The Third Detainment of Theodore Nott

Truly, though our element is time,
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so.

Philip Larkin, Reference Back

Tuesday 25 August 2020

In which the narrator is confronted by his chief adversary and recounts to the reader the circumstances under which he was apprehended.

I wasn't sure if I'd been in this holding cell before. The old mattress in the corner could have been the very same one I'd tossed and turned on fifteen years ago during the many sleepless nights awaiting trial after I'd given myself up. There was the same pattern of bars on the tiny window, pointless in an underground building, which now showed the full darkness of night. This might have meant that it was still earlier than it somehow seemed, although I had no reason to trust that the window showed an accurate reflection of the conditions above. The cell seemed depressingly familiar, but I was starting to think that the door might have been on the other side to the one I'd been put in last time, and I certainly didn't remember it being this shade of pink. Fifteen years, though. A lot could have changed.

A lot had changed. Even I, a pureblooded recluse with vanishingly little contact with Muggles, knew about the mysterious and deadly illness that was ripping across the world, causing shutdowns, panic, and deaths. Thousands of deaths: in Britain the toll was already several times larger than the entire magical population, and continuing to grow. No magical people were known to have become infected, but nobody seemed to know if witches and wizards could inadvertently spread it, a fact that was causing a lot of anguish for Muggleborns in particular. In most respects the wizarding world remained unaffected, with magical establishments opening as normal but things did feel different, somehow, on the few occasions I'd ventured from my house.

The door banged open and Potter strode in. He had a nasty graze to his cheek, which almost certainly was due to a curse I'd thrown at him a while earlier. His demeanour lacked the professional detachment that one might have hoped for in the Head of Magical Law Enforcement.

"Ready to start talking?" he growled. It was almost comical.

"Well, no, not really," I said, trying not to smirk. "I have the right to have a lawyer with me, and I'm not going to say anything until I have one." They had taken my shoes when I'd been brought in, so I now stood just in my socks. This felt rather infantilising. My glasses had also been shattered in the raid so I was left squinting around, trying to make sense of what was going on. It was still hard to believe that they'd actually brought me in, that I wasn't just going to go to bed and wake up to my house elves bringing me my usual tea and toast with the morning paper, that a few hours ago, my life had irrevocably changed.

"That's it, isn't it, you think you're so bloody clever, don't you?" He was being so rude you would have thought that I'd been the one who had broken into his house in the dead of night and not the other way around, but his commentarymade me think, actually yes, I did feel good, almost euphoric, which was weird, because in addition to the aforementioned break in, I'd just been showered with hexes, sworn at, arrested, and was now apparently looking at a sentence in Azkaban that would make my last stint there feel like a bank holiday weekend (their words, not mine). Maybe it was because being back here reminded me of last time, and what I was feeling was partly dizzying relief that I didn't have to be that guilty, overserious twenty-five-year-old again. I certainly wouldn't make the same mistakes he made.

"Interesting décor," I said. "Umbridge would have approved."

"Pink is supposed to be calming." Potter snapped irritably at me.

"I'm sure it's working," I said snidely. "I'd like to owl my lawyer now."

"You've changed," Potter said. I think he missed the twenty-five-year-old me.

"Only slowly," I said. "But it's not like you ever knew me that well in the first place."

"I kind of thought I did," Potter said. "I visited you."

"You inspected me."

"You shared a lot with me," he said, a note of betrayal in his voice. "I wanted to help you walk away from the Dark Arts, find your magic again, and be happy."

I literally had to bite back the response, "Well, two out of three isn't bad," which made me wonder anew why I wasn't taking this more seriously.

"I'd like to owl to my lawyer now," I repeated. "Portia Mbewe." I'd done my research this time, just in case. "I mean it, I'm not saying another word until she gets here."

"Why?" Potter said. "Why couldn't you just keep your nose clean?"

I folded my arms and leaned back against the pink wall.