DISCLAIMER: We own nothing that matters when we are talking about rights to literature… especially not the Harry Potter universe.
(RATHER IMPORTANT) AN: In this chapter, we have added an OC. He is necessary to transport Sirius, because, obviously, Sirius can't walk out of Azkaban to his trial by himself (legally). He will play a small part in the coming chapters, but he will not become a major character, a love interest, or anything that we (as fans) hate to see much of. And we took the character's last name from one of the books (one of the students had this surname) so it was not a random choice.
!A RANDOM AUROR!
Mister Sam Brocklehurst had been training to be an Auror ever since he had learned how to cast a spell. He had formally trained for only five years, yet he was one of the best in his division.
He had great things coming for him, but at the moment Sam was in one of the most tedious and uncomfortable jobs in the field. He was currently on an assignment to retrieve Prisoner Number 4512 for re-sentencing.
Apparently, there was new evidence or something. Sam really didn't know or care. Neither did he think that the new evidence would change anything (it rarely did) so he hadn't bothered to look up what the name of the prisoner actually was…
Most of the prisoners themselves wouldn't remember, anyways. His supervisor had said that this prisoner had been in here a while… and was expected to be more than a bit loopy.
Sam walked stiffly down the hall, tightly gripping his wand. It was quite obvious that many of the people in Azkaban were crazy, Sam observed as he passed a young female prisoner who was cowering in the corner of her cell. Suddenly curious, Sam approached the cell so he could see the girl more closely. She had long, ratty hair that was almost to her elbows and her bright blue eyes flashed wickedly when she saw he was watching her.
Not a moment had gone past and Sam found himself two inches from the girl, the only thing separating them was the wall. Sam pulled back and ran a hand across his temple, nervously. "Er…" he told the girl, uncomfortably. The girl cocked her head, her eyes glinting in a strangely insane way, "I… I… eh…"
The young female prisoner bared her teeth and made a spitting sound, like a cat.
"I have to go…" Sam finally choked out, backing away.
As he hurried down the dark, dank corridors of Azkaban, Sam tried to remind himself that he was a fully trained Auror who wasn't afraid of insane prisoners. They were locked up. Prisoners.
Sam didn't notice that he was fast approaching his destination.
He was alerted to this fact when he heard a rasping voice. Sam rubbed his temple again, nervously.
"Why that evil, vile, despicable, wicked, malevolent, degraded…" said the voice, "He's trying to kill your kid!"
Sam approached the cell, wondering how crazy this prisoner really was.
"So! I still hate the guy! Curse him, Hermione!"
Sam stayed silent, listening to the man's dramatic conversation with himself.
"Oh, Merlin, you're right! No, Hermione, don't do it!"
Sam Brocklehurst couldn't wait until this assignment was finished and he could go back to doing more rewarding jobs.
There was a long silence. The Auror strained his ears for any sound, but all he heard was the other prisoners ranting and wailing.
Sam waited for quite a while before he realized his situation and shook his head. He had been ordered to retrieve the prisoner, not wait outside the cell listening to him.
He was just about to unlock the cell door when the prisoner spoke again.
"What are they doing?"
Sam froze.
"No, it looks like both Snape and Remus are doing some sort… of…" the voice trailed off.
The prisoner cleared his throat, "James! How am I supposed to know? As if I ever spent the time to look up the different jinxes and counter curses!"
Sam placed the key in the lock and turned it until it made a soft clicking noise. The prisoner didn't even notice… he was so engrossed in something that was sitting in the corner.
The Auror opened the door and brandished his wand, a stunning spell ready, on the tip of his tongue.
Mister Brocklehurst silently studied the young prisoner, noting that the man's long, black hair almost swept the ground in front of him, while he was sitting. Another thing that Sam noticed was the prisoner's body posture. He appeared to be sitting quite comfortably next to a small puddle of water.
"Perhaps, James," the prisoner told the puddle, "but I doubt it."
