To the Ordinary World (Everybody’s Got To Write an Azkaban Fic Sometime)

Not all stories should be told by everyone.

Consider, for a moment, Prisoner 1995A221B. His life has been one of misery and woe, even without the whole “locked up in an inescapable fortress with literal monsters for guards and figurative monsters for fellow inmates”. This is not the guy you get to tell you jolly uplifting stories like… Christ, even thinking about Prisoner 1995A221B makes anything sound miserable and tragic. He’s the kind of backstory that starts off with a nice Perrault Cinderella, but finishes with mutilated and blinded step-sisters anyway.

(Although there is that play that claims all fairy tales are about incest, so maybe Cinderella was an inherently flawed choice of example if there are people going around thinking that. Hopefully you’ve got the idea anyway.)

Now, you might give a nice jolly story to Prisoner 1959A643C. Why? Well, he’s cracked. Can’t tell up from down, left from wrong or right from right. And that’s saying something because he could when he came in. But a little bit of insanity isn’t a barrier to warm and endearing stories. Hell, it’s basically required to make a children’s story jolly… everyone’s an orphan, going to be an orphan or has parents who are secretly alive but no-one knows this. The cracked mind doesn’t care that these tragic backstories are inevitably necessary and just ploughs right on through.

But this is the thing about Azkaban… there’s basically nothing to do but tell stories.

Let’s get back to our friend Prisoner 1995A221B.

In another world, this guy could’ve been the big hero. Saves pretty much everyone. Sometimes he doesn’t save many people at all and ends up travelling through time to try again. Maybe there’s another dimension. Maybe he saves everyone but they die later in an unrelated Batman’s parents style murder. Maybe saving the world is sort of a side plot for some grand romance. Any kind of hero thing you can think of. He could have done that. But it doesn’t really matter because, in this world, an evil pink toad made a Faustian bargain. And all her enemies were variously killed or imprisoned. Prisoner 1995A221B is one voice away from thinking he’s one of the unlucky ones.

That’s probably not enough detail, right?

The first thing you’ve got to understand about bureaucrats who get a chance at absolute power is that a lot of them don’t want it. They’re public servants. They might have ideas about how to do things. They may even be radicals or zealots or both. It doesn’t matter. The best place to do good is somewhere important in the bureaucracy. That’s why they became bureaucrats. Maybe they think it means they don’t need to worry about morals or codes of conduct. No. They’re instruments of power… machines following the instructions laid out before them, perfectly and without question. Entirely banal. And if those instructions change? They change too. Except, of course, they don’t. They’re still the same. It’s just a different goal.

Of course, sometimes they like following orders but are also evil. This is one those times.

The second thing to remember is that sometimes people have enemies they’re not aware of. Take Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic. Back in the mid-1990s a dude called Tom Riddle was trying to undermine his ministry from the shadows, even as Fudge was insistent that Riddle was dead. Fudge’s ignorance didn’t magically make Riddle into something other than a deadly enemy. And likewise poor Stan Shunpike, who’d once failed to recognise Fudge despite his fame, importance and signature look. The only difference was that Shunpike didn’t know the Minister for Magic personally thought of him, not the other way round.

The third thing to remember is that sometimes, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Thus, Tom Riddle died and Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley were framed for the gruesome deaths of Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. Which sounds completely implausible until you remember Harry Potter was raised by (a) muggles and (b) the notorious mass murderer, Sirius Black (killed resisting arrest not three days earlier). Oh, and it turned out Harry was one of the late, great Dumbledore’s closest pupils… the shock of the news giving the old man a fatal heart attack. Oh and Gilderoy Lockhart recovered his memories, revealing it was Ron and Harry who obliviated him in the first place. Clearly, the loose end had to go.

Oh, and the trial paperwork kept getting lost so by the time Harry Potter was ready for his court date, he looked completely insane. Since they also use Azkaban for the holding cells.

If it wasn’t clear, Prisoner 1995A221B was convicted in 1995, sent to Azkaban, put in block 221 in cell B. In the real world they’d called him Harry Potter, the Boy Who Killed. In here they don’t call him much at all. The Dementors only want the locations and a measure of prisoner freshness. Who is completely irrelevant. And with just the two exceptions, this has led to 0 escapes in hundreds of years.

We’ll call him Potter, since he does matter to us.

