A Promise Worth Keeping

Chapter Four

The Dementors had left the corridor, leaving the prisoners to their own devices. Most of them would have barely even noticed the difference, thought the prisoner in the cell at the end. He had noticed, but hadn't bothered moving, being as comfortable as he ever got, curled up where he was in a corner. Then his ears twitched as he heard voices in the distance.

"Let's get this over with as quickly as we can and get out of here," someone said as a door banged shut.

Immediately panic flared and the prisoner adopted his usual shape, the human emotions of guilt and remorse slamming into his mind with renewed force as he transformed. The man let out a slight whimper as he reoriented himself, missing what the speaker's companion replied as they marched up the corridor.

"Which one is it?" the voice asked impatiently then.

"Last on the left," a second man replied.

It took the man in the cell a few seconds to remember that was his cell. They were coming for him! Why? This had never happened before. He sat up, huddling back into the corner, but wary and watchful, waiting for them.

The footsteps stopped outside his cell door. "Hang on a sec," the first voice said. There was a clinking of keys and then the door was pushed open.

Two men stepped into the cell, Aurors by the looks of them, wands out pointing at him, and expressions of disgust on their faces.

"What's your name?" one of them demanded.

The man said nothing, considering why they might be asking this. But then he realised that if he didn't reply or said he couldn't remember they would go away and the Dementors would come back so he croaked in a voice hoarse with disuse, "Sirius Black."

"See, I told you he knows who he is." The second Auror said. He was young, and Sirius thought he looked almost familiar, as if he might have seen him recently.

"So you did," the first Auror said. He seemed to be in charge. "It doesn't mean he knows anything else, but like I said, anything's worth considering."

He turned to Sirius. "Stand up!" he ordered.

Slowly, Sirius clambered to his feet; muscles stiff from the position he'd been lying in. He stared warily at the two men.

"Hold out your hands."

Sirius held out his hands and the Auror secured shackles around his wrists. He felt the tingle of magic dampening metal. They must be really worried. What did they think he was going to do, Apparate out of here through the anti-Apparition wards?

The Auror jerked his head and Sirius slowly walked forwards to the cell door. He hadn't been out of his cell since… he didn't know.

The younger Auror stepped in front of him and he followed the man down the corridor, hearing the other Auror's footsteps behind him. He avidly drank in this different experience, trying to fix it in his memory at the same time aware that whatever was coming was unlikely to be pleasant. They couldn't have finally decided to let the Dementors have him; it wouldn't have been important that he knew who he was. It must be something else, but he couldn't think what.

Sirius was led into a part of the fortress he didn't think he had been into before. Or, at least, he didn't remember having been into it before. Eventually the younger Auror pushed open a door and led him into a sparsely furnished room. His eyes flicked at the men impatiently waiting and recognised one of them, a tall thin man in his forties, as someone who accompanied Fudge on his inspections. The other looked like a mediwizard. A sudden, unreasoning burst of hope flared within him almost leaving him dizzy with its intensity. Could they finally be going to question him about what had happened?

"Hobson was right, sir," said the Auror in charge to the tall, thin man.

"Well let's get on with this, I haven't got all day."

"Yessir."

Sirius felt a hand push him in the small of the back towards a chair placed in the centre of the room. "Right, you siddown!"

Sirius sat, and immediately tensed as an invisible force held his head rigid.

The mediwizard walked forwards. Sirius could see he was carrying a small vial. "Three drops?" he asked the tall, thin man.

"Oh go the whole hog, Watkins what does it matter?"

Which didn't sound too promising. The hope Sirius had felt began to leach away.

"Open your mouth," the man ordered. He looked as if he thought Sirius might bite him. Sirius opened his mouth.

The man emptied the vial into Sirius' mouth. Immediately he began to feel the woozy distancing feeling Veritaserum brought.

Dimly he heard the older Auror say, "Well on you go, Hobson this was your idea."

Hobson cleared his throat. "Can you hear me?"

Hazily, Sirius focused on the man's face and croaked, "Yes."

Hobson took a deep breath and asked, "What's your name?"

Sirius had no control over what he said and couldn't have refused to answer if he'd tried. "Sirius Black."

