(Disclaimer: see first chapter)

Beta: RedButterfly33. I do not always accept all her corrections, though - so any remaining errors are very much this stubborn author's own responsibility. :P

Chapter warning: Mentions of attempted suicide. Also, be warned that I have a rather liberal interpretation of Dementors (the canon explanation of their feeding always rubbed me the wrong way). Also, my approach to Legilimency has a high BS potential...

3.

December 24th, 1997

Harry painfully sat up. He wiped his wet cheeks, then licked his fingers – water was too precious to waste it in this way. Sightlessly, his eyes wandered around his tiny cell of six square meters; the trial once again played out in front of his inner eye.

Not much blame could be laid at Dumbledore's and his friends' door; they had done everything to make sure he got a fair trial. Unfortunately, Voldemort had been one step ahead of them.

Angrily, Harry smashed his fist into the wall. He had been taught to shake off foreign influences, so why the fuck had he failed to overcome this potion? Whatever it was they had given him (he was going to find out!), it had forced his muscles to completely ignore his own will and give voice to someone else's thoughts.

Puzzled, Harry raised his hand which was throbbing painfully. Droplets of blood were glistening upon the skin. Oh great. He knew why he usually preferred to avoid sleep. In sleep, he had even less protection against the Dementors' influence, and he often hurt himself during his nightmares.

A shrill whistle caused Harry to raise his head. "Yes, another nightmare," he answered.

The phoenix that had appeared in front of him disapprovingly clacked his beak and touched down on Harry's shoulder. He cocked his head... and cried. The wounds on the back of Harry's hand closed up in no time and the phoenix trilled a few satisfied notes.

"Thanks, mate," Harry grinned. "If I didn't have you..."

"Then you'd have killed yourself with those nightmares long since," Fawkes sang jokingly.

Harry gave him a sharp look. "That I would have done, but not only because of the nightmares."

"That bad?" Fawkes questioned, all humour gone.

"Fawkes, I dreamed of the trial again. Even if I ever got out of here, no one would ever be able to forgive all that I said that day. You were the one to tell me they destroyed all my possessions with one powerful spell. And even Hedwig... they..."

Fawkes looked sadly at the boy. "Hedwig died a hero's death trying to defend your photo album from the spell."

"It's all my fault."

Fawkes gave a subdued whistle, the phoenix version of a deep sigh. "Harry, you've been here an entire year. Don't you think it's time to stop the self-recriminations? They are quite useless. I am only going to tell you again and again that it wasn't your fault."

Harry smiled gratefully. "Really, Fawkes, if it wasn't for you..."

"Don't mention it. By the way, the new tunnel from the Hog's Head* to Hogwarts failed, Dumbledore sent Moody and Shacklebolt and they caught Lestrange in the act."

"Bellatrix has been captured?"

"No, killed. She resisted and fought quite the duel with the Aurors. One of her own curses rebounded on her."

"Painful?"

"Very."

"Good."

Fawkes cocked his head again. "What was with you and Bellatrix, anyway?"

Harry's face hardened. "She nearly killed Sirius. It was only because he wasn't welcome on the other side of the curtain that he survived."

"What curtain?"

"In the Ministry's Department of Mysteries. It's a kind of gateway – or so an Unspeakable told me after Sirius was spat back out by the thing – for an 'elegant escape', though not in the way Sirius accidentally tried to use it..."

"How else, then?"

"It is an offer to suicide risks. They stand in front of it, and if they feel pulled towards the gate, it means they are going to end their lives soon. Instead, they can step through the doorway and find a kind of peace on the other side – he did not say how – and think about their life. Once they are ready to tackle their life head-on once more, they return. However..."

"What?"

"There's a reason why the archway was locked away in a far-off room nowadays. It seems that more than a dozen test subjects already stepped through, but Sirius was the only person to ever return, and it took him a week."

"Oh."

"And he was so out of it... like he'd been smoking weed the entire week he was there..."

"Oh."

"You know... when I stood in front of that archway, I was extremely tempted to pull aside the curtain and step through," Harry said in a small voice.

"Would you still do that now?"

"I don't know... When the Dementors pass by my cell, I see Cedric dying, hear my Mum and Dad die, or I see myself throwing back their kindness in everyone's faces in the courtroom. It hurts. Then I often wonder if it wouldn't be better to give up this pathetic excuse for a life I still have here.

"Then again I sometimes think they should have known me better. I mean, I've fought against Voldemort for five years. How could they truly believe I'd done a 180 all of a sudden and joined old Snake Face?!"

"You know why."

Harry sighed. He did know. He had always carefully kept his emotions under lock and key in order to avoid getting hurt. He had never gone straight to his friends or Professor Dumbledore with his problems, but often waited until it was nearly too late. Like the time he'd heard the basilisk in second year, or the nightmares Voldemort had sent him during his fifth year...

He had never fully trusted anyone. Then how could he expect complete trust from others?

Hedwig had been the only exception. Harry had loved his owl since the first day and that love had been returned. Fawkes, too, he had liked from their first meeting, and the bird had since proven to be his most loyal friend.

He had not believed in Harry's guilt and even fought with Dumbledore about it. But due to the overwhelming evidence against Harry, his arguments had fallen on deaf ears. 'Wishful thinking,' they'd said. Everyone just wanted to put the 'Harry Potter' episode behind them as quickly as possible, preferably cross it out of their lives entirely.

One week after Harry's incarceration, Fawkes was his first and only visitor. By that time, the boy had already tried to punch open his wrists with a spoon, to smash his head in against the wall, and to strangle himself – all quite without success.

