Fallen
The dawn came too early, too quickly, for Rio. She had fallen
asleep the night before after a long battle with insomnia, often her plague
on that particular night of the year, but had tossed fitfully the entire while.
She couldn't recall her dreams, but they left her disturbed when she awakened,
and she figured they were nightmares. They were always nightmares.
The Ministry would want her to check in with them in a few hours, and she knew it even as she lay staring sightlessly towards her window. The light was still soft where it came through the curtains, still the vague silver of newborn sunlight. She hated it anyway, loathed it, still wishing it would never come, just like she had every thirteenth and fourteenth of July for the last ten years. It had never listened, which just told her that there were no gods who cared.
The Ministry would want her to check in, but they rarely had anything for her to do. There were rumours that some of the Aurors would be laid off, or sent to other countries where their forces were in short supply, in order to make use of them. Ever since Voldemort's death in Rio's third year at Hogwarts, no new dark wizard had arisen. The remnants of the Death Eaters who had served Voldemort had been slowly eradicated or had fled over the next four years, mostly with the help of Harry Potter. He had begun training to be an Auror when he left Hogwarts, but once the Death Eaters began slipping into the school to plague and torment those in charge, especially after they murdered the newest DADA instructor during the summer before Rio's sixth year, Harry had returned as the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor. To everyone's surprise, he had done so. His skills, though many, in rounding up the remaining Death Eaters were wasted with only cleanup to do, and many thought that he had suffered far more than his share without heaping more onto it by making him the premier hound of the Ministry. They were fully equipped to deal with it and they did so effectively. So, with another year's worth of training left, he had forgone what he thought he wanted in order to do what he found he was best at. He had taught her well for two years before her time was up. All had been peaceful long before Rio had left Hogwarts at eighteen, but she had done so with a heart still full of unrequited rage. She had lost a great deal to those who served darker purposes, and though she had become an Auror like her mother, she had vowed to be the most ruthless, dangerous Auror that had ever lived at the tender age of thirteen.
Nine years after she made her vow, Rio had become the living nightmare to the wicked that she had wanted. She had paid a great price for it, however: she hadn't taken a lover, hadn't married, hadn't seen her family in years, and had incurred more wrath than not. Those she had loved, she had quickly seen she could never have, or they hadn't wanted her in return. She had lost more in order to keep to her vow than she had when she made it in the first place. Looking at herself now, Rio wasn't certain that the exchange had been what she really wanted, the terror of others to satisfy a need for vengeance that simply wouldn't quench no matter how many of the wicked she managed to get rid of. They whispered her name because she left it carved into their society, or written in blood, sometimes a mockery of their Dark Mark floating above houses or corpses where she had done murder in the unofficial name of the Ministry of Magic: Shade. Shade was the figure of shadow, the one who was rumoured to use not one but two wands, or to be so fast in the use of one that she may as well have two. She hunted them in the night, and always seemed to know who they were no matter where they hid, as if she could read their minds. She tormented them, teased them, tortured them, and sometimes they would be lucky enough to find another Auror who would bring them in alive.
The Ministry really didn't know who it was. They suspected that it was a rogue witch, a rogue Auror, or even one of the old Death Eaters punishing his or her own. Rio kept her own secrets, and remained one of the scarier Aurors to be had after her three years of training. She was ruthless enough that they suspected her, but because she was careful, they could never pin it on her. She also gave everyone enough obvious reasons to suspect her that most figured it couldn't be her, such as the fact she wasn't a full Auror and therefore supposedly unable to handle such tasks on her own for the first three years. Shade was, after all, far too crafty to do such a thing. It was a balancing act she had played throughout her training, and the year's worth of true Auror experience that she had come into. She had never held the record for most dark wizards brought in for trial, and most figured that she never would. Then again, she rarely chose to exercise restraint in her battles, and there was usually no need for a trial once she was finished. They hadn't rescinded the order from the seventies that allowed Aurors to use deadly force if necessary, and Rio often found or created reasons for it to be necessary.
