Raised by the Dementors

A Family Reunion

I OWN NOTHING EXCEPT FOR GEMINI (future me here, I just woke up time to rewrite this yayy)

Gem's POV (Her nickname):

The day seemed a little brighter today. How I knew? Well, simply because no rainwater was leaking from the ceiling into my cell. For one of the most exclusive facilities meant to contain the Wizarding World's worst criminals, it had a rather frail structure. Any Wizard with enough skill could break it if they desired. But unfortunately, the only person who would willingly break Azkaban prison was dead. Today marked my eleventh birthday, and nearly ten years of being stuck in this place. You would have thought that I would have developed strong opinions on things from the people who raised me- and I did! I inherited Sirius's reckless tendencies after a few years, and I also grew to have a rather blunt outlook on the world from Auntie Bellatrix. However, there was one thing I was conflicted of. While Sirius despised the man known as Voldemort, Bellatrix did nothing short of praise him. At times, both of them got awfully close to ripping the other's eye out over their political and social opinions. What were politics again? Right, that thing Sirius described as annoying and useless (I always had a feeling he hated politicians). Bellatrix described politics as an obstacle for her Dark Lord, a bunch of flies and mosquitoes that were weak, but incredibly hard to kill.  I had never seen a politican, but my guardians described Lucius Malfoy as one, so who was I to disagree with their opinions? 

Ten years ago, he got away from his imprisonment, causing me to be put here instead. You'd expect me to be bitter, right? Well, not really. I would be extremely bitter if I had been raised solely by my aunt. But lucky for me, I had Sirius. He always told me to let go of the past. He'd often remind me that Lucius was not worth my anger, nor was he worth my time. He would tell me that Malfoy resembled a Loreal commercial? I never knew what it meant, but Sirius told me to be grateful that I inherited more of my mother's features. Speaking of Sirius, he woke me up today with what he called the muggle Happy Birthday song. Although he sounded like a dehydrated cat, I still appreciated his efforts to cheer me up. Uncle Sirius told me he used to be a fantastic singer back when he was a srtudent at Hogwarts, he also told me that on the day of his eleventh birthday, his younger brother Regulus attempted to sing that exact same song but failed. Not because he didn't know the lyrcis, but because their mother did not want anything muggle to make contact with her precious children, not even a song. For such an awful woman, he made her seem more like an angry 'cartoon character'. I  didn't know what that meant, but Sirius explained it as muggle pictures that moved and talked to tell a story, and were often very funny and exaggerated. As a child, I foten wondered if all wizards were like Walburga Black, did they all hate muggles that much?

Aunt Bellatrix said that muggles were powerless creatures, unworthy of our attention unless the Dark Lord commanded them to be... slaughtered. She said that in the past, wizards and witches were burned and persecuted and treated badly, so we had to go into hiding. She claims that Voldemort wanted Wizards to claim their place as the rightful rulers of the world. Why couldn't muggles and wizards coexist? She never answered that question. However, Bellatrix did teach me some useful things. One of those useful things was basic wandless magic, which I used since I started showing signs of accidental magic at about three or four years old. She said that it would become useful in the future. She also said that about the Occlumency and Legillimency her and Sirius taught me. Occlumency to block my mind against the cloaked dementors, and legillimency to defend myself against other prisoners who found it entertaining to torment a child. 

Azkaban had taken its toll on my guardians. It took away Sirius's signature charisma and Bella's... not so insane behavior. I always wondered what they were like before the prison, before the war, before the conflict. Probably bickering cousins, but way worse. The small wooden crib that had been placed when I was a child had been transfigured into a brick bed that, quite honestly, gave me more back pain than treatment. Ah, treatment. I was thankful to the guards for not tormenting me on my birthday. Maybe they, too, realized that I should be eating a warm meal, preparing for my Hogwarts letter, probably fixing my hair in the mirror. I don't even own a mirror. Sirius and Bellatrix, however, were not so lucky today. They were taken out of their cells soon after I woke up,  Bellatrix in a fit of mad giggles and Sirius rolling his eyes. Treatment took its toll on the prisoners, for sure. It was unnecessary physical torture, as if the Dementors and near starvatation weren't enough to drive us mad.