The stone floor was uneven and sloping in the direction of the left wall, where a cluster of bugs floated, drowned in the collection of cold, stagnant water. The vile cell had a window (if the crudely cut gap in the stone could even be called that), but Dolores was far too short for it to be of any use or comfort to her. Even standing on the filth-caked mattress was no help. She had discovered she could get the slightest glimpse out of the tiny opening if she jumped in a very undignified manner, but she still couldn't see more than a patch of pale sky and the occasional flash of dark water. She rather wished she had no window at all, for on wet days (which came often there in the North Sea), the cold rain blew mercilessly into her cell. In fact, because the window was so small, the water streamed in with much greater force, pelting her skin painfully. It was on days like this that she was forced to drag her soiled mattress into the corner of the room and huddle behind it, breathing in the smell of mildew and decay until the rain had subsided. It had stormed relentlessly during Dolores' first days in Azkaban, the wintry air turning the downpour into half-frozen slush that felt like a thousand tiny knives. She was loathe to touch the repulsive mattress at first, but when her skin grew raw and blistered from the ceaseless onslaught, she gave in and crawled behind the mold-soaked mattress. The stench was nearly unbearable and she retched violently, vomiting the contents of her stomach down the front of her striped robes. Eyes watering from the acidity in her throat, she had called for a guard—screamed that she needed a new uniform at once but, of course, no one came. A hoarse voice from somewhere down the hall asked her very kindly if she needed help.

"Yes!" She called back, relieved to have any kind of contact with another person. "I've…stained my robes."

"Take 'em off, then. The dementors like plump 'uns!" The compassion in his voice had vanished, replaced with gleeful maliciousness.

Dolores covered her ears quickly, but not before she heard some of the obscene things the faceless man was crudely suggesting. She could feel hot, embarrassed tears pricking her eyes and she ordered herself not to cry.

Logically, of course, she knew that weight was not a factor in the dementors' level of interest in a human, but she still took some small comfort in the knowledge that she was rather skinny. In fact, Dolores Umbridge looked nothing like she had in her previous life—no longer plump or clad in pink, her hair, once so precisely styled, now hung in limp curls around her sallow, gaunt face. One could be forgiven for not recognizing her at all.

The Azkaban diet had been rather effective for Dolores—she had never been quite so thin. Even as a child she had always been overweight. It was one of the many things her mother hated about her. She had tried every possible diet—including appetite suppressing potions and several experimental spells—without any success.

Her mother would be proud now. Although, considering the fact that she was, after all, serving a life sentence in Azkaban, perhaps considerably less proud.

Dolores' mother was a monster. She had never been shy when it came to pointing out her children's flaws—Dolores' most especially. Chubby, bowlegged, too short—Dolores had heard it all. She pretended that it didn't matter but, of course, it did.

When her mother made an offhanded comment about the dull, common color of Dolores' brunette hair, she tried to dye it a pale blonde, like Florence Skeeter. The combination of muggle box dye and the color charm she had (very inexpertly) performed left her hair dry and brittle, falling out in clumps when she brushed it. Dolores cried the entire time as her sister cut off the damaged parts, leaving her with only a few inches of hair that was now exactly one shade lighter than it had been before.

"My God, Dolores, what have you done to your hair?" Her mother had gasped, unsuccessfully stifling a laugh. "They're going to think you're a boy!"

Panicked, staring into the spotted mirror at herself, she worried that her mother was right—perhaps she did look too masculine. She was already overlooked by all the boys—the thought of returning to Hogwarts for her fifth year looking like this was enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she decided something had to be done about it. Proud Slytherin though she was, Dolores Umbridge wore pink every single day after that.

Startled back to reality by the harsh clatter of the daily food tray, Dolores looked up and realized that the rain had lessened to a slight drizzle. She pushed the mattress off and stumbled over to the three small portions of bread and water. There was a small lump of cheese on the plate today, but it was so moldy that the surface was almost completely white. Dolores fought back the urge to be sick, which was made even more difficult by the fact that her hands now smelled exactly like the mattress she had just touched—a putrid combination of rat droppings, decay and stale urine. She was forced to eat on her hands and knees, using only her mouth to touch the bread—like a dog. She tried drinking the water in the same way, but accidentally knocked over her cup, splashing the liquid all over the floor where it mingled with the fetid water that already pooled there.

