Agnes O'Hare (her royal HIGHness) (saintagnes) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-05-12 18:16:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! [1979-05] may, agnes o'hare, marlene lupin (née mckinnon), millicent bagnold (née macfusty) |
RP Log, Agnes, Marlene, & Millicent
Who: Marly, Agnes, Millicent
What: Agnes is in jail... again
Where: Ministry of Magic holding cells
When: 12 May depending on when we post
Status: Complete, logged
Rating: PG-13 for swearing mostly
The last thirty six hours had seemed like a hellish blur of color and anger and violence; Agnes had received word late last afternoon from her father. Mum and Gramps were dead. Murdered. In the very fucking pub he'd owned for 20 years. It was unreal, and she'd fled home immediately to fight off the obliviators that seemed intent upon removing the last memories of her family from the world. Oh, it had been intense. Agnes had been through some shit battles lately, and obliviators didn't fight as dirty as death eaters. She'd hexed two and punched one in the nose before being dragged off screaming bloody murder out of the pub. Half the muggles and wizards in the area had fought this battle many many times before, and this time the obliviators had only fined most of the participants (which was a laugh, wasn't it? As if anyone in this neighborhood had the money for a fine). Agnes, however, was a repeat "violent offender", and had her ass thrown into a holding cell before she could blink twice. Stripped of her wand and her journal and allowed one owl (which she sent to Marlene), she finally made time to feel the one emotion she hadn't yet had the time to recognize: grief.
It was a very lonely sort of cell when one was feeling like hell, and Agnes, who had always been rather free with her emotions, didn't fight the tears as they ran down her cheeks and across her nose. On occasion she made a rather unattractive snerk and smeared tears and snot across her hand, but otherwise she didn't move. Fuck. FUCK. It was so fucking unbelievably shitty she couldn't believe it was real. But if she was going to be here for "a week or up to thirty days depending on how well you cooperate, Ms O'Hare", she was bloody well going to have a shoulder to cry on first.
So that's where Agnes had been. It shouldn't've been surprising, considering Agnes had been quite clear about what she planned on doing to the Obliviators, but Marlene had been so distracted by the millions of other events of the morning that she nearly lost it again (after finally regaining some sort of composure) upon getting the owl from the Ministry explaining her friend's present situation. Wonderful. This was just what they fucking needed right now, Agnes in jail. Why had she not stopped her last night before she'd taken off? Why had she encouraged her? ...Well, because Agnes had every right in the world to be livid, and if Marlene would've fucking been able to pull herself out of this annoying funk -- otherwise known as, you know, dealing with grief like a normal person -- she probably would've been in the same boat right now. Or worse, considering the people she had half a mind to do Very Violent Things to.
She'd popped over to the Ministry as soon as she got the owl, knowing perfectly well that people only got to send one note out, and she'd been it. Agnes didn't even know what sort of hell Marlene had woken up to that morning, because she'd been thrown into jail for trying to work off the rage to her own personal tragedies. She should've been surrounded by her friends just then, not fucking thrown into a cold, dark jail cell by herself. Leaving her wand with the guard (despite feeling very, very uncomfortable with being disarmed, even though it was protocol,) he let Marlene into the cell with Agnes, the door closing with an echoing clang that made Marlene's stomach drop. "Hey, love," Marlene said quietly, immediately moving to sit at Agnes's side, putting her arm around her. She didn't need to ask if she was okay. The answer to that was pretty flipping obvious. "I tried bringing you some pot but they thought that might make things worse."
Agnes managed a rather wet sounding laugh at that and smudged a shaking hand across her face. She didn't feel especially embarrassed at crying, but she felt shitty bringing Marlene into a damned cell when she should have been at home enjoying her Sunday (oh, little did she know). "Bastards," she tacked on helpfully after, and then wiped her arm off on her shirt before wrapping it around her friend. Jesus, human contact of the non-violent kind felt almost like a relief after the stupid shit she'd been dealing with. "Quite the fucking mess I got myself into, yeah? Can't seem to. Stay out of trouble." And with a weak smile, her eyes welled up again, and she gave Marlene a sharp, needy sort of hug and then released, shaking her head. "They got to 'em, Marly. Mum and Gramps. Both, just gone." She didn't even have to say anything about the obliviators - after all, they weren't especially at fault - just another rankling element in this hell. "You don't look too hot yourself." Another attempt at a laugh faltered.
