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Early morning

The shout woke him from a splinter of sleep. His own voice rang off the walls. Curled tight in a back corner, Lawrence was dressed in regulation grey prisoner robes, his brown curly hair streaked with white, reached past the collar in uneven lengths. His bare feet were tucked beneath him, a heavy blanket drawn around him. It wasn’t cold in the temporary detention cell by Azkaban standards, but Lawrence couldn’t get warm. His shivers were not to much due to the temperature, but his situation and the nightmares which kept him company.

He wondered if Hannah were somewhere nearby, in the same situation, or if they’d moved her to Azkaban.

“Ugh,” he vocalised, rolling his head from one shoulder to the other, nauseous. He’d not been asleep more than a minute or two, he’d bet, though he had no concept of time passing, locked away. On the one hand it might be torturous to know, he’d considered, but on the other it would give him a grip on reality. By the time they’d locked him in here, it had been the early hours of the morning. He’d been awake enough to take note of the mutterings of time for his paperwork. Once he’d been stripped of anything on his person he’d been seen by a healer, allowed to wash, fed something and been put on ten minute observations. Last thing any of them wanted was for him to slip the night.

Despite the close observation, he’d been treated more humanely than he might have treated himself had the boot been on the other foot. Then that had been his undoing in the war. Interrogating muggle borns, even half bloods, for where they got their magic from. Such a ruddy fool. Lawrence sunk his head down to rest his forehead on his knees at the memory and sighed. He didn’t deserve the respect they were giving him. He was a monster.

In the morning gloom, Lawrence lifted his heavy head and rubbed at his pallid face with his remaining right hand. He heard approaching footsteps and squinted at the door, anticipating a check. There had been many passing by throughout the time he’d been here, but this time it was more than one set. Was it a change of the guard, breakfast, or might it be time to start the inevitable hours of questioning which lay ahead?

Berkeley walked into the holding cells with all the height her tiny frame could afford her. She had come into the offices that morning to be informed of the arrest. She had barely placed her cloak on her desk alongside an untouched coffee before she was heading down to see him. To most he was just a bad wizard behind bars once again, one less threat for the Ministry to worry about. One more notch on the belt of the Aurors' careers. Sure, there were still some there who had been around when Lawrence had been an Auror. The older hardened officers who had survived the Second Wizarding War. They had faced adversity and made it through, Lawrence had not. He had turned, he had become a despicable worm. It could be argued that he had paid for those crimes, given his years in Azkaban but he hadn't changed. His current arrest proved as much.

She came to a stop outside his cell. Her porcelain features masked any emotion. She looked like a doll, perfectly curled golden locks, arctic blue eyes. Had she not been so determined to follow in her parents footsteps she likely could have been a model for Witch Weekly. It was these features that often led to those around her underestimating her. Berkeley didn't mind that though. It gave her an advantage over the small minded.

Her jaw was taut and the tip of her wand was just barely visible under her sleeve. She wasn't supposed to have it with her, or at least not wielded while visiting prisoners but this was worth breaking the rules. She looked to the ghost of a man she had once known. A man who had once been close with her parents. Her mother had only been a year older than him, in the same house. Her father was three years older but they all trained together as Aurors. He had come to their house for holidays, evening meals. She had once idolized him. The war had changed all that. She hadn't seen him in nearly fourteen years. She wondered if he'd even recognize her.

"This is too good for you." Her voice was just as inexpressive as her face.

The pint-sized figure stopped outside the bars of the cell door. The body language was pure contempt. Lawrence looked up, a stray brown curl hanging limply in the middle of his forehead and arms looped around his knees under the blanket. Something about the figure was familiar, yet it wasn’t Andromeda Gamp who had been on duty through the night. As the light caught the witch's face and blonde curls, he narrowed his eyes and blinked, exhausted mind whirring at her pretty face.

“This is too good for you.”