She'd taken her fair share of hits, had nearly died more than once, and had been left with scars inside and out. She had been reamed, chewed out, put on probation, and sent into certain doom for her punishment for her actions and for her constant testing of the authorities over her. She was arrogant and cocky, but for good reason, when it came to dealing with her superiors: rumours persisted that people would be fired or shuffled, but she knew that the Ministry would resurrect Voldemort before they'd get rid of her. She was held in reserve for the biggest cases like manhunts, protection, search and rescue, and other things that took a great deal of skill. The older Aurors despised her because she was young, new, and yet good; the younger despised her because she got special treatment while they still handled the werewolf cases and rabid toilet bowls. She was their interrogator, their enforcer, their scare tactic in lieu of Veritaserum since a confession without the use of the serum damned them better in court. Rio was, for lack of a better description, the thing they had wanted from Harry Potter, and which would have been better for him to not give them. The last thing they needed or desired was to have their trained hound slip her leash and go rogue.
Rio didn't mind. It paid her in many ways, and she found some perverse delight in making the others hate her. She'd gone unnoticed most all of her life, even after her losses during her time at Hogwarts, so long as Harry Potter and his friends had been around. If she had her wish, she'd find a way to live forever just so she could do this job eternally.
Except for today. The fourteenth of July was always the day that Rio honestly wished she could die and not face each agonizing second that passed. She would do as she had every year since leaving Hogwarts and entering her job: call in sick. In Hogwarts, she'd had no such luck. If she were sick, she'd be sent to Pomfrey and berated for lying. The Weasley twins had come into good use for that, what with their little boxes of tricks. She had used them well, indeed. It was an unspoken rule, now, that Rio took a sick day on the fourteenth of July, but all the same, she would still have to go through the motions of calling it in. They never asked, after the first year with them, when she had been asked to handle several small blast-ended skrewts that had been stolen from someone's collection and had been left in the way of well traveled paths, causing burns and blisters to Muggles and magic folk alike. She had handled it physically, giving herself rather nasty wounds, and had then returned with them to the Ministry itself, where they "accidentally" got away again. They couldn't prove that she had purposely released them herself, but she had been sent home to recover. So had most of the Ministry sent to recollect them. She had been seen as hopeless until a month later, when she had single-handedly discovered and brought in a suspect in the murder of a wizard's Muggle wife. They began eyeing her critically at that point, but the topic was never breached. What was more pressing to them was that a first-year trainee to their division already seemed fully capable. She had been gnawed on for a very, very long while for her actions to impress upon her the seriousness of what she'd done, and how easily she could have been killed given her lack of experience. She had been nineteen, and she hadn't stopped trying to go it on her own. They had decided to simply keep their eye on her after a bit. She would either get herself killed one day and therefore be out of their collective hair, or she'd continue doing them a great service and collect respect.
The fourteenth of July was simply not a good day. Rio crawled out of bed having known this for ten years, and proceeded to the toilet to unwillingly begin living it.
They had no phones to use with the Ministry, and the avenues of communication were currently swamped for one reason or another. She figured it was something minor, a bubotuber or three making a mess in Hyde Park, that was causing chaos, and chose instead to wander downstairs into her kitchen to find something to eat. She hadn't been there long when she received a knock on her door. She had to use her magic to keep her food cooking while she went to answer it, wrapped in her robes for what little modesty she had left, and found herself staring at the Head Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt. He had been placed there not but a year before, and was doing a rather fine job of things to anyone's eyes. He and Rio butted heads constantly, but she found she had a grudging respect for him, mostly because he didn't virulently despise her. She pushed, and he only let it push him so far before he pushed back. He warned her when she was treading on shaky ground, rather than let her break through the surface, but he didn't let her get away with too much without scathes. She chose to get away with them anyway, but she'd heard the whispers that maybe he was taming her at last.
Given that the man was standing at her doorstep, however, Rio was inclined to think otherwise. "Calling in today?" he asked lightly, arms crossed at his chest. "I suppose you can see that you can't get through well enough."
"Good morning to you, too," she offered dryly. "Let me guess: the nation has an emergency that only I can stop, thus making me the chosen world-saver for the day."
"Of course not," Shacklebolt replied evenly. "But ta for the exercise in ego first thing in the morning."
Rio leaned against her doorframe leisurely. "Then what ARE you doing here, Kingsley?" she asked curiously, retaining some modicum of her cool demeanor and sticking in his first name to annoy him severely.
