Beautiful Day chap. 3
Beautiful
Day
By Margot -
cherry@time-stranger.net
A/N: Sirius makes it to Azkaban, only to find that
his previous ideas about the wizard prison are very different
from how it actually is. The cryptic messages of Aidan Dubois
only raise more questions in his already exhausted mind- who is
this mysterious man and what effect is he having on the other
prisoners? There's a bit of inspiration in here from The Shawshank
Redemption. It's a bit how I picture Azkaban, at least for
the time being. Thanks again to Nicole the Beta Reader, and also
to the reviewers: Private Show Girl, Lhoth, inyron (I know it
was said that Harry was already a year, but I decided to make
him ten months, therefore, the story right now is taking place
in May of 1981. Good eye though ^~), Zeptron Zulu, Pleiades (again
^^), Ts, Lin-z (I thought it would end up getting much more violent,
but it doesn't seem to moving that way), and Lily's Angel.
*
Chapter Three - A Sinking Feeling
*
"Insanity - a perfectly
rational adjustment to an insane world."
**
"Here's your cell, Black."
The Azkaban guard finally stopped
in front of a thin door made of silver floor-to-ceiling bars.
He jammed one key after another into the magical lock. With each
key, his hand trembled more and more.
"Let's hurry this along,
this place gives me the willies," he muttered to himself,
shoving the final key into the lock. The cell door sprang open
with a loud metal clang, the first sound Sirius had heard since
entering the enormous prison, aside from the random mutterings
of the guard and the quiet crackling of sporadically-placed torches
along the walls.
"Home sweet home for the
rest of your life," the guard announced, showing Sirius into
the cell. The cell was essentially a great tin box, the ceiling
just high enough to escape scraping the top of Sirius' head. At
one end was a tiny sliver of a barred window no larger than a
breadbox. Hanging underneath it was a small cot, suspended by
silver chains and covered with a thin white sheet. At the opposite
side was the cell door, wide enough to allow the average man to
slip through when open and surrounded on either side by more dismally
dark wall.
Sirius stepped into the cell
and stopped when he got to the centre of it, examining his new
surroundings. He didn't flinch when the door behind him slammed
shut; he simply continued to stand still and stare at his cell
in disbelief.
"One meal a day's all they're
gonna give you," the guard said from the other side of the
bars, "and you can get some water from that sink in the corner.
There's a toilet over there, too, if you didn't notice that yet."
The sound of shoes tapping against the ground, indicating that
the guard was walking away, registered vaguely in Sirius' mind.
He noticed a sink and a small toilet in the left corner of the
cell, just as the guard had told him they would be there. And
still, he continued to look around the empty cell, wondering when
he was going to wake up.
*******
Time had passed. Just how much,
Sirius couldn't be sure. Probably three or four hours at the most-
the sun had only just begun to set; he had seen it in the light
cast through the tiny window above his bed a few moments ago.
He was lying sideways on the tiny bunk as he had been for the
past few hours, periodically shifting between closing his eyes
to shut out the light of judgment and opening them to desperately
search the cell for anything of interest he might have missed
the first few times. It was like waiting for something... an all
too common theme in his life.
His eyes were closed. But not
for long.
The ominous feeling that had
been hovering over Sirius suddenly collapsed and fell on him,
causing his eyes to jerk open. Otherwise staying completely still,
he allowed his eyes to dart frantically about the cell. It felt
like something was approaching, something silent and shapeless,
that would soon descend upon him...
A sudden shriek echoed at the
other end of the corridor. An odd chattering noise followed it.
Sirius didn't realize that it was his own teeth. The shrieking
continued, growing in volume and desperation, and was soon joined
by the voice of another, then another; deep, desperate screams
that chilled his soul.
Sirius stared out the cell door,
a knot of apprehension and terror churning in his stomach. The
screams continued to grow as more and more voices were added to
the din. Outside of his cell, the light dimmed as if the torches
had gone into hiding. Sirius' hands tightly gripped the thin sheet
below him. He could feel his fingernails press into his palms
through the thin blanket.
