I try to fight. It doesn’t work. My friends are dead, it was basically my fault. I’m being thrown in the most dreaded place of Wizards there is, because my supposed friend was “murdered”. By me. Along with about thirteen Muggles. But here’s the thing “ I didn’t do it. Which is why I’m fighting. They all think that I’m this huge supporter of Voldemort, but they couldn’t be more wrong. But so far it isn’t working. The Dementors aren’t bothered by me. They just keep going.
I am thrown into my cell. Thank you, Peter. Thanks for being a great friend.
I shout at them for a while, calling them all the names under the sun. Loudly. But it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to do anything about me. They’ve already taken my wand. My friends are dead or evil. Or, in one case, they think that I’m evil. Which isn’t true. I’m innocent. Okay, I’ve never been innocent. But I certainly didn’t do what they think I did.
Eventually I wear myself out. I sit back in this damp, awful cell, and close my eyes. Something tells me that I should start getting used to boredom.
“Hi,” a female voice says, making me jump. “I’m Mistry.”
He tries to fight. They always do. I did. But he is no match for them, of course, my new neighbour. They never are. I wasn’t. I am oddly entranced by him from the beginning. His face is mucky, he is in a terrible fury. But what I do see of him, I find absolutely ... captivating. He must have been a looker before he was put in here. Probably went through girls like a whale goes through krill. Wow, that was pretty random.
When he is finally forced into his cell, he shouts at them for a long time. If I was a lady, and hadn’t been stuck in hell for a year and a half, then I might have been offended by his language. But I’ve never been a lady, and I have been stuck in hell for a year and a half. I’ve heard it all, said it all. I should be out of my mind by now, after so long, but I have a trick to keeping your sanity. Just two words.
When he stops yelling, he leans back against the wall. Poor guy has exhausted himself. If he’s as innocent as he kept loudly insisting, I should probably do my part to keep his mind intact. He might even end up as a kind of friendship. Although, I doubt it. The Dementors suck any good feeling out of the place. Still, I could always tell him my name.
“Hi,” I say, and he jumps. “I’m Mistry.”
The speaker is a woman about my age. Her face is moderately clean, but her long brown hair is matted, and her clothes grubby. But her eyes shine out, a sparkling hazel colour.
“Sirius,” I mutter.
“Nice to meet you, Sirius. Would you like a handy hint?”
Who is this woman? “Uh, sure.”
“If you really are innocent “ and of course, only you know that “ then keep telling yourself it. Just those two words, ‘I’m innocent’, over and over. The Dementors won’t take it away.”
I am intrigued by this. “Why not?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly a happy thought. But if you keep reminding yourself, you won’t go mad. Or, at least, I haven’t. Not yet, and I’ve been here one and a half years.”
“You’re innocent?” I ask. It doesn’t surprise me. She doesn’t have the voice of a killer. Even though she’s in here, the worst place in the world, her voice seems to have remained friendly. And her eyes light up when she talks. Or maybe just when she talks to me.
Sirius. His name is Sirius. It’s a good name. You could go far with a name like Sirius. As far as Azkaban, even. And that’s a long way. Yes, this is the kind of thing that floats around my head now and then. The thoughts don’t make me happy. They just occupy my time.
Even though I’ve managed to stay sane “ it’s quite an art, really “ I wouldn’t say that I was very normal to begin with. As a girl, I used to dream of rugged looking guys with stubble, and leather jackets. Who had an Irish lilt in their voice, and a secret love of ballroom dancing. Don’t ask why, I’ve never even met anyone of that description. Maybe that’s why it appealed to me. Anyway, as it turned out, the guys I ended up with were losers. Except for one, I think. But I don’t remember his face, or anything about him. But when I go to sleep, I hear someone whispering a name in my ear, over and over. I feel calm in my dreams, but when I wake up, the name escapes me again. We must have been really happy if the Dementors took away everything I knew about him.
I wonder if Sirius ever had a girlfriend? Well, of course he did. He’s so damn good looking, even with all that grime on his face. And that hollow look in his eye, already. It usually takes a few days for that to become prominent. I don’t think he took my advice.
“What did they say you did?” he asks me, and I jump. That’ll teach me to do exactly the same thing to him.
