Things Fall Apart, Part IV
By StickPegasus
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I'm not making any money. If there's any question, see the disclaimers in the other chapters.
A/N: I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go with this, but I think I've got it figured out now. If you notice a slight difference in style near the middle of this chapter, congratulations, you're observant! I actually wrote that part before I even started this particular story, and decided that it would fit in here somehow. I hope some of the statements aren't too repetitive.
Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! You guys make me happy.
Now, on with the story…
As the years passed, Remus slowly began to develop a new life for himself. He had rarely stayed in one town for long, fearing that someone would discover his secret. So, he moved from town to town, taking temporary teaching positions in local schools… that is, until someone read between the lines of his monthly absences. Then he would resign, and move on.
It seemed to Remus that he had, finally, really begun to heal. He had some semblance of a life. While he still spent his evenings reading before the fire (his library was now quite impressive), he didn't feel as lonely. He had met all sorts of fascinating people in the past few years. But despite this, he knew he didn't have any friends. He didn't actually believe that he could ever really make friends again. He was too afraid of losing them.
But the people he did meet made his life fairly interesting. He had gotten rid of a boggart for his ancient neighbor last week, and she was definitely an eccentric. Once he had finished with the boggart, she had insisted on his staying for tea and discussing why crystal balls frightened him so. (The boggart, when it saw her, had turned in to a wad of chewing gum.) And he had met one man in town the other day who had insisted upon Remus helping him pick out a pair of socks from a department store window. Very odd, these people were. Kept Remus on his toes.
Tonight, Remus sat in front of the fire again, thinking about the interesting turn his life had taken in the past few months. Before he had moved to this small town near Land's End, he had lived for a short time in Wales, and had only lasted a month before his neighbor had asked him about his lycanthropy. As was customary to Remus by that time, he had left town the very next day, tattered briefcase in hand.
The cottage in which he now lived was atop a grassy knoll at the edge of a large wood. Ivy grew profusely along the white stucco walls and had begun to creep up the chimney and on to the roof. On clear days, while standing on the tiny front porch, Remus could look south and see the ocean. To the north and east lay the wood, and to the west was the town.
Today was a gloomy, sullen Sunday; heavy clouds hung ominously in the sky, and the air was thick with the buzz of storm. Remus sat on the front porch and gazed vaguely at the darkening sky, waiting not only for the rain to come but also for the moon to rise, in a few hours. Tonight, the moon would be full.
Remus didn't need a lunar chart to know that the full moon was tonight. He didn't even need his instincts of time, which told him it had been twenty-eight days since the last full moon. All he needed was the dull ache that had spread slowly throughout his body and had, over the past two days, escalated to a semi-dull, insistent one. In a few hours, a full-fledged monster would replace the mild, controlled man living in the cottage at the edge of the wood. As soon as the moon rose.
He sat quietly for several hours, his heightened senses taking in every sound, every smell they could. The rain had begun to fall heavily, and the wind was beginning to pick up, as nightfall came ever closer. Slowly, Remus rose from his chair on the porch and went inside the cottage, through the warm front room, down the hall, and in to the spare room at the back of the house. He had cast strengthening charms earlier that week on every inch of the room, and now proceeded to lock himself inside.
He deposited his wand in the bottom drawer of the desk by the window, for safekeeping. Then he removed his worn robes and folded them neatly, laying them in the drawer on top of his wand. And then he stood, waiting, in the center of the room, for the moon to rise.
Torrents of rain battered the cottage roof, the wind whipped roughly, howling, around the corners of the house. Remus thought, vaguely, of how fortunate he was to be inside tonight, as the pain in his body grew steadily sharper.
The transformation came upon him suddenly as the moon rose in to the night sky, behind its screen of clouds and rain. Intense pain gripped his slender body and forced a heavy moan from his throat. He could feel every bone, every vein, every muscle in his body shift, and the pain still increased. He sunk to the floor, biting back screams of pain as he did so.
His spine was on fire as it stretched and rearranged itself, his slender hands became coarse and wolfish, and sharp claws jutted fiercely from his fingertips. He now lay, shuddering, on the ground, drawing great gasping breaths, and all the while his hoarse screams became less human. His shrieks became more and more feral until their timbre had changed completely, and were replaced with fierce growls and occasional chilling howls of agony.
His body had lost all of its human characteristics. Now, upon the rug in the spare room, lay a fully-grown werewolf, panting in exhaustion. After several moments, the wolf took to prowling the room, searching for a way out. The wet nose could smell no prey nearby, and it yearned to get out and hunt.
And the rain lashed relentlessly upon the windows of the cottage.
