#and someones going to have to answer for them

Form 84 Section B Subsection C.I.iii: Request visit for high security prisoner
Prisoner: R080421
Visitor: Head of Department of Law Enforcement, Portia Montgomery
Purpose of Visit: Personal
Date: 2/08/2014
Approved by: Auror Smith, Auror Unit 9, Azkaban
Personnel on duty: Alexander Brown
Time-In: 21:00 hrs
Time-Out:22:00 hrs

—————————————————————–

“You don’t have to go through with it.”

“Make idle threats?” he raises his eyebrows, “Is that how you run the DMLE?”

She twists the edge of her robes in her fingers, “It’s not right.”

“And me being here is.”

“Comparatively, yes. Not enough to warrant you throwing the whole bloody wizarding world into chaos.”

He shrugs, “Its for justice. And truth.”

“So you’ll just stand back here, safe and sound, with your arms crossed, laughing as we try to run around cleaning up the mess you’ve started?”

“Oh well sorry, I’ll just be sitting here, enjoying myself in prison.”

“Merlin Gus, you’re so selfish.”

“I like that -”

“Shut up. Don’t tell me about how you’ve been selfless all your life, laying yourself down for everyone to walk all over you because everyone bloody well knows that it wasn’t selflessness or higher moral duty, but plain fucking guilt.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I’m your sister, I think I know enough. I know enough to know that you’re doing this because you’ve spent ten years feeling sorry for yourself and like a child, you want to get your own back.”

“Well by all means, do go ahead and tell me why I’m doing this because obviously, I don’t know.”

She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, “Why?”

“I told you. Justice and truth, you can believe me or you can not believe me,  I don’t bloody care.”

“You’re so selfish.”

“You’re like a broken record. If you don’t have anything interesting to say you can leave - ”

“It’s always been about your guilt. Everything. Don’t upset Gus, he’s been through so much. Don’t trouble him Portia. Just do as he says Portia. He just needs time Portia. No Portia you can’t have any attention, I have to help poor Gus poor, poor Gus been through so much you couldn’t possibly understand Portia, don’t trouble the poor boy.”

“I fail to see what this has to do with me, this is all mother's doing.”

She flicks him between the eyes, “She wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t been moping around the place the whole time, looking as though you carried the weight of the world upon your shoulders.”

“You’ve never been through what I’ve been through.”

“And that must be so terrible for you. All that guilt for all those years, if you want to make it right, you’re going about it all wrong and father wouldn’t have approved.”

“He was dead by the time you were born and he would have done the same thing.”

“Then he was a fool and you ought to stop feeling guilty about something you couldn’t possibly be held guilty for.”

You weren’t there, you never saw what I saw.

“Its too late,” he shrugs, instead.

She looks as though she’d like to hit him, moves her hands, still them and they clench into fists.

“You’re wrong if you think any of this is going to change anything,” she says evenly, “People will read this, public inquiries will be made, a few people will be fired and everything will go back to normal in a few weeks. A few discreet scholarly minds will come out in public and tell everyone that Caius Rookwood was a madman and that his theories were completely outlandish, people will take their word for it - because who the fuck knows who Caius Rookwood is except that he was the father of a Death Eater, as though that lends him credibility? And in a few weeks, maybe a few months, all of this would have been forgotten, but you, you'll be in big trouble when this blows over because the Ministry won’t forget that you’re the one who started it all. And by that time, Auror Potter would have finished his investigations into father’s murder and you're going to be the one who’s going to have to answer some very difficult questions. And no one is going to be nice to you this time round.”

“I’ll answer them,” he says carelessly, “I’m a big, bad Death Eater aren’t I?”

She studies her older brother, hardened and embittered by his time in prison and wishes she could shake some sense into him, or at least rouse him from this miasma of self-pity he seems to have been sucked into. Then again, she wonders how much she knew him in the first place and whether he’s always been this self-pitying, simply not out loud where she could hear him. Whether ten years all alone in this tomb - it is a tomb - with nothing but the North Sea and his memories to keep him company have finally made him believe all the poisonous stories he’s told himself over the years.

“Well good luck explaining what you were doing on the scene of the crime,” she drawls.

He stiffens, slightly and her eyes shine in triumph, knowing that she has finally made it through to him.

“I still can’t get used to it,” he says, lightly, swiftly changing the subject. Forced, but not enough for her to catch it.

“What?" 

"Portia Montgomery,” he rolls the syllables exaggeratedly.

“Charles isn’t his brother.”

“His son was a bully too. Had to deal with him at good old Hogwarts.”

“Charles isn’t like them, all right? Leave off.”

“I didn’t have anyone to tell them off till -”

“Till your knight in shining armour came along, Merlin's balls Gus, it happened ages ago, it doesn’t matter now.”

“But it matters, Portia,” he says softly, “All of it." 

She rolls her eyes, "get your story straight before they haul you up for questioning,” she says unsympathetically and then leaves, not marking the way his eyes cloud over and his knuckles turn white, so white, as he grips the edge of his table - or the fact that he draws blood when he bites his lip.

Or the way he starts to sob helplessly when he is certain there is no one who can overhear him in the corridor outside.