Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, the story would not have been PG13. So it's pretty obvious I don't own it.
To clarify up some confusion, Harry never learned the names of what dementors and stuff are called since they just refer to themselves as a concept of 'us.' He understands that he is not a dementor, but he doesn't think he is a human either, so he's learned to call various things by what he vaguely knows them as.
They - Dementors
Them - the shadows that induces madness. Harry wears Them like fluttering robes which is why he was mistaken as Death and scared the guards when he had a Grim (Sirius) by him as well.
After discovering the method of opening doors and acquiring a puppy, the boy spent the following year uncovering more things in the level of Azkaban where he lived. When he wondered why he was able to find new areas that had been hidden from his sight before, They informed him that he was beginning to master his inheritance. Further inquiry into that area was met with a silence that hinted at him finding out as he learned more on his own.
Initially, he was frustrated, and puppy was the one that took the brunt of his anger. He would pull on his pet's ears or tail until a yelp would make him feel better, but that grew old quickly. Puppy never seemed to get mad at him though. Instead, it would continually try to play with him by licking his face or do silly things until he pushed the dog away, but he grew to appreciate its company and warmth. With the persuasion of Them urging him to learn how to speak, he also allowed the puppy to be a human after a few weeks went by for short periods. Very short periods since he found all the talking the Sirius-Human did was annoying.
During his explorations, he learned many new things about his home. First, it was sentient, but not in the same way he, Them, or They were. He would walk into a room that had bones scattered within it, and he would know what purpose it had served. It also explained why he just knew his rooms were Home. Each new room uncovered by order of their history, and he slowly began to understand why They refused to tell him more.
The first such room had a single skeleton dangling from the ceiling with a tarry black stain under it that was once flesh centuries ago. There was a table with rusted tools off to the side and rags in a corner, and he got a sense that he shouldn't touch anything here because it was for learning. It took a few days of returning back to the room and carefully looking at things before he could piece together the feelings he got, and the picture that formed was that this room was to learn what all was in a human body.
The next room he visited was nearly identical as the first, but the difference between the two was what was in the corner. This one had robes that were kind of the same as what the humans above wore - the ones not in cells - and that realization allowed Them to clue him in that these were magical humans while the first were muggles. He wondered if a difference was found, and was told he had to learn the scribbles to find out.
He sulked for a few days after that and spoke with Sirius a little bit. He kept trying to call him Harry initially, but finally stopped when he got angry about it. Puppy instead told him his dog name was Padfoot, and that he could be called Paddy. It was close enough to puppy for the boy to agree to the name, and Sirius was relieved that there was some progress being made.
On his fifth birthday, Voldemort came again, and They had to drag puppy off and lock him in the baths when he wouldn't stop barking and growling. The boy still hadn't figured out if the pale man with red eyes, slits for his nose, and no hair was a human or not, but it was a mystery he wanted to uncover so he didn't ask the others. He just quietly sat and stared as the person read, got angry when the book was taken from him after a page, then threw a box on the table that was meant for him before stalking out without a word.
It was too short of a time really for him to come to a conclusion still, and he wasn't happy about it, but They reassured him he would be back again. There was an undertone of amusement to it, but he knew that was from them humoring his want to find out for himself.
When he was alone, he got off of his chair to see what the gift this year was. While he worked on figuring out the box, Paddy came running out and sniffed him until one of Them covering him swatted at the cold nose in irritation. Paddy immediately sat down with his tongue hanging out and looked immensely pleased with himself, and he huffed at him in irritation before jerking his hand out of the box when he felt movement inside of it.
Looking within, there was something white and fuzzy with red eyes.
'It's a bunny, Master!' Them informed him mentally when he wondered if it was food for Puppy. 'You could try to feed it to Puppy, it's usually either a pet or a food.'
He wondered how something could be two things like that as he reached in again to pull it out so he could look at it better. There was something around its neck with scribbles, and he frowned at that. "Shirie now!" he demanded with a look at Paddy.
The dog's form melted and grew to a raggy human's form with a puzzled look on his face. "He came here to give you a bunny?!" he asked, completely bewildered, then got a faceful of white fur when the boy thrust the rabbit in his face. "Pff, ew, fur in my mouth! Fur in my mouth! Blah. The collar says 'Billy.' I think that's the bunny's name."
The wall of speech with the grin he gave his godson was met with blank annoyance as usual, and he sighed. "Why would he give you a bunny?" he asked, hoping that Harry might reply to him this time. Anything to try to bring out the humanity in the child, though he was very careful now to not bring out the ire of the boy's guardians. The first night was a nightmare that he would never forget, so he was very careful not to take off the necklace nor push too hard so the boy took it off as punishment.
"Birfday," the boy responded. "Eat it?"
Sirius turned green and shook his head while offering the bunny back. "No thanks, it's yours, pup," he replied, wondering why Harry had such strange ideas. "Wait, it's your birthday?"
