Courage is a kind of salvation – Plato

Darkness.

How many days had passed in the world outside of the dingy cell? How many months? Years, even?

The redheaded man had no idea how long he had been in his cell. He had no clue how much time had passed since he had first been captured. All he knew was that the world had turned upside down, and that everything he'd been told, all the ideals he'd been raised with, were now worth squat.

Raising his hand made the chains rattle. He hated that noise. Always had.

Ever since he first became entranced with the world of dragon keeping, he had hated the chains that held down the great beasts to the ground, finding them cruel and unjust. Dragons were creatures of the sky, not of the earth, and as the years passed and their wings failed to make them soar, the dragons grew more and more passive, dumb, and content. It was tragedy in the purest sense of the word.

In a sense, he now felt the same way.

The chains rattled a bit more as he raised his hand so it would be eye level.

His own wings had been chained down, so to speak. He could do nothing but content himself in the misery that was his life right now. He would sleep when allowed to, eat when fed to, and nothing more. What was even worse was the fact that he knew the world outside, and it tortured him to know that it existed, that he had lived in it, but could now neither see it, nor touch it, much less experience it.

Heavens, what had he wasted his life doing?

Gone to school, done well, become popular…what did it all matter in the grand scheme of things? Where had his potential, his dreams fit into all that? What did it all matter now?

They were fleeting dreams—useless distractions, if viewed more uncharitably. They couldn't get him out of his cell now, or feed him good food, or prevent the guards from torturing him. He had never been taught by anyone how to survive this sort of situation. Never even imagined it could happen to him.

Heavens, how silly he realized he'd been!

What made him different from so many others? What had possessed him to think he could possibly live out his entire life in normalcy, while the world around him burned to ashes? What is some sort of irrational pride? Unrestrained arrogance?

Whatever it was, he decided to let go of it—for whatever good it'd do at this juncture.

Well…

At least he'd have a clear conscience, he supposed.

That had to count for something, right?

He sighed before letting the darkness consume his thought once more.

Weeks passed for him, and so far, his captors had said nothing to him, instead revelling in the indirect torture they applied to him by preventing his sleep. However, he did notice that one day, a man—a Death Eater he supposed; he couldn't quite make out the person because of the glare from the light outside—came in and seemingly observed him for a bit before leaving. At least that night, he was allowed to sleep without any problem.

For the next few days, it seemed to him that conditions were improving just a bit, with every day something new happening. The first day and thereafter, he was allowed to sleep. The second day, his rations were improved in quality. The third, his chains were lengthened enough to let him stand up and walk around his cell, and so forth.

By the seventh day, he had begun to regain some of his old strength, and had begun to do some push-ups as a way to keep himself occupied, having been given the chance. His visitor returned that day.

"Amusing. You believe working up your strength will get you out of here?" asked his visitor mockingly. The man didn't reply, continuing his work-out. His visitor took no offense, however, and merely observed in silence. He left about fifty push-ups later.

The scene repeated itself the next day, and the day after that, with the visitor remaining in the cell observing the redheaded man for longer and longer periods of time. Eventually, one day, he asked outright.

"Do you know why you're here?"

The redheaded man deigned his visitor with a glance and a curt shake of the head. His visitor sighed and put his palm to his forehead in frustration. "Something to be said for bureaucracy, I suppose," he mumbled.

Silence returned between the two.

"Why do you keep coming to visit?"

The visitor was unruffled by the question. "Do you wish for me to stop?"

Silence again, before, "No. It's different. Please continue."

A crooked smile made its way onto his visitor's face. He couldn't quite make out the man's face, covered in shadows as it was, but he could clearly see the smile.

"Would you like to know why you're here?" asked the visitor at length. Silence for a moment before the redheaded man nodded once. "You were here as a bargaining chip."

"Were?"

"The person my superiors wished to use you against is presumed dead," elaborated the visitor. "Allegedly killed in the coup."

"Who was it?"

"Ginevra Weasley," was the prompt response. "The Duke's wife."

"Ginny?" asked the redheaded man in confusion. "But…she's only…nineteen!" he protested. "And she isn't married! Much less to a Duke!"

