xcvii. his own demanding ghost
In the middle of the sea at the end of the world, a man sat alone in a stone cell pressing ink into his skin.
He was a terribly thin man, more bone than flesh, waxen skin stretched taut to his skull, his black hair and beard both matted into thick, stringy clumps. An old torn cuff had been sacrificed to tie the mess back from his sunken eyes. There wasn't much in his cell: a pallet laid at his back, covered in a threadbare blanket that might have been white at some point, an empty food bowl waiting by the iron gate, and in his hand he held what remained of his spoon. Time and a bit of magic had whittled it down into a passable needle, the ink fashioned from sea salt and tar, preserved in a little hollow worn into the floor.
The man pressed the needle's crude tip into his skin again, flinching ever so slightly at the sting, pulling the needle free only to heal the skin with a pulse of raw magic. He panted softly and studied the effect, moving his arm into the watery, barely-there glow of distant sunlight drizzling through the window's thick grate. The glyphs were an exhausting endeavor, mere centimeters taking weeks to form—but it wasn't as if he had anything else to do.
The only thing Sirius Black had left was time.
He scoffed, muttering "Time served," to himself as he twitched the needle about and added yet another point to the symbol above his elbow. He'd been shite at Ancient Runes in school; that'd always been Remus' forte—oh, God, Remus, Remus, I'm so—but he remembered enough to get by.
His fingers traced the rougher skin above nyd on his heart, a rune pleading dire, dire need. It came first, of course; every other word etched into his worthless hide was simply an elaboration on that single plea.
Sirius returned the needle to the ink and tugged the pallet's edge over it all—not that anyone would bloody well care should he fashion a shiv; the only one he could use it on was himself after all, and Sirius wasn't such a bleeding heart Gryffindor that he'd never considered the idea—why not, after all, a fitting end for a dog, a failure, but no he couldn't, he couldn't—.
Shaking his head, Sirius dragged in a lungful of brine-flavored air and let it out.
Distantly, he felt the pressure emanating from that part of himself where he kept the worst bits hidden— "How could you do this without telling me? How could you? How—?!"—lessen like a balloon with a small puncture, a flimsy veil lifting enough for him to hear the world outside his own skull once more. He could hear the dull, repetitive thump of the waves hitting the island, the wind howling, and—the other prisoners.
"Ooh!" came the high, girlish shriek of his least favorite witch in the world. "Looks like the Dementors are moving off!"
"It's gotta be inspection time," grunted another, a voice for a face Sirius' had never seen and couldn't place—Rowle, he thought. Not Rabastan or Rodulphus; they were either dead or, more likely, in the other ward. It wasn't Wilkes, or the Carrows, the latter too far down the way for Sirius to hear unless the witch started screaming. Bellatrix Lestrange laughed, the sound garbled and deranged, like a dragon's claw scraping inside his head—.
"Shut the fuck up, you mad bint!" Sirius shouted.
"What's that? Still breathing, cousin?" Bellatrix laughed again, and Sirius softly cursed under his breath, wishing he could wrap his hands around her neck and squeeze. Silence—true, Merlin-blessed silence—came like rain in the desert here, rare and precious and almost always spoiled by the Death Eaters he lived down the hall from.
Sirius settled on the floor, angling himself so he could somewhat see down the corridor, past the black cell across from him, toward the stairs he'd been dragged up twelve years ago and hadn't laid eyes on since. If it weren't for the sound of the waves, the whole bloody sea could've dried up, and Sirius wouldn't have a clue. He didn't know anything outside of that cell, no bigger than a coat closet.
The Dementors had, indeed, pulled back, and now Sirius could hear the steady, echoing thump of hesitant feet coming up the steps, the sound barely audible under the Death Eaters' catcalling. "He will return for us!" someone screamed, and Bellatrix crowed in appreciation. "The Lord will come for his most faithful!"
Sirius slumped into the wall and scoffed. Like hell. Images flickered in his head—a house, a ruin, a familiar dark head, irate black eyes. "You fucking TRAITOR—!"
Ashes. A smoldering plot of land. "How could you—?!"
Grunting, Sirius ground his forehead against the stones and folded his arms across his chest, squeezing. He didn't need the Dementors to torture himself; somehow, that always made it worse. He concentrated on the corridor, the footsteps, the pounding of the waves. Water. Merlin, he couldn't rightly remember what it felt like. The windows of this godforsaken place were Charmed to never let anything more than air through, so even in the worst winter storms, the rain never graced his squalid little cell. The sun never came out. The wind never blew. Warmth never came.
A short, bumbling bloke came into view, trailed by two of the uniformed guards. Sirius almost snorted; the Ministry couldn't have picked a worse wizard to send careening into the depths of Azkaban. He was from the Ministry. Only an idiot could mistake him for anything other than a bureaucrat: pinstriped robes fell past his shaking knees, and on his head he wore the ugliest lime-green bowler hat Sirius had ever seen. Rubbing his chin, Sirius squinted and tried to remember where he'd seen the guy before. Didn't he run for Minister against Bagnold and Crouch? Doesn't look like he ever won, poor sod. What was his name again?
