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Interview with Victim No. 4
September 30th, 2008
Those present: Ms. Hermione Granger, Office of Magical Law, interviewer
Ms. Granger: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Are you comfortable? Here, have a cup of tea.
Victim No. 4: I'm comfortable, thank you.
Ms. Granger: Milk and sugar?
Victim No. 4: Yes, please.
Ms. Granger: All right, if you're ready, the quill right there will record our conversation. As soon as it enters the record, only you and I will be able to read the details of who you are.
Victim No. 4: I'm ready.
Ms. Granger: Okay, please tell me your full name and age.
Victim No. 4: Astoria Cassiopeia Greengrass, twenty-five.
Ms. Granger: All right, thank you. And do you know what date you were brought to the Community?
Victim No. 4: It was December 30th, 2004. I was on my way home from dinner at the Leaky Cauldron. They were somewhere between where I Apparate onto my street and my door. The details get a little hazy, you know.
Ms. Granger: And you lived in a muggle neighborhood, is that correct?
Victim No. 4: Yes, on the north end of town.
Ms. Granger: Right, thank you. And were you kept on your own at first?
Victim No. 4: Yes. The day count might be a little off, but I believe that it was around ten days. That's what I recorded, anyway.
Ms. Granger: I see. And who did you have contact with first?
Victim No. 4: Gerard. Do you know that we never learned his last name? What is it?
Ms. Granger: Oh, um, Bisset. Gerard Bisset.
Victim No. 4: Hmm. So strange, that we never knew. We wondered, but… Anyway, Gerard was very chatty. Kind, even. He actually reminded me a good bit of Professor Slughorn. Do you remember him?
Ms. Granger: Of course.
Victim No. 4: He was just a, um, generally happy person. He was very fatherly, like we were his spoiled children that he loved to dote on or something.
Ms. Granger: Were you afraid of him?
Victim No. 4: Not at all. I liked him instinctively, although I mistrusted the feeling simply because of where we were.
Ms. Granger: What did he say to you?
Victim No. 4: He apologized for my living conditions and said he didn't know about it or he would have come sooner. Something about a mix-up. He seemed genuinely distressed about it. And then he took me to this really big bathroom and told me he'd wait outside the door while I changed.
Ms. Granger: Were there any others? Any guards?
Victim No. 4: No, just him.
Ms. Granger: Did he Imperio you, or—
Victim No. 4: No, nothing. He took my arm and sort of guided me like I was sick and needed a doctor. I spent a while trying to find a way out in the bathroom, but of course there wasn't anything. So I showered and changed, and he came in to get me, and then he took me to the new room.
Ms. Granger: Was the room empty?
Victim No. 4: It was sparse, but it felt like a palace compared to the dirt floor. No one else was in there.
Ms. Granger: How was it furnished?
Victim No. 4: I'll work my way around the room, starting on the right, all right?
Ms. Granger: All right.
Victim No. 4: When I walked through the door, there was a small table and two chairs on my right along the wall—the door was closer to this wall, you see. And then past that was a dresser—a tall one—and past that was a wall that came out maybe three feet. That hid the bathroom.
Ms. Granger: And past that?
Victim No. 4: There was the back wall with a nightstand, the bed, and another nightstand.
Ms. Granger: What about the third wall? The one on your left?
Victim No. 4: Nothing was on it. No furniture, and nothing on the wall.
Ms. Granger: And the wall the door was on?
Victim No. 4: There was a small bookcase with four shelves almost touching the wall to the left. And that was everything. It was really a very small room, thinking about it now.
Day 19
Draco's dreams didn't stop. Once they appeared, they seemed eager to stay and so littered his every sleeping moment so that he woke up frustrated two days in a row. Most irritating was his knowledge that, of all the things he had learned about Astoria, her faithful adoration of dear "Eric" wasn't going anywhere.
Astoria certainly noticed his irritation, and she even apologized for laughing at him in her overly-sincere way. He waved her off.
And more than ever he found himself distracted as they invented and played Floor Quidditch—with plates acting as goals and wads of paper from books on blood purity acting as a quaffle—and instead of making sure that the paper ball Astoria was forming into a quaffle was a perfect sphere, he found that he was looking at a lower neckline than he thought her robes had had before.
She noticed, and in her Astoria way, said, "Oh yeah, they've been altering my robes. Lower necklines, tighter bodices, that kind of thing. It's really annoying. Have they been changing yours?"
He sighed inwardly. "No."
They spent all morning playing their new game and perfecting its rules. Draco did his best to focus more on the game, and Astoria didn't mention it again.
It's not like he didn't consider simply asking her to stay in the bed with him one night. But unlike other girls, there was something else tied up with Astoria that made it more complicated. It should have been simple. They were locked in a room without another soul, so it would make sense. But then she had to be head over heels for some idiot still in England, and she had to go and make whatever was between them feel more important.
Maybe he just didn't know what it was like to have friends anymore.
It perhaps would have been worth the gamble—worth whatever complicated thing between them becoming more complicated and messy—if he wasn't sure of what she would say. He remembered how she had looked—awkwardness mixed with pity—when he'd told her that Eric would wait for her.
She would say no with all the fluttering and embarrassment and pity in the world. And Draco didn't fancy the humiliation that would bring, especially since Astoria had a knack for reaching into some of his deeper and more vulnerable thoughts anyway.
Draco was pulled out of these gloomy thoughts by the sound of footsteps in the hall outside their door. Astoria had been about to throw the quaffle and stopped mid-swing, and both of them scrambled away from the door.
It was Jasper, which both of them found unsettling. In a swift motion, he and a second guard with a broad chest and blond hair grabbed Draco and dragged him out of the room, leaving Astoria yelling behind them.
