Reformatory

Ring the bells of mercy
Send the sinner man home
The keys to the kingdom are lost and gone
And I'm left to die alone

-- Laika, Black Cat Bone

After a while, the screams turn to background music, like the sound of a ship's engines on a long voyage; something you don't notice by the end. The crying, pleading, wailing, pain--it becomes silence, and what was silence no longer is. It's deafening. It crushes you, waves of it pulling you under and you can't breathe... can't breathe until someone reaches in and pulls you out and brings you back to life but you know you'll never be the same, because the place changes you--it changes everyone.

But most people don't get pulled back anyway. After all, they're sinners and this is their penance. They'll spend the rest of their lives here, watching their own bodies rot away, their own flesh wrinkle and their limbs become useless appendages because they're never used, never moved except for when they're thrashing against the bars, the lungs screaming, burning themselves hoarse. Let me out, let me out.

Some go mute in the end, not due to the madness, simply because their throats are dry and their tongues stick in their mouths and they can't speak, can't even moan when they relive the worst, over and over and over until it becomes real and they are there and they know they'll never get out, because you can't escape your own mind, it stays with your forever.

---

It's dark, and you're cold. No, it's bright, the surface of the sun, and your skin is on fire. Sizzling, burning, popping bubbles from the heat. And you're in the dark again, and there's screaming, faint at first but louder and louder until it gets too loud and it fades into what you now know as silence.

You don't know if it's your own screaming. Maybe it was one of your friends, maybe another prisoner, maybe it's not there at all. Maybe you did kill them, maybe it was your fault, maybe you're not as innocent as you want to believe. Maybe the guards, papers, ministry, everyone... maybe they're all right.

Did you curse him, blow him apart on the street? Was that why you stood there laughing? Maybe you thought it was funny what you did. Maybe you need to get these thoughts out, out, before you're as mad as the rest of them.

Maybe you already are.

---

You're freezing as the sea outside, beating the rocks, thrashing away. It always does, you later realize. No matter if there's a storm outside or not. The waves hate the rocks, they hate the prison, they hate you for being there. They hate you because you're dirty and because everyone else there is too.

Except for a few.

You can feel the pure ones. Not pure, really, but the innocents. You can feel them. They don't suffer the way you do, and everyone can feel it, even those faceless soul-suckers who don't care about anything except for their all-you-can-eat human misery buffet. They don't care who's guilty and who's innocent, but they must feel it, they must.

How could they not, when it's even louder than the silence, the screams, the waves. It's not even audible it's so loud, it comes from every heart, with every heart beat, every pulse, you can feel that they don't belong there, that they shouldn't be suffering this way, even if they are Mudblood-loving fools, each and every one of them. You can feel that too.

And you know he's there. The boy you spent your summers with, the boy you tormented and teased until he ultimately hated you, though you loved him because he was family and because he was the most like you, really was, despite your ideals and different views on magical politics.

You can feel him, thrashing in his cell, wishing those foolish friends of his were still alive, because if they were, he wouldn't be here. He wouldn't be guilty and he wouldn't be here, dying bit by bit, quickly enough to feel it, even see it.

You remember summers with him, taking walks in the country, playful kisses stolen under the cheery tree in your mum's gardens, hiding from the rest of the family, just the two of you and the sun and the fruit dropping into your hands at will, the tree's leafy branches keeping you from being found.

Those were good days, and you're not allowed to think of them. You know you're not, because it is coming. That repulsive creature that makes good times bad and--

The sun disappears, a freezing rain falls, licking your limbs and plastering your summer dress to your body. He's there too, soaked from head to toe, face slightly flushed with anger as you battle out everything you hate about one another in another of your traditional shouting matches.

Thunder rumbles and you both shout more loudly still to be heard. Your throat is burning and you can't believe what he's become, can't believe he's turning his back on everything you were ever taught. You'd kill him if you could, kill him rather than see him abandon what you've both been prepared for since you were born. Of course, luck would have it you're unarmed. Your wand is at the manor, and physical fighting is plebian and such a Muggle thing to do.

At the manor... the wand is out of range of the screaming, and it's hard to believe because you're screaming loud enough to raise the dead and kill them again all with one note.

---

You can feel them. You can feel those... those things. They aren't here. At least, they're not right here.

There's a ray at the end of a dark, dark tunnel and it just might be a happy thought. Or maybe it's just death. Whichever it is... it'll be better than this, even if you are afraid to die and even if submitting is cowardly and not for you, because you shouldn't be here, you're not like the rest of them, you're innocent, innocent, you tell them, but they don't hear you, they only feed, vampiric for emotions and magnets for the bad thoughts, dragging them to the surface, pulling them away from the depths where they belong.