In The Heat Of The Night

But there's no release, no peace
I toss and turn without cease
Like a curse, open my eyes and rise like yeast
At least a couple of weeks
Since I last slept, kept takin' sleepers
But now I keep myself pepped
Deeper still, that night I write by candle light
I find insight, fundamental movement
So when it's black this insomniac take an original tack
Keep the beast in my nature under ceaseless attack
I gets no sleep
I can't get no sleep

Insomnia by Faithless

Sometimes it takes a person years to figure out why they do certain things. After eight years Celeste had still not discovered what evil little spirit had taken over her body and made her look into a career as an Auror on leaving Hogwarts. After three years, she had not discovered what part of her had been deemed perfect material for the Operatives and had given her to a leader (and she used that term in the loosest possible way) who may as well walk around with a sign saying, "I'm up Fudge's arse". And they were only the little things. She had no idea what bastard decided that Pamela Earnshaw would be a great person to murder, just as her youngest daughter reached adolescence. Why Charles Earnshaw had chosen to ignore the illness that eventually killed him? Looking up into the oblivion of the dark space above her and listening to Walden snore in time to an unheard rhythm that rose and fell like his chest that her head was leant against, Celeste realised that some things were never meant to be truly known.

If she had to narrow it down, the reason she joined the Ministry was her father. The Unspeakable. The man who had told his fourteen-year-old daughter what he did with his long days in the Ministry. The man who had spent years with a group of fellow Unspeakables trying to create a counter-curse to Avada Kedavra. The man who had told the Ministry that it couldn't be done. The man who had lost his wife in doing so. Revenge was a river that ran through the Earnshaw family; it was passed from generation to generation and vengeance would be granted one way or another. The death of Pamela Earnshaw had sparked a fanaticism in Charles that Celeste had yet to see rivalled in anyone. The Death Eaters could not even hope to emulate the dedication that her father had had in finding his wife's killer. He had combed through the Ministry ranks, spending hours when he should have been working with curses searching through the files about every single Ministry worker. She'd been to those file rooms herself- broken in, of course, breathing in the musty, dank smell and immersing herself in the lives of other people. She'd read her own file; it was filled with comments from her trainings days, from teachers at Hogwarts, from Alamus. Ranging from the good; for example Professor Flitwick's comment: Celeste is an intelligent young woman with a determination to succeed. Her work in all her chosen subjects is excellent and she had a special aptitude for Astronomy and Defence Against The Dark Arts.

To the bad, Dumbledore's: Celeste is a clearly bright young woman who is more than capable of going into the Ministry, as she plans to do. However her behaviour is sometimes amongst the worst I have ever seen. Her fondness for Muggle duelling has led Professor Flitwick to despair and she has shown little remorse for her actions. Whether this anger is a manifestation of her rage about her mother's death we have not yet discovered, however I urge Celeste to tell someone if she is going through any difficulties.

To the most extreme: Highly Dangerous. Connected intimately to Walden Macnair and has links to Death Eaters.

Now she didn't do this because she was a nosy cow, although reading Alamus' file was fun. He had used his file to keep old diaries and it gave her a deep satisfaction in not only knowing that he had only just passed his Auror exams but also that he was convinced his wife hated him. This had soon turned to a feeling of nausea when she read that he had dreamt about having sex with Catherine. The image was too disgusting and besides it was a violation of her best friend. No, the reason she searched through the endless maze of files, like one long grey beast, was so that she could make a list of those who had or could have had a grudge against her father. Charles has passed his desire to get even to his youngest daughter and Celeste had continued it with zest. Vengeance for her father and mother had at one point become an obsession in her life. The need to somehow get even had slowly taken over her life; which led to not eating and fatigue; which had eventually led to that most dreaded of all things: insomnia. She gave up taking Sleeping Draughts because there was no need; she turned her sleepless nights into productive hours, writing list after list, and name after name. And after four years she was still no nearer to that elusive name. As the dawn filtered through the chink in the heavy curtains, Celeste closed her eyes and let herself be carried away by the rhythm of Walden's breathing; rise and fall, rise and fall.

After the briefest flirtation with sleep, which involved a short but bizarre dream involving Voldemort's new guise as a yellow rubber chicken at Easter with the first one to catch him winning a day with Fudge, Celeste dragged herself from bed and staggered to the bathroom; whoever said a shower revives was clearly lying. As she roughly dried herself, she winced as the towel dragged against the sore red flesh on her back. Turning to look at it in the mirror it was a deep angry red and was surrounded by bruises in various shades of black, blue, green and purple. Frowning, she stomped out the room to find Walden sitting on the bed, reading the Prophet and grinning as the latest Death Eater activity was reported to the masses. He looked very sexy really, shirtless and with tousled hair. And there came the inevitable slide towards thinking about sex until pain in her back reminded her today was not the best time. Celeste and her brain silently conversed as she stood watching Walden with a slight look of gormlessness on her face. "Get your mind off sex, Celeste, get your mind off sex. Think of Fudge shirtless. In a skirt. With nothing underneath. Let us never think of this again." Walden looked up from his paper and raised his eyebrow at her shootin her his filthy smile.

