Doing some research

[Lily Drage]

Lily found a table at the library. She needed to be able to find some extra info on Josh. She had pretty much put the pieces together that Josh was really a Death Eater, but she could not believe that he was a horrible guy. She had left a note for Estrella to meet her in the library since they had not had much of a chance to talk since break and she wanted some input about what to do. She grabbed an old Daily Prophet and began to read while she waited for Estrella to show up.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella was quite glad to snatch a break from classes, considering the first week of the semester she was still trying to get all of her thoughts together. Although she was tired, her eye twitching occasionally, she was in a relatively cheery mood. She had read Lily's note quickly and then jammed it into her pocket as she made her way down to the library. She wondered what the girl wanted to meet about- it was odd, considering that they slept in the same room as one another that neither could find the time to talk.

Her head held high, her eyes scanned the place for Lily, finding her at a table. Smiling warmly she approached her, pulling out a chair for herself and sitting down. "Well hello Miss Lily. It has been a busy week, hasn't it?" She suddenly reflected that she had forgotten to give Lily her Christmas present, wincing. That was definitely something she had to get onto doing- although she was pretty sure that the librarian would not approve of her bringing something non human near the cherished volumes. Curious to find out what Lily had to say, she grinned, drumming her fingers on the edge of the table.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily folded the paper up, laying it on the table as Estrella sat down. "Yes, yes it has. Crazy that we have to schedule time to talk. How was your holiday? Anything special happen at your grandfathers place?" She put the paper on the start of a pile that was going to be the ones that were discarded, ones she no longer needed to look at. Ones that had nothing about Josh in them. She was hoping that Estrella found out some news about him, news that would be the opposite of what she saw.

 

[Estrella Drage]

"It's insanity, is what it is," Estrella concluded with a grin, putting her face in her hands. "Anything special? Well..." She thought about it for a moment. Should she tell Lily that, once upon a time, her grandfather was a Death Eater? She hadn't opened her mouth on the matter ever since Sarah had put her to bed after the rather hellish night she had. In fact, she hadn't done much as far as communicating the rest of the break, although granted, there were only a few days left before she was tossed back into a busy school year. "I didn't find out anything about Josh- but I did find something out about my grandfather. I am not entirely sure what to think of it." She paused for a moment, knowing that her friend was going to ask what. She braced for her answer, wondering how she was going to push it past her lips. The older Ravenclaw girl was faced with the dilemma of whether it would be betraying her grandfather's trust or not.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily picked up another paper as she listened to Estrella speak. She was not surprised that she had not found out anything on Josh, but the fact that Estrella had learned something about her grandfather stopped Lily short. "Really? What did you find out? Maybe I can help you make sense of it. I found out some information too. That is why we are here. We need more info and I figure that there is something here somewhere that will help us out. But you go first. What is your news?" she whispered as she spoke so as not to attract the attention of the nearly invisible librarian.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella bit her lip as she looked back to Lily, resolving to tell her. She wasn't going to get anywhere in keeping their friendship together if she wasn't honest. "Well-" she looked down for a moment, "I was in the library- at the Herrogard I mean," she knew that she had never really talked about the place with Lily, "Anyways, I was up on the balcony- and his sleeve rolled up. He- had something there, if you know what I mean." She hoped that Lily would get what she was hinting at. "He said that it was from when he was younger- that he left him long ago." She had lowered her voice considerably, gazing back at her friend. "I'm not entirely sure whether to believe him or not. I mean, he's never hurt me or anything- and it wouldn't be good for his rep to be one- but I just don't know."

Pausing for a moment, she asked quickly, "What did you find out?"

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily listened to Estrella's story with a shocked look on her face. "Really? Wow! That is just crazy!" She sat back and thought about it for a second. "You know, that would make sense if he was. Like father, like son, right? He wouldn't be working as the Minister of Magic if he was still with them, but it could explain why your father and Josh are members. Oh, yeah, um, I kinda saw something on Josh's arm too. I didn't confront him or anything. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible." Lily blushed a bit at the memory. "It was a total accident, but Josh used the main bathroom to take a shower while Blake and I were down on the beach. I came back to get a book from my bedroom and as I was exiting my room, he was exiting the bathroom in nothing but a towel. Not too hard to miss what I saw on his left arm." Her face flushed a bit darker as she remembered the way he looked, and the way the black image stood out on his arm.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella nodded, agreeing that the situation was indeed crazy. She looked down, her brow furrowed in thought. "But my question is, why the heck would they want to?" She was not entirely surprised by what Lily had found out about Josh, although she felt a little betrayed nonetheless. Why all the secrecy? Why the lies?

