Running Close to the Ground

Chapter Seven: A Cartoon in a Cartoon Graveyard

Then he started in a-dealin' with slaves, and somethin' inside of him died.

- Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up in Blue"

Dubrovnik, 1994

I have come here traveling as a rat by day and a man by night. To Muggles, this country was once part of Yugoslavia and is now - after a hard-fought war that still flares up now and again - called Croatia. Wizards have always known it as Dalmatia.

Moony's first scientific expedition took him here, back in '78. He was supposed to be studying the East Mediterranean Sea Serpent, but it sounds like he had plenty of fun on the side. I remember whole passages from his letters. It sounded like paradise: perfectly clear blue seas fringed with palm trees; little red-roofed, white-walled towns; paving stones worn smooth as glass by countless generations of feet; slim dark-eyed girls in short skirts.

And now? Half the roofs blown off, ruined shells of buildings spattered with bullet holes, brown burnt mountains rising over the city. In the countryside you see whole villages deserted, with blood red poppies blooming where windows and doors used to be. The signs of social chaos are everywhere, too: windows smashed in by looters and young cripples begging in the streets.

And yet the people cling to some sort of rules and order. They give you a receipt for everything here, even the pay toilets. I don't know what you're supposed to do with them. I'm sorry, ma'am, but that was a defective shit, would you please take it back and let me have another?

Coming into this city in my human form was a mistake. I feel like everyone is staring at me and muttering things that are probably hostile, not that I'd have a clue if they were since I don't speak one word of the language. An old Muggle tune keeps running through my head. A man walks down a street. / It's a street in a strange world / maybe it's the Third World / maybe it's his first time around. / He doesn't speak the language and he holds no currency. / He is a foreign man...

An alley cat is curled up just outside the city walls, cold and stiff with the bones almost jutting through its skin. I could die here just like that cat and nobody would ever know the difference.

I walk down the wide central street of the old town. It is a city of churches, saints mounting the roofs and clutching crosses in militant hands.

He looks around, round / sees angels in the architecture / spinning in infinity...

I turn aside, feeling dizzy; I am more at home in the maze of crooked alleyways and narrow staircases that make up the side streets. I have lived so long as a creature of holes and corners that open spaces make me nervous.

I need a drink, I tell myself. That will make things better. I find a café where the waitress speaks a little English; at least, she says "Hello," and smiles, though the sorrow never quite disappears from her face.

"One large beer, please."

It turns out she doesn't speak my language so well after all, because she has a hasty consultation with another waitress and a dictionary, and finally comes out of the kitchen with a large beer and a dish of peas. I shrug and eat the peas. I'm starving, anyway.

The second waitress, Lena, speaks much better English. We chat a bit as I finish my drink. "It's quiet here tonight," I say, looking around the café. "Not many customers."

She shakes her head. "The tourists were how we made our living, and now, nobody comes to Dubrovnik. Who knows when they will be back?"

"Bad times?"

"Not so bad now as it was in 1991. Then, we were living like rats in a sewer. No water, no electricity, the streets full of ... of broken pieces of things."

"Rubble?"

"Yes. That is the word."

I nod sympathetically. "I know a bit about living like a rat. It's bloody awful."

Lena stares at me, suspicion clouding her dark eyes. "You are English. How can you know?"

"I was a soldier once," I say vaguely, and fortunately this answer seems to satisfy her.

"More beer?"

"Yes, please."

I don't want to lie to her. I don't want to start another war that will turn my own country into ... this. I want to be well away from here. I want to go home, harm no one, and live unharmed, and I want to tell these kind, sad-eyed girls who are doing their best to speak my language that I hope they find peace. But hell, if I said that, they'd probably just bring me more peas.

Perhaps it's not too late to turn back, I think. Perhaps I could vanish into the postwar chaos and pretend to be a Muggle who's lost his papers, performing the occasional Confundus or Obliviate if anybody gets suspicious. I could steal a boat and do some fishing, or even try to make my way as a street artist after the tourists return. If they return.

I Transfigure my napkin into a considerable amount of Muggle currency, enough to leave Lena a generous tip. "Go out and buy yourself something nice," I tell her, hoping she'll take the hint and spend the money before it turns into a napkin again.

