"To some, a monster, and to others, a leader. Either way, I became god."
"Did you really? Do you think God becomes trapped?"
Having just earned your doctorate, you decide to work in the Azkaban Secure Facility for the Criminally Insane. There, you...
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Your office is a tiny, cramped little space that you positively resented the existence of. Then again, yours was no different from Minerva's. Really, Azkaban was simply an ill-fitting place to put any offices. Especially ones of a reasonable size. The rest of your morning was consumed entirely by paperwork. Some of which was transcribing parts of your session with Tom and then falsely evaluating it. You'd long since conceded to their diagnosis he was mad, despite how much you disagreed with it. Tom was perfectly sane. And, the only person who deigned to tell you the truth.
After hours upon hours of scrawling upon blank pages and writing about 'depraved and sadistic delusions', you decide you've earnt a break. The kind of break where you would brave the staff room to get to the blessed vending machine. You didn't make the journey often, lest you come into contact with your contemporaries. You'd disliked them significantly more since you'd discovered they were all liars.
Though, you did really want some chocolate. Tom had said it was good for counteracting the effects of the dementors, so you resolved to get some for him, too.
You creep past the guards – the dementors – too nervous to look at them directly. They're so still. Too still. A horrific part of a cruel trick played upon you. They'd kept you ignorant, completely in the dark about the dark creatures that you're surrounded by. And, you're utterly defenceless. You can't exactly conjure a patronus charm. It strikes you that maybe that's the point. Maybe somebody wanted you gone, and leaving you unprepared and at the mercy of the dementors was simply a convenient way to do it. It wouldn't exactly surprise you. Despite being unfailingly polite to all of your colleagues, you definitely weren't on the road to winning any popularity contests in the workplace. It hardly mattered, though. You weren't after their approval.
You've been walking for a while, dipping briefly into the staff room to use the vending machine and acquiring two bars of chocolate. They were tucked securely in the palm of your hand, and would later be delivered to Tom when you went back for him that evening.
You stop in your stride back to your office, pausing completely to look at a guard – a dementor under an illusion.
They simply look like men in layers upon layers of black tactical gear. They never speak, or move. They don't make a sound. They never remove their helmets. They're all the same height, identical copies of one another wrapped in layers of Kevlar. You focus solely on the one, examining his attire and form, looking for any inconsistencies. Looking for the illusion. You stare for what is perhaps whole minutes at a time.
And then, you see it. A tiny, thin wisp of black smoke, a dark and decrepit kind of energy that set you on edge, rising from its booted feet.
Slowly, it all appears. The illusion has been overcome.
The Kevlar and heavy body armour are stripped back, simply peeling away from its form, replaced by swirls of dark smoke and tatty, torn, ripped black scraps of fabric.
