Chapter Text
There is a time in every man’s life where they wake up to the feeling of stuck . Each day for the past four or so years was a steady decline into stuck . His daily life consisted of working through the very molasses of existence and he sat here at this shoddy little park with this dirty algae covered fountain with the worst tasting tea that he could find at the canteen and drinking it between grimaces. It’s not that the tea tasted particularly bad, it’s that it was the same tea he had been drinking for four years. It tasted like glue, that sticky disgusting feeling of knowing that he was going to drink this same tea at 11:00 every day until he was six feet under. This dusty and bitter earl grey was going to be on his tongue when they interred his body in the ground.
He stared at the change in his hand, exactly two sickles and four knuts. He had a change jar at his desk that always got two sickles and four knuts every day at noon while he whittled his morning away between tea and a long lunch. His dead-end job that had been Ministry assigned after the war was a bureaucratic method of destroying a man. A prison of paperwork, the slog that was turning his life into cement.
Another sip of tea, and a grimace. The lowest form of life was to be cement, always stepped on, unable to speak up or defend themselves. The Ministry had stripped him of his humanity after the war. A forgotten rock amongst the riverbed of Britain, slowly whittling away to nothing.
Corban Yaxley sighed into his cup, as if breathing was an act of rebellion, a last bit of him left, a last bit of life left that was not written down and checked in by his probation supervisor. Even breathing was tiresome, the steam blew up in his face as he exhaled. How much longer was he going to breathe? How many more years was this going to be a thing? He swirled the tea around, the grime at the bottom of the tea cup turning into a whirlpool.
His friends all said that he was lucky. His assets weren’t touched due to some loophole. Lucius constantly bemoaned the fact that he was in Wiltshire and not Aberdeenshire. Gold was as cold as stone, both were equally as dead. He couldn’t spend his way back into living, and that was exactly what the Ministry knew when they assigned him this role four years ago. The Dementor’s Kiss had been outlawed, but this living death was worse, to be aware as your soul died was far more terrifying than existential dregs that were swirling around him and sucking him all the way down.
He took another sip.
“I’m sorry,” A woman was apologizing and he looked up to see if she was apologizing to him.
She was not. She was holding the same paper cup that she had, it had spilled over, the tea staining her blouse and the white lip of the cup. The same earl grey he was drinking, the same disgusting swill from the Ministry canteen.
“You can’t watch where you’re going?” The other woman said, yanking her child back away from the curly haired ministry witch. “You can’t even avoid a child?”
He watched the Earl Grey witch shrink away. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all you can say? Honestly.”
The Earl Grey witch looked away from the woman and towards the fountain, biting her lip, swallowing the words she intended to say. Corban decided there was one thing worse than being a stone at the bottom of the ocean of the Ministry, and that was to be the water. The Earl Grey Witch was water. Helpless group thinking bureaucrat, unable to do anything without the group pushing her through life. A single droplet without a face or personality, just a tea stained blouse and a silent mouth.
At least he sank to the bottom, perhaps she would be envious of his ability to sink at all. This made the corners of his mouth pull upwards. Perhaps there was something left of Corban Yaxley afterall. The ability to hit rock bottom was his and his alone.
The Earl Grey Witch turned towards the dingy fountain, she had two sickles and four knuts. Angrily, she threw it all into the algae fountain, the coins skittering across the slick green surface and hitting the stone before sinking.
She angrily swiped at her face, lipstick staining her fingers as she tried to clean herself off, it smeared across her face, Ministry Mauve he noted. The same drab color as all the other witches in the sea of the government. She was crying, and she stormed off, her tea sloshing over her hand as she chucked it in a bin that was already overflowing with other cups of the same type.
Perhaps he was wrong about Miss Earl Grey. Perhaps she had the ability to sink after all.
“She what?” Rodolphus was emptying an entire sugar packet into his cappuccino.
“She threw the change in the fountain.” Corban said, stirring his coffee, black with a dram of whisky, that he had snuck into this dingy restaurant near the very modest LeStrange residence that was purchased with some Tax Free Swiss Money Rodolphus had saved up.
It only had 11 bedrooms, and was a shame upon the name of LeStrange.
“So?”
“So she’s a rock, like me.”
