Pity
Azkaban without its guards is nothing. Lucius had laughed at his sentencing – unhinged, they must have thought him, but it hadn't mattered – high and cold, eerily familiar to some. Soon to be familiar to all; yes, he believes this.
It is dark and it is dirty, but they are fools to think that walls can hold them. All are fools against the Dark Lord.
He has heard the whispers, yes – the Potter boy, nothing has changed in fifteen years – but pays no mind to such things. They do not understand. They do not know. Some things are greater than mundane minds – even his, he admits this – can understand.
And that is why they follow Him.
Rumours of a plan, of his son, of Dumbledore. He berates himself in the dark; it is his fault, his fault, he failed; the Dark Lord neither forgives nor forgets. His son is sixteen, no match for this sort of thing; intelligent, surely, but Lucius cannot help but remember the slight shadows of doubt. Rare, yes, but still there, and he believes he has cause to doubt his son's devotion, if only a fraction. But it is a crack, a flaw, and could be broken into – but he mustn't think these things, he must be on guard, his thoughts must be closed.
Some days he thinks he might be going mad, here in the dark, even in the absence of the guards, for his thoughts tumble over each other and contradictions run wild. He is above that, surely he is; he is not weak. Not weak, not weak; a mantra, and wishes desperately for sleep, for air, for a master and a wand and a task.
There are some in here – he hears their cries at night, they are broken, they are not like him – who are not guilty; he would know. He realizes that the Ministry must be panicking, trying not to show it, and the thought lights a corner of his mind with triumph. To throw innocents in this dark place. He has never believed in innocence, but he nearly pities them, if he knew what it was like to feel pity.
His cell, the darkness, and the screams of the dying, if only in his mind.