~*~
Watery moonlight spilled in increments through the barred window of the cell, and shone weakly across the floor, before being swallowed up in the darkness. The shafts of light shifted eerily as thick clouds and mist began to obscure the moon completely from view. The figure of a man, huddled in the corner of his cell, was once again shrouded in darkness, darkness equal to that in the deep recesses of his mind.
The gaunt figure held his face in quivering hands that trembled not only from intense cold, but also from perpetual fear. For weeks now there had been no reprieve from his fear, he was too weak to transform in to the huge black dog and dilute his emotions. So he retreated to this corner to focus on the one thought that could keep him sane… the one thought, the only thought, that the dementors had no chance of taking away… I am innocent.
All of a sudden, Sirius Black shuddered violently. A wave of fierce cold had swept through his cell; a fresh dementor had taken post outside his cell. His jaw clenched in dread, he focused all of his energy on the three words that would be his lifeline… I am innocent.
The night became darker as it continued to creep through Sirius's own private hell. The screams began in the cells around him, and Sirius moved his skeletal hands from his haggard face to cover his ears. Piercing shrieks blended with hoarse yells until it all became too much for Sirius, and he fell, exhaustedly, in to a fitful sleep. But no matter how exhausted he was when he succumbed to sleep, he was never rested when he woke.
Dreams laced his sleep every night, vivid, horrible nightmares that continued for hours because his mind could no longer force him to wake. They drained him of every ounce of control and he screamed, screamed in agony and fear and grief for his friends. Sometimes he woke because the horrors of his sleep were too much for him, drenched in sweat and tears, but more often than not he was not able to wake himself. All because of the dementors.
So he sat, entombed in hell, for years on end, finding relief only when he was strong enough to transform. Waiting for absolution that he knew would never come. And thick fog loomed on the horizon, drawing nearer and nearer every second.
~*~
Dawn broke, behind a thick cover of cloud, when the moon sank below the mountains to the west the next chilly morning. Remus lay, quivering, on the rug in his spare room. His body ached fiercely. He took several gasping breaths before he was able to finally control the pain. Then, when he could no longer stand the cold, he dragged himself up off the floor and to the desk, pulled his robes and wand from the drawer, and dressed himself slowly. He reached for the doorknob and turned it with a shaking hand. Then he shuffled along the hall to the kitchen, his weary body protesting with every aching step. He collapsed in to a chair at the quaint kitchen table, and, with a wave of his wand, put the teakettle on to boil.
He rubbed exhaustedly at his swollen eyelids and scrubbed a hand through his hair. When the tea was ready, he Summoned it from the counter and breathed the smell of it deep in to his lungs. He sipped it carefully, letting the hot liquid run down his hoarse throat and in to his belly, warming his body.
He lit a fire in the living room fireplace and moved to sit before it. As the flames licked at the edges of the firewood, Remus could hear the wind as it continued to whistle through the trees. He couldn't remember whether or not the storm had let up last night. Hell, he couldn't remember half of last night itself. His mind seemed to have blocked it out again, as it often did during his transformations. Although, Remus supposed that the wolf mind inhabited a separate, forbidden corner of his human mind, and the wolf's experiences were stored there. Remus had yet to figure out how to retrieve them.
Fat raindrops splattered the windowpanes of the cottage while the fire crackled hospitably before Remus, but he felt neither comfortable nor cozy. He hurt. His head was throbbing with every beat of his pulse, and every bone felt as though he had been put on the rack. His aching muscles protested his every movement. And he was exhausted.
As much as Remus would have liked to sit in his old chair, curled up in front of the fire, all day, he could not. He needed to go in to town, for he had made an appointment to help a shopkeeper get rid of a boggart in the basement, and should get going. He pulled himself from his chair and began what would be years of teaching locals how to defend themselves from Dark creatures.
~*~
The fog had lifted, yet the moonlight was still feeble, and the stars were unable to penetrate the darkness around Azkaban. A haggard man crouched in the corner of his cell, staring out the window in to the deep black of the sky. He shook from cold, and from fear, his skeletal frame covered in twelve years of filth and grime. His long hair hung limply past his shoulders. And his eyes had lost the sparkle they had once kept.
The dementor outside his cell had left momentarily, only to be replaced by another. It glided toward the man's cell and looked, as it were (dementors are blind), directly at the man, who stared back in horror.
It was those moments in which the dementors changed shifts that allowed this man some type of relief. Before his imprisonment, he'd thought that he had been afraid. But nothing, NOTHING outside these walls could ever have prepared him for the horror within. The relentless feeling of utter helplessness that ate away at his soul every waking hour, and the horrible nightmares that filled his restless sleep each and every night. Not to mention the awful screams that came from the surrounding cells. The man was sure he made the same sounds as he slept. He had woken from too many horrible dreams to deny it.
