The Assassin
Part Five- Staying Sane on Hell Island.
Author's Note: AHHH!!! This was written by an authoress hacked up on cough medicine and tired and depressed as hell. Not bad, but keep this in mind: This is Azkaban, Hell Island.
Jordan dragged her metal handcuffs across the tightly barred window. They were a 'precaution', for after all, she was 'a danger to herself'. She gazed at the rough scratches of a name in the rotting wood of her bed. Harry Potter, the boy who lived. She began banging the thick metal links against the bars, not minding that it sent jolts through her skinny arms, cutting deep into her white flesh.
Tank! Tank! Tank!
"In the prison of heaven, that's how the angels make music," she said aloud to the blank walls. "But their bars make sweeter notes than mine." Jordan sighed, her whole body drooping until she tumbled off the bed onto the cold stone floor. "Cold, and so unforgiving," she quoted herself mindlessly. Keeping your thoughts to yourself here wasn't a real matter—the prisoners would forget, the Dementors didn't care. It was almost a release for Jordan, no longer having to be silent about anything.
She laughed aloud. "Silent! I don't have to be! I can scream as loud as I want, and nobody will punish me for it." Proving her point, she shrieked as loud as she could, her voice skidding up to the highest peak her vocal cords could achieve, holding it, and drawing out the end in a long, jagged scream that lowered ever so delicately into a barely audible moan. Jordan then laughed again, almost hysterically, her voice crackling from the strain.
Her Azkaban scream, she thought. "A tortured scream, like that of a soul who knows that only hellfire awaits him from this holocaust of the same hungry flames," she whispered in a sing song voice, enjoying the soft echo of her morbid words.
"That's quite poetic, Jordan."
Jordan rolled her head on her neck to look at the door. "Go away, dreams. It isn't time, because I'm not sleeping. I'll never sleep again," she threatened the doorway. "Never. You won't get me if I stay awake, ha! Because dreams only happen in sleep, and I'm never going to sleep again!" she began to laugh, then to moan, rolling over to curl up on the stone floor with her back to the door. The scars on it stood out, rigid and blue with chill.
"Jordan. I'm not a dream. Please come to the door."
Jordan suddenly rolled over and stood up, her black hair over her face. "That what you always say!" she shrieked. "Always!" she pointed a finger at the door, slowly backing away, then rushed at the door. She stopped at the grilled opening, brown eyes mad in her pale face. "What do you want from me now?" She ran her spider-like fingers over the bars, clacking her bony knuckles against the metal. "The music of Azkaban. Isn't it nice?"
The click of a key in the door startled Jordan back into an almost sane mind. "Don't do that! I'm dangerous!"
"I could take you if I wanted. Who say's you're dangerous?" The low male voice was familiar.
Jordan backed away, recognizing the eyes and voice. She crumpled to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably but not crying—she was out of tears, out of water. She clawed at the stone, seeking a refuge, wishing she could just go back to peaceful insanity, knowing that once out it was so hard to get back in.
A soft hand cupped her rough, dirty chin, drawing it up towards a face ruddy from the sun, red from the brisk sea wind, and covered in a kindness and pity that made her heart scream. How nice it would have been if she had been just an ordinary girl and he an ordinary boy, and they could have been happy. Been able to be together.
But no. Jordan was half-crazy in Azkaban and Harry Potter was the boy who lived. No ordinary life could await them in this case.
"They want me to make sure you won't hurt me," Harry said. "So the door stays open, but you must sit on the bed. No Dementors. Just you and me and a deaf guard." Jordan just stared at him, not comprehending quite what he wanted from her.
"They forbid you to come back…" she said quietly. "I heard them arguing. They said that you were upsetting me."
Harry lifted her onto the bed. "Do they feed you at all here? And in my personal opinion you're doing a bang-up job of hurting yourself."
Jordan fiddled with her handcuffs. They had been so tight when they'd been place on her arms, but now they jangled loosely. "It's hard to stay sane in here, Harry."
"So I've seen. A moment ago you were as mad as they come, but now you're almost normal."
Jordan shivered. Almost normal. Would she ever be normal again? "Is this just a social call? Or is there news of what's going to happen to me?" He glanced away, but she reached for him, wanting him to look her in the eyes.
Zzzzzzwack!
A charge of energy leaped out of nowhere and bit her. Jordan glanced at the doorway, where a deaf guard stood, holding his wand out. Harry shook with rage, clenching his fists. "I would curse him, but then I couldn't talk to you," he said truthfully, meeting her eyes. Jordan wanted to reach out to him again, to touch his face and marvel at his inky black hair, trace the laugh lines around his green eyes—but no, she couldn't.
"What's happening, Harry?" Jordan choked. "When are they going to kill me?" she had never wanted to cry so much in her life, but in the void tears would have filled there was only a dry, itching emptiness that tortured her soul and made things so amazingly clear. "When am I going to die?" she sobbed dryly.
Harry tried to hug her, but the guard cleared his throat and shook his head. "Blast this—I'm not even allowed to touch you!" he exploded. "And you won't die if we can win the trial." Jordan gave him a questioning look. "A trial. To prove who actually killed Albus Dumbledore."
