
another.
The basin being circular, and the room he was observing square, Harry could not
make out what was going on in the corners of it. He leaned even closer, tilting his
head, trying to see...
The tip of his nose touched the strange substance into which he was staring.
Dumbledore's office gave an almighty lurch - Harry was thrown forward and
pitched headfirst into the substance inside the basin -
But his head did not hit the stone bottom. He was falling through something icycold
and black; it was like being sucked into a dark whirlpool -
And suddenly, Harry found himself sitting on a bench at the end of the room
inside the basin, a bench raised high above the others. He looked up at the high
stone ceiling, expecting to see the circular window through which he had just been
staring, but there was nothing there but dark, solid stone.
Breathing hard and fast. Harry looked around him. Not one of the witches and
wizards in the room (and there were at least two hundred of them) was looking at
him. Not one of them seemed to have noticed that a fourteen-year-old boy had just
dropped from the ceiling into their midst. Harry turned to the wizard next to him
on the bench and uttered a loud cry of surprise that reverberated around the silent
room.
He was sitting right next to Albus Dumbledore.
"Professor!" Harry said in a kind of strangled whisper. "I'm sorry - I didn't mean to
- I was just looking at that basin in your cabinet - I - where are we?"
But Dumbledore didn't move or speak. He ignored Harry completely. Like every
other wizard on the benches, he was staring into the far corner of the room, where
there was a door.
Harry gazed, nonplussed, at Dumbledore, then around at the silently watchful
crowd, then back at Dumbledore. And then it dawned on him. . . .
Once before. Harry had found himself somewhere that nobody could see or hear
him. That time, he had fallen through a page in an enchanted diary, right into
somebody else's memory . . . and unless he was very much mistaken, something of
the sort had happened again...
Harry raised his right hand, hesitated, and then waved it energetically in from of
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Dumbledore's face. Dumbledore did not blink, look around at Harry, or indeed
move at all. And that, in Harry's opinion, settled the matter. Dumbledore wouldn't
ignore him like that. He was inside a memory, and this was not the present-day
Dumbledore. Yet it couldn't be that long ago . . . the Dumbledore sitting next to
him now was silver-haired, just like the present-day Dumbledore. But what was
this place? What were all these wizards waiting for?
Harry looked around more carefully. The room, as he had suspected when
observing it from above, was almost certainly underground - more of a dungeon
than a room, he thought. There was a bleak and forbidding air about the place;
there were no pictures on the walls, no decorations at all; just these serried rows of
benches, rising in levels all around the room, all positioned so that they had a clear
view of that chair with the chains on its arms.
Before Harry could reach any conclusions about the place in which they were, he
heard footsteps. The door in the corner of the dungeon opened and three people
entered - or at least one man, flanked by two dementors.
Harry's insides went cold. The dementors - tall, hooded creatures whose faces
were concealed - were gliding slowly toward the chair in the center of the room,
each grasping one of the man's arms with their dead and rotten-looking hands. The
man between them looked as though he was about to faint, and Harry couldn't
blame him ... he knew the dementors could not touch him inside a memory, but he
remembered their power only too well. The watching crowd recoiled slightly as
the dementors placed the man in the chained chair and glided back out of the
room. The door swung shut behind them.
Harry looked down at the man now sitting in the chair and saw that it was
Karkaroff.
Unlike Dumbledore, Karkaroff looked much younger; his hair and goatee were
black. He was not dressed in sleek furs, but in thin and ragged robes. He was
shaking. Even as Harry watched, the chains on the arms of the chair glowed
suddenly gold and snaked their way up Karkaroff's arms, binding him there.
"Igor Karkaroff," said a curt voice to Harry's left. Harry looked around and saw
Mr. Crouch standing up in the middle of the bench beside him. Crouch's hair was
dark, his face was much less lined, he looked fit and alert. "You have been brought
from Azkaban to present evidence to the Ministry of Magic. You have given us to
understand that you have important information for us."
Karkaroff straightened himself as best he could, tightly bound to the chair.
"I have, sir," he said, and although his voice was very scared, Harry could still
hear the familiar unctuous note in it. "I wish to be of use to the Ministry. I wish to
help. I - I know that the Ministry is trying to - to round up the last of the Dark
Lords supporters. I am eager to assist in any way I can. ..."
There was a murmur around the benches. Some of the wizards and witches were
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surveying Karkaroff with interest, others with pronounced mistrust. Then Harry
heard, quite distinctly, from Dumbledores other side, a familiar, growling voice
saying, "Filth."
