Hey. So this is a rather long, faintly sappy story which I will be adding chapters to frequently. I've already written more than half of it, but have not yet gone over it for grammar and spelling errors. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Temporal explanation: This is set after the ending of Deathly Hallows, but prior to the epilogue.

Rating: It's on the upper end of T. Mild language, some violence and gore, and a lot of dark/depressing content.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, locations, terms, etc. specific to the Harry Potter universe. The only OCs are Stevie and Vincent, and a couple of extras.

A light breeze whipped my robes out behind me as I flew towards Azkaban prison to visit my father. I did so once every two weeks, alternating with Mother. Father still had about four years left to his sentence.

I gazed down at my reflection in the dark, rippling ocean water below. I looked even paler than usual in the dim light of the full winter moon.

The full moon – Fenrir Greyback. He'd torn the muggle woman to shreds right in front of us, the Dark Lord and I, and my companion was laughing his terrible cold laugh…

I jerked my thoughts away from Greyback with a start. Azkaban was looming up out of the sea mists ahead, and I veered slightly to aim for the spot of light at its base that marked the only entrance in the magical wall surrounding the prison. As I reached it, I came to a halt and slid off my broomstick, walking towards the four Aurors who waited in the magical gateway.

"Who is it?" asked one of them gruffly, raising his wand.

"Draco Malfoy," I answered, holding up my hands to show I was unarmed. My wand was in my pocket, and the Auror, whom I thought I recognized as Dawlish, took it carefully and placed it in a box. The other Aurors came over, and cast a variety of dispelling and canceling charms to confirm that I was not an imposter.

"You can go in," said Dawlish at last, when they had finished their inspection. "You're here to see your father, I presume?"

I nodded.

"He hasn't been moved from last time you visited," he informed me, before gesturing at the magical gate, which disappeared in a wisp of silver fog. I walked through and entered Azkaban itself, a tall stone building with few windows and only one door. Through this I proceeded, and then ascended a stone staircase to the eighth floor. Turning left, I continued down a long, shadowy hallway.

Shadows were everywhere in the cold drawing room – the Dark Lord had no desire for any light other than that which shone from his own wand. He pointed it at the old man lying on the floor, the man who had made both my own hawthorn wand and the wand which was now being used to torture him, and he screamed in a hoarse, cracking voice, while I stood there frozen and watched, and did nothing…

I shook myself out of my morbid thoughts as I reached the end of the hall, and looked into the cell immediately to my left. Father was in there, reading a week-old edition of the Daily Prophet. He looked up at the sound of my footsteps, and then came over to the bars, smiling wanly but with genuine happiness.

"Hello, Draco."

"Father. How are you?"

"I'm actually quite well, thank you. Without the Dementors here, Azkaban isn't that bad. The Aurors guarding this section will sometimes come over and have a chat, too."

I looked back along the hallway. Aurors were posted at intervals along it, looking bored but alert.

"How's Narcissa?"

"Mother's well. She's staying with Andromeda Tonks."

"Really? How… intriguing. Ah well. And you, Draco?" he said, looking closely at me. "How have you been lately?"

"I'm fine," I told him, which was at least partially true. "I'm staying at the manor, trying to get rid of the things that were brought in during the war, repairing or replacing any damaged furniture…"

"I see. What else are you doing, though? That is, have you thought about what you're going to do with your life – now that certain career options have been eliminated by circumstance?"

"Not really," I answered honestly. "I didn't think much about it during school, since we always assumed I was going to be a Death Eater."

"I know," he said, suddenly looking serious. "I'm sorry for that, Draco. You were following in my footsteps, and it hasn't exactly turned out very well."

"It's alright," I said, reaching through the cell bars to grasp his shoulder. "Let's not talk about that, okay?"

"Very well." He was silent for a moment, and then returned to the earlier subject. "Have you considered work at the Ministry?"

"No. The Ministry's primary concern right now is rebuilding what was lost during the war, a prospect that I don't find incredibly inviting. Besides, I doubt if I'd be very welcome, considering. And I must admit, Father, that I'm still… fascinated, in a way, by the Dark Arts. I know what they can do, and even having seen the uses the Dark Lord put them to, I can't help but think that ignoring them is a great waste."

"Perhaps," my father said, sighing. We spoke for a while about magic, and then about people and times, past and present. At last, I said farewell and departed down the hall.

I was passing the third floor on my way back down the staircase when I froze, hearing a familiar voice shouting from the hall on the right. Memories flooded through my head, and I stood unmoving on the steps.

"Of course, Bellatrix, my dear. I shall see you tonight." Rudolphus departed through the beautiful door of my home, leaving his wife in the drawing room with Pettigrew and I. She turned and gave Pettigrew an awful, mad grin.

"Fetch that mudblood we captured earlier today, Peter." The ratlike man scurried away and I was left alone in the room with my disturbed aunt.

"Draco, darling," she smiled, grasping my arm with her long fingernails digging into my skin, "why don't you do this one?"

