Second Denial
After a long session with Travers's widow, the man sat down for a butterbeer with them while they complimented him on his performance. He accepted with a surprising amount of grace and seemed to acknowledge that it was part of their job and promised not to let it get out if they spoke freely of him. What surprised them more than anything else was finding out that he was the father of the Creevey boys.
"Oh, so you're a muggle and you found this place no problem?"
"Well, technically, I'm a squib, but no one ever told me that, growing up. Would you believe it; the boys' mother was a squib too, God rest her soul. We lost her when we were trying to campaign in ninety six for Fudge to come back and, well, I guess we thought he could put things back to normal. Should've known."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it was his predecessor, Minister Bagnold, who was the only one who had any chance of that."
"Right," Justin said, realizing that he was not quite so free to speak as he might have hoped. Calling their client an absolute moron without the slightest idea of how things worked probably would not turn out well. "How did you get a job with witness protection?"
"Oh, they specifically scouted muggles for the role, well, muggles with some experience in this world, so squibs were welcome too. They figured it would be the last place anyone would expect us to hide the witnesses. So far, it's been mostly working, but don't worry- I can screw up anything."
"It was thanks to Mr Creevey here that we ended up with Lucius Malfoy," Zacharias explained. "He was able to testify with Veritaserum, mind-reading, a Pensieve, truth spells, joke shop goods designed to make you spit up embarrassing secrets, and the threat of testicular torsion if they ever found out he was lying in any way about handing over the location of a former Death Eater to anyone else. Even though all the evidence pointed to him, he was exonerated because he did something they hadn't ever considered; he left the evidence in our possession after every conceivable measure was taken to make sure that it wouldn't be lost."
"Sir, I might as well be out with it, do you have any knowledge of where Dolores Umbridge is?"
"No, but I could get you started," he said after burping. "Jack Sloper took the case."
"Jack Sloper?" he asked. Justin knew nothing about the young man other than that he had been a replacement Beater for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and he had not been terribly good at it. Perhaps he had found his calling after Hogwarts. He frowned. More likely, nothing was different about him at all.
"I don't think he comes in here. Hit one of the Chaser girls in the mouth, his words. Thinks it wouldn't go well for him."
"What?" he asked. "I never heard about that."
"Oh, well, they didn't complain about it," Zacharias said. "Those things happen in Quidditch matches. At the same time, they were well-regarded, for the most part, and admitting to having hit one at one point would be too much of a risk. If he did come here, and no one wanted to punish him, he wouldn't qualify for anything that would interest him much."
As they were in the middle of talking, Mr Creevey finished his drink and excused himself, citing that he had somewhere to be.
"Okay, hold the phone- sorry, that's another muggle expression; it's sort of like firecalling someone- I thought that the twins- they were also on that same team- were known to be abusers to main characters. I didn't pry into every last detail of their lives, but I think they once tried to get their younger brother to swear an Unbreakable Vow; they boasted about that in a DA practice meeting."
"You're asking why they're not in here?"
"Absolutely. Why isn't a side character worried about what happened to a main character?"
"Well, that was funny."
"What? It was funny? I didn't think it was funny."
"Well, you might have heard it once too many times and then it was stale, but if you hear it once, and then never again, if it's just a throwaway kind of thing, then it's funny. When you pause to consider the moral implications of it-"
"Lavender was furious when she heard about it," he recalled. "We even had a talk to discuss whether or not the twins should be allowed to remain in the DA- some of us thought it was a little excessive because the incident was a long time ago, but they dropped out of school before anything ever came of that discussion."
"Well, that's the problem, you had a whole talk about the moral implications. The less you discuss it, the less you call attention to it, the more you can enjoy it in hindsight. Basically, humor is situational, and good and evil remain forever."
"Sure, but can't we get them now as long as enough people discuss how bad they were?"
"Enough important people, I suppose, but it doesn't matter what we say." Zacharias shrugged. "Besides, what's the point of getting them? Does it really bother you what they did?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Oh, but it's a little unfair, isn't it? It's a little unfair how some people suffer and others don't?"
Justin frowned. He could tell that his friend had not, in fact, become numb to everything and always ready to roll with it and not worry about anything. Almost certainly, there was something that he saw as unfair, and even if he had gotten shanghaied into working for the club, it was entirely possible that he saw his own participation in it as a way of righting a wrong. What wrong was it, though?
"I'm trying to understand what this entity sees as immoral. That's the only way that I can unmask the people responsible for all this."
"Well, think about it this way. You know all the damage that Voldemort did, and he's still a lot less... hated, than Umbridge, for example."
