"Out of Spite"

Interrogation, as it turned out, was far harder to bear from your own side. Or by people who you once considered if not friends, then friendly.  They didn’t look so friendly now.  He'd been on the receiving end of many a flinty stare from Picquery during their tenure together, for though they'd been largely amicable, perhaps even friends, they'd butted heads on many occasions. But the open hostility was something he'd rarely felt, and the closest they’d come in the past was always tempered by the knowledge that they were, largely, on the same side.    Percival had appeared in the Woolworth plaza, he'd established that much, and the people in the room with him were Aurors, his old Aurors. So he was, in theory, safe.  But his wrists, barely freed, were shackled once more and his wounded magic locked in to fester and roil. A length of rope tethered him to those sturdy rails on the bed, for his own safety they'd said, and the slab-of-meat feeling he'd grown all too familiar with churned in his gut as they all stared at him, six of them.   Three Aurors, Wilcox, Picquery and- Percival managed a glance up at the tall, lithe man at the back before his nerve failed him and he ducked behind his bangs once more, gaze averted.  Good boy, eyes down.  Humiliation burned and curled his shoulders further. He didn't remember much of waking the first time, only terror and scrambling and then weeping into and falling asleep against the man's chest. And further back, arriving was a blur of pain and blood loss and even more terror but the blue coated man was there and he'd hidden behind him too, pathetic. The others were people he knew and that should have made it worse, but the thought of some stranger seeing him in such a state, having to take care of him…  Unacceptable. Or it would have been. Before. Now? What even was acceptability? They knew what he was now, and surely what Grindelwald had kept him for. Doubtful that he had any dignity left in their eyes, so the only thing holding him to any sort of standard was the dregs of his own pride. Whatever that was worth nowadays. Really, the fact that he could still feel shame was astounding.