A Touch of Death

The first lesson I learnt about Azkaban was taught to me that same night. Never do anything to draw attention to yourself, like crying. I hadn't been sitting on my bench for very long before I heard a tapping on the wall next to mine, as though someone was banging a metal object against it.

"I know who you arrrreeee," said a slow, mocking voice. "I know who you arrrreee in there..."

I stopped crying at once; stopped breathing.

"Don't get all shy on us," said a voice on the opposite side of me. "We know you're in there anyway."

Someone giggled from across the way. "S'Potter in there," someone whispered, but loudly so that it carried and echoed and bounced off the walls. "Sssss'Potter."

My name seemed to ring through the prison as gradually other prisoners got wind of who I was. I scrabbled back on my bench and hunched up as small as I could next to the wall, shivers running up and down my spine.

"Did a bad, bad thing, he did," said a low voice. "A baaad, bad thing."

"Killed his Mum, they told me," said someone else. "Killed your Mum, di'nt you, Potter?"

"Nah," said the man in the cell next to mine. "The Dark Lord killed' is Mum. That's right, isn' it Potter? I 'eard that. 'E went after yer Mum and 'er feller. Merlin, but that must'a been fun. The bird and the feller both at the same time, eh? Bang, 'e goes with 'is wand pointin' right there at 'em. Bang, Bang. Like shootin' flies, eh? Jus' like flies."

Several people laughed and I hid my face in my knees.

"Never mind," a woman whispered. "I'll be your Mum, Potter. I'll look after you in here. You're gonna need looking after."

"Hey," someone said. "Who'd he kill, then? Potter? Potter, who'd you kill?"

"S'is Auntie," said the man on the other side of me. "Sss'right, innit, Potter? S'your poor old Aunt that you sent on."

"Did a baaaad, baaad thing."

"Life fer a life, last I'eard. That's the punishment, ain't it? Life fer a life."

"You watch yerself in here, Potter," the woman said. "You just watch yerself."

"I shouldn't be here. It's not right. I'm innocent." Silent tears ran down my face as I mouthed the words to the darkness, careful not to speak them. "I'm innocent," I repeated to myself. "Innocent."

They didn't stop talking to me all night.

I'd like to say that the first few months in Azkaban were the worst. I'd like to say that, but of course, there is no better or worse in Azkaban. That would be like saying there was a better or worse in hell. The only blessing was that they didn't open the doors. They pushed food through twice a day, but I lost all interest in food after I had hurried over to eat hungrily on that first day, only to be warned once again by the only woman in the vicinity that I had to watch myself. I picked through my food when I got too light-headed but more often than not pushed the food back out again, for fear of being poisoned. And I was poisoned, on several occasions; not seriously, but enough to make me throw up the whole night to the great amusement of my peers.

The Dementors were acting strangely. Sirius had told me that most went mad in Azkaban and got lost in their minds, and although most of them certainly were quite far gone, they weren't as bad as I had thought they would be. I had hoped for them to be prisoners of their own fears as I had so often heard, but either both Sirius and Hagrid had been spreading false rumours or the Dementors had lain off a bit, because the prisoners managed to find it in them to threaten and bully me at all hours of the day. I suspected the Dementors were becoming more sympathetic to Voldemort and so were going easier on the Death Eaters to show support for him. They took their losses out on me, however, or tried to. I felt so powerless to face them without a wand, but I remembered what Sirius said about not having any happy thoughts for them to take. As I was miserable as sin I found that they didn't have a huge effect on me anyway. Whenever they appeared at my door I just thought over and over again, like Sirius must have, the bastards put me away when I was innocent, someone out there is walking free and laughing at me, I'm innocent, I'm innocent, I'm innocent. I said the word 'innocent' so often to myself that it started to lose all meaning.

I thought of Sirius a lot, mainly because he had been here, and he had survived it, although I'll never know how. I could feel myself losing my grip on time and reality, however much I tried to cling to it. The Dementors were mainly to blame for that, helped quite effectively by the Death Eaters who kept on at me relentlessly. I tried to disassociate myself altogether from my parents; tried to cut off any strings that held me to them in my mind, because that way the taunts that the Death Eaters threw my way could not affect me so badly. They talked about my parents a lot, about how they must have died; they made up lies about how Voldemort had tortured them before death, that they died like flies or spiders at the hands of a merciless child. They made me believe eventually that Voldemort had literally plucked off my mother's legs before sending her to her death. I couldn't help it; the Dementors took most of my mind's defences and made me an easy target for the others. One terrible day I even hallucinated and was adamant that someone had picked off all my limbs too.

