Chapter 12

Despair

The day was grey and dim. The sky stretched on for ages in pale grey, leaching the colour from the landscape. Bella felt cold and sick and terrified, with a lump of heavy dread sitting in the pit of her stomach. She'd felt this way ever since the letters came.

The winter holidays were beginning and she had still heard no news of Mr. Malfoy, for better or for worse. She was waiting for Draco just now. He was up in the now empty boys' dormitory with his head in the fireplace, talking to his mother. She wasn't sure what they were talking about and she was ill with anxiety and impatience. Bella was afraid for all of them, and she couldn't do anything to help. She knew Draco must have been feeling even worse. She couldn't grasp his hope that his father would escape. It had been done before, but was it possible now, when they knew Voldemort was returned, and even more security than before? Perhaps Draco had had some news, and knew something she didn't. For all their sakes she hoped he did.

She chewed her thumbnail absently, deep in thought. She tried in vain to swallow the lump in her throat. Just thinking about this made her want to cry, and she couldn't start that now. The crimes of Lucius Malfoy...what had he done behind that mask that made him such a dangerous criminal? Surely things that the Ministry could only guess at. Certainly it made Bella a little nervous. But to her, he'd always been kind. To her he had been a better benefactor than she could have ever hoped for. Never mind the part of her that wondered what would have happened if that wet punk Lucius Malfoy had found in the garden had been Muggle-born. Morals later, only sadness now. She well knew she wasn't Muggle-born, and what might have happened had not. And here she was, at the end of it all. The Malfoys had been as good to her as any family she had ever imagined and she did not intend to forget that. They had taken in an ignorant, lost, homeless witch who knew less about magic than the Mudbloods they so despised. She owed them so much it hurt to think about.

A noise in the room startled her, but she turned and saw that it was just Draco coming in. She stood up quickly, looking at him expectantly.

His face was pale and drawn. The dark shadows she'd noticed under his eyes that morning were more pronounced, and his voice had a ragged quality as he spoke. "Bella...I have to talk to you," he said. It seemed he was fishing for the right words before he spoke again.

"What is it?" asked Bella, feeling the lead weight in her stomach grow heavier.

He took a deep breath before he spoke. "Mother wants us both to come back for the holidays. She said she wouldn't hear of us staying here. And..." here he stopped a moment. "And we're being allowed to visit my father."

Bella drew her breath in quickly. "In Azkaban? But I thought they didn't allow..."

"Mostly they don't. But they make exceptions in some cases, mostly for –"

"Oh," said Bella quietly. She felt sure he had been going to say "for the condemned", but had stopped himself. She didn't want to hear the words aloud either.

"I mean," he said quickly, "you don't have to, if you don't want to, I, well I understand..."

She looked at him sharply. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"All I mean is...well, I was thinking you'd be afraid of the dementors."

Bella had never met a dementor. She knew Draco had. She wasn't sure whether it was pride or stupidity that was talking through her, but she answered him anyway. "Look...I know what a dementor is. I know what they do. I get the idea. Of course I'm afraid of them; I think they're about the scariest thing I've ever heard of. But if I can see your father, then it's worth it. I don't care." Bella stopped suddenly. She had realised her voice was shaking.

Draco's face had changed. Before he had only looked nervous, but now all he showed was a sorry kind of melancholy. "Bella, I shouldn't have..."

"Shouldn't have what? Don't you know what you and your family mean to me?" She was breathing hard and her cheeks were burning. She knew she shouldn't trust her voice, knew it was trembling, but she was past caring now. "You don't know what it's like, not having anyone, being all alone! I was alone for fourteen years. And now, you think I'd miss what's probably my last chance to..." She gulped. There were tears in her eyes suddenly. She knew she shouldn't be saying these angry things, but she couldn't stop herself. Biting her lip, she said, "Shouldn't have what?"

She had been going to say something else, something worse, but her voice just wouldn't come. Then Draco shut her up completely, taking a long step forward and wrapping her in his arms. Leaning her forehead on his shoulder, Bella tried not to cry. She hadn't been herself in days, and was beginning to think that any sentence she began would end in tears if things didn't look up soon. His arms felt real and solid around her, like the only thing keeping her from falling down.

"I shouldn't have doubted," he whispered in her ear.

Bella drew a ragged breath. Her cheeks were wet with tears. "I'm sick of it, Draco. I'm sick of having to act normal and be strong. I hate it, being stuck here, not knowing anything, not doing anything, but..." But what? There was nothing else to say. She felt helpless still, but at least not alone.

"I know, Bella," he said, a hand squeezing her shoulder. "But try to trust me. Just trust me."

Was it such a false hope? Of course she couldn't know. But it couldn't hurt to hope a little, just a little, for a while. And it seemed like a little of the grey had faded, and some colour had come back to the world.

