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Chapter Two: I Do Desire We May be Better Strangers
Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil. --Ayn Rand
Ginevra composed herself in the elevator. If you look nervous then you have something to hide.
She did have something to hide, but the last thing she needed was to appear that way.
As the doors opened her eyes met familiar, friendly ones. The same eyes she was attempting to recapture on paper in spare moments.
Those eyes held a danger in them that she could not quite place.
"Greetings, Ginevra," the man said jovially.
"Comrade," she responded, looking at the floor.
The man grinned. "Please, call me Sirius."
She said nothing.
He dropped the smile. "Well, lively crowd tonight, eh? Walk with me, Ginevra."
She followed him down the hallway that seemed so daunting the other day. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was walking toward her doom.
They entered his office and he shut the door behind them.
He took out his wand and preformed a silencing spell on the room.
"Silencing spells are forbidden!" she shouted before she could stop herself.
The man smiled once more. "Not to me they aren't."
She mumbled an apology, hoping that he hadn't taken offence at her presumption.
"Now, Ginevra, why don't you tell me anything new you've learned over the past twenty-four hours."
She looked at him in confusion. "Sir?"
Black sighed as if dealing with a defiant child. "What is your last name?"
"I don't have a last name. We are now free from surnames due to the gracious nature of our Lord."
"Gracious nature," he repeated in an amused tone. "I know that you found out who the Weasleys are, Ginevra. Why don't you tell me what you discovered?"
She hesitated. Anything she said or didn't say would be more than enough to warrant her death. She supposed she probably deserved any punishment she received. By even wanting to know her family she was the very definition of a traitor.
She finally chose the path of least resistance. "I discovered that I am much better off without them."
Black let out a sharp bark of laughter, "Clever. Unexpected, but clever. You know, most would have kept with the denial or begged for mercy…others would beg for me to kill them for their sin. You're smart, Ginevra."
She swallowed. The smart never survived. The last person on her floor who had been praised for being intelligent was quickly deemed too intelligent for their own good. They referred to those as mercy killings.
"Tell me, then, in what ways are you better for never knowing your mother and father?"
A test. She knew this was a test of her loyalty…to see if she truly loved their Lord of if she was just sprouting off nonsense.
Her first thought was it is harder to miss what you never had. That's why they saved the youngest and generally killed the older children -- the ones who would remember their families.
"Our Lord is the only father I'll ever require," she recited from the many lessons of her youth.
"That doesn't answer my question," Black said thinly. "It doesn't much matter, anyhow." He pulled a ring out of his pocket and twisted it in his hands before tossing it to her. "Illegal permanent portkey," he stated simply, "you get in trouble push in on the diamond."
She was tempted to throw the ring back. If such a thing were discovered on her person it would be a betrayal to the man she just called her father. And the fact that Sirius would have such a thing…
Was he a traitor?
She thought again of his eyes. No. He was most likely a spy. He was testing her with this illegal portkey.
"I'm not a spy," he said as if reading her thoughts. "Don't let anyone catch you with that portkey."
He gestured for her to leave and she gladly slipped out of the office. It was much better to be on the twelfth floor. It was far less dangerous there.
Ginevra remained conflicted for the rest of the day. He was either a traitor or a spy and neither was of much use to her.
After hours of turning over every possibility in her mind she decided to speak to Neville about the situation. Neville always had a level head…and besides, maybe he had found out something about Black or Sirius or whoever the man was.
She walked quietly through the hallways of her building and stood silently in front of Neville's door. After checking to make sure no one was watching her she turned the door handle and entered the familiar apartment.
What awaited her was quite an unfamiliar scene.
With wide, terrified eyes she looked at her friend gagged and bound on the floor.
Four men who had been torturing him for hours with a mixture of muggle and magical methods turned to face the redhead in the room.
Ginevra could feel the bile rise in the back of her throat and the tears stinging her eyes. She was too shocked to move and too horrified to scream.
Neville wasn't moving. Ginevra could not properly assess his condition from her vantage point but the four men in black robes knew very well that Neville wasn't likely to ever move again.
One of the men took a step toward her and Ginevra did the only thing she could think of: She ran out of the apartment with a speed she had never known she possessed.
A/N: OK, I apologize that this is short and I've honestly written more but this is the best break point for this chapter. I promise that chapters will be longer from here on out…this just leads to the main part of the story and I'd rather keep them separate. To make up for it I will post thenext chapter quickly. Anyway, enough in the way of pathetic explanations, eh?
Please take the time to review. Don't force me to beg ;)
Chapter title is from As You Like It…I believe. It's kind of late so I could be mixed up. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me.
