Megan Jones. (theotherginger) wrote in perdition_rpg, @ 2009-02-19 10:16:00 |
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Current mood: | sore |
Entry tags: | ! 1998-02, megan jones, zacharias smith |
WHO: Megan Jones & Zacharias Smith
WHEN: Thursday evening
WHERE: Hufflepuff Commons
SUMMARY: Zach and Megan talk and have comfort and chocolate.
RATING: G
STATUS: Complete.
To say that the school year hadn't been a good one for Megan Jones would probably be about as much of an understatement as saying that the Carrows resembled piles of dung. The idea of practicing the Cruciatus Curse in class and having it practiced on her because she refused to torture a living creature really hadn't helped to improve matters, at least not considerably, and though Megan was usually one to cling to optimism until the very last possible second, she wasn't feeling it tonight. She was sore and achey all over--after effects of the curse that probably could've been treated in an instant by Madam Pomfrey, were she still there. Megan knew that, by rights, she should've been doing homework for her other classes, or at least resting upstairs in her bed, but she didn't even want to think about picking up a quill at the moment, and her bed area smelled like Theodore Nott's perfume.
So instead, she was in the Common Room, curled up on one of the squashy sofas nearest to the fireplace, resting her head on the back of the sofa. Though no one could see or hear it, she was trying to recite Bible verses in her head, in an attempt to pull herself out of a post-Cruciatus funk, but it wasn't working very well...for some reason, the only verses that kept coming to mind were related to the Crucifixion, and those were not helpful in the least. It also didn't help that Megan had far more on her mind than she preferred to have. There was Susan and her...thing with Theodore Nott (which was weird to say the least, but at least it wasn't Susan and her thing with Gregory Goyle. Yuck.), all that graffiti around the school, Neville Longbottom's rallying cries, the papers' lies about Justin, and Zach actually performing the Cruciatus Curse.
She couldn't say that she entirely blamed him. They were just practicing on rats, after all, and if Megan could've done something to avoid getting a detention that wouldn't have completely gone against her conscience, she probably would have. Still...it was torture, and that Zach had been willing to do it was...well. Megan could either judge him for it or she couldn't; there was no middle ground. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back further, hugging her knees to her chest and willing herself not to think about it anymore.
Megan wasn't the only one who felt that the school year wasn't a good one, but Zacharias had decided from the moment he was forced to return after winter holidays that it was going to get a lot worse. He didn't think that it would get this bad, though, and he didn't think that he would be in this kind of situation where he found himself conflicted over the things he was doing. Goldstein had performed the Cruciatus Curse because he wanted to keep on contributing to the D.A, which was understandable enough. Zach, on the other hand, didn't even think about the D.A when he agreed to perform the curse. There was an apprehensive look on his face as he walked down from his dormitory, a few Chocolate Frogs in his hand to give to Megan -- if she was there, of course -- and fortunately, she was. He gave the common room a swift glance, hoping that none of his friends were there, and then went to join Megan on the couch next to her.
"Hey," he said, sounding a little awkward, before handing over the chocolates. "For you."
At the sound of Zach's voice, Megan opened one eye to look at him, and smiled a bit sleepily as he gave her a handful of Chocolate Frogs. "My hero," she stated quietly, sitting upright a bit more and opening one of the boxes and quickly popping the frog in her mouth before it could jump away. Megan found it appropriate that underneath the frog, the face of Albus Dumbledore was smiling up at her the way he used to smile before his beginning-of-term speeches. "Poor, dear man," she commented, holding up the card for Zach to see. "If you hear a strange noise when you're in bed at night and everything else is quiet, it's probably him turning over in his grave."
Sitting up more properly, Megan set the card down on the arm of the sofa beside her and turned to actually look at Zach, both eyes open. "Thank you for the chocolate. How're you doing?"
