Monday 21 September 2020

In which the narrator unwillingly engages in dialogue with other agents of law enforcement.

Potter did not return to ask me any more questions, and after the initial burst of interrogations in the first few days after the Aurors had brought me in, I rather thought they had forgotten me or moved on to something else. I had been confined to the holding cell for the last four weeks with no company except for Aurors occasionally coming in to bring food or clean me off with a spell. I was still wearing the exact same clothes that I'd had on when they brought me in, and although I wasn't aware of them shaving me, the few days' worth of stubble I'd had never seemed to grow into a full beard. Although the hygiene spells they used on me meant that I didn't really smell, I still felt filthy, wretched, and my socks were starting to wear thin from pacing around the cell in them. I wanted to jump into a nice hot bath the minute they let me go, if they ever did, although at least I was now finally over the worst of the potions comedown.

I was lying on the mattress facing the wall, tracing out patterns on the pink-painted brick with my finger, thinking about nothing in particular: the toy Hippogriff I'd had when I was a kid, the forgotten library book I'd found at the bottom of my Hogwarts trunk that had somehow racked up a twelve Galleon fine, the three tea-stained mugs we'd had to share in the underprovisioned staff room at Flourish and Blotts, two from publishers, one with an inexplicably obscene slogan. I struggled to maintain any productive streams of thought; the days were so similar now I struggled to remember what was happening or anchor myself in time. The door creaked open and shut. I didn't move; I'd deliberately positioned myself that way so that I didn't have to engage with all the people coming and going, peering into my cell to goggle at me as though I was an animal in a zoo. I heard footsteps approach and stop. I still didn't move. Williamson's voice: "Are you going to get up or are you going to make me make you?"

"How are you going to make me?" I said, still facing the wall.

"Levicorpus should do the trick."

I hauled myself up, shooting Williamson a filthy look. Unexpectedly, Jones was there too.

"Good boy," said Williamson. A tray materialised in my hands. "Have some food."

Greasy grey slices of meat glistened on the plate. I gagged, an involuntary reaction.

"What's the matter? Not up to the standard you're used to? Not like your elves cook for you, huh?"

"Oh, he doesn't eat meat," said Jones. "Do you?"

I hadn't realised she knew that about me; I hadn't told anyone. I wondered what else she knew. The food I'd given since I'd arrived here had been miserable, but plain enough to so as not to present any difficulties (bread, plain rice, cold soup, boiled vegetables). As the fare in Azkaban had unvaryingly been weak gruel, it hardly occurred to me that the lack of meat might be by design. Aloud, but without looking up at either of the Aurors, I said, "No, I don't eat it."

"A vegetarian Dark wizard! Of all the ridiculous things!" Williamson guffawed. "I thought you were making that up, Attica."

I wondered if she knew why I didn't eat it, if she knew that the texture and the taste and the smell brought back horrible memories of things from when I was fifteen. She probably did know; that day was woven right through me, shaping everything I now thought and did.

Williamson was still chortling.

"Do you eat fish then?"

"No." I wanted him to go away.

"You know those potions you're hooked on? Know what's in them?"

I did know, because I'd looked into making them myself: Calming Draughts, Euphoria Elixir, the Draught of Peace. They were ruinously expensive to purchase ready-made, but after learning what a faff they were I'd decided that I was lazier than I was stingy. The potions also called for all sorts of horrible things (eye of newt, yak blood, crocodile heart, kelpie lung) that I did not care to think about, let alone touch. I somehow was able to forget this when I wanted some though.

"I'm not hooked," I said, but that was a lie and all three of us knew it. Neither of them bothered to respond.

Jones was watching me. Her expression was ambivalent, somehow encompassing both pity and scorn.

"Look, I'm not eating that shit," I said, pushing the tray back at Williamson.

"You're not getting anything else," said Williamson.

"I don't care. Take it away, I don't want any."

"Someone ought to teach you some manners."

I glared at him.

"Why don't you sit down and talk with us?" said Jones in a more conciliatory tone, Vanishing the tray. "Maybe we can sort something else out for you, if you help us." I wondered if they'd planned the whole thing together, good Auror, bad Auror. I was surprised that they had the authority to do anything without Potter's involvement, but perhaps they had decided to take the initiative while Potter was otherwise engaged.

"Well, Attica," I said, "Once my lawyer gets here, I'd be delighted to speak with you. Until then there's nothing I can do for you so you might as well piss off."

"That's a shame. I had a nice chat with your elves. They were asking after you."

"Oh really?" I said, trying to project indifference although my heart was beating hard. Had they told her anything? I knew that my elves would not deliberately compromise me; in fact, they were bound by duty to keep my secrets. However, they were both worried about me and proud of me, and an Auror who understood the nature of house elves would be able to manipulate that with ease.

