Chapter 83: The Prison

He was hazy with pain. He was ravenously hungry and not in a position to do anything about it. He knew better than to ask for help and he knew better than to ask about Dora.

It was a slight relief when one day the hit wizards began gossiping casually about Bellatrix's death.

No, not casually.

They were informing Rodolphus Lestrange that his wife was dead and they knew it. They were enjoying it. Azkaban destroyed the men and women inside the cells, but it seemed to affect those charged with standing guard as well.

Rodolphus sobbed brokenly. Everyone ignored him, with the exception of Dolohov, who pointed out loudly that Bellatrix had never actually loved her husband anyway.

"It was Sirius Black that got her right away," one hit wizard informed another. "They were first cousins. We never should have gone to the trouble of locking the Blacks up. We should have left them alone and let them finish each other off."

"Sirius will have enjoyed that," whispered Peter from the cell beside Remus. "He always hated his family. To be rid of one of the last, and by his own hand, will have been the highlight of his year."

"You'd better hope they don't arrest him and put him back in here as your cellmate, Peter," said Remus as pleasantly as he could.

He enjoyed Peter's squeak of fear. If Sirius was out there somewhere taking pleasure in things that shouldn't strictly have given him pleasure, he wasn't alone.

For the rest of the month, nothing mattered as much as listening hard for news of Dora. It never came. He told himself that Sirius had killed Bellatrix within a day of her escape; Bellatrix hadn't had time to go after Dora.

Avada Kedavra takes less than a second. How quickly did I die once Dolohov had an opening?

He told himself that the death of an Auror at the hands of an Azkaban escapee would have been so significant that the hit wizards would have been sure to discuss it, as they had discussed Bellatrix's death.

They discussed Bellatrix's death to hurt Lestrange. They don't know that Dora's death would hurt me, so they wouldn't share.

He told himself that Dora was strong and well-trained. Just as he'd made certain that Sirius would be ready for Bellatrix, he had made certain that Dora knew about what a terribly wrong turn their lives might take if they weren't careful.

And Dora would have sacrificed her life for the cause. Dora hardly ignored Bellatrix when she walked by her cell.

The idea that he might have slept through news of Dora haunted him. It haunted him so completely that he decided that it was no longer time to stand by his convictions.

"Peter," he whispered to the crack in the wall.

"Hi Moony!" said Peter with a cheerfulness that made Remus want to hex him. "Finally bored enough to talk to me?"

"Have you heard anyone say anything about Auror Tonks?"

"Tonks?" asked Peter as if he'd never heard the name before.

"Bellatrix Lestrange's niece. She escorted me here, and Bellatrix was threatening to kill her. I imagine that that may have been what motivated Bellatrix to break out."

"Oh. Andromeda's daughter." Remus could almost see Peter's face scrunching up in concentration the way it had when he'd been confronted with a particularly difficult assignment in school. "No, no one's mentioned anyone but Sirius and Bellatrix."

"Thank you," said Remus reluctantly.

"Why do you care about her?"

"She's Sirius' cousin."

Remus thought it was a perfectly reasonable excuse. Why shouldn't he care about what remained of Sirius' family, as close as he and Sirius were?

Peter didn't think it was a perfectly reasonable excuse. Peter laughed his squeaky, high-pitched laugh. "You have never been a good liar, Remus."

"I'm not lying."

"Good for you." Peter sounded more sincere than taunting. Remus would have preferred taunting. "You always held back in school when you didn't have to. There were so many girls who fancied you, and you had yourself convinced that they would hate you if they knew and that they would have to know if you so much as held hands with them."

It was true, and Remus still didn't think he had been wrong. What a terrible, dangerous thing it would have been for all concerned if he and one of his classmates had grown close, only for her to find out…

"I know what you thought," Peter continued. "I think you were wrong. I think you made it harder on yourself than you needed to. I'm glad you finally trusted someone."

Remus remained silent.

Peter didn't know about Remus' relationship with Dora, not really. All Peter knew was that Remus had gone out of his way to ask about Dora when he never voluntarily asked Peter about anything. So Peter was trying to get Remus to confess by pretending that Peter already knew. It was the oldest trick in the book— and an effective one, to be sure.

For all that, Remus couldn't help but remember Sirius' reaction when Remus had told him about Dora. The disgusting jokes. The threat to sabotage their relationship. The dismissive way he'd sometimes spoken about every aspect of Remus' life, whether it related to Dora or to his now-defunct teaching career. The complete lack of understanding.

