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He wasn't trying to be cruel. He knew that some of his aurors, some of the staff, thought his quiet was some manner of punishment. It wasn’t.
It wasn't that he blamed them, not. Not. Not really. It. Blame wasn't the right word, and responsibility—
He didn't hold his aurors responsible for what had happened.
The words….tangled. And there was a terrible wounded part of him that linked his people to a madman's words and his tricks, and if he wasn't careful....
If he wasn’t careful, he'd open his mouth to say hello and just scream until he couldn't any longer.
That was. Perhaps the better option.
If he was particularly uncareful, he’d open his mouth and something uglier still would crawl out from behind his teeth
— he showed me exactly what he would have done to you, to make me tell him what he wanted to know. I didn’t, I wouldn’t, but I can hardly look you in the eye without feeling it ghost over my skin, please don’t ask me to risk telling you—
There was a terrible part of him that bit out: you were late.
He wouldn’t risk them hearing that.
There was arguably — only arguably, he wasn’t sure he agreed — worse part of him that murmured: you came early. Come back in a few minutes.
and he certainly wouldn’t risk any of his people hearing that.
Better not open his mouth, then.
(Silence protects was a lesson any soldier learns sharpish, that any copper picks up as they go on, if they’re any good. And perhaps a wizard might marry his lover--because the government had many better things to worry about than marriage licenses. So perhaps a man might call another husband, in the safety of the wizarding world, but he’d only keep a government job by doing it well out of earshot.
So. One thus inclined had best keep quiet.)
He knew better than most: best not to open his mouth.
He hadn’t needed to revisit that lesson. But.
See. Picquery had offered him his job back. As if he’d left it. (None of that, now. Hush.)
Congress...
Congress had been a bit skittish.
He had very carefully written a report, for Picquery and Congress to mull over; offered them broad-stroke sketches of how he’d been flayed, and tried not to feel as though he’d written it on parchment made of his own skin, with ink drawn from the insides of his own wrists.
Then, he’d submitted to questioning under Veritaserum, when some deemed mere sketches were insufficient for sussing out suitability.
Well. He could speak, but truth serum doesn’t offer an objective truth. And.
Well.
He hadn’t entirely dishonored himself, at least. But a biting tone and the snappy pace of questions that veritaserum worked best at had drawn out something at once more flippant and more discomforting than anyone had been entirely expecting from Percival Graves.
Apparently, clipped answers and a stiff expression hadn’t satisfied either. And there was the second second lesson he’d learned in silence.
The memories he’d wordlessly given over for a Penseive had been returned by morning with a note:
Please be assured that you have the utmost confidence of the Magical Congress of the United States of America. Thank you for your service, Director Graves.
The root of that second lesson of silence is widely discussed, and uglier than most suspect.
If a tree falls in the forest, does the axe hear its screams?
So. Well.
See.
The thing is.
He'd have taken twice the torment to keep any single one of his people from harm, is the thing. He'd do exactly the same thing, again and again and again, if it protected his aurors, his staff, his neighbors, his city from falling under Grindelwald's mad notions of freedom and right of rule. It would destroy him, but he'd do it.
How then could he be less than vigilant against the harm he'd wrapped up tight and swallowed, that sat in his throat and threatened to burn them? When his aurors, every witch and wizard of them, had twice the heart of any of the ice sculptures that sat in Congress’ hallowed halls, and would take up a failure not their own even when he wished they wouldn’t?
Silence had protected them as much as he'd been able, and while he had no objective truth to offer, it still did.
And if silence felt like clutching the wrong side of an axe blade?
Well. Why make someone else bleed?