Chapter 3: Metamorphosis
Week 23By Sunday I was flushed with relationship confusion and joy, not to mention my newly cast and so far unnecessary Contraceptive Charm. We were halfway to Voldie's cell before I even remembered I'd been chucked off my broom by proxy.
"Is he all right?" I asked the guard uncertainly; and he gave me only a blank stare. "Volde – You-Know-Who. Is he OK?"
He rolled his eyes uncomfortably. "Why shouldn't he be OK?"
"He got tortured. Last week."
"Did he?"
"Don't you know what goes on round here?" I said, half frustrated and half curious.
"No, I'm only Grade 1, don't know nothing," he said; not offended at all, more satisfied. He obviously didn't want to know.
I inched hesitantly past the curtain of flame, wondering whether Voldie would be horribly scarred, charred.
He wasn't; he was sitting up in bed looking almost bright and gleeful. "Hello, Harry," he said quite happily.
"Cheerful today, aren't we?" I said, amazed. "I thought you'd be in bits after getting tortured!"
"Oh, I was," he said indifferently. "But hey healed me. Amazing what hey'll do for you when he Chosen One'sss involved."
I put the books down on the end of his bed and said quietly, "You knew I was there, then."
"Nope. Hey told me. Repeatedly."
Oh. "Sorry," I chuckled apologetically. "I suppose they wouldn't shut up about it."
"Hat's one way of putting it," he said, face suddenly closed.
Dismay. "They punished you for it?"
He pulled a "duh" face.
"Well, how? I mean, if they can't torture you?"
The "duh" face intensified.
"THEY FUCKING DID IT AGAIN?!"
He laughed so much he almost rolled right off the bed. My seething did not abate.
"THEY TORTURE YOU, AND I FEEL IT, AND THEY PUNISH YOU FOR THAT BY TORTURING YOU – "
"Sorry," he said, suddenly no longer amused. "I don't know ih I eher intended to pass it on to you."
"IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!"
"I planned to," he said indifferently, as if he thought I wouldn't mind. "I hought I could blackmail you into releasssing me."
Then his expression altered. He looked at me with flat, blank eyes that seemed to have frozen over.
It was the first time in months I'd seen him do a passable imitation of an evil dictator. I took an inadvertent step backwards.
"'He auhorities," he said carefully, "didn't like hat idea."
My voice had gone. I coughed a couple of times. "But they can't do anything to you," I said, "apart from torture you more."
"Oh, can't 'hey?" he said; because they would kill him.
"Is there a date for your execution?" I said, and his expression slipped again, briefly showing raw, unconditional terror; so "No," I said, embarrassed, "I haven't heard anything, it's just the way you were talking, I thought..."
"I don't know what'sss going on," he said curtly.
"Like I do!" I snapped.
Narrow-eyed. "What can you hink oh," he said, "that beginsss with H?"
Eh? "Hamster? Hovercraft? HP Sauce? Oh – Horcruxes."
"So you do know."
"Dumbledore told me. We've got rid of two of them. Three, if we count Nagini – I assume she's dead..."
"She is dead," he snapped, and it seemed he had felt more affection for her than Dumbledore had assumed; but when he could talk again he said, "Ssso. And ih you knew about 'he ohers, would you tell Dumbledore?"
I hesitated and said, "You're never going to get let out, you know."
No answer; or, no spoken reply.
"And I can't seem to get them to stop torturing you, even when they're doing it to me. Which I thought they would care about. So... if you were to... get killed, I suppose your suffering would be over."
Incredulity so deep it made me blush. "Hust for 'hat, you can bring me Alfred Bester's Demolished Man next week."
"Sorry."
"And you can tell Dumbledore 'hat I might hust still hahe an ace up my sleehe."
"What? You're going to escape – "
Snort. "Hance would be a hine hing. But he's not going to kill me ih I can help it."
I tried to sort out my emotions. It was no good; they were jumbled like spaghetti.
"I finished Dreamsnake," I said. "I liked it."
He managed a grin, which buoyed up my soul immeasurably.
"You did, did you?" he soughed. "What lesson did you draw from it?"
"That they killed the snake because they didn't understand it was harmless. Look, you've no right making a metaphor like that. You're not harmless."
He held up a stub of finger. "Neiher is he snake," he said. "Hat's what hey find out at he end. It can be very danherous ih it's not used properly."
