He kept recounting the events inside his head, in the order they had happened, and they played out before his eyes like a movie. But it all seemed too horrible to actually be true. It seemed like the kind of thing you heard in the news, the kind of terrible tragedies that only happened to other people. Things like this never happened to you, or anyone close to you.
There they went again, the events leading up to what was happening now. They were playing without him having to even think. They always did. They always taunted him.
What had happened first? Sometimes he forgot, it had been so long. How much time had passed since it happened? Days? Weeks? Years? He had tried to keep a tally of days in his dog form, using his claws to make a line on the stone wall that encased him. Soon, he found himself counting off the hours, soon the minutes. The despair ate away at him inside until every second seemed like a day.
The first thing that had happened, that always played out first. Sometimes his brain tricked him. Sometimes different things happened, sometimes they survived, and everything went fine. But that didn't explain why he was here...
But it was undeniable what truly happened. James and Lily had been murdered. His best friend and his wife, both cruelly murdered by Voldemort. With tragedies, good always came, but he often forgot that Harry had survived, that Voldemort had been vanquished, because they were overruled by the facts that Voldemort was likely to return, that Harry would grow up without parents, and his innocent Godfather was rotting in jail...
And why was he in jail? That rat, Pettigrew, who faked his death and blamed it on him. When this event played out, it always came back to the fact that he had persuaded James and Lily to change their secret keeper. The Death Eaters could have found him, thinking he was still their secret keeper, and he would have gladly died for them. Pettigrew would not have, he should have realized this. As children, they had joked that they did not know how he had gotten put in Gryffindor. Now he knew that he didn't belong there. He was not a Gryffindor. He had never been brave, for what brave man sells out his best friend to save himself?
His hand fell on the newspaper the Minister had left there earlier. The crosswords were all filled in, so he felt had nothing else to take his mind off things. That is, until he focused on the picture.
The youngest boy had a rat on his shoulder.
A very familiar rat.
A rat that was missing a finger.
A strange, demented smiled curled up the prisoner's features as he skimmed the article.
"He's at Hogwarts..."