A mass of cloaked forms drifted
by Sirius' cell while he stared out in fear. The mass was moving
slowly, clearly in no rush to leave the corridor.
Dementors.
There must have been twenty
or thirty in that mass alone, all drifting silently down the hall,
oblivious of the horrified screams following them. One Dementor
stopped outside Sirius' cell. It turned towards him and peered
into his cell, ignoring the departure of its companions. Black
air floated gently on the spot where its feet should have been.
It was otherwise motionless. Sirius stared at it, unable to move
or react. It was as if there was a drain in his feet, slowly sucking
all the hope, the last slivers of happiness that he had.
Frightened beyond his wits,
Sirius pushed himself off the bed and crawled quickly towards
the furthest corner of the cell, where he wedged himself between
the wall and the toilet. He hugged his knees to his chest and
buried his face in his cloak, mentally pleading with the Dementor
to leave him alone. He was filled to the brim with a debilitating
sense of loneliness; he could think of nothing but how lonely
he felt, how alone he was, how completely empty his cell was,
how much he had lost.
Sirius didn't know if the Dementor
had left or not, but it didn't seem to matter. He could still
hear tortured screaming through the corridor, only louder and
closer. He soon realized that the closeness of the sound was because
it was coming from his own throat. Tears seeped through the fabric
pressed to his face and began to dampen the bare skin underneath
his cloak. His screams pierced his ears until he couldn't even
hear himself anymore, and still he kept screaming as complete
and utter despair filled his entire being. He screamed and screamed
until the blackness of the cloak pressed against his eyes consumed
him and he knew nothing else.
*******
It was already daylight. Sirius
blinked hard, then shut his eyes again and dug his face into his
arms. A few moments later, he unfolded his legs and crawled towards
the small food bowl in the corner.
"I'd save those bits for
later if I was you. I mean, I'm not you, but it's just good advice."
Sirius stopped crawling and
turned towards his cell door. Looking out between the bars, he
could see into the cell opposite his. A man was sitting there,
looking back at him. He was thin and pale, with sunken, dirty
cheeks and greasy blond hair. His exposed arms were thin and bony.
It struck Sirius how similar he looked to Remus on the days before
the full moon, if, on top of his exhaustion and fever, Remus had
been starved for several months. As miserable as his appearance
was, however, his expression betrayed it all; starving and weak
as he seemed, he still appeared quite serene. He was looking directly
at Sirius.
"'Cause you know, that
bread and gruel's all you're going to get until tomorrow morning,
so if I was you I'd eat a bit now and eat some later. So then
instead of being not so hungry now and starving later, you're
only somewhat hungry for the whole day. That's what I do. It'll
help you last longer. That's what everyone down this corridor
does."
Sirius simply stared at the
man in the opposite cell, weary and more exhausted than he'd ever
been. The man simply smiled and nodded.
"You made it through your
first night. I heard you yesterday during the Dementor visit.
Sorry about that," he said earnestly, as if it had been his
fault, "they don't come down this hallway often. We're all
the way in the back, see, so they only make trips down here once,
maybe twice a week. Too bad they had to come down here on your
first day. What's your name?" The man said all this very
quickly and matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather.
"Black," Sirius said
flatly. He wasn't in the mood to elaborate.
"Black? There's
an odd name. Never known anyone with one name before. Although
I guess I shouldn't talk about strange names, mine's Aidan Dubois.
Weird, isn't it? But my dad was French, and my mum named me, and
she was Irish, so I guess that explains it. I was raised in London
so I've got the normal accent. What are you in for?"
Sirius felt depleted. He wasn't
in the mood to talk, especially to someone who was so nonchalant
about being in prison. "Don't want to talk about it."
Aidan nodded. "Well, I
understand that. It's only your second day. You need a couple
of days is all. S'all right."
Without a glance back, Sirius
crawled onwards to the food bowl. He quickly finished the stale
bread, but kept the gruel for later.
*******
The next four days passed without
incident. Indeed, they passed without stimulation of any sort.
