I can feel the pain suffocating my body, gripping me like a python choking its prey. My eyes accustomed to being in the dark have little light left in them. The air around me is cold, almost icy but it has been, for years, and there’s so much that they can break. It is often said that in the final moments before you die, the happiest memories of your life play in your mind like an old fashioned reel, as you finally pass into the oblivion. However, I feel that the few happy memories that belonged to me have long gone, only to replaced by the reality of this dark dingy jail cell. I’m sorry if I haven’t introduced myself to you yet, but my name is Ellis Boyd Redding or just Red and, I have the unwanted distinction of being the longest living occupant in Azkaban. For forty years, I have been in this very cell, growing old or perhaps, fading. I had entered this cell as a young and vengeful man, brimming with power and anger. Four decades later, it’s not just my body that has waned, but my spirits too. People in the wizarding world have often attributed crimes with a punishment more severe than ordinary. For Azkaban doesn’t just restrain criminals from their darker sides, but emancipates them from their souls. Their daunting veiled guardians take away the only means required for one to survive this place…’Hope’.
The only lucid memory I have is from my childhood … of those long winding roads of Buxton where I was born, flanked by trees of all shapes and sizes. I’d run down those roads at times into the woods to pick up stones. On a sunny day in spring, the fields would often be covered with grass greener than paradise, bales of hay rested around awaiting the cattle while daffodils bloomed on unguarded patches of land. For the first 10 years in Azkaban, this memory was my savior. Every time the icy cold chills would penetrate my body, I’d imagine standing in the middle of this cell with my wand back and creating the strongest Patronus I can produce, using only this memory. The imagination alone would buy me few ounces of the ever fleeting warmth in this unforgiving misery.
My misery would peak when woken up by the nightmares of the crimes I committed. The crimes I wouldn’t recall because now, I believe I’ve paid for it and some more. The only bit I can possibly tell is that it was caused by my Irish blood and an act that would completely change my life. But again, this story is not about me, because I wouldn’t have lived to tell it had another man not been a part of it. And I swear to the one god that exists, that this way it is way more interesting than the monotonous ramblings of an old crook like me.
Every New year’s day at Azkaban, rather than the stale food that appears in the jail cell magically, some turkey and beef are served. That’s how I knew that it was the year 1981 and I’d put the time of the month around November when my adjacent unoccupied jail cell had a new dweller. It had previously been occupied by Brooks who killed himself in one of his fits. Brooks was a fine old man, but he couldn’t take it anymore, like most people in here. The only form of human contact one can have in Azkaban is the occupant of the neighboring cell. So for almost one year, my acquaintances were ‘halved’ or so limited to Floyd who lived in the cell left of mine. On the first day the new dweller arrived, I bet Floyd a bottle of Firewhiskey that he’d cry himself to sleep (Floyd and I occasionally bet drinks against each other which we’d pay out to each other if we ever got out). Sadly the new freshman didn’t make a single noise and I now owed Floyd one more.
On a gradual basis, the new prisoner started talking to me. New to ‘charms’of the Dementors, Sirius, his name was, thought I was just a voice in his head. It took him weeks to realize that it was me, a verifiable human being on the other side of the wall trying to wile away time. Soon enough he talked, making me the constant outlet of his thoughts and frustrations. Sirius, you see, unlike most criminals here, was high-born. He belonged to the Black family, the one deeply rooted in the history of the wizarding families in England. But unlike most hazy minded convicts, Sirius was well read. He was like a force of nature, distinct from us. He survived Azkaban on a different frequency. Gradually with time, we walked past both our lives or as much as we could remember of it. The joyous marauding of Padfoot, Prongs, Moony and Wormtail, their lives in Hogwarts and beyond. And of betrayal, deceit, and death. I learned how much the world had changed since my exile. Dark wizards taking over the wizarding world, how the light had been brought to it at the expense of his best friend, and how vengeful he was against another friend who had trapped him in this cell. I, for one, did not know if Sirius was innocent because everyone you ever come across Azkaban tells you they are. Floyd once told me I was the only guilty one here. But there was a certain sincerity in Sirius’ voice which diluted, if not, erased my doubts.