I thought that I had better ask he why she was in here. She had been sitting there, her brow creased, obviously deep in thought. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have disturbed her. But I wanted to hear that voice again, that friendly sounding voice. And I hoped that she would return the question. Because, really, I need to talk to someone. She looks surprised that I spoke up. As if she had been thinking about me seconds before. If James was here, and I’d said that, he’d have rolled his eyes, and told me that I wasn’t the centre of everybody’s universe, just because they happened to glance in my direction. But James isn’t here. He never will be. Which I’m glad about, really. That he’ll never have to come here, I mean. Because he’s dead.
The word suddenly roars in my mind. He’s dead! He’s DEAD! It won’t stop. I cover my ears, and screw up my eyes, but the noise gets louder. As I scrunch myself up in a ball, something seems to be overriding the storm.
“You’re innocent! Stop it, you’re innocent! Sirius, don’t!” I look up. The words are coming from Mistry. There are tears sparkling in my eyes, and she has her fist clenching one of the bars that separates us. I don’t think she realises. But the noise has stopped. It’s stopped. Everything’s calm again.
If she hadn’t jolted me out... Who knows how long I could have been stuck like that for?
That poor thing. To have an attack like that so soon ... whatever happened to him must be really weighing on his mind. It must be bad.
Telling my own story might help him. It might even help me.
“When I was at Hogwarts, I was happy. I think. Nothing from that time haunts me, and I don’t remember it being terrible. But then when I got a job, as a literary magazine editor, I started attracting these really awful guys. Like I was this big loser magnet. I remember them quite clearly. But then that seemed to stop. I think I met the right person. Whenever I think about it, I get this feeling, but that’s all. And then, most nights I hear a name being whispered over and over, in my ear, and I feel calm. I’m sure there was someone.
“Like I said, I was a literary magazine editor. We weren’t huge, but we had a good, stable ground. But then these rumours started flying around. There was an argument, about some legal thing or another, and it got brutal. And then there was an interview in a section of the Daily Prophet with the people on the other side of the dispute. I was labelled as a Death Eater, and everyone was suddenly up in arms about it all. The Ministry searched my house, and found “evidence”. I wasn’t even told what it was. They were so desperate to look like they were doing something about You-Know-Who, that they didn’t give me a trial. Before I knew it, I was in here.”
Her story is completely believable. In fact, I think I do recall something about a magazine editor being arrested, but there has been so many arrests, and deaths, and disappearances, that eventually they all clump as one. Her story is a scary one. At least there was convincing evidence for my arrest, even if it wasn’t true.
I find myself telling her my story, too. Not all of it, just the brief version. The one about Secret-Keepers being switched last minute, it all being a mistake, my friends being dead. I also describe my childhood. How terrible it was, being an unwanted son. Mistry listens very well. We both sit in reflective silence once I am done.
But the roaring in my head doesn’t return while she is there. I just sit, and watch a leak in the ceiling drip rhythmically.
I’m not sure whose story is more screwed up. That I would be put in here for something I clearly didn’t do, or that one of his best friends could turn against him like that. I notice that he is calm once he has finished. It makes me calm, too. Maybe things might get ... more tolerable while he is here. We both know that we’re innocent. We both know how to stop ourselves from going mad, but I’m not sure it’s quite sunk in to him, yet. Give it time.
Every day, we are allowed to walk around a tiny courtyard for fifteen minutes. There are Dementors all around, and the punishment for any kind of attempt to escape is apparent. We are not forced to use this opportunity to breath momentary fresh air, but Sirius and I begin to do it every day. We are the only ones who go regularly, as most give it up after the first few days. But we make a point of it. Sometimes we talk, and other times we don’t. We can spend whole days in silence, and others we don’t stop.
I wouldn’t call us friends. To be friends, we have to enjoy each other’s company. There’s not much hope of enjoying anything ever again. I would call us colleagues.
I almost enjoy our fifteen minutes of exercise each day. I get to see what Mistry looks like in the daylight. Saying that sounds like I’m starting to like her in a different way. Other than a colleague, I mean (which is what we decided was the best name for our relationship a while ago. Although, “a while” in here, could be an hour or three days, it all blurs into one). But I don’t. It’s just that it’s good to have a change of scene every day. You know?
Sometimes the roaring in my head comes back. Usually when I think about Lily, James, Harry, or Peter. Every time, I think that I’ll never get rid of it, I’ll become like one of the others in here “ spending my time in a corner muttering to myself. But then Mistry starts gently repeating the words “You’re innocent,” over and over.
And the sound goes away. Because she’s right. I didn’t kill them. Not really. And Peter must have been a damn good actor. Or maybe we just didn’t notice that he was acting differently, because we were so wrapped up in our own lives. But it wasn’t me who killed them.
