"So, Bella, how would you fancy escaping with me?"

Bella was speechless. Her blank stare must have affected Harry because his earlier enthusiasm was dampened slightly.

The problem was, for the life of her, she found she still couldn't say anything.

"I, er, understand if you would rather stay here, I mean…." He trailed off, unable to break the silence.

Bella actually snorted at this. How could someone understand turning down an escape attempt in favour of staying at Azkaban? You truly would have to be mental.

Eventually, she managed to finds her voice.

"Where did you get that?" She, of course knew that of the Marauders, but they had already graduated Hogwarts when she joined her first year.

Immediately, Harry's face perked up again, a grin lit his features and his eyes danced with mischief and, strangely, pride.

"Padfoot gave it to me." He waited for her reaction. Sirius had told him that even the Slytherin's had had a grudging respect for Prongs, Moony and Padfoot with Wormtail, as usual, being looked over. Harry hadn't felt the slightest twinge of sympathy for the man. He had betrayed his parents. In his eyes, Pettigrew deserved everything he got. He was also sure that this respect for the Marauders would have instantly disappeared had they known their true identities.

Harry wasn't disappointed. Bellatrix's eyes widened slightly as she recalled that Professor Padfoot had been one of the Marauders.

Bellatrix quickly made some deductions in her head. They were simple, but after being in Azkaban for an indefinite amount of time, the simplest task become the most difficult, with everything else being impossible.

"So, this means that at least one of the Marauders was an animagus, and that you, possibly, know this Padfoot?"

Harry nodded. "Yes and yes. 3 of the Marauders were animagus. They decided to become animagus because one of them, Moony, was a werewolf," Bella gasped at this, "hence the nickname. Also yes, I do know Padfoot, so do you. I am also very familiar with Moony, I have met Wormtail, though I hate him, and Prongs," he paused, "Prongs is dead."

Bella was surprised. The emotion in Harry's voice was threatening to break through and she had a suspicion that Harry knew these people much better than he was letting on, and apparently she even knew one of them!. Despite this, she decided to change the subject.

"Why have you brought it?"

"For reference." The response was blunt so he continued. "I have already read the book from cover to cover. Twice. I figured it wouldn't hurt to bring here to refer to when I'm planning my master escape."

Bella nodded, feeling pretty stupid for asking such a ridiculous question. He obviously wouldn't bring a book unless he planned on reading or using it to escape.

She pondered for a moment, before asking what she hoped was a more educated question.

"Are you an animagus? Can you transform?" Alright, it was two questions, but they meant the same thing.

"No not yet, I was just about to start when I was arrested." A dark look flashed over his eyes before the mischief quickly returned. "Which is good, because that means we can start at the same level. You won't need to read the book, I will explain everything as we go along."

She nodded again, silently asking him to continue, to which he complied.

"Okay, before this book was written, there were two main, widely practiced methods for finding one's form. The first was a potion that causes a patronus like being to appear, in whatever form the drinkers animagus will be. It also says somewhere," he said this whilst flicking through the book, "that your patronus can be used as as a rough guess to what your form will be, though this is not always the case, it can be completely unrelated."

Bella could see the sense in this statement. After all, patronuses are supposed to reflect upon someone's personality. She began to roll over possibilities of what her form could be in her head.

"The second method is a dream diary. This method is not used as much as the potion method, despite the potion being ridiculously difficult to brew as well as it being expensive. For the dream diary, one would simply record their dreams for a certain amount of time, however usually this takes a lot of patience. A person would rarely find their form this way within the first six months, and can sometimes take years of recording dreams."

This idea didn't excite Bella at all, they had all the time in the world, but what were they supposed to record their dreams on? The wall?

"Fortunately for us, the Marauders found another way. Due to the fact that we are hardly in a position to brew a notoriously difficult potion, and the fact the we have no access to ingredients, we cannot use the first method. Again, we have a problem with the second method-" He was cut off by Bellatix.

"We can't write our dreams down anywhere."

"Indeed. Also, I don't think our dreams would reflect out personalities accurately enough with the Dementors around. Lastly, although we have enough time, I want to be out of here as soon as possible. I don't fancy going insane."

Bellatrix was beginning to warm up to the young man in front of her. She enjoyed his dry wit and strange sense of humour. Not to mention the fact that his eyes would probably never lose their bright colour and sharpness, no matter how many years he spent here in Azkaban.

She had already witnessed that his eyes could portray more emotions in a second than most could in a minute. From the shock to anger to confusion when he first recognised her, to the glint the held now.

She was drawn back to reality by Harry's voice.

"So that leaves us with the Marauder's third option. Meditation." She couldn't help it, she scoffed. Luckily, Harry either didn't notice, or didn't care. "With enough time, I am confident that we can figure out our forms."

