The Smell of Guilt

The Smell of Guilt

I am standing in a dark corner watching the events proceed like they were predestined to. No, I should rephrase this: there is no such thing as a destiny. It is all about bending to his will, and about seeing to everything he wishes happening. It is about knowing what he wants, and doing what he wants.

Once somebody is brought in here, there are only two ways things can go for them, and nobody has ever managed to defy that unspoken law. Either you are brought and burned or brought and killed, and it is clear before they enter which fate will meet them. I have met my fate, and I have not had the courage, willpower or motivation to not embrace it. It is that which I have craved for all my life that I am now witnessing - not for the first time, but not for the thousandth either - and as the guttering torch on the wall throws its eerie light on me and my companions I rub my left arm gingerly where it is still sore. I doubt the pain will ever fully go away.

The room is neither dusty nor dirty, very unlike anything one would expect an old dungeon room to be. The stone walls were not built, crafted, and neither were they carved. It is a natural system of caves and tunnels that he has chosen as his hide-away, and as I stand back and watch the rough surface of the wall digs into my back, but I do not move. I am not allowed to leave my position for the moment, and I do as I am told. Always.

Would he tell me to jump off a cliff, I would. Would he order me to bite off my own leg, I would. If I were to die in an accident I would curse myself for not having died in his name. And that's how it is supposed to be.

It is almost like a ritual, even though nothing much is happening. Each and every one of us is almost emanating boredom in waves, much like radioactivity, penetrating everything and leaving a mark of contamination.

The room has been sufficiently prepared, even Nott has to admit that. Sometimes I think he would like having it furnished in stainless steel, with the bright light and the shiny instruments that are so typical for certain rooms - if it weren't an entirely muggle thing. His hate for Muggles is the only thing that is bigger than his obsession with neatness, perfection and cleanliness. But I understand him. It is a messy job, and one cannot be blamed for developing certain quirks when being confronted with it all the time. After all, it might be possible to catch some of their...goodness.

I, for myself, have my own quirk. Nobody knows about this, at least I think they don't. I never directly tell anybody. It would be of no use, after all, wouldn't it? I sometimes ask if somebody notices as well, but they never do, in the beginning. And in the end, there finally is something to notice, but it's not that.

It is the stench. I cannot describe it, as I have a feeling that it is not physical odour that I perceive to be there whenever there is a job waiting for us. We are good at what we're doing, but it's metaphorical smell clings to our clothes and our bodies like dirt. I really shouldn't be talking about 'us', though. I am only an apprentice, after all, standing in the shadows, watching, the one to clean up in the end. The end that always stinks of something else.

I must be doing a really good job with cleaning up, because the room reeks clean. There is no wavering scent of blood, nothing to suggest what is going on here regularly. The table in the middle of the room has been neatly polished, and the shackles are spotless. They are not rusty with age, and if I can help it, they will never corrode, at least not under my watch. It is my duty.

The instruments are all lined up neatly on the small table, lying on a nicely folded piece of needlework. Everything is as shiny as a little girl's shoes on her first day of school, all thanks to my work. I am not getting paid for it, but why should I? This is a war, and I am fighting for my ideals, after all. My family is well off, and supports my actions. I do my work with vigour and carry my head with pride, even though I sometimes wonder why.

I have blue blood running through my veins, even though, if cut with any of the instruments on that table, it would be shining red. I am of noble kin, and I am assigned the work a dishrag-clad house-elf or some lowly Weasley should do.

Last week there was a Weasley in our charge. We squeezed every bit of information we could out of him, and in the end, also every drop of blood. He was as empty as his family's vault by the time we were finished with him, and even though there is a hole on the floor to catch the liquid, I had quite some cleaning up to do afterwards. But it was worth it. We got important information, after all.

I still do not know who today's lucky winner is going to be. Nobody in our room does. It is supposed to be a surprise, some kind of present that was sent from Lucius Malfoy himself for the great work we did on that Weasley guy.

The stench is almost killing me today, and nothing has happened yet. I am at the height of PMS, and in a strange mood so this might be the reason. It smells of deceit, of treason, of misplaced and abused trust, of pain, of death. I do not know why it affects me like it does. After all, I have never deceived anybody. I am not a traitor. I do what I am supposed to do, and what he wants me to do. I have never managed to find the source of the smell. Everywhere I go in this room, it is there. Sometimes it's even in my private quarters, or Nott's office. It is everywhere, around here. Perhaps it's something magical in the sediment.

The door does not creak when it opens. It never does. I oiled the angles the other day, just as I was supposed to. Of course it makes a sound, as it is old and well-used, but it does not creak. A wave of nauseating air hits my nostrils and it almost makes my eyes water, but I do not act on the impulse to cover my mouth and nose with my hands.

