10th September
I have been in a state of restless anticipation and anxiety. Yesterday the Minister announced the matter to be closed, legally, but I'd be a fool to think it was all finished between us. The Ministry will not be happy until I am forced to retreat. So for now, behind closed doors our battle is far from over.
At around three o'clock in the afternoon, I decide to talk a walk in the garden to distract myself and also to allow myself to be glad that I am still here to enjoy it. I fetched my blue jumper from my bedroom, but when I clattered down the back stairs there was a large shape darkening the glass of the back door's window. I stopped where I stood, on the bottom step.
I was not expecting visitors. Whoever had come to see me today had a very specific reason for not wanting to use the front entrance.
I winced slightly as the door was blasted off of its hinges.
"Well that certainly serves as an answer to my dry rot problem," I muttered to myself, determined not to let three- no, four Snatchers faze me. I have not seen off the devil in order to let some minor demons take me down. If I remain calm, maybe they might do the same.
Wishful thinking.
The Snatchers stride past me and into the house. They look over my possessions and start to rifle through them. I seek out their leader.
"Excuse me for rudeness, but what the hell are you doing in my house?"
"Enjoying a free for all."
"I beg your pardon, but since when did my house become a jumble sale?"
"Jumble sale? Nah, we ain't paying. Nice frame though," he picks up a photograph of Adelaide as a baby, but when he finds he can't pull the photograph out of its frame he merely shrugs and tosses it on the floor, shattering the glass covering while the baby in the photograph crawls out of it, terrified.
"You can't just take what you like!"
"Oh yeah?" He sniggers and leans over me. "And you're going to stop me, right?" he says patronisingly. He pushes me down onto the sofa and pulls my wand out of my sleeve.
"Welcome to the real world, littl'un. You and yer Dumbledore, an' all your dream of a new world are dead as ash."
He snaps my wand in my face.
I snatch a shard of glass from the broken frame and attack him with it. I am tempted to get him in the eye, but I fear that would warrant too harsh a retribution, especially if it kills him. I bury the fragment in his shoulder and he yelps in pain.
"Be lucky it wasn't your neck," I snap spitefully, the hurt evident in my tone.
They keep an eye on me after that. Two hours pass before they go, two hours of book tearing, drawer opening and thievery. Each loss gets me. Maybe they did want my money,my ornaments or my jewellery. But did they have to take my nightclothes? Or my slippers? Or even the clothes I set aside for when Adelaide grows older.
Though their leader is still bleeding from the glass in his shoulder, he does not resent me enough to ignore his sole order: just as he and his crew are leaving he hands me a letter. I open it once they are gone, in case it is a Howler.
But it is not a Howler. It is an invitation.
To celebrate the commencing of new Ministry reforms, Pius Thicknesse, Minister for Magic, cordially invites you to
The London Book Burning
16th September 1997, 4pm
Your attendance is compulsory
I leave the invitation on the kitchen table as I step out into the garden. I don't want that hanging in my pocket like a lead weight when I am trying to think.
Everything keeps coming back. Events, memories. Sometimes I wonder if anything really changes, or if everything just keeps doubling back.
The last light of the day is fading fast, waving of the water of the river. But then that too returns. I stop, my left foot on the last step of the bridge.
It's a Patronus, but I can't tell whose. A beautiful silver doe; she pauses at the edge of the river by the reeds. I move to follow her and she simply walks in a circle once, then strides off towards the trees. It is then that I see, in the light that shines off her beautiful form, a web.
It is a web of silk, but not that of a spider. The glistening thread loops around the branches of the trees, hanging like a canopy, weaving around the trunks and spreading across the ground before vanishing among the reeds.
Ever grateful that the doe found me when she did, I wind my fingers through the silk until I find the loop that marks the beginning. To find whatever lies at the end of the line requires patience and focus.
Slowly, I begin to reel it in, taking slow small steps so as not to disturb the web. I laugh to myself as it leads me around and around the trunk of a tree like a maypole. It takes time, but my curiousity is piqued by whatever lies among the reeds. I watch the thread glide down from the braches as I pull at it, like water in the falls. I wind its softness through my fingers before releasing it onto the ground.
Finally, I begin to reel in the last two feet or so and pull out my catch. Dripping wet, is a wand.
