backdated WHO: Sofiya & Theodore WHEN: 20 March 2005, night WHAT: The Book Burning & aftermath
RATING: PG-13 for eventual violence PROMPT: BOOKS
The night started in slow-motion, perhaps like all bad nights.
Theodore dressed for a funeral. It felt apt, somehow; even his natural bend towards cynicism couldn't excuse this, couldn't find rationale for the destruction of creativity and knowledge. The Ministry will be hosting a bonfire. How remarkably unobjectionable a turn of phrase could be -- it sounded almost festive, a bonfire, with music and food, with people from all over the Kingdom, a chance to unite, a place to celebrate.
A time to cast books into the Ministry's crucible and burn away all that wasn't right in their eyes.
It made Theodore a bit ill, to be honest, but on the ocean of politics the tide was turning and he knew better than to hold his ground in the face of an impending flood. The stakes grew higher with every passing week. Punishments more severe. Liberties quenched to the point that people were forgetting what it was once like, before Diggory, before Shacklebolt, before Voldemort, before Scrimgeour. Theodore didn't entirely agree with the shortcomings of Fudge's reign, but he had a long, precise memory, and for all it's flaws, there had never been doctrines like these. But, for all that longing ate away at him from the inside, there was little sense in dwelling upon the past. The past was gone, and never would be again. There was no time for do-overs, no chance to change what had gone wrong. All he could do was deal with now, and now he was collecting a few books from his father's collection, cast long ago into limbo behind the glass of a cabinet in his sitting room, for a book burning.
One was a genealogy book, one that Theodore had memorised as a child, under the tutelage of his father. The memory meant more to him than the text itself, but he opened it anyway, felt the inside of the cover and the centuries old ink that scrawled out its first owners. Like many purist genealogy texts, it was older than living memory, magically updating itself to include new lines and children. He flipped away to somewhere near the end, a half-smile at the corner of his mouth. There he was, a thin line from his parents. He traced it up and over, to Pansy's name. Her children were marked by three indistinct Xs, and his smile faded. He believed in what this book represented, as he believed in blood-purism itself, but it seemed callous, somehow, to ignore everything that her children represented, everything they would become, because of an unfortunate lapse in blood. He might have considered adding in their names, adding his own script to that of his forebears, but there was little point. This book would be burnt soon, leaving him with little more than memories.
He set it atop a desk.
Upon it went another book, considerably less sentimental, about the practical applications of Dark Arts. It wasn't technically illegal, having no magical references or curses inherent to the pages, but Theodore didn't exactly feel safe living on technicalities. No, he had to be unabashedly in support of the Ministry -- even if he'd never been unabashedly in support of anything in his life.
A third book, disparaging of muggles, followed by a fourth, and a fifth. It felt as if he were carving out a small, sensitive piece of himself with each addition. It was the sacrifice of independence for safety. He hated it, but sometimes that didn't matter.
Ten minutes later, and Theodore's apparating deposited him twenty metres from a blazing pile of parchment and heavy paper. It was beautiful, in it's way, an incredible dance of reds and yellows that licked at a night sky.