Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling, not me.
Courting chaos, chapter two: Pursuing the unattainable.
"To pursue the unattainable is insanity, yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so." – Marcus Aurelius
Waking up from attempted oblivion was never sweet. She felt stretched too thin, like she didn't belong in her own body. Sometimes she actually thought that the kind of stupor you could get from alcohol was to be preferred to the feeling you got when you woke up from using a dreamless sleep potion.
After getting dressed and going downstairs in the gloom, she realized her mistake of going to bed early. No one was awake yet, and even the different shifts of guarding Order members wouldn't change for at least one more hour. Not that she cared for company after yesterday's scene at the meeting, but the Black house was at its most depressing early in the morning. Dead and dark. No amount of tea with toast could make it better, only the presence of other people.
In the end she settled for coffee and yesterday's paper. Every day that came without a Death Eater attack to report, they desperately tried to be normal. Sports, international news, ministry decrees, weddings, deaths. Ah, well, the deaths had risen, but they were conveniently in the back of the paper and could be safely ignored while looking for the comics. Being by herself without anyone to comment on her behavior she took the time to read every death rune. These were among the people she didn't save, couldn't save or sometimes simply chose not to save. Her hubris hadn't reached quite so far that she imagined that every death in there was because of her, but even one was too many.
She wanted to kill him sometimes, for telling her about his plans, for choosing her to deal with it all. Reason told her that it wouldn't do any good. He would be replaced by someone who wouldn't give her information. Most of the things he did, he did for Voldemort, some things he did for himself and some things he chose simply not to do. Malfoy seemed to be controlled by his whims and, however a half-assed ally he was, that was a scary thought.
When Remus arrived an hour later she was reading about the problems the French had with a new influenza and nodded civilly at him when he took a seat across the table. She could see that he wanted to speak to her, most likely about yesterday, so she made her excuses, gave him the paper and left for the library once again. She was supposed to check over all the wards today, here at the house and their different safe houses. Since no one knew where all the houses were she would have to hunt down eight different people and Side-Along Apparate blindly with them. She could barely control her joy at that thought. Later, she had a date with the devil.
Malfoy never made her wait for long. Being a double-crossing spy had made him more punctual than she could remember him being in school. She actually had a small compartment in her head marked Malfoy. Subtitled, a disaster waiting to happen. In it she put everything she learned from him or about him. She figured the disaster waiting to happen was pure kindness on her part. Malfoy made disaster happen everywhere, all the time. Still, knowledge is power and she needed every scrap of it. The only problem was that all her knowledge relied on him being sane and she had started to doubt that early on in this twisted little agreement they had. He didn't drool and she hadn't been able to reveal any red glints in his eyes, but he was not playing on the sane side of the field. He seemed to operate on two planes at the same time, and one of them existed only in his own head.
She wondered what kind of dilemma he would present her with today. Since they were meeting in a park, she couldn't even begin to guess. When he first had approached her with information regarding the Death Eaters and their activities he would simply leave it all in a package for her. When she stopped trying to hex him and realized he was actually giving her real, very strategically important information, he started insulting her. None-too-subtle barbs about her blood, her upbringing and her looks. She guessed the insults were more habit for him than anything else, though it seemed to amuse him to watch her struggle not to curse him. The meetings were always held at different times in very different places. Always very Muggle places. After the first time she ventured a "thank you" for the information, he arrived with two packages to the next meeting. Both held information about attacks, corruption in the ministry or people who were looking for information about the Order. Malfoy told her she could only pick one. For the one she chose he would supply the password that would bypass the charm he had put on it. For the other, he wouldn't.
She ranted, she raved, and she threatened him. Didn't he realize that it was people's lives he was playing games with? Oh, he understood perfectly and still did it with a smile. He probably couldn't give her too much information without giving himself away, but suddenly she had to make the choices and accept the responsibility of those choices. After making her choice he muttered something to the package and then gave her the other as well. Told her that there was nothing too complicated on it and that she could try revealing what was in it.
She remembered coming back to the headquarters, throwing the information at Harry and starting to unravel the charm on the rest of the papers. No eating, no sleeping until it was finished. It still took her the best part of two days and by then it was too late.
All the information in the package was entirely correct.
The next time they met it was the same, two packages and one choice. This time she didn't hang around, trying to contain her anger. Instead she picked one bundle of information, got it unlocked and left. Sometimes he would give her both the packages of information and she had never been able to unlock the charms in time so far. Then he started telling her the information inside, no details but enough to make it possible for her to judge which set of details she needed the most. If she was lucky she could deduce some things from his descriptions but somehow it all seemed to end in chaos anyhow. Then, even later, after she had learned to live with the fact that she was the one to decide the fate of others, he changed the rules again. Suddenly she received only the one package. It had made her angry and bewildered. A little lost. What did he want now? They were back to square one and she had no clue to as why. That strange state of confusion and relief lasted until she started seeing the patterns after each meeting. She happened to go past the small corner shop where they last had met. It was nothing but a burnt-out shell. Just a couple of years ago she could have passed it off as a coincidence; it wasn't the safest area of the city, after all. But suspicion colored by a dash of paranoia had her start going through the Muggle newspapers after more clues. Clues she found in abundance. Wherever they had met something had happened afterwards. It could be as easy as a small fire, an outburst of surprising violence or destruction of property. As soon as she knew what to look for, it escalated. Wasn't that just his way, why do something if the other part won't acknowledge it? She had tried rescheduling, putting meetings in different places but then he just didn't show up and she had to see even more attacks on her people, her friends, that she didn't have a chance to stop. So she started weighing lives and it always seemed to be more important for her to guard those she knew and loved.
So now she sat here in the park, thinking that she wouldn't regret any dead ducks or even the odd old lady or two.
He didn't enjoy their meetings as such, though it filled him with a sense of calm and satisfaction to see her upset. He did his very best to make her feel upset, otherwise he would have been disappointed.
When she left he could sense that she wouldn't be so sad about something happening to the park. He couldn't imagine anyone being sad about something happening to the park, actually. It was disgusting. He would leave the park exactly as he found it since doing anything, especially burning it to the ground, would only have been an improvement. No, today he would concentrate on the small church just a stone's throw away from the park. Muggle religion wasn't high on the list of things he disliked, but it was a nice building. Someone would be sad if anything happened to it. He decided that anyone inside needed to be carefully removed before the fire, possibly in a more painful way than breathing too much smoke or burning up would be. Luckily he had access to many wonderful and multicolored potions for situations just like this.
He thought for a while about the people who would dislike it and about the people who would be most likely to cheer him on. He didn't care for any of them.
Murder and mayhem it was, then.
