“As I write this, twelve of my colleagues have already taken their own lives. I intend to follow their example. But the things I saw-” a convulsive scribble. “They must never happen again. Branches of magic so foul their exploration defies words. ‘Evil’ is not enough to describe what I saw. Should you seek to emulate what I describe, may you be damned. This is what we found on the dread island off Dùn Èideann.” The urgent, terrified scribbles were littered with ink splatters and scratches, like the author had broken many nibs penning it. “Dùn Èideann is Scottish gaelic for Edinburgh,” Lily sent. “That’s as good a place to start.” Harry nodded numbly, paging through Sarella’s journal. “Tattered cloaks of blackened human flesh…Oubliettes: narrow, deep, dark holes no wider than a man standing upright, welded black grates overhead, with holes in the sides that led to the Dementor hive, so the foul things might torment the thing. The one inside, it was still alive somehow. The dementors had done things to it. Enough that we could not be certain of the human’s gender…And the bloody, blackened manacles jingled together like some grotesque wind chime, bound to a living, naked man. His irises were gone, the eyes were terrified whites surrounding a jagged black pupil…Manacled to a stone plinth. The woman was screaming, struggling against her restraints. Her abdominal cavity was open, large spider legs splayed out over her sides. A faint chittering could be heard over the cracking, squelching sound of her organs being eaten…The dementors would not fall even to the Aramaic Death Curse. Johnsen was foolish enough to summon Fiendfyre. Similar results. …Evidence that Ekrizdis made sport of letting the victims try to escape. Dementors would swoop down on anyone who tried to enter the water, driving them out to sea, abducting them once their stamina ran out. My partner touched the waterline on accident, investigating skeletons chained to rings at low-tide. I cannot get Marinella’s screams out of my head. Her death was not quick. …Surrounded by patroni at all times, it scarcely keeps them at bay. The dread terror the things emanate radiates past even the strongest spirit-guardian. We keep finding living victims who should not be alive…Limbs backwards…missing too many organs… …I wish I had perished before we ventured past the upper levels. Azkaban is only the topmost layer. Beneath the ground level, stairs lead down to further labs…Eerie carvings on the walls depicting the foulest, most unnatural magicks, forbidden for good reason…Can barely tell the victims were human once. The experiments grow more gruesome, the air is stale and tainted. The inner walls are thin, only a single layer of stone between us and the Nest. Dementors scratch endlessly against the outside… …Dark holes and chasms emanating foul breath, decay and rot. Armstrong ventured too close to a passageway. His patronus was between him and the darkness. Even the patronus-light could not penetrate the darkness. Scabby, blackened hands snatched him into the abyss. They were not the hands of a dementor. Something else is down here. The stone blocks are all bloodstained. Where has all the blood come from? It’s far too much for the estimated number of victims Ekrizdis took. I don’t know how long this has been going on for. Ekrizdis may not have been the first wizard of Azkaban. The inner walls are gone. The triangular shaft stretches all the way to the sky, but it cannot be seen. Darius sent his patronus into the shaft. I leaned over and looked up and down. The silvery light reveals perhaps thirty feet before the unnatural darkness obscures the shaft. Looking down, a sense of unnatural dread immediately seizes me. The walls of the shaft below are smooth, oily black stone. The shaft should be open on all sides to the many, many levels, but it is smooth and unbroken as far as I can see in either direction. I have a feeling I could fly straight up on a broomstick forever, and never reach the sky. I felt an unnatural compulsion to jump down. Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or the darkness is somehow– seething. I teetered on the edge and lost my balance, but Darius caught me. I need to leave this place. We’re surely a mile deep by now…Don’t think we can go any deeper. I’m hearing things, I think. Chanting in an unfamiliar language, rattling chains, the sound of hoarfrost cracking. Paranoia consumes even the most level-headed of those of us who remain. The stairs down do not end. Our supplies are running out. I am relieved. Thirty of us went to explore the lower levels. Seven of us remain. Even with wizard-spaced bags to carry provision, the food is spoiling unnaturally quickly. Bread crumbles into grey sand, fruit and vegetables shrivel and turn putrid. We begin to ascend. Something beckons me deeper, appealing to my basest instincts. I feel as though I am being summoned. Each step upwards feels twice as hard as it should be. One of us turned back. We left her. Six of us remain…The passages are changing. We descended counter-clockwise the whole way, a straight helix directly downwards. Now, we must hunt for the ascending staircase on each level. It is time consuming, and supplies run dangerously low. The Aquamenti charm produces blackened, tainted water…Darius split off with two others to search quicker for the stairs up on each level. Whichever team found them first, we called to the other. Seven levels up, Darius’s team vanished. They had the supplies. Three of us remain. Me, Amelia, and Horus. This place has taken its toll on them. Their faces are drawn and gaunt, there is a spark of madness in their eyes. Their skin is pallid and dirty. I imagine I look no better…None of us can sleep. Weariness drags at us like leaden weights, but the nightmares would surely be worse…Amelia broke her leg badly slipping on the steps. We had to amputate immediately. Some black, necrotic flesh was spreading up her thigh. Horus conjured her a crutch…I lost count of how many levels we ascended, but I know it has been more than we went down…Despair feels both natural and unnatural…feel less hunger and thirst than we ought to. Horus theorized we were so close to death that starvation and thirst were unlikely to be the cause of our death. I agree. The more my body shuts down, the more potent the draw, the longing to turn back and go deeper. Time cannot be counted beneath Azkaban. The three of us escaped. They say we were gone four days. It felt like years. I write this twenty-eight years after my birth, with wrinkly, liver-spotted hands, fallow, stringy, limp grey hair, and the beginnings of cataracts. If you visit Hell, DO NOT GO DOWN. …My last entry. I met with Horus one last time. We are but pale reflections of our innocent selves before venturing Down. Amelia passed. She Obliviated herself. The spell erased everything but her time in Azkaban. The healers did not try to stop her from killing herself. …I am afraid of death. But I cannot continue living. Even now, under the sun in my parents’ yard, that paranoia and longing tugs at me to return to Azkaban, to venture back down. Only Horus understands me, and he too, feels the draw.