Marlene just shrugged, shaking her head, not sure of what to say. She briefly considered not telling Agnes what had happened; she had more than enough to deal with right now without bringing her own shit into it. However, she was also more than aware as to how Agnes would react when she did find out, and Marlene wasn't sure if she could deal with the wrath that was sure to follow once she got out of jail. "I'm so sorry, honey. I know that means shit right now," she added with a sarcastic laugh. People could be as sorry as they wanted, it didn't change anything. She still appreciated it, but if she had to listen to one more person's condolences... especially from people who she wanted to hex in the face right now... she was going to snap. "It's uh. Been kind of a bad day for a bunch of us," Marlene admitted, her voice cracking slightly at the end of the sentence. Fuck. There went her promise to herself that she wasn't going to start crying again.
Agnes laughed right along with Marlene and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "It don't mean shit," she murmured - though, in all honesty, it kind of did. It was a nicer kind of shit, though, considering it came from one of her best friends, and at least Marlene was frank about it. Agnes couldn't stand the sort of dripping sympathy most people dredged out. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the sentiment, but she didn't need to be fawned over. But she didn't think much on that, at the moment, because Marlene's admission startled her, and her heart did some unpleasant combination of sinking and racing. "What the shit happened?" She asked, attempting to sound sturdy and supportive but coming out more frantic and demanding. Marlene's parents? Oh God, please, no - not anyone else. "What happened?!"
"They uh..." Marlene swallowed hard, knowing that she didn't have to elaborate on who the unspoken "They" was, "Lil's parents, both of them. Lily was there, they... James said they made her watch," she explained, trying to keep her voice steady and even and keep down the sick feeling welling up again in her stomach. "And uh." Dammit, out with it already, Marlene. It was so much easier to write it down than to say it out loud. Actually vocalizing what had happened, that made it real. And it wasn't that she was even in denial over the fact that it had happened anymore. It was the "how" that wouldn't come out. "This morning... well, last night we think, I don't fucking know, they... Sophie and all of them, Agnes. Sophie and Cam and Holly, and while they were sleeping... things've kinda exploded, dude," she sniffed, wiping at her eyes again. Dammit, wasn't she fucking done with this yet? She didn't think it was physically possible for her to cry any more than she already had that day. "Remus and I are going to do something. We don't know what yet."
"Those fucking arrogant, evil pricks," Agnes hissed, rage welling up in the undertones of sadness and overwhelming them. She was infuriated, and she grabbed Marlene and pulled her in close. "It's gonna be okay. We're gonna pay them back, Marly." Her voice, fingers spasming over the other girl's back. How could anybody be so fucking revolting? Holly was only fucking three years old. Who the fuck did that. "They're gonna suffer. Soon's I get out of here I'll help best I can, yeah?" She resisted the urge to ask if Marlene's dad could help out with that - after all he had other things to worry about right now, and she wasn't quite selfish enough to discard that, even if she was having trouble coping with the notion that other people were dead. Other people, and so soon, so suddenly. It wasn't fucking right, and if Marlene wanted to cry, she could fucking do it, and Agnes joined in, leaking onto her friend's shoulder a bit. "D'you need anything, darlin?" It was a bit of a ludicrous question, but Agnes seemed to have a knack for those.
"I think I'm gonna steal that pot when I get back," Marlene laughed through her tears, squeezing Agnes tightly. After a few moments she pulled back, pressing against her eyes and swearing under her breath. "Dammit, I need to stop this, it's not fucking helping anything." She didn't bloody come down to the jail to have Agnes comfort her over her problems; she could be upset all she wanted later when she had a pillow to smother her sobbing into. She didn't act like this in front of people for a reason. "How long are you in here for? Can I do anything? I'm sure if they knew what happened they wouldn't be acting like such wankers, keeping you in here." At least, Marlene hoped that was the case. It was hard to believe that the place that half her family.... well, the place that her father worked would be cruel enough to keep someone in jail for something so stupid when they were mourning something so terrible.
"Goddamn, darlin, you fucking smoke the shit outta my stash. I can always" get more... from Mum? Not anymore. Agnes bit down on her lip and sat back, eyes swollen with tears. She was exhausted just from all the feeling she was doing. Her nan dying had been bad enough, but her entire family sans one getting wiped out in the span of a few months? What the FUCK. "I ain't sure how long theys keepin' me," she said, voice dipping lower, both to disguise the closing of her throat as her body attempted to cry. "Theys tellin' me if I behave or sommat then theys gonna let me out in a week." She stood now, moving toward the bars. "BUT I AIN'T COOPERATIN WITH THESE SLAVES OF THE FUCKIN MAN. THAT SHIT AIN'T RIGHT." She yelled it through the bars and the long sigh of the guard could be heard, even around the corner of the detention block. "Those fuckers," and she jabbed her thumb outward, letting anger wash over her to replace the agony, "is tryin' to take the last memories peoples got o' my gramps and my mum."
