Work Text:
December 1981
Amelia Bones walked by the dim lighted corridor leading to her office, only aware of the sound of her heels clattering on the marble floor. Someone greeted her along the way, “Madam Bones”, bowing his (or her? she didn’t care) head respectfully, but she had nothing to offer more than a hum.
It took all her willpower left to arrive at her room, close the door and lean against it, allowing her shaky legs to take control over her body and crouch down. There was no use resisting the temptation of giving up to gravity, as she could feel pressure over her mind, brain and blood. She closed her eyes and opened them right away, the images of the courtroom she just left flooded in front of her eyelashes, as if they were present in the room. But they weren’t. The room showed up exactly the way she first nestled one week ago.
If she had a time turner to go back a year, two year and even three years prior, which was a temptation she had to resist after every four and more glasses of scotch, to steal one from Department of Mysteries, going back to a year wouldn’t change anything materially, except the lightness on the burden in her chest, she would find the room exactly in the same vein.
She remained down until her legs started aching, panty hoses scratching, and her lungs screaming for that unhealthy habit of hers. Her vision was still blurry, a little light-headed. She forced herself to remember what healers told of her: breathing deeply, counting numbers.
One
Two
Three
She didn’t care that her legs were tingling, but stood up and reached her desk in three long paces, opened her personal drawer and lit a muggle cigarette, leaning against her chair. Letting go of ashes to the floor felt ridiculously rebellious, just as treating the aisle landing between her two fingers as the main source of light. There was no way of knowing whether it was the decrease of oxygen concentration in her blood or all the things that happened in the last five years tumbling many worlds down had finalised fifteen minutes ago made her feeling giddy.
Her charms to the door proved their effectiveness. The room was in total silence, except burning of the skins dying away. She stomped, in anger, in befuddlement, in distress, in disorder. The silence has to break away. The silence has to stop.
She lit another cigarette to choke voices inside her head.
It was her mother’s voice, six months ago, in one of their ritually Sunday breakfasts at her family home, knitting her brows, looking over the top of the Prophet, adjusting her words so sleekly that no one except a Bones would understand the sarcastic tone. “Ernest, darling, why aren’t you proposing that thought of yours to Death Eaters? They would love you for suggesting making Muggle studies compulsory.”
Her father had replied, dunking a spoon to his egg, lips twitching, struggling a smile. “Your friends in Wizengamot won’t let me talk anymore, darling. They say I’m too proactive.”
“I think they meant provocative.”
Two days later, she had insisted on joining the search team of Aurors investigating her parent’s house. Her childhood room was wiped out from the earth with a blast, making Amelia wonder if it was a personal threat to her, or Death Eaters got the wrong intel about which room her parents were sleeping in.
Three months after that breakfast, on another Sunday morning, the Ministry issued her mother with Second Degree Merlin Order, none to Ernest Bones, who indeed has been found provocative.
“Mum would be so pissed if she heard her husband’s efforts unheeded,” Edgar had said, leaning counter of his kitchen and glancing at twins watching muggle television while clutching to the cuppa in his hands, trying to hide his voice trembling, in anger and pain. The prize giving ceremony held on a Sunday, made it the first Sunday morning they spent together three months after they buried their parents. “Bloody Crouch even abstains from mentioning his name.”
Amelia wanted to ask if a tiny bit of his anger targeted her, after all, it was Edgar who hated the Ministry and all the work they had done. He never stopped bickering Amelia about choosing a bureaucratic career in it.
Instead, she had heard herself reminding him about their father’s laxness over any kinds of formality, and how he probably preferred it this way.
Three days after the talk, Rufus Scrimgeour was recording her testimony, showing her pictures taken inside what remains from Edgar’s house, asking if she noticed any difference in artefacts other than natural disarrangement of the vicious attack. Her nephews’ toys on the floor looked untouched, as if they were just gone to watch their favourite show on tv, mocking her from the still, muggle style photograph. Again, she insisted on visiting the house so they wouldn’t do it over pictures, with some Auror looking at her in pity. After her statement was put on the record, she sedated herself at her house, took not one more day of absence other than the Ministry would give.
