I, the Prisoner of Azkaban

I, the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter 2: Freedom

Something is touching my head. From very far away, a voice is talking. Very softly, at first. It is a child's voice. I am numb. I cannot open my eyes, let alone move my limbs. I try to sense all the parts of my body and realize something is different... it is the dog I am feeling... there is sand below me, and small waves of water are touching my hind paws...

I drift off into darkness again.

**

"You poor thing..." It's the child's voice again. My mind is slowly returning out of the darkness that seemed to last forever, I can feel the dog's body, every bone in my body is aching. My eyes snap open. The child jumps.

I am in a sort of cave. There are rocks around me. The ceiling is so low that the child's head is just touching it. A ray of light falls through the entry behind the child. Light.... I try to stand up but collapse at once. The girl, seeing how weak I am, comes closer. "No, don't move. You are very, very ill..." She must be about five years of age, has long brown hair and a high, soft voice. Unlike anything I have seen or heard for a long time.

"I can't bring you home cause Mum will get mad. I'll go home and get you something to eat... I'll be back... you understand, don't you?" She touches my head timidly. I understand better than she thinks.

**

How long I have been lying here I do not know. The light grows weaker, and something inside me grows desperate. I try to calm myself. It will return. I am even too weak to stand up, let alone transform. I will have to lie here waiting for my strength to come back. My mind is dazed from weakness, and the dog does not think coherently anyway. There is only one word forming in my mind, growing stronger, until it is swimming in front of my eyes.

Freedom.

**

For days and days I lie in the cave, waiting for the girl to bring me food, listening to the sounds of the birds and the soft breeze outside. It must be summer. I have completely lost the track of time inside my cell. I realize I did not even look at the date on the newspaper's front page. The newspaper, where is it? I lift my head slowly and look around me. There, I must have carried it in my mouth while swimming. Swimming. How did I escape?

The light grows weaker, stronger again, weaker... many days pass before I can stand up and slowly drag myself outside. It is nighttime. She is not here. I transform back into a man and stay there for a moment, crouched on all fours, before I allow myself to slowly stand up.

It is a very soft summer's night. My blood rushes to my head as I take everything around me in, the trees, the wind, the waves from below... I must be near the place she found me...

How did I escape? I remember little. I had sat there for a long time after Fudge left, staring at the photo, until my eyes began to close. I woke up lying on the floor, the newspaper tightly clutched in my hand, I jumped and looked at the photo again to see if I had not been dreaming.

I had not. He was there, clearer than ever, on the boy's shoulder, and suddenly a wave of hatred swept through me, I had hated him, loathed him, ever since that night at the house. When I found their bodies, their empty eyes staring at me, her face contorted in fear... But I had never known where he was. I hoped he had died. I hoped he had died a slow, painful death, next to his master maybe, conquered by little Harry.

Little Harry who lay in his crib, crying next to his parents' bodies. Harry is at Hogwarts too, now. My chest tightens suddenly. Maybe he's there for that.

A wave of blind hatred sweeps over me again. The hate, the loathing grew stronger with every day back inside my cell. He, who had betrayed them, sold them to the Dark Side, killed them, he had escaped and was now biding his time as a pet. I was often sick in my cell. The Dementors never cleaned it up, of course - it added nicely to the smell of decay that lingered in ever corner of the fortress.

I do not know much of those days after Fudge had left. I only know that I grew stronger, it was not a positive strength, but it was the rage that was surging through every part of my body, I wanted revenge. I had to get out, I had to kill him. Kill the traitor.

One night I transformed and, more instinctively than anything else, slipped passed a Dementor that was bringing food. I was so thin that I easily got through the small gap in the door. I could hear the Dementor behind me gasp, confused, it was trying to find me, but I was running now, running through the corridor with moans and cries to my sides, Dementors behind me, the gate was closing, I slipped through, it closed with a snap just as I reached the other side. And faster I ran, over the grounds, and without thinking anymore I jumped into the water and swam.

I must have passed out when my body hit the icy water, but somehow I did not drown, my body swam on, I swam while drifting in and out of consciousness, for hours, weeks, months, years... I can't even remember the moment I touched solid ground. I must have had the newspaper tightly in my mouth all the time, even when she brought me up to this cave, for there it is now, lying on a stone inside, the rat staring up at me insolently from the front page.

The rat. He has to die. I have to survive to kill him, is my last thought before I collapse against the stone wall.

**

I can now even smell the food in my sleep. It is never enough, and I am always hungry since I left the fortress. Every time she comes to me now I wake up from the smell of the food. I usually sleep until the sun is way up. I cannot sleep through the night, I cannot bear it. I keep jumping to the sounds of animals, rustling branches, expecting a cold, icy feeling to sweep over me any moment. I sleep outside the cave now, it is too small, too narrow inside...

Something is different today. My muscles stiffen even before I gain enough consciousness to realize what it is. She is talking to someone, something about showing the dog, the other person answers. It must be her mother. "You should have told me before, honey, it's dangerous going outside these days, I told you there's this bad man running around, he-"

They have come around the cave in front of which I fell asleep last night. I open my eyes to look up at them. They both stare at me in shock, and suddenly I realize I haven't transformed back.

