The thick morning fog had yet to lift from Diagon Alley's flagstones.
A gust of wind slammed open the Leaky Cauldron's greasy black wooden door.
A stack of Daily Prophet special editions, smelling of fresh ink, thudded onto the bar.
Tom, the old bartender, stopped polishing a brass goblet.
His cloudy eyes fixed on the enormous moving photograph on the front page.
The headline was printed in bold black type that took up half the page.
"Farewell to barbarism, welcome to gears-inside Azkaban's reform-through-labor factory."
The entire photograph exuded a suffocating blend of industrial machine oil and cold, hard steel.
There were no cold, hovering Dementors.
Only rows of Dark wizard prisoners dressed in coarse gray-blue overalls.
They stood before enormous, roaring Muggle assembly lines.
They were being forced to perform monotonous, physically exhausting piecework.
Clearly, some company had spent a considerable sum on publicity to land this headline on the front page.
"This is an unconscionable outrage!"
McLaggen, a pure-blood wizard, slammed his fist against the edge of the bar.
The oak boards cracked under the strain.
Tom shot him a displeased glare.
"Open your eyes and take a good look at these crude tin toys!"
McLaggen pointed at the meshing metal gears in the newspaper and roared.
"That damned Marauders Company has actually stuffed the filthiest Muggle machinery into our prison!"
Tom glanced at it and said mercilessly:
"That's your prison, not mine. Old Tom is a law-abiding wizard in good standing."
McLaggen choked on his words.
"It's not mine either. I mean, this completely strips away the most basic decency and dignity of being a wizard!"
"Even if they're criminals, they still received seven years of elite higher education at Hogwarts!"
"Now they've been reduced to laborers pedaling sewing machines for Muggle capitalists!"
"Has the wizarding world