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  A Daily Prophet Exclusive - July 25th, 2014

  "One Speaks in the Third Person due to not caring much for the First and Second."

  An In-Depth Look at How Daniel Weston went from Convicted Felon to World-Class Beater - Part Three.

  Interview by Ginevra Potter-Weasley, Senior Quidditch Correspondent

  No time to waste, 't'il est ho! 'Borrow' the wand, Colloportus, up and into the Sanctum Sanctorum. Ninety degrees widdershins to the Women's Barracks. Check if it also has a safe. If so, not in the same place. Back up, close hatch and think.

  The view through the pillars was not the same as 'Home' Barracks. If the view there was arranged to keep a watch on that safe from this crawlspace...

  One scanned the field of columns slowly, looking for a clearish view of the slightly roughened wall surface. The fluids in the pipes were every color, clarity, and, it appeared, viscosity. They flowed, changing each of those attributes at random times, sometimes turning back on themselves. One found it both soothing and nauseating, sometimes both, sometimes neither. One was quite glad to be shielded from the odd unwelcome feeling and its attributes...

  There. A view that didn't shift. It seemed to be around the back side of the room, away from the door to the C Block Dormitory of this Barracks.

  ***

  One's very limited scouting had shown that the female prisoners, for whatever reason, mostly resided in A Block Dormitory, with a few outliers in B Block. Said 'scouting' consisted of lying beside the door to the Hallway, peering through the crack at the bottom with a scrap of broken mirror on some braided orange peels saved from one's evening repast. Not much of a sacrifice, to be sure.

  One thought the arrangement might have been at the direction of the guards, to facilitate the roll call. If so, it was sheer laziness on their part. We rarely had two roll calls a month. Those consisted of a Howler being tossed into the Hallway, which was an order to fall out by our racks, and an odd winged Argus Eye came and scanned each row. Usually this was the end of the thing. Rarely, though, a dormitory fief-holder would be required to produce a body that had missed the call. It seemed to be of no concern whether the body be alive or dead.

  Dead bodies were not as rare an occurrence as one might wish. It was a rare month that did not see two or three, and old lags still spoke of 'The Night,' when the 'rescued' Death Eaters had settled some scores before taking the pick of the scum with them.

  It was a simple process. One dragged the (hopefully) recently deceased down the Hallway to the Locked and Blocked Barracks Door. After, of course, removing anything that would not be useful in the afterlife. The dearly departed was arranged/dumped on a metal gridwork set into the floor beside the door. Services would be brief, or done from a distance, or non-existent. Else the guards, Jolly Jesters every one, would trigger the Incendio variant on the gridwork quick enough to give Bates' burn cream business a boost. The spell did its work in seconds, and the ashes were automatically gathered to be disposed of according to the deceased's wishes, as listed in their records.

  Questions? Dear girl, the only reason the guards would ask questions would be to catch some laggard with the Incendio.

  ***

  Still, best not to take chances. Low and slow between the pillars. Up, a tentative Alohomora, yes, a safe, only a small, dusty metal box inside. Grab, Colloportus, and back to ground.

  Once back in the ductwork, one gave the box a cursory inspection. Weighty and locked, file under LATER.

  Skip Solitary & Secure, (too bloody well right), and up the ladder. Knocked out the second Mens' Barracks in less than twenty minutes. The safe in the one above 'Home' Barracks was located in the same spot as below. It appeared, however, to have never seen use.

  Last Mens' Barracks, same safe location as the Women's Barracks below. Again one eeled to a position in the pillars, just one row in from the aisle. About to rise and go through one's routine...

  One stopped. Something was... different.

  One examined the wall closely. Indistinguishable to the eye, as always. No slightly off-colour spot, as in Bates' hidey-hole. The others one had seen so far had no wands, and no place for them. This, though... was that the tiniest of pinholes, right where the wand tip showed on Bates' safe?

  Ease out. Crouch against the wall to the side of the tiny black spot. The colours from the contents of the pillars swirled on the wall. Push away the feeling of loss. Sidle over, try to check for depth from an angle. One's precious eye was not going right in front of that hole...

  It flashed.

