A/N: I do not own or profit from Harry Potter.

And I'm sorry about the lack of Audrey in this chapter. I tried to kind of keep her in his thoughts.

Chapter 12: Azkaban

Percy's alarm clock screamed at him, and he rolled over to shut it off.

He knew just how much he didn't want to get up and go into this day, but at the same time he knew he couldn't get away from it. He pushed himself out of bed and went to shower.

His work had pulled him into the muggle world a great deal lately. He hadn't worn his robes in several days. Today, though, he pushed the muggle suit to the back of the closet and pulled a robe out instead. A dark robe. He would need something dark where he was going. Though it was only the first of August, he knew it would be cold, too. He reached for his cloak.

He didn't eat anything for breakfast, only put his work things into a bag and slung it over his shoulder.

When he was ready, he pulled open the door and apparated to the Ministry. He couldn't have borne the walk, and he was in his robes anyways.

It was a motley group of criminals who waited for him as Shacklebolt and several aurors took care of the last pieces of paperwork. No one gave him a second glance, not even the prisoners-to-be. Most of them had their heads down, staring at the floor. A young woman was crying loudly, but no one bothered to comfort her. Percy looked past her sobs with no sympathy.

When Shacklebolt was gone, the auror in charge turned to him. "You must be Weasley."

"I am." Percy shook his hand, aware that his own hands were growing sweaty already. "And you are Auror Fayne?"

"That I am." Fayne gestured to the group of criminals. "They're our load. When we get to the prison, my lads and me will take care of them, hand them off to the prison wardens." He sized up the redhead in front of him. "I know you've got your own work to be doing, so as soon's you get there, get off and do it. We want to finish this off and get back here as quick as possible." He shuddered, and Percy shifted his gaze to the other aurors in the room. They, too, seemed to dread going to the prison, even just for a few hours.

"I understand." He responded. "I'll be as quick as possible."

.

They took a portkey, with all the prisoners chained together. They landed at an undisclosed location and then took a short train. The sun came up a little as they went, but in Percy's eyes it was hazy. He struggled determinedly to keep his mind from reverting to where they were going. The clink of the prisoner's chains seemed to cut into his mind like a metal file.

He gazed at the sun. Where they were going, there was no sun. He had heard that Shacklebolt and others were fighting to have the dementors removed from the prison altogether, leaving only the human wardens as guards, but it was hard fight. Percy was against it himself. The dementors made escape next to impossible. During the war that had been bad, when the inmates were children and muggles. But in the current political climate, with the current assortment of criminals, he was of the opinion that dementors would be the most practical means of guarding the fortress. For now, anyways, the dementors stayed, and let their fog smother the prison and it's inmates.

He turned his eyes away from the sun. They stank, the brooding creatures, and they made the air thick despite the cold. One could hardly breathe when they were about.

No, he did not want to remember. He did not want to go back to that feeling in his lungs, when breathing was no longer the word. Sucking was more like it. Sucking in that thick, odorous, foul air that scalded his lungs with cold.

One of the prisoners shifted, and the chains rattled again.

Percy shut his eyes. Their family had barely escaped so many times. After Ron had been caught and then escaped at Malfoy Manor, they'd all had to dive for a place to hide. Aberforth Dumbledore and Neville had pulled Ginny out of school scarcely minutes before the Death Eaters had shown up with a warrant for her arrest and incarceration. Percy had not been so lucky. He couldn't honestly remember how they had got to the prison, but the memories of his days there were eerily sharp. He could remember every detail about it.

He cleared his mind. No, he didn't want to go back, but he had to. They couldn't take his wand. No, nevermind 'they'. He was one of 'them' now, he was the authority, he was the voice of the Ministry now. A sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind wondered if the dementors would remember him, but he pushed it back as impossible.

.

The train stopped and Percy got off first, eager to be away from the inmates.

They were at a rocky edge of land near the sea. He distantly remembered the spot, remembered the small hut where the last wardens lived. There were no dementors here just yet, just the human guards who controlled them. They were miserable, foul men with lives ruined by repeated exposure to the monsters.

The warden who came out was unfamiliar. All of the old ones had been murdered at the last breakout, and then replaced with ministry pawns. The pawns, had in turn been replaced by Shacklebolt's men not long ago.

A boat was drawn up to the rocks, the cold sea sloshing at it's sides, and they all got in. By now the chill from the ocean was sinking into everyone's bones, and Percy tugged his hood up over his face, pulled his cloak around himself. His wand was gripped tightly in his hand.

Happy thought. Happy thought. Books. Library. He drew his patronus to mind, a silver owl soaring in and out, swooping about him with Hermes, the solid owl mixing with the silver figment.

Oh, God, how much he didn't want to be here, doing this. Shacklebolt had known it was a bad idea. Hadn't he offered to have someone else go?