Hobson gave a nervous smile at his superior and taking another deep breath asked, "Where would your friends take the Potter boy?"

What? Images of Remus and Peter and James flashed before him. The effort to find an answer almost made him gag.

The tall, thin man gave an exasperated snort. "Oh for goodness sake, Hobson! Don't they teach you how to interrogate people under Veritaserum in Auror training these days? Can't you see he doesn't understand the bloody question? Don't know that I do either. You have to be absolutely crystal clear in what you're asking."

He marched over to Sirius and slapped his face then snapped his fingers in front of it, saying "Stop! Don't answer." He paused then said, "Harry Potter, the son of the people you betrayed has been kidnapped by Death Eaters. Where would they take him?"

Sirius stared at him in horror; mind racing as he said, "I don't know."

The man snorted again, this time in disbelief and repeated, "Where would they take him?

Again, the response he had no control over, "I don't know."

The man turned and looked at Watkins. "Have you got any more?"

Watkins looked deeply unhappy. "Mr Milton, sir, he's had double the recommended dose already. If I give him any more it would be dangerous."

"Who for, us?"

Watkins was nonplussed. "Well, no of course not."

"So what's the problem? He probably built up a tolerance for it against just such an eventuality as this."

"Um, even supposing that were possible, sir." Watkins muttered, "It would have been nearly ten years ago, so I hardly think -"

"I don't give a damn what you think, Watkins! Give him the bloody potion!"

"Yessir." Watkins' voice was subdued.

Hazily Sirius watched him walk over to the table and rummage around in his medical bag. He came back holding another vial and glanced at the two Aurors. "You'd better hold his mouth open or something, I doubt he's going to co-operate this time."

Sirius heard an audible sigh from behind him. Then someone, it was the Auror in charge, pinched his nose hard and held on until Sirius had to open his mouth in order to breath. "Like this?" the man asked sarcastically.

"Er, yes." Watkins replied and gingerly walked forwards, holding another vial.

As soon as he had tipped the contents in Sirius' mouth, the Auror let go of his nose and held his jaws clamped shut until he swallowed.

The woozy feeling increased, and his vision began to blur. When the men spoke their voices sounded as if they were coming from a long way off. He began to feel sick.

"Where would they take him?" demanded Milton again.

"Wha?"

Milton repeated the question and slapped his face.

The man sounded as if he was speaking from the other end of a long tunnel, but Sirius still had no control over the answer. "Don't know."

An exasperated snort. "Must be the question," Milton muttered. He tried again. "Give me a list of Death Eater hide outs." His voice sounded from further away.

"Don't know."

Slap. There was a buzzing in his ears now. "…list…Death Eater….outs."

"Don' know."

He could hardly make out the voices now. "Where…? …no good…losing him."

Everything went black.

---

As Sirius came to, the sharp smell of stale vomit filled the air. He groaned and opened his eyes. He was lying, back in his own cell, in the middle of a puddle of puke and he had a blinding headache. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was almost completely dry and his tongue felt swollen. Must get water, he thought. He slowly started to push himself up into a sitting position, but fell back as a wave of dizziness overcame him. He lay there for a moment, spots dancing before his eyes, then he tried again. He had to get water. This time he managed to climb onto his knees and stayed there, slumped forwards onto his elbows while the dizziness cleared. There was a bucket…. Lifting his head cautiously, Sirius could see it, sitting by the door and eventually managed to crawl over to it. It was full. He drank. And drank.

Later, huddled in his usual corner at the back of the cell, he wondered how long he had been lying there. Hours? Days? He didn't know. And then with a start and a thrill of horror he remembered what they had wanted to know. Harry! The boy had been kidnapped. Dimly he remembered the last time he had seen the child, the only time he could remember seeing the child, bound up as it was with everything else that had happened that night. He had been cradled in Hagrid's enormous arms, blood from a cut on his forehead trickling down his face, crying. Sirius remembered arguing with Hagrid, to let him take the baby. But Hagrid could be stubborn as a mule when he wanted to be, more stubborn even than Sirius, and he had insisted on taking the baby to the Dursleys. The Dursleys! After all the efforts Lily and James had gone to, to make sure that Harry would never fall into their hands. After he had promised to take care of the baby if anything happened to them. Sirius gave a sob of despair. He'd broken that promise with barely a thought, and had gone off to wreak vengeance on the Rat. For all the good it had done, he thought bitterly.

