Mitzvahs
Chapter Four
by Capella
A/N: Hooray! At least this came a little quicker than the last chapter.
However, for the entire summer I will be out of town at various nerd camps, so I doubt that I'll get any writing done. Don't expect an update from me until August -- however, I might be able to get some notebook writing done during June, so you might want to check back the second week of July, where I have a temporary break between nerd camps. I might be able to get the next chapter done then.
WHOOO! Three quotes!
Thanks again to the HP Lexicon who, though they are probably unaware, have helped immensely in writing this story. However, since in the Harry Potter books Azkaban has never been thoroughly explored, I had to make up some of this -- I thought I remembered Sirius saying that he got the newspaper. Some of it was obvious -- I wondered if there would be wizard guards there as well, but that would be odd since remaining around the dementors is a job that no one would take.
I'm assuming that Dementors can talk. Fudge says that the guards told him Sirius kept saying "he's at Hogwarts" in his sleep. The guards = dementors, so you can see where I'm going with that.
So, here it is. Of course it's not happy, since dementors tend to suck happy memories out of stuff.
"You say that I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly, but you say that Dreams have no power here? Tell me -- what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"
-- Morpheus
"They don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most go mad within weeks."
-- Remus Lupin
"Most go mad in there, and plenty stop eating in the end. They lose the will to live. You could always tell when a death was coming, because the dementors could sense it, they got excited."
-- Sirius Black
Draco felt the cold as soon as he took his first step inside of Azkaban Fortress.
The cold rushed through him like a cutting wind and sliced his facade of bravery in half, and he fell to his hands and knees and vomited on the floor, shivering so badly that he almost pulled a muscle. He gasped for breath for a moment before his stomach tried to turn itself inside out again. Dark pressed in on his mind and he knew, he could tell that it was the dementors that he felt. Now, shaking on the floor next to a pool of his own vomit, he felt vaguely ashamed for making such fun of Harry's fear of dementors. He supposed he hadn't been affected by them in third year because he hadn't had any horrible memories. He'd have to thank his father for changing that.
Someone landed a sharp kick in his side and he grunted, looking up into the disgusted face of one of the Aurors, the short Oriental woman.
"Get up," she said. Draco looked up at her, his legs refusing to obey him, and her face softened a bit. She grabbed hold of one of his arms and hauled him to his feet; she was surprisingly strong.
"You'll get used to that feeling," she said, and there was no trace of the pity in her voice that he had seen on her face a moment earlier. "You'll be feeling that a lot for the next twenty years."
Twenty years.
He'd be thirty-eight when he got out of Azkaban. Most of his classmates would have jobs and families by then. All the things he had ever worked for -- the magic he'd been taught, the extra advanced Potions lessons Snape had been giving him, his father's weath that would support him until he was dead, his ambitions -- all of it was for nothing.
He wondered about the cruelty of the Wizengamot. Surely it would have been kinder to give him a life sentence -- what good would come of being released? He would never hold a job again, unless he became a Death Eater and did what his father did -- bribed and threatened and blackmailed his way up to importance.
It was a little frightening that he was starting to consider it.
He stumbled on a stone and barely kept himself from tripping. The Oriental woman rolled her eyes and tugged on his arm.
"Hurry up," she hissed, and Draco reflected that she was probably about as happy to be here as he.
"Yeah, well, fuck you too," he muttered, and she shot him an incredulous look. "I'm not in any hurry to be there." He actually had no idea where 'there' was. Maybe his cell. He didn't really know how jail worked. He tamped down his pride and asked.
She smirked. "We're just the delivery boys," she said, gesturing with her free hand to the other Aurors accompanying Draco, and said no more, although Draco had a good enough imagination, and the growing, paralyzing cold would have been a large enough hint even if he didn't.
He panicked, and turned to the woman beside him. "Please don't do this," he said, and she ignored him, looking forward, down the dark corridor lit by flickering lanterns that didn't quite banish all the shadows in the corners. "Please."
"You did what you did," she said. "Now we must do what we must. It is not our job to help criminals evade justice." She paused. "Even if you are just a child."
He looked at her again, realized that she looked to be just the right age to have a son about as old as Draco.
Suddenly she let go of his arm, and he almost crumpled to the floor before he caught himself. The cold was almost overwhelming, now, and the look of almost-pity in her eyes scared him. Without a word, the Aurors turned around as one and began walking in the direction they had come.
It was silent for a long moment.
The cold increased so exponentially and suddenly that Draco fell to his knees, shivering, the cold pushing its way into his open mouth and down his throat and into his lungs until he could not breathe.
He heard the breathing first, a horrible rattling sound from all around him. Something curled around his arm and he stared at it in horror; slimy, decomposing fingers dug into the flesh of his forearm, and he looked up slowly into what seemed to be an all-invading blackness.
He let out a shaky, pained gasp, and abruptly lost conciousness.
When he came to, on a cot in a cold, dank, claustrophobically tiny cell, there was a different kind of cold presence near him.
"Get up."
Draco opened his eyes, for a moment unable to focus in the flickering light emitted from the torch on the wall. Then he saw the shining white of his father's hair.
"Father," he gasped, and sat up so quickly that his head spun and blackness speckled his vision. He swung his legs over the side of the small cot and stood up, swaying, looking into his father's icy blue eyes.
"Draco," his father said, emotionless. Draco felt his heart falter in his chest.
"Are you -- are you here to get me out?"
Lucius regarded Draco for a long time.
"No," he said finally.