For the time we passed each other, we felt we had something stronger within us that we did not know of. Something stronger than what the most powerful magic could witness. It was like a warm embrace in the coldest of places and in the deepest darkest moments of, we knew at least we had each other. Those cold icy sensations from the presence of Dementors could not affect us as much they did before. It is one of my genuine beliefs that me without him, and he without me could not have survived this place. For the first two decades, my means of surviving this place was that of having no hopes. That they could not get things from inside you if you didn’t have it in the first place. But ever since Sirius came, he gave me an unabridged access to hope, as if it’s achievable even in the grimmest of circumstances. He’d say that hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
He’d often tell me that once in summer after he had left Grimmauld Place, he sailed across the Pacific, on his motorcycle, to a tiny island called Zihuatanejo. He said that as he flew across the Pacific with nothing but the sky at the horizon, he’d feel elated. The Mexicans said that the Pacific has no memory, and that’s where he’d like to live. A warm place with no memory.
But after 12 years in Azkaban Sirius grew silent. Although his voice had started growing stronger and warmer, he had stopped talking as if he was saving his energy for something. One night he hissed at me and said that in due time he hoped if I ever get out, I should make way for 13 Grimmauld Place, his family home in London. Having already experienced the death of a cell mate, this was the second blow to my morale. That night was the longest that I remember. I heard slightest sounds of brushing against the jail bars but that was it. There was a thunderstorm that night and against a flash of lightning, I saw the shadow of a dog. Soon enough, I climbed up to the guarded window of the cell on which you could only see the North Sea. I wouldn’t really know what happened that night but I can only imagine. Sirius Black, prisoner XY-390 swam across the chilling waters of the North Sea into the mainland. Sirius Black lived the dream of every prisoner in Azkaban. Sirius Black was finally free!
In 1993, Sirius Black escaped from the prison of Azkaban. Ministry officials came to check our cells. That day, I believe everyone at the prison was given hope. Hope, that however dire the circumstances are, there could always be an opening scraped through. Not that more people did not escape. Almost a dozen escaped some 18 months later but they were actually helped by the Dementors who’d sworn their allegiance to the returned Dark Lord. The changing of alliances of Dementors meant that Azkaban was not as haunted as it was, deserted by the veiled creatures. Soon again, I lived on my own, as Floyd had passed away five years ago, and his cell was now empty. People who had been sentenced and shared my destiny in prison had passed, and I now I felt as alone as I’d ever been. Still the thoughts of Sirius that kept me up many a night, if he could roam the streets of London free in his Animagus form, while the whole wizarding world looked for him. His escape had planted a genuine ability to hope within me.
Almost three years later, I learned about the demise of my dear friend. His cell, now occupied by Tommy who was clocking time at Azkaban for breaking and jinxing. He told me of the raging war outside these cells, and how Sirius had been killed while fighting Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic. That night, a little part of me died, but deep inside I had probably expected it all along. Sirius wasn’t like everyone. I had to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in, is much more drab and empty now, that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
I have survived a couple of years since, and I ate turkey and some beef tonight. Tonight marked the start of another millennium. The Great War is over and the wizarding world thrives in peace. I know this because inmates are now allowed to read the Daily Prophet. But I feel I’ve lived my life enough. Death is creeping closer to me, and after all these years, it just would feel like a warm embrace compared to the cold cells of Azkaban. But even in this instance, there’s hope. The hope that Death is like a door and once I pass through it, the chains of my past and my sins would not cling to me. I hope on the other side of it, I’d be free like any other man. I hope I can see the blue expanse of the Pacific and feel its breeze, but most importantly, I hope I could make my way across to a beach somewhere on a small island off the coast of Mexico, where there’d be an old aging man fixing his old flying motorcycle back to new. I hope, I’d meet my friend again!
Stereohead 