"Keep yelling like that and you might even get them to cut things short, you annoy'em enough," Marlene suggested with an exhausted shrug, leaning against the wall. Her thoughts had drifted to Agnes's family, wondering if the Obliviators had actually gotten to them yet. She could understand wanting to help the muggles forget about how absolutely horrific Agnes's mother and grandfather's last few minutes had been, how and what had all happened. She'd grown up with the whole official textbook reason as to why the Obliviators did what they did (what with her dad at the department's head), but the morals behind it still nagged at her, especially when it was her best friend's family at the head of it. "I'll see what I can do about that," she suggested, not sure how effective her plea of leaving them alone would be right now, and she was probably too late anyway, but she'd still ask her father about it to see what he could do. He might actually be more sympathetic at the moment, given his own present situation. Marlene knew her dad wouldn't take too kindly to someone trying to make him forget his own daughter simply because he wasn't a wizard.
Agnes turned and leaned against the bars of her cell, giving Marly a weary smile. "This is fucking bollocks," she announced to nobody in particular. She didn't especially want to think about what was going on, because if she thought about it long enough she knew the guilt would start to set in for real; she knew it would eat at her and eat at her until she couldn't bear it. Another side-glance assured her that no-one was in the immediate vicinity, and she asked in a low voice: "what's everyone thinkin' bout all this? Ain't a coincidence, that's for fucking sure. We takin' action or what?" It probably ought to have occurred to Agnes that further provocation was the best way to get the last member of her family killed, but with repression of grief, of guilt, came the repression of a little thing we like to call reality as well, and she was hell-bent on revenge. It didn't quite jive with her peace and love mantra, but by God it felt like the right thing to feel.
Marlene glanced towards the doors of the cell as well, then moved towards the furthest back corner of the room that she could get to, waving for Agnes to move closer. "We're definitely not sitting on this, no fucking way," Marlene explained in a hushed tone. "Well, honestly, I don't know what any of the older folks are thinking; none of them have said jack shit really. Which, you know, typical," she rolled her eyes. "Remus and I are trying to figure something out for rounds tonight, because if I don't do something I am going to flip out at the wrong person, and that'll just be messy. And Sirius's bitch of a cousin, she... not Narcywarcy, the crazy one that married Lestrange, she and Sirius started getting into it, and I guess she actually told Sirius that she's one of them. There's no way of proving it though; her word against his, but we want to figure out somehow to set the psycho up," Marlene nodded, barely speaking above a whisper. Not that she cared if one of the guards popped in and heard her mention Bellatrix, but she definitely didn't want them to overhear her namedropping Remus or Sirius, especially with that Pepper guy poking his nose in to things.
Agnes moved away from the bars with another glance outward to assure herself no one was coming and into the corner with Marlene. She kept a look out, cuz fuck knew who was eavesdropping in here, honestly. Bowing her ear in, she nodded and frowned her eyebrows in concentration. She really didn't want Sirius to go get himself murdered - it was hard to be friends with a corpse, and only slightly less so with a ghost. Not to mention the fucking would have to stop. Har. A wry smile touched her cheeks but spilled away almost immediately. Bellatrix Lestrange - how she fucking hated that name, and the bitch that went with it. Agnes tried to limit how often she was in touch with her hateful side, but if anyone could make a person angry it was Bellatrix. Hell, she could probably make John Lennon want to slap someone. "Maybe youse can get her to do somethin death eaterly in public? Though I wouldn't want no one on the other end of her wand, even if it were in public."
"Yeah, that's part of the problem. Kind of hard to provoke that without someone else winding up dead," Marlene groaned, leaning back into the corner, trying to ignore the way that mentions of Death Eaters, and death in general really, was not helping her desperate attempt to keep her emotions in check until she got back home. "And pissing'em off in the journals doesn't do much eater except give them time to brew how ticked off they are and then pop up when you're not expecting it." And usually popping up behind people who weren't involved, who shouldn't have reason to need to expect something like that to happen. That was the part that was still gnawing at Marlene the most. If their problem was with the shit that she said, then fucking come after her. Leave her family out of this. ...Not that Marlene reallly wanted that to happen either, but better her than someone she cared about.
