Igor Karkaroff, Pensieve Memory, December 1941
Name: Igor Karkaroff
Format: Pensieve Memory
Date: December, 1941
Relevance: Presented with extreme reluctance to Walburga Black is Igor Karkaroff's worst memory. The contents of this memory affected Karkaroff for the rest of his life - he never did stop running.
As the memory slips into vision, a small boy of about 6 runs through a thick layer of snow, a mop of messy, jet-black hair flying behind him. Fresh snow falls thick and steady from the dark, overcast sky. He leaps over large, dark lumps, half-buried in the snow, without breaking his stride, his breath coming in dense, ragged clouds and his clear blue eyes widened with fear. In his hands he clutches a plain brown paper bag, held close within a thick, dark coat in a futile attempt to keep the contents from freezing. The boy slips on ice here and there, grabbing for freezing walls to keep his balance as he careens around the street corners, dodging more solid bumps as he moves as fast as his legs will take him.
His foot catches on one of the stiffened lumps, and he falls flat on his face, rolling the frozen mass over in the motion. As he picks himself up and tucks his bag back in his coat, flitting off with only a moment of hesitation, in order to flick his head around, looking restlessly for some kind of unseen danger, it becomes apparent that what he unearthed from the snow is a corpse, dark eyes staring blankly at the sky, blood frozen with his solid, blue face. In fact, every single mound in the snow is a frozen body, littering the streets in the stead of any living being.
The boy runs until he reaches an old city townhouse on the outskirts of the city, and there he comes to a skidding halt, shaking the snow from his hair and his clothes as he takes another critical scan of his surroundings, panting heavily. Until he seems satisfied, he doesn't enter the building, but when he does, the movement is as quick and twitchy as ever.
Inside, the boy locks and bolts the door as quietly as he can, then trots up the old stairs with his bag and into a well-furnished sitting room, where he finally stops and, pulling the bag from his coat, hands it over to what must be his father. His father takes the bag and pulls out nothing more than a loaf of bread - but it's all they need right now. The boy steps back, then turns to collapse in the arms of his mother, who sits on an old sofa, opposite the boy's father. She strokes his hair gently, soothing him, while beside her, leaned on her side, another boy naps - this one no more than perhaps 4 years old.
The peace does not last for long. Barely has the boy's father risen from his seat to hand out portions of the bread when the sound of the front door being bashed in shatters the silence. The father drops the bread and buries his right hand in his coat pocket as his wife shakes her younger son awake, getting to her feet in an instant and clutching both children to her body as she shuffles them quickly to an old wooden closet.
"Vhodite! Igor, ostanovis zdes s tvoyom bratom - ne shumi - vsyo budet horosho," the woman whispers, pushing Igor into the darkness.
The younger boy is not so lucky - as his mother steps back, to grab him and hide him with his brother, two soldiers and another man dressed in black burst into the room, guns raised. Igor flinches at the sudden, multiple cracks of gunfire, and his little brother chokes on blood, dropping to the floor where he does not move again, his eyes gazing in blank surprise while blood slowly filters onto the floor from the round of bullets lodged in his body. His mother screams and his father shouts, pulling a wand from his coat - but before he can say a word, one of the soldiers has the barrel of his gun held to his head, and with another ear-splitting crack, the father's head is blown away in a spray of thick, dark red, the rest of his body hitting the floor with a dull thump, and another horrified shriek.
Igor clamps a hand over his nose and mouth, trying not to breathe, not to move, not to give himself away, as his petrified gaze fixes on the only member of his family left standing - waiting in stunned anticipation of the inevitable. No gunfire is forthcoming, however. Instead, the man in black grabs Igor's mother, gloved hands all over her, and she sobs, begging for mercy, praying to God. The soldiers laugh and close in, shoving her down, ripping her clothes apart and kicking her when she claws and struggles in vain to break their grip.