“You watched a girl spill tea all over herself, get angry, and leave, and you believe you know her now?”
“I know what it’s like to meet another rock.” Corban said, leaning back against the worn velvet of the booth they were in. “There’s only a few of us in the world, and when you meet a rock, you know.”
“And you know this because she wasted some money in a park?” Rodolphus seemed nonplussed “Rabastan has been seeing a mind healer, I can give you a referral.”
“I thought she was water, all Ministry employees are either rocks or water, you either are part of the ocean or buried by it.”
“Ah yes,” A bell dinged somewhere in the restaurant signaling that someone had entered “I have heard this story a thousand times between the war and now, we have rocks, we have water and we have fish, and you were a fish.”
“I was a shark!”
“Oh by merlin , we are not having this insufferable conversation again.” Lucius said with a sigh as he summoned over a waitress before sitting down. “It is a Tuesday, Yaxley.”
“It is a Tuesday, and I’ve met a rock at the Ministry, is it not enough for me to have a spot of comradeship at the bottom?”
“You are only at the bottom because you choose the bottom.” Lucius waved him off as an annoyance “If you had paid the fine as we all did, then you would be free, as we all are.”
“Thirty percent of my assets or five years of public service? Lucius I thought you were good at money, doing nothing for five years and draining the system with long lunches and tea breaks is a much better deal.”
The waitress served Lucius a cappuccino as well, the same as Rodolphus, the two of them always got the same as the other. Same food, same houses, same sisters. Same smug expression when they paid their fine and he made the bad deal of five years at the Ministry.
“I am good at money, which is why the only thing I have to complain about is boredom, and you are complaining about where you stand in this delusional hierarchy.”
“You need a wife.” Rodolphus announced “A wife to distract you from this Ministry Lake.”
“It’s an ocean, and it’s not like the Black Family has any more girls to offer up, so I cannot get one from where you did.”
“What about Cecillia Zabini? Her last husband has unfortunately passed.” Rodolphus said “She is a beauty and she can give you an heir, is there more to life than this?”
“I’d rather you kill me outright than ask a woman to do it.”
“Women will kill us all in the end,” Lucius said, stirring his cappuccino next to him “It is a matter of what is the last thing you want to see before you die. This is why men choose Cecillia. They know their last moment alive will be her beautiful face as she strangles you with your own bedsheets. A man deserves a poetic death.”
“I am sure Narcissa will accommodate you.” Corban said, stirring his cup absentmindedly.
“And what of Miss Earl Grey? Can you see her killing you?” Rodolphus chimed in before Lucius could rise to Narcissa’s defense.
“If anyone was to kill me, it would be a Ministry employee.” Corban said before taking a sip of his coffee.
The whiskey burned all the way down, tearing through him, the bite of alcohol on the back of his throat was enough for now.
The question being, would it be enough for the rest of his time here? Even alcohol seemed dulled at the bottom of the ocean. Even whiskey tastes like water at the bottom.
Miss Earl Grey took her tea precisely nine minutes after he did, and she always sat across from him, taking up as little space as possible in rundown public park that was 150 meters from one of the back entrances of the desk farm that he worked in. He was still in Law Enforcement, because of course, but he mostly filed away evidence and tagged it before sending it to archives.
She wore the same thing every day, except on Thursdays, where she wore a nicer blouse, and she would throw one knut into the fountain after she finished. Her eyes would flutter closed briefly as she held the knut in a white knuckled hand and then with a force she would slam it into the fountain.
On Tuesdays, on the day of the week he met her, she would stare into her paper cup trying to divine wisdom from it, shrinking even smaller if possible, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed over the steaming cup of a tea facsimile. Tuesdays, he decided, were the worst day to be a stone at the Ministry, because Tuesdays were also when he had to meet about his progress . Tuesdays he had to lie about his progress, because he had made none. No effort into reintigrating with society, no effort into amending his actions in the war, no effort at the Department of Law Enforcement. Ministry Mauve Tight Lips would write down his lack of progress every week, sternly looking him over like a school marm, trying to scare him into action by telling him who this report would be seen by, and yet it didn’t.