Peter seemed kinder.

He'd thought Peter was kinder than Sirius once before. It had ended in disaster.

With the last of his mental fortitude, he reminded himself that Lily and James were dead and that Harry was a marked man.

He ignored Peter.

The second full moon was worse than the first. His broken left arm had not yet healed. The throbbing burning stab of an already-broken arm transforming to a wolf's front leg was so acute that he remembered it clearly when he resumed his human form the next morning.

His arm had been broken in two places the previous month; some ginger prodding suggested that it was now broken in five places. His cell was once again full of the tangy scent of blood.

He wondered whether anyone else had escaped. He decided that he didn't care. He had done all he could do to protect the world from Voldemort. If the world didn't really want protecting, that was the world's problem.

He passed out again, grateful for the release from thought and pain.

The next thing he noticed was Peter's voice urgently asking whether he was all right. Peter sounded hoarse, as if he'd been asking the question for hours. He vaguely remembered that he wasn't talking to Peter and let his head fall back to his thin, blood-stained mattress with a thud.

He awoke to find himself levitated into the far corner of his cell. Ropes bound him so tightly that he cried out. It felt as if at least half of his ribs had cracked.

A team of hit wizards vanished the blood from his cell and— to his shock— replaced his mattress with a clean one.

He didn't ask why. He just tried to appreciate it.

Someone splashed dittany in his general direction. He was so well-covered with cuts and bruises that even this aimless application helped improve his physical condition as well as his mood.

Then the hit wizards were gone and the only sound left anywhere near Remus came from the cell next door.

"Did they untie you, Remus?"

"Yes." His desire to know what was going on outweighed his desire not to talk to Peter.

"Good. I heard them bind you, but I didn't hear them remove the bind, and they know I can't see them so I thought they might not have bothered."

"Why does it matter whether you can see them?"

"I was the one who told them that they'd better at least clean up the blood. I said Sirius wouldn't like it. He was the one who got the dementors out of Azkaban, and he was the one who killed Bellatrix when they couldn't control him, and I told them what he's like when he's in a temper…"

Remus couldn't help laughing at the thought of Sirius learning that Peter Pettigrew, of all people, was invoking his name to get what he wanted. That in this one instance what Peter wanted and what Sirius would have wanted overlapped completely was irrelevant.

He immediately regretted laughing. The hit wizards had healed some of his cuts, but they hadn't done anything about his cracked and broken bones.

The ribs must be broken, not cracked, he decided. He'd lived through cracked ribs too many times to count. They didn't hurt this much.

"Why is that funny?" Peter demanded.

"You don't think that it takes a certain nerve for the man who framed Sirius Black for thirteen murders he did not commit to threaten someone else with what Sirius might do?"

"It was my only choice! Do you think I liked doing it?"

"I don't know. Did you?"

"No!" The no was so emphatic that Remus was inclined to believe it. "I didn't like it any better than I liked it in school. You were strong and smart, Remus, you wouldn't understand. There were people who would have hexed me in the corridors— would have left me locked in a closet where no one would have found me for weeks— and they didn't because they were afraid James and Sirius would come for me. How many times did I hear it? 'Don't do it, he'll tell Potter and Black.' Some of them hated Sirius and James and some of them wanted Sirius and James to like them. I didn't even matter. I only existed as a piece of them. It was humiliating."

"That was hardly their fault. They didn't ask to be— to be the height of cool. It came naturally to them."

Peter's chuckle was almost wry. "I know."

"Then how could you betray them?"

"Voldemort would have killed me if I hadn't. I protected myself. You and Sirius can say you would have died, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us had to throw ourselves on the funeral pyre."

He didn't know why he'd expected a satisfactory answer from Peter.

Time made less and less sense as the final month of his sentence wore on. He remembered the routine he'd tried to implement when he'd first arrived, but it no longer seemed important.

He couldn't walk laps of his cell or do press-ups or stretches. He hurt too much. He had to conserve his energy.

He could try to focus on his Patronus memories. He could try to recite the names of the entire student body of Hogwarts. He could try… but he inevitably fell asleep when he'd barely started. He seemed to need more sleep now than he'd ever needed before. Time no longer had any meaning.

He wondered whether time had meaning for Harry. Had Sirius told Harry that he, Harry, was the final Horcrux? Had Harry been adamant that he should make the ultimate sacrifice as quickly as possible? Had Harry experienced the in-between, as Remus had? Had time moved forward or backward for him?

Or had Harry died?

