Into the Wild: Karkaroff's Story

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Chapter 4: The Death of Redemption

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His chief was the one that found him hours later, huddled under his desk, hugging his knees to his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Erm...uh...Igor?"

Slowly, his face turned towards the intruder. The chief had seen a broken man before; he was quite good at the interrogation game. But Igor's eyes that day, as they bored their nothingness into his soul, were a void so infinite and dead that they haunted him for the rest of his days.

He watched the chief scamper away, frightened like a little bunny. The fool. None here could ever fathom the gravity of the piece of parchment he held in his hand. They could never understand...

Once, in a moment of anger, he had let slip that he was favored by Lord Voldemort himself. "Lord Baltimort? Whazzat?" was the response, and it was all that Igor could do to not turn his Desert Eagle on the blaspheming moron.

It was an outrage! First, one of the most important Death Eaters flees, and not one single person even makes the feeblest of attempts on his life. Then, Igor Karkaroff obtains the one, single thing that the Dark Lord would give anything for, that would return Karkaroff to his favor, to his former position of delicious power. Still, not one person flinches. Not one person, in neither this world nor the world he left behind, not one person notices the great things that were achieved by Igor alone. Then, he, Igor Karkaroff, is revealed as the one lone soul in the entire universe who could bring about the downfall of the darkest wizard in all of the history of humanity, and they, the imbeciles that surround him, ask, "What's a Lord Baltimort?"

The injustice of it all welled up inside of him. He wanted to scream; he wanted to cry; he wanted to kill.

So, with vision obscured by bloodshot eyes, he grabbed his only good buddy, the Desert Eagle, and proceeded to take out his rage on the stick figures of the Dark Lord scrawled on his desk.

***

Karkaroff was not exactly known for his belief in Divination, nor for his adherence to prophetic declarations, but this sort of thing was something he couldn't ignore. He desperately wanted to, yes, but it was just too fitting. Fate, it was obvious, had chosen him, and Karkaroff could not escape that. Why did Lucius have to come into this particular police station to interrogate Petunia? Why did he just happen to overhear them talking about it? The coincidences were far too poignant and numerous. He would just have to accept the destiny before him.

Sitting down heavily in his dilapidated office chair, Karkaroff's fingers played absentmindedly over the barrel of his Desert Eagle as the words of the prophecy continued to rattle around his brain. "It is in this wizard that resides the power to vanquish the Dark Lord... he is our only hope..." The words foretelling his great destiny gave him a thrill of excitement and power. "For neither can live while the other survives." What a sour note to end such a good prophecy on, he thought, now ghosting his fingers over the hammer, then over the trigger. "The power taken from the blood of the first boy." His fingers stroked the bumpiness of the handle, the texture of power... "The blood of the first boy." Blood...Harry's blood. How in the name of Beelzebub am I going to get access to that? Under Dumbledore's extraordinarily long nose? Not a chance, not if I were Godoric Gryffindor... He had unconsciously picked up the handgun, balanced it in his hand, felt its weight, and clicked the safety on and off, back and forth. The blood of the first boy...blood... Click, click went the safety. Blood...the blood that protects him...Because his sister's blood, the blood that protects him, runs in my veins. The memory hit him like a slap to the face. His hand tensed, his muscles squeezed, and the gun went off, straight through his computer.

"Petunia! Petunia's blood!" Karkaroff jumped up triumphantly, ignoring the hissing, fizzing smoke coming from the destroyed hardware on his desk. His co-worker in the cubicle next to him looked up quizzically.

"Petunia what? This doesn't have anything to do with that Lord Maltimore, does it?"

Without a single word, Karkaroff flung his arm over the cubicle wall, and shot the rest of his nearly full clip straight into his co-worker's monitor.

The chief was sitting at his desk, scowling at the paper in front of him. "Hmm...Tax preparer, abbr... hmm..."

He jumped in his seat as the door to his office was thrown open.

"Karkaroff! What's an abbreviated word for a tax preparer?"

"CPA? But chief, no, listen to me. I need to get Petunia Dursley back in for more information immediately!"

"Petunia who? But she's never been in here before. Let me look up her file..."

He pushed aside his half-finished crossword puzzle and began looking through the boxes and folders that littered his office.

