Note: I was inspired by the song 'cellblock tango' to write this fic. I hope you will have as much fun reading this unique fic as I will have writing it. All Characters and Azkaban belong to J.K. Rowling. Commence!

THE 6 MERRY MURDERESSES

CHAPTER 1

It was the usual Saturday night in the Azkaban suite, 'The Box' as they'd dubbed it. The box was long and narrow , and the only unused or livable room in Azkaban, reserved for the Minister when he came to visit.

That never happend.

So you can see why The Box would present such oppertunities to the only women in Azkaban. The six Merry Murderesses, we'll call them.

They were all unregistered animagi, and after a weeks worth of torture, they all managed to transform and slip out of their cells to meet up at The Box. Now once, when the ministry had attempted 'rehab' for these women, and before the official ran out screaming, one woman had managed to slip a deck of cards into her prison robes.

So every Saturday night the six Merry Murderesses were able to creep down the rat infested corridors to the large iron door at he end of the hallway. Once there they would whisper the password: Pop, Six, Sqish, Uh-Uh, Cisero, Lipchitz

The password was all of their 'nicknames' combined. Each woman knew the others real name, but their nicknames were used to strike fear into the men of Azkaban, to warn them. For each woman's nickname had to do with the crime they had committed. Sure, there were rumours about what the crimes had specifically been, but their was never an oppertunity to exchange such pleasantries in the wizard prison.

On this particular Staurday night however, that had changed.

This time, the first woman to make it down the hall had been Six, otherwise known as Luna Lovegood. After four months in prison her appearence had begun to show what those close to her had always known, she was not a woman to be messed with. Her long white hair was matted, and her large dreamy blue eyes had darkened to reveal madness. Her nimble fingers fiddled with a hairpin in the lock, and the well oiled door swung open without a sound.

By the time she had entered the long and narrow, carpeted room, Pop, also known as Ginny Weasley was halfway along the hall behind her. Now, Ginny had always been a very nice girl, but her wrath was well known, as was her shock of fire red hair. And after a year in Azkaban it was hard to look at, because it clashed so greatly with her now paper white skin. Her once soft chocolate brown eyes had widened on constant lookout for asassins. She was now the perfect example of Mad-eye Moody's favoutite mantra "Constant Vigilance". So after darting through the shadows, and a hurried whisper of the password, she too was admitted to the room.

Still struggling to transform in her cell however, was Squish, aka Cho Chang. And she alone had been able to maintain her appearance. She still possesed the same silky hair, the same air about her. If you ignored the fact that she looked older and gaunter, you wouldn't have any idea what conditions she had been in for the last eighteen months, until she spoke. You see, in exchange for her maintained beauty, Cho had sacrificed her sanity. She never had the stability to kill, or hurt anything for that matter. So, only a week after her admittance to Azkaban, she had cracked. Now whenever she would pause and try to think, or recall any memory of before prison, she would start to sing, no, scream her wedding song "Somtimes When We Touch". In these fits, her screeching became so helpless, so full of guilt for what she had done, the dementors would swarm her, until conciousness had mercy, and let her go. After about five tries, she managed to transform into her usual swan and waddled down the hall past the cell of Uh-Uh, Fleur Delacour to be exact, in the midst of one of her nightmares.

Fleur Delacour hadn't slept for more than seven minutes since her entrance to Azkaban nine years ago. She was constantly plagued by nightmares. All of them filled, not of death, but of her loss of beauty. She had kept her looks, but unlike Cho, she now looked more unhuman than ever. Her veela blood seemed to be less affected by the dementors, and she took on an almost luminous tinge to her skin, causing her to look like an extraterrestrial. Her personality became even more ruthless and haughty. Nevertheless, you can't exactly choose your companions in Azkaban, so she too was invited to strut her way to The Box.

The only woman who even came close to Fleur in disposition was the eldest, and most ruthless, Lipchitz, aka Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix, who once was quite beautiful, though now quite mad, was still sharp as a whip. Her screams were rarley ever heard, and because of her twenty-three years in that hell-of-a-place, she was becoming immune, never admitting what did and did not cause her extreme pain. Instead her maniacal laughter echoed about the mold ridden corridors twenty three out of twenty four hours a day. Crazy though it may seem Bellatrix had found a sort of friend in Azkaban. She had found an ally in the last person you'd expect, Hermione Granger.

Hermione, otherwise kown as Cisero, seemed to be the last person you would expect to find in Azkaban, never mind on civil terms with Bellatrix Lestrange. You see, twelve years ago Hermione had discovered that underneath her goody-two shoes were some very dirty socks. When Hermione found herself stripped of the stick-to-the-rules side of her, she was left with a frightnenly intelligent, half crazy, traumatized girl. After all, she had been through with the war, and after her fall from grace, she too both screamed and laughed at the pain. Any pre-war inhibitions she'd had evaporated, leaving her ruthless intelligence and tourtured soul exposed. She and Bellatrix slinked through the shadows towards The Box and after shoulder checking to see the dementors hadn't sensed their mouvement, they too slipped into the dimly litted room.