An Occurrence At Azkaban

An Occurrence at Azkaban

by Lady_Isabella (and Ambrose Bierce)

I

A man stood upon the rocky soil of a hidden isle in the unforgiving North Sea, looking down into the crashing ocean water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. There was an unspoken aura - distance - between him and the guarding wizards who surrounded him, wands at the ready in case anything unexpected should happen. The air was suffused with an atmosphere of fear and chilling finality.

Beyond one of the Aurors nobody was in sight; the curve of the rough-hewn coastline intersected with the forbidding grey stone walls of the prison-house and was lost to view. The gaze in the opposite direction was similar to the first, showing other Aurors bearing visages as hard as the earth they stood upon. Not a man moved; the company faced where the bound man stood, staring stonily, motionless. They might have been statues to adorn the otherwise featureless area. The chief of the Aurors stood with folded arms, silent, observing his subordinates, but making no sign. Death and Dissolution are dignitaries who, when they come announced, are to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar to them. In the code of etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was awaiting the Dementor's Kiss was apparently about forty-two years of age. He was an aristocrat, if one might judge from his habit, which was tailor-made of the finest materials. His features were good - an elegant Roman nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, fair hair was combed straight back and secured with a black ribbon so that it remained out of his face in spite of the blustery wind from the North Sea. He had a long and pointed face, but bore no trace of whiskers; his eyes were large and grey, and had an aloof, unconcerned look which one would hardly have expected in one whose soul awaited extraction. Evidently this was no vulgar miscreant. The wizard code of laws makes provision for punishing many kinds of offenders, and gentlemen are not excluded.

A group of ragged, godforsaken figures appeared now in the doorway of the stolid prison building - tattered and weathered, their only revealed bodily features being the spindly, half-decayed digits that might possibly be called fingers. Lucius closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and son. The water below, touched silver upon the wave-crests by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks, the grey prison walls, the Aurors - all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound that he could neither ignore nor understand. He wondered what it was; its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and - he knew not why - apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the blast of a curse; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch, dangling from its silver chain.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water beyond the rocks. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might snatch away one of the Aurors' wands and leap into the sea. By diving I could evade their curses while casting a bubbleheaded charm upon myself. Then, swimming vigorously, I might get far enough away that I could apparate ashore, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank Merlin, is as yet warded against even intruders of their ilk; my wife and son are still beyond these muggle-lovers' farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it, the air near the man took on an unearthly chill at the approach of the black-cloaked Dementor. The creature lifted up bony hands to draw back its hood...

II

Lucius Malfoy was a well-to-do wizard, of an old and highly respected British family. Being of pureblooded lineage and something of a philanthropic politician he was naturally a supporter of Lord Voldemort and ardently devoted to the anti-muggle cause. Therefore, at the Dark Lord's direction in June of 1996, he had donned the concealing black robes of a Death Eater, the pale mask that revealed naught but eyes behind a pair of slits in the otherwise featureless faceplate. He had led his fellow adherents of the cause in what was to be a ridiculously simple task; to acquire a prophecy hidden in the Ministry Department of Mysteries that heretofore had lain outside of Voldemort's grasp. But now, with the unknowing and misguided aid of The Boy Who Should Not Have Lived and his facile friends, that prophecy would soon be given into Lucius' hands.

Or so he had thought; Potter and his friends had proved far more troublesome and difficult to tame than any of the Death Eaters had ever imagined. But then, just as the infuriating boy's will had started to wear down and the sight of the pathetic Longbottom boy being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange caused him to start handing over the spun-glass jar...all had been ruined. The cavalry had come, and ever-heroic Dumbledore with his Aurors had even beaten back Voldemort himself in a desperate stand. All...all had been lost, and now Lucius found himself a prisoner, and sentenced to receive the dreaded Kiss.

III

Lucius Malfoy's legs grew weak from the awful nearness of the Dementor, and he lurched forward suddenly, colliding with one of the Aurors. Lucius twisted as if in the throes of a fit, and wrested the man's wand away from him with one of his bound hands before diving off of the rocky plinth into the ocean below. From this state he came back to full consciousness - ages later, it seemed to him - because of the suffocating presence of water wanting to force itself in through his mouth, his nose, and into his chest to drown him. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his lungs out through every fiber of his body and limbs as he strained to be able to breathe. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment.

He was conscious of motion, and the firmness of a strange wooden wand clutched in his fist. A terrible roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that his desperate lunge for freedom had succeeded, and he was in the icy waters of the ocean surrounding the 'inescapable' isle. To evade the Dementor's Kiss only to drown at the bottom of the sea! - the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising again towards the surface. "I do not wish to be hit with a curse," he thought to himself. "To escape, and then be killed in the getaway - no; I will not be cursed; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of some street entertainer, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort! - what magnificent, what superhuman strength! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. There, now, was Lucius' first view of the wand he had captured from his erstwhile captor. He watched his hand direct a slow-motion version of the wand gesture for the bubbleheaded charm, its undulations resembling those of a water snake, while his lips mouthed the incantation. The luminescent sphere of oxygen appeared around his head, and Lucius gasped feverishly to draw the precious breath into his aching chest.

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. He felt the water's currents move against his face, and the differences of temperature as they swirled about him. He looked upon the strange and mysterious denizens of the sea while he swam; saw the individual motes that seemed to hover in this silent world, the dark movements of fish that were both curious and wary of this invader of their realm. The cold caress of the water, which had seemed like knives stabbing into him at the first, now invigorated him as he swam. He contemplated apparating away now; he deemed himself strong enough, and there was still the chance that the Aurors might come searching for him in a craft if they believed him to still be alive. He waved the wand in his hand, focusing upon the mental image of the woods surrounding his home in Wiltshire...

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round - spinning like a top. The water, the land, the forests...all were commingled and blurred. Had he splinched himself? Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color - that was all he saw. In a few moments he was flung upon the dirt at the foot of a large beech tree. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the soil, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked to Lucius like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful that it did not resemble. The trees towered like the columns of a great palace above him, and he inhaled the fragrance of the woodland flowers. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces amongst the tree trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Aeolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape - was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

But this very thought stirred Lucius' brain - he might be traced here, if the Aurors had perceived his spell of escape. He had to continue onward. Standing, he looked around and realized that he had not quite achieved his true mark - his apparation had put him closer to his home, but not truly within his own grounds. He could not risk another spell on this wand; to remain undetected, he would have to move under his own means.

All day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodsman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and son urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance.

His spirit seemed to tremble within him, and he gasped for air in desperate gulps. He could feel his body shudder, quaking at some unknown enemy that seemed close and near. And then a sensation of limpness overcame him, as if he floated for a moment and began to drop.

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene - perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he has left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of feminine robes; his wife Narcissa, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a rushing wind about him, and a terrible emptiness at his heart's core; darkness floods in upon him - then all is silence!

Lucius Malfoy was not truly dead, although he might as well have been. His body laid crumpled upon the ground as the Dementor lifted itself up from him, fairly glowing in dark triumph at the taking of the Death Eater's silvery soul upon the rocky shore of Azkaban.