Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2305
Characters: Sirius, Dementors, Remus (dream), House-Elves

The fortress of Azkaban towered over the tiny boat and its five occupants. It was a slightly darker gray than the sky behind it, but it was no less grim. Not that Sirius noticed this. He was curled up, eyes shut tight, in the bottom of the boat, not noticing anything outside of his own mind.

The boat glided upon the surface of the water, propelled magically, though the choppy North Sea tossed it from side to side. The prisoner and the four tall, black-cloaked figures all seemed oblivious to the droplets of freezing rain that struck them from the dark November sky.

With a grating crunch, the small boat ran aground on the bare, rocky island. The Dementors were apparently used to the reaction of new prisoners to their presence, for they did not bother trying to make Sirius rise and walk into the fortress by himself. One of them merely pointed a skeletal finger at him and, chains and all, he rose a few feet into the air and floated, still in a fetal posture, through the great oaken doors and past the rusty portcullis, into his new home.

The four guards drifted eerily along behind him. Once inside, a fifth guard met them with a long roll of parchment, which he held up for their inspection. The Dementor directing Sirius's movement paused and touched the parchment where the words "Black, Sirius - Mass-Murderer - Life Imprisonment" were printed. The Dementor with the list nodded slowly, then touched a heavy iron door beside him which screeched a protest as it opened to admit the new arrival.

Sirius's oblivious form floated down corridor after corridor, each one much like the others, lit by tiny windows high in the walls which, on a day like this, allowed only a dim and colourless light. The walls were cold, bare stone, and the inmates for the most part sat huddled in the corners of their cells, some rocking, some muttering to themselves, some occasionally giving a shriek of anguish as the four Dementors passed.

At last, they reached an empty cell. One of the Dementors drew a heavy iron key from beneath its robes and turned the lock. Sirius was floated into the cell and the door clanged shut behind him as he was dumped unceremoniously onto the narrow bed. The Dementors drifted away down the corridor, their progress marked by the shrieks of the prisoners.

As the guards retreated, the hold they had upon Sirius's mind lessened somewhat. He opened his eyes for the first time since his arrival and took in his first view of what would be his home for the rest of his probably short life. Bare stone walls; bare stone floor; a narrow bed with a thin, lumpy mattress and a thin, threadbare blanket, both too short for him; a bucket privy in one corner; a tiny window high in the wall through which he could see a patch of cloudy sky and feel a constant, chilly draft.

It was clean but the entire place stank of fear. And no wonder, thought Sirius. This place is haunted by all the terrible memories experienced by anyone who ever had to live here. He shivered. The cell was cold. He tried pulling the thin blanket over himself but it did not do much good. He closed his eyes again and soon fell into a fitful doze.

Remus was looking at him with sad, sad eyes. "How could you do it, Padfoot?" he was saying. "How could you?"

"I didn't," he tried to say, but his mouth did not seem to want to open.

"James and Lily were our best friends, Padfoot. You killed them. And Peter, too." Sirius could tell from the gold colour in Remus's eyes that the full moon would be rising soon. "I guess this proves how little they meant to you. And how little I meant to you."

No! Sirius wanted to scream but could not. I never did anything! It was Peter! Peter, not me!

But suddenly he was filled with doubts. He could not remember clearly. Maybe he had been the Secret-Keeper. Maybe this was all his fault. He had known a moment ago, but now it was slipping away from him.

Remus looked angry. "You killed them, Sirius. All of them. And now you have to die, too."

Remus was changing. The wolf was coming and Sirius could not remember how to change into Padfoot. He knew that if he did not do something soon, the wolf would kill him for sure.

He turned to run and tripped. He could not remember how to get up again. He tried to open his mouth to cry for help but his lips were clamped shut. He could feel teeth closing on the nape of his neck.

"You must take your clothes off," said Remus.

"What?!" cried Sirius, eyes popping open.

"You must take your clothes off, Prisoner. It is the rules of Azkaban that you must wear this uniform," said the dull-eyed house-elf in the passageway outside his cell.

Sirius frowned. "I thought house-elves couldn't handle clothing," he said suspiciously.

"Only clothing given by the master may free a house-elf, Prisoner," said the creature in a bored voice. "My master is not here. He says we must obey the Dementors, and we must wash the clothes of the prisoners. You is not our master. The Dementors is not our master. Your clothes will not free us; only clothes from the master." The house-elf gave Sirius a contemptuous look to show him what it thought of such woeful ignorance. "You must take your clothes off now, Prisoner," it repeated.

He thought about refusing, but he had been wearing this clothing for more than two days now, and it was a bit ripe. With a sigh, he stood up and shed the last garments he would ever own, trying to ignore the hard stare of the creature in the passageway. He pushed the bundle between the bars, shivering, as the house-elf passed him a clean but shapeless gray shirt and trousers. He dressed quickly as his attendant and laundry vanished, but the thin garments were little protection against the chill.

A short time later another house-elf arrived with with his supper. It did not speak and neither did he. Although the food was tasteless, cold, and had an unpleasant texture, he ate it all. He had eaten very little in the past forty-eight hours.

This is my life, he thought once he had finished eating. The sky outside his window was dark now. I have nothing to look forward to between now and the day I die. Pray God it will be soon.

