Azkaban...all you ever wanted to know!
This page is still under construction...but it's almost done!
The Facts - Azkaban Prison or Fortress as it is also known is probably the worst place in all of Rowling’s Wizarding world. It is located on a tiny island easily bypassed by Muggle shipping lines or perhaps is unknown, far out in the sea, but these security measures are unneeded for the prison. The prison is guarded by the foulest and darkest creatures of Rowling’s world, the Dementors. The Dementors are terrifying specter like creatures, with disturbingly human upper bodies beneath their cloaked forms.
The Dementors act like sort like a sort of vampire, but are far more terrible. They suck the happiness, hope, and eventually even the will to live from the very air or anywhere they infest. They will even suck the magic from a Wizard or Witch if they are exposed to long to the creatures making it impossible for the victim to fight them. They can be fended off with a Patronus Charm, a type of shield that projects positive thoughts at the creature. I Dementor relishes in death but never kills, even with it’s most terrible weapon, the Dementor’s Kiss. The Kiss is performed when the Dementor removes its hood, revealing it’s face that is mostly a gaping mouth. They clamp there mouth over the victims and suck out their soul. However this does not kill the person, the mind and body can exist without the soul. Instead the soulless person survives to live a terribly empty existence, incapable of memory, feeling and possibly survival.
These terrible creatures dwell at Azkaban prison, therefore the prisoners don’t need their walls and locks to keep them from the world, as they are locked within there own heads, unable to think a single happy thought for the Dementors will rob it from them. They are forced to constantly relive the worst most desperate, fearful and saddest moments of their life and are incessantly tortured, not by blades and iron, but by their own guilt and despair. Most of the prisoners are shrieking for mercy by nightfall of their fist day of imprisonment, but in a few days fall silent as they are locked within their own minds, and scream only in their sleep where they certainly find no relief. Most go insane within weeks. And most lose the will to live and stop eating.
Personal Speculation - The prison is most likely cloaked in spells of invisibly, like Hogwarts to keep the Muggles away from it. If any Muggle shipping lines pass by the island, it is likely they would see only a desolate rocky outcropping rather than the terrible prison really there. If any prisoners did manage to remain sane enough, and had enough willpower to escape the water surrounding the fortress would likely be a barrier in itself. Azkaban prison would probably be located near Scotland where the waters are frigid, this would be meant to kill any man sane enough to escape.
As the purpose of Azkaban is sever punishment and eventfully insanity there is no reason for the prisoners to enjoy any of the luxuries that Muggle prisons have. The conditions are probably so dire that it resembled a war prison camp.
Everyone that has ever escaped Azkaban has been described as gaunt and looking “like a skeleton” therefore there is probably meager food and water.
They are described as being filthy, therefore there probably are not any showers or baths. Their hair is matted and long, therefore they probably aren’t even allowed combs or hair cuts, and their faces are sunken, their skin thin and waxy and deathly pale. These are all signs of malnutrition, lack of sunlight and living to long in despair.
The prison outfits consist of simple gray robes, and by the time of escape the robes are ragged suggesting that the prisoners are simply locked in there cells and forgotten, left exposed to the elements and the cold.
Since most of the prisoners chose to die horribly of starvation and likely dehydration there most likely isn’t anything else they can use to commit suicide within their cells. No metal, no glass or porcelain to shatter and cut themselves with.
If the prison is as dire as the prisoners reflect it to be than the waste disposal is perhaps very poor as well. Disease of all sorts is liable to be rampant here, Remus even says himself the Dementors like to infest diseased places. Dementors also reveal in decay, so any prisoner that died and goes unclaimed by family they are apt let decay before they bury it.
Not only are the living conditions so dire but Fudge suggested that there is nothing to do in Azkaban, and stated that most prisoners “sit there muttering to themselves in the dark”, and Sirius begged Fudge for his Daily Prophet. They wouldn’t have books, or T.V or anything that Muggle prisons have, most prisoners where meant to go insane, and therefore have no use of them. The prisoners are also not allowed visitors; Barty Couch was allowed a deathbed visit to his son only because he was an important Ministry member.
These however are context clue formed opions about the prison, I claim none of this as fact.
So how did Sirius survive? – Sirius’ personality suggests that he’s always been resilient and enduring, in Azkaban he must have taken these traits to an otherworldly level, this part of his character among many other things is what helped him survive twelve years and kept him sane, to a certain degree.
Sirius also knew that he was innocent of the crimes he was charged for, but this wasn’t a happy throught, in fact it most likely made his suffering all the more painful, therefore the Dementors couldn’t steal that knowledge from him. Despite the wracking of pain of thinking of all that could have been in those twelve years, it gave him fire and strength. It kept him wanting to live, knowing who he was and helped him keep his magic. And it fueled his hate.
Hate helped him just as much as anything else. Hate can be every bit as powerful as love, and this is very true in Sirius’ case. While thinking of Harry, or James, Lily, Remus and any other loved ones he may have had before his imprisonment would have kept him alive, they come with happy thoughts and memories that the Dementors could steal from. It’s likely by the time he escaped he barley even remember those people, because they represented such as carefree time of his life. His hate of Peter, of everything that had condemned him, the Dementors couldn’t take, and the thought of somehow gaining vengeance where likely what kept him eating each day. But Sirius didn’t have any drive to escape up until his 12th year, nor any plan on what he was going to do after the escape.
When his despair become to much to bear, he would use his magic to transform into the dog, in animal form emotions are much less complex and therefore couldn’t effect him as strongly. Not only would this ability help bear twelve years of unending torment but would fool the Dementors into thinking he, like everyone else, was going mad. (The Dementors are blind.)
When Sirius came across the Daily Prophet with the picture of Scabbers/Peter, everything changed for him. If the Dementors had sucked away the memory of his friends and god son it’s likely that seeing that photograph of his enemy and everything his betrayal stood for brought everything rushing back. It gave him all he needed to know, the fact that Peter was alive, who he would be with, and where he would be going. He knew Peter was perfectly positioned to act and kill Harry and even Dumbledore should he receive any word of Voldemort’s return to power. Sirius knew he had to act now, so he did the unthinkable and escaped. He slipped past the Dementors as a dog (they were to confused by animal emotions to know he’d escaped), he was thin enough to squeeze through the bars, and he braved the water and the sheer exhaustion of the journey and swam back to the mainland, driven by both the power of hate, and love for his godson.
So how did Bellatrix and the other Death Eaters survive and stay sane? – I really wouldn’t say any of them are sane…of course I do hate them all (especially Bellatrix) so that’s just an opinion. This is a good question. Hermione says that in order for Sirius to have escaped Azkaban at all and suggested for him to be sane he must be using Dark Magic. One can only assume that the faithful Death Eaters had dark magick to reverse the effects of Azkaban once they escaped, and probably had their faith in Voldemort to keep them alive, perhaps that faith is a Dark Magic in it’s self that gave them something to hold on to just has Sirius had.
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