On the last day of Ginny Weasley's life the sea around Azkaban was as still as glass, skimmed with gold under the rising sun, no hindrance to a ferry powered by magic but unsettling nonetheless. Percy Weasley, making the crossing from the mainland for what he hoped would be the last time, kept his eyes turned away from the water and remembered the pride he had once felt at being sent here on the Ministry’s behalf.
They had been careful never to refer to his conversations with the Death Eaters as interrogation. Interrogation was the jurisdiction of the Aurors, and Percy had no training in it. But asking questions required no training, anyone could ask questions, anyone could write down answers and hand them over to more qualified people. The Ministry would serve no one by remaining ignorant of the reasons behind the upsurge in Death Eater activity, and while they held out no hope that any of the prisoners would tell them anything useful, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
Percy had been asking questions for months now. Sometimes he wondered if he should have reported all the answers he received to the Ministry; but he wondered less and less, and over the past few months he had come to be glad that he hadn’t.
Do you know why Voldemort will eventually fail? Lucius Malfoy had asked in April, looking out over the sea through the bars of the interrogation room window, the morning sun washing his hair with gold and turning his eyes as pale as glass.
No, sir, answered Percy, who had come to Azkaban expecting to question a broken, defeated terrorist and found this instead - a prince in exile, cool and gracious and immaculate, power held effortlessly in every small movement.
Malfoy had turned to him, smiling like an indulgent teacher with a favorite but occasionally lazy pupil. He will fail, child, because he is crude. Hand him power and he can think of nothing more imaginative to do with it than litter the scorched earth with death camps and blacken the skies with ash from the crematoria. He has never really cared about the proper order of the wizarding world - how should he, a half-breed himself, using the pride and strength of pureblood families to grind his Muggle father into the dust over and over? An unworthy cause, don't you agree?
But you followed him, Percy had argued, quill pausing over his notebook.
For a while, Malfoy had answered softly, looking back out to the sunlight on waves. Voldemort is a sadist and a madman but Tom Riddle was very convincing, and I think that at first even he believed in the value of a Pureblood oligarchy. For many years I was mistaken, and then for many more I was trapped. I have a wife and child, you see, who are dear to me. And... power is a heady thing. Especially power over life and death.
Percy's lips had thinned, and he had thought of his sister in the Chamber of Secrets - but without as much anger as he had expected. He had, in that April, not spoken to his family in years, and Ginny's face was a soft red-haired blur in his mind. You said before that you were under the Imperius curse. It's the only thing that kept you out of Azkaban during the Dark Lord's first rise to power.
I said that, Malfoy had agreed with an oddly old-fashioned courtesy. It served me to say it then. I have no more need to now.
Not now you're in Azkaban with no more Dementors to do the Kiss, you don't, Percy had commented drily, wanting to regain the upper hand in the interview and unsure how to do it. He had felt crass as soon as he had said it, like a schoolboy hurling petty taunts, and blushed to the roots of his hair; but Malfoy had turned back to him with a pleased expression.
Yes, he had said, a teacher whose favored pupil had solved a difficult problem that should have been far beyond his skill. I am. And I have something now that I did not have before.
Percy had frowned quizzically.
Lucius had smiled. I have time. Time, and Voldemort's eye no longer upon me.
A key had rattled in the door behind Percy. Time's up, a harried-looking Auror had announced. Percy had folded up his notebook slowly, uncomfortably aware of the paucity of information in it.
Do come again, child, Malfoy had said kindly. So many of the other prisoners have been here since the days of the Dementors, and they are... not terribly interested in conversation anymore.
Percy's last glimpse of him, that day, had been the sunlight-on-snow of Malfoy's hair stirring just a little in the salt-drenched breeze off the water; and Malfoy, hands clasped loosely behind his back, graceful as a dancer in his stillness.
On the last day of his sister's life, Percy stepped onto the dock at Azkaban with a carefully neutral expression, two vials of polyjuice potion hidden in the hollow handle of his briefcase, and an hourglass draining inexorably in his head.
