Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling does, and a whole bunch'a other people own bits and pieces of it
A/N: Well, this piece was inspired by two friends of mine who happen to be HUGE Slythie fans, Nightshade Darkholme and Rachel Hunt. They made me think, and I thought, and then I watched the first movie and wrote this near the end in one go. I also saw the second one this weekend (YAY!!). So. If you want a fluffy story, leave right now.
And please, consider.
Everybody Says
Kitty Henderson looked like a harmless young woman. Mud-brown hair was cut off at her earlobes, and watery brown eyes looked fruitlessly up at her captors. Her snapped wand was shoved neatly in the pocket of the Auror who'd broken it. "No Death Eater," he'd sneered as he shoved her onto the ground. "deserves an Ollivanders wand."
The assistant to the substitute Minister of Magic, a hassled-looked brown haired woman a few years older than Kitty, trotted along beside the Auror and the two officers who were escorting her to the interrogation chamber.
"That's good, Dean, put her in this one. The rest of her lot's down the hall, with Oliver, Seamus and Lavender," the assistant gestured. The Auror she'd indicated shoved Kitty rudely into the whitewashed room. When she fell and hit her head on the floor, the two officers pulled her roughly up and pushed her into the chair in front of the table.
"What about Colin?"
"Still on assignment down in Edinborough."
The Auror closed the door, locking it. "Are Cho and Justin still acting as Ambassadors in Luxemburg?"
"Yes. Now, you are?" the woman turned tiredly to Kitty.
The Death Eater cocked a lifeless head at the woman. "You're Hermione Granger, aren't you?"
Hermione looked startled. "Do - do I know you?"
"Everybody knew about Hermione Granger," Kitty told her. "And Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. You three made the Dragonlord so mad . . ."
"You went to Hogwarts, then?" Hermione inquired.
"Graduated three years ago. Ginny Weasley was in the year ahead of me. Slytherin house."
Hermione was about to go on when Dean jumped in. "Your name?" he asked coldly.
"Kitty Henderson."
One of the officers sputtered. "Henderson? As in Thelma Henderson?"
"My older sister," Kitty looked up at the man with faraway eyes. "Not that she'd admit it."
"Okay, well then, Henderson, we've gotten most of the story from your cohorts. I believe you heard it on the way here?"
"Yes," Kitty answered, no emotion in her voice.
"Anything you wish to change, or add?"
"No."
Hermione looked a bit started at that. Almost every Death Eater they'd brought in had been profuse in claiming their ignorance of the evils that were going on, pointing fingers where they would. The new, young staff at the Ministry was fairly certain they'd been able to figure out what had been going on by what their prisoners did and did not say, or the conflicting loyalties, and who pointed their finger at whom.
Two years ago, when the Dark Lord had been alive, when she'd still be in the Dragonlord's favor, she might have. Now she was just - resigned.
"Ah - alright, then. You're being sentenced to fifty-five years in Azkaban for the crimes of murder, use of the Killing Curse and the Crutacious Curse, manslaughter, assault and battery both physical and magical, kidnapping, malicious use of the Dark Arts, conspiring against the government and," Hermione raised an eyebrow at her list. "malicious mischief."
Kitty laughed a hollow, ironic laugh. "That sounds about right."
The officers exchanged a worried glance. How insane could this girl be? Didn't she know what a sentence in Azkaban was?
Dean caught the glances and looked at Hermione. They knew. Hermione hadn't gotten to be assistant to and soon-to-be Minister of Magic by sitting in the back and directing people. They'd both seen this before, in Death Eaters too far gone to care.
"Right then. Now, we only have one question left: Why did you become a Death Eater in the first place?"
This question usually startled their prisoners. The last thing they expected from the 'winners' of the War was idle chitchat. They were almost always so surprised they answered truthfully before thinking about it long enough to lie.
"That one's easy. D'you remember the Sorting Ceremony? How they forced the frightened first-years up in front of the whole school so they could find out which house they were supposed to be in?"
"Of course," Hermione said, a little distracted. "Does this have a point?"
