Chapter: Towards the Dark

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"All truth is simple…is that not doubly a lie?"

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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She remembered the story went like this:

They appeared, and hazy lines of blurry bodies became solid. It was dark and they could hear the black sea crashing against the rock precipice of the shore. A mist hung low in the air, masking the dim light that emanated forebodingly from a fortress in the distance.

Someone recognized. She had not told them where they were going, but they knew now. "No… fucking hell," a familiar male voice breathed, and Hermione saw a pale hand reach for the portkey they had arrived by. But she had already enchanted it to fail.

He would recognize it, wouldn't he?

She shot Malfoy a hard look. I warned you. His hand dropped away.

They looked panicked, their faces a white glow amidst the shrouding darkness. Hermione spoke quietly.

"I've brought you here so you can know. There's nothing glamorous about punishment, there's no bright light of forgiveness because you did what you thought was right. There's only loneliness and madness and one day death. This is Azkaban, and you can see there's nothing here but the cold."

They seemed to step back collectively, one single terrified motion that reflected the expression on their faces. More hands reached for the portkey only to find it ineffective. Even Vulpe looked horrified, and her dark eyes wandered instinctively to the crumbling edifice on the hill. Hermione wondered how she would feel, knowing that Bellatrix and Rodolphus had survived there. The past tense of that thought reminded her that Vulpe's parents had been executed after the war, a barbaric practice that Hermione would have vehemently opposed were it anyone else.

Malfoy stood straight, his face blank. His father had not been disposed of in the same way.

"I'm not going. You can't make me," whispered Montague, his eyes very wide. "I don't care what you do, Granger, but I'm not going in there."

Hermione looked at him sadly, but she had resolved not to push them. This was something they had to do willingly, and if someone said they didn't want to go, they wouldn't have to—now. "I'll have to inform the Ministry."

"I don't care."

"You'll be removed from the class. You'll probably have to go on trial."

"I don't care."

"Okay." She retrieved a portkeyed coin from her pocket and activated it as she handed it too him. He disappeared immediately.

After that Pucey and Warrington said they wouldn't go either. Then Bletchly, Higgs, and Daphne. She gave them all coins without argument. When they left it was very quiet.

"Miss Granger?"

Startled and jumpy in her disturbing surroundings, Hermione spun around immediately to see three hulking men, their faces shadowed with horrors both seen and done; they were the guards of Azkaban, and her guides. "Yes?" she answered, surprised to find her voice steady.

"Ah'm Owen, an' this is 'Enry an' Pete," the smallest of the three main said with a thick accent that Hermione had trouble placing, motioning to each of his companions as he introduced them. "We're yer guides."

"Ah…" Hermione said, sticking her hand out politely. They shook it carefully, as if afraid the bones in her hand would break. She smiled. "Shall we begin? We want the full tour."

She glanced briefly over her shoulder as the three men led them up the rocky shore, the colossal fortress looming over them, to see that her students most definitely did not agree with her.

They walked in silence, but heard the screams of prisoners as they approached. The building before them seemed to hum with magic, and Hermione could sense the securest wards in the known world flex and give as they entered the premises. She couldn't tell if the prickling at the back of her neck was due to them or something else. The darkness seemed somehow inherently evil.

The structure of the fortress was build for purpose rather than aesthetics. It was large and blocky, obviously having been renovated many times over to increase its capability. The most recent section to have been rebuilt was composed entirely of magically constructed metal, the strongest in the world, which had been bound seamlessly to the stone surrounding it. Hermione shivered, remembering the day of the mass breakout from Azkaban when that whole side of the prison had been blasted away using muggle explosives. Something muggle, Hermione thought ironically. Something they hated. The prison had soon after been modified to protect against muggle weapons as well as wizard. The building was enormous; it was only one story, but sprawled across the area of the island impressively. They had had to add to its many corridors and hallways after The Last Battle. There had been too many prisoners.

She doubted that any light ever permeated through the clouds covering the island, much less into the prison.

And it was cold. There were no dementors now, but it was entirely void of heat.

