Marked by the Dark

Number 5: Protect and Serve, Tobias’ Story

“It doesn’t matter what actually happened. The only thing that matters is what people believe.”

Tobias Riffington should be a name known to every wizarding family in Britain, but as we sit in his local pub on a Friday evening in December we don’t warrant a second glance. Perhaps this is because in the few news reports and associated court proceedings he was consistently referred to as ‘Auror A’, not to protect him as he hastens to add, but to prevent people seeking him out, to prevent the story from gaining more momentum.

“The Ministry don’t want me to talk, they don’t want people scrutinising things” He tells me, tone hushed, eyes fixed firmly on the slightly flat pint of lager gripped tightly in his right hand. “They just want it all brushed under the carpet and forgotten about, same as always.”

Tobias is not an Auror any more. In fact, he no longer works at all. He tells me that he sometimes helps his father out at his owl post office, feeding and cleaning up after the birds, and that he spends time with his mother in their vegetable garden. He wants to work, he says, but cannot, and the generous compensation payout he received from the Ministry means that he does not have to.

“I always wanted to be an Auror. It always seemed exciting to me, going on missions, catching the bad guys, doing something with meaning. I worked so hard for it. The training is really tough, and the exams, they really do only want the best people, and I would spend every spare minute revising and reading and practising. My Dad helped me make dummies to hang up in the back garden and he would charm them to move so I could practise my spellwork and duelling and stuff like that. I worked so hard.” Tobias’ pint glass rattles lightly against the table and he grabs it with his left hand to steady it.

“The day I completed all the training and received my Auror badge was the best day of my life. My parents were so proud, they took me out for dinner at a really fancy place and kept telling everyone who served us or sat near us or even looked in our direction that their son had just become an Auror. It was a great feeling, I was on top of the world.”

Tobias qualified as an Auror in 2008, some ten years following the second wizarding war. Like all newly qualified Aurors he spent the first twelve months on the job buddied up with a more senior member of the team, an Auror that we will call by the pseudonym Striker in order that The Quibbler does not get sued by her family.

“Striker was great. She really showed me the ropes. She seemed to have a sixth sense for when someone was being untruthful or misdirecting us, and she could smell a scam a mile off. We were the highest performing partnership, because she had a knack for finding the perps and I had a knack for distracting them. Our boss loved us, both of us. If it had just carried on like that, if we’d stayed in the field, then I could have had a great career, I could have been happy.”

Tobias quiets and he drains the rest of his pint. The nerve on the side of his right eye is twitching, and he screws his eyes shut in what appears to be an attempt to still it. I offer to buy us another round to give him a few moments to compose himself, and he asks for something stronger this time. The rest of the pub dances around us, full of merriment and flirtation, a Celestina Warbuck song starts playing and some couples begin dancing. I make my way back to the table, firewhisky in hand, to find Tobias watching one of the couples with a look that could almost be called longing.

When I put the glass down in front of him he starts, his right hand instinctively moving for his wand before he halts and brings both hands back to the tabletop, muttering a thank you. Before I can ask any prompting questions he looks back to the couple and begins to speak.

“I had a fiancee, you know? We’d been together a couple of years, and I’d proposed when I was in Auror training. I really loved her. I still love her. They took that from me. They took everything from me.” Tearing his eyes away from the dancers, Tobias looks back at me and there is a steel there that I hadn’t seen before. I ask him when he was assigned to Azkaban.

“Nine months after I qualified. I thought Striker would be furious, the team called Azkaban duties ‘babysitting’ and we had been absolutely killing it in the field. I reckoned that having our run cut short like that would have her in fits, but she seemed happy about it. I thought maybe she was ready for a bit of a rest or something. I never would have thought…” his voice trails off and he takes a gulp of his firewhisky before continuing.

As our readers may know, following the cessation of the second wizarding war the Ministry removed Azkaban from the control of the Dementors, instead manning the prison with teams of Aurors who were rotated between Azkaban guard duties and field duties, usually in stints of three to six months. Much has been made of this system, with the Ministry proudly announcing that there have been no escapes and that prisoners are treated more humanely than in the days of the Dementors. Aurors deployed on Azkaban duties are responsible for maintaining peace and order within the prison, ensuring prisoners get fed and exercised regularly, and patrolling the prison and island to ensure there are no threats. The island remains very high security, with anti-apparition wards and other security measures covering almost every inch, and whilst the Dementors are no longer there, many visitors and former inmates have been recorded as stating that the prison retains a sense of hopelessness and despair.

“It’s a bloody horrible place, Azkaban.” Tobias runs a hand through his hair, his leg jiggling under the table. “You get there and it’s like you can taste misery in the air. The whole place is creepy, and it’s crawling with ghosts, not friendly ghosts like at Hogwarts mind, they never speak, they just howl.” Tobias gives an involuntary shudder. “The first day we went, Striker warned me that it would be bad, but I still wasn’t ready for it.

