Forced Truth

Ezra was trapped in some sort of special Ezra Hell. He had fucked up, royally, and now a lot of people were in serious trouble because of him - and he couldn't even feel sorry for himself, because hey, at least he wasn't in prison. For some reason, even though he knew about the Order and hadn't told anyone until he inadvertently let it slip in front of an Enforcer, they hadn't arrested Ezra. They questioned him for hours and hours, and threatened him handsomely, but at the end of the day he was still a free man. Physically, at least. The inside of his mind was a different story.

Ezra had been losing his edge for months even before this mess came crashing down on him. He had always prided himself on his ability to keep calm, or to at least reflect on when things went wrong. Now, and for the past several months, he felt like he had this huge mental block. Talking with Luna eventually showed him that his brain was blocking him from trying to reason his way around the things the Ministry was doing that he knew were wrong. He couldn't be an innocent bystander anymore, promising himself and others that those bad things had good purposes. They were just bad. Evil, even. And that made Ezra evil, if he continued to work for those people and their purposes.

But it wasn't so easy as just quitting his job. Ezra loved his job and what it was supposed to stand for. Some part of him was fighting very hard against letting go. Having all these different parts of his brain fighting against each other all the time, with no energy to try and talk his way through it, Ezra slipped. He said something he shouldn't have and then he spent upwards of eleven hours in an interrogation room, being interrogated not by his coworkers - the Aurors who should have been handling matters such as these - but by Enforcers.

And then, they'd let him go. Ezra figured out pretty quickly why it wasn't Aurors interrogating him. When he got back to the office, it was nearly empty - a great number of them had been arrested. Because of Ezra. Ezra hustled his way out of there that day and had only been going back for his strict eight hours, five days a week since then. He was afraid he would one day step into the Ministry and never step out into the free world again.

Not to say he didn't think he deserved that fate. Ezra was devastated. He believed in Luna and her cause and now he'd gone and ruined it. He'd ruined the lives of all those good people, fighting the good fight. Some of them had children. Those kids, probably scared to death wondering where their mums and dads were, were heavy on Ezra's mind the morning the Enforcers came back for him. He was at his desk in his office, and he snapped the quill in his hand clean in two when they said the Minister wanted him. The Minister of Magic, wanted to see him. Ezra stood up too fast and walked too slow, and his accompanying Enforcers were all too happy to be rid of him once they reached the Minister's office.

Ezra went in and forced himself to look at her. "Good morning, Minister," he greeted, practically diving for a seat and nodding his head for tea. Perhaps his hands wouldn't shake so much if they were occupied with a delicate little tea cup. He grabbed it and tried not to break it, occupying himself with a long sip while the Minister spoke, watching her over the delicate brim.

Ezra's mouth felt funny. He stared at the Minister blankly for several long seconds while he swirled his tongue around his mouth, twisting and turning. Actually, his whole face felt funny. Hot. His whole head, too. He felt sort of lightheaded, like a balloon. Concentrated on the imagery of himself with a balloon head, Ezra hardly felt his mouth move and was surprised at the sound of his own voice. "No ma'am, not at all." He slapped his hand over his mouth, but his tongue darted forward. "We've been doing some pretty terrible things. The wrong things."