Sirius spent the days alone, shifting between periods of sleep
and wake. Voices from outside his cell registered vaguely in his
mind but he could hear nothing, nothing at all. Why fight when
you're bound to go mad after year one anyway? Better to surrender
now and get it over with. Forget this pain. Leave this world.
Those four days were possibly
the worst of his life until that point. The indescribable loneliness
and isolation, so thick you could almost punch it. The hunger-
desperately wishing for a bit of butter whenever you swallowed
down the stale bread and a pinch of salt whenever you drank the
gruel. And the guilt.
The knowledge that James and
Lily were dead... dead. One moment they had been living,
breathing, and the next, they had ceased to exist. He'd turned
the idea over in his mind countless times- dead. Death. The end
of living. The end of being. The knowledge that it was
his fault. All this... this loneliness, this hunger, this knowledge...
he'd brought it on himself. He'd done this to himself.
That was the worst.
He couldn't escape from any
of it, couldn't do anything to soothe himself or ease his mind.
The emotions were always with him; through sleep and wake, they
were his only company.
That was pretty bad, too.
But all things must come to
an end, even days. And they did end. On the fifth morning, the
seventh day of his sentence, he crawled towards the food bowl
like on all other mornings.
"Hey, Black. Glad to see
you're still alive and all that. How're you holding up?"
The familiar voice of Aidan Dubois trailed into Sirius' cell and
he stopped, grateful for the sound of another human being's voice.
Sirius crawled towards the cell door and looked into Aidan's cell.
"Mmmm," he grunted
quietly.
"Good. Feel like talking
at all? S'always nice to have friends in here, you know. Helps
you last longer. Myself, I've been in here 'bout a year. I think."
Aidan smiled.
"A year?" Sirius spoke
his first intelligible words since coming to Azkaban.
"Surprising, eh? Everyone
on the outside thinks people in here go crazy after a few months.
Not so. Well, sometimes so. It all depends, really. I mean, where
they put you, what kind of person you are. Takes a strong mind
to last." Aidan tapped his forehead. "If you've got
a strong mind, you'll last a long time no matter where you are.
One bloke lasted for damn near twenty years down here. What'd
you say your name was again?"
"Black. Sirius Black."
"Sirius? Black?"
Aidan asked incredulously.
"Yeah. Why?"
Aidan shrugged and started along
a different vein.
"So, what are you in for?
You're doing life, right?"
"Yeah."
Aidan smiled in spite of the
grim response. "Thought so. Everyone who gets put away back
here in this corridor is doing life or a really long sentence,
usually. What'd you do?"
Sirius leaned against the cell
door bars and took a deep breath.
"I was accused of murdering
my best friend and his wife. Selling them to You-Know-Who."
Aidan's back straightened. "James
and Lily Potter, right? Yeah, right! White - he's in that cell
down there - got an issue of the Daily Prophet in here few days
ago and we read all about it. D'you really kill all those Muggles?"
Sirius scowled bitterly. "I
did not. I was framed."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He turned
his head away slightly, no longer facing Aidan. "Backstabbing
fuck."
"Eh?"
"I was framed by someone...
I thought was a friend." He shrugged, feigning offhandedness.
"I suppose not. So much for friends," he muttered.
"What makes you say that?"
Sirius paused a moment. He was
sitting in the most horrible place a wizard could be, about to
spill his feelings to someone he'd known for what seemed like
mere seconds. His stomach quivered slightly. Why? Why was he so
willing to tell his secrets to a stranger?
Because he needed someone, anyone
to tell them to. Because it was nice to have friends. They help
you last longer.
He sighed again. "One friend
died on me. Another stabbed me in the back. And another hates
me." He tried to laugh but it only came out as a shrill,
bitter sound. "Some friends, eh?"
Aidan became stern. "Now
Black, don't go saying those things. Friends're important. They
keep you alive. Can't live without friends. At least, not in here.
Let me tell you, Black, you can't give up on friends because you
will be an empty man and you will never do anything and you will
never go anywhere."
The unintended irony of Aidan's
statement wasn't lost on Sirius. He already was an empty man.
