Chapter Summary: Sirius decides to go visit Bastet in Azkaban.
Much to the protest and dismay of Vivienne and Morgause, Sirius decided to leave them in the care of the Potters for one more night as he ventured off to Azkaban for one of their 'tours' of the prison. He almost asked Remus to come along, but then decided against it. Being a werewolf, no doubt there were new regime laws against him too. So Remus decided to stay with the Potters and get to know more about Vivienne and Morgause, as well as the 'new' James and Lily. So Sirius rode off to Azkaban alone.
Sirius' jaw nearly dropped right off his face when he saw what had become of the prison in which he'd spend 12 years of this life. The whole place was a LOT bigger (hadn't Vivienne mentioned it being expended by four times its original size?) and dementors sat in front of every door and external window in the place. There was even a separate entrance for the new prisoners, where they were herded off the huge flying carriages and cars driven by Death Eaters. Sirius, looking down at the prison, felt shivers go up and down his spine. His wife was somewhere inside, suffering to death but not dying. Sirius quickly got into the 'tour' line with the other pure-blood tourists. One recognizable face was easily spotted in the crowd. Lucius Malfoy and his little demon of a son, Draco, were a few people in front of Sirius in line. Draco looked like he was in line to get into a strip club, excited, a little uncomfortable, but clearly pleased to be there.
After Sirius paid 3 galleons to get in, he was herded into a smaller tour group…with none other than his dark cousin Bellatrix as the tour guide.
"Alright, our first stop on our tour of Azkaban Prison and Concentration Camp for Blood Traitors and Mudbloods will be the loading dock, where hundreds of new prisoners come in daily from all over Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France," explained Bellatrix. Her voice had a sense of pride and privilege about it. Sirius made sure to keep his face hidden from her sight. She still looked incredibly insane to Sirius, but, she'd never been in Azkaban, so she didn't look nearly as ragged and utterly gross as before.
"The prison is divided into six main camps. One each for the British Mudbloods, the Scandinavians, the mainland Europeans, the blood traitors who disobeyed the laws of pureblood breeding set down by the Dark Lord, the children of said traitors who were mainly born after the new regime took place and, therefore, all are under the age of fourteen, and the rebels against the new regime, mainly made up of ex-Aurors and those associated with Albus Dumbledore."
When that name was mentioned by Bellatrix, nearly the entire group Sirius was traveling with booed and hissed.
But what disgusted Sirius most about this was the conditions of the place. They were tens times more in ruins than whenever Sirius had been in jail. They walked through a main corridor, and every so often, a smaller hallway would branch off the main one, with arrows indicating sections such as "Torture and Interrogation Chambers" or "Scandinavian Mudblood Holding Cells" or, the worst sign Sirius had seen yet: "Mass Graves for Mudblood Prisoners: Authorized Personnel Only."
"Yours truly," said Bellatrix, "has been graciously appointed by the Dark Lord as Head Torturer of the British and mainland prisoners." Sirius kept looking for a hallway that led to the British Muggle-born cells. None yet.
Bellatrix continued with her monologue. "We don't execute prisoners here on a regular basis. A prisoner will have to show extraordinary hopeless circumstances for himself and literally beg at my feet or the feet of some other authorized personnel in order to be considered for a swift and painless execution. The average execution only takes place once a week, and very rarely will Avada Kedavra be used inside these walls. Other than to kill the occasional rat, of course."
Some people in the group actually began laughing at this incredibly dark joke. Suddenly, Sirius found his exit, and quickly broke off form the group and ran down the corridor that led to the British Muggle-born cells. No dementors or prison guards were in sight, but Sirius was nonetheless very wary of where he stepped. When he came into the first set of prison cells, he could barely stomach what he saw.
Countless rows and rows of cells of prisoners, some withered, worn, and on the brink of death, other were new arrivals, still scurrying around their cells like a lab rat in a cage, begging for help. Sirius noted that the more worn and helpless a prisoner looked, the less they moved around. The skinniest and dirtiest of the prisoners who were still alive were perfectly still, staring like madmen at the wall opposite them, looking almost like they were dead. Many of the cells had two or three prisoners in each small room. There was no light other than the occasional orange light of a torch. And there were no toilets, just piles of straw in the corners.
Sirius had to turn down three or four different hallways before he found who he was looking for. And when he found it, he wished he hadn't.
Bastet was sleeping on a pile of straw in the corner of her cell, who she shared with another girl who looked like she could be Harry's age, a girl with bushy brown hair and large front teeth. The smaller girl was napping with her head on Bastet's lap. Bastet's hair gave more color to the room than anything else; today it sported a bright indigo color. Maybe she wasn't a Metamorphagus after all. No Metamorphagus in their right mind would have brightly-colored hair in a place like this. Bastet looked somewhat in between those who looked like brand-new prisoners and those who looked ready to give in at a moment's notice.