A good morning if ever there was one. Lawrence did not expect a good reception, and his handling overnight had been gruff and tight-lipped. There was a definite tension. Whoever this witch was, she was not pleased to see him. Nothing new there.
“I tried dying in a ditch, but fate had another agenda.” Lawrence replied in a hoarse voice. “Or are you referring to my breakfast?” He had a feeling he wasn’t getting any if she was delivering it. He wriggled his toes under the blanket, trying to encourage his circulation.

“Do we know each other?” Lawrence asked, lifting his head, an edge of irritation to his voice. He didn’t like being stared at like a zoo animal.

She scoffed at his remarks though her face remained mostly expressionless. She had never been good at expressing herself to begin with. Even the sheer rage she was feeling being in his presence didn't show much beyond her tightened jaw and stiff posture, "you should have tried harder."

Fate be damned he should have died in Azkaban.

For a moment she glanced around his cell at the mention of breakfast. There was no sign that he had been recently fed and she certainly hadn't brought him food. She chalked it up to him being salty with her but that also meant if he was expecting a meal she didn't have a whole lot of alone time with him.

This time she visibly bristled at the irritation in his voice. He had no right to be irritated. From what she heard he turned himself in, he didn't come in fighting, he came in sobbing. What right did he have to be irritated with her?

She couldn't decided whether or not she enjoyed the fact that he didn't immeadiately recognize her, "Don't suppose you'd remember, being busy betraying all your friends and all. I'm not exactly the little girl who'd climb up on your knee asking for stories of the glorious Auror Corps, now am I?"

She gripped her wand, her hand beginning to shake with her controlled anger, "You had a chance to make it right! You could have done better, you should have done better! You paid for your crimes, you were free to do right again and you threw it all away! Again!"

There were tears starting to brim her eyes, "how could you?! You were my idol!" She brought her wand up, leveling it at the older wizard without having the strength to cast anything.

“You should have tried harder.” Oof, definite good morning, and no breakfast in sight.

“Don’t suppose you’d remember,” the blonde at the bars began in reply, Lawrence watched her placidly from the corner, blinking at irregular intervals as he listened. “… busy betraying all your friends…” blondie had an axe to grind it seemed. Lawrence exhaled slowly, knowing this was only be expected. “… not exactly the little girl who climbed up on your knee asking for stories of the glorious Auror Corps now, am I?”

In an instant, Lawrence was transported from the grey cell by his mind’s eye. Hurtling back through his memories to decades past when he had stood the other side of the bars. Friends, little girl with blonde hair sitting on his knee… plenty of colleagues and friends in the Ministry had children, but she could only be young, or Hannah’s age maybe? He frowned, trying to place her.

“You had a chance to make it right-”

Oh Merlin, he did know her. There was a growing familiarity. But it was just out of his reach as he stared across the cell towards her.
“That’s our girl, pretty as a picture…”

“You could have done better - should have done better!”

“Takes after you, Cath, definitely…” In Lawrence’s mind he could see her now, see them. “… not her back of a bus father, only joking Kev…” They had been his colleagues, both aurors and at school just ahead of him. Their pretty blonde-haired daughter had marked his auror service with her rough age, growing up as he joined the corps. When Lawrence had come out last February, and spent days reading newspaper archives, he had found Catherine Cavanaugh amongst the many names of those who had died. At the height of the war, he had been caught up too closely to comprehend the great losses. Selfishly trying not to be taken down too.

“You were my idol!”
      “Berkeley!”

Lawrence threw out his remaining hand towards her as he yelled her name, an instinct to defend, even though he hadn’t a wand to retaliate with if she hexed him. “Berkeley Cavanaugh. I remember.” He inhaled and swung his legs down to the floor, getting to his feet. If she wanted a boot-stamping reunion, he wanted to see the whites of her eyes.

“Your parents were good people,” the former Auror told the young auror, approaching the bars, garbed in prisoner robes. “But you picked a false idol, I didn’t throw it all away, I had no choice.” Lawrence retaliated, too exhausted to reason, old memories stirring odd feelings inside him which made him fear the dementors might be listening.