Any further subversion or soul-searching would have to wait; the tête-à-tête was interrupted by the crisp click of a pair of high heels approaching. Specifically, the favourite brown not-quite-sensible pair of the Head of the DMLE's hitwizard squad. Millicent had a steaming mug of tea in one hand, a thin, lavender Ministry file in the other, a small book tucked under her arm and half an hour until a meeting with Magical Creatures regarding a mermaid-smuggling racket running out of Portsmouth. Just enough time to give Miss O'Hare (whose file she carried, one finger marking the place she'd skimmed up to in the lift) a little nudge.
She'd signed into the cells, a protocol she was entirely happy to observe given recent events, and borrowed one of the warden's juniors to carry a chair down to O'Hare's cell for her. Upon noting who Millicent was here to visit, the warden had observed she had a visitor already. A Miss McKinnon.
How interesting.
Low voices stilled altogether as Millicent arrived at the cell, glancing once at the pair of girls (and that's all they were; girls) huddled in the back corner before directing the guard to set down the chair to one side. She set her burdens down on it, file and tea and book, and then looked up through the bars with a pleasant smile. "Miss O'Hare?" she said, glancing from one face to the other, "I'm Millicent Bagnold."
Agnes's lips drew into a line, something that seemed altogether unnatural on what should have been a welcoming and utterly emotional sort of face. "Do me a favor and tell people where I got to, yeah Marly?" She reached out and gave her friend a handsqueeze before kissing one cheek promptly and moving away from her. She didn't trust Millicent at all - just because she was a woman didn't make her a slave to the institution. Didn't make her a damned cop. She wanted Marlene out as soon as possible lest she get caught in the questioning. "Give your folks my best, yeah?" A wry, wry smile. They'd both suffered a shitload in the last day.
Oh good lord. Millicent Bagnold? The bloody head of the hit wizard department? Well today just kept getting better and better, didn't it? Marlene threw a slightly nervous glance Agnes's way, hoping that she'd at least try to watch what she'd said around her. Despite being The Man or not, you didn't piss off the heads of Ministry departments. Especially not when you were already in jail. "I'll do that, yeah," Marlene nodded, fiddling slightly nervously with the edge of her shirt. "You let me know what's going on the second you can, all right? We'll do... tea." Tea. Bagnold had tea with her. Wonderful; she probably had it plugged with veritaserum. Don't drink the kool-aid, Agnes. "I'll see you soon, love," she said her goodbyes, moving slowly to the cell door and nodding a respectful "'ello, ma'am," to Millicent as she waited for the guard to unlock the door to let her out. Once outside, Marlene turned and mouthed "good luck!" to Agnes, trying to appear reassuring before being scuttled off by the warden. It was Agnes. They could throw her through hell and back and she'd be fine. There was no question that she could handle the Bagnold lady.
Millicent had picked up the file again, giving the girls the illusion of privacy for their farewells as she flipped through the last few pages of it. Even doing so, she didn't miss Marlene's nervous glances; she was a hitwizard, observation was a fundamental tool of her trade.
As the warden showed Marlene out, Millicent tossed the file back down on the chair, and turned the full force of that observation on Agnes, resting one hand on her hip and tilting her head slightly in consideration. She looked quite a sweet little thing, though obviously neither pleased nor cowed at Millicent's presence. "That was the infamous Miss McKinnon, I assume," Millicent said, not looking away from Agnes. "You've both of you had a terrible time recently. I wish there was more I could do for you." She turned to the chair, picking up the mug. "Is there anything I can have brought down for you? A cup of tea, perhaps?" She smiled as she lifted her own, curliques of steam rising, for a sip.
Agnes moved closer, but it was mostly so that she could plop down upon her bench, cross her legs up comfortably around her, and peer right back at Millicent, grey eyes surprisingly sharp when not dulled by copious amounts of pot. That particular lacking was making her more irritable than usual as well, and the usually smiling lips were pulled tight against her teeth until she finally smoke. "She ain't infamous." It was a defensive sort of tone, reeking of immaturity and loyalty and rashness. Agnes ought to know better than to rankle the one person in charge of her jail sentence, but she didn't, wouldn't, couldn't refrain from being exactly who she was. It was a failing, though she didn't recognize it as such. "How do I know you ain't put nothin in it?" She asked dubiously.