"It was said, 'We call
that person who has lost his father an orphan, and a widower that
man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense
unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here
every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence'."
Aidan nodded somberly, the only evidence of his pride glinting
in his eyes. Then, he faltered, forcing the wall of eloquence
and wisdom he had erected around himself to crumble. "Er,
forget who said that. Joe Something. Not important, what's important
is the message, don't you see? The man who has lost his friends,
it's terrible, it's so terrible it's unspeakable. That's how terrible."
"Thanks for reminding me,"
Sirius bit.
"But there's the thing,"
Aidan continued, "you've got to pick yourself up and move
on. Don't ever forget your friends but don't dwell on them either.
Or the terrible memory will take over you and you will be hollow,
the bad memory will be the only thing left in you."
"Look," Sirius interrupted
with biting impatience, "can we, you know, not talk
about it? It's nice that you're giving me advice and everything,
but save it until you've lived it, all right?"
Aidan barely skipped a beat.
"Sure, all right-"
A voice from down the hall sounded
loudly. "You, Black, you telling Dubois to shut his mouth?
Don't do it, boy, t'aint smart. You listen to what he says, Dubois's
the smart one 'round here and you'd do well to listen. He's helped
th'rest of us before, we's lucky he's got life, eh? Just 'cuz
he ain't lived it don't mean he don't know 'bout it. He's real
wise, that Aidan Dubois. Smartest of any of us."
Voices of agreement could be
heard from a number of the other cells. Sirius craned his neck
to look down the hall, then looked back up at Aidan. Aidan simply
shrugged and smiled modestly.
"They like what I've got
to say."
Sirius simply stared for a moment,
then finally found his voice again. "How do you know? What
to say, I mean."
Aidan smiled another secretive
smile. "Books. Lots and lots of books. I used to read a lot.
Taught me lots of things, only no one'd ever listen to me. The
way I speak, it's crude, it's common. No one listened to me on
th'outside. My common way of speaking kept them from hearing what
I've actually got to say. Don't want the gift if it's not wrapped
up in a pretty package, see? That and I tend to blabber. Just
means I've got a lot to say, I suppose, although it really depends
who I'm talking to, doesn't it? Never spoke a word to my teachers
back in school. But the people in here, I've got lots to say to.
And they listen to me. S'pose it's the only nice thing about being
in here. And the people I've met aren't so bad neither."
Shouts echoed down the hall
in agreement. Sirius shuddered. He knew they had meant to be in
cheerful agreement, but they had sounded like a song from a choir
of skeletons. He surveyed Aidan carefully. Aidan had a light expression
on his face. His skin was stretched across his cheeks like it
would on the skull of a rotting corpse, but for what it was worth,
he seemed perfectly content.
"What are you in for?"
"Hmm? Me? They say I was
a Death Eater and killed a bunch of wizards and Muggles on various
occasions."
"Is it... is it true?"
Aidan grinned and nearly laughed
out loud. "'Course not. Don't you know, Black, everyone in
here's innocent."
Sirius stared.
"Hey, Radford," Aidan
shouted, turning his head to face down the hall.
"Yeah, Aidan," the
replying shout came back, a deep, thick male voice. It rang with
a thick African accent.
"What're you in for?"
Sirius could hear a few quiet
laughs and chuckles from some of the closer cells. When Radford
spoke again, Sirius could almost hear the smile in his voice.
"Didn't do it."
"Y'see, Black? Everyone
in here's innocent."
Sirius continued to stare and
examine Aidan's expression. Aidan's comment didn't tally well
with Sirius's past beliefs about Azkaban but no evidence of lying
or joking was evident on his face. He simply wore a pleasant smile.
Sirius felt another question spring forward in his mind.
"When you said that people
in the back don't go mad as fast as the others... did you mean
it?"
Aidan nodded placidly, a smile
still spread across his face. "On my life." There was
a long pause. "Wondering if you're going to make it in here?"
Sirius was silent.
Aidan tapped his chin and turned
away. "Never know who's going to make it in here."
Absolute silence echoed down
the hall and into Sirius' cell.
"You just never know."