Azkaban
by Silvia
So you want to be a hardened criminal?
Yeah, you and Santa Claus and The Goblin Beggar and the Muggles' Candy Bunny thing and the bias free Gryffindor can share a cell together. Will probably be comfortable, with all of that extra space and all.
Just give it a couple days, and everyone's soft in here.
Whisper, whisper. Brains like jelly.
How it really goes is:
I wake up when a bit of sun sneaks through the bars and thaws out my nose. A voice is screaming and I say, "la la la" -- out loud, as if I could drown it out. I am being proactive, I think, and when their cloaks glisten from the shadows I think it again, and again, and again. There's something about that word that they can't touch -- it's just there.
I wash my hands in a small faucet in the corner of my little box, and then sit back down on the mattress. It squeaks, and I swing my feet back and forth, and say, "la la la." I wonder if anyone new has been brought in, and carefully, very carefully, have no opinion one way or another about that.
If they keep coming, the Aurors will lay down more brick. The Dark Lord fell, and the guards are back, and maybe the builders will just keep on building.
There's a lot of us.
"So much evil in this world," Dumbledore said, and then his throat stopped rattling, and there was silence, and it was so nice. I took my hand off and wiped it on my robes and thought, 'yes, there is.'
I think, especially at the end, he was pretty damn smart. I think he was saying, "I don't know which of us is which."
There's always some war going on sometime, somewhere. That's what I learned in the one Muggle Studies they shoved me into. "Just in case," the professor said, "you were wondering if you were better than them, or they were better than you."
We're all in the same boat, and a lot of us are dying.
I don't think he meant for me to take that as "every man for himself," but then I've never been predictable. They all knew I'd get the Mark, sure, but they didn't know I said "Avada Kedavra", like a bedtime prayer for eight years, practicing on centipedes and pill bugs until I had it just right. Only the best for my father.
They didn't know about Harry.
They know now.
How he thinks it goes is:
I was just misunderstood. It's his fault, because of some taunts and a handshake, and he could have brought me around. He could have made me a good guy.
He visits and I smile -- but it's fake, so they can't touch me -- and I say, "Get me out of here, Potter" and I mean, "I don't belong here. You know that, don't you?"
I mean, "I love you, but it's too hard to say it. I've never said it to anyone." He nods, he's so understanding, and he cups both of my blood stained hands in his blood stained hands and makes me promises.
How I think it goes is:
I grew up, and my hair darkened a shade, and my calves were slick with sweat after Quidditch, and my arms got tan, and he touched my shoulder one day and couldn't seem to stop.
My mother was a beautiful woman, and I am a beautiful man, and we wield it like a weapon.
Harry never stood a chance.
I took him to bed -- literally. I hooked fingers into the front of his robes and pulled him through the dormitory door during the winter holidays, because he was pacing and pacing and needed his sleep. He blinked at me, and I said, "Just shut up," and I meant, "Just shut up," and let him believe whatever he wanted to believe.
The truth is:
Lunch is inserted through a small metal opening that creaks. They will never use magic, because we all want their wands. It's a bit of gruel and a saucer of water, and I don't take it all because I have to look weak.
I recite charms through my head as I chew, sectioning them off syllable by syllable and piecing them back together. I slide the sounds smoother and smoother until its blurry and vague and I have just the sort of mind you'd never want to read because it would make your head hurt.
The truth is:
I was hardened already.