Despite the overwhelming guilt that he was feeling, Zach let out a small laugh. "Heroes would be people like him," he responded, gesturing at the Chocolate Frog card of Professor Dumbledore. "I'm just the chocolate deliverer." He leaned back against the couch, trying to make himself comfortable even though it was difficult. They would probably end up talking about what had happened at the Dark Arts class later. Then again, while he was unwilling to talk about it, at least he would be confiding about it to Megan. Somehow, it was better to talk to someone that wasn't in the D.A, even though there was that possibility that she was judging him too.
"I'm... all right," he answered -- it was half a lie, but he didn't feel like he had the right to say that he wasn't, considering that it wasn't him that had gone through detention. He looked down at the floor. "I don't know, I guess -- after what happened at class -- I just don't feel good about what I did. I could've said no and opposed like the rest of you, but I didn't."
"One doesn't need to have a Chocolate Frog card to be a hero...sometimes, the hero's the one bringing the cards," Megan quipped. She'd never been a huge collector of the cards herself, but the Dumbledore ones seemed far more important in the last several months than they had before, and even moreso now. It wasn't that she'd been particularly close to the man, but even as dotty as he'd been, he always seemed to her to be stable and trustworthy...like Moses or perhaps like Peter, if he'd survived to old age and not been crucified upside-down...
There she was thinking about crucifixion again. Megan shook her head a bit to clear the idea from her mind and focus on what Zach was saying. "Well...one generally doesn't feel good after that kind of thing. It's kind of like a kick in the balls, if you'll excuse the expression, unless you're completely heartless." She straightened up a little bit more, stretching her arms slightly as she did so. "I suppose you could've said no...you also could've set Carrow's hair on fire or jumped out the window or cursed the rest of us. Could'ves don't really matter in the long run, I don't think. It just matters what you can and will do next."
"Yeah," he responded, and while his response was short, Zach actually looked like he was deep in thought. Megan made a lot of sense -- there was no use dwelling over something that was already done, and he couldn't exactly make an excuse for himself for what he had done to the rats, either. He offered her a small smile. "Thanks, Megan. It doesn't make what I did better, but I needed someone to tell me that." There was a pause, and he let out a small sigh, voicing out what everyone who was tired of being at Hogwarts were thinking: "I just want the year to be over with. I never thought my last year would end up being like this." He looked at her. "It was supposed to be better, or at least anything other than what's going on right now."
"I know," Megan agreed with a sigh. "We're supposed to all of us be here, Justin and Sally-Anne included, and we're supposed to be enjoying the year and having most professors look the other way when we skive off classes and winning the Quidditch cup and sneaking in illegal substances and having people not care..." She laced her fingers together around her knees, pulling them closer to her chest. "But then, I suppose that 'supposed to' matters about as much as 'could've' in the long run, yeah? Though I have to admit, it would've been extremely funny if you set Carrow's hair on fire, in a 'vengeance is sweet' sort of way. I think the only ones who wouldn't have enjoyed it would've been the lump in question and their worshippers in the class." A slow smile spread across her face at the thought of it. It was a very good thought indeed.
He laughed as he imagined Professor Carrow's hair on fire. Certainly, it was fun to picture, but the consequences of what would happen afterwards was something Zach didn't want to know. "True," he responded. "Then again, the supporters are always disappointed when people go against their favourite professors, so we shouldn't be too surprised by now." Despite his lighthearted tone, Zach couldn't help but wonder what it would be like when this was all over. Would things ever be the same again, even if they made it out alive? "I wonder what it's going to be like when we're out of here," he resumed, scratching his cheek thoughtfully. "I wonder if we'll still remember everything, or put them aside and don't think about it any more. And I wonder if we'd still remember people in the Inquinsitorial Squad and what they've done to us."
Zach's question gave Megan pause. She'd always been a more forgiving person than a lot of people she knew (well...in order to live with her mother, she kind of had to be), but the idea of forgiving and forgetting seemed unwise in this case. At the same time, was it really forgiveness if you held onto the memory of something and let it inform your future opinions? Her mouth twisted as she considered the idea. "I think it all depends what happens to everyone in the next couple of months," she stated finally. "If things stay the same...I don't think there'll be much choice in the matter. They won't let us forget because that would deprive them of the whole sick pleasure thing. If things change for the better..."
