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When they arrested Sirius Black, he was still laughing.
Not because he was happy. That part of him had died somewhere between the green flash that struck James Potter and the broken sound tearing out of Hagrid’s throat as he lifted Harry into his arms.
No. He was laughing because the world had suddenly stopped making sense.
Peter.
The name ricocheted through his head like shattered glass.
He had betrayed Lily and James. He had taken their Secret Keeper bond and handed it to Lord Voldemort with trembling hands for excitement and rat-like eyes.
And Sirius had let him.
Brilliant joke, Black.
When the Aurors arrived, they found a destroyed street, blood, thirteen corpses, and Sirius Black standing in the middle of the wreckage laughing like a possessed man.
He did not even try to explain himself.
What would have been the point?
James was dead.
Lily was dead.
Harry was an orphan.
Peter had vanished in an explosion, and everyone believed Sirius had killed him.
Perfect. Clean. Neat.
A perfectly packaged punchline.
They locked enchanted chains around his wrists.
One of the Aurors spat at him.
Sirius laughed harder.
Azkaban smelled like rotten sea water and despair.
The first thing Sirius learned was that the cold there did not enter through the skin.
It entered through memories.
Dementors did not hurt in the ordinary way. They hollowed people out. As though invisible hands reached into their chest and pulled away everything that made a person… a person.
During the first few days, he heard James laughing. The sound echoed brightly through his mind. “Pads, that is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
Then he heard Lily singing softly while making tea.
Then, Remus laughing so hard he doubled over.
Then, Harry crying as a baby.
And then, slowly, the Dementors began to devour everything.
The laughter became echoes.
The voices unraveled.
The faces lost their details.
After a few months, Sirius woke one morning unable to remember the color of James’s eyes.
That was the first moment he truly felt afraid.
Not of prison.
Not of death.
Of oblivion.
Because if he forgot James, then James would really be dead.
Time did not exist in Azkaban.
There was only hunger, cold, and faceless guards gliding past the bars.
Sirius stopped speaking.
The other prisoners screamed often. Some begged. Some laughed into the darkness.
He did not.
He curled himself into the corner of his cell and counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Breathe.
One.
Two.
Three.
Breathe.
Sometimes he transformed into a dog.
Dementors perceived animals less clearly. Emotions became simpler, more distant. Hunger. Sleep. Instinct.
Not happiness. Not guilt.
So Sirius learned to survive by becoming less human.
At first it was a choice.
Then it became a reflex.
Then it became dangerous.
There were days when he woke up unable to remember his own name for several seconds.
Days when the dog felt more real than the man.
But there was one thing the Dementors could never fully take from him.
Peter was alive.
That truth remained sharp and immovable inside his mind.
Not a happy memory.
Not something they could suck away.
A certainty.
I did not kill him.
Peter is alive.
Peter is alive.
Peter is alive.
Sometimes he repeated the words so many times they stopped sounding like English.
The years passed.
Twelve.
Twelve years of black sea beyond the windows.
Twelve years of screams in the corridor.
Twelve years without a real sky.
His body became bones and filthy hair.
His hands never stopped trembling.
But his mind…
His mind stayed hooked onto that single jagged truth.
Peter is alive.
Then came the newspaper.
One of the guards dropped it carelessly in front of his cell.
Sirius barely looked at it.
Until he saw the photograph.
A smiling family on vacation.
A red-haired boy.
And on his shoulder…
A rat.
Small.
Gray.
Missing a finger.
The world stopped.
Sirius crossed the cell so quickly the guard stumbled backward.
His fingers shook against the paper.
No.
No, no, no.
Peter.
At Hogwarts.
Near Harry.
Near Harry.
For the first time in twelve years, something exploded inside Sirius stronger than despair.
Terror.
Not for himself.
For Harry.
Because Peter was not hiding.
He was waiting.
Waiting for his master to return.
And Harry was standing right in the center of the storm.
That night Sirius did not sleep.
He transformed into the great black dog and stayed motionless while the Dementors drifted past his cell without truly noticing him.
For the first time, Azkaban seemed… fragile.
Like an old lock.
And Sirius realized something terrible.
He had not stayed alive for revenge.
He had stayed alive because Harry Potter was still in danger.
The next day he stared out at the sea beyond the window.
Black water.
Waves slashing against the rocks.
Freedom.
He smiled slowly.
It was not a sane smile.
It was the smile of a man who had lost everything except a purpose.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” he murmured to the storm beyond the glass. “But you leave me no choice.”
Then he transformed into the great black dog.
And began planning how to escape from his personal hell.