That first day, we got there and signed in, and I thought they would take my wand but Striker laughed at me and asked how we were supposed to defend ourselves without wands. She said they used to take wands back in the days when the Dementors were there, but that Aurors held on to theirs now so they could defend themselves or the island. She said not to worry about it, and nothing ever happened anyway. The other Aurors that were there said the same, that nobody ever kicked off and that it was an easy paycheck.”

As it turned out, it would be far from easy for Tobias. He and Striker were assigned to patrol the inside of the prison for the first week, beginning at the bottom levels where those on more minor charges were held, and working their way up to the top floors which house the lifers and most dangerous prisoners, including what remains of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s infamous Death Eaters. Striker led the way, as they wound their way through the tight tunnels and dark passages of the castle.

“I had no idea where I was to be honest. If she’d left me there I wouldn’t have found my way back. Every corridor looks the bloody same, it’s just bricks and damp and spiders and darkness, and they seem to wind in spirals. We walked along the corridors, looking into the cells to check all the prisoners were okay. Some of them greeted her by name, but most of them just nodded at us or ignored us altogether. It took forever. I didn’t know so many people were in prison, it seemed endless.

When we got to the top corridor though, that was different. There aren’t many prisoners up there, maybe fifteen or so, and every single one spoke to us. They were all really polite, it was creepy, they asked us how we were doing and what was going on in the outside world. Some of them told Striker to give their regards to her family, and I remember thinking ‘oh yeah, she’s going to go home and tell her mam that a notorious mass murderer says hello’. It was weird. These people haven’t seen the light of day for over a decade but they make polite conversation like you’re at a society ball. They were really interested in me, because I was a new face. They asked me my name, and where I was from, and who my family were, and what my blood status was. I was talking to Walden Macnair for quite a while and it was really uncomfortable. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but Striker had said we should

Tobias is sweating now, and his leg is moving so fast and hard it’s making the table rattle. I push my firewhisky towards him, as his own is empty, and he drains it in one gulp.

“All I remember is running down the corridor, and turning the corner to the last cell and seeing Striker with her head up against the bars, whispering with Rodolphus Lestrange. I heard her say something about placing an order, and then Lestrange saw me. Then the pain hit me, and all I remember is the agony.”

What happened to Tobias had to be put together later from his own fragmented memories and information from other prisoners and guards. Lestrange, it emerged, had mastered Occlumency following his escape in 1996, and despite repeated efforts his memories could not be forcibly extracted without being damaged beyond use. It is believed that Tobias was hit with a Cruciatus Curse and that it was cast by Lestrange using a wand that had been smuggled into the prison by Striker. From the point of the Cruciatus onwards, Tobias’ memory is unreliable, for reasons which will become apparent.

“I don’t remember the rest of that day, the rest of that week actually. When I try there is just white fog. I remember most of the next two months, but not properly, it’s more like watching a play where someone else is living my life for me. I remember going back to Azkaban, and following Striker down the halls. We would spend longer on the top floor than anywhere else, and we would bring them things. Just small things, things that the other guards wouldn’t pick up on. Food, mostly, but occasionally quills, parchment, tobacco, even potions sometimes. We would transfigure them or cast disillusionment charms on them so that we could get them in without questions. Lestrange had a wand, he would let himself and others in and out of their cells so they would be walking around freely on the corridor. I don’t know how nobody noticed. The biggest thing Striker brought him was information. She would tell him about planned Auror raids, tell him who was buying new premises at Diagon Alley, tell him who was courting who, and then he would give us instructions. We were to burn down the new store on the Alley, to put the frighteners on the muggle-born who was courting a pureblood, and we did. We did everything he told us to.”

At this point in his story, Tobias’ head drops into his shaking palms. Following investigation, Tobias was officially cleared of any wrongdoing by the Wizengamot, due to significant evidence that his partner had been regularly placing him under the Imperius Curse to force his participation. It is obvious, however, that he carries significant guilt for his part in the conspiracy, no matter how unwilling he was.

“I tried to fight it, I did.” His eyes look at me imploringly across the table. “Every now and then I would break free of it but they would Crucio me again and then replace the Imperio. She had my mind in chains. I knew I didn’t want to be doing these things, but it was like my body was being controlled by somebody else. My family noticed something was off, but my parents assumed it was the stress of the job. My fiancee though, she knew something wasn’t right.

That night we went and burned down the shop, she confronted me. I got home smelling of smoke in the middle of the night and she went off on me, demanding answers. I tried to tell her, tried to explain that it wasn’t me, but the curse made me shout at her, call her names, tell her to mind her own damn business. When she pushed, the curse made me Stupefy her. The next day, she was gone. After everything, I apologised, asked her to come back but she said no, she didn’t believe me. I don’t blame her.”