The visitor chuckled. "You have been in the dark, haven't you?" noted the visitor wryly. "According to Imperial sources, your darling sister has been married to Harry James Potter, known to us as the Duke of Halifax, the Iron Duke," he informed his captive. "And, for the record, your sister is now twenty-one."

"I've been here…four years?" asked the redheaded man in horror. He had, at most, counted two years. His calendar, self-made and carved into the stone, only counted two years!

The visitor chuckled. "Ah, yes. Your calendar," he broached, as if reading the man's mind. "While you were asleep, some of the guards seemed to find it quite fun to mess around with you by changing the amount of scratches. It's wholly inaccurate, I'm afraid."

The redheaded man slumped against the wall of his cell despairingly. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked. "If your target is dead, why even keep me alive?"

The visitor gave him a steady look for a moment before replying. "I never said Ginny Weasley was dead," he noted, before standing up. "Time for me to go. If I stay too long, people will start talking."

The redheaded man was quick to lash out with an arm and grabbed his visitor by the arm roughly. "Wait! Tell me what you want with me!" he demanded.

The visitor turned back to look at him. "You are not yet ready to hear what I need to tell you," he judged simply. "You have no purpose, no goal. You have accepted the chains that bind you as your fate. Until you break free of those chains, you will not be ready."

With that, the visitor clasped the redheaded man's hand and forcefully removed it from his own arm. "Remember that well. Break free of the chains that will keep you in this cell forever, and I will tell you what you wish to know."

What did that mean?

The redheaded man did not see his visitor for a while after that, and so the man focused his thoughts on breaking his chains, certain in the knowledge that doing so would get him the answers he wanted. He chipped at the metal with rocks, banged the cuffs against the wall, clawed at them on end.

Gradually, slowly, they loosened. Confident in his victory, the man slammed them against the wall one last time, and the clasps broke open. His wrists were bloody—the price of inflicting so much damage on the clasps—but he did not care. Now he would get his answers.

Except the visitor never came.

The redheaded man felt like howling in fury as his visitor apparently lied to him. He wanted to rage against his captors, break from his cell and rip them apart for the torture they had inflicted on him. It had been the final drop in a glass already full. He had enough.

"So, you've broken free."

The words came two months after the redheaded man had broken free from his clasps. Instead of focusing his rage on an unseen character, however, he had decided to focus on escaping.

"You're late," snarled the redheaded man.

"How do you figure?" asked the visitor.

The man raised his wrists. "I've freed myself months ago, and you didn't show!" he snapped at his visitor, who seemed amused by the man's rage.

"Did I ever say that you were to break free from your physical chains?"

The man was about to rage at his visitor before stopping. What did he mean? Why did he specifically specify his physical bonds?

"You're finally getting it, I think." Noticed the visitor.

The man shook his head. "I don't understand."

And suddenly, the visitor was right in front of him, where he had been a good three meters away before. The visitor raised a single finger and poked the man's head gently and kept his finger there.

"The physical bonds that keep us in place are the easiest obstacle to overcome," lectured the visitor. "But the bonds that keep our minds forever in our cells, eternally sapping our strength and holding us back—those bonds need time, motivation, and courage to be broken."

The man looked up at his visitor half in awe, and half in suspicion. "Who are you?" he asked.

The visitor chuckled. "I am you, of course."

"What?"

The visitor smiled as he stepped into the light that broke through the bars of the cell. Indeed, the visitor was none other than the very same man who was also on the floor, looking at his visitor in awe.

"I am you," he repeated. "I am the you who refuses to sit still, to be bound to the ground," elaborated the visitor. "I am the part of you who suffers most when you are in this place, the part of you who thrives on being free to fly the skies at our leisure."

The man had no response to that. Instead, he chose to ask, "What is this place?"

The visitor smiled. "You don't understand? This place is you as well. Well, more precisely, it's a part of you," he conceded.

"How?" asked the man.

"You made it," replied the visitor simply. "You made it when you gave up, two years into your stay at a Death Eater concentration camp," informed the visitor. "Even as others around you plotted to escape, you've clipped your own wings and chained yourself to your prison, making your escape impossible."

