A/N: Yes, my dear readers, I'm back after a shocking absence of over two years. I shall place the blame on being in another country and having extraordinarily limited computer access. To get back into the swing of things, I've decided my stories desperately need editing. (Well, Sanity Regained needed more editing than this one, but I figured there was no place to start like the beginning). While I'm starting over, I would like to note, with much gratitude, that I have saved all previous reviews to both these stories and intend to use recommendations an comments in them to help with the changes. An enthusiastic welcome to new readers. Please review and let me know what you think. General disclaimer: what you recognize is not mine.

Sirius sat up, awoken by a loud bang and the noise of several feet on the stone floors of Azkaban. There were incoherent yells and the sounds of a struggle. Sirius moved over to the door of his cell with interest. People were rarely if ever this loud when they were brought in.

He did some quick calculations. It had been six months since the last few people were brought in—Sirius had recognized his own cousin, Bellatrix, among them, and had felt some small satisfaction that she had ended up here. She was just down a little ways from Sirius, her and her husband, her brother-in-law, and some pale kid that had come in with them. But even the four of them hadn't been as noisy as this newcomer.

There were four dementors. One led the way while three others tried to keep ahold of Azkaban's newest prisoner. The struggle was such that Sirius' first glimpse of the newcomer consisted of only a pale face and a tangle of brown hair. They stopped right outside Sirius' cell, and Sirius came to the conclusion, with some interest, that the newcomer was to be placed in the cell across from his own. That cell had been empty for almost a week, since its former occupant had stopped eating and died of starvation.

Sirius struggled to breathe through the painful cold of the dementors. He watched curiously as, finally, the dementors managed to shove their resisting captive into the cell. With a clang, the barred door closed. From the sound, the prisoner had been pushing against the door and the dementors had to force it shut.

"Bloody dementors! I didn't do anything! I'm innocent, you bl—"

"They don't really listen to yelling," Sirius observed wryly as the dementors drifted away again, clearing the cold stone passage. "And if you're not careful, they'll come back and suck you dry."

The occupant of the cell was immediately on guard. "Who are you?"

Sirius didn't answer right away, but studied the girl across from him. She looked young; he doubted she could be out of school yet. What could she possibly be in Azkaban for? But then, Sirius had known plenty of death eaters that age. It was rumored that Bellatrix had become a death eater in her sixth year at Hogwarts, after all. The girl was standing defiantly at the door of her cell, grasping the bars of her door with white hands. "You might want to get away from the door, you know," he said finally. "The farther from the dementors you can get, the less cold it is when they start their rounds."

She looked at him with a mixture of wariness and defiance. "I can look after myself, thanks. Who are you?" she repeated, distrust lacing every word.

He shrugged. "Another prisoner. After a while it doesn't really matter."

"Doesn't it?" She was still looking at him mutinously.

"Nope. Most end up insane in about a week."

"Yeah, well, I'm not most people," she said rebelliously.

It was a long moment before he said anything else. He didn't want to talk to her, not really. He had nothing to say to anyone who practised enough dark magic to be thrown in Azkaban. He looked at her more closely. He felt his stomach clench with hatred as he recognized her robes to be those of a Death Eater. The need to speak to another human being and have them respond, however, was stronger. "You a Death Eater, then?"

She glared at him. "No. Are you?"

He accepted that she was lying. "Bit of a coward, aren't you? To deny your allegiance to Voldemort?"

She flinched and pressed herself more firmly against the wall. "Are you a Death Eater?" she repeated.

"No," he spat venomously.

From the look on her face, he knew she thought he was lying as well.

He tried something else. "Well, if you're not a Death Eater, what are you in here for?"

She stared at him. Then, to Sirius' utter amazement, she started laughing. Maybe she's already insane, he thought, watching as she clutched at the bars for support, still laughing. And if she's not. . . yep, here they come.

The dementors were back, following the root of what could have been a somewhat happy emotion. Even something as small as amusement attracted the monsters in this place. Sirius pulled his ragged robes closer about him, trying to retain a little warmth. He watched as the dementors paused outside, facing the opposite cell. He heard the sucking sound that the dementors made as they fed off the prisoner's emotions, and heard her intake of breath before she stumbled backward to the far wall of the cell, as far as she could get from the black-robed monsters.

