Two of a Kind

Two of a Kind

The Dementors had quit Azkaban; Fudge had said so in the Daily Prophet. Therefore Azkaban should no longer be the Ultimate Dregs of Despair in the wizard world, now that it was deprived of its trademark guards who stripped you of every happy thought and feeling until you were driven clean out of your mind.

At least, it shouldn't be quite the same dregs of despair. There were still things to despair and dread about Azkaban.

For most of the prisoners, the departure of the Dementors had come far, far, too late. Their minds were far, far gone...

Layers of filth and squalor which exuded every crack and niche in every cell that were never cleaned or scoured, for all the prisoners who passed through over the years carrying goodness knows what...

Food that was as uninspiring and meagre as ever...

Guards who had doubled, not only in number, but in indifferent, if not heartless, temperament...

Mind you, the fearful quivers in their eyes, their paces and their chatter were something new. It was unmistakable proof that they, too, were living in dread.

The imminent dread that You-Know-Who would be on their doorstep at any moment with the former guards of Azkaban at his command. Every single guard would get the Kiss and all the entombed minions of You-Know-Who would be set free...

...Including this new minion, whom they had just processed into the Azkaban prison record system and were now escorting to his quarters. There were certainly raised eyebrows, and even hoots of laughter, when he arrived. They certainly didn't expect this little twerp would turn out to be a Death Eater.

But you never can tell, these days...

*~*~*

It was near four years ago, when Ern had said it...

"I'd blow meself up before I set foot in that place. Serves him right, mind...after what he did..."

Oh, the irony. If Stan could have blown himself up right now, he would. Dementors or no Dementors, he would rather do that than set foot in this place.

The place that he was setting foot in at this very moment.

But in a way, it serves him right too, mind you, for telling such great big porkies about Death Eaters...

*~*~*

As Stan Shunpike was dragged deeper and deeper into the corridor, it felt more and more like a monstrous, relentless boa constrictor. The very walls seemed to be coming alive, and threaten to crush Stanley in their dark, drowning death. Even the wails and screams from his fellow prisoners, and their desperate, scabby hands which clawed desperately from those suffocating walls, seemed to be reaching out to assault him like foul harpies.

"Look, Guv, I'm no Deaf Eater!" The man howled in vain as he was dragged deeper and deeper down the cold, dank corridor that loomed up before him as if it were a huge, monstrous maw ready to devour him. "It wuz jus' a lark! I didn't mean all them things! I wuz only jokin'!"

"Well, the joke's on you, Shunpike!" The burly guard gave Stan's chain yet another vicious yank as he hauled Stan down the darkening corridor.

You had to admit it: The brutal, snarling guard was right.

Stan was beaten. His shaking body went abruptly limp and his cries of protest dissolved into faint, meek, occasional whimpers.

There was a horrible groaning in his ears as the door to the maximum security wing swung open. Then came a dreadful jarring as the mindless wails and shrieks were abruptly replaced by strange gasps of surprise and hisses as the true Death Eaters crowded at their cell door to examine their newcomer...

"Well if it isn't Stanley Shunpike, the scabby little conductor of the Knight Bus!"

"What are you doing here? Did your filthy Knight Bus run over a little old Muggle?"

This was greeted with a loud, raucous cacophany of laughter that was made all the more horrible for being so croaky from disuse. It even raised a sardonic smile from the snobbish Lucius Malfoy who was otherwise eyeing poor Stan Shunpike as if he were something the gnome had dragged in...

Stan had become such a forlorn jellyfish by now that that he had not even noticed that the guard had hauled him to a stop outside one of the cell doors. Only the fierce jangle of the keys could pierce his gibbering mind. The door opened with an odd groaning creak that sounded as disused as the voices in the corridor. Only Stan's stomach registered with a distant, sickening lurch, the sensation of being shoved to the befouled floor as the guard pushed him through the door. The door slammed shut, the keys jangled yet again, and the hefty, burly footsteps gradually faded into the cold, clinical distance.

