As You Are // D.M.

OUR MEMORIES

Armena Riddle-Lestrange

April 20th, 2010

Darkness. It's all I remembered from those days in Azkaban. There were nights when the wind was so frigid, that if I just closed my eyes I could picture him. Yet just like everything, the moment I opened them— he vanished. He was like a ghost. His voice would call out to me and the phantom pain of his love would always be there. He would always appear in my dreams. The days when the sun was scorching, those were the worst days in Azkaban. It was like the rays would never end and in the sauna of the hot temperature, sleep evaded me. That's when the hallucinations would start.

I wanted to forget him, I wanted to be able to never remember the pale haired boy that I loved with all my heart but there was absolutely no escape. They say people only need a week in Azkaban to go insane. I wouldn't doubt that. You were all alone to your thoughts and most of them were the darkest ones. Draco was my nightmare every single night, he was my darkest thought. There was no way of being able to rid myself of his memory.

I could never get rid of him and it killed me to my core.

I don't know what was worse: the dreams or the hallucinations. At least in my dreams we were back at Hogwarts, lying under a cherry tree where I would read him love stories or tales happy endings. We were not a happy ending, the villains never got the happy endings in the stories that I read. My favorite dream was the ones where we would be tangled up for hours, our limbs intertwined together. I could feel his lips hot on my skin as we made love; white fabric floated around us, like we were in the clouds. When we would both reach that sweet climax, he would hold me in his arms. He would repeat over and over again how much he loved me. His fingers trailing down my spine, counting each vertebrae as he went. His lips would kiss my temple and he would repeat sweet nothings to me, as we just laid there in our own little paradise.

I had wondered many times if he still dreamed of me. If he even thought of me anymore or if he simply forgot about me. I knew he would never be able to forgive me after he learned what I had done— but I did it all for him. It was always for Draco.

My nightmares were worse than my dreams.

In my nightmares, I would relive that last day as a free witch. It would play like a broken record in the room of lost items. Theo's eyes staring up at me through his blank and dazed expression reminding me that I had killed him. The unforgivable curse pouring out of my lips. The dark blood that coated the room, dripping down the walls like someone threw red paint. I would picture him, The Dark Lord as he narrowed his eyes at me with disgust. Every time I tried to stop him from doing what he did best, he would do it in tenfold. At one point I learned to just give into my nightmares, accept the fate that I was given. I could picture him now— my father would just stand and laugh at me while I stood over Draco's dead body.

Yeah, those were the nightmares that I would wake up screaming from.

The room in Azkaban was dark and large. I could hear the dementors around me swooshing and hissing, begging to have what was rest of my soul. They were relentless, I could still picture their dark abyss mouths, sucking on my life, as I waited for them to finally kill me— but it never happened. As time went on, I started to count my days by scratching marks in the wall with my nails. I think I got up to seventy five before I lost count, then the days turned into years.

Then finally it was done.

Those who entered Azkaban rarely lived to tell the tale of their return. Even worse those who were released, refused to talk about what they had experienced inside. The least frightening part of Azkaban was the fact that it was swarming with Dementors. If I really let myself think about if— If I let my mind go back to that dark cold place, I could still hear the manic laughs of the prisoners inside and the hunger of the Dementors waiting outside of my door.