Fawkes's presence had let him know that he was neither alone nor crazy. And the phoenix had made sure things stayed that way.

Harry's love for birds had driven the phoenix to bring him a book about animagic and practise with him. Animagic was based in wild magic and therefore could be used without a wand. Much to both of their joy, Harry had managed the transformation after several months and, beyond their wildest hopes, his animagus form indeed turned out to be a phoenix. Ever since, he had been able to converse with Fawkes.

It had only taken a few weeks for him to begin understanding the language even while in human form. And so he had daily conversations with the phoenix who loyally kept him company and talked to him about his problems, the nightmares and the guilt, but also about recent developments in the wizarding world and about his friends.

Harry was incredibly thankful to the phoenix. He knew that without his visits, he'd long have died of despair or succumbed to madness. Only with Fawkes's help could he hold on to reality and even keep alive a tiny spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd get out of here one day.

Until then he wanted to keep trying not to nurture any resentment for the wizarding world that had cast him out. And to continue his fight against Voldemort.

The proximity of the Dementors enhanced all unpleasant things in Harry's head and kept them constantly on his mind. But his connection to Voldemort was certainly one of those unpleasant things.

Voldemort apparently still sat at the upper end of the connection; Harry could only receive, not send anything; but he was now able to choose how much he received.

His mind was wide open and received each of Voldemort's emotions, vibrated with his tempers, trembled under his curses... and listened to his plans. A visit into Voldemort's mind was always a painful affair, yet Harry now had a lot more control over the length and type of excursion into that sick mind. What Snape had failed to teach him, he had learned upon the cold stones of Azkaban.

The trick was not to hide things from the other; a Legilimens would look precisely for those things. No, instead he needed to show his emotions, thoughts and ideas so clearly that the other was crushed by the avalanche of information and automatically closed his receptors in self-defence.

This was done sub-consciously, and so it appeared to the attacker that his victim's mind was closed; even though this was more true of his own mind at that point.

Harry had discovered this his first night in Azkaban. He had accidentally entered Voldemort's mind in his dreams and was noticed by the other wizard right when two Dementors walked by outside his cell. Harry had not time to react and all his panic and despair rushed down their connection at the Dark Lord.

Harry felt a short flash of pleased approval of his pain from the other end – then the connection suddenly broke. In his moment of weakness, Harry had involuntarily bombarded Voldemort with information to the point where his brain refused to take in any more. For Voldemort it must have seemed as though Harry had blocked him.

Once Harry understood this, he had thrown himself into a rigid training aimed at vehemently throwing his entire being at Voldemort, leaving him without any chance of reading anything in Harry's mind or messing with it like he had done in the past.

As soon as Harry was confident in his accomplishments, he ventured further. He was capable of blocking Voldemort; now it was time to strike back.

Unfortunately, this task turned out to be a lot harder. Harry was now able to reject a connection he did not want – such as when Voldemort was crucioing someone to death – but if he accepted the connection, it still came with intense pain for Harry whenever Voldemort spoke an Unforgivable.

Harry had taken to carefully testing the waters, as it were, like one would dip a toe into water to test the temperature before letting one's entire body fall in. He tested Voldemort's mood and only entered his mind when he wasn't in the process of cursing anyone. Thus he could save himself a lot of pain, enabling him to stay calm enough that Voldemort did not notice him.

But still he was incapable of manipulating Voldemort's mind the way the Dark Lord had manipulated his the previous year.

"What's on your mind?"

Fawkes was still perched on Harry's shoulder and had waited patiently while Harry was lost in thought.

"I am trying to puzzle out how Voldemort was able to change my dreams through my scar, while I cannot influence him at all."

"Wonderful."

"Erm... excuse me?"

Fawkes chuckled. Harry was strangely reminded of the headmaster. "It is wonderful that you are working on a puzzle rather than bathing in self-recriminations."

Harry smiled sheepishly. "I guess you're right."

"But of course."

"Not conceited at all, are you." A quick grin.

"Phoenixes are beautiful, intelligent, popular and brave. Everyone knows this, so no conceit is necessary – these are facts." Fawkes strutted down Harry's extended arm like a peacock. Harry watched him speechlessly for a moment – then he broke out in peals of laughter.

Entirely unnoticed by him, a Dementor turned tail in front of his cell and ran. This much hilarity was physically painful for the cool creature.

Fawkes shook his head, making the boldly erect feathers on his head dance merrily. "Harry, it's good to hear you laugh!"

"Oh Fawkes, how could I not! That, at least, I think I will not forget how to do as long as you're there."

"You can count on me, Harry. The only days I shall ever fail to visit you will be the three days after my burning when I am featherless and stationary. Only afterwards will I once again be strong enough to come visit you."

"I am so happy that the wards of Azkaban only keep humans from apparating in and out. You are free to come and go..." A dreamy expression entered Harry's eyes. "If I was a true phoenix, I could simply vanish from here just like you."

Unfortunately, despite having the animagus form of a powerful magical being, even as a phoenix he was limited for the most part to the powers he possessed in human form. Fawkes thought he might manage to complete a phoenix apparition. After all, his tears held some minimal healing properties - they had tested them on Harry's countless scrapes and frostbites - but even then, in his core he'd still be human and as such subject to the wards.

Harry had once joked that he could set himself on fire, hoping that his ashes would be carried outside by the cool wind forever whistling through the fortress's hallways, and rise from his ashes.

Fawkes hadn't been amused. Harry had dropped the topic with a shrug.

Haven't got any matches anyway.

*This was written before the publication of the Deathly Hallows, that's why the idea of a tunnel from the Hog's Head to Hogwarts is presented as a new idea the DEs thought up rather than established fact.