Chapter 3
January 1999
The boat crossing is long and miserable and Harry is sick twice over the deck railings.
He wonders if the sea is trying to tell him something.
The water is dark and choppy and the boat heaves from side to side as it struggles through the rough waves.
Don’t come here. Don’t keep living in the past.
‘It gets easier,’ calls a voice behind him.
Harry turns to find a man watching him from the wooden seats in the middle of the deck. He is about Remus’ age, if only Remus were still with them.
He wears a mariner's cap over coarse brown hair and is broadly built with a sympathetic smile. A leather trunk teeters on the seat next to him and Harry wonders how it hasn’t fallen over with the lurching of the boat.
Magic, he supposes.
‘Right,’ says Harry. ‘Thanks.’
He wonders if everything gets easier. With time, with distance, with age.
The wind whips sea spray and hair into his mouth and Harry's stomach churns again.
Or maybe nothing gets easier. Maybe you just forget how hard it is.
The man chuckles and points over his shoulder.
‘Anyhow, we’re arriving now. You'll be glad, I'll bet.’
Harry turns to look where the man is pointing.
Azkaban.
The fortress seems to appear out of nowhere and looms suddenly over them, vast and foreboding. It is perched atop jagged black rocks, soaked by the wild waves and puckered with barnacles. Its colossal stone walls are sea battered and weather beaten and its desolate grey spires rise high into the overcast sky like brittle needles.
Harry has never seen such brutal architecture. It screams of hopelessness.
He has to look away as the boat navigates the craggy outcropping to port at a ramshackle wooden pier.
The salty smell of the ocean and of seaweed fills Harry’s nostrils and he can hear gulls shrieking high overhead.
‘Azkaban. All off for Azkaban!’ announces a shrill voice from nowhere.
Harry has seen neither crew nor captain aboard the vessel and wonders where the voice comes from.
As he ponders the boat’s crewless passage, two heavyset guards arrive at the pier. Their faces are etched with scars and they remind Harry of the sea worn rocks beneath them. He knows that they are Aurors, and he wonders if he too will look like that someday.
Harry lifts his bag, shakily, and walks towards the swaying wooden ramp that connects the boat, temporarily, to the pier. It is dark and slick with water, but Harry doesn't worry about losing his footing.
He’s already lost it. On life, on hope, on keeping going.
He takes a step, and then another, until he is on the pier, standing next to the man in the mariner's cap. Through the gaps in the algae covered planks he can see the sea churning.
Harry looks up again, quickly.
There is only one other passenger aboard the boat. He appears, gracefully, from below deck, as though unfazed by the turbulent waters. He is wearing a slim cut suit of charcoal grey cloth and a fine wool cloak is draped about his shoulders. It is fastened at the neck with a silver serpent-like pin. His angular face is framed by brilliant white-blond hair, slicked back just as Harry remembers it.
He navigates the swaying, sea-soaked ramp with ease and steps ashore.
He does not look at Harry, and Harry is happy to avoid his gaze.
*
Harry is sitting in a windowless grey room. Its rough stone walls seem to close in on him like a trap. One that is modestly furnished with a wooden desk, two wooden chairs, and a wooden cabinet, between which there is barely room to move.
Harry thinks that the occupant must like wood, and small spaces.
Overhead, an enchanted lantern emits a clinical white light that feels entirely too bright for the size of the room and is causing Harry to squint.
‘It used to be a cell,’ the man sitting opposite him says.
‘Oh,’ replies Harry.
‘Haven’t gotten round to decorating yet, but I thought a window charm might be nice.’
Harry nods. There is something disorientating about the lack of natural light. He cannot tell if it is day, or night, or a dream.
‘So,’ the man continues. ‘Welcome to Azkaban.’
Or a nightmare.
His voice is gravelly, from too many pipes smoked over too many years, and does not seem to fit with his wiry build. His bright blue eyes remind Harry, painfully, of Dumbledore’s and his thinning hair is the colour of sun-bleached hay. On the backs of his hands, scars crisscross like rivers on a map.
He introduces himself as Bernard Kettletoft, Head of the Azkaban Rehabilitation Administration. He has been assigned, by the new Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Head of the Auror Office, Gawain Robards, to oversee the introduction of a new regime at Azkaban.
