Prisoners of Azkaban, Probationary Diaries August 2009, Prisoners #19-09-1979 and #09-01-1960
!!! WARNING for graphically gruesome description of Bellatrix killing Crookshanks !!!
oooOooo
August 3, 2009
Yesterday's entry is complete gibberish, the handwriting nearly illegible.
But I did manage to write down what I did and where I am.
Seventeen minutes before midnight I jerked awake from a nightmare, fearing I had forgotten my daily entry. The pain that pulsed in my hands was bliss.
Then the thought struck me it was just a dream that I roused Severus long enough for him to write his entry. I stumbled from the sofa, tore off his blanket, grabbed his hands.
Only when I saw the bloody letters etched into his hands I collapsed, weeping hysterically.
I had barely fallen asleep again, when the conviction gripped me that I was still in my cell, that Severus was just a name in one of my squares, not the man holding me tightly.
I screamed and shrieked and babbled and only quieted when he told me that it cannot be a dream because no dream could possibly contain Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and Severus Snape in one and the same bed. Especially a Draco Malfoy with a sun-burnt, weather-withered face and a shaggy, unkempt beard as long as Albus Dumbledore's used to be.
That made sense to me even in my unhinged state and I fell asleep once more.
This morning I am calm.
But I fear that the last eleven years have left me less than sane.
I keep counting the squares on the flagstone floor of Draco's living room on the fourth floor of his lighthouse-home. The way they get cut off by the round walls bothers me. That there would be 256 of them without the stairs bothers me.
I keep thinking of the squares in my cell. There were not enough of them. My list of our dead held 95 names, including animals and magical creatures, and I only had 91 squares. I left out the animals in the end. I put them in the corners. But it pained me. Dear Fang. Brave Mrs Norris. Faithful Hedwig. And my Crooks. My poor Crooks…I can still hear the heel of Bellatrix' boot grinding his skull into a pulp of brain, bone splinters and bits of blood-drenched fur.
With Severus and Draco alive, I would have had two more squares to fill with names.
But that would have left two corners empty.
It bothers me that there are no corners here.
We'll stay here on Bound Skerry for a few days, though.
Draco says we need time to adjust after eleven years in Azkaban. He'll bring us up to date concerning events in the Muggle and the wizarding world. And feed us properly; he promises he cooks a wicked fish stew.
That Severus doesn't protest bothers me.
He withdraws into himself for long periods of time. One minute he's talking to Draco—the next he's staring off into space for an hour. It is Occlumency, and Severus insists it has kept him sane all this time.
But I have seen Draco look at him.
He, too, wonders: How sane?
oooOooo
A/N: Many thanks to Ayerf for beta-reading.