Tea Behind Bars by WeasleyMom
Tea Behind Bars
Sunlight christened the morning through the windows of the Great Hall as I watched the Dark Lord fall. His body hit the floor with acute, unbelievable finality, and I did not feel what I was supposed to feel. As Potter was pulled into a roaring celebration, the invisible chains that had grown so tight around me went slack. Just like that, I could move again. I could breathe.
He was smaller in death, crumpled and ridiculous-looking, nothing like the devil who had ordered my life for the last two years, who had haunted my dreams and likely always would. The longer I stared at his lifeless body, the truer it became. Finally, I tore my eyes away.
My parents sat on either side of me. I didn’t look at them, but I knew Father was staring straight ahead with his eyes full of nothing. Mother’s arm was around me; the jagged rock of ancient walls dug and scraped the skin on my back as she pulled me closer. She shook with tears I couldn’t understand. Her sister was dead but that seemed an unlikely cause for grief. There had been a time when they’d seemed to care about each other, but recently, my parents made no secret of their hatred for Bellatrix. With no other obvious answer, I had to wonder, did she cry for him? Or was she relieved, like me? I didn’t ask.
We never ask each other.
After a long time, we left the Great Hall. It was my father’s doing; he shifted and I looked at him to find he’d set his jaw in determination once more. What could he possibly have been thinking? Our side had been utterly vanquished, our cause and rule overthrown, and still his jaw was there with that hard line declaring his resolution. I didn’t understand it, but I rose and followed like a good son.
Or in my case, just a son.
I tried not to look around, but the pull of probing eyes was difficult to resist. The dead were everywhere. Students and others who fought for the –good†had been lined up and placed in honorable poses with closed eyes. Death Eaters, in contrast, remained where they’d fallen, limbs askew and faces caked with dried blood. I squeezed my eyes shut as thoughts of Crabbe pushed against my mind. Without a doubt, he’d been completely consumed by Fiendfyre, his body burned and used up until nothing remained, not even a body for his parents to bury.
There was little left of the entrance hall. The floor was covered with stone, broken glass, and other large-scale rubble, and, in inexplicable contrast to the devastation of the scene, a smattering of colorful gems that shimmered brilliantly in the morning sunlight. After a long moment of confusion, I realized what I was looking at: the jewels from the hourglasses that tallied the points for the House Cup. They’d spilled out everywhere, and were -- for the first time in history -- all mixed-up together. The image burned itself into my memory… red, blue, green, and gold. I resisted the full meaning though it scratched at the edges of my mind.
Without really deciding, I knelt and picked up a green one, turning it over in my hand twice before pocketing it and moving to join my parents, who had walked ahead of me into the grounds.
I didn’t want to look around. I tried to keep my eyes down, but I couldn’t help it. The Hogwarts grounds were unrecognizable. The sight of it made me sick… spiders the size of classrooms crumpled with their legs in the air, a fallen giant whose body was half-submerged in the lake, and the ground ripped apart by spells and explosions. The greenhouses were in shambles, and the damage to the Quidditch Pitch was substantial. I could almost see my twelve year old self walking toward those hoops for that first match playing for Slytherin. It had been a lifetime ago -- so far removed from the scene in front of me, the boy so different from the wretch I’d become -- that it might have been a different life all together.
Then Mother was calling my name, waiting for me, so I moved to follow them. Just like always.
When we got home, Father disappeared straightaway and Mother went to make tea. Then she went round the house, opening the drapes on every window, letting in an obscene amount of light. I knew what she was trying to do, but it was useless: it would take more than sunshine to drown out anything that had happened here. Father eventually returned clean-shaven and we sat down in the Drawing Room. What a curious sight we must be: tea and a shave before being hauled off to Azkaban? I didn’t even know Mother could make tea.
They came that night -- Kingsley and a band of Aurors, looking like they were expecting a fight. Fools. If we’d wanted to run, we wouldn’t have been hanging round the Great Hall for hours after it was over, would we? We wouldn’t have been sipping wine out of goblets at our dining room table when they rang the bell, either.
I spent thirty-eight hours in Azkaban, and so did Mother. We were released together. The only time I ever saw her expression waver… the only time I ever saw her truly shaken was that day, the day we walked out of hell, leaving my father inside.
We are free now -- so they have told us.
I’m not so sure. There may not be bars on the windows, but I have learned one thing: there are all kinds of cages. When I go out, I am a monkey in a zoo. People stare and narrow their eyes. They cross to the other side of the street rather than pass too close to me. I know their thoughts: I belong in Azkaban, permanently. I want to stand straighter, to stare back at them with my father’s square jaw, but I rarely manage it. I know my crimes better than they do, after all.
At the Manor, I wander round the house, thinking and thinking. I relive the fire in the Room of Requirement, the tortures and the murders, that awful night on the Astronomy Tower, and the common thread in it all: my own pervasive weakness… not brave enough to do the Dark Lord’s bidding and not brave enough to stand against him.
And worst of all, I think of Potter, and how I owe him my life three times over.
Now that… is a cage.
End
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