Betrayed

Well, here's chapter 2...hope you like it.

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Sirius looked around his bedroom, nervous despite his best attempts not to be so. Every night, since Harry’s detention, he’d had the same nightmare. There was nothing he could do to stop the nightmares; dreamless sleep potions just didn’t seem to work, there wasn’t any curse or spell on him, there was nothing wrong, if the numerous healers he’d visited were to be believed. But, when shadows took the streets and darkness claimed the world, he couldn’t help but panic. He feared the moment he closed his eyes, knowing that the nightmares would fester upon him, as they had once done with his ex-godson. The endless dreams –an innocent Harry, demanding an explanation, despising him for what he had done, not even looking at him- threatened to drive him crazy. He hadn’t had the rest of a good’s night sleep for months now, he hadn’t slept a single night without waking bathed in cold sweat, hunted by the nightmares.
And that night wouldn’t be any different...

He was at the gates of Azkaban, Harry had just been declared guilty and condemned to life imprisonment in the magical prison, in a high security cell. Ten dementors would guard his cell. Nobody had ever lived longer than two days in that conditions without turning mad, and in the faces of his friends it was evident that they knew. Next to Sirius, a enraged Ron glared at Harry. The redhead had managed to become an auror in his sixth year, as had done Hermione, vouched by and helped along by the Order of the Phoenix. To his left was the bushy-haired witch, her eyes filled to the brim with tears, not able to look at the boy she had learned to love as a brother.
To his right was Hogwarts’ Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, looking at Harry with disappointment and compassion in his gaze. His pale blue eyes had lost their sparkle, and seemed to accuse the boy who had once been his pupil.
In representation of the Ministry of Magic were the pleased Fudge and Umbridge, there to make sure the proceedings were carried without a problem.
Harry turned around and looked at him in the eyes, just before entering Azkaban. He had made sure Sirius never had to return to the damned place, demonstrating his innocence, and he had to do now what his godfather had had to so many years ago; enter the prison, in life imprisonment. Sirius would never forget that gaze, between hurt and furious, stunned, that seemed to ask “why?”.

It always started with that memory, the night in which Harry was taken to Azkaban.
And then it turned worse, much worse.

Many months and years had passed since that night, the night in which Harry had been condemned, while they did nothing to prevent it. The Wizengamot, thanks to some new evidence, had revised Harry’s case, surprising everybody with the resolution: innocent.
Sirius and Dumbledore had volunteered to fetch Harry from Azkaban, as soon as possible.
The very moment they entered the prison the cold of the dementors penetrated them to their bones, bringing with it horrible and hurtful memories better left forgotten. As they walked towards his godson’s cell, the cold seemed to turn harsher, deeper, stabbing his chest with a gelid iciness that made breathing most difficult.
‘Harry…’ he muttered. Harry had trusted him, and he had betrayed him.
He was the traitor, the one who had given away a defenceless boy without stopping for a moment to doubt, without asking himself a single question, blindly trusting in his guiltiness...only because he had seen him. Just as he had been seen, so long ago.
They stopped at last in front of a big, metallic door. Touching it with his wand, Dumbledore muttered ‘Patefacio-foris’.

Slowly, screeching loudly, the door opened, revealing a filthy narrow cell, bare except for a thin cot and a hole in the floor. On the cot, laying on his stomach, was a boy, skeleton-thin and extremely pale. His hair, wild and covered in caked dirt, fell down his back, hopelessly tangled. The robe was torn, barely covering the battered body.
‘Harry...? Harry, we’re here to take you out of Azkaban.’ he muttered, trying to wake him up desperately. No, it couln’t be...
His emerald eyes, now glazed, empty, struck in him.

It was too late, Harry would never get out of that prison...Azkaban had killed him.
He caressed softly his messy hair, trying to tame it, his face covered in tears.
He would never look at his godson in the eyes and ask for forgiveness...forgiveness for doubting him, for never lifting a finger to help him...for betraying him, for failing him.
‘Azkaban has killed him…my Harry, my little one…’ he muttered, torn by the gilt that was furiously eating him away. The sobs racked his body as he hugged the dead corpse that was once his godson. ‘No...not my little prongs, no...’

