Book 3: Astoria Greengrass and the Legilimens of Hogwarts
Song rec: "Four-Walled World" by Temple of the Dog

Some people say things like "At least it can't get any worse."

Five vicious strangers in silvery masks were having a shouting match with Draco's mother in the entrance hall. The sixth stranger was bound, hooded, and hopefully only unconscious.

They have no imagination.

The shouting intensified, but no wands were drawn, for the words "Dark Lord's orders" made it clear that Draco's mother was to step aside or face something much worse than having her house invaded.

Anyone who says that isn't watching this right now.

The hooded captive was mobilised, and Draco trailed behind the unwanted company to watch them place him on the floor of the basement. Then the Death Eaters Disapparated. Curiosity and a certain fear of the unknown drove Draco down the stairs even as his mother called after him. Draco was not allowed to untie any ropes, but there was a face to be seen beneath that suffocating cloth. When he approached the body in the basement, he saw that it was an elderly one. It must be a Muggle-born in that case, because why else would they bother to bring such a frail old man here as prisoner? Then again, Albus Dumbledore was nearly the same age, and he was very powerful…

Draco loosened the rope around the neck and pulled off the hood. It was Ollivander, the wandmaker, and he still had a pulse. Draco knew that he was not allowed to do any more for this man and came upstairs with a clenched jaw. His mother locked the basement door with the wand she had bought from the man at the bottom of the stairs. The Malfoy Manor was to be used as a prison that was supposed to make up for the fact that "we don't got Azkaban ours yet," as one masked brute had put it.

They certainly did not have Azkaban yet, as each morning, Draco walked down to the breakfast table to find Bellatrix in his father's seat. Occasionally, he had received notes from his father, short and sloppily-written responses to the pages Draco had sent him. He knew why the replies had been so inadequate: the dementors had once been making his father waste away. But those things were gone from Azkaban at last, and Draco, as the next morning's post told him, was allowed to travel to the prison to visit his father.

"It took them long enough!" Draco's mother exclaimed as she handed a right-of-entry card to him, putting away the boys' new booklists for the time being. "I applied for these the day of his sentencing! Now, go give Theodore his card and tell him to get ready quickly. I'm not waiting a second longer than fifteen minutes."

She might have to wait a few extra seconds, though, because the Lestranges halted Draco on the staircase.

"Where are you going? What about breakfast? …Hm? What are those, Draco? Hand them here…" Bellatrix spoke, and Draco hesitantly gave her the only tickets that allowed Theodore and him to see their fathers.

"Oh, I see," she said in a small voice, passing the cards quickly to Rodolphus as though they were dead rodents. "Off to visit Daddy, are we?"

Rodolphus snorted and gave the card to Rabastan, whose hands trembled awfully as he held them. He kept flipping one over top of the other as if he was seeing them anew each time.

"Your mummy never got you a card to visit me," Bellatrix brought up yet again. "And she only came once every… oh, what was it, Ro?"

"Once a year, I think. Dementors made it hazy, Bella."

"Hmph. But Daddy doesn't have to live with the dementors anymore, does he? No. He doesn't. We did. And he never visited us, yet he receives visitors!"

"Keeping up appearances, Bella. That's what Lucius does," said Rodolphus, taking her arm and walking down the stairs with her. "No real faith in the Dark Lord… Only values himself…"

Draco wished so slightly that Bellatrix and Rodolphus would have stayed a little longer. He was left waiting for Rabastan to give him back the cards, too scared to ask for them. Rabastan nearly looked like he was going to try to swallow them; they were so close to his face.

"These things haven't changed a bit… Of course, yours say 'SON' on 'em, but… Aha, ha…"

Draco had come to hate Rabastan's laugh. Rabastan drew out each overemphasised "ha" as if he didn't know what real laughter felt like, but did not let that stop him from expelling sound.

"Oh, you want these?"

Draco lifted his hand.

"SO DID I!" Rabastan screamed in his face, spit flying. He was holding two edges of the cards, threatening to rip them.

That's okay. He's trying to scare me. I can always Mend them.

Rabastan looked Draco straight in the eye, but Draco had been learning how to defend his mind from even him. Rabastan's Legilimency was only so strong, and, at the moment, Rabastan himself was too mentally compromised to succeed in Legilimency.

