A/N: Not quite sure what to say, actually. Writing is not easy, and it's been long. Please don't be too hard on me. I'm trying. Please give me a chance :)

Disclaimer: Most unfortunately, I do not own Harry Potter, nor anything recognisable from the books/films. No profit is made from this fic. I write for fun.

There is nothing we like to communicate with others more than the seal of secrecy, together with what lies under it.—Friedrich Nietschze.

She'd never been quite sure as to why she'd chosen this particular profession, when there were so many other options open to her. But she'd wanted a challenge, and as much as people told her to do something with that brain of hers, that hadn't really felt like one; or, in any case, not the one she'd been looking for. Besides, after all that had happened, in a way this only felt right.

He was dark. He was vicious. He was feared, awed, and hated, and very much out of bounds.

Cell block 12 was notorious, even within the walls of Azkaban itself. It was said that the cells' occupants had haunted faces, and made sounds that were inhuman and unbearable to hear. It was also said that they were dangerous, and that their ghosts would come back to haunt the place forever.

Prologue

It was a cloudy Monday that seemed to be promising nothing special for the entire rest of the week. It was those days that made her wonder what on earth she was doing here. Surely there had to be something more exciting out there to fill her days with?

Usually she would rationalise with herself that every job had less likeable tasks, and even a part of her had chosen this over being an Auror because it involved less action. She'd thought herself to have seen enough action for a lifetime, too much for one person to take; yet when the obvious war had finally been over, there had been a lot of cleaning up to do—that was, rebuilding every place destroyed; chasing after the Death Eaters that had still been on the run; and all the while taking care of the dead, remembering them, giving them proper burials, mourning them. It had probably been tougher than the war itself.

And yet she had literally went for condemnation, in a way. The job had been done, the Wizarding World had been rebuilt as much as could have been managed in the time they'd been given, and while her two best friends stayed where they were, content (happy, almost) with the idea of an action-filled life, she'd quit without any idea of whatever she wanted to do.

It had struck her then. She wanted to see things from a different perspective.

Cell block 12 was notorious, even within the walls of Azkaban itself, yet not in a way that was realistic in the slightest. It was said that the cells' occupants had haunted faces (which was true, mind you), and made sounds that were inhuman and unbearable to hear. It was also said that they were dangerous, and that their ghosts, in a way she'd always thought only Muggles believed in them, came back and haunted the place forever, as a vicious cycle. It was described best like a Muggle haunted house in a horror movie, and as hesitant as it had left her at first, she soon came to realise that this was not one.

Most of them weren't dangerous, and most of them did not make a sound. They were resigned, and she always wondered whether they were quietly accepting what was coming on them. In a way, she couldn't imagine this, and honestly: she'd tried. She'd imagined losing her life often in her life, and then realised someone could come to terms with that even in a situation like this, when every second of the day made one think of it, instead of their head being elsewhere yet the possibility drumming in the back of it, like it had with her. But this was different. This wasn't just a life that was lost; it was a soul.

She still shuddered at the thought of it. The quiet resignation of the bigger part of the prisoners—that was what made it all seem surreal, and somewhat horror-like.

Bending over her paperwork, which momentarily meant sorting out a case of one of the many newcomers, she was suddenly startled by her co-worker storming in, seemingly shocked. "He's coming down!"

She cocked an eyebrow. "Something wrong, Carter?"

"907!" His tone was a mixture of excitement, awe, and fear. She wondered why. What was so special about prisoner (or at least she suspected him to be talking about a prisoner) 907? What was James Carter so nervous about? The worst had been long gone, hadn't they—Bellatrix and Yaxley and Dolohov, and all of Voldemort's other closest followers—they'd been the first to have their souls eliminated, reduced to useless shells who could barely keep themselves from drooling. It was a vision that sparked both disgust and satisfaction in her, and she wasn't sure which one she found more disturbing.

"What about him?" Her voice sounded bored, she realised.

Carter was now looking quite uncomfortable, lowering his voice and whispering, "Aren't you—you know… I know you're not scared easily and all that but aren't you at least a bit intrigued?"

She stared at him. Blinked. The wheels in her head were working top speed. Nothing. She couldn't remember ever hearing the number before, let alone why one should be—scared, intrigued, awed?—by hearing it. She closed her eyes and sighed, ready to drop her head in her arms. She didn't feel up to listening to the big stories today; to be quite honest, she'd had a busy weekend, and she was dead tired. Besides, she had honestly no idea what her co-worker was talking about.