He swept his eyes up and down her petite form. He was barefoot, she in boots, but there was still at least half a foot difference in height.
“Don’t tell me you became an auror, you could have done so much better…” Bright, pretty girls like Berkeley could contribute to society in so many other ways than dealing with the shit that came with being an auror.

When he yelled her name the floodgates opened. She blinked rapidly to get through the useless tears. She was wrong, it was so much worse that he did remember her. She choked softly as he mentioned her parents too. They were good people, her father still was in his own way. The war had all but destroyed her family like it had for so many others. She had lost her Mother - not to mention Grandmother and a few other Cavanaugh Aurors - and her father had been slated with a fate worst than death.

She was trembling slightly now but her wand was still trained on him as he got to his feet and approached the bars. A False Idol indeed. She had been too young at the time to fully comprehend the effects of the war but she still saw them lingering near Thirteen years later. She couldn't bring herself to scoff at him as he claimed he had no choice. It was something said by many who had been on the wrong side of history. She did her best not to believe him. She needed to hold onto her anger lest she dissolve into further tears.

"War does terrible things to people." She wouldn't say more on that subject. She didn't know his full story. She didn't want to know it to be honest but he had done enough to land himself in Azkaban and that was all she needed to know, "But what about now Loz? Dark Lord is gone, you served your time, why keep going?" She managed the ghost of a sneer, "Let me guess, you had no choice, yeah?"

“War does terrible things to people.” Berkeley replied, tension clearer in her voice at close range. Lawrence stopped short two foot before the bars, just out of the reach of her wand. His left hand sleeve hung empty at the end, while his remaining hand upturned, imploring understanding, even though he expected none.

“You think I follow Voldemort?” Lawrence asked, mirroring the sneer. How the young knew nothing of what their generation had suffered, lived through and carried on their consciences. As a pureblood, Lawrence had been an automatic potential for alliance with the Voldermort periphery followers. He had no children or wife to protect in his life, he had always been an excellent wand to have in a fight and he thrived on friends. Lawrence had never been antisocial, gathering friends at school, a regular group at the Leaky Cauldron to drink with, friendly neighbours, banter with fellow auror colleagues - invites to dinner from the likes of the Cavanaghs - and acquaintances through different departments and organisations. To think he was now alone in the world, was Lawrence’s nightmare even without adding poverty, homelessness, criminals and dementors.

“War makes people do terrible things, Berkeley,” Lawrence explained, dark eyes dropping from hers watery but alert gaze to the floor outside the bars, “count yourself lucky to be too young to remember. We all lost.” He was well used to aurors belittling the poverty, fear and closed doors faced by a former Azkaban inmate. How they expected anyone to rejoin society he wasn’t entirely sure. The bar seemed to be set impossibly high, suggesting that the Ministry preferred to indefinitely lock away anybody who broke the law. Shufflebottom had been in four times when Lawrence had recruited him, but he had a wife and two children who had taken him back in. Now he was in for a fifth, Lawrence suspected his old school friend would be in exactly the same place. If he came out at all or lived. Death once again seemed to be the only solution.

“What choices were available to me were all the wrong ones.” Lawrence spoke, anger creeping into his voice as he fixed his gaze on the shorter witch. “You have never been in my position, you have never known what it is like to lose everything. To be nothing. To know that nobody would mourn you - to agree with them.” He stepped forward suddenly, teeth gritted, grip on reality loosening, “You dare to judge me with your pretty curls and fortunate life, you know nothing of what I know, Berkeley Cavanagh.” Lawrence snarled, seizing the bars with his remaining hand and leaning in towards his visitor.

Andromeda did not ask Berkeley where she was going. There were more people in cells here. Berkeley had her own cases. Andie was tired. She had been on duty all night. She had to visit Lawrence a lot. She took it in turns with other aurors. Nothing about this was right. When things were easy they were too easy. Andie checked the list of other prisoners. She used her wand to keep the hot chocolate warm. Andie could get sick of eating chocolate. She had eaten a lot of it because of the dementors. The hot chocolate was not for her.

