It was the end of a warm afternoon in July. Flies buzzed. Elsewhere in the school - and despite the dampening influence of the Dementors, unseen but sensed beyond the walls - staff and students alike were celebrating the end of Exam Week. An occasional explosion suggested Fred and George Weasley were leading the way in this. But for Albus Dumbledore, alone in his office at the top of the turret staircase, the lengthening sunlight brought only memories, and a vague sense of trouble.
Perhaps it was this bad business with Hagrid's hippogriff, about to be put down for attacking a student - an attack which, knowing the student concerned, had almost certainly been provoked, and which had barely scratched the boy in any case. The verdict had more to do with politics than justice, and it troubled Dumbledore that he had not been able to do anything about that. He had promised to be there for Hagrid while the sentence was carried out, and that was all he could do. Then again, there was a full moon this evening. Much as he tried not to worry, and ashamed as he was to admit it, Dumbledore had been sitting out each full moon in some anxiety for almost a year now. Or perhaps it was simply the Dementors. This was what they did, after all: they forced you to relive the worst times in your life, past griefs, past fears. And past mistakes.
Dumbledore has an uneasy feeling - and it had been growing stronger with every passing week - that he had been party to a very bad mistake indeed. Twelve years ago...
After a while he got up and fetched the Pensieve. It was not his memory. Despite long arguments with the Ministry, back and forth, he had never managed to get permission to interview the prisoner for himself, and in the end Alastor Moody had agreed to go in his place. The man had been incarcerated for months by then. Their story had been the obvious one that Moody wished to question him in connection with an on-going case, hunting down those Death Eaters who were still at large. But even Moody, the already much-respected Auror, had been granted access only on the condition that he was accompanied by a junior official from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He had traveled out to Azkaban with Cornelius Fudge.
He had made the trip solely as a favor to Dumbledore, and on his return he had given Dumbledore his memory of it. Like any memory, it was reliable only up to a point - in this case, Dumbledore suspected, it would have been coloured strongly by Alastor Moody's implacable hatred of anyone associated with the Dark Arts. Moody detested the prisoner, all the more violently for once having liked him. The conviction without trial had not bothered him in the slightest, though Dumbledore had been appalled by it. But for all that, the case had seemed straight-forward enough at the time.
Dumbledore frowned. He had time enough before he had to go down to Hagrid's. If nothing else, it might set his mind at rest if he looked again, reviewed the facts. He leaned forward, letting his mind fall into the Pensieve's bowl...