"Kudos on them still being alive."

"I'm sorry?"

"It's not unheard of, for elves to mysteriously die or disappear. Especially ones that know as much as yours do."

"Don't you think the Ministry should stop interviewing elves then?" I said. "Don't you feel a little responsible?"

"No," she said. "It's the fault of the people who kill them. Or order them to be killed."

"I know," I said. "I wouldn't do it. But whether you intended it or not, your policy means that elves are dying." I realised I was shouting a little, and shut up a bit. I didn't want her to think I cared too much; they were just elves.

"It's kind of sweet, really, how much you care about them. You don't need to hide it."

"Don't patronise me," I said. "Elves are vulnerable. We should look after them."

"Interesting you should say that. Do you consider forcing them to travel through time to test out an illegal and highly dangerous magical artefact looking after them, then?"

"As I said, if you wish to discuss my case specifically you will have to wait until my lawyer is present," I said stiffly, trying to conceal my horror at what she'd just said. Ms Mbewe had been right; they had used my elves to get evidence against me. I still could not countenance killing them, and it was also a worry that my elves would realise what they had done. They would never forgive themselves if they knew that they had caused me harm, even indirectly.

"If you're still trying to hide... I wouldn't bother. We've got all the evidence we need. And resisting us will break you, I guarantee it."

"Break me how?" I said.

"I think you know," she said. "You've been there before."

"That was different," I said. "I was depressed, I was losing it."

As I spoke, the rank smell of prison somehow returned to me: my own accumulated sweat, damp walls, mildew, urine, excrement. A more defined moment (I couldn't tell if she was dragging this up or if it had come with the stench): the slow realisation that I was sitting in a stone cell in my own waste, vague humiliation as I understood that I was not alone, that Potter and the Minister (Shacklebolt at that time, not Granger, thank God) had been observing me for some time. I wished I could pretend that that had been a turning point, that things had got better after that, but the truth is, I don't remember. I don't even remember what happened next. There were many degrading episodes from that time in my life. Only some of them had etched themselves onto my consciousness. She was doing this. I tried to push her out of my head, but she was faster than me, stronger than me, weaving and diving through disused pathways, dredging up things I'd rather forget.

"Out," I said. "Get out."

She laughed. "Give it up, Nott. You can't beat me at this."

Another memory: lying in that same cell, picking at the scabbed over old scar on my arm, digging my thumbnail under the scab, pulling and tearing until it bled, a habit that even now I'd failed to break entirely.

"What are you doing?" I said. "What do you want?"

"That's what's waiting for you. You brought this on yourself," she said. "If the Ministry wants to examine the entire contents of your head, it has every legal right."

"You can't use anything you find there in court. You're messing with me," I said. "It's cruel. What good does it do, reminding me of all that now? My fate is pretty much sealed anyway."

"You have options."

"Shitty ones."

"You don't have to spend the rest of your life in prison."

"And all it's likely to cost me is ending up disembowelled in a ditch somewhere."

"We can protect you."

"Why?" I said. "Why would you do that? If you think I deserve to go to Azkaban, why would that change if I landed a load of other people there?"

The Aurors exchanged looks.

"You know, you never really struck me as a man of principle," Williamson said. "Not when we're talking about putting you in Azkaban until you die. You could live another century there, easily, surrounded by the same four stone walls. They'll bury you there on the island when you do finally croak."

"We're only suggesting what's in your best interests and you know it," added the witch.

I shrugged. "You're the Legilimens."

"You know how to look after yourself."

"Yeah, I do," I said. "And at no point does it involve talking to you. You can't use anything you get from my head in court, so I don't really care what you think you know about me."

"That really doesn't matter. We've got enough hard evidence," he said.

I said nothing.

"You've got one chance to avoid dying alone in prison," she said. "I'd take it if I were you."

"Fuck off," I said.

"They don't deserve your loyalty," she said. "The people you're protecting, they've already screwed you over."

"Are we done?" I said.

She looked me up and down appraisingly.

"Oh, we're not even close," she said, a note of contempt in her voice. She waved her wand and I flinched, expecting to feel pain. Instead a plate appeared in my hands, loaded with delicious food: leek soufflé, bulgur wheat, sautéed mushrooms. My mouth watered instantly, uncontrollably, but I was also marvelling at and resenting the fact that this plate was here in my hands, that without being aware of being forced my hands had somehow risen to meet it and I was glad to be holding it; I would not drop it. Jones smirked as though she knew exactly what I'd been thinking. "Enjoy your dinner. They still only serve gruel in Azkaban, you know."