Chapter 1
Only footsteps and their faint echoes were audible above the clamor of crashing waves.
They went ignored by most of the prisoners within earshot. Hope rose and fell as easily as the tide, if they were even capable of mustering that higher emotion.
Mildew and moss-ridden walls separated the prisoners from each other, imposing an isolation that was utterly complete. Their vocal chords were impaired upon incarceration, making speaking a futile endeavor. The silence they could not break was almost as unbearable as the Dementors that roamed at will, interrupted only by the distant tinkling of keys.
Most fell victim to the dual threats, one or the other. If not outright insanity then to a mindless stupor.
Only a handful of prisoners stirred.
Wintry green eyes belonging to one of them opened.
Their owner laid spreadeagled on his back and the sight that greeted him accordingly was a keystone, sculpted into the stern visage of Praxidice, the Exacter of Justice. It was set at the apex of the masonry archway of his cell, locking into place the voussoir stones. His cell was restrictive in the two dimensions that mattered: length and width, while it was expansive in the only dimension that did not: height. Halfway from the ground to the underside of the tower, a portcullis mounted on vertical grooves on the wall hemmed him in. Above that the counter-weights hung from chains well beyond his reach.
The prisoner pushed himself upright, and his gaze - always turned inward, never outward when he awoke - shifted lower. The hypnotic waves of the North Sea visible behind him invited his contemplation, but he could not turn his back on the spectacle at his fore.
Azkaban was a panopticon.
Through the latticed grilles of the portcullis, he could see the curvature of the Azkaban's circular structure. The rim encompassed a radius of a thousand yards, divided into nine levels of cells that extended the entire thickness of the wall. Central to the circle was a watchtower. It was layered on a multitude of tiers with multiple eaves and jutted from the surface of the water, which sluiced against its base in constant reminder that Azkaban was adrift at sea. The occupant of each cell was backlit, separated from each other, and subjected to the scrutiny of an unseen observer in the tower at the center of the circle.
It was not so elaborate originally.
At first, Azkaban was built as a conventional prison, boasting walls, gates, guardhouses, and innumerable cellblocks.
It functioned splendidly during peacetime, but its flaw became glaring when the Dark Lord declared war. The corridors and battlements needed dozens of guards to patrol them, and those very same personnel were needed on the field, launching raids and responding to Death Eater attacks. Too many were tied up at Azkaban, blunting the war effort. Redesigned as a panopticon, there was only the need for a single observer, stationed in that tower. Much more efficient.
The prisoner fancied he saw the glint of a telescope trained on him, and unconsciously shrunk back against the wall in an effort to disappear into the threadbare blankets and mattress. He peered closer, but was thwarted by the Venetian blinds that covered the viewports. He had never seen whatever entity inhabited that tower, not once. Flocks of seagulls frequently roosted on the decorative brackets at the ends of the eaves, but they were never scattered, their nests never disturbed.
More than once he contemplated the possibility of the tower being empty. It made sense, he reasoned, to turn the mentality of the prisoners to their advantage. The inability to well whether they were being watched or not conveyed what the architect of the panoptic prison design, the philosopher and social reformist Jeremy Bentham, called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."
He instinctively knew that the paranoia was justified. Every time he convinced himself that nothing watched him, he felt a weight settle on him, the same sensation he experienced whenever Dumbledore pinned him with a penetrating stare. He felt it too keenly for it to be an illusion.
Someone kept a watchful vigil, and paid more attention to a certain prisoner than to any other.
His gaze lowered to the ledge on the other side of the portcullis, narrowing as a hand appeared and latched onto it.
Its fingers were spindly and a lifeless gray, their joints exposed through decayed tendons and wasted flesh. Another hand appeared beside the first, and a Dementor slowly dragged itself upright to stand on the ledge. Its face was hidden beneath the shadows cast by the cowl, but its stare was more felt than seen. The prisoner straightened his back, meeting where he thought its eyes were with his own challengingly.
He shivered once and dim memories began to resurface.
A cradle ceasing its gentle rocking motion.A plea for mercy , voice drowned in of green light enveloping a father and a mother.
Worse memories supplanted them, making them seem pale in comparison.
A wand of holly being turned on defenseless Muggles.A wand of holly being turned on defenseless wizards.
Not really defenseless, he mused.
No less than seventeen of his Muggle victims had wielded guns. It wasn't his fault he had simply summoned their small-arms. The officers amassed at Surrey weren't defenseless at first - he had rendered them defenseless. There was a difference, fine though it was.
The wizards and witches were only negligibly different - he'd pried their wands loose from fingers stiffening with rigor-mortis. They posed a greater challenge, but they all fell in the end.