Sam moved a step to the side so he could see more closely, and took a breath, "Prisoner number 4512, you must come with me at once. Your trial is to be held as soon as you get there."
The prisoner glanced at him with eyes that were mysteriously clear, and then turned back to his puddle.
Sam, scarcely taken aback, cleared his throat and steadied his wand, "Prisoner number 4512-" he began again, but this time the prisoner interrupted him.
"Yeah, sure, just a minute…"
Sam watched as the man waved him off in such a rational way.
"I'm sorry," Sam said, "I can't wait a minute, we need to leave now so your trial can begin."
"I'm watching the Quidditch match," said the prisoner, irritated, "Just give me another minute!"
'Yeah,' Sam thought, sarcastically, 'He's going to testify… and everyone's going to believe him…'
Suddenly the prisoner stood up on unsteady feet, took a deep breath and coughed, "Wait… a trial? You said trial? Already! Snape said it was going to be later!"
Sam's brow furrowed, "I guess I don't know about the time it was originally going to be held at, but I do know that it is going to be held now. Today. As soon as you arrive."
The prisoner was too rational (except for talking to inanimate objects)… Sam was worried.
The Auror instinctively took a step back when the other man took a step forward.
"So we have to leave now?" the prisoner glanced hesitantly at the puddle in his corner and then took a step back toward it.
Sam scratched his chin, "Er… yes. We must leave now. Immediately."
"Yeah, I know what 'now' means," prisoner 4512 said, dismissively, crouching back down next to his puddle.
"What are you doing?" Sam wondered.
"I'm… erm… I'm getting a drink. Of water. Yes. A drink."
Sam ran a hand across his temple. A drink of water? What an odd response…
The prisoner peered back at Sam again then quickly turned back to the puddle.
!SIRIUS AND JAMES!
"Wait… a trial? You said trial? Already! Snape said it was going to be later!" Sirius yelled.
'The trial wasn't supposed to be for almost a week!' James exclaimed.
'I know! What are we going to do!' Sirius mentally questioned.
"I guess I don't know about the time it was originally going to be held at, but I do know that it is going to be held now. Today. As soon as you arrive," the Auror replied.
'Uh… I dunno… stall?' suggested James.
'For how long? Does Dumbledore know?' Sirius wondered, hysterically, 'Is this going to end up as a big circle with us finishing exactly where we started?'
"So we have to leave now?" Sirius asked the Auror.
The Auror replied, "Er… yes. We must leave now. Immediately."
"Yeah, I know what 'now' means," Sirius said, absent-mindedly
'Uh-oh… Sirius, I just had a thought,' James stated, mentally, 'Will we still be able to communicate once you leave?
'You mean mind to mind?' Sirius realized, 'You're right! What will we do!'
'Erm…'
"What are you doing?" the Auror wondered.
'James, help me!'
'Er…' James replied, then he had an idea.
'Sirius,' James ordered, 'drink me.'
'Drink you!'
'The puddle! Drink the puddle!'
"I'm… erm… I'm getting a drink. Of water. Yes. A drink," Sirius told the Auror.
The animagus looked at the puddle, glanced back at the Auror, and then turned back at the puddle.
Laying flat on his stomach, Sirius lapped up the water, with his eyes tightly shut.
!PETER PETTIGREW!
Peter ran along the side of a muggle building that served food outdoors. He found as much food as he could eat from the ground and from the bins.
In his animagi form, Peter had been living like a king off the streets, in his opinion. He was glad that the Ministry buffoons didn't have enough sense to completely secure his room from animagi transformations and some of the more simple dark spells that he'd learned from his superiors in the service of the Dark Lord.
His whiskers twitching happily, Peter curled up in a cozy crack in the café's wall and fell asleep, quite ready for whatever happened to come next.
!SAM BROCKLEHURST (THE AUROR)!
Sam was rather taken aback when the prisoner spread himself horizontally on the ground and started lapping up the water like a dog.
After the prisoner (Sam had yet to find out his name) had finished almost seventy-five percent of the water, he sat up and scratched his dirty chin.
