Life in Black and White
Chapter Six
It was too long of a day to cry. Hestia lost all desire to do anything of the sort immediately upon her arrival to the department. It was hell, really, and what good were tears in hell? Life outside didn't exist, the catastrophe of Hestia's personal life paling to the burn-red welt that was Joshua Henley's…death. There was always that hesitation, the pause before the speaker finally settled on the generic, faultless death. Murder went unsaid, assassination even more of a taboo. Murder meant malice, assassination implied agenda, organization, grander intent. No one said it. No one dared.
Juriswitch Meadowes and Juriswizard Dearborn spent the day in a cell in the Auror's block, interrogating Ophion Selwyn. He refused to give them anything, refusing to speak at all. The single word he deigned to utter was a contemptuous 'mudbloods' before falling back into his smug silence. Meadowes and Dearborn were trying to push a Veritas-compulsion motion through the Wizengamot, but Selwyn's defense team was fighting it, and, for they price they came at, they certainly weren't bad at their jobs. The motion had been all but shot down before the 'lunch break' the apprentices were given—they were basically told to get the hell out around noon. With all of the minor cases suspended until further notice, there was nothing they were truly capable of doing independently. Everything to do with the Selwyn case and Henley's…death was far too important for them to be trusted—they were too slow, too inefficient, too incompetent to be left to anything, and there wasn't the time for Dorcas and Caradoc to be proofreading and editing the paperwork and hovering over their shoulders.
Caradoc had popped in to give them the disappointing news about the imminent rejection of the Veritas-compulsion motion, prompting Alasdair to grumble—with tight and utter hatred in his voice—"So? The bastard has to eat, right? Slip him some." Daniel touched him gently on the shoulder, not saying anything. Alasdair didn't shrug it off, curling further in on himself, his sharp, proud shoulders sagging, fury and grief written legibly on his smoldering, down-turned face. Hestia's heart turned in her stomach, where it had been sitting all day long; it was oddly comforting. Alasdair might act like a bastard who couldn't be bothered, but he loved all of them. They were family.
"Go home…and for the love of God, be careful with yourselves!" Caradoc was ashen-faced, his jaw tight as he swept his gaze over the three sorry apprentices.
"Should we really?" Daniel asked quietly. "Do you think…?" They danced around the topic again, and, again, no one was brave enough to step across the perimeter.
"Yes, I do." His eyes settled a little heavily on Hestia, and she froze in singled-out panic. "Be careful, please, don't act your age and get into something stupid."
Hestia pulled her gaze away from him, looking down to where her golden-lacquered fingernails were stripping her quill nervously, gathering her nerve before speaking up (her eyes still glued down.) The others were moving away, moving to gather their things and follow the suggestion they'd been given.
"Hestia?" His hands moved into her line of vision, onto the desk. He'd softened his voice, and Hestia kept her fingers busy, peeling bits and pieces off her bluejay-feather quill.
"I was just thinking!" she burst out, startling him—his hands jumped on the desk. "Well, I read the motion—the frame of questioning implicated Selwyn as a suspect due to his affiliation. Could we maybe just blind the motion to his current criminal proceedings and treat him as a hostile witness? Separate the cases? You might be able to push that through."
In Hestia's idle, half-hearted romance-novel imagining, this was the point where a smile would spread over Caradoc's wan, weary face and he would congratulate her excitedly on her stroke of sheer genius. She'd help draft the motion and the resulting information would provide vital evidence and their entire organization would topple and they'd stick You-Know-Who and all the rest in Azkaban forever and be done with it. And it would all end in a joyful wedding (she tried to stick Caradoc up at the altar—it was easy to see Sturgis smiling up the aisle at her beside him—but then Rabastan burst through the door behind her on a broomstick and kidnapped her from the cathedral in her wedding white.)
But he just nodded, only the slightest pleased tilt to his mouth, not quite real enough to be a smile. "Very well thought-out, Hestia—Dorcas is drafting it now."
The praise did not go missed, and a blush rose to Hestia's face as he spoke, her smile a little wider than it had been in quite a while. Alasdair, though deeply stricken by his mentor's death, would not have been Alasdair if he couldn't manage a surreptitious, sideways sneer. This fact, among a few others, saved him from having one of the silver scroll weights that were in shamefully easy reach on her desk flung at his head.