Harry leaned forward so that he could see past Dumbledore. Mad-Eye Moody was
sitting there - except that there was a very noticeable difference in his appearance.
He did not have his magical eye, but two normal ones. Both were looking down
upon Karkaroff, and both were narrowed in intense dislike.
"Crouch is going to let him out," Moody breathed quietly to Dumbledore. "He's
done a deal with him. Took me six months to track him down, and Crouch is going
to let him go if he's got enough new names. Let's hear his information, I say, and
throw him straight back to the dementors."
Dumbledore made a small noise of dissent through his long, crooked nose.
"Ah, I was forgetting . . . you don't like the dementors, do you, Albus?" said
Moody with a sardonic smile.
"No," said Dumbledore calmly, "I'm afraid I don't. I have long felt the Ministry is
wrong to ally itself with such creatures."
"But for filth like this . . ." Moody said softly.
"You say you have names for us, Karkaroff," said Mr. Crouch. "Let us hear them,
please."
"You must understand," said Karkaroff hurriedly, "that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-
Named operated always in the greatest secrecy. . . . He preferred that we - I mean
to say, his supporters - and I regret now, very deeply, that I ever counted myself
among them -"
"Get on with it," sneered Moody.
"- we never knew the names of every one of our fellows - He alone knew exactly
who we all were -"
"Which was a wise move, wasn't it, as it prevented someone like you, Karkaroff,
from turning all of them in," muttered Moody.
"Yet you say you have some names for us?" said Mr. Crouch.
"I - I do," said Karkaroff breathlessly. "And these were important supporters, mark
you. People I saw with my own eyes doing his bidding. I give this information as a
sign that I fully and totally renounce him, and am filled with a remorse so deep I
can barely -"
"These names are?" said Mr. Crouch sharply.
Karkaroff drew a deep breath.
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"There was Antonin Dolohov," he said. "I - I saw him torture countless Muggles
and - and non-supporters of the Dark Lord."
"And helped him do it," murmured Moody.
"We have already apprehended Dolohov," said Crouch. "He was caught shortly
after yourself."
"Indeed?" said Karkaroff, his eyes widening. "I - I am delighted to hear it!"
But he didn't look it. Harry could tell that this news had come as a real blow to
him. One of his names was worthless.
"Any others?" said Crouch coldly.
"Why, yes ... there was Rosier," said Karkaroff hurriedly. "Evan Rosier."
"Rosier is dead," said Crouch. "He was caught shortly after you were too. He
preferred to fight rather than come quietly and was killed in the struggle."
"Took a bit of me with him, though," whispered Moody to Harry's right. Harry
looked around at him once more, and saw him indicating the large chunk out of his
nose to Dumbledore.
"No - no more than Rosier deserved!" said Karkaroff, a real note of panic in his
voice now. Harry could see that he was starting to worry that none of his
information would be of any use to the Ministry. Karkaroff's eyes darted toward
the door in the corner, behind which the dementors undoubtedly still stood,
waiting.
"Any more?" said Crouch.
"Yes!" said Karkaroff. "There was Travers - he helped murder the McKinnons!
Mulciber - he specialized in the Imperius Curse, forced countless people to do
horrific things! Rookwood, who was a spy, and passed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-
Named useful information from inside the Ministry itself!"
Harry could tell that, this time, Karkaroff had struck gold. The watching crowd
was all murmuring together.
"Rookwood?" said Mr. Crouch, nodding to a witch sitting in front of him, who
began scribbling upon her piece of parchment. "Augustus Rookwood of the
Department of Mysteries?"
"The very same," said Karkaroff eagerly. "I believe he used a network of wellplaced
wizards, both inside the Ministry and out, to collect information -"
"But Travers and Mulciber we have," said Mr. Crouch. "Very well, Karkaroff, if
that is all, you will be returned to Azkaban while we decide -"
"Not yet!" cried Karkaroff, looking quite desperate. "Wait, I have more!"
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Harry could see him sweating in the torchlight, his white skin contrasting strongly
with the black of his hair and beard.
"Snape!" he shouted. "Severus Snape!"
"Snape has been cleared by this council," said Crouch disdainfully. "He has been
vouched for by Albus Dumbledore."
"No!" shouted Karkaroff, straining at the chains that bound him to the chair. "I
assure you! Severus Snape is a Death Eater!"
Dumbledore had gotten to his feet.
"I have given evide