"No, chief, that's not necessary. I...it...um..." Karkaroff silently kicked himself for forgetting that he had modified the chief's memory, just as Lucius had. To everyone else, Petunia Dursley had never been inside that police station.

"Nope, no record of her. Are you feeling okay, Igor?"

"Um...I must, uh...I must be confusing her with someone else...umm...sorry to bother you, Chief... I'll be going now..."

"No, wait, while you're here - CPA was right; now: what is known to scientists as Felis catus?"

"Known to what? But Felis catus... yeah, that's a spell used to bring small domestic animals under one's control..." He trailed off at the sight of his chief's face, blankly staring at him, with no idea of what to say. Karkaroff was not to blame - he was still trying to cope with the paradigm shift of forgetting about the memory charms - any wizard could have done it.

"Um...I'm going to lie down now," he said, leaving a dumbfounded and speechless muggle to try to fit that answer into those tiny little crossword boxes.

***

The dark suburban street was eerily lit by widely-set streetlamps. Karkaroff's small feet made little noise as he crept up the path to Number Four.

Once inside, his blood froze as he heard two people talking - no, not talking. He made his way through the kitchen towards the muffled noises -- was that...? Trying to suppress his giggles, he peeked over the countertop, expecting to see two people unconventionally arranged on the couch or the floor, and was shocked to see just one rather large boy. He soon located the source of the noise - a box, with moving pictures in it. And that would explain those noises.

Quietly, he stunned the boy - not that he especially needed it. His eyes were already vacant and dull.

Then, going upstairs, he stunned the two sleepers, slipped out his knife, slit the bony woman's wrist, and let the red blood drip into his vial. Like a vampire...except not as ugly... When it was full, he reluctantly mended the cut - he had been rather transfixed by the sight. He pushed it out of his mind, and slipped out of the house without any further ado. None of them were any bit the wiser.

With a last quiet laugh, he imagined Petunia waking to find that there was blood on the carpet and her wrists had been slit. She would wonder if it had been her who did the slitting.

***

Karkaroff held a newly packaged, self-loaded clip in his hand. He had a delighted smile on his face. Christmas had come early.

He congratulated himself on his ingenuity. It had taken quite some time to find a Muggle gun shop that would fill the twenty bullets he had with the blood he had taken from that woman - it had almost been too easy. In retrospect, he had taken quite a lot of it - ah, well. Bygones and all that rot. The prophecy was rather vague on that point, the blood of the first boy. He didn't know how he should use it or where he should put it. He had filled them, dipped them, boiled them, and glazed them, and now they sat in his clip, waiting like choirboys in a pretty little row. It was very fitting, though. Voldemort would die at the hands of a Death Eater-turned-Muggle Policeman. He would die at the hand of a betrayer, by the unstoppable steel of a Muggle weapon covered in blood blessed by prophecy. The Dark Lord would not have prepared himself against such a death, would he? The prophecy must have known about his adventures in Muggle-land, and it must have known about his newfound love for firearms. Amazing things, these prophecies!

He was chuckling and there was a bounce in his step as he walked down the street towards the Underground. He was invincible, for Fate was with him. The Chosen One. It had a nice ring to it.

As he boarded the train, he had only a vague idea of where he would find Lord Voldemort. He had once overheard the Dark Lord and Antonin Dolohov speaking of a house in Little Hangleton. Karkaroff could almost hear the nostalgia underneath his Lord's voice - it had made his skin crawl. Whatever made the Dark Lord nostalgic couldn't have been good.

He stepped off the train as it lurched to a stop at the dinky station in Upper Hangleton, and began the walk down the hill. The house was easy to find, being the biggest one around. But one look at its darkened windows revealed that it was deserted. Karkaroff sighed, and sat down upon the cobbled sidewalk outside of the fenced-off garden, gone to seed. The roses and the lavenders that once flourished had been overgrown and consumed by the rank weeds that choked them. The smell of rot was on the air. Rot and treachery. Guilt and blood. Fear.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. He heard slow, laborious footsteps closing in on him. He froze, afraid of what might be behind him. A heavy hand with thick, sausage-like fingers slammed down on his shoulder, smelling of badly cooked liver. Instinctually, as a result of the training that had been drilled into Karkaroff over the last year, he grabbed the arm, twisted it, and landed the intruder flat on his back, with Karkaroff's knee at his throat and his gun at his forehead. His wand lay forgotten in his pocket.