Not that it isn’t miserable in here. It is. I’m just saying, if it wasn’t for Mistry, things could be a whole lot worse.
I wake up from a restless sleep (which is unusual, I am most often comforted by The Whisper) and I am shocked to find that I can’t stop coughing. Unfortunate. Sirius is woken not long after me. He had been murmuring about someone called Lily in his sleep. He does that sometimes, and I often wonder who she is. A girlfriend? Sister? But I don’t like to ask him.
“What’s going on? Why are you coughing?” he asks me, coming closer to the bars.
I shrug, unable to do much else. He looks worried. I can’t stop it.
“You need some fresh air maybe? It won’t be long until the fifteen minutes. Can you stand?”
I try to pull myself up. I have to cling to the bars to support myself, but it’s definitely possible. He grabs my wrist through them, and holds on.
“Okay, just gently sit down until they come to let us out for a bit. It’ll just be a passing bug or something, don’t worry. You’ll be fine again tomorrow.”
I wish I could believe him. But this doesn’t feel like a “passing bug”. This feels like the plague of illness I have seen take hold of many fellow prisoners before now.
When we are eventually escorted outside, he has to hold on to my arm to keep me upright. We are the only people who have bothered to come outside today. When we get there, the air clears my head, but I still feel weak.
So much so, that I fall over. He grabs me again, and pulls me back upright. His eyes are full of concern.
Who wouldn’t kiss him?
I don’t know how it happened. One moment she is practically fainting, and I have to catch her. The next we are kissing. It’s weird. Up until now, I’ve never even thought about her that way. She was just ... there. I think she felt the same. But now ... Well.
Not that I have long to relish it. Because we are separated very quickly, and very forcibly. The Dementors don’t like stuff this good, and so when there was an explosion of it, they have no choice but to get rid of it. I cry out her name, but I can no longer reach her.
If this was a cheesy romance novel, I’d say that I’ve always loved him, from the moment I saw him. But it’s not, and I didn’t. He was just ... there. If I did love him from the beginning, it could never have worked. The Dementors would suck it out of me. Unless, of course, this was a cheesy romance novel, where I would say that our love was so true, not even Dementors could destroy it. But it’s not, and they could.
I don’t think I’m betraying the guy I was with when I was happy. I mean, all I have of him is a whisper of a name in the dark, which is gone when I wake up.
Anyway, however it happened, we ended up kissing. It felt ... right. But then, the Dementors tore us apart. It was with such force, that I resumed my coughing, even though it had died down once we had got outside. I hear him shout my name. I try to reply. I open my mouth to call back, struggling to be free. I kick out at the Dementor in front. The one holding me then moves closer. I feel myself retreating inside my head. It’s getting closer, and I am struck with a sudden ... knowledge of what is about to happen.
At least I won’t have to feel any more.
I wake up. I must have gone unconscious.
“Mistry!” I cry, sitting up suddenly, and staring around for a sight of her. Instead, I see Cornelius Fudge, looking incredibly nervous at my awakening.
“I am afraid, Black, that your friend Mistry is ... no longer with us.”
“She’s dead?” I cry, jumping to my feet.
“No, no. Well, not exactly. After your ... unexpected display of affection, and her determination to free herself, the Dementors seemed to think it was fit to ... to administer The Kiss to Mrs Page.”
“Mrs Page?” I ask, astounded. “She was married?”
“Yes, I believe to a Mr Fred “ or rather, Freddy “ Page. They were, apparently, very happy. But that is of no matter. Your cell is now isolated, and your security has been tightened. The fifteen minutes of exercise has been abolished permanently. I ... I’m sorry, Black.”
He walks away, clearly relieved to be leaving.
The Kiss. She hadn’t even done anything wrong. This world is so screwed up, and there really doesn’t seem to be anything I can do.
She’s gone. My friends are all gone. Harry will have to spend his life with his Aunt and Uncle, who happen to detest what he is. The roaring in my head grows louder.
But then ... But then, I remember Mistry. One of the first things she said to me.
“If you really are innocent “ and of course, only you know that “ then keep telling yourself it. Just those two words, ‘I’m innocent’, over and over. The Dementors won’t take it away.”
And then, when the roaring began, she would always keep repeating that I was innocent. It really did help.
I’ll take her advice. I’ll make sure I remain in my right mind for her sake.
I’m innocent.
AN: Well ... what more can I say? Let me know what you think! I can’t wait to hear from you!