WHO: Byron Kettleburn, Victoria Mulciber and Clement Max WHAT: Everyone's double lives catching up to them WHEN: Tonight, 7 April WHERE: The Daily Prophet offices WARNINGS: Violence, death.
Sleep deprivation was starting to get to Byron. It wasn’t just that he was trying to lead what felt like several different lives — a fake reporter, a real reporter, a functioning father and...a boyfriend? He wasn’t sure what he’d call it.
The real issue was that he couldn’t stop thinking about the Death Eater — Clement? Paranoia kept him awake. Every time he closed his eyes, in rushed the fear that it was only a matter of time before everything caught up to him. His dreams would take him through the various ways in which it could happen. And the various outcomes for the people close to him.
But it was exhaustion that was presently catching up to him. He’d thought avoiding the busiest hours in the Daily Prophet would make him less of a sitting duck while he was there. But that plan had backfired. His eyes grew heavier as the evening wore on. Eventually, he nodded off at his desk on top of a half-written article. BOTCHed but not Broken: The Benefactors of Traditional Cultural Heritage’s Greatest Success Stories would have to wait.
It was easy to get inside the building, not least of all because of Narcissa Malfoy, but there was a satisfaction in that as Vic stalked towards Byron’s desk, fists clenched so tightly together from rage that she was almost shaking.
How dare you. You thought you could just slip away? That what you did wouldn’t have consequences?
And there he was, her friend, sleeping on his bloody desk like he thought exactly that.
“Wake up,” she snapped.
That’s all it took to rattle Byron from his slumber. He shot up straight in his chair and jerked around to identify the source of the voice. When his eyes landed on the Death Eater mask, he jumped out of his chair, knocking it over and nearly tripping himself as he stumbled to his feet.
“Wh-what’s going on?” His voice cracked when he spoke. Without looking away from the Death Eater, he reached a trembling hand behind him to feel for his wand on his desk. All the while, he thought, this is it.
This would be it, if Clement got his way. That Byron was a classmate didn’t matter to him; he’d lost any potential sympathy that Clement might have for him when he’d tried to date Madeline. “You think you can just obliviate all your crimes away?” he hissed, wand drawn.
“Obliviation? Crimes?” Panic drew his breaths closer together and Byron could only manage a halting laugh. His fingers closed around a pen and he swallowed before he fumbled for his wand next to it. “You must have the wrong guy. I can barely be trusted to apparate myself home at night.”
The attempt at a joke, how easily Byron used it as a defence mechanism, only infuriated Vic more. She threw a crumpled copy of Byron’s article onto his desk, teeth barred behind her mask. “Cut the bullshit, this is yours isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Even if it was only a piece of paper, Byron flinched when it came near him. When he was reasonably certain it wouldn’t be the cause of his untimely demise, he shot a glance at the two Death Eaters and finally looked down at it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, turning his wide eyes back on them. “I didn’t — I don’t — It’s not mine.”
“You shouldn’t lie, Byron,” Clement said, a flick of his wand to accompany his words with a cruciatus curse. “Now, do you want to try that again or do you want to keep denying that I caught you black and white and red handed?”
He tried to brace himself on his desk when his knees gave out beneath him, dropping his wand and watching it roll beneath his desk. Instead Byron crumpled to the ground, banging his knee on his overturned chair. As if the cruciatus curse wasn’t bad enough.
“I didn’t —” he started but couldn’t finish through his clenched teeth.
“You did,” Vic spat, even though part of her desperately wanted them to be wrong.
That part was buried by the anger and betrayal, the hurt that she’d been stupid enough to believe he considered her a friend while he worked to undermine all she was trying to do. With only a momentary fumble of indecision, Vic took off her mask and let him see the full extent of it. “Time’s up, Byron. Should I read you a passage? Maybe you just need a reminder.”
Byron’s eyes widened when he saw his classmate standing in front of him. The Death Eater on whom he’d just cast suspicion standing next to the Death Eater he’d tried to obliviate. The curse still had him by the throat, but he didn’t need to speak for his fear to be easily read.
Clement dropped the curse, clearing Byron’s head from the pain to let him fully take in that it was Vic standing in front of him. Then, because despite the many flaws he believed Byron to have, Clement still knew he was a clever man and likely had suspicions based on Madeline telling everyone that he’d forgotten about their break up on the same day that Byron had obliviated someone, he removed his own mask.
“You really should treat your friends better, Kettleburn.”
“Friends?” Vic scoffed, nails cutting into her skin where she’d balled her hands into fists. “We were never his friends. Was that what all the—the jokes were? The drinks? Looking to make a fucking story?”
“No,” Byron answered, senses slowly returning to him. He braced himself on the chair but couldn’t quite make it to his feet — at least not for a long moments’ worth of collecting himself and waiting for his legs to work again. “It wasn’t like that.”