The boy didn't reply as he accepted the rabbit back. Tuning out the rest of the noises that Sirius was making, he poked the bunny a few times while keeping a strong grip on it so that it wouldn't escape while it squirmed. Deciding that fur was gross and the bunny was too small anyway, he dropped it on the floor.
"Paddy now."
Sirius cut off what he was saying and nodded in response with an inward sigh to turn back into a dog once again. When his transformation was completely, he nudged the rabbit with his nose then looked up at the boy in a silent question of what he was going to do with the bunny, but he saw that Harry was already heading out the door again to do explore some more. Seeing that he was to be left once again since he couldn't see in the darkness, he sighed and curled up around the shivering rabbit to give it what comfort he could.
Being in such a depressing and cold place, the bunny refused to eat or drink no matter what Sirius tried to do. Bringing the rabbit to Harry to try to coax him into caring for it just got him blank looks before the boy would toss the bunny thinking he just wanted to play catch with it, and as a dog, he couldn't do more than that. Bitterly, he wondered if it would have been more humane to just eat the creature when it was offered, but he knew that was just wishful thinking since there was no way he could do something as barbaric as that. It took the bunny only a few days to die, and the body rotted for a few days in a corner before it disappeared one night.
The boy would often see Paddy trying to take care of the bunny, but he couldn't understand why. It was a useless creature, not even as amusing as his own puppy was at times, and it was small. He left it to Paddy since he didn't want it, and when he saw his puppy moping after it stopped moving and started stinking, he had They get rid of it to see if it would help. When it didn't, he waited another couple days to see if Paddy would go back to being his usual self before finally demanding Sirius so that he could figure out what was wrong.
"It died, pup!" he exclaimed in anguish when asked. "Don't you know what that means?!"
There was something in Siri-Man's eyes that the boy couldn't understand when he was asked that question. "No," he told him honestly. "What is died?"
"That means there is no life! It means it won't see tomorrow again, it won't have a family, it won't have f-friends," Sirius explained, sobbing on the last word.
"Fends? Fam'ly?" the boy asked, completely confused now at the emotions that was being displayed. Water started coming out of Siri's eyes, and he reached out to touch it with his head slightly tilted, wondering about that, too.
"Yes, Ha-pup, friends and family. Like what we are!" he moaned. "Oh, what would Lily and James say?"
The boy didn't understand any of it, and Them and They were silent on the subject meaning they didn't know, either. He did know Lily, though, how could he not? "Lily is first mother," he replied back solemnly. "She dealed."
That snapped Sirius out of his grief, he blinked. "Dealed?" he asked.
"Told They to eat, but They keep me," he explained. "Then He came but They say no."
"Who is They and who came, pup?"
Harry pointed to the dementor in the room first with a short "They" then gestured to the iron doors leading out. "Him. Bunny person. Voudeemor?"
Sirius barked out a laugh suddenly. "Yeah, he is white with red eyes. Can we call him Bunnyman from now on?" he asked.
The boy felt his mouth move in response to the laugh and the question, and he withdrew his hand from Sirius's face to feel his own. His mouth was doing the same thing Sirius's did when he was happy, what is was doing now.
'You're smiling, Beloved,' Them informed him, and he felt his smile widen in response as he met Sirius's eyes.
"Bunnyman," he agreed, finding this new warmth very nice from the cold he was normally content with.
He continued to explore though he did spend a little more time with both Paddy and Siri-Man. The human did still annoy him, but not as much as before. Still, the newfound happiness he discovered with his pet did not lessen his thirst for knowledge of Azkaban, so he kept leaving his puppy behind.
His next fount of information came from a room with several bones shackled to the walls. They wore rags and had long hair still stuck to the skulls, some of which had fallen to the floor when the neck bones couldn't support the odd angles the heads had hung at after death. The tables also had a few smaller skeletons, those of babies, and he learned that the room was to find out why some children had magics and others didn't when one parent was a muggle.
He returned to his own rooms when he found that out and tried to think it over, and no help came from They or Them since they didn't have babies or have that kind of problem with reproducing.
When he asked where they came from, They replied that they had spawned from The First. The First was created by The Master, an experiment that was made to guard an island from long ago. The Master tried to recreate the city here after his madness had hit, but he had built it on hate and so it was not the same. They were happy with this new home though, and were allowed to breed the numbers that were needed recently to properly inhabit it, but they needed a new Master which was to be him.
Them had replied that they came from the Madness of man. When he didn't understand the thought-words, They supplemented the information that Them were similar to poltergeists, only the magic of Azkaban and the insanity of those that resided in it gave it more form. It was why Them were incorporeal like ghosts, but had the ability to move things and such if they had enough incentive to do so.
Still, it wasn't enough information for him to come to a conclusion about the room with the babies, so he asked Sirius-Man.
"Where baby come from?"