Tuesdays were tedious, and Tuesdays wore on stones like him and Miss Earl Grey. It was three Tuesdays in when he did a simple spell to clean the fountain before she arrived, muddy green turned to clear blue and grey as he sat and waited for her across the way, the smell of tea, the tiredness of another day to live through, the look on her face when the fountain was clean.
He took a sip of tea to hide his smile when she, instead of sitting by the bench trying to disappear, sat on the lip of the fountain instead. Her back to him as she placed one hand on the cold cement and every so often she would look around to see everyone else in the park, many employees were out here for a smoke, a chat, or a tea break. She never spoke to anyone, or brought anyone out here with her. She would drink her tea alone, often suffer alone, as rocks were wont to do. Today they suffered together, sitting at the bottom of this sea together, the oppressive pressure of a Tuesday ocean suffocating them in this dingy yard, stuck to the bottom by the weight of society alone.
She dropped a knut in the clear waters of the pond, and today he could see all her other donations, a small pile where she usually got up, copper sparkling on the bottom, cleaned accidentally when he charmed the water clean, when the water rippled it reflected off of the coins, and today he tool one of his knuts and gently placed it on top of her pile. Trying to put himself an Miss Earl Grey together, two knuts at the bottom of the fountain, his first meeting with her through dead metal alone. Cold and lifeless, it sank to the bottom to join her, atop a pile she made of money given by the Ministry and thus discarded.
“Scum.” A voice said, and he looked up, instinctively knowing it was addressed to him.
“Charmed.” Yaxley replied as another Ministry official passed by, his lip curling at the sight of an ex-Death Eater. Thickness was always aware of what side of bread was buttered, and Yaxley never quite liked butter.
And yet there was no scum left on the fountain. This was cleaned for Miss Earl Grey.
A name he repeated quietly every morning at 10:57am to the faceless tea cart woman when he ordered his respite from the ocean. “One Earl Grey.”
One Earl Grey for One Probationary Scum.
Did she know who he was? Or were they both anonymous grey rocks, settling to the bottom, waiting to be pulverized by the machine that employed them?
On Wednesday it became ritual, Miss Earl Grey would give her offerings to the fountain, and he would follow, hoping that their offerings would touch and their paths would cross.
After all, if metal could mingle, why couldn’t stone?
“She’s missing.” Corban bemoaned at the pub two days later, on a Friday “She hasn’t shown up.”
“Who?”
“Earl Grey.”
“Oh for fucks sake.” Thoros Nott said, holding up two fingers for the bartender to come over and refill their pints “Rodolphus told me you had gone soft on some chit from the Ministry.”
“She is not some chit, she is Miss Earl Grey! She is my whole morning.”
“You’re hard up, mate. Do you need a girl? I have a few girls we can get for a few bits of metal.”
The thought of paying for sex with the same coins he offered up to Earl Grey made his stomach turn into knots. “No! What if something has seriously happened to her? What if she’s hurt?”
“She’s a bird with her own life, and you’re some pervert that spies on her during her tea time. You’re not a hero in this story Yaxley, you’re just a creep with a wild imagination.” Thoros said with a laugh. “You don’t even know her name and you’re worrying about her health? Start worrying about your own. Roddy said a mind healer wasn’t out of question, you’ve gone a bit queer since Antonin left for Russia.”
“Exiled to Russia.” He huffed and looked up at the shelves of whisky glimmering behind the bar “Miss Earl Grey is my friend, she’s not some bird.”
“Barmy.” Thoros Nott said, setting his pint down, half empty in one swig, with a thud. “You cannot call someone a friend without knowing her name. Do you even know what her job is? You work at the same place.”
“No.”
“Then what do you know?”
“She puts her money in the water.” Yaxley wheedled, trying to act like he knew more about her than he did. “She goes out on Fridays, and she is very punctual.”
“Amazing, I feel like I know her myself. She throws money away and she’s always on time for tea breaks.”
“She is always at tea, she never has missed one day. She is sad, and she is a small stone, and on Tuesdays she’s even smaller.”
“Oh thank Merlin you showed up.” Thoros said to someone else and he looked up to see Rabastan who despite being timid himself, was always out drinking with Thoros who was the exact opposite “You have that private… friend that does the -” here he made a twirling motion at his forehead “give me the name.”