The wizard stopped at the first cell and started up a stuttering conversation with the inmate interred within, though Sirius couldn't hear what was being said. It seemed an age since the last Ministry inspection, and Sirius couldn't say why they felt the bloody need to check on them when nothing short of death would get them to open the doors. Maybe it kept everyone out in the world nice and happy, being reminded the Death Eaters and Dark wizards and murderers were still tucked away in this frigid fucking hell. Not that he disagreed, really. They deserved it. He deserved it.
Didn't he?
The wizard—Fudge, Sirius thought his name might be, he looked quite like that Hufflepuff prat Gabriel Fudge he went to school with once upon a time—passed from one Death Eater to the next and skittered away from dear old cousin Bellatrix when the mad witch spat and cackled at him. Sighing, Sirius shuffled closer to the gate as Fudge neared. The wizard stopped, the two bored guards behind him, and he peered down at Sirius as he fished a handkerchief out of his open cloak and dabbed at his clammy, sweat-drenched face.
"Sirius Black."
"Hello," Sirius acknowledged, voice rough and grating. Fudge looked around the cell while Sirius looked at him—and he nearly gasped aloud when he spotted the folded, wrinkled Daily Prophet stashed in the inner pocket of Fudge's cloak. "Can I have that?" he blurted, causing Fudge to freeze. Shite. Could have gone about that better. "The paper. I miss doing the crosswords, y'know?" Sirius could care bloody less about the crossword—well, it would give him a way to occupy his mind for at least a couple of minutes. No, what he wanted was just one glimpse of the world outside his cell. Just one chance to see—.
Fudge tossed a nervous glance toward one of the guards and the witch waved her hand in answer, allowing the pudgy wizard to tentatively poke the paper through the bars. Sirius had to stop himself from snatching it out of Fudge's hand. His own hand shook as it clutched the folded bundle tight. "…thank you," he whispered.
Uneasy, Fudge nodded and moved to the cell across the way, leaving Sirius to his paper. He flipped it upright and peered at the date.
July thirteenth, nineteen ninety-three.
His heart almost stopped from the shock of it. Ninety-three? No, that couldn't be right. Had it really been so long? Days in Azkaban seemed to stretch on interminably, but at the same time, it seemed only yesterday they'd locked him here. The Dementors kept everything…fresh, all the grief and remorse and terror sitting on the tip of his tongue like a bad taste. Fuck me, he thought, swallowing. The war ended twelve years ago. Twelve years, and it doesn't feel like it ever stopped. Twelve years since—.
Letting out a shuddering breath, he flipped the paper over and sought out an article. The first he found was a fluff piece about the summer migration of Golden Snidgets in Somerset. Bloody useless information, but Sirius devoured every word, moving on to a column about Gilderoy Lockhart, then the editorials. He saw mention of some problems at Hogwarts—and his mind spiraled, memories churning, thinking of a slumbering black-haired baby cradled to James' chest. Harriet. Harriet would be at Hogwarts for her third-year. She wasn't yet thirteen, he remembered. He wondered how she liked living with Lily's sister. He wondered—.
Fidgeting, he flipped the paper again to the front fold. The main read was for a lottery drawing at the Ministry—another fluff piece, really, a ploy for better government relations with the public. He remembered how Remus used to—. Sirius gnawed on his lip and shook his head like a wet dog. "No," he muttered, focusing on the type. Arthur Weasley had won the lotto, Sirius read as he grinned. He'd never met Arthur himself, but he'd known Molly by association through the Prewett twins, who'd been Gryffindor Prefects when he first came to Hogwarts. They were all good people. Better the Galleons go to them and not some bigoted pure-blood cunts who'd managed to dodge the post-war purge.
He finished the article, then glanced at the picture of Arthur and his entire family in Egypt. Egypt! Did the Egyptian Ministry have their own Azkaban somewhere out there in the scorching sands? Merlin, he'd trade anything to be there instead of here, but he assumed the Egyptian prisoners probably felt the same way about Azkaban. What's that Muggle phrase? The grass is always greener on the other side? Huffing a laugh, Sirius looked over the picture again, studying the smiling, freckled faces, the youngest son standing by his little sister with a rat on his shoulder—.
Sirius stared. "No," he whispered louder than he had before, shaking his head. It couldn't be—it was impossible, because no matter how much it looked like it, there was no—. No—. No—! "I'm seeing rubbish now."
He scrambled to his feet and almost tore the paper apart in his haste, rushing to the weak dint of light fluttering through the window, thrusting the picture closer. It didn't matter how he refuted it; there, on the Weasley boy's bony shoulder, sat a rat Sirius had seen more times than he could count over the years. There sat Peter Pettigrew—Peter Pettigrew and one missing finger.
