Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [84]
“So let’s just nonchalantly float in, find Sirius and Lupin’s cell, and then rescue them. Got it?” said Harry as all three of them formed a line. They nodded, and started working their way through the sea of dementors. After a few bumps and crashes, they came to the entrance of Azkaban. It was a huge door, at least the size of a bus, and it was made of a heavy dark metal. On the front, there were deep red words carved in, the letters were curved and pointy all over. The characters looked more like torture devices than letters of the alphabet.
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” read Harry off of the door. “Sounds like a nice place, let’s go in.” He gave the doors a slight push, and to his surprise, they swung open, revealing a large open room. It was a pure-white room, except for one small brown desk in the middle, with a small bald man sitting at it, and several holes in the wall, appearing to be randomly scattered.
“Let’s stun him, and see if we can find some papers that say where Sirius and Lupin are,” said Harry. Ron and Hermione agreed, and started to take out their wands. Then, suddenly, to Harry’s surprise, the man stood up, and walked over to them, smiling. Harry saw that what he thought was a bald spot was actually a metal piece.
“Oh good, you’ve finally arrived,” said the man to the three of them. Harry was very confused, were they expecting him? Then, he suddenly felt panicked, did they know what their plan was? “I must say, though, you were very quick to ship here… not that I have any complaints about that.” Then it hit Harry, the man evidently thought that the three of them were an order of dementors from some company.
“This way please!” said the man. He mounted a broom, and started to fly up into the air, and towards one of the holes in the wall. Harry floated up with him, and Ron and Hermione followed. It’s just like walking, Harry thought, as he instinctively moved his tentacle-like legs that allowed him to hover.
They entered the hole, which had a sign at the entrance that read “Suicidals: Guard With Extreme Caution”, and the most terrible sight Harry had ever seen came before his eyes. The hole was an entrance down a hallway that didn’t seem to have an end. It was like a tunnel that someone who had a near death experience might see, only this tunnel did not end in any light, it was almost pitch black the entire way down. The only sounds were that of water (at least, what looked like water) dripping and moans, with the occasional scream. Dirty and skinny hands were protruding through the bars that separated the prisoner’s cells from the hallway. When Harry saw whom one of the hands belonged to, he thought he was going to be sick. A man with only one arm and half a leg stared back at Harry with his one good eye. His other was bloodshot and extremely inflamed. His skin was a deep green, and he had almost no hair left, unless you counted his extremely long beard that had bugs crawling in and out of it. The man suddenly threw up what looked like blood, and it hit the ground with a large splat. A group of rats immediately came up to the pile of bloody vomit, and started eating whatever was in it. The man picked one of the rats up, and bit its head off with a large crunch.
Harry turned his face away from the man, he knew Azkaban was supposedly terrible, but never knew it could possibly be this horrific. As Harry hovered down the halls, and saw several more dementors, floating around, causing screams wherever they passed, only one thought came to Harry’s mind.
“This is Hell,” he thought to himself as they passed another man who was desperately trying to keep his only eye from dripping out of its socket by holding it in with a spoon. They came to the end of the tunnel, and reached an intersecting hallway. The man turned right, and Harry followed, along with Ron and Hermione. This was another tunnel like the one they had just left, only this one had a sign that read: “Newcomers”. The man stopped there, and turned to the