"But everyone knows of prisoner #907!" He exclaimed when she told him so.

"Well, not with me then."

That was the exact invitation Carter needed to start telling, in a way one would narrate a horror story. "It is said that he is the most notorious who has been here so far," he started off, his voice low. "No one really knows about his life, or his crimes, but he's the darkest prisoner to walk the halls. #907 lives in the darkness," Carter whispered. "Apparently he cannot stand the light."

Hermione raised an eyebrow, not quite sure what to make of the story so far. "And who is he?"

"Ah, but that is the point, isn't it? No one knows."

"Then how do they know he belongs here? When no one knows who he is, or what his life has been, or what his crimes were! What if he's innocent?"

Carter let out a dark laugh. "Granger, you'll see for yourself. No one even dares to look at him. He's evil."

Of course, for someone who always wanted to know everything, this made Hermione wonder, her fingers itching to start taking notes and investigate. "You say he's coming down here?" she asked, her brain scanning over her options. "But then where's his file?" She was fairly sure she hadn't seen a file with that number on it yet.

"I'm not sure. They should send it down to our level before this Friday, I believe."

Files usually came before the prisoners, not afterwards. Of course they did; how else were they supposed to know what they would have to put up with? This man was proving a mystery before she'd even caught so much as a glimpse of him. They couldn't hold someone of whom they held no information whatsoever—meaning there was a reason that said information was held back.

She groaned, wishing Carter hadn't started about it, for now it would be hard to concentrate on the huge amount of paperwork that was still waiting for her today. But then, it was almost noon, and she could just take her lunch break first. She took her purse, checked for her wallet, and flooed back to the Ministry, which she exited to Muggle London. As much as she loved the Wizarding World, Muggle London had the best cafes, and she could actually get some coffee there, which she felt was much needed at the moment.

She had not felt the eyes upon her as she left.

::

Lunch had taken her longer than it usually did when she went out on her own, but it was nothing she hadn't expected, as her head was busy already categorising what she'd just heard about #907, even though it was not much. It got her more curious by the minute. The prisoners in their cell block were always a mystery to her, like a puzzle she wanted to solve; why were they there, what kind of people were they—surely there had to be something wrong with you to commit horrible crimes?

Yet over the year she'd been working down in 12 now, she'd realised this wasn't the case. There were those like Bellatrix Lestrange, who just enjoyed inflicting pain; people with a serious mental problem (she still wasn't sure what to think of them); people who'd done it in momentum; even, every now and then, the one who'd hurt someone else in self-defense. (Those were the people she usually managed to get back upstairs. For while Hermione was nothing like an attorney, and could not relieve those people from their sentence in general, she could save them from the prison's darkest places if her arguing and evidence were enough.)

Now, of course, she was intent on figuring out what kind of person #907 was to be so unknown, yet so feared. Was it, in fact, more the case that the unknown was feared? Or was there a third variable that kept him unknown, and feared? She was by no means afraid herself, she'd heard stories much worse than a bit of rumours going around that were obviously meant to scare people. Hell, she'd looked horror in the face not three years ago, and she was still standing!

She took the escalator down—as high as the Azkaban building was, there was an entire storey underground, inside the rock the prison stood on. How on earth they'd managed to build it that way, she had never bothered to find out, afraid that she wouldn't dare to go back down again. The elevator rattled, as every single one of them in official buildings seemed to do, and stopped and opened with a loud clang.

It was like the cliché films, in which one dazedly looks up and sees something or someone that they have been looking for or which shocks them immensely. Yet this was not a film, and that must have been #907 being transported to his new cell. The guards seemed to be cowering, wanting nothing more than to get away from him, yet he himself walked morosely on, silently, without any verbal or physical protests. He did not, however, as so many others often did, walk bowed and slowly, as if he'd come to terms with his fate yet was afraid and reluctant for it. This man walked like one who simply did not care. She knew he could not see, but often the ones who were led downstairs were trying to, anyway. He did not.

She realised he walked like a man who was already dead.

She could not follow, for her office was the other way, but she stared after them until they were gone—cell 46, she knew, and she was already dreading doing her rounds that afternoon. It was one thing to hear of people, but a whole different thing to actually see them, even though she had not yet seen his face. And suddenly there was a spark of—not really fear, dread, maybe, but very unpleasant indeed.

Most probably because all she knew about him, was there was nothing to know about him. (She would have to pry some more details out of Carter, she decided right then and there, for there had to be more to it.)

Suddenly the Monday was no longer so dull, and the week was looking a lot more promising.