One Honest Heart

The Patronus Charm is used to fend off Dementors. Being the spectral embodiment of its caster’s happiness, the Patronus repels the Dementors who thrive on misery and despair.

Proper practice of the Patronus Charm is difficult to achieve since most students fail to put themselves in a suitable state of mind without the actual presence of a Dementor. When Dementors were banned from the Hogwarts grounds, practical study of the Patronus was removed from the Defence Against the Dark Arts course plan. Attempts to use shapeshifters as stand-ins for Dementors have consistently failed to be of any real use.

— from Spells & Charms III, 1976 ed.

One of the best examples of this is the Patronus Charm. Its incantation, Expecto Patronum, is a masterpiece of layered spell-making that channels its wielder’s power in the most direct and visible way possible. Expecto Patronum helps its caster will a physical embodiment of his magical power into existence. It creates an autonomous weapon of pure willpower that can home in on its target while its wielder’s mind is muddled by the fear that Dementors use to incapacitate their prey.

Lexically, both halves of the charm carry multiple meanings, all relevant and working together towards the expulsion of the Patronus. The etymological Latin origins of expecto that will resonate most clearly for modern users are the most obvious: to expect, to look out, (ex specere). To produce a Patronus, one must expect it to appear. Since this is inherent in all incantations, it need rarely be addressed within the wording itself. The fact that it is in evidence here proves the failsafe nature of this vital protection charm.

The second origin of expecto is the one more specific to this particular charm: to expel from the chest, expectoro. It is likely the wielder’s wand is placed right before his chest when the charm is used and therefore this centring of power in that area is most useful, facilitating the focusing of the power that needs to be expelled. The (inherently flawed) assumption that goodness and happiness resides in the heart (pectus) helps the caster concentrate on the positive energy that he needs to produce the Patronus. Such concentration is vital as our only direct channel to the pure and undiluted magic inside us are the very feelings that the Dementors subvert, or attempt to destroy, in order to make our own magic inaccessible to us.

The part of the spell that deals with what we are to expect is unsurprisingly the one richest in connotations. The root of patronum is, of course, the Latin patr, father. The most fundamental reason for this (often overlooked) is that this is a charm that is very much the product of a patriarchal society. The patr is expected to preserve and protect. The fact that the most powerful of gods have often been pictured as great fathers is telling. The father is a symbol of safety, protection, power, and benevolence – precisely the things essential to the creation of a Patronus that knows its purpose.

. . .

The father image inherent to the Patronus Charm has the rarely discussed side effect of affecting the strength of an individual Patronus based on the caster’s relation to his father or the image of a father. This would explain the much hyped Potter Patronus, cast as it is by a boy who went from direct father worship to a conflicted turmoil of emotions that are all excellent at counteracting Dementor influence and creating a very powerful Patronus indeed. Rather than being a sign of Potter’s great magical powers or prowess, his Patronus is a sign of his substantial psychological father issues. Issues that have thus far served him well.

. . .

Phonetically, the Patronus Charm is a prime example of an expulsion incantation. Heavily aspirated and semi-aspirated p’s and t’s interact crosswise to phonologically represent the thrusting forth of the father figure that is the Patronus. . . . The consonant sounds of the two stressed syllables together form [p^htr], a close approximation of the Latin patr. . . . The final [nm] can easily be seen as a shortened form of [nam], adding to the sense of reverent foreboding, building the expectation implied in Expecto.

. . .

Considering the amount of guidance and direction inherent in the very wording of this charm, it is a sure sign of the degradation of wizarding kind that so many people these days suffer great problems creating even the faintest wisp of a Patronus. Though considering the lamentable effects of its destructive twin, the Killing Curse, perhaps this too is a blessing, for never has wit been spread so thin over the Wizarding World as today.

— from Phonetic Focus and Conductive Connotations, or Why the Will is Mightier than the Quill by Henry Witherto, 1999

To please the spirits of the Empty Woods,
To fill the fiends that on the merchants fed,
The Rulers ruled to offer Sacrifice;
To ease the calling of the Empty Ones,
To still the waking nightmares they inspired,
They picked a boy of wit and reason dull
And bade his brighter brother bring him forth
Into that deep and dreary Darkened Wood,
Infested with the fest’ring evil sores
That ravage souls and leave but withered cores.

Poor were the boys, no ruling could refuse;
Against their will, without a backward glance,
They ventured t’wards that vile Forbidden Wood;
The elder wept, the younger wondered why,
Then from the dark was heard a ghastly cry.