"Of course. People had already accepted that he was just part of the world. There was something about her that hit closer to home. Susan Bones had her aunt murdered while we were in school, sure, but not too many people lost a lot themselves, or if they did, well, it was like a force of nature. I suppose Harry Potter lost his parents too, but if he hadn't, well, he wouldn't exactly be Harry Potter, would he?"
"You're starting to get it," Zacharias said. "Certain things, we just accept because it's always been that way. I would think that if we grew up before the Death Eaters came to power, we would be less likely to accept them as just part of life. To some extent, it's the devil you know. Even if something comes along as a potential solution, you wouldn't trust it, and you'd rather keep dealing with the problem the way you were. I don't think anyone regarded Umbridge as a potential solution, though, and it's easy to see why. If you were a suspicious person, and you thought there was a chance Voldemort was back, you would want to know all the magic you could, and if you didn't think he was back, then it would be a total mystery why you weren't being taught. Just try to think of that; try to see a world where you think Potter's off his rocker and it's business as usual, you're trying to get your N.E.W.T.s and no practicals? What's the point?"
"That's a good question," he said. "I can't really answer it, because I never had one in mind," Justin said. "I was basically on Harry's side from the beginning."
"Merlin, you might be even more of a background character than I am." He took a breath. "When someone who's supposed to help shows up and gives you nothing but gaslighting and pointless rules doing nothing but setting us back, that hurts a lot worse than someone who's supposed to kill people showing up and killing people." He shrugged. "It goes back to the main character thing. If the villain didn't do villain things, well, what would you make of it? It gets confusing, though, when you have characters that aren't that far from the spotlight, and you can't quite tell that they're supposed to be good or bad."
"I suppose," Justin said after a moment. "That makes Umbridge the ultimate white whale, just like we thought. If we can get her, we'll get a break from this for so long, they'll never have us back."
"It's possible, certainly. Death isn't the end for some of us, though."
"That's only if you come back as a ghost; I'm told that it's optional."
"Yes, let's hope what's otherwise waiting for you is better than the treatment Travers gets."
After work they went over to the Ministry like before, only they went straight to Jack Sloper's desk in the bullpen. He was not there, but the desk had plenty of notes.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" someone else asked.
"Ah, Andrew Kirke; it's good to see you," Zacharias said. "Sloper's another friend of ours; he just asked us to pick something up for him."
"That's classified!"
"Is it? Is there anything else that we could be keeping secret? Anything you might have done on four October of ninety nine?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked, suddenly looking away. It almost looked like he was willing to go down with the ship, which would be a disaster.
"Well, think about it this way. Do we need to recite the entire thing for everyone here, or do you remember the part where he said we could mess around with his desk and to take it up with him if you had a problem with it?"
The entire office was silent for a moment. Everyone was staring at Kirke, wondering what he had to hide, and for a moment Justin thought that nothing he said could be believable enough for them to get out of it, but Zacharias looked confident, so matching him was the sensible thing. He stared straight back with the exact same expression.
"Well, Sloper's the responsible one, so I suppose I'll hear it from him."
Almost certainly, he had never been to the club, but as long as the witness had been, it was not their problem. Most likely, their new friend would try to drag him off to that part of town to put them in the same situation, and that would be justified, of course, because he needed to suffer for what he did to one of the Chaser girls, and he needed to aid in the punishment of those who needed to suffer even more. Who knew, maybe he'd be the one looking around for a big fish to get a reprieve from his punishment.
"I've got to ask," Justin said when they were on the way out. Zacharias was looking over the papers he had looted. "What's the goal here? Does everyone other than the good main characters end up getting punished for eternity?"
"That's entirely possible," he said. "It's seems there's levels to things, though. They let people like ourselves go after the worst offenders, at least while there's still worse offenders to round up."
"What was the problem with the Death Eaters getting off, then? They got off for supplying information on the whole operation, allowing us to come up with a complete historical record, catch the most culpable targets, and prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future. They're obviously not good people, and they did it just to save their own necks, but why can't we accept that the deal makes sense?"
"Oh, well, the main characters never interacted with any of that to my understanding. They might have appreciated, in some sense, those kinds of benefits, but that's a, well, this might sound strange, but that's really a post-canon concern. Things seemed to slow down a lot when Voldemort was defeated, so now we're in the post-canon."
"I... well, now that we're in that time period, isn't that the most relevant?"
"Not at all. This time period mostly doesn't matter. That's quite possibly why we're only getting a reprieve. This is all just sort of an afterthought, like a dying dream or... well, it's kind of like things that happened long enough ago, not to main characters. Just imagine if someone told you that Marietta Edgecombe never betrayed anyone again, and she actually went out of her way to be a good person."
"I mean... I suppose, if I believed it, I would think that was a good thing."
"Well, sure, but you know, you're not a main character, and you don't identify with them."
"What if she did something good for them, though, would the club count that?"