"James?" the prisoner asked hesitantly, then made a jerking motion backwards, startling himself and startling Sam.
The prisoner looked up at the Auror and smiled guiltily, "Er… right… done. We can go now."
Sam nodded curtly and motioned with his wand for the prisoner to turn around.
"Pardon?" the prisoner asked.
"Turn around, I need to bind your hands and restrict your legs."
The prisoner complied much more quickly than Sam had hoped.
Sam bound the prisoner's hands and feet with a few spells. He was finished within a minute and cleared his throat to let the prisoner know that he was finished.
"That was fast. You must be a fine Auror," said the prisoner absently as they started walking away, "Actually, I was an Auror myself… or, to be quite honest, I had barely started before I had to quit. When I was arrested, I had only been in real Auror work for a little over a year."
The prisoner rambled on, "I was fairly good at it, you see. My mate, James, and I were fast learners and we picked up on most of the stuff really fast."
Sam was really beginning to wonder who this man was and why he was sent to Azkaban. Sam also wondered, vaguely, why in Merlin's name he was so sane!
The prisoner looked at Sam strangely and Sam realized he had been staring.
"What… do I have dirt on my face?" the prisoner crossed his eyes to try to see the tip of his nose, "Well, I can't see any. Do you wanna rub it off for me? My hands are tied up. Obviously you already know that, you were the one that cast the spell. So is there dirt on my face?"
"Er…" said Sam, "No I wasn't staring at anything on your face."
"Oh, alright. Say, I don't really know your name, other than you being some Auror."
Sam was, unsurprisingly, taken aback. "My name? Uh, I'm not authorized to…"
"Oh, am I making you feel threatened? I'm sorry," the prisoner said, truly apologetic, "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"Uh…" said Sam.
"You just called me by number. Four-thousand-something-and-twelve? Anyways, I have a name as well."
Sam agreed, "You're number is 4512.
The prisoner nodded, "And you know my name as well," it was a question.
Sam opened his mouth, unsure of what to say, when the prisoner stopped and looked him right in the eye. The Auror suddenly felt threatened, despite the fact that the prisoner had his hands and feet still bound.
"You didn't even bother to look up my name did you?" the prisoner asked, cocking his head.
Sam raised his wand, warningly and the prisoner backed away like a scolded dog. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking," the prisoner apologized.
"Absolutely right, you weren't thinking." Sam said, forcing himself back into Auror mode.
The pair of men walked along the corridors for a few minutes of strange silence.
Finally, the prisoner said, "Sirius Black."
Sam stopped and raised his wand again, demanding, "What?"
The prisoner repeated, "Sirius Black. My name is Sirius Black."
"You're Sirius Black!" Sam cried, rather louder than he meant to.
"Yes," the prisoner replied, with no uncertainty.
Suddenly, Sam was on high alert. They sent him alone to deal with one of Azkaban's most infamous prisoners! And Black was bloody sane!
"But he's been in here for years!" Sam accidentally said aloud.
"Yeah, so have I," Black said, "Well, I mean, I'm him because I have. Or actually I have been because I'm me."
Adrenaline pumped through Sam's veins. "But you're sane!"
The prisoner rolled his eyes, "I know that. I'm also innocent, but no one wants to believe that."
Sam wanted to scream and run away, something he'd rarely ever wanted to do, even throughout his difficult Auror training.
"But your entire family was a bunch of Death Eaters! And you killed all those people! And… and… everyone knows that you're evil!"
Sam was at a loss to explain why he was trying to convince the prisoner that he was the epitome of malevolence.
Black looked at Sam and said, "It is not my fault that I'm related to my family. I didn't kill anyone that day in the street. And how does everyone know I'm evil if I didn't even get a trial in the first place?"
Sam couldn't respond.
"Never mind, you don't care about my woes. Don't even answer those last statements. We're almost out of here anyways."