“I am not in need of private friends that do the-” Yaxley twirled his finger at his head “I am just worried about Miss Earl Grey.”
“Oh, you are still stalking her?” Rabastan queried in that soft voice he used that was guileless and yet incredibly cutting.
“It’s not stalking, she’s my friend.”
“Except she does not know she’s your friend.”
“Stones know other stones.” Yaxley turned to the bartender. “Three fingers of whisky, and don’t put any bloody ice in it.”
“Your brain has turned into a bloody stone.” Thoros said with a laugh “Get my friend a pint too, eh? Service around here has really gone to shit.”
Miss Earl Grey came back one week later, when October had finally turned on the calendar. She would curl herself small on Mondays too, a weathered stone that was getting battered about the ocean floor.
She had to sink to protect herself, and he wondered if she knew that.
He resolved on a Tuesday in mid-October to make his move on Miss Earl Grey.
“Excuse me,” He asked the woman who served his a swill of tea.
“Earl Grey.” She said gruffly and turned to a big copper drum that was filled with disgusting tea.
“There is a woman,” Yaxley said and cleared his throat and tried again with more confidence. “There is a curly haired woman who buys tea 9 minutes after me, I want to pay for hers.”
“Lots of women get tea here.”
“She buys earl grey, like me, every morning at 11:07” He insisted and slid over a few sickles “I want to pay for hers.”
“And what am I go’n tell her then? Some middle aged man is buying her drinks at work?”
“You can.” Yaxley said “You can tell her whatever you’d like, as long as you make sure she is not paying for this.”
The woman eyed the sickles and made a grunt as she served up his tea, sloshing it over the sides so it stained the lip of the cup. She pushed back two knuts. “Fine. No guarantee it will go to whatever bird you’re eying.”
“I have no doubt that it will, you’re a smart lady Agatha.”
“I don’t need compliments from scum like you.” The tea woman snapped suddenly angry at agreeing to this but Yaxley could not care less.
He sat on his usual bench, but this time instead of that malaise that settled over him like a bog, there was a giddiness. The knowledge that Miss Earl Grey would have her morning made by him and not even know it was him! She would come out here to the park, the dingy wet drab thing that it was, to a clean fountain with her free tea and wonder who was thinking about her. He waited for her timely arrival, and sure enough, in Ministry regimented grey she appeared with her tea and someone following her. A man with red hair.
“I am not coming to your house for Samhain, I am not going there at all.” She hissed under her breath, but it carried, and he was listening.
“Just because you’re not with me doesn’t mean my family doesn’t want you.” He had this kind of childish whine “Mum said you were allowed to come.”
“It’s been "no" for four years, and it will be No for five. I wish you would stop coming to my work.”
“It’s my work too.” He snarled, angry at the rejection. “Not everything is about you.”
“This is about me.” She said “This is about you never contacting me again. Grow up, Ron.”
This Ron whirled away from her, smacking the tea out of her hand and it clattered to the ground. Yaxley tensed when he saw his gift seep into the cobblestones around the fountain, the liquid pooling and steaming as the moss growing between the rocks swelled with his small act of kindness.
He got up to protest, to protect the other Ministry stone from whoever this Ron was and she turned towards him, separated by the fountain alone. The two of them stood now, facing eachother across the stone fountain. She was a great deal shorter than he was, even with her wild hair she did not reach his shoulders, and she had this ability to curl into herself for protection that made her seem even smaller. He noticed now that she was holding a knut between her thumb and forefinger, staring determinedly at the water beneath her.
She made her offering to the fountain and he decided to do the same, and when he fished out some change from his pocket to make sure to keep their metals together under the water of the fountain, friends in currency if not in real life, he counted out one knut and looked up to see her looking back at him.
Her head was tilted, the fingers that had held the coin were now under her chin as she regarded him and he decided there was only a few minutes where two stones could meet under the ocean before they were ripped callously away by the currents they could not control.
He gave his coin to the fountain as she had done and she offered him a smile.
“So you are wishing too?”
Oh, yes, he wished for a lot of things. The war to be different, his father to be different, his choice of slavery at the Ministry of Magic to be different. Did she know what it was like to be trapped in this misery? Could she see his misery the way he saw hers?
“For many things.”
She relaxed at this, like recognizing like. “Yes, me too.”
