She was going to go home and probably not come back. Once you're on the train . . . you know, generally, you can hide easily enough. And she knew . . . . She said she'd hide in the luggage compartment if she needed to. But I . . . I . . . I told them that she was on the train and they went on . . . and took her." She buried her head in Harry's chest. "I couldn't believe it. The words just came out. I wanted to take them back, but I couldn't. They told me they'd killed her."
"Oh, my God, Ginny." Harry wrapped his arms around her. "It's time to forgive yourself, now. Without Luna there . . . Maybe it was for the best." He thought back to the insanity that was the dungeon under the Malfoy's house and the time afterwards at Shell Cottage. Luna and Dean and Mr. Ollivander. He hated to think about those days, even now, so many years later. But Luna had been useful there. And she had come out okay on the other end. Maybe a little more haunted, a bit more jaded. No more talk of everything coming back to her in the end. Maybe she knew now that innocence, well. It never came back once it was gone. He felt the prickle of un-shed tears in the back of his own throat and kissed Ginny's hair, inhaling the sweet smell of her shampoo.
"Don't say that, Harry, trying to make me feel better. I betrayed her. And I've lied to her, all these years. She even asked me once, if I knew how they found out she was on the train, and I lied. I told her I didn't know." He gave up trying to hold back the tears and they cried together for a while, for the loss of all their innocence, and the loss of everything that will never come back.
*!*!*!*!
Three days later, Harry and his team of Aurors stood in front of a grungy Muggle cottage. Harry approached the side door, and turned the handle tentatively, half expecting a bolt of magic to come out of the lock. But none did. He squatted down and pulled the lock-picking set out of his pocket, smiling briefly. "Thanks, Fred. You and George did good, buddy." He slipped the first tool in, and a few seconds later, heard the click of the tumblers. He opened the door and his team moved in.
The extraction was almost surgically clean and Amycus Carrow, who looked like nothing more than a sick old man, was arrested with hardly any fuss at all. The Muggles nearby didn't even come out of their home to see what was going on with a bunch of men dressed in black standing in a semi-circle around the little run-down place.
Harry suspected that Amycus had wanted to be caught at that point. It made him wonder what sort of sick relationship the brother and sister had, that he completely gave up after she was taken away from the shop where she had been trying to find Muggle medicine for him. Maybe they had their own secrets. As he sent them off to Azkaban, he set it up so they wouldn't be anywhere near each other. Maybe that was punishment enough. And he didn't feel bad about it, either. For Ginny and Neville and Luna, for all the little first years who lost their innocence two weeks after starting Hogwarts, for Dean. For Snape. They deserved everything they got.
When he got home that night, Luna and Ginny were sitting on his couch, both sobbing. He fixed them some tea. Secrets had been shared and somehow, somehow, things were better.