The boat ride to the shore was a fairly quiet one. Throughout the beginning of the trip, Sam watched the prisoner as he stared off into space, a glazed look on his face.
!HARRY!
As his broom bucked and swayed, Harry clung on tightly. He had never heard of this happening before!
Suddenly, Harry was dangling below his broom, clinging on with only one hand. He reached his other hand up, but before he could get a grip the broom gave an almighty wrench and Harry was falling.
Harry looked at the ground under him and tried to flip around so he didn't hurt his head, but the ground hit him first.
Everything went black.
!REMUS AND LILY!
Even after Harry plowed headfirst into the ground, Lily kept chanting the counter curse. She seemed to be in a trance.
Remus mentally struggled to gain control of his body again. When he did, he ran up to the edge of the stands and vaulted off. He landed on his feet fifteen meters below and continued running.
H reached the fallen boy in record time. Harry had plowed face first into the ground, and his face and mouth was full of mud.
Remus tried to wipe off the young boy's face, so he could breathe, and just barely caught a small golden ball that escaped from his mouth. "Well that was dreadfully improbable," Remus mumbled as he scraped some of the other dirt from the boy's face. Miraculously, Harry hadn't landed at too much of an angle, and he hadn't managed to snap his neck.
Remus felt a hand on his shoulder and noticed that there were several dozen people surrounding them and at least fifty more hurrying that way. Professor Dumbledore somehow managed to make his way through the group and pointed his wand at Harry's unconscious body.
!SIRIUS AND JAMES!
As the small group neared the boats on the outskirts of Azkaban, James made his presence known.
'Sirius! You're ignoring me!'
Sirius jumped, but the Auror hardly gave it a glance.
'I'm sorry, James, I was communicating with my captor.'
'Yes, well… that bores me. Even you should be able to tell that the Auror doesn't want to be here talking to crazy prisoners.'
'Are you calling me crazy?' Sirius asked, mock outraged.
'Well, no matter what I think, that Auror thinks you're crazy.'
'Puh,' Sirius replied.
Neither Sirius nor James noticed when the group climbed into the boats, Sirius doing it semi-automatically, his attention wholly on his conversation with his best friend.
!SAM BROCKLEHURST!
The Auror looked at the prisoner and frowned, touching his temple. Black seemed to be in a daze, staring off into space. He was showing no emotion and his eyes were unfocused. Sam thought for a moment and decided that it looked as if he had already had his soul sucked from his body.
Sam shivered. That was a terrible fate, to be sure, and he didn't know that he would wish it upon anyone, perhaps not even this… person.
Deciding to make sure that nothing had happened, Sam prodded the prisoner in the side with his wand. The man jerked away in surprise with a yelp, shielding his face with his still-bound arms.
Realizing what the situation was, Black dropped his arms, glanced at Sam and the turned in the opposite direction, a pink tinge rising in his face.
!SIRIUS BLACK!
Sirius had been rudely jerked from the perfectly sane conversation he'd been having with his dead best friend, and that annoyed him.
The convict angrily turned away from that discourteous Auror and glared across the water. At that point, Sirius recognized that they were no longer in Azkaban… they were on the outside!
He was free! He was… Sirius took a breath of clean air, and thought about his bleak situation… he wasn't free yet.
Looking around, he noticed the foreboding black clouds that loomed overhead. Sirius felt the cold breath of the wind, not unlike the freezing touch of the dementors, suck the hope rapidly from his being.
Sirius lowered his gaze to the water that was splashing so near them. The convict loosened his magical binding and slid his hands apart. He extended one hand and dropped it over the side of the boat.
A voice from behind him made him pull his hand back in again.
"If you're thinking about throwing yourself overboard, don't even try it. There are charms that prevent you from it."
Sirius turned around and scoffed, "I knew that. I was an Auror, remember? And anyways, why would I want to drown myself!"
At the puzzled look on the Auror's face, Sirius remedied his statement with a rather unconvincing sigh, "I've no reason to attempt escape or suicide."
