Given how little Hugo would be inclined to conversation, Albus saw little reason to dance around the topic. There was a short pause before the figure grunted again and buried his head further into his arms. Albus registered no surprise, Hugo had been jailed over a year, and most prisoners lasted only a few months here. He was already too late to make amends with his son. Instead, he gave Hugo the smallest mercy he could give him and, with a flash of wicked green light, extinguished his life. Wasting no time, Albus tumbled back to the portkey, feeling weakened and depressed, both by his failure and by the presence of the life-sucking dementors above. He took one last look, before touching the portkey, at the forbidding black castle walls and lamented that it had ever needed to exist.