With the door slamming behind them and cutting out Astoria's voice, the hall was deadly silent. They didn't let Draco stand but instead forced him to kneel, head down.
"So tell me, are you enjoying your little visit with us?"
"Not particularly," Draco managed, struggling under the weight of something pressing down on his neck and shoulders. It forced him to stay on his knees, doubled over and head down so that he could only see Jasper's feet.
"Too bad. Now listen, you little coward," Jasper knelt down so that Draco could see the rich material of his robes, the scruff of his chin, and could smell something like tar mixed with saltwater. "We've given you that lovely room and a big comfy bed, and the two of you aren't even sleeping in it together. So consider this your warning. You two better get very cozy—intimate, I'd say—or I'll lose patience."
Of all the things he had thought Jasper would say to him, this had not crossed his mind besides being a personal thorn in his side. His mind raced for a minute, trying to make some connection, until he realized that Jasper was waiting for a response.
"That sort of thing usually involves two people making a decision, not just one. What makes you think she'll go for that?" Draco said through clenched teeth. The weight was becoming unbearable, and he felt it draining his strength.
Jasper grunted in disagreement. "Man up. Make it happen."
"It's not going to work," Draco said, and received a kick in the stomach.
Jasper heaved Draco back to his feet, the weight disappearing, and threw him against the wall. Draco was so drained from the weight that he let his arms hang limply at his sides. Jasper was staring into his eyes, and Draco could feel the man's furious presence prodding at the edges of his mind.
Draco coughed out a laugh, his lungs still feeling deflated. "Go ahead. Try to see what I'm thinking."
Jasper's lips twisted as though he had eaten something sour and rotten. Grabbing the collar of Draco's robes, he had the guards open the door and threw him back into the room. The guard holding Astoria dropped her so that she fell to the floor in surprise.
By the time she had rushed to where Draco had collapsed, trying to catch his breath, all of them were gone, the door was locked, and just the two of them sat huddled in the middle of the floor with only the ticking clock for company.
"What happened?" Astoria asked.
"Don't know," Draco said, still breathing hard and putting a hand on his shoulder to see if there was bruising.
"Are you hurt? What did they do?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just a weight charm."
"What did they say?"
But he just shook his head, looking confused and concerned, like he was trying to figure something out but the pieces weren't fitting together for him.
"They don't want us sleeping on the floor," he said finally.
For once Astoria seemed shocked into silence. When she recovered, she tried to get Draco to let her look at his shoulders and stomach, but he shoved her away.
"Really, I'm fine. Let it alone."
And he sounded so angry that she did. Instead, Draco crawled onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, eventually falling asleep.
He woke up to Astoria prodding him in the arm. She was carrying one plate and had set the other one on the empty side of the bed. When he started to stand up, she shushed him and told him to stay where he was. With a few pillows propped behind him, he was able to sit up with relatively little effort, and he was tired enough that he let Astoria fuss a little.
The plate held a dry piece of bread and a small bowl of watery soup.
That night, Draco stayed where he was, and Astoria climbed into the space next to him.
Day 20
They woke up to another steaming breakfast that could almost match the quality of Hogwarts' Great Hall. Neither one spoke as they ate. As soon as the food disappeared, however, Astoria took to pestering Draco with questions on what exactly Jasper had said, and Draco ignored her completely.
What were they planning on doing with them? He wondered. Was Astoria in danger? Would they hurt her the same way or worse? He hadn't felt that tired in a long time, not since—. He shook his head. He needed to concentrate. Maybe they should try to find a way out of here, he thought, but he laughed at the idea as soon as he had it. They couldn't even reach the window.
"Are you just going to ignore me all day?"
He turned to her. "I'm just thinking."
"About what?"
He frowned and shook his head again.
"How are you feeling?"
"Fine now. Seems sleeping did it."
She still looked suspicious. He let himself stare at her for a minute, and then impulsively reached his hand out, palm up on the table. He waited patiently for a moment while Astoria tentatively brought her hand forward and placed in his. He held on to it tightly.
"We need to be careful," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I—I don't know. Watch what we say, or—I'm not really sure. But they're angry with us, and I think we're not responding like they thought we would. We're not as grateful or as trainable as they thought we—I—would be."
"Is that what they said?"
"Not really, but I think they thought we would be easier than with…" he trailed off, thinking again.
"With what? With others? So you think there are more of us?"
"Yes."
"Okay…so what's wrong? Why do you seem so worried?"
He dropped her hand and leaned back in the chair. "I don't know. I just don't have a good feeling about this. They can just drag us out of here, and we can't do anything. And it wasn't bad this time," he said quickly, "but what's to say it won't be next time? Or what if it's you, not me?"
"And…" he started, but trailed off because for once he envied how Astoria felt brazen enough to say just about anything. She was so stupidly honest and conscientious.
"What?"
And here she was looking so genuinely concerned. He wanted to shake her. If she just cared less, he thought…
"Draco, what is it?"
He drummed a finger on the table and stared across the room at the clock. It was almost lunch time. "I think…you should start forgetting about Eric."
He never took his eyes off the clock, but he caught how her shoulders immediately tensed.
"Dr-Draco, don't say that. You know we'll get out of here, and—"
"No. No, Astoria, we won't. We both know it," he was so angry at her for putting him in this situation anyway that he didn't care about how she looked frightened and hurt. "There are no leads on where we are. And even if they manage to find us eventually, they won't find us fast enough."
"Fast enough before what?"
He shrugged and went back to staring at the clock. "Before you have to forget about Eric."
"Is that what they said?"
"Basically."
She wandered around aimlessly, eyes distant and brow knit in thought, for the rest of the day, Draco carefully watching her. She had to understand, he thought. It was obvious to him and his Slytherin mind that no Eric meant something different for them.
But she was too dense and Jasper was too impatient.
