It was raining, the kind of rain that defines this island, and the cold fog expectantly blinded the eyes for a mile and more. Miserable weather, to be sure, but not entirely forbidding. There were things the rain could cover that the darkness of night, as much as writers like to ponder about it, failed entirely to do. Tracks, for instance. The thick mud was quickly filling in with swirling water, blurring the edges and drowning out memory.
When one needs to be invisible, one prays for rain. Not for the night. People of all sorts, wizarding folk included, one would hope, go out at night. They enjoy their perceived secrecy. But true secrecy is hard-earned. I have a few scars and a couple of chipped teeth to prove it. It isn't easy disappearing off the map.
Now, I am needed again. Well, to put it more precisely, I need food, and he has money. He pays, I eat, and I do whatever is put to me. Primitive concept, but the oldest truths hold steady in these winds of change. Change, you ask. There is a boy, and there is a near impossibility associated with him. They call him a miracle.
I said he was lucky, and they shot me uneasy glances. They need to believe in a miracle, you see, for the enemy is much stronger than they are this time around, and they know it.
For my part, I do not throw in my lot with either side. The wizards under Dumbledore, as noble as he makes their purpose out to be, are simply buying time before the inevitable: a drawn-out war which no one will avoid. Voldemort is simply playing for dominion. His is a seedy past, I have heard, but I never believe anything I have not experienced.
I fought with him once. Not as one of his insecure, arrogant Death Eaters, but as a hired hand. I was hungry, and he had money. I took out whomever the Death Eaters failed to…eliminate, as he would say.
Wizarding literature fails to meet the heights of what the non-magic people have written over their numbered years. A book is a reliable companion, and it seems fitting I carry one with me wherever I go. Today, as it has been for a few weeks, the book is Life of Pi. A boy in a boat with a Bengal tiger. Absurd idea, compelling reading.
I haven't seen Voldemort in many years. He, to his credit, did not hunt me down when he smelled treason on me. I suppose even his bunch of misfits could not achieve what I have done. When one considers it, I have handed Voldemort his greatest prize.
Azkaban, the prison they say was created with the workmen of the living dead, is destroyed. Nothing remains: no ashes, no ghostly beings of soul-sucking terror. They are all gone.
All that remains is the terror of its ghostly presence. I left nothing in its memory.
Voldemort's lackey, all trembles and shambles, came after the sweat was spent and deed done. It was classic—he shivered to see the hollow patch and the scarred trees where the dread of the wizard underworld had once stood.
And now I go to meet the master of this underworld. It seems I have been granted amnesty for my past transgressions, but I believe that only happened because I am useful. Voldemort is clever in that he refuses to bond with the living. He loves a memory.
It is memory that is most dangerous.
