The newspapers didn't publish the suspicion that Regulus Black was behind the death of Rookwood. They printed that he had died in Azkaban, and mentioned the Grim's attack on Sirius Black, but left out any suspicion of the perpetrator. However, everyone inside the dark prison had been told through rumors and directly from the Aurors that a former Death Eater was taking out his old comrades. The dementors were enjoying the madness from those who might have thought that one of their friends might break them out now suspecting anyone they used to be associated with.

The paranoia and broken trust were like spices on top of their regular meals from the residents of the dark tower. Despair and hopelessness might be the main course meal for them, but it was all the extra little haunting emotions and depression that would draw them to specific prisoners, like exotic delicacies. While they did come to the lower levels, Sirius had to assume that Bellatrix and some of the others might also be aware that vengeance and thoughts of revenge would spoil the taste for the wraiths. Sirius was relatively sure that guilt was also something they enjoyed, but since he only felt guilty for trusting Peter, that wasn't in his emotional reserves. The true believers of Voldemort probably also had no guilt about their actions as well.

Over the next two years, Sirius only managed to dispatch five inmates from the higher levels. The other members of Voldemort's inner circle were untouchable now. They slept during the daytime to keep from being defenseless at night and were always wary of a potential attack from The Grim. Nearly all the former Death Eaters except for those in the lowest levels were dead now, so until he could kill them, he would just seek vengeance for others.

He scanned the newspapers each day to see who had been sentenced to prison and for what crimes. When he found someone who had committed a heinous enough act, one that they showed no repentance for and would eventually be released, he would lead a dementor to their cell and force them up against the door so it could devour their soul… then he just had to draw enough blood from their soulless body to leave his mark at the scene.

The Aurors were having a horrible time with each death. After Rookwood's murder, they assumed that Regulus and The Grim were invading the island for each attack, so they were focusing most of their protection outside the walls. Most of them had all but given up on policing the inside of the prison and just treated The Grim like a heavy rainstorm. Sirius was just an unstoppable natural disaster and one that didn't have any effect on those who weren't criminals.

In the two years since Rookwood's murder, Sirius had made a few more changes to his cell. He had replaced the luxuries the guards had stolen during his questioning, picked up a few new books, and a rug next to his bed to keep his bare feet off the ground when he woke up in the morning. Humpty even replaced his pewter dinner plate for free, though Sirius assumed it was also because he had made the man quite wealthy on the side and could easily afford it. Sirius hoped that the silver diner set was being used and wasn't resold.


The dementors still left him alone, and their screams had started to almost become understandable. They still sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but he could feel the intention behind them as they spoke to him. They were like children when they would come by his cell to get him to come to play with other prisoners or thank him for giving them a snack.

It was eerie, but also comforting in a way that these monsters did have some level of humanity to them outside of their insatiable hunger and devouring of souls. The Grim was growing even larger as his understanding of them grew. The claws on his feet were more like talons now, curved and sharp as they almost cut into the stone floors, his snout was longer, and his teeth were bigger having grown back after needing to knock a few out to craft the wands to help kill Rookwood. Though his eyes were always the most terrifying when he saw them in the mirror, still red and occasionally a wisp of flame would come off them as he blinked.


A few months shy of his tenth year, Sirius received the first good news of his stay in Azkaban. The newspaper arrived one morning with his breakfast for him to see the headline:

Harry Potter Sighted in Diagon Alley!

There were no pictures to accompany the headline, but it outlined numerous eyewitness testimonies that were clearly about Harry shopping for his first year at Hogwarts. The descriptions that were given made him sound a lot like James when he first met his best friend; round spectacles and a mop of completely unruly hair on his head. Harry had been born with his mother's eyes, like shining emeralds, which James and Lily had been afraid would fade over the years. However, according to the article, they had stayed just as bright, a perfect combination for the memory of his parents.

It wasn't until after the school year started that he saw the first photo of Harry in the paper. Sirius grinned with pride that the toy broomstick he had gotten his godson for his first birthday had paid off and ended with Harry landing a spot on the Gryffindor quidditch team. As a seeker no less. The paper said that he was the youngest at Hogwarts in a century. Sirius laughed some more as he realized that Harry had broken tradition by having his own broom as a first-year student. Ever since he and James had torn through the school on their brooms daily during their first year at Hogwarts, no one else was allowed a broom until they had completed their first full year of flying classes.

That night, a dementor visited his cell to ask him to come out and play. When he turned the wraith down, he felt a pull on some of the happy memories he had acquired that day. He immediately shifted into The Grim and barked fiercely at the creature in his doorway, scaring it away. He'd find a way to kill the monsters of the dark if they stole these thoughts from him.


However, they did start getting annoying, so he served them up a four-course meal on the winter solstice that year. It was planned meticulously with a few inmates that were part of a crime syndicate that smuggled squibs out of the country to places unknown. They were in Azkaban only for half a year, which meant they were perfect targets for a quick elimination. With his thoughts currently on Harry's happiness, Sirius thought that removing a few souls who would dare commit criminal acts against children would certainly benefit the world.

Sirius started to pin up the articles involving Harry. He put them all over his cell when they came in. They were all articles about the quidditch games he was in, and he won every single match he was in. At the end of his first year of school, there was a mention that he and his friends had received an award for Special Services to Hogwarts, but didn't mention why.

The photo showed him with a ginger who couldn't be anything but a Weasley, and a bushy-haired girl with large teeth. To the side of the photo was another smiling boy as well that wasn't named but Sirius was nearly positive was Neville Longbottom. Neville was a bit chubby but at least he had survived living with his grandmother all these years. Sirius still had no idea where Harry had been.