That first mouthful of tea was always absolute bliss. Millicent sighed, and opened her eyes again, to look at Agnes with one corner of her mouth crooking upwards in amusement. "Like sugar or milk?" she asked, and then continued without pause, "Really, Miss O'Hare, the department is being frowned at enough at the moment without me violating protocol for the administration of various agents to prisoners." She tapped her finger against the rim of her tea mug. "And perhaps infamous was the wrong word, but Miss McKinnon is becoming rather well known in the department for having trouble follow her around." She looked up again and added, "As are you," as though this afterthought had only just occurred to her.
Agnes swallowed slightly; she was both ravenous and dying for a cup of tea and couldn't decide if she was principled enough to refuse either because it was the ministry. Her stomach growled loudly, as if it wasn't being treacherous enough simply feeling hunger, and she frowned down at it. "Troubles always gonna come to people who speak out 'gainst what ain't right in this world." She replied sturdily, folding her arms across her knees and feeling unpleasantly small in this cell and under the scrutiny of such a well-polished woman. "Sometimes it's worth it. Othertimes..." it ain't. But her voice hitched in her throat and she just smiled wryly.
Millicent had smiled a little at the rumble of Agnes's mutinous stomach, but the expression gained its own sardonic quirk at the girl's words. "Oh believe me," she said, half a sigh, "I know quite what you mean. Excuse me a moment." Careful not to spill her tea, she took her wand from its pocket inside her jacket and touched its tip to her throat, so that when she turned down the corridor, her next words were audible to the warden in his station. "Have someone bring some tea and perhaps some sandwiches for Miss O'Hare, please." She tucked the wand away again, and added to Agnes, "You can wait until after I've gone to eat, if it makes you feel better. Though you have my word there won't be anything more untoward than horseradish in them."
She cradled the mug in both hands, and gave a her head a diffident tilt before she added, "If I may offer some advice, and you're no more required to take it than you are the sandwiches," though both, Millicent considered, would be of significent benefit, "attack is all very well, but long-term progress requires some defence, not to mention support and planning."
Conflicted as to whether to say thank you or piss off, Agnes went with a politer and more karmatically friendly approach. "Thanks." Sandwiches. Mmm. "Vegetarian, please, lady." She supposed she could just pick the stuff off her bread, but the idea of contamination was repugnant, and her stomach was beginning to like this idea of eating food more and more. She nodded abruptly, though unsure whether she'd really wait for Millicent to leave or not. After all, veritaserum required her to know which questions to ask, and Agnes had no idea how much Pepper had passed on. She felt safe. Sort of. In a vague, I-don't-mind-eating-your-sandwiches sort of way, anyhow. "We had wards up at the commune," she replied dully, feeling her stomach twinge under the thought. "Cause of last time. But my folks didn't want none of that down at the pub. Woulda kept out the needy, y'know?" Her eyes closed a little bit, replaying the last few moments she'd spent there. Damnit all, why had she been so stupid. She should have insisted. Should have forced them to put up the wards. But she knew deep down that if anybugger on this planet was as stubborn as she was it was her old gramps. Was being the key word."
Millicent's eyebrows went up - vegetarian? Girls these days - but she passed the additional instructions on to the warden. "It's so easy to identify what should have been done with hindsight," she said gently. "All we can do is try to ensure there isn't a next time." After a moment's pause, she continued, in a slightly more businesslike tone, "Which is why I'm here, Miss O'Hare. Because the only way I can even meet your eyes is if I am sure I'm doing everything I possibly can to prevent what happened to your family, and to Miss McKinnon's, and to..." She bent to open the file on the chair, flicking to the end. "To Mrs Potter." Whose family name, staring at her there on the paper, was Evans. Lily Evans. Oh Merlin, they were all of them Tabby's schoolfriends.
The file slipped closed again as Millicent straightened. She was still staring down at it, though, as she said, "I have a daughter your age, Miss O'Hare. I believe you were at school with her, actually. The idea of her being involved with something... being out of her depth and not asking for help, though it would keep her safe..." She looked back at Agnes then, and smiled without a shred of amusement or joy as she admitted, "It terrifies me."
Agnes blinked heavily, startled at the tears that were already hot again beneath her eyelids. She felt like shit, to be honest, about all of it. Not just her parents but Marly's and Lily's families. What if that'd been partially her fault? Well, there wasn't even a what IF. It was something they were all part of, but that made every single one of them responsible, in her opinion. There was no hiding in numbers among their lot. "Law ain't gonna help us, lady. I gotta be honest with ya. Unless youse gonna go out there and ward every bloody fucking house of peoples who says what they think about these bastards. It ain't gonna happen." The tears got hotter, and Agnes smeared them away from her with the back of her hand, continuing on as if crying in front of an absolute stranger was just another drop in the bucket. "The only shit I's involved in is saying what's right and what's wrong wheres people can hear me. It's enough. They ain't too 'preciative of honesty."