Instead, I do what everybody else in the room does - look at the prisoner. I lift my eyebrow. Surely this must be a joke? We are the best in our line of work, after all. I can see Nott furrowing his brows in confusion too, a much more rough expression than my delicate one. The other two men in the room, Parker and MacDonough look equally suspicious and alarmed. What is going on here?

The people we get in here usually have a name. A name that many people know or have heard, be it in the newspaper or from somebody whose job it is to gather information. The names of the people are usually everything they are left with when we are done with them, but even those names call for respect among a certain sort of people. People that do not share our opinions, that is.

I have never seen the woman that is looking alternately at our room's occupants with big, frightened eyes. She looks very small and fragile, even more so because she is standing between the two sturdy looking guards that accompanied her here.

The one to the left sneers and pushes her forward, so she is standing in the middle of our room, and she looks very exposed. Her shirt is torn on the right sleeve, and the hair on her right temple is matted with blood. Whose, I cannot discern. Perhaps it's hers, perhaps it's somebody else's. She cannot be in our hands for long, for her long, brown hair still shines as if it was recently washed. I can see her hands trembling, and her slender face pale at the sight of what the two tables in this room contain. Her blue eyes, already wide with fear are glued to the spot where a particularly nasty-looking knife is shining strangely in the torch-light.

"What is this?" Nott finally asks brusquely.

"A present from Lord Malfoy, Commander Nott," the guard to the right replies. "He sends his best regards to Miss Parkinson," he points at me with his fingers, and I have to suppress the comment rising in my throat at the rude action, "and says that she can try herself on this practice material."

With that they leave the room, and Parker bolts it shut. The woman - no, girl, as I notice now, because she cannot be any older than I am: 18, perhaps 19 - is still standing rooted to the spot.

There is an uneasy silence. I can feel three pairs of eyes on me, and I know exactly what is going on in their heads.

Well, she's good enough at cleaning...

A girl?

Who is this?

She surely deserves her chance, but isn't it a little early?

What is this?

"Well, go on then, Parkinson," Nott finally barks, without seeking the others' consent and then pushes Parker in the general direction of where I am currently standing, indicating for him to take my place.

So here it is, my chance. I step forward, nodding to MacDonough. He nods back and leads the girl to the table. She does not try to resist, and I have a slight suspicion that she is in some kind of shock - something that I will not tolerate, later. Until now, it serves its purpose.

While I think of a good way to get her out of her apparent reverie, MacDonough ties her to the table, securing the shackles on her wrists and ankles, tying the straps across her chest and head rather loosely for now. We still need to get her clothes off, after all.

But for now, the situation is perfect. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Nott sitting down on a chair in another corner of the room, sucking the tip of his quick quotes quill. He does not speak out loud, but I know what he must be saying, for every protocol begins the same way. Well, almost.

Date: September 3^rd 1999

Case #: 0052 06

Name of interrogating officer: Parkinson

Bystanding officers: Nott, MacDonough, Parker

That is how the head in this case would look like. The rest will have to be written while the interrogation is running.

"Unclothe her," I finally say, and even though it gives me a sense of satisfaction at first to see Parker acting at my command, the stench gets stronger with every piece of clothing that the man removes from the strangely unresisting body.

She is very pale, and very thin, I notice as I start dictating interesting details about her body. Size, earrings, tattoos, crooked teeth, a broken nose, everything gets recorded. I do not quite know why, but it is the way it goes. If there is an interesting tattoo, we see to it that the skin in its area is not harmed, and after death occurs, it is expertly removed. If there is a golden tooth, that one is pulled post-mortem, in order not to cause any harm to it. We have little bags to put the teeth in, and they are then marked with the case number.

Somehow, even the number 0052 06 has a stench to it. I know it must be 0052 06, because our last interrogation was 0051 06. The 06 at the end says that it was our unit that did the interrogation. It carries our names, so to speak. It stinks. We stink. I briefly close my eyes to get my concentration back.

Then I slap the girl in the face, hard. She snaps back to reality, much like I did mere seconds before her.

"What's your name?" I demand, and judging by the look of her face she is only now realizing the full extent of the situation.

"Sarah," she whispers.

I pick up the wallet that Parker found inside her wallet. "Why does this identify you as Dilys, then?" I ask, pointing at a card with her photo on it. It is an unmoving picture. I know who - or what - I am dealing with here.

"Dilys Fester," I read, and she closes her eyes. "Do you believe in magic, Dilys Fester?"

She shakes her head, as far as that is possible with the restraints on her head. She seems to only notice them now. When her cheeks turn slightly pink, I gather that she just discovered her state of undress. "Yes, you are naked Dilys. Does that scare you?"

I am not at all like Nott or Parker or MacDonough. They notice this at the same time that I do. They are rougher, they prefer starting with physical methods. But I am a woman. I toy with her fear, even though it smells like rotten trust, molded love and decomposed passion.