It didn't work. Or, she didn't think it did. He looked more amused than anything. "I wanted to see if you had the guts to call in sick today when I was staring you in the face, actually," he answered drolly. At her tightening features, he shrugged at her. "Well, go on, and I'll leave you be once it's done. If you can do it. Otherwise, I expect you in your cubicle in an hour."
"I'm calling in sick today," Rio replied with narrowed eyes. "Good day." She wheeled in a flurry of robes and attempted to slam the door shut on him, but he caught it and pressed inside regardless.
"You're not sick, though," he pointed out, gesturing at her. "How is it that I'm supposed to let you slack off when you're obviously hale and hearty?"
"Thought you said you'd leave?" she shot back irritably. "I did my part, now you do yours. You didn't say you'd question my reasons, just that you'd go away." She set her hands at her hips, her chin lifted defiantly at him.
He held up his hands. "And I will just as soon as I ascertain the reason behind you doing this as reputable," he answered her seriously. "Rio, you're suspected of being Shade, you must know that. Every Auror and Hit Wizard in the Ministry eyes you when you call in like this or go on vacation each year. At least you don't give them enough to go off of to come here and ransack your home looking for evidence that they can use against you."
Rio rolled her eyes and moved back towards her kitchen. "I don't have to explain anything to anybody for any reason," she growled towards him. "I don't usually use all my vacation days anyway during the year. This is one that I happen to use. So, unless there's been a resurgence of dark wizardry overnight, or a new Dark Lord has sprouted, you know bloody well that I'd be useless to you anyway. It doesn't hurt for me to take a day for myself now and again, and I choose July the 14th of each year for that day."
Kingsley watched her for a long moment while she tended to her breakfast. "You're an odd bird," he offered after a moment. "But you have a point. Just don't call in sick, Rio. You have to be sick for it. Ask for a day off beforehand next time. I'll most likely grant it, given the low workload we've had the last few years. I can say that you asked off ahead of time this time and the paperwork was lost."
She turned and gestured at him with her spatula, scrambled egg crumbs falling towards the floor as she did it. "I'll be in tomorrow, but you won't like it," she announced simply. "You might say that I'll be rather sick then in truth, and won't be in the mood for taking guff."
He looked at her wryly as he sat at her kitchen table and placed his hands atop it one over the other. "Drinking tonight, are we?" he asked in faint amusement. "I seem to recall you coming in fit to be tied every fifteenth of July, yes. Always wondered why you'd taken off on the fourteenth of each year to have a bender."
Rio paused as he spoke, but she covered it by moving to the egg pan once more. He couldn't know. Nobody really recalled the fourteenth as anything but yet another day in July, at the Ministry. Nobody except her, that is. "Will you have a little breakfast?" Rio asked politely. "You're here whether I like it or not. I may as well offer."
She knew what his answer would be before he even opened his mouth. It had been the sole reason why she asked to begin with. Kingsley made a soft sound and stood once more with a shake of his head. "Unfortunately, no. I have to get back." He straightened his clothing and robes in silence for a moment. He then turned and made his way towards the door. Rio had gone to her pan of frying ham during it and was removing the meat onto a paper towel for draining purposes when he next spoke, as if he'd been waiting for her to give him a farewell, his hand on the opened door. "Rio," he said seriously, "it's been ten years, now. I remember that investigation like it was yesterday. I was a part of it. You have to let it go someday, or it will eat you alive inside." He took a deep breath. "The Ministry has let you do whatever you wish because it's afraid of what you might do if they let you go. They've been grooming you for something, Rio, and have used you thus far like a pawn. I've sat and watched it since you came in, and now I have to be the one to help pull your strings. They want you as their hound, and when they couldn't have Harry, they decided on you instead. You've been trained for that purpose. All these times when you should've been fired and thrown out, and nobody knows why you stay anyway, that's the reason. They've invested so much time and energy in you that they refuse to let you go even if you wanted."
Rio had paused in the process of moving her eggs onto her plate, and stood staring through the wall at the back of her stove. It was one thing to tell herself all of this, but quite another to hear her boss confirm them. "Why are you telling me this, Kingsley?" she asked softly, dangerously so.