Igor watches, tears of silent horror streaming down his face, over his hand, as the soldiers and the man in black take their turns to viciously beat and rape his mother, her screams and cries choked from her throat as her struggles slowly subside in the face of pain and exhaustion. He doesn't know how long it lasts - minutes, or hours? When the men are finished, setting their clothes right again, one kicks her in the side, and she does nothing more than give a faint moan, her broken, bare body twitching.
"Töten Sie sie," the man in black says, and his face twists into a grin that will haunt Igor for the rest of his life. "Nein... Ich werde."
He unloads an entire round of bullets into the woman's body before he's satisfied.
"Brennen Sie den Platz," he mutters, his voice so smug, and he strides out of the room, leaving Igor watching the two soldiers as they smash the oil lamps over the floor. They move out of the boy's crack of vision, and seconds later, the room, his family, explodes in violent flames. The sound of the retreating jackboots and the fierce roaring of the fire are the last things Igor hears, as his hiding place heats up fast, and he sweats, but he can't move, or they might see him - he has to wait just a little longer, even as he suffocates on the thick blanket of smoke filtering in.
Blackness.
There are flashes - a group of men, wrapping him in a heavy blanket, carrying him away in their arms, but he can't see. Everything is black, or white, or burning. He can't breathe, it's all smoke, the sound of gunfire goes off somewhere around him.
More blackness.
It must be a few days later. Igor awakens, in what appears to be a hospital - a wizarding hospital, though he doesn't know, for he's never seen one. His aunt is holding his hand, seated by his side in a bed, her face shining with tears. She murmurs something to him, speaking rapidly, and he doesn't know what she's saying, because his whole body hurts and the clean light hurts. All he can manage to choke out is a bewildered, defeated little "Mama... Papa..." and then his aunt is stroking his face as he begins to cry, and he doesn't know where he is or how he got there and he can't understand a word his aunt is saying as she clings to him, burying her face in his hair.
It's too much, he's too tired, too exhausted, and he falls back into unconsciousness, for the time being.
NB: Here you get into some unfortunate by-products of the crossing-over between Muggle and Wizarding worlds at a rather sticky time period - I doubt wizards were doing much better than muggles, particularly in certain regions.
Format: Pensieve Memory
Date: December, 1941
Relevance: Presented with extreme reluctance to Walburga Black is Igor Karkaroff's worst memory. The contents of this memory affected Karkaroff for the rest of his life - he never did stop running.
As the memory slips into vision, a small boy of about 6 runs through a thick layer of snow, a mop of messy, jet-black hair flying behind him. Fresh snow falls thick and steady from the dark, overcast sky. He leaps over large, dark lumps, half-buried in the snow, without breaking his stride, his breath coming in dense, ragged clouds and his clear blue eyes widened with fear. In his hands he clutches a plain brown paper bag, held close within a thick, dark coat in a futile attempt to keep the contents from freezing. The boy slips on ice here and there, grabbing for freezing walls to keep his balance as he careens around the street corners, dodging more solid bumps as he moves as fast as his legs will take him.
His foot catches on one of the stiffened lumps, and he falls flat on his face, rolling the frozen mass over in the motion. As he picks himself up and tucks his bag back in his coat, flitting off with only a moment of hesitation, in order to flick his head around, looking restlessly for some kind of unseen danger, it becomes apparent that what he unearthed from the snow is a corpse, dark eyes staring blankly at the sky, blood frozen with his solid, blue face. In fact, every single mound in the snow is a frozen body, littering the streets in the stead of any living being.
The boy runs until he reaches an old city townhouse on the outskirts of the city, and there he comes to a skidding halt, shaking the snow from his hair and his clothes as he takes another critical scan of his surroundings, panting heavily. Until he seems satisfied, he doesn't enter the building, but when he does, the movement is as quick and twitchy as ever.
Inside, the boy locks and bolts the door as quietly as he can, then trots up the old stairs with his bag and into a well-furnished sitting room, where he finally stops and, pulling the bag from his coat, hands it over to what must be his father. His father takes the bag and pulls out nothing more than a loaf of bread - but it's all they need right now. The boy steps back, then turns to collapse in the arms of his mother, who sits on an old sofa, opposite the boy's father. She strokes his hair gently, soothing him, while beside her, leaned on her side, another boy naps - this one no more than perhaps 4 years old.
