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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Sirius & Demetrius & Lily Evans
Prisoner 212 is a fresh offering to Azkaban. Life brims in him, loss and fury and grief, a corrosive tide heaving between his lungs. A human soul that ravages and rips at its own self is scintillating nectar to a Dementor.
In Azkaban, the prisoners make their own chains. They lock themselves into the loops of their own thoughts. They can probably break the bars if they try, if they weren’t trapped in the dying circuits of their brains. The waves plug the ears of the prisoners. The sea dribbles into their skulls and fills them with pitch-black weight.
Even if you do somehow leave Azkaban in the end, you may hear nothing else again, nothing but water slamming stone.
Prisoner 212 is to be guarded at all hours of the day. Prisoner 212 is called Sirius Black.
---
Sirius searches for a light source as soon as he is shown into his cell. All new prisoners look for hope. This is why there are cracks in the walls that let in slips of sunlight at certain hours during summer. He lies on the floor, his eyes scrawling a path from one hole to another, tracing a constellation of small futile hopes.
The Dementor outside the cell doesn’t leave its station. It must have been assigned to him. Sirius folds beneath the Dementor’s blind gaze, the way it can draw memories to the surface of his thoughts, until he becomes an unwilling audience trapped behind his own eyelids, watching these underwater dioramas turning slowly without end.
Sometimes the Dementor curls its long, rotting fingers around the bars, and the walls of the cell swarm with frost spiders, their crooked legs snapping and jerking. Terror makes Sirius defiant. He flings a rock at the Dementor.
“Hands off the bars!” he barks. “These bars are mine! You may have the outside, but nothing in here is yours! And this cage is mine!”
He’s a dog after all, a flea-bitten mongrel. Dogs are territorial, aren’t they? Woof, woof.
“Get the fuck off me, Padfoot!” James shouts at him. Sirius is huge, shaggy and sitting on a very horizontal James’ chest. “I don’t want your fleas.”
Sirius bounds off, but not before thwacking James in the face with his tail.
“Was that your arse in my face!”
Sirius flexes his huge hind legs, curves his head into his flank and scrapes at the back of his ears with his ragged claws. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Take my fleas, Prongs. And James slips into the shape of Prongs, kicking at him with his hind legs, ramming bone-heavy antlers at him. Somewhere at the margins, Lily Evans is watching their play with disapproval.
Lily Evans won’t come anywhere near James when he’s showing off, and she’ll refuse to be in his line of sight. Lily Evans is brilliant at organising, at rallying everyone else into a riot, even better than James or Sirius ever can, but the fact remains that Lily Evans has no sense of fun. Everyone says that. Maybe because Sirius tells everyone to say that. Lily Evans is James’ girl. No. Wife. James is Lily Evans’ dog. No. That’s not. Not right.
Sometimes Sirius puts up his arms in surrender and limps off to join Lily Evans who’s always just around the corner. It’s easy to be with her, to stretch out and uncoil all his limbs across the steps of the Entrance Hall. Lily Evans looks at them, at him, at the sprawl of his body, and that’s a great as hell feeling, least until she gets defensive and her lips go thin and she says--
“Fuck off,” Sirius says to the Dementor outside his cell. “Stay out of my head. You’ll never have her.”
He flings another stone at the Dementor.
---
A Dementor doesn’t usually get curious, but this one does, because Prisoner 212 is an odd one.
Sometimes he’s barely there, his presence less human than the other inmates. Other times, the sense of him is so strong, it swells like a storm cloud against the bars. The latter state means the Dementor has a feast.
Prisoner 212 tosses and turns and talks in his sleep. The memories at the surface of his sleep are thick streaks of nauseating colour and they ring like shards of bells, so vivid and so exquisite that they hurt the Dementor to eat. An excruciating banquet is Prisoner 212. And among his nightmares is a name that he repeats over and over again.
And the Dementor wonders: what is a Lily Evans?
---
Lily Evans is a vision, the shock of sight in an eyeless world. Lily Evans is white sharp light, so bright that colour is impossible on her. The world around her develops first, flowering softly into muted greens and hushed blues, colour creeping toward the blinding beacon that is Lily Evans sitting in the middle of Sirius Black’s head. The world percolates into Lily Evans, illuminating first her pasty calves, her robes dusted with sunlight, and the corona of her hair. And then she’s a complete scene by herself, sitting on the grass, one knee pressed into her ribs. There is a book propped up on that jut of a knee, and Lily Evans inclines her head to the right, and says to Sirius, “Can’t you swim?”
