Memory

By: QDT

For: Bedelia, February 2011. The "Love in Unusual Places" prompt on Twin Exchange forums.

Location: Azkaban

Disclaimer: If I were JK Rowling, I could write actual novels instead of struggling to hit 1,000 words.

The thing about Azkaban is that it drives people crazy. Dementors instill fear in people, not because of any harm that they might cause them, but because they make them relive all of the harmful or frightening things that have ever happened to them in their entire lives, over and over again until they crack. No matter how strong someone is, they're always afraid of something. Dementors find that something, and they feed on it. They are very simple creatures when it comes down to it, and therein lies their main failing. What can they do to a person like themselves? How do you frighten someone who thrives on fear and pain? Azkaban has little effect on the truly crazy.

The screams there are constant. When one person's voice gives out, someone else begins their own sobs. It is an unending cacophonous harmony of hurt. To Bellatrix Lestrange, the noise is a symphony. Sometimes, she laughs with them, a cackling descant that oftentimes causes a sudden silence in the music. Other times she screams with them, and angry cry. She would be jealous of the dementors. She knows that they are the ones in charge here, that they are the ones causing the screams. She contents herself with the knowledge that they can only ever dredge up painful memories, whereas she, given the opportunity, can be the cause of such delicious new ones.

Her own memories are full of pain. She thinks that this is why she is able to remember them. She remembers suffering, hours and hours of suffering, and pain. Alice Longbottom, begging for the safety of her son. Gideon and Fabian Prewitt's last screams before that flash of green death and the sudden, ringing silence that always follows. Were she capable of being happy, these things would probably make her so. But sick pleasure is not true happiness, and so the dementors cannot take these things away.

There is something that she is sure she cannot remember, that they have been able to take away. But she knows that it is gone and that makes her angry. Anger is something that they cannot take away, and they know it. Her anger agitates the dementors. They can neither feed off of it nor take it from her, and so they are always acting oddly around her cell. This makes the human guards nervous, and they avoid her cell as much as possible. She likes this, and though she knows that it is because the unpredictable behaviors of the dementors, she fancies that they might avoid her cell anyway, merely because of who is in it.

There is a cell like that down the hall, she notices. It takes her a while. She loses track of time in Azkaban. There is no clock, no sunlight, no times of lightness or darkness. Just gray. Sometimes she sleeps. She never knows how long. It may have taken her weeks, or maybe months or perhaps even years to notice. But there is a door that the guards don't dare go near even though the dementors swoop by it without a second thought. Bellatrix can see it through the tiny, barred window on her own cell.

She is terribly curious. Who is in there? What kind of person are the guards themselves afraid of? Is it somebody that she knows? She ponders this for even longer than it took her to realize that there was a place they avoided. Months at least; years, probably. She obsesses over it. She does not know who it is, nor does she know if she ever knew. Somehow she is sure that she did. The cell, the only thing that she can see in this godforsaken place, gets tied up in her mind with the one thing that she cannot remember. On good days, she knows that while she may know the person in there (she knows a lot of wizards in prison, who were arrested for similar offenses as herself), that person probably does not feature prominently in whatever memories the dementors prevent her from seeing. On bad days, she is positive that whoever is in that cell is central to the memories that they take away. On those days, she hisses at the dementors as they pass by. They do not seem to care, but it certainly frightens some of the other prisoners.

And then one day, one day when the screams are significantly quieter than usual, and Bellatrix knows that it is sunny in the low-security cells with real windows, he joins the music. From that cell down the hall comes a low, angry growl, and suddenly Bellatrix knows.

The memories flood back in, and she knows what was missing. The dementors congregate around her door, but it is too late. She remembers. She sees herself, Bellatrix Black, all dressed in white. Bellatrix Lestrange. Suddenly she is happy, truly happy again. Even in the midst of the most depressing place on earth. She cackles with pure joy, and there is a responding laugh down the hall. Loud and long and deep. She remembers meeting him at Hogwarts, both just eleven years old, playing innocent games. Searching for anthills and smashing them. Cursing spiders and pretending to be able to hear them scream. She laughs again.

She remembers the wedding, and everything that came after. Being welcomed together into the ranks of the Death Eaters. How he used to track the muggles and muggle-lovers down, how she would be the one to surprise them.

The dementors crowd around her. They are agitated, angry. But the human mind is a tricky thing. Everything she knows and remembers is intertwined with each other, and it is impossible to extract any one thing on its own. The dementors may not know this, but they know that she is happy, and that when she laughs it causes flickers of happiness in the other cell, so close by. They are outraged. But she doesn't care. The only thing that matters now is remembering him.

Rodolphus.