"Of course it would; it just hasn't really happened yet." He shrugged. "After they won the war, they could've done anything they wanted and no one would have stopped them, so there really isn't a way to do anything good for them. They have pretty much everything that they could get legally, and they don't seem to want anything that isn't legal, so all we can seem to do is take care of it on their behalf, without their knowledge."
"It would have rather ruined things if I had succeeded, then," Justin said as his thoughts turned to getting home for the evening. He was exhausted and there was a lot ahead of him. Zacharias only gave him a look a moment later. "Oh, come off it. If you were really trying, we'd have done it. You didn't even tell me they had a trap waiting for me, they forgave you right away, and you didn't seem all that put out by it. You weren't even going to deny it."
"I suppose not. I'll have to deny one of the charges, though. If I had been trying, the only difference would be that they wouldn't have forgiven us right away. I basically saw it as you didn't know what exactly you were messing with, and I thought I would just give you a sample of what might happen. I didn't know about the illusion magic, but I can tell you that they have all sorts of other measures in place."
"I see," he said after a moment, still annoyed. "You couldn't just tell me it was inevitable and there was no fighting it?"
"Well, if I had done that, I can only think that you would have calmly retreated without making an issue of it, then handed a letter to someone to be released on your own death, and confessed the whole thing to the Quibbler, where you would at least have the story out there. If enough people took you seriously, and they might, with all the background characters who've gone missing, well, the authorities wouldn't have had much of a choice but to do a proper investigation, and then, well, I'm certain things would have gotten nasty, and you and I would be at the center of it."
He tried to think about what he would have done, and no matter how he started to approach the problem, the prediction of his work friend was not far from the truth.
"How did you guess?"
"It's the sensible thing, a particular specialty of retired side-characters like ourselves. It's essentially what I would have done. Now, most of that, I basically used as my argument for why I followed you rather than just reporting you right away; that's why they forgave me. I told them I was taking the risk of Potter hearing about this place so that if he ever hears about it again, it'll just sound like complete hogwash."
It had become much harder to disagree with the idea that he was a background character. Sticking around as a side character would have only required him to constantly do more than he had ever done before, and he knew he would hate it if he really committed to it. He had not even really wanted to live in the magical world, which was obviously where all the action was happening. Hell, there were even muggles there, apparently, and he wouldn't mind if he just resigned to even greater obscurity?
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "Thanks for everything so far. I'll admit one thing; I wish I'd left well enough alone and that I hadn't followed you to the club."
"No trouble, mate," he said, turning to go himself.
With that, they parted.
Staring up at the ceiling for a moment after taking a much-needed shower, even though he was exhausted, he found it hard to sleep. It was hard to tell when exactly he fell asleep, but he woke up to an owl at his window, which was annoying enough to get him out of bed, even though he was sure it had not been long. He took the letter from the owl right after it left and it was basically a threat telling him to get back to work because they were opening early. How had they learned where he lived in such a short time? Had Zacharias told them to better his case that he was on their side?
Getting to work was not a particular challenge; he could apparate there and then he just had to knock at the door.
"You're on; we need you to back up Romilda."
"Oh, the one with the love potions," he muttered. What if all this is her idea? "Why isn't she getting punished again? I remember Ron Weasley nearly dying because of her-"
"Sure, but the love potion bit was funny." He frowned at the concealed face of another club worker and went inside. Sure enough, Miss Vane was wearing fetish gear and had a middle-aged man at her mercy. She had made him cum three times already, if his complaint was to be believed, and she just used her wand to decrease his refraction period.
"There's a spell for that?" he asked as soon as he arrived, wiping the cum off her fine leather.
"Of course."
"That's the kind of spell you learned?"
"Of course."
Justin could only shake his head. It was explained to him that Eric Munch had once upon a time aided in Harry Potter's sham hearing, collecting his wand at the door before it began. The time of the whole affair had been adjusted by three hours to guarantee that he would not be able to defend himself, and the captive was currently begging them to understand that it had not been his idea. Romilda was not convinced, summoning a jar of some liquid and handing it to him to open it.
"Vinegar?" he asked, getting a whiff as he handed it back. He would have guessed it would be some awful potion.
"Yes, vinegar," she said, putting it on the supine captive's member, then casting a sticking charm to keep the jar in place, even as he tried to move around.
"No, please, anything but vinegar!" Munch begged.
"I'm not sure what the issue is," the much younger wizard admitted.
"I'm not either, considering he wasn't there at the Ministry during the battle of the Department of Mysteries. He's only getting his just reward."
"I'm sure there were a lot of employees who weren't in that day. It was probably planned for a specific day, anyway." Come to think of it, though, since he had been in the DA, should he not have been there himself? He was not invited, he supposed, but why had that been? Was he just not important enough to bring along?