She let her head thump sadly against the stone wall. Perhaps she would die of dehydration. Surely death would be better than this. Would anyone miss her? Did anyone miss her?

"Cornelius."

She wasn't sure if she'd spoken the words aloud or in her head. She thought of him often—Cornelius Fudge. Though she had worked tirelessly for Scrimgeour and Thicknesse after Cornelius resigned, her loyalties always lay with him. He was an excellent Minister, taking his dedication to laws and protocols very seriously. He was a wonderful man. She missed him quite terribly. In all honesty, he was the closest thing she had to a friend during her Ministry tenure (aside from Mafalda Hopkirk, who was kind to everyone.) Surely Cornelius would miss her, wouldn't he? After the years she spent working diligently for him, surely he must mourn her absence…wish to see her, perhaps? Although, she supposed with a nasty sinking feeling in her chest, she would never see him again as it were. Her sentence was for life—a concept so impossible that she couldn't seem to contain it in her mind. Thinking about forever made her head hurt, and the prospect of dying here…all alone…like her…

The fact that Dolores had a brother was generally common knowledge; however, no one except for Cornelius and her close friend Elizabeth was aware that she also had sister. Two years older than her, Dorothy Umbridge was beautiful—tall, thin and dainty—and extremely talented. Everything her mother wanted in a daughter and everything Dolores was not.

Dolores adored her sister, as did everyone else. They were very close, and Dorothy was the one person who could make Dolores feel better after a confrontation with mother—ironic, since the conflict with their mother usually stemmed from the differences between them: "A little makeup wouldn't go amiss once in a while, Dolores, not everyone is naturally beautiful like Dorothy," or "Surely you don't intend to eat any of those, do you? It's alright for your sister, you know, she's thin as a rail. But you, well…"

After some of the nastier fights, Dorothy would crawl under the covers with her and they would read Witch Weekly by wandlight; giggling over cute Quidditch players and laughing until Dolores could barely breathe. Her sister was the bright spot in what was a very dull and joyless childhood. In fact, despite her mother's apparent hatred of her, she grew up quite happy...for a time.

Dolores had been the one to find her.

She had received her Hogwarts letter, but was still attending Muggle primary school until September. One afternoon, after Dorothy had skipped all her classes, Dolores had come home to find her asleep in her bed, curled up on her side with the covers and blankets pulled all the way over her head. Flinging her bag onto the floor, she collapsed onto the bed and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. It was boiling hot in their room; her back was already beginning to sweat.

"I think I might be sick tomorrow as well." She informed Dorothy. "I can't stand another day of that Justin Hooke prodding me in the back with his pencil and sticking bugs in my hair."

Dorothy said nothing and Dolores nudged her underneath the mound of blankets.

"Dorry, are you awake?"

Dolores could feel the sweat soaking through to her back, thick and sticky. She tugged at her blouse and when she pulled her hand away, it was covered in blood. Yelping, she leapt up and realized with horror that the covers were drenched with blood. She yanked the sheets back, revealing the body of her sister. Irrationally, she thought perhaps Dorothy had gotten her monthly or, perhaps, a nosebleed. What she found was nothing so trivial. Her sister's blank, glassy eyes stared hauntingly up at Dolores from a bloodless face—her forearms sliced vertically from wrist to elbow and her throat cut—so deep that the blood gurgling out was nearly black.

She threw herself back, crashing into the oakwood dresser. She must have been screaming, but she couldn't hear herself making any sound. When her brother found them, almost an hour later, she was sitting in a pool of blood and glass, the glittering shards from the broken mirror reflecting fragmented pieces of the horrible scene.