From every shade, from every beastly bower,
The damnéd Empty Ones came wailing forth
And circled round the boys to break their wits.
In fevered fits they crumpled to the ground,
Both victims of that vicious, searing sound.

But in the Boy where Wit was loosely tied,
There dwelt a sleeping, silent, secret Soul;
Beneath his breast, a shining Knight drew breath
To thunder forth; Avenge his brother’s death.

Of passion, power and the heart of Life
Composed, beside himself he stood his ground,
Opposed the Empty fiends with fiery light;
With strength of spirit, like a Phoenix fought
Against the damnéd spirits o’the dirt;
Their foul advance with flame did he divert.

Drew back they did, like Shadows from the Light,
Like Darkness from the bloom of budding Day,
And bowed before the One they could not fight,
Before that Kingly Soul they could not slay.

Thus having won his vict’ry of the Heart,
He settled slowly on a stronger shape
And rose with brain and brawn of brother born.
Then by the Empty Ones an oath was sworn:
To him or his they would not do a thing;
From that day on, was he their Shining King.

— from the Tale of the Shining King, from a seventeenth century manuscript

At 2PM yesterday, Bellatrix Lestrange, confirmed Death Eater, was subjected to the Dementor's Kiss at Azkaban Prison.

The decision to dement Lestrange was, according to Ministry officials, taken recently and was in part the result of the problems the Azkaban facility has had with its Dementor wardens of late.

"Lestrange escaped once. We couldn't risk her running loose again," said a visibly pressed Charles Umbridge, prison director, at the press conference held after the execution.

Neither Umbridge nor any of the other officials present could provide any clear answer to the question of whether the public should expect imminent breakouts from Azkaban or if Lestrange was deemed particularly prone to escape.

Most known for her cruel torture of Alice and Frank Longbottom, turning the couple into permanent St Mungo's residents, Lestrange has resisted all attempts at classifying her as insane. To the end, she claimed to be of perfectly sound mind.

Her last words are reported to have been: 'In any case, that beast will be served a healthy meal.'

Our source also claims it was Lestrange who initiated the Kiss, taking the Dementor by surprise and nearly curtailing the procedure as the creature drew back in shock.

Lestrange's body will be transported to the Weiste facility for keeping later this week.

Even when I stayed after class, I was still one of the crowd, just another one of those troublesome people who demanded something in return for the money they donated. I was just another student trying, and repeatedly failing, to leach learning from the esteemed Mr. Henry Witherto. And in Henry's eyes, this also made me an idiot, and thus unworthy of his attention. Only idiots, he seemed to reason, would need Patronus training as grownups, and choose him as their teacher. In his own rude way, Henry was right about more things than one might have liked to admit, for fear of making his ego explode.

It quickly became clear that simple dawdling after class would not suffice. I could have been a potted plant for all the attention he gave me. So, I hemmed and hawked and said, in the tried and tested manner of journalists and students both, that 'it must be fascinating, spell research.' He looked up from his papers, arched an eyebrow and said 'Why?'. When I answered that with some kind of goldfish impersonation (he later told me, and I feel bound to agree), he simply turned back to his papers, and that was that for that evening. I went home and got pissed.

After my third failed attempt at luring information out of Mr Witherto, I went for the direct approach. I told him I was working on a story about the Patronus Charm, had done extensive research, and would like to see whether he could contribute anything I did not already know. It was the direct approach of a burning arrow towards an inflammable ego. His reply was that it always amazed him how people could question the blatantly obvious but take the ridiculous rambling of prophets as undisputable fact.

He then turned back to his papers again, and I thought even that approach - tried and tested on Ministry officials and close-mouthed cookery-contest crones - would fail.

When I was halfway through packing my bag, he began his lecture. I sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair, opposite his desk, all night through. The recounting of his research and latest findings followed no chronology that I could detect, was largely anecdotal, rapid and ruthlessly academic, and would have been almost entirely incomprehensible if I hadn't actually done the extensive research I'd claimed to. I'd read all his published work, plus bits of a manuscript I'd managed to weasel out of his publisher. I could fill in all the gaps, sometimes vocally, and make the required leaps of logic and chronology. The fact that he didn't manage to confuse or deter me elevated me, on the Witherto ranking, from common idiot to vaguely promising, if rather slow, imbecile.