Hestia took a bit longer gathering her things than the other two—Daniel and Alasdair had fair flown from the room, leaving their desks scattered in their anxiety to be out of this suddenly unpleasant place. Hestia took her time straightening her desk, carefully filed away the various bits of leftover paperwork that would no doubt be vitally important to someone in a few days' time.
She did not want to go home. She had not quite decided if she was going to go home. Or where she was going to go if she didn't. Or what she was going to say if she did. Or…really anything. The Department of Magical Law might've been an unpleasant mess, but it wasn't her mess. That was waiting outside for her.
So she dawdled. When she'd finished cleaning her own desk, she moved on to Alasdair's mess of a workspace. He'd probably wring her neck for touching it, but this was desperate.
Two hours later, the cluttered little apprentice annex was ordered in a way only Hestia could have configured—she found space for things when there had been none before. The piles of books on the floor were gone, neatly ordered on bookshelves she'd found abandoned in a supply closet somewhere. Every roll of parchment was tagged and ordered in one of the cubby holes on the far wall, every desk and chair at perfect angles with the walls.
She sat down on the floor in the middle of her perfectly ordered office and burst into the tears that had been too long in coming.
This was a perfectly unpleasant shock for the man who walked into the office. Confronted with the age-old male conundrum, there's a crying woman, what do I do? , the man opted for the simplest; let's awkwardly carry on and just pretend she's all right.
"Er, I can't find Dor—Juriswitch Meadowes, could you…Hestia?" Hestia's head snapped up at the surprised mention of her name. Red hair met her eyes…spectacles, tall and attractive.
"Fabian?" Hestia gurgled through her tear-clogged nose.
"You're a mess." He bent down and grabbed her by the wrists, helping her up.
"Yeah." Hestia agreed, walking over to where her handbag sat nicely square on her desk, pulling out the lace-edged handkerchief and wiping her tears.
"So, er, Dorcas?" Fabian's hands were deep in his pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his heels.
"Probably still with Selwyn. That's where they've been all day." Hestia turned her head away and poked at her face with her fingertips—sticky and swollen and (she was sure) a vivid, posy pink.
"They're not in the DMLE rooms, though."
"The Auror block," Hestia agreed, throwing her shoulders back, trying to scrape some of her dignity from where it was ground into the carpet. "Some jurisdiction thing I don't understand yet."
Fabian turned to go, lingering at the doorway. "Ah, er, sorry to interrupt." He seemed to be struggling with himself. She laughed a little to herself.
"I'm okay, really, Fabian. You can go." He nodded at her in obvious relief and took off out the door. "And you should go," she muttered to herself, tossing her bag over her shoulder.
A paper airplane whapped her on the forehead as she made to leave fifteen minutes later (she'd noticed some scrolls Daniel had stashed on the top of a cabinet and made the time to file them appropriately.) It was Juriswitch Meadowes' handwriting, asking for some scrolls from her office, ending with a (Fabian told me you were still here.)
Hestia dashed down the hall to Dorcas' reasonably tidy office (the desk was, admittedly, a bit unorganized but Hestia stilled her itchy hands) and pulled out the labeled scrolls from the caddy that made up one of the walls.
The Auror's block was not a friendly place. Though Selwyn was the only current prisoner, the hall somehow set Hestia's hair on end. The Auror who searched her was a little rough, too, and she got the feeling he was laughing at her robes. He waved her through into the interrogation room and Hestia fluttered, readjusting her robes and trying to conceal the shudder that coursed through her.
Ophion Selwyn didn't look like a monster. He looked a little like her dad. But then, that was the Joneses—they had a bit of everyone's blood, youngest sons and daughters who'd married into the Jones family every so often for a lack of better options, and every once in a while out came a kid with Prewett-red hair, or a bit of lift to the nose like some of the Parkinsons or, in the case of Hestia's older sister, the Flints' notoriously bad teeth (her parents had had them fixed).
Dorcas and Caradoc nearly fell over themselves when she was nearly shoved through the cell door by the guard, who slammed it shut behind her.