"You keep in mind, Malfoy, that everyone you walk past on your way to your father's cell will see you. There is nothing else to look at in that place except the people that manage to get in there once every year, or once every month, or… or twice a day… The others will see you, and they will remember you, and it will make it so much easier for them to lose their minds because there is no contact there for them. And people like you go in and out as you please and visit whom you please and only give us something to watch… to watch and to think about."

Maybe someone who craves as much attention as you do should have considered that before doing something without orders that would get you life in Azkaban, Draco thought daringly.

Rabastan did not sense it. He dropped the cards — except his pity card, of course — and trotted down the staircase.

No one would visit that pig, Draco thought as he picked up the cherished cards, glad at the fact that Rabastan had not got his way during his time in prison. But the thought lingered for a few extra moments in Draco's head, during which time he reasoned that, if not incarcerated themselves, Rodolphus and Bellatrix probably would have visited him. Draco remembered someone else who would have written Rabastan a poem per visit…

"We've received passes," Draco said loudly.

Theodore emerged from his hibernatory cave, sporting that beard he had grown since his shave at the barbers' and the chin-length hair to match.

"Azkaban? Let me shave, and I'll be ready."

"My mother doesn't want to wait," Draco indicated.

"And my dad doesn't need to think I'm letting myself go," Theodore said, splashing his scraggly face with water.

Draco scratched his bare cheek a little self-consciously. He wasn't remotely as dark as Theodore was, and the hair that he did have on his face was not the right texture. Draco's lack of facial hair wouldn't have mattered much if the likes of scrawny little Theodore didn't have the capability of growing as much hair as a Quintaped. But Draco considered the fact that his father was always clean-shaven. It looked more dignified. If it didn't, Theodore would have kept his face furry for the visitation.

Draco took his mother's right arm, and Theodore gripped her left, and they Apparated to the banks of a steep, rocky island which cast them under a cold shadow. The rock was all black from wet water; at parts of the season, it must have been submerged. The principal smell was of the sea's salty mist, though Draco was more conscious of the odours of wet soil, fish remnants, and rotting foliage simply because they were less pleasant. The water hit the craggy island so hard that he was getting stung with water himself. He glanced at a tall tower in the misty distance and was trying to locate the trail that would lead to it when Theodore coughed at him. Draco looked back to see his mother pointing her wand at the top of the tower. He was very confused. There was no way that the three of them were going to be able to break anybody out of this complex.

All at once, the top of the tower flashed a brilliant blue ray out to the open sea, and Draco's mother put her wand away. The tower on the island was not the prison itself; it was a lighthouse to signal their arrival to the guards. Theodore was not asking any questions because he wanted to pretend like he knew exactly what they were doing, but Draco stepped forward — and found himself in the barrel chest of a wizard with a Ministry-purple coat.

"Right-of-entry cards and I.D. numbers," the wizard ordered, pushing Draco away.

After the required identification was given, the wizard took off his hat and drew a crimped sort of wand at it, saying, "Portus." The next move was theirs. After travelling via the Portkey hat, Draco ignored his motion sickness to his best ability and examined his new surroundings. He was in a low-ceilinged, windowless room that was well lit but poorly maintained. The puddles on the floor were established enough to host algae, structurally fatal cracks in the walls were being supported with magic, and air circulation was too much to ask for. Draco's mother was rushing through registration at an ugly old desk, repulsed by the environment and hoping as much as Draco was that his father was not living in these conditions.

"Only your name," said the guardswizard at the desk. "Everybody signs theirselfs in."

Draco's mother was motioned to stand by the wizard who had made the Portkey and wait. Draco stepped forward and dipped the featherless quill into diluted ink. What he saw on the most recent sheet of the registration book disturbed him.

AZKABAN PRISON NON-MINISTRY REGISTRATION.

List VISITOR name, PRISONER name, VISITOR relation to PRISONER, REASON for visit, DATE and TIME IN & OUT.

Sinistra, Aurora. - Crouch, Barty Jr. - WIFE. - Visit. - 04/01/96, 10:12 – 12/01/96, 09:03

Sinistra, Aurora. - Crouch, Barty Jr. - WIFE. - Visit. - 13/01/96, 09:47 –

Sinistra, Aurora. - Crouch, Barty Jr. - WIFE. - Body Claim. - 17/01/96, 00:47 – 01:09.

Sinistra, Aurora. - Crouch, Euley. - DIL. - Body Claim. - 20/01/96, 08:23 – 10:00.