The peace does not last for long. Barely has the boy's father risen from his seat to hand out portions of the bread when the sound of the front door being bashed in shatters the silence. The father drops the bread and buries his right hand in his coat pocket as his wife shakes her younger son awake, getting to her feet in an instant and clutching both children to her body as she shuffles them quickly to an old wooden closet.
"Vhodite! Igor, ostanovis zdes s tvoyom bratom - ne shumi - vsyo budet horosho," the woman whispers, pushing Igor into the darkness.
The younger boy is not so lucky - as his mother steps back, to grab him and hide him with his brother, two soldiers and another man dressed in black burst into the room, guns raised. Igor flinches at the sudden, multiple cracks of gunfire, and his little brother chokes on blood, dropping to the floor where he does not move again, his eyes gazing in blank surprise while blood slowly filters onto the floor from the round of bullets lodged in his body. His mother screams and his father shouts, pulling a wand from his coat - but before he can say a word, one of the soldiers has the barrel of his gun held to his head, and with another ear-splitting crack, the father's head is blown away in a spray of thick, dark red, the rest of his body hitting the floor with a dull thump, and another horrified shriek.
Igor clamps a hand over his nose and mouth, trying not to breathe, not to move, not to give himself away, as his petrified gaze fixes on the only member of his family left standing - waiting in stunned anticipation of the inevitable. No gunfire is forthcoming, however. Instead, the man in black grabs Igor's mother, gloved hands all over her, and she sobs, begging for mercy, praying to God. The soldiers laugh and close in, shoving her down, ripping her clothes apart and kicking her when she claws and struggles in vain to break their grip.
Igor watches, tears of silent horror streaming down his face, over his hand, as the soldiers and the man in black take their turns to viciously beat and rape his mother, her screams and cries choked from her throat as her struggles slowly subside in the face of pain and exhaustion. He doesn't know how long it lasts - minutes, or hours? When the men are finished, setting their clothes right again, one kicks her in the side, and she does nothing more than give a faint moan, her broken, bare body twitching.
"Töten Sie sie," the man in black says, and his face twists into a grin that will haunt Igor for the rest of his life. "Nein... Ich werde."
He unloads an entire round of bullets into the woman's body before he's satisfied.
"Brennen Sie den Platz," he mutters, his voice so smug, and he strides out of the room, leaving Igor watching the two soldiers as they smash the oil lamps over the floor. They move out of the boy's crack of vision, and seconds later, the room, his family, explodes in violent flames. The sound of the retreating jackboots and the fierce roaring of the fire are the last things Igor hears, as his hiding place heats up fast, and he sweats, but he can't move, or they might see him - he has to wait just a little longer, even as he suffocates on the thick blanket of smoke filtering in.
Blackness.
There are flashes - a group of men, wrapping him in a heavy blanket, carrying him away in their arms, but he can't see. Everything is black, or white, or burning. He can't breathe, it's all smoke, the sound of gunfire goes off somewhere around him.
More blackness.
It must be a few days later. Igor awakens, in what appears to be a hospital - a wizarding hospital, though he doesn't know, for he's never seen one. His aunt is holding his hand, seated by his side in a bed, her face shining with tears. She murmurs something to him, speaking rapidly, and he doesn't know what she's saying, because his whole body hurts and the clean light hurts. All he can manage to choke out is a bewildered, defeated little "Mama... Papa..." and then his aunt is stroking his face as he begins to cry, and he doesn't know where he is or how he got there and he can't understand a word his aunt is saying as she clings to him, burying her face in his hair.
It's too much, he's too tired, too exhausted, and he falls back into unconsciousness, for the time being.
NB: Here you get into some unfortunate by-products of the crossing-over between Muggle and Wizarding worlds at a rather sticky time period - I doubt wizards were doing much better than muggles, particularly in certain regions.