The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

II: July 29, 1993

"Tell me the story, Sirius."

"Once... once..."

Sirius Black's lips moved slowly, chapped from salty water and wind. "Once..." he murmured again, the energy going out of him. Every breath he took ached deep in his body.

His eyelids fluttered. Darkness... stringy darkness with bits of patchy light shone through. Hair. His hair, hanging in thick ropes over his forehead, mangy and greasy and knotted from the throws of the tide. He winced as he shifted, his fist lifting up the hair in his eyes. His ribs had screamed a bitter agony when he'd moved, and he recalled the sound of them cracking with the impact of the slippery rocks outside of Azkaban.

"R-R-Regulus?" Sirius whispered, falling back against the stones that lined the beach. He coughed - water came up and gushed across the rocks before him, his chest heaving with the effort. He could just stay there, just lay there in the wet stones... But Sirius was certain he'd heard... a sound... a voice... pleading him...

"Tell me the story, Sirius..."

He screwed up his face against the pain, forced himself to raise up his head and have a look around.

Sirius lay belly-down on a damp, gray sea shore. The only living things he could see in any direction was the birds. He was alone. He was hearing things - hallucinating. He had gone mad in all those years in Azkaban, clearly.

The thought filled Sirius with a darkness that spread from his heart on out through every nerve in his body, a queer crawling sensation as his mind spiraled back into the depths of the thoughts he'd lived with for these past twelve years under the dementors...

He slowly closed his eyes and laid his head back down on the stones, his body battered and tired and his breath ragged. The birds called out and the water rumbled and hissed about his feet, licking up to his ankles before rushing back away into the sea. A crab scuttled by, pausing to inspect Sirius for a moment before hurrying on his way. The sun shone, hot against Sirius's back as he lay there, starting to dry up from the long night in the sea.

Suddenly Sirius's eyes popped open, and a new vigor was in them.

He sat up, barely wincing for the pain of it, the damp sand flying as he flipped over and scrambled to his feet. The dark blue water waved and sputtered at his feet, spanning out in the distance, seemingly unending. A tiny dark speck, far off across the water, where the clouds flashed with lightening, was the shadow of Azkaban. Sirius stared at it, hand splayed upon his forehead to block the suddenly blinding sunlight.

SUNLIGHT.

Sunlight because he was outside.

Sunlight because it was DAY TIME and he was ALIVE and the ocean hadn't swallowed him up, the dementors hadn't caught him and kissed him and sucked out his soul. Rather, his soul was fully intact and inside of his body and his body was here, on the shore, miles and miles from that horrid, nasty place. He was free.

For the first time in twelve long, horrible, unthinkable years, Sirius Black was free.

"WAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!" he yelled, and in spite of himself and in spite of the grim mission that had propelled him into this daring attempt, Sirius threw his arms into the air and rushed about the shore, his striped Azkaban rags heavy still with the water that had soaked them through. His feet left deep gashes in the damp ground as he ran about, kicking up sand. He quickly ran out of breath - that's what twelve years without proper exercise will do for you - and collapsed into the sand again a few feet from where he'd started. But the point was that he was actually bloody free for real. There were no bars, no musty/moldy stone walls, no dementors.

Sirius grinned, staring up at the blue of the sky overhead, his heart pounding in his chest from the exertion of running about as he'd done, and he gulped in the fresh, salty air.

"James... Lily..." Sirius murmured under his breath, watching the clouds move slowly overhead, "I've made it out. I've got out of there. I'm going to find that traitorous fucking bastard and I'm going to make him pay for what he did to you. What he did to Harry. I--" Sirius stopped.

Harry.

He was going to see Harry.

The thought thrilled him beyond any other he'd yet had. His Harry. That little ball of Lamesish pudge, his little man. Sirius's heart ached. Gone would be the pudgy baby fat wrapped leggies he'd loved squashing, and a thing of the past would be that frizzy-fuzzy little head of barely-there hair. The ickle bundle of giggling piss-and-snot would be all grown up by now, he realized. Well, not all grown up, but a bleedin' teenager! Going to Hogwarts! Twelve years ago that little ball had been so tiny, but now he'd be tall and shaped like a real human.

Sirius wondered if those little pudgy features had turned out more like his mum or his dad?

He had to find out.

Eager, Sirius flipped over and with a POP he'd transformed from the man in the ragged Azkaban stripes to a big, shaggy black dog, dirty and a bit matted, scrawny about the waist so that his ribs showed a bit, and his fur was pulled out in patches. He shook off the sand that was clung to his coat, his whole body trembling from nose down his spine to the tip of his tail, and then he started running.

As a dog, Sirius had much more energy, and his ribs didn't hurt at all. He didn't look back over his shoulders at the fading prison, that was behind him, and although he was sure that, eventually, the Ministry for Magic would catch up to him, bring him in, and most likely administer the Dementor's Kiss for all that he'd done... it didn't matter to him right now. So long as they caught him after he'd completed his mission... after he'd seen Harry and avenged James and Lily Potter's deaths... after he'd caught the rat, that stinking, stupid, traitorous rat... Peter Pettigrew.

Sirius didn't care what happened to him after that. After all, it was his fault that James and Lily were dead as much as it was Peter's. His idea, the switch. His idea, one which he had passionately begged James to go for, and it had led them to the unthinkable. He deserved whatever he got.

And so did Peter Pettigrew.

It would be a long journey, but he'd made long journeys before as a dog. This one, too, was worth every step - for with every thump of his feet against the ground, he thought of the justice he was running towards.

He thought of James and Lily, he thought of the scene he'd arrived to at their home in Godric's Hollow.

He thought of the sound of Harry's cries as they echoed off the walls, falling on the unhearing ears of his lifeless mother.

He thought of James's cracked glasses, his body laying on the stairs, his wand on the table.

He thought of Peter Pettigrew and how the beady, watery little eyes would widen upon seeing him, upon being struck with the spell that would change a rat into a stinking, sniveling, disgusting little man whose life would be his, Sirius's, to take. Just as he took James's life. Just as he took Lily's. Callously. In cold blood. He would stare into Peter's eyes and watch the life leave them until his face was as pale and empty as James's had been that night, twelve years ago...

Every single step was worth a thousand more.

Finally, he would commit the murder that he had been sent to Azkaban for.