Hello all, and welcome to my first foray into the world of fanfiction. I'm looking at uploading once a week, maybe more. Not sure yet, but I hope to not disappoint with this first effort. Please leave a review if you have any questions, concerns, or reactions.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise nor any of its characters. All credit for the franchise goes to JK Rowling.
Prologue
If it wasn't for the state of his clothing, his disheveled hair, and the gaunt, thin frame of his body, one could've said that the person sitting in Cell 390 looked regal. His dull gray eyes stared at the wall, motionless, revealing more about the spirit of the man than they intended to. He had a long mane of black hair that descended to his upper back, and a ragged beard that looked far too thick to be comfortable. The tattered black robes that covered his body did little to disguise the frail stature that hid behind them. Sharp features, however, defined his face – his strong jawline, high cheekbones, and tall figure screamed his status in English Wizarding society, that of a pureblood from a very distinguishable line. Sitting against one of the walls of the cell, however, the man was indistinguishable from the hundreds of other souls that sat in the same prison as him.
However, the moment he heard footsteps, the man's eyes changed. They went from dull to piercing grey, resembling the color of angry storm clouds on a windy summer day. His body tensed a little, and although he tried to ignore the presences making their way towards him. Two sets of feet made their way towards Cell 390, and he knew what time it was.
The Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, and the Warden of the prison had arrived.
While the warden would inspect every week, the Minister would come to the prison once every few months or so to laud over the prisoners their miserable existences in the penitentiary in which they were held, under the guise of "inspection," of course.
He ignored them. As he always did, he tuned out the Minister's droning voice as he spoke about the fall of the Dark Lord and how they were all responsible for the failure of their master's ambitions. The man instead thought about those who meant the most to him.
James.
Lily.
Remus.
Harry.
He thought about the last one more than any other. He had failed Harry in his responsibilities, and not knowing where he was or how he was doing tortured the man more than anything else.
"What kind of Godfather am I that I don't even know where he is or how he's doing?"
As Fudge droned on and on, the man couldn't help but think that the Minister was a bit pompous in his claims.
"Got rid of all of the Death Eaters?" the man scoffed. "Fat chance."
He could never understand how a man like Fudge had wiggled his way into the Minister's seat. He seemed incompetent and far too boastful for his liking. Though he shared nothing with his fellow inmates, he could sense that they felt the same.
Judging by their faces, he was right.
The Death Eaters snarled and yelled at the Minister. Just like the man in question, they were all unbroken in their spirit, even if they were in their minds and bodies. They jeered as the Minister goaded them with news of more of their comrades being caught and convicted, but all of this was ignored by the man in Cell 390.
Until, of course, he heard Harry's name.
"…and your lot will never find Harry Potter in the Wizarding World. Yes!" shouted the Minister. "He is far away from the reaches of even your most persistent Death Eater."
"Never find Harry in the Wizarding World?" thought Cell 390's occupant. "Why wouldn't he be anywhere in the wizarding world? After me, Harry's guardians were meant to be Alice and Frank. Unless something happened to them, he should be there, right?"
The man pondered the words the Minister had said, ignoring the rest of the commotion that was going on outside the bars of his cell.
"Nowhere in the wizarding world. Does he mean muggles? But which muggles would Harry-"
The man's train of thought ended abruptly as his eyes widened considerably.
"Who in their right mind would give a wizarding child, least of all the Boy-Who-Lived, to them?" he thought in shock.
He remembered meeting them a few weeks before the Potters had gone into hiding. In a last desperate attempt to salvage whatever family she had, Lily had gone to her sister's home at Number 4, Privet Drive, with Sirius and James in tow. Needless to say, it hadn't gone well. Not only were they ridiculed and mocked, they were insulted deeply by both Petunia and Vernon Dursley, Lily's sister and brother-in-law. That had been the last time they had seen the couple.
"Not that Petunia cares, I'd bet," the man thought bitterly.
A few moments later, gray eyes narrowed. A few more moments later, and those eyes were unrecognizable from what they were not half an hour prior.
In their depths, a fire burned.
(Break)
One.
Two.
Three.
A familiar pair of gray eyes darted around the walls, watching the guards change rotation. They watched as the prison guards changed their orientations and their positions, filling in for one another and altering their stations to make sure that they were never tracked into a pattern.
Four.
Five.
Six.
As all of this was going on, nobody noticed the prisoner in Cell 390's hand darting around a particular patch of wall on his cell, chipped off stone in hand. What looked like random dots and lines were positions of the guards in their new formations.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
A black cloaked figure appeared at the end of the hall, guarding the entrance to the wing of cells housing the deadliest of inmates at the prison.
The man's hand ceased moving. As he looked at the seemingly random design, his eyes wandered as he looked at all the walls and floor around him. Practically every inch was covered in boxes, lines, and dots. From the celling to floor of every wall and almost a quarter of all the floor in the cell, these markings denoting patterns of guard movement were inscribed.
"Eighteen seconds," the man thought. "That should do it."
(Break)
Sirius Black wasn't a fool. Sure, he had participated in the many schemes and pranks with his group of friends when he was younger, engaging in acts of imprudence, but he was certainly no fool. However, he certainly felt very foolish on the evening of December 12th, 1987, almost as foolish as he felt almost six years prior to that.
