The Postcard

He is fifteen and it's summer when he gets the postcard. Dean is Muggle-born, and he knows all about postcards, but he has never gotten a postcard from that part of his life. He has never gotten a postcard like this.

Dear Dean,

I knew your father. We need to talk.

Igor Karkaroff

He turns it over and over in his hand. That's all. It's brief. Terse. The postmark is London. He goes to his bedroom and he takes out his wand. He is not supposed to do this, but it's an emergency. He says, "Specialis Revelio!" and he taps the postcard.

Nothing happens.

There must be a way to locate someone, he thinks. Witches and wizards have their own ways of doing everything, and if Dean were pure-blood or even half-blood, he would know what to do. He would know how to find Igor Karkaroff. But he's Muggle-born, and he's fifteen, and he's alone. He knows there's not much point in getting out the London telephone directory.

He's been wondering about his father. He's been wondering for years. Not because he wants him. On the whole, he's pretty mad at him. It's normal to be mad at someone who deserted you when you were ten months old.

Dean loves his mother. He has loved her with fierce protective devotion ever since they were deserted by the father Dean can't even remember. He likes his stepfather, too, a burly big black man called "Pops" who lays bricks. Pops is the fastest bricklayer and the best darts player in all of East London, and he tells a damn good story too. Dean has four little half-brothers and half-sisters, and they're annoying sometimes, but it's not like he wants to give them up. He doesn't want to give any of them up.

However. He has been wondering. Dean was always a little strange, at the playground, at church, at school, and since his mother is absolutely the nicest, most normal woman in the neighborhood, he wondered about his father. When he found out he was a wizard, he really started to wonder. But unfortunately, it was just about then that his mother stopped talking. Until Dean was eleven, his mother was more or less willing to talk about his father, even though she was clearly pretty mad at him. The summer he was eleven, she shut up like a clam. She has barely mentioned his father in the last four years.

Igor Karkaroff was the headmaster of Durmstrang. He accompanied the Durmstrang contingent to the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts last year, and Dean saw him often, but he didn't know that Igor Karkaroff even knew his name. If Igor Karkaroff knew his father, it could mean a lot of things.

It could mean that his father was a wizard.

It could mean that his father attended Durmstrang.

It could mean that his father taught at Durmstrang.

It could mean that his father was Bulgarian. (Are there black Bulgarians? Dean saw a photograph once, and he knows his father was black.)

It could mean that his father was a Death Eater.

Because Ron and Harry think Karkaroff is a Death Eater. He heard them talking in the dormitory.

Dean himself has no particular reason to think that Karkaroff was a Death Eater, but he did think Karkaroff was an awful snob. Not the sort to consort with Muggle-born students. Not the sort to use the Muggle post. There's something awfully dodgy about Karkaroff using the Muggle post.

Dean sits on the edge of his bed, fiddling with the postcard, fiddling with the wand, until his mother tells him that it's twelve o'clock in the morning and he had better go to bed.

He goes to bed with a lot on his mind.

II

He's home again, and it's two days after Christmas, when he gets another postcard.

Dear Dean,

We still need to talk. I'm sorry about your father.

Igor Karkaroff

The postmark is Kiev.

I'm sorry about your father. So that's it. So now he knows. Igor Karkaroff fled Hogwarts last spring, when the Dark Lord rose again. Harry finally sort of told him what happened, now that he's in the D.A., and Dean knows that Karkaroff was a Death Eater and he left the Death Eaters and he fled when the Dark Lord returned. Karkaroff is trying to tell him that his father was a Death Eater. Karkaroff isn't a Death Eater anymore, and he's sorry.

Fat lot of good that does, being sorry.

It was better when he didn't know.

It was better when he thought that his father was a bloody selfish bastard who deserted them. He used to think that his father was dead. Now he doesn't know. Now he thinks his father's in Azkaban. Now he thinks his father's in hiding. Now he thinks his father is wherever the Dark Lord is, rallying Death Eaters. Now he thinks his father's off somewhere killing people, attacking Ron's father in the Ministry, like in that creepy nightmare Harry had last week.

Now he thinks he's the son of a murderer.

Now he knows why his mother won't talk.

It was better, it was really much, much better, when he didn't know.

III

During Easter holidays, he gets the third postcard.

Dear Dean,

One of these days, we'll talk. Don't be angry at your father.

Igor Karkaroff

The postmark is Copenhagen.

Don't be angry? Don't be angry? Karkaroff, you bloody selfish bastard, you don't know how angry I am. You think I'm going to talk to you? To you?

Except that you're the only one who knows my father. Who will admit to knowing my father.

Dean does know one thing now, and it's not much, but it's good for what it's worth. Ten Death Eaters broke Azkaban in January, and his father wasn't one of them. He can't go by names, because he thinks now that his father probably isn't using his real name (and Thomas may not be his real name either, he realizes now) but all ten pictures were in the paper and he looked at them closely. None of them looked remotely like Dean, and none of them was black.

So either his father is still in Azkaban, or he wasn't there in the first place.

Of course, it's possible, after all, that his father is dead. Karkaroff has been using the past tense.

He hopes his father is dead.

He goes to bed hoping against hope that his father is really, really dead. Much too dead to kill people.

IV

Early in July, he gets another postcard.

Dear Dean,

I'm pretty sure I'm dead. We can't talk. If we talk, they'll kill you too.

Igor Karkaroff

There is no postmark.

Dean doesn't like the tenor of this postcard. It's the day after the Brockdale Bridge collapse and all of his mother's friends are talking, talking, talking, and Dean knows something is up but he can't tell anyone. There are two particularly nasty murders in the paper that week, and no one else in East London knows what they mean, but Dean has heard of Amelia Susan Bones, and he knows.

He knows, and he's worried, and he's angry at Igor Karkaroff, and he's angry at his father. He still hopes his father is dead.

Two weeks later, Igor Karkaroff's body is found in a shack in the mountains. It is removed by the Muggle police. The autopsy fails to establish the cause of death. The unusual tattoo on the corpse's left arm is duly noted, and a description is circulated, but no one claims the body. It is buried in a pauper's grave.

Dean will never know now, whether or not his father was a Death Eater.

He will never know what Igor Karkaroff so badly wanted to tell him.

He will never know that Igor Karkaroff was the man who killed his father.