#aw.task

victoria coughs, barely audible as she straightens her back and stands. she grabs her purse from the seat next to her, and listens to the sound of her own heels clacking against the ground as she enters the living room, sick of the already familiar smell, and the potential hour she’s going to be spending here, stuck with a person who’s got nothing but judgement for her. she thinks of setting the place on fire, and clears her throat as she sits across this month’s executioner. macdonald looks unimpressed, which is also a familiar sight - she always feels like these inspectors always think that she’s got more to atone for than the rest of them, with the sway of her hips and the way her name rolls of her tongue, unashamed. a hand falls at her pearls around her neck, and the other wraps itself around her waist. she smiles, deadly.

“so, miss rosier.” it almost sounds like an accusation. she knows it’s one, and wonders if her father was responsible for the death of any of her loved ones. “how are you feeling? how’s your job?”

victoria feels her head tilt just slightly, and tastes the distant aroma of her lipstick as she speaks. “i’m quite alright, thank you.” she wishes she could have a glass of champagne to accompany this hell, but goes along with this persona instead. they don’t want her to be her, anyway - if father didn’t want her to be her, why would the ministry? “my job can be somewhat taxing, sometimes, but i have come to... accept it, if i dare.” another tight smile follows her words - she talks sweet, but her body language tells a different story. she knows that if she were to really enjoy what she was doing, if she were to feel anything other than distaste, they would be suspicious. she raises her chin in retaliation, waiting for her to question her motives in her job. when the questions don’t come, she sits back, empowered, if only slightly.

macdonald pushes her glasses back on her nose, and looks up at her after her endless scribbling. probably notes about how much of a smartass she is. victoria wants to laugh - she doesn’t. “do you feel integrated into society? a job, a house. how do you think you’d fare outside of the r program?”

she taps her fingers against her waist, thinking the question over. “i’ve always been integrated to society. i never had any intentions of isolating myself, or disintegrating my identity.” she’s always given the same answer to this question and similar ones, because it’s true. “i’m good at my job. i talk to people at work, i socialise, i take care of myself and the people around me. i’ve always been capable of taking care of myself, and it’s no different now.” macdonald’s gaze burns into her skull as she begins writing, not looking down at her words. victoria knows she’s playing with fire here, but she doesn’t really care - they’re not going to send her to azkaban, not after the names she’s given them. she wouldn’t admit it to macdonald, or any other investigator, but she wants her freedom back. she thinks of wildflowers, and twirls her pearls around her neck.

macdonald stops writing. she purses her lips, raises her eyebrows - “have you, in any way, been in contact with known war criminals? or, to the best of your knowledge, have the other residents in the past or currently been in contact with known war criminals, shown any desire to attack muggles or muggle-sympathizers? have they joined any suspicious groups?”

she has to bite back the laughter that forms at her throat - does she think any of them would do something so stupid after all the things they lost in the war? does she really think any of them would tell the truth, even if they did, without a drop of veritaserum? she shakes her head, arms crossed. “as i am not allowed to visit the half of my family members who are in azkaban, and that the other half is dead, i haven’t had the opportunity - or, the thought, mind you - to contact any war criminals. i don’t want anything to do with the ones you already haven’t found, and they’d probably kill me if they knew what i did.” the cold, harsh truth. macdonald knows it. victoria knows it. she doesn’t understand why the ministry wants answers to questions they know the responses to. “i hardly think any of us would be stupid enough to do that,” she says, as macdonald writes. “even if something has happened - something that would be malicious towards muggles, i don’t know of it. i doubt it would happen, and i also doubt that anyone would be telling it to anyone else in the building.”

macdonald thinks it over, and for a moment looks dissatisfied with her answer. victoria challenges her again, with the tilt of her chin, the cross of her legs, the raise of her eyebrows. when she turns back to her notes with an aloof expression, victoria knows she’s won again. or, at least, macdonald’s allowed her to win. once she’s written half a novel about her words and body language, victoria suspects, she raises her head to look at her again. here comes the more difficult of questions: “your presence here is the sign of the benevolence your actions didn’t show. if i’d brought in a relative of one of the many permanently injured or murdered by death eaters, what would you say to them? would you hide your mark?”

there’s always a question like this in the investigations: if she wants absolution, if she would do it again if she ever had the chance, what she would say to her father if she was presented the choice once again - they are never easy, but rosiers have been trained to make uncomfortable look smooth. she takes her time with the response, the words rolling off her tongue with practiced nonchalance with a hint of apathy. “nothing i would say to them would make any difference. i wouldn’t hide my mark, because i don’t want to pretend that i didn’t make questionable choices in my past, and i don’t want to lie just to make somebody else feel good about themselves. nothing i would say would change the way they saw me - a murderer, a representation of the reason for their loss. i’m not the one to show the greyness of the world to strangers, neither am i one to save them.”

macdonald looks almost affronted: victoria’s sure something’s happened to her or her family in the war, now. she obviously didn’t expect this - this honesty that victoria has allowed herself to share with the people who don’t expect it from her, the people who want her to be victoria rosier. who need her to be a rosier, just so they can condemn the name once again, just so they can prove that there is no good that can come from families that have made mistakes. she’s already accepted that she’s made mistakes - but being ashamed of them will never solve the problem, will it?

