Shades of Black

Author's Note: Yes, I'm well aware of how long it's been since I updated this story. My main reason (other than working on other stories and real life) is that I was trying too hard to make the original "Part VI" of this story work. However, no matter what I was doing to it, it just wouldn't work. I couldn't really expand it without it losing the quality that it originally had. As such, I'll now be posting that sixth part - Innocent - in my drabble collection, Bits and Pieces, sometime in the future. This, however, is the original "Part VII" - with a bit of the sixth part worked in at places. So, now that I've delayed an update on this story for long enough, I'll quit rambling and let you get to the story. I present for your reading enjoyment, Wake Up.

~**~

Wake Up

By ForeverSirius77

~**~

"Dumbledore said the Fidelius Charm was the best option," muttered James, his hair still soaking wet from encountering the storm outside. "He said we should probably cast it soon, and then we started talking about who to choose as a Secret-Keeper ..." James trailed off, but his meaning was clear.

"You want me to be your Secret-Keeper," said Sirius. It wasn't a question; he knew he friend too well for there to be any doubt in his mind, now that he'd heard James's story, why he had needed to talk to him that night and had braved a storm to do so. There was also no question in regards to what his answer would be.

"We trust you," James said simply. "Out of everyone, you're the one that Lily and I trust the most, and you're Harry's godfather as well. Padfoot, we -"

"Of course I'll do it," Sirius interrupted, staring at his friend all the while. "You don't have to try and convince me, Prongs. Brothers look out for each other, after all."

A loud crash of thunder tore the lone man from his thoughts - but whether or not he was grateful for such action, he could never really know. Sometimes, the realms of his mind were much more pleasant than dwelling in reality; sometimes, he was not grateful in the slightest when he was torn from the running threads of memories in his head.

His thoughts had been all over the place within the past days ... or was it weeks? Months? Surely not that long, though he would easily admit that keeping track of something as insignificant as the passage of time - such a normal thing that was, time - was not very high on his list of priorities. Being away from a clock was a minor discomfort, insignificant to him where he was. What did it matter to him if two weeks had passed, rather than two days? Or even if it had been months, why did he care?

What good would that knowledge be to him?

Hours, days and nights, they all bled into each other in here. Differentiating between them, keeping track of them, did not matter. Not when there were other, far more important, far more necessary, things that a person should keep track of. Losing the knowledge of how much time had elapsed since the beginning was a price that he would definitely pay to keep a hold on everything else.

His mind. His heart. His soul.

Yet with every passing ... well, stretch of time, such a grasp grew harder and harder to keep.

He could feel his grasp, tenuous at best, slipping all of the time. Like trying to cling to a railing, the smooth, wet metal causing his fingers to slip and slide. Constantly, he had to re-grip it, his hands changing position each time. Trying to pull himself up - away from the danger of falling and back to the safety of solid ground - was not even a consideration; it was all that he could do just to keep himself from falling. Just to maintain that grip.

He could not let that grip fail.

But that will, that focus on such a single, important goal, kept being hounded, tested. They wanted him to fail. And they waited for it - for they knew that everyone, no matter who they were, no matter how much they fought to maintain their grasps, always failed in the end.

There was only one result.

Failure was all that awaited; success was impossible.

Such was the way that it was. Always.

Columns of smoke rose to the sky, their dark colour blending well into the night's blackness. They blotted out the few, twinkling stars that tried to shine tonight. Orange flames flickered as they licked at the wood of what once was a large, beautiful home. The white walls were now a charred black; the polished silver doorknob was spotted in ash from the remains of the front door.

He paid little attention to his bike as he got off; his focus was purely on the sight in front of him. Just hours ago, the house had been standing unharmed ... There had been no fire, no smoke, no debris.

This could not have happened. Not to this house. Not to these people.

But the body that was sprawled on the ground just inside the doorway was not a hallucination. It was not a nightmare that his mind was assaulting him with; no matter how much he wished otherwise, the dead body of his best friend was reality.

Just like the sight of the woman he loved like a sister, the wife of his best friend, lying on the floor of the nursery, was real.

Both unmoving. Neither breathing. Both still and cold.

Another rumble of thunder broke him from the grip of that particular memory. And he clutched to that imagined railing, securely readjusted his slipping grasp. With every memory, with every assault, it became harder and harder for him to keep that all-important hold on that rail. So hard ... and he was so exhausted.

The tiredness stretched throughout his body, a simple movement of the head or lifting of an arm feeling like too much exertion. He had never been this tired, never been this drained or felt this weary. But it was an exhaustion that couldn't be solved by the simple solution of sleep. No, even if it was possible for him to gain hours of uninterrupted, pure and blissful slumber here, that wouldn't erase this feeling of complete exhaustion that wrapped him in arms of false security.

Gaining physical sleep wouldn't help him to gain strength to maintain that imperative grip on everything that mattered.

The memories continued to flicker in his mind, sometimes vividly, sometimes faintly. They whispered to him, reminded him ... even seemed to scream to him at times. Those memories, their assaults helped along by the demonic creatures floating down the dark corridors, wouldn't let him forget. No matter how hard he tried to push them aside, tried to keep them away so as to keep his grasp on the rail, the memories - and the creatures - and even the prison itself - wouldn't let him forget.

But no matter how much his grip slips with each assault, he always came back; his hands always found that new, secure position for a time.

Until the next assault threatened to dislodge it once again, and the entire cycle, the entire battle, continued.

The sound of the storm raging outside the thick, stone walls was quickly joined by that of a few screams coming from others in the cold, dark, hellish prison. Those sudden shrieks and cries, those yells of the condemned, echoed up and down the corridors. They were louder than the thunder, more varied in their sounds than those of nature.