The Dementor's defining trait, he explained, was its lack of life, the absence of the energy that keeps all other creatures sentient and aware. The Patronus, on the other hand, is nothing but life. It's a piece of ourselves that we release from the bounds of our body and mind when both are failing us. But life, though strong, cannot exist (at least not in this world) without a body to contain it. Therefore, it seeks a vessel to fill, and the only bodies not already full of life are Dementors and their demented victims. That is why the Patronus charges towards the nearest Dementor. It is, Henry said, rather like water pouring into a cavity in the ground. There is, he concluded with one of his trademark snorts, nothing nobler about our Patroni than about ourselves. Ergo, nothing noble at all.

That morning, I dreamt of snake-like Patroni slithering and sliding into a large black hole, in the centre of which lay the unconscious, bloody shape of Harry Potter. The following evening, our plan took shape, and one week later, the hunt began.

The idea, birthed by me but brought to maturity by Henry, was that Patroni, being pure energy, work on a level of reality where even distant absences of life (Dementors) would affect them, much as the North and South Poles affect a common compass. We theorized that with every other body in Britain filled with life (or rapidly decomposing, as Henry thoughtfully pointed out), Patroni would detect the missing Dementor and gravitate towards it in some barely noticeable manner. Throughout his many Patronus classes, Henry had observed that Patroni tended to pull north, towards Azkaban Fortress.

The theory was that if one cast a Patronus closer to the missing Dementor than Azkaban, it would be drawn towards the single Dementor instead of his many island relatives. When it hit me that the Dementors of Azkaban were indeed very many and thus likely to exert a greater pull at any given point within the British Isles, I felt very ashamed of my stupid idea and told Henry as much. He snorted at me and told me we were not dealing with something as common as magnetism here. Azkaban was not the North Pole. A Patronus needed no more than one body to sustain itself, and operating on a magical plane quite separate from the noise of nature, it would always seek the shortest route to an Empty vessel.

I'm not quite sure I understand all of his explaining to this day. The important thing, as ever, was that he was right.

So, we chose from the class those with the strongest Patroni: Hetty Amberseed, frightened of her own shadow and quite prepared to launch her weasel Patronus at it repeatedly and vindictively; Bob Willsome, the epitome of laziness who thought it a perfectly splendid idea to have unasked-for energy skip off to do his work for him; John Parsnip, the morbid melancholic who seemed to release an unwanted and frightened Patronus fairy from his listless body rather than actively thrusting anything forth (which he seemed incapable of doing just in general); and Mrs Wilma Winterbottom, your archetypical rotund matron who seemed to practically overflow with energy in all directions of life. A busty, bustling busybody who was of the firm opinion that people in general were terribly bad at managing their lives the way she would have. She had such an excess of energy that her expulsion of the Patronus was rather like a small, overcharged locomotive letting off steam.

We chose these people because of their strong and reliable Patroni, not because of their personalities. It seemed, Henry concluded after our first day, that the peculiar predilection for producing powerful Patroni on demand also brought with it a regrettable predilection for being powerfully peculiar. During the later days of the hunt, I would look back on my alternately chaotic and comatose cookery contest days with something akin to fondness.

Hetty was a suspicious, sniping old hag; Bob kept up a steady stream of complaints whenever he had to move his considerable bulk about; John unerringly found the black storm cloud to every silver lining; and Mrs Winterbottom was completely averse to Apparating even the shortest of distances. This aversion proved a substantial problem, as the plan required a great number of Apparations in quick succession. When Mrs Winterbottom was made aware of this fact, she said she would not have it, she simply would not have it. When her authority in the case of what she would or would not have was put into question, and Henry absolutely insisted she was vital to the success of his plan, Mrs Winterbottom turned into what Henry would later describe as a wobbly, plump pudding of woe (what he would later say behind my back, I really don't want to know). She lamented most earnestly that she could not be of service to such a fine gentleman but she had her principles and one of them was not to get splinched, for what ever would her poor children and grandchildren do without her around to organise their dear little lives? One suspects she had, at some point in her life, rather overdosed on Jane Austen. That, at least, was Henry's theory. Henry was very big on theories.

He was also very keen on getting his own way. He put on a sympathetic face, said 'there there,' and enveloped Mrs Winterbottom in a hug just before he Disapparated, distraught wobbly female in a firm grip. After the third time he performed a similar trick, grabbing Mrs Winterbottom in more and more unlikely places, Mrs Winterbottom took it upon herself to brush up on her Apparating skills and was always one of the first to arrive at a new location, eager to get the hunt over and done with. (This eager Apparating was later employed for visiting family and friends, for which we were undoubtedly cursed by many.)

