Confessions of an Ex-Death-Eater

5.

It is a funny thing, dear Reader, to be brought up hating someone by their name alone. Can you imagine knowing nothing about a person, and I mean nothing, yet being told you must hate them? And you must hate them because, as a fifteen-month-old baby they vanquished the 'Dark Lord'. That is the power of drip-fed propaganda.

I look at my own son, still a baby, lying in his Moses basket beside me, sleeping peacefully, and realise how ridiculous the whole scenario was. Hindsight and experience are wonderful things.

Once, in my childish innocence, I did question my father. I still consider my logic to be sound for surely, anyone with the prefix 'Dark' before their name deserved vanquishing. Was not the 'dark' associated with all things bad and evil? Was it not 'dark' when nightmares haunted one's sleep and monsters came out from under one's bed? I braved voicing my doubts, but I was taught that a short blast of the Cruciatus Curse is the most effective tool which prevents questioning by inquisitive little boys. It is far more efficient than the walking cane for it cannot be healed with simple spells and the memory of the pain from a Cruciatus lingers.

I remember that my mother never spoke out, even though she was obviously angry. No, there was fear in her eyes too and I wonder, now, if my father was abusive to her too. I recognised, even as a child, that my mother was powerless against my father. So, the Cruciatus Curse taught me very quickly that dark magic meant power over others, and therefore 'dark' was good.

And despite the violence my father showed in terms of his lessons, I followed him faithfully for he was a god to me. I believed I deserved to be punished to speaking out of turn or saying something foolish without understanding what he meant. I still believe, even to this day, that my father loved me, it was just showing 'love' was a weakness to him. And I was a little boy who needed to be strong and learn some key lessons in life so I was ready for my future.

So, it was ingrained into me from a very early age to hate the very name 'Harry James Potter' despite knowing nothing about the boy behind the name.

I would like to say there is a hidden shoe-box somewhere, stuffed full of information, newspaper articles, and clippings which helped to etch this very hatred into the core of my heart. There isn't. Because absolutely nothing was known about the boy for the first eleven years of his life. Any reporting was purely supposition.

There is one newspaper article, one article from 1981 with a black and white photo of a baby in cot, under the heading 'The Boy who Lived!'. The baby in the image is standing up, holding onto the bars, there are tears streaking his face, he has bright eyes (vivid green, the article declares) and a messy shock of fine black hair. He is identified as Harry Potter by a scar the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.

At the time, no one was really sure what happened on the night of the 31st October 1981. We have all heard the reported version of events. That Voldemort went to Godric's Hollow and killed James and Lily Potter. That he tried to cast the killing curse on baby Harry and failed, leaving the boy with his lightning bolt-shaped scar, and the curse turning on Voldemort instead. By the time Aurors appeared at the scene, muggles reported seeing three green flashes, seeing the cottage roof collapse, hearing a child crying, and seeing two men outside the cottage who appeared to be arguing about a motorbike. One of the men had long black hair and wore a leather jacket, the other looked like some kind of 'giant' wearing a large shaggy coat. Most importantly, when the Aurors entered the house, the child was gone. Harry Potter had disappeared without a trace and no one knew where the boy had gone to.

We know now that it was the effect of Voldemort's final curse which blew apart half the cottage and alerted Albus Dumbledore that something was seriously amiss. Rubeus Hagrid arrived to rescue Harry as muggles began to swarm about the area. At the same time, Sirius Black arrived after realising Peter Pettigrew's betrayal as the Potter's Secret Keeper. Sirius offered to take Harry but Hagrid refused, so he lent Hagrid his motorbike and went to find Pettigrew and seek revenge, which ultimately led to his arrest and imprisonment.

I know the photograph in the article is dubious. It is set up to look as if the photograph of baby Harry was taken by one of the Aurors during evidence collecting, yet Harry had already been taken by Hagrid. And what about the scar on Harry's forehead? Who told of that? How did anyone know? We know now that only five people from the wizarding world saw Harry immediately after Voldemort cursed him: Rubeus Hagrid, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, and the first person on the scene, Severus Snape. It is doubtful that any of them took the photo. So how do we know about the scar? My money is on a combination of Hagrid and Dumbledore spilling the beans for different reasons. Hagrid probably made his way through every pub between Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, blubbing his heart out and telling everyone about how he rescued the poor li'le baby 'Arry who never made a sound or shed a tear, and how he fell asleep as they were just flying over Bristol, and how he was distinctly marked by Voldemort's killing curse and that Dumbledore had said he would have that scar for life. I am sure Albus Dumbledore was more politically shrewd, he would tell the world so that when Harry Potter reappeared in the wizarding community, everyone would recognise him and he would become a figurehead of hope when Voldemort undoubtedly re-emerged. He probably had to tell the Ministry too, and as numbers grew of the people who knew, news must have spread.

I am fairly certain the boy in the photograph is not Harry Potter, I can only imagine that its staged by The Prophet and the scar is probably drawn on some poor random kid's forehead who was prodded until he cried for the photo. Perhaps Rita Skeeter should be questioned one day. I still keep it because what I do know is that this is the image of Harry Potter that I grew up with, this was what I grew up knowing about the famous Harry Potter with his green eyes and his chaotic tufts of baby hair and his scar. I keep the photograph framed on my desk next to a photograph of my son at the same age, to remind me, to keep me grounded, and to prompt any errant thoughts to remember. Why? Because it reminds me that somethings in life are truly ludicrous, such as my so-called hatred for a boy called Harry James Potter who I'd never met, purely because as a fifteen-month-old baby he vanquished the 'Dark Lord', an evil overlord who's purpose I never understood, let alone agreed with.

And, truthfully, I didn't hate this unknown Harry Potter, though I was more than a bit obsessed by him.

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