By far the most trying day was the one when Lucius Malfoy came to see me. That in itself scared me; the fact that he had been allowed out of his cell to come and walk up to mine and face me. My defences were already low from months of being half-starved and terrified and taunted, and I slunk away from him when he pushed his hands through the bars and leered at me. Azkaban had changed him, at least; there were two black circles underneath his eyes, his hair had turned silvery-grey and wispy, his face was drawn and he was almost as thin as I was. But the sneer remained the same.

"Not so cocky now, are you, Mr Potter?" he said in his silky, slow voice as I huddled up in the far corner to him and tried not to look, feeling paranoid. "I write letters, you know. I write letters to my son. You might remember him, or have you forgotten already what it's like on the outside?"

I shook my head against the wall and shut my eyes. Malfoy continued. "He's at school now, where you should be. I write to him and tell him all about you, Mr Potter. I tell him all sorts of things, and he makes sure your little friends hear it. You remember your friends, don't you, Mr Potter? The pretty little mudblood and her boyfriend."

I did remember them. And the thought of them knowing how I'd ended up was too shameful to bear. "D-don't tell them about me," I said to the wall, and my voice sounded odd, cracked and hoarse after a long time of silence. "D-don't let them know I'm like this."

"Oh, but they do already, Mr Potter, don't worry about that. But my son is not the only one I write letters to. You do know why I'm in here, don't you, Mr Potter? You should do, seeing as you were the one that made sure I got sent here." His voice was fierce now, and in my mind I imagined him shooting little arrows at me out of his mouth. The thought was so strong it made me flinch. Azkaban's like that. It's good at making sure your mind takes over.

"I write my letters to You...Know...Who," he continued, and he drew out the name but I knew I wasn't scared of that. "I write my letters to the Dark Lord, and he knows all about you, Mr Potter. He knows you're here, trapped like a fly in a spider's web. That was his plan, don't you see?"

I didn't see, because I was still stuck on the fly analogy and was losing sense of my limbs again.

"I still have my legs," I whispered to myself frantically, and Malfoy laughed.

"Yes you do, Mr Potter. But what good are they if you can't run away? Watch yourself in here, Mr Potter. You just watch yourself. You never know who's going to sneak up on you."

And with that he left, leaving me holding my legs and trying to remember what he had said about Voldemort.

x

I was lying on the floor of my cell one night, staring up at the ceiling and trying to get to sleep. I took to sleeping on the floor quite early on; that way, if I ever felt too threatened I could just slide underneath the bench and curl up there. The people around me had started up their night-time chorus and I was largely trying to ignore them. It reminded me very much of when my Aunt Marge came to stay; if ever they talked to me I would try to remember something from school, like Transfiguration or Charms or even History of Magic, though that was somewhat less effective.

"Potter? Potter! Whooo's a'comin for you then, eh? Whoo's a'comin for you? Algernon's a'comin, and you know who he's a'bringin' with him? He's bringin' the daaaaark one, eh? The Daaark Lord, eh? Eh?"

"The correct way to handle a Bowtruckle," I recited in my head.

"Hey, runt! I've been thinking, you know? I've been doing a lot of thinking, and do you know what? Do you know what, little runt? I knew your sow. Yeah, s'right. I knew your mam before she had you. Knew your mam before she had your dad, actually. And, you know, while she had your dad. Cor, she used to go like the clappers, her, she'd -"

"Where does a Bowtruckle live? What does it eat?" I couldn't remember, but I had to.

"Oi! Oi, little'un!" someone said in a whisper above me.

"Shut UP!" I shouted suddenly, to the delighted whistles and catcalls of the others.

"AND HE SPEAKS!" someone called.

"I didn't know he had it in him!"

"How many months has that been, then?"

"I didn't think he'd sound like that -"

I hid my face in my hands but the whispered voice went on.

"Oi! Oi, little'un!"

"No," I said quietly, and I rolled under the bench.

"No, little'un, don't go under there, I need to talk to you. Quickly, while the others are shouting. I don't want them to hear."

"Go away," I moaned, but then I realised. How did he know I was under my bench?