When the screaming started, it was at those times that he thought he preferred the memories, the mixture and rambling of his mind's thoughts. He desperately tried to block the shouts from his ears, even now; in the beginning - however long ago that was - his body had responded instinctively to the sudden sound. Like a child, his hands had fallen over his ears, feebly - and foolishly - wishing that such a simple action would cause all sounds of the outside world to disappear. Yet now, his body barely responded - at least, it barely made any physical movement. Just eyes sliding closed and the mind taking over.

He kept telling himself that he wasn't there - that everything that had happened in the past - Days? Weeks? Months? - was nothing but a nightmare. A vivid nightmare, yes, even a vicious nightmare, but it was still just a nightmare nonetheless. And he was bound to wake up from it soon. Nightmares always ended, no matter how horrible they were, after all. He would wake up.

But he never did.

"You betrayed them." He could barely recognise his voice as he spoke; yet his mind registered the fact that it was himself who had spoken. The tone was low, quiet; he was muttering, but he was also speaking urgently. He felt like he'd run for hours; he was out of breath, but he had to say these words. Yet the words weren't coming - at least, not like he wanted them to come. He knew what he needed to say, but not how he needed to say it.

There were too many thoughts swirling in his head, each one viciously fighting the others to be the one in the forefront, the main thought. Emotions coursed through his blood, anger and hatred battling on one end, while sadness and guilt dwelled on another part; he felt disgust for the man in front of him, and he felt numb with everything that'd happened in just the past few hours.

He couldn't think, he couldn't focus on any one thing; too many different areas were vying for attention, for his focus.

And then the shout came, all seven words of condemnation.

"Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?"

It was not the storm, now, that separated the man from the deluge of his memories, from the vivid replay of that morning. No, this time, it was the quiet - yet still echoing - sound of footsteps walking up the long stone corridor just outside the doorway of his cell. The sound, so normal and expected in the real world - the world outside of these walls - brought him back into reality far more easily than any of the storms' rumbles had done, any screams of the other prisoners had accomplished in doing.

The sounds of normal human footfalls were rarely heard in these corridors. Their presence was, as far as he was concerned for the time being, a point of interest.

That interest, his curiosity - for he had always been a curious boy - temporarily overpowered those all-encompassing feelings of exhaustion. His tiredness was swept aside for the time being, and he found the strength to move closer towards the iron bars that kept him locked in the small cell. He, like everyone else trapped within the prison's walls, rarely approached the doorway. He, like everyone else, never wanted to be closer to the cloaked demons than was possible.

And the back wall of the cells was as far as any of the prisoners could get from them. Few rarely left their places under the high windows to venture closer to the barred door.

But he was interested now, curious. The sound of humans walking past the numerous, dark cells was different; it broke up - at least temporarily - the monotony of the prison.

He watched through the bars, his eyes trying their best to pierce through the deep shadows of the corridor beyond, and he listened, straining his ears for the sounds of the footsteps as they came closer. He concentrated on those sounds, the sounds of people's feet hitting the ground ... and the clinking and clanging of chains. And he knew, now, what this was, why there were people in the prison's corridors today.

New prisoners.

Still, though, his interest did not wane, and he remained next to the bars to watch the group as they came closer. For a reason he had never really understood, new prisoners were rarely brought in by the Dementors themselves; rather, Aurors, using a combination of magic and enchanted chains, escorted convicts to the cells - and only then, when the prisoners were in their new 'accommodations' would the demons get to take over.

So, he still watched. He watched as the group appeared at the far end of the corridor, heard one of the Aurors unlocking the doorway that led to this particular block. The sounds grew louder as the people walked further down, away from the doorway and towards his own cell. (He figured that they were heading towards the other end of the block; there were a few empty cells down there, not having housed an occupant since the past prisoner had died.)

The group would have to pass him to get there.

And he was curious to see just who had been condemned to spend their lives on this miserable rock.

But when the group of Aurors and prisoners finally came into his sight, however, he wanted nothing more than to be out of sight. He wanted to be away from the bars, where he was clearly viewable, and hidden back in the dark shadows, where his identity couldn't be determined. Just as he had found the strength to move closer to the doorway, he once again overcame the exhaustion to push himself into that far corner of his cell. That dark, hidden, safe corner.

He did not want the woman on the other side to see him. He did not want her focus drawn to him, did not want to hear her voice. He was not a fool; he knew that she was, more likely than not, fully aware that was held in one of the cells she was walking past. And in normal circumstances, he would not have minded in the slightest getting into a fight with the dark-haired, pure-blooded witch on the other side of the bars.

Yet these circumstances were anything but 'normal'. He also hadn't seen her in years, and was in no hurry to bring about a family reunion - especially in the current setting, with the current company.

No, that reunion - if it ever happened - could wait. It could wait until the apocalypse, as far as he cared.

So he remained back in the dark corner, his form hidden in the shadows, and he made sure his grip was firm on that imagined railing. That all-important grasp that he would not allow to fail. Ever.

And he waited for the memories to come, knowing that the demons would be in the corridors soon - and with the demons came the assaults. The cycle would just continue; the monotony would return.

Yet he continued hoping all of the time that the nightmare would end.

That he could just wake up.

~**~

Author's Note: And there you have it. The three italic scenes - the flashbacks - came from some of my other stories, or were inspired by the writing in the other stories. (The first came from Brothers, while the last one came from the previous part in Shades of Black, entitled, He Laughed.)

Also, since I haven't done this on any of the previous parts, I'd like to thank those of you who've reviewed this story since the first part was posted. So, a thank you to Anastasia, Lahiraya13, Snuffles7, Marauderwitch, and DragonDi for reviewing.

So, a big "Thank You" to you all; I really appreciate it. And to everyone else, thanks for reading, and don't hesitate to share your thoughts on this part, as well as the story as a whole.

~Megan