The idea was to cover as much ground as possible in as short a period of time as could be managed, to cast Patroni at a great number of pre-selected locations in order to compare the results and thus form a map to the missing Dementor. Henry, never one to let prejudice stand in the way of progress, had contacted a colleague at a Muggle university to manage this. The Muggle, Charles Williams, used electronic measuring devices to detect the even the slightest hint of a specific trajectory in the Patroni we cast. He then entered these data into a book-like device called a laptop. Using equations that took into account the presence of other sources of Empty bodies (notably Azkaban prison) the laptop presented likely vectors that grew more and more specific and closer and closer together as the hunt progressed.

While we were all encouraged by these results, the constant Apparating tired all of us. And it didn't exactly help that Henry kept giving impromptu lectures on the mechanics of Apparation. Not even my pathologically inquisitive mind appreciated learning that while Apparation worked on the magical plane where natural nuisances like time and space does not matter, disturbances in the web it cast over our physical world can lead to serious problems. Apparation works by the traveller's forcing the part of this magical web that is connected to his destination to reform his physical form there while disintegrating it at his point of departure. His life energy, the same thing that spawns the Patroni, existing on that same magical plane and tied to this world only through the traveller's body, will momentarily flow into the great web only to pour into the new body at its moment of completion. As time has no meaning in the web, this can be said to take no time at all, and no one has calculated the time it does take on the worldly side of the transport. However, holes in the web do appear, for various unexplained reasons, and if such a hole were to be located between the Apparationer and his destination, the transmission of his body might be jumbled. The results are often so poor that the traveller's life energy won't even bother to attempt leaving the magical plane, merging instead into the web. Then, of course, one also runs the risk of one's life energy being distorted, and subsequent insanity.

I told him to shut up, and was promptly upgraded to opinionated dull-wit in the Witherto rankings. I think that was when he began taking a non-professional interest in my presence. He did stay unusually quiet for the rest of that day. And he stopped flirting with Mrs. Winterbottom, which I think rather disappointed her, to tell the truth. He was, after all, a dashingly handsome and quite brilliant bloody bastard.

Henry's Patronus always stomped around longer than anyone else's. That was, he said, because he knew how to make an effort, and thus, so did the spectral embodiment of his power. And he wasn't even trying to be funny.

When the vectors were through coalescing, everyone's spirits sank yet again. The smallest target area the laptop could produce had a two-kilometre radius and most of that ground was covered in dense forest. What made it worse was that the forest in question was the infamous Forbidden one. The only habitation within the target area was Hogwarts castle and we couldn't very well barge in there and turn the castle inside out to look for a Dementor that would hardly have gone unnoticed. So, the Forest it was.

Hetty acquired some sudden stomach ailment, Bob caught it from her with surprising agility, and John felt rather too at home in the dreary Forest to produce any sort of reliable Patronus. We did manage to convince Mrs Winterbottom to join us in the Forest for a while, but after a deranged Bowtruckle chose to forcibly adopt her as its tree of choice, she left in quite a huff and hurry, vowing never to return.

It looked like the end of the hunt, and we'd scarcely had a sniff of our prey. We'd never be able to do a systematic Patronus search of the Forbidden Forest without getting severely injured, or even killed, in the process. And none of our Patroni could sustain itself long enough to track through the forest and lead us like a bloodhound to the missing Dementor.

We were ready to give up, but then Henry came to think of that third element Charles had taken into account when calculating the position of the lost Dementor. That second source of beckoning Emptiness.

13. Bodynapped

The Quibbler – 17 July 2002

BELLATRIX BODYNAPPED

Luna Lovegood, London - While being freighted to the waste facility yesterday afternoon, the bereaved body of Bellatrix Black Lestrange was brusquely bodynapped by a Daily Prophet reporter and her cohorts. The Prophet denies any connection and the Aurors claim no such thing has taken place at all.

Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says she herself witnessed both the planning of the deed and the bringing back of Bellatrix’s body to an undisclosed location.

‘They have the best of intentions, I’m quite sure,’ she says, ‘but I’m afraid the results may not be what they have expected. I’ve said as much, but they would not listen.’

She claims the bodynappers intend to revive Bellatrix Black Lestrange through methods she has chosen not to reveal, she says, for fear of what others might do with that information.