I crawled out cautiously and looked around me, and as I looked up at the ceiling I saw it. A little hole in my ceiling, with a big blue eye staring out of it.

"Merlin's balls!" I cried in surprise, jumping back to hunch next to the door.

"I wouldn't go over there, little'un," the eye said. "Never know who'sa gonna grab you on the way past."

I came away from the door a step.

"Get off my ceiling, eye" I said.

"No. Not until you listen to me. And you have to listen fast because they're not gonna keep making that noise for long. It's ok, little'un. I'm a friend."

"No you're not," I said. "No one's a friend. You're just an eye."

The eye laughed and said, "Ok. All right. You don't trust me, and why should you? Just know this about me, little'un. I never joined in with what they were saying about you and your family, ok? You know that, cos you'd recognise my voice, wouldn't you."

That, at least, was true. This man's voice was low and husky, and urgent - I'd never heard him before.

"And know something else about me."

"What's that?" I said, hesitantly.

The eye moved and a pair of lips appeared in the hole above me. "I'm an innocent man too," they said. "I'm an innocent man just like yourself. When you trust me, I'm gonna help you out."

The lips disappeared and the hole was covered up. I went over to sit on the bench and stayed up the whole of the rest of the night thinking.

Over the next few days or weeks or months or however long - it's hard to tell in a place like Azkaban - the eye reappeared quite frequently. At first we had to stay silent in case the others would hear, but he would pass me through scraps of parchment that he had written on, along with a quill which I would use to write back to him:

We have to talk like this for the moment, little'un. Don't give me away.

Where'd you get the parchment?

Found it. Haven't you got any? I must have the five-star cell.

No, I'm right down here in steerage.

Steerage! I like that.

How'd you make the hole?

With my fingers.

No you didn't!

No, I didn't, but it'd make you think more of me, wouldn't it? I did it with my earring. It's a dragon's claw. I'll throw it through for you.

Cheers. It's nice. Think I ought to pierce my ear?

I did.

No!

I did! With a sewing needle. I'll throw it through for you, in case the mood takes you.

You really do have the five star cell, don't you.

No, I brought that one from home, to remind me of my mum, you know?

I don't believe you.

Fair enough.

What's your name?

I hadn't got to the name question until four or five nights had passed.

Rufus. Rufus Trevelan.

Really?

Really.

I'm Potter.

No, you're not. That's just the others getting to you, that is. You're Harry, remember? Harry first, then Potter.

Oh yeah. I'm Harry. How did you know that?

You were famous once. I remember things. We need to talk, Harry.

What do you call this?

Writing. And your handwriting's terrible.

Sorry. Haven't had much practise, you know. Well, we have to wait for them to be loud again, don't we? All they seem to do is whisper.

Can't you talk again? Make them shout?

I don't want to.

I know you don't want to but you'll have to, Harry.

I don't want to.

It's alright, I'll be here to talk to you, so you won't have to listen to them, will you? They're just words, Harry, nothing more, nothing less. You can choose to shut them out, that's your defence.

I didn't write back after that but lay underneath the bench so the eye couldn't see me, playing the dragon claw through my fingers and thinking.

"Alright," I said aloud one night, and I got to my feet and yelled, "I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE ANY MORE! THERE'S COCKROACHES IN MY CELL! I WANT TO GO HOME!"

Which was, predictably, met with an array of echoed catcalls, jeers, shouts, taunts, and all the rest of it, but I scrambled up on to the bench and poked the cover off the hole in the ceiling.

"Rufus!" I called.

"Nice going. Cockroaches in your cell, eh?"

"I think I saw one the other day. I called it Colin."

"Imaginative. Mine are called Beatrice, Randall and Wayne."

"You have three?"

"It could just be the same one walking up and down. Hard to tell, you know?"

"Look, we're not here to talk about cockroaches."

"No," he agreed. "Let's get down to business. Harry, I have to ask you the most important question of your life."

"Ok."

"Do you trust me? Think long and hard."

I thought.

"I don't know, Rufus. I don't know."

"What would you say if I told you I could get you out of here?"

"I'd say your mind's away with Beatrice, Randall and Wayne."

He laughed at that. "Ok," he said. "I can wait. I can wait for you to trust me."

"Good," I said. "Nothing personal, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

The others were still making loads of noise and I relished the chance to get to know Rufus a bit more.