How did they know it was Death Eaters that had kidnapped the baby? Had they left the Dark Mark floating above the Dursleys' house when they took Harry? Why would they take him now? A thought flashed into his mind and he struggled to grasp it, giving a grunt of frustration as it eluded him. He rubbed his forehead, trying to make the headache go away, but it didn't work.

Eventually he slept only to wake screaming from a dream where the house at Godric's Hollow had turned into some nightmare of suburban respectability and Lily's horse-faced sister cackled as she gleefully handed baby Harry over to masked Death Eaters. Shaking, he crawled over to his water bucket and drank, but it was nearly empty.

The shape outside his cell must have sensed him move, as it hissed and he felt the questing tendrils of it in his mind, consuming him. He managed to crawl away again back to his corner. Crouched there, he reached inside himself shifting his shape and for a time things felt easier.

He slept again and when he woke noticed that food had been left while he slept. As usual he had to force himself to eat, but as he did so, he remembered the dream, and transformed to hold on to the thought. That was it! That was what he'd been trying to remember. Harry wasn't a baby any more. He knocked his head against the wall in annoyance at himself. Then he wondered how old the boy was now and he remembered the mediwizard had said something, something about it being nearly ten years. But that couldn't be right.

With a grunt of effort he hauled himself to his feet and staggered over to the other side of the cell where his scratches covered one wall. However after he spent most of the rest of the day trying to count them, he had to admit that perhaps the mediwizard had been right.

Feverishly pacing round the cell Sirius realised the boy must be ten. He couldn't be eleven because he would have been at Hogwarts, and if Death Eaters had kidnapped him from Hogwarts, it meant Dumbledore must be dead and Voldemort returned. So no, he must be ten, which meant it had been nine years. Nine years, dear God, and his scratches weren't so far out after all.

As he paced, unaware he was muttering to himself now, he thought about the terror Harry must be feeling, taken from his home in the middle of the night (probably). And what had the Ministry done? Come to question him. They must be really scraping the barrel if they thought someone who'd been in Azkaban for nine years could help them. With that thought he stopped pacing and began to shiver, not with cold but with fear. Fear for Harry.

The next few days were not good. He spent them alternating between replaying that awful Halloween and the argument with Hagrid, and picturing Harry (who must surely have grown up to look like James) being horribly tortured by fiendish shapes in masks. All the while knowing it was his fault. That if he had kept the promise he had made to look after Harry instead of giving in to his selfish desire to extract vengeance from the Rat, things would have been very different.

He had a brief moment of lucidity and knew he was finally, really, teetering on the edge, ready to fall with nothing to catch him. But he managed to retreat into the dog's shape and the awful guilt receded.

And yet he still dreamed. This time it was different. In this dream he was held rigid in a total body bind while Lily and James stood before him crying because of what he had allowed to happen. And, in the background, the Aurors who had questioned him whispered words he could never quite catch.

Sirius' eyes flew open in the darkness. Hobson, he of the nervous smile and idiotic questions, had said something important. He struggled to remember what it was, risking a transformation in an effort to think more clearly. He replayed the memory of his interrogation over and over until he finally realised it couldn't have been then. Almost screaming with frustration at his inability to remember he finally managed to tease out a disjointed memory of when he had seen Hobson before.

And then he froze as he remembered the Halloween visit. Could it really be that simple? The man's sarcastic words came back to him, "He's hardly going to walk out of here now, is he?"

Feverishly he tried to think. The Dementors couldn't see as such, he knew that. They seemed to sense people by their thoughts. But they always seemed to leave him alone more when he was in the dog's shape. Could it be that as Padfoot he was harder to sense?

Then he came back down to earth with a bump. And just how exactly, he told himself viciously, did he think he was going to succeed in finding Harry and rescuing him when the Ministry with all its resources was apparently failing? When even Dumbledore must have failed? But while he knew he had no idea, he did have a burning compulsion to do something. Because there had to be no one left, no one who cared. (Oh what, like you cared? The small, mean voice in his head demanded.) And then he knew he'd rather die trying to find the boy than rot in this hellhole while what remained of his sanity (and he didn't think it was much) crumbled into nothing.