"It does, it does, I promise," Kitty vowed in a singsong voice that made her guards very nervous. "My older sister had been coming home every summer and telling wild tales about turning things into frogs and a rather nasty Potions Master. All about the Slytherin/Gryffindor war, about the rough Quidditch matches they played against each other, about how the Famous Harry Potter won for Gryffindor most of the time. All the nasty little rumors about her rival house. Thelma's a Gryffindor, and don't forget that, 'cause it's important." the childlike Death Eater's watery brown eyes were mostly blank, as if she had somehow gone back to her first year and was narrating her own story.
"My Dad, now, he was a Hufflepuff, but Mum was a Gryffindor. We've Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws all over the family tree; Thelma, Jemima and Tom are the only Gryffindors. So naturally, Thelma was sitting in her seat at the Gryffindor table, all done up in scarlet and gold, waiting for me to join her. Or one of her friends at the Ravenclaw table, for Mum was always saying I was terribly clever," a small smile at that before she slid back into the telling, face nearly blank. "But when they put the Sorting Hat on my head, it talked to me. It told me I was very, very clever, and there was only one place that all my cleverness would be appreciated. Then it yelled Slytherin.
"Well, of course I was unsure! I waiting a moment, hoping the Hat would say oops, wrong person, but it didn't, and I took it off and I sat next to a blond boy I recognized as a Malfoy. Thelma was looking at me weird, I didn't really understand. Y'see, I was so naieve that I actually thought that my being her sister," Kitty's voice bordered on the hollow laugh. "was more important than the house I was Sorted into! How innocent could I have been?" she asked herself wonderingly. "Innocence lost . . . Lost while still at Hogwarts. Never, never seen again, innocence, a slippery thing to grasp at the best of times. I never really understood innocence, not after what happened next - oh, I should have expected it, should have known should have seen should have been ready!"
Dean looked about ready to strangle the former Slytherin. Hermione, noticing this, cleared her throat. Dean restrained himself as Kitty kept talking.
"I made friends in Slytherin at the feast, and I talked to the Dragonlord himself, without anything honorary at all - well, he was Draco then, I suppose. But I didn't talk to Thelma. She was across the room, of course, and then we all got lead away by the Prefect, and I never did see the Gryffindors very often, especially those in other years. We never talked much, we said hello and all, and I thought maybe we'd just fallen into the habit, because we still weren't talking much when summer rolled around. And my parents gave me sidelong glances when they thought I wasn't looking, but I'd mentioned how Thelma was acting to Draco, who told me to watch. So I did, I did, and I'll never forget what I saw.
"It took me till third year to figure it out. Why my parents were interrogating me in letters, why my sister always had to confirm or deny what I told them. Why Thelma stopped speaking to me altogether. See, I still mostly thought we were one big happy family. I was blind, and a fool, and I should have seen it coming ought to have known! It was right there, hiding in the very best place - plain sight!"
"This is rather lengthy, Henderson," Dean growled, fed up. "Does this point come before we catch you or not?"
"Long, long before, Gryffindor, long before. I told you I lost my innocence at Hogwarts, and I did, and I became what they said I would. Thelma was helping Professor Snape in Potions, and I smiled at her, and she glared back. And when her friends came to meet her, they told her how brave she was to have stayed for the Slytherin class. And I heard them and came up and asked her what was wrong, why hadn't I talked to her lately?
" 'You're a stinking Slytherin' she spat at me. 'You're not worth talking to! None of you lot are! I hope you're happy in your dungeon, Katherine. You've ruined the family, we can't trust you. You're a Slytherin!'
"And I was and I am and I vowed not to stand down to her humiliation. I was clever and ambitious and I made friends with the Dragonlord while I could and he got me into the top without having to stain myself at the bottom. Of course, I ended up on the bottom eventually, and got caught, and find myself here. I knew I'd be here, one day, because I was still clever for a time . . ." Kitty's frightening blank eyes returned to a resigned and ironic present.
"What was the question? Oh, yes. Why did I become a Death Eater?" Kitty laughed her hollow laugh and looked Hermione straight in the eye. "Because that's what everybody told me I was supposed to do."