  The eye on the side of one's head away from the wall was dazzled with red light. But a single eye served perfectly well for one's soft-footed bolt down the aisle, round the corner, up the pillar, through the hatch and latch. Quite possibly one's best showing ever, so long as one is not judged by number of heartbeats per second.

  And through one's crystal macroscope, the red light was slowly pulsing.

  ***

  It was the splinter of light from the Hallway that warned one. Reflecting indirectly through the metal collars at the top of the pillars, it was slightly whiter than the light in the room. Whomever had entered had done it smoothly, with a minimum of fuss or exposure. One probably would not have heard anything even if one's ears had not been a drum circle for heart's blood.

  The distorted figure one saw through the pillars began to circle the room widdershins. One saw a shadow as the newcomer passed the tiny pulsing light of the safe. A man came around the corner to one's left. He alternated peering at the bases of the pipes, and their shadowed tops. He held an old-fashioned Muggle oil lantern above the level of his eyes, and a little back. It smelled like he was burning a mixture of cooking oil and... butter?

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  As he got a bit closer, one recognized him. It was Whiskey John, so named not because he drank, but because he would not drink. When offered any of the local 'brewmasters' efforts, he would always say the same thing.

  "If John cannae ha' Good Scots' Whiskey, John will have nowt!" And any within hearing would repeat the last five words in chorus.

  "Whiskey John will have nowt!"

  Other than that, John was a taciturn man, as close-mouthed as good Scots are supposed to be, and so seldom are. Not an ill-tempered man, but he kept his own counsel. Giving counsel was a different matter. He wasn't one of the three fief-holders, but he was the one they came to for advice and mediation. As such, this Barracks seemed a little less like a hell-pit. Their death rate was certainly a sight less than that of 'Home' Barracks. Oh, there were fights, but anything more serious than a scuffle had John showing up, telling them what they were doing wrong.

  "Nah, nae, that's awl wrong. An' yer gone t' do it, gie us sommat t' bet on!"

  Next thing would have the men standing in their pants, with a ring of spectators, putting on the most pitiful showing of La Regole di Marquess of Queensberry to be found in the British Isles. And John himself stopping and restarting the fight, so he could explain just how pitiful they were. And everybody laughing, even the fighters. Then John would have a pair here or there dragged up by their 'mates' because he had noticed some bad blood between them. "Tek a swing or two, ge' it oot yer system."

  One quite liked him. Therefore one gave him a very wide berth. As one fellow 'George' had warned one, "Oh, he's fly, he is. He's dead fly."

  Dead Fly Whiskey John did a full circuit of the room and ended up by the safe. It opened at a firm poke at the pinhole. If he said a spell, he did it Silently. The safe opened.

  It was all stacks of paper and rolls of parchment. No money to be seen. The only thing of interest was a ruby-coloured gem resting in a niche behind the pinhole.

  "Did you spot him, sweetheart? Was it that bastard Bates? Show me what you got."

  A fan of light rose from the gem sketching a picture in the air. One was considering vacating, but the picture was a blurry mess. One was only able to recognise the outer inch of one's eyebrow, because one had been there.

  "So," John seemed to be thinking out loud, just barely enough for one to hear. "So, so, so. Not as thick as one might think, or not that glaikit Bates at all." One saw a magnified ear as he leaned in and whispered something over the gem. Then one heard, "Mebbe that'll catch him out."

  John exited back into the Hallway.

  One had no idea what might 'catch someone out.' One was not going near that safe ever again, though, so it was free to remain a mystery. The mention of Bates, however, gave one food for thought.

  ***

  One sat overlooking the pillar room of Dust-Troll estates for perhaps too long. Never on any visit had one seen a movement or heard a sound from this area. The pillars were precisely as active as in the other Barracks. Headache-inducing perusal of the them had turned up no macroscopic effect guiding one to a safe. Perhaps this and the Secure Prisoners Barracks below had no such thing.

  Still, there had been anomalous action from one pillar. The shaft directly across the aisle from the hatch was operating oddly. This had the partially textured surface that allowed one to access the ducts. At regular intervals, as far as one could tell, a flat spot of reflected light ran in a straight line down the height of the pillar. What made this odd? There was nothing to reflect. The only light source was the single crystal hanging amongst the pillars with the pillars filtering and colouring, as the radiance passed through.