"We'll get to them to, when we identify them," Romilda said. "No one abandons my Harry."
"I'm curious," Justin admitted. "This whole thing doesn't seem too out of character for you. Did you start it? Is this club your idea?"
"Oh, no, I can't claim credit for that. I heard a rumor it was started by Olive Hornby."
"I've never heard of her."
"Oh, well, out of everyone with a name, she might be the absolute furthest in the background. She was only mentioned twice, and she never appeared."
"How do you know that?" he asked. "How do you know how many times her name was mentioned?"
"Well, a lifelong- an apparently even longer than life long enemy of hers had a hand in it." She shrugged. "I'm not worried about who started this place. You'll never find out who currently runs it."
"Please stop this madness!" Munch begged, reminding them that he exists while they were in the middle of cleaning up. "You're pickling my penis!"
"Oh, so that was the point of this punishment," Justin muttered. "He's convinced that this will have some sort of negative effect."
"Yes, with many of the guests, the idea is to convince them that some punishment is worse than it is. That way, they can still suffer again and again."
"I see. Isn't this similar to what they're doing to Lockhart?"
"Oh, no, the fun of it for him is that he gets punished by a former fan. Well, technically, Dennis was a fan of Harry's, and that was mostly through his elder brother, but it's close enough. I can't wait until we get Draco Malfoy in here."
"Will that get you out of your punishment?"
"No, what I did was funny."
Justin frowned rather than laughing. Romilda frowned back before telling him that he had other work to do. If she could help him, he might have acted like he found love potions funny, but it seemed unlikely. He walked over to yet another place in the mostly dimly lit room where he found Zacharias and Arkie Philpott (he had a nametag of all things, a surprising contrast to all the people in leather masks. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, they were putting probity probes up a goblin's rectum.
"Oh, looks like we're up to three!" he counted. "Maybe you'll think twice before messing with me again- I mean, maybe you'll think twice before messing with Harry Potter! He's got friends in low places- lower than your stupid underground bank!"
"I didn't think this place was that low," he muttered. "In all my trips to the Ministry, I would have thought you would need to get a building permit to use the Super Low Spell."
"Well, we didn't need to tell anyone about that," Zacharias said. "Hardly anyone ever reads books about it. You only need to use it once a year and then you're good, so most business owners go the route of talking to someone who knows it, but we were fortunate to have an expert in house."
"I've noticed people here have interesting taste in spells. On my way here I heard someone use something that sounded like 'testicular torsion'. I'm not sure what it does, exactly."
"You don't want to find out." He shivered a little as he magically tightened the goblin's anal ring around the probes. "You wouldn't believe the kinds of spells we have to learn here. It's ridiculous. I can almost guarantee that each one of them has absolutely no other application."
They finished up with the punishment of the goblin, not sure what exactly he had done to Harry Potter of all people. Justin had not, after all, heard every single detail of his life story. As interested as he had been to find out what all happened, everything in those days was tinged with a bit of shame for not doing more himself. He had gone to Hogwarts that year and had worked with the DA in the protection of the younger students from the Death Eaters that were in charge, but it was nothing that warranted its own explanation. After getting a basic idea of what happened, none of the main characters had ever asked him about his experience.
"I don't thing I had ever heard of Philpott back there."
"He's something of a hero down here," Zachrarias explained. "He's only ever been mentioned as a byword among some Gringotts employees on the subject of how hard it was to get gold out of the bank. He's quite possibly the least important person to ever exist. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he brought in the goblin that we were just punishing himself, citing that he once turned on Harry Potter whilst they were on a quest to recover one of those dark things."
"You mean, he wanted revenge for the way they treated him, so he investigated the background of some of the goblins and found one that was a real jerk once upon a time?"
"Exactly; he's a real model citizen down here."
Annoyed again, Justin said nothing as they went to their next victim. He did not really have any personal enemies, and he suspected that most background characters did not, but when they did, they were perfectly unforgiving. For now, his only viable target was Umbridge; he did not think he could find any of the still-living Death Eaters, and if he did, he would probably have a hard time capturing them. His only enemies, he supposed, were everyone else's enemies.
"Who's this?" he asked as they came to a witch torturing another witch, something of a rare sight. Gemma Farley, who had been prefect of Slytherin for a good stretch, was apparently not too particular about who was eating her out while she rattled off everything she hated about her anonymous victim.
"Oh, this is Pansy Parkinson, but I suppose you wouldn't recognize her by now. She was a prolific bully in her day, though more in the emotional sense, I suppose. Gemma reported her, along with several others, and that effectively made up for the fact that she's a Slytherin herself."
"Right. I should have guessed it was otherwise unforgivable."
"You're learning."