So he watched the Dementors' behaviour when they came to his cell, noted how it really was different when he was in the dog's shape, confirmed that they did seem less able to sense him. And then it was a case of waiting for the opportunity.

When it came he couldn't believe how easy it was to get out of his cell. Getting out of the fortress was harder, a nightmare of dark, cold corridors and hooded shapes that haunted his dreams afterwards. When at last he made it outside he collapsed, shaking with exhaustion and fear, so that he had to force himself to get up and stagger down to the water's edge. And then he stood, an icy wind from the north ruffling his fur, staring in dismay at the darkly heaving, white crested water. How was he ever going to get through that?

He didn't know, but he had to try.

---

The water was cold. Colder than anything Sirius had felt before. Even the dog's metabolism couldn't protect him from the growing hypothermia. As he frantically swam through the dark water the realisation began to grow that he wasn't going to make it; that he didn't have the strength to survive the winter seas; that it was too far and too cold.

As dawn broke and the dark sky lightened to grey a deceptive warmth began to creep through his frozen body, lulling him towards sleep. With a jerk he splashed awake realising he had been dozing off and knowing if he did it would be the end.

There were seagulls now. He could hear them, raucous and noisy accompanying a dull, throbbing vibration, below hearing. One swooped low over him and he gave a weak snap at it with his jaws.

And then unbelievably he heard a voice. "It's no deid ah tell ye! Ah seen it move." But he could decipher no meaning from the words and slipped back into the drowsy warmth.

Later, there was nothing but the vibration, booming through every cell of his body. He was aware of it even in the place beyond consciousness that he had retreated to. But then other senses felt a new, rocking motion, different from the buoyant swell of the water. And this time real warmth.

He became aware he was lying on a hard surface and someone was rubbing his fur dry with a towel of some sort, prompting his sluggish circulation to move. There was a strong smell of fish and warm milk.

"Come on, boy, there you go, come on," someone said, voice almost rendered unintelligible by a thickly Scottish accent.

"You're wasting your time, Alec. It'll be deid before tonight," someone else said, mocking Alec's efforts at whatever it was he was doing.

"No it won't," responded the other voice. Alec presumably. "Just needs to get warm."

"Aye, right," the other snorted. "It's nothing but skin and bone. If you fed it all the fish in the hold it'd still be skin and bone. Too far gone if you ask me."

The rubbing paused. "I don't remember asking you." Alec sounded nettled. Sirius' eyes flickered and he vaguely saw a dark shape looming above him. There was a scraping noise as the shape pushed something towards his nose and the smell of milk grew stronger. Alec rubbed his head. "Come on, have some milk."

He sniffed it, and tried to lap some of it without moving his head, but couldn't reach. Somewhere he found the strength and with an agonising rasp of raw muscles lifted his head and cleaned the bowl. Immediately he began to feel better.

"I hope you asked, before you took the last of the milk, Alec," commented the other, who Sirius now saw was a grizzled looking man standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin.

"What?"

"Well I mean, feeding it to a half deid dog that's likely going to croak before we get back to Fraserburgh." The man shook his head.

"He's not going to die," muttered Alec, scornfully.

Sirius didn't think he was going to either. He had too much to do, a burning purpose that was nearly all that was left of him, hollow and numb inside as he was. Then gradually the physical cold receded and he slept, a dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.

He was woken up by someone patting him on the head. "Come on, up you get, boy," Alec said, as Sirius opened his eyes. "Get some food."

The beat of the engines had changed, Sirius noticed, and the motion of the boat was different.

Alec snapped his fingers encouragingly. "Up you get," he repeated.

The mention of food worked wonders and Sirius managed to clamber up onto four wobbly legs and followed the fisherman up onto deck. There was land in sight and an afternoon sun was shining out of a sky that was clear and cold and blue. It sparked something inside him that he struggled to name but nevertheless recognised at some level. The cold wind ruffled his fur but it didn't seem so bad with the thin trickle of warmth he felt from the sun.