"I was going to meet you for these! Outside!" Dorcas exclaimed, motioning to the files. Hestia shrugged, wide-eyed, slightly slack-jawed, and feeling as though she'd missed something important.
She held up her hands helplessly. "I didn't know! They just shoved me in here. I…sorry!" She handed them off to Caradoc, getting them off her hands as quick as she could, flustered and upset by the surprise and dismay that had greeted her. "I'll go, I was on my way out…"
Calmly, from his seat at the table in the center of the room, Ophion Selwyn looked her over. With a slight grin on his face, he nodded at Hestia and she really couldn't locate her stomach.
"I'll talk to her."
Hestia lingered in the stairwell far longer than was justifiable, even in the given circumstances. She sort of wished she had a cigarette, not that she'd ever bought a pack in her life. She'd occasionally bum one on a night out when the drink had got the better of her, but it was never something she'd craved. She didn't even really crave it now, but she wished she had something to do with her hands. She had to smile at one of the neighbors who happened by—the woman looked at her strangely. And why not—she was just standing there, thirty feet from her front door and not moving.
Her grip strangled the strap of her bag, the patent leather slick with the sweat on her palms. She didn't even know whether to hope that Sturgis was gone or to hope he was home.
She'd just moved to open the door when it swung open, very nearly slamming into her. "Oh, god, sorry!" a somehow-familiar voice called, bustling around the door in a blur of dark brown and powder pink.
Hestia didn't recognize her at first. Gone was the gaudy, glitzy makeup and horrid clothing. The ugly streaks of color in her hair were gone, the dark, plain brown in a neat little bun on the top of her head. She was in pink and black, muggle clothing, neat and conservative, a huge bag slung over her shoulder.
"Hestia!" Maggie's hand was on her arm, concern on her face. "Sorry! I just threw the door open, how silly of me!"
"No, no, it's all right." Hestia recovered herself, grabbing hold of the door that was propped open on Maggie's bony hip. "What are you--?"
"I just stopped over to see Sturgis…I have a ballet class in Kensington in an hour, thought I'd stop by and see how he was—." Maggie bit her lip, falling quiet.
Hestia felt helpless. Obviously Sturgis wasn't all right. It was her fault. Somehow, the question, "You take ballet classes?" fell out of her mouth without her even really thinking about it.
Maggie flushed, nodding. "With the English National Ballet School…it's muggle, but…" she trailed off.
"That's wonderful, Maggie," Hestia assured her, with much more surety in her voice than she felt.
There was a slight awkward pause. "He's not there, Hestia. He Flooed out just a few minutes ago."
Very quietly, Hestia spoke. "That's all right, I just…I just…"
And she didn't cry. She just smiled nicely at Maggie, who cautiously excused herself with all the right sort of excuses, and went into the flat that no longer really felt like hers.
She threw an enlarged valise together with more than a month's worth of clothing and some cosmetics. She hesitated before she cleared out the shower of her toiletries… Sturgis would surely notice that. A few outfits out of the closet, a few books off the shelf, some of the makeup from her vanity…even if he was looking, he wouldn't find those empty spaces. The bottles in the shower would be obvious.
Hestia left those. She'd buy new ones. She didn't want to make it look like she wasn't intending to come back.
Everything was in its place. The wards were the same…maybe he wanted her to come home. She didn't really believe that. She warded the door behind her when she went.
Rabastan was ecstatic when she came in with her things, eagerly relieving her of the weight in the entrance hall. He had to set the bag down when she started bawling there, barely in the door. His arms were around her and he smelled warm and safe and Hestia didn't know why this had to be such a mess, what was wrong with him, why did Sturgis have to be such a demanding, unreasonable arse about this all?
Hestia wished a lot of things. She wished she could have both, that she could love Sturgis and love Rabastan and never have to choose between. That wasn't unreasonable, was it? It wasn't the same sort of love, why couldn't she have both? She wished Sturgis could understand. She wished Rabastan didn't have to be such an antagonistic bastard. She wished that Sturgis had been home, to stop her packing and make sure she didn't leave.