But I'm here now. Pull yourself together, go to work.

Think of Audrey. It's for her. She'll probably be so happy with you when you tell her you've spoken with her father, when you tell her he's confessed to everything.

Maybe you'll even get a reward…

Percy tried to push the chill away from his bones.

The young female prisoner's snoffles suddenly fell silent, and Percy glanced up and around. How long had they been on the boat? His eyes strained through the fog. In the distance, shrouded by gray clouds and framed by the black of his hood, the tower of the prison was just becoming visible.

The young woman began to cry anew, harder than before, as reality of the scene settled over the group. Percy felt a grim sense of satisfaction to know that he was one of the few who was coming out of that place at the end of the day. The woman, she likely wasn't yet twenty. Just younger than he had been earlier this year when he'd seen the prison for the first time. Now she would spend an entire existence chained to a wall in tower covered in fog, in the middle of an unplottable sea. It served her right, he thought mercilessly. He had always had a gift for being callous in the face of others.

The boat navigated itself carefully through the rocks jutting up from the sea, jouncing from side to side in the swells. Sea-spray covered all in the boat, and those with wands were quick to dry and warm themselves.

At last, it drew up and those aboard climbed onto the small cluster of rocks on which the prison building stood. Large waves crashed over them, making footing difficult. Percy was one of the last off the boat, as the prisoners were the priority. The shape of a dementor soared high above and disappeared around one of the corners of the tower. Percy felt a sharp panic shoot through his muscles, and he resisted the urge to duck down and hide in the boat until it returned. Instead, he clasped the warm, solid human hand held out to him and climbed up onto the rocks, then followed them to the doors.

He was pleased to see that Fallan, the old warden, was gone, and replaced instead by a fat, tired-looking man eager to accommodate the aurors. He took their names, and Percy signed and turned in his paperwork to visit. It was taken and put away quickly as the prisoners were ushered to one of the two, now-separate compounds.

Malfoy was in cell 218. Percy turned and scanned the room, forcing himself to remember that Malfoy was the reason he'd come. Audrey was the reason he'd come. She was a happy thought, at least, and he clung to that thought with desperate abandon.

When he got out, he was going to go see her straightaway.

He knew, of course, which way to go. Down a stone corridor, up a winding staircase, out into another stone corridor. Someone screamed once, and he felt a chill on the stairs and was almost certain a dementor was coming, but he ran across none. He skipped the loose step near the top and came out onto the hall, the floor and walls flagged with deep gray stone.

218. He stopped and looked inside the little window in the door.

A shaggy head was hunched over a set of wide, bony shoulders. The body was covered in a ratty striped tunic and trousers, the wrists and ankles bound to the wall by heavy chains.

Percy shut the window loudly enough for Malfoy to hear, and then began undoing the charms on the door.

In a moment it was open and he stopped in the doorway long enough for Malfoy to get a look at him. The two took in one another's appearance for a moment.

"Weasley." The other man said, his voice coarse, but his tone still both proud and hateful as he stared out of his hollow eyes. "Arthur Weasley."

Percy shut the door and moved to sit across from him. "No, sir. Percival Weasley, Ministry of Magic. I'm here on behalf of the Muggle Reinvestigational Unit. We're investigating crimes against and relating to muggles."

Malfoy stared at him still. Though he was putting up an appearance of pride, of being the old Malfoy, it was clear that he was broken beyond repair. Percy gazed back into the pale grey eyes. They were nothing like Audrey's. He remembered what Malfoy had been before. His eyes had been like Audrey's then, pale grey, penetrating. Now they had faded, almost to a watered-down white, eerie in his pasty face.

Percy stared back and desperately wished for a moment that he were sitting with Audrey and not her father. He swallowed and turned to the file in his bag. "Mr. Malfoy, your name has come up on a certain matter. In January of 1997, a muggle man was killed in upscale London." He raised his eyes to the blank-faced man across from him. "Your son has been cleared and able to account for his whereabouts elsewhere. Where were you on the night of January 13th, 1997?"

Malfoy remained expressionless. One might have thought he hadn't heard the question, didn't know Percy was even there.

"Mr. Malfoy?"

"I...don't know." Malfoy weakened for a moment, then finished the sentence out with a fair measure of disdain.

Percy pressed on. He managed to wring some sort of alibi out of the man before him as the quick-quotes quill scribbled at his side. He kept his own notes on a spare parchment.

"Did you ever participate in muggle-killings, Mr. Malfoy?"

There was a pause. Then, "Yes." Percy already knew that, Malfoy had been convicted of more than a few crimes.

"Any in London?"

"No."

"Are you familiar with Michael Bones?"

Malfoy stared at him a moment as trying to place the name. "No."

