For a long time, Father, for a long time I am kept imprisoned by you, chained in my mind by your manacles, yes, even my mind chained, and then I begin to see again, to know, to control my own mind. Sometimes, Father, sometimes I wanted to run before the time, to flee before I knew my absolute haven.

And then they came for me, Father, and our roles were reversed, yours and mine; now I am the jailer and you are the jailbird, now I control- your thoughts, your mind. I could control you entirely, Father, you would not be able to breathe if I bade you not to do so, and you would suffocate with a clear windpipe, drowning in the oxygen that you cannot see.

I don't. Perhaps you could serve us some purpose, Father. But I am wrong. They say you have lost your mind, Father; you have. You have lost it to me. So you die- so I kill you, so I repay you halfway for when you killed me twice- and because I cannot kill you again, O immeasurable sadness, I make you into one small thin bone (easily broken) and I hold your funeral, your desecration, neither of us visible any longer

You are gone from the world forever, Father, and I am happy now. But I am not entirely satisfied; there is still great joy and glory and beauty to come.

It is coming, it is coming, it is coming….

It is coming….Resurrected, it is coming, I have been resurrected….

It passes, unexpected, in the summer night. I am blind and do not see for I have no gift of foresight, only hindsight belongs to me, a gift given in the fortress of the Nazguls; have I failed now? I have. I must end the universe before the universe collapses in on me. Listen to me scream.

I am almost succeeded.

A treasonous thought, which I dedicate to your memory, Father: I will succeed, I will vanquish, I will triumph, when Master did not. I…am…better….

Shut up; give me silence! Screaming at my mind, my mind has been torn apart by the battles fought in it, for it; it is shredded into pieces (gory image, yes; do I care?) and that is why I Am.

Darkness coming. Darkness coming now. I am sightless….

I am handed a glass of…water, is it? Water, I believe, I hope.

I drink….

I speak….

I am a traitor, I am nothing, I have forsaken the light and I will die, yes, I will die, Master, forgive me, for I do not know what I am doing, I am a traitor first resurrected now insurrection.

They have left me for the most part, I may hold silence now in my loosely cupped hands like cool liquid, I am abandoned, guarded by another traitor to wait. Waiting, it is the most painful; waiting, eternal, it is the art I learned as a bird and my mind is flying, through the castle, and I sense something drawing closer….

I sense the Nazgul whenever they are near; I am tuned to their frequency, so quoth I, and I know when they are nearby, they are coming for me, these monsters created by what they cannot own lest it consume them.

I am forgetting myself, I must remember, they are draining me of my needle-focus and my memories. Who am I? Who am I, Father? Who do you say I am?

I do not know my great-grandfather's name and my grandfather's name is Caspar Crouch and my father's name is Bartemius Caspar Crouch and my name is Bartemius Caspar Crouch, you are my father and I killed you but my mother, she died for me, and I am in Slytherin and I played Keeper a thousand years ago when I was young and I was not afraid of dead birds—

Who am I?

I do not know my grandfather's name and my father's name is Bartemius Caspar Crouch and my name is Bartemius Caspar Crouch, I am a Death Eater with the Mark burnt into my flesh, and so did Regulus Black when we were children, when we were friends; I convinced him to join, but he passed as most things do with the wind and he is no more to me for I expect he could give you a very clear, concise definition of treason for he is the fulfillment of treason itself—

Who am I?

I do not know my father's name and my name is Bartemius Caspar Crouch and I am (was? Birdcages- Azkaban, full of Nazgul-dementors; Imperius, these have taken from me all emotion and was I ever capable of love?) in love with a woman already married to another man, and naturally she does not know it (reference the earlier parentheses: if I am not capable of love, one of the two capacities, then how can they call what I do evil, the other capacity, if I have no capacity in this sense at all?) and in case you could not guess this is the sort of luck I always have; I killed my father with much happiness—

Who am I?

MY NAME IS BARTEMIUS CASPAR CROUCH AND I SWEAR ON PERIL OF MY SOUL THAT HARRY POTTER WILL NOT LIVE TO SEE THE END OF HIS FOURTH YEAR--