NikaKamentseva: переводы

→They could add some chocolate to her meals, perhaps even masking the flavor so she herself wouldn't know in case she got visitors. Or they could be lax when checking any visitors she got for chocolate supplies. They could even Stun her occasionally. Unconsciousness wouldn't last near Dementors; eventually it would turn into a restless sleep and then you woke up drained and hurt. However, for a few hours, it could at least provide a relief from suffering. And maybe in a while, if Lord Malfoy didn't cave in to international pressure to release her, they could "forget" to feed her, and ease her into a merciful death. It wasn't like she was going to live through her sentence anyway.

→No reason at all, unless they didn't want the other prisoners to see what they were doing with her.

→The cells in the highest levels were normally used for short-term prisoners: petty thieves, crooks, sometimes people who couldn't keep up with their debt repayments and needed a sharp reminder of the consequences of laxness. Each block held half a dozen cells, which were simply filled up from left to right, unless a pair of prisoners came in who should be kept separate. Several cells in the other blocks were also free at the moment, so there really was no reason for the girl to get a block of her own.

→Bahry nodded. "Cell block 2 in B spiral is free," he suggested. Li nodded slowly, understanding the hint.

→"No," Auror Li sighed. This was the hardest part of their duties, worse than the feeding or vanishing the contents of the toilet buckets, worse even than cleaning out the corpses of prisoners who had served their time. And it was his turn. Gerard had already filled in for him when he had had to stay at home because his youngest had Glowpox last week. "It's my turn, isn't it?"

→Bahry ran his hand through his white hairs. "Look. I don't like this any better than you do, but you've got to play the hand you're dealt. The girl has been remanded to our custody, and we'll just have to make the best of it." He turned to Li. "Mike, are you willing to take her to her cell, or shall I do it?"

→"It's not our place to judge that," Gawain Robards said sharply. "The Wizengamot have spoken. We leave her in your custody now." With that, he nodded to the guarding Aurors, and stepped up to the door, followed by the third Auror, a pale young man who seemed to want to get away from this place as soon as possible. Marc, with a last pitying look on the young witch, followed them.

→"You don't know the worst of it," Marc Kleiner, the second of the guarding Aurors, said bitterly. "You should have heard her confession. She was horrified by what she did. And you should have heard Albus Dumbledore. And what she said in the end..." He wiped his sleeve over his face. "Obviously she's mad, and too dangerous to be allowed near other children. But I thought they'd lock her up in a closed ward of St. Mungo's or something. She doesn't deserve this."

→"That's sick," Leela McGonagall, the newest of the off-duty trio, said flatly (she was a distant relation, and everyone called her Leela because it would just feel wrong otherwise). "I don't mind giving criminals what they deserve, but that presumes they're mature enough to know what they're doing. I can't believe the Wizengamot did this."

→"They argued to have her judged as an adult, but did not explicitly name a level. Director Bones suggests not to be excessive."

→Bahry cast a spell of silence to avoid the prisoner overhearing anything. "Auror Robards, please report." From the break-room, the off-duty Aurors looked in. Bahry irritably waved them over. "We would like to know what in the name of Merlin is going on here."

→Li's heart wrenched in sympathy as he looked at the little girl. Was this the mad first-year child who had come up with a gruesome plan to murder a schoolmate? She looked so... normal. And so scared. She was staring around with big brown eyes, huddling as close to the Patronuses as the ropes binding her would let her.

→The boat came nearer, and the Aurors inside it dragged their prisoner onto the little platform on the island, which lifted up into the air, following its standard path to the roof entrance. Dementors rose up as their new prey was carried over the pit, held at bay by the Aurors' Dementors but coming close enough to hungrily investigate the prisoner all the same.

→"They can't be serious," McCusker muttered, as Li felt a lump in his throat. Bahry just swore.

→Li exchanged a glance with the others and jabbed his wand at the screens showing the surroundings of the prison, magnifying one of them. There, on the north side, they could see the waters, where a boat with the prisoner and three guarding Aurors was approaching. The boat was still too distant to make out any faces, but even so, the prisoner definitely looked very small.

→Three booms sounded in the room. The signal of an incoming prisoner.

→Li's mind was not on the game.

→The three of them were on their 5,609th game of Dragon Poker. (They had taken a break and tried some other games a few weeks back, but they had quickly returned to Dragon Poker, as centuries of Aurors had before them. It was simply the only card game interesting enough to play for this long.)

→"Maybe I will be, maybe I won't. But for now, I am not prepared to walk away and leave my friends to die when they can be saved. And I am not prepared to throw away all my ethics for some greater good either."

→Would Dumbledore help him? The old wizard cared for Hermione, obviously. He probably valued her more than the 200 Galleons standard bribe for being caught in Azkaban. But most of all, he cared about Harry's safety. No, he cared for the hero's safety. He would not allow Harry to risk his reputation for her. If he knew what Harry was planning, he could simply stop him from doing so until it was too late to recover Hermione. It might only take a few days, after all, or a few weeks at most, before prolonged Dementor exposure would break her mind beyond repair.