Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make

***

The Dementors swoop through the halls as if they own the prison, as if they monopolize the anger and despair and overarching sense of sorrow that permeates the halls of Azkaban. They don't. Prisoners sorrowed and wailed and despaired long before the creatures made their first appearance within the cold stone walls.

This prison itself had long embodied the darkest emotions of the human heart, had long brought the ugliest and saddest aspects of the squalid and downtrodden to light. Imprisonment meant lack of freedom, lack of options and a loss of free will. For most wizards and witches, born into the privilege of bending the earth and air to their very will, the loss of this freedom was as sure a path to death as the loss of the very air they breathed or water they drank.

Azkaban allowed the Dementors within its walls, reluctantly at first, then embracing the soulless creatures as they stole what they lacked from the helpless. Azkaban knew the creatures' worth, and knew that the guards of old were not nearly as effective as these ominous, creeping terrors that now haunted the long stone corridors.

This was a place of necessity, a place that existed so the rest of society could work smoothly, and it would succumb to necessities of its own if the need arose.

The Dementors were good for destroying hope.

One of the problems with breaking prisoners whose sentence was short was the fact that they managed to retain a sense of hopefulness, a sense of who they were cemented in the knowledge that the hell they were trapped in was a temporary one.

But under the care of Dementors, bringing to light the monsters that lurked in the most shadowy and twisted part of their minds, even prisoners whose sentences were light could be effected deeply.

The apelike man, old and wizened, shuffles around his cell. His curses are hissed and angry, spoken in a language few understand. A language even fewer desire to know. There is something serpentine about the pattern he walks around his cell, winding and twisted. He will not be in the cell long enough for the pattern to be worn in the floor, though over the ages similar patterns have been worn in the stone of other cells, deeper in the pit of Azkaban. The marks fade between prisoners, never leaving a trace for the next occupant to see.

This prisoner is reminded again and again of his witless children, of his failure to his bloodline. The cross-eyed faces of the final product of the old and venerable house he is scion of haunt his Dementor-laced thoughts, reminding him of ineptitude and embarrassment.

The man is not reminded of his crime. It is not a moment of horror or shame, like so many of the other prisoners

The man is constantly reminded of his other failures, failures outside of his realm of influence but failures he orchestrated nonetheless. His gut-wrenching terror is not rooted in pain or the monstrous, but in thoughts of broken legacies and inability to produce immortality from his loins. Poverty and filth are his only accomplishments, the only things he wrought of a life built on a foundation of blood that had ruled the wizarding world, and the shame of it makes him pace, faster and faster, trying to ignore the tears that soak his cheeks and the painful quivering in his jowls.

His pain fills the air thickly, like a rich desert that the Dementors lavish themselves on. His shame, his knowledge of his own failures eat away at his soul, offering up the broken pieces to the creatures that linger near his doorway.

His failure is not being locked in these impassive walls, but rather, his failure is found in the people he has left at home, floundering in their own incompetence.

***

The occupant of Cell 1044 believed with every ounce of conviction in his twisted, inbred body that he had committed the murder he was imprisoned for.

He hunched down in his favorite corner of the cell, poking hopefully at the grimy cracks, hoping for a hole big enough for something to crawl through to keep him company. He had never relished the company of outsiders, but had found solace in family and in creatures he felt kinship with. Neither was present in his tiny cell, squalid enough to remind him of his home, a shanty on a tiny parcel of land.

Sometimes he gained comfort from the impassive walls of Azkaban, touching their cool surface and thinking that maybe his ancestor had had a role in their construction. Azkaban was as ancient and venerable as Hogwarts; after all, maybe the connection was not so tenuous.

When the Dementors glided past, he would get as close to the bars on his door as possible, hissing at them. He no longer spoke English, not even as he mumbled to himself in the dark. The mumbles always slid off his tongue with a quiet hiss. Even Azkaban could not unlock his deepest secrets, coded in a language only those who were born with the ability could speak.

Sometimes he would fall to the floor, writhing and screaming. The screams would be a guttural outcry, and the unadulterated fear and pain in this howl would bring the Dementors, who lapped up the pain like honey.

