Freedom

The Aurors and Hit Wizards fanned out thoroughly surrounding the seedy dive where there had been numerous reports of illegal and illicit activities behind those walls. Ron had seen the undercover survelliance video and had been sickened by it. Even the most hardened Aurors and Hit Wizards had been disgusted by what they\'d seen. The women... some of them just girls... the conditions they lived in, the acts that they were forced to perform -



Ron shook his head free of those thoughts. He was still queasy and it\'d been two months since they\'d shown that footage. He and Harry were fresh from the academy and technically shouldn\'t even be on this mission, but the club was big enough with enough girls and the clientel slippery and mean that the MLE had called in every available man and woman for this. Glancing over at Harry not too far from him, he gave his best friend a nod and a reassuring smile. They were going to be ok. He just wasn\'t so sure about how they were going to handle what they saw inside.



"All teams report," a gruff voice whispered in their ears. A minute later after all the teams had reported their readiness, the team leader whispered, "Good. Move in!"



Ron and Harry leaped out from their hiding places behind a stack of boxes and garbage cans and ran for one of the side entrances. They were to help gather the women and girls, keep them calm and help treat the ones that were hurt. Other more experienced Aurors came up behind them to guard the door.



It was mass chaos when they reached the back rooms. Half dressed or naked girls and men were running around, the former screaming, the later yelling. Ron had steeled his stomach for this, but the reality was far far worse. A lot of the girls had bruises and scars, old and new.



"Merlin," Harry whispered before he steeled his face in the \'hero\' look Ron was very familiar with and pulled out his badge. "Ladies, ladies, please. Calm down! No one\'s here to harm you. Please, get dressed and settle down so we can sort this out."



Ron watched as Harry and a few of the other Aurors gathered the women together in the front room. He moved off to look in the back rooms where the women took the men after they\'d been selected. Using his heavy boot, he kicked in doors as he went. Most of the rooms were empty, the occupants having fled, but a few were still occupied. Ron bound the men where they were and directed the girls back to the front room. Kicking the last door, he felt his stomach drop. It had been horrible, but not... not like this. He found the girl in bed, practically unconscious, bleeding profusely. The john was nowhere in sight, but he had to be nearby, probably still in the club given the freshness of her wounds.



"Miss? Miss, are you ok?" he whispered, checking her vital signs and finding them weak. Biting back the bile rising in his throat, he threw his cloak around the girl and picked her up, her long black hair cascading over his arm. Gods, she was his age.



Raven had thought someone had finally answered her prayers and ended it for her, had felt her life bleeding from her wounds, her body going cold, her limbs heavy. She\'d welcomed death with open arms.



And then they were moving her.



If she\'d had the energy, she would have cried, sobbed, to be returned to hell when all she wanted was for it to end.



Her eyes fluttered open, expecting to see the cold green eyes of Max, the valet who served as her captor if not her owner.



Instead of the cold green of Max\'s, her eyes met concerned blue eyes staring at her with fear and pain that echoed what she was feeling.



"Let me go," she whispered. "Please...." she begged, hoping that he\'d finally be the one to end her misery.



"We\'re here to save you," he murmured, walking swiftly down the twisting corridors to the main room. "You\'re safe now."



His heart broke for her and all his Weasley nurturing instincts as well as his own innate Gryffindor instinct to save people came rushing to the fore. "Medic!" he cried out, running into the crowded room to the section that had been designated for the injured. "She has multiple lacerations on her stomach and thighs, evidence of a recent rape and bruising at her neck."



The healer nodded and swiftly ran his wand over her, murmuring to the medi-witch a diagnosis and treatment. Ron could only step back and watch helplessly. "Is she going to be ok?" he asked a minute or so later when the healer stopped talking and began working.



The healer looked up from the broken flesh he\'d been working on and looked Weasley in the eye. "It\'s much to early to say. She doesn\'t seem to want to. But we\'ll do what we can. Now, don\'t you have something you\'re supposed to be doing?" he asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow as though to ask why Ron was still standing there when there were still people running around.