"So, Rufus," I said. "You're innocent. What didn't you do?"

"I wasn't a Death Eater."

At those words I ran off the bench and hid underneath it. A Death Eater?

"Hey! Hey, little'un! I said I wasn't one, ok?" he whispered urgently. "They put me away for it but I was innocent."

"Did they trick you?" I said from under the bench.

"No. I never did anything. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Come out, Harry, come on, we can't talk loudly, you know that."

My longing for a friend won over my fear and I got out from underneath the bench and stood on top of it again, although I didn't draw myself up to my full height.

"Are you lying to me?" I asked him.

"No. I almost wish I was, in a way, because then it would make being in here more bearable. I'm an innocent man, Harry, just like yourself."

I didn't say anything for a while.

"Don't you find that works?" he said. "When you know you're innocent, it's like one thought the Dementors can't get from you. Keeps you sane, right?"

"Yeah," I said finally. "Yeah, it does. Hey, have the Dementors been getting easier to handle lately?"

Rufus thought. "Well, yes. There was a time when no-one in here knew who they were, they were so shot away. The Dementors feed on your happiest feelings, and everyone in here was trapped in their own personal hell. I was kind of alright, what with my unhappy thought prevailing. But now..."

"Now?"

"Well, just listen to 'em. They're out of their hell, that's for sure."

I sat down heavily on the bench.

"Harry? Harry?"

"What?"

"What house were you in? At school?"

I had to think because I'd forgotten what the names were.

"Red," I said at last, remembering my bedspread and my best friend's hair. "Red house."

"Ah, I should have guessed, I suppose. I was in blue. You remember what blue was called?"

"No."

"I do. It was Raven's Claw."

"No, it wasn't," I said, remembering. "It was just Ravenclaw. No 's'."

"Oh yeah. Yours was Gryffindor."

"Sure about that? Not the Griffin's Door?"

He laughed at that and the sound was strange to me: true laughter, not forced, sarcastic giggles.

We didn't get much more chance to talk after that and he didn't write to me for a little while, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I wondered about him. I wondered what his story was, where he'd come from, who his family were, why he was befriending me. Most of all, as I sat in the darkness playing with the dragon claw, I wondered if I trusted him.

Every once in a while he'd send some of his food down to me, I suppose because he'd heard me choking so often on mine. He'd poke his finger through the hole when the others were getting too unbearable in their taunts and eventually I'd grip onto it, feeling grateful for the contact.

Then there came a night when I, sitting alone in my cell and making sure the hole was covered up, took out the needle that I'd hidden in my pocket, and put it through my ear. It didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would, and I took out the dragon claw and fed the ring it was attached to through my ear. The claw felt funny, dangling there heavy and a bit bloody, but it also felt as though Rufus was a friend at last, and it felt as though I trusted him.

x

It was late one evening, and I was stood at the little window of my cell, hands around the bars, wishing the glass wasn't there. It must have been summer, because the sun was pink and spreading a warm glow across the water, and the first stars were alight, fighting with the sun for sky-space. As I watched the sky I felt a moment of utmost clarity in my mind; the first I had had since coming to Azkaban. I thought about things in detail as I had not done in such a long time. I wondered if it was my birthday yet. I wondered how long I had been in prison. I wondered how old I was supposed to be. I wondered what I looked like. I wondered what my friends were doing. And then I wondered, for the first time, what had happened to my Aunt. Why she was dead, who had killed her, who had managed to sneak in and take my wand, why they had done that, what -

Then a Dementor passed and took away the moment. They did not leave me shrieking and shaking like they probably would have done had I been in any way happy, but they took away my thoughts all the same. They must have been getting hungry in Azkaban, I thought, with hardly anything to feed on. Sort of like a Dementor diet, I thought with a laugh, which was immediately sucked away.

I ignored the sunshine and sat on my bench, looking up at the hole in the ceiling which was, for now, covered, and feeling slightly sick. I hadn't had any food from Rufus in days and had had to resort to my own, which had turned against me so often that I suspected I was now becoming slightly immune to being poisoned. Suddenly, a slip of parchment fell into my lap. I looked up at the hole in the ceiling and Rufus' blue eye was staring down at me.

Little'un.

I made a face up at him and wrote, Stop calling me that, eye. It's Harry.

It's not important. Harry. Do you remember the outside, what it's like?

