Before the Dawn | George Weasley

48

I departed on my task the next morning before the sun rose, walking from Jamie's villa to the end of the road, where I disapparated.

I landed in a small town on the English coast, just outside Scarborough; my grandfather had lived there before he died, and I had visited him once as a child. But I wasn't there to revisit old memories. I was using the town as a halfway point, to get in apparition range of somewhere far worse.

If you had asked me years ago whether or not I would ever visit Azkaban prison, I would have laughed at you, or made some bad joke about being framed; yet, here I was, standing in the small graveyard just outside the prison walls, the violent winds whipping my hair around my face and the crash of the endless ocean surrounding me deafening. 

There was no sight of land off the island in any direction you looked; the prison was placed in the very center of the North Sea, purposefully and mercilessly isolated from all civilisation.

Dementors circled the skies above me, setting me on edge, but I gritted my teeth and made my way to the front door, a tall, steel contraption of an entryway. It opened with a screech, and I came face-to-face with a rather tall dementor. It blocked the doorway, staring at me from beneath its dark hood.

Wordlessly, I lifted my shirtsleeve. After a moment, the dementor shifted aside to let me enter.

"I've been sent here to see Morfin Gaunt," I said sharply as I walked in. "Take me to him."

The dementor drifted away. I followed behind, the damp smell of the prison greeting me as I went. My boots squeaked against the stone floors as we entered the cell blocks, cells on either side of me holding shells of human beings; some pressed their faces against the bars, while others sat and stared intently into corners. There was a gentle hum of voices, mostly from those speaking incoherently to no one in particular. I swallowed shakily and kept my gaze straight ahead, on the dementor in front of me.

After climbing two flights of stairs and walking down six different cell rows, we came to a stop in front of an end cell. I hesitantly looked inside, the inmate staring at me with open agitation. The dementor drifted away, leaving me alone with the man in the cell.

He was difficult to look at; his hair was so matted and dirty I couldn't be sure quite what colour it was, his open mouth revealed several missing teeth, and his two small eyes seemed to peer in two different directions, and I had trouble choosing which one to look at.

"Morfin," I started. "Morfin Gaunt is your name, isn't it?"

He just grunted, leaning his forehead against the stone wall of his cell.

"I need to talk to you, Morfin," I urged. "I need to ask you about the place you grew up."

"You're not welcome," he said, his voice scraping against my ears.

"Why aren't I welcome?" I asked patiently.

That seemed to catch his interest. He crawled closer to the bars that separated us. "You speak it. You're one of us."

"Sorry, what?" I leaned a bit closer, but not too close, lest he decide to reach out through the bars and throttle me.

"One of us." He grinned, showing off his few remaining teeth.

"Yes, I'm one of you," I said, still unsure of what he meant but deciding to play along. "Morfin, can you tell me about the place you grew up?"

"Little Hangleton," he growled, picking at his toenail. "With Father and Merope."

"Merope?" I asked softly. 

He looked at me with so much distaste that I physically recoiled. "Filthy squib."