His stomach hurt from laughing, but between the drips and echoing silence short giggles would burst from his lips, making his shoulders tremble against the rough stone. The room was bare. The wooden bench on which he sat. A toilet. A sink. Dull iron bars that looked out into darkness, the light from his one torch only skimming at the edges of the corridor.
‘It’s one of those places you’ll be able to spruce up,’ said Prongs. ‘Really make it your own, you know?’
Sirius burst out laughing again.
A cockroach made his way slowly against the edge of his wall, the flickering light from the torch catching on its shiny body. Sirius decided that he looked like a Gary, and watched him fondly.
He felt a dark presence drift slowly past, on the other side of the bars, and suddenly he found himself sobbing again, feeling as though the presence had settled in his chest. He stood, trying to shake the feeling out of himself, battering the side of his own head, anything to get it out. He felt a rage and a fury fill him like lead, so he stamped on Gary. The insect crunched underfoot.
‘You’ll never make friends acting like that,’ said James, and Sirius laughed again. What did that knobhead know about making friends? He was only cool by association.
‘Rude,’ said Prongs, but he was grinning.
Sirius sat back down on the bench. He couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing in anticipation, but he knew that nothing was going to happen.
He gave another small chuckle.
It was not cold. It was not hot. The bench was not comfortable, but it caused him no discomfort. There was nothing. Nothing but the dark presence that drifted back and forth every few minutes, with rattling breath and a burst of iciness. He wished Gary would come back.
He heard solid footsteps and the jangle of keys, and he sat up straight, turning his head to the pitch black.
‘Walkies,’ sang Prongs, and Sirius clapped a hand over his own mouth in a weak attempt to stop the laughter.
'Just ‘ere,’ came a gruff voice, and a portly guard stepped into the light, looking just over his shoulder and gesturing for someone to follow. He backed away, and in his place stepped Moony.
‘You look rough,’ said Sirius. ‘It’s not full moon for another week yet.’
Moony simply stared at him, as though not really seeing. He looked like a man on the brink of collapse, as pale and cold as the moonlight they had run wild under for so many years.
‘Tell him about the effing rat,’ said Prongs indignantly, and Sirius laughed. Moony stared.
‘R-rat!’ Sirius gasped out, shaking hysterically. ‘He was a bloody rat!’
‘I mean, we should have guessed, really, shouldn’t we?’ said Prongs.
Sirius howled with laughter. Moony stared. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he understand about The Rat? He was probably too tired. ‘You’re a wolf, I’m a dog, Prongs is a deer, and he’s a bloody rat!’
‘Excuse you, I’m a stag,’ said James. ‘My antlers are massive.’
‘Stop,’ said Sirius, barely able to breathe from laughing and wiping at his watering eyes.
Moony still didn’t get it. He still stared at him, and his expression reminded Sirius of Gary. He opened his mouth, his lips were trembling, but he continued to gaze silently at Sirius, who was still unable to control his laughter.
‘It was my fault,’ Sirius told him, shaking his head and chuckling. ‘I…’ He tried to tell him, but he couldn’t stop laughing, couldn’t stop thinking about the glaring signs they had all ignored…
‘I… I’m sorry,’ said Moony hoarsely. But he wasn’t talking to Sirius. He had turned, and he spoke into the darkness where the guard remained.
‘I thought I might be able to get something out of him, but I… I can’t…’
‘It’s all right, lad,’ came the gruff voice. ‘It were brave of yeh to try…’
Sirius realized what was happening, and ran to the bars, reaching through them desperately and pressing his face into the cold metal. ‘No, no, no,’ he shouted at Moony’s back. ‘No, no, Moony, no, don’t leave us here on our own!’
But Remus Lupin faded slowly into the darkness, and Sirius screamed and howled and kicked painfully at the bars, swearing as loudly as he could, until the dark presence of his Dementor guard came too close.
The strength of his grief knocked him backwards, and he fell onto the grimy rock floor, laughing and sobbing and spitting out curse words. Gary’s sticky corpse lay close to his head.
The Dementor had stopped drifting back and forth and now waited, perfectly stationary, outside the bars. James had gone now, and Sirius felt his anger and rage return, but now there was no one here to take it out on, so he lay still and accepted the feeling. He wasn’t really aware of time passing. It could have been seconds or minutes, or hours or years. He simply stared at the ceiling. There were no cobwebs. Only cockroaches could live here.
