Written for History of Magic.
Character: Percival Dumbledore.
He doesn't regret what he did not even when the unbearable coldness comes and all the happiness in him is taken away. They had broken his sweet Ariana, so he killed them and this hellish place was his punishment.
A place where people break and succumb to madness. He hoped that he died before insanity claimed him and became like the rest, screaming like a feral animal or laughing madly for hours.
Sometimes in the dead of night when his stomach aches for a decent amount of food he tries to recall a happy time and place but each time it is more difficult. He knows that his happiest memories will either be gone or so fuzzy and mixed up that thinking will hurt, but he can live with that because he knows he did what any wizard would have done if they had been in his shoes.
This place of endless cold and darkness could never make him suffer more than the knowledge that he failed to protect his daughter. More than once he'd seen Ariana sitting' in his cell, sobbing loudly. She never spoke or looked him the eye, even the illusion of her would not forgive him for failing to keep her safe.
That he regretted more than anything not his crime, but the event that made him commit it.
When he died here, in this place that could have only been plucked from someone's darkest nightmare, he knew the one memory that would never fade would be the broken image of his daughter.
That's his true punishment that image not the Dementors or Azkaban. Not the others screaming or the painful pangs of hunger that never went away its that image.
There are days when he wants death to come and set him free then others days he wants to live one more day because why should be set free when his daughter never would be.
She'd be free until her death and as broken as she was he hoped that wasn't for a very long although he'd never know even if he lived to a thousand. It was rare to get any news in Azkaban and the snippets you did get were usually from new inmates.
Those poor people who still had no idea that Azkaban was a hundred times worse than they could ever imagine. It never took them long to figure it out though and then they stopped shouting news from their cells and became silent at least until the Dementors came.
But unlike those poor souls he'll never beg or scream for forgiveness for what he did because he will never regret it. Sometimes he wonders if the others are really sorry or they just say they are in the hopes that the pain and coldness will go away.
If that is the case its a waste of time and effort because it would never go away until they died.