PROLOGUE: AT THE END OF THE DAY
Twilight fell with a hush, and the last remaining strands of lavender light slowly inked to darkness. Sirius Black leaned closer to his barred window, tracing the receding light with his pale, dirty fingers. When he had first arrived at Azkaban, the banishment of the day, and the incoming night had been the hardest for him to bear.
Dressed in a drab gray and white robe, Sirius huddled closer to the wall. The night breeze began to waft through the window. Soon it would get cold. His bare feet were already numb from the breeze. He would have thought that he would have gotten used to this by now. It must be nearing winter; the sharp prick of the wind seemed to be edged with dark months ahead. The salt from the sea coated the back of his throat, creating a familiar itch. He would have to drink something soon.
Black waited until the last vestiges of the day had gone; he had to be sure that one more day had completely passed before he pick up a small, sharpened rock, and added another hash mark to his wall. There were 3,650 hash marks. Sirius couldn't believe that 10 years of his life had slipped by.
In the first few years in Azkaban Black had spoken out, to anyone who would listen, telling them of his innocence, and who the real traitor to James and Lily had been. He had thought it to be utterly ridiculous that anybody could believe that he, Sirius Black, had colluded with Lord Voldemort in betraying his closest friend. He had thought that once people began to see his side of the matter, that he would be let out, and the real traitor would be caught and punished. But very few people wanted to listen to him or even cared to listen. For them, the case was already closed, the culprit caught, and nothing more was to be said. They washed their hands of the matter and Sirius disappeared behind the walls of the dark prison.
At first Black had so much anger in his veins, a pounding hatred that boiled up inside of him. He could never understand how that ratty little man named Pettigrew had gotten the better of him. He could never understand how all those who had once loved and worshipped him had turned against him, but that had been the old Sirius. The old Sirius could never of understood that sometimes life didn't care if you were innocent or not; sometimes the knocks came, and you had to roll with them in order to survive.
Sirius listened to the familiar creaks and moans of the prison as its inmates and guards settled in for another night trapped in the dank, dark place. The Dementors absolutely loved Azkaban; it probably was like a summer home to them, but for witches and wizards, the place was a void. People went into the void, but rarely did they ever come back out. If they did come back out, they would never be the same. Sirius waited for his usual Dementor guards, knowing that in a few minutes they would arrive with his food and water. That was the routine. The day fell, and twenty minutes after sunset, the guards would come with his dinner. Routine was all that seemed to be left for Sirius.
For years Sirius waited for someone, anyone to come to his defense, or to just see him. He had expected at least to be visited by some of his friends, like Remus, but no one ever came, and the years fell away like gray shrouds. Insanity had seemed like an easy way out for Black in those early years. Despised by his friends, feared and hated by the magical community, Black could have easily have been destroyed by Azkaban. He would have become just another number, another forgotten name and another person buried in an unmarked grave.
All of this could have happened if it hadn't been for James.