Travers, Damon. - Travers, Les. - BROTHER. - Visit. - 19/05/96, 13:10 – 15:07

Malfoy, Narcissa. - Malfoy, Lucius. - WIFE. - Visit. - 01/08/96, 09:58 –

It was one of those things that had to be saved for later, a thing too bizarre for the moment. Draco scribbled his information on the parchment and watched Theodore as he did the same. Theodore's expression did not change when he saw what Draco had seen about Sinistra. Draco and his mother were escorted up the left staircase and Theodore was escorted up the right. Maybe the environment was different where Theodore was going.

Each stone step had a large amount of moss on its sides, and, in fact, a certain amount of it was even through the middle of the path where people would have worn it down… if there were any people taking these stairs on a regular basis. This promulgated plant served as a home for small insects that Draco spotted in the chilly light from the dirty windows. Draco's mother held a sleeve to her face and kept her free hand only hovering above the icy, metal handrail. The wizard leading them was equally disgusted with the place and cursed "whoever left the stair this way after the dementors got out."

"Dementors were the only ones up here before?" Draco's asked, scandalised. "They couldn't have delivered the food…?"

"Food appears in the cells. Got a few house-elves that cook. Yeah, the A.S.O. never did much, as you prob'ly know. Mostly here for financial business, they were. I'm a new hire. They added about twenty to the team since the dementors left."

Draco was thankful that his right-of-entry card had not arrived during the time of dementor management. He would have never made it up the stairs. The worker escorting them, who evidently had been hardly trained, continued speaking, hungry for underprovided conversation.

"Eh, you can look at it one way, because now everybody's anticipating more escapes. Dementor's Kiss is off the table, if you think about it, and now we're understaffed. Or you can look at it another way, because I hardly think Sirius Black would have escaped if there were humans round, and I know for sure that Crouch wouldn't've. 'Course, the bit with Black was a twist in the end, wasn't it?"

Draco was peering in each door they passed and only seeing a stone wall each time. The walls were set only far back enough for the doors to open, which hazardously all opened toward the inside. It provoked the feeling of being trapped in a public toilet stall. The moisture in the air was clinging to any bare skin it could find on Draco. More than once did he stumble, a near victim of the slime on the steps. After they passed the nineteenth floor, though, the moss was totally gone, though the same dampness remained. Finally, after aching unimaginably from the walk of twenty-three flights of stairs, Draco saw the worker releasing spells on the last door.

"Who you here for again — oh, Malfoy, shoulda known."

The guardswizard entered the corridor first, then Draco's mother, then Draco. The corridor was so thin that no one could walk next to someone else. Something dripped on Draco's head, but he had not been dry for a while.

"I remember fixing these last couple wards — almost the whole south side was gone."

"Where is my husband?"

"He's at the end, Missus. We've got a bit of a walk yet."

Draco had rarely been so uncomfortable and sore. He was in an extremely dark labyrinth with the illusion of suffocation teasing his mind. It reeked of urine and must. The worker kept saying "Point Me" to his lit wand, which spun round dizzyingly. An inordinate amount of turns later, they saw the first cell, which was empty. It was adjacent only to stone walls and, as every cell in the prison was, solitary. Draco was not expecting the window in the cell after all he had seen, but the mocking sliver of light only gave a faint gleam to part of the floor.

"Keep up, dear," his mother said, and he recalled that Theodore was doing this alone.

They made another turn in the compressive maze. In the next cell, a large, round shadow rose from the boulder of a bed. Draco had the feeling that the prisoner might have been Mr Crabbe, but again they were turning at a fork. The inmates of the next two cells were right against the bars. Both of them were chained by the wrists to the walls, and both of them emitted a smell so bad that Draco stepped on his mother's heels in trying to hurry away.

"Malfoy. Visitors," said the worker before Draco could even spot his father's cell.

