Misery was etched into these walls, and nothing would ever wash it out.
Nothing would ever wash out the stench of prisoners kept in a place without much in the way of bathing rooms (or necessary facilities) either. Several MLE employees had cast discreet bubble-head charms over themselves. Draco and Hermione, along with several other Investigators pulled along for the ride, was used to worse.
Then they turned a corner and Draco felt his gorge rise.
This scent was concentrated, made all the worse for the lack of habitation. Without air to pass through it, the reek did not freshen. Draco smelled the ghosts of unwashed bodies, sickness, filth, an undernote of urine. His gorge rose. Beside him, Hermione's wand flicked silently and a bubble formed around her head.
Draco's fingers twitched, but he resisted the urge to cast one over himself. His father had lived with the reek, and by rights, he himself should be dealing with it now. He could stand it for a few hours. He was strong enough to stay and weather this.
His mouth, however, opened in a desperate attempt to accustom himself to the smell. Hermione lifted her wand, her eyes a question mark. He shook his head, and she nodded, her eyes still puzzled.
"Dementors do not sleep, nor do they require sustenance," came the muffled voice of Investigator Azad, speaking through her bubble. "All they require is a supply of misery to feed off of. Now that we no longer employ such methods, more is required to keep prisoners occupied. Prior to the second Wizarding War, prisoners were allowed no more than one walk a day in the courtyard."
She gestured at a sunken square in the midst of the housing, bare of anything but stone. Instead of a clear window of the sky above, a tangle of black iron fencing roofed the exposed area, twisting and bending before his eyes, squeezing tight any area that might have been open a moment before. Escape was not possible, not even to jump into the North Sea.
"Why not let them walk around the battlements?" spoke up a fresh-faced MLE officer. Beside him, Hermione rolled her eyes.
"To keep them safe," Azad leveled a glare at the young man. "The despair wrought by the Dementors and by the prospect of life here would cause many to throw themselves into the sea."
Despair. Hopelessness. Unbidden, the image of his parents' reunion flew through his mind's eye. Father, wasted and pale, his hair a tangled and filthy mess, moaning into Mother's neck. Draco, watching from his aunt's side, had thought his father injured, hurt in some way that he had not seen when the older man shuffled into the room. Then the realization that he was weeping shocked Draco so much that his mouth hung open.
He'd never thought of his father in any guise but that of power. When his mind wandered to the thought of him, imprisoned in Azkaban that terrible year, he only saw his father, sitting in a stone cell, angry at those who had gotten him here...and those who failed to get him out. For a moment, he felt confused tears prick his own eyes. Then Aunt Bella made a sneering remark at his father's expense, and Draco snapped back into his mask.
"How was the prison staffed?" The young voice somewhere ahead of them in the crowd snapped Draco out of his reverie.
This was a question that met more with Azad's approval. "To house guards with the prisoners here would punish them as well as the prisoners. Instead, a rotating system was worked out where food was delivered to the prisoners twice a day, and a midday walk was allowed. There are several courtyards, so guards were able to keep the prisoners in near-total isolation."
Hermione gripped the cloak about her shoulders a little tighter.
"Guards would fly in for breakfast and evening meal delivery, as well as to walk the prisoners," Azad continued. "They would be paired together for safety and to prevent one of them from becoming overcome by the Dementors. Each was also expected to check each inmate daily to make sure that the prisoner was still alive and in reasonable good health. The usual phrase, I believe, was to call out the prisoner's cell number and condition."
Five-twenty-two and still there.
His father had cried the phrase in his sleep, loud enough to echo throughout the manor. Draco remembered slipping through the hallways until he stood at the threshold of his father's bedroom, house-elves dancing agitatedly at his feet. He never got there first - his mother was always there, pressing Lucius's face into her neck. She'd sometimes see him there, and shake her head - his father would not want anyone else to see him like this.
Five-twenty-two and still there.
He'd tell one of the elves to bring his parents some tea or cocoa. Unsure whether or not to ask them to add firewhiskey, he left it to his mother's capable hands, then went back to his own room to stare at the ceiling for hours.
He knew what he had to do. He wasn't sure it would be allowed, but he needed to know.
They turned on to walk through the halls between inmate cells, and the space grew more confined. As he expected, numbers were hewn into the stone above the door of each cell. The width of the halls forced them to move together more tightly, more slowly as officers lingered by the cell doors, gawking at the interiors. Draco's attention was elsewhere, drifting deliberately away from Hermione's side, easing his way to the back of the line.