He does not need to explain to Harry - though he does - the effort to remove the Dementors and, with them, the inhumane conditions that they have inflicted on the prison over centuries unchecked.
Harry smiles at the irony of it. As if the Dementors are the worst thing inside Azkaban.
Still, they have almost completely been replaced now, by Aurors, like Harry, posted on rotation to guard and manage the fortress.
‘The aim,’ Kettletoft says, ‘is to move away from indefinite solitary confinement, prioritising rehabilitation and reintegration into society.’ He pauses. ‘For those that aren’t serving life, at least.’
His tone is impeccably neutral. It reminds Harry of Muggle newsreaders, and he can’t tell whether Kettletoft actually supports this policy or thinks it too liberal.
‘Currently, we have a communal dining hall and a courtyard for exercise. Most prisoners are permitted to use these facilities. We also have plans for a library and a workshop in time.’
Harry shifts awkwardly in his uncomfortable wooden chair. ‘And er - is it safe?’ he asks. ‘Them being together, out of their cells?’
He isn’t worried about himself. He’s worried about them. Plotting, escaping, going unpunished for their crimes.
They killed his friends. Now Harry drifts through days, barely living. Sometimes he wonders if they received life sentences, or if he did.
Kettletoft seems amused by his question.
‘Most of our inmates don’t need walls to keep them confined,’ he says. ‘Their minds do that for them.’
Harry remembers, with difficulty, his own encounters with the Dementors. The hopeless pit of despair that they dragged him into. The sense of drowning in his own mind. He isn’t surprised that most of the prison’s long term residents have lost their sanity to the old guard.
‘It’s the more recent inmates,’ Kettletoft goes on, ‘that we must be wary of. They are more coherent, more manipulative, more capable.’
Harry doesn’t ask who they are. He knows. He stood face to face with them at the final battle. Defeated them. Sent them here.
A poor exchange for his friend’s lives.
‘Our job is to ensure that Azkaban remains secure, and our society remains safe,’ Kettletoft concludes, as though he has been reading from an invisible script.
He places his hands atop the desk, scarred fingers interlaced, and gives Harry a penetrating look, as if appraising him.
‘You’ll have a tour this afternoon, and see your quarters. Tomorrow you can start learning rules and routines, but take the week to really settle in. Some change their minds straight away,’ he warns. ‘It’s a difficult place to get used to.’
Harry nods. He is certain that it is.
But he has no intention of requesting a withdrawal.
As cold, and lonely, and as grim as the fortress is, he knows it is where he is meant to be.
*
The tour lasts three arduous hours.
The sounds of the place are somehow more haunting than the sights.
The prisoners babble incessantly to themselves, lost in the labyrinths of their broken minds. Their chatter echoes along the endless stone corridors and tumbles down the spiral staircases.
In the towers on high, Harry hears the wind whistling through holes in the crumbling mortar like a wailing, love lost ghost.
No one responds but the nesting gulls and the crashing sea.
It is ghastly.
Even without the Dementors, Azkaban is as bleak and as cheerless as a death sentence and each wing leaves Harry feeling more and more despondent.
*
After a meagre lunch - Harry has little appetite and does not complain - Kettletoft escorts him to his living quarters.
They pass through the dreary entrance courtyard and Harry shudders at the greyness of it all as he tastes the salty air upon his lips.
His reaction does not go unnoticed.
‘If you can stick it out here,’ Kettletoft says, ‘you can learn to find the beauty in anything.’
Harry ponders his words as he unlocks the iron barred door to the staff tower.
He has already survived the worst of times. So why can’t he see the beauty in anything?
The locks clank and clunk and finally Kettletoft pushes the door open. It screeches against the floor and the sound ricochets across the desolate courtyard behind them.
‘Welcome home,’ Kettletoft says wryly, and steps inside.
Harry looks back briefly before he does the same.
Draco Malfoy is walking towards the pier, escorted by a guard. Their eyes meet - for a moment - across the cheerless concrete and Harry thinks - for a moment - that he wants to leave with him. For how can he possibly stay here?
And then Malfoy is gone.
And the moment is gone.
And Harry is stepping into the tower.