A Memory Of Shadows

1 - Leaving Azkaban

The stone was rough and cold beneath her fingertips. Dead, but not dead, thrumming with a beat she had listened to for five long years. Over the centuries, the walls had been soaked with pain and fear, despair. Insanity. Oh, so much insanity. Until there was nothing left of its natural essence, only darkness. And she had listened to the whispering of it, had felt it running through her whenever she ran her fingertips along the walls of her cell. Did she too become darkness? Insanity?

Somewhere further along the corridor a door creaked across the floor and she yanked her hand back, as if she had been caught doing something forbidden. But it only felt forbidden, those thoughts of others. Of the mad and the dead.

Five years. 60 months, 1825 days, 43800 hours. It must have been a little longer, though. It was Winter now; the heavy scent of humidity and the sea had been laced with those of warming fires and frost for weeks now. It had been May when she had arrived, right after the battle.

The battle.

The cursed, the wretched, the horrid, the useless battle.

She had not died. She had wanted to, she had felt so ready for this all to be over. And it had been over. Just not the way she had needed it to be.

Footsteps. Quickly, she sat down on her bed, hands tucked neatly underneath her thighs. They'd have felt threatened if they had found her standing in the middle of the room.                                     It was easier this way. A face appeared behind the tiny barred window of her heavy cell door, dark eyes scanning the inside of her cell. "Are you ready, Miss?" The Auror's voice was softer than expected. Almost kind. "No," she answered truthfully. How could she be, the world out there was a foreign one. One without a place for a creature like her. Still, she was to be thrown into it mere hours from now. They had given her clothes this morning. Not the ones she had arrived in; her Death Eater robes had been burned long ago. The heavy material of her dark blue cloak hang loosely from her too thin body and the fine light blue stitching, once scattered along the edges to bring out her blue eyes did little to hide the dark circles underneath her eyes. Her father had bought her this coat in Diagon Alley mere months before the last battle, the two of them striding across London as if they ruled over it. Back then, they technically did. Her father, at least, in part. Glorious, glorious father, the famous and feared Death Eater. The one who, when she came of age, had not even blinked as he had pushed her in front of the Dark Lord's feet like it was the greatest gift he could have given her. Or given him? She would never see him again, her father. Somewhere in this forsaken place, he had found his place for eternity. To rot and to die.

"Miss?" She was dragged from her thoughts, back to herself. "I am sorry," she said carefully, still unmoving, "do you need me to do something?" The guard smiled weakly before remembering himself. "No," he replied, "just stay put."

She could almost feel the magic that followed his disappearing face as he stepped back, clearing the way for the spells necessary to open the door. It was time. She did not want it to be time.