She chuckled nervously, a grin breaking out on her face. "I bet that embarrassed him," she stated, knowing that she herself would have run in the other direction had she been in that rather testy predicament. "Did he do anything when you saw it?" she inquired, trying hard not to invision her godfather in just a towel.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily looked at Estrella. "I honestly don't think he was embarrassed by his lack of clothing. He really didn't seem to be. I think I was more startled than he was. He picked up the book I dropped and handed it back to me. I don't know if he actually knows I saw it or not. He kept looking at me strange but never said anything to me and I avoided him as much as possible. I hope he thinks I was just embarrassed and not scared of him or anything." She flipped open another paper, scanning the pages quickly, looking for anything about Death Eaters or Josh. Not finding anything, she grabbed the next one and opened it up.

There on the front cover was a story that stopped her cold. There was a massacre at the Ministry a year or so back. As Lily scanned the article, knowing that Death Eaters had to be behind the act, she found what she was looking for. Josh's name was listed as a recently broken out Death Eater that was to go to Azkaban. "Look at this. I wonder what he did." She turned the paper for Estrella to see, pointing at Josh's name.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella looked down, thinking about it for a moment. "I hope he thinks that too. I mean-" she played around with what was most appropriate to say, "It is better if he doesn't know what you know, so you have some fuel for the fire, you know?" She blushed a bit, realizing that what she was saying was probably not making sense. "Sorry, that must have been a bit confusing. But if you do end up confronting him- he's not going to have time to prepare a lie, right?"

The fact that Josh was a Death Eater still upset her greatly, made her numb. How many people had the person she had seen as more of a loveable uncle killed? How many families had he taken from? What about her father, for that matter? It unsettled her to no end to know that murderers were so close to home.

Taking the paper from little, her brow furrowed as she scanned the front page news hastily. "I remember reading this in third year," she murmured, remembering that Kale had made some comment about it. "But I didn't recall his name-" her voice trailed off as her finger found Josh's name, tapping it as if it were supposed to do something. "Malfoy, including the known death eaters Vladmir Rasputin and Joshua Hanson, have since disappeared, and are being searched for," she read quietly, her dark eyes looking up to Lily. "What in the world was he doing in Azkaban? And who broke him out?" A hard knot gathered in her throat as she read the words at the bottom of the page.

"The Daily Prophet and Ministry in accordance ask that if you have any information about the night's happenings or wanted criminals, please come forward." Estrella's face was a blank slate as she looked up to Lily; part of her wished that they had never found the article. Her tone possessing a great deal of bitterness in it, she seethed, "Well, that puts us in a predicament, doesn't it?"

Part of her was frightened, now quite aware that something rather sketchy was going on with her godfather and those around him. "And Blake doesn't know?" she added, biting her lip. She felt that it was her duty, well, their duty, to do something about this, but she wasn't sure what. One thing she was sure of, was that she wanted answers.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily started to look through more Prophets as Estrella read the article. "I remember the story too. It was a huge talk at the time. I just never made the connection either. I wonder what he did." When the last lines were read by Estrella, Lily put down the paper she was looking at. "I don't think we want to do that. Not yet at least. We need to keep some leverage on our side and if we turn him in, we lose that edge. Plus, I want to know what he did first. If he is a murderer, I don't want to piss him off, you know?"

She went on to another paper. As she flipped through the pages, she found a small article on an inside page. "Hey, look at this."

Man charged with Torture of Squib

Joshua Hanson, 39, was arrested by Ministry aurors for the torture of squib Markus Welby. Hanson is known to be associated with the group known as Death Eaters. He will be transfered to Azkaban until his trial. Mr. Welbey is presently at St. Mungos and doctors are hopeful he will make a full recovery.

"I think we just found what he did." She laid the paper out for Estrella to see.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella was having a hard time not refusing to believe what she was reading and deliberating, but the facts were held before her very eyes. She put down the article in disgust. "It makes me-" she played around with words for a moment, "Angry." That was a rather incorrect summation of all the emotions she was feeling right now but she felt that she could at least throw one of them out there.

She took the other one from Lily, heaving a great sigh as she read the article, her expression poisonous. "Torture a squib?" she hissed. It wasn't a squib's fault that they didn't have magic, just as it wasn't a muggleborn's fault that they did have it. She hated these ideologies that the rather insufferable group had. She hated even more that someone close to her was involved with them.