He thought again about The Rat, thought of his sniveling little face and his stupid little notebook. It was strange to experience anger without energy; to simply lie there lifelessly on the floor.
‘I was lying lifelessly on the floor,’ said Prongs, who had apparently returned as the Dementor drifted away again. Sirius chuckled, but it wasn’t really funny. You could always count on Prongs to try and joke his way through difficult situations. He appreciated the effort.
‘We like to drink with James,’ he sang softly. ‘Because James is our mate… And when we drink with James, he gets it down in eight, seven, six, five…’
He could see him in The Leaky Cauldron, trying to glug his way through a pint of Simison Steaming Stout, wincing and spluttering, The Rat roaring with laughter next to him.
‘He won’t do it, he can’t do it,’ taunted Moony. But Prongs slammed the empty glass down before they could finish singing ‘two’, proudly accepting the cheers.
‘You bastard, Wormtail,’ he said. ‘You know I’m more of a Firewhiskey guy…’
‘Bollocks,’ said Sirius. ‘I’ve never seen you drink anything more manly than a dirigible plum cocktail…’
He burst out laughing yet again, but he was still lying on the floor, and the warm Leaky Cauldron fires were far away from Dementors and cockroaches and iron bars.
‘Do you like Firewhiskey, Gary?’ Sirius asked, but Gary didn’t respond. Gary was dead. His laughter came in snorts and then coughs. He was definitely crying now. From laughing too hard, certainly.
‘Stop pissing about,’ said Prongs. ‘You’ll need to get your story straight for the trial. You’re Harry’s godfather. I’ll not have him living with Lily’s sister.’
Sirius sat bolt upright, as if James had shook him. He was right. Another giggle escaped from his lips, but he ignored it, stood, and started pacing. He didn’t know when he would have a trial, but Moony hadn’t understood, and he needed them to understand that The Rat was still out there…
‘Guard!’ he shrieked. ‘Guard!’ Nothing moved in the darkness. He growled in frustration. He knew that fat little man was out there.
‘GUARD!’
The Dementor slowly passed again, and he shuddered, wishing the explosion had killed him too…
‘GUARD! I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!’
He grinned as the guard appeared, sighing huffily. ‘Are you now?’ he said, bored. ‘Are you telling the truth? Because if you are making a genuine threat of suicide I have to fill out a form and…’
‘Nah, don’t worry,’ said Sirius. ‘But give me some parchment and a quill.’
‘No,’ said the guard flatly, and began to turn away.
‘It’s for my suicide note!’ said Sirius hurriedly.
He saw the guard throw his head back in exasperation and slowly turn on his heel. ‘You just said,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘That you weren’t going to…’
‘I’ll make a genuine threat of suicide if you don’t give me something to write with,’ said Sirius. ‘A really long and complicated one, it will take you ages to record.’
The guard considered him for a moment, his stubbly face clearly miserable even in the low light. ‘Fine,’ he said sourly. ‘But I’m not giving you anything you can stab me in the eye with. And don’t kill yourself.’
He took out a short wand and conjured a roll of parchment and a stick of charcoal.
‘Thanks,’ said Sirius, snatching it greedily.
‘You really are a nasty, manipulative bastard aren’t yeh?’ said the guard, but Sirius wasn’t listening. He was returning to his wooden bench, looking down at his precious writing materials.
‘None of that will be any good,’ said James. ‘No one can read your terrible handwriting.’
‘I’ll write it all down,’ he muttered. ‘All of it. So they’ll get that Rat. They’ll get him. They’ll get him.’
‘What are you blathering on about?’ asked the guard, disgusted.
‘I’m getting proof that I’m innocent,’ Sirius told him, barely noticing that his voice sounded like he was joking.
The guard looked revolted. ‘You’re sick. Everyone thinks so. Bloody sick…’
He walked away, and the Dementor returned, but the iciness and despair could not touch him. He had purpose. He thought fiercely of that chubby little toddler, bouncing on James’ knee, and of Lily blowing gently on a mug of coffee, and of Prongs grinning mischievously and vanishing under his cloak.
His hands were trembling, and the charcoal was too thick to write elegantly with, but hope was rushing through him as onto the parchment he carefully scratched, Day One.