The darkness here was different from Azkaban's.
Azkaban was a suffocating vacuum, with all happiness sucked dry.
The darkness here was older, damp and heavy, carrying a smell of decay.
Pitch-black lake water filled most of their view, its surface eerily still, without a single ripple.
Only faint phosphorescence flickered on the rock walls, barely illuminating the outline of this underground world.
In that black water, hundreds of gray stone pillars stood upright, an array of gravestones left behind by a giant.
"Ugh..."
A pained groan broke the silence.
Bellatrix.
Lestrange opened her eyes with difficulty, the dizziness from Forced Spatial Transfer making her want to vomit.
She instinctively reached for something, and her fingers touched cold, rough rock.
She snapped fully awake and quickly looked around.
She was on top of a solitary stone pillar, with only about five feet square of space.
Around her was a pitch-black abyss, and below was black water, frightening just to look at.
"Wh... where is this?"
Rodolphus's terrified voice came from nearby.
Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. By the dim green light on the rock walls, she saw figures, some familiar and some unfamiliar, sprawled atop the densely packed stone pillars around her.
Her husband Rodolphus, her brother-in-law Rabastan, and Dolohov, that butcher who knew nothing but killing...
There were also more strangers in filthy prison uniforms, clearly ordinary criminals held on the lower levels.
An invisible force had separated them into distinct groups.
The Death Eaters occupied a ring of stone pillars near the center of the lake, while the ordinary criminals, capable of nothing but petty theft, had been placed on the outskirts.
"Quiet."
A voice, amplified countless times by magic, suddenly exploded beneath the cavern ceiling, its echoes building in layers and shaking fine ripples across the water.
"Snap."
A