"Has Harry said anything?" Draco asked dully, not even bothering to change Harry's name into Potter for his father's benefit.
"How should I know?" Lucius asked, sounding slightly irritated. "What were you thinking, Draco, letting yourself get caught? I did not realize that I had brought my son up to be such a traitorous fool. Get you out? Your mother and I are better off without you."
"Father --" he started.
Lucius backhanded Draco across the face, and Draco fell to the floor, his lip splitting and bleeding onto the stone. One of Lucius's rings had caught Draco's cheek and opened up a gash in the skin. He tried to lift himself up. "Fa --" His father's boot connected with his side as he got to his hands and knees; a shocked cry escaped his mouth when he heard the crunch of bone breaking as his ribs crumbled under the pressure. He crumpled at his father's feet, breathing in desperate, gasping sobs, swallowing blood, and hoping that one of his ribs hadn't punctured a lung, that the blood in his mouth was only from where one of his teeth had cut into his cheek.
"You disgust me," Lucius hissed. "You will never attempt to contact either your mother or myself again. After you are released, do not try to find solace or shelter at the manor. If I see you again, I will have you killed."
"Please, Father," Draco said, his voice flat and hopeless even to himself, his forehead pressed against the floor. He jumped as he felt his father's cane dig painfully into the back of his neck. With every breath he took, the cane dug a little sharper into his skin, and he began to wonder if his father would break his spine.
"Do not," his father said in a low, dangerous voice, "address me in that manner again. For all forms and purposes, I am no longer your father."
With that the cane was removed, and Lucius moved away. "I wish to leave," he said smoothly, and Draco listened, emotionless, to the open-and-shut of the door.
He stayed where he was, forehead resting on the floor, watching as the mixed tears and sweat pooled beneath his face, his mind as empty and echoing as the silence after a scream.
Draco came out of his stupor slowly, and it took a great amount of effort to drag himself off the floor and sit on the cot, his broken ribs screaming in protest at the exertion, his muscles watery after spending who knows how long on the floor.
He shivered and rubbed his arms absently as the feeling of pressing fear increased slightly. Draco looked at the door as the air became tight and close around him, panting slightly in the manner of a snared animal.
The stone door creaked, and Draco heard that horrible rattling breathing again, just before the door opened slowly and fingers curled around the frame.
"Jesus," Draco whispered, and abruptly it was as if he was back in the dungeon with his father -- like the metal was still stuck in his collarbone and chin and the powder was burning his skin. He could hear his father laughing softly; he could feel his father's soft fingers smoothing his hair back from his sweaty forehead. The torchlight flickered erratically around him, oblivious to his shrieks.
His head hit the floor first when he fainted.
When he woke a few hours later -- wondering exactly how many hours he would spend passed out on the floor for the next twenty years -- he could not remember the first time Harry had smiled at him.
He panicked for a moment, going over every moment of his life in his mind, before remembering that Harry Potter was a bloody traitor anyway and forgetting that unpleasant moment of his life was nothing horrible, that the dementors certainly could have sucked a different, more pleasant memory out of him. Although off the top of his head, he could not think of what.
There was a bowl of greyish porridge by the door, and a slice of bread, and a newspaper.
Draco leapt from the bed, wincing at the pain, his hands curling hungrily around the newspaper. He scanned the front page, hoping against hope that he would see something about Harry on it.
His heart stopped in his chest.
There was a picture of Harry in the infirmary at St. Mungo's. He was curled up in the bed, pale -- as far as Draco could see from the black and white newsprint -- but very obviously awake. He blinked blearily around, looking thoroughly confused; a white bandage was wrapped around his upper torso and shoulder. The nurse standing next to him looked angry.
'Boy Who Lives Survives Assassination Attempt; Draco Malfoy Imprisoned On Murder Attempt Charges.'
Draco's eyes widened, and he started pacing despite the pain in his side, reading the story feverishly for any sign that Harry had told them the truth. The real truth. There was none.
Instead, Draco's name was plastered across the story with the title "the convicted" in front of it.
Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, prominent members of the wizarding community, was tried and sentenced to twenty consecutive years in Azkaban wizarding prison for the attempted murder of Harry James Potter.
"I had a feeling from the first time I heard of my son's apparent enmity towards Mr. Potter that someday this latent desire for revenge would surface," Lucius Malfoy said. "I wish I could have been able to somehow stop it. However, I am thankful that Mr. Potter emerged unscathed. Even though Draco is my son, I am grateful to the Wizengamot and Chief Warlock James Brennan for giving him the punishment that he has brought upon himself. As of now, I publicly assert that Draco is no longer my heir nor a part of the Malfoy family. He will recieve no assistance from Narcissa or myself."
And two paragraphs later --
Potter was unavailable for comment.
The newspaper dropped from Draco's suddenly nerveless fingers. Unavailable for comment. Harry was awake -- he could have said something; surely they would have listened. If he hadn't said something now, that meant he probably never was planning on it in the first place.
Draco bared his teeth in a snarl.
If Harry thought he could just -- betray Draco in this manner, he was about to learn something else. If nothing else, Draco had been raised a Malfoy. Presented with the correct incentive, he could be suitably patient.
So he sat down on his cot calmly, aware as the hours passed and each memory of his mother, his friends, and Harry Potter was slowly leeched from his mind, fingered the cut on his cheek that his father's ring had made, and waited for the dementors to return.
Well yeah, it's short. But I'm leaving next week and I wanted to get this out 'fore I left.
See ya'll in July!