But, alone, she couldn't help herself. She was scared. To go home was to be met with anger and disappointment, and Hestia had never dealt with those terribly well. She'd spent her life studiously weaving around those unpleasantries, and avoidance was what she knew. Rabastan was good in the immediate sense. He was the one who'd welcome her, twine his arms around her waist and kiss her throat and make her forget, make her feel wonderful now.
And it had been a terrible day. Even when she'd been hustled out of the interrogation room, Selwyn was still refusing to speak…to anyone but her. It didn't do to linger thinking on why. Now she didn't even have work as a relative respite. God only knew what sort of mess she'd walk in tomorrow to find; Dorcas and Caradoc had been more than adamant that they would not be subjecting her further to Selwyn, that he was in no position to be making demands on them and that he was getting absolutely no concessions. Dorcas chalked it up to pureblood mania, stating that under no circumstances would they be pandering to his prejudices by providing a pureblood liaison to speak for her muggle born superiors. Even Caradoc had looked doubtful, though he fully supported the course of action prescribed: keeping Hestia out of sight.
She really wished she hadn't had to wear the slag robes to work. She laid full blame on the inappropriate outfit, and was fully ready to rip them apart at the seams when she had a chance to change clothing.
She had been quite ready to burst into tears after leaving the Department of Magical Law; having her misdeeds and slattern behavior shoved up in her face, as Sturgis was so sure to do, was not an appealing option in the least. God, she knew! She knew!
In for a penny, in for a pound, too. Indulge in the selfish before she gathered up her courage to go home and face the music, because there would be no more of Rabastan after she'd found her backbone.
That thought ruined everything. The perfect, adoring look on his face was blurred by her intense desire to memorize it, the touch of his hand between her shoulder blades dulled as she tried to cement the sensation in her mind. She was trying too hard, and ruining it all in the meanwhile.
Rabastan made her dinner and cuddled her in bed after pudding, took down her hair and ran his fingers through it and scratched her scalp. He talked about tomorrow—that thing Hestia had always thrilled to hear about before.
Tomorrow was the thing boys never liked to talk about. That was a word she'd learned to avoid—boys got funny about 'tomorrow', got distant and vague and stopped meeting her eyes and started missing appointments.
And now she had a boy who liked to talk about tomorrow. And cuddle with clothes on and play with her hair and use 'we'. And she couldn't keep him. It left a sour taste in her mouth. Fucking unfair, this was.
She was angry, she decided a few hours later as Rabastan slept, curled up around her. And not at herself—she'd spent a lot of time in the past few days being angry at herself, so that was old. She was angry—really, truly, deeply angry for the first time in their relationship—at Sturgis. And maybe it was the rage of a little girl who couldn't keep the puppy that followed her home, but Hestia kept it close all the same. He'd made her promise and why? What had she ever asked of him? Not even the simplest of questions, lately! Sturgis and his stupid secrets and insane hours and mysterious friends and ridiculous demands! Why couldn't she just keep the fucking puppy? Why couldn't he just get over it and fake some enthusiasm like a decent friend?
She fell asleep angry, and woke up angry still.
Hestia found the diamond ring while she was digging through a drawer looking for toothpaste and she screamed. It was not the good, excited sort of scream she always associated with engagement rings. It was rage and frustration, hoarse and rough in her throat. The sound didn't wake Rabastan, so she chucked the box at his head from the bathroom door.
"I didn't find this," she informed him flatly, all of her effervescent and seemingly endless good humor completely spent.
"I…d'you mean no?" Rabastan's hair was in a snarl on the right side of his head, his face puffy from sleep. He looked utterly dejected.
"I mean, there's not a question. I can't answer any question that doesn't exist centered around a ring I didn't find." Hestia's voice grated like a metal rasp.
Rabastan made to sit up. "Do you want to--."
"No, not in the least," Hestia cut him off, whirling back around to the pristine, tiled bathroom to finish getting ready.
She wore the most professional set of robes she had, and her tallest heels. It was going to be a long day at work and they weren't the most comfortable shoes in the world, but, fuck it, she was wearing them.
She was going to go home after work and scream at Sturgis and Hestia wanted to be able to look him in the eye while she did.