House: Slytherin
Category: Drabble
Year: Head Girl
Prompt: [Setting] Azkaban Cell
Word Count: 306
oO0Oo
For once, it was quiet.
The silence was peaceful, stretching calm and unbroken across the desolate island. It was also unnerving. For as long as she could remember, the screams, moans, and whimpers of the inmates had been in her ears.
Something was happening.
From within her cell, Bellatrix Black pulled herself to her feet. A small smile tugged at her lips, but she wasn't happy - she didn't know if she would ever be truly happy again - and so the smile faded and was replaced by something which wasn't quite a grimace. Stumbling across her cell, Bellatrix pressed herself against the cold iron door. She could fit almost the entire top half of bony frame through the bars, but even that did not allow her to see further than down the hallway, which ended in a nondescript grey wall.
She'd seen that wall too many times. If the Dark Lord was coming for her, then he would come for her, whether or not she was sitting in her cell of reaching out through the bars. Something like hope flickered in her chest, and Bellatrix basked in its feeble warmth. It had been so long since she'd felt anything beyond crushing despair.
Her patience was soon rewarded. Some time later, the door to her cell crumpled, and Bellatrix forced herself to her feet. With an unsteady gait, she stepped out of her cell and breathed her first breath of air in decades.
Then she smiled. The masked Death Eater who had freed her had also brought her her wand. Turning back to the tiny, cramped cell where she had spent fifteen years of her life, she cast Fiendfyre.
As the flames devoured her cell, she began to laugh, and then she was cackling uncontrollably.
Free.
She was finally free.
When she stopped laughing, the silence was beautiful.