It is not the intent of the bodynappers to bring Bellatrix back but rather to use her body for what our source calls scientific purposes. While she can’t fault their logic, she fears a repetition of the Frankenstein myth and the escape of a new Bellatrix, more dangerous than ever.

Our source would not reveal to us the names of either the reporter or her cohorts but has given this information, and more, to the Aurors in the hope that they might prevent a disaster, should things not go as planned.

The Quibbler will, as always, keep You updated and First In The Know.

14. A Treacherous Trail

It was a beautiful day – high summer – and the small glade was cosier than anything I’d ever imagined I’d find in the Forbidden Forest. Bees hummed and a warm breeze sighed through the high grass. It was enough to turn anyone into a budding poet. Still, the fullness of the swarming forest and the richness of the clear blue sky was counteracted by the ghastly emptiness of the body we had placed at the centre of that peaceful glade. The absence of life in the hooded eyes of Bellatrix Black Lestrange seemed an evil, inverted reflection of the simmering kettle of life wherein we sweated like so many pigs: me, Henry, and the three Aurors who had Apparated onto the scene mere moments after our arrival.

I had to do some very fast talking to keep them from immediately snatching Lestrange from under our noses. I had to convince them that while they were certainly well within their rights to do exactly what we had previously done (‘yes, sir, terribly sorry sir’), it would be in their best interest to consider the ‘whys’ without getting too worked-up about the ‘how’ (‘theft of Ministry property’, nasty way to put it).

Ponder, I put it to them, the probability of Potter’s absence really being connected to that of the Dementor. Could it not be a case of ‘if you find the one, there’s the other’? Harry Potter is one big bonus, I suggested. Imagine, I ventured, becoming the new fabulous trio, the one that found and brought back the Boy Who Lived...

I was fairly confident the tactic would work from the moment I first lay eyes on those cocky young males with their shining, prominently placed badges, turning their haughty gazes towards us. The top men are rarely sent on missions that make the front page of the Quibbler but not a single notice in the Prophet. The right person in the right place, like me at the Prophet; I knew that thinking from the inside. And, as is so often the case, the reverse also seems to be true. There was nothing particularly right about those Aurors. Nor anything wrong enough to warrant execution, at least.

During their rather extended moment of indecision, I explained the plan to them, dumbing it down as much as possible. Patroni can track down Dementors. The downside is that they are ephemeral creatures (‘short-lived; while there is an awful lot of life, it can’t exist on this plane, ehm, well, yes, let’s move on’). They seek Dementors out of a desire to inhabit their soulless bodies (‘in order to stay, well, here’). Since a Demented person is also, per definition, soulless (‘She always was,’ offered the slightly podgy Auror self-righteously), they should work just as well. The pure life-force of the Patronus should be able to make a home for itself in Lestrange’s body and in that form track down our missing Dementor. Perfectly simple, if it worked.

For such blatantly corrupt men, they were surprisingly reluctant. They raised some valid concerns (‘What if it brings Lestrange back to life?’, ‘When it has a body, why’d it search for another? Waste o’ energy, innit?’) and would probably have put a stop to the whole thing if Henry hadn’t cast his Patronus while we were debating the issue.

There was a sucking noise and Lestrange’s body shuddered. She blinked, slowly, several times. Then she smiled, her face radiating innocent incomprehension. It was like looking at a child peering out through the body of a walking corpse. The Aurors backed away as a single entity, which was probably the most coordinated manoeuvre they’d ever managed.

Though I remained where I was, the look on Lestrange’s gaunt face made me uncertain of success. She still looked empty, if in a more lively way. But Henry, as always, was utterly confident. He poked the Lestrange-clad Patronus, with his purely cosmetic ornate cane, to attract what could pass for its attention. ‘Can you understand me?’ he demanded. The body blinked. ‘Allow me to rephrase myself,’ Henry continued. ‘Understand me. Now.’ The hint that the Patronus would face a fatal stripping of bodily cover hung in the air like a sword in slowly tearing cobwebs. The body’s smile grew. It nodded.

‘There is another empty vessel close by. It beckons,’ said Henry. ‘See it as – insurance.’ The meaning of the word could not have been lost even on one who had never heard English in their entire life. Henry was never easily misunderstood when he was in that mood. ‘Lead us to it.’