"Are you stunned with my beautiful body, my lady? Why Miss Earnshaw, my wee lass, you appear to be naked. Let me come and warm you up." The lilts in his accent made the invitation, however jokingly it was, so incredibly inviting. Mind off sex. Naked Fudge. Argghhh.

"Shut up. I have to go to work. Besides I'm covered in mangy bruises and my back hurts." Getting dressed into her underwear she felt Walden's eyes follow her body as it stretched and curved. As she pulled on a pair of trousers, she felt his warm arms curl around her waist and his cool lips kiss the little freckles at the top of her shoulder. Resistance was soon rendered pointless when he began to kiss behind her ear and all parts of her turned to liquid as she breathed in his lemony smell. His hand slipped to the recently fastened trousers and slowly began to undo them, pulling the zip down agonisingly slowly, his skin brushing lightly against her tummy. Turning round she brought her lips to his, he picked her up and carried her to the bed, gently throwing her down. Which was enough to set off the ultimate passion killer in the form of painful red mark on her back.

"Argghhhh! Shit, bollocks. That hurts. Ow ow. That's it, I'm going to work." Pulling on the rest of her garments and working up another rage because there really was no need for her hips to be that big, she ignored the "What's wrong?" comments from Walden and stormed towards the door. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into him and the two held a silent glaring competition for a moment or so before she stood on her tiptoes and gave him a gentle kiss. She pulled herself free and walking out the room, slamming the door behind her, hoping he didn't take that little show of melodramatics too seriously.

She hadn't told him that she was only due in at two. That would have been a hindrance in her set list of what to do. That night before had set her off on a train of thought concerning her latest attempt to find out the identity of the evil bastard who killed her mother, or EB for code. The previous times she'd done this, it had been relatively easy for her to break into the vaults where every little bit of information of Ministry workers was kept. There had been one guard stationed at the single entrance and the shifts changed one every six hours. Now, whether it was because they had grown complacent because nobody ever visited the vaults or whether it was because Fudge put Ministry idiots in charge, Celeste had broken in quickly and unseen those first few times. She loitered at a notice board near the entrance, pretending to be deeply immersed in the list of Death Eaters and rewards for their capture, (she'd been insulted at the thirty thousand galleons award for Walden; he was worth fifty thousand at least). When the guard on the next shift walked outside, he would always begin to talk to the other guard, (work, Death Eaters, Quidditch, bowel movements), and she could wait until they were sufficiently immersed in their conversation before slipping past and creeping through the vault door. Luckily for her they decided never to lock the door, due to the fact that nobody ever went there. The other side of the door was a long, grey corridor and had fourteen other doors, each leading to a section of files. These could not be Apparated into and Alomorha failed too, so the All Undoing and Unknotting Knife was used and the door had opened at will. For the first and last time in her life she'd thanked Alamus for insisting that all his Division had one. The door would wing open; it's imposing grey had caught the light and she'd strode in and spent hours, falling ever deeper into names, places and events until she's wrenched herself away, as if her oxygen was slowly being cut off, her greatest fear. Celeste didn't think she would get over that incident when she was eight years old and her cousin had tried to drown her in a pond; occasionally she would still have nightmares and would wake up covered in sweat. Pulling herself from the mass of those gone before her and back into the real world, she'd wiped the guard's memory and left him calling "Take care, Miss" at her retreating figure.

However things like breaking into to secret Ministry vaults was never ran smoothly and it was this, her sixth time, when she just had to ran into trouble. Breaking in had been fine, waiting for the guards to have their usual chat about life's most mundane things. "Why are such people employed?" crossed her mind as she strode across the cold, unfeeling floor. She reached into her pocket and pulled a scrap of parchment, on which the initials BD had been scrawled. It was not her hand that had written those, but her father's. She'd looked at seemingly hundreds of name ranging from Betty Dawson to Bryan Drillon. Not one name had fit the pattern. Not one, until she had stumbled across one name, quite by accident ad she was leaving: Benjamin Dorbren. She had only managed read that he was unmarried, a few years younger than her parents, and like her father, was an Unspeakable, working with unidentified Potions, before she'd had to rush off to work, her non appearance would cause only more boring rants from Alamus. Desperate to find out more, like a hunger eating at her mind, she pulled open his file and began to devour the history of this man, whoever he was. She absorbed herself into this man and his past, her mind teeming with details from years ago. She read through 'History' and took in little details from schooling to first work experience and was just getting to his involvement in the first war when she heard a click, so small and yet it echoed around her silent space, that made her turn around. The sight that greeted her was the tip of Charlotte Makepeace's wand pointing straight at her forehead. Charlotte's round face was flushed a deep red, her dirty blonde hair was clumped knots over her head and her mouth was contorted into a deranged smile; half triumph and half fury. Celeste wondered where this ranked in her 'Top Ten Most Ugly Things I Have Seen In My Life'?

