Jack Sloper figured that would happen (rise_over_run) wrote in caged, @ 2013-12-30 20:54:00 |
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Jack came in through his bedroom door to find his father sitting on his neatly made bed, a piece of parchment scattered to his left. He knew better not to say anything immediately, the steely look on his father's face clearly indicated who would be doing the talking in this conversation. "You weren't going to tell me, then?" Gerald asked, gesturing skeptically with his eyebrows. Jack unlooped the scarf from around his neck and tossed it on the desk chair. "Tell you what?" he asked, though from the slight change in angle, he could see the edges of very distinct red sealing wax on the parchment. "You lost your prefectship. For refusing to cooperate with authorities and general behaviour unfit for leadership." Gerald snatched up the parchment in his fist and shook it at Jack, a disparate action to the calm tone he struck. "What part of our current situation has you baffled, Jack? Do you think these are idle threats being made about your future? You are being held accountable now for the things you say, Jack, not 2 years from now and the people you are pissing off --" "Do you even want to know what happened or should I not even bother?" Jack interrupted him darkly, moving to lean his backside against the front of his desk. Gerald held his tongue, but didn't withold his stern glare on his son as he crossed his arms before his chest. "Go on." Jack took a breath, cheeks pinked up in anger. "They were looking to generate a list of suspicious people that could have participated in the writing of some internal pamphlets and some graffiti. They demanded 3 names along with reasons. Dad, they've been giving students Nightmare Draught repeatedly and they locked Luna up 2 days for no good reason and we -- and by we, I mean the 4 other prefects who lost their badges that night for the same thing -- weren't about to just make some names and reasons up to appease them. They're looking for targets and you don't have to tell me about being held accountable for my actions because they're holding people accountable for things they haven't even done. Anytime something goes wrong, Ginny's the one getting dragged in to have her hand carved into!" The minute Ginny's name was mentioned, whatever progress Jack had made crumbled. "You need to stay away from her, Jack. Everyone knows her family is a heartbeat away from being implicated with the Order of the Phoenix and if she's causing that much trouble at school, it's not going to be long before she is casting shadows on you," Gerald warned forcefully, his arms tightening in their cross. Jack gripped his desk with two hands, pushing himself back to fully standing. "Well maybe you should just throw me out now before I start casting shadows on you, Dad." "You're going to be nothing but a ball of guilt and misery when it's your sister that starts paying for you mouth, John Naveed," Gerald threatened in a low voice. The statement hung heavily in the air as tension draped molasses-thick on the room. Jack broke it first, shaking his head slowly, as if clearing himself of a fog. "Nothing changes. Nothing will change --" "Jack--" "NOTHING WILL CHANGE," Jack yelled, his characteristic cool completely blown. "Everyone keeps their mouth shut and head down and nothing changes! Don't you even care that what they are doing is wrong? That they are hunting people down and throwing them in prison and Obliviating them until there is nothing left-" "Jack --" "Grow a fucking heart, you coward!" As quiet descended in the room and Jack could see his father, jaw set so hard it trembled slightly, his face flushed and his body vibrating with strain. He wondered if he held himself so tightly to keep from going for his wand. He'd crossed a line and he knew it, but his mouth wouldn't open, nor would an apology crawl it's way out of his throat to try to pull himself back over the line. Suddenly though, his father was across the room, grabbing his shoulder and marching him out the corridor and up the flight of stairs to his parents' floor. He slammed the door to his study behind him and Jack and through open the closet door. The both of them were silent as he pulled out a cardboard box and set in on his desk before tearing into it. The item was wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap in addition to the cushioning charm, but once he got it off, Jack found he still didn't recognise what it was. "This is a pensieve. You know what it does?" Gerald said, some of his calm demeanor restored by the trip and the search. Jack shook his head silently. "It replays memories. Once upon a time I thought I'd go into mind healing." He put his wand to his temple and after a few perfuctory twirls, a thin stream of silver light coiled itself around the tip. It was then swirled into the metal dish etched in runes that were indeed familiar, the memories wafting over