Sirius's jaw dropped, and he stuttered a few seconds. "Uh… Er…. Uhm… What brought this on?"
"Magic baby an' no magic baby," he explained with a glance at the doors leading out.
Sirius furrowed his brows to try to make sense of the explanation, but couldn't figure it out. "Uh… well pup, you're a bit young for The Talk so uh…. Damnit James! When a man loves a woman very much… er… They lay in bed and make a baby!" He felt quite proud of his explanation until he realized that the golden eyes on the shadows that the boy wore were open and watching him curiously, and that the dementor in the room had also stilled to watch him try to explain. "Really guys?" he asked weakly.
"Dun unnerstand. Comes from bed?" There was no bed in that room.
"Uh… not exactly. See, they do it on the bed. Well, uhm… sometimes. And it doesn't always m-make a baby?" Sirius tried to explain while squirming uncomfortably. "See… uh… Well, it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. They… Ugh, why me? The man fertilized the egg inside of a woman's tummy, and the baby grows for usually 9 months, then comes out."
The boy blinked, then nodded in understanding when They confirmed that They had to rip open his first mom's tummy to get him out. "Why some have no magic?" he asked next.
"Oh, those are called squibs," Sirius said with relief, glad at the change in subject. "Nobody knows why, but sometimes babies are born without magic."
"What is magic?"
"Dang pup, all the hard questions tonight," Sirius said with a grin. "Magic is part of our lives. Those without magic cannot use it, but if you're one of the lucky ones born with it, then you can do many things that non-magics think are impossible. Things like flying, growing gills to swim underwater, turning into another animal like I do, or even changing an object into something else! There's so much that magic can do that I could tell you things for years and still not cover all of it."
The boy sat silently as he tried to process the information with the help of They and Then, then finally nodded. "Show me."
"Well, you've seen me turn into a dog, and the blue fires here are magic, and so are the creatures in this room," he said.
The boy shook his head. "No. Show me other stuff!" he demanded.
Sirius sadly sighed. "I wish I could, pup, but I don't have a wand. I need a wand to perform magic," he explained, then sighed again.
"Wand?"
"Yeah, it's a stick with a core, it lets witches and wizards - that's us - perform spells. You'll learn spells and get your own wand when you're eleven. You just turned five, so that's six more years to go," Sirius said. "My wand is either snapped or in the DMLE… or whatever Bunnyman is calling it nowadays."
He needed a wand to do magic? To turn things into animals and fly and stuff then. Sirius tried to talk to him some more, but he just tuned him out while he talked with Them and They about what was magic and what wasn't for a bit until the human fell silent.
"Teach me," he finally said, then gestured at the books on the mantle of the fireplace.
"To read and write?" Sirius asked with surprise.
"Read an' righ'," he confirmed.
And when his sixth birthday came around, he was determined to ask Bunnyman for a wand.
AN: Nope, haven't left this for dead. I edited chapter 1 and 2, most of the changes in chapter 1, but I struggled a lot with this chapter. A lot. I scrapped it 4 or 5 times, each time with over 5k words, because it kept coming out in ways I disliked. This one is under 4k words, but I was happy with the results. Chapter 12 is done also, and will be posted once it's beta'ed and checked for plot holed and inconsistencies.
Harry doesn't know human gestures like nodding and such. Dementors don't make those gestures but for the few times when they are responding to a ministry official if then, and they are the only humanoid things he has been exposed to regularly until now. With Sirius teaching Harry, he will learn his name and it will be used next chapter, but he won't be keeping it for long. Barty is going to get some weird notes asking for more supplies and stuff during this time skip like ink, quill, parchment, lesson books, and stuff like that, written by Sirius on scraps and delivered by the dementors. His last standing order from Voldemort about those things was to do as they ask, so he will only bring up the notes in his yearly report. Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, sorry it took so long to come out! Not only was I having difficulties with it, but a bunch of rl stuff came up as well. I was always happy to see new follows, faves, and reviews though!
Speaking of reviews…
I love you, guest reviewer Nobody. You guessed a ton of stuff accurately, gave me wonderful critique (some of it hard to swallow, but swallow it as a bitter pill I did in hopes that I get better), and lovely compliments. The psychological was hard for me to write because it had victimization/self blame triggers, and that made me feel bad, but it was to try to show what the shadows do.
Being imprisoned in Azkaban for too long makes people violently insane - something that canon's dementors are blamed for though they are only supposed to be the equivalent of extreme depression. So I created the shadows to explain that portion, how it can twist the depression and self loathing into something more by getting in their heads and messing with it if they are started to go crazy. They keep themselves hidden, all it takes is closing their 'eyes' and staying in the darker areas. Since the cells are poorly lit, they are free to flit in and out to toy with people's heads, and it's why those that are secured in the lower areas are affected worse.
Votes on who teaches Harry - Snape and Bella are pretty much tied, and I liked one of the reviewers of both, so expect them to show up in the chapter after the next!