Prisoners of Azkaban, Probationary Diaries August 2009, Prisoners #19-09-1979 and #09-01-1960

oooOooo

August 20, 2009

[The ink of this entry is smudged in several places by drops of liquid falling on the ink before it completely dried out.]

I am—Oh, Merlin! I have no idea what to write! I—Oh, God! How can I feel happy and as if my heart is breaking at the same time? I am hysterical. I am laughing and crying. Severus just sits next to me, stunned, and keeps transfiguring leaves into tissues, so this entry won't be completely unreadable.

Padma and Parvati must know! Why haven't they told me—us?!?! How could they keep that from me???

…Severus says because they probably were afraid I'd react just the way I do.

[A nearly illegibile line of writing.]

I must concede he has a point. Bloody man, always so reasonable.

But I am supposed to write down what happened, not how I feel. (Given that I write with my blood and Veritaserum, that's almost impossible, though. Even for Severus.)

Despite Severus' misgivings, I set out for the western gatehouse this morning. (He only allowed me to go because I demonstrated several times that I can Apparate back to our cottage safely.) I used the Point Me spell to find my way and Limites Revelio to stay beyond the boundaries of Hogwarts. Padma said the wards are deadly now.

—It wasn't easy. To approach Hogwarts, on the road that Harry, Ron, and I took all those Hogsmeade weekends—

[Yet another splodge, ink smeared by drops of liquid.]

…I…I cannot remember how many there were…

I left the road before the gate. Staying at least ten metres or 32.8 feet or 10.9 yards from the grounds, I turned left—west—and started walking. To my right—to the north—stretched the Forbidden Forest, the one corner on Hogwarts Grounds. Dark and gloomy in the rain. Fog obscured the hilltops and wavered in the wood. I kept my wand out and thought of Alastor Moody. "Constant vigilance!" he barked at me before the Final Battle, to cheer me up. The curse that killed him hit him right between the eyes.

Milly can't remember that day clearly. It has faded into nightmares.

For me it happened yesterday.

The shed.

The snake.

How it—hesitated before it attacked Harry. How they stared at each other, how he shouted at it in Parseltongue…

…how it struck him. Ripped out his throat.

How he—how he tried to give us his memories—

[Almost a whole line of writing is obscured here.]

I started counting my steps. Numbers are safe. Memories not. When I reached 3,936, the gatehouse lay before me. I was halfway up a hill, looking down. I checked and re-checked the wards, before I approached it. But everything was clear. The gatehouse doesn't belong to Hogwarts anymore.

A house-elf opened the door.

Blue eyes, not green like Dobby's. Dressed in immaculate emerald tartan. Including slippers. A free elf?

"Come in," the elf chirped. "Annie Maddock has been expecting you."

I followed the elf.

She led me into a cosy sitting room.

In a rocking chair in front of a bay window, completely immobile, a soft tartan blanket spread over her knees, sat Minerva McGonagall, staring vacantly off towards the hills.

She is paralysed and out of her mind.

But she is alive.

[Another splodge of liquid-smudged bloody ink.]

oooOooo

A/N: Many thanks to Fliewatuet and Mia Madwyn for looking this over.

Further notes:

# The ink splodges in this chapter are different from Severus' smudges. In this entry, the splodges look as if some kind of liquid dripped on the ink before it dried. Perhaps tears.

# "Limites Revelio" means something like "Show the Borders". It's a variety of the Revelio spell.

# The western gatehouse looks something like this (minus the surrounding countryside; it's not that close to the lake): .

# Annie Maddock is apparently a canon house-elf and once belonged to the Lovegood family.