AN: Ergh. Mind fog.
Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.
The island stood many miles beyond any coastline, sufficiently south of the Arctic Circle to reduce any risk of escape over ice, but far enough north for the sharp wind to whip freezing burns across any exposed skin.
Casting a glance back towards his ship the man smiled, rubbing gloved hands together in anticipation.
It was perfect.
It's older than Hogwarts.
Colder too. Much colder. (Cold like pain and misery and soul sucking guilt that replays death until you lose all awareness of anything but mortality. And you regret.)
The walls are dark, rough as though it were hewn from the very rock of the earth. (The walls bleed in sunlight, drip dark water as the chill lessens. That's when it hurts the most. When the stone itself echoes the act and the crashing waves are spellfire blows with screeching screams echoed on the bitter north wind. Torment.)
There are inhabitants here. A spit of land too desolate and wretched to have any use at all now houses the living damned. (That is what they are called at home, around bright fires when cold goes only as far as your clothes allow and souls are free of ice-burning claws. They call them damned because who else would hold such company, who else would take their food from creatures so dark,)
Dementors. Tormentors. Guards and slaves to despair.
They feed on pain.
They feed on souls.
Like shadows and nightmares and waking memories come back to haunt. They cling to night and watch without eyes.
They know.
Perhaps that's the worst part. Throughout life there is judgement after judgement and suddenly there is no more. Nobody cares and the sea lies dark with no moon and no hope. Your fate decided simply by your presence. They want your screams and your shouts and your white knuckled whimpers as long lost fears resurface with gleaming dark eyes of faces long lost.
You can think of nothing but your apologies and bitter self-loathing. You can think of nothing but the cold.
And the bars are unsympathetic. The rock even more so. Claustrophobia is ever-present and life is no longer life but something longer and far more interminable. There is no colour and grey is more hateful now than ever. You long for your own blood and its vibrant red but the light is insufficient and gives you nothing but a cold wet trickle with a stab of ever-deserved pain.
They'll patch it up for you.
They never let you die.
Not like that. Not like you had even the smallest semblance of control.
Death is only for the worthy, their biting cold breath rattles in your skull. You'd hear them without ears and that thought scares you. It scares you into insomnia and your limbs know sweat to be cold.
Twenty years later and the island was no longer bare but perhaps even more forbidding.
"Azkaban." He spoke the name and it pleased him. He looked up at the fortress with an expression of pride.
Many occupants. Some took it screaming others in shocked silence, whimpering with pale faces.
Sirius Black had laughed.
He had cackled like a mad man, not fighting the guards but taunting them, snarling in their bonds only to laugh and howl and scream names into the night.
Peter Pettigrew was one. James Potter another.
It was only a matter of time though. They all fell silent in the end. (Silent and cold like death that could breathe but no longer smile.)
His laugh died out and he spent his days and nights and dreams of sleep watching shadows flit past with a new dose of misery, prisoners clawing as they were dragged sobbing to their cells, visitors putting on a brave face and pretending they believed the criminals deserved such treatment. He never forgot though. Never stopped thinking.
He was the first to escape against their will. And in that he angered them.
He angered them enough to leave.
In the months following the island felt lighter than it had done in centuries, not all dreams were nightmares and the shadows were thinner in the plain light of day. But Sirius Black was caught or forgotten or given up on or something for all the damned knew because the guards came back and things resumed as normal as though that small respite had never happened.
He had had great plans for this place.
It would be the hub of his empire. The untouchable feat of engineering, towering over the waves in forbidding peaks of rock.
But something in his plan had failed and stumbling over a dark sanded beach he made for the only remaining boat.
Behind him the castle burned.
He'd run to Scotland, perhaps further even to the Roman occupied lands of Britain. But the Romans were fleeing south again and the times were changing and uncertain.
For now, Azkaban had fallen.
Bellatrix Lestrange took it all in her stride, head held high.
She deserved this fate and she knew it.
Some would even consider that she belonged here, with those creatures which thrive most on pain.
And at first the dementors loved her. They were drawn to the distorted aura that surrounded her being. Her darkness penetrated their unseeing eyes and they would flock to her. Prison guards, those commanded to keep her imprisoned were infatuated with her essence, she had no problems acquiring what she wanted.
But, the beasts that they were, they grew bored, leaving her alone to toy with sufferings she had inflicted, her psychological prison stronger then than ever.
They did not spare her and soon she too took to screaming. Soon she too was begging and pleading and carving wishes of painless death across the black stone floor of her haunted mind.
She too would fail fists at the cloaked figures watching, she too would cry in the knowledge she'd never be alone again.
She heard of her cousin's escape as a rumour in the monochrome of fear and guilt. She heard of her master's rise in the same ghostly breath.
She looked across the sea with a grim smile that day, not happy but determined. Little Sirius Black was stirring again and, as ever, the results were not going to be pretty for him.
Her guilt was redirected to shame for abandoning her Lord, her bitterness was given a purpose and when the walls came crashing down and her Master arrived before her she wept tears of joy as the dementors were distracted.
Daily Prophet. Year 1200AD.
A new location for wizarding gaol uncovered. At the heart of the North Sea a burnt out fortress was discovered with complete shielding in seemingly unbreakable Norse magic. The Minister has given it the all clear and plans have been set in motion to populate the desolate rock with the dark creatures Dementors for additional security. The Wizgamot are presently redirecting magical criminals and vagabonds to the Fortress of Azkaban.
There has been little change over the years. The rock is perhaps a little less jagged, the cells a little more damp but in essence Azkaban is much the same as it ever was.
The Second War will rise and the Second War will fall and perhaps there will be more Sirius Blacks and Bellatrix Lestranges. Perhaps Harry Potter will fail and rot away as his godfather could have done, perhaps Hermione Granger will lose her sanity to the beasts of the underworld. Perhaps Draco Malfoy will follow his father to the recess of this prison, or maybe his extensive fortune will prevent it. Whichever way it goes Azkaban will watch and Azkaban will know.