Stan just lay where he had fallen. An utter zombie now...completely frozen...completely numb...and now, completely silent. Not the flicker of a whimper now. Not the flicker of movement, not even a blink. The goggle eyes stared out into infinity, but nothing registered, not even the horror of the dank, squalid and chilling cell. It was a complete state of catatonia.

There was no way to know how long it was before Stan could register anything once more. Only the measly uneaten prison portions lying at the door suggested a day or so. He didn't know what he had been doing all this time. Had he been lying catatonic all this time? Had he gone through moments of blackouts, or even managed to drop off to sleep through sheer exhaustion?

Weakly, his eyes began to blink. They were as blurry as an infant's, and could make out little more than a dank, stony darkness. They couldn't focus on anything. The slabs in the stony walls of stone criss-crossed in a garbled, incoherent fashion that seemed to chill all the more for it...

It was far too early yet for Stan's disjointed senses. His head sagged back to the floor, on the verge of blacking out altogether...

It was then that the endless assault from the worst of your memories began. There may be no more Dementors in Azkaban, but their impact on the prison was still fresh and keen. In time it would dissipate, but for now it still cast a long, lingering shroud that still sucked the happiest of memories as surely as the Dementors themselves.

And the memory that overwhelmed Stan right now was his stupid folly that had landed him right in here. It should have served as one of his whimsical memories, if not quickly forgotten in the blur of too much drink. Instead it was the memory he was beating himself over the head with...

"Aww, pull the other one, mate! "You, take a butcher's at a Death Eater's' Bristols?" Stan's china burst out laughing, but they were both getting too tiddly to notice that Stan's prattle was attracting sharp, disapproving stares from other tables.

"I can see 'em now!" Stan twiddled his fondling as if his minces were eying those Bristols already. "Me Germans is on 'em already! An' 'er Scotches!" Stan gave the loudest wolf whistle of the night in the pub.

Stan's china was now brought up short. "Aw, shut yer North an' South, yer lump, 'fore it gets somebody's Oliver!"

"Aw, stick it up yer Khyber!" Stan snorted and returned to his prattling.

And on it went. As Stan got more and more elephant's trunk, his prattle got louder and cruder as he pictured himself doing far cruder things with a totally imaginary female Death Eater who can't be all bad under her Death Eater's disguise, than taking a butcher's hook at her Bristol Cities and Scotch Pegs. Intermingling with the crudeness were more romantic undertones such as taking her April Showers...

Stan never knew where to stop once he started yarning - especially when he had too much tiddly wink...

Finally, Stan drew far too many disapproving stares. The deeply embarrassed innkeeper marched straight over and threw both Stan and his china right out the door.

That should have been pretty much the end of it, once Stan had sobered up by morning. Much as the other patrons had disapproved of Stan's prattle, none of them had taken it seriously. Stan was well-known among them for spinning yarns, and when he was drunk, he spun the wildest of yarns.

Unfortunately, there had been an undercover Auror listening. He had taken Stan's prattle at face value...

And so did the Ministry when Stan Shunpike was hauled before the Wizengamot the following day. The treatment Stan received now proved beyond a doubt that the Ministry had learned absolutely nothing from their inquiry, whatever that was, of their treatment towards Sirius Black. It was Barty Crouch "justice" all over again.

No proper trial at all. The only witness to speak was the Auror and that was it. None of the other people who had been in the bar at the time were called, not even for the Prosecution. Not even the innkeeper who turned Stan and his china out was called to appear.

As for the Defence - well, what Defence? There was no counsel, no chance to speak, not even under Veritaserum, and certainly no chance to call witnesses. No chance even to properly sober up. Stan's head was still throbbing badly from all that drink and in danger of throwing up all over the courtroom floor. What chance had he to think clearly or speak properly?

Stan's head now throbbed even more as the fearsome judge, a breed worthy of Barty Crouch himself, bellowed incessantly at him. The sheer volume and venom pounded against Stan's ears, making his aching head throb and ache all the more. What the judge actually said went straight over poor Stan's befuddled head....

Except for one solitary word: "Azkaban!"

That loud, booming word kept repeating over and over in Stan's mind right now. It just wouldn't stop.