I remove the silk tied around the handle and fold my hands around it. It is shorter than my previous wand and unyielding. It will not serve me as well as my previous wand, which chose me, but I think circumstances will allow for that. In time perhaps, my wand may become better acquainted with its strange new mistress and I might acquire a good ally in this new wand.
I am then overcome by the strange sudden urge to laugh. Not an amused laugh, or a mocking one. Nor is it a hopeful or a triumphant laugh. There is no triumph for me- not yet. Nothing awaits me yet but more strife and sin and threat. I am told I have very little to hope for, that if I am lucky enough to die old I will only die penniless and frustrated.
No, the laugh is a happy laugh; a laugh that wants nothing better to sing itself to the heavens. A laugh because I am still here, because I am not broken yet.
16th September 1997
"So you decided to come. Wanting to join in the fun after all?"
"Hardly." Pius Thicknesse is resplendent in plum velvet robes, not a dissimilar shade of colour to his face last week. I, in stark contrast, am back in plain black with a dour expression to match. "You may celebrate the destruction of enlightenment, I on the other hand mourn his passing."
He shrugs and helps himself to a glass of mead after it has been checked for poison. This regime may relish in displaying its total control but it remains suspicious, as the evil that created it may also be the evil that brings it down. Nobody really trusts anyone else here. Your best friend could turn you in for questioning before you know it. Amazing how loyalty is checked when Azkaban is in question. Everybody swears total devotion to the regime, but those of us who understand the nature of power know full well that this can only last so long before it collapses in on itself, buckling under the weight of corruption and red tape.
But for now, they make their hay. The burning has yet to begin but the masses are pressing into the Atrium, all eager to join in the revelry, even if inside they know they will enjoy it just as much as I will.
The destruction of the written word is treated as a fairground attraction, with long tables of rich food cooked by house elves and served on fine china stolen from Muggle Borns. The Victorian china that belonged to my brother in law's grandmother is on there somewhere, only to be grabbed and snatched at by greedy fingers. What do they care if it smashes? What do they care if I never get it back? If it breaks on the floor the pieces will be ground into powder by trodding feet.
The Ministry does not quite have the audacity to hang streamers and balloons, but festivity is still there, a blanket smothering the barbaric.
Slightly off the centre of the Atrium stands a massive pile of books, stolen by the "infidels" or ransacked by bookshops or libraries. Books that may once have been treated lovingly by Irma Pince, or handled by Hogwarts students seeking answers to essay questions all meet their demise here. From where I stand (in my humiliation, next to the Minister and Umbridge and the Heads of Departments, all of us on a raised platform, with a railing to protect us from being crushed by the crowds- such fate is for the lowly) I cannot make out their titles, but I know that they all have one common theme: all the books, whatever their genre, whatever the blood status of their author, all are at odds with Ministry ideology and therefore cannot be tolerated.
Off to the side, safely out of the way of the pyre, stands the plinth of the Ministry-approved literature. Books by pureblood, pro-Voldemort authors. Books supporting their ideas and way of life. Rita Skeeter in particular and her new book The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore is on especially lavish display. I dislike their readers, who now shout their praises and crudely condemn those on the pyre, but I hold nothing against the books. To do so would contradict everything I consider to be liberated speech and free art. I do not wish to dispose of those on display,I just pine for diversity, for richness of culture and this barren and flat expression starves me, not of food but of higher things.
The crowd eagerly presses around the pile and the signal is given for the books- now just torchwood for a bonfire- to be ignited. Instinctively I press my eyes shut, not able to bear the sight of this most foul of acts. I feel ashamed (not as ashamed as the arsonists should be) that my pitifully plain diary lies safe at home under lock and key, while far greater and more esteemed works go up in flames just for saying what they want to say, what they have to say.
Thicknesse's voice curls itself into my ear. "You will watch this; and you will smile."
Ironically, a Muggle quote springs to mind. ""One may smile, and smile, and be a villain."" [Hamlet.]
"What?"
"Never mind."
Under his threats, I force a grimace onto my face while inside I burn with a disgust stronger than the fire consuming the books.I clench my teeth to hold in every inch of my anger and my knuckles whiten as I grip the railings to hold me up. I flinch every time a book is thrown onto the fire, I want to scream as fiercely as if I were on the bonfire myself. Book after book is thrown on, the Atrium's mob is chanting itself into a frenzy, the flames blinding out all reason. We have plunged deep indeed.