the surface like a liquid cloud. "Just look into it. The magic will do the rest." Jack leaned hesitantly towards it, at first just getting a good eye on the runes immediate to him (transportational ones, he noticed), then when nothing happened, peered in further. He didn't have time to look up at his father before he felt himself pulled in. It wasn't like a Portkey, but rather like falling into a dream without the jolting awake at the end. *** It was the dining room around them, the three glass walls showing the mid afternoon brightness that came with the Northern Wales summer. His father was collapsed in the seat he took whenever they actually used the room, at the head, his half slumped posture against the large wooden chair giving him all the appearance of a defeated king. And then his mother, in a summer dress with her hair tied loosely at the top of her head. It was like a dagger in his chest to see her pass a bit of parchment to his father from her perch on the corner of the table, her face a mask of worry. "You can't go in," Gerald murmured as his eyes passed a second time over the letter, shaking his head as his mouth slacked in fear. "God knows what they've got planned - they might just Kiss you on the spot." His mother's head tilted skeptically and she gave him a dry look as she snatched the parchment from his hand. "If they were going to do that, they wouldn't be sending out a letter, Ger. They want a show of it. I may not be on the politics side of the paper, but I know how it works. They want to be seen as fair," she replied, and if seeing her had been a dagger to the chest, the sound of his mother's voice finished him off. Jack bit his lip hard as he could feel his eyes stinging. He crossed his arms over his chest, a mirror of his father not minutes ago, and swallowed hard as the scene continued to play out. "If you go in, you won't be coming out, Beh," Gerald retorted quietly, taking the hand resting on the table edge and massaging it with his own. "If I don't go in? Will they go to my father's door looking for me?" she said, biting her lip and looking into the grain of the table. "Will they come here? Will they haunt your every move, waiting for you to give me up? Or maybe they'd just make an example of you. Of our children. Like they did Marius McKinnon." She was trying to keep a straight face and struggling, and even if Jack didn't recognize the name, it was obvious that his father did. "We can take the train down to London and get the Chunnel to France. My aunt can keep the kids while we get a better plan settled and I'm sure we can mick the passports from when we went to Canada. Just a number or two to change, surely," Gerald reasoned, a slip of panic in his measured tone. The look Behnaz gave him in response wanted to be encouraging, but ultimately, it faltered. "It's easier if I do this. I will not drag my family into my troubles like my father did his," she replied. Jack knew that story well enough, of his grandfather's days working for the BBC in Tehran. It had not ended well for anyone, but it had ended worst of all for his great-uncles and their family that wasn't so lucky to have come to the UK or Canada. Of course it would have driven her now and, as Jack exhaled and looked down, of course she would have expected Azkaban. She probably expected the English version of the SAVAK. "I married your troubles," his father replied softly. "It will make no difference to them. I've already done it. There is no saving us from you." His mother took a breath that stuttered in her chest as tears leaked down her resolute face. "Yes. Yes there is." After a pause hwere she wiped the back of her hand across her cheek. "This is an argument that you can't win. You know I'm right. You know," she repeated as his father looked down into his lap, his hands still holding onto hers. He tugged on her hand, pulling her into him as he stood and wrapped his arms around her, burying his head in her neck as she started to out and out cry... *** Jack was in the study again, the memory giving way to reality. His hand was clutched over his mouth as tears were silently streaming down his face. Gerald was still standing at the desk. He now busied himself with replacing the memory into his mind, his mouth a thin, hard line. When the deed had been done, he came around the desk to stand before Jack, blue eyes narrowed. He leaned in, still a shade taller than Jack, so he could meet him eye to eye. "You are wasting your mother's sacrifice and you should be ashamed," he enunciated quietly through steady lips. After a beat, realization hit Gerald's own eyes - it was his turn to have gone a step too far. Jack didn't see it though, the whole core of him shaken to the point where nothing much existed in that room but his own overpowering sense of confusion, of anger, and of shame. It poured down his cheeks as he turned on his heels and opened the door to the study, then slammed it so hard it the door frame cracked. |