Hello and welcome to my new short story, The Fugitive. Before you read, I must warn you, if you dislike description, you might not like the first couple chapters. The first through possibly the fourth chapters are going to be her describing her past. The first one is about her experience in Azkaban. However, it is quite interesting and I do think I got the concept of Azkaban down pretty well. No, there is not much dialogue, but I promise there will be more. It will eventually develop a plot, however, I did enjoy writing this. The plot is a doozy from what I've discovered so far.

I really hope you enjoy it! Dedications are at the bottom. Of course, Harry Potter would be an obvious dedication, but my dedications are just going to be movies, books, songs, anything that inspired a certain part of the story. I won't tell you which but they inspire some way or another. Most of them are just quotes that I used.

There's my little intro to my story, enjoy! Oh, and sorry that some of the 'paragraphs' are just like one sentence. I didn't realize that fanfiction was going to space everything out. :/

P.S.: I don't say in this chapter her name. Her name is Eli Persephone Doras. So, no relation to any other character, thankfully.

I

The Crack

I have been fading in the dark for too long. Days past, maybe even years. It's not like there was a way to tell time. I tried to be certain that it hadn't been that long. Who knows if I even aged in that dreadful place. It was only one pitch black day after another.

I sat in my corner of my cell for almost the entire time. At least, what I thought was a corner. Seeing was impossible. You had to believe you were seeing something, pretend, only to keep yourself sane. Seeing was believing. The key to your sanity was imagining there was something in front of you, behind you, beneath you, and extremely far away from you.

By your eyes being temporarily, and for some of us permanently, vanished, the other senses teamed up and increased. In time, you could taste the screams in the other cells. You could feel the dementors gliding towards you. You could smell the hunger in your stomach and could hear the fear in peoples hearts.

There was one crack in my cell. I never mentioned it to many as I was sure no one noticed and I surely did not want it taken away. Sometimes, a tiny spot of light shined through it, letting me know when it was light and when it was dark. It brightened up my day. Funny, how little things make us complete. That tiny little crack saved my life.

My cell mate, Carey Jones, saw the light too. Sometimes, we both thought we were imagining it but too insane and too foolish to not see it. Occasionally, the light spoke to me. Not good words. Scary words. Familiar words. Nothing was good in Azkaban.

The light would repeat moments in my life. Moments in my life that I would say I had never been proud of. Well, moments that I used to be proud of, but now haunted me.

What moments?

Interesting question. What moments, indeed.

Moments where the earth shook beneath your feet, and you turn to expect an earthquake, but only realize it was the shatter of your own heart.

Moments where your feet seem to trip over air, and you stand up and look behind you, only to realize that it was the burden of your soul that tripped you.

Moments where you wish you were dead, because no god or guardian angel was there to save you.

Those moments.

Through the bars of Azkaban, those moments were all you felt. All you dreamed. All you saw. You were left with your most terrible memories. Not only did you remember them, but you could see them. Since there was only darkness to look at, you were forced to revisit your past. You think that looking at your past memories will somehow cheer you.

The terrifying fact is that no past memories will cheer you. The dementors not only suck them out, but you find out there were no happy memories in the first place. You forget all the happy people you've ever met, the life-inspiring moments that make you, and the places that joy you. There is no memory of them. They disappear. As does your sanity.

As you look back on your past, there is nothing there. Nothing to live for. You feel happy, rotting in this dreadful prison. Life itself, you think, is much much worse than living in Azkaban. And that fact alone even scares you.

The one thing you can think about that calms you, is your enemies. The people you've hated more than anything in this world. Those memories are still there. Therefore, you sit plotting a revenge or other terrible things to do to them when you leave your prison. When really, it's those people you ought to thank. They keep you away from your cold and wet penitentiary and into your mind.

The mind is a very dangerous thing to access when you are settled in Azkaban. The mind, actually, is something you might want to keep away from. The more thinking you do, the more you wonder things, and the more aware you become. You suddenly become extremely alert of your surroundings and where you are, and just how terrified and miserable you are and will be. For a very long time.

On the other hand, when used appropriately, the mind is used as an escape. Metaphorically, of course. That is, if one knows how to use it.

I accessed my mind countless times through my dark times. I knew how to use it. When I first tried, I failed miserably. The more I thought, the more I remembered the terrible memories that the dementors insist I remembered.

My first memory was my father and all the terrible things he had done. The worst was wondering why I became like my father, if I hated him so much. My father was the most terrible human being ever, yet I am almost an exact copy.

Not in every way, but the ways that counted.

I remembered the slap against my skin when I disobeyed him. I remembered the years I spent dying for his trust and appreciation. Only to receive bitter and painful results. I remembered the smell of fire whiskey on his breath every evening. I remembered how awful he was to other people and how sad and mad and happy and terrible and ecstatic and surprised it made me feel. All at the same time.

I never remembered my mother.

There were never any appalling memories of my mother, so, naturally, I had no memories of her during my little experience. Pity.

Wasted.

Thrown away.

If I hadn't been in that place and many other things, I could have beautifully fulfilling memories of my mother. They were instead replaced with unpleasing things.

Not just memories but other terrifying things.

Illusions were common.