“But you can’t say I’ve been a shit friend when you’re both —” He trailed off, silently motioning to their masks. To Clement’s wand. He swallowed. “Not very friendly.”
Vic blinked at that, as if it had never truly occurred to her that their feelings or actions were hypocritical in any way.
What was it like she wanted to demand from him. How could you do this to me?
Jaw set, she reached for her own wand. “Well I guess it’s all irrelevant any way. You were right, we aren’t friendly. You’re just a vigilante who’s run out of time. I thought you were keeping your head down Byron.”
Aside from the whole publishing incendiary articles for an illicit paper and obviously pissing off the wrong pair of classmates, Byron was pretty sure he’d been keeping his head down and his opinions mostly to himself. He’d been writing bogus stories for the Daily Prophet for months without a proper complaint. He hadn’t even had a chance to clog Narcissa Malfoy’s toilet before she’d stopped showing up to work.
But despite all that, or maybe because of all of it, he had to laugh at the thought of his being a vigilante. “You think I’m in the Order of the Phoenix?” He shook his head, his grip still tight on the toppled chair in front of him. “Come on, that’s ridiculous.”
“Stop laughing,” Clement punctuated his command with a burning curse, just in case Byron got any bright ideas about trying to make a run for it. “It’s not ridiculous.” Thanks to Gerald’s help with fixing his memory, there was little he was more certain of than that Byron was most likely a vigilante. “But your little group will get the message soon enough. You can’t stop us. None of you can.”
“You help them Byron, your little paper helps them so don’t give us that bullshit. Give us names, who helps you? How the fuck did you know about the floo?”
“Dedalus Diggle told me about the floo,” Byron replied through a wince, not quite truthfully but also not completely untruthfully. He figured, if Diggle was dead, at least they couldn’t retaliate against him. He took a deep breath before he added, “And he was right, wasn’t he? That’s how you did it.”
Vic bit back on her molars, an imperious tilt to her jaw as she shrugged. He was going to die, what was the harm in confirming. “Yes, I told you didn’t I. Everyone underestimates the floo.” Underestimated her.
“What the hell, Vic?” Byron resisted the urge to hide under his desk or to go crawling after his lost wand. He’d thought they were friends — he’d even thought Clement was his friend until everything with Maddie. How could he be friends with people who were willing to murder him? “All those people dead. For what?”
“For the cause, obviously Byron,” Clement rolled his eyes, already growing tired of this question and answer game. He and Vic had planned murder, not an interrogation. But then again, if they could get names out him, other than an already dead man, maybe they would be rewarded. “It’s a much faster way to get a message across than your worthless paper.”
Vic bristled at Byron’s accusatory tone. “Grow up Byron,” she agreed. “I look after myself and I’ll do what’s necessary to get what I want. You should have worked a little harder at doing the same. Names. Now.”
“I don’t have any names to give you,” Byron said, a note of pleading in his voice. He wasn’t about to tell them Betty and Gwen had been working on the paper with him. And he didn’t know the first thing about the vigilantes, not that he expected them to believe him. “I don’t know anyth—”
A flash of red cut him off and it was all Byron could do to breathe through another round of painful torture. He lost track of time, but it seemed to go on for hours. More questions, more torture, more questions he didn’t have the answers to. By the time they stopped, he could barely move. His face glistened with sweat. He couldn’t look at them.
Vic could barely look at him either. Swallowing hard, she glanced briefly at Clem, hand shaking where it gripped her wand in a death grip. They were getting nothing out of him, something Vic realized some time ago, and yet they’d delayed the inevitable. Maybe that had just been her.
“Any,” she cleared her throat, “any last words, Byron?”
“Don’t — don’t do this.” Byron said and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “I won’t—” He paused to cough again, a painful reminder that rattled through his aching body. His voice was hoarse when he spoke again, glancing between his two classmates. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I won’t write anymore. Anything. Ever again.”
He could tell it wasn’t compelling them, though, and he went on, his voice cracking in his throat. “I have a son,” he said, his chest seizing at the thought of Terry and Lumos. “I can’t just — Please don’t do this.”
Vic inhaled sharply, throat tight.
Clement could see Vic’s hesitation, Byron’s claims of friendship and fatherhood causing her pause. Unfortunately for Byron it wasn’t working on him, Uncle Gerald’s words ringing in his ears. “Victoria,” he snapped, raising his wand again. She’d said she wanted to do this. That Byron was hers to kill after what he’d said about her. But Clement was not a patient man. “If you don’t hurry this up, I’ll kill him and you.”
Vic’s gaze snapped to Clem’s, the cold, expectant expression on his face causing her mouth to curl up in a snarl.
Determined, she raised her wand and met Byron’s eyes.