"I don't see why you are overreacting like this," says the Head of a Department to my left. "They're just paper, really."
I turn and don't bother to bite back my retort. "And you're just an overgrown ape, really," I continue despite his offence. "The thing that makes you different from the other animals is the same thing that makes those books more than paper. Ideas, theories, ventures into the unknown, the beauty of building something new over the old. Today you trample on ideas, saying "they are nothing but paper," tomorrow you will be trampling on the bodies and gravestones of innocent people saying "they are just animals,really.""
I stay and I watch as the crumpling pages disintegrate into ash. By the time someone casually pours a glass of punch over the remains of intellect, almost everyone has gone, leaving a mess of smashed plates, overturned tables, food and drink splatters that the house elves clean up. I rub my arms to try and bring some warmth of feeling back to them. But the fire of hatred leaves a bitter chill and I am left without a windblock.
A drunken Snatcher slaps me over-heartily on the back and laughs at the aftermath of the burning.
"You know what? I been thinking-"
"For exactly two minutes before you rejoined the hysterical savages."
"Shut it, young'un. I been thinking- it's like a metaphor."
"Behold the mystical presence of the multisyllable word."
"You see, you young'un an' Potter an' Weasley an' all your lot, you're like the ashes. An' our lot-"
He jabs a finger at the Magic is Might statue. "We're them. We got the power and the money an' all that. Compared with us- you're nuffink. You ain't worth noticin'."
"Maybe," I reply slowly. "But ash can't do this."
"Do what?"
I punch him in the face.
2nd October
"Dung, you're wasting your time. the Snatchers took everything of value, there's nothing left to steal."
He looks at me oddly. "I don't always think about business, y'know."
"Then why are you here?"
"I found these." He draws from his bag a wooden box of knives- my knives. It's all I can do not to snatch them out of his hands straight away. He must have bought them off the Snatchers- or stolen them. The manner of retrieval is irrelevant: I want my property back.
"But I can't just give it to you Marion. Times are 'ard, on all of us."
"I just told you, the Snatchers took everything of value. Money included,"
"Then what do I get for 'em?"
"How does this sound, for a deal? You give me my knives, I don't curse you to Bayswater and back for your poor conduct in battle- and you know what I'm talking about. Weapons are valuable- so is redemption. Give them back."
Eventually impatience and mingled pity gives way and I send him out of the house with a fresh loaf of bread, a dozen apples and solid lumps of cheese. But I get my knives back; and before long I hope to get everything back- and more.
25th October
The drumming and splashes of the continual rainfall do nothing to quench the fire raging still in my head. Every time I close my eyes or even just forget the war for a moment it blazes back, each new grievance or injustice serving as dry tinder that makes it burn brighter.
For me now, Knockturn Alley is the safest place in London, if only because it is a devil with which I am well acquainted. Its business is growing, the numbers of the underworld swelling. The rest of the country's prospects are as grim and limp as my soaking clothes.
Like moths to a light, the vague glimpse of sunlight brings out whole groups of the Wandless from their dens. They grasp at it, the closest thing to gold left, with no money or wand. Some falter in their reach and die grasping at one last value.
It seems that the Death Eaters are only marginally kinder to the Wandless in death than in life. They kick them aside in the road and complain about the smell, yet leave them to rot.
I see one tall man bend over in the street and close the eyes of a dead Wandless man and cover him with a sheet. I am about to walk over to the stranger and commend him for his nobility when he straightens up and I recognise who he is: Kingsley Shacklebolt.
It is all I can do not to run up to him and embrace him and Thank Providence that he's still alive.
Careful not to appear as if I am following him, I walk behind him until I am close enough to tell him :"Kingsley, it's me."
He whirls around, wand pointed at my throat.
"How do I spread butter on my toast in the morning?"
I smile at the memory. "Well, first you take out your butter dish. You never buy the butter that comes in little tubs, you always buy the wrapped kind. Then you take your butter knife and glide it over the surface of the butter from end to end until you have a good coating of butter on the knife. You never lop off a corner or dig out a chunk, because that makes a mess and is difficult to spread. Then you bend back your piece of toast so that it is a flat surface and you slide the butter over the still warm toast so that is melts nice and evenly. Then you use your other knife to cut the toast into small squares and you carefully eat one square at a time. But if you think nobody's looking, you do what I do and cram it all into your mouth at once."