Such power came with a price, however. He had paid it to Tom Riddle. At first, the Dark Lord had refused to give him an audience. He already knew who his allies and enemies were, he did not need them switching categories.
He had to show he meant his change of heart, something adequately achieved when he massacred the inhabitants of Little Whinging.
The Dursleys. Them first.Their insufferable neighbors. Them next. Then everyone. The end.
That had gotten the Dark Lord's attention.
Through a savage exertion of will, the prisoner quelled the unpleasant memories that refused to stay buried.
He wasn't in the mood to relive them.
The Dementor reached for the winch on the other side of the portcullis, its hand tracing the axle before coming to a rest on the shaft. Cranking it would lift the only obstruction between them.
His heartbeat quickened from its lethargic pace and a slight knot of tension had formed between his shoulders.
When push came to shove, he did not want to lose the remainder of his tattered soul.
The creature's stare lingered awhile before roving upward and it released its hold on the shaft. Its hands moved to the grilles of the portcullis and the Dementor quickly scaled up it and the chains atop it, disappearing from sight. The prisoner had never kept the Dementors' interest for long. They fed on happiness and hope - wrath was an acquired taste, apparently.
He cocked his head to the side, angling his ear to the arched ceiling. Judging by the gravelly sound of another portcullis lifting and the pulley hoisting the chains, the occupant of his cell above his own had the misfortune of being sentenced to a Kiss. He heard nothing. Perhaps the unlucky fellow was subdued by the aura of the Dementor - but then he heard things.
The frantic rattling of the bed-frame against the wall livened his quarters as fists swung through a cloak with no flesh to harm underneath.
Due to the complete absence of voices, the scuffle seemed almost civilized. How would it feel, to face the certainty of death and not be able to cry out in fear? Or beg for mercy, if only from the merciless?
The mortal struggle being waged nearby reminded him of his own state. Slim fingertips thoughtfully massaged his throat, raspy from disuse. He struggled to remember the last words he'd spoken.
What had they been?
"Please."He hadn't begged. He was rightfully condemned. "Believe me."Believe what? That he was innocent? Speaking of which - "I'm innocent."No. He was no liar.
He dismissed them possibilities one after the other - he could not remember. Peeled his lips back in a snarl, too. Threw an - ironically - wordless tantrum.
I have no mouth and I must scream.
The desperate prisoner from the neighboring cell hurled himself off the ledge, choosing to brave a hundred-foot drop rather than the Dementor come to take his soul.
Poorly-chosen, the listener mentally tutted.
He would have chosen the Prisoner-in-the-cell-above had chosen the Dementors.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of the man's panicked face as the body folded and inverted in the air. He judged the poor fellow to have just reached midlife - or the end of it, given the predicament. It was open to interpretation. The plummeting man's vector was almost horizontal for the first few moments, before his trajectory abruptly curved downward, bowing to gravity. The splash that followed was quite the spectacle, frothing water roiling away from the point of impact. The ripples flowing outward gradually subsided, and a flailing figure emerged.
The wizard sputtered and strove to stay afloat in the frigid water. He looked frantically from side to side, as if bewildered at his survival. When he calmed, he stared upward, at where the Dementor now stood. It made no attempt to follow.
The triumph was short-lived.
Shapes began to darken, rising from the depths.
The Dementor had not followed the prisoner. There was no need.
Hundreds of its brethren surfaced, hoods and sleeves draped low, weighed down by water. Droplets cascaded, running freely from their forms. They surrounded the lone human in their midst, the focal point for their overwhelming aura. So many in one place, and so near, it was a wonder the prisoner was not immediately paralyzed. The cold intensified, and in a final act of desperation the wizard made for the tower so tantalizingly within reach. He managed a single stroke, which took him into the waiting arms of a Dementor. Emaciated arms wrapped around the frail figure, and the black-clad fiends flocked to them en masse. There was no sense of dimension - they pressed their wraith-like bodies more closely than physically possible. They seemed to dissolve together into a vast inkblot, swirling in the water corralled by the grim enclosure of Azkaban's superstructure.
They Kissed.
The escapee disappeared, sinking without resistance beneath the surface of the water.
The Dementors followed.
The water regained its earlier tranquility.
Losing interest, the prisoner focused his attention on the footsteps. They were much nearer now, and approached from the southwestern end of the walkway outside. From observation he knew that the Dementors made their rounds from the opposite direction. The footfalls sounded firmer too, not the hollow-like steps of the wraiths. That, coupled with the sound of rustling from the other cells as mute prisoners attempted to attract attention, led him to the inevitable conclusion.
Someone was going to be set free.
Harry Potter began tapping the wall beside his head, fingers following the rhythm set by his first visitor in five years.
.