I didn't, really. I remembered certain things like heather and a black carriage, and a brick house and a castle, but nothing clearly. It started to worry me.

No, Rufus. Not really. It's not all stone, I know that.

You're right, Harry. It's not all stone. Do you remember going to school?

I thought. Yes.

Do you think you'd still be going to school now if you were out? Do you think you still have friends there, who would help you?

I don't know. How old am I?

I don't know.

Well, how old do I look, eye?

Well, that's the thing. You look twenty.

Twenty! No, I was about sixteen when I came in. It hasn't been that long. I'd know.

Well, I don't know, there's a lot of muck and beard on you, I can't see. And your hair's a mess.

It always is.

This is irrelevant. What's relevant is your old school. Do you at least know where to find it?

No. It's Unpredictable. I remembered what my friend Her...what my friend had said once in an old life.

Unplottable, you twit.

That's what I said. Bad handwriting.

Well, that's not going to help us much. I'd forgotten about that.

Why do you want me to find it?

I have to think.

After that he stayed quiet for quite a long time, and I was left to realise just how much about my old life I'd forgotten. Azkaban was not a place in which you were well placed to remember things. I tried to think about friends - names, faces, places we went, things we liked to do. I knew just about what they looked like but I couldn't remember what they sounded like, or what exactly their names were - everything was on the tip of my tongue but just out of reach. I tried in vain to think about what my favourite things to do were. Maybe I didn't have any favourite things to do. Maybe I just slept and ate. Favourite foods, then. I only knew that whatever it was I liked, it didn't include poison as one of the main ingredients.

It was then that I realised just how much of my mind had sneakily gone off to the Dementors without my knowledge. They must have been sapping more than I thought, more happy memories than I knew I had and never knew I'd miss. I knew Sirius, because I knew what I'd done to him however long ago, but I was certain that he'd never told me that in Azkaban memories from your old life simply vanished so you forgot what it used to be. It was too scary and so I decided not to remember any more, and I decided not to think any more, and Azkaban won a quiet victory.

Time went by and by, Dementors went by and by, and I didn't think, and I didn't remember, and the eye from upstairs didn't bother me again, and I eat, and slept, and I forgot to remember and I forgot to think. At some point I forgot who I was supposed to be.

x

Harry.

Wot?

I've been thinking.

Goway.

How long has it been? Your handwriting's even worse than it was.

Hu r u?

WRITE PROPERLY! It's me. Rufus. The eye?

Hlo, eye.

Hello. Sorry I've been away so long. I've been thinking.

Ino.

I'll keep this short because I have no idea what you mean to say. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let you forget. But I've arranged something. Harry, there will be a sparrow outside your window tomorrow.

Tomorrow?

Can you remember that?

Cant remember. Wil tri.

Well, there will be. A sparrow. Tomorrow, outside your window. That will be the sign.

Sign?

Yes. I'm getting us out of here, like I promised, remember, ages ago? There will be a sparrow outside your window tomorrow and this is what you are going to do. I'm throwing you down some sticky stuff, I'll wrap it in parchment. When you see the sparrow, open the parchment and wipe the sticky stuff all round the tops and bottoms of the bars on your window. It'll weaken them so that even a scrawny little runt like you will be able to pull them away. Then, you punch your fist through the glass and crawl through.

I tried to read, and tried to think, and tried to register what was going on. Problms.

Problems?

Problems. Im hi up. Water dn ther.

There will be a boat. You will have to jump.

K. Problems.

Go on.

Wnidow sml.

Your window is small. I know. But, in case you hadn't noticed, you're small too. You'll get through it no problem.

An u?

I'll get through. Don't worry about me.

Problems.

What?

Blud.

Blood? You're going to get out of Azkaban, Harry, a little blood on your hands will not bother you.

Boat?

Will come from a friend of mine.

Brid?

The bird's mine. Don't worry. Tomorrow, Harry. Look for the sparrow. We're getting out of here, together. Look for the sparrow, just remember.

Look for the sparrow, I thought as a small parcel of what looked like glue wrapped up in parchment was thrown down to me. Look for the sparrow, I thought as the Dementors rolled by. Look for the sparrow, I thought as the Death Eaters catcalled their way through the night. Look for the sparrow. I didn't think about what would happen after the sparrow came, lest I should forget.

Look for the sparrow.