Chapter 50

"Fine, then." Vaughn sighs in defeat. He turns his eyes to the ever-expanding mass of trees behind us, gazing into the dark nothingness between them. "I'll go first. I used to be a Death Eater."

***

Zoe

My fingers go rigid around the leaf they'd been pulling at.

"That's not funny." I snap.

"Not supposed to be. I'm not joking."

I look sideways at him. "If your goal is to get me to trust you, you're not off to a very good start. I might've led with a different personal anecdote, given the circumstances -- "

"Shut up." He stops me mid-sentence. I'm too stunned by his mouth to interject, and he doesn't spare me the time to, anyways. "I'll tell you the story of it all. 

When I was three, my parents died in a car crash. They were both muggles who, as far as I know, didn't have an inkling about anything to do with the wizarding world. I was sent to an orphanage in Russia – no other living relatives. None that wanted me, at least. The orphanage was a run-down, repurposed building that used to be a slaughter mill. Not exactly the most inviting place for couples looking to adopt, so I grew up without parents.

I wanted to die by the time I was eight. The only thing that stopped me from making that happen was receiving my Durmstrang letter. I got it by owl post when I was ten. I thought it was some cruel joke, at first, because good things didn't happen to me and magic wasn't real. But sure enough, an old wizard showed up to the orphanage and told me all about the wizarding world and the things I could learn at Durmstrang. So from then onward, I was sold.

I went to Durmstrang. Didn't know anything about the wizarding world, really – what was right and what was wrong, who the good guys and bad guys were. I was just a kid, completely alone and desperate for someone to take me under their wing.

Dark sort of school, Durmstrang is. They actually encourage students to embrace the dark arts. They even teach you how to practice them. Most of the students eat it right up. I mean, when you're a kid, you don't consider the idea that adults are teaching you to do something bad. Something wrong.

Anyways, there was an older student named Daegon who was really fascinated by the dark arts, moreso even than was normal by Durmstrang standards. He must've had a keen sense for picking out the weak kids in the crowd – the followers, the ones who could be easily manipulated. He sniffed me out pretty early on – claimed me before anyone else could. I was so young, my mind so moldable, like a blank canvas. A perfect subject for dark wizards looking to recruit. He put all these ideas in my head about how the wizarding world needed order, and how muggles needed to be controlled for their own good.

One thing I remember him telling me had to do with my parents' deaths. He used to tell me that the car crash that killed my parents was direct evidence that muggles needed to be controlled. He'd explain it all away, saying how anything made by muggles -- cars, for example -- was imperfect and that's why my parents died, because they were driving a muggle-made car. He'd say that this proved muggles needed to be controlled by wizards, that on their own, they were a disaster waiting to happen, that they were clearly dangerous to themselves and others. I remember him saying this all the time: 'now don't you hate the muggle technology that killed your parents?'

And oh, if I hadn't before, I started to then. The way he made it sound, muggles were mindless beasts, incapable of being tamed. And what good had they ever done for me, anyways? I'd ended up in a muggle orphanage myself, abandoned and alone.

Eventually I graduated from Durmstrang with honors. I'd been trained very well, and I was highly-skilled in the dark arts. Voldemort got word of this, and he tracked me down. With the talent I had, he was willing to make an exception for my being muggle-born, so long as I became a Death Eater.

Voldemort was not just powerful when it came to magic -- he was a very skilled manipulator, as well. He could make you see reason, sense, and morality where there was none. Not that I needed much persuasion -- I hadn't been taught any differently to begin with. 

I never knew he was killing and torturing, though. Somehow, he managed to hide that from me -- right up until I met someone who showed me the truth. 

See, this man I met was an auror. It was his job to take me captive and hand me to the dementors, but he didn't. He sensed something deep within me upon our first meeting -- something that was good, something that was still worth saving. And he was right. I wasn't too far gone yet.

He began to show me the things my master was really doing. Being an auror, he had access to the ministry's most guarded information about Voldemort's activities. I saw and heard of things I will never be able to forget. Innocent lives lost or otherwise destroyed. Damage that was beyond repair, that was unfathomable to any sane human mind. I finally understood just how corrupt the dark arts were. I became aware that everything I'd been taught thus far was no more than lies and manipulation. I was simply a pawn that Voldemort was using for personal gain.

