School: Ilvermorny
Year: 5
Theme: Redemption
Write about a character who achieves redemption in some people's opinion but fails to do so in the eyes of another.
Bonus Rule: Write from a Muggle perspective
Main Prompt: [Character] Original character
Additional Prompts: [song] The Gambler by Kenny Rogers: Taking risks, not knowing if they will pay off
[Quote] "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge in the other."—Mary Shelley: Victoria having love for her family that develops into rage
TW: Offscreen character death including the death of a child
WC: 2307
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Victoria drew the thick blanket tighter around her shoulders, staring at the same blank patch of well-worn floorboards. The wood was warped and smoothed by the passage of a thousand footfalls, with a smear of mud marking the pale yellow surface.
A set of heavy boots filled her field of vision, dirt-smeared with cracks covering the toe caps where the metal had been joined to the leather.
Following them upwards, she stared into the carefully blank face of a young man, not much older than her, his skin dark and streaked with mud. He remained still under her scrutiny, letting her take in the strange clothes that he wore — a long trailing overcoat, which almost reminded her of the robes in Oscar's storybooks, thrown over a dark leather shirt and trousers. She met his eyes for an instant and flinched away, her gaze travelling to the small golden hoop curled through his ear.
It reminded her that Oscar wanted her to take him to get his ear pierced that weekend. She couldn't forget that, he was so excited…
"I'm sorry," Victoria whispered. Her voice cracked on the words, her throat rasping and painful. She coughed, a thick wet sound, and drew one hand out of the blanket to cover her mouth. There was mud clinging to her hand as well, thick with an almost iron tinge to it. "What did you say?"
The man smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with the movement. "Is there anything I can get you? You're probably going to be here a little while longer before you can go."
Victoria nodded slowly. Nothing about this felt real. Where was she? But the man in front of her was waiting for an answer, and she didn't want to be rude. Mum was very clear about that.
"No, I'm okay." She tried to smile, but it felt wrong, so she ducked her head, readjusting the blanket around her shoulders once more.
"Okay, if you're sure."
She didn't like the way he looked at her, a blend of such deep regret and worry that it felt like she was only viewing the surface of an unexplored ocean, so she nodded once more, firmly.
He bowed, the action well practised for how archaic it was, and moved away, his boots further smudging the mud on the floorboards.
Victoria sighed, rubbing the blanket over her face. The fabric smelled old and faintly damp, but it was soft beneath her fingers. Every blink felt painful, but she forced herself to sit up and look around the corridor she was sitting in.
Trying to remember gave her a series of snapshots that made no sense: a bright red phone box that spat out golden coins as it seemed to descend into the earth; a man with a face so heavily scarred it could have been carved out of wood, barking orders at someone she couldn't see; Oscar's hand slipping out of her own and she tried to reach for him, but he was gone as soon as she did so; a brilliant flash of green light—
"Moody."
She jumped, glancing around her for the source of the voice. Her stomach twisted and rolled, bile burning in her throat, but she swallowed against it with what little moisture she had left in her mouth.
"Was this worth it?"
There was a cup of tea resting on the small table next to her, the surface mottled with floating patches of darker brown, but she reached over to pick it and sipped at the foul-tasting, freezing liquid. Next to it, almost covered by the pile of magazines — the titles blurred as she glanced at them, producing a set of old-fashioned words that were at odds with the glossy pictures, Apothecary, broomstick, robes — was a small grate.
A cold breeze whistled through it, and the voice came again. "She doesn't know what is happening. Shock, I think. You're my partner, so tell me truthfully."
Victoria couldn't quite make out the other voice, a deep growl of thorned words, but the man she had spoken to before seemed undeterred. "No. You chose me to be your partner, knowing who I am and what I'm like. So tell me. Was it worth it?"
"You saw exactly the same newspapers I did, Shacklebolt."
Victoria froze, staring unseeing at the magazines. Moody… She knew his voice, and she hated it. Anger curled through her like a weed, twisting through her ribs and stealing her breath until she was nothing, but rage. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.
She couldn't say why she was here — everything still locked away for now in the crevasses of her mind — but she knew, as clearly as knew her own name, that it was that man's fault.
"All of this. All of this, for the sake of the newspapers?" Shacklebolt sounded bewildered. The sound of him pacing, the ringing thud of his boots hitting the floor echoed through the grate. He was a tall, broad man, like her dad, and in the manner of tall, broad men, they both knew when noise was more effective than silence.
"Sit down, Shacklebolt. You'll be no good to anyone when you fall over from exhaustion." The note of exasperated fondness in Moody's voice was at odds with the hateful twist it caused in her heart.
A chair scraped against the floor, and she pressed her balled up fists to her cheeks as the sound vibrated through her teeth. She could smell the mud and iron again, the cracks in her hands and around her fingernails coated with the colour of rust.
"I'm the Senior Auror in this partnership, so in matters of work, what I say goes. Agreed?"
"I'm not questioning your actions, Moody. There's no point to that now."
"Kingsley."
Silence reigned thick and heavy from the other room, and Victoria's nails bit into her palms. Time seemed to stretch and loop, endless and constant as she strained, trying to catch even a whisper of sound from the other room.
"The Department was looking at an internal review following the botched raid on Westwell Place. Amelia let me know that much as I was the Senior, so it was my responsibility, but it was clear heads were going to be on the chopping block."
There was a long pause, filled only with the sound of distant footsteps further down the corridor and the uneven thudding of Victoria's heart.
"Meaning mine," Kingsley said.
"Your actions were justified," Moody scoffed, "but politics is a different game I've had to learn to play."