Potter does not look good. No-one who’s been in ten years looks good. He’d looked bad after ten weeks. These days he’s a wreck. His hair’s long and jagged… he’s got a sharp rock… and his beard, well, again, it’s just long enough to cut comfortably with the rock, so it’s quite long. It’s so dark, Potter doesn’t even realise his beard isn’t jet black, but rather a dark auburn. And it’s this very darkness that explains why he’s got so many scraps, bruises and bumps. He knows he’s innocent, sure, but the Dementors still mean he can barely keep a sense of space and time.

Every day is much like the next in Potter’s world. He wakes up when they bring the food round. It’s not much. Usually a gruel with dry, crusty bread. He eats the gruel with it because otherwise he cuts his gums. If he’s lucky, it’s porridge. On Boxing Day they get slop… what should be a horrific combination of leftovers rather than a special treat. After what Potter assumes is breakfast, it’s exercise. He can’t do much. He was never not skinny, but now he’s mostly bones, covered in scars, and it’s not a good idea, he knows, to exercise. But he has to. Some push ups. Some sit ups. Some bench dips (using the rock slab that passes for a bed). Some star jumps. And then he’s done.

Eventually they bring round lunch. It’s a lime. And some salted meat, usually beef but sometimes pork. Every other 63rd day there’s sometimes a biscuit. It’s been 315 days since Potter last had a biscuit. It’s fifty fifty if there’s a biscuit coming today. If Potter still had his wits about him, he might even be thinking about the possibility. Since he’s in Azkaban, he doesn’t. Some days he can’t even remember there are sometimes biscuits. On the days he does, he thinks about them as he carefully eats lunch. The meat’s tough and his teeth… Azkaban isn’t good for the body, mind or soul. He knows it’s a kind of sea diet. He remembers from school. Not Hogwarts, but school. Potter doesn’t think of Hogwarts as school any more.

Potter thinks about his life as a muggle a lot.

He already misses Dudley and his Aunt. If he stays here much longer, he’ll start missing his Uncle, too.

After lunch, Potter tries to find the hole. This is how he gets hurt on the days he doesn’t try and do his exercises somewhere he shouldn’t.

There’s no yard time in Azkaban. The Dementors don’t care and prolonged exposure to magic means their human masters don’t either. It’s basically ‘the hole’ 24/7 365 days a year, 366 for leap years. Except, the cells are arranged in blocks of four. And since the prison is magical, there’s always space. Block 221 didn’t exist before Potter arrived. Sort of. It used to exist. 221 was, after all, the 221st block they needed. It’d been empty for 227 years. It hadn’t existed for 227. They’d wanted somewhere lonely. Somewhere no-one could yell across the way or shout down the hall. So they went and found an empty floor. And put Potter as far from the windows as they could. Somewhere they could ‘forget’ to inspect on their infrequent tours.

But there are two theys. And the second they are Dementors. They don’t care. They’re monsters of limited intelligence and infinite cruelty.

Potter has a cellie. Well, more a blockie. Prisoner 1995A221C.

C doesn’t do things the same as Potter. C’s much worse off. Oh, sure, she gets the gruel and the bread and all the other stuff. Insofar as Dementors can be arsed to bring their food their food, Dementors aren’t interested in making their job difficult. C, though, disagrees with something in the gruel. Oh, in some ways it’s got uses. She’s far too malnourished to menstruate which, here, would mean just bleeding (Dementors don’t care)… and since she’s never getting out, she doesn’t worry what ten years of this might mean. She also doesn’t have to eat the gruel… which is bad enough that Potter wretches every time he feels it. But she’s got to eat. And that bread… it cuts. So she has to dunk it, still.

And that’s where it all goes wrong.

Sometimes it’s okay. If it wasn’t, she’d be dead. They don’t serve porridge enough to survive without the bread. They don’t serve enough food to survive without the breakfast. So she has to eat the bread. If she wants to live. And that’s the problem because, often enough, it’s bad. And when it’s bad… C doesn’t always find the toilet fast enough. Which means the water. And there’s always water.

The Dementors take a lot from prisoners. That time to think… that goes first. The food is just there and the notion that finding the toilet before eating? Well, that just isn’t. But the bad memories are. Which is why C doesn’t dunk the bread in the water. That always causes… the other problem. And then she screams. It doesn’t make sense. It’s safe to drink. The bread is… mostly safe to eat.