Suddenly I realize that I don't want to be doing this. The thought hits me like a brick wall. I do not want to stand here, torturing this girl, despite her being a Muggle. The whole thought of it makes the air in the room seem like there is no such thing as fresh air. Lemons do not exist in a world like this. Apple scent was not created for people like me. My world smells of darkness and deadly secrets. It smells of steel, of blood, of burned flesh.

But even though every fiber in my body is now trying to protest against what I should be doing, I know that the outcome of this interrogation is inevitable. There is no way around it.

So I pick up my work again, doing what I am supposed to do, but not thinking what I am supposed to think.

This girl has no secrets of any importance to us. This girl is a Muggle. She is young, she is healthy, and she is strapped to a table in a dungeon room of a tunnel system that serves as a base of operations to the most feared wizard of all times. And I am standing right next to her, asking myself what I am doing here. Then again, I know what I am doing here, but all of a sudden, I don't care about that anymore. I hate Muggles. I hate their dirty blood and I hate the way they - do things.

This is the point where I realize that I do not know the slightest thing about Muggles. Neither do I want to know, but how can one hate something one doesn't even know.

I realize that this is not the time to entertain such thoughts - that there is never a time to entertain such thoughts, really. I try to repress them. They will not go away, though. As I draw first blood with a sterile knife, I think about where this hatred came from. But hatred is like fire: it burns on the very things you live on, and it needs to have a point of origin. Except for magically created fire. Is there something as magically created hatred? Was she charmed to hate Muggles at an early age so she would learn hating Muggles? Or were Dumbledore and his cronies merely charmed not to hate them? Was it a natural thing to hate Muggles?

Even as I look at the girl that is currently screaming because of what I am doing to her, I know that I hate her. I hate the way she screams, the way she is trying to stop me from sinking that spike further into her arm. As if she could!

I am confused, and the stench is almost overwhelming now. It takes some effort to look at the three men in the room, silently asking the question. Nott declines with an expression that clearly indicates that he is too much her superior. MacDonough looks contemplative, but Parker instantly agrees so that gives him some time to decide.

It's always done that way. I don't think there is some sort of reasoning behind it, but then again the smell makes it hard to think. I nonchalantly lean against the table, supporting my weight on it while it trembles a little with the force of Parker's display of raw violence. I do not avert my eyes, even though I would like to. I am a woman, naturally I would be revolted by that. When he is satiated and done, Parker carefully readjusts his robe, and after taking a look at the bloody mess that the other man just made, MacDonough declines.

The girl is still conscious, and there are tears leaking down her face. I am quite angry with Parker, and Nott doesn't look happy either. That's not how it should be done. We give him a look.

"What?" he asks irritably, his breath still coming in pants and gasps. "She's a worthless muggle, no information that could possibly be lost by her snuffing it a little earlier."

"This is Parkinson's training object, Parker," Nott says quietly but menacingly. He turns around and looks at the girl that is bleeding heavily between her legs. In addition to the wounds that I have caused her, and judging from the pallor of her face, this looks like a hopeless case. I cannot possibly practice keeping her alive for as long as possible under these circumstances.

"You ruined her, Parker," I hear Nott say. I watch the scene with slightly detached interest. I am not feeling well at all, at the moment. I should have declined the present with the way I was feeling this morning. And the stench is everywhere. It is squeezing the last bit of sanity out of my lungs. It is soaked into my blood through some strange chemical reaction, and that blood goes everywhere in my body. It infests my brain, and clouds my line of vision.

If somebody asked me to step away from the table now, I would fall to my knees. Fortunately, nobody asks me to do so.

"This is a waste of time," Nott grumbles when I tune the conversation back in. "Parkinson, finish with her and then clean up," he commands and ushers the other two out of the room.

Suddenly, I want nothing more than to leave the confinement of this room, of this tunnel, of the whole system. I haven't really gotten out in months, and I have only seen the sun in my dreams. I want to feel the wind in my hair, carrying an ocean breeze down my windpipe, and not the nauseating stench of guilt. And that's what it is. I don't know where it's coming from, but it's there.

I turn to the gasping girl on the table, and see that she is spitting blood. I pull myself over to where her head lies and cut off all her hair with a knife, put it in a case bag and pocket it. Then I take another knife, bigger this time, and sink it deep into her chest. She makes some more gurgling noises, and then she's quiet.

I am finally alone in the room, left with only a bloody body and my own feelings.

With the last ounce of resolve, I manage to open the lid to the magical elevator that automatically transports the bodies to the incinerator. I know that this is not possible, but when I open the lid, even more of the foul air that is everywhere hits me. I start cleaning the room as carefully and halfway through cleaning the table, my stomach finally gives up and I throw up all over the neatly polished surface.