I wavered. "Well? What do you think, then?"
He smiled, and answered in Parseltongue, "That great harm arose from the fact that no-one understood the snakes."
Week 24"We're having trouble, Harry," Dumbledore told me, stirring a disproportionate amount of sugar into his tea. "The Ministry, as you might be aware, is in some confusion at the moment."
"Er, no," I said. "I don't know anything about the Ministry, really."
"Governments are always in tumult following the end of a war," he said calmly, "unless, of course, there is no-one left alive. That is certainly not the case at present, so let me sum it up like this: the present administration made itself deeply unpopular during the war, both by arresting the wrong people and by contributing almost nothing to your success. It also seemed, for a while, that you would die. The Ministry needs to make itself popular, Harry, and if one can't help the hero, the traditional route to popularity is to..." He raised his eyebrows and looked over the tops of his glasses.
"Do horrible things to the villain," I supplied. "But don't they know they're doing it to me as well? How are they supposed to..."
He held up a hand quietly, and I stopped.
"While you were in a coma," he said, "Voldemort could be tortured with impunity, and he was, very enthusiastically – "
"But I was unconscious for THREE MONTHS!" I shouted, horrified. "He was – you mean – he was tortured for – "
"Harry, please try to stay calm," he said gently, and while I was shaking he continued, "When you woke up, it became obvious that things had changed significantly. On the one hand, the Ministry finally had its victory; the hero was alive, the villain imprisoned, and public opinion very favourable. On the other, they were left asking themselves: What are we to do with Voldemort?"
"Give him life imprisonment!" I said. "Shut him up at the bottom of a pit! Just don't do this!"
Dumbledore sighed. "I don't know all the facts," he said, "but I think you are assuming two things. First, that there is nothing we want from Voldemort, and second, that there is any one person in charge of what is happening to him."
"The Minister!"
"Regrettably not."
"Then me! Why isn't it me? I'm the bloody saviour!"
He smiled sadly. "And what would you do with him?"
"Lock him in a box in my dormitory! Anything!... Sorry, Professor."
"I am glad to hear that, Harry. Now, my other point: you assume that it is merely for their own entertainment that the inhabitants of Azkaban torment Voldemort. You have forgotten, I think, that there is a great deal of information they would like to extract from him. Countless people disappeared during the First and Second Wars, and he may know where they are. He set traps that are proving tricky to defuse, and he cast Dark spells that we need to know how to unravel."
"Well, I'll do that!" I said. "He talks to me! Give me a list and I'll ask him on Sunday."
Dumbledore nobly restrained himself and let only a faint smile slip out. "I will make the necessary arrangements. As soon, that is, as I work out who precisely is in charge of Azkaban. I'm afraid that might take some time."
"Is it Dementors?" I said suspiciously.
"No," he said, "but that's all I'm certain of. It's hard to say what goes on in there."
The logical part my brain threw out sparks and I said "Well, can't we move them all out of there?!"
Dumbledore's shaggy eyebrows made a tectonic inward swoop. "We could," he said. "No doubt we could, if the Ministry agreed to cooperate, which is not completely without the realms of possibility. However, I think you are forgetting, once again, that the people inside Azkaban are extremely dangerou, and that we barely won this war. The relative peace that we presently enjoy, Harry, is something we cling onto with the tips of our fingers; and if Tom Riddle were to rise again, do you really think that he would treat us any better than we are presently treating him?"
"Do I think so?" I said incredulously. "I know so, sir. He tortured me before I fought him. He didn't do anything like as bad to me as they're doing to him now. It doesn't compare."
Dumbledore was silent for a long time, then nodded slightly without speaking. I fancied that he looked pitying and disappointed.
-
That night I was trapped inside Voldemort while he was... was... well. Anyway. It was like a dream, one of those appallingly tedious dreams where things keep on getting worse and worse but you can't wake up. It was no dream. I was peripherally amused by the notion while we scrabbled and screamed.
Then I woke up at 3:30am; and was left to wander agitatedly around the bathroom, shivering with disgust in between dry heaves, with no company whatsoever. I couldn't stand being inside. I got my Cloak and broomstick and headed out to the Quidditch pitch.
I looped absently around the grounds; up, down, round, with little snowflakes biting my face. The snow felt clean, calm. It was much better than anything human.
