A/N: Hey buddies! You have no idea how happy it makes me to see all these reviews… YEAH TOO BAD I HAVE ZERO!! Whew… okay, breathing… PLEASE read and review my story. I won't know if I should update, if no one reviews. COME ON!

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Chapter 3

The Darkness of Azkaban

Sirius's first impression of Azkaban Prison was not a good one. But how could it be? There was nothing welcoming about it, and he didn't even deserve to be here. There were dementors everywhere—the place was literally crawling with them.

The huge castle-like prison was made of stone, with stretching towers and a creaking drawbridge. But worse than the outside, was the inside. Here, men and women were going mad of misery and depression, and their shrieks could be heard from all corners of the jail. Dementors glided around the grimy, dirty halls, their sinister, blank hoods watching your every move, and their quaking breaths struck a pang of fear into the hearts of each criminal there.

"Get in there, Black." The Hit Wizard growled, tossing Sirius forcibly into one of the high-security cells. The floor was mucky, and felt disgusting to the touch, but Sirius slid himself into a seated position against one of the walls. He looked out of his wrought-iron cell door and into the cell across the way. There, a man was lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. Sirius was unnerved to see that he was jabbering animatedly to himself in another language, occasionally flipping back to English to answer his own questions.

Sirius shook his head, and looked at his hands. He hadn't washed them in days, and there was dirt under his nails and smothering his palms. He realized how stupid it was to care about how clean his hands were—he was in jail, after all. But he wasn't just literally dirty—he felt contaminated all around. What was he doing here? This place… was horrible, and everything in his life was even worse.

Sirius didn't even have a window in his cell—how would he know how the days were passing? As the night approached, however, dementors came by and put out the torches that lit the passages. Sirius wondered inwardly why there even were torches—the dementors didn't need to see, and darkness would have been a welcome sight, compared to what he had seen so far.

But when the torches were out, the dark was so thick that Sirius couldn't even see his own hand in front of his face. Wordlessly, Sirius curled himself into a ball, and lay down on the stone floor to sleep.

The next morning, a Hit Wizard visited his cell to tattoo his registration number and identifications to his chest, so that he could always be recognized. As the wand branded him, he realized with despondency that now he would always be remembered as the man who killed Lily and James, the man who went to Azkaban for murdering Peter in the streets of London—the whole entire lie was there, branded on his chest for the rest of his life. When his job was done, the Hit Wizard left Sirius alone, and slammed the cell door closed with a ring that echoed through Sirius's mind.

On the third morning, Sirius experienced something that he had hoped he never would have to encounter. The insane man across from him was given the fatal dementor's kiss. Three dementors had come gliding into the man's cell, and they all gathered around, so that the man was no longer visible to Sirius. Then came the clattering breaths, and the man's screams. It chilled Sirius to the bone to hear such agony and suffering. The dementors lowered their hoods, and Sirius felt sick to his stomach, and wanted to throw up. They brought their faces closer to the man's, and he stopped howling… but then a bright white light came floating up out of his throat towards one of the dementor's mouths, and they dropped the man to the floor eagerly. The lucky dementor swallowed the man's soul and they left. When the dementors had disappeared, the man lay on the floor of his cell, staring at Sirius with wide eyes and a blank expression. Those vacant eyes haunted Sirius until more dementors came later that day to move the man someplace else.

The dementors were constantly leering in Sirius's cell, taking experimental gulps of his cheerfulness—which there was little left of, by now. But as the days turned to weeks and the weeks into months, Sirius stopped caring, and nearly stopped noticing.

Occasionally, Sirius would transform into a dog, at first it was for his own amusement, but then he started to do it just so the dementors would think that he, like the rest of his jail-mates, was going crazy. But really, Sirius was just as sane as the day he had entered Azkaban, for he really had no happiness that the dementors could take away—he had already lost everything he had loved in this world. The only thought that he really had was to find Peter and prove his innocence.

But as the months turned to years, and he got another tattoo on each finger for every year he was in the prison, those thoughts of proving innocence were over. He wanted to kill Peter just so he could commit the crime that he was here for.

The years passed by slowly. Sometimes, when the new Minister of Magic came by to check up on things, Sirius would ask him for the Daily Prophet, and Sirius could keep himself caught up on things in the wizarding world. Sirius would watch when new prisoners were brought in. He learned more about them by watching than he did from reading the Prophet. Watching and listening was how Sirius learned things normal people would never know.