Alec gave him some fish, which disappeared in seconds. He must have looked hopeful for more as the fisherman laughed and said, "Nah, nah, you'll get more later." Then he stood up in the bow of the boat as it approached a headland with a lighthouse perched on it, eyes half closed against the brightness of the day, drinking in the smells around him, listening to the cries of the seagulls as they swooped over the boat, and the smack of the waves against the bow. As they passed round the headland, to the ever-present smells of fish and diesel were added the distant reek of a Muggle town that grew stronger as they entered the harbour.

The boat slowed down to a snail's pace before finally coming to rest against a quayside thronging with fish dealers and men stacking boxes of fish. As they tied up, a voice came from the bridge, "Alec! Get that dog down below or tie it up out the way while we're unloading."

Alec rolled his eyes. "Aye, all right," he responded over his shoulder. He turned towards Sirius a thoughtful expression on his young face, and then his eyes lighted on some rope. "This should do the trick," he muttered, picking it up.

Sirius watched him uncoil a length of rope and fashioning it into something that looked horribly like a noose and advance towards him. "That's it, just tie you up over here out of the way," Alec murmured.

Sirius panicked. A sudden blast of unreasoning fear at being imprisoned again flooded his mind, and he bolted, adrenaline giving him the strength to leap down onto the dock below.

"Hey!" yelled Alec running to the side of the boat. "Somebody get that dog!"

The men on the quay turned at the shout, amused expressions on their faces. One or two of them made to grab Sirius, but the panic made him fast and he dodged them. He darted out between two piles of fish boxes being loaded into waiting fish lorries parked in the street beside the harbour and almost got himself flattened by one of them as it drove away.

The noise and the smells around him were confusing; there was too much sensation for his brain to process, accustomed as it was to the monotony of Azkaban. The grey stone of the buildings all around him was too similar to that of Azkaban and he skittered panic stricken through the streets until he saw ahead of him the white tower of the lighthouse and made for it. The grim grey buildings gave way to rough grass and he was out under the sky with nothing but the wheeling seagulls and the wind around him. Then, as the adrenaline began to drain away, his legs began to shake and he nearly collapsed. Instinctively seeking any kind of shelter, he staggered to a park bench overlooking the sea and crawled underneath it, hoping no one had seen him.

Once the panic had stilled and he began to think, he knew he had to move, that Alec might come after him, so with the sun falling towards the horizon he slowly made his way back into the streets, pausing to nose amongst an overturned rubbish bin. As he walked he wondered if he dared try Apparating, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. He didn't dare transform so near Azkaban in case anyone saw him because they would undoubtedly be after him and he knew now he'd rather die than go back. In any case he'd probably just end up splinching himself if he tried to Apparate, even assuming he could still remember how, and that wasn't going to do Harry any good.

Keeping to the shadows and side streets he slowly explored the small town. Eventually he found what he realised he had been looking for just off the main road to the south of the town; a service station with a car park full of lorries and trucks, and a cafeteria filling the air with the stench of greasy chips and burgers.

Grateful for the dog's unfussy tastes he filled his belly with scraps from one of the dustbins behind the caff. He had to struggle not to eat too much for his starved system to cope with. Then he went in search of transport.

His discovered his choice was limited, as many of the trucks carried containers, but there was one lorry that might do. He sat on his haunches in the shadow of another truck looking doubtfully at the possibility. It was full of sheep. It wouldn't be very comfortable he knew, but… Then it occurred to him to wonder where it was going. The driver's cab proclaimed in large letters that it belonged to some company from Thurso. But was it travelling to the town or away from it?

There was laughter in the distance as two men walked out of the caff. They paused by the lorry's cab to light cigarettes and stood idly chatting for a few minutes. They were going to a market at a place called Longtown. Well it sounded as if it was in the south. Sirius trotted round to the back of the truck, then transformed just long enough so that he could climb up into the truck, before transforming back. The sheep weren't particularly happy, but then they weren't particularly happy about being in the truck either. He squeezed his way through them to the back and sat down to wait. Almost immediately the engine started up, the lorry gave a great lurch, and they were off.