Percy asked each question in his own time, studying Lucius' responses, movements, inflections. The man's voice shifted every now and then, and his hands began shaking once, his eyes trailing off. A second stay at Azkaban was clearly doing its work on him. Yet as varied as his behavior was, his answers were all the same. He knew nothing about the case. Percy at long last tugged out the picture of Michael Bones. "Do you know this man?"

"No."

Nothing. He knew nothing about the murder, at least. Percy turned to the other matter. Audrey.

"Do you know anyone by the name of Audrey Bones?"

"No."

Percy fiddled with his quill before asking the next question. "How many children do you have, Mr. Malfoy?"

Malfoy stared at him as if not sure what to make of the question. "One."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

Percy fumbled with his papers a moment and glanced over a parchment from St. Mungo's. "You have no daughter, born in 1977?"

"No." The answer was slow this time, cautious. They were treading new and uncertain ground.

Percy raised his eyebrows. "Well, I have a paternity test here that states otherwise." He waved the piece of paper. "You do have a daughter, Mr. Malfoy, would you care to tell me about her?"

Malfoy's unfocused eyes became a little clearer as he was able to pinpoint one thing happening around him. "I have no daughter!" He snapped, leaning forward a bit.

Percy compressed his lips as he gazed steadily at Lucius Malfoy. He ducked his head again. "Can you give me the names, then, of any women who might have borne your child around 1977?"

Malfoy's eyes were growing larger, or perhaps it was a trick of the shadows.

Percy continued to study him. He would naturally deny it for his family's honor. But if he really didn't know...either Narcissa or another had neglected to tell him. Or was that possible? Keeping a pregnancy secret all the way through to birth would be next to impossible. Not Narcissa, then. And not a muggle nobody. Someone with access to a house-elf and a blanket bearing the Malfoy crest. A servant, perhaps? A laundrymaid? Someone close to him, but not too close...

Or someone smart enough to know how to hide her condition.

Percy twirled his quill in his fingers as he studied the man across from him. He turned his tone businesslike. "Mr. Malfoy. I can see that you are feeling the full effect of your stay here."

Malfoy glared at him.

"Perhaps, an exchange would be favourable. A deal. You've been here only two months in a year-long sentence. Perhaps I could make that year go a little faster if you talk." He stared at the rumpled wizard, waiting for him to start talking.

Malfoy's eyes paled a little more, and his pasty face fell. He searched a long time for words, several times opening his mouth and then closing it in desperation. At last, he burst out. "I know nothing, if I knew I would tell, I, I know nothing about this!" His words fell over each other in desperation to come out.

Percy put away his papers, rose and went to the door. "Thank you, Mr. Malfoy, that'll be all."

Malfoy's mouth opened again and for a moment he looked like he might cry out, might beg to go with Percy, but it shut again and not a sound came out. Percy stood by the door, looking down at him where he slumped. He was broken. He was a sick, ruined man with no help. After a moment he swept out and shut the door after him, locked it again and started down the hall.

He knew nothing. Percy had not spent nearly the time in this place that Malfoy had already. If anyone had offered him a chance at escape, he would have taken it, would have taken it with no thought. Malfoy had thought. If he had known anything, he would have given it all up, given up any honor he still claimed to have, and admitted anything. He would've owned up to anything he had left to own up to, but he hadn't. He really didn't know anything.

The mother, then. He would have to find the mother.

Oh, the things Death Eater wives could do.

Percy head his own footsteps echoing on the walls, heard the grunts of the prisoners as he passed their cells. He tried hard to forget that desperate need to be out, to be out of this place. He could feel it creeping up on him now...

No, that was a dementor. Percy flattened himself against the wall as a brooding black cloak fluttered past the hall just ahead, and for a moment-

Freezing water. Oh, God, so cold...

Those teeth. Everywhere, all he could think about, because everything else in his mind and heart were being sucked out, sucked into that tooth-riddled mouth...

He found himself sitting on the floor, sweating. He touched his own brow and found the sweat to be cold. Desperate to push himself back up, he scrambled to his feet and started for the staircase, the dementor now gone. He ignored the few faces that peered out at him from boxy windows.

He reached the doors and had to wait an hour. One of the prisoners had started a struggle. At the end of his wait, the aurors returned, shook hands with the warden, and scrambled out the doors, down the rock, ready to get to the boat and put a long distance between themselves and the prison walls. Percy had meant to look again at the graveyard, but he was distracted, too distracted, too eager to get away. They all hastened into the boat.

None looked back.

A/N: I know Percy does not go to prison in the books, but I have a whole backstory in my head as to what happened to Percy in DH. Basically, he got arrested after the Trio escaped Malfoy Manor, because he was Ron's brother and he was already under suspicion anyways (I mean, come on, he's a Weasley).