But it is a magic prison. An evil, dark magic, but magic nonetheless. Why shouldn’t the water force her to eat something of the gruel?

If you asked, C couldn’t say much about the water. It runs, that’s for sure. And it’s cold, really cold. Sometimes C thinks it’s deep, like she could swim to the bottom and find a way to the sea to escape. On those days, it does seem kind of salty. Other times the water seems everywhere… like a monsoon falling from the cell’s ceiling, with no escape and no place to dry.

Potter exercises because that’s all there is. Because he knows that’s what prisoners do. Because once upon a time he was a muggle and learnt that exercise was good. C exercises because she has to get dry. And one day she’ll have to exercise more than she possibly can.

And when she’s dry and finished her lime, C tries to find the hole.

“Ginny?” Potter whispers.

“Harry?” she whispers back.

They always whisper. At first it was because they knew they weren’t meant to be together. By the time they were convicted, they did it because they always did. Now they whisper because they’ve forgotten.

“How was lunch?” Potter asks, it’s all he ever does.

“Oh, Harry, tell me about being a muggle,” Ginny replies, like she hasn’t asked every day for the last ten years.

They’re usually whispering when the Dementors come by for their lunch. There’s something about tasting a world where Dementors don’t exist that the monsters love.

It takes a while for Potter to come back to himself. He hears his mother scream, of course. That’s not going anywhere. But then there’s Cedric, the cruciatus, Ron’s empty eyes starting across the gap between their beds… his lungs pulled through his chest and his guts spilling on to the floor, the blood under his nails, Dumbledore and Sirius’ bodies under that headline and, worst of all, Mr and Mrs Weasley not even looking at either him or Ginny. He used to see the cupboard, too, but now that’s a happy place. (Even though it’s not.)

What he doesn’t understand is why he always sees Lavender, smiling at something Ron said in Divination just before he wakes up. But he doesn’t question it. He has to see if Ginny’s back.

She was 14 when they’d sentenced her Azkaban. She was 13 when she became ‘Potter’s Accomplice,’ his latter day Bellatrix: the woman he recruited to murder Hermione Granger as she slept, safe from Potter in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitories. She was 13 when her parents thought she’d help pull her own brother’s lungs through his ribs. She was 13 when she woken in a bed that wasn’t hers, next to the left side of her brother’s best friend. She was 13 when they’d told the world about the Chamber. She was 14 when she realised everyone who could’ve helped was dead, sitting in chains next to her or whispering in the ear of the Minister of Magic that prison was too good for her. She was 14 when she saw her own parents not even turn. She was 14 when she’d seen her favourite brother sadly pocket a clockhand. She was 14 when she’d see all this as a taster for the diary, for the chamber, for the memory of the blackouts and the blood and the boy. She was 14 when she realised she was C.

And the memory they always take is this… Harry still calls her Ginny.

So why does she remember dancing with Neville?

“Ginny?”

“I’m here, Harry.”

They do dinners in Azkaban. There are four varieties. On the good days, the prisoners get potatoes and a variable amount of salt, either far too much or not enough (Dementors don’t eat food). On the bad days, it’s just fruit… and the morning comes with diarrhoea. Mostly, though, it’s a dry scone with meat gravy… not tasty, not healthy, not nourishing, not filling and always reminiscent of life before. And then there are the bushy heads of raw broccoli and unpeeled carrot, orange even in the gloom of Block 221. Those are the days Potter has questions.

“Who do you think did it, Ginny?”

“Voldemort.”

“He’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I woke up because… it’s hard to describe, but I just knew he was dead, really dead. And I turned to tell Ron and…”

“I was cold.”

“It must be someone.”

“Tell me a story, Harry.”

In his head, Potter thinks he knows what Ginny looks like now. He’s wrong.

Cell 221C doesn’t have a sharp stone. C’s got an ancient pair of rusted, blunt scissors. They’re magical, she knows, since even in her time they couldn’t have lasted. And despite their obvious bluntness, they cut her hair… once long and fiery, now brutally short and consequently the rather browner shade of ginger that dominated her roots. Potter still sees the hair he remembers, but now tangled and rank… enormously long and horrifically matted. Potter wants to give Ginny his rock, so she can cut it. But the hole is much too small.