The two of them stood in silence and his eyes moved to her tea cup littering the ground. “Can I buy you a cup of tea?”
Her eyes regarded him warily for a moment, honeyed brown, tired and sad. “You’re here every day.”
He hummed in agreement. “My tea break is at eleven.”
“I know, mine too,” She turned back towards the Ministry building a drab grey thing with Roman columns, an empire swallowed by the bureaucracy of man.
He began to follow her into the canteen, and when he caught up to walk beside her she looked up at him “I think my tea break should be at ten thirty, eleven is too close to my noon lunch.”
“That’s the brilliance of eleven tea breaks, because eleven tea breaks turn into three hour lunches.”
“How can you get anything done?”
There was a lightness in his being when Miss Earl Grey was around because he offered her a wan smile. “There is much to learn about the Ministry of Magic.”
Despite being a rock, and despite working in the dregs of the Ministry, Lucius and Corban spent a great deal of time together. There was something to be said about the survivors of the Death Eater Trials, a trauma bond after moving through the system and arriving to the other side alive. Many of their old comrades could not say the same, and things were different once you survived, everything was tinged with the memories of Azkaban and the Wizengamot. They may have pronounced you free to go, but as Lucius and all the others knew, there would never be any freedom again.
They were currently playing wizard’s chess in a cafe just off Knockturn Alley. Lucius liked to sit in the very back, where the windows were visible but he was not, and was currently attempting to take one of his knights. “So you spoke to Miss Earl Grey?”
“I did.” Yaxley sounded pleased with himself. “She works as an arithmancer for the Department of Mysteries.”
“Is she a pebble or whatever?”
“Of course she’s a stone. I can always tell.”
“Did you tell her that she is a stone?”
“You can’t tell a girl you’ve just met that she is a stone. Right now, she thinks she is water. She thinks she’s a good little employee doing good employee things-”
“But you think she’s not.”
“I know she’s not.” Yaxley said using a pawn to knock over one of Lucius’ pawn. “I can tell when someone is sinking and I am there to meet them right at the bottom.”
“How romantic.” Lucius replied leaning back to survey the board, his tea left cold. “I can tell why you’ve never wed.”
“And I can tell why your father had to pick your wife for you.” Yaxley shot back.
“Better to have a wife than hope some pretty thing hits rock bottom to be with you.”
He had never taken a wife, and it was mostly due to the rumors surrounding himself and Antonin, at first it was because women did not fit into his goals, and at second it was because women didn’t want to fit into his goals. To work in the DMLE as an Auror meant long hours and you either married another Auror or not at all, and while he had the coveted head desk for a short period during the war, afterwards, he was given another desk and another title, this one undesirable to women for a different reason than the lack of intimacy.
Miss Earl Grey did not seem to know who he was, because she spoke to him, and not many people did anymore except those that already were fucked with him after the trials, or those that wanted to fuck with him and shout obscenities and slurs. The fall from grace hit some people harder than others, and Lucius, sober now, spent the two years before Scorpius was born in an opium den, trying to smoke the war out of his system, the brand off his arm, and the memories out of his mind.
Now Lucius sometimes grew very quiet during chess, lost in the memories of a dream that seemed so tangible it was reality, and Yaxley too grew quiet, aware of the horror that another day would bring, no curses or groveling, but the horror of
decay
at his desk surrounded by whitewashed walls and disgusting paperwork.
“Miss Earl Grey!” Yaxley had waited a bit now that they knew each other, well sort of knew each other. Well, he bought her tea…twice. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She had ink spots on her jawline, her eyes looked tired. “Oh! It is you again: the Wisher.”
“Can I pay for your tea?”
“You’ve paid before,” She gave herself a smile to the parchment “I will pay for us this time.”
She shifted the parchments to get to some beaded bag that was at her hip and then he watched them all tumble off of the shaky pile she had and clatter to the floor near her feet. He struggled to catch them, only managing to pick up two before they hit the ground and then they both were crouched down together gathering paperwork. Miss Earl Grey did not smell like tea, she smelled like fresh laundry hung to dry on a summer afternoon.
She looked up as he handed her back a cluster of her scrolls, and their eyes met briefly before they both looked down at their hands. “You should charm them.”