Ron looked the healer in the eye, the worry and concern evident on his face. "She has to be my age," he whispered, looking down at the girl one last time before turning away to join Harry.



"You okay?" Harry asked worriedly. It heartened Ron just a little bit that Harry was just as pale and shaken as he was. Fighting Death Eaters and running for your lives was one thing, looking at torture was something else entirely. He could almost see what Harry was thinking through his eyes. He could hear Hermione\'s tortured screams in the girls too.



"Yeah... yeah, I\'ll be ok," Ron whispered, his eye straying to the girl\'s prone form not too far from where they stood. "Everything alright here?"



"Yeah. If you want to call it that," Harry replied sardonically.



Ron turned back to the crowd and tried to help calm the girls down, though knowing him, he was doing nothing but making their panic worse.



*****



She didn\'t know where she was, which was terrifying, but she thought she had to be safer since the last time she woke feeling warm and in so little pain had been... before.



A healer had been in to see her, had given her a potion, which she\'d drunk, and tended the bandages, but hadn\'t said anything. He\'d looked at her with a hint of disgust, though, and it had made her stomach turn. She didn\'t know if the disgust was for her and she didn\'t know how she\'d gotten there. Had the man hurt her badly enough that they\'d taken her for healing? She couldn\'t think so, since no one had ever bothered before. And she had some half-formed memory of kind blue eyes.



But that must have been a dream.



Whimpering softly at the pain, some remembered some actual, she tried to find a comfortable position, but wasn\'t used to sleeping without her collar.



Finally, she gave up and laid on her back, counting spots on the ceiling and waiting for the healer to return or death to claim her.



Ron stood outside the girl\'s door, the girl he had saved the day before. It was Christmas Day, he should be with his family but he couldn\'t get rid of the thought of the girl. He needed to know if she was going to be ok even though he really should not be there. He wasn\'t on duty and this wasn\'t even his case but he couldn\'t stop thinking about her. Pushing aside a vague worry that he was breaking the rules, he knocked briefly before opening the door and stepped inside. "Good morning," he said softly, giving the girl a small smile as he sat next to her bed. She was staring at the ceiling but looking breathtaking after she was cleaned and healed. "How are you?"



Slowly, her mind registered that she was no longer alone, and her head turned slightly, her eyes tracking to find the voice. She frowned slightly, a crease forming between her eyebrows that would be forever etched in her flesh from the looks of pain she\'d had for so long.



She met his eyes and inhaled sharply.



The kind blue eyes looked back at her.



She opened her mouth to speak, but a scratchy hiss was all that came out, her throat still raw from screaming, something that the healers had decided to wait to heal, not wanting to shock her body on top of the trauma she\'d already been through.



Frowning, he took picked up a nearby cup of water and held the straw to her lips. "I\'m not going to hurt you," he murmured soothingly, trying to recall his classes for rape victims. "And you don\'t have to speak... obviously since you can\'t. I\'ll ask you a couple of yes and no questions and then I\'ll leave you to rest." He gave her a self-depricating half grin and set the cup within easy reach for her. "I am Auror Ron Weasley. I\'m technically not supposed to be here, so if you want to keep this quiet, I wouldn\'t mind that. Do you know why you\'re here? Do you remember the raid?"



She gratefully drank the water, wondering if it was poisoned, or what game he was playing. Was this all an elaborate setting for some new torture they\'d devised?



If it was, then she would try to absorb as much strength and comfort as she could while it lasted and do what she had to... after. If not.... She didn\'t even want to let herself hope for the not.



It took a moment for his questions to penetrate the fog surrounding her mind, and licking her lips, she slowly shook her head no. "No," she whispered. "Just screaming... mine. Then... feeling cold. And... eyes. Your eyes...." she trailed off, blinking once slowly.