"But Harry," she questioned, "don't you need to find some sort of peace when meditating? That will be tricky when we're here"

"Yes, it does require a certain amount of calm." Harry replied, completely serious. "But, like I said, I think we can do it."

For the next few hours, Harry explained what was needed for the meditation to work, occasionally checking thing in the big book he had brought with him. With the explanations came questions though, and Bellatrix wasn't one to hold back.

By the end of the question and answer session, both were exhausted from all of the excitement from recent events.

Harry's first night in Azkaban was not pleasant. The only reassuring thing he could find from his dreadful night's sleep was that he was correct about his dream dairy theory. There was no way someone would be able to find their forms using that method whilst in these walls.

Bellatrix was still sleeping silently when he work on the hard, bumpy ground. Aiming to pass the time, Harry began what he could of the physical workout he had begun doing before he was arrested. He usually started with a run, but since he couldn't do that here, he settled for two minutes of star-jumps followed straight away by two minutes of running on the spot. After this he gave himself thirty seconds so regain his breath before launching into press-ups. At his current level, he could do fifty with no problems, so he pushed seventy-five, before turning over and beginning to do sit- ups.

By this time, Bellatrix was awake and observing silently, woken by his soft panting after the two minute jogging.

She counted one hundred sit-ups before he again turned over and resumed press-ups. However, when he reached what must have been twenty, she had lost count early on, he began to put a clap once he had pushed his body weight of the ground. This cycle continued for what seemed like an age before Harry noticed that Bella was watching him. He stopped and, wiping the light sheen of sweat on his brow, greeted her.

"Morning." He was blunt, but got the message across. She liked that. She replied similarly.

After a short, comfortable silence, Harry spoke again.

" I think we should get started."

=0=

=000=

=0=

A week had passed since Harry and Bella had begun meditating and they had slipped into a routine. Harry would nearly always woke before Bella and begun his exercises. Bella said that she found sleeping easier since Harry had arrived and put it down to the Dementors giving them a wider margin. The reality was that Bella took comfort in the fact that Harry was sleeping beside her, only a few feet away, but she was in no position to tell him that.

Harry would continue his exercise until Bella woke up, or he was too exhausted to carry on. Following this, the begun to prepare their minds for meditation, whilst the muck that qualified as food was pushed through the doorway. The pair then dedicated the bulk of the day to their task, figuring the quicker they find their forms the quicker they will be able to transform.

They would break when dinner, or maybe it was breakfast, was pushed through the door. Bellatrix would then take this opportunity to learn more about Harry, and occasionally, Harry would ask a few questions of his own, but since Bella was still coming to terms with her past, he didn't ask too many. Bella was surprised that Harry talked about his past so freely, and when she asked about why this was, he shrugged and said "I moved on". They shared tales about their life at Hogwarts and home life, but Bella returned Harry's gesture and didn't ask too many questions here, as, despite his claim to have 'moved on' she could still sense some trepidation about discussing his relatives. These talks often lasted long into the night, or morning, and after the meditation, which was surprisingly taxing, left them both exhausted. Over the past few nights, they had both often fallen asleep sitting next to each other, leaning against the side of the cell.

After a week and a half, Bellatrix was just starting to find that calm place inside her, though Harry, having found his 'happy place' three days earlier, figured is was harder for her as she had spent longer in Azkaban than him, as well as the fact that the guilt for the atrocities that she had committed, forced or not, was hanging over her head.

Harry was happy to learn that she was making progress and moving past her guilt. He himself had experienced problems in his meditating, mostly his anger at Ron and Hermione, but he had managed to dampen down all of his negative emotions, with the help of his Occlumency, and now, instead of an inferno, his anger was quietly simmering deep in his mind. He was sure though, that given the right circumstances, with the right stimulus, his anger would flare right back to the inferno it was before, however, he was also confident that he would be able to manipulate his emotions back into the simmering pool when he the stimulus were removed.

Bellatrix had finally come to terms with her past actions. She had accepted any wrong doings that she had willingly done, which was a surprisingly low amount, and, with some encouragement form Harry in their evening talks, she had reluctantly, and slowly, begun to move on from anything that she had done whilst under the influence of Rodolphus and Voldemort. In a way, she was glad that she was learning to move on, all she wanted was for that to be put in the past, as selfish as that seems.

All in all, they were making progress.

A/N: So Harry and Bellatrix are taking a leaf out of Sirius' book and escaping by becoming animagi. Any ideas for forms? I'm thinking that Harry might have two different ones for reasons that will become clear later on, but any ideas for Bella? I'm open for suggestions. Anyway, drop a review whilst you're here, only takes a few seconds. Go on. Do it. Thanks for reading.