~*~
The small passenger craft rocked violently on the rough sea as it carried Minister Fudge and a few of his associates to Azkaban for the yearly inspection. Periodically one of the younger men leaned far over the side of the craft, then turned, eyes screwed shut, and sat huddled in the corner of the pilot's cabin, a sickly green tint to his chubby features. The Minister of Magic was used to the rough trip by now, and was not so affected.
Finally, the fortress appeared, dark and mysterious through the thick fog. The craft pulled up carefully to the battered dock and the Minister and his associates disembarked. They climbed the steep path up to the doors of the fortress, where they were met by several dementors. The chubby young man, who was still rather green, immediately became quite a bit more apprehensive upon entry.
As they entered the fortress, the men were hit with an extreme feeling of dread. Fudge walked ahead, with the dementors, while his associates followed.
The dementors led the men to the office of the Director, a gnarled little man with glittering black eyes.
"Hello, Minister, how are you this-er- lovely morning?"
"I am quite well, thank you, Dr. Blithesbane. Did you see the Prophet this morning? The Cannons lost to the Wasps," he held out the front page for the little man to read.
"Yes, Minister, I've already read it. Got to keep up on my current events, you know... If not for such things I'd probably go quite mad. Well, more so than already. One would have to be quite unsound to take a job like this, eh?" Dr. Blithesbane had a curious and somewhat unsettling grin on his face.
"Yes, Doctor, I see your point. Well, let's get started with this, shall we?" Fudge turned to his associates and said, "If you'd like, you may remain here and owl the office for me, to let them know we've arrived," to which the men agreed readily. Fudge and Dr. Blithesbane left the office with the dementors and marched down a flight of dank steps.
"We'll start with the low- security this morning, all right, sir? You wouldn't want to have to stomach the high security prisoners at such an early hour, I'm afraid." The Doctor still had that grin on his face. Fudge nodded in agreement.
The tour continued quite uneventfully, well, as uneventfully as such a tour could continue. They climbed higher and higher in the fortress, passing cell upon cell of captured Death Eaters and the like. Most of them sat, muttering to themselves, in the corners of their cells, blank looks on their faces.
As they approached the cell of Sirius Black, the dementors outside his cell parted, allowing for a look inside. Black, his filthy hair hanging limply past his shoulders, stood to greet them.
"Hello, Minister," Black croaked. His voice was scratchy from so much screaming.
"Er, hello, Black..." said a somewhat startled Fudge.
Black spied the newspaper tucked under Fudge's arm, the headline "Cannons Lose to Wasps" emblazoned upon the front page in bold letters. "Have you finished with your newspaper? I- I miss doing the crossword."
"Oh, erm, sure, be my guest," Fudge handed Sirius the newspaper.
"Thank you," he said. "So, uh, anything interesting happening in the world that I should, as a high security prisoner, be aware of?" He almost cracked a smile as he made this remark.
"Oh, the usual. You know. Been pretty quite lately. I'm sure the Prophet will catch you up."
"I doubt, sir, that this newspaper would fill me in on twelve years, but I thank you all the same."
"Shall we continue, Minister?" Asked Dr. Blithesbane.
"Yes, let's. Goodbye, Black." They walked off.
Fudge looked at Blithesbane. "How does he do it? He's been under heavy guard for twelve years, and he's not- he's - well, he seems almost normal. I don't get it. Shouldn't he be huddled in the corner, drooling, talking to himself rather than asking the visiting Minster for the crossword puzzle?"
"I'm not quite sure, sir. You-Know-Who must have performed some sort of impenetrable protection charm on him; perhaps even the dementors can't get past it. He's a singularly rare case. I've never seen anything quite so remarkable in all my life, and believe me, I've seen many remarkable things."
"If He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named can shield his supporters from the dementors, he must have been far more powerful than we had ever imagined... Thank Gods we have seen the last of him."
~*~
Sirius Black sat in the corner of his cell, Prophet in hand. He'd read the front-page stories already and had now flipped to the next page, where it was announced that the Weasley family had won the thousand Galleons in the Prophet's contest. There was a picture of the whole family, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley smiling kindly in back, and their seven children in front of them. How cute, the smallest boy has his pet rat on his shoulder... Sirius glanced again at the photograph, more closely this time. Dear God. He stared in astonishment at the rat's front paw. It had a toe missing. Peter Pettigrew. Is. Not. Dead. "Five of the Weasley children will be attending Hogwarts this year," said the article. He's at Hogwarts. I must get him. I've GOT to get him. That filthy rat sold my best friends to Voldemort... Almost had my godson killed... He's at Hogwarts.