“I know.” She said with a sigh “I just-”
“Don’t care enough.” He offered.
She gave a small laugh “You know, then?”
“I do know.” He agreed. “How about tea?”
“Yes, I thought about…” She let the last word hang “I thought about what you said last time, about your lunches.”
“Yeah?” He handed over four sickles for two cups of tea.
“I was thinking, I could also perhaps take a long lunch.” She said slyly. “A working lunch of course.”
He handed her the paper cup filled with steaming earl grey, but then realized she had too many papers to carry and so instead he followed her as she walked outside on a blustery fall day. Her hair caught the wind, sometimes tied back, like today, and sometimes wild, as it was wont to do on Thursdays. She looked back at him over her shoulder to check if he was still there and he offered her a small smile.
Miss Earl Grey took long stretches of silence as they sat together on Yaxley’s bench facing the fountain. She spoke as if she was afraid to speak, sometimes she would explain her work and then peter off. The way Miss Earl Grey communicated was like a match, she would burn bright briefly and then quickly turn to smoke.
“I like to hear about your work.” He said after the fourth time she abruptly stopped talking about some calculations she was running on financial waste coming out of a sketchy “defense” department. “So, let’s hear about your work!”
She turned to him, her cup half empty, scanning him over to see if he was lying. “Not many people care about my work, even my boss doesn’t care about my work.”
“Your boss is paid not to care about your work, they all are.” Yaxley waved this off “ You care, and I want to know about it.”
She licked her lips, pink and wet she seemed to clam up further, shrinking in on herself.
“Let me tell you about a theory I have,” Yaxley said changing the subject away from something about “About the ocean.”
“I thought you worked for the DMLE?” She queried.
“And because I work for the DMLE, I cannot talk about the ocean?”
She laughed at this “Of course.”
“There are three types of people who work here: sharks, water, and rocks. Bad people, psychopaths and the like, they are the sharks, they take advantage of the water, cut through it, and use it to get where they are going. Then there is water, they support the sharks, because they do not know they have the option not to, they never do anything at all but follow. They are necessary for the sharks, but the sharks never spare them one thought. Sharks don’t even know water is there.”
“And the rocks?”
“I am a rock.” He said proudly “I am at the very bottom. I am of no use to a shark, I cannot flow like water. I am nothing to no one, and in that, I am proud.”
“This is your ocean theory?”
“It is. What are your thoughts?”
“My thought is that I wanted to be a fish, but I got eaten up, and now I am at the bottom with you.” She looked at her cup “They hired me out of Hogwarts to help people, and I ended up helping no one and getting myself into loads of trouble for my challenging attitude and now I am not a fish, or a rock, or water. I’ve just gotten pushed further and further away after they chewed me up in the Wizengamot. I am just a skeleton.”
Yaxley tensed, realizing that perhaps it was too early to spring the rock theory on Miss Earl Grey.
“My friends all became sharks.” She said quietly.
“And you didn’t?”
“And I couldn’t.”
“Well,” Yaxley leaned back, trying to hide his discomfort. “Plenty of room for more friends amongst us rocks.”
“You would accept a failed fish?”
He nudged her ankle with his foot and she looked up. “There are no failures amongst rocks, no one has ever failed as a rock.”
“Are there others?”
“Well,” He thought about Lucius and Rodolphus, they were definitely sharks. Nott Sr was just a fuck up, and Rabastan was a bit touched. “Two is enough for now I think.”
She looked at him with a smile, tired eyes and yet she was endearing. Miss Earl Grey was a precious stone if he had ever seen one. She offered her hand and he took it, it was warm from the tea.
“I’m Hermione.”
“I’m Corban.”
“I know,” She said “I was at your trial.”
He was in Flourish & Blotts reading about Miss Earl Grey, Miss Hermione Granger, who he had, at one time, tried to kill by chasing her down the very halls of the same place they worked. After his trial, after he stopped caring about the news that often painted ludicrous pictures of the Death Eater Death Cult (with many graphic depictions of sex and blood rituals to which he was never invited), she had been given a prestigious position on the Department of Creature Welfare, which the Minister at the time had created specifically for her. Her fall from grace was slow, grindingly slow. She failed to get traction for werewolves, house elves, and others who needed her help. The Wizengamot would challenge her motions as unnecessary charity and a drain on tax funds, and slowly she was demoted again and again until she became a glorified dicto-quill for the Department of Mysteries.