I have to start over again, and after what seems like hours, I am done. I drag myself back to my room and take a shower. When I come back from the steaming bathroom, I notice that it's already past midnight. So late already. I close my eyes and sniff at my hair. It should smell like grapefruit. It doesn't. Everything smells just the same. Chanel No. Death.

I have to get out or I'll suffocate. I have to see the sun again, I have to live again. I clothe myself, while my frantic thoughts revolve around things that I haven't thought about for ages.

When I'm done, I pull the bag with her hair out of my dirty clothes and stuff it into the pocket of my fresh robe. Absently I twist my hair around in one hand and then finally secure it at the back of my head with a quill. I do not take much, only some clothes and things that I suppose are dear to me and stuff them in a small bag.

Everything is done in a haste, and my thoughts and vision are hazy, blurred. Somehow, I make it past the guards. I flash them the crest that is embroidered on my robe slightly above my left breast and they let me pass.

And when I get out, the night air smells on the surface smells just like the night air down there. I close my eyes, taking deep, steady breaths, telling myself that I am just imagining things, that this is not real. That night air does not smell like this.

It does not really help. I walk away and not once look back. I have no idea of what the future holds for me.

*~*~*~*

"That'll be all, thank you," the woman in front of me says while fumbling with her bag, no doubt looking for her wallet.

I nod and put everything into her bag neatly, in an order that makes perfect sense. The heavy things first, fitting everything in according to size and form too.

"You do everything so neatly, Dilys," she says, as always, but today I don't pay attention to her. I am watching the man that just entered the shop, blinking a few times to check whether it's really him. It must be. The last time I saw him must have been when I was seventeen, on our graduation day. He changed a lot since then, and then again not. His skin has some wrinkles now, and there are crow's feet around his eyes. But those eyes are still shining with that same, mischievous light that they always did, and his hair, albeit streaked with grey a little already is still as unruly and wild as it ever was. But what really gives him away is the scar.

I blink again, thinking about my own scar. What would the odds that Harry Potter steps into my grocery store be?

Suddenly the smell comes back, not that it's ever gone. It is always there, and it has been my constant companion through all those years. It has faded to something barely tolerable with time, but now that he steps into my store, it comes back tenfold.

"Good-bye, Dilys," Mrs. Hooper says. I wave her good-bye in return.

"Are you Mrs. Dilys Fester?" he suddenly asks, stepping forward to the counter.

"Ms," I reply absently. What does he want? What is he doing here? Why can't he just leave. I lean on the counter. I am not as young and strong as I once was, and I don't think I can deal with the smell any longer.

"Oh, yes, sorry." He is now fumbling with his shirtsleeve. "This might take a while," he finally says. "Perhaps you should close the store for today."

"But Mrs. Rhys-Jones hasn't been here yet," I reply, knowing that the counselor's wife will still need to get her groceries. I have the only grocery shop in the small welsh town I'm living in, and I know that people are counting on me. It revolts me, it still does, but it gives me an almost satisfying sense of control and importance.

"She will have to knock, then," he says calmly, and then turns the sign so that it now flashes the word 'CLOSED' to everybody walking by.

"I am some sort of policeman, Ms. Fester," he then begins explaining why he is here. I would like to scream that I know that he's an auror, but I can't. Have they found out? Surely they cannot have! Absentmindedly I run the fingertips of my right hand over the scarred tissue on my left lower arm. It is gone now, and even though nobody in this town knows this, the horrible sight of the disfigured skin there is a lot easier to bear than what was there before.

"There were some big crimes committed, more than twenty years ago, and I'm investigating material we found only recently. Your name dropped there," he says, looking at me significantly. "My, ah, discovery tells me that you should, in fact, be dead."

I gasp. They have found the protocols! They probably have enough material now to condemn me to death, or even the Dementor's Kiss, if they knew I was still alive.

"Is there something you remember?" he asks me, apparently mistaking my gasp for a reaction of surprise, or shock.

"N-no," I stammer. They don't know. They don't know. I chant this sentence in my head over and over again.

"What is that on your arm?" he asks, pointing to my left arm.

"Oh, got burned. With acid." I try being nonchalant. "Was a long time ago, really, and no big deal. I survived, as you can see," I say, giving him a reassuring smile, which takes some effort.

"Well, perhaps, but this matter should still be fixed. I might come back to talk to you another day, Ms. Fester. Perhaps you remember something then," he finally says after giving me a long, hard stare. Somehow I have a feeling he doesn't quite believe me.

"Yes, you do that," I say, ushering him out of the store.

"I will," he says, before closing the door behind him.

He will, I know. I walk back to the safety of my counter and sink to the floor there, leaning my head against the cool wood.

And the next day, when my customers come and buy the same things they buy every day, they do not notice the lingering scent that reminds me of his parting words, almost like a threat.

One day, he will come back, and until then, the scent will stay, tickling my nostrils in evil, tormenting pleasure.