Escape

Escape
Chapter Two
“Azkaban Prison”

The hippogriff touched down lightly on the ramparts of Hogwarts Castle. He rustled his gray feathers and stomped his hind hooves as the three humans dismounted. Hermione Granger didn’t think he looked at all pleased to have been saved from execution, dragged through the Forbidden Forest, and forced to carry three riders to the tallest tower of the castle. Buckbeak fixed a fierce orange eye on her, as if he knew she had been the rider who had tugged painfully at his feathers. She bowed nervously, her eyes watering profusely as she refused to blink. Buckbeak squawked indignantly, but bowed reluctantly. She breathed a sigh of relief and stepped forward to pat his steel gray beak.

Off to the side, the other two riders were talking quietly. Hermione tugged on Buckbeak’s reins, moving off a few paces to give her best friend and his godfather some privacy. The boy’s face reflected so many conflicting emotions that it was not at first discernable what he was thinking. His eyebrows were knitted, but his eyes were wide. His lips flickered between a deep frown and the tiniest of smiles as his godfather spoke.

Harry Potter was trying his best to hide how upset he was from his godfather. Sirius had been through so much, and Harry had ruined it all by being high-minded. Sirius had struggled to keep his sanity and his magical powers for twelve years, escaped from Azkaban prison, and risked his soul by hiding inside the Hogwarts grounds with dementors at every entrance. He had done it all to avenge the murders of his best friends, Harry’s parents.

But Harry hadn’t let Sirius kill the man who had betrayed Lily and James Potter, who had framed Sirius for those murders, who had left Remus Lupin alone and friendless, who was the reason Harry was an orphan. No, Harry had asked Sirius to let Peter Pettigrew live. It was his fault Pettigrew escaped; his fault Sirius’s name wouldn’t be cleared. Harry wanted to feel disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to live with Sirius, but he couldn’t allow himself that selfishness. It was his own fault, after all.

Harry could hardly stand to look at his godfather because of the guilt gnawing at his insides. His eyes fixed on Sirius’s shoulder. It didn’t do any good to avoid his godfather’s eyes, though. The tangled mess of elbow length black hair and the filthy black robes with the cruel serial number on the chest taunted him, reminding him of where Sirius had been and why he had to run again.

Sirius laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. He was saying something about Lily, about her eyes. Instinctively, Harry looked into the deeply recessed eyes of the man standing in front of him. They looked different than in the wanted posters that lined every window and bare wall in Hogsmeade Village. For one, the eyes were gray instead of black. They were horribly hollow, like there was no emotion resting inside of Sirius to be reflected. But something was shining through the hollowed depths, a flicker of some long forgotten memory returning at last.

Harry tried closing his eyes, but the image was burned into his brain. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the sight. He didn’t think he could ever forgive himself. He had seen the pride and love in Sirius’s eyes, the fleeting happiness.

“You’re more like them than you know.”

Harry swallowed thickly. It was James’s and Lily’s legacy living through Harry that had made Sirius happy, however briefly. And it was Harry who had shattered all hope of Sirius being happy again. If only he’d done something to stop Pettigrew from escaping. He shouldn’t have listened to Hermione. He should have caught Pettigrew when they went back in time!

But he’d been too preoccupied with the Patronus, with the possibility seeing his father. He had been worried about saving Sirius from the dementors …

The dementors. A cold shudder passed down Harry’s spine at the mere thought of those vicious creatures. Sirius must have been strong to resist them for twelve years. Whereas Harry passed out within moments of coming into contact with one of them, Sirius still had his sanity after twelve years of nothing but contact with them.

Maybe Sirius just didn’t have many bad memories to relive. Maybe his youth and school years had been so pleasant that when the dementors stole those memories, his mind just went blank, like dreamless sleep. Harry felt inexplicably happy thinking that Sirius might have led such a joyful life before he was wrongly convicted.

He wondered if Sirius’s worst memory was getting caught by Filch before the Marauder’s Map was completed. Or maybe one of their Animagus transformations had gone wrong. Maybe Sirius had been confined to the hospital wing for a month with a tail, like Hermione had been in second year. An unexpected smile spread across his lips. Maybe all of Sirius’s worst memories were really funny in hindsight ….

But that didn’t seem right to Harry. All that happiness would have attracted the dementors more, and no matter how pleasant a life one led, their power was terrible and inescapable. No, Sirius probably hadn’t lived the perfect life before Azkaban. The hope that had blossomed in his stomach turned into pride. His godfather wasn’t so lucky as to have had an easy life. He was just strong.

Sirius had clung to the worst memory possible in order to survive: he was serving the prison sentence that belonged to the man who had betrayed his friends to their deaths. There wasn’t anything more terrible than hate. Harry knew this for a fact. He had hated Sirius from the moment he’d heard that his parents had been betrayed by their closest friend, and now he hated Peter Pettigrew.

A constant gnawing sensation had settled around Harry’s middle, as if a fearsome beast struggled against his flesh trying to escape and wreak havoc. It was a difficult task, hating someone. For months, it had clawed at his every waking thought and screamed for more attention, more energy devoted to the act of hating. Although he was young, only thirteen, Harry knew that the lurking monster could consume him.

And it must be worse for Sirius, he thought. Pettigrew hadn’t been just a faceless stranger. Someone hadn’t just told Sirius that Pettigrew betrayed James and Lily. They had been friends, as thick as thieves and closer than brothers. Sirius had trusted him, trusted him so much that he had put his best friends’ and godson’s lives into Pettigrew’s hands.

Harry’s fists clenched, his nails digging mercilessly into his palms. He wouldn’t blame Sirius for that. He’d never blame Sirius. For every decision there were at least two choices. It was Pettigrew who had chosen wrong. Under threat of death, Harry had refused to join Voldemort at the age of eleven. As a grown man, Pettigrew should have been able to do the same.

