Sirius Black had once been a fundamentally good man. He was a loyal friend who worked hard and played just as hard, his mischievous spirit emboldened by his best friends. Usually, he helped those in need and tried as best as he could to step out of the shadows the Black family name cast on him. Sometimes the family legacy of Darkness and cruelty crept up on him, such as the time when he almost led Snivellus to his unsuspecting death, but all in all, Sirius considered himself a decent person.

That was before he was left to rot in Azkaban for twelve long, miserable years by the people he had once loved so dearly. No trial, no visits, no letters. Not a one who had come to rescue him, to listen to him, to reach out a hand and say, "I'm here to help you". Instead, he'd been thrown in a cell and left to die a miserable death with all of the other Death Eaters, his apparent bosom brothers.

The first days had been filled with hope, even as he had slept on a ragged cot, his thin prison clothes doing little to ward off the chill of the air whipping in through the windows. The Dementors, stationed so nearby, had slowly dragged out and extinguished those hopes and replaced them instead with despair, and then with nightmares, and at last with screams of terror. Most nights he shivered under the cot as Padfoot, too scared to sleep for the fear of what he'd see. Merlin knew the last few years had supplied enough fodder to keep his mind occupied.

Time slipped away, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until he was no longer sure when he was awake or sleeping. People he'd thought dead visited him in his cell, and those he had called enemies began seeming sympathetic, like friends almost. Was he dreaming it all, or was it happening? What was real? A dream? He couldn't tell.

And then—a brief moment of clarity. An unstable bar across the window. A frantic scramble to further destabilize and then remove it, and then he was on the outside of the prison, the frigid spray and roar of the sea engulfing him. The distant sight of the shore beckoned him, and... Well. He had nothing to lose if he didn't at least try. So off into the sea he went, Padfoot's warm fur protecting him from the freezing, roiling water.

Somehow he made it across. Half dead and choking on water, but alive nonetheless. The haze of fear and despair lingered, a dark miasma across his mind, but he didn't feel as though he were chained down by it as a million lashes were inflicted across his soul. The first night he slept under a tree, shivering and scared of how empty his mind felt and how big the world felt. It didn't matter. He was free.

After that, he began to plan. First, he would destroy Pettigrew, the one who murdered his most beloved friends. The one who caused him to be stuck in Azkaban. He would die a most gruesome death at his hands. Sirius simply had to find him first.

And after Peter was taken care of...well. He had no loyalty to Dumbledore and his followers, those he had once considered his brothers in arms. Those who had abandoned him and left him to die. However, he was loyal to Harry Potter. Harry, the boy he had considered almost his own. Harry, who had laughed with him while they romped outside together, who had sat on his lap as they gazed up at the stars, who had petted him and called him first Pas and then Pads. Harry, who was his to love and protect.

Harry, who had been taken away from him.

The first time he set eyes on Harry, it was like looking at a young James Potter. The same messy hair. The same lanky build. The same propensity to sleep curled on his side, mouth slack, hand tucked under his chin. He had gripped the curtains at the visceral pain the image evoked, his hands transformed into claws as he wavered between grief and rage, and accidentally ripped the curtains.

The noise woke one of the boys, and he had had to escape, so close to his goal of getting to the killer sleeping in their midst. He returned to the cave, only sometimes creeping out to sit by the lake in the early, early morning when nobody would be awake to spot him. Sometimes when he looked in the water, he saw his brother's reflection. Other times, he saw Marlene, her summer blue eyes staring into his, or Gideon and Fabian, who he had fought with countless times. He could never escape their ghosts, and their accusing looks. What did they want from him? Wasn't he trying hard enough?

When he closed his eyes, they followed him into his dreams.

And then one day the girl showed up. The girl interested him. She confused him. She anchored him in the present because she was there, and she didn't always show up, but he was able to count the days in between her appearances and begin to understand the passage of time. Which, in the end, was the definition of ironic, because the girl was flaunting the rules of time as easily as breathing, and he watched it destroy her, day by day, season by season.