Her body doesn’t fit Potter’s mind’s eye, either. Oh, sure, he knows she must look a lot like him… scarred and thin like death, but it’s the rest that’s wrong. Potter’s uniform is too small for him, but it fits, just. He takes it off to exercise, because he’s sure he won’t get another. And putting it back on gives the impression of the warm down his primary school teachers were so keen on. C’s uniform would still fit. She was small, a child really, when she entered, but even without Azkaban she wasn’t going to grow much more. No, C’s issue is her uniform has long since disintegrated. She wears her rag like blankets, like a toga. There’s an imperial quality to C, quite different to Potter’s almost crabbed desperation to fit what he has.

The only time Potter imagines a Ginny that resembles C is when he thinks of her, listening to his stories. Ginny always liked stories. Her favourite was The Boy Who Lived until she heard her brother Ron tell her about the real Harry Potter, the one who went to save the Philospher’s Stone and fought trolls. And then she lived in a story and not a nice one. Ginny Weasley, as far as they know, was almost killed by a memory, which is just a different word for story. After that Ginny didn’t like stories, so much. But she still listened, wide-eyed and curious. And that is the face, Potter imagines Ginny wears as she contorts her body to get closer to the hole.

“Once upon a time,” begins Harry in the way he dimly remembers stories start, “there lived a little, orphan girl with an evil aunt who wanted the little orphan to be normal. But the orphan wasn’t normal. She had magic hair that kept growing and growing. When her aunt cut her hair, the orphan would wake up and find it was even longer than before. When her aunt burnt her hair, nothing would happen. The orphan’s hair just grew and grew.

“One day when the orphan came home from picking flowers, her aunt bundled her onto a horse and rode off into the forest, headed for a dark tower that the aunt once lived in. They rode for five days and four nights, stopping only to let the horse drink. And all the while the orphan girl tried to ask her aunt where they were going. But the aunt said nothing, until suddenly they reached the tower and the little orphan was thrown in.

“‘Now, Rapunzel,” cried the aunt, for that was the orphan’s name, ‘when I cry out, you shall let your hair down and I will bring you some food.’

“”But why, aunty?’ cried Rapunzel, tears running down her face and splashing onto the tower’s magic stones.

“‘Because I am your aunt,’ came the reply, echoing as the horse rode away and ringing against the forbidding trees that surrounded the tower clearing.

“And for many years this was the pattern of Rapunzel’s life. She would wake in the morning and stare whistfully at the trees. When the sun rose to signal midday, Rapunzel would eat some of the food her aunt brought, never knowing when the next visit would come. And then Rapunzel would sleep, dreaming of the flowers she used to pick. After her nap, Rapunzel would sing to herself as she combed her hair until she fell asleep again. And everyday, Rapunzel would fall asleep later and later, since everyday her hair was longer and longer.

“Sometimes the wicked aunt would bring food, as she had promised. She never stopped to hear Rapunzel sing, even though her voice was more beautiful than anything in the world. Instead she always strode to the foot of the magic tower and cried out, ‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’ And every time Rapunzel heard her aunt, she dropped her hair all the way to the ground. And it was always just long enough for the evil aunt to climb to the top.

“One day a prince rode through the forest, chasing a golden hind. Because the hind was clever and brave, it led the prince on a merry chase, deeper and deeper into the trees and closer and closer to the magic tower. The prince hunted the hind for six days and seven nights, until suddenly he heard a beautiful voice ringing through the trees, causing him to forget his prize. But the hind did not forget the prince, turning to see him dismount in search of the heavenly voice.

“For days the prince stumbled around lost and confused, drawn only by the voice. He saw all manner of mysteries and horrors, but it was okay for he heard the voice leading him somewhere. Until suddenly he didn’t. All he heard was a harsh, wicked voice, ‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’ But there it was! The Tower! And the hair! And the evil creature climbing up, impossibly high.

“The prince was noble and brave, so he waited until the evil aunt slid back down to make sure he was rescuing the beautiful voice. He was prepared to wait four days and four nights, to maintain a perfect vigil, lest the voice escape him. It took only two hours for Rapunzel to sing once more. And suddenly the prince knew what to do.

“His head held high, the prince strode right to the tower’s base and shouted the words he’d heard, ‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’ And there it was! The hair! The prince began to climb.

“At first Rapunzel didn’t notice the difference, for she listened to the words, not the voice but when the prince began to climb, she realised it was not her aunt that came to visit. Rapunzel was nervous. She could not remember meeting other people. She could not remember other people. There was only her and her wicked aunt.