Week 25Walked through the curtain of flame. Stopped in shock. Actually bobbed back hastily through the curtain before I'd realised what I was doing, and uncertainly poked my head forwards again, finally accepting: the room was completely different.
"Harry?" the voice said, hopeful but nervous. "Hat is you?"
"Yeah, it's me," I said, staring round the room; stunned. He watched me in silence. He didn't seem surprised.
No concrete cell any more. Instead: walls painted cream and mustard. Two enormous Georgian windows, spreading dull daylight across the room. A comfy-looking (albeit prehistoric) chair on wheels, a desk covered with a mess of papers; a rather dodgy painting on one wall, and on the other, a diagram of the human brain.
"Your bed's still the same," I said absently, sitting down on the chair. Fortunately, it turned out to be real.
"Hank you," he said, taking the books, and then, "Don't you recognise a pssssychoanalyst's couh?"
"No. Is that what it is? Why have you been sleeping on it?" I said, perplexed. He plucked randomly at the blanket and didn't answer.
I got up again, rather at a loss, and trundled round the room. I stopped in front of the painting and peered at it. Boats on a lake with cloying Victorian personages in the foreground. "This picture's really crap."
Voldemort gave a huge, genuine laugh, grinning so broadly I could see every one of his smashed teeth. "Hat's what I said. And, if you look, on the ceiling 'here's a crack shaped like a bloke's hace. A bloke who looks a bit like a pig. I once decided it was a portrait of the pyschoanalyssst. Better 'han a Rorschach."
Animated as he was, he was talking twice as fast as usual. The words slurred as though he were talking through a mouthful of baked beans, but I didn't mind missing bits of it as long as he was cheerful.
"Where are we, then?" I asked.
"My analyst's treatment room. Nineteen-hurty-sehen," he said indifferently.
"You had an analyst?"
"Orhanage sent me 'here."
"Did it do any good?"
He gave a horrible mirthless laugh, and couldn't seem to stop it, although he looked at me, frightened, and it morphed into a hysterical, nervous giggle.
I felt his fear of me like a bucket of ice cubes to the face. The shock faded away but the distance remained, a fuzzy, ungraspable miasma in between us. Fear gave me an inane kind of plastic wisdom, gagged all those wise, sarcastic things he would have said. Like, Is it good, to torture evil people? And I might have played devil's advocate for a bit, but ultimately I would have said, No.
But he didn't ask any more.
"So why are we here?" I said, sitting back down in the chair.
"Because I didn't like it. Isn't hat ohious?" he said harshly, fear still taking the edge off his tone.
"That's better. Come on, swear at me," I said, heartened. "Say, 'Stop your foolish dribbling, Potter'," or something like that."
He didn't, but he gave me a long glance, giggled again and said "It's hunny seeing you in 'hat chair. Makes it all seem like a hoke. Helps me hang on to what's real."
I looked around the dull room, and shivered. I didn't really like his analyst's taste in interior decoration much. "I don't know why it looks like this," I said aimlessly.
"It's a ssspell."
"Did you do it? I mean, has it appeared out of your nightmares or something, or did someone else put it here."
He blinked very slowly, giving me time to appreciate how huge his shadowed eyes looked like in that thin, skull-like face. "Well," he said, and laughed again, sounding close to tears; and "Somebody cast it."
"I suppose I should remove it," I said, and I trundled outside and said doubtfully, "Finite incantatem."
Pause. "It hlickered," the voice called. "Try it again."
Mustering all my defeating-Dark-Lords superpowerz, I bellowed, "FINITE INCANTATEM!"
After a moment I peeped through the curtain and saw him sitting in his little concrete cube again with a contented smile. "Better," he said. "Good hing you're here."
"I don't believe this," I said to the world at large, sitting down on the foot of his couch.
"Don't believe what?" he said. "Hat I had my head shrunk? Hat I hated it? Hat your ssside would do hese hings?"
I shivered. "You never told me," I began aimlessly. "Or you never told anyone, I never knew you were afraid of this."
"Why would I hahe told you?"
"You are telling me," I pointed out. "You're telling me, now."
I thought about torture. I thought how I had hurt him, and he had hurt me, and we had both been hurt together, in the same body. It seemed to me that the experience had brought us closer than anything else ever could; that we were pinned together like two moths on the same card.