"So," Charlotte's dull voice quivered with excitement, "breaking into Ministry files are we, Earnshaw? Well, well. A turn up for the books this is. If you ever needed anything to make your reputation worse then this is it. Why are you here anyway? Trying to get that despot lover of yours off are we?"

"Now really, Makepeace," Celeste said, the contempt in her voice breaking through her mock sincere voice, "why would I tell a sly, conniving, simpering Muggle like you anything about what I do with my time? Good God, you haven't changed a bit from school, have you?"

Charlotte hissed and spit flew from her mouth as she raised her wand. Celeste mockingly laughed in the pathetic arse-licker' shiny red face.

"Oh Charlotte. Why bother when I curse you into the middle of next frigging week?" She paused, enjoying Charlotte's fury. There was a slight closed look on Charlotte's visage. Maybe she was reminiscing on the school comment. The two girls and their gangs had fought a gang war over territory, prestige and who ultimately was top dog. Charlotte's Muggleborns had hated Celeste's pure and halfbloods gang and vice versa. Blood had, literally, been spilt on Hogwarts stone floors. Coming back to the present, Charlotte raised her wand and sent a misguided curse that Celeste simply pushed herself across the cold floor to avoid, the ice cold rubbing against the robes on her backside. Furious, Charlotte cursed again and this time it hit home; Celeste felt the white hot pain scrape across her upper left arm and the blood began to trickle, deep, red, almost blue; Celeste liked to think it was the symbol of purebloods. Jumping up and trying to ignore the pain and blood that stained her white skin, Celeste viciously kicked Charlotte's lower arm, knocking her wand out of her hand. With another yell, Charlotte ran at Celeste and knocked her to the floor. Celeste felt Charlotte's weight sit heavily on her stomach moved her head held Charlotte's hands off from pulling her hair. Celeste hated girl fighting, she prided herself on being able to fight like a man. Punching Charlotte deeply in the stomach, she laughed as Charlotte clutched at her stomach and her face became excruciatingly red. Flinching as her robes, already covered in blood, dragged against her cut and the pain fired up, she bit her lip until she knew was going to draw blood. Ripping off the hem of her robes and tying it around her arm she picked up the file on Dorbren. The amount of blood she'd lost made her feel dizzy, not too dizzy however to give Charlotte a big kick in the face, and from the muffled yell she knew she'd broken it. She'd broken many bones before, her own and other people's. Staggering out of the vaults she drew her wand wandered outside the door to find the guard knocked out. Clutching at her arm she knew she couldn't face Alamus' probing comments and her friends' concerned looks so she went to the only person she could face.

Apparating into her bedroom, she saw Walden sitting on the bed, flicking through an old battered copy of Witch Weekly, an amused grin on his face. He looked up and gave her nasty look, which drained from his face when he saw her arm. Leaping off the bed ran over and tenderly lifting her arm to observe the cut, his face grimacing when he saw the wound.

"Fucking nasty bastards, those cuts. Had a load of them in Azkaban," He fell silent at this and nodded his head towards the bed. "Sit down there, it needs cleaning." Celeste shook her head violently, not good in her state and scrunched up her eyes to stop the spinning.

"Oh no. You ain't getting any of that shit on my arm. I saw what it did to you when I put it on."

"Oh don't be soft." He walked briskly into the bathroom and, after ten seconds of noisily rooting around, he came back out with a large clear bottle of a formidable purple liquid. After one final look of pleading, she gritted her teeth as Walden poured a small amount on a white flannel. She threw her head back as the liquid burned into her wound and started to clean. She screwed up her eyes and felt the tears run down her cheeks. She gripped onto Walden's hand and gritted her teeth until she was sure she felt the enamel scrape off. She felt Walden pull her into a hug and as the pain began to subside she kissed him deeply and leant her head against his broad chest.

Then she knew why she did certain things. Celeste understood why she put up with pain and the daily abuse from the rest of the Ministry. She understood why she could never rest until she knew who had killed her mother. But the most blindingly obvious at this point was why she stayed with this strange and beautiful man. She stayed because he could care for her like nobody else, because he knew her pain, having lost his beloved father too. She stayed with him because she could come in like she had done and he would abandon any anger he felt with her. She stayed because she knew, like himself, that she had a past and that certain things that you didn't pry into. When she was with him, everything else became insignificant. The world was them and the space that contained them. They were the world. She looked at the file, discarded on the soft floor, and she knew what her parents had felt for each other and why her father had done what he did, because she would do the same for Walden. Mostly however, it was because she loved him. Surely that was reason enough?