“And then she met the prince.

“‘Beautiful maiden!’ cried the prince, ‘let me free you from this wicked castle and I shall be yours forever!’

“Rapunzel stared at the man before her, suddenly aware that he was a man and she was a woman. ‘Who are you?’ she cried out, feeling braver than she was.

“The prince’s eyes bulgedm but he swallowed deeply and summoned his courage. He threw himself on his knees and clasped his hands in front of his breast, ‘I am the prince of the forest and I would be your servant for eternity, just to hear you sing once more!’

“Rapunzel swooned at the prince’s honesty, her pirouette causing her to fall into the prince’s arms. He looked into her face and as she saw his eyes, she felt the urge to kiss him. But a foul voice shrieked out the magic words and Rapunzel found herself throwing her hair out the window, once more. ‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’

“Within moments the wicked aunt was perched like some enormous crow upon window sill, sunlight streaming in from high above. ‘What is this Rapunzel? Some villain’s come to take you away forever? To some awful place where I would never see you again?’

“Rapunzel looked into the shadow that was her aunt, but it was the prince that spoke, ‘I am the prince of the forest and I would take Rapunzel to a place where you may not follow!’

“The wicked aunt looked at her niece’s fluttering chest and panicked face, before turning to face the prince. With a cackle she voiced her unforgettable reply, ‘Fantastic! So long forever, Rapunzel’ whereupon she jumped out the window and was never seen again.

“Rapunzel looked at the prince and spoke the magic words, ‘Do you really mean to take me where my aunt shall never see me again?’

“To which the honest prince replied, ‘Yes, of course. If you would take me.’

“Her heart lighter than it had been all those years trapped in the magic tower, Rapunzel spoke further magic words, ‘And what would my life be like?’

“To which the noble prince replied, ‘As good as I can make it, but I saw terrible things in the forest: I fear I may make your life worse.’

“Her head lighter than she’d ever known it, Rapunzel spoke the penultimate magic words, ‘I should like to see an ordinary world.’

“To which the brave prince replied, ‘I am the prince of the forest, I can show you only my world: do you let me?’

“And then Rapunzel spoke the final magic words, ‘I do’ and they lived ever after.”

There was always a little silence when Harry finished a story. Potter didn’t know why for sure. He imagined Ginny taking a breath and trying to collect her thoughts: not an easy exercise in Azkaban, even in block 221 where the Dementors were really only around four times a day.

C wasn’t sure why Harry never said ‘the end’ when he told her a story. Maybe it wasn’t something muggles did because C was pretty sure all the stories were muggle ones. But they always seemed a little off, too. Like Harry didn’t know them properly. It was probably the Dementors. It was always the Dementors.

“Is that how it goes, Harry?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Was it a happy ending?”

“How can it be? The rest of it’s sad.”

“I think it could be happy.”

Sleep doesn’t come easy to the inmates of Azkaban. On the main floors it’s made all the harder since there’s always someone who’s screaming and everyone is whimpering. On cell block 221 the extra challenge was the cold and the exhaustion of innocence. But always there was no escape. The blankets too cold and too light to help. The slabs that passed for beds, too hard to sink into. Unclear hours and nothing to do but dwell on pain, misery and horror. And then when it did come, from the sheer impossibility of anything else, it could not be restful for that was not rest but exclusion… not a thing but the absence of something else.

And in the morning, nothing but the day that was lived before.

Meals that inmates couldn’t track.

Time the inmates couldn’t use.

Memories the inmates couldn’t keep.

Thoughts the inmates didn’t want. Not when they arrived.

It was worse in winter. The cold was everywhere. Even more so than usual. It’s always cold in Azkaban.

It’s not just to do with the Dementors either, although having skeletal soul-eaters whose ragged, stinking rags fail to keep their frozen cores patrolling the wet, moss-covered stone corridors certainly adds to the cold. Cold is just what happens in a fortress made of stone on a windswept island constantly under assault by an unnaturally ferocious sea. Cold is almost the defining feature of Azkaban. That’s what cold means to Azkaban.

But it’s colder in winter.

The water’s salty today. It was the day before too. And before that. C’s getting thirsty. And with the cold. She’s on a new kind of edge. It’s a bit clearer than usual. It’s also colder than usual.

