Chapter Text
It was only a month into the primary school year and it was already a familiar scene. The boy who looks too small to even be there runs from his cousin. The teachers knew the little hooligan liked to tease and bully his cousin Dudley for his weight problem. He would do anything for attention. He even somehow dyed his teacher's hair blue! So sue them they looked the other way as Dudley and his friend Piers chased him out of sight. It wasn't until that afternoon the teachers noticed he never came back. Probably ran home and skived off school. A note was sent home with Dudley informing his parents his cousin would be suspended for a week for his actions.
It wasn't until three days later his family noticed he was missing. Not that they cared. With any luck the little freak died and would never come back, but it was more likely another freak took him back to his own kind. Either way, the Dursleys would never see him again. They reported that a member of his father's family stepped up and took the trouble maker. That was good enough for anyone who would find it suspicious. Almost everyone.
When Albus Dumbledore was informed the boy was missing panic set in. The Death Eaters were not supposed to be able to get near the boy. He couldn't understand what went wrong. He had to play this safe though. It would do no good to insight a mass panic among the population. His trackers showed the boy was alive and healthy, but it could not locate him behind whatever wards they had the boy under. He was obviously dealing with someone powerful and to leave no trace they proved to be careful as well. He couldn't even find the breach in the wards they would have had to have made. It was as if the boy just vanished. If he didn't know any better he would say the boy apparated himself away, but accidental magic wasn't that strong and it wouldn't explain why he couldn't find the boy now. The old wizard sighed. He would have to reinstate the Order of the Phoenix. Someone took Potter and he must be found before the ministry found out he was missing. There was no telling how they would bungle the situation.
Sirius Black was staring at his ceiling. There were 72519 stones in his cell. After several months in this hell hole he had started to count them just for something to do. On his bad days he even named them. He was up to 20 named stones now. The sad part was they were better conversationalists than anyone else he had to talk to. The vast majority of the prisoners were insane and couldn't hold a thought together. The rambling just served to disorient him and that was dangerous in this place. The dementors didn't talk. At least not in a traditional sense.
And so he was stuck talking to Frank, but only because Bill was mad at him. He had spent too much time as a dog this week and Bill thought it was messing with his head. Frank didn't care. He knew being a dog made things easier in this place. Of course Sirius knew this was all in his head. He wasn't crazy yet. Or at least he didn't think so. But going crazy would explain why he didn't remember his trial and it would certainly explain why there was someone else in his cell. He hadn't seen another human in a long time and now he was in the company of a young boy.
That boy looked familiar. It almost looked like James. Obviously he was starting to hallucinate. Azkaban had finally won and he started to laugh.