Slowly, I walk away from the café and mount the city walls, where I do a bit of sketching as the sun sinks low over the sea. A tower like a chess castle takes shape on my pad, surrounded by stone walls that have stood through the siege as they have stood through many wars before. The last of the sunlight tints them with rose, and hundreds of swallows circle above the city's broken roofbeams.

And beyond it all, the blood-red light stains the clean waters of the Adriatic, and a few boats come into harbor with their sails furled. Their masts and ropes look like skeletons.

I look down at my drawing and frown. The lines are a little off, a little crooked. It's because I have only four fingers on my right hand.

Fuck yes, it's too late to turn back.

I slip out of the city after dark and turn my steps southward, toward Albania.

If you'll be my bodyguard,

I can be your long-lost pal...

Godric's Hollow, 1973

On Boxing Day we gather at James' house to compare presents.

It hasn't been a particularly brilliant Christmas for me. My mother, who means well but has an unholy knack for picking up bargains that are Very Bad Ideas, dug up something called The Game of Dental Hygiene, which even the inventive brains of my friends can't make entertaining. ("You forgot to floss; shame on you! Lose two turns.") And Remus and I have an unspoken agreement not to buy Christmas presents for each other, because neither of our families has any money. He feels obligated to get something for the others, even if it's just a new quill or a bar of chocolate, because they always give us something, but that's about as far as his pocket money will stretch. I don't have any pocket money at all.

James and Sirius gave me a book about the Animagus transformation which I'm sure they'll want to borrow back within a week, and for some reason Mr. Stevens, the Muggle pensioner living down the street, gave me a sketch pad and a set of pencils. That was weird. I don't think we've said so much as ten words to each other, although I suppose he must have seen me doodling on scraps of parchment sometimes.

That was probably my best gift, but it's overshadowed by James' model Quidditch pitch and Remus' Stratosphere Five. It's only slightly used, and his parents can't really afford it, but somehow they managed it anyway. Now I'm the only one who doesn't have a broomstick.

As the other three boys zip around on their broomsticks, I sit on the lowest limb of the apple tree, sketching. I try to get the blur of James' hair right, and the clear lines of the bare branches, and the smudge of shadows on snow.

At last Remus alights, looking tired and stiff; he stumbles a bit as he walks through the new-fallen snow. "You can have a go, if you like," he offers.

I shake my head. "That's all right." I look silly on a broomstick. The others would only laugh at me.

"What's that you're drawing?"

I move my hand aside and let him have a look.

"Oh wow," he says, "that's us. I mean, it's totally us, not just people who sort of look like us. You're really good, you know. You have a gift."

"Thanks," I say, trying to play it cool. This picture is better than anything I've ever drawn before; I already knew that, but hearing it from somebody else gives me a warm feeling inside, like I've just taken a swallow of hot butterbeer.

"Can I show the others?"

I'm tempted, but I shake my head. "I'd rather you didn't. They wouldn't understand."

But Sirius has already flown down to check out what we're looking at. Being from an old pureblood family, he's unimpressed. "What good is a picture that doesn't move?"

Hogwarts, 1974

Sirius learns the answer to his question during a particularly dull History of Magic class, when I start drawing a series of cartoons called "A Day in the Life of Snivellus Snake, the Sexy Slytherin."

In the first panel, Snivellus stands in front of a reptile-framed mirror, admiring his reflection. Well, you know what they say about men with big noses ... if I'm not much mistaken, I'm too sexy for my robes! I must rub some Girl-Repelling Grease in my hair so they'll leave me alone!

"That's ... not ... at all nice," whispers Moony unconvincingly, between snickers.

But wait! I put the grease in too soon, I forgot that I need a date for the Pureblood Social Club Dance. Oh well, there's Dominatrix Black, and she's decent-looking if you cross your eyes and really squint. I'll ask her.

I add a caricature of Sirius' least favorite cousin, exaggerating her heavy, long-lashed eyes and giving her horns and a forked tail. Sirius snorts.

Dominatrix, would you like to go to the Pureblood Mutual Wanking Club ... er, Social Club Dance with me?

Go away, peasant boy! I am a Black. We don't date anyone more distantly related than second cousins, that's why so many of us are insane.

"Go on," mutters Sirius. "I thought you were making a comic book, not a documentary."