“All dogs swim,” Sirius says. “Doesn’t mean they have to like it.”
Lily Evans says nothing and instead turns back to the book – the book – the book – there is something about the book.
“You know why I don’t like swimming?” Sirius presses and Lily Evans has to turn to face him again.
Sirius is afraid of water, that’s why. The press of it, the black weight of it, how it slides into his airways, forcing its way down his throat, cauterises his eyeballs with its liquid burn, bubbles of it getting lodged in his ears. How it folds around his limbs and mangles speech into froth. Reminding him of the time that bitch cousin Bella tried to make him eat the waterweed growing at the bottom of the pond in the gardens of the Black Manor.
“You don’t swim because you’re afraid of water. Just like a rabid dog.” Lily Evans shuts her book. “I saw a rabid dog once. A bowl of water was given to it, and god how it screamed. It ran screaming until it reached a fork where one path led to a creek and the other to a bonfire and it chose the fire without a second thought. Anywhere but water.”
The book cover is taken up by a painting of a man collared in stiff white ruffles, forehead glistening like a wet egg. Above the portrait, the title blazes in the sunlight.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
“Who gave that to you?”
“Mary did. She’s got a trunk full of Muggle literature, and she keeps getting sent more books by her family.” Lily Evans shoves the book at him. “Here, you read it. I don’t have the patience for this.”
He shoves it back at her. “I have less of that.”
She pushes it right back, and they go at this for some time, until the book falls into the measured space between them, the pages open.
“Oh, read it,” Lily Evans says. “Just because.”
“Just because, you say.” Sirius picks up the book and clears his throat loudly. “What revels are in hand? Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?”
Lily Evans shrugs, tips her head backward as if to snap at an overhanging branch.
In front of them is the sprawl of the lake, flat and glazed with light. Small waves swoon upon the pebbles at the shore. There are three figures in the lake. The splashing they make throws up silvery spume and Sirius watches the droplets descend in slow motion, languid and beautiful, like a very untruthful memory. James and Remus are there in the water. As is Peter, the rat.
---
Rats. There are plenty of them around; the Dementor knows the scurry of their feet, the naked slap of their tails against stone. But why is this one special? The Dementor, who never knew it could wonder about anything, now wonders: what is a Peter Pettigrew?
---
It was Peter. Peter did it. That rat. That fucking rat. Peter has fur the texture of lint, blunt chips of teeth for gnawing at ropes, for chewing on bridges, tunnelling into goodwill and secrets and then selling them out. He has a pink-tipped snout that is always convulsing when it meets the knife stroke of a breeze. His rat-head pokes out of his collar and his tie-knot is a lump at the base of his throat. His tail drags on the ground between his legs. He’ll trip on it one day, just like he used to do with his shoelaces. Sirius will make sure to laugh when that happens, like he always has whenever Peter is flat on his face with a bloody nose.
Peter killed Lily Evans and James. The rat did it. Sirius is innocent. Because it was Peter. Peter is the rat. But who let the rat in?
Rats run in the stone walls. Rats chew at the hem of the Dementor’s robes, large crust-furred rats eyeing him from outside the bars. Let them come in. He’ll whip into Padfoot’s form and crush their spines with his teeth. Crunch, crunch. Dogs love bones.
It was Peter. It was Peter. Peter killed them all. Peter's vertebrae and pointy skull crackles beneath Sirius's jaws. He's not even Padfoot but he has a mouthful of rat, of wormwood, not...wormwood. No. Wormtail. Wormtail. Not wormwood. Different things. Wormtail is that rat, Peter. Wormwood is--
“--the most important ingredient if you want to brew the Draught of Living Death,” says Lily Evans, Top Potions Student, as her quill makes bored flicks across Sirius’s Potions essay. “Yes, absolutely correct. That’s wormwood, indeed.”
The fire is crouching down to embers in the grate and only Sirius and Lily Evans are up. Lily Evans, because she claims she’s having trouble sleeping. Sirius, because he wants to fight for territory with Lily Evans. Lily Evans’ fiery self is masked in shadow, and she looks deadly enough to cast a Killing Curse, if only she didn’t have such iron-hard beliefs against it.