He heard it anyway. "It extends deeper than you think," he continued stubbornly. "Into the Muggle Prime Minister's area and office. There have been a few too many words dropped into a few too many ears that should never have known about you, and the Prime Minister is wondering about making you a dual-world agent, for the Muggles and for the Ministry, and making you a member of MI-5. The duties the PM has for you, however, are more what you'd find in their MI-6, down to being nothing more than a paid assassin for the enemies of Great Britain."
Her hand tightened on the handle of her pan. "Why are you telling me this, Kingsley?" she repeated, grating it out with an edged tone and gritted teeth. She hadn't wanted to know any of this, and in fact didn't think it was intended for her to know it at all. She was having at least a little difficulty even accepting it as probable or possible, given that Muggles and wizards didn't mix on a large enough scale to warrant a magical assassin working for the British government.
"You aren't the only one who's ever been asked," Kingsley continued, closing the door a little. "There have been others, and they're still employed by the Prime Minister on occasion, secretly. There hasn't been anyone they've wanted in a long while, however, and the ones currently in service are older, in their forties and fifties. Potter was supposed to have been a perfect candidate, and in fact once the Ministry accepted that he would have to fight Voldemort years ago according to the prophecy, and that Voldemort was alive, they had him in mind. He was without a family, he had a stubborn streak, he was good at damn near everything that an Auror or spy would have to be, he was Muggle-raised so that he could get around amongst them, and he had a livid hatred of all things dark or wicked. It can be easily used, Rio--"
"Leave, Shacklebolt," Rio snarled, setting down her pan and actually lifting her lips over her sharp canine teeth as she said it.
He ignored her. "It can be easily used and twisted to serve other purposes. They knew Potter had been a part of Voldemort as well, and that he more than likely had the knowledge of that evil in him like a taint, a memory he couldn't erase. He became an Auror and they let him in, but he proved during his training that his hatred of all things wicked had mellowed. He and his friend, Ron Weasley, you know him as an Auror, Rio. Ron and Harry entered at the same time, but Harry was asked by Dumbledore to teach before he'd completed the three year training. You know this. Dumbledore undercut the Ministry, and the Ministry tried to keep Potter with the siren call of the eradication of evil. They tried to offer him the position as hero that he'd always been, but Dumbledore… Rio, Dumbledore knew that Harry didn't deserve that life, not after all he'd been through. He offered Harry the chance to teach others what he knew and prepare them for the fights to come, rather than fight them himself. And, Rio, he accepted because he realized how tired he already was of fighting. Ron is still an Auror, and one of the best that we have these days, but Harry…."
Rio wheeled on him, stabbing at him with her spatula. "I don't CARE, Kingsley!" she bellowed at him angrily. "Did you come here to spout about Potter, to torment me, or to show that someone in this damn world actually cares that I live or die? Get OUT, Shacklebolt!" The spatula even shook in her hand.
He'd actually jumped, his hand at the pocket where his wand was residing, before he realized it was just a spatula. He shook his head at her warily. "I came to tell you that you'd been treated unfairly, Rio, and that they mean to treat you even more unfairly. That this time, they may not give you a choice like they did Potter, but force your hand." He opened the door again. "They almost have enough to prove that you're Shade, Rio," he said simply. "When they do that, you won't know, and they'll hold it above your head unless you agree to their demands. What you've become can be worse, Rio." He stepped through the door on his way out. "Let go of it. It's been ten years now, girl. It's what they'll use against you. I'll see you tomorrow."
Even as he closed the door, Rio's spatula was hurtling through the air. She didn't want to know that. Any of it. She really was a stand-in for the great and mighty Harry Potter. They couldn't have what they wanted, so they had settled for second best: her. He had been offered a way out, and nobody cared enough to do the same for her because she hadn't lost her parents to Voldemort, nor had she fought him and won. She wasn't the big hero, she didn't have Dumbledore behind her supporting her like a grandfather.
There was no chance of redemption for her. The hatred ran too deep, and her path had been started so long ago that she couldn't get off of it now if she wanted.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Night was falling by the time Rio made it to the small estate outside of Cardiff where her grandmother had lived. Her parents' home belonged to her older brother and his family, now. He had destroyed everything magical that he could lay hands on, and she wasn't allowed to even think of visiting him or his three children. She had only seen them now and again when she'd wandered to their primary school and seen them at play with Muggles. She didn't even know if they were magical in nature. They were the only real family that she had, and she just couldn't abandon them completely. It made her sad, but she smiled to see them all the same.