Unsurprisingly, the Auror didn't reply.
Sirius turned back around to face the approaching land and sat quietly, thinking to James, until they arrived.
!AUTHORS!
Many thanks to everyone for sticking with us! Our computer crashed and we lost most of this chapter, so we were forced to rewrite it… ah, well. The rest of the story is coming along nicely, though, and we are very, very grateful for all the reviews we've been getting.
Additional thanks for accepting our OC. I suppose this may be awkward, but he shouldn't be terribly involved in the story (so we'll re-use him instead of trying to make another OC for the next chapters).
Now, I'm not quite sure whether we're allowed to do responses to reviews in the story, but I've still seen others doing them, so we're going to reply to them.
Eggo Waffles: No, Remus's head is just fine. Yeah, I agree about Sirius and James.
SongOfStars: Thanks awfully!
Marguerida: I absolutely love Sirius and I hope that things change in the books and Sirius goes free… (he lives, I hope!) And I certainly agree that Sirius should get out of Azkaban relatively soon (see above chapter… heh), but that doesn't mean I won't be cruel to him and do the opposite of what I think. (-hits self with lamp- bad Kiwi! Bad Kiwi!)
dweem-angel: Quirrel was just behind Snape and Remus, somewhere. Quirrel was still casting the spell on Harry's broom, but in this universe, Remus sat where Quirrel was going to sit so when Hermione went rushing past, she knocked over Remus instead of Quirrel.
Time and Fate: Er… okay. Thanks, I think.
Harrypfan001 TEACHERLADY: Sorry about the length between updates. Thanks for the review.
RemusLily: The puddle thing was this: somehow the puddle inside Sirius's cell is channeling James Potter's spirit, so the two marauders are able to talk. And, as for James's role on his Quidditch team, in the movie they made James a seeker, but in the original books, he was a chaser.
Haley Carr: Thanks. I hope my writing isn't too foggy.
LupinLover88: I'm sorry about Remus's eye color. I wasn't sure either. I think that hazel can cover a variant of colors, so that's why I picked it. If his eyes are said to be some other color then I will gladly change it. There will be no (or minimal) pairing in this fanfiction, so worry not.
koriaena: I'm glad you found it again… and like it still!
Cool-chan: I am really glad you like this story. ) I liked the banter in your review! Too funny. I was cracking up when you were talking about Lord of the Rings and the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I love those books!
I-want-to-fly: Thank you much!
starrynight1013: Yeah, I am quite a lot farther along on than on I'm glad you liked the story enough to look for it here! Draco means dragon, Severus means severe, austere, stern, harsh, strict, serious (hehe), grave, solemn, gloomy, etc., Nemo means no one, nobody, not any, etc., remus (no capital) means oar, sinistera or sinistra (as in Professor Sinistra) means left, left-handed, on the left side (the left side was thought to be unlucky and bad), awkward, wrong, gauche, unlucky, harmful, evil, bad, faithless, etc. Any more that I should look up:)
starrynight1013 (again): During the wolf part, Remus had taken the potion, but someone had tampered with it so he only had partial control. I am aware that it probably wouldn't be the same way in canon. As for Remus being beat up by a troll: I know he would definitely be able to, under the right circumstances, but at the time he was still recovering a bit from his escapades at Azkaban and he was thinking making it harder than it was, he was prepared to fight a lot worse but he forgot how to handle a simple troll (it was the stress, I suppose). As you will notice, he tries harder spells that just don't impact the troll. I know he is a little OOC. In chapter 18, Quirrell was not putting a curse on Remus; he was only cursing Harry's broom, like he was supposed to do in the books. Just so you understand; Quirrell was sitting in a different spot than he was in the books; that is the reason that he wasn't knocked down when Hermione rushed past (Remus was instead).
!AUTHORS!
Thanks again for all of the reviews. Now, we are signing off again. Please keep reviewing while we keep writing (and editing each others work!)
Kiwi Jeanne
&
Sqwerty Jeanne