Nor would Stan's endless cursing at himself, for drinking too much, for shooting off his big mouth, telling great big porkies about how big he was for some reason or other - and all for nothing. Since when did he ever care about some Death Eater's Bristols?

Here, locked up in the bloody horrible wizard bucket and all for bloody nothing over Bristols!

Azkaban...Azkaban...Azkaban...

*~*~*

Finally, other words began to filter through...

Foul, despicable Death Eater...utterly contemptible...a mere bus conductor, turned out to be a loathesome Death Eater...I hold you in the highest contempt...you are the lowest of the low, you pathetic little Death Eater...

Stan's head shot bolt upright. "I'm not a Deafeater!"

It surprised him how much his throat hurt to shout those few words. There was a faint croak almost hinted at a voice starting to fall into disuse. Hardly a day or so, and not a real Dementor, and Azkaban was beginning to work on poor Stan.

Yet as those words Death Eater...Death Eater...shouted over and over in Stan's head, he began to shout right back.

"I'm innocent, I'm innocent!" Stan kept shrieking over and over, his voice shedding its croak as it gathered momentum, as it pounded right against the horrible voice going over and over in Stan's mind.

Stan's shrieking overwhelmed the voice and it faded into nothing. Yet Stan still kept at it...he felt an odd surge in him as he shrieked his innocence over and over, punching his innocent fist furiously into the air...and that horrible engulfment of Azkaban simply could not overwhelm it...

Then his throat seized up, painful and hoarse from all that shouting. However, that couldn't stop it from shouting on and on in Stan's mind, sending that horrible engulfment retreating even further into the distance.

All of a sudden, Stan felt an odd uplifting invigoration swelling within him. For the first time, his head was absolutely crystal clear. "I'm innocent! I'm innocent!" The cobwebs all blew away and his depression was banished as his mind was filled with a raging defiance that Azkaban just couldn't seem to suck away...

"I am innocent!"

Stan was brought right up short. That wasn't his voice just then!

He spun around. "'Oo's there? 'Oo said that?"

There was only an eerie stillness in reply. Stan gulped in indignation. Bloody cheek - butted in like that and now they won't even show themselves...

Stan whirled around in a complete circle. Nope, nobody, just the dour stone walls staring back at him.

Stan froze. Was he hearing things? Was his mind going already? He shivered and began to feel the warning signs of panic.

Then his eye spotted it. He almost fell back, and then heaved with relief.

I AM INNOCENT. The words on the wall stared back at him, plain as day.

So somebody else was banged up in here, and they were as innocent as he was. This must have been how they done it. They kept shouting they were innocent and Azkaban couldn't take it from them. That was 'ow they kept their marbles...

Gingerly, nervously, Stan paced up to the words on the wall. If they wuz innocent, if they got through, maybe they could 'elp him too. Maybe they left something else written on the wall that could 'elp. And why not? They wuz both innocent, both him and this other bloke...two of a kind, like.

Stan was absolutely shaking as he neared the wall. His fingers quivered as they raced all over the inscription, tracing those rough cut letters that felt as if they had been gouged over and over...well, that figured. Must have been goin' over 'n' over in that bloke's head, just as it wuz goin' over 'n' over in Stan's. He felt that surge in him yet again.

He ripped his fingers away from that inscription to see if there was something, anything else that was written...His fingers struck what felt like more etched letters.

"S" ...yep, he could trace that, no problem...the other letters felt a bit sharp...no wait, there was an "I"...it took a bit of fumbling, but he thought it was an "R"...another "I"...definitely a "U" and finally, another "S".

S-I-R-I-U-S...

SIRIUS!

Stan jolted straight back from the wall. He was so staggered that he missed his footing and his backside landed smack on the floor. His poor backside hardly registered. His head still reeling, Stan stared blearily at the wall.

I AM SIRIUS BLACK. I AM INNOCENT.

Sirius Black, Sirius Black...the shock welled up in Stan's throat, as if he was going to throw up. The most infamous prisoner ever to be locked up in this horrible place, not least because he was the first to break out, which everybody said that nobody could ever do. This was his cell!