Sometimes, you saw things that weren't real. You seemed convinced they were because they looked and acted so real, but it was only your mind playing tricks on you. Sometimes, you preferred your dark memories and your dark cell.

Therefore, it was never a positive if things were authentic or fake. Mainly, it was whether or not you trusted your instincts.

The crack was something that I was never sure if it was real. Even to this day, I wondered if I'd only imagined it.

I saw it, I think, only because it tortured me more. It taunted me. Laughed at me. It was light, and I was dark. It was free, I was enslaved. It had feelings, I had fear.

It was comforting, however. As taunting and terrible it seemed, it was something to talk to. Something to listen to. Perhaps the words were in my head and were not real at all. Even so, I was grateful.

There wasn't much to be grateful for there. I think that was the point. All you got was regret, pain, fear, and blood.

'What do you fear?' Carey Jones asked me one day.

It wasn't your regular tone of voice. It was rarely over a whisper. Talking wasn't normal. You were left to rot in your own misery.

Misery, misery, misery.

Therefore, words that were spoken were given in nothing more than a hoarse cry.

'Fear,' I replied to her. The conversation dropped. There really is nothing to fear than fear itself.

Fear trembled the body and shakes the soul. It awakes your mind and ensnares the senses. Fear wears you down till your lying on the ground, and then you fall, and then fall, and fall, fall. Falling. Fell.

An endless pit. It only gets larger as you get further down.

That was Azkaban.

I imagine these words are scaring you. After all, realties such as these are never pleasing to anyone. They're not supposed to.

Everything I tell you is true. It's either true, or I was too insane and imagined things as terrible as that might sound. The list goes on and on about the things that people imagined in their cave. I could hear them whenever they slept. Sometimes, I feared these things could have perhaps happened to these people. Others, could be just possible fears in their life or just nightmares that the dementors provoked. They moaned, and groaned, and grunted, and cried, and whimpered, and complained. Every night. Every day.

Carey Jones, my cell mate, often moaned about a sword. A dark red sword slicing through her stomach. Bellatrix Lestrange groaned about a bright green light and a very loud sound. Travers, a death eater, grunted about zombies with white eyes chasing him around his cell. Rodolphus Lestrange, Bellatrix's husband, cried about bugs, lots of bugs, pecking his eyes out. Rabastan Lestrange, Rodolphus's brother, whimpered about someone named Newt, and would grumble various curses in his sleep. Mulciber complained about a dark spot engulfing his body and casting him into the darkness.

When I heard these night terrors, I wasn't scared. I wasn't disturbed. I wasn't petrified. I was calm. It was normal behavior for prisoners. Normal. Can you believe that?

Normal seemed so overrated to me when I was in the darkness. Newbie's were terrified of the shadows. Petrified of the screams and the screeches. Bewildered by the paranoia, the idea a dementor could take a wrong liking to you and stalk you like prey, until you go insane.

We call them the tail. The tail were the beasts (another word we used for dementors) that followed you around. Mostly in the beginning, to put your mind into shape. To make you think twice about running away and to make you realize the terrible consequences you would receive if you took a step too far.

The tail were terrifying. I remember when I had a tail and I was consumed in fear and terror.

When the tail lost interest in me, the crack appeared.

I hadn't noticed it before. I was more preoccupied by the tail and wasn't interested in my cell for there was nothing there. Darkness was all there was. The beasts blended into the darkness. You couldn't see them coming. But you could hear them, smell them, taste them, and, even worse, feel them.

A cold chill down your spine. That's what you felt.

Winter. Blizzards. Ice. Snow. Rain. Hypothermia. I don't know how else to describe it.

So cold, it was hot. So scorching, you froze.

And you liked it.

It was the one thing you felt. You never felt anything, except ice and heat. It felt good.

When I first saw the crack, I wasn't quite sure what I felt about it. For, it was the first time when I truly realized, I was slowly, and painfully, losing my mind.

'Kill him,' it would say constantly. 'He deserves it.'

Memories would shoot through my head.

'He killed her! Do it, Doras!' it yelled. So real these voices in my head.

A scream would echo inside my head. My scream. My yell. A flash of green light would burst through the crack and I would instantly fall asleep. Or did I wake up? I'm still not sure if I dreamed it or not. And if I didn't, why was it talking to me?

Those were the questions of the crack. There were no answers. The crack was the crack and I just accepted it.

It was the same with a lot of things. At Azkaban, you tended to just accept things. If someone was screaming their lungs out for no reason, you accepted it. If someone was talking to themselves, you accepted it. If someone died, you accepted it.

Not like the deaths affected me much. I've never been one for sentiment. The weak die. The strong survive. It's the psychological food chain. If you let your guard down for a second, you're gone. People's emotions and dialogue slowly and painfully swallow you and spit you out, then stomp on you a few times.

The prisoners could very well be compared to animals. They became animals over time. Like dementors, they would feed off of the despair of others, and they would enjoy it.

However, some of us were like that before we even came to Azkaban.

Inspiration Dedications:

o Scared, by Three Days Grace

o Galaxies Collide, by Eleventyseven

o Spiderman

o Kingdom Hearts

-These are for you to figure out. For fun. :) I've never seen anyone else do it so I'd thought I'd throw it out there. Try to see where I incorporated these. They're not very long, actually. I didn't take much. Just insipirations-