Millicent's gaze wasn't unsympathetic, but it was also steady, and not letting up just because of a few tears. In fact, there was a definite hint of steel in her voice - her own new-woken worry for her family transmuting into anger - as she said, "The law can't help you, Miss O'Hare, if you don't help the law." But she left that alone for a moment, setting down her tea on the chair. "And Miss McKinnon and Mrs Potter. Are they also involved in the same shit?" The expletive didn't have any extra weight, or any hint of flinch; just another word more common than many used in the hitwizard squadroom.
"Open up your damned journal if'n you want to know who is speaking their minds, madam," replied Agnes, immediately galvanized by the other woman's change in tone and replying with a sharp tinge of hostility. Typical pawn of The Man, she thought; can't stand the idea of the unwashed masses daring to speak their minds. Blaming the victim. Typical. Absolutely typical. She was so sick of this hierarchical bullshit. "I ain't helpin' no law. I ain't a slave to the man. I don't need nobody's fuckin' help." And that was that. Whatever openness, vulnerability - whatever softness she'd felt toward Millicent evaporated, and Agnes was again just another bristling hippy anarchist.
That tone set Millicent's mouth in a seriously displeased line. "I see," she said, words cold and steely. Millicent had, however, never been the sort to throw her hands up and leave idiots to the consequences of their own actions; rather, she gained more satisfaction from saving those who'd damn themselves just to spite her. "And your family, Miss O'Hare? Did they need anybody's help? The McKinnons? The Evanses? If we'd know they needed protecting perhaps we could have done something. But you," the word was as sharp an accusation as her pointed finger, "are keeping me from doing my job."
Agnes uncurled herself and pushed off from the bench upon which she'd been listening to this diatribe. She stood in front of the bars to her cell, all not-quite-five-foot of her, and glared up at Millicent. "The only help they needed was you lot gettin' off your damned duffs and doin' somethin about this fuckery that's goin' on out there. They needed people to catch these bastards. To pick up the people who is doin' all this shit and to fuckin' lock 'em away. Youse all picked up two death eaters already and ain't even locked 'em up. Just set 'em free. So don't bloody point your finger at me, woman, like I's doin' anything but speakin' out against this shit. I ain't done nothing but tell these bastards exactly what I thinks of 'em. I ain't gonna be terrorized by nobody. I ain't gonna shut my mouth and hope the big bad meanies don't pick on me. I ain't a coward. My gram and gramp and ma went out with their chins in the air and their hearts in the right place, and they wasn't afraid of nobody, neither." She growled out this last, furious that this stupid governmental bitch dared to point her finger and accuse Agnes of doing anything but what was right. Legal? Fuck the law. What was right and what was lawful weren't always the same thing, and she'd be fucked if she'd be scared out of doing what was right by some bloody cell bars. Her parents had raised her proper. "Go find some other victim to stick your digits in, cuz I ain't ashamed o' what I done."
Just as well there were bars between them, really, because Millicent's palm just about itched to slap the silly chit. How dare she suggest that they sat there doing nothing. That they let people go because they wanted to. As if Millicent didn't feel each and every destroyed life and livelihood like a cut in her own flesh. And how dare she do it while standing there refusing to help.
But there were bars, and there was enough trouble for the DMLE already, so Millicent took a deep breath, and when she spoke her voice was even and cold. "If you and yours have information about even one of them that could have led us to an arrest, let alone a conviction, and you haven't shared it with us, then I hold you personally responsible for every bit of damage they have caused."
She turned away from the cell, and snatched up the book from the chair, turning back to slot it between the bars, propped against the crossbar. "Here," she said, "your journal, Miss O'Hare. I'll have the warden bring you ink and a quill so you can cause more trouble, shall I? Because Merlin knows we don't have enough dead bodies yet."
Agnes nearly took a step back, stunned by the comment for a moment, even as anger and self-righteousness spilled through her stomach. She had to clench her teeth not to yell out something rude that would probably have gotten her an extra week or two, so instead reached forward for her journal and launched it across the room as hard as she could. As it was not a very sturdy book nor was the cell a very long one, the sharp ripping of binding was loud as it slammed against the wall and fell into a plaintive heap below the 'window'. And Agnes didn't know if she was madder at Millicent or herself.
And she didn't want to know.