Prisoners of Azkaban, Probationary Diaries August 2009, Prisoners #19-09-1979 and #09-01-1960
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August 8, 2009
After breakfast we wanted to see the owner of one of the three houses we can afford.
Amrita Agan lives outside the village, at the lakeshore.
Hogsmeade has grown in the last eleven years or 135 months or 587 weeks or 4,115 days or 98,760 hours or—calculating minutes is futile and leaves me frantic, my heart racing. But time is fleeting. Only 23 days are left of our probation. Or 552 hours or—no. That way lies madness.
So—Hogsmeade has grown, but it has not flourished. Shops are closed. Rooms are for rent, houses for sale. When we left, Hannah broke up the first brawl of the day, throwing the louts out. Their marks proclaimed them half-blood and Mudblood. Their breakfast was a bottle, shared in a corner.
Hannah says they haven't much to do besides drinking and fighting. Not many half-bloods still own a business; Mudbloods are not allowed to do so. Few employers are willing to hire half-bloods, or worse, Mudbloods. When we stepped outside, a beggar cowered in front of Honeydukes—the letters "MB" nearly hidden by an unkempt beard.
Who will give us a job? We may not be branded, but there's no hiding the fresh incisions on our hands, marking us prisoners on probation. And some at least will still remember our names…
On the way to Amrita Agan's house we passed the Shrieking Shack.
Where Voldemort seemingly—
[The quill has slipped from the line again here; the writing continues in the middle of the next line, messy.]
one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine…letters—
—the Shrieking Shack, where He triumphed, is now a memorial, a museum, a small café, a little shop. Postcards and souvenirs. Toy-snakes, child-sized Death Eater masks, buttons flashing the Dark Mark.
Severus had one of his episodes there. He froze and disappeared into himself, leaving only a shell behind. Almost an hour—58 minutes and 27 seconds—he just stood and stared. At what? I can't tell, and he doesn't say.
I remained at his side and pretended to be fascinated with the memorial stones. Marble markers bear the names of their fallen.
Our dead have a memorial only in my mind.
Middle column, third square from the window: Harry James Potter.
Next to Harry, of course: Ron Bilius Weasley.
When we reached the lake, it was my turn to freeze. In the distance Hogwarts beckoned. My first home in the wizarding world. Curious that Azkaban should be my second.
And my third?
I still don't know. When we started down the path, something rustled in the high, dry grass to our left and right, like small animals running towards us, and the Patil twins jumped out of the reeds!
"You shouldn't be here," Parvati said.
"And you mustn't go there," Padma warned.
Suddenly a voluptuous woman (dark skin, black hair) glided down the path and stopped a few feet from the twins. With cold black eyes she stared at us.
"So your little protectors have found you already," she whispered, her voice low and sibilant. "Heed them well."
With that, she moved past us.
Severus shivered.
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