In a dingy dark cell in Azkaban prison, there was a great deal of screaming happening. Now, that in itself was not unusual, considering it was Azkaban and screams were quite abounding. However, giving birth was not, so this screaming was a bit different.
The not-so-happy-mother-to-be was one Jem Brinks, a witch who had been caught torturing muggles with the cruciatus curse, and thrown into Azkaban shortly thereafter. No one mentioned that the reason she had been torturing the muggle was because he tricked her husband into death. Much like how no one mentioned she was with child when she was tossed into the prison, if anyone knew. So here she was, being assaulted with memories of her dead but still lovely husband and in labor.
About seven hours later she died, still in her cell, but with a wailing baby girl in her arms for the dementors to find.
A girl walked down a hall, following the chill and empty sucking feeling she knew meant her mother. She was dressed in an over sized Victorian dress that had been torn to a length that fit her and was held to her waist by a piece of cord, and her bare feet were hardened from years of walking down rough stone corridors. Her face was small and pale, as were her eyes, and her honey colored hair hung in thick tangled ringlets, that bounced from side to side as she walked, trailing her pale hand on the bars of a cell as she passed.
"Hello, Sirius." She greeted the black flea-bitten dog within the cell, and he whimpered in reply, begging for company in his misery, making her smile apologetically as she continued down the hall, where she'd continue on to the stairs that would take her to the next cell, and then the next set of stairs, and the next cell, until she reached the top where her mother waited. "Sorry, boy, I have to go. It's time for me to eat." She called back as she started up the roughly hewn steps, and in answer she got another low whine. "I'll bring you a rat later, boy." was the last she said before she disappeared around a curve in the stairs, leaving the dog alone in his corridor.
She passed a few more cells, and greeted each occupant, not matter how insane.
"Hello, Alfred." The dark skinned man howled in response.
"Lovely day, isn't it Madam Barthahew?" The old hag muttered warnings about the wind.
"Good day, Nettle." The half pixie fluttered up close to the bars and called her a cloud.
"Bellatrix, Rudolphus." The man's eyes twinkled with insanity, and his wife screamed.
Finally, she reached the last one, and gave the woman inside a sweet smile. "Mora, greetings." She waved, and the pale skinned woman within waved back, giving her a toothy smile. Mora's tail wagged beneath her skirts, making them move about oddly.
"Elizabetha, what a pleasant surprise." She croaked, coming closer. Elizabetha backed away from the bars. "Going away so soon?" The witch asked her, and she nodded. "Pity."
"Yes, yes it is. Have a nice nightmare, Mora." With that parting, Elizabetha turned and headed for the last set of stairs, and as she started up them she could hear the witch beginning to hum tunelessly to herself.
As she reached the top floor the feeling of cold around her grew, and a sensation like her soul was being pulled out began. Sure enough, there was her mother.
"Ma mere!" She called, and skipped up to the black cloaked figure, throwing her arms around what little was palpable. She had learned the french phrase when Bellatrix had first came, years ago, and still been sane enough to communicate normally. A skeletal hand brushed her back, giving her a horrible sense of loss, and she looked up into the black shroud that served as her mothers face. It was wrinkled and black, with a gaping mouth and sunken cheeks, but no eyes.
"Liz-be-ah..." The dementor rasped, making the sucking feeling grow with it's voice. It was a voice Elizabetha had heard all her life, since she was able to remember. When she had first talked she had mimicked it, rasping her own name like it was a magic word. Then her mother had taught her to say ma, and she had called her that for years until she learned mother from a younger Madam Barthahew and ma mere from Bellatrix. When she started to realize the dark creature couldn't possibly be her mother, and the other dementors her family, she had still called them so, because she didn't know any other words for them, until Mora had told her that they were dementors, and even then she still preferred mother. She didn't know their real names, or if they even had real names, so instead she made them up. The pale one was Mon Cheri, and the smallest was Blue and so on, names like any child would give. Assuming they knew french and wished to refer to soul sucking monsters as "My Darling" in the first place.
"Hello, mother." She greeted, a familiar ache forming on her head as a welcome depression settled over her and her skin beginning to itch comfortingly. Her breath now came out white.
"Late..." Her mother grated, and Elizabetha shrugged.