The clanging of chains sounded throughout what little space there was. Soon, Draco was standing in front of a trace of his father, who reached his chained arms out as far as he could toward his family. The worker insensitively broke them up and told the non-prisoners that they were to visit inside of the cell whilst he stood in the corridor. After the hugging, which was unpleasant due to the chains stretching through the middle of the room and the sweatiness, the initial conversation amongst the family was nothing more than complaining about the squalidness of the whole complex. Draco's father put great emphasis on the fact that he was in what was outrageously considered a "good" cell, a cell that had to be rebuilt after the January breakout. Draco's mother surprisingly said that this was at least a joke of an improvement; when she had visited Bellatrix in the past, there was slime mould in all parts of the cell, and Bellatrix had been covered in mites and ringworm. Draco didn't want to think of that; his father looked bad enough. His hair had been chopped, though it nonetheless had knots in it, and his face was sallow, thin, and patched with prickly hair. One of his eyes was red with infection. He looked like a diseased beggar, and Draco wanted to know the names of everyone who was responsible for it. With that sour feeling, he looked out of the cage and at the A.S.O. worker, whose back leaned against the glistening wall. He made no effort to conjure furniture for the family. Draco's father's chains rattled as he slid the wrist hooks across the room and tried to make a decent place on the berth for his family to sit. His sleeves slid up from this motion, and the Dark Mark became visible. He had no idea about the one on his son's arm.

If anybody could give Draco advice about the Dumbledore mission, about how to safely be a Death Eater, it was his father, who had been a Death Eater for over twenty years. Yet Draco could not speak of any of it here just as he could not write about it. Nothing in prison was private. Even if he could speak of it, he probably would only mention how much of an honour it was, that he was capable, and that completing the mission might get his father out of Azkaban quicker. Draco would leave out the part about the terror he felt. He was still counting on being able to overcome that feeling.

Draco and his mother were there for three and a half hours, during which time they were relieved to see that food did, in fact, arrive. Draco's father dined gracelessly with those hindering chains — an upsetting sight. In response to his wife's concerns about the infamous prison undernourishment, Mr Malfoy said that since the dementors left, he had eaten regularly. Overall, the visit had made Draco feel better, even if the nasty trips to and from the cell had felt like they equalled the time they spent there. The card in Draco's pocket reassured him that he could always come back.

Theodore was waiting for them in that catacomb of a reception area. Draco explained that their escort was dawdling and unfortunately talkative.

"Dad says it's nothing like it was when the dementors were here," Theodore conversed. "It's pretty awful now, though, so it's tough to imagine…"

"Did you have to go through a maze to get there?" Draco asked.

"Yeah, the whole prison is a maze except for this floor, hospice, and the staircases. Dad told me in one of his letters that he didn't even know where he was in the prison. The guard didn't like it when I told him. He's on the north side of the twenty-first floor. It smells like compost there."

"My father's in one of the rebuilt cells," Draco said. It seemed to have an air of distinction about it when compared with the rest of the prison. He clung to that notion.

The trio took showers when they arrived back at the manor because the dirt they imagined they had been accumulating in Azkaban turned out to be real. Draco's thoughts wandered in the shower, and he recalled something that might have been of importance. He afterward visited Theodore with a frank question.

"Do you think Sinistra is with us?"

"'Us' is not a pronoun I use for these people," Theodore mumbled.

"Stop it. You know what I mean."

"Do you mean 'with' them ideologically? The answer to that is no."

With irritation, Draco said, "What do you think?"

"It's a matter of conjecture. It's clear that she's a blood-traitor and went so far as to fight alone against the Death Eaters during the prison breakout. She's no sympathiser. The question arises when one takes into account her continued closeness with Snape and her marriage to Crouch. We know that they are and were amongst the closest to the Dark Lord, equal to only the Lestranges. They came to Crouch young, so it's not like she's unaware.

"Additional factors would be the 'death' of her husband, providing she did not know he lived after 1982… or, providing she did know, the fact that she could not locate him. If the Dark Lord, after obtaining the location of Crouch Jr from Jorkins, came to Sinistra with this information, I think she would consider herself indebted to the Dark Lord, regardless of the lack of logic in that, and might have agreed to cover for her husband during the Moody operation.

"What is much more likely is that she became involved simply because those already close to her were involved, which would explain her detachment from the ideology but familiarity with such prominent figures. If this is the case, her future is insecure, so her fear must keep her quiet."

It was a lot to digest, but the inquiring mind should always be prepared for the prolix answers of Theodore Nott. He, after all, had much knowledge of the subject, likely sourced from his father, and his nature was to analyse everything about everything. That same nature provoked another one of his tactless remarks:–

"I do know for a fact that she isn't going to help you murder Dumbledore."

"I wasn't asking because of that!"

"Weren't you?" Theodore scoffed.