Three cloaked and muffled figures showed up dark against the colourless water and the blank mist, the wind blowing it past them in great, cold, indifferent clouds. And the smallest of them shivered and looked around.

She could see nothing in all this fog. The water paled and disappeared just yards away from shore. All she could do was listen anxiously for the envoy ship from Azkaban, and try to keep her head about her. And then, from far away, the soft lapping sound of the water was broken by another noise. It was the slow, steady tempo of oars slapping against the water, sounding disembodied and eerie in their invisibility. She looked nervously at Mrs. Malfoy.

"Is that them?"

"I don't know who else."

And as if in answer to her word, Bella squinted into the mist and saw a dark ship moving toward them, crawling like an enormous insect on its oars.

As it drew closer, other sounds of the ship filled the air. The creaking timber and the voices of the men on deck reached her ears, and Bella could see that the men on ship were not dementors. She had been expecting that, though she wasn't sure why. The ship came in alongside the dock, and a small gangplank was lowered. A man stepped out onto it and approached them.

He was no taller than Bella, and rather shorter than the two Malfoys, but he was very stocky and muscular. His robes were the same colour as his thinning, straggly, iron-grey hair. He smiled none too kindly at the small group and bowed slightly.

"The Malfoys, I presume?" He said in a rough voice just shy of mocking.

"Yes," said Mrs. Malfoy coldly.

"Then welcome to the Azkaban Galley." He stretched out an arm to indicate the little ship.

Silently Mrs. Malfoy stepped onto the gangplank and followed by Draco, and Bella came last.

At the top of the plank, a tall, gaunt man in the same dull robes held up his hand to stop Mrs. Malfoy.

"Name, please, and relation to the prisoner," he said with his eyes on a dirty piece of parchment he was holding.

Bella heard the slow, controlled exhalation that came before her words. "Narcissa Malfoy, wife."

The tall wizard nodded curtly and let her pass. He blocked Draco, and said, name, please."

"Draco Malfoy," he said, as icily as his mother. He stepped on board.

Then it was Bella's turn. HE asked her the same question, and she answered Bella Thorne" and went to follow Draco, but he held up his arm again and wouldn't let he pass.

"Sorry", said the tall one, not sounding it in the least. "Only immediate family of the prisoner are allowed to visit. You'll have to step down, Miss."

"What!" cried Bella, but Mrs Malfoy stepped in.

"Excuse me," she said in a voice like a fistful of razors, "But this young lady is a ward of the family, and it is quite within your rules to allow adopted children to visit."

His eyes scanned the parchment he held, and at last he moved back and said, without looking a Bella, "She may board." He glared round at them grudgingly as she stepped on board. She felt he was hoping to meet them all again soon, under less favourable circumstances.

Bella took her place with Draco and his mother, and felt Mrs. Malfoy put a hand on her shoulder. Her heart was beating very fast still, at the though of losing her last chance to see Mr. Malfoy, at least while he still...

She cut her thought off. She mustn't think of that, or she'd start crying again. The image of Lucius Malfoy dead-eyed, unresponsive, yet still breathing, living but worse than dead, was absolutely too much. She twisted her hands together as they pushed off, the magic oars splashing and creaking in the oarlocks, moved by the invisible hands of some spell. They looked strange and threatening, somehow unnatural. They made the only sound on the voyage over.

On the island the fog was thinner, and Bella could see the forbidding eminence of Azkaban fortress rising into the mists, which still obscured the top of it. She felt her hopes for escape sinking down into her toes. She could dimly see dark shapes walking - no, gliding on the battlements.

There they are, she thought grimly. Though seeing the dementors didn't make her feel any better, she had the momentary solace of knowing that at least those ones were very far away.

They followed the short stocky warden to the great dark gates where the portcullis came down at let them in, the fog dripping off it sullenly.

The warden motioned them towards a little wooden door, which he opened for them and shut abruptly behind Bella.

"Before your visit you must be searched," he said flatly. "If you won't consent to a search you will not be allowed to visit the prisoner. Step this way."

There was a standing archway in the centre of the room that he directed them to go through. One by one they passed through it, and it glowed blue, and then a pale gold and the warden nodded.

"And, for the duration of your stay, Mrs Malfoy, you and the children will have to surrender your wands." He smiled again and held out his hand.

Bella looked at Draco as he reluctantly handed his wand over. Bella felt more than a little uneasy handing her wand to the grimy little wizard. For the first time in more than two years she didn't have it by her side and she found her hand moving anxiously to the empty wand pocket in her robes. The warden took their wands and handed them to another who put them in a long, steel box. As it closed the seam of the box disappeared and it took on the look of a piece of rough stone, the same colour as the fortress. He took it into the next room.