Hermione glanced behind her as they approached the threateningly bolted doors and saw that every single one of her charges was shivering and frightened. She had come prepared and began to pull on a heavy parka, but thought better of it and handed the garment to Pansy, who looked as if she were going to either faint or vomit from fear and exposure. Pansy looked rather amazed but nodded reluctantly in thanks.

Owen, Henry, and Pete were working at the locks on the door; there were an amazing number of them, and it took quite a long time. Finally, the door loosened with a low, sharp sound and creaked open. Hermione heard a whimper behind her.

"Welcome t' Azkaban," said Owen flatly, and it felt more like a condemnation than reception. They walked into the gloom, and heard the cries of the damned amidst the sounds of their hollow footsteps.

-

The prisoners' cells were disturbingly small, maybe five paces wall to wall. There were no bars, and the "door" was enchanted to look identical to the other three sides of the room from the inside. From the outside, they could see everything. She supposed it was a standard safety measure, but it was horrifying nonetheless.

It wasn't a cell, it was a box.

"They can hear us, but they can't see us," informed Henry, his face empty of all expression. When any guard joins the group of us, they lock him in an unused cell for a day or two so he can see what it's like." And then his face cracked, a shadow crossing over his eyes. "It's torture. They made it worse after the Dementors left. Brought some expert enchanter here and he waved his wand and all the cells shrunk and the walls closed in and changed and everything's so dark now."

Hermione nodded slowly and remained silent.

She made herself look into the cells, so that her class would follow her example. Most of the prisoners looked like a heap of rags and flesh, motionless in a corner of their cell. Some were naked, sprawled on the cold floor, their sunken chests moving only slightly. Many raved and paced across their room, talking to invisible people around them and gesturing madly. Some screamed until their voices left them. Some were crying.

Pansy finally fainted, and Pete picked her up and carried her until she revived. Vulpe looked as pale as Hermione had ever seen her and she walked with her eyes determinedly set on the floor, wincing as she heard the prisoners rant and scream and cry. Blaise was trying and failing to keep his face blank. And Malfoy… Malfoy looked as if he would die.

Hermione felt tears begin to spill down her cheeks and did nothing to stop them. She wanted to reach out, to touch and let him know that someone was there. He looked like he didn't know that anything existed except for the prisoners in the cells and the high, bitter walls around them.

Hermione shook her head and turned back to the prisoners and the tears did not cease. She saw a familiar face within a cell and stopped walking abruptly. "Oh… Nott," she breathed, and every single one of her students' heads snapped towards her, and then to the prisoner that sat bundled in the corner of the cell before them.

Theodore Nott had been the most malicious and involved Death Eater of their generation. His wealth and persuasiveness had not saved him from a life sentence, unlike most of her students. She saw them recoil with the realization that this could have been any one of them. They could all have been in Nott's place.

"Let's keep going," Hermione said quietly. "Come on." She felt pity, now, for them.

They went on, walking through the winding tunnels and corridors of the prison slowly. They went for what seemed like hours in silence, until she heard a memorable voice. A cultured accent, a smooth, slippery tone. An evil lilt. No.

She grabbed Owen's arm. "Let's turn back now. Please…" She said fervently, whispering as she glanced back towards Malfoy, whose face had gone very white.

The guard looked back at her, confused. "There's no other way out, Miss Granger, if you want t' keep on th' safest route."

"What?" She said loudly, a bit panicked. In a lower voice she continued, "I told the Ministry—"

"…Narcissa, I told the house elves that I wanted my robes impeccably pressed, and…"

Hermione stopped talking immediately and swept around to Malfoy. His mouth was pressed into a thin line and he seemed to be moving as if on mechanics. "You don't have to, Malfoy. You can—"

"…Hogwarts' fool Albus…"

"—stop and wait. You don't have to do this," Hermione finished quickly, grasping his shoulder as he refused to look at her with eyes so blank that she was frightened.