Megan shrugged again, not really wanting to answer the question. "I suppose we could all not move on and always hate them forever, but I don't think that would be very productive. I don't think we'll ever forget, but I don't think that it'd be good to just keep being bitter about it, you know?" In her mind, it was really the only option...to keep moving forward and not keep looking back and holding grudges. Part of her wished she could get inside Zach's head on the matter, though, and part of her wondered if his question about remembering the Inquisitorial Squad was about himself as well. "Of course, I suppose we could all get mass amnesia or something along those lines, or have some sort of memory wipes, but that'd be an awful lot of trouble to get us to forget our school days."
"We should get mass selective amnesia instead," Zacharias said, almost wishfully. "Or we can get someone to modify our memories." Was he really coming up with this nonsense? He looked at her apologetically. "Sorry. I got carried away -- but -- yeah, I think I'd prefer those kind of options. I don't think I would mind." Some wise person from a thousand years ago probably thought that people had to go through hard times for a reason, and that good things were bound to happen to those who prevailed -- but he didn't see how it could work in this kind of situation. It wasn't only his pessimism influencing him; it was the whole school year. It was what was going on outside. It was Justin's death. He folded his arms, voicing out what he had been thinking for the last couple of weeks; "I just want to go home and be with my family again, you know?"
"I think we all would," Megan agreed a bit glumly. But then...it wasn't much better back home, with Nain gone and Aunt Hestia running here and there and everywhere for no good reason...
She sighed. "Then again, they've made it clear to us time and time again that we wouldn't be much better off back home...I just don't understand it, to be perfeectly honest." Megan lowered her knees, now sitting cross-legged and facing Zach. "I mean, not even the being the kind of people that would murder innocents just because you perceive them as lower creatures than you...even that makes some sort of sense, if you think that they're somehow 'stealing' from you or things like that, but to go after people just because they think differently?" She shook her head, hating the thoughts and hating where they were going. "It's just...I don't even know anymore."
Zach pursed his lips. It did seem like something that was hard to comprehend. But at this point, he didn't care about what those people thought -- what they did was just wrong, whatever their reasons were. "What ever their reasons are, it doesn't matter," he voiced out. "It's still wrong." He started to realise how dreary and depressing their conversation was starting to turn into, and smiled at her apologetically. "Sorry. I'm sure this isn't exactly the most enjoyable conversation you've had."
"It's not the most enjoyable school year I've ever had," Megan pointed out with a slanted smile in Zach's direction. "I wonder if it'll be better at all once we're through for the summer...forever...or if they'll keep coming after us after we've left Hogwarts behind forever." She didn't like the idea of it, either way...even if they were left alone following their last days of school, there would still be the thought that younger people, still in school and still less able to defend themselves, would be suffering under the Carrows' hand. It just wasn't a happy thought all around, but Megan's mind immediately jumped to the idea of blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness... "I guess it all boils down to hope again, yeah?"
Hope. Well. Zacharias didn't have a lot of hope left. In fact, he was never the one to rely much on optimism, and a situation like this only made him feel worse than he already was. However, he didn't want to seem like he was being whiny in front of her, even though there were a lot of things to whine about. "Yeah," he said, and smiled back at her. It wasn't the happiest or the biggest smile ever -- but it was a small, appreciative half-smile, nevertheless. "Thanks, Megan. I feel a lot better now." Not really -- but he did feel somewhat better and less crappy than he was before, and he owed it to her.
It definitely wasn't the best smile ever, but Megan didn't think that the best smile ever would really be seen around the school this year. She uncurled from her corner of the couch and leaned over towards Zach, putting her head on his shoulder in a comfortable and friendly gesture. "So do I," she stated plainly, curling up again in her new spot on the couch. She was still a bit sore from the curse earlier that day, but the emotional comfort given by cuddling was a bit more important to Megan at that point than the physical discomfort she felt.