A/N: Written for The 2012 Hogwarts Games (event: Athletics – Hurdles – 2000 plus), a thread found at the HPFC forum. I was supposed to write something I don't write often or something I'm uncomfortable writing about. And I've never before written Umbridge, nor did I feel very comfortable writing this.
I want to thank mew-tsubaki for beta-reading. This is also dedicated to mew, as the first installation in a collection called "Wedding presents."
The Walls Are Coming to Greet Me
The walls around her were dripping. The floor was wet, too, liquid slowly soaking her robes and creeping up on her body like worms wrapping themselves around her legs and arms and stomach.
And yet, there was no way of escaping them.
Another sob shuddered through her body, but—at this point—Dolores had stopped caring. There was no one to see her anyway, so she had swallowed her pride long ago, stuffed it down her throat in the hope that it would help to make the screams that were always ready to erupt be held in place. To be un-screamed.
She hugged herself tightly and wished, as she had done so many times now that she had lost count, that she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Somewhere warm and dry. Somewhere she, if she closed her eyes, didn't have to see all those…things in her mind. Somewhere she could forget.
But, as was suspected, the sound of a Dementor drifting past her cell made all the things reappear in her mind. Hadn't she witnessed the impact of Dementors so many times that there wasn't anything else to expect?
The images floated around in her head, blending together so that she couldn't tell the centaurs' excruciating shouts from her captor's disgusted words. She had felt, if she was perfectly honest with herself (something that happened more and more often now that she felt the walls closing in on her more and more), completely worthless when, after the Auror had disarmed her, he had looked at her as though she wasn't human, even.
She shuddered and pressed herself closer against the wall. The wetness wasn't that big of a problem compared to the idea of the safety a wall behind her back could give.
As she closed her eyes, slowly, she heard every sound become more prominent. If she concentrated hard, she could hear the people in the cells surrounding her. In the beginning, she had made it a game, trying to figure out who it was, but as the screams had become louder and more and more incoherent, she had stopped. Both because it made her heart twist strangely as pictures of faceless Mudbloods she had sentenced to Azkaban spun in her mind, and because it gave her a strange premonition that she, herself, screamed as achingly disjointedly in the nights.
Then, not much later, she had reached the point where she couldn't tell the days from the nights, because she had stopped looking up at the crack in the wall and trying to decide whether the light, the few times it did slip in, was from the moon or from the sun. And now, right now, as she became sure there was a Dementor hovering just outside her door, for some stupid, stupid, reason, it all felt like the longest day in her life. That she never would leave this day, now that she was caught in it. That it was a day so horrid it resembled a nightmare, but it actually was real and not part of a dream-world. Meaning she couldn't escape, not ever.
She opened her eyes again, though it didn't make any difference. Oh, how she wished the creature outside would go away. Oh, how she wished she had her wand there. Oh, how she wished she…were someone else.
And as she had that thought, another one presented itself. One that she feared, unconsciously. One that always emerged. One that she longed for to remain a thought. One that existed of the feeling of a lump in her throat and the way she thought so hard, Don't cry, don't cry, and the way she saw her fellow third-year mates asking, "Are you all right, Dol? Are you crying? What for? What did we do?" And she could hear them so clearly, she could see them looking at her, and she could remember how it felt when whatever they said never gave her the comfort they had aimed to give her.
And she felt ashamed.
She hadn't had a tough childhood, not at all. She only had been weak, and that—in itself—made it so much worse. That she hadn't been able to hold herself together, those times she had broken down for no visible reason.
She let her fingers trace marks in the sticky surface that was the floor of the cell she inhabited. The hollow feeling in her chest didn't give way, and her breath became a bit hitched. She wondered how many people had sat in this very cell.
And, more importantly, how many of those who had been put here because of her.
What had she done? Her fingers tightly gripped her forearms, and her nails, which were jagged and uneven, cut into her skin.
A second later, she heard a scream bouncing off the walls, and she couldn't tell if it was her own or someone else's.
Then a rustle sounded, and it became easier to breathe. The Dementor must have moved on to its next victim.
With a bitter taste in her mouth, she thought of how she'd never get that chance: to move. The judgment had been clear; she wouldn't leave Azkaban alive.
The trial was so fresh in her memory that she almost wasn't certain it had happened as she remembered it, since so many of her other memories had become clouded and jumbled. However, those clouded things had been all the happy memories, if there were such a thing left.
But still. She had it all left there, safely in her mind. The testimonies that had been given by Potter, Granger, Weasley, and the nameless people who had accused her of so much.