Hermione Granger had divorced herself from the “Golden Trio” due to some love triangle according to this old version of the Daily Prophet, but he knew what the Potter child was up to. Next in line to be Minister, many people had one word for Harry Potter and it was not suitable for saying outside a pub. He was entitled to a fault, and would call people on their “debts” to him as the only one who had weathered the war. Ronald Weasley, another Weasley, was an auror that never went on assignments, or at least, if he did go on assignments, Yaxley never heard of them.
Today’s paper which was on the bottom of the pile depicted Ginerva Weasley and a litter of children under the headline Next First Lady? . This was not what his Miss Earl Grey was meant for, no fame, no children, no entitlement. Only matchlike conversations and the fear of being told once again she was taking up too much space.
He did not doubt that she would be eaten up by these people, and now that there was nothing left to take from her, they stepped on her, like they stepped on him. Rocks.
Miss Earl Grey was not meant to be stepped on.
He got angry at the thought of her being abused by these people, by the people like the redhead who he learned he also tried to kill (and unfortunately failed at killing, it didn’t seem like his life was worth much now.) He opened pages after pages of archival daily prophets to see her, to watch her sink away from the headlines, Post-War Princess turned into “Where is She Now?” pieces and even an insulting one that said after the tragic breakup she had fled the country. This one was dated when he was first put on probation after a lengthy trial.
His fingers ran over the photo of her, it was at one of those disgusting galas that the Ministry hosted now for every major holiday, a misuse of funds with lavish food, drink, and decor that definitely came from the re-appropriation of old money for new money. She was so pretty in her plain black dress, her hair pulled up and her eyes were looking at something off-frame. She clearly was uncomfortable to be photographed, one arm crossed over her thin frame, and on her other arm, that she was attempting to hide was MUDBLOOD in red angry letters. On the same arm that held his mark, which also had turned into red angry scarring.
The decay of Hermione Granger was well detailed by the Prophet. When she didn’t meet their expectations they began to destroy her. Her breakup with the redhead he did not kill, Ronald Weasley, began her downward spiral. The press ate her alive while he moved on from witch to witch. Her only value to the wizarding world clearly had come from her relation to this man, and his friend. Corban tapped his fingers on the last photo of the three of them, this one from the seventh anniversary of the “reformation”, she was standing awkwardly off to the side, and then the photo panned to Harry Potter taking the hand of the red headed girl who was the brother of the red headed boy. That in itself was suspect.
“Corban fucking Yaxley.”
He shut the book.
“Alastor.”
“Do you prefer that I call you sir ? Or Boss ?”
The table shook as the other man kicked it with one boot. He smelled vile, like alcohol and musty wool.
“I’d prefer you didn’t call me at all.” Yaxley said as he stood up quickly, pulling the book away from the table before Alastor could take a grab at it.
One of the things when he was first on the force was get Alastor fired for killing whoever he deemed necessary . It was on one of Yaxley’s first ride alongs that he saw Alastor Moody kill an innocent due to “bad blood” when it was discovered that the father had been on the wrong side of the war. The child was ten and Alastor had a laugh about Slytherin having another empty bed.
Yaxley’s stomach churned a bit at the sight of him, at the smell of him. Alastor Moody knew his wand was bound, and that made Yaxley an excellent punching bag for a drunken fool of an auror. He did not want trouble so close to the end date of his imprisonment at the Ministry, three months and after the turn of Yule, he was back to nothing.
The auror kicked the table again and he could hear the leg splintering and his eyes moved towards the proprietor who was now looking up from his book at the register to see what the commotion was about. Yaxley, not pressing his luck, moved back through the aisles of books to return the one he was reading to the shelves, but there was the chime of the door opening and shut and Alastor began to advance on him down the narrow corridor, the crazed auror’s jackets brushed against the shelves as he hobbled towards Yaxley.
Yaxley was not frightened so much as he was frustrated, before the Ministry put him on this probation the only decision he would have had to make in regards to this nutcase was whether to maim or kill, and now it was either run away like a coward, or make a stand like a fool. Another problem with the DMLE, and something that Yaxley himself took advantage of during his tenure of being the boss was that if you had a problem, there was no problem officially recorded.