Pettigrew appeared in the doorway, levitating a man bound with dark ropes of magic. I raised my wand, my hand shaking, and hesitated. My aunt turned her deranged gaze on me and hissed at me to hurry up.

I yelled, "Crucio!"

Jolting back to the present, I ran on down the stairs, away from Rudolphus Lestrange's shrieking voice. I was so rattled that I missed the exit and ended up at the very bottom of the staircase, in the basement.

I paused, catching my breath. I had never been down here before; the basement housed prisoners considered relatively low-risk. This might have been due to the very remote possibility that one could tunnel out; the magical wall did not extend below ground, although it would take a very determined, active, and cunning prisoner to dig through several hundred feet of solid rock, with only their fingernails or the occasional tin spoon, while Aurors stood guard in the passage outside, and then to swim the many miles to shore with no magical aid.

Most of the cells were unoccupied; in the aftermath of the war, petty crimes were mostly overlooked due to the much more dangerous criminals, ex-Death Eaters and similar, who were still on the run. I spotted only one Auror, a young woman with dark skin and hair. I wandered over in her direction.

"Hello," she said, looking curiously at me.

"Hello," I replied. I could have gone back up the stairs and departed, but didn't feel like doing so just yet. My mind was still clouded with memories of the previous year. "I'm sorry, there's no particular reason I'm down here – merely idle curiosity. Who are you?"

"Stevie Paulson. You?"

"Draco Malfoy." I was not sure if my name would cause an unfriendly reaction, but she seemed unaffected by it.

"Oh yes," she said, shaking my hand. "I assume you're visiting your father here?"

"That's correct." I looked around at the basement. Gloomy as the rest of Azkaban was, at least it was dry and had a few windows. Here, the walls were damp with salt water, and the only light came from a few grills on the ceiling, through which a dim, colorless glow from the floor above filtered down.

"How many people are down here?" I inquired, gathering from the Auror's presence that there were some, although I had seen no one.

"Four," she answered. "Mundungus Fletcher is down the end of this passage, he's only here for another couple of weeks. The infamous McCarter sisters are off the same hall on the right. They're in for a little longer, we've been looking for them quite a while. Their latest escapade was looting a morgue. At the end of the passage on the other side is Barty Crouch, Jr."

The name was familiar. "Wait," I said slowly, "wasn't he involved in the Longbottom affair? And the Triwizard Tournament… I would have thought he'd be in a high security cell."

"Yeah, well, he got the Dementor's Kiss," Stevie told me, grimacing. "He just sits there, doesn't do anything really."

I had seen someone Kissed by a Dementor once. It was an old mudblood – no, we were calling them muggle-borns now, weren't we – an old muggle-born woman who had been too inquisitive, given too much information to the public about the Dark Lord's operations.

We had gone to her house in the middle of the night, the Dark Lord and Rookwood and I, and the Dementors, they had come too; gliding silently through the darkness, like great grey moths, their approach bringing icy strands of fear and despair that wormed their way into my mind. We'd found her in her bedroom, just roused from sleep but with her wand out, already made aware of our visit by the Dementors' cold presence. The Dark Lord had disarmed her, though, before she could fire off a spell, and one of the great grey shapes had swooped down on her, its… face, if you could call it that, close to hers. I had heard it take a long, rattling breath, and then something bright had emerged from her lips and drifted in the air for a moment before the Dementor sucked it into the gaping black hole beneath its hood. Her soul had looked like a spark, floating there in front of me…

They had never even told me her name.

"Can I see him?" I asked. Stevie looked askance at me. I couldn't blame her; it was an odd request, and she probably thought I was a bit sick for making it.

"Er… okay. Dunno why you'd want to, though."

She pointed me in the right direction, and I walked back around the stairs and down the opposite hall. I stopped at a cell near the end and looked in.

A youngish, light haired man was sitting slumped against one wall. His eyes stared blankly at the stone across from him, although I doubted he saw it. He looked dead. I said his name, but he didn't move at all.

I returned to where Stevie was standing in the other hallway.

"Hey," I said. "Er, would you mind if I asked you some things?"

"No. Can't promise I'll answer, though."

"Right – it's nothing classified. I just wanted to know – he sits there and doesn't move at all, right?"

"That's right."

"So… how come he's still alive? When does he eat?"

"He doesn't," she told me. "Doesn't eat or sleep or move. Sometimes I go in there and shift him to the other wall or something. Changes the decor a little."

I felt that this was a bit tasteless, but then, she did have very boring job.

"So how is he alive?"

"Not sure. I'm not a Dementor expert, I dunno how it works."

"Oh. Well, thanks, Stevie. It was nice meeting you."

"Likewise," she said, although I suspected she didn't mean it. I went up the stairs, retrieved my wand from the Aurors at the gate, and flew back slowly to Malfoy Manor, thinking.

Well, there's the first chapter. Please review, any and all input you might have is welcome.