C wonders if Harry’s cell has water like hers. What it’d be like if she could dive in and swim to see him. Would he recognise her? Would she recognise him? He’d have a beard, she was sure. How would he shave it? Maybe he had a razor, like she had the scissors? She should ask. Why do they never talk about their cells? About themselves?

But it’s not when they usually talk.

Her mind pauses. Wait. How does Harry tell the time? Does he just wait at the hole for her to arrive? Has he got some instinct? How did it all start?

The scissors!

People who live in Azkaban shouldn’t be sane. It’s not really the point. A lot of the inmates weren’t sane going in. Anyone who stays certainly isn’t sane. Anyone. Even the innocent.

But they hold on longer.

C knows she’s living the same day again and again. On those days that are a little different, at least. But she hasn’t thought about the scissors since before the conviction. That was more than a decade ago. When she still looked sane.

Potter hears it before he knows what it is. A funny kind of clink. Like metal on stone. No. It was metal on stone. He remembers that sound. Not well, but he’s heard it before. And it’s coming from the hole! Ginny!

Harry sticks his index finger in the hole. The ringing stops. He draws his finger back and twists his body to get his face closer.

“Harry?”

“Ginny?”

“Is there water in your cell?”

“Yes,” and if Potter thinks the question strange, he’s forgotten what strange feels like.

“Is it salty?”

“Today.”

“Yesterday?”

“A while, yes.”

There’s a pause. There’s only darkness and the faint noises from the hole. Potter can’t see the way C moves closer to the hole every time she thinks he’s about to speak. C can’t tell that on Potter’s side the hole is jammed between the toilet and the bed, that Potter breaks and bruises his body just to hear her. It’s just darkness and faint noises. Blank scripts in the stage play of their misery.

“Harry.”

“Ginny?”

“I think we can swim out.”

“Why?”

“Just a feeling. Like waking up because I’m cold.”

“To a terrible truth.”

“What?” A pause. “Harry?”

“It’s what you always say. You woke up because you were cold.”

“And you just knew he was dead. A feeling.”

And this is their pause. They both know it, even if they can’t acknowledge it. But could they identify it even absent the Dementors? Is this them or their circumstance? But it is theirs. Forever, theirs.

“Ginny.”

“Harry?”

“I will try and escape with you.”

“Because I’m cold?”

“Because you asked.”

Chapter Two found here.

Author’s Note

I like to read canon compliant Hinny and Next Gen stuff. Writing like this is… easier.

Originally, I suppose, this was going to be a one shot, but I’m seeing at least two more chapters out of this. Escape and Resolution, basically. Can’t promise they’ll be written. Only breaking for a chapter here because I didn’t know how to continue on from that last line.

(Do you like it? Should I change it to “because it’s you”?)

I’m not entirely sure if the narrator has kind of… dropped out of the fic or not. That wasn’t meant to happen. Nor was writing in present tense. Although, to be fair, I lost the ability to control and identify tense several years ago so maybe it isn’t in present tense.

(If you can’t tell, the opening little spiel about who tells stories is kind of a warning not to read this. I’m not equipped to write this story.)

Why does Harry tell stories? Um… because Ginny likes them? But they’re all meant to be like the version of Rapunzel you get here… twisted by the circumstances in which Harry finds himself. And it’s not just that Ginny likes the stories… it’s that they’re something which Harry can kind of control. They aren’t really happy stories, right? (How can they be happy when they all start from misery?) And even if Harry now associates them with the “good times” (i.e. without Dementors), they’re not good memories for Harry, right? They’re things he knows everyone else already knew when he heard or read them at school.

Fic title comes from a Duran Duran song (Ordinary World) featured in Layer Cake (drugs, violence, some sex, lots and lots of swearing… fantastic movie, epic soundtrack). Chapter title rifs off the title of The Korgis’ song “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime”. Why? I listen to music while I write and there was really nothing more to this fic than the notion of writing an Azkaban fic. Mind you, when Ordinary World came on I noticed that I’d sort of incorporated something of an escape from the horrors of wizarding Britain. The lyrics would match better if this was focussed more on the loss of Ron and Hermione, but (out of context) the chorus is pretty appropriate:

And I don’t cry for yesterday / There’s an ordinary world / Somehow I have to find /And as I try to make my way / To the ordinary world / I will learn to survive

Finally, why Medium? It was easier than finding my password for my ffnet account? And now I’m always logged in so, why not?