Shot down! I don't see how she can resist my manly charms! Oh well, I'll just try her older sister. Excuse me, Narcissisis... Narcissistica...

I'm not going out with you if you can't pronounce a simple name like Narcissismicissima! What an idiot! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to gaze at my own reflection until I drown.

Snivellus stalks off, muttering to himself: I don't get it! I must be so sexy I intimidate them. Well, I'll just have to ask the one girl in the castle whose personal charms are a match for my own...

"Who?" whispers James, leaning forward breathlessly as I begin to fill in the next panel. With a few strokes, I sketch the fuzzy outline of a girl rising out of a toilet.

"Moaning Myrtle?" Remus tries to stifle a violent case of the giggles.

Sirius grins. "Match made in heaven, wouldn't you say?"

Remus watches me closely as I give Myrtle acne and glasses. "You're drawing with your left hand," he says curiously. "Aren't you right-handed?"

"Yeah, usually." I've always been a little bit ambidextrous. I've never thought about it before, but somehow my left hand is the one I naturally use for caricatures, although I need to draw with my right hand for anything involving straight lines or fine detail.

"That's neat," he says. "Wish I could draw with even one."

I'm not used to being the center of attention, or having anyone envy me. It's nice. And a few months later, when we start work on the Marauder's Map, they remember that I'm the one with the gift for line and proportion and the skill to add the little flourishes in the corners. I feel like I've found my place in our group at last.

Little Hangleton, 1995

"And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death ..."

The boy I killed lies flat on his back, his blank grey eyes staring at the darkening sky. I can see that he is tall and good-looking, and I know that he would have been Tri-Wizard champion but for my master's plans. One of fortune's favorites, I tell myself, and probably stuffed full of conceit and self-righteousness when he was alive.

I look at him so I will not have to look at James' son.

"... And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort ... perhaps they now pay allegiance to another ... perhaps that champion of commoners, of Mudbloods and Muggles, Albus Dumbledore? It is a disappointment to me ... I confess myself disappointed."

The Dark Lord's voice is precise, correct, chilling. For once, someone other than me will bear the brunt of his wrath. Every man and woman in the circle is as terrified as I am.

Make it stop, I think feverishly, cradling the stump of my right arm. Make his voice stop, the pain stop, everything. Let me wake. Or for God's sake, let something happen.

And then something does happen. Bardolph Avery throws himself at the Dark Lord's feet, as if he were a madman. "Master! Master, forgive me! Forgive us all!"

That's Avery for you: the only man among us who thinks of someone besides himself when it comes down to the wire, the only one fool enough to draw the Dark Lord's anger down on his own head instead of waiting to see who's going to catch it. He's either the bravest coward or the most cowardly hero I've ever known.

"Crucio!"

Oh hell. I turn my eyes away, trying to tune out Avery's screams and the Dark Lord's high, screeching laugh. At least it isn't me at least it isn't me atleastitisntme...

"Get up, Avery. Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget. Thirteen years ... I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?"

Lovely, now it is me. He motions me forward.

"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?"

I do. But not for the reason you mean. For once I am trying to think of the pain, trying not to think of the other thing I have sacrificed. The sketch of Dubrovnik harbor swims before my eyes, and the other one, the one of the three boys flying in the snow...

"Yet you helped me return to my body. Worthless and traitorous as you are, you helped me ... and Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers..."

A stream of molten silver flows from his wand and takes the shape of a human hand. My right hand. It settles on my wrist and binds itself to my flesh as the blood begins to clot.

Experimentally, I pick up a twig as I would a pencil. It crumbles into powder. His gift is useless for anything but dealing death.

But I know my part; I kiss his robes and thank him. "My Lord ... Master ... it is beautiful." The other Death Eaters make room for me in the circle, and the ones who know my name and have pieced together some of my story nod approvingly behind their hoods, thinking: Silver kills werewolves.

But that's a little too clichéd, too obvious for the Dark Lord, isn't it? Most of his jokes, if you can call them that, have a double edge, and he has never tired of taunting me about that old betrayal. As my master speaks of the rewards that await his faithful ones, I hear the echo of another well-worn phrase: thirty pieces of silver.

One day, after all this is over, I expect I'll be handed a rope and invited to hang myself in the Godric's Hollow churchyard. Get it? The Potters' field.

Yeah. I don't think it's very funny either.