The walls recognized the plaintive mewling of the weak, of someone still caught in the childish throes of acceptance and denial at the hands of a parent. Of someone who sought but never found themselves.

And finally, words in a human language spilled forth, and the pathetic story of a sister married to an animal, the animal who left her alone and pregnant, the brother taking revenge and finding himself more alone than ever, huddled alone in a cell with no one to speak to and no creature to hold.

This sad creature, the purified result of generations of the purest blood and most revered bloodlines, cowering in the corner, is not all that is left of his family, but he believes this is true.

***

The walls of the cell slant slightly.

The floor slopes almost imperceptibly away from the door, making the short walk towards the door feel more difficult and exhausting than the descent deeper into the cell. There is an off-kilter feel about the cell, as though the walls and floor and ceiling are at war with each other, and might fly apart at any moment, leaving the prisoner dangling in the stuffy air before plummeting somewhere, anywhere.

The prisoner, young and unsure, thinks the slanting floor, the twisted walls are merely in his mind, and wonders if he is mad.

He has ripped the button from his trousers and lets it roll across the stone floor. The button falls when it hits the grooves between stones, and the prisoner understands this as proof that the floors are straight as any.

This prisoner's hands are still bloody and torn from hitting the walls and clawing at the impassable door. He has not been in the cell long, but already would give anything to be free of it. He did not earn his stay here, has committed no crime and has been betrayed, framed and tossed aside as if he had not sacrificed everything to be a good person.

The unjustly imprisoned are not only the sweetest treat the Dementors could wish for, but they succumb the earliest to madness.

Their righteousness lends itself well to hatred. Sometimes the prisoner aches, he hates so deeply, but emotions accomplish nothing here.

His cell is near enough to others that he can hear familiar voices screaming in the night, and wonders how he ended up in the same place. When he stares at the odd angle of the corner, he thinks it apt, because they came from the same place. Born the same, dying the same, it has a beautiful symmetry.

How he longs for symmetry.

Outside, the Dementors stand watch because the prisoner has become their most famous, and his bitterness and hatred taste like the sweetest chocolate to their starving brethren. Their influence drives the prisoner to the most horrible moments of his young life, and though most his hatred dwells in his present condition, memories emerge from an older source.

In the twisted walls and slanted floors of his room, he begins to see his childhood home, all retina-burning combinations of wallpaper and paint, sharp angles and twisted floor plans that add up wrong, somehow.

In the moon shadows that invade the room at night, created of shifting clouds and the light of the moon (the reversal of sunlight, mirroring back on earth), he sees the shape of people and things he thought he'd escaped years ago.

In the shadows, his mother lurks, disapproving and unforgiving.

In the shadows, he sees his brother, the one he left alone to face fate. The one he disappointed.

He sees his favorite cousin, confused and betrayed. He sees her sisters, one lush and violent, the other frozen and arrogant. The purebloods he grew to disdain dance through his mind, telling him what he has heard his entire life, and in the dark recesses of Azkaban they begin to instill a sense of doubt he had never before experienced.

He screams and screams, and the Dementors relish the sound.

And in the darkest moments, the darkness takes the form of his best friend, a mother killed too young, and an orphaned godson, left to face unfathomable evil alone, while still in his crib. At these moments, the screams refuse to emerge from his throat. He chokes on the force of unvoiced anguish, and only at these moments does he break down and cry.

The tears taste sweeter to the Dementors than even the most terrified screams.

When he finally discovers his escape into a simpler form, the walls of Azkaban straighten. The prisoner has beaten the Dementors, has found solace from their pervasive influence, and the stony walls refuse to counteract this small rebellion.

They grow weary of listening to people relive the horrors of yesterday. They wish for new horrors to fill the hearts of the prisoners, rather than static old terrors to be replayed ad infinitum.

***

The rat-like man had visitors.

Usually prisoners, especially those convicted of crimes as terrible and political as the one this had been incarcerated for, were allowed few visits from the outside world. Seeing people alive and healthy and uncomfortable in their surroundings broke the spell that Azkaban created, one of despair and apathy and disconnectedness.