When I left, he asked for Patrick Hamilton's Gas Light.
Week 26Life insisted on continuing at the usual pace. It was irritating and disorienting. I had to pretend to care about news, gossip, impossibly difficult Transfiguration homework and the appointment of a new Quidditch Captain, given that I was no longer fit for the post and Gryffindor's first match was next week. McGonagall asked me for a recommendation, but I didn't much feel like choosing between Ron and Ginny, so I left the final choice up to her.
Also, various Slytherins seemed to have it in for me. I would say I didn't care, but in all truth I was so preoccupied I didn't even notice. That situation persisted until Draco Malfoy confronted me in the corridor, upper lip ruched up to his eyebrows. He seemed even less enamoured with my person than usual.
"I know you're gay, Potter."
"You do?" I said. "Pity I missed that owl."
"I – " he started, but other humans arrived. Draco skulked shrunkenly until they'd all passed by, following me down to a place where not many people would see before shouting, "Potter!"
"What NOW?" I shouted back.
"They might think you're a hero. We know, don't we, you're just a smarmy hypocritical prick! How dare you! How dare you!"
Poor old Draco had clearly taken a Bludger to the head. "What the fuck?"
More people. He shrank back again. I walked away. He followed me. "You're running away from me, Corned Beef-Face!"
My face was a lot more scarred since I'd been tortured. I rolled my eyes at Draco's petty and juvenile taste in insults and said "I'm not running away from you. I don't know what you're talking about."
Incadescent with rage. "BASTARD!" His wand appeared. Mine matched it out of sheer reflex. "Keep your hands off my Weasley!" he bellowed, and fired the Pineapple-Penis Curse.
"Protego!" I said automatically, and shot it back at him. He ducked just in time. I stared at him, agog; "So it was you!" I said, and hexed him to a pulp. I hadn't been in a fight with anyone since Voldemort, so I was mildly pleased to find my hand was still in.
Inevitably, dozens of people crowded round to watch and Colin Creevey started frantically taking photos. I eventually managed to push my way through them and stormed off to confront Ginny in the Gryffindor common room. Restraining the urge to point at her and roar "You had it off with Malfoy!", I sidled up to her like a donkey with a leg brace and mumbled "Ginny... Draco Malfoy just said it was him that got you pregnant."
"Then he's a liar," she said matter-of-factly. "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole."
I gaped at her ridiculously for a moment and then grinned equally ridiculously for a similar length of time. Then my face fell and I muttered, "Well, he was being pretty weird. He screamed at me and hexed me and he said 'Keep your hands off my Weasley'," I intoned with a disdainful shrug.
"Then it's a pisstake."
"No, it wasn't a pisstake. He was really, really serious," I corrected her absently. My tone must have annoyed her because she snapped back, "Harry. I wouldn't do anything with him. Whoever he's talking about, it's not me," and then there was a silence as we calculated precisely how many other Weasleys there were in the castle and realised who Draco was shagging. Ginny shot sparks out of her eyes and marched up to the boys' dorm, and I followed her feebly with the knowledge that there would shortly be a great cataclysm which I could do nothing to prevent.
After that, facing Snape re: Draco was pretty much an afterthought. The words "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE SHAGGING THE FERRET!" were still echoing through my skull as I wandered idly into the staff room to be tackled by the livid Heads of House.
"Well, Potter," Snape said in a whisper that would no doubt have been very frightening if I hadn't developed a fairly good sense of proportion about these things, "what sort of punishment do you think should be meted out to someone who randomly curses the same student twice in one year?"
"What, Malfoy?" I said. "Detention should sort him out. His cursing's not up to much."
"Potter, this isn't funny," McGonagall said severely. "Whatever Mr Malfoy said to you does not justify putting him in the hospital wing."
"What, even though he called me gay (which, like, isn't an insult but I thought he meant it as one) and a bastard and Corned-Beef-Face and said I was snogging his boyfriend?"
"Yes," McGonagall said, unfazed.
"And made me think that him and Ginny...?"
McGonagall knew about Ginny's resorption, whereas Snape did not. She paused and frowned.
"And he tried to curse me, yet again."
"We do not share your view, Potter, that cursing is your prerogative alone," Snape said silkily. "Although I know that your much trumped-up exploits in May... blah, blah," and said the usual stuff about how I was an attention-seeking prat.
