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"This is ... all sorts of awful in the end...."   
09:25pm 08/10/2004
  Perhaps the only reason I can convince myself that I did in fact find Remus is the fact that I can feel my arm around him, and his haggard breath on my skin, and his weight pulling my body down. Not that he's actually very heavy. If I weren't attempting to walk through Azkaban prison, I could probably carry him easier than Slytherins carry evil in their hearts. I can only wonder how long Remus was kept here... How long did it take for him to get so thin and sickly?

I think I may have taken a wrong turn... or two... or five... I really don't know at this point. I'm just hoping we're getting closer to the exit, even if we're not taking the shortest route.

Keeping up a conversation, or at least a monologue on my side, seems to helping me focus some. That and Remus. Not that focusing is easy. Memories are still pushing forward and distracting me from finding my way out of here. Merlin, I hope that's daylight up there...

This is it, the exit, thank whatever powers are out there. The doors are still hanging open, and sunlight is streaming in. Actual sunlight.

That is, quite possibly, one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

Ron is running down from the ship. Everyone else seems to be onboard. Soon we'll be racing along the water, getting farther and farther from this prison. Ron seems nearly as concerned as I am to get the ship moving. He's also kept a cabin open for us, seeing as Remus needs some serious medical care.

...

...Sirius medical-no, that joke is far too dead. We killed it within the first week of our first year. Lay it to rest, in peace.

The meager distance between me and Azkaban is already showing within my thinking, now that we've cast off. Perhaps, once we pick up speed, and perhaps after I seek some minor medical attention, I ca n get back to as normal as I've been recently. But anything I can do to help Remus comes first. Always.

OOC: Haha, the title is straight out of their dialogue. Silly Remus, saying Sirius shouldn't have to return to Azkaban and crap. Haven't they both been through enough, already?

-Sirius		  
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12:20am 09/03/2004
  It's so cold here. Is it colder than I remember? I can't tell. Perhaps it just feels colder after being numb for so long.

Me and Ron have stepped off the boat. We're walking up towards that prison, that huge maze of terror and despair. I can remember... when I was here, the dementors glided along the corridors, sucking the joy clean out of the air. There was the stench of sickness and blood and waste and rot that even time could not lessen. It's still rampant throughout. But I can't think about that now. I have to act like some prejudiced Muggle, writing off these lives as filth deserving of their suffering. I have to act heartless. I have to act like everything I hate to find who I need more than anything else.

The longer I'm here, the harder it is to ignore the chill the dementors have left. Ron has taken over acting to the guard. We'll knock him out, the guard, first good chance. Then there's no need to walk and ignore the people languishing in the cells, seeing their enervated limbs and knowing that only a short time ago my own limb was twice as thin, and I couldn't tell because I was too far drawn into my own troubles and sorrows from my past, and mulling over my regrets and would have's and should have's and shouldn't haves and what ifs and how could I have ever been so stupids...

It oughtn't be so cold. The dementors are gone, and even if they left their influence in the very stones of the prison, it shouldn't be as strong as it is. Perhaps this intense cold is just the set of memories of this place that I still carry with me. Perhaps I'm merely tormenting myself. Is that why I feel this strange feeling, getting stronger every step I take farther into this hellish place? It continually pulls my memories of Remus to the forefront, and this influence the dementors planted into the very foundations of this place keeps melding different memories together, shifting back and forth. It's confusing, and distressing... It makes it so hard to think straight in here.

Ron's nodded to me. He wants us to knock out this guard now. We have to get rid of him so we can set these people free. His keys are the same ones the dementors carried. It's touch stings, but I can't think about that. It hardly matters, my focus is no where. I can hear sobbing and screaming in the background - I don't know which, if either, is real, and which is memory.

Remus? Yes, I have to find him. He's here, where here really is. But I can see him in my memory too. I see him during our classes back at Hogwarts, scolding me for ignoring the lesson, and then berating me later about the number of detentions I've gotten and the points I've lost, and he says I shouldn't pick on the Slytherins so, they don't deserve it just for being sorted in the house. And then the incident with Snape. I hadn't meant that to happen, I never had, not like that, but Remus had been furious with me. But those are memories. Aren't they? Yes, they are. I need to find the real one, the one here. There's a Remus somewhere here, suffering. That sensation within me is growing, and telling me I'm drawing closer. Where am I? I don't know, but the smell is overpowering, and the screams are deafening. Are people screaming? Maybe they are, but I don't see them scream, only hear. Here? Here I'm helping people out of the cells. One man is so old, I have to practically carry him out of the cell. He's talking about the man in the last cell. The poor man in the last cell, he has a terrible cough and he's sick, and his aunt is sick this month, that's why he'll be gone, but he'll be back in a few days, as soon as his aunt is better, so you needn't worry, and yes, I do promise to help the man in the last cell, that cell at the end, the one that has exactly 758 stones in it, I forced myself to count them once to focus my thoughts onto a task, and I recounted them continually to keep my mind and there are exactly 758 stones, because that's my cell, and the man with the cough is lying with his back to me at the far end, and I don't want to go in, but he needs me to help him walk.