When the visitors came, the prisoner spilled out names and places and deeds, condemning those who walked free while he rotted away. They promised him reprieve if he told them enough information

When the visitors left, the prisoner was left colder and more uncertain than ever. He would mumble to himself in the harsh language of the north, a language learned from his father. He always looked uncomfortable in his prison-issued robes, as though he were naked without a protective layer of fur and wool to stave off the elements.

He promised the men who came that he would go far away if they let him free, promised them he would never deviate from the letter of the law.

But in the darkness, when the walls seemed to loom inwards and the world felt smaller than ever, the prisoner thought of the men he condemned with thoughtless, selfish words.

In the silent stretches of eternity at midnight, he felt the weight of others' lives on his chest, and found he couldn't breath from the pressure of it. His gasping voice would attempt to cry out, but he found himself struck dumb.

When the first splash of morning light hit his cell, he would leap out of bed and stand vigil at the door, waiting for the moment he had been promised.

Waiting for freedom, bought with the lives of people who had trusted him.

***

When the boy first arrived, he did not handle the transition into imprisonment well.

His arrival was overwhelmed by the others who were brought with him, the sultry woman and the dark brothers who were convicted of the same crime.

The sensationalism of a son condemned by the father had given him a bit of celebrity, but not nearly enough. Not enough to make his fate important, or to grant him the sort of glory that had driven him to the side of one who promised the world and handed out only punishment and death.

The cell he was placed in was slightly smaller than average. It held four walls, only one interrupted from smooth clean rows of stone to hold a door, and the narrow, barred window on the door was placed just high enough that the boy had to strain on the tip of his toes in order to see out.

All his view offered was a different row of stones, unbroken and unmarred with signs of life.

The lack of window in this cell was unusual. Most offered windows to give the prisoner a glimpse at the sky and light and the things they could never again experience firsthand. They allowed the cold, salty scent of the ocean to slither into the room, triggering memories of sunlit days on the beach or midnight strolls with sweethearts, memories that were almost immediately overridden with the other, more dreadful memories that the Dementors left in their wake.

But in a prisoner so young, in a prisoner whose family connections had made him believe he would never see the inside of a cell, the glimpse of freedom a window would allow would merely grant hope, rather than force him deeper into despair.

It seems calculated, this prison cell without any room for hope. The boy breaks faster than most, sobbing and screaming and falling utterly into incomprehensible madness.

When his influential father finally visits, there is naught left of the child he had condemned.

***

The boy had not been this close to death before his parent's visit.

Azkaban had never been fooled, not in all the centuries it had stood watch over the most vile wizards and witches that the insular society could produce, but it sensed something was off about the boy. Everything was different about him bar his appearance, down to the awkward way he slouched onto the cot and the labored, rasping breathing that came from lungs that had been clear hours before.

There was now contraband in the cell, a bottle that the boy sipped with startling regularity. Most beings lost their sense of time under Azkaban and the Dementor's influence, but the boy had regained his ability to keep track of the passing hours.

When the boy died a few days later, his corpse lay in the cell for only a few minutes after death before the guards, alerted by the frenzied orgy of feeding by the Dementors, carried it away.

It was in the ground before nightfall.

***

The cell bears no mark of the lives that have passed through before. Initially, this is seen as a mercy by the new prisoners, who prefer to not think of those who have come before them. The cell is theirs, to do what they will.

But after long stretches of solitude and contemplation, the true horror of the unmarred walls begins to develop in the minds of prisoners.

When they die, anything they have done will fade. The memory of their stay will fade, and the culmination of their life will bear no more significance than the setting of the sun.

They will become just another temporary marker in the seaside cemetery, until time decays that as well.

The prisoner realizes this after seven years of incarceration.

He knows intellectually that this was his fate, that his lifetime sentence in Azkaban would result in a slow death surrounded by soul sucking creatures and the most squalid miseries that wizardkind could inflict on their own.

The Dementors don't visit his cell as often as others, either because his misery is light enough that he is merely a snack rather than a meal, or because the others down this hall offer sweeter fruits of misery, succulent and bitter.