"Funny," I said. "I'd have thought you'd sound more pleased that he's locked up. I can let him out on Sunday, if you want."
"What makes you think you will be allowed to see him on Sunday, Potter?" he purred.
"I beg your pardon?" said McGonagall.
"Hang on," I said, mockery vanishing, "you can't do that. They're expecting me. And it's none of your business in the first place."
"Perhaps you should have thought of your charitable duties to the Dark Lord before you irresponsibly cursed another student."
"Severus, stop being so childish. Potter – "
"Is there anyone you don't treat like dung?" I said. "He's been waiting two weeks to see me, in Azkaban. I'm his only visitor."
Snape said softly, "Oh, really?"
"Severus," McGonagall said acerbically, "if you haven't observed, Harry is in my house and I will determine his punishment, and the question of whether he will be allowed to continue his visits to Azkaban has nothing to do with you or Mr Malfoy..." and she dished out detention for the rest of the month, ordered me to apologise to Malfoy (which I would have done anyway) and told me to be less rash in future. I barely heard a word because I was caught in a stare with Snape. My hands were actually shaking.
-
"Sorry about that," I said.
"Yeah." Ron, sprawled on his bed, stared into the middle distance for some time with an expression of surpassing disgruntlement. Presently he asked, "You're not shagging him, are you?"
"Ron, I wouldn't shag him with a bargepole, even if he wasn't with you."
"Mm." He still looked worried. "Is he with anyone else?" he asked in a would-be casual tone.
"I don't know, do I?"
"But you haven't heard..."
"No."
"Mm." Slightly more chuffed. "Did he sound angry? When he thought I was cheating on him."
"Mad as hell," I assured him. "He screamed his head off. Oh, and he aimed a Pineapple-Prick at me, but I dodged."
"Well, if he's getting possessive he'll want to hang onto me, then," Ron said happily. Pause. "He'd fucking better after everything I've..." Mutter mutter.
"Ron," I said, absolutely fascinated, "what's he like in bed?"
This was not actually what I meant to say. I meant, is he as scornful and aggressive during your tender love scenes as he is the whole of the rest of the time. Ron, however, thought I meant something else. He puffed his chest out, looked smug and said "Like I'd have wasted all this on someone who wasn't fit." Then I got a very long account of their courtship, first snog and numerous fights, which had to be concluded in a whisper because Neville and Seamus were going to bed.
When Draco was fully healed he initiated the unnerving practice of hanging around Ron whenever they weren't in class. His repertoire included aggressive flirting, resentful complaints about the way Ron treated him (while, incidentally, still doing all the things Ron told him to), and hysterical protestations of love. Recalling the Lavender Brown thing, I loyally refrained from pointing out Ron's predilection for over-emotional, clingy blondes.
Week 27"Sorry, they didn't have Gas Light," I apologised as I strode into Voldie's cell, books in hand. "They sent me a different one instead."
There was a pause. The blanket slowly erected itself and a sleepy head peeped out, miraculously giving the impression of being tousled without actually having any hair. "Book? Which book?"
I lay down next to him and sorted through the pile. "Er. Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka."
Voldemort snorted, snorted again and said, "A person slowly turning into a monster. I hink hat's really quite appropriate."
"No, you're not," I said nastily. "You were a monster before. Now you're slowly becoming human."
His face acquired an unreadable expression, an odd, curdled look. I felt ashamed. "Sorry for saying that," I said.
He laughed until it hurt him, which of course wasn't very long. "Sorry. Sorry indeed. You're a hery peculiar boy, Harry," he purred, wagging the remnant of a finger at me with a pitying grin. "Why aren't you torhuring me? If I were you, I would curssse me until 'here was nohing left."
"There's already not much left," I said, which was about as cruel as I got.
"But here you are: bringing me booksss, talking to me, trying to make my lihe easier."
"That's because I'm a 'good person' and you're, like, a psychopathic maniac."
"It must be hery boring being a 'good person'," he mused.
"No, it isn't," I said irritably. "It's not-torturing that lets me do all the stuff that's enjoyable. I mean, I couldn't walk out of here after, you know, torturing you, and go back to school and talk to people and go shopping and, and live normal life."
"Certain people do," he said.
"Sick people. People who are wrong."