"…Dark Lord wants us all there by nine o' clock, Draco. What do you propose I tell him, hmm? That you're simply too lazy…"

Malfoy turned his eyes finally to hers, looking down at her with a sudden blaze of loathing dancing in his gray irises. "Did you or did you not hear the guard, Hermione? I have to…"

He trailed off as they rounded the corner. Hermione, still shocked by his use of her first name, had not prepared herself.

Lucius Malfoy was a shadow of his old self. His hair, once of the sort that Hermione would have considered beautiful if it had belonged to any other person, was so caked with grime that it looked black. His impressive bearing and form had disintegrated and he now looked nearly skeletal. His eyes were wide and appeared alert, but if one were to look directly into their depths one would see the madness coloring his face. He was one of the ones who raved. He had conversations with people no one else could see, and walked frantically around his cell, head jerking every which way as he talked.

"Darling 'Cissa, you know Draco must do this…No! I'm sorry, my lord…yes, I understand. Wait, Dobby, what did I tell you? The pictures are to be straightened just so. It will be clothes the next time you disobey me. Out of my sight!" And here his voice turned low and sinister. "Draco, what did I say would happen if you failed? You knew that Azkaban was to be broken out of soon after the completion of your task. Did you think that I would not find you? You forget, son, that Severus is far more loyal to me than to yourself…Yes, of course, he must be punished. Wormtail, I have never met such an incompetent being as you. The Dark Lord will hear of this, I can assure you… wants her alive! Don't use Avada Kedavra, Avery! Disobey me…"

And it went on, Lucius's broken mind jumping from one point in his life to another. Hermione trained her eyes on Malfoy, who had stopped walking and stared, horrified, at this shell of his father.

"Let's go," Hermione said loudly over the yells and refined conversation of the elder Malfoy, but no one was listening.

Draco stepped back until his shoulders were touching the opposite wall of the corridor, his face entirely bloodless. Hermione saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip and didn't fail to notice the way his hands shook as he clenched and unclenched them.

"Father?" He said in a very small voice, sounding so much like his younger self that Hermione jumped forward and stood in front of him, attempting to block his view of the raving man despite her inferior height.

The constant stream of conversation halted immediately, and Lucius Malfoy turned his head very slowly towards the sound of a voice he apparently recognized. His nostrils dilated as he sniffed the air once, and then again, as if he could smell, in some perversely serpentine way, the presence of his son. "My lord, it appears we have a visitor. Yes, my wayward son, for whom I feel I must once more apologize. He has been punished accordingly for his grievous ineptitude, I assure you. Yes, yes…the most severe for a member of my family, of course." A pause. "As always, my lord, you have displayed impressive insight and intelligence to have guessed such a conclusion. Draco is no longer part of the Malfoy line. He is disowned, and will fight under you as a member of the lowest rank of Death Eaters possible. Of course, such a fate will surely…"

Draco had closed his eyes during his father's deranged soliloquy and was now leaning the majority of his body weight against the wall. Hermione did not doubt that he, like his father, was reliving that night that must have ended in such pain. And then, seeing Draco's expression as Lucius continued to speak of him, she had had enough. Not knowing what else to do, she whirled towards the rambling prisoner and pressed herself against the invisible barrier between the corridor and the cell.

"SHUT UP, LUCIUS!"

Her voice rang out clearly above the steady stream of noise from the prisoners. Lucius stopped talking at once, his mouth clamping down tightly as he stared at what he saw as a screaming stone wall with something that looked almost like fear. He abruptly backed into the opposite border of his cell and sank down into a huddled ball, drawing his knees up to his chest and remaining silent.

Hermione, breathing hard, turned around to find everyone staring at her. She ignored this, and stalked up to Draco, who had not moved. His eyes were still closed.

"Malfoy." She tried again. "Malfoy. Draco."

His eyes snapped open and focused on her. Hermione, both fascinated and horrified, tried not to gaze at the pain in them. Dropping her face towards the ground, she curtly said, "Come on, then," and walked on.

-

Hermione watched blankly as the last group of students touched the portkey and disappeared, seeming to meld into the murky shadows around them. She would not return, not yet. She had something she needed to do.

"You're going to see Severus, aren't you?"

