Chapter Text
Lovesong of the Buzzard By BitchKing
Chapter One
The Year 1982
Sirius Orion Black stares out at the grim grey waters from the open bars of his cell, basking in the reprieve from the Dementors. It is February now, spring will soon come to the prison, and Sirius can only hope it will bring even the slightest warmth to the dark place. Three months have passed, creeping by slowly in unbearable pain and screams, and he has long since given up on the idea that Dumbledore will come to rescue him. A small whimper from the darkest corner of his cell pulls the gaunt man from the bars, and he crosses his small cell to the only thing keeping him mostly sane.
Harry.
His best friend's son. Lily's son. His Son. This poor toddler of only eighteen months, his godson to the rest of the world's knowledge, but in truth the boy is his by blood too. James had been his mate, for all that the man tried to deny his creature's blood-call. He loved Lily, even more than he could bring himself to love Sirius in the end, but Harry was the product of the only night James allowed himself to give in. For all that Lily often hated him for trying to steal her husband's heart, she could not deny the two of them when they asked her if she'd wish to be the surrogate carrier of their child, unable to get pregnant herself do to something her horrible sister had done to her. It was a rough pregnancy, filled with many scares, but when Harry came out one month and two weeks early it was the happiest moment of their lives.
Now Harry is all he has left, and he's trapped in the cell with Sirius. It is not a happy thing having his child with him in this thrice accursed place. The Dementors cant touch it, for all that they wish they could. Sirius shifts into his animagus form and pads over to the child, bundled tight in layers upon layers of prison robes. The Aurors working at the prison have tried many times to get Harry to a safe place, but everyone has always laughed them off. You have to seriously piss someone off to be forced to play guard and escort in Azkaban, so it really is no surprise that they are ignored and written off as being as insane as the people they guard. For all their words, even they have given up, but they do what they can to keep Harry as safe and comfortable as possible in the prison.
The cell they share is the same as every other cell. It has one bed, a concrete slab chained to the wall with a thin grimy cotton filled pad as a mattress, a stained pillow, and a single thin ragged blanket, and two sets of prison robes. It is what every prisoner has rights too. Harry's corner is the one farthest from any bars or inmates, hidden in shadows at all times, and it has a basket-crib crafted from the long thin shavings of wood that the Aurors painstakingly pulled from one of their old boats. It's padded on the inside on all sides from a cut up mattress and pillow, and the baby is bundled up in the adult sized robes and the blanket. It is the best they could do, as the magic of the prison prevents them from giving anything more to the prisoners than the standard fare. Sirius and Harry, despite sharing a cell, are noted by magic as two separate prisoners. When he grows too big for the makeshift crib he will be given his own cell, the empty one directly near Sirius's, and he dreads that day.
Sirius curls up next to the child.
It's times like this when Sirius wonders if life growing up as Dumbledore's naive weapon would have been the better choice.
--
Time passed in a sluggish crawl of bad nightmares, desperate screaming inmates, and the eerie howling of the wind adding to the chill of the always cold and dark prison.
Harry's second birthday is much like every other day in the prison. The Dementors feed off them like an all you can eat buffet for the majority of the day, but when night falls and the Dementors glide off to guard the outskirts of the lake so no one can get in, like they do every three days, and the Aurors give the prisoners small bars of chocolate with their only meal, a strange slimy bowl of white tasteless mush they get every three days to at least give the illusion they are attempting to keep them alive. Unlike everyone else in the prison, Sirius included, Harry doesn't eat all the chocolate at once. He eats a small nibble from one corner and hides the remaining chocolate in his basket.
By now, everyone is aware of Harry's presence in the prison, and his presence seems to be calming to all in a sickening sort of way. Only Sirius calls him Harry, and he very rarely does that, using it less and less and practically allowing it to fade away into non-existence. Most the time he calls the child Prongslet. The Death Eater's all seem to have taken to calling him little darkling, and Sirius thinks this has to do with the fact that he is the reason of the dark lord's fall, despite what the newspapers say about Neville Longbottom, but it could also be because Harry seems not to be as affected by the Dementors anymore, his child mind easily adapting to the environment in ways no one else could. The Aurors call Harry by pet names like sweetheart and darling, and Sirius knows this is because they don't know how to apologize for the fact that none of them knows how to prevent him from living in such a dark environment. The inmates and Aurors all share one name for him though, because while it started as a joke about Sirius it's the only one they could all agree on. It isn't really even a name. They call him Red, because in the rare moments the sun manages to pierce the clouds his black hair shines like blood, and his avada kedavra green eyes have rings around the iris in bright scarlet. Sometimes Sirius worries the child has been affected badly by the killing curse to the head at fifteen months.
The prisoners all chipped in for a present. It isn't much, just a quilt sewed from a small patch of each of their robes, but the child seems to love it more than anything. The Aurors, being the only ones able to actually buy things, all pitched in a small part of their paychecks for the chocolates for the prisoners in place of a cake, and their present came in the form of a hand made beautiful dream catcher which was promptly hung in Harry's new cell above his bed. The basket that he'd previously been using as a bed had broken a few days earlier while the boy was having a violent nightmare, but the padding was fixed back into a whole pillow and mattress and added to his cell. They had tried to give him new robes and bed stuff, but it had not worked because Azkaban's magic sensed he already owned some.
Harry moves out of Sirius's cell the very next morning, leaving only a small "window" of bars above each of their beds for them to see each other from.
--
Bellatrix Lestrange is very fond of the child responsible for her master's death, but she is hardly the only one. He is alarmingly thin, and terribly small, but it has some advantages. The boy has the ability to leave his cell whenever he wants, and he makes sure to visit everyone, even those who have been downright cruel and vicious to him. In fact, the only one he doesn't visit is a stupid mangy werewolf a few cells over from hers, which she seriously doesn't blame him for because she wouldn't willingly visit a man who tried to rape her either.
And what fun that day had been. Watching the tiny tot lay the werewolf out on the floor as if it was the easiest thing in the world was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. Of course it helped that the werewolf had not expected it, but Bellatrix would love to meet the person who expects a two year old to suddenly cave in the front of their chest to squeeze their heart. She had been taken forcibly a long time ago, by her own father, so watching the boy scold and threaten his own would be rapist was what made her finally start liking him.
It doesn't help that he treats her, and everyone else, with love and kindness, sharing the chocolates the Aurors often sneak him with everyone, even if it means going without for a few weeks himself. He's selfless to a fault, something she blames her cousin for entirely, but she knows if he were not here they'd have all gone insane long ago.
She braids a few chunks of the boy's long messy hair as he listens eagerly to her calm explanations on magic. He's an attentive and fast learning student, already in control of his wild magic despite his young age. Just what she always wanted of a son. When the Aurors come to take him away for the next three days, Bellatrix lets her hand fall to her stomach. She's miscarried two weeks after they locked her up here, and she isn't certain if she'll ever be able to get her body healthy enough to ever have another one. Like many of the female inmates, Harry is the only child she has.
--
Halloween causes some issues in the prison, when Harry accidentally slips while climbing to get to some of the upper level cells and falls. He doesn't die, but he breaks his left hip in a way that will force him to limp for the rest of his life. The Aurors heal him as best as they can, but it isn't enough. The inmates label the day a day of bad luck and decide to make sure to keep him safe as long as he is there.
Pretty soon though, Harry is right back to climbing like he always has, not letting his crooked leg prevent him from visiting his friends.
The year ends without any more issues.
Just more screams, more bad memories, and more pain.