"Gomen. I stopped for a bavarder with Ms. Mordelia Madalina Mora." It was always fun to say Mora's full name. The dementor hesitated for a moment, then slowly raised a ghostly hand towards a small table set for one in the middle of the room. "Hvala ti, Majka." Elizabetha said before walking over to the table and bowing to it, before sitting in the prepared bench as her mother looked on approvingly, and beginning to eat what was had been served to her, in this case being old canned soup that had probably been expired for years. Not that Elizabetha knew that. Her stomach was vulture like in it's ability to digest by now.
Things had been hard on the dementors at first, suddenly having a human child on their hands. None of them had known how to deal with a prisoner giving birth, and the dementors themselves didn't really have children, new ones just appeared if the environment was right. Yet here was a human babe, and they had had no idea what to do with it. About that time, a mostly sane woman who had two children previous was brought to Azkaban, Mordelia Mora. She had mostly raised the girl, indirectly, giving directions and tips to the dementors but rarely making actual physical contact, because after all, she was only mostly sane, not completely, and you simply do not trust a half crazed women with your adopted child. After she was old enough to walk around without stumbling, and able to speak, or more importantly, run away and scream for help, she was allowed by the other prisoners. Thus she had learned to speak. To speak at least three languages fluently and about seven more enough to have basic introductions and maybe some stilted small talk, and other little terms in many more. And picked up some strange tenancies that the dementors were sure were not quite normal for a human child, but they had written it off as a side effect of being raised around mentally deranged people and left it at that. Because, well, they were dementors, and they never had any problem with mad folks, now did they? So that had been the way Elizabetha was raised, being taught all sorts of odd manners and habits, most of which her environment approved of entirely. If she was going to bow to tables and speak three or more languages within a single conversation, who was to judge?
Once finished, Elizabetha rose and again bowed to the table before also to her mother, then walking primly away, leaving the dementor with an "Arigato" and a "I love you, mother" before heading back down the stairs. She had basked in her mothers presence for long enough, and she knew that the dementor would need to get back to driving people insane soon.
Plus, she had promised to bring Sirius a rat.
So she started down the stairs again. Elizabetha had been running up and down steps since she was little, and that combined with regular meals and six hours of sleep a day made her a fairly healthy child, although she did not look it. Her skin was pale and grey from lack of sunlight, and she had grey circles under her eyes that, in the right lighting, made her look almost dead. On more then one account she had startled aurors when they came to bring new prisoners, because they thought she was perhaps an inferi summoned by one of the many dark wizards within the prison. She still liked to meet them, though, even if she rarely spoke to them. She had learned early on that aurors viewed her relationships with the beings within Azkaban disparagingly, some had even attempted to take her from the prison. And not always with her consent. So she preferred to watch silently when they brought new occupants, and only wave hello if they noticed her. Of course, she always rushed closer to introduce herself to the new prisoner the moment they stepped back, so she never came off quite as standoffish as she would have hoped, but it wasn't as if she could not say hello.
As she passed Mora she waved to the witch, who was currently scratching desperately at the floor. Then there were Bellatrix and her husband, who was sane enough now to greet her in his rough voice, which made her smile, even if he said the wrong name. Nettle trilled at Elizabetha, her crest coming up high and her needlepoint teeth bared in a mischievous grin. A few feet past her cell, Elizabetha caught the desired rat, and held it with a layer of skirt, squirming by the tail. Madam Barthahew cackled as she passed, and when she stepped up to greet Alfred, he screamed at her. Alfred had never much liked her.
When she reached Sirius's cage, the dog rushed up to the bars, and before her eyes he morphed into a human, legs lengthening and face flattening, his shaggy fur growing back into his skin. It looked ghastly, actually, but by the end of it there was a skinny man with filthy hair before her, an insane twinkle in his eye.
"You promised." He said shakily, and Elizabetha nodded.
"That's right, I promised. Here you go." She tossed the still squirming rat through the bars, where it landed with a thump and hardly had time to squeak before Sirius had grabbed it and started tearing it apart with his bare hands, muttering about filthy traitors and justice. When it was no more then a pathetic scrap of torn flesh and bone in his hands he tossed it into a corner, where it joined hundreds of other matching carcasses. Elizabetha had been catching him rats for years. Then with a shuddering breath he turned back to her, and an almost fatherly light entered his eyes, albeit an insane, glassy one.
"So, Lizzy." He said, voice rough with disuse. "How have y-" He broke off and coughed, ragged gasps making his frail body shake before he could continue. "How've you been?" Elizabetha was reluctantly impressed. Sirius, like all the other occupants of the gloomy prison she lived in, never ceased to amaze her with how hard they struggled to continue, despite what the Aurors thought.