Andie heard voices. She looked up. The noise stopped. She could hear Berkeley talking to a prisoner. The noises came again.
"Berkeley?" Andie called. She hoped Berkeley was not in trouble. Andie left the hot chocolate behind. She began to walk down the cells.

Berkeley quietly observed him as he spoke. Her senses were on high alert, her arctic blue eyes wide behind the tears. Despite allowing her emotions to bubble to the surface she still did her best to maintain control. She was constantly over looked given her size and looks and felt she needed to work extra hard to be taken seriously. Breaking down completely because a man she once idolized made all the wrong choices wasn't going to help her.

She furrowed her brow, narrowing her eyes. He insinuated he hadn't been a death eater, a full blown follower of the Dark Lord. She wasn't so ignorant to think the war had been black and white, one side directly opposing the other, nothing worked that way in real life. She also wasn't about to forgive or excuse him. Whether he directly worked for the Dark Lord or not he had been sent to prison for war crimes and that was all she needed to know about it.

Anger seeped into his voice as he spoke of bad choices and privilege. She stood her ground and tightened her jaw fighting all her instincts to run as he closed the space between them and raised his voice. She flinched the way a child being reprimanded might and the tip of her wand sparked in response to her emotions.

She had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, there was no denying that. It was all part and parcel of being a direct decendant of the Wentworth Family. She was not a criminal, she did not understand the circumstances that led to him believing he had no other choices but she was not free of hardships.

She had lost so much to the war. The lives of so many loved ones. She lost her mother, her rock and her Grandmother, the foundation of the whole clan. Her father was now a ghost, a man cursed. At age fifteen she was left to manage the entire household. Upkeep, bills, her mother's estate and her father's care. Not to mention raising Briar and Kyson. Then she had to bust her butt, fighting against all preconceptions to become the Auror she was today.

Somewhere off in the distance she heard someone call her name. She knew she had very little time left alone with him. She leveled her wand to his chest, the tip still letting off the occasional spark, "I know nothing of you and you know nothing of me. The man I thought I knew died in the war. The girl you once knew grew the fuck up."

A few choice hexes dances on her tongue. She wasn't going to risk her job for the satisfaction of hurting him but she wanted to see fear in his eyes before he figured that out.

“He did,” Lawrence agreed forcefully, the tendons raising in his hand as he gripped at the bars. Beneath his fingers they hummed with magic, charms and wards branded into the metal with runes to prevent escapes. They had not changed dramatically in fifteen years. The witch outside them had, though her good looks had just matured. She had grown up too quickly, but to Lawrence she was still inexperienced, out of her depth.

“What do you want to do, hurt me?” Lawrence asked, watching her wand flare out of the corner of his eye. “Take out all the pain you feel for those years. For everything that’s happened to your pretty little life?” He had slipped easily into anger, too strung out to have patience. To be knocked out would be mercy at that moment, not to have to think, not to have to hear. “Will it make you feel better, to hurt me? Even out some debt you hold over me for being human, for not being some impossible, perfect man you had a childhood infatuation with?”

Inside, a small, broken part of Lawrence did care that the bonnie little Cavanagh girl had looked up to him along with her parents. That he hadn’t been as strong and as just as they had been in the end, that he had chosen an easier path because he was able to as a pureblood. Without the opportunity to raise his own family, being a kind of honorary uncle to the odd youngster had brought him joy. To know he was cool enough, patient and thoughtful. To be trusted enough to entertain the likes of Berkeley and give her parents a moment of respite. To imagine how he might raise his own, when he got the opportunity.

Lawrence released the bars and gestured to his chest, stepping into a better line for the younger auror.
“Go on, it’s what you came down here to do, isn’t it?”

"Berkeley?" Andromeda called again. Where were the hit wizards? Pratt said they had to stay all the time. They had finished the shift. Where were the next two? Andromeda felt worried. Musgrave was sick. He did not have a wand. Unless he got a wand he should not be a problem. Andromeda got out her wand.

She saw Berkeley at the door to the cell. She called to her. "Is everything good? Where are the hit wizards?" She could not see in the cell yet.