Thinking about trying to track down where Harry was living, he remembered an occasional article in his subscription to The Quibbler called, 'Potter Sightings.' Most of them were garbage, like the ones where someone claimed Harry Potter showed up at their birthday party and blew out the candles before they could do it… then vanished. However, there were other more credible ones as well.-

It had cost him a nifty knut, years ago, but Humpty had brought him a floor-to-ceiling, double wide, filing cabinet. He couldn't have been able to have a magically expanded chest because the enchantments would fail in Azkaban, so this would have to do. Inside, he stored nearly every magazine and newspaper he received. He spent the summer looking through the old Quibbler magazines and tore out all the 'Potter Sightings.' The ones that sounded credible tended to take place around London, with a few in Surrey County. Sirius didn't know any wizarding families that lived around there, but Dumbledore must have hidden him somewhere no one would expect.

In the middle of the summer, he had a long chat with Humpty. The man was ecstatic as his son had received his Hogwarts letter. His jailer wasn't exactly his friend, but he was a close business associate at the very least. Just as a gift, he wrote out a request to give the boy a genuine moke-skin sack from his vault. Sirius had four of them, so one missing wouldn't hurt, and he wasn't using them anyway.

A moke was a lizard of undetermined size. It was undetermined because they could change their size, the same as an occamy could. While the winged serpent was normally the size of a large snake, it would grow to fit a room when it wanted to be threatening. A moke on the other hand would shrink to evade predators and detection, sometimes as small as a grain of sand. The largest sighting was about as big as an adult's arm. When one of the lizards would feel comfortable around a wizard, they wouldn't shrink. That is usually when they would get killed and skinned to make a moke-skin sack.

The sack itself was an excellent anti-theft pouch. It could hold a huge amount of goods while being naturally featherlight, and shrink when the owner of the sack was approached by someone unfamiliar or untrustworthy to them. Due to their rarity, they were very very expensive. It would be a perfect gift for a new Hogwarts student.


The next year progressed much the same as the last one. Sirius would watch the papers for signs of Harry and post them on his wall. He'd chat with Humpty about his son at Hogwarts, a Gryffindor just like the two of them, and give him tidbits of advice on secret passages around the school and fun ways to prank the professors; catnip in McGonagall's office was a favorite. When he had a few free moments, he'd also find a fresh criminal, convicted of something dastardly, and feed them to the dementors.

It was pretty clockwork until Humpty started reporting that his son was writing to him that some students had started being petrified around the school and The Chamber of Secrets had been opened.

Sirius had a great laugh at that and explained that he knew every inch of the castle, top to bottom. He knew how to get into the private quarters of every teacher, how to get free food from the house elves in the kitchen, and in a pinch, could even leave a dead snake in the bedroom of a Slytherin he didn't like. When he had heard of The Chamber of Secrets, he had tried to find it. He and all his friends had searched for it tirelessly. He told Humpty that he even had a way to cheat in his explorations, not specifying how, but he never found it, as it didn't exist.

Regardless of his denial about the chamber, Humpty kept getting reports from his son that more people were getting petrified. It was strange that the newspaper didn't print any of it, so that meant someone was hushing it up. Then there was the most disturbing rumor that was brought from his son… his godson, Harry, was a parselmouth.

Humpty was quite shocked as well, but like a couple of gossiping girls, he shared the story. Some ponce of a teacher for Defense had started a dueling club, despite many more qualified teachers being available, particularly the Charms Professor - Filius Flitwick. He ended up arranging a duel between Harry and Lucius Malfoy's brat who got in regular skirmishes with Harry already. The brat conjured a snake, and Harry spoke to it. Depending on who was telling the story at school, some kids said he was trying to get it to attack a Hufflepuff and some said he was trying to scare it off.

Sirius was inclined to believe the latter, both because he believed in the content of Harry's character, and if he was going to tell the snake to attack anyone, he assumed it would be the Malfoy kid he had been engaged in a duel with. However, now, a lot of the school believed Harry was the Heir of Slytherin.

Humpty passed on more reports of students being petrified, and eventually, The Daily Prophet published a story blaming Dumbledore for the media blackout on the school and saying he had been removed as Headmaster. He wasn't sure if he believed Dumbledore was responsible as if the first story The Prophet published was this, they were also a suspect in the blackout. Nothing Sirius could do about that, but he knew that it wouldn't end well. Shortly after he heard that at the same time that the Headmaster had been sacked, Hagrid had been arrested and taken to Azkaban on suspicion of the attacks.

Sirius was livid. It's one thing if he didn't get a trial, they found him at the scene of the crime surrounded by carnage as he was laughing hysterically. They had nothing on the gentle giant of Hogwarts. Even more, he was being put in Azkaban for holding? With no trial? Just suspicion? The first night that the Groundskeeper arrived, The Grim of Azkaban sat near his cell and growled at any dementor that tried to come close. Sirius stayed on guard the next few nights, but the dementors knew to stay away on their own.

A few weeks later, the paper published that Dumbledore had been reinstated, that Papa Malfoy had been removed from the Hogwarts Board of Governors, Hagrid had been released, and that the students who had been petrified had been returned to normal. The only 'detail' that was given said that Harry had been awarded another award for Special Services to Hogwarts. Sirius celebrated by having a large pack of Bertie Botts Every-Flavor Jelly Beans delivered to him and then he went out and killed a convict. It wasn't a coincidence that the man he picked out had long blonde hair like he remembered Lucy Malfoy had when he married Sirius's cousin, Narcissa.