Her grandmother had died when Rio was in her first year of training as an Auror. She had been in her seventies or eighties, a good age considering everything, and had left the estate in Rio's name. It was sitting unused, however, because Rio had her job in London. It had come with a bit of money as well, but it sat in her own Gringott's bank account gathering dust. She visited now and again to make sure the House Elves were still happy and fed, and they seemed overjoyed to see her on her infrequent visits. She had left it up to them, after the title to the house had changed to her, to keep the house in order, they and however many of their unemployed family and friends wished to help. She'd had to rescind that order when she came back one day to find the entire manor full to bursting with elves who were actually cleaning each other for lack of anything else to keep clean. She'd sent several to Hogwarts with a note to Dumbledore that they needed a place to call their own and masters to serve, and they hadn't returned. They'd seemed heartbroken that she was sending them away until she explained that she wasn't angry at them for a job badly done, but making sure that everyone had a fair turn to serve as they needed. It had mollified them, given she was sending them to someone who was kind and understood them rather than firing them and leaving them in the cold again. She hadn't freed them, after all.
The grounds were perfectly manicured. Even the outside of the manor seemed to sparkle. The inside was spotless, nothing out of place. She tried to visit the manor two or three times a month, if for no other reason than to make sure there was enough food around for the house elves and anyone who dropped by in her absence, but she'd left standing orders for the stores to be restocked by the elves themselves if necessary. She'd even left money to do it, though it had never been touched. She'd charged them to protect the house as well, and the grounds, and to make sure that no Muggles bothered it, and no wizards entered with intent to harm anything or anyone.
But there was one day that she always arrived at nightfall, and didn't leave until the next day.
She arrived as she usually did, and the entire estate was silent but for the birds and beasts of the night. There was a fog rising from the heat that had come in that day, and the cool and damp that night brought this close to the ocean. She entered knowing that she'd been recognized, and the elves she saw bowed and told her how happy they were that she had returned. She never struck them, and kept them well dressed and clean through direct orders and subtle maneuvers around their aversions to clothes. She had simply told them, in an order form, that they should be clean and have new clothes on when their old ones were torn and stained, as it made her look bad otherwise. She let them decide what and where to get them, allowing them to leave the estate to do it on occasion if they desired, just as she allowed them to visit family now and again and return.
They thought she was a strange Mistress, but they loved her all the same without a word of complaint. She allowed them those as well, much to their astonishment, under the clause that she was learning how to be a good Mistress to them and needed to know what she should and shouldn't do.
She smiled faintly, wearily, at them as she entered, finding their excitement and energy to be comforting to a degree. She asked that they fix her something small for dinner, like a bit of meat loaf, as it was just her, and that she be brought a bottle of vodka from the cellar. Their happiness evaporated almost immediately upon her second declaration. There was only one day that Rio drank around them, and it was the worst day for them they could think of aside from when her grandmother had died.
She had taught them the dishes that she liked that were Muggle in origin, and they had learned how to make it readily enough. She'd had a feeling it had been more to keep her from cooking ever again in their presence than to try and make her happy, but she didn't mind. They did a good job of it, and she had her dinner when it was dark. She didn't wait for her food to start in on the bottle, however. By the time she'd finished eating, she was already well on her way to being unable to stand.
She grabbed the bottle and walked outside along the small garden paths that resided there. She'd walked them many times as a child, and thus knew them by heart. She talked to herself and to the elves that she knew were listening to her even there, even if they were hiding away to be there only if she required something. "They want to make me a bad person at the Ministry," she said to them and to the trees and flowers. "Want me to go off and kill people and spy on them for Muggles and for wizards, both, all over the world. My boss came and told me about it. Don't know that I have all that much choice in the matter, though. I am what I am, right?" She tipped up the bottle again, listening to the silence and the barely audible whispers of the house elves as they heard that she might be leaving. That terrified them most of all. "But if I did have a choice, what would it be? I could leave the Ministry right now, but they'd make me a wanted criminal so that they could get me back for the same purpose. I'd have to run away all the time, always hiding… If I tell them no, then they'll say they'll release the information and proof they have that I'm Shade, and I'll have to live with that. No more secret stuff. Everywhere my face goes, I'll be known, and I'll be marked. They'll have me working there anyway, and if the Ministry wants, it has the power to make me a wanted criminal when it releases that information."