The pub is emptying now, the bell tolling for last orders. I dutifully retrieve one last drink for each of us, and when I retake my seat Tobias has clenched fists, knuckles white. He nods in thanks as I slide his glass over.

“The night I broke free, I was certain I was going to die. We were at the prison, the last hour of our shift. The curse was waning again, I was fighting, and I knew Striker would renew it as we left the island. We were returning the medium security prisoners to their cells after their evening exercise, and Striker wasn’t really on her game. Earlier that night Lestrange had given her an earful about a deal that had gone off down Knockturn Alley that he thought she should have told him about and he had threatened her that her family would be in danger if she didn’t fix it and pronto. I think she was distracted, trying to work out a plan, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. I remember a few whispers, and then suddenly they were on us. Ten prisoners, all jumping on us and trying to take our wands. Striker went down, hit her head on a rock and then suddenly it was like the world came back into focus. With her unconscious the curse must have lifted, or weakened enough for me to break through, I don’t know. One of them grabbed her wand, and they were fighting for mine but I somehow got off a Bombarda and then just ran. I knew I had to get to the front guard station before she came round, but then I realised that they might be in on it too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just went on instinct. Pure instinct and adrenaline.”

What Tobias did, he tells me, was run screaming through the front entrance of Azkaban, shouting that Striker was corrupt and possibly dead without breaking stride, then out of the front of the prison to the designated Auror apparition point where he apparated directly into the Auror offices at the Ministry screaming bloody murder. Meanwhile, the remaining Aurors at Azkaban had found Striker, who remained incapacitated with a serious head injury, subdued the rioting prisoners, and confiscated Stiker’s stolen wand. What followed was a sleepless night at the Ministry as Tobias told his story repeatedly, agreeing to the use of Veritaserum and the extraction of his memories, and confessing to a long list of illegal acts carried out under the influence of the Imperius Curse including, but not limited to, arson, intimidation, grievous bodily harm, fraud, theft, and attempted murder.

Readers of The Quibbler may, at this point, be shaking their heads in disbelief and wondering why, if all of this is true, they have not heard about it in the Daily Prophet. Tobias’ trial was held in secret, with the records sealed. Under the influence of the Ministry, reports in the newspapers were limited to small columns buried in the middle pages, and were forbidden from reporting more than the vague mention that there had been a minor disruption at Azkaban prison and that ‘Auror A’ had been temporarily cursed and another Auror sadly killed in the scuffle.

Striker never regained consciousness and died from her injuries in St Mungos the following day. Subsequent examination of her wand, a reliable inside source has confirmed to me, revealed that she had been regularly casting the Imperius Curse and had also used the other two Unforgivable Curses at least once each in the preceding month. Her crimes were never reported in the newspapers, and never subject to any formal legal scrutiny, and the Ministry continues to remain tight lipped on the subject.

“After it all happened, after my hearing, they took me to an office and told me that I could have a promotion and a pay rise if I kept quiet, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t trust people anymore. I couldn’t trust anyone in the department. Striker was top rung, well respected, if she could do it to me then so could any of them. In the end they gave me a settlement and an honourable discharge on medical grounds. They tried to make me sign a non-disclosure agreement but I refused. I tried to get the story told in the Prophet, but they said there was no evidence and that it couldn’t possibly be true. So I stopped talking, went back to my little flat and kept myself to myself.”

But what of the corruption in Azkaban, I ask him, what of the death eaters roaming the corridors armed with smuggled wands? Was this allowed to continue?

“They turned the prison over the day after the riot. Stripped all the cells of everything and brought in new furniture. I heard that they added some new-fangled magic suppressing wards on the top corridors, you know, on top of the anti-apparition and shield wards they already had. Aurors still have their wands on them, but they have to go through a dozen checks on the way in and on the way out to identify any charms or hidden objects. It’ll happen again though. Without the Dementors, as long as those people have hope and have cunning, it will happen again.”

The landlord starts turning chairs up onto the tables around us, and I realise we are the only people left in the pub. Tobias stands, downing the last of his drink.

“People won’t believe this, you know. Nobody ever believes it.” He looks down at me as he dons his robes. “They’ll think you’re just a hack.”

I tell him that I trust my readers, and they trust me, and that as long as I believe him then others will too. And I do believe him. His story, as fantastic as it seems, makes sense and his eyes and body language tell me everything I need to know about his honesty. As I stand and we walk out into the street I ask him the same question that I ask everybody that I interview. I ask him how he has been marked by the dark. His shoulders droop, and he turns his back on me as he answers.

“They took my love, they took my will, they took my future. I trust nobody, and nobody trusts me.”

As he Apparates away I hear his last words on the wind.

“They took everything.”

by u/neeshky