"As well as ever. My wounds have all healed," A week ago she had taken a tumble down some stairs, and come away from it with only a a sprained ankle and a split lip and headache. She had soaked her foot in cold water and wrapped it up, and layered cloth under her lip to prevent further bleeding, before continuing her perusal of the halls quite normally, happily ignoring the pounding in her head and the harsh stings of pain in her ankle. "And just in time, too. It's almost my birthday, you know. Six days."
"Is it?" He thoughtfully played with his dirty hair, giving it a small sniff before making a face and dropping the lock back into place. "Should I get you anything? Or really, could I even get you anything?"
"Je ne sais pas. Maybe a new spell? Will you teach me how to become a dog too?"
"Do I look like a mandrake to you?" That statement made absolutely no sense to Elizabetha, so she decided to drop it.
"Ne. Maybe a differant spell? I want to try more singing spells, like Nettle does. She only taught me a few, like clean as a whistle." Elizabetha loved how Nettle's magic worked, the way she could sing the right nursery rhymes and make walls crumble. Provided she had some article of jewelry, of course, and a strong enough voice to sing the whole song. Here, in Azkaban, she rarely did. She was sick far too often to sing much.
"Ask her, then!" Sirius giggled, and she shrugged.
"She's not sane enough, recently. She just babbles and shrieks."
"And since when was sanity an issue for you, Lizzy? Look around at where you're being raised!" He... has a point, she concluded.
"Vrlo Dobro, I'll take that under notes. Mata." With that she wondered without further comment back down the corridor, Sirius once again turning into a dog behind her, and howling his own farewell.
On the way down she passed more prisoners, of all sorts, and greeted each by name. Death eaters, werewolves, poor half insane beings who couldn't even remember where they were anymore, and everything in between. Witch, wizard, young, old, human, creature, mixed. It made no difference to Azkaban prison, and therefore made no difference to her. She met with several dementors busy with... whatever dementors did, Elizabetha herself still wasn't sure of all the details, and called hello to each of them. All but two screeched fondly back at her, and the remaining two were rather busy, what with handing out kisses and all, so she left them be and continued on her way.
Not for the first time in her life she internally grumbled about the impracticality of having her rooms in the very belly of the prison and eating all her meals at the top. Yet she eventually reached her destination, two large room at the very pit of the prison. She passed through the first, the one with thousands of strange things and old books perched on the shelves that had been carved into the stone and flat rocks serving as tables containing more carved curiosities and glassy oddities, parchments and papers stacked in thick piles. One wouldn't guess it, but over the years Elizabetha had collected quite the library, down in the pits of Azkaban prison. One of the Aurors brought her books when he came to drop off a prisoner, and often prisoners themselves had a few pages hidden on them.
Then, she stepped into the second. Just like the other, she had not changed in the slightest the rough textures and rock walls of her bedroom, rather adding grotesque decorations, such as a rat skin rug on the floor, courtesy of Serius, and a pretty torn ball gown that one of the death eaters had arrived in, hanging in a corner. Other then those and a few more shelves carved into the walls, stuffed with shards of rock and the occasional bundle of silvery fur, donated by werewolves and Mora, the only items in the room were a pile of filthy dresses, a bedside table, and the bed that went with it, a rough cot just like the prisoners used, and that Elizabetha constantly wondered about. How, exactly, had it even gotten down here? Or any of her things, for that matter? Where had her glass nick-knacks in the other room all come from, the toys the dementors gave her as a child, the rats that had taken over Azkaban in the last five years? It used to be completely devoid of life...
Then, she easily explained it all away, or at least until further notice; She was in Azkaban, nothing could really be that logical.
Six days left to go. Then she would go to the great school Sirius had once told her of, where he had studied little and caused mischief much. From which she had received a letter from weeks ago, telling her what things to bring and where to bring them, along with herself. The magical school of Hogwarts.
So hopefully that wasn't terrible. I have another chapter written and I'll put it up too if this is well enough liked. I know it's not completely making sense right now, but I'll try to answer any questions along the way, and honestly this isn't really one of those stories that is meant to make complete sense. But you can ask or make a request if anyone wants to. I'm hoping to make this pretty long.
Please review, and feel free to be a total critic, because I'd appreciate anything, honestly. Byeeeeeeee!