I know I know this voice, it's familiar, very familiar, I heard it all the time before, but never here, no, here was where there were screams and tears and despair, and phantom voices from memories that never comforted, but here is an actual person, and I can feel my hand grip the man's arm, and I have to focus on something, focus on the man, yes, because I have to get him out of here, have to help him to the door, and the man is turning towards me, and he has such a pale, familiar face, and the same tawny hair with gray streaks and those golden eyes...

...

I've done it. I've done it. I found Remus.		  
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10:58am 25/01/2004
  I found my way back to Hogwarts. I even found Ron there, which proved good in the end.

I just can’t believe what has happened. It’s hard enough to believe that I’ve been caught behind a veil for *nine years*. Oh, and in those nine years, Voldemort had been dealt with, and now Muggles were out to kill all wizard kind. You know, the ones we had protected from Voldemort’s followers. Truly grateful people, they turned out to be. I’m just glad I didn’t actually die for their sake, because that would’ve been an awful waste. If I’m gonna die, I’d like it to be for people who deserve it.

And now I know that Remus and Harry are both gone. Disappeared. Taken. Possibly killed... No, Remus isn’t. He’s not killed. Something tells me he isn’t, and damn it, I can’t help but believe it and hope. I don’t know about Harry... I have to hope for him too. I can’t bear thinking that I let them down when they needed me most. Again....

Ron gave me what’s left of Remus’ wand... I don’t know what to do, exactly. Of course, I want to rush over there, find him, and destroy anyone in my way. But that plan hasn’t worked out too well in the past. It seems to backfire quite often. And I... I don’t want to abandon them again...

Ron feels the same though. Says Percy does too. So we have a plan basically formed. It should work... I hope. I just can’t sit here and wait for other people to plan a proper rescue. I can’t think about anyone in that awful place, let alone Remus...

We’ll get everyone out of there, if everything works. Full break-out. And after Azkaban, perhaps we can find Harry too.

Oh, Merlin, why these people? Did they do something wrong I don’t know about? Compared to some of the crap I pulled, they’re saints...		  
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From Beyond the Veil...   
11:35pm 15/01/2004
  I could feel the dirt pressed into the indentions of my paw, and the cool air blowing my ears back and passing in rivulets through my fur.

I could feel. And there was cool air, and smells, and a dark forest all around and billions of stars overhead.

It wasn’t at all like the torture I’d endured, frozen behind that God-forsaken veil.

Perhaps frozen is the wrong word. It wasn’t cold. Or if it was, there was no feeling of cold. There was no feeling of anything. And after that first realization of what had happened, that my body had passed through to where no one was meant to return, the white had blinded, and sight was irrelevant.

It felt as if the veil had enveloped me completely. It hid everything; it sunk into the precipices of the brain and dulled the senses until minute dragged into minute, hour into hour and day into day, and time didn’t matter. Every length of time drew out, and it felt so tiring... How could I escape when thinking itself was dulled and slowed nearly to the point of standing still?

But the veil couldn’t stop sound. It could distort it, and warp it, and sometimes make the sounds impossible to distinguish, but it couldn’t stop the sounds from reaching my ears. It was one thing to hold onto, when my mind drifted helplessly. That at least was something.

That was how I knew. See, after the initial research, and string of failures, investigations on the gateway petered off. Most wizards didn’t frequent the Death Chamber, so the first part of my imprisonment had been endured basically in silence. And it didn’t matter if anyone else was in here with me. My throat was parched dry, and the most I could get out was a soft murmuring of words. I suppose, thinking back, that there might have been a murmuring behind the veil to begin with. But when the sound is incessant, never ending or changing... Well, how can you know its really there? In the end, it seemed exactly like silence, the whole time... however long that had been. And there was no way to reach other persons behind the veil. So why worry whether they were there or not? Not to mention the sluggish thought patterns... it took forever to pull anything coherent together in my mind.