She jumped, starting so violently that she nearly fell over. Malfoy shot out his hand and grasped her wrist, righting her and letting go very quickly afterwards. Hermione nodded silently, rubbing the skin that ached where he had touched. He had a strong grip. "I thought you left."

He shook his head, his attention trained on the ground. When he raised his head again Hermione saw a very fierce look in his eyes. "I hate you," he said quietly, his voice low and faintly ragged. She saw an expression she was vastly familiar with on his face; it was the same look that Harry had had after a monumental battle during the war, the look that Mrs. Weasley had when she set the three empty places at the dinner table every night. She recognized it from the mirror when she picked up Ron's old shirt and remembered. "I can't believe…" And here he trailed off, his gaze focused entirely on her. He was not violent, and she did not feel threatened. He was simply angry and sad all at once, and it was raw and painful to see. She had never before imagined a Draco Malfoy like this.

It was very, very cold.

Hermione felt like crying again. "I know, Draco." Sometime inside the prison she had begun to think of him as something other than just Malfoy, and his first name slipped out with surprising ease. She decided to ignore this. "I'm so…" Her throat stopped, and she waited a moment before continuing. "I'm sorry. I tried to stop it, I really did. I didn't mean…" She didn't know what else to say.

He turned his face away from her and stared for some time out into the roiling sea. Hermione, for want of anything more adequate to do, set the last portkey on the ground and silently made her way back to the last place she wanted to be on earth. Owen was waiting for her at the entrance of the prison.

She had to see her old Professor because she had to know why. He had been imprisoned literally as soon as the Aurors had caught him. The Ministry had, in the midst of the war when everything seemed to be lost, decided do revoke the right to a fair trial for the truly "dark ones," something Hermione opposed even to this day despite her activity in the war. Snape hadn't had even a chance to argue his case. But Hermione had no sympathy for him. She needed to know why he had betrayed someone who had helped him so much and why he had not killed Harry when he had the chance and there were so many questions that she could barely keep track of them in her head. What she needed was closure.

"I'm coming with you," a hoarse voice behind her said. Hermione stopped walking and sighed.

"No, you're not. You need to get away from this place."

"Shut the fuck up, Granger."

"Okay."

-

She didn't ask him anything as they walked through the winding, claustrophobic halls of the prison again, and he didn't offer to explain. She could guess herself why he wanted to come.

He was guilty and he was angry and he was tired of not knowing.

The silence felt awkward so she spoke, finally, her voice seeming very soft amidst the noise of the prisoners. "Do you still dream? Of the war, I mean? Harry told me about what happened that night, during our sixth year. Did you—"

"I don't want to talk about that."

Hermione looked up at him, surprised by the flatness of his tone, and found him to be staring straight ahead at Owen's back but not really seeing. She didn't say anything more after that.

Snape was not one to rave and blather, and Hermione was infinitely glad. She could not have dealt with her old potions professor repeating ingredients to insolent first years who were not really there or sucking up to a nonexistent Dark Lord. He simply sat, sallow face blank, silent.

Draco, surprisingly, was the first to speak. "Severus?"

Snape seemed to shake himself out of a stupor and turned his head slowly, as if his neck was very stiff, towards the source of the familiar voice.

Hermione tried now. "Professor?" She was shocked to discover how much her questioning tone sounded like herself at fifteen, asking her teacher a question about the properties of boomslang skin.

Snape sat up, his eyes now very awake. "Draco?"

Draco's face went hard. "Yes. You're lucid?"

Something in her old professor's face twitched, and he blinked twice before speaking. "More or less. What…What are you doing here?"

"Granger has questions. I want to listen."

"Granger?" Snape said distantly, as if trying to drudge up memories of a past life, which Hermione supposed was more or less an accurate presumption.

Hermione glanced at Draco sharply. She doubted very much that he wanted simply to listen to a conversation, but continued nonetheless. "Yes…" she intoned nervously. "You remember me? Harry Potter's friend?"

"Ah… The sensible one."