Three months after Edgar’s death, two weeks before now, she had heard Alice Longbottom heaving, cracking her knuckles nervously, in the very front chair of the desk Amelia was currently occupying. If Amelia didn’t know Alice since she was fifteen, the Alice who was the bluntest person she ever met, she would suspect she was hiding, or worse, embarrassed of something.
“Ames,” Alice started, using her family nickname. It's been nearly three months the last time she heard it, maybe in their last breakfast together with Edgar. “Fuck, no, sorry I shouldn’t—”
“Go on Alice,” Amelia had replied. Alice was one of the few things that reminded her of her family. She has been with them, attached to Edgar from their hip since they sorted into Hufflepuff, after all. “Please.”
“Is it… inappropriate to confess that I’m… relieved?” she had said, a tear escaped her eyes that she wiped with the hem of her robe swiftly. “Fuck-I shouldn’t have said that, I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are missing Eddy dearly,” Amelia had been forming a similar sentence to this one many times, but she doubt if she ever meant it this much. “It isn’t selfish or inappropriate relieving by dodging a bullet. The war is over, finally.”
A sob escaped Alice’s mouth. Amelia remembered having had doubts about what was that crying for: whether it was a grief for Edgar, Ernest, Susan and Caradoc or a shameful relief of the fact that Neville wasn’t in danger anymore. They both wailed, and even Amelia had no clue what her tears were for.
Two days after their intense exchange, Amelia welcomed Alastor, the calculated, serious and even his demeanour wasn’t enough, losing-a-nose kind of scary Moody to her office, shaking in shock, clipping, trembling, prosthetic leg banging around the floor. The very first time Amelia ever let herself lose control next to someone who isn’t her kin, fairly sure the man sitting on the chair Alice Longbottom sat two days ago and drinking scotch shares the sentiment.
Shattered glasses, broken paintings, three bottles of firewhiskey on the floor, going down the drain.
“You know, Amelia,” Moody had said, cutting their big pause. In fact, it was the first sentence anyone ever made in an hour, since Moody had done nothing but watched her screaming fucks and shits and crying. Words came out of his mouth sloppy, lamentingly, which was the reason she had decided to stop all together. She felt hesitant to feel honoured or scared as being a person who witnessed pissed and crying Alastor Moody, but also, it was the most bizarre thing she ever witnessed. “They’ll name you for the Department.”
“What?” Amelia couldn’t help her voice cracking, hanging from her chair.
“Boneses were– are, you are still here, of course,” Moody took a huge sip from his glass, sending mingle of tenses to his stomach with the help of his scotch. “You are the only one who never stopped openly criticising Crouch, right? He got in such a huge pickle right now. Gotta check on your boy sometimes, eh?”
“Do you,” she cleared her throat, ignoring the first part of his argument. “Do you think the boy is guilty? He’s what, eighteen?”
“Regulus Black got his arm marked when he was sixteen,” he said, straightening his back in the mention Blacks. Amelia knew how hard Moody took Black’s betrayal. “He was caught with the Lestranges. There is no doubt.”
“Will there still be a lawsuit?”
“Do you really believe Barty would chuck out the opportunity of pinching his own son off in front of at least a hundred wizards?”
He didn’t, of course. If there was one thing certain, Barty would do anything to secure his own place in the spotlight.
Amelia remembered Junior, that lanky boy who had visited his father’s office once a week for lunch when she was just an intern. His visits always ended with Barty’s hurried voice reminding him that he had a work to do, lengths of visits shortened each time. Today was the first time she ever saw him after he had started Hogwarts.
With the butt of her second cigarette, she lit the third one, and tossed the scotch down her throat.