Where Angels Fear To Tread

Prologue

Extract from the Journal Of Doctor S. Summers

Tuesday, January the 15th, 2008

Patient No. 2003 Mr. H. J. Potter (see note 1)

Curiously, this is the first report on this patient, who has been in Azkaban for three years and has undergone numerous psychiatric examinations in his imprisonment by various skilled psychologists.  I discovered the reason for this while interviewing Mr. Potter, who seems to be healthy and cheerful, even if his sense of humor is decidedly macabre. 

I conducted many interviews with Mr. Potter, hoping to get to the crux of his problem.  He is a likeable young man, bright and surprisingly well read. (He confesses that a few privileges are given to him as a prisoner, enabling friends to bring him books, newspapers and the like.) His knowledge of the Azkaban itself and its prisoners are considerable.  He is in fact still a confident and charismatic young man, which is rare in one who has been at the prison for so long. 

Most of the prisoners here are labeled insane after one or two years of imprisonment.  It is rare for a prisoner to keep his/her mind for so long.  There are of course precedents, like the Black case (see note 2), in which the prisoner reportedly kept his sanity for more than ten years.  Unfortunately, there are no records to prove this, as the Ministry set up the Magi-Psychiatry program after the Second War, and Sirius Black is still one of the most wanted men of the Wizarding World.

Finding Mr. Potter to be a perfectly normal young man, I reported this to my superior, who sent the report back.  I was extremely confused.  Mr. Potter explained that the Ministry would not settle for anything less than a report saying 'criminally insane' and agreed to help me find evidence of his insanity.  He was extremely polite and helpful and suggested I should look for the whereabouts of his esteemed former psychologists for some answers.  I followed this suggestion and discovered that five of Mr. Potter's former doctors have quit their profession entirely while seven were currently undergoing psychiatric examination themselves. 

Of course, I set out to understand the reasons for these skilled men and women to take these extreme paths of action.  However, there are no records of conversations held with the patient, no reports, and certainly no conclusions drawn.  Each doctor quit the job after less than a week, while Mr. Potter seems to be in the best of mental health himself.  I asked him if there was a reason behind this.  He told me that he thought I was a likeable enough person and didn't want to inflict anything terrible on me.

I told him he could 'inflict' anything he wanted to, as long as it was helpful to him, as that is what my profession entails.  I hope that was wise.

    

End Extract

Note 1: Doctor Summers committed suicide a week after this last journal entry.  There are no further reports from any doctors regarding Mr. Potter. 

Note 2:Mr. Black's whereabouts are still unknown.  

TBC