Satisified, he lowers his wand and I raise mine. "Why is it that, when you are especially pleased with me, you sometimes call me Poppy?"
He clears his throat. "Poppy is short for your chosen surname, Popyngcart. The poppy is a wild flower, vivid in colour but not beautiful. Its product, opium is a drug and a controversial subject that has even started wars. An overdose can kill you, or give relief from pain. To many, it is considered a weed or a pest. It is a flower of the battlefield, that blooms even when everything around it is destroyed and lives, even when surrounded by the dying."
Confident that we are who we say we are, we begin to walk out of the street to find somewhere more secluded, to talk.
"I had reason to be suspicious, Marion. That wand is not your own."
"Sadly, no. Snatchers took mine and snapped it, so I had to find another. What has been happening in the meantime with you, Kingsley?"
"Whatever you do, Marion don't say you-know-who's name. Don't! They must have put a taboo on it, I said his name and ended up surrounded by Death Eaters. I only just got away, I don't know if they are still looking for me."
"Then why aren't you in disguise all the time?"
"The same reason you aren't. There are charms on almost every important magical building to reveal disguises. Wearing an unfamiliar face is even more dangerous than wearing a wanted one. Everybody expects the wanted to be in disguise, there is even talk of the Ministry introducing identification papers that must be shown for any magical trade or transaction, therefore preventing any Undesirables or Muggle Borns ever being able to buy magical goods that may make them a threat ever again. Now let's get someone safer, I stayed here longer than I intended to."
He offers me his arm and we disapparate to a field somewhere in the Cotswolds.
Now that there are less people around, I look Kingsley up and down. He's thinner than before and although he is ever calm, there are signs of worry in his face. I smile to see him. He is more regal in his patched and worn robes and without any signs of office than Fudge and Thicknesse combined ever were, in all their finery and their lengthy ridiculous titles. He has always had a sort of quiet authority, a natural dignity you would say. He doesn't need to roar to be a lion.
"I'm very glad to see you alive, Kinglsye."
And I you," he raises an eyebrow. "I read about your trial."
"Oh,the Daily Prophet just loves me right now."
"The Prophet was quick enough to denounce you power-hungry, vicious and insane. There is pinch of truth there, though it was all vastly blown out of Quibbler, however, was less imaginative with the imagery and stuck closer to the facts, even if it wasn't exactly sympathetic. It argued that due to your young age and the fact that prison was considered as a sentence, you should at least have had the offer of legal aid. You owe a lot to Xenophilius Lovegood."
"I have begun to pay him back for it. You think all those anonymous pro-Potter articles come from nowhere?"
"You wrote them? Interesting. But where on earth did you get all the information from?"
I don't need to answer that question. He's beginning to work it out himself.
"The night Scrimgeour died. You had a big red box in your hands. Those kinds of boxes contain confidential information, there's only one reason Scrimgeour would give you a box like that. But you didn't destroy it, did you?"
"Not all of it. In fact, almost all of it survived destruction. But I'd say less than half of it has been even mentioned in the pages of publication. The rest is saved, in case Lovegood flips out and does a U-turn and starts copying the Prophet. In which case I will have to find some other way to keep the public informed. I'll post leaflets if I have to. Look,I know it is illegal-"
"Leaking information warrants 7 years in Azkaban, Marion. I can't believe it. You've escaped a prison sentence by the skin of your teeth, only to just go back to activities that could easily and fairly land you back in the courts again."
"Keep your hair on, not even Xeno knows it's me. But I got myself out of the courts for a reason, another reason than self-preservation. I would be a poor journalist, I would be a disgrace to our language if I didn't tell the truth when it was called for. The Prophet has Rita Skeeter, The Quibbler has Lovegood and me. This battle we could win. And you can help me win it. Please Kingsley, help me. And I promise I will reward you, given time."
"Marion, I am not a hired opinion. My silence is not bought. I gain my rewards myself, from my endeavours alone. I am not going to help you because I like you, or because you are on my side and can help me. I will help you because you are another human being, who needs help."