"But – "
"NO!" I cut him off. "I like being like this. I'll never get off on hurting people, I don't want to be a Dark Lord, I want a nice calm boring life with friends and ordinary people and no battles, and if you think that's boring then fuck you."
"I won't disagree wih you, Harry. I can't."
"No, you can't. Because you are wrong. – Did I tell you everything that happened?"
"...No?"
"Well, my girlfriend got pregnant and..." I began and gave him the whole long, convoluted, possibly rather boring story, because his eyes started glazing over halfway through.
When he'd finally assimilated most of the narrative he said slowly, "'He wretched Malhoy boy is wih a Weasley?"
"And?" I said sharply. "He doesn't deserve Ron!"
"Quite posssibly," he agreed. "I hope he knows 'hat, too."
"He nearly killed him," I muttered. "He sent poisoned mead to Dumbledore, the fucking maniac."
"I know 'hat," he said. "It was I who ordered him to kill Dumbledore, ih you recall."
"Can I ask you something? Why him? He was totally useless." Before he had a chance to reply, I suddenly remembered Dumbledore saying, His anger was terrible to behold... "Was it to punish Lucius for fucking up at the Ministry?"
"Hardly matters now."
"I remember Dumbledore saying you were so mad about it that Lucius was probably 'secretly glad to be safe in Azkaban'."
Voldie' reaction to this was extraordinary. He stared at me with his mouth open, then contorted his face into an awful grimace, and then finally threw his head back and gave a shrill, sniggering laugh.
"SHUT IT!" I said, and he did.
"There was stuff I was supposed to tell you before," I said, "we didn't get onto it, what with all that... weird stuff."
He laughed again, a proper laugh this time, and said "You looked so hunny in 'hat chair."
I smiled too, because I was trying to be all official with him and he didn't care; but I had to talk to him, so the smile faded.
"You got tortured and, like, I'm there."
"Are you," he said roughly, staring at the wall.
"I asked Dumbledore how come they can't just stop torturing you."
"Mm."
"He said, first, that no-one's in charge."
"Doesn't sssurprise me."
"And second, they want you to give them information. About people you killed and stuff."
"About people I killed?" he said. "I'm all hor doing hings horoughly, but isn't it a bit late in 'he day hor that?"
"Disappeared, people who disappeared. You might know where they were buried and stuff."
"Buried! Since when do I bury people personally? What d'you hink 'he minions are hor?"
"Oh, shut up, shut up, you're not cooperating."
"Potter, it's all a bloody hoke. Hey don't want any hucking inhormation. Torhuring me hor inhormation? You hink 'hat's what hey're doing? Hey're torhuring me because hey like it. Hat's bloody why."
"Not listening. Not listening. Not listening," I repeated, hands over my ears, until he'd stopped shouting. Then I said, "Don't give me that crap. Dumbledore told me himself."
"Gihe me my books," he snarled, and started reading violently. I turned the pages for half an hour, but Metamorphosis bored me silly.
"You could get me 'he books hrom 'he corner," he said.
"How did you get them over there, anyway?" I asked, getting up and bringing his stack of books from the corner of the cell.
He rolled his eyes at me. "I didn't put hem 'here."
"Didn't they realise you wouldn't be able to reach them?"
"Yesss, Potter."
I stayed silent. It was odd: I could believe they would Crucio him, obviously, but I couldn't believe they would put his books where he couldn't get to them. It was just so petty.
I sat back on the bed and said, "Give me more torturing tips, then."
"Aren't any tips to gihe," he said. "Long as 'hey're in enough pain, you can sssay whatever you want to 'hem. Whistle He Bridhe Oher He Riher Kwai. Say whateher seems like a good idea at he time. Ssay whateher gratihies your ego. Keep saying he same clihé until it's hust sounds.
"Is 'he guard 'here?" he added.
"Yes he is. Why would I let you out if the guard wasn't there? I hate you."
"I don't hate you."
"You don't?"
"No." Pause. "I LOAHE you." Another pause, then, with an awful grin, "D'you know why I said hat?"
"No," I said, utterly baffled.
"Becaussse I know you won't torhure me hor saying it. I can get away wih hings, wih you. I hate you more, because I am ahraid," he creaked in that blank, monotous voice, which added a surreal note. "So I hate myselh most oh all."
That was back when he could still say resounding things.
