From Here There Is No Escape
By Trep092
Disclaimer: All I own is an ancient lap top on its last legs, a dog that keeps shedding, and a cat that insists on pulling everything out of garbage cans. Did you read Harry Potter in that list? Good. That's because I don't own it.
I'd like to thank my beta Erik's song for all she's done for me.
Darkness... Cold... Fear...
The prison of Azkaban is as terrible as they say, and worse.
A hundred thousand times worse.
Especially when you are innocent; wrongly accused of a crime you would never have dreamed of committing.
Never.
The black stone walls press around me. Sucking all colour from my mind...
Or is that the Dementors?
Six of them outside my door day and night.
Not that day and night have any meaning here. Its always night.
No… darker than night. Colder than night.
Night, when compared to this place, is as bright as day. And day... Day is unimaginable.
I've nearly forgotten what day means. It's only a word. A word that describes the time when the sun makes it bright outside.
The sun.
How I miss its caress. Its light fingers that crawl into dark places and illuminate and warm them.
It chases all shadows away... it is always victorious.
But not here.
The stone walls inside Azkaban have never seen the sun. The darkness that they contain is as a black hole; bending light into shadow.
If one day the sun ever dreamed of looking into this hell it would turn tale and flee. It wouldn't even try to chase the shadows away.
But I must not think of warmth.
I am frozen to the bone. The air is heavy with cold and is painful to breathe.
Sleep isn't even an escape.
I can't tell anymore when I'm sleeping and when I'm awake.
For all I know I haven't slept since they locked me in here.
The walls move, the shadows writhe and twist, tall menacing figures reach their putrid hands through the bars and grope for my throat...
I jerk away from the slimy stone wall. I could swear something was crawling along my neck.
Screams.
Screams are all I hear. Well besides the ever constant rattle of dementor breath.
How I long for the wind.
For its silken touch, and the way it sighs and moans. For the way it shakes leaves and tosses rain. For the many noises it is capable of making.
There are many kinds of screams.
There are the higher ones of those who have just arrived. Those who protest their verdict and still have life in their veins.
Then there are the lower moaning, wailing screams of those who are near defeat. Those who have given up on ever seeing light and life again.
Then there are those who are silent. Who only scream with their minds for their voices and will to live have deserted them.
It all clashes in a cacophony of terror and misery.
I want to tear off my ears, but I settle for gripping my hair and pulling with all my might.
How long have I been here?
My hair is much longer than it was at my trial.
Bah. What trial?
"Mr. Black, you are guilty. We sentence you to life in Azkaban."
Not a chance for defence.
Sure Dumbledore tried. But nobody would listen to him. They saw only what they wanted to.
Now I'm here. While that slimy little murdering piece of filth Worm Tail is free.
There is no justice. I have no faith. Not even in myself.
But I have to have faith.
I didn't do it. I would have never told Voldemort where to find Lily and James.
I have to cling to that fact.
I have to hold on to it so tightly that the dementors can't take it away.
I dig my fingernails into the slimy stone floor to ground myself.
I can let the dementors strip me of everything. Happiness, hope, even my identity. But I can never relinquish the fact that I'm innocent to their groping hands.
I will hold on to that fact until I die.
Death.
It's the only escape from this agony.
When will it come?
Since I entered this prison, however long ago that was, I haven't made a sound.
No screams, no moans.
The last sound I can remember making was laughter. Insane, maniacal laughter.
The mad laughter of one who has lost everything. Two friends to death, and one to Voldemort's service.
The laughter of one who doesn't care anymore about anything.
Besides the fact that I'm innocent.
Licking my dry and cracked lips I try to speak. I try to tell the small world of my cell and the dementors outside that I am innocent.
But nothing escapes.
Only a low hoarse rattle in my chest.
Or is that the dementors?
Desperately I try to remember something.
With a supreme effort I remember colours.
They begin to coalesce into images. Distant images that appear as though a layer of fog separates my eyes from them.
They flick past like the pages of a photo album.
Hogwarts castle high on a hill, a feast, the Gryffindor lion, James's face, Remus as a werewolf, glittering snow, James's and Lily's wedding, Harry, the wrecked cottage in Godric's Hollow, a motorcycle...
The fog thickens and the images fade to black and white.
Worm Tail confronting me in the street, dead muggles everywhere, the disgusted accusing faces of the people at my trial...
The images begin to fade.
Desperately I try to cling to them. But they shatter like a mirror and are snatched away.
I hear the dementors' rattle. It grows louder and louder until that is all I hear.
It roars in my ears and fills my head.
What was I supposed to remember? It was something very important.
Right. Innocent... I am...
I open my mouth wide.
And scream into the blackness.
I join the choir of wretched voices wailing and shrieking to a nonexistent God
I am lost.
There is no escape.