Later, after her body had been taken away, Dolores couldn't stop screaming. She'd screamed until her voice was gone, and even then she screamed still; a hoarse, breathy whisper. Her mother had shrieked at her to shut up, but not even the fear of punishment could have restrained her. Finally, late into the night, her mother charged into the sitting room and yanked Dolores up by the collar of her shirt, startling her into silence and nearly choking her. She dragged her down the hallway and shoved her through a doorway. Dolores could hear the familiar sound of a key turning in the old, rusty lock and realized with a dull stab of dread that she was back in her room. Dorothy's room. Somewhere in her consciousness, her rational mind understood that she was in shock. The screaming had stopped, though, so her mother would sleep just fine.

Without realizing what she was doing, she had walked over to the window and crawled outside, landing with a muffled thump on the dew-soaked grass. She and Dorothy loved to sneak out here; late at night when no one was awake they would lie on their backs, looking up at the stars and dreaming about what they would do when they were free of this place. They had both been so looking forward to getting their Hogwarts letters but only one letter had come. For Dolores. It wasn't a surprise—she had been exhibiting signs of magic for years while Dorothy tried in vain to exhibit the slightest magical ability. Of course, this had done nothing to lessen their mother's hatred for Dolores. In fact, once she had concrete proof that her younger daughter was a witch ("abomination, unholy aberration!"), she seemed to go out of her way to make her life miserable. Funnily enough, although Dorothy hadn't received a letter, their mother suddenly turned on her as well. For the first time in her life, their picked apart everything, from Dorothy's appearance to her clothing choice to her singing voice as she quietly hummed in the living room. Nothing she did was good enough; a sentiment Dolores knew well.

Plucking a wet blade of grass, Dolores felt the sharp pang of loss in her stomach. She was partly to blame. If she hadn't been the magic one, if she had spent more time with Dorothy, if she hadn't gone to school today, if—she pressed her fists against her ears and cried. This couldn't be. How could this be? Was she truly to be alone in the world?

Stifling a sob, she glared at the shadowy street. Quite suddenly, her temper flared and she set her jaw. She balled her hands into fists and resolved then and there that she would not let her sister have done this in vain. Dolores had never amounted to much in her mother's eyes but she could make damn sure she was respected by the Wizarding World. She would be proper and organized and perfect—everything Dorothy had tried so hard to be. She would go to Hogwarts in the fall and study as hard as she could—learn every piece of magic she could—and someday she would come back here and make her mother pay for what she had done. Her evil, narcissistic, harridan of a mother who had stolen everything from her—her happiness, her childhood and, now, her sister.

Dolores vowed that she would make something of herself. She would prove her mother wrong if it was the very last thing she did…and then she woke up one day to find that she had turned into her. She had become so obsessed with reputation and her advancement through the ranks of the Ministry—so consumed with the pursuit of power—that she never stopped to think about what she was sacrificing in the process.

"Heartless," they called her at the trial. "Cold," "prejudiced," "evil." As she had looked up at The Wizengamot, she saw herself as she appeared to them—she saw her mother reflected in their eyes.

The realization that she had become the very thing that she worked so hard to escape was unbearable. Worse, even, than spending the rest of her life in Azkaban. How could she live with what she had become? How could she face herself in the mirror, when the image looking back at her was the face she still had nightmares about?

And how could she change, with nothing but her life sentence stretched out before her? An eternity of suffering and pain with no end in sight.

When Dolores was first promoted to Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, one of her many jobs had been processing the Azkaban death notices—taking care of all the paperwork and occasionally passing them along to Cornelius if the bodies were needed as evidence or there was a dispute over who would claim them. She quickly lost count of how many prisoners had died by their own hand. Once in a while there was an unusual suicide—one man tried to chew through the iron bars. He was found with his head so mangled that they were unable to determine whether the shattered tooth fragments were a result of his unsuccessful meal or from bashing his head against the stone wall until he lost consciousness. More often, however, it was the garden variety self-starvation. It seemed rather dull to her, at the time; simply another form to fill out. She certainly never thought about how difficult it would be to override the body's drive for preservation. In fact, before her imprisonment, she found the concept of suicide to be cowardly and ridiculous, if she gave it any thought at all.

