At What Cost

Prologue

I used to think nothing meant white. Pure and clean, even spacing with just enough room for something to exist. That nothing didn't mean anything, that it was just an idea that spread across our vocabulary to express something that we do not fully understand. Nothing is clear, it's as deep and dense as the ocean and as quiet as the sky on a sunny day. I used to think that it was impossible for anything to truly be nothing, that there is not a single thing on this earth that could truly encompass anything close to nothing.

But I was wrong, so bitterly and painfully wrong that I find it difficult to imagine anything other than nothingness. That this idea of something is as far-fetched and impossible as nothing was once. 

A long time has passed since the end of the war. Or, I think it's been that long. Time moves and sounds different in a bubble. In Azkaban.

I recall very little of the last day before Fudge ordered me to be sent to Azkaban. Probably because it's as if it never even happened, a distant memory that only serves as a reminder of what I no longer have. Freedom. 

Harry had barely been fully healed and ready to go back to school when Dumbledore and two workers from the ministry took me away from the infirmary. There were soft, sickly yells from my friend and distant murmurs from my classmates as they forced me out onto the courtyard. 

"What happened to Hermione?"

"Where are they taking her?"

"Was she working with...you-know-who?"

"Does Ron know?"

They all imagined something innocent, that I was going to be taken to the Ministry for a simple charm made towards a muggle and that I would be sent back to school with nothing more than a warning. I pity the girl that I once was, the girl that would have made the same assumptions about a classmate. The girl that fell in love with magic and the people that came with it. The small strong girl that became gentle around the tall red-haired boy. I wish I could go back to her and tell her how much things were going to change now.

When Ron found out about me going to Azkaban he tried so hard to get his dad, who works for the ministry, to have them rethink the verdict. That the truth behind what they said was nothing more than a final spin from the members of Voldemorts circle. That it could not possibly be true. 

"It's true Ronald. And we would do better than meddle with issues such as those this soon after the war." That is what I imagine his father would have said. I don't blame them, they should stay away. I am nothing like they thought I was. 

I am nothing like I thought I was. 

Azkaban is a prison in the middle of the ocean where they sent people who have committed crimes against magic. Sirius Black, Harry's Godfather, was imprisoned there far before the death of Voldemort. In our conversations about it, he described it as something that drains the life out of you like you forget who you were before the 4 walls of your cell became all that you know. Dementors eat away at your soul, magic taken away, it's a pitiful way to live.

But I deserve it. 

Do I? 

Yes.

Is love really that awful of a crime?

Maybe it is.