He knows something of bitterness, this formerly handsome prisoner. He thinks of bitterness as a beautiful woman, heavy lidded and passionate, entwined with a man who looks a lot like him, but is merely his brother. His older brother, offered wealth and beauties and the honor of siring the next generation of their pureblood family, the generation that will take the wealth that has put food in his mouth and clothes on his back and jewels around the necks of the girls he has adored.

He knows this bitterness has no place behind the stony walls of Azkaban, knows that his brother and his brother's wife are both down the hall, never to sire children or indulge themselves with the family wealth.

He knows this as surely as he knows that the mark on his arm brought him to this fate, that the man who burned his honor on the tender pale flesh of his arm had no intention of fulfilling the sweet promises that he had whispered in his ear. He had never been destined for greatness, or to achieve things his brother could not.

He had been a puppet to the end, and now he was alone and nameless in a nondescript cell that bore no evidence that he lived there. It would bear no mark even when he died.

He was a ghost of the past, even as he took breaths of chilled air. He was the twisted, bitter remainder of a wizard, who had achieved nothing and would achieve nothing.

And for this broken, younger son, the thought of his anonymous fate was worse than all the memories that the Dementors conjured from his disreputable past, far overpowering the screams of the innocent and the empty eyes of the newly mad.

***

Azkaban had never played host to many female prisoners.

It wasn't that witches were of a milder persuasion than wizards, it just seemed as though they were caught much less often, or they were less inclined to use an Unforgivable when another curse would suffice.

The dark former beauty who laughed and screamed with equal rancor was an exception. The few human guards who handled administrative duties in Azkaban avoided the twisting corridor her cell was located down because she unnerved them so.

Beautiful women could get away with murder, but she hadn't. She had earned a lifetime of Dementors and confinement because of her use of the Unforgivables, and the sight of a beauty decaying under such care gave the human guards an uncharacteristic twinge of sympathy.

They wrote off her crazed laughs and fervent cries of loyalty as the effect of a decade of Dementors, thinking her mind long broken under such influence.

They never considered that it was her true personality, reigning free of the constraints of polite society.

They never thought that the hollow eyes that emerged from her gaunt face, fiery and mad, could possibly be the windows to her soul.

It never occurred to them that the Dementors avoided her cell out of anything but courtesy for her sex. They never thought that the true reason was that she provided a weak meal, because she found enjoyment in the pain and despair of her condition.

She was one of the few prisoners who laughed, and her merriment drove the Dementors far from her cell.

***

Sometimes he could hear his wife laughing.

They had been placed in cells far from each other, his last glimpse of the gorgeous, impassioned woman who had married him having been some ten years previously, as they were lead down different corridors in the labyrinth of cells and tunnels that Azkaban comprised of.

But sometimes... Sometimes, that familiar throaty laugh echoed through his cell, and he couldn't figure out how.

It couldn't be a result of the Dementors' lingering presence, because the wild joy that built within his chest at the unchained sound had nothing to do with despair. And it couldn't be a trick of the wind, because he had spent his first months here screaming her name and listening desperately for a response.

In his less lucid moments, he thought the sound was a gift from the prison itself, something that gave him hope and cause for prayer and allowed him to handle the years of pain and degradation. He thought it was a reward for giving the Dementors such lush portions of his own soul, heedless of what it did to his mind. He had no desire for most of the memories that the Dementors stole, because happiness was not something that could aid him here.

Most of his memories of his wife were wrought in pain and fury, and the Dementors did nothing to erase them.

He is mad, he thinks, but he knows that the prison, that Azkaban herself appreciates someone who defeats the Dementors at their own game. And he does, oh, he wins at this game because his love is pain and violence and hatred, and the Dementors cannot steal it.

And so he waits, idle in the embrace of insanity, and awaits the sound of his lover's laugh.

***

The unjustly imprisoned offered the most succulent feasts for the Dementors.

A massive man sat in the corner of his cell, shoulders hunched from a lifetime of being overly large for his surroundings. Giant teardrops rolled slowly down his face, clinging in his frizzy beard and loud wails emitting from his throat, from deep within him. His wails came purely from his despair, untainted by darker aspects of the human heart, and the Dementors fought and clustered outside his door to drink in the emotion, all the sweeter for lack of taint.