Sirius climbed onto Buckbeak’s back, and Hermione handed him the rope reins. With a final wave, Sirius and Buckbeak took to the sky. Harry and Hermione stood side by side watching the hippogriff and man escape together. As they flew in front of the full moon, Harry remembered that Professor Lupin was wandering the grounds. He would be devastated when he found out that Sirius had been forced to flee. Their friendship had been reconciled for less than an hour before they were separated again.

“Harry … Harry … Harry!”

It took a moment for Harry to realize that Hermione was speaking to him. Her voice became jumbled with the many threads of consciousness swirling through his head. Finally, she grasped his sleeve and shook him, physically jolting him out of his reverie.

“Harry, we’ve got exactly ten minutes to get back down to the hospital wing!”

With a nod to show that he’d understood, he followed Hermione down the spiral staircase and through the school. They were held up once by having to hide from Snape and Fudge and again by Peeves, but managed to slip back into the hospital wing just as Dumbledore was about to lock the doors.

Harry scrambled into bed, his heart pounding in his ears. Beside him, Hermione had buried herself up to her eyes in blankets and was shaking slightly. Harry stared at the ceiling, waiting tensely for the clock to stop chiming. Madam Pomfrey appeared between their beds and began shoving chocolate into their mouths.

What would Fudge do when Sirius was found missing from Professor Flitwick’s office? The grounds would be searched, naturally. But Sirius wasn’t on the ground, and Harry didn’t think he’d land Buckbeak for a long while. Not only was his godfather brave and loyal, he was also intelligent and powerfully magical. He’d managed to keep his Animagus ability, escape from Azkaban, and elude capture for an entire year while hiding right under the dementors’ noses … er, mouths …

Harry shifted uncomfortably at the thought. He didn’t want to think about the rotting hands and malodorous breath anymore. Dumbledore was going to send them away. Hopefully Harry would never have to see another dementor.

As the clock tower stopped chiming, a charged silence hung in the air. Harry and Hermione exchanged silent glances, waiting tensely for the inevitable to happen. Overhead, a resounding, infuriated roar ripped through the silence. Hermione jumped several inches off her bed, her eyes wide with worry and fear. But Harry wasn’t frightened. Snape’s anger caused a great bubble of happiness to swell in his chest. Sirius was free … Snape was fuming … and Dumbledore had made sure that no one could ever trace it back to Harry and Hermione.

He could hardly fight down the smile threatening to break across his lips. Only when the hospital doors flew open did he school his features. Snape’s snarling face loomed over him, but for the first time in three years, Harry didn’t mind facing the Potions Master. If Snape was in the hospital wing, then he wasn’t skulking around, connecting the disappearance of Buckbeak with Sirius’s escape.

Miles away, Sirius and Buckbeak were flying south away from the dementors, away from Azkaban. Sirius let out a whoop of joy that was lost in the rushing air. He was finally free. True, most of the wizarding world still believed him a mass murderer, but that wasn’t important. Dumbledore knew the truth … Remus knew … Harry knew, and that was all that mattered.

Weeks later, Sirius dropped onto the sandy wooden floor of the ramshackle hut with a blank sheet of parchment perched on his thigh, and a bottle of ink and quill made from one of Buckbeak’s discarded feathers clutched in his hands. A hot breeze blew in from the ocean, scattering the sand across the rickety floorboards. The thick leaves of the palm trees scratched against the thatched roof, and the branches bearing coconuts creaked in the high wind.

Some feet away in a clearing, Buckbeak was chasing a poisonously green snake. The hippogriff snapped his beak furiously and lifted his head, as if to show Sirius that he had defeated the bothersome serpent. For a few moments, Sirius stared out across the choppy ocean waves, savoring the sights, sounds, and smells of freedom.

He’d been locked away in a tiny cell for so long that he had forgotten the feel of a summer breeze and the smell of fresh air. He’d been constantly taunted by the rough waves of the North Sea crashing against the fortress, but he’d forgotten the beauty of the slowly churning topical ocean and brightly colored fish streaking through the clear water.

The longer he was away from Azkaban, the more memories returned to him. The smallest things triggered the remembrances. Just that morning, he’d been watching the clouds morph as they passed across the small island and he’d suddenly remembered how Regulus and he used to lie on their backs all afternoon watching the changing clouds and pointing out the formations of dragons and grindylows. At night, the mating call of an exotic bird reminded him of James’s snore, and that had made him laugh so hard that he’d fallen out of the hammock.

Sirius looked down at the blank parchment draped across his knee. He knew if he didn’t start writing soon, he would daydream until the sun set and the air turned cold. It was tempting to forget all the troubles of the real world and just remember the happy moments that the dementors had stolen from him, but Dumbledore had asked Sirius to keep in contact, and he couldn’t write without the sunlight.

His hand hovered over the parchment for a moment too long and a great blob of ink splattered across the page. It reminded him of something … a Transfiguration essay he’d left until the last minute.

He was sitting in the Hogwarts library, staring at Dorcas Meadowes’s shapely figure and had smeared ink all across his first paragraph.

“Honestly, Padfoot,” James had sighed. “It’s an essay about human transfiguration. If you can’t even write the essay properly, maybe I shouldn’t teach you how to become an Animagus.”

Sirius had snapped out of his daze, frowning slightly at his friend. “You aren’t teaching me! We’re learning together!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve all ready mastered it and you’ve only grown a tail and ears …”

A slow smile stretched across Sirius’s thin lips. Dumbledore could wait until tomorrow. He had a more important letter to write. Sirius dipped the quill into the ink again.

Dear Harry …