It was by listening that he learned what his godson had accomplished in his first year of Hogwarts. Harry had faced Voldemort while attempting to protect the coveted Sorcerer's Stone. Just like his dad and the Hidden Crystal. Sirius was so proud, but had no one to share it with.

Only once did Sirius ever have a visitor.

A Hit Wizard led his guest down the dank hallway and to his cell. At first, Sirius didn't even notice that she was standing there looking at him. He was too busy looking at the new number added to the middle section of his left pinky that morning. The Roman numeral 11. He had been here 11 years.

"S-Sirius?"

He looked up, and saw Belle standing before him, watching him carefully. It didn't quite register to him that Arabella Figg was standing outside his cell, wanting to see him—actually wanting to talk to him.

"Sirius, I… How… Are you holding up all right?" She asked tentatively. It was almost as though she expected him to be out of his mind. He thought how funny it might be if he pretended that he was, just to see how she would react, but he settled on shrugging instead.

"I-I thought you might… you might like a visitor." Belle replied softly. Sirius smiled to himself. Did she maybe miss him? "I mean, it's been 11 years, now."

"I know." Sirius said. His voice was frog-like, and sounded raspy. He hadn't realized that he hadn't really used his voice in ages. Belle looked taken aback that he could actually talk. Sirius looked at her and smiled slightly. She looked just as beautiful as always… but she was older, and she seemed more reserved than she had been 11 years ago.

"H-how's Remus?" Sirius choked.

"He's fine. Just fine." Belle said stepping closer to the bars, and wrapping her fingers around them as though she wanted to go to him, to touch him. But Sirius didn't move. "Well, he's more or less fine… as fine as he can be…" She continued, stuttering slightly. She didn't know what to say, it was so obvious.

"That's good." Sirius said, his throat starting to hurt a little bit from the strain. He gulped, and got to the question he had wanted to ask for 11 years. "And Harry? How is he?"

"He's growing up, Sirius." Belle smiled, her eyes brightening.

"He's just like his dad, right? It's his second year at Hogwarts now, isn't it? Is he good at Quidditch? Or is he a bookworm, like his mum? Does he—"

"Oh God." Belle whispered, tears filling up her eyes. "God, why did I come here?" She asked herself angrily. She released the bars, and started to pace back and forth. It was like she was debating leaving, just to walk right back again.

"What are you talking about?"

"Of course all you'd care about is Harry! I mean, he's killed your master twice now!" Belle cried.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Sirius asked angrily. "I'm not a Death Eater, Belle. I never was!"

"You know what? I don't want to hear your lies anymore. I don't even know why I came…" Belle turned to leave, but Sirius only had to say one thing to bring her back.

"Because you miss me."

"I most certainly do not." Belle snapped, wiping her face. "You murdered three of my friends, why would I miss you?"

"I didn't betray them, Belle."

"Don't you see, Sirius? I can't believe anything that you say anymore! You'll probably just deceive me again." Belle said, frustrated. It was like she was trying to convince herself of this, more than Sirius. "I'm sorry that I even came. Goodbye Sirius."

"I didn't kill them, Belle." Sirius called after her. He didn't know if she heard him, but just the fact that she had wanted to see him at all meant something to him. Even if she thought he was a liar and a back-stabber, she still missed having him around.

And he missed her, too.

He missed them all—James, Lily, Remus, Belle… but mostly Harry. He never even got to know his godson. Alone in his cell, Sirius sometimes imagined what he might look like now: Just like James, when he was 12, with his mother's vibrant green eyes. He often wondered what life would have been like if Hagrid had let him keep Harry that night. Surely they would have been the perfect pair—Sirius would have told Harry everything about his parents, from their childhoods before Hogwarts to his mother's passion for music, to his father's desperate wedding proposal to Lily the morning before she was going to marry Amos Diggory. He wouldn't have replaced James or Lily, but rather brought them alive for Harry.

It would have been perfect.

But now his life was far from perfect. As he sat alone in his cell, there was nothing to think about, so he would transform into a dog and just sit in his cell, letting boredom buzz through his mind.

Until one day.