He gave a shuddering breath that rattled his bones and everyone else's. He had learnt from the best. The Dementors. His endless torment…
"But something kept me standing by that hospital bed, I should have quit but instead I took care of you.
You made me sleep all uneven, and I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you."
He leant back, his head resting against the stonewall, eyes looking up to the heavens as if begging for an answer to the prayers he had given since he was six years old. A single tear escaped, rolling down the hollow cheeks; a memory of a life once lived, and emotion once felt, and a family he once had.
Harrison James Potter.
And tomorrow, the last line to a family he hated, who had hurt him beyond repair, would be snapped. And his last cord that held him up would break.
Thousands of miles away, across an angry grey ocean and beneath a sky the colour of a pain and despair, and under attack from the storms that raged on behalf of the prisoners, the inmates of Azkaban prison began to scream as life was stripped away from them. The maddening glint in their eyes was dull and became duller still as they clawed at their skin, the stone walls, stone floors, iron bars, iron manacles that had long been out of use.
A girl, just eight-years-old stilled, her blank eyes staring up at the endless grey, her lips slightly parted in an ended, silent scream. Tears slipped under heavy eyelashes as the melody washed over her. It was as if he was there, running a hand through her dirty blonde curls, promising her something better, a land where the sun shone and the people laughed.
Her broken, bleeding nails scraped at the rock beneath her as she lay alone, the screams of her world echoing and shrieking around her as they swooped down, just begging for a reason; the kiss is what they wanted as they slowly drank them dry.
Elladora Cynthia Lestrange.
And tomorrow, it would come again, they would come again. An endless cycle with but hours to recover in-between. To imagine being held by her father who was but cells away. To imagine being pulled close by her mother who just out of reaching distance, as she had always had been. As he had always had been. To be stuck in this never-ending hell with only a promise to keep her moving forward.
...
Knockturn Alley played host to all manner of establishments; shady shops, illegal brokers and dealings, inns, brothels, opium dens… Wherever you'd find someone not wanting to be found, the little alley would have it. It was the land claimed by the Dark Creatures otherwise hunted, the Dark wizards and witches with something to hide, the fugitives on the run, the many that needed to acquire something and couldn't afford to do so by legal means. It was the black market of the wizarding world.
A small pub, tucked away in the corner, invited the more solitary and shadowed of characters. The Murder Inn was a place where visitors drunk themselves to death; drowned away the memories and thoughts that plagued them; cured their constant stream of self-destroying intelligence and cynical outlook on life with the un-prescribed drugs- usually brought in from the muggle world; the ones chased out by society with the slandering of names and the targeting of faces. The Murder Inn currently played host to Sirius Black.
The dark haired, silver-eyed man nursed a bottle of Firewhisky; swimming in the thoughts of his past. As a child, he never had the allowance to be a child. He was the heir for the most prominent and powerful family in Britain and many other countries too; the son of Walburga Black, a woman who was difficult to get along with at the best of times; a boy who discarded teachings out of stubborn spite. He went out of his way to 'shame' his family name; to throw away their teachings. A child throwing a temper tantrum.
And oh, how he had paid for refusing them.
No-one ever could look past the surname and the one person he thought had done so betrayed him for the simple fact Sirius wasn't making him look good. It left a bitter taste in his mouth as he thought about it. How he had been let down, after he had given everything.
*FLASHBACK*
"I want you gone Sirius."
A cold, shocked, unsettled feeling formed in his stomach as he stared at his best friend. "I'm sorry?" His voice was evident with disbelief.
James spun around and glared at the abandoned Black with accusing eyes. "You've heard what Harry did! You've seen it. What the papers are saying…" The Lord's eyes hardened. "Having a pet Black does not look good. I got away with it when we were kids but your name precedes you Sirius."
"So you're ditching me because of my family tree?" Sirius snarled. "Guess what, Potter? Your mother was a Black, too! Are you going to disown all knowledge of her?"
"Don't say a word against my mother!" James roared.
They glared at each other in silence for a long time; each with different notions, different reasons for the hatred that passed between them now.
"I thought you were different James," Sirius spat. "That you could look past the surname… But apparently not."
"It's a bit suspicious don't you think?" James sneered, taking a step forward. "You were spending a lot of time with Harry near the end. Always by his side, whispering in his ear… And then this happens. It's hard to look past the surname when you think just like the rest of them."