A/N: I've delayed this thing long enough - so here it is! Enjoy!

Prologue to Detention

Darkness enveloped everything. All that could be seen were shadows, constantly moving about - if only an inch or so - restless with hunger and anticipation. All emotion was sucked from the atmosphere, as helium from a punctured balloon. Quickly, stealthily. But noiselessly.

For, it was the silence that drove most away from sanity. The swift extraction of all feeling has no theme music.

There is a line drawn in life. A line that is crossed, more often than not, without return. One would be more settled to insanity in this place. There was no escaping them – they who were the drivers of the insane – for they haunted your dreams. And in your waking moments, when you instinctively reached out for the relief of the conscious world, you were drained once more. Driven under by the vacuum created by the figures in black, and drowned in a world of your own creation. A world of your own despairing thoughts.

Azkaban prison had no need for weaponry – no need for fences or barricades. The mere isolation that Poseidon provided was enough. After all, who would want to reach the Forbidden Island? Murderers, thieves, liars, and Benedicts were held there – but that was not what really kept away the young delinquents and troublemakers of the wizarding community.

It was the Dementors – those who drove men to madness with their mere presence. Screaming in the prison was only heard with the arrival of a new inmate. It only ever lasted a few days. But in those days of broken silence, the other inmates reveled. For, if the attention of the Dementors was drawn away from them for even the shortest time, it was a relief. Some of them even gained back memories – happy memories.

For one prisoner in particular, some of the happiest memories he regained were also some of the more horrible. Some were of a young woman crying. Some were of her screaming uncontrollably. And the last were her dying words. The girl that was involved, however, was what made the difference – was what made them bearable. She was his Rae of light. These were terrible memories, and because of that the Dementors should have left them with their owner. But it was Rae that made the difference.

Whenever he closed his eyes, he could imagine her silky black hair curling around her face in the wind; he could imagine her stormy gray eyes staring into his liquid black ones. He inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of the past. Tangerines. But she was only a memory, now. No matter how real she had once been – no matter how much love and passion she had once brought into his life – for, now she was gone.

Perhaps, one day, he would remember her last words. In Azkaban, they were but a blur of colors and letters, swirling about in a haze of dust. One day, if ever he were a free man, he would remember them. It was not a possibility. It was for certain.

Sirius Black opened his eyes. The moon was rising, and cast a beam of liquid silver into his cell. He stood, shakily, and peered through the barred windows into the celestial world above. There was his star – Sirius. The smaller stars about it connected seamlessly to form Canis Major. Near to the heavenly dog was his best friend, the hunter, Orion. One day, they would be together again.

The screaming had subsided now, and the presence of the Dementors was drawing near again. How he dreaded the return of the vile creatures! They would drain him once more. They would take away his Rae. His only Rae of hope.

A sigh escaped his chapped lips as he felt the memories begin to fade once more. Sirius reached beneath the blankets on his cot and pulled from them a notebook – a very old and battered muggle notebook. He flipped open the cover and read the first page.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

It was a message. He had always known it – yet, he had never really figured it out. Of course he had tried, but always to no avail. He also knew it happened to be from a book, although he had never bothered to read it. If I ever get out of here, I should, he found himself thinking.

Sirius shut his eyes once more, closing the notebook. They were approaching his cell, now, and he knew it like the dawn. He could sense it before he could see it. Wasn't there some wise and philosophical phrase that went along with that? He struggled to recall it. Remus had always been the intellectual one of the group. Oh, yeah.

"Walk by faith, and not by sight."