Inside the cells, contents varied, giving little clue as to who might have once resided there. Some were littered with trash and waste caked on the stone floors. Others were fixed with large chains spanning their centers restraining the more violent inmates. Small cots were kept neatly in some, others seemed to have smashed theirs to bits in a rage. Little earthenware bowls were shoved into corners, most empty, some filled with dried or rotting food.
Even in the most boring rooms of the Ministry of Magic, ghosts occasionally flitted through, interested in what was happening in the world. In Azkaban, however, the place was unnervingly devoid of their presence. Whatever waited a person in the afterlife, Draco guessed, could hold no more horrors than this place.
The aroma was worse the further into a cell one traveled - Draco held a fold of his cloak up to his face until he grew accustomed to the smell. Inside the cell, however, he could see the other marks an inmate left behind - graffiti of varying grammatical standards.
The Dark Lord will avenge me!
I will be free. You will never be anything but a Mudblood.
The Dark Lord is coming for your children. They will feed his pet.
Some smeared foul language and phrases onto their walls with what (he hoped) was food. Dark Marks, varying in intricacy, could be found on many cell walls. Others wrote the names of loved ones - Draco recognized more than a few names - with pleas to be remembered if they never got out of the prison. Usually these were scratched into the stone, effort needed to wear away at the granite.
If I remember nothing else, I loved Araminta.
Lettice and Callum - your father did these things, he did them for you.
I don't know why I'm here.
I don't want to live in this world.
All I did was be born. I took nothing from no one.
Flora. Flora. Flora. Flora. Flora.
Draco made it to the back of the line, then glanced up at the numbers, noting that they were at 349. Most of the inhabitants who had lived here were Muggle-borns, crammed cheek-by-jowl. In a peculiar bit of racism that Draco did not understand, cells in which Death Eaters and other imprisoned purebloods had been housed were deemed "too good" for Muggle-born prisoners.
Pretending that he wanted a closer look at one of the cells, he stepped inside, examining the graffiti, but really listening for the steps outside to fade away. When he was sure they had, he slipped around a bend, searching for the five-hundred block of cells. The prison was a bit of a labyrinth, and he pointed his wand at different points in the hall as he went, marking where he'd been with red spots.
The smells varied as he stepped along - putrid here, almost nothing there. He wondered if some blocks had been left empty on purpose.
A small sound came from behind him, and he started, heart pounding in his ears. When it did not continue, he berated himself. What did he expect? A prisoner left behind? Adementor still lurking the hallways? Certainly no ghosts.
He continued on, lighting the hallways with a muttered Lumos as he went.
Draco's stomach jolted nauseatingly when he turned a corner and saw the first of the five-hundred block cells. He stopped a moment, wondering if this wasn't the most idiotic thing he'd ever done. It wasn't as if he thought his father would be waiting for him in the cell. Wherever Lucius was, the last place he'd ever go would be back to Azkaban, even without Dementors.
This was the worst kind of curiosity. And yet he needed to know...
His feet moved woodenly, taking him the final steps down the corridor.
5-2-2
The door was ajar, left where it had been blasted open by a spell. Draco picked his way over the splintered wood, taking care to gently push the cell door open. Even so, it creaked open with a sound like a constipated hippogriff.
"Lumos," Draco muttered, peering into the corners of the tiny cell, wand raised as if he expected something to jump out at him.
All in all, it wasn't much bigger than a broom shed. A cot, at least a foot too short for his father's tall frame, lay square in one corner. A bucket for waste sat in the corner opposite, near the door. The stones were grimy, smeared with filth that Draco didn't even want to contemplate.
A slit of a window looked out onto the grey sea, charmed to prevent anything from being thrown out - and to keep the rain and wind out. Even so, the cold seeped into the room, causing him to shiver and pull his cloak more tightly about himself.
His father had spent a year here, a year so terrible that he would do just about anything to never return.
Five-twenty-two and still there.
His shoulders slumped, and he wondered yet again what he'd hoped to gain from this room. Probably a reprimand when he returned to the group.
As he turned, his eyes caught sight of them, faint, like the barest impressions of ancient runes. He halted mid-swivel, and held his wand closer. Above the bed, etched in crude lettering, were two names.
NARCISSA
DRACO
He could not have been more surprised if his father had swung round the corner and punched him in the face. He stared at the reality of his father's love in the markings, reached out a hand to trace them, knowing that the last hand to touch it had likely been his father's.
