His shoes had always been binding, annoyingly so, but it was now that he wished he had appreciated them more. His parents had always purchased him shoes made from the finest materials—Italian leather was nothing compared to the dragon skin loafers he had grown up in.

He ducked under a protruding tree branch and continued to run. His chest was heaving, perspiration cropping up on his brow and running down his spine. His hair was heavy and hot against the back of his bare neck. He nearly tripped over a knotted root that grew from the cold, hard, ground, and he had to jump high in the air to avoid it. A flash of light flew over his shoulder and exploded over his head. It collided with a tree branch, sending a curtain of pine needles falling to the ground, and a nest of birds squawked annoyingly as they took flight.

"Stop in the name of the Ministry!" One of them, the one who could run the fastest, commanded him. He didn't look back, he continued to run, zigzagging through the woods, his heart beating so quickly he thought it might burst from his chest. He couldn't see his parents anymore; he couldn't even hear his father yelling indignantly. He assumed this meant they had already been captured. They might have already been transferred to Azkaban. The thought of it made him run faster. He couldn't feel his feet, much less his calves anymore, though that might have just been from the cold.

It was only September, but it had snowed the night before. The flakes had come down angrily, pounding against the tarp over his head, the wind screaming into the dark night. When he had woken this morning, the ground was covered in a thin, icy blanket of the stuff, and he had cursed with displeasure. He had to boil a kettle over a handful of bluebell flames, and had to put on the only pair of socks he had left, the ones with the holes in the ankles.

The socks were gone now, probably blown to bits when they had arrived. They had apparated into the small corner of the woods he had claimed for his own. He didn't know how they found him, but that didn't seem to matter when he stepped from the tent. They set it on fire immediately after, burning away the belongings he had left.

Except the diary. He always kept that with him. The shoddy little book that had once been a rich and unused gift from his parents, given to him his seventeenth birthday.

"You're an adult now," his mother said proudly as he unwrapped it, oblivious to the crinkle in his brow. "We thought you might want to record some of your experiences, write them down. Perhaps it will be therapeutic."

Therapeutic. He almost laughed at the thought, but then another spell flew at him, and he whirled to the right. It scraped his skin, and he shouted out with pain. The spell had ripped at his shirt and his skin, leaving a deep, oozing cut. It would leave a scar, no doubt. He flicked a spell over his shoulder and heard a shout—he had managed to hit one of them with a stinging spell that would cripple them for a minute, perhaps thirty seconds more, but it provided no more than a two-minute distraction.

And that's when it happened. He reached a stream. It had iced over from the storm the night before. It appeared thick enough to walk on, but he wasn't sure. He glanced back behind him. A pack of the thick-robed men were converging on him, wands held aloft, all shouting. He couldn't risk being cursed or being caught. He turned back to the stream and winced as he slid a foot forward, carefully scooting across the surface with as much care as he could, though he moved quickly.

His friends at school had always teased him about his frame. He was tall and thin, barely a hint of muscle, they always chanted. He had grown even more thin in the past four months, but the muscle was there now, just apparent under his pale, vein-crossed skin. He silently thanked his parents now for his slim frame; the ice seemed to hold his weight just fine. But then, just as luck would have it, a clever one of the men shot a spell at the ice, just under his feet. There was an erroneous crack, and he fell through, plunging into the water below.

Immediately, his skin felt as if it had been subjected to an icy fire, his pores were screaming, and he panicked, waving his arms and legs as he tried to surface. His wand slipped from his grip and was swept away into the darkness. A hand came through the darkness, reaching for him, and he pulled away, closing his eyes. It would be better to die at this point; he would not allow them to take him this way…

The hand overpowered him. It grabbed him by the hair that now reached down to his shoulders. It pulled, yanked, and drug him from the water and out into the icy air. He felt his eyes roll into the back of his head as he took his first breath, swallowing deeply, and then everything went black.

"What have you got for me today, Cole?" Astoria Greengrass leaned her forehead against the mold-encrusted jail cell bars and tried to smile. The prison guard, a young man in his early twenties, looked around nervously as she spoke to him. He was hunched over, his pathetic appearance punctuated by a ginger mullet and copious acne. He walked the hallway pushing a trolley, though she was the only prisoner up here. On the top of the cart was a plate with an indistinguishable mass of brown goo. "I'm a growing girl, tell me there's something I can actually eat today."