"Follow me," said their guide. And they did.

He took them down a long, dark corridor, longer than Bella would have thought possible. After what seemed like years walking down the twisting turning passage, they stepped out into the dull cheerless daylight again.

"Welcome to Azkaban Prison," said the warden grimly. There was a small courtyard below them but they were going along a pathway on its side. Their unpleasant guide led them inside at the end of the walkway, and down many more dark corridors.

They all look the same, thought Bella. I could never find my way out again. She was getting more and more jumpy as they went on. She hadn't seen any dementors yet, but she kept looking around like she was expecting one to jump out at them. Maybe she was.

As they rounded a corner, Bella looked behind them. She had seen something out of the corner of her eye...

At the end of the hallway, there was something. Gliding along the corridor, crossing the one they were moving down, was a dark, cloaked shape. A dementor. Bella froze. She tried to turn around, but felt her muscles go stiff. She felt cold all over, frozen to the bones, as though her blood had been frozen all at once. She felt brittle, like a young shoot of grass caught in a frost. And it turned, and through her blind terror, Bella knew it was coming closer.

Despair was rising in her, fear and sadness too, but mostly just hopeless, helpless despair. This was what held her there like a bucket instant magic cement. There were no words to describe the horror she felt, and nowhere to go but into the dark...

The memories came then, rising like dark water, thick like quicksand. Panic rushing back to her like it was happening, like she was twelve all over again, standing dead on her feet, over the bleeding, twitching body of a nameless stranger. She could still feel the bruise he'd left on her arm as he'd pulled her into the doorway, could still feel the knife under her jaw, the voice growling for her not to make a sound. And she hadn't, only felt that warm maddening prickling like a psychic sneeze building, only made a little sound as it flew out of her like a bullet when he'd started unbuckling his belt...

She gasped for breath, trying to bring back the present, to feel the ground under her, but she was slipping back even farther, not in the doorway anymore...

It was a dark road now, in the middle of nowhere, with woods rising on all sides and bathed in the white glow of the car's headlamps. She was standing in the middle of the road, staring down at the crushed buck lying in front of her (But I don't have a...) car. She heard it's wheezing, gurgling breaths as it struggled with death, saw the pain in its wide, staring eyes and the blood dripping from its mouth. Shuddering, she saw the pocket knife flash down in (and that's not mine!) her hand, and the blade bit deep into the animal's throat...she could smell the steaming blood as it oozed out onto the tarmac, and even that hadn't done it and by the time the poor creature was dead the person she wasn't was crouched on the ground retching and sobbing like a child...

Like the child she was, somehow, when the bullies had caught her coming home from a school that she knew even as she remembered it, that she had never seen. Crying as the big one in the white jacket had pulled up her shirt and put out a cigarette on the chest of a ten-year-old boy that she knew she had never been, and screaming in a voice that had never been hers...

Bella opened her eyes when she heard someone calling her name from far away. She blinked, and saw Narcissa Malfoy's face swim into focus above her, looking fearfully into her eyes. "Bella, can you hear me? Bella!" Her voice was heavy with relief as she saw the recognition cross Bella's face. "What in Merlin's name possessed you to stop?"

Bella groaned and sat up. "What...what happened to me? I saw it, and then I just couldn't move...did I faint or something?" She looked around at Draco who was kneeling on her other side.

He shook his head, his eyes wide and face pale. "No, Bella...I don't know, really. I saw you weren't there and we all went running back. You were on your knees and the dementor was just a few feet away from you. Your eyes were open but you acted like you couldn't see us, and didn't know we were there. And you were totally rigid. When the warden sent the dementor away, you went all limp and fell over. What happened to you? How do you feel?"

She tried to shake off the confusion; she rubbed the spot on her chest where the cigarette had burned her, just above the left nipple where she knew there was no mark and never had been. Of course not, because that hadn't been her. That hadn't been her car or her hand or her knife or her dead deer. Only the first, the dead man, he was hers. His memory would live on with her till she died. For a moment all she could hear was her own voice whimpering "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want to, I didn't mean it, I just wanted him to stop," over and over again. It was the strongest and the worst. But even that was nothing to the creepy, uneasy felling of having things inside her mind that weren't hers. Those other memories were right there now, like things she'd just never bothered to think about before, and they felt invasive and alien inside her head. "I'm sorry," she whispered to herself. ""What was that? What did I see?"

"Your worst moments," offered the warden, pushing back his grimy hair.

"I know that," hissed Bella. "But what about the others...?" she trailed off. Three pairs of eyes were watching her now with more than idle curiosity. She shook her head. "No, never mind. It was nothing. I forget."