These freshly awakened thoughts did not go unnoticed by the dementors. They sensed that Sirius was taking a stroll down memory lane, and several of them surrounded his cell.
An intense cold swept over Sirius, a cold that had merely been overlooked while his mind had something else with which to occupy itself. All of a sudden his mind was transported back, twelve years ago, to that horrible night when he knelt over the body of his best friend, sobbing fiercely... "oh, James, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... this is all my fault... I never... oh, God..." Sirius dissolved in to bitter tears as the memories returned. He cried until he fell into a fitful exhausted sleep.
~*~
Minister Fudge and Dr. Blithesbane concluded the inspection just as sleep was beginning to overtake those prisoners nearest the Doctor's office. By the time the two men arrived back in the office to collect Fudge's associates, several rather chilling screams could be heard coming from the surrounding cells, much to the dismay of the weak stomached men on the trip.
Fudge led the way out of the fortress, he wasn't kidding anyone... he was just as glad to get out of there as the next guy. They climbed aboard the small craft for the long journey back to the mainland, where they would then Apparate to London.
~*~
The thick fog enveloped the fortress; the damp cold penetrated Sirius' very soul. His face was stained with bitter tears, and the muscles beneath his dirty skin were tense even in sleep. For sleep is only restful on the nights in which there are no nightmares, and as long as dementors stood outside of Sirius' cell door, there would be nightmares. For perhaps an hour after succumbing to exhaustion Sirius would sleep quietly, then the dreams would hit. Horrible dreams, more often vivid than vague, but tonight's was indistinct. He lay, curled in to a tight ball, on the solid rock floor, his eyes twitching back and forth relentlessly beneath their heavy lids, searching for relief. He mumbled indistinctly, quietly, for several moments before the desperate screams erupted from the depths of his soul. Perhaps this would continue for hours, perhaps he would awaken himself with his own screams, he never knew. All Sirius knew was that there was no one here to help him, no one here to shake him awake when the screams began.
The misery never leaves the prisoners of Azkaban. Some may find meager
relief as the dementors continue down the halls, some live for those spare seconds when the dementors change shifts; that is, those who are capable of forming coherent thoughts inside their troubled minds. Sirius fought these intense bouts of anguish as an Animagus. Since dementors are blind, they did not notice his transformation in to the huge dog know to few as Padfoot. While in his canine form, Sirius' thoughts were far less complex; those intense emotions were subdued so he could maintain some of the sheds of control. Often after a long night of nightmares, Sirius would transform, to help clear his head a bit. If he had the strength.
It was the next morning after Fudge's visit that Sirius was hit by a stunning thought: Harry Potter was old enough to be at Hogwarts now. Harry, the son of his best friend, his own godson, was at Hogwarts. Where Peter was. I have to get to him. James, I swear to you, I will protect your son. I've failed as his godfather so far... if it weren't for me he wouldn't even need a godfather... I have to make it up to you, James, and Lily. And Harry. ......He's at Hogwarts......
The thought occurred to Sirius, seriously, for the first time since he'd been locked up, that he could find a way to escape. The only sane human on this bloody island was Dr. Blithesbane. It shouldn't be too terribly difficult to get past him. And the dementors are blind. "If I were to rush past them as a dog, it would confuse the hell out of them," Sirius thought to himself.
So a week or so later, when the night was darkest, Sirius transformed in to the huge black wolfhound. As the dementors changed shifts he slipped through the bars of his cell, his skeletal frame being an easy fit, and ran like hell through the narrow corridor and down several flights of stairs. He had no idea where the doors of the fortress were; however, some sort of instinct enabled him to find his way outside.
The dog loped toward the narrow path that led to the dock. When he finally reached it, he took one look at the dark sea, sniffed the crisp air deep in to his lungs, and plunged in to the choppy, cold water.
The frigid water hit him like a thousand knives slashing at his weak body. He forced his legs to pull his body through the water, as far away from Hell as he could possibly get.
The dog swam for what must have been hours. The moon had risen and set, and the coldness that was dawn had begun to set in the air. At last, his wearied eyes spotted land; he swam for it reverently. When his paws finally hit sand, he dragged his exhausted body out of the sea and up on to land, across a sandy beach and on to a large rock, where he collapsed.
He awoke several hours later with a strange warmth upon his aching body. He opened his eyes slowly only to shut them again, violently, as the bright rays of sunlight hit his dark- accustomed eyes. The Sun. Light, for the first time in nearly twelve years. For a fleeting moment all the weight of his soul was lifted by the enormity of this discovery. No more shadows. No more dementors.