Sirius Black didn't understand how they could possibly have done this to him.
How could the Wizengamot have just dumped him in a cell in Azkaban with no trial?
It wouldn't have been all that difficult for him to let them know they had the wrong man- one little sip of Veritaserum and the whole truth would come spilling out. There was no way any one of them would seriously still believe he'd so mercilessly betrayed the only family he'd ever had... that he was the reason they were dead...
Do not think of James, do not think of Lily.
Sirius curled up in the corner of the little concrete cell, his back pressed against the wall, his knees pulled to his chest, his dark hair falling into his face, still splattered in blood from the muggles Wormtail had destroyed.
The chains around his wrists and ankles were painfully tight and they chaffed against his skin. But Sirius didn't mind the pain- he had spent the last few days in a haze of mental agony influenced by the dementors, and the physical pain in his limbs grounded him, kept his mind from simply floating away. It reminded him of what was real and what wasn't.
Unfortunately, reality was every bit as bad as any thought the dementors could bring to his mind.
He closed his eyes, an overwhelming feeling of depression seizing upon him.
His best friends were dead.
He'd never see them again. Never joke with James, never flirt with Lily teasingly. And he'd never-
He cut his mind off, refused to let that train of thought grow any stronger.
It was just the dementors, only an artificial feeling of guilt-
Guilty.
It pounded through his head and he flinched, shuddering from the thought. He did have some blame to take; after all, he had urged them to switch their Secret-Keeper to Peter-
Not guilty, he forced himself to think. He had had no idea Peter was working for Voldemort. It had been a good plan. It should have been the perfect bluff. If Peter hadn't been a traitor, Voldemort would have gone after Sirius, and no matter how much they tortured him, he wouldn't have been able to betray his friends. It had been a good plan. Not his fault.
But the dementors were there, lurking right past the bars, and there was truth to what they were forcing him to think.
Guilty.
He would never have thought he'd end up here, never believed he's ever even have to worry about having Prongs and Lils be dead-
Not guilty.
Sirius curled up tighter, squeezing his hands against the sides of his head as though he could press out the conflicting voices that were arguing inside of it.
He felt like he was falling down a tunnel, spinning towards an indefinable bottom, his heart rising in his chest and hurting more than he had ever thought it could.
I didn't kill them.
Lily was the one who had always been an optimist, who had comforted Sirius when things went wrong, who had almost made him believe that there was such a thing as a happy ending. After all, if Lily Evans could marry James Potter, anything could happen, right?
But it couldn't. People couldn't change. Sirius was proof of that himself, wasn't he? He had thought he was so different, being a Gryffindor, being in the Order of the Phoenix, fighting the Death Eaters with his best friends by his side, but he had wound up in Azkaban anyway, just like the rest of his good-for-nothing relatives. Black by name and black by nature.
But it was my fault all the same.
Because of him, James would never see his baby boy grow up, never ride another broomstick, never cast another spell, never know his grandchildren, never kiss his wife again. And Lily-
No. Do not think of Lily. Do not think of James.
But he couldn't stop himself. He was drowning, swallowed up by a sorrow that he was floundering in.
He'd never been good at emotions and now he was choking on them, too many to name and too complicated to explain.
And those blasted dementors weren't helping, they were sending him back to the time when he ran away from home, when his brother Regulus had punched him in the face and they'd hexed each other, when Prongs and Moony and even that slimy little traitor, Wormtail, had decided they could no longer be friends because of that little prank he'd pulled on Snivellus, finding out Marlene was dead, too… Every horrible experience he'd ever had floated to the top of his mind… He just wanted to die… At least then he'd be with them…
But death was not something he would be permitted to taste any time soon. His fate was to be incarcerated until he either died of old age or illness, or the dementors took his soul. In which case, even if there was anything after this miserable, horrible existence, he would never get to see it, never get to reunite with Lily and James. And in the meantime, there would be many long years of living nightmare for him, and the worst part- young Harry would grow up thinking Sirius was his parents' murderer…
This, finally, was too much. After easily the worst three days of his life, Sirius Black finally succumbed to his emotions. Everything he was feeling was crushing in on him, and as though the pressure was real and tangible, he could no longer hold himself up, no longer bear to feel the despair that had burdened him since Hallowe'en… He collapsed to the floor of the frigid, filthy cell, sobbing.