“Oh, good. You’ve mentioned the key properties of axolotl gills and Shrivelfig shavings that contribute to the potency of the brew. Oh, look at that: the Ministry wants to limit the primary ingredients of certain draughts to prevent misuse of the Potion among the public.”
“Glad you like it,” says Sirius, lazily. He stretches his legs out, warming his bare feet by the fire.
“It’s brilliant. Ticks all the boxes and answers the question. And then some.” Then, she crunches his essay up and lobs it into the fire. Sirius shouts and leaps up from his armchair to try and fish his work out of the hot logs, but Lily Evans is faster. “Incendio!”
The small fire billows and fills the whole grate and nearly singes his face, before shrinking back into a low flame. The control Lily Evans has over her spellwork is exceptional. His essay is burnt to ashes.
“What the fuck--”
The glare that she directs at him is cold. “I coached Peter last week on this same essay, and what a surprise, you seem to have almost the same phrases, ideas, arrangement of ideas as he does.”
Sirius drops back into his armchair. “Okay. You got me. Peter could have fucking mentioned that you’d helped him.”
“Do better,” she says and then she kills the fire and takes all the heat with her, leaving him in an ice-cold, wintry room.
---
During winter, prisoners in Azkaban die. Some are little more than human fossils, not even bothering to shut their eyes when they exhale their last weak breaths. There’s no sunlight at all during winter. There’s nothing in winter but the winds and the great tumbling bolts of the sea, bludgeoning the fortress of Azkaban.
The Dementor does not enjoy Prizoner 212’s company during winter. His entire being has diminished to the point that it can hardly sense him. Sometimes the remnant of his presence is more animal than human, fewer coherent thoughts, all splinters of residual instinct. This is poor nourishment for the Dementor.
Maybe when the season changes, Prisoner 212 will swell with a little more life again, a little more flavour, a little more sustenance for the Dementor. For the first time in its existence, the Dementor looks forward to summer.
---
Midsummer is when the fairies flit around, causing mischief, pissing love potion on everyone’s faces, making fools of us all. Maybe it was the fairies that did it, that defaced Lily Evans’ book. That’s what Sirius tries to tell everyone.
“It’s not midsummer, Sirius,” Peter points out. Shut up, Wormtail. You don’t get to fucking speak to me. Not after what you did. Not after what you’ll do.
It’s the Shakespeare book that Mary McDonald had gifted her, that she had forced herself to read all year. (But really, she had forced Sirius to read it aloud to her all year and add some ridiculous dramatics to the already absurd plot. They are both so sick of this Shakespeare bloke, though Lily Evans has at least a measure of respect for him.)
James is livid about the book. “Who did this?” he demands, shoving the book under the noses of each Gryffindor gathered in the Common Room.
EVANS IS A DEMENTOR
The words have been scrawled in a luminous green slash across the cover, decapitating the portrait of Shakespeare with indelible ink, just below those irritating ruffles.
EVANS IS A DEMENTOR
“Oh, leave it,” says Lily Evans, looking positively embarrassed. “I don’t care that much.”
Hurt flickers across James’ face at Lily Evans’ dismissal.
Sirius sweeps in to the rescue. He lands a broad-handed slap on James’ shoulder. “Nobody in Gryffindor would do such a thing to Prefect Evans. We’re a fairly sane lot here. I mean you’ve seen how bloodthirsty she can get distributing detentions and we’d all be pissing ourselves before crossing her.”
“But Lily said she hadn’t brought the book out of Gryffindor Tower for the last few weeks. Someone in here has done this to her.”
Sirius changes his note. “Are you suggesting this is a whodunit?”
“Nobody’s done anything to me,” says Lily Evans loudly.
The audience is diluting; the other Gryffindors drift back to whatever they had been doing. Lily Evans heads for the back of the Fat Lady’s portrait. “Forget about it. But thanks anyway, James.”
Later, she catches up with Sirius, strolling all by his lonesome away from the Potions class he should be attending. She’s got that book with her, and the green writing on it blazes accusingly at him.
“Hullo, Lily Evans,” says Sirius, flicking hair away from his face.
“So why am I a Dementor?”
Sirius feels stupid now. That hadn’t been a very clever insult he’d come up with. All he wanted was to take his rage out on her for destroying his essay. “Don’t overthink it. Just what you remind me of.”
“Yeah? Go on, then. Tell me. In what way do I remind you of a fucking Dementor?”
He takes the book from her and flips open to a page. “Did you see this part?” He clears his throat loudly. “And though she be but little, she is fierce. Remind you of someone?”