At first she was fine, her crazy hair bushy and shiny, her skin flushed with health. She would stare up at the sky from her spot on the bank by the lake and just breathe for a minute before cracking open a book. But that soon stopped. Something was happening to her, something completely and wholly ravaging that he couldn't figure out. She went from calm and centered to feverishly working, her clothes hanging on her as she wrote scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. But the workload didn't explain away everything. He had seen people bend under the weight of a full schedule, and this was something else.

One day he watched her sit at the embankment, her head in her hands for a long, long time. He wasn't sure if she was crying, or sleeping. She was so impossibly still. But at last, she had straightened up, slowly, so slowly, and pulled out something round and golden from around her neck. It spun slowly in front of her, and he shrank away from the sight of the Time-Turner.

It was no wonder she was wasting away. Time-Turners were notorious for wreaking havoc on witches and wizards alike, especially those not attuned to their Dark energies. Something about it—the mechanism that made it work—slowly destroyed the magical core as it drove them out of their minds. What was worse, arguably, was that the lucky witch or wizard didn't feel the effects until it was too late: it took their sanity and magic little by little while making them feel like they'd had the Felix Felicis every time they turned it over. The feeling was addictive, another part of the loop that fed into the deadliness of the Time-Turner.

How in Merlin's balls had she gotten such a thing? And how had nobody noticed the effect on her?

But he couldn't do anything to help her without risking getting caught and Kissed. So he watched, and he watched, and he watched as she wasted away. At one point, when he had managed to steal money and supplies, he managed to write his girl a note, which he left pinned underneath a rock by the spot she usually sat at.

When she found it, he watched with bated breath as she read it, first shaking her head in disbelief, exclaiming that it couldn't be right, then muttering that they wouldn't have given it to her if it had these effects, then slowly, slowly, starting to cry, choking out that she had no choice.

No choice? Surely she did. The girl was a fool to think she couldn't save herself. What was she doing with the time that was so critical, anyways? He had warned her, he raged to himself, and still she continued on?

So be it. He washed his hands of her. He had tried to warn her, and she turned away from it. Now, when she came to the banks, sometimes crying, sometimes reading, always steadfast, he turned away and headed into the cave, unwilling to be a spectator to her foolishness.

But that foolish girl saved him when all hope seemed lost, helping Harry—his Harry, who had been taken from him—to facilitate his escape on the damned Hippogriff.

"The Time-Turner, then?" he asked, resigned, even in the midst of mounting Buckbeak.

His girl—no, Hermione—had stilled. "How did you know? No, wait. You're the one who sent the note."

He nodded. "It's dangerous, that." He leaned over and tapped the spot on her chest where it was tucked under her shirt. "Listen to me and get rid of that thing. It will kill you. It is killing you."

"Hermione?" Harry had asked, alarmed. "What is he talking about?"

They both ignored him, starting at each other. She bit her lip. "I know. And—and I will stop. Right after this. But we had to save you! You're innocent. It's all Pettigrew's fault, not yours!" she burst out.

Beside her, Harry nodded, his eyes, Lilyflower's eyes, bright green and shining with conviction. The sight of both of them, so earnest in their conviction, made something inside him shudder and click into place. They believed him. They defended him. They helped him.

The rest of the world could burn, he thought as he flew away, but Hermione Granger and Harry Potter were his to protect, no matter what happened on his path to killing Pettigrew.

No matter what.

Welcome to the first interlude :) It is, as you have noticed, a significantly shorter chapter than usual, which is why I tried so hard to get one out on Monday. However, I hope hearing from Sirius will help you forgive me just a little bit.

As a side note, today we hit 150 follows across AO3 and FF . net, which I find absolutely mind boggling. To celebrate, I wanted to do a give away! The first person to comment their thoughts on this chapter/the fic will get a short fic of their choosing: they can either describe a scene that they wished they had seen so far in the fic or give me a short H/V prompt that I will write. I will contact you via PM or I'll reply to your comment directly so we can hash it out. I'm excited :)