Stumbling, Sirius' back hit the wall and his skull struck the stones hard. Muggle sirens peeled in the distance, loud and straining like a woman screaming. Screaming, like the women actually screaming, the ones too close, too close—. Rubble popped and skipped as it landed, dust in the air. Sewer pipes caught in the Blasting Charm's radius gurgled and frothed. His leg was broken. It was broken, and he had blood in his mouth, and on his hands, quivering, wand broken—.
Laughter. He laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was fucking tragic.
"No!" Sirius snarled at the paper, at himself. "It's not possible!"
"Going mad in there, cousin?"
"SHUT UP!"
"They only ever found a finger of him," the Auror sneered as looked down at Sirius. "Are you happy, Black?" No, Sirius didn't feel happy. He didn't feel anything at all; in fact, it seemed as if everything happened at a great distance from himself, and he had no choice but to stand to the side and watch—.
A finger.
A missing toe on a rat.
It made a sick, twisted kind of sense to Sirius, the kind of sense he knew Peter would have appreciated. He'd always been the soft one in their group, malleable, able to fit the cracks of their friendships—but he held no shape of his own, and looking back, Sirius had spent the years spotting all the little things he should have noticed before. Peter used to like getting in that last kick when they taunted Slytherins, especially that dickhead Snape who cozied up to Lily. He'd been a right nasty git when he got his back up; Sirius had come away from their spats with bruises and cuts more often than not, but not Peter. Peter never did anything until Snape was already on the ground.
If there was anyone Sirius could imagine living as a rat instead of a man, it was Peter.
He scanned the paper again, eyes flicking back and forth at a furious pace. "The Weasley family will be spending a month in Egypt, returning for the start of the new school year at Hogwarts, which five of the Weasley children currently attend."
"No, no, no..." he moaned, one hand gripping his hair, yanking it at the roots. Hogwarts. The children were returning to Hogwarts—.
Harriet.
Sirius had grown to tolerate the size of his cell—but now the walls pressed too close, his breaths coming in short, gasping pants. Peter was alive. He was alive, and headed back to Hogwarts in the hands of an oblivious boy, going to the place where his goddaughter attended school with other oblivious children. It's not safe, he told himself, fingers scrabbling at the stones, tearing his blunt nails. It's not safe, she's not safe! Peter killed twelve people just to escape. Soft, doughy, inconspicuous Peter slaughtered twelve human beings and cut off his finger to get away from his old school chum. What would he do if cornered in a school full of children? What would he do? Oh, God—Lily, James, forgive me. I've failed—.
The hollering in the corridors morphed into shrieks and screams; ice began to form again upon the walls, and it clawed at Sirius' bare ankles, steam issuing between his chapped lips. They were coming. The Dementors were returning, and with their encroaching presence rose the onslaught of his worst remembrances, the terror subsuming Sirius like a black, inexorable tide until he couldn't see, until he started to scream like all the rest.
"How could you have done this?" Remus cried. "How could you? She's dead, Marlene's dead! Elara's—."
An Auror stood outside the blackened grounds, the hem of his red robes eddying in the ash-filled breeze. "There were no survivors, Mr. Black."
"—dead!"
Broken wood littered the cobbled street and the splinters sliced his feet. A dark figure crouched in the obliterated bedroom, weeping, a bloodied infant in his arms. Black eyes found Sirius. "—you fucking TRAITOR!"
"Lily and James—!"
Keening, Sirius sank to his knees and pressed his face to the floor, reaching for his magic. He pulled it over himself, and it was only when his limbs shifted and changed that the frigid tide receded and he could breathe. Where there once stood a man in prison-garb now hunched a large, scrawny black dog. The dog snatched hold of the paper between his teeth and brought it over to the pallet, where he settled with a growl and a whimper. Silver eyes stared at the photograph printed on the front page. He continued to stare long into the night.
I'll stop him this time. I'll get out of here and stop him, I have to. He won't get Harriet—not this time, I swear on my life. Not this time, Peter.
He's at Hogwarts. He's at Hogwarts.
A/N: There's a whole host of fan-theories revolving around Sirius' tattoos—but, as far as we know, Sirius didn't have them in book-canon, as Harry never mentioned them. Some believe they were done to him as a form of identification, but I'm going with the theory he did them to himself, and in CDT, he created them to preserve his magic (except the one on his neck; which is clearly his prisoner number, just like the one Lucius got). So, anyway, I take some creative license with the tattoos and Azkaban in general.
Chapter title from the quote; "Each of us must suffer his own demanding ghost," The Aeneid, Book VI, by Virgil.
Sirius: "AWWW YEAH. Everyone excited for when I finally appear!"
Snape, grumbling: "I hate it here."