"I'm sorry Astoria." He reached for the plate, and then froze under her steely look. "Miss Greengrass, I'm sorry." He leaned down and shoved the plate through the small gap in the bars, protected by a force field that worked only from the outside. Astoria knew this from first-hand experience; she had tried to squeeze through the insanely small space her first night in the cell. That night had been the only night in her life she had broken down and cried.

"Stop apologizing," Astoria commanded, looking down at the goo. "What the hell is this?" She prodded it with her pinkie nail, which had grown too long for her liking. "Is that…are there pieces of meat in this shit?"

"Liver. Try to eat it, if you can, I don't know if you will be getting dinner tonight."

"I am a human with rights," Astoria shouted, her stomach leaping into her throat. She grasped the bars and tried to smile seductively, charmingly, but Cole seemed too nervous to respond to such a gesture. "Oh, please pull some strings. I promise I won't try to scratch the other guards again, but you know how they are…sometimes their eyes wander. I am just a girl, after all." She looked down for effect, made the corners of her lips turn down, as if she were about to cry.

"It's not that," Cole said, his voice wavering as he grasped the cart. "There's a new prisoner coming in today—the one they've been waiting for."

"Who it is?" Astoria immediately questioned, rising to her feet. Her heart suddenly felt light. "Is it someone from the school? It is someone from Hogwarts? Someone I know."

"I can't say, Miss Greengrass."

Astoria knew that if he were closer, she could reach out and run her fingernails down the length of his face, applying just enough force to break through the skin and leave long, bloody tracks. But she sighed and pushed herself away from the bars, retreating into the corner of her cell. Outside, the wind howled against the cinderblocks, and Astoria reached for the threadbare blanket on her cot and wrapped it tightly around herself. The metal door at the end of the hallway shut with a final, ringing tone. She would be by herself for sometime now, alone only with her thoughts and the leaky sink that drove her mad when she tried to sleep at night.

She went to the sink and looked into the mirror that hung above it. She wondered if there might be a way to break it somehow, use the pieces to stab a guard, break free. Or, maybe she could slit her wrists. Astoria cocked her head to one side and ran her fingers down the side of the mirror. No, it was reinforced, set right into the wall.

Her face had grown gaunt over the past three months. When she had gone to school, when her parents had still been alive, she had always been groomed and polished. Her hair had been long and espresso colored but infused with caramel highlights that complimented her hazel eyes. Her skin had always had a slight sun-kissed tone to it, even in the dead of winter. But now, the color had faded from the lack of vitamin D, she was pale as a ghost. They had cut her hair when she was caught and admitted—it was just up to her shoulders now, and the highlights had long washed out. Astoria gripped the sides of the sink and breathed deeply.

The metal doors at the other end of the hallway, the entrance, banged open.

"Let me go, I didn't do anything!" They had brought in the other prisoner. Astoria rushed to the front of her cell and wrapped her hands around the bars, trying to peer down the length of the hallway. The voice sounded completely panicked, but weak as well. "Get your filthy hands off me!"

The prison guards didn't reply. Astoria supposed that having humans guard you and care for you (if you could call it that), was better than having those creepy dementors lurking around, but she still hated the guards. They were trained to treat her as if she were inferior, but dangerous all the same. They looked at her as if she were dog shit on the bottom of her shoe, but when they were close to her, close enough to see the hate in her eyes, they backed away and left her alone.

The guards were dragging a boy down the hallway. He didn't appear to be much older than Astoria, perhaps by two or three years. He was shaking violently, either from cold or fear, it wasn't apparent. The guards reached the cell across from Astoria's and opened it with a flick of their wands, because it was just that easy to imprison someone. They threw the boy inside, without care, and sealed the bars behind him. The boy collided with the metal end of his cot and screamed, clutching his upper arm. Astoria noticed that the material of his shirt on his upper arm was stained with red, as if he were bleeding through it.

"Let me out!" The pale boy cried, rushing to the bars. Astoria could see tears in his eyes, glinting at her from all the way across the hall. "I haven't done anything!" His vocal cords strained, threatened to give out. The guards kept walking. The exit door shut behind them. The boy screamed again, more loudly this time, but now his voice was not frightened, it was tainted with anger.

Astoria turned away from the boy, her own fear and frustration unfurling within her chest. It ran through her body like a dragon's fire.

"Don't bother screaming," she said aloud, sitting on her cot and crossing her legs. She leaned the back of her head against the grimy wall. "They can't hear you anymore."