Draco helped her up. Her head was still swimming. Mrs. Malfoy quietly gave her a piece of chocolate when the warden's back was turned. Bella felt herself thaw as she nibbled it, and her mind clear. But the memories were still there, like a potent nightmare, hovering in her thoughts. Whose were they, then, if they weren't hers?

Their journey through the bowels of Azkaban was over. The warden stopped before a heavy, dark iron door. "There's another hallway that runs beside this one. It's the one the dementors use, and guarded with spells so we don't have to feel it every time they go by." He looked around at them, stopping a little longer on Bella. "I have to clear them out before you go in. Wait here." He turned abruptly and unlocked the door. As it opened a palpable wave of cold passed over them, and for a second Bella felt herself get dizzy again. She sucked in her breath and dug her nails into her palms to keep herself grounded, doing the best to deny the flashes of misery that rose around her like swamp water.

It left her all at once when the door slammed shut. Bella was relieved to be herself again, but frightened all over again. After a moment the warden came back, and this time the open door didn't send anyone into fits of terror.

"You can go in now."

And in they went.

The only light in the little cell came from a small barred window. And where its light fell on a thin cot, Bella saw a gaunt figure slumped against the wall. It was, unmistakeably, Lucius Malfoy.

He looked up and met their eyes silently, with a wan smile flitting across his lips. At first Bella was surprised at how normal he seemed. Though his face was haggard and unshaven and his long hair uncombed, he stood up to greet them like any genteel wizard welcoming visitors.

Before he could speak, Mrs Malfoy rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck. And it was not until he touched her that Bella saw the shadows beneath his eyes, and felt the haunted, hollow dread of another night in this cold room. She sensed the long, chilly imprisonment here stretching back like looking up at the sun after falling down a well, wondering how to get up again. It was as if, with another human being in his arms, he remembered what he had been taken from, and all of a sudden missed it all over again.

For a time there was silence, and then a moment when Bella thought she saw Mrs Malfoy's lips moving next to his ear. There were tears in her eyes when she stepped back.

"We've missed you," she said softly. "All of us."

He turned to Bella and Draco and caught them both in a tight embrace. "Oh, and I've missed you," he said fervently. His voice was so ragged and heartfelt Bella began to wonder how long they'd have to run for it if she could kill the warden, if that's what it would take to get him out. It sounded like he hadn't spoken aloud in months.

Letting them go, he took their hands and pressed them, saying, "I've thought of you, both of you, but they won't let me, they steal the good memories when they're here. I thought I was starting to forget...but you're just as I remember, and it's wonderful to see you..." Bella couldn't help a shiver when she saw his wide, haunted eyes as he spoke of the dementors.

"Father, they can't do this," whispered Draco furiously, "They can't –"

"Hush," said Mr Malfoy, in an even lower whisper. "They can, but it doesn't mean they will. Not now, though, not with that filth outside the door, listening. Just remember, that we are all doing what we can." He gave Draco what seemed a very significant look. Silently, Draco nodded. He knew it was no time to talk of such things. But what time would they have? Bella searched Mr. Malfoy's face, but it was inscrutable. He had always been good at that.

As they left the fortress with their wands restored to them, the party of three was subtly different. They were all still silent, but now the silence had something darker, something funereal about it. Draco's head was down, his arm around his mother's shoulders. He looked at her now and again, but Bella didn't meet his eyes. On the way over, she had been an inch away from tears every step of the way. But after that, after the things she'd seen, she felt different. She was numb, like a wire had been cut. She could see, hear, think, and all the rest. But she felt nothing, other than empty. She couldn't even feel the wind properly anymore, it seemed.

I couldn't cry now if I tried, she thought. Why was she so detached now, so apart? Why was she so distant from the pain of the other two? Mr. Malfoy was still up against the same awful fate as he had been this morning! Why did that feel so vague now, when earlier it had terrified her?

There were questions buzzing in her mind. Just a week ago she had only been worried about him being in prison, and she knew that, even if he was in Azkaban, his wife was doing all she could to petition for parole. Now the situation was nothing but a big, horrible uncertainty. He could be given the Kiss at any time, left an empty body with the soul of Lucius Malfoy gone, eaten away by some dementors horrid insides. And her father was someone else, and her head was full of other people's thoughts...

She wouldn't cry, but Bella wondered if she thought about this too much if she might skip the weeping step and just go utterly insane. She knew she definitely would if she could feel it all properly. Perhaps it was some kind if defence, like a reflex.

And as the boat crawled slowly away from the island, Bella did indeed feel herself begin to shake. With fear, with cold, with anger...Not here, she thought ferociously. Not yet, not with that awful warden here. Not till I'm alone. She could do it, she could stay strong, if it was really strength. She could stave off madness for a few more hours.