"People have escaped?" asked the man, memories slowly filtering in. He could remember now…a plan! There had been a plan to escape! Pike! He remembered Nathan Pike! The crazy, fool of a man who'd cooked up the insane plan to escape from the camp!

The visitor smiled knowingly. "You've started to remember, haven't you?"

"Yes…" confirmed the man, grabbing his head with one hand. "It's slow, though."

"That's normal," assured the visitor. "Too much at once would send you into a catatonic state."

"I wasn't aware I had such an extensive vocabulary," noted the man in a weak attempt at a joke. It made his counterpart chuckle, however.

"As I am not your conscious self, I have the privilege of digging out the information buried in your subconscious. You know the words—you just choose not to use them," explained the visitor with a serene smile.

The man's arm went through a short spasm at that moment. Both men looked at it.

"What's going on?" asked the man. The visitor gave him a calculating look.

"You are being woken," explained the visitor.

"I'm asleep?"

"Not exactly," corrected the visitor before sighing. "I guess woken is a bad choice of words. You're being yelled at would be more descriptive, I suppose."

"Why?"

"Because you refuse to escape," came the simple answer.

"What?" asked the man, stunned. "But I broke free, didn't I? You said so yourself!"

"And yet here we are, in your cell," noted the visitor.

And so, suddenly, the man understood. He had broken the chains, demonstrating his refusal to surrender, but he had not shown the courage to take the steps out of his cell. He had merely spoken, but done nothing. A determined look flooded his face as he pushed himself off the ground and onto his feet. As he passed his counterpart, he whispered,

"Thank you."

And disappeared the moment he stepped out the door.

"—Charlie!"

A sharp, stinging sensation flooded the man's brain as he regained conscious control over his sight. Images slowly formed around him, slowly gaining coalescence. Before him, holding him by the front of his work-shirt was Nathaniel Pike, a long-time prison-mate who had successfully escaped two weeks prior.

He had slapped him.

"Bloody hell, Nathan, did you have to slap me?" demanded the man indignantly as he rubbed his cheek.

Pike grinned, replacing the frown he had previously worn. "Charlie! Welcome back!" he greeted joyously. "Hate to break it to ya, pal, but we gotta ske-daddle!"

Charlie looked around him, noticing the fighting occurring around the yard. Some of the prisoner huts were on fire, and he could see many a guard laying face down on the ground, as well as the occasional prisoner. Oddly, he also saw what he guessed were militia, given their rag-tag appearance but oddly superior weaponry.

"What the heck did you do now, Pike?" growled Charlie. Nathan grinned roguishly.

"You know me," said Nathan. "I go into a bar alone, I leave with a mob!"

Charlie was about to give a witty reply when instead he focused on catching the rather wicked looking spear that Nathan had tossed him. "Nathan! What the hell, man?" roared Charlie. "You could have stabbed me, you reckless twat!"

Nathan grinned. "You know I love it when you speak sweet nothings to me," he replied without a care in the world, instead easily cutting down two guards who'd been sneaking up on him from behind. "Now, you out of la-la land, yet? We've a prison to liberate!"

Charlie replied with no words. His feral grin was enough.

"And when we're done, there's this fella I wanna introduce you to!" added Nathan, before following Charlie into the middle of the fighting. "Calls himself the Iron Duke!"

Two hours later, the camp had fallen to the American Resistance.

The visitor now remained alone in the cell, and he smiled up at the ceiling, even as it disappeared—slowly breaking down like a puzzle.

"Do you know?" he asked no one in particular. "The pain of having to live in a cell all by yourself?"

The man smiled sadly. "Never forget the lessons you learned here today, and you'll live long and free," he promised, even as his own feet began to slowly disintegrate.

"I promise you…"

"Charlie Weasley…"

AN: I know it seems a little weird to post this interlude here, but bear with me. I've been writing these interludes and planning them out for a while now, as a way of delving into the motivations and several "missing scenes" from the Dark Wars quadrology. Bill's scene in "The Eagle's Wisdom," for instance, showed him at work, and his own analytical motivations for following Harry. Charlie's will do the same. There are two more interludes waiting upload, as well, so just a head's up, eh? - Marquis.