And so, as only a select few others had done before me, I began to work for the Order of the Phoenix as a double agent. As far as Voldemort was concerned, I still embraced and believed in the dark arts. But secretly, I was feeding his information to Dumbledore and the Order.

Unfortunately, Voldemort had double agents working for him within the Order, as well. Voldemort's spy turned me in as soon as he found out what I was up to. My act was up. I went into hiding for months, and his Death Eaters were unable to track me down. 

Well, they settled for another method of vengeance against me. The auror who I'd come to know as my best friend — the one who'd shown me the error of my ways and helped me turn my back on the dark arts — they turned him into the very thing both he and I loathed the most.

Using the Cruciatus curse, they tortured him until he lost his sanity. And once he was no more than a shell of his former self, barely even a human being, they began using the Imperius curse to turn him into a mindless slave for Voldemort. 

They had complete and total control of him — they ordered him to kill muggles, torture wizard families who had information pertaining to the Order and the ministry. They even ordered him to kill muggle children. 

Eventually, I got word from Dumbledore that they'd sent him to kill me. Dumbledore told me I needed to finish him off — he was a liability to the Order, and he had become the very thing his older, truer self would've hated the most.

I prayed he wouldn't find me — even though he had become something so heinous in nature, I still loved the person he used to be very deeply. I had no desire to kill him. But he found me. 

I tried to reason with him at first, hoping in vain that I could undo the damage that the Death Eaters had done to him and bring back the old him. But it quickly became clear that the person I knew was gone. I remember looking into his eyes and seeing it: there was no one behind them anymore.

It was like battling a machine — he kept coming at me, kept coming at me. Firing unforgivable curses left and right. Clearly, the Death Eaters had given him instructions to end my life even if it cost him his own.

It was self-defense in the end. He was still a powerful wizard, and running from him wasn't an option. And I wanted him to be peaceful, too -- the man I knew would've rather been dead than a pawn of Voldemort's. So I did it. 

I hated myself. I wanted to die. Once the Death Eaters knew that I'd finished off their...slave, they wanted my blood more than ever before. And I was tempted to just let them kill me. I thought it would just be easier, to be dead. That maybe, if there was an afterlife, I'd see my friend again. And if there wasn't, well, death still had to be better than the life I was living.

But Dumbledore convinced me otherwise. Said my friend would've wanted me to stay strong and fight -- he wouldn't have wanted me to give in to defeat. He was right. And so I kept fighting, even though it hurt like hell every day."

A long, thick silence follows Vaughn's confession. I'd been so absorbed in his story that I hadn't realized my own throat closing up, or how my eyes had started to burn. 

Bits of it flashed like sputtering bulbs in my head, shocking and sharp:

So I grew up without parents.

I was just a kid, completely alone and desperate for someone to take me under their wing.

I thought it would just be easier, to be dead. 

"I'm sorry." The words leak out of me. I really mean them. 

I wish I'd been able to say more, but I couldn't, for it was then that I'd realized how exactly alike Vaughn and I truly were. 

***

Blaise

I sit on the corner of my bed for the better part of an hour that night, frozen. My body is tense, my hands clasped tightly over my knees as I think.

Hey, Zoe, want to talk about how I've walled myself off from you emotionally for the past two weeks? 

This is the first thing my brain, swimming with slippery thoughts, comes up with. Fan-fucking-tastic. 

"Fuck." I whisper to myself. I'm not good at this stuff. 

She may not even want to talk to me. That would save me from having to form a coherent sentence, at least, which is something that feels outside of the realm of possibility for me right now. 

A loud, abrupt voice in my head:

Get your ass up and walk now, or you're never going to do it. 

And so I do.

I force myself across the room, through the door. I shuffle down the stairs towards Zoe's room. My bones feel brittle beneath my skin, like they suddenly can't support my weight. My tongue has gone very dry in my mouth.

I'm just reaching out a fist to knock on Zoe's door when I feel a hand clap down on my shoulder. I turn around.

"Blaise, you need to come with me. Right now." A short and thin woman says. 

I recognize her -- she was the one explaining everything to Zoe and I during our first meeting here. Her name is Ingrid, I think. 

"It's time for you to make your first attempt at talking to your mother."