“Corban!” A small female voice, that of his Miss Earl Grey.
The two men froze, like cats caught fighting and she had three books in her arms, her eyes were bright and then narrowed. “Professor Moody.”
“You know this piece of scum?”
“I do.” She said “And I also know what hasn’t been written in the records but is gossip around the office, Professor. However, I am not one of your buddies at work, and I know all about what you did to Draco Malfoy last summer, and I will file a formal complaint if you seek to repeat your actions in this bookstore. Mr. Flourish is in agreement.”
Alastor’s magical eye swirled around in irritation before fixating on her and Yaxley, for all that he could do, stepped in front of his line of vision. “Just leave.” She said re-shelving a book angrily “There’s nothing you could possibly want here.”
Corban’s eyes widened at the dig and he let out a snarl.
“Uppity bitch, I-”
“Get on then.” Yaxley barked, anger surging at the insult “I’ll choose Azkaban before you insult her again.”
“I promise you would n’er live that long.” Alastor whipped out his wand and then Miss Earl Grey, who was quiet as a mouse and apologized for living at work, whipped out her own, stepping in front of him, leveling him with her wand.
“What makes you so sure that you will be able to do anything about it, Professor?” She hissed, still mindful of the atmosphere of the bookstore. “Leave, or I will expose your dirty secrets about the children of the death eaters that have trumped up charges and the after effects of the cruciatus on their case files.”
This seemed to have an effect on Alastor because he shoved his wand in his pocket, shooting her another dirty look before hobbling out of the book store. He could see the proprietor, Mr. Flourish, relaxing at his register and turning back to his book.
She let out a shaky breath and turned back to the shelves, her shoulders tense, and he wished he could comfort her, or protect her from his former coworker, his former subordinate. She was so small, her hair curly and haphazardly pulled backwards away from her face. She wore navy robes even on her day off and she looked so unassuming. Yet, when push came to shove she was more dangerous than Bellatrix, with blackmail material that had even deterred the crazy Alastor Moody from his favorite pastime: torture.
Yaxley, at a loss of what to do, stood next to her silently as the hand that was grabbing the deep oak shelf relaxed and she leaned her head against the lip of it, trying to breathe easily. Quietly he spoke: “Would you like some tea?”
He took her to Lucius’ favorite cafe, a quiet spot that was far away from the crowds so that the Malfoy family, often hounded by the press, could enjoy some privacy while they ate. This privacy came at a price, and that was not listed on the menu, but she ordered tea, and a croissant, which she began to pick apart and eat like a bird in small pieces. No words passed between the two of them in the booth in the back of the cafe. She had three books:
Unified Set Arithmancy, Reactive Agents in Neurosis Potions, Detective Dee
. He smiled at the last one, a popular book series that he read a lot when he was younger.
Miss Earl Grey, or Miss Hermione Granger was comfortable to be with, in the silence she found comfort and eventually after half the pot of decent earl grey was gone she had relaxed and was beginning to read the inside cover page, torn between being rude and interested in her purchases.
“Read.” Yaxley said, calling the waiter over and asking for the paper. “There is no hurry this afternoon, my dove.”
“Does he do that often?” She said, looking up from the book she was shyly pretending not to read. “Terrorize you.”
“To the victors go the spoils.” Yaxley replied as the paper was laid down in front of him. Harry Potter was the headline again today for an opium bust in South London.
“How is it that we’ve made such a mess of things?” She huffed and finally, relented, cracking open the Artihmancy book on top of the pile “When I found out about what was happening to Daphne, I wanted to put something in writing to protect innocent children of Death Eaters from retaliation. How can house elves have more rights than people?”
Yaxley’s eyes went up from the headline. “I see now.”
Brown eyes met his “What?”
“Why they buried you.”
“Why?”
“Because you saw the truth of what it means to be the winners of the war. To write history, and to omit it too.”
“People choose to be blind, but I cannot.”
“You’re a smart girl, Miss Hermione.”
She gave him a wan smile: “Brightest Witch of Her Age.”
“A blessing, and a curse, I see.”