Lily Evans doesn’t find it amusing. She snatches the book back and reads the passage that Sirius had circled in the same luminous green ink. She mouths the words silently as she reads, and Sirius can trace the phrases in his own head (he read the whole thing, of course, one night when everyone else was asleep but him, and he was so fucking bored). She reads the book and he reads the shapes of her vowels, the way her lips flute and splay, and imagines her clear but murderous enunciation in his head. O! When she’s angry she is keen and shrewd.
“Oh, you’re so clever,” she says. “But that doesn’t explain how I’m a Dementor. You never had any logical progression of ideas, not even in your essays. Your thoughts jump everywhere. You make no sense.”
Sirius is already tired of her. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But then again, maybe you just suck the light and life out of everything. Like a fucking Dementor.”
She stops suddenly and jams A Midsummer Night’s Dream into his torso and his arm crooks automatically to catch it. “Take that back.”
Sirius raises his palm in apology but it’s too late. Lily Evans is sucked away, disintegrating in a tunnel that opens between them, stretches her away into filaments of light.
“Evans,” he calls weakly. “Come back.”
But he doesn’t really want her to come back, not really. Because if she does, who is to say she won’t stride up to him, an incandescent spectre with a sharpened quill in her hand? She’ll hold him down, and the quill tip will be dripping green ink as she scrapes words across his eyeballs, searing his retinas with her rage.
EVANS IS A DEMENTOR. EVANS IS A DEMENTOR. EVANS IS A DEMENTOR.
---
The Dementor is listening to a bedtime story. Well, that is what Prisoner 212 calls it, anyway.
“It’s a hell of a story,” Prisoner 212 tells the Dementor. “There’s two blokes in love with one girl; there’s another girl with no blokes in love with her. Plus a bunch of pixies or something.”
The Dementor stares into his cell. Prisoner 212 is crouching in the far corner.
“One of the blokes in the story is called Demetrius. He went and fancied some other bloke’s girl and stirred up a shitload of trouble. I like him. Maybe you can be him, because everyone hates his shit-stirring guts.”
He pauses in the telling of his curiously deranged tale. The Dementor can hear his teeth clicking against each other, the faulty mechanism of his jaw trying to articulate intelligible speech. The cold of the Dementor is affecting Prisoner 212’s ability to speak.
There are people in the cell beside 212. This puzzles the Dementor because they aren’t real people, not solid living bodies that it can reach, but ragged extensions of 212’s soul.
Prisoner 212 knows they’re there too, and sometimes he hates them, sometimes he whines at them. “Lily Evans,” his voice cracks. “You’re not really here. Go look for James. Please. It was Peter. You did this to them, Peter. We did this to them.”
Sometimes Prisoner 212 addresses the Dementor. “If I’m Sirius, then you’re Demetrius. Demetrius the Dementor, nobody loves you.”
The people in the cell move. Are they ghosts? The Dementor cannot tell what is real and what isn’t. But it can tell what is nourishment and what isn’t, and at the moment, nothing in this cell will appease its appetite in any way.
“In the book Demetrius ends up with...someone. I forgot her name. Who cares. But here in this cell, Demetrius, there’s only you and me,” Prisoner 212 howls to the Dementor. “You and me. Sirius and Demetrius. And Lily Evans. Lily Evans and you and me. Who’s the odd one out? Here’s a hint: she was a vixen when she went to school!”
---
In school, everything was grand. Out of school, Lily Evans got married.
What a pity they don’t allow marriages in three or Sirius would definitely have married them both, Lily Evans and James, squeezed himself between them, wedged them apart, clung on to their ankles sobbing like a lonely stray, don’t go, make room for old time’s sake, take me along, I’ll hold us all up together, keep our secrets together.
Oh? Lily Evans might say, looking down, arched-eyebrow at him. Glorious grisly sunshine in her hair. What can you offer us, Sirius?
What can you offer?
He can offer--
Fleas.
Rats.
Plagues.
Peter.
A plague of Peters.
“I love you and James,” he tells Lily Evans, the bravest he’s been, and the latest he can manage. “But I love James more.”
“I just love James,” counters Lily Evans. “You shouldn’t be telling me this kind of stuff now.”
“Anyway, it’s better this way and we know it. He’ll come after me. Not Peter.”
“I don’t want Peter here.”