Wouldn't Remus have heard, even here, if the Boy Who Lived had died? Wouldn't the screams of agony have been so loud that they would have reached him even here?

Or would Dumbledore have covered it up? Covered up his own failure? Covered up Remus' failure to improve Harry's lot along with the future of all of wizarding Britain?

If Harry was alive, Harry was still growing. That made time so much easier to measure. Another growth spurt; a need for a new set of clothes in a larger size. Another year of schooling complete.

What of Dora? How did time move for her? Were her days longer because she missed him? Or had she hardly noticed a change, busy as she was with her family and her friends and her Auror duties?

Has she finally realized that she was better off without Remus?

She was better off without him, he remembered. That would always be true in any reality. He was helpless, broken, and infamous. If he died during his next transformation, would that be a blessing? Would it let her be free?

He'd done everything he could do to protect her from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. It was in Dumbledore's hands now. Dumbledore and Harry. It would be all right if he died. Dora would survive.

Not that it mattered whether he'd done everything he could do. Not that it mattered whether Dora would be better off without him. He wasn't going to make it through his third full moon in Azkaban anyway.

He knew it as a human.

He knew it as a wolf.

As he shuddered and waited for the change, he thought of the nicknames given to the April full moon. They were soft, gentle names.

The Pink Moon in honor of the pink flowers that bloomed in early spring.

The Sprouting Grass Moon in honor of the new growth of the season.

The Fish Moon in celebration of the fact that food, sometimes scarce in the winter, was abundant again.

The Hare Moon, symbolizing rebirth.

The Egg Moon, as birds, too, began to reproduce.

The transformation was not soft or gentle, nor did it feel like a comforting rebirth.

The wolf was furious.

His nostrils were full of the scent of human beings. Flesh. Prey.

They were close and the wolf was ravenous.

He was hungry for food, but above all else he was hungry for more of his own kind.

He needed to reproduce. He needed to bite, to rip, to tear, to feel his bloodline continuing, to ease the ache that consumed his body.

He hurled himself over and over at the bars that were all that stood between him and that which he most needed.

When his left front leg could no longer support him, he found himself in a tangled pile on the floor. He had to stop the craving, the need that made his skin crawl beneath his fur. He sank his teeth into his right front leg. It didn't stop the craving, but he tried again.

Remus blinked the blood out of his eyes.

His moan was met by peals of laughter as he tried desperately to situate himself.

His morning-after questions returned to him as they inevitably did after thirty years of practice.

Did I hurt anyone?

No. He was in Azkaban and he could barely move. He hadn't left his cell. There were no signs that anyone else had entered his cell— and if someone had, he probably wouldn't have bitten and scratched himself quite so badly. Nor would his fellow inmates have been likely to laugh at his predicament.

How bad are my injuries?

He was conscious, which meant that this was not his worst transformation, nor his second-worst, nor his tenth-worst. But he was beginning to have doubts that he would ever use his left arm again. It was no longer merely broken in five places; it was shattered.

He was more worried about the bloody mess that was his right arm. That was his wand arm.

His ribs ached; that was nothing new. His lungs hadn't been punctured, though.

His nose was broken and his body was smeared with blood.

Do I need professional treatment?

Irrelevant. It was out of his control.

Can I afford professional treatment?

Irrelevant. It was out of his control.

How suspicious do I look?

He needed to remove this question from his self-review. He no longer had a secret. Everyone knew who and what he was.

What do I remember about last night?

He'd meditated on the rebirth symbolism historically given to the April full moon and gone into the transformation convinced that he would not survive the night. He vaguely recalled feelings of anger and frustration, but nothing specific.

He looked again at his right arm and became aware of an iron taste on his tongue. Yes, he remembered biting himself— but he had no desire to dwell on the matter further.

He struggled to his feet, hoping against hope that he hadn't drunk or spilled his water while in wolf-form. He'd tucked his water pitcher into the farthest corner of his cell the night before, and now crossing from the front of the cell to the back seemed like an insurmountably long journey.

He took one stiff, shaky step and then another.

The door of his cell shrieked open behind him before he was able to take a third step.

"Come on," said one of the Aurors. "You're free to go."

To be continued.

Recommendation: Peter's Choice by Ebenbild. It is story number 12234513 on this site.

Summary: There's a reason why a coward was sorted into Gryffindor. Also, there's always a reason for betrayal - and sometimes the reason isn't what you think it is. Unlikely, but could be canon.

I always appreciate an attempt to give a little more depth (by which I mean ANY depth) to Peter.