Stan whirled around wildly, as if he expected the infamous Sirius Black to come leaping out of the shadows or summat...

An interminable number of minutes passed while Stan sat, heaving wildly...but nothing came leaping out of the shadows. There was nothing leaping out at all except the letters on that wall...I AM SIRIUS BLACK. I AM INNOCENT.

Innocent...innocent...Stan began to chuckle weakly in sheer embarrassment...how could he have forgotten? Hadn't he read about it in The Daily Prophet? It was all over the front page! Sirius Black was dead, killed in the famous battle with the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. And what's more, he was completely innocent. He had nuffink to do with Death Eaters, he was set up by one, that Peter Pettigrew they all said got blown up, but had shammed it all and 'elped You-Know-'Oo to come back...

Guess he had just gotten so used to thinking Black was that nutty Death Eater wot blew up that Muggle street, an' all that, that he wasn't quite used to thinking otherwise yet. That was what he told Harry Potter 'bout four years ago now, that was. The night they had the Boy Who Lived on the Knight Bus!

Having a celebrity on the Knight Bus had always made Stan's day. He didn't really care who it was, so long as they were famous and sitting right there in person on the Knight Bus. Left him positively gushing, it did. Inflated his big mouth to shoot off later at the Leaky Cauldron over a few fire whiskeys...

Like the night he shot his mouth off once too often...oh, did he have to remind himself of that? Stan began to wince as the ghastly, embarrassing memory churned to torment him yet again...he sank to a heap on the floor and buried himself into the wall, crying in anguish.

*~*~*

"Oh, so you've woken up at last, have you Shunpike?"

Stan shot up his head dazedly. It was one of those harsh hulks of a guard, glaring down at him like he was something the gnome had dragged in.

The guard pushed one of the untouched food trays forward with his boot. "Are you going to eat something now, or do we have to force-feed you?" He scowled down, waiting for a response.

Stan just stared back at him blearily. His mouth wobbled, but that was all he could manage.

The guard leaned forward right into Stan's wobbling, blank face. "So we have to force-feed you, huh?"

To Stan's astonishment, the guard gave a sudden chuckle. "You know, we had to force-feed your predecessor too, when he first arrived. He was just like you right now. Well, Muggles say history repeats itself. I guess there's something to be said for these Muggle sayings."

That finally wrung a response. "Sirius Black?" Stan croaked.

A light sparked the guard's face - which quickly faded to a dark, morose scowl. "So you've noticed, eh?" He paid a sharp, embittered look at the graffiti on the wall. His face was more sourly than ever when he turned back to Stan. "Yes, this was Black's cell alright." The guard snarled and spat as he continued. "After he...left (the guard sounded like the word "escaped" would choke him) we kept it empty. We wouldn't have anyone in it until Black was found..." He stopped abruptly, looking somewhat embarrassed and self-reproachful for reminiscing like that in front of a prisoner. "Well, anyway, he's dead, so the cell's open for business again. Congratulations, Shunpike. You're the first customer. Hope you enjoy following in Black's footsteps!"

"But Black was innocent, they said so! Don't you care - YAAGGGHHH!" The guard had given Stan the most vicious kick in the shin. Stan moaned as he clutched his throbbing leg. Oh Merlin, that had been a stupid thing to say. Suppose the bitterness in the guard's voice should have warned him. The wound rankled as deep as the day that Sirius Black had escaped. The surprise announcement that Sirius Black was completely innocent and had perished in the infamous battle against the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries, had cut no ice with the guards whatsoever. If anything, their acrimony over the Sirius Black escape was all the more intense because of it.

"Now, I repeat: Are you going to eat or do we have to force-feed you, Shunpike?" Now the guard was almost shrieking with bitterness.

Hastily, Stan grabbed the chunk of bread on the plate and wolfed it down, heedless of how dry and stale it was. He dared not aggravate the guard any further. Stan then found he had to wolf down all the untouched trays as well, and almost make himself violently sick, before the sourly guard would even consider leaving him alone to retreat into the dregs of despair.