For a moment, all the anger and confusion he'd held for his father disappeared, and he was once more a little boy standing at his father's side. Grit and stone dust adhered to his fingertip, and he worried it against his thumb, thinking of the time it had probably taken to carve it out, and what little his father would have had to work with.
Stripped of everything else, Lucius Malfoy put what he valued most on the walls of his prison cell, a reminder of what he could not do without.
His reverie passed quickly, the degree of irony to which Draco had been subjected to in his life practically demanded it. But as he realized his time was up and he'd better rejoin the group, he stopped at the door, turning to look once more to look at the room. A room that he, very easily, might have occupied himself.
All that time he'd plotted and sweated in the Room of Requirement, all his frustrated tears and nights spent staring at the ceiling...his father had been in here. His mother might as well have been a prisoner, never leaving the Manor, pacing the floor, weeping. And now he had no idea where either of them might be.
He hoped it was someplace warmer than this.
Reluctantly, he turned to walk out the door.
A few yards away, idly flipping her wand between her fingers, Hermione leaned against the wall, head turned in the other direction. His surprise must have shown on his face, because she put up a hand.
"I wanted a look at the battlements, and you didn't think it was safe to go by myself," she said, her oval face neutral.
He nodded in thanks. Hermione always gave the best gifts, even when they weren't wrapped.
"How..." her brow furrowed, and she trailed off, afraid to ask something he wasn't willing to give.
"Ask," he replied patiently. She'd earned it. She'd been playing the observation game even when they weren't officially playing.
"How did you know which one?" she replied quietly. He could see the little fingers of fire curling, midair, that she'd left as guidemarks to let them walk back. He focused on them, rather than on her face.
"He used to scream it at night," Draco replied quietly. "Five-twenty-two and still there. Then Mum would dose him with Firewhiskey or I'd get a Calming Concoction down his throat."
He was quiet a moment longer, then the words came spilling out of him. "He carved our names on the wall."
Hermione simply nodded. She knew him well enough by now to know that he wouldn't welcome a hug. But he didn't mind her presence near him the rest of the day, keeping the chill at bay. They drifted back to the edges of the group, receiving nothing more than a raised eyebrow from one of the MLE minders.
Draco listened to the rest of the talk on autopilot, numb to whatever was going on around him. He dutifully walked with the group to each of the points of interest, grateful that they never neared Cell 522. When bad weather was reported and the visit was cut short, he closed his eyes in gratitude to whatever deity had decided to cut short his torture.
He found the broom, mounted it, and waited for Hermione to climb aboard in front of him. But he found himself blinking in confusion when she simply enlarged his cloak, then slipped underneath it behind him, seating herself on the broomstick. Instead of gripping his shoulders, though, she embraced him fully, her arms wrapped securely about his chest, her thighs clasping his hips, her nose and lips breathing warmly against his neck.
He took off quickly, so that no one would see the tears stinging his eyes. He had not known how much he needed that embrace until then. Hermione, to her credit, did not let go, asking if she could still hold onto him in the rough weather. They both knew the weather wasn't any rougher on the return flight, but she held him securely, anyway, matching her breathing to his, despite the blond hairs that must have been tickling her nose.
If he hadn't loved her then, he would have begun on that flight.
But eventually, like so many things, it ended. Rather than meet her eyes, he nodded once in thanks, as she carefully dismounted the broom.
Hermione checked her watch. "Earlier back than we thought."
"Not enough so that we could go back and work," Draco grumbled discontentedly.
"Nah." Hermione shuffled a bit. "Do you mind if I take off? I'd like to surprise Ron for once, and..." she trailed off, but he knew what she meant. He'd seen the look on Weasley's face.
"Go right ahead," he said. "I'll see if I can sneak past Oddsbodds and get some work done."
"You'll do no such thing," came a stout voice off to the side. Oddsbodds leaned against the wall, observing them with an inscrutable expression. "Go do some Christmas shopping. Go take a young lady out for a drink. Go see your aunt. But don't try to get anything past a fellow Slytherin, is that understood?"
Draco blinked, startled. "Completely, sir."
Oddsbodds tipped his hat to them and continued on his way out the door, twirling his wand in one hand.
"Did you know he was Slytherin?" Hermione murmured in an undertone. Draco shook his head, bemused. That had been happening a lot, lately.