And now, as she remembered it, she didn't get the urge to laugh them up in their faces and to accuse them of being disillusioned. They all melted together into one formless mob, one big organism that swayed and wavered, shouting obscenities and pointing at her, and all she begged for, really begged for, was to ask for their forgiveness.
Not that she deserved to get it. She didn't deserve anything.
A sound, which she couldn't realize where it came from, suddenly rang in her ears. It was sharp, too sharp. It sounded almost as though she had banged her fists against the door, which she sometimes caught herself doing.
It had to be someone banging a fist against the door.
The door swung open, and Dolores felt absolutely terrified. Had she been in that cell so long that she didn't know anymore what a knock on the door was?
"Miss Umbridge, how are you?" the person that had entered asked, and Dolores sat up slowly, pulling her fingers through her hair without knowing why she did it. She had done it out of reflex, as though a part of her knew that she was supposed to do so, but she couldn't for her life tell why that was.
"Miss Umbridge?" the person repeated. Then he narrowed his eyes and continued, "Dolores?"
"Yes," she answered breathlessly. So he was talking to her, to Dolores. She hadn't spoken with a person in so long… Or had she? Suddenly she felt confused. Hadn't there been someone speaking with her not that long ago? Or was it very long ago? Or maybe it had never happened.
"How are you?" the man asked again, a bit louder.
Dolores looked at him. She had the urge to say, "Fine," but there was also the urge to laugh at him, and she couldn't decide on why she should follow any of those urges. In the end, she didn't say anything.
The man looked at her for a long time. His eyes were very…brown, Dolores noted. They had these interesting little dots in them, as though they were planets orbiting suns, which were his pupils.
"Dolores, are you listening?" the man asked, and Dolores watched his mouth move. It didn't look as though it belonged to him, she observed when she focused on solely his lips. It could have been transfigured onto his face, she decided.
"There are lots of debates right now, in the Ministry, about Azkaban and how it should be run. So, basically, my point is that there could be a change."
Dolores suddenly ached for the man to leave. He talked too much, and he talked of things she knew she didn't want to think of; she didn't even want to hear of them. Because if she did think of them, she would start longing for them, and there was no use for that.
"Hopefully, they will only take a few more months, those changes. They are saying that it's not humane enough, this prison, that there—"
The man didn't say more, and Dolores was happy.
Later—hours later or minutes later, she had no idea—Dolores saw there was blood under her nails. She couldn't for her life understand where it had come from and she wanted to get rid of it. Now.
She scratched her fingers against the ground, against the stones, and they started to bleed, and suddenly Dolores felt tears dripping down her face. It wasn't that it hurt; no, it was something else. It was everything else, just as usual. It was the walls creeping closer, it was the ground being too cold, it was the wetness soaking her so slowly she didn't quite notice it, and it was the screams from the man in the cell across the corridor. It was the wind howling outside. It was the fear that her blood froze in her veins. It was the dread that she never would die, that she would stay here forever.
As she hugged herself, she regretted everything. Every tiny thing that she ever had done that had led her to this place. She deserved being here, for she knew, now she knew it, that she shouldn't have done it.
There were eyes all around her, staring at her, forcing her to look back. They were pleading, as though she alone could make their pain go away. But she had no idea how to do that, no matter how much she wanted it.
And, oh, how she wanted it. Her fists clenched, and she stared down at them and wondered when they had become so thin, when the bones had become so pronounced, when her skin had become so wrinkled and how she hadn't noticed it happening.
Maybe time had passed, after all. She looked at the walls, the stones where she had, a long time ago—or maybe just minutes ago—carved scores into the wall with her fingernails (maybe that's why they were so bloody), and there were so many marks. So many.
She carved a few more; one for each time she felt her heart beating, one for each time she heard that man scream.
She wanted to join in his screaming. She wanted to do something, something that made her feel, that made her a little bit more alive.
But was she dead? Or was the papery skin against her too-bony fingers actually something that lived? That had veins that blood ran through? That consisted of something alive?
She couldn't tell, and she pressed herself as far into one of the corners as she could get, wanting, wishing to escape from the doubts and the questions and the shouts and the marks on the wall.
"Help me," she might have whispered, but as she thought of it, it could have been something she just considered whispering, something that she kept in her mind since it was useless to utter, as there was no one listening.
"I'm sorry," she continued in that voice that either was very loud, demanding someone, everyone, to listen, or so quiet it wasn't even audible.
"I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't. Please forgive me. Just take me away from here. I can't be here any longer, I can't, I can't, I can't."
The walls crept a bit closer. "Please."
The wetness made a shiver travel up her spine. "Do something, just do something. Don't leave me here. I can't be here any longer, I can't."
Her fingers grasped after something in the air, but she didn't know what.
But nothing would change, Dolores thought.