In the days and weeks that followed, he learned that the cold and the gray and the monotony were the least of what Azkaban had to offer its residents. The Dementors patrolled the passageways of the fortress regularly, feasting on the happy memories, positive emotions, and spirit of their victims. Sometimes they would not pass for two hours or more, but often they seemed a constant presence, occasionally pausing outside his cell to devote a little special attention to him. Sometimes there were two or even three of them at a time. In those moments he would have welcomed the gray and the cold if he could have remembered them.

It was not so much that he remembered the most terrible moments and events of his life as that he relived them over and over again in his mind. Even if in reality there had been some good mixed with the bad, here in Azkaban it was stripped away. In the beginning he tried to make himself remember the good bits too -- tried to relive them -- but it was like trying to close his hand around a flame: Its beauty glittered tauntingly and he only ended up burning himself -- summoning more Dementors to feed on him.

The most awful events he relived every day. He had hoped vainly that a kind of numbness might eventually develop around them, but they remained sharp, and cut him anew each time. The only thing that changed, and changed very quickly, was that he soon had no more tears to cry.

Sirius had never been a crybaby. His mother had broken him of it early. "Blacks don't cry," had been drilled into him from the earliest memories of his childhood. The words had usually been accompanied by a slap. And so he had learned to bury his pain, and hide it behind a joking facade. If he could laugh about something, then he did not have to cry.

Then Remus had come into his life and showed him that sometimes it was alright to cry. But he had never been comfortable with it, so it had not happened very often -- maybe a dozen times between meeting Remus and landing in Azkaban. Sometimes, there had been tears of joy -- that night after he and Remus had first made love; the day James had told him Lily was expecting and that they wanted him to be the baby's godfather; the day his life had been forever joined with Remus's -- but those were not the occasions the Dementors allowed him to remember.

Sirius had learned to hide his fear early on as well. Even as a child, he knew that to show such weakness was to give away the advantage. Long before he had ever set foot inside Hogwarts, he had learned to project an air of nonchalance. Anything he could not laugh at, he could show disdain for, and vice versa.

Nothing affected him on the surface -- not fear, not pain, not love -- but beneath the surface, he was broken. The image of the arrogant joker was so effective that Sirius Black was lost behind it.

And then he had come to Hogwarts and met that remarkable boy, Remus Lupin. Remus, who had cracked his facade with a silent look, who made him feel foolish and awkward in his jokes, who had been the first person besides himself that Sirius had ever truly cared for, and the first person to show him what love and acceptance meant, even in those early, innocent days when it only meant friendship.

The first time he had met the wolf, his fear came as close to the surface as it ever did. The wolf scared him. It was not Remus. Remus was shy, reserved, careful, thoughtful, sensitive. The wolf was none of these things and Sirius could see that Remus feared it, and so he feared it too. But he had learned to bury that fear so deep that even the wolf could not sniff it out by the time Padfoot was born of Sirius's affection and bravado.

Every full moon Padfoot was there for the wolf, and every time he was terrified. At first he had thought his fear was the instinctive fear of a human towards a werewolf, but it quickly became clear that the wolf was not interested in four-legged prey. Still the fear persisted.

The truth of that fear had found him, though, even before he had learned to change his form. One night, a day after the full moon, he had just come into their dorm room after detention to find Remus, pale with exhaustion, sprawled across half a dozen open books and several pages of scribbled notes, sound asleep, red marks on face and arms vivid. He looked so vulnerable that Sirius had nearly been moved to touch him, and in that moment he had known what it was that he feared, and, simultaneously, what it was that he wanted.

He wanted to protect Remus. He wanted to dispel his fear with a touch, and to stand between him and the darkness. Because what he feared above all else was the thought of losing Remus to the beast. Remus, the thin, pale boy who wrestled with the monster all night once a month. What if he should lose that fight one day? What if the wolf decided not to let go with the dawning day, and Remus disappeared forever?

Sirius had studied werewolves and their habits feverishly from the first moment he had learned the truth about his friend, and he knew that his fear was unfounded. But the struggle he saw within Remus was more real than words on a page, and it was terrifying to watch time and time again.

Sirius had known little physical pain in his lifetime. His parents had been of the school of thought that deprivation and humiliation were better teaching tools than beatings. But to see Remus's body coming back to itself in the dawning light of those mornings -- bruised, bleeding, huddled, shivering, naked -- brought on near-intolerable physical reaction in him.

He knew in his heart of hearts that he could not save Remus from the darkness, but he swore to himself the first time Padfoot had leant his furry warmth to the unconscious, shaking body, that he would never leave him to face it alone if he could do anything to prevent it.

But now Remus was alone, and would be forever. That Sirius was being punished for something he had not done was bad enough, but that Remus was suffering, too -- intolerable! Sirius tried to dispel the thought, but could not.

The only alternative was to face the other possibility: That Remus would not be alone forever. That he would find someone else and forget all about the man he thought had betrayed him. Unbidden, images came to Sirius's mind of Remus lying naked next to a faceless Someone -- touching, kissing, making love. Nothing was clear about this Someone except that he was Not Sirius. Such thoughts made him roar with frustration and longing.

Better to imagine Remus alone forever, just like he was.

Survivor's Guilt: Padfoot's Tale © 2004 Skjaere