He does not quite fit on the bed that was magically enlarged for his benefit. His feet, no matter how he curls up, dangle off the end, leaving bare toes vulnerable over the abyss of darkness that invades the cell at night.

The Dementors do not quite know how to relish the childish fear this feeling invokes in the man. The walls of Azkaban soaks it up like sunshine, knowing the lasting sort of damage this slight wound is forcing on the gentle giant sleepless in his bed.

He stares into the darkness intently, trying desperately to see if there are any unknown monsters lurking. He has always embraced the violent creatures most consider to be the true monsters in the world, while fearing the innocuous faces and poisoned word traps that smarter and greedier souls used against him.

But in the darkness, with his large, hairy toes hanging out over the unknown, the childhood monsters snuck up on him, sudden and terrible.

In the unfamiliar walls of Azkaban, the first night seemed as though it was the most terrible.

The gentle giant sobbed in the night, terrible memories filling his spacious mind. He was certain he would not survive, that he would meet his despairing end here in this too-small bed held captive in the terror-inducing clutch of the Dementors.

But as the light of the first new day in Azkaban dawned, he became more confident that he could handle the terror, despair and emptiness. In the light of the days that followed, he remembered that he had a savior outside these walls who would free him, who would make sure his creatures were unharmed.

And once he has separated himself from the terror the Dementors inspire, Azkaban strikes.

The bed is ever so slightly smaller. The darkness is that much more absolute. And the Dementors slide down different corridors, leaving the man blessedly alone to feel the faintest memory of happiness as it leaks back into him.

And with the memory comes other darker, more insidious memories tied intrinsically with the joys of childhood, memories that disappear under the steady watch of the Dementors, who deal in flashier pathways to despair.

And so the big prisoner, unbroken by the Dementors, shudders and shakes in silent fear as he vainly attempts to keep his vulnerable toes away from the monsters that lurk in the abyss. The monster under the bed, unremembered since the awkward days of the youngest childhood, appears more terrible than ever.

And the man spends his days sobbing in the corner, creating a feast for the Dementors who still do not understand that their power is not responsible.

***

Azkaban Prison is designed with punishment in mind. The steps leading to the front gate are slightly higher and slightly too narrow, causing the new prisoners and visitors alike to pant, breathless, by the time they have made the meandering climb from the dock to foreboding front doors, ancient and looming.

It takes more than one man to push open the heavy doors, which can be barred from either side, though magic allows them to slide open with minimal effort. Once inside, Azkaban swallows all who enter, as to make them feel as though they have found themselves ensconced in the belly of the beast.

The island Azkaban was built on was small and craggy, comprised more of jagged cliffs than actual land. The prison therefore was built underground, with only the uppermost level, reserved for the lightest sentences, built aboveground. The deeper the cell was built, carved from earth and lined in stone, the longer the sentence. It made no sense to store the ones who had earned a lifetime nearer to the surface.

Azkaban possessed its own cemetery, placed in an inlet of smooth land below the western cliff face. The cemetery could have been located on a higher and less precarious bit of land, more safely protected from the raging sea during the harshest storms, but this design allowed prisoners a view of what their fate likely could be, a temporary marker on a piteous strip of land.

When the prisoner bound for a six month stay arrived, he stumbled up the steps, falling at more than one point, only to be grabbed up by the unsociable wizards who ran Azkaban prison.

The man kept babbling about his innocence, about his role on the side of good, about knowing who truly deserved this fate.

He was placed in one of the few aboveground cells, one with a view of the inner courtyard of Azkaban, where the Dementors would sometimes swoop.

"I'm a good man," muttered the man, straw-like hair sticking at odd angles from his head from the journey to the prison through harsh sea winds. "I'm not one of them."

No one bothered to answer him.

***

In the darkest recesses of his cell, a lonely man stares at the wall.

The cold stone in this cell does not move, does not alter the slightest as he watches carefully, hoping for some change. Day after day, month after month he watches the same four walls with the stationary pattern of stones. The guards do not speak to him; the other prisoner's cries for attention are muted and indistinct in this solitary cell.

