Paper Confines

xxxii. Traces

After a pause, Nadya said, "no," at the same time as Colette asked, "yes?"

"Uh. Ehm, or not," Colette mumbled.

"Well—yes, in that sense," Nadya rectified.

Claude snickered from the desk.

"I mean," Nadya bristled, "that we need flexibility here. If what happened last night is going to have been worth anything, we can't be watched and confined all the time. If there has to be a consequence, just... make sure it's something else."

Reid rolled her eyes and looked ridiculously like Amoret. "Shall I tame Swooping Evil while I'm at it?"

"You're the graduated genius!" Nadya exclaimed. "Don't say it outright or anything. Stir it in their subconscious, make them think they thought it up themselves, make it something that seems inarguably crueler than curfew and timeout. Let it scratch their stupid fucking itch for justice for their poor, pureblood children."

"Trying for medieval torture, Sidhu?" Claude asked.

"You're medieval torture."

Reid had given up on composure somewhat, her hands wiping over her face.

Colette didn't think she had much to offer in terms of suggestions. She could think of plenty of things she wanted the Knights to suffer, but anything they did, her and Nadya would too, and the sheer balancing act of trying to impress that onto the Ministry was Sisyphean. Nadya was asking a lot. Colette recognized she was asking it too.

"Worry about Dawlish," was all Reid could muster. "I'll see what I can do."

Colette, following instruction, worried greatly about Dawlish.

She was led by another auror to the Hufflepuff dormitories, given an opportunity first to clean and redress, and felt on display when she was taken through the corridors again a polished spectacle. Word had naturally spread about what happened, mangled little rumours like sprouting weeds, twisted from the truth because so few knew it. It was lucky most of the students were gone on holidays, and yet, eager first years clustered at the corners and giggled quietly. Colette tried to imagine Nadya taking the same journey and figured she was probably glowering at them while her auror wasn't looking.

Dawlish was as fair as Reid made him out to be. He probed little, wrote plenty, and smiled sincerely between questions. Colette's skin was still littered sparingly with cuts that stung with her fidgeting; she'd healed most of Nadya's last night, before Reid, propped on a knee where she was bent over scouring Rosier's memory, hissed at her to stop. Injuries made for better optics.

By the pity on Dawlish's face, Colette suspected that was true.

It helped that she wasn't nearly so bad at lying as it was decided she was. Little lies—lovely lies, yes—Colette couldn't keep conviction to save her life where those were concerned; lovely lies like not loving Nadya and not being afraid, things she couldn't convince herself to believe under the harshest circumstances. But to lie for her? Poisoned canelés and twisting tales of thieves? She told them like the truth.

It was faster than Hopkirk's interrogation with Amoret, and Colette wondered if Reid had anything to do with her absence (it seemed Reid had something to do with everything) or if the Ministry had decided at last that the Prophet had no place here.

She prayed for the latter on her way out, and stared listlessly at the empty corridor, resigned again to waiting. It made her skin itch.

Colette did all she could think of until Reid returned with news: spiralled over the piano, mourned a thousand pasts, and hoped for the future in spite of it all. The cycle span. It was never perfect; she never had been. But she still hoped at the end of every turn.