There was another nod and then the Patronus turned and walked into the dense forest. Its pace was slow and we had no problems keeping up, though the walk was certainly more pleasurable for Henry who left it to me to deal with the Aurors’ complaints and scepticism. Only once did he support my increasingly desperate arguments. The podgy sceptic had wondered how we could be sure the ‘thing’ had understood what it was supposed to do. It seemed merely to be taking a wee stroll, he complained with a mixture of impatience and approval. To that, Henry replied that the Patronus was a part of himself, and there were few things he had trouble grasping. The implication that this soundly separated him from the Aurors was impossible to miss and their complaints stilled somewhat after that.

Though I must admit, even I was a bit unsettled by the apparent aimlessness of Lestrange’s amblings. She walked in a zigzag pattern. Sometimes she even stopped, often to stoop down and pick something up, sometimes to promptly sit down and play around with what she had previously picked up. Fir cones and ugly little sticks were her preferred building blocks in the forest – flowers, herbs, and grass when we emerged into the blazing hot meadows. Henry recited numerous ingenious reasons for her to get up and keep tracking during these sometimes very long, and very warm, interruptions. It seemed to me like trying to raise a child by handing it an academic dissertation on child rearing. She left when the play was over, never sooner. The Aurors took out their irritation on me, because they wouldn’t dare take it out on Henry.

She also had a child’s taste for sampling things with her mouth. At one point, this threw Lestrange’s body into violent fits that thankfully subsided once she had got some water (from the skinny, permanently parched Auror’s water bottle) and had emptied her stomach in the nearest tuft of high grass. There wasn’t much to empty out except some acids and a foul smell. After that, she calmed down somewhat and seemed to acquire something of a focus. Her fir cone-clad sceptre, her crown of weeds, and her grass necklace still made our small search party look like something out of Lewis Caroll, with me as the White Rabbit. Oh, dear.

Having Lestrange lead us straight onto the Hogwarts lawn, through its gardens, and up to the castle itself didn’t exactly help quell my doubts. Henry merely raised an eyebrow. It shames me to recall that I found his utter composure rather sexy in the vibrating summer heat, where we stood all alone outside the main entrance, due to everyone else’s having run off, and in, at the sight of Lestrange, a Demented woman walking.

Her benevolent and befuddled smile was likely the most upsetting thing about her. Albus Dumbledore’s similar expression, as he strode out onto the stairs, certainly unsettled me.

12 March 2002

Trust Potter to come up with kinky new use of Polyjuice. Trust Harry to still feel horny after having drunk that vile goo. Trust me to trust him, and get turned on too.

Am so predictable.

Never knew I was so – lithe. Excess fat, my arse. And not even there. Dieting definitely off to-do list. Polyjuice kinkiness should be compulsory for those suffering compulsive eating disorder or similar. Really. Puts things in perspective. Pretty perspective. Narcissus, c’est moi.

Certainly made for unusual sex. We were as focused on exploring our own bodies as we were on exploring our own bodies. Strangely inverted intercourse in an infinite infinity loop. Mental masturbation. Physical and emotional attraction criss-crossing, intersecting, and interacting. Passion squared.

Queered?

Am still shaking from the sheer orgasmic shock of it. Dazed but not satiated. Urge to pet hand makes writing difficult, or at least an odd sensation, like so much else tonight.

Harry’s coming. Back for more.

!!

[manic scrawls]

4 April 2002

New Polyjuice tastes like juice. An inspired choice. Orange.

Very old juice though, made of stale oranges, but still, less gag-inducing.

Am genius.

Essence of Potter standing by.

Harry very much standing too.

Yummy.

And I don’t mean the bloody potion.

Narcissus, c’est encore moi.

5 June 2002

Narcissus laughs in my face. Narcissus laughs in his face. Mad laughter from my wretched soul and his wretched mouth. Insanity: no longer a place I’m heading for, but one I’ve left behind. Masturbation was never so mental as this.

I speak to myself under the willing delusion that I don’t. His voice is nearly gone. The writing is all mine. All alone.

Still I talk, and recite all I can remember, every little thing, every detail of his life.

But the charade must stop. People will suspect eventually. I was never as amiable as he.

I try to find his smile but it seems forever lost. Narcissus leers back at me.

I miss him so.

[indecipherable]

6 June 2002

Bought a boy in Redlace Street. So drugged-out he hardly noticed the Polyjuice. When he looked in the mirror afterwards, he laughed and called me sick.

I am.

Narcissus laughs in my face and his.