His long blond hair has suffered the most during his stay. Without charms or combs, it edges closer and closer to becoming the matted, filthy mass of a madman rather than the smooth mane of an aristocrat, but the prisoner fights against this inevitability. He carefully drags his fingers through his hair, leaving furrows along his scalp and making the long locks appear stringy. He does this to save himself from having to shear off his trademark locks after his (inevitable undoubted fantasy) release.

He will not succumb to the embarrassment of showing the world tangible evidence that his time has changed him. He is stronger than that, better than the system and has no doubt as to his superiority.

But day after day, staring at the same solemn rows of magically uniform stone, with no change and no deviation and no stimulus other than the pestering thoughts of his own twisted mind...

After months of this, his mind is beginning to turn in on itself.

There are no books to engage the mind, nothing to be learned from four cold walls of grey stone. The prisoner is not allowed post, and has not heard from his wife or son since his arrest.

Bitterness cannot take root in his already blackened heart, and he has long since separated any lingering feelings of guilt or doubt over his convictions from his conscious, separated them and shoved them deep to the remotest abyss of his labyrinthine mind.

But this prisoner is one of the monsters who feel love, who care deeply enough for people outside the walls of his cell that the thought of what his actions has done to them insinuate themselves in the unfathomable and unrelenting sections of his mind, and for lack of distraction begin to override even his plans for what he will do upon his escape.

His son, he thinks. His son still needs him, still needs to be shown so many things. His son does not need to grow up this quickly, does not need to take over the responsibilities he has left lingering in the (fading) world outside.

The thought of his icy, beautiful wife, her pale hair and frozen eyes a match for his own, sends warm sparks through his numb body - the unfeeling nature of his cell cannot compete. He is confident he will see her again, soon, but shies away from the thought of how this is changing her. How this imprisonment is changing him.

And to a man so controlled, the knowledge that he can do nothing to affect what is happening to these people he love, can do nothing to effect what is happening in the fantasy world outside his cell of stark reality- this is a hell.

This is hell beyond what the soul-suckers would have accomplished. To retain the memory of the good times, juxtaposed with the dire conditions of the here and now- to the man who felt no remorse, this is the worst punishment of them all.

***

Sometimes the prisoner pretended that he was dead.

He would lie on his cot, on the blankets that were magically cleaned every week, and cross his arms over his chest like an old picture he had seen of his grandfather. The portrait of the corpse was eerily still, frozen in death for eternity. Someone had told him once that Muggle pictures were all still as death, as motionless as the snapshot of his grandfather's corpse, and the idea had filled him with revulsion.

Who wanted to see themselves still as death while their hearts still beat with life?

Now, now he couldn't help but to imagine himself as dead, and he halfway wished that he had a Muggle picture of himself so he could see what it would look like.

In this terrible still cell, there was no other hope but for that of the sweet release of death.

He held his breath, ignored the slow thump of his heartbeat, and relaxed his body into limpness. He always crossed his arms over his chest, because none of the corpses he had created had ever looked so peaceful. The violent deaths that filled his mind were not harbingers of peace, like he imagined in the long moments when the Dementors were absent and bringing despair to others, but this sort of quiet, orderly death was.

He welcomed his eventual fate, and wished that it would only embrace him sooner.

He felt a tendril of chilly air wrap around his throat, and the shudder it produced told him that the Dementors were returning soon. His grandfather's peaceful corpse slid out of his mind, elusive as heaven, and more terrible images reigned dominant.

The worst scene was the one that always appeared in his mind first, the one that made his limp body stiffen and his arms to jerk away from his chest to clutch the blankets, clawing his fingers futilely into the thin mattress.

Black cloaked bodies bled and broke around the room. A white mask had fallen away from one, revealing a shocked, dark face. The prisoner had known them all, but did not attempt to help. He treasured his own life more than theirs.

He had been the one to finally take down the brothers. In death they were as identical as they had been in life. One lay crumpled with an expression of agony dominating his features, red hair hiding his open eyes. The remaining brother had fallen a few feet away; fingers wrapped bonecrackingly tight around his wand and a vaguely shocked expression on his slack face.