Sirius opens his eyes and sees a bleak blue fracture of sky through the walls. Peter is dead, Sirius meant to break his bones and open up his throat and in terror Peter shat himself, shattered himself, took the street with him and left Sirius behind, intact, starving, hollow, waiting for the inept Ministry dogs to come round up this stray. One day he’ll have fur snagged in the crevices between his canines. Flea-infested fur or long bloody strands of hair. Hunger is a worm wriggling in his gut.
---
Demetrius the Dementor is starving. Starved of love. Starved of food. Demetrius the Dementor wants Lily Evans, the light of Lily Evans, the cloud and shadow of Lily Evans, the kiss and shearing scream of Lily Evans.
Prisoner 212 has possessed Demetrius the Dementor, stolen its ability to feed, starving it from the inside. What is it about 212 that won’t yield?
A Dementor shouldn’t have a name, is not a person, only has a blind sense for that which will sustain it, which are those with souls. And yet Prisoner 212 calls the Dementor Demetrius, which must be as good a name as any other, because what name should a Dementor even be called? What’s in a name and what does it mean to be named? What does Lily Evans mean? The repetitive sounds that spew from Prisoner 212’s lips must all be names: James, Peter, Lily Evans. Wormtail, Shakespeare, Padfoot, Prongs.
Prisoner 212 has been ranting about the midsummer story for years, and now Demetrius the Dementor cannot stop hearing its cadences, the spectres it calls up, the drivel of it.
Demetrius the Dementor is weakening. Prisoner 212’s soul gapes open, and colder than the essence of Dementors is the clarity and the emptiness of his core. Nothing to nourish a Dementor there.
“What’s the matter?” Prisoner 212 taunts the Dementor. “You seem rather bleak today!”
And other times:
“What’s the matter again? My soul not refined enough for you? Just your luck to be assigned to me all these years, huh! Beggars can’t be choosers.”
And yet again:
“What’s the matter now, Demetrius? Eat me, Demetrius!”
But everything changes when the officials with bowler hats and papers come to visit.
Demetrius the Dementor is more interested in them than Prisoner 212. After all, these are fresh quivering souls, blanching in its presence. If only it could reach out and seize them and kiss them, oh, kiss them deeply, draw the stars of their souls out through their mouths, slurping strands of blindingly sweet nutrition from them. Oh, kiss them deeply like Prisoner 212 might kiss Lily Evans, if he could, in that midsummer story of endless, endless hunger. If he could.
If only it could-- if not for the silver Patronuses surrounding the official men.
“May I have the paper if you’re done with it, Minister?” says Prisoner 212.
And when the Minister, astonished, passes the newspaper through the bars, Prisoner 212 says: “And I don’t suppose you have on your person any other reading material that you might surrender to a man of Azkaban with too much time on his hands?”
And when the Minister shakes his head, even more nonplussed, Prisoner 212 sighs and closes his eyes, mockingly. “Such a pity, Minister. I haven’t read in years, you know. I’m rather fond of that Muggle author, Shakespeare.”
Not as though the Minister of Magic has a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
Barking, the Minister might say later. Twelve years and still clear, so clear-headed that he must be barking!
And Prisoner 212 might reply, Woof, woof!
---
Woof, woof, is he just a rabid dog, then yes he is just a rabid dog, scared of water, scared of dreams, but he'll overcome this disease in his brain, he'll plunge into the sea, he'll drink it all, salt and all, what of those marooned at sea who drank salt water and started seeing dreams? Hallucinating? What the fuck. What the fuck. Lily Evans in the paper. Dripping red hair, freckles, showing her teeth like a winning hand of cards, eyes green as guilt, get out of my brain Lily Evans, Lily Evans--
Get a grip, says Lily Evans, hand on her hip, blowing her dragon-breath in his face, and see what you’re supposed to see.
Sirius holds the paper to the dribble of light from a hole in the wall. There’s not an army of Lily Evanses grinning back at him after all. Just a family. Red-headed family. Pyramids in the backdrop. Whatever. Nobody he cares about.
See what you’re supposed to see, Padfoot.
Again the red family and red sands behind. None of them he knows. Except. On the boy’s shoulder. He folds the paper, and folds and folds and folds away all the taunting faces and the red. Folds until he has a tiny scrap. A chewed-off shoulder. And perched upon it, sleeping, haloed in sunshine
is
the
fucking
rat
Wormtail. So you got away. Wormed yourself out of my paws, outsmarted a rabid dog, you fucking rat.
