It had to end. Nothing went on forever. He was making a list of things that hadn’t lasted forever “The Hagtown Harrower’s losing streak, the Dinosaurs, You-Know-Who’s time , spring, the Roman Empire…�



“It has to end, and it won’t kill me first. There are plenty of things that could make you want to die, but most of them can’t kill you, and only one ever will, anyway.�



“Even stars don’ last forever. Night don' last forever. Hangovers, stomach cramps, loneliness, ruddy political speeches, waitin' for Harry to grow up and come to school at Hogwarts, that poison ivy I got meself covered with the one and only time I took a holiday in foreign parts, Defense Against the Dark Arts Teachers, them Muggle ball games…� They all came to a close eventually. This would come to a close, too.



He was just making lists, just passing time, making lists. “It doesn’t set the ruddy things goin’. They don' care what you do, really, so long as you aren’ happy. Well, I ain’ happy. Over fifty years since they snapped my wand an' threw me out, no one to believe me but Dumbledore, an' here I am, in Azkaban, no evidence, no trial, just stuck here like some common criminal. Not just relieved of me duties and sent away, but here, with the ruddy Dementors tryin' to suck the life out of me. The happiness, anyway. Well, it’s the same, ain’ it? What’s life if yer never happy? But ye have to keep goin’. If you don’t keep goin’, then you’ll never be happy again.�



Another list he was making was people who had believed in him the last time. “Dumbledore.� Well, that was a short list. People who had believed in him since, now, that was a bit longer.



There was Ogg, the old groundskeeper. “I got his trust, all right. I’d go into the forest anytime; nothing in there frightens me. You have to understand things. You have to know their natures. There’s some things that defend themselves, and some that defend somethin’ else. You can’t cross those things. Well, you can, but ye have to be careful, like ye have to grab a Bowtruckle from behind, right under the arms, or like you have to know where to push on a Whomping Willow to get it to stop whomping. Guardian trees they are, ancient guardian trees, and there’s not many as know that, anymore. An’ some things are gentle, and have to be protected, like unicorns – have to be protected from evil, and from just plain accidents. Some things just are. Aragog…� He felt a cold wind feathering into his lungs, and stopped thinking of his friend, stopped thinking of how much he liked taking care of things, liked the forest, liked the peace, and the quiet which was never really silence, but the quiet sounds of a million little things just being, and the times when it wasn’t peaceable and quiet. He thought, instead, of the Centaurs. “Not a happy lot, them. Proud an’ willful and not friendly like.� He was friendly. Well, there was no point in not being friendly, was there? At least, there was no point in not being friendly when he wasn’t on Hogwarts business for Dumbledore.



“Can’t think about Dumbledore, should NOT have thought about Dumbledore - just about what trouble I’m being to him, him havin’ to get me out. He will, he will, too, no doubt about that. You can rely on Albus Dumbledore.� He just barely repressed the thought “Great man, Dumbledore,� and so just barely avoided another lungful of cold air.



“Well, that ain’ no happy thought, anyway, me causin’ trouble for Dumbledore, who stuck by me through thick and thin after me dad died, and who gives second chances, and first chances to some as no one else would give a first chance to, and who testified for people back when You-Know-Who was around, and the Wizengamot was a bit wild, like.�





The chill warmed a bit. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was not a happy thought. “They can’t get a drop of happiness out of me with that one. He was a horrible thing. Even when Harry defeated him - Lily and James dyin’ like that - not one speck of happiness there at all… He was a horrible thing.�



“Well, an’ I’ve known other horrible things. When me mum left me. They think I can’t remember, but I can. I remember me dad, cryin' fit to break his heart or go mad. He never knew I remembered that. An the owl that brought me the news when he was gone - old and grey and a little lame in one wing, and then dad’s funeral. Tom Riddle, trying to kill Aragog, and accusing me of killin' that muggle girl, or good as. Me wand bein’ snapped in two in front o’ me, like a bone bein’ snapped, excep’ a bone could heal, and Armando Dippit arguing with Dumbledore about me stayin’ on to help the gamekeeper. Don’ even Dumbledore know I heard that.�





“That’d be a list now - people I don’t like, exactly. Not that I go around lookin’ for people to dislike - waste of time, if you ask me, but some folks just want yeh not to like em, seems. Dippit, he was never very nice to me to begin with, and the other boys in the house, the ones who made fun o' me size until I picked one up and put him on the mantelpiece in the common room, like I used to put me dad up on the dresser. Tom Riddle, that foul git who went an' turned himself into You-Know-Who, or Moanin' Myrtle, who wasn’t satisfied aggravating everyone when she was alive, but went at it tooth an' nail after she died, and still at it, hangin’ out in the plumbin’, and sometimes even getting into the lake and stirring up the merpeople. Rufus Scrimgeour, that prat of an Auror, not one bit like Alastor Moody, a thumpin' good Auror if ever there was one, probably the best Auror the Ministry ever had. Rufus, nah, he’s more like Fudge, a stinking politician. Scrimgeour’s thinking of goin' higher. I could see it in the fake way he pretended to be nice, pretended to care when he brought me over here. A guard of twenty Aurors. As if I was gonna get violent, or sommat. As if I haven’t been a trusted member of the Hogwarts staff for over fifty years�


“Cornelius Fudge. That fellow Avery, friend of Lucius Malfoy. Well, any friend of Malfoy is no friend of mine. That kid of his, Draco, always startin' trouble an' insultin’ people, and his two thug friends beatin’ people up fer him, no doubt. I got no patience for bullies, especially big bullies and most especially the ones who enjoy it. Childish and unsportsmanlike.�


“Not that I’m what you’d call a sportsman, meself. Like Quidditch, o' course, but not huntin’, really. I don’t like killin'. I do what has got to be done. Things have their natures. The deer are goin’ ta keep havin' fauns, an if the other forest creatures can’t eat them fast enough, well, then, I have to do something or there wouldn’t be no forest, soon enough. And ferrets and such, they’re for hippogriffs, like, and the other large birds, and I have to feed the thestrals something, but I just do it, when I have to, I just do it. It ain’t nothing to enjoy.�








“And Peter Pettigrew, now why am I thinking of him? Never much liked him. Couldn’t be very sorry when he was gone. No, I was that sorry Sirius was a traitor, I’d never ha' thought it, never, but I ain’t sorry Pettigrew is gone. I don’t think a bit that Pettigrew was after Black, either. No, Black went after him, and killed him, and no loss there. I shouldn’t think like that, really.�





“And the Death Eaters, the rest of ‘em, well, they’re a bunch worth disliking – hating, even, but not worth naming. Don’t deserve to be named and remembered, even to be hated. Better to think of the good ones gone. Not that I can do that here.�


Where was he? Oh yes, people he didn’t like. “Well, it ain’t a very long list, after all. No point not likin’ people you have to see all the time, even if you’d rather not - like Filch - and less point in not likin’ people you never had to see anyway�


A list of people he missed; now that would be a long, sad list. “Me dad, still, after all these years, and that little Muggle bloke, Georgie, that I used to play with in the village. Not right in the head, Georgie was. The other Muggle kids used to give him a hard time. I wouldn’t let them. Well, all I had to do was stand there and be large, the ruddy cowards. I saw Georgie forget to look before he crossed the street, saw the truck send him flying three houses down the block. That was the summer after me first year at Hogwarts, before me dad died, the last summer I went home to the village. And there was Ogg, who taught me, and Pringle, who looked the other way when I was keeping Aragog in the closet. Filch would never a done that. They both died like they would a wanted to go. The first, he tripped in the forest and rolled down the hill. When they found him at the bottom, his neck were broke. The caretaker died in his bed, asleep on clean sheets.�


“Come to think, every death since then has been bad - violent like as not, or evil, usually both. The McKinnons, the Prewetts, the Potters, the Longbottoms. Well, they ain’t dead, but might as well be, gone, anyway, and then Pettigrew, an all those Muggles with him... Not that I knew the Muggles, but I felt bad about ‘em anyway. The war was over. No need for ‘em to die like that. They should not have had to die. Quirrell, even�





Most came empty-handed to Azkaban, and did half the Dementors’ work for them. Hagrid brought the forest with him, the forest, and a full life. He did everything anyone needed him to do around the castle, and a lot of what they could have done for themselves, but he didn’t mind. He knew everything about the forest that any Hogwarts gamekeeper had ever known, and he knew more on his own that they had never found out. He cooked, he gardened, and he played cards. If he tried, he could think about these things without emotion. “I got me ways of passing the time. Countin’ the blocks in the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling, doin’ me setting up exercises, even tryin’ to make this little twig I found in me hair move, without me touchin’ it. After all, what are they goin’ to do to me for trying to do magic? I’m here already, ain't I?� In fact, he was a spectacular failure at moving the twig, but he was very patient.


No one asked Hagrid what he was being patient about. Patience was something of which the Dementors were entirely ignorant; terrified, hysterical people were not generally known for it. Hagrid was not terrified, and he was not hysterical. “Dumbledore’ll get me out o here. It may take a while. I ain’t his only problem, but he’ll get to it. E’ll get to it, and the forest will still be there, and the school will still be there. There are certain things you can’t start questioning ; ye’d jus go mad.�


There were things he couldn’t list. The students he’d liked, the pets he’d had, the days on the grounds that started with a crisp sunrise and went on into the dusk of a midsummer’s night, but it was easy enough for him not to. There was plenty of other stuff to list.


“Dangerous snakes - now there’s no beast I like less than snakes. Might not a minded them - probably wouldn’a minded them, except for You-Know-Who. Tom Riddle ruined snakes fer me. That makes ‘em useful here, though. Adder, asp, black, boa, boomslang, cobra, copperhead, grass, mamba, python, rat, rattler…�


“An’ there’s plants like snakes, ones can go either way in a potion, dependin’ how you make it. People think I don’t know these things, but I been collectin’ plants in the forest for Hogwarts Potion Masters these fifty years now. I might not be the smartest, but what I know, I know.� He got a little chill there. He couldn’t afford to be even that happy.


“Wormwood, weelsworth, wild ash bark, willow (well, it takes a powerful lot of willow to hurt, but it can, it can) and tulips, no one thinks about tulips, and snowdrops - got to get em just before they bloom, just before. Too late, and they stop the potion, but just before, and they — I forget what Snape calls it. Makes it happen, like. Makes it change.�





“When I had to leave they were just getting ready to bloom. Just ready to pick. I don’t know if Snape got his snowdrops.�





This was a bothersome thought, and it occupied him for several hours. It occupied him right up to the moment where the Dementor showed himself at the door and opened it, walked him down to the courtyard, and handed him a sweets tin. He was thinking about snowdrops when the pulling started – about snowdrops, because anything was better than worrying if he was going to court, or worse, and he kept thinking of them until he landed, as it were, right outside the gates of Hogwarts, within sight of the little spot where he found them first, every spring, against the south side of the school wall.


This time, of course, the thought of spring did not send a chill through him. He stood there, shocked, but not surprised, really.


“I’ll walk the long way round up to the castle, I will. Dumbledore won’t mind.