the sight of a newspaper clipping is different - victoria raises her eyebrows as macdonald taps on the table, looking at her face as if to dissect any suspicious piece of expression. “i’m sure you’ve heard about this.” she pronounces, deliberately expressed syllables as victoria examines the article. “do you think anyone in here would be susceptible to this? what would it take for them to convince you to join them?”

she should have known something like this would come up in this month’s interrogation: the moment she saw the article, the moment her boss told her they would be covering it in an episode the week later, she knew this would be talked about. “the radio show i work for covered it last week,” she says, unimpressed. is she trying to shake things up, make her spill? surely, this is no way to startle a rosier who knows her way around research. “as i said, i don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to do anything about this. we’re not malicious people, we’re kids that were sidetracked during their parents’ war.” perhaps the truth, perhaps a lie - for a while, victoria knows she believed in her father’s cause. but she believed in it simply because it was what her father believed in, and now the memory almost brings her to tears. she shakes her head. “there’s nothing left for me in that world. there was nothing for me the moment i saw my father in the battlefield, and that’s why i left.” famous last words.

macdonald looks at her, examining once again, and nods. looks pleased. it’s not that victoria hates her father, now - it’s just that she wants to make the ministry think that she hates her father, because it makes things easier. she hates it, but she wouldn’t know what to do if she met him ever again, either.

she is kept inside for what seems like an eternity, going over every single response she’s ever given to a ministry official, ever - macdonald must really hate her, if they’re talking about her job applications in detail. she laughs once when she asks her if she ever thought of poisoning any of the residents with her cooking, and tells her that she’s just that nice. macdonald doesn’t buy it, but moves on, asks her about her boss, his affiliations with the death eaters in the previous war, and she tells her about how he fought alongside the ministry in the second one, how he risked his life so that the world wouldn’t be the place they both fought for when they were misguided. macdonald seems sure that she doesn’t deserve the job, or that they’re conspiring something together - victoria tells her to listen their episode on parent influence in traditional, pureblood families next wednesday. macdonald looks at her, and tells that she will. after that, it’s routine: she asks, victoria answers, lies, tells the truth, pretends she is the rosier they want her to be for a while.

It’s time for the monthly check in on the residents of 8 Acanthia Walk. Every month an official representative from the R Program is sent to the building to conduct a thorough evaluation of the state of the building itself, and of its occupants. Initially, they sent the same person every month, thinking that a familiar face in every individual interview would put them at ease and perhaps turn into new information, details useful in the capture and conviction of war criminals. When that approach proved fruitless, the ministry decided that a harsher approach should be taken. No representative has been seen twice ever since. Like all before her, the woman gives them no first name, and refuses to treat them by theirs anyway. Mrs. Macdonald arrived two minutes before the hour scheduled, which they’d all been warned about a few days in advance, so that all would be present.

She walked slowly through every corridor and apartment, never touching anything, but as a bold reminder that they weren’t simply tenants there, but under government vigilance. They could walk into their houses whenever they pleased, and only they could dictate who was in and who was out. In all of nearly two years since the program was turned into a reality, no occupant had been forced out after a monthly check in, but Mrs. Macdonald repeated often how that could very well happen.

The empty flat on the ground floor was opened and she got a different notebook, although the other one was almost filled with notes from her walk around. In the empty living room with a conjured table and two chairs, cold and with a musty smell, individual interviews happened. Those too were mandatory. One by one, they always came in, some interviews lasting a handful of minutes, others sometimes almost an hour. The questions didn’t change much from month to month, but stories were confirmed and contradicted, details could slip up and there were quick judgments of character, wellbeing, adaptation and moral shift.

Mrs. Macdonald comes to the door and calls another name, barely giving a glimpse at the young people in front of her. They were all told to wait there. Your character’s name is called. She has the chair ready, and her quill didn’t leave her fingers. She eases them in at first. “How are you feeling? How’s your job?”

“Do you feel integrated into society? A job, a house. How do you think you’d fare outside of the R Program?”

“Have you, in any way, been in contact with known war criminals? Or, to the best of your knowledge, have the other residents in the past or currently been in contact with known war criminals, shown any desire to attack muggles or muggle-sympathizers? Have they joined any suspicious groups?”

TO NON DEATH EATHERS - “You’ve seen the destruction Death Eaters have brought upon our society. Were you now given the chance to join them, regardless of what their outcome was, but simply focusing on their beliefs, would you? Or do you consider yourself a changed person?”

TO DEATH EATERS - “Your presence here is the sign of the benevolence your actions didn’t show. If I’d brought in a relative of one of the many permanently injured or murdered by Death Eaters, what would you say to them? Would you hide your mark?”

Mrs. Macdonald unfolds a newspaper clipping on the table. It’s the newest update on the secret group that has been worrying the nation - in the past few weeks, it was learned that some ex-Death Eaters yet to be arrested have been trying to create a new group to continue their previous work, and have been preying on young people, left vulnerable from the war: they lost fortunes, families, jobs. The residents of Acanthia Walk would be a perfect match. “I’m sure you’ve heard about this. Do you think anyone in here would be susceptible to this? What would it take for them to convince you to join them?”