Obliviated the boy before I put him back. Wouldn’t want Harry remembered as a narcissistic sex maniac. Even though it wouldn’t be far from the truth.

Truth is what we make it.

And the unmaking of the lie.

I lie awake at night. My dishonest heart beats against my chest like a damned soul trying to escape its tomb. And I touch myself and him. Stroking, moaning, clawing, crying, scratching, screaming. Locked inside a lecherous, all-consuming lie.

Narcissus howls at me: Give up, and DIE!

16. Vacant Vision

Rising from an uncomfortable yet expensive armchair over which he had been draped since the end of his forced and indecently filthy tale, Lucius drifted towards the hunched figure of his lord, taking great care not to disturb the latter’s concentration. Still, the closer he got, the less it seemed that Voldemort was concentrating. Rather, he was staring into a stone bowl and at a potion displaying all the properties of liquid silver, his eyes wide, jaws quivering.

He had sat like this for some considerable time. Lucius had assumed Voldemort was muttering quiet incantations but his mouth was set in a line so thin it was near invisible on his pocked parchment features.

As if this eerie paralysis were contagious, Lucius came to a dead, half crouching stop, once more locked in the centre of the room. Silence froze in the air, counting seconds and minutes as it fluttered to the restless floor. Lucius waited for a command, a request, an exclamation of incoherent anger that never came.

‘Is there – a problem, my lord?’ he asked at last.

Voldemort jerked backwards, his chair creaking. He offered no answer but stared as unseeingly at the wall as he had stared at the potion, as perfectly still as a man Petrified by a basilisk stare. Lucius wondered if his lord and master had seen his own reflection in the glittering liquid and if, perhaps, he had found it as paralysing as his followers always had.

When the Dark Lord finally stirred again, turned and rose, one hand clutching the back of his chair, his eyes held none of the basilisk power they once had. Voldemort let go of the chair, took a step forward, and stopped, swaying a little before his head twitched to one side, and he froze again.

Disturbed by this stop-motion display and, even more so, by the slight slackness about his master’s jaw, Lucius dared pose his question once again, if only to break the silence. ‘Is – something wrong, master?’

The bald head swivelled, eyes focused, ragged remnants of eyebrows rose in unison. ‘He’s dead,’ said Tom Riddle, voice hollow and tinny. There could be no question of whom he spoke, but there seemed no joy in the declaration, no relief, no elation. Only a strange emptiness, a sudden loss of point and purpose.

Face drawn and eyes wide, Lord Voldemort had never looked so much a dead man walking as he did then, lurching out of the room, not even bothering to slam the door behind him, a wretched cold invading the room in his wake.

Lucius shivered. But not from the cold.

Headmaster Dumbledore was as blatantly amused by our insistence that a Dementor was somehow hidden within the castle as he was subtly appalled by our Patronus animation of Lestrange’s body. As genial as ever, his long, dark glances towards Lestrange revealed as much of his true feelings as one could ever hope to know. Though, as unsettled as I already was, I’d have preferred being able to take his hospitality and calm presence at crinkly face value.

Thanks to the Aurors, we were allowed to search the castle, under heavy guard and led by Lestrange, whose ambling seemed more purposeful indoors. Now, we were only delayed by the thin Auror’s repeated visits to just about every bathroom we passed. He wasn’t feeling well. In various ways, none of us were. Except maybe Henry.

We went up and around, curious students scuttling out of our way, until Lestrange walked into an empty room and stopped. Though there was nothing there, it was clear from her stance that she had reached her destination. When Henry asked her where the Dementor was, she just gave him a long, quizzical look. The podgy Auror snorted and reminded Henry, very haughtily, that the latter had asked the Thing to lead us to an empty vessel. Well, the room was empty, wasn’it? Who could say how that Thing defined vessel, anyway?

It struck me that the room was, in fact, curiously empty, but when I asked the Headmaster about it, he replied that it made itself useful, and left it at that. I didn’t press the matter. What mattered was the lack of a Dementor at the end of our trail. And the Aurors were not at all happy about that. Muttering threats about legal action, they left in a huff, leading Lestrange hurriedly across the Hogwarts lawns. They were eager to leave (and the thin one eager to heave, it seemed) and knew as well as anyone that they could not Disapparate on the Hogwarts grounds. I was in no hurry to get back to a possible arrest and chose to stay with Henry who had, completely unembarrassed, asked Dumbledore’s permission to do some research in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library. And it was among those dusty shelves, with Henry pouring over some ancient tome and me gazing out the open window, that we heard the shrill screams rising up from the garden.