He had escaped Azkaban, the most infamous wizarding prison on the island of the United Kingdom, with only a semblance of a plan. As he travelled towards the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft on the Knight Bus, he couldn't stop his hands from shaking as he considered the significance of what he was about to do.
Flashback Start
Fifteen.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Sirius tried to keep his counting as even as possible in his animagus form, steadying his breath and moving in as-close-to-uniform fashion as he could. However, it was for naught. His timing was shaky at best and having not used magic in almost seven and a half years, he struggled to keep his form while trying to accomplish his task.
Twelve.
Eleven.
Ten.
To any spectator, it would've seemed like a cause for naught. They would've seen a large, scruffy Grim dragging what looked like a corpse from down the hall into a recently empty cell. The aforementioned "corpse' was an inmate at Azkaban, unrecognizable in the tatters of clothing he wore, and an empty blank look on his face. The only evidence of life in the body was the slow rise and fall of the man's chest, but even that seemed as if it was slowing down every second.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Sirius had been planning his escape for months. Every day, he would pay close attention to the shifting of the guards at Azkaban, keeping track of their patterns and movements with every ounce of mental capacity that he had. He would keep track of which locations were guarded and under watch, which ones were left unwatched – even for a moment – and made sure to plot a perfect route to escape through after months of grueling labor.
After almost four months of observing and keeping track of the many different formations that the guards would take, he had found out that at exactly one point every 4 days, a route blocking the wing of the prison in which he was situated in would be opened so that the guards of the prison, the Dementors, would be able to go through and switch into a unique rotation with another one of the foul creatures. Though Sirius was extremely affected by the Dementor's agonizing magic, he would force himself to count over several weeks, and found that he had an eighteen second window in which he would have to take whatever measures he wanted to ensure escape.
Six.
Five.
Four.
He finished dragging the inmate from the other cell, through the bars, into his own cell, Cell 390. He continued to keep track of the mental count as he forced himself to continue with the final item on the list of steps he knew he had to do to escape. He had three seconds to bound down the hall before the Dementor arrived and would notice that something was amiss. Despite their incredible sensory abilities, Dementors did not have the power of sight. Rather, they tracked people down by sensing emotions. If they sensed anything outside the confines of the cell, such as himself, he knew he would breathe his last breaths. He refused to allow that before he could get a chance to smell freedom once again.
He used all the practice he had put in over the last few months to slam his occlumency shields on his mind, disguising any and all emotions and thoughts he may have, and it showed. The Grim's face settled into one of cold indifference, and before even another moment had passed, it shot out of the cell and down the hall.
Three.
Two.
One.
Sirius bounded out of the hallway and saw an opening. There was a gap in the walls where the dementors would traverse the island and come into their shifts. He pushed his canine legs as hard as they could go and reached the edge, jumping into the hypothermic waters as he didn't stop paddling. He used every last iota of mental strength to make his way towards the shoreline of the mainland, which was visible on the horizon, and kept paddling towards land.
Zero.
Behind him, the Dementor that was coming into the shift noticed a disturbance in the wards that surrounded Azkaban.
It turned, seeing its fellow Dementor positioned at the entrance to the other wing of the prison that was nearby.
It turned once more, not noticing anything wrong there.
It extended its senses over the wing it oversaw, sensing no major shift in despair and anguish. There was a lack of feeling from Cell 397, but the man was close to dead anyways, so it did not matter much to the Dementor in question. As long as Cells 390-396 were filled, disturbances in the rest were not a high priority issue.
Satisfied with its check, it stayed where it was, presiding over the wing that once housed the infamous Sirius Black.
Sirius knew that it would take three more days after he had escaped for the warden to check each cell and realize he was missing and was replaced with someone else, but by then, he hoped he would be long gone.
Long gone with his Godson.
Flashback End
He knew he couldn't take the Knight Bus directly to Number 4 on Privet Drive. If Sirius was right in his guess, that was exactly where Harry would be. That left far too obvious of a trail for him to be caught, and if what he predicted to happen was to take place, the Knight Bus would be one of the first places to be investigated on whether there had been anyone strange that had visited the muggle home of the Boy-Who-Lived.
Therefore, he resolved to take the bus to Hogsmeade, a quaint wizarding settlement very close to the grounds of Hogwarts. He had lent his motorbike, a flying bike left to him by his uncle Alphard, to Hagrid on the fateful night when everything had gone wrong. His uncle had given it to him when he had ran away from his ancestral home and it had served him well numerous times over the years. He knew that if he were to be able to retrieve it without any notice and head to Privet Drive, he could leave with Harry before anyone would take any notice to his escape.
With that plan in mind, he then considered the current predicament he was in. He had boarded the Knight Bus without payment, saying that he had lost his money pouch and that his family in Hogsmeade would pay for it. Of course, Sirius Black had no relatives waiting for him in Hogsmeade. He had nobody waiting for him anywhere.
Except at Number 4, Privet Drive.
He stared out of the window, seeing the world changed from how it was even a meager few years ago. He considered all the options in front of him, and most importantly, he considered how much he missed the little tyke who would pet his hair and yell "Pafoo!" every time he would walk through the door of the Potter Cottage in Gordic's Hollow.
He was doing all of this for Harry, and he wouldn't forget it.
"I'm coming for you, Pronglet."
Thank you all. Leave a review and let me know what you think.
See you all next time. I'll try to get the next chapter in within 2-3 days.
The Bird of Flames