She made it to a gate on the side and leaned against it. Locked as it was, it didn't open to let her fall inside. "If I agree, I do what I don't want to do, and have to go all over the place, never really at home much. They'll try to control me. They'll have to, if they let me go so readily and freely. There has to be a leash or else there'll be trouble, you mark it." She grimaced and had another drink straight out of the half-empty bottle of vodka. "Don't want a leash. Don't like the one the Ministry has on me now."
She rubbed her face. "I can't win, any way that I go," she said, her voice a touch slurred. "I'm either away from home forever, or here forever and unable to leave. At least if I accept the offer, I can come home." She squinted up at the sky. "And maybe I can make it work to my favor, after all…" She pushed up the lock to the gate and moved through it. "Just collect me later, elves," she told the waiting surroundings. "You'll know where."
The whispers went silent as they obeyed her and moved back into the house. Rio wandered around and down a little hill to where an old iron fence and gate resided, and pushed through it into the cemetery beyond. She was silent the entire time, looking at the way the darkened trees in the night swayed with the faint breeze and the way the fog covered the ground. It made it less spooky for Rio than a taste of home. These were the nights when London would be thick with fog, and she could hunt the hated ones. For now, however, there wasn't hatred in her heart. There was only a sadness and longing that the night and the moon and the fog echoed and welcomed. She felt as if all three were embracing her, and though it was a cool and lonely embrace, she was accepted and part of it.
Her stumbling steps took her down a hill and around a tree that reached out to hold in several headstones. This was the family plot, where her grandmother was buried next to her grandfather. Her pureblood mother, killed by Death Eaters for a secret she had implanted in Rio's own head ten years ago, lay next to them. Her father, a Muggle, had been hidden in the form of her owl, Ferches, by her grandmother in order to protect him, and she hadn't even known that it was him until it was too late to change him back. He had died three years later, while she was at school, having aged faster and accepted a shorter lifespan as an owl than as a human in his fifties. He was buried next to her mother. Her brother wouldn't be buried here when his time came, but wherever he wished, something that her parents would have writhed over had they not already been dead. Her own sister had decided to join up with the remnants of the Death Eaters once she'd seen how their mother had favored Rio. Already in Slytherin as she was, it had been like breathing to be jealous and conniving towards her older sister, the one whose shadow she'd lived in her entire life. After Voldemort's death, she'd remained with the Death Eaters until it became apparent that they were a dying breed. She'd left Hogwarts when Rio was in her second year of Auror training, and she'd almost immediately married another half-blood from Slytherin who had money. Rio had discovered, six months later, that the two were dark wizards planning to continue Voldemort's studies into eternal life, and who wanted to take up the power he'd left behind. Rio faced her sister down, and her brother in law, and brought them in alive. They'd been sent to Azkaban prison, where both had died within a year. She'd received a small letter to that effect, at least, last year.
They were buried, even her sister, in the same cemetery right near each other. In the middle of them resided a large, low marble statue beneath the tree of an angel. The house elves kept it spotless, and thus no age marred it, no slime from the rain, no stains, and no fungus. It stood pale and ghostly in the moonlit foggy night, a beacon to the drunken Rio's eyes. She could feel the house elves gathered around the cheerily lit windows overlooking the family plot, noses pressed against the glass and their ears drooping as they wept and watched her. She'd seen them doing it before, year after year, and was at least comforted to know that their grief was as fresh as her own despite the passage of time. It never occurred to her that perhaps their grief wasn't for the departed, but the one who still lived on.
Rio collapsed next to the statue, displacing the fog in swirls around her for a moment, and then her lower half was somewhat covered a moment or two later when it crept back in to caress her soothingly. Bottle in hand, she pressed against the angelic figure and hugged it to her, a clink sounding as the glass met the marble. Her eyes closed and dropped the first of many tears that would come, and she whispered thickly, "I miss you all so much."