"Pst! Bastet!" Sirius whispered, looking over his shoulder every few seconds to see if anyone was coming. "Bastet!"
Bastet and the second girl stirred and slowly awoke. The girl looked at the strange visitor and looked a little frightened. This girl hadn't been in prison for very long. Bastet looked around her cell first before looking at Sirius. When she did, she gasped and smiled widely, exposing the fact that two of her teeth had rotted and fallen out of her mouth. She sprang to her feet with newly found energy and ran to the barred door.
"Sirius! Oh god, Sirius!" she cried a little too loudly. Sirius bent down and kissed Bastet through the bars as she reached out and tried to grab him and hold him. "I've missed you so…how did you get in here?"
"I took a tour of this terrible place. I just had to see you," Sirius said. Bastet looked like she'd survived a nuclear attack, and yet now that she had this little spark of happiness in her life, her true beauty, not unlike that Sirius had seen at the Yule Ball, began shining through again.
Bastet turned to the younger girl. "Hermione! This is the man I told you about! My Sirius!"
"What is he doing here? The dementors will find him and then he'll be locked away in the rebel's camp" Hermione warned. Bastet shook her head.
"She's an incredibly smart young witch," bragged Bastet. "She was getting straight Os at Hogwarts until last year."
Hermione explained the rest herself. "I drank a Polyjuice Potion so I could look like a pure-blood girl who'd been expelled before I came to school, but then, during an inspection day, they took longer than usual and the Potion wore off before I could get to my stash of it," she said. Sirius bit his lip. "It was worth it," assured Hermione. "The three years I was at school were the best years of my life."
"How are our daughters? Vivienne? Morgause? And Remus, James and Lily? How are they all?"
Sirius touched Bastet's rough, scraped, and scarred arm. "Remus, James, and Lily are all fine. Vivienne's becoming feistier every hour, and Morgause is a spitting image of you," he assured.
"Can you get me out of here?" asked Bastet. Sirius shook his head sadly.
"I cannot," he said. Bastet began shaking.
"They've taken everything from me, Sirius! My home, my family! My hopes, dreams, and pride! They said I stole the secrets of magic from a pure-blood family and threw me in here without even giving me a chance to defend myself. Me and seven others were all on trial at once and we all were found guilty!" Bastet cried.
Hermione got to her feet and put her arms around Bastet. "There's no food," she explained. "Once or twice daily, Bellatrix Lestrange or Antonin Dolohov will come through and toss an apple or a slice of bread in each of our cells along with a cup of salt water. A single apple to last a whole day isn't nearly enough to help us. The salt water is dehydrating, and some are living in a single cell with four others!"
"I'm so glad it's just Hermione and I," Bastet remarked. "We still both have enough sense to split whatever scraps we get in half."
Sirius felt hot tears pour down his face to see his wife and the love of his life in such a sad state of being, if one could even call it being at all.
"I'd rather be dead than in here, Sirius," Bastet said, growing increasingly distressed. "I truly, truly wish that I'd have died years ago before this happened."
"Don't say that," said Sirius. "Keep hope, love."
"Hope?" spat Bastet. "What HOPE? What IS hope? Whatever it is, there's none to be found here! If I died years ago, I may not have lived a long life, but at least I lived a good life. Hermione and I, we're not living here. We don't live. We exist from feeding to feeding. We're put to sleep every night by the Dementors coming by to suck a little more of the life out of us, but leaving just enough so that he survive and recover just in time for the next night when they come through again! Sirius, I do not want to be alive. I would've rather died out in the streets without every having known this place! Even if I were only 20, it would be better having died beside all those happy memories that I can't even recall now!"
Hermione sighed. "Sirius, we both have been considering groveling for an execution…"
"You can't!" Siruis whispered.
"Bastet's right, Sirius," Hermione said. "We never grow numb to the pain of this place. I'm only 14 and the power of this place has eaten away at me. We both want to, and we both are seriously considering it."
"Sirius, please give my love to Vivienne and Morgause," said Bastet, who was shaking violently and had to turn away into a corner to vomit behind the pile of straw. Sirius cringed. Hermione didn't stir. She'd seen so many similar scenes, she was used to it.
Hermione did turn and go to comfort Bastet as she ralphed. Sirius felt another hot tear run down his face. But suddenly, he felt a hard clap on his shoulder. He spun around to face Antonin Dolohov, holding a bright yellow torch.
"Lost?" he asked. Hermione and Bastet didn't turn around.
"I wanted to see the prisoners," Sirius lied. "Why aren't they part of the tour?"
"The holding cells are off limits to tourists. Your time is up here, go on home," Dolohov said, pulling Sirius away from Bastet and Hermione without even the slightest chance to say good bye.