"If he's capable of doing that I am pretty sure he would do other things," she stated bluntly, knowing that it was the obvious. Part of her wished that Josh had not been sprung from Azkaban, that she had never met him and he had stayed there forever.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily looked at Estrella, gaging her reaction. "I know. I wonder what else he has done that he didn't get busted for. And how bad did he torture the squib to be arrested? Man." She was a bit scared, but then started to wonder if Josh has changed his life around a bit since then. This was a few years ago after all. "Do you think maybe he has changed? Like, reformed since then? This was a few years ago. Is that possible?" Lily was trying to look for the silver lining here, any silver lining that she could find. She just did not want to believe that Blake's dad was an active Death Eater.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella's jaw was taut as she looked back to Lily, pushing the paper away, as she had already crinkled the edges. She was fighting the impulse to crunch it up into a ball and burn it. "I don't think we'd ever really know- something tells me he would not squeal. Even if he did end up fessing up to it. He sure doesn't go around prattling about pureblood supremacy." She repositioned herself in her chair, smoothing down her robes. She bit her lip as she looked back to Lily. "If he has reformed- then good, I suppose, but at this point I'm not going to hope for anything. It's possible, maybe not entirely feasible. I wish there was a way he could be directly asked without one putting their life at risk, you know?" Pulling a strand of hair behind her ear she sighed. It had been bad enough finding out that her dad was one at twelve, that Valcan had been one just recently, and now, it seemed that Josh was one. What in the world had driven these three men to such extremes? On the outside, they didn't seem to be those kinds of people.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily sat back in the chair, not quite sure what to think. "You're right. How often do you hear of a Death Eater that truly reforms. There was that Headmaster back at the other Hogwarts, but that is rather rare. I guess thinking about it, if your Grandfather was one, and your father was one, Josh had a lot of influence on him to join up. Best friends tend to do a lot of things together." She could not think of a way to find out more without putting herself or Blake or anyone in danger. Then a thought hit her and she whispered, "I wonder if Blake knows any of this." She could feel her heart break for him, for what he did not know or what he was keeping a secret. Either way, this was a horrible thing for him to endure.

 

[Estrella Drage]

((I swear to god I posted to this earlier today. @_@ *smacks self* ))

Estrella's lip pursed as she looked back to Lily, putting her head in her hand. "I'm sorry, I think it's just hard for me to wrap my mind around this right now." She sighed, and gathering herself a bit she replied, "Yes, it would make sense for them to pack together like that. What's driving me nuts is, why would they have to resort to such a hateful means? I don't even understand how they could." She was trying not to think about the innocent lives the men may have taken over the years. She knew that best friends tended to do things together, but being a member of a group so vile was hardly a recreational sport.

Amidst everything she had forgotten about Blake. She had only met him once, in Flourish and Blotts, and she was pretty sure she hadn't rubbed off well. She swallowed hard, knowing very well that if Blake did not already know it would be some hard news to take. "Are you going to tell him?" she asked quietly. "It kinda sucks finding out something like that about your dad." The older Ravenclaw girl knew exactly how that went too. In her opinion, Blake should be told, but he was Lily's boyfriend, and Lily would have to handle the information where she saw fit as far as Blake was concerned.

 

[Lily Drage]

Lily looked at Estrella for a moment. "I don't know what to do. I don't think he knows, but I don't want to be the one to tell him you know?" She sat forward and put her head down on the table between them. "I don't know what to do," she said into the table, a variety of emotions flooding through her. She closed her eyes, thinking about what she needed to find a way to tell Blake. Somehow, she had to let him know, but didn't want to wreck his image of his father while he was still forging a relationship with him.

 

[Estrella Drage]

Estrella frowned a bit as she looked to Lily. What was she supposed to do? She really didn't know how Blake was supposed to be told. Heck, she really didn't even know the kid. Lily would have a better idea of how he would handle it. Or at least she thought. Not entirely sure if giving her friend a hug was the right thing to do, her eyes widened. "I'm sorry, Lils," she said softly, "As far as Blake goes, I don't know if I can be of much help. If you need me to help you, like in telling him or something, I'll be behind you a hundred percent." She attempted a failing smile. She thought it rather unfortunate that Lily had to be put into such an unfortunate situation. She would have to put her anger at Josh aside for the moment and focus on someone else other than herself. Estrella was not sure what else to offer up for a suggestion.