  One had been unwilling to scout this barracks, even this single room. Time was passing, though, and this could well be one's only chance. Girding the Weston loins and stiffening the bowels of same, one dropped into the Troll's Den...

  ...only to find there was something to reflect, after all.

  ***

  There was a door, an actual door, set into the wall below the hatch. Not disguised or camouflaged, just set into perfectly normal jambs, with a doorknob, of all recondite things. One hadn't seen a doorknob since one's sentencing hearing, on the door of the lavatory where one was required to change clothes, prior to being flown to The Rocks.

  Had one known that was one's last knob, one might have appreciated it more. At the time, one was just glad that one's formal wear was not going to prison with one. And, as one mentioned, the bare modicum issued to one mostly went away on one's first day.

  The light source was a small crystal panel above the door. The face protruded in a shallow arc from top to bottom. It was inactive at the moment, but every so often a soft white light would appear at the top edge, then sweep down the face in a thick line. That was what the column was reflecting. But only that column. No other pillar one could see was reacting to the light.

  One mystery solved, another pops up. That left the door. One got the Augery wand ready, and touched the doorknob with one's other hand. It was made of smooth, unfaceted crystal, much as the pillars were. And, like the pillars, perfectly frictionless. Forget turning it, one could not even keep a grip on it.

  Alohomora it was. One cast the spell Silently, the musty stillness of the place making one most unwilling to speak out loud. The door eased open, swinging gently back into darkness. One was quite pleased that it did not bang open into the wall. The slowly changing light of the pillars did not penetrate into the space at all, leaving it as dark as twenty yards up a giant's cloaca.

  One Silently cast Lumos, only to find it of little use. It barely drove the unnatural darkness back two feet in front of one. The little one could see was the floor below one, and racks of shelving to either side. One could have been in a shallow utility room, or the beginning of an endless hall. One's thought of shouting to gauge the depth of the space died fast and ugly. One was not making a sound in here.

  Then something made a sound behind one.

  ***

  One is pleased to say one did not freeze. One is not quite as proud of turning so fast that one lost his balance, staggered into a shelf unit, and banged one's elbow badly, and loudly, while throwing out an arm to catch oneself. Swings and roundabouts, don't you know?

  One later remembered the echoing sound of the Bang! traveling down what seemed to be a long hall. Much later.

  At that moment, one was aghast to see the pillars moving, sliding toward the outer walls, clustering almost tight enough to touch. A solitary pillar was left standing in the center of the room, and something was wrong with it.

  The internal colours were muddying and losing their translucence. There was a rippling motion along the glass. One could not tell if it was a trick of the light, or the actual crystal distorting.

  And... Nothing was leaking around the edges of the lower collar. No, that's not right. Something was leaking but that something was more an absence of Anything, which should have made it Nothing, and I was smothering, afraid and alone. Something is gone... I need it... I really need it...

  And the light above the door flared, flared Red, and impossibly bright. It shifted to Orange, then Yellow. Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, which shaded through an impressively rich Purple to Red again. The cycle kept repeating and speeding, until the rotating cycle started strobing and becoming White. An impossibly Pure White. And the Nothing/Something recoiled, sucking back into the pillar. The colours in the pillar clarified, the rippling stilled...

  ... and the other columns came sliding back into place, clearing the aisle around the wall, and settling still as stone, as if they had never moved at all.

  And one was sitting on the floor, head between knees, shaking and sick. The Augery wand was in one hand...

  ...and something was in the other as well. Something one had reflexively grabbed off the shelf as one was falling, It felt good in one's hand, solid and real, comforting and protective. One gripped it hard, still sick, eyes closed.

  There was a chiming sound from above me, from the wall beside the inner door jamb. Something bounced gently off one's head, and landed on the floor between one's feet.

  Forcing one's eyes to open, then to focus, one saw a distinctive, brightly colored package.

  A Chocolate Frog?

  ***

  (Note from Ginevra Potter-Weasley: At this point we had used up more than the allotted time for the interview. Daniel, after all, had a World Cup Game coming up. That, of course, took precedence. He has graciously agreed to continue this story after his Cup Game, win or lose. We at The Prophet look forward to following this gripping tale to its triumphant end).