"Igor?"

"Goyle?"

"How did you...?"

"What are you doing here?"

"But...you were...we..."

"Where is the Dark Lord?"

"But...uh...you're dead!"

"Where is he?"

"Ungh!"

Karkaroff moved the barrel of the gun from Goyle's forehead to the inside of his mouth. "Tell me!"

"I-ghor...hwat ith at hing?"

Honestly! Thought Igor as he swapped his Desert Eagle for his wand. I'm living in a world of imbeciles!

"Ok, Goyle, let's try this again. Where is the Dark Lord?"

At that moment, the interrogation suddenly became unnecessary. Simultaneously, forgetting their situation, they both yelped as a searing pain bit their upper forearms and spread across their bodies. Karkaroff rolled off his perch atop Goyle, and closed his eyes against the drab nighttime sky, willing the pain to end. When it did, Karkaroff was ready.

Goyle's blank stare met Karkaroff's steely gaze, and with a pop, they both Disapparated.

***

With another pop, Karkaroff Apparated in a well-lit hall, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He was straddling a golden, protuberant object that continued and spread out between his legs. Something very sharp was poking into his rather fragile backside. Completely botched. Again. Poshel k chertu.

He shifted uncomfortably, wondering what he had landed on. Twisting around very gingerly, he discovered the source of the sharp pain behind him - a centaur, with bow and arrow, pointing straight into his buttocks. And underneath him, he discovered, was a vapid-looking witch. With a glance to see if the vast hall was empty - he wanted no witnesses - he carefully climbed off the statue, using what looked like a goblin's head (although the look on its face clearly ruled this out) as a stepstool.

Now that he was here - wait, was this the...? What was Voldemort doing in the chertavoy Ministry of Magic? What...? He mentally shook himself. This was no time to think about that. Forcibly, he turned his attention to the other matters at hand. It took considerable effort to steel his nerve once more. He unholstered his Desert Eagle and held onto it like a pillar of support. It was his redemption; it was his salvation. This muggle contraption would take down the darkest wizard of all of time.

Every muscle in his body was tensed, tiger-like, ready to spring. He was balanced between action and submission, between the past and the prophecy, between faith and fear.

The safety on the Desert Eagle clicked off.

"VOLDEMORT!" The cry left his lips as a challenge, as a thundering, echoing heroic summons. The name pealed off the walls of the hall; it searched out the corners, rocketed down the length of the blue ceiling, and shattered the windows. He was here to bring the world to its end.

***

The scene played out in front of Karkaroff's eyes as though watching through a glass window far away. He saw as the two formidable wizards exchanged words, fear in neither of their eyes. He saw the Dark Lord languidly draw out his wand from his robes, and almost lovingly caress it. He saw as Karkaroff, unseen by the other, grip his Desert Eagle equally lovingly. He saw Karkaroff, in one fluid motion, twist his thin frame away from a flash of green light, then round on the Dark Lord, gun pointed at heart.

"For my mother." He whispered, then pulled the trigger, sending bullet after bullet to its destiny. Bullets made holy by the prophecy, by the blood of the Potters, by the word of Dumbledore, by the sacrifice of his mother, and by the betrayal of his father.

Karkaroff emptied the clip. Voldemort had collapsed on his knees, hands covering the damaged flesh, his head bowed. Then, it raised, and brown eyes met red slits. "For myself. Avada Kedavra."

Green light consumed Igor Karkaroff, and the confusion left his eyes as his small body hit the dark wood floor.

***

Hours later, amid the throng of ministry officials, only one man noticed the overlooked casualty, lying broken on the floor.

Dumbledore closed his eyes at the sight, realizing what he had done. The blood of the first boy was written on Karkaroff's arm in a deep, glistening red, shining defiantly up at him. It shone his deception; it shone his lies; it shone his sin back at him. He had sent him to his death. A miscalculation, lost in the melee, forgotten. Lies had turned to blood.

Forcing the pain back inside of himself, knowing, cursing the things that had been done in the name of goodness, of rightness, Dumbledore stood, his pain not the only pain, and not the most important. He must go check on Potter.