Out of The Shadows (Golden Trio Era) {1}

Karkaroff's Trial

This place couldn't be Hogwarts; Mikayla had never seen a room like that in the castle. The adults in the room seemed to be facing in one direction and none of them were talking to each other. The basin was circular and the room was square, so she couldn't make out what was going on in the corners of it. Mikayla leaned in closer, tilting her head, trying to see. The tip of her nose touched the strange substance that was in the basin. Dumbledore's office gave a sudden lurch, the pair were thrown forward and pitched headfirst into the substance inside the basin, but their heads didn't hit the stone bottom. They were falling through something icy-cold and black.

Suddenly, Mikayla found herself sitting on a bench next to Harry at the end of the room inside the basin. The bench was raised high above the others. She looked up at the high stone ceiling, expecting to see the circular window that they had been staring through, but there was nothing but dark, solid stone. Confused, Mikayla looked around her. Not one of the witches and wizards in the room were looking at her or Harry. Not one of them seemed to have noticed that two fourteen-year-olds had just dropped from the ceiling into their midst. "Professor!" Harry suddenly whispered. Mikayla turned to see that he was sitting right next to Dumbledore. "I'm sorry—we didn't mean to, we were 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. Then it dawned on Harry, "Harry this is like one of my visions! I don't know how this thing works but we can't interact with anyone here. It's the past it's already happened." Mikayla turned to her best friend, who was confused why Dumbledore was ignoring them, he nodded before he came to his own conclusion, "It's a memory." Harry said as he turned to Mikayla. "What?" she raised her eyebrow at him. "Remember in second year when I was writing in Riddle's diary and it sucked me into a memory?" He prompted. Mikayla nodded understandingly. "It was like this, wasn't it?" Harry nodded and turned back to Dumbledore, raising his right hand and waving it energetically in front of Dumbledore's face. Dumbledore didn't blink, look around at Harry, or move at all. "See?" Harry muttered to me. Mikayla nodded and looked around more carefully. The room, as she had thought before, was underground. It was more of a dungeon than a room. There was a bleak and forbidding air around the place; there were no pictures on the walls, no decorations at all; just 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 Mikayla could confirm where the pair had found themselves, she heard footsteps. The door in the corner of the dungeon opened and three people entered, or at least one man, flanked by two dementors. Her 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, Harry and Mikayla couldn't blame him... They both knew the dementors could not touch them inside a memory, but they 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. Mikayla 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 and Mikayla 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." A curt voice came from the pairs left. Mikayla looked and saw Mr. Crouch standing up in the middle of the bench beside her. Crouch's hair was dark, his face was much less lined, and 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 and Mikayla could still hear the familiar smug 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 Lord's 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 surveying Karkaroff with interest, others with pronounced mistrust. Then Mikayla heard, quite distinctly, from Dumbledore's other side, a familiar, growling voice saying, "Filth." She leaned forward so that she could see past Harry and 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?" Moody said with a sardonic smile. "No," Dumbledore spoke 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," Mr. Crouch said. "Let us hear them, please." "You must understand," Karkaroff said 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," Moody sneered. "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," Moody muttered. "Yet you say you have some names for us?" Mr. Crouch said. "I—I do," Karkaroff nodded, his voice breathless. "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?" Mr. Crouch said sharply. Karkaroff drew a deep breath. "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," Moody murmured. "We have already apprehended Dolohov," Crouch said. "He was caught shortly after yourself." "Indeed?" Karkaroff breathed, his eyes widening. "I, I am delighted to hear it!" But he didn't look it. Mikayla could tell that this news had come as a real blow to him. One of his names was worthless.