Drabbles/Ficlets/Some weird hybrid

[author_by_night]

So re-reading the third Harry Potter book has me fanficcy again. It's also re-emerged the Fangirl of Fandoms Past in me, but making fun of her within the recaps is subduing that quite well. (God guys, I honestly saw Sirius as Johnny Depp. Though it does amuse me that the guy in the American version of Being Human kind of looks like how I pictured a younger Remus... at least in the one episode I saw. I couldn't get into either the UK or the American BHs but that's another post.)


In any case, I need to get some drabble/ficlet/hybrid goodness out of my system.

Kinsley didn't like gathering the friends of a criminal together. But in some odd fashion, he supposed, it was almost... poetic? No, that wasn't the right word, too positive for something so terrible. And it wasn't closure, either. If anything, their closure had been disrupted, a door re-opened by Black's escape. But they appeared to need this moment.

Among those he had questioned were Emmaline Vance and Remus Lupin; they'd been in the Order, of course, if a few years before Kingsley. He had still been new when the war ended. He had liked them, and the Potters, and their other friends, but their deaths and betrayals were not to him what it had been to them. Kingsley only really understood their grief when he lost his own good friend and partner while tracking down a suspect. It still hurt years later.

The questioning had taken five minutes; it was clear none of them had anything to do with Black, nor wanted anything to do with them. Emmaline and Mary Cattermole (who'd been MacDonald when Kingsley knew her) had outright denied they were ever friends with with him. A third woman agreed firmly. Remus had offered a dry, "he murdered three of my closest friends, what more is there to say?"

So now they were sitting in Kingsley's office. Kingsley had stood up to indicate they could leave, but only one of them had left, a woman who'd told him, "we shagged once, but that was the closest I ever got to him. Lily would've killed me had she known." She'd then turned bright red and made a hasty exit.

"Perfect," Mary Cattermole said. "More things we didn't need to know. I'm going to kill her later; I never liked him. I told Lily, you're friends with another Severus, but did she listen? Of course not. He didn't even have the nerve to stay in Azkaban. He was always good at being sneaky."

"Do you think we need to call back the Order?" Emmaline asked Kingsley.

"The Order's useless, we always told you two that," Mary shot.

"You just don't like being left out of things, Mary. Not that we didn't try getting you to join."

"She did it because of James. I never liked him much, you know. Liked his friends even less."

"I'm sitting right here," Remus said dryly.

"You were actually okay," Mary told him. "I just never liked-"

"-the ones who were murdered. I understand."

"Mary, maybe you shoud find Despina," Emmaline said.

"This isn't ov-"

"-Mary."

Mary rolled her eyes. "I need to get home to the children anyhow."

Mary stormed out, slamming the door behind her. Emmaline turned to Remus. "Look... I'm sorry about that, but you have to understand, we lost Lily in a different way than you lost James."

"How was it any different?"

"Because her husband's best friend killed her. I know James died too, and Peter, I know you lost so much more, but it's a different kind of betrayal for us."

Kingsley remembered when the Longbottoms had been tortured; so many people hurt because of that, but for so many different reasons, and at the time all of them had felt they hurt "more." But it was over now; Alice and Frank were still insane, there was no fixing that, but Bellatrix was still in Azkaban, and they could only move forward. Lily and James's friends couldn't, and they all felt resentment towards exactly the wrong people.

"I know," Remus said. "But you know... it wasn't as though Lily never had any say. She joined the Order on her own, she and Sirius had their own friendship-"

"Oh, there's that too," Emmaline said, this time with a wry smile. "We didn't like that she'd found a new best friend. It was a little infantile, but can you really blame us?"

"I can't blame you for a lot of things."

Emmaline nodded. "You know... you and I should meet sometime. I've missed you, as much as I hate to admit it. Weren't we going to discuss the novel we were reading once we both finished?"

"Yes, that's right! What did you think of Dracula?"

"I wouldn't quite know, that was twelve years ago. Don't think I finished, it was... not a good time."

"I'm in the same predicament myself, actually."

"We should re-read it, then," Emmaline said, and she actually smiled for a minute. "Perhaps we can discuss it sometime?"

"Perhaps."

Neither of them looked nor sounded too hopeful; they shook hands, and Emmaline left. Now it was just Kingsley and Remus.

"I must this," Kingsley said. "Just one thing... you don't happen to know of how Sirius might have escaped?"

Remus's jaw tightened; Kingsley raised his eyebrows.

"No," Remus said after a moment. "I don't... think I do."

"Are you sure? There's people's lives -"

"I've taken a job at Hogwarts," Remus interrupted.

"That's good to hear-"

"-and when I get there, I'll... retrace my footsteps. See if I can think of anything. Make sure he doesn't get close to Harry. If I find anything of note, you'll be the first to hear of it. After Dumbledore."

"Do I have your word?"

"Yes."

Remus left then too, and Kingsley sat back at his desk.

He'd been the observer then, and he was one now too. Seeing grown adults dealing with the aftermath of their childhood, in a very brutal way. It was disturbing, if not as disturbing as the boy who would be thirteen now, the one who'd been betrayed the most.

Kingsley looked at the pictures of Black in his cubicle. It was time to get to work.

Constructive criticism is welcome; I do think it needs work.

Comments

[13oct.livejournal.com]

Hey, I think its great as it is. :)

I'm reading HP to my kids and its bizarre seeing things through their eyes. I half want them to see my fannish pov so it's a bit conflicting. I also didn't realise just how big a fan I was/am. :))

[daintress.livejournal.com]

Very fun! I imagine someone MUST have grilled Remus pretty hard, when Sirius first escaped, but I was expecting it to be Dumbledore. Or possibly even Fudge or Moody. Kingsley, after all, wasn't exactly high on the totem pole at that time.

I like him, though. He's the most calm of all of them, so he was a good linchpin for this fic.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

I think it's great as it :)