Sirius leaps to his feet, lies back down, paces in rage. All the cold control he’d exercised, the desolate years, vast coils of time wheeling around this cramped cell funnels out of him. He’ll split his ribs if he must, flatten himself into nothing but a hide that can slither through cracks in the walls so he can follow the patter of rats and eradicate the vermin. Peter, oh, Peter. You wait.
He jams himself through the bars. The bars hold him. Woof, woof. His arse still in the cage, his head out there, growling at freedom. Not thin enough. Not hungry enough. Well and truly trapped. In the end it’s Padfoot that betrays him as well. He bucks back and forth but he has too many bones, too many useless organs holding him back, too much rage, he’s too full, he’s got too much in him, he’s--
---
--bloated with nourishment for a Dementor is the burning soul of Prisoner 212. All of a sudden his presence fills the cell, stronger than anything Demetrius the Dementor has ever feasted upon.
And what’s better, Prisoner 212 is now within reach.
Demetrius the Dementor swoops forward and seizes Prisoner 212 by his-- snout? Whatever his shape, the creature within is a seething soul, a long-awaited meal. It drags Prisoner 212’s face toward it. Prisoner 212 bites off the Dementor’s scabrous fingers and spits out flakes of decay, but it feels nothing. Only the pull of a kiss, only the stab of a soul, only the flame of summer.
---
So this is how the midsummer story ends. With a kiss. Fitting ending for a tortuous tangle of romances.
Not now. I’ve got unfinished business. Go away, Demetrius the Dementor, I’ve got rats to catch.
The Dementor’s hole of a mouth draws closer. Rattling breath. Cold stubs of fingers which Padfoot had bitten off to no effect force his jaw open.
Not now, let me go, I’ll give you someone else? How about that? I’ll give you Wormtail. I’ll give you Peter Pettigrew! He’s full of terror. You can smell his terror a mile away! How about that! Wouldn’t you like to eat that?
But he knows that Wormtail has nothing compared to him, who has been taunting the Dementor for years, starving it, prey just beyond reach.
Beside him, Lily Evans reaches out to him and wrenches his gaze away from the deadlock of the Dementor’s grip. I’m sorry, Lily Evans. Forgive me, Lily Evans.
Lily Evans runs a thumb over his icy lips. She peels off the lips from his mouth. She peels the mouth off his face.
Sirius, she says, Lily Evans isn't here.
Forgive me Lily Evans.
He opens his eyes and screams: Lily Evans! Take Lily Evans instead of me!
---
Lily Evans, as it turns out, is a vision, the shock of sight in an eyeless world. Lily Evans is white sharp light, so bright that colour is impossible on her.
Demetrius the Dementor blanches, but Lily Evans is neither Patronus nor charm. Suddenly, Prisoner 212 is nothing but coal and gritty ash, nothing compared to Lily Evans.
Oh, the torment of Lily Evans. It must have her. It must have Lily Evans. It must, it must, anything to have her.
Demetrius the Dementor releases Prisoner 212’s face, grips the two bars that trap the dog and pushes them apart, just the tiniest fraction, just so it can dislodge Prisoner 212 and knock him out of the way and reach for Lily Evans and at that, Lily Evans leaps at it, clawing and howling, tears her burning-match fingers through its ribs, fumbling in that rotten hollow where a heart might sit, and pulls it apart and pulls herself in, into its core, and with the scorching blaze of midsummer, ignites.
The iron bars scream and the dog is out, streaking through the passageways, up the stairways to the roof and into the night.
---
At the edge of the roof of Azkaban crouches a dog. At the foot of the fortress, the sea shreds itself on the walls over and over again.
Beside Sirius, is Lily Evans. Maybe a wraith. Maybe a sliver of Sirius’s soul, levered free by the Dementor.
Still afraid of water, Padfoot?
I’m sorry, Lily Evans, says Padfoot the Dog.
Lily Evans doesn’t exist. I got married. I’m Lily Potter now.
He reaches a shaking hand toward her and she disappears.
Azkaban’s alarms begin keening. Sirius has no idea what happened to the Dementor, and he sure as hell won’t be sticking around to find out. He leaps off the roof and the sea rises to catch him and snuff him out in its starless crush. Years ago, he would have feared it, but now, all he can see is a trail etched through the waves, and he’ll follow this until it leads him right to the source of his feverish, blistering hunger.