"Don't you—" Kingsley's voice burned with cold anger. "Don't you put your choices on my shoulders, Moody. I can't carry that burden."
"I chose you, Kingsley. We're a team, but my choices are my choices."
Victoria shifted on the unyielding plastic seat, feeling the chill settle in her bones. They kept circling what she needed to know like warring cats, neither willing to give an inch as they moved towards an understanding.
"We needed redemption, the whole department, but yes, me. To keep the vultures from circling and the press from breathing down our necks so we can do our damn jobs. And that came in the unlikely form of one Death Eater, Patrick Connor," Moody finished.
Victoria heard him walk, the clunking drag of his steps pulling at something in her memory, of being unable and unwilling to move, a weight in her lap keeping her pinned. It was soft beneath her hands as she heard that sound echo around her.
"—a known Muggle murderer. And Madam Bones agreed to this?"
Victoria flinched as she jolted back into the present, jaw aching as her teeth were clenched, keeping her scream locked tight in her throat. She could feel the hard plastic beneath her, the cool air pressing at her skin exposed by the drape of the blanket, and yet everything she could smell was iron, thick enough to make her gag.
"I made a choice. I let him go so he would ferret others out of hiding. Connor was the ticket, so I made that choice."
"And that girl outside, her family died for that redemption."
Dead.
Dead?
Her family couldn't be dead. Victoria had just been to see them, Oscar skipping along at her side with his bright red book bag in hand, chatting with a fascinated glee about the Ancient Egyptian mummification practices he had just learnt.
It was routine and familiar. Her mum would have just finished work, collapsed on the sofa as she tried to muster the energy to put the kettle on, her hair still pinned up and her suit jacket thrown haphazardly onto the hook, more than likely falling onto the floor. Her dad would be in the garden, his face ruddy from the summer heat, singing along to songs he could only half remember on the old crackling radio.
But…
Her mum hadn't been on the sofa. Her dad hadn't been in the garden. The house had been quiet, but it made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Oscar had let go of her hand and run ahead, calling out to their parents, and she had been helpless to do anything but follow him. Then— then—
"They did," Moody confirmed, his voice low. "It worked. We caught Connor and four others who followed him and turned up after we got there. The higher-ups are thrilled, and the papers are calling it a victory."
"It was a gamble, Moody, plain and simple. It was such a risky plan. What if Connor had run? What if the others hadn't turned up?"
Moody laughed, and Victoria felt like screaming. The noise held no humour behind it, the rumbling exhalation of a settling grave. "It was a risk I was willing to take. Men like Connor don't change."
"So, was it then?"
Moody's pacing stopped. "Was it what?"
"A successful redemption."
"There's no success in war, lad. The girl's family is dead, and she'll never know why after a time. The report's back. It was a coincidence Connor chose her family to murder. She'll be Obliviated soon, and it'll just be a tragedy."
Victoria realised she was standing, hands curled into fists at her sides. No. Her family's lives had been weighed against the uncaring scale of whatever this place was and found wanting. It wasn't fair, it wasn't worth it, how could it be? How could they think that?
The gamble may have paid off for the man, but it had come at the cost of everything Victoria knew.
"Miss?"
Victoria turned, tipping her head back to meet Shacklebolt's gaze, taking in how young he was, the same as her. Then her gaze dropped to the man next to him, shorter and older, his face scored and lined in a way she would never get to see her father's face imitate. She would never see any of them again.
The slap was a good one, hard enough to burst through the ringing in her ears, her palm igniting with stinging agony.
"You will never get your redemption from me," she spat. The anger was the only thing keeping her standing, the only thing that kept the tidal wave of grief at bay, so she clung to it with desperate strength. "Never."
"I never expected it from you," Moody said, blood running freely from his nose, shockingly bright against the sterile backdrop of the corridor. "I'm too far gone to be saved."
"Victoria Taylor?"
Victoria turned, despite herself. Every instinct screamed at her not to turn her back on the man, but she couldn't be rude. Mum always said that good manners were important, even in the midst of fury, so Victoria looked towards her name.
The man, tall with a riot of brown curls escaping from his cap, stopped, a stick loosely held in one hand.
"If you could look here," he said, holding up a picture in a broken frame — one of her family, the edges of the glass stained crimson, because they were dead, they were all dead… "Obliviate."
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"I'm so sorry for your loss."
Victoria smiled mechanically at the woman in front of her, one of Mum's friends most likely, but she blended into the endless grieving mass of people, with her eyes red-rimmed and face pale beneath the powder.
"Thank you," Victoria murmured, her lips numb and her throat raw and grating. She accepted the hug, the woman's perfume surrounding her like a living cloud, and then the woman was gone.
The sky was clear and beautiful, and Victoria considered that it should be raining. It should be a never-ending downpour because she was burying her family, but the sky remained stubbornly clear.
Anger never felt far from her now, directed at a source she could only see in her dreams, one that fled from her the moment she woke. But she knew the man she saw, heavily scarred with bright red blood running from his nose to congeal in the rusty mud that covered them both. She knew it was his fault her family was dead, and she knew he would receive no forgiveness from her, nor would he ask it.
Victoria looked out across the sea of black-clothed mourners with their heads bowed, her back straight and her nails carving half-moons on her palms and met a man's gaze.
He stood at the edge of the cemetery plot, too far away for her to make out his face, his clothes dark and nondescript, perfectly commonplace, but something tugged at her thoughts. He held her gaze for what felt like an eternity before another person stepped between them, their face a death mask of painful grief, and when Victoria looked again, he was gone.