It lasted only a few minutes; then they left again, satisfied their victim was drained. Sirius looked up again to see the girl standing at the bars again, staring after the gliding figures, no longer laughing.

"You shouldn't have laughed," he informed her. "That's what brought them. If you're going to express any positive emotions, it's best to do it silently." She was quiet, looking at him. Since she didn't comment, he asked, "What'd you laugh for, anyway?"

She smiled slightly, Sirius was surprised to see. One would think a few minutes with four dementors focusing their miserable powers on her would keep her from smiling for at least a little while.

"It was just—your question, I guess. 'What are you in here for'? It sounded like some really clichéd line off of a muggle movie, or something."

He frowned. "You muggle-born, then?"

She shook her head absently. "Pureblood, actually. But sometimes it's useful to know about muggles." She cocked her head. "You going to tell me who you are, then?"

He shrugged again. "Doesn't matter. You'll forget it in a week, when you go insane."

"I suppose if you kept me guessing at it for a week, it might be incentive to stay sane that much longer."

He shook his head. "Won't work. I heard one of the human guards saying that I was the only one in this place who could actually answer to my own name."

"And why's that?"

He shrugged apathetically. It was because he was innocent, but she wouldn't care. She was a Death Eater, after all. She'd be insane before the week was out.

He watched as she finally got bored of waiting for him to answer. She was looking around her cell. It was almost as though she was actually interested in her surroundings. She gazed at the ceiling for several minutes, then at each wall. Her eyes flitted across the floor, then up to the window where the cold ocean breeze was blowing in. Then she studied the door and let out a soft exclamation of disappointment.

"What?" Sirius asked, trying to remain interested.

"Nothing really. Just—the hinges are on the other side."

He raised an eyebrow. "The people that built this place weren't stupid, you know."

"Yeah, well, people used to say that about the Minister of Magic, too, and look how wrong they were."

Definitely a Death Eater, Sirius thought grimly. There goes her sanity. She'll be screaming about her precious Voldemort by nightfall.

She was tugging at the bars on the window now, which was made all the more difficult by the fact that they were above her head.

"Even if, by some impossible chance, the bars do come loose, what are you going to do?" Sirius asked. "Swim back to the mainland? In freezing cold waters?"

She looked over at him, an irritated expression on her face. "I'll burn that bridge when I come to it."

"No one's ever broken out before," Sirius felt compelled to remind her. "Not in the thousand years Azkaban's stood. You'll get out when pigs fly."

She gazed at him. She cocked her head, studying him once more. Her eyes flitted to either side of him, and he knew she was taking in the two prisoners to either side of him. Although he could not see them, he knew they were probably sitting and staring at nothing, very much insane. Then her gaze returned to him. Her eyes, a dark brown, seemed almost confused.

She sat down cross-legged on the cold stone floor of her cell. She frowned looking around once more. "Not much to do here, is there?"

Sirius fought back a derisive snort. "It's a prison, not an amusement park."

She was silent for several minutes, gazing at him unblinkingly. "Porcus volaticus."

"What?"

"Porcus volaticus," she repeated. "It's the spell that's most likely to make a pig fly."

He stared at her.

"Though I suppose wingardium leviosa would work, too," she added thoughtfully. "But porcus volaticus would make the pig sprout wings." He didn't say anything, and she sighed, then turned her back on him. He watched as she lay down on the hard stones, bunching her ragged cloak up to serve as a pillow. Soon he heard her even breathing and knew she was asleep.

Sirius watched her for the last few hours of daylight. She didn't move, not even when the dementors passed by, near dusk. He found himself wondering again, as he saw the sun setting outside his tiny barred window, just what the girl had done to land herself in Azkaban—even if she were a Death Eater, the Ministry would have to be fairly pitiless to throw someone underage in Azkaban. But he knew he probably wouldn't find out. She'd most likely be insane by morning.