When we arrived at the oak where the Auror’s had, apparently, taken a break (for the thin one to retch, no doubt), Dumbledore already stood in its shade, shaking his head sadly. All other witnesses had moved off and turned away, slumping down on the grass, standing still as statues, or emptying their stomachs in the nearby bushes. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring, however much I longed to.

The scene was like something out of a gothic horror story, thrust into a flowery pastoral. The podgy Auror lay crumpled on the ground, eyes wide, a tuft of grass clenched in his hand, flies already gathering on the clotting blood that filled his mouth and dyed the grass below him crimson, a large fir cone firmly lodged in his swollen throat. His death had been slow, choking as much on the blood pouring from the gashes torn by the cone as on the cone itself. He had been trying to retch up the alien object while Lestrange had dealt the second Auror a much swifter death.

That the point she had devised to drive her stick into the fir cone’s heart would work just as well on a much softer heart, none of us had imagined. It had only been the innocent play of a newborn Patronus. As had her incessant tasting of weeds and flowers.

Or so we thought. The skinny Auror sat with his back against the tree, his face white and drawn, eyes straining out of their sockets. When she had snapped his neck, he had already been half dead, perhaps making a futile attempt to save his colleagues. On his head lay Lestrange’s crown of weeds. They were the very same weeds she had tasted, the very same weeds that had made her retch and borrow the Auror’s water bottle. Later analyses at the Auror headquarters revealed them to be the ingredients of The Maiden’s Poison, a slow-acting, tasteless venom native to Scotland. According to almost forgotten legend, Scottish maidens who wished to get rid of irritating suitors, or prevent nightly rapes, kept the flowers and herbs under their pillows, ready to be chewed and administered to the unwitting bed-partner through a deadly kiss. Though untested, the theory is that the poison is counteracted by female oestrogen to the extent that death could be avoided simply through cleansing one’s mouth and retching up any remnants of poison that had slipped into the gastric system.

The Maiden’s Poison had also been favoured by female assassins and spies during times of war. It was eventually outlawed – by men, of course – and is now as good as forgotten by the Wizarding world. If it weren’t for Henry’s being asked to conclusively verify the ingredients of the archaic poison, I would never have known about it. Poisons that anyone with a decent herbal can chew up in a matter of minutes are something the Ministry would rather have stay forgotten. The official story was that Lestrange snapped the Auror’s neck, no poison involved.

But the scene was more complex than that. The body of the stabbed Auror had been draped across the poisoned one’s legs, its robes stripped off. Using the widened heart-wound as an inkbottle, Lestrange had left a message scrawled across the Auror’s ribcage:

“Le Roi mourra, Vive la Reine” – The King will die; long live the Queen.

‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘the lady’s got a certain style, at least.’

I murmured half-hearted agreement, but kept to myself the unnerving fact that Lestrange’s style seemed to be Henry’s. I had, as always, done my research thoroughly. I knew that Lestrange’s educational prowess had been erratic at best. And she had never studied French.

That was one of the many things I worried about, sitting alone on a large stone on the outskirts of the Hogwarts gardens, when the expected Howler from the Prophet arrived, sacking me at 40wpm and 100dB. It howled at me what I already knew: My career was as dead as a Demented doornail. I knew I would make headlines the following day, and every day thereafter for quite some time. The Prophet would vilify me as much as it could to salvage its own reputation. I was no longer a quirky oddity but an anti-social, over-ambitious, notorious nutcase who had been kept on the payroll out of pity.

As I sat on that stone, wallowing in the subdued woe I’d perfected over the years, some Muggle hikers appeared at the main gates, gazing up at the castle, pointing and chatting. I waved a despondent greeting – I even ventured a smile – but though I was straight in their line of vision, they looked right through me, as if I was nothing but an empty patch of air. Just as the Howler had told me: I was Nothing. I lay back, closed my eyes, and suffered a painful sunburn the following day, plodding through Henry’s family estate in my nightgown. He had offered me room, in his bed. The house was out of paparazzi reach, and I probably wouldn’t be able to afford my flat in any case.

My life, for what little it had been worth, was over. I felt as empty as Lestrange no longer was, thanks to me, and no matter how much I ate, I never felt any fuller.

Then, when I would have grabbed any second-hand chance, the phone rang, and I squelched out a hurried Yes.