"It wasn't me!" she replied sullenly. "They don't believe me though," she said dreamily, staring into space. "All they do is laugh. Laugh and laugh."
"Snap out of it," he said, shaking her. "We reminded Fudge that everyone reserves the right to a trial, whether they be accused or condemned."
Jordan shook her head. "They're just going to kill me," she said softly. "All I want is to die quickly and with at least a vestige of honor."
Harry stomped his feet, drawing her red-rimmed brown eyes to his clear green. "Can you be any more helpful?" he demanded sarcastically. "All you seem to want to do is just sit there and choose your death. Well, Jordan Marvolo? Do you want to die?"
"It seems rather unavoidable to me at the moment!" Jordan snapped back. "Have you ever been in this position, knowing that everyday a group of people are meeting discussing exactly how and when I shall die? Planning my death?"
"What if I have? What do you think I've spent my past two years thinking about? You and Voldemort and all the Death Eaters—planning my untimely demise, if you will!"
"That isn't fair!" she shouted, banging her wrists in their heavy metal cuffs against the rotting wooden bed. "I was never involved in anything about your death!" Which was actually quite true. Her only purpose at Hogwarts had been to kill Albus Dumbledore.
"How am I supposed to know that? For all I know you didn't kill Dumbledore, you were just trying to kill me. Is that why you wanted to see me at the Yule Ball?" he shouted back. That was unfair, and they both knew it.
"I though you believed me!" Jordan cried. "I'm telling you the truth, I'll swear it on my own grave!"
Harry sighed and placed his head in his hands. "I know you are. I'm sorry, I do believe you, it's just that this is really hard to do. You've no idea of the unwillingness of anyone to believe that you're not guilty. I know you aren't, because you told me so and I believe you. But nobody else would believe you, because nobody witnessed the crime."
Nobody witnessed the crime…Jordan thought to herself. There was something important about that phrase, something she needed to remember. Nobody witnesses the crime… "Nobody witnessed the crime…"she said softly, in what she thought of as her madwoman voice—soft and singing, quietly crazy. "Nobody. No one at all? Then who caught me?"
Harry's head went up. "Someone caught you?"
"Of course, silly. How else would I have ended up here?" she said, knocking her wrist cuff on the bars. Tank! Tank! Tank! She giggled, feeling white clouds of mist envelope her mind. It was so nice not to think!
He slapped her. Not hard, but it was enough for anger to clear the insanity out from between Jordan's ears. "If I ever hear that noise again, I will slap you again. Who caught you?" When she didn't answer right away, he drew back, looking at the guard at the door. His profile startled her.
"My first guardian. At your school. I've forgotten his name!" she cried, pulling up her legs and curling into a tight ball of bones, rocking back and forth. "I used to call him Daddy, but HE didn't want it to be so. He said that if I called him Daddy we'd become too close, and I'd value him over 'My Master'," she said sarcastically. "So I called him Dui, but he had to leave when I was four. I don't think he ever told me why. Dui left HIS service a long time ago."
"Snape?" Harry asked incredulously. "Professor Snape?"
Jordan sat up straight. "Severus Snape. Dui. A tall man, with a hooked nose."
"Yea, that sounds like him, but why was he taking care of you?" Harry obviously thought this man the scum of the earth, Jordan thought to herself.
"Maybe because he's a little bit more humane than you think he was, Harry Potter," Jordan said quietly. "Maybe he knew that he could make a difference in my life, just like you."
A silence fell, broken only by the harsh and ragged breathing of the woman in the cell next to Jordan's. She was moaning softly, banging her wrist cuffs on the floor in a broken rhythm.
Tank…tank…tank
Jordan closed her eyes, seeing herself as if from the outside. A tall, skeletally thin girl, with dark hair long from almost a year without a trim. Gold streaks fell down like sun beams in the soot-black of her hair. Long black eyelashes fanned out on pale cheeks devoid of any blush of life, and lips thin from hunger were pressed tight in thought. The ragged, wash-out black robes that all Azkaban inmates wore hung loose on her frame, and her emaciated arms clenched across her chest. Not a pretty girl.
She opened her eyes again, to see Harry. Such a handsome young man, with summer freckles and spicy green eyes. Black hair, glossy and well-cut. Muscular arms. But so stubborn. Jordan sighed, her breath making a cloud on the still air.
"Just talk to him, Harry. Tell him to visit me. You should visit me. I need to stay sane if we're going to think up a good argument for my trial," she tried to smile, her lips stretching painfully into the now unfamiliar position.
Harry, regardless of the guard, hugged her tightly. "I'll come back. Often. And I'll talk to Snape. I'll try, anyway. He hates me." He turned to go as the guard cleared his throat noisily.
"I don't think he hates you, Harry. Maybe you remind him of someone."
Harry looked back. "Who?" he asked sarcastically. "My father?"
Jordan smiled a little bitterly. "Maybe of me. Before I screwed up." She waved her hand around the cell. "Or maybe of him. Before he screwed up."
She watched him leave, dragging her fingers around in the dust of the floor. Harry's foot print were there, pointing away from her. Jordan crawled over to the other side or the tracks. That was better. She played with her hair, falling asleep slowly, awaiting the nightmares of Azkaban.