He had to still his instinct to reach out and take her hand. Being touched was probably the very last thing she wanted after what she\'d been through. "There was a raid on the club you were in. All of the johns including the manager and the owner of the... place have been rounded up and are in the process of being interrogated and processed. Some of the men will be fined and released but most are going away to Azkaban. All of the girls have been taken to the Ministry for a debriefing and questioning before being released. We\'re trying to find homes and the families for a lot of them. The most serious cases, like yours, were taken to St. Mungo\'s. I don\'t know your condition, but you\'ll probably be released in a few days and then... and then the Ministry\'s going to want to question you. The MLE probably would question you sooner, but the Healers have given them very strict guidelines regarding their interaction with you and the other girls and one of them is to wait until you\'ve been discharged. Which is another reason I\'d appreciate it if you don\'t say anything to my superiors or the Healers about my being here."



Studying her face with his Auror trained eyes, he saw the toll of living in that house had put on her, but even still she was gloriously beautiful - veela, his mind supplied because the only time he\'d ever seen a woman this close to Raven\'s level of haunting beauty was in his sister-in-law, her sister and the veela from the Quidditch World Cup all those years ago. "Is there... anyone I can contact to let them know you\'re here?"



Silently she shook her head no. "I don\'t have any family. My mother..." she wanted to tell his strangely gentle man with the kind eyes that her mother had been killed the night she was taken, "was killed. Papa, too, I would think. Otherwise, he would have come for me. He promised that he\'d always come for me." Tears filled her eyes, tears that she had thought long since dried and gone. They swam up from the depths of her soul and began a long slow descent down her cheeks that she hardly even noticed. She\'d grown used to tears in the last two years. They gained no sympathy and so were a waste of energy and precious water.



"Oh please, oh please don\'t cry!" Ron whispered frantically. "I\'m sorry!" He looked around almost in a panic for something to plug up the leaks in her eyes, but only found tissue. Grabbing the box he held it out to her. "I didn\'t mean to make you cry. We\'ll try hunting down your father, find out what really happened to him, if he\'s really dead. What\'s his name?" He\'d do anything to get her to stop crying, just so long as she did and stopped ripping holes in his heart.



She shook her head, biting her lip. There had been one rule. Under no circumstances had she been aloud to claim Papa as her father. He\'d explained that no one could know about Raven and her mother because Papa had a lot of enemies and they\'d hurt her.



Was this a test? If she told, would they hurt her again? Hurt her more? She didn\'t see how they could without killing her, but whenever she\'d thought that in the past, they\'d proved how wrong she was.



It was obvious that she wasn\'t going to say who her father was, at least not right then. But that was fine by Ron; he wasn\'t going to pry the issue out of her. "Later then," he said with a comforting smile and a nod. "What is your name?"



She took a deep breath, taking a tissue from him and wiping away the tears before answering. "Raven," she said softly. "Or it was. They called me something else... there.... No one\'s called me Raven since Mum." Indeed, it had felt like she\'d left who she\'d been behind with the name. "I don\'t want to be called... the other name... again...." Not here. Not by Kind Eyes. If he called her that here, if her worlds collided like that, she might well go mad....



He wasn\'t entirely certain what other name she had been called in the club, but whatever it was, he was sure he was probably going to find out when they began their investigation on her. But that didn\'t matter, she looked like a Raven and that was what she was going to be called. "Raven," he murmured, nodding once and smiling again. "I have to go here in a minute since I don\'t want to get caught, but is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all, just name it and I\'ll do everything in my power to grant you your request."



"Is today... Christmas?" she asked softly, feeling her eyes well with tears again at his nod. "Then... unless this is a trick... you\'ve already given me what I wanted for my birthday."



His heart may have had holes torn into it, but it hadn\'t broken. It broke at the sight of her tears and the knowledge that this was her birthday. "Happy Birthday," he whispered, reaching over to very tenderly brush her hair away from her cheeks. It was a purely unconscious move that he didn\'t even realize he\'d done until he hand was back in his lap. He could only hope he hadn\'t hurt her. "If you need anything, tell the Healers to contact Auror Weasley. They\'ll know who I am. Okay?"



She had learned long ago not to flinch when someone touched her. It often only provoked worse. But this time, out of familiar surroundings, she couldn\'t help it. Still, he didn\'t strike her, so she managed to mostly suppress the urge, merely fighting down the shiver of apprehension and nod. "Thank you," she whispered as she watched him stand and walk out the door.