She stepped back instinctively, surprised by the first compliment she had ever received from the surly professor. Ex-professor, she reminded herself. She was also surprised by how sane he seemed; it was unnerving in a place like this. "Er…yes. I have some questions."

"You always have," Snape replied after several moments, as if considering the sound of her voice.

"Why did you betray Dumbledore? He helped you…saved you from Azkaban before. Why hurt him?" Once she began, she could not stop the questions from tumbling disorderedly from her lips.

"Betray?" Snape said, chuckling darkly. "That's what they all said, wasn't it?"

"You did!" Hermione said in a tone louder than she intended, somewhat angry now. She felt rather than saw Draco shift beside her.

"No, never betray. You should learn, girl, the signs of legilimency. Or Harry Potter should. He was never very good at any of those sorts of things, was he? No, never betray. Never."

Hermione glanced at Draco, who looked only slightly less confused than she felt. "Right," she persisted. "Why didn't you kill Harry, if you were always secretly loyal to Voldemort?"

"You don't listen," Snape said immediately, before seeming to revert into something else entirely unlike his previous attitude. "Dumbledore said, he said so." Hermione was horrified to hear her old professor's voice break and waver unsteadily.

Hermione saw in her peripheral vision Draco press the flats of his hands against the invisible wall between them, and heard him speak with such vehemence that she nearly withdrew from his side. "Why did you perform the Unbreakable Vow? How could it have possibly helped you?"

"You two aren't listening. I had to…had to keep up the arrangement. Had to look perfect. Had to help…had to…"

And after that he said no more things of use to anyone but himself.

-

They appeared together inside the empty Ministry classroom, the other students having long since departed. They were both very shaken, but Draco more so, Hermione thought.

He leaned against one of the desks because it looked as if his legs would not support him. He was pale and trembling from the aftereffects of that place, that torture that had claimed everything he knew.

Hermione needed to escape. "I-I'll see you next week," she blurted lamely, and began to rush from the room. And then he looked at her.

He was lost. Something was destroyed completely inside. His hair hung over his haunted eyes with a shallow curve that echoed the worn arc of his spine. She could see the shallow rise and fall of his shoulders, far too fast.

Too fast.

She didn't feel her legs move, but she was before him in an instant. He gazed silently at her, his face tilted slightly downwards as if hiding. She said the only thing that seemed appropriate.

"I warned you."

She saw the muscles in his jaw flicker and move. "No, you didn't. You didn't tell me anything," he ground out, and then she moved her hand to his cheek and rested it there, her fingers smoothing the lines over his angular cheekbones and at the corners of his eyes. His eyelids fluttered closed, and he released a long breath of air.

She let the warmth of her hand flow into him, and when she saw that it was not enough she moved closer and rose on the tips of her toes and took him in her arms.

He was stiff for a moment, tension knotting his muscles, but then he folded into her and clung, his face pressed tight to her neck. She whispered to him, told him it was okay, and apparated to her flat.

-

She set him up on her couch and he fell asleep immediately without removing his shoes. She left them on, unwilling to involve herself further, and then went into her room, locking the door behind her.

She had had to do it. She didn't want to think about what he would have done if she had left him alone. He was broken, now.

She had broken him.

Hermione stared at herself in the mirror above her armoire until a tear trailed down her cheek and hated herself, then.

When she woke up in the morning he had gone away.

She remembered the story went like this, and that it was the beginning of something.

-

"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Author's Note: That, I think, is the best chapter yet of this fic. Either that or I'm hopelessly misguided.

Oh, but what fun to write!

Of course we get a bit more insight into everyone's character when troubled times rear their ugly heads. Poor, lovely Draco. I hope it was to your liking. Azkaban is one creepy place, and that's all I have to say about that.

There's not too much left, I think. Maybe a few more chapters, unless I can think of something else I want to do. I may do a sequel, but I'd have to be inspired.

As always, cookies and cheesecake and chocolate tortes (we had 25 people over last night and those were the desserts…mmm…) for all my reviewers. There are so many more of you than I am used to! It's delightful! I'm happy that this is something moderately popular. Remember the cookies and cheesecake and chocolate tortes, people, and remember to review!