[Interview conducted by editor, 2017. The identify of the interviewee, a Hogwarts prefect in 1991-92, has been redacted to preserve anonymity.]
EDITOR: You were a student at Hogwarts in 1991-92, correct?
[REDACTED]: Yeah. It was my 6th year.
EDITOR: And you were a prefect?
[REDACTED]: Yeah. Gryffindor House. That’s right.
EDITOR: What do you remember about 4th June 1992?
[REDACTED]: Remember? Well, it was the last day of exams. Prefect duties – well, to be honest prefect duties were a bit fuck-all for me at that point. No one takes the job seriously after 5th year unless they’re on to be Head Boy. I stayed on because I liked the perks, if I’m being honest – the baths, the free passes, you know. So there was some patrolling that ought to have been happening what with end-of-term celebrations and what have you, but I was – well, I suppose I had end-of-term celebrations of my own to attend to [laughs].
EDITOR: Were there any duties specific to that date? To 4th June 1992?
[REDACTED]: Yes. That morning we all – all the prefects – received a notice at breakfast to meet the Deputy Headmistress, McGonagall, to meet her for special instructions. So she pulled us aside after brekkers and told us that the Headmaster was going to be out of the castle on business that day, and that we all ought to be extra-vigilant as various, naughty behaviours I suppose, were likely once word spread of his absence. And – well, I found that odd, because everyone knew Dumbledore was always going out on business. Like it’s part of his job, you know, and – well, it’s not as if he was taking a personal hand in discipline at the castle, was he? So I found it odd that McGonagall felt the need to prepare us all for that, make such a show of pulling us aside. It’s almost as if she wanted to make it clear to everyone how very much he was gone.
EDITOR: Did word spread? Of his absence?
[REDACTED]: Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know who all really cared. Like I said, it was a regular occurrence. Some people I’m sure got gossipy. People like to be in the know. When the prefects are told something you assume – you assume you’re missing out on something important, if you aren’t one of them.
EDITOR: Did you witness any peculiar events on the night of the 4th?
[REDACTED]: Yes. Yeah, of course. So – well, like I said, by my 6th year I was a bit burnt on all my prefect duties, and, er – well, I was never the most, well, disciplined student, at least outside classroom hours. So – well, to be honest that night I had plans to meet up with a girl from Ravenclaw in an old classroom just down the stair from her tower – bit of a convenient spot to well, meet a young lady, smoke a fag, you know. I won’t say which one it was for I don’t want to out any current students who are finding it, hah, useful [laughs]. So I was slipping out of my dormitory around midnight with a bottle of Ogden’s under my robes, thinking about what I was about to get up to, when I found laid out on the common room floor before the portrait hole a first year in a full-body bind.
EDITOR: Neville Longbottom, correct?
[REDACTED]: Yeah, that was his name. Bit of an accomplished wizard he is now, but back then – God, the boy was a runt. So I barely saw him, tiny little child he was lying there in the dark not making a peep. But I thought, God, some berk hexed this little squib – and God, what’s worse, the runt let them do it. So I freed him up, got him sitting up. And right away he’s blubbing on about how some classmates of his were out of bed, wandering around. So I think, God, this kid’s a squib, he’s a cissy, and he’s a grass all in one.
EDITOR: What did you do?
[REDACTED]: I told him to have a drink of hot milk and get up to bed. I didn’t want a racket getting in the way of my evening plans, and I didn’t want Percy Weasley stomping off to get some first years in trouble who were just out to have a nice out-of-bed time. By that point I’m sure I’d forgotten that we were on high-alert or what have you. And I didn’t have a blasted idea what the Longbottom kid was so upset about. Once I was sure he was on his way back to the dormitory I slipped out down the stairs and on over to the classroom, where there was a lovely little number waiting for me in [REDACTED] – shite, bleep that will you? – and, well – not sure what kind of details you’re wanting out of all this, but –
EDITOR: When did you begin to notice that something was strange?
[REDACTED]: Yes. Well, this classroom overlooks the front quite well, and I was smoking my aforementioned fag when this girl – let’s call her Sally – when Sally says wotcher. And we see there’s four or five men sort of milling around, no one we’d ever seen before, sort of going in and out of the front entry. And so Sally and I, we got curious, so we put out our fags and we sneaked off toward the bannister over the entry hall. You had a good vantage there and no one could right see you, us being several stories up in the shadows. And what we saw – let me think. It was all sorts of movement, men in and out – and what’s odd is not a single one of them was someone I knew, not a single one of them professors. They were speaking in hushed voices, but you could pick up the curses. They were angry – like something had just gone terribly wrong. That’s the sense of it we got anyway.
EDITOR: How many people were there?
[REDACTED]: Well, like I said there was the four or five from outdoors, all of them in black cloaks and hoods. And there was a woman, unremarkable type, and with her were two or three men with cameras. It looked like she was press, almost. She was maybe the most hopped up of all of them – I think she got escorted away by one of the men in black. But then some blokes came thundering down from the third floor, and with them – this was when things got truly odd – with them, I swear it, was Dumbledore.
EDITOR: What do you remember about him?
[REDACTED]: Oh, he seemed calm enough for a man who was supposed to be in London. The man he was talking to though – a black man I think he was – he seemed ready to blow. I don’t know, not shouting or anything. Just fumes coming straight out from his eyes and ears. But now this was when I felt – and Sally, she said she felt it too – this is when we both felt that Dumbledore looked up and somehow saw both of us, stared into our souls like, and said ‘you ought to get back to bed, hmm?’ I don’t know. He had that presence about him. Maybe it was just years of being a schoolteacher. You can just hold that schoolmarm in you without even thinking it once you’ve been at it long as him. Anyway, we took the message and we did that, we went our separate ways back to bed.
EDITOR: Did you overhear anything? Anything to give you any indication of who the men were, or what they were there for?
[REDACTED]: Hmm. No. Maybe I would have remembered back then. But it’s been 20 years now. I don’t remember any of it too well. I guess pretty soon after rumours started to spreading – and other aspects – well, they sort of covered up anything me and [REDACTED] – shite, Sally – Sally and I noticed. It didn’t end up being too glamorous or interesting to anyone, what details we had to offer. At least compared to some of the rumours. So we just kind of forgot about it. But as I’m telling it to you now, I’m positive. I do remember. It happened.
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