A voice from his back sent shivers through his body.
‘It wasn’t Azkaban, godfather. You all killed me. You killed me.’
‘Harry?’ the body in his arms was that of his godson, but, somehow, he was also in front of him. His face was contorted in a hard, harsh expression he had never before seen in him. His face seemed to be carved in marble; his body, lean and strong, was easily revelled by a black and silver robe. His hair, short and wild, was styled just as James used to do his hair. Some distant part of his brain registered the thought that Dumbledore wasn’t there anymore, but he didn’t care about the old man. He had before him the body of his godson, just as he could have been if Lily and James hadn’t...and his face, it was so full of hatred...
‘Don’t ever call me that again.’ His youthful face contorted in a disdainful sneer. ‘It's Potter to you, Black.’
‘Harry, I...’ sobbed Sirius, shaking, only to be cut by him.
‘I haven't come this far just to listen to your pathetic excuses, Black. I bring a message from James Potter. And I must say I never thought my father could be so cruel when angered.’ he said, a gruesome smile gracing his lips, delighting in the effect his words had on the ex-convict.
‘James? But, that’s impossible, Prong’s death…’ “And so are you” he thought, looking at his godson.
‘Not anymore. Death isn’t unalterable, Black...surely my dear grandpa has taught you as much, hasn’t he?
Black paled. He was, once more, the sick skeletal prisoner who once inhabited Azkaban, a mere specter of his former self.
Harry, seeing his face pale beyond his usual chalk-white color, chuckled.
‘Yes, my beloved grandfather, Black. I know who he is. Lets concentrate on the message, right? I don’t want to suffer your presence anymore than I have to.’ With a graceful movement he extracted a red orb from his robes. He pressed it gently and let it float from his hand. The orb started glowing and from it came a voice he knew well. ‘You are no longer welcome between the Marauders. Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black are therefore declared traitors of the worst kind. I withdraw custody from my son, Harry James Potter, from Sirius Orion Black, in favour of Remus Lupin.’ Recited the recorded voice in monotone. It then became threatening, full of hate, and a shiver travelled down the ex-prisoners body. ‘Black, If you ever come close to my son, if I ever see you again, I promise you, I will kill you. Slowly, and painfully.’

Tears flooded the animagus’ eyes, and something inside him tore, waves of pain rocking his body. James, Lili...and now Harry…he had failed them all.
The corpse Sirius held in his arms suddenly moved. His eyes, a washed out green, screamed in pain.
‘Godfather...you killed me...I trusted you, I risked my life for you...and you didn’t even try to believe in me, to ask for evidence, for veritaserum, for a real trial...I risked the dementor’s kiss for you...and yet you sent me to Azkaban without even asking...who is the traitor, Black?’
‘I’m dying.’ Said the other Harry dispassionately, kneeling by his side and tracing the other’s lightening-shaped scar with his finger, in a loving caress. ‘I’ll soon die, Black, and you will all follow me, because there will be no one to face Voldemort. And to think,’ he continued, with a bitter smirk ‘that if you had taken a couple of hours more to arrest me, just one hour or two more, I would have killed that bastard...the one that is going to destroy those who condemned me.’ He muttered, venom filling his words.
‘Yes, Padfoot.’ Corpse-Harry’s tone was cold too, more similar to a rasping last breath than to real hate, but still chilling cold. ‘I was going to kill my last family in this World, just because I thought…I thought that with you as my family I would’n need that snake...’
‘As you see, I was wrong.’ Continued the other, waving his hand in direction of his dying self.
He pierced his his eyes with his own, tear-filled, accusing eyes.
‘Who is the traitor, godfather? Who is the traitor?’

Sirius woke up, his heart beating wildy in his chest, soaked in cold sweat. He couldn’t take his mind off his godson’s disdainful stare, the hate in his once best friend, Harry’s lifeless corpse, coming back from the dead to torment him.

He glanced at his alarm clock. It was three a.m, and he wouldn’t fall asleep again.

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R&R?