The woman instinctively grabs her child and staggers backwards with her, mouthing wordlessly. I do not move. She continues staring at me, her eyes full of fear, full of terror. The first and until now last time that someone stared at me like this is many, many years ago, after they found me on the street and within days every wizard and witch knew that Sirius Black had betrayed his best friends.

I lower my head to evade her eyes, these eyes that make me more of a beast than I have ever been, even as Padfoot. I can hear them stumbling away, hesitatingly, then faster and faster, the mother breathing fast, the child not daring to speak.

So they are looking for me now. Even the Muggles know my face. I try standing up and fall back against the hard stone wall, a feeling of despair rushing over me. How am I supposed to make it...

But then I remember. Survive, by all means, to hunt him down, to kill him, to take revenge. Then you can die. Then you will probably die anyway. Serves you right.

It takes me every bit of determination to heave myself upwards, and I drag myself into the cave, grabbing the newspaper, and stumble out into the daylight again. It is, ironically, a bright sunny day. I turn my head upwards, blinking at the sun. I could have sworn it was never this bright.

The Muggle woman will have alerted the other Muggles by now. I force myself to turn away from the sun and look around. The beach down there in front of me, the path the girl and her mother took to my right, the forest behind me.

I put the newspaper into my mouth, transform into a dog and take off at a run into the forest.

**

The first village I have come near in days. Food. My insides are burning with hunger. I have been living on dirty water from puddles and gutters and, occasionally, a dead animal.

I approach a small cottage. Blue light is flickering out from the window. The gate is open and I steal around the house, into their garden. There are leftovers on the table, vegetables in the soil, wastepaper bins... I try to move as quietly as possible, but the Muggles don't hear me anyway due to the loud noises in their house. It must be some Muggle apparatus. I am not paying attention as I devour the food, but suddenly I catch a few words and move closer to listen.

"... has not been sighted again since a family living near Thurso reported him to the police on Monday. The witness who does not wish to be named here has testified to the police that Black tried to attack her four-year-old daughter before they managed to escape. The telephone hotline..."

I spit out the last piece of meat and growl, instinctively. A sudden movement inside the house, and I speed around the house and down the street, while I can hear shouting behind me.

**

The Muggle newspaper is dated 6^th of August. I hold it in my hand, a man's hand now, while I hold a piece of old bread in the other hand, which I am taking hasty, big bites of. Three more weeks before the new school year starts, three more weeks to get there on time. If I am lucky, I can find the train before it reaches Hogwarts. A train packed with screaming children, but nonetheless without teachers.

Something inside my body twinges. What if in all the chaos, I will not get to see Harry? I saw a picture of him once in one of the Daily Prophets Fudge brought. Just like him...

"You are not going there to see Harry", I tell myself, and my voice is more of a croak than anything else. He would probably try and kill me anyway, I add silently.

However. A small glimpse cannot hurt. The black and white picture never showed the colour of his eyes... and I have a bit of time before the school year begins, if I remember correctly...

I search inside my head to remember the night I found them. I have never looked for this memory deliberately. It is painful, yet I need to find out... the giant, insisting on taking the baby... the motorbike... where will he take him? To his aunt and uncle, it finally comes back to me, I shake my head violently as ever so often, to try and get out the images. The Dark Mark over their house...

I have been to those relatives' house once with... with her. I remember the house and the street it stood in as clearly as if it were yesterday, strangely enough. I suppose it struck me as odd that there were so many houses in a row that could look so exactly alike, that there was not a speck of dust on the street and that no sound was to be heard. Not exactly like anywhere I had ever been before.

**

"COME BACK IN HERE! COME BACK AND PUT HER RIGHT!" The voice is coming from around the corner. Am I really in the right street? But everything around me is dark and quiet. I speed around the corner just in time to see a door slam shut. The door to the house I was looking for. Squealing noises are coming from the inside. I look around and can just make out a small figure walking away as quickly as possible, his trunk heaved behind him, something that looks like a birdcage...

My heart gives a funny jolt. A rare thing to happen to me as Padfoot. That silhouette with the masses of hair must be Harry.

I follow him quietly. A few streets after that he collapses against a wall, I come closer noiselessly. Just a small glimpse... I slide behind the fence of the house to his right and watch him silently.

My godson. He is sitting with his eyes closed, his hands gripping the trunk and the cage, his breathing fast and heavy. For the first time in years, I can see James. Not after Hogwarts, not as a married man, but as a boy, of about Harry's age, grinning at me... How old will Harry be now? 12? 13? How many years have passed?

He is standing up now, rummaging in his trunk, when suddenly... He must have sensed me. He is turning around to look. I move backwards. He mutters a word, and his wand lights up, reflecting against the walls and the door - Harry is staring at me, and there, reflected in the light, I can see his eyes in the darkness. Green eyes.

Suddenly he stumbles backwards, over his trunk, his wand is flying out of his hand, I make a quick move forward without thinking, I have to see if he's hurt, when-

BANG. Harry yells and rolls around, just in time.

The Knight Bus.

**