I don't own Harry Potter.

Thanks for reviewing and favoriting!

Chapter 26 "Week One"

Severus had tried to stay brave for Lily during his last moments with her, but the truth was that he was terrified out of his wits.

The last thing he saw was Lily's horrified face, stained with tears, before he was dragged away from her and out of the court room by the two guards. The guards brought him to another black door along the hall. They stopped in front of it, tapping it with their wands and uttering an incantation in unison. The door swung open, and the guards pulled Severus inside. It was dark and cold, and had a desperate feeling seeping through the air. The only thing in the room was an ornate black stone fireplace, carved with hooded reapers carrying scythes.

Severus almost lost it at that moment; he knew where that fireplace led, and he didn't want to go. No matter how brave he tried to be for Lily, he was truly terrified inside.

One of the guards tapped his wand on the fireplace, and a black fire sprang up. He took a pinch of Floo powder from a little iron canister on the mantle and threw it into the fire. The fire grew larger, and seemed to hiss in excitement.

"Off you go," The guards pushed Severus towards the fire. "You're lucky that you're only getting three months. That's something to keep you going, huh? Don't go crazy now."

The guards gave him another hard push, and Severus tumbled into the fire. It was so cold, it seemed to burn his skin, and he began shivering immediately, from fear as well as the cold. There was no spinning as in a regular Floo. It was more like Apparating; he was simply in that room with the guards, and now he was in another room. It was bare as well,except for a lone torch that was burning on the wall, sending flickering light across the gloomy grey stone walls. There was not even another fireplace here; Severus guessed because it was a one-way trip to Azkaban. There was no escape.

A large iron door with rust dotting its hinges stood in front of Severus and he watched it fearfully, sure something unpleasant was bound to come through it soon. Within a minute, his suspicions were confirmed as he heard a key clicking in the lock on the other side of the door. He had to remind himself to breathe; he had been holding his breath in fearful anticipation.

The door creaked slowly open, and Severus felt a cold envelop him. It seeped into him and every good thought disappeared from his mind; he even momentarily forgot about Lily.

The torch on the wall suddenly went out, leaving the room in pitch blackness. Severus backed up until he hit the wall; he sensed something coming towards him in the darkness.

A hand with skeletal like fingers suddenly curled around his right forearm, gripping him tight. Severus screamed, trying to tug his arm away, but the hand gripped him tighter, and soon it was joined by other hands, all gripping him tight. The suffocating hands of the dementors {at least, that's what he guessed they were} grasped his arms, his shoulders, and then his legs and lifted him off the ground. He writhed in their grip, screaming, and a hand clasped itself over his mouth. The flesh that was left on the hand smelt sour and decayed, and Severus fought the urge to throw up. He felt himself blacking out; the cold was chilling his bones, the smell of the hand was churning his stomach, the hands were squeezing him tightly, and then, he passed out, mind frantically scurrying to bring him to a better place.

When Severus woke, he began his first day in Azkaban. He was lying on a cot in a small cell, and it creaked beneath him as he sat up. The sheets underneath him were stained with spots that looked suspiciously like blood, and they were thin and thread-bare. The pillow had lost its fluff long ago; it was barely thicker then the sheets.

Severus stood, shivering; it was horribly cold in the cell. Wind whistled threw cracks in the stone walls, and rainwater puddled in the corners. Severus jumped as he heard a small scuffling noise, but it was only a mouse that ran along the wall and crawled into another crack. There was not even a toilet here; instead there was a pile of moldy hay that represented the restroom.

Severus walked slowly toward the front of his cell and wrapped his hands around the thick iron bars of the cell door. Screams and cries met his ears, and he quickly covered them to try to block the sound as he took in the surroundings. As far as he could tell, he was on the fourth level of the prison; he could see the rows and rows of cells stacked on top of each other on the opposite side of the cylindrical fortress. A metal walkway passed in front of his cell, and went all the way around the fourth level.

There were countless hands reaching out of the cell bars, crying out for food, water, freedom, and in some cases, death. When Severus had his fill of the horrifying sight, he backed up and sat back on his cot, heart thumping in fear. Would he be screaming like that in a few weeks? Would he become mad too?

Severus curled up on his cot and wrapped the sparse blanket around himself, but it didn't do anything to stifle the cold that chilled his bones. He pressed himself harder into the corner, shivering so hard his teeth began to chatter.

The screams suddenly quieted a bit as a more intense cold suddenly came over him, entering his every molecule and extracting the happiness from him. He knew what was causing the cold, and he closed his eyes as the dementor continued past his cell. Severus couldn't see the creature now, but he could still hear its rattling breath, and smell its rotting scabby flesh, a sour smell that stayed in his nostrils long after the creature left.

Severus tried to think of Lily; he imagined holding her and running his hand through her red locks, so he wouldn't have to think about the dementor that just passed by. He sat like that for hours, pressed into the corner with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears to block the piercing screams; the sound of madness.

Was killing Sirius Black really worth this? Severus thought. Wouldn't it have just been better to let the authorities deal with Sirius Black, so it would have been Black sitting here instead of him?

Severus' first day in Azkaban was horrible, but he quickly learned that it didn't get better the longer he stayed. It got worse. The dementors constantly drained you, there was never enough food and what he was given was rotten and disgusting, and it was always freezing. Severus spent most of his days trying to stay warm. He used Lily as his stronghold; whenever he felt himself getting pulled into the pit of depression and hopelessness, he used an image of her to pull himself out. That's how he got through his first week in Azkaban.

On the last day of that first week, Severus used a rock to scratch a line in the wall above his bed where it joined the six others he had carved there. He had gotten the idea from the other lines that prisoners before him had scratched out in his cell, counting down their time in the prison. He was relieved that he had gotten through the first week, but his heart sunk as he realized there were eleven more weeks to go. He sighed and sat back on the bunk, staring up at the lines with blank eyes.

FAST UPDATE!

There you go! Finally a chapter with Severus! There will also be more of Potter in a future chapter as well. ;)

Hope you enjoyed this chappie, let me know as always.

See you later, Dementors :P