Now, after a handful of failed attempts, it seemed much harder.

She had never tolerated pain very well, so the head-bashing method wasn't in the cards for her. Much too barbaric. She had considered starvation; in fact, it seemed like one of the more humane options. After all, how difficult could it be? The food was unfit for consumption as it were—a hunk of bread that was molding and more often than not infested with insects, and a filthy cup of spoiled water—and simply abstaining would surely be the most passive way to end one's life.

She tried not eating. She tried so hard, but it was as if she couldn't help herself. Her body just ate, like it was on autoplane, or whatever that ridiculous muggle contraption was called. Dolores knew that eventually—someday, years before her life would have ended outside of Azkaban—her body would succumb to the poor nutrition and lack of hygienic conditions, but even that was years away still.

Dolores didn't want to go mad. The thought of being unable to control her own mind was terrifying to her. And if she was to die in this hellhole anyway, what was the use in waiting? Why suffer through one more day of this torture when all she had to look forward to was fear and rot and regret? She had never been a time-waster and, if it was business she was about, she figured it was time to get about it.

She wished she could curl her hair—maybe put on a bit of makeup. She shuddered at the thought of Cornelius seeing her like this—hair long and unkempt, bags the size of the French Ministry under her eyes. Her nails, too, looked like something out of a Muggle horror film, although they, at least, would serve their purpose. They were quite long now. She examined them carefully, the plan playing on repeat in her mind. Would she truly have the nerve to go through with it?

The first few scratches made her wrist red and angry but didn't break the skin. Taking a deep breath, she dug her nails in harder, gasping as a tiny drop of scarlet blood trickled out. It wasn't enough; it was too shallow, it would never work. Casting around desperately, her eyes landed on a small rock lying on the floor. It was a sea-slick piece of the stone wall that had chipped from window, and Dolores had been using it to keep track of how long she had been there, a tally mark on the wall for each day that passed. The stone was about the size of a snitch, but it was sharp enough, and she'd get much better leverage than she had with her fingernails. She picked it up and examined its jagged edges for a moment before plunging it into her forearm, squeezing her eyes shut as the point of the rock pierced her flesh.

Breathing heavily, she let the stone drop from her hand, where it landed on the floor with a dull thud. Looking down with an equal measure of satisfaction and horror, she examined the gash. It was only a couple inches long, but very deep.

The Ministry would be tasked with informing her family. But she had no family.

Eyes watering in pain, she closed her teeth upon the ragged flap of skin and wrenched as hard as she could. The skin tore easily and her head swam as her mouth flooded with the taste of iron. Her eyes slid in and out of focus.

The Senior Undersecretary to the Minister would be contacted to inquire as to whether anyone would come and collect her body.

Delirious from pain and shock, she imagined Cornelius receiving the letter, in his bathrobe and slippers, drinking his morning coffee with bleary eyes and rumpled hair.

This must have been what Dorothy's last moments felt like.

She felt even colder than she had before. She could smell her own blood, mixing with the sour water on the floor. Her breath came in shallow pants, slower and slower with each passing moment. The light was growing dim. She couldn't hear anything anymore. And with one final exhale, Dolores joined her sister forever.

Author's Note:

I had almost this entire chapter written before I realized that there were no more Dementors at Azkaban during Umbridge's time there, but let's just call this poetic license.
Anyway, this was a very strange chapter for me. I, like everyone, pretty much can't stand Dolores Umbridge (although I do love Imelda Staunton), but writing this kind of made me like her, just the tiniest bit. I know JKR has said that Umbridge despised her mother just because she was a Muggle, but no one becomes that evil without having some kind of significant abuse or trauma in their past. I don't know, I just felt like there had to be more to her than what we saw, and this is what I came up with. (And I, too, have a mother like Umbridge's, so I suppose I can relate, lol.)

Thanks so much for reading!
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