"You are not Sirius' only correspondent," said Dumbledore. How true this statement was. Sirius also kept in contact with someone else that neither Harry nor Dumbledore knew about…
On The Run To You
Chapter Two: "Escape"
He had been counting the days, the hours and the very minutes he had been locked in such a prison. Twelve years he waited. Waited for death, waited for insanity and then suddenly his wait was over and his fate was easily better than he had imagined it to be. For days he ate nothing. Not that it was such a huge sacrifice to stop eating. Barely anyone in Azkaban ate the food given to them. They starved themselves of food just as the Dementors starved them of happiness and eventually they passed to a better place. Such creatures were suited to guarding a place such as Azkaban. They tormented each and every prisoner in the place, not with words, not even with actions but merely by passing by their cell could make a prisoner sink further into their own depression.
He knew death would eventually be the only way out of the place that had made him so detached from the rest of the world. Only a stones throw from reality, it often seemed as though he were living in a place purely created for him and others like him, trapped inside their own heads, every bad memory circling their minds like vultures, occasionally swooping down and pecking at the remaining flesh, or, in the prisoners case, their good memories.
Once or twice, the black dog would lay down on the floor and become a man. A man whose skin was sallow, his face gaunt, etched with fear, his hair tousled and dirty. The truth was, when he was a dog, he almost looked the same. The beast he had become began to mirror the beast he had always been able to transform into at will. But now, he was a beast whether he were a man or a dog.
He liked to think he kept his sanity better than anyone else in the wretched prison. He later told somebody who asked, that he kept himself from going as mad as others do in Azkaban and he told them, almost truthfully, that he kept himself that way by knowing he were different to all others in Azkaban. He knew he was innocent.
Peter Pettigrew. How he loathed that man, even the name sent shivers down his spine and made him growl with anger, whether he was in the form of a dog or not. He had been sent to Azkaban for something this man had done. Something unforgivable had happened to innocent muggles and he, alone, had been targeted for taking the blame for committing such a sin.
He had always known that he would either die or escape from his hateful prison. After those muggles had been maliciously murdered, he was taken immediately to Azkaban. And for two weeks he ran rampage, using all the strength he could muster. But then one day, a visitor made him silent for the first time in those fifteen days. She made him a promise and he hoped to all the heavens that one day, he would live to see her keep it.
As the years went by, however, he began to realise that death would be his only escape. And then suddenly things changed. Pettigrew was alive. And this time, he would not escape the fate he deserved. The man, in one moment of sanity he could pull together, took the paper from the newest Minister of Magic who seemed incredibly shocked at how calmly the man was acting.
And there was Pettigrew, leering at him from the front page of the paper, teasing him for escaping what should have been rightly his punishment all those years ago. And then replaced by the man was the dog once again. He stopped eating and slipped through the bars of his prison, ignoring the Dementors as they glided past him, their close proximity almost impossible to bear. With the remaining strength he had in him, he swam determinedly towards the shore before collapsing in a heap, his strength gone, his body and mind fragile with hunger and twelve years worth of mental weakening.
When he awoke, in pain and hungry, he made his way towards the nearest shop where he scrounged for food and even caught sight of the most recent newspaper. Where, on the front page, a headline bore the words "Sirius Black escaped".
Okay, so that wasn't the most interesting chapter but I just wanted to give Sirius his own little insight. In the coming chapters I will try to develop a relationship between Sirius and mysterious woman who came to see him in the first chapter. What kind of a relationship? You will just have to wait and see ;)