Perhaps that's why it’d taken me so long to piece together what had happened. The Muggles were constantly in the Death Chamber, trying to discover the secret of the gateway, but incredibly wary. That didn’t stop them from discussing current events, though. Messengers would bring news to Muggle researchers, and much of the news of the new war reached my listening ears. And eventually, one thought pieced together in my mind.

How could they? How could they possibly think to hunt our kind down? We, who had fought to protect them, who had given our lives, and our blood, and our futures for their happy ignorance of the war. And even when it ended, and they knew, we never harmed them. Never! And now ... now Arthur...

I’d always liked Arthur. He was a bit odd at times, especially about his Muggle things... In some ways, its a little ironic that those fools took him out to begin with. Perhaps, in some ways, it’s good for him. I’m not sure how he’d like it, fighting the same people he’d studied with that curious fascination... He’d really loved Muggles...

I’m sorry that I can’t be quite so kind to the bastards, Arthur.

Actually, I believe my temper got me out of trouble, yet again. That's partly why I got out of Azkaban. That bastard Wormtail... he may have gotten me in there, but he helped to get me out in the end, I suppose... Perhaps tempers and grudges aren’t so bad.

Two Muggles had been on the other side of the gateway one of those days, or hours, or whatever it was, talking. They were discussing something that had happened, some news of the new war, unaware of me listening the whole time.

“They found a number of those monsters registered here at the Ministry, did you hear?”

“Yea, I did. But I didn’t hear what happened to them. They get sent off with the rest of these freaks?”

“Initially, I’m sure. But now they’re keeping them separate, up on that island in the North Sea. Remember how they’d wince when speaking about it? Aztallie, or something? Damn frightened they are. Good place to keep the abominations.” The other guy laughed.

“Yea, sounds right. Say, I’m going to catch lunch before I lose the chance. You coming?”

“Nah, I want to look at this thing for a bit... I think I might have it figured out you know.” The other man must’ve walked off, but the only thing that concerned me was this other man... I concentrated on any sounds he made; the sound of his feet on the floor, echoing around the room outside, and the mumbles of his voice as he talked to himself helped me to lock my mind onto what was happening.

He was getting closer... I knew he was getting closer. Perhaps... perhaps if he got close enough...

And there, right there in front of me, I saw the touches of color, bringing my sight back into focus. It was so close... so close... It took the whole of me just to reach for it, those paltry inches. But once my fingers grasped, the man had pulled back, and me with his hand. Not that the veil would let him pull me out. It wouldn’t accept the gaping hole I’d leave. So as my mind began to piece itself together, and my muscles remembered the signals that my mind sent and responded with increasing strength, I pulled that Muggle back around. Let him fill the hole. I had ‘abominations’ to go aid.

I fell with my back to the ground, and it hurt. It was cold, and hard, and my muscles suddenly tightened... It took until my mind had collected itself for me to understand. That spell Bella had cast was finally taking effect. In retrospect, it had been like I was moving through molasses. Bella’s spell had obviously been incomplete; the full effect should’ve had me stunned immobile. But I wasn’t going to complain for Bella’s mistakes; nope, not at all. I was perfectly alright with her casting botched spells...

Once I had remembered the counter spell and cast it on myself, I found myself moving easily. It was almost a shock. I tried to move my arm, and it moved, just as it should... it almost seemed odd, strange is it sounded.

After sneaking out of the Ministry (a miracle in itself), I wondered the streets idly as Padfoot, wand held gently in my mouth. Where to go, where to go... I had no idea how long I’d been behind the veil, but I guessed a while. Looking at everything that had happened, a significant amount of time must have passed. I couldn’t be sure that Headquarters was still in use at all. Though this new war was underway, there was no way of knowing if Grimmauld Place was being used by my side. No, perhaps the only place I could go... was Hogwarts.

So I was running to Hogwarts. Living off rats again, and keeping my wand by my side, even if I was a canine and couldn’t use it... I supposed it could have been worse. I could have had dementors chasing me again.

And I still had hopes, strong in my mind. I wanted to see Moony... Where was Remus, now? Had he gone back to his home? Had he found a job again? With the discrimantion, I doubted it. And Harry... I had to find Harry too.

Hopefully someone at Hogwarts knew where they both were.

-Sirius		  
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