Stigmata

Chapter Fourteen: Salvation or Perdition

Azkaban Prison was no less of a looming monstrosity without the Dementors as it had been with them. Ron hated Azkaban. Yes, he saw the necessity of it, but, to him, it would always be the incarnation of Hell, something that mere mortals had no right building, let alone using.

He had made this trip many times, bringing one Death Eater after another to this place. Not many of them had remained alive. Lucius Malfoy: executed. Bellatrix Lestrange: executed. Rodolphus Lestrange: life-time sentence. Walden Macnair: executed. Crabbe Sr. and Jr.: executed. Goyle Sr. and Jr.: executed. Blaise Zabini: life-time sentence. Theodore Nott: executed. Pansy Parkinson: executed. Draco Malfoy: to be executed tomorrow. The list wound on and on, more names and faces than Ron wished to remember... and many, many more names he did not recognize and faces that he would never have met... all brought to this place because of one common sin.

And, now, his once-best-friend was to join them. The last one on a list which Ron wished had never been made.

The Head Auror sighed as the stunned wizard was brought into the boat and laid roughly across the wooden floor. The strange eyes that were infamous as Lord Scylla's eyes were glazed over and unblinking. Ron tapped his wand against the side of the boat, and it began to move through the murky water silently, toward what would be Harry's final resting place.

Scylla... Harry Potter: life-time sentence.

As the boat neared the island fortress, dark storm clouds began to close in around the moon.

He walked like a man defeated, Ron thought, as he and two other aurors brought Harry towards the cells occupied by Death Eaters. These were the deepest and darkest levels of the prison, where the only light came from Ron's own wand and where the scant moonlight crept in through the small barred windows of the prison. He should have been happy that Scylla wasn't making things difficult. Even without a wand, the dark wizard could have fought back effectively enough. But he didn't. He just slowly walked as if the world had closed him off from its light and left him to the darkness.

Ron had to remind himself that it was Harry's own choices which brought him to this in order to appease his own guilt.

They were passing the cells of Death Eaters now. Scylla slowed slightly to look at the destroyed human souls which sat in their cells, but he kept moving, so Ron allowed the change of pace. No Death Eater looked towards the group, and Scylla did not try to communicate with them in any way until they reached the second to last cell, which was no Death Eater's cell.

Harry... Scylla, stopped, his eyes fixed unblinkingly at the figure who sat on the stone floor of the cell looking back at him with sad, cold eyes.

One of the aurors next to Harry prodded him, first lightly, then more forcefully, but still Harry did not step forward.

"Sir-" the man turned to Ron as if to ask what to do, but was suddenly pushed to the floor as Harry leapt toward the bars of the cage.

"Stop." Ron steadied the other auror whose wand was pointed at Harry, a spell waiting on his lips.

Harry gripped the bars of Malfoy's cell as if trying to move them through sheer force of will. Ron couldn't bear to look at him. Even though he'd heard, from Harry's own lips, that he held no remorse for his actions, the guilt ate away at the redhead.

"Just let him in!" Ron muttered. "Malfoy's going to die tomorrow anyway; he can sit in this cell just as he would in the other one."