Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I write for entertainment purposes only.
Author's Note: It's been a long, long two weeks and I apologize for the delayed update. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter, and maybe now that school will start again soon, I can get into a routine so regular updates continue. Again, I apologize for the delay. Feel free to review and let me know your thoughts on this one!
Prisoner 79934: Ginevra Weasley
By: Rae
-A Harry Potter Story-
The food had just arrived when the doors down the hall opened and the sounds of booted feet began clomping toward him. He pulled his plate back from the door and moved to shrink back against the wall, prepared to scream as soon as the guards arrived. He took a bite of the tasteless glop on his plate, not bothering to wipe the mess off his chin. It helped the illusion of insanity, after all.
Voices drew closer even as prisoners around him screamed, moaned, or ranted in the background. His ears perked up at the words.
"I don't know why we have to drag ole Neffit out here," said one gruff voice. "Everyone knows he killed that Muggle. Why they insist on doing these inquests over and over is beyond me."
"It's just a hassle," agreed another guard. "Pretty sure it's just happening to make his mother shut up about it."
He relaxed. Neffit was several cells down from him. The guards wouldn't come anywhere near him. He took another bite of his mush and continued listening.
"So when's the Heir of Slytherin seeing her mummy and daddy again, Dirk?" The first guard asked with a dark laugh.
"Prob'ly another two weeks," said a third voice. "They come like clockwork and jump through every hurdle to visit 'er each month. It's a right pain in my–"
A loud shriek filled the air, cutting Dirk off.
"Silencio!" The second guard called, and the sound died.
"Heard they're still trying to get that solicitor to help stall the court," the first guard said, and there was a sound of movement in the corridor along with a muffled grunt.
"If it helps 'em sleep at night," Dirk said. "She'll never see the light of day agin if you ask me."
"Saw some such about 'er older brother being friends with Harry Potter," the second guard said.
"Sometimes I hear 'er crying out in 'er sleep for 'im when I'm patrolling," Dirk said. His voice turned to a falsetto girlish pitch as he said, "'Not Harry! Please, Harry, save me! Don't hurt him!'"
There was laughter, and then one of the guards said something he couldn't quite hear, and a strange sound emitted from another cell. A thud sounded after that, and he realized they must have restrained Neffit.
"Ed better get the order out tomorrow or we won't get our stuff on time," the first guard said now, changing the subject. "I need my mags and the Wireless. Tired of only talking to you lot."
The three guards shared a gruff laugh, and then Dirk said, "Be another three weeks 'fore the boat's back. I'm running out of cigarettes. Damn Muggles. Might be about useless, but their smokes are good stuff."
The voices trailed off as they walked away, and he relaxed, finishing up his meal, such as it was, and wiping the food off his face. He hated the pretense of insanity. Sometimes he wished he was insane. Anything to wipe the memories from his mind and erase the truth that stuck with him.
He pulled out the copy of the Daily Prophet he'd gotten from Fudge. That had been–how long ago now?-several days ago, maybe a week. He opened it to the picture of the Weasley boys, his finger tip rubbing against the rat on the youngest's shoulder again. It was a soothing motion as he thought and reread the page he'd already memorized.
Flipping to another page, he read a separate article that talked in great detail about the Heir of Slytherin, an 11-year-old girl, if the author was to be believed, who'd unleashed a basilisk on Hogwarts last year. He found that hard to believe, especially after listening to the guards talking.
Word traveled in Azkaban, of course, and several of the prisoners had talked about her when they were moved into the cells nearby. The guards moved prisoners around frequently, not allowing them to stay in the same spot for long. But now it had been quite some time since he'd been moved. In fact, he realized that it had been so long since he'd been moved around that he could recognize the different voices of the guards that visited his hall.
A thought flitted across his brain, and once he caught up with it, he mulled it over for a few minutes. Then, without thinking too much about what he was doing, he felt his bones begin to bend and change and shift into the old familiar form he'd carried with him since his teen years. When his body settled into his new shape, he stood up and shook himself off, like he'd done so many times before.
When he was younger, this was a little unsettling. The shift was sometimes too much. Colors became muted into blacks, whites, and shades of grays. Before he'd shifted, it had already grown dark in the corridor, so he paced his small cell in a circle, thinking about settling into his customary spot in the center of his pallet before a scent caught his nose.
He found himself walking to the bars and pressing his snout through them cautiously, intrigued by whatever this almost pleasant smell was. He craned his neck, and then almost without his noticing it, his entire head pressed through the bars, barely brushing his furry ears against them as he did so. That smell was so familiar, but he couldn't place it, and he stepped forward again, his bony shoulders rubbing against the sides of the bars.
Without trying, he stepped forward again, straining to catch the location of that smell that had so wrapped around his brain.
And then, just like that, he was out of his cell and standing in the hall.
It was so surprising he stood stock still for just a moment. Just long enough to orient himself to the eerie darkness of the hall before he moved cautiously down the hall, his nails clicking against the stone floor. The other cells with his fellow prisoners held the same assortment of motley people in varying states of agony. He ignored the sounds coming from them and made his way down the hall to the door.
At the end of the hall there was a space perhaps six feet long in which no cell doors broke up the walls. It was here he breathed in deeply and caught that tantalizing scent again. Abruptly his brain brought to mind a large hall filled with voices of students, candles floating in air, and tables laden with mouthwatering food. Treacle tart, he thought.
Standing there for a moment, he glanced down the hall toward his cell before deciding to change. His bones melted and shifted again in the same manner as they had before, and when they finished, he stood up from his crouched position on the floor and looked around, his eyes dimly registering the same lack of color from before but now as a result of the dark rather than his canine eyes.
He stretched a trembling hand out in front of him and grasped the door knob to the wooden door that guarded the hall where he had been kept for too long. Twisting the handle gently, he breathed in a surprised breath when the door released in his hand and pulled open without a sound.
He ducked a cautious head through the doorway and looked out into another of the endless halls of Azkaban. There were no guards about to see him, and–blessedly–no Dementors roaming the hall. He stepped out into the hallway, no real thought in his mind except to test the boundaries of this strange newfound freedom.
Unbidden, an image of a redheaded boy with a pet rat on his shoulder swam before his eyes, and his fists clenched. Words on newsprint came back to him. Ginevra Weasley, Heir of Slytherin, sister to the four Weasley boys heading back to Hogwarts.
He walked down the hallway a few steps, thoughts taking shape in his mind as he listened carefully for any sounds of approaching guards. What was it Dirk had said about the Heir of Slytherin? Her parents would be coming to visit her soon. That meant she was somewhere in the prison, and if so, perhaps she could tell him more about the rat.
His eyes lit up. Three words pounded through his brain in quick succession as he ventured further down the hall.
Innocent. Wormtail. Harry.