Lawrence taunted her and something inside her broke. The tears fell freely and her wand hand shook. She couldn't remember ever showing such outward emotion. Perhaps not since she learned of her mother's death. She had always been strong, she had to be, for everyone else's sake. However standing here, in front of him, his words cutting through her had all been too much. She had seen countless criminals before. She had caught them, booked them, even had to give reports to trials before but none of them, not even MacDuff[1] had shaken her the way Lawrence did.

He wanted her to hurt him, he was practically begging for it. Every fibre of her being wanted to do it. She almost needed to do it. Had they not been in the holding cells she likely would have. She could only imagine the kind of damage and pain she could actually inflict on him if she didn't hold back. All of that without having to invoke any of the Unforgivable Curses.

She took a step back as he patted his chest, moving directly in front of her wand. The tip still sparked occasionally. She narrowed her eyes at him, knowing that he was baiting her. If she let loose, if she did attack him, she'd be the one in trouble not him. He was already looking at another lifetime spent in Azkaban what was one more Auror attack to him? But she wanted so badly to hurt him, just as he had hurt her. She felt all of it boiling up in her until she finally screamed at him, like a banshee. It was raw pure emotion, no words just sound. In response her wand tip exploded with red sparks, the warning flare even the youngest of wizarding children were able to send off.

She stumbled back and finally turned to Andromeda, having hardly noticed the other Auror was there, "I was just . . . I," She blinked away as many of the tears as she could, her face drenched. She swallowed hard, "There was no one here when I got here." She swiftly holstered her wand. She hadn't outright attacked the prisoner, the sparks weren't likely to cause any real damage.   

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1. I've murdered half the town, left you love notes on their headstones

She didn’t curse or strike, she screamed. Lawrence lowered his chin, shoulders tensing like the hackles of a dog, anticipating a strike. Although she lost grip on some of her magic, it was nothing worrisome, but the strong emotions between them brought a gathering feeling of approaching gloom.

Voices as if a room or two away, reached Lawrence, and he knew they did not belong to anyone nearby. The sound of rushing London traffic and a car horn blaring sent Lawrence stumbling backwards, instinctively dodging danger without physically being there. The defiant posture of a moment before was gone, and he curled down to the floor in a crouch, pressing his hands over his ears as the two aurors conferred.

Lawrence let out a pained moan from the floor, eyes screwed shut.
“Leave me alone, I’ve nothing for you!”

This was not right. Andromeda drew her wand. Berkeley was acting strange. Where were the hitwizards. Why had they left? Berkeley looked upset. Andromeda walked closer and glanced into the cell. Lawrence Musgrave was crouched down. He had his hands over his ears. He moaned.
"What have you done to him?" Andromeda demanded. "Berkeley he is our prisoner. You cannot hurt him. Even if he is awful. What have you done?" She was shocked.

Berkeley shook her head again. She wiped furiously at the tears streaming from her eyes. She was sure by now they were bloodshot and it wouldn't be long before they became puffy. She was oddly thankful she wasn't the type of witch to agonize over makeup otherwise she may just look like the Banshee she had sounded like moments before. She turned to her fellow Auror. She wanted to protest. She knew she hadn't actually hurt him but things didn't look good. He was suddenly on the floor clutching his ears. Her own scream and loss of control over her magic wasn't likely to go unnoticed.

"I lost control is all." It was one of the hardest things for her to admit. Thankfully there was only Gamp around to hear it. She was always, always under control. She needed to distance herself from this case and fast. She worked so hard to be taken seriously, to compensate for her size and her fashion model looks. Losing herself to a low life like Musgrave was the last thing she needed.

She looked him over, catching his plea, "I didn't hurt him." Though she wanted nothing more than to flea she came close enough to speak to him once more, "You are nothing to me." The pain evident in her voice as she finally headed for the exit of the holding cells area. Before leaving completely she looked back to Gamp, "You'll need to file a report about my wand discharging. See if he can give you a statement on the matter. I'll sign whatever you'll need me to tomorrow." Berkeley had every intention of leaving the offices for the day. She was no good to anyone in the state she was in.