The prisoner remembered the boys from school, remembered their sweet faced sister giggling across pumpkin juice at their antics during meals. He remembered the power surging down his wand as he spoke the curse that had damned him to a lifetime of hell, unable to escape.

But always, always he remembered the violent scene, where corpses of friend and foe lay together on a bloody floor, and the faint tremble he had felt as he escaped, leaving it all behind for his own safety.

He never remembered the day being so gut-wrenching, or feeling so nauseated and terrible about his actions when the Dementors were hunting down nightmares in other corridors. He only remembered laughter and relief at the feeling of being alive. He remembered the joy of the heartbeat in his chest and the way colors had seemed brighter, people more vibrant than ever before.

But the Dementors sapped every bit of joy from the memory, leaving only the harsh reality and the things he didn't dare examine, even in the brightest light, before he had been brought here.

And now, now he longed only for death, in order to escape these unfamiliar pangs of guilt and remorse.

***

The first time he had walked with as much dignity he could muster into the ominous halls of Azkaban.

When he had fled, he had run, stumbling on underused legs and sobbing from the sensation of being able to run, able to feel this fluttering sensation of joy welling in his heart.

Now, he struggled against the men who led him, kicking and flailing and screaming. Finally they restrained him with magic, and he looked at his surroundings with terrified eyes, veins showing vividly on the whites. When he saw the familiar door with its familiar, narrow slit, he tried with every ounce of strength he had regained since his escape, but was unable to break the spell.

They threw him inside, and the door shut with a rattle that shook him to the core.

The spell held him motionless, but he didn't need to look around the cell. A dozen years had burned every detail of the small room into his memory. Even the accumulations of dust in the corners and the way the blanket wrinkled over the lumpy mattress remained the same.

The first time, he hadn't believed he would be caught. He had worked for the sodding Ministry, of course he was above suspicion. It had taken a long time for even the Dementors' influence to convince him that he would never be free of Azkaban's smothering embrace.

But now... now it seemed as though his escape had been a dream.

Those wondrous months, filled with excitement and a renewal of life, were gone. There was nothing here to suck the memory away but the lingering feelings that this cell produced in him.

And the feelings were enough. It had taken years for the Dementors to break him down, but less than an hour in the Dementor-free walls of Azkaban, and his body fought for the ability to sob, throat aching to constrict but unable due to the spell rendering him helpless.

***

His cell shifted every time he closed his eyes.

The prisoner wasn't the brightest wizard to grace the halls of Azkaban, not by a long shot, and like other dim-witted souls he took comfort in the consistency of the world around him. Change was bad, because it necessitated the need to reassess and reevaluate the situation. He didn't want to have to reassess or reevaluate because he was happy with things the way they had been.

He would count the rows of stones, starting from the corner of the left wall, beginning with the uppermost stone and working his way across. He would get one row across, or two, then he would blink and the stones would have shifted. It wasn't a big shift, but just enough that he knew it had happened, and that the number would have changed.

So he would start again, this time willing his eyes to remain open. If he didn't blink, then the stones couldn't possibly move.

He got halfway down the wall once, before his eyes watered so much that he had to close them for one moment of blessed relief.

When he cracked them open, the wall had changed again, more drastically than ever.

He cursed then, loudly and in his uneducated Cockney accent, voice echoing through the vacant corridors. There were no Dementors left to terrorize him, and so his anger lasted as long as his voice held up, uninterrupted by bursts of terror or sorrow.

Eventually, though, his voice began to crack and falter, and he would look around for a cup of water that was not yet provided. He would settle down on his small cot, and his roaming eyes would focus on the wall, bored and ready for the schoolboy pastime of counting the stones of the wall, or creating images out of the cracks of the ceiling, until the constant altering of his tiny world became too much.

Outsiders had always cited the Dementors as the source of the insanity that broke the majority of those who entered Azkaban.

Now, in the absence of the spectres of sorrow, the true source of the insanity was revealed.

Azkaban itself.

**