"Why are you here?"

"I did something real nasty."

Arthur looked through the bars, across at the man bound in shadows behind his own bars. His hair, ragged clumps of black like charred flesh fell down his ashen face. His eyes were gaunt but they had something there, something as close to life as they could in wizards' prison. The man, Sirius Black, gave a stiff nod. He knew better than to continue pestering Arthur. He leaned back on his cages.

Cloaks ebon slid past their bars, sending a mournful shiver through their being. When they passed Sirius turned his gaze back at Arthur, drinking his appearance in. Arthur, in drab clothing, must have once been a picture of class. His shock of blond hair now fell raggedly, matted with dirt. His eyes were the color of a calm sea, a greenish-blue with just the same amount of depth and mystery. Arthur picked at the walls with his nails. Azkaban was no place for him, Sirius knew, and not for him either. Sirius sighed.

"He must be in his second year now." Arthur stated. In the other cells inmates muttered something Arthur couldn't catch.

"I'll leave soon, I know I will." Sirius said. His eyes, shallow pits, sprung to a new life at the thought of his godson, of escape. Arthur wondered if he had a plan. He wouldn't get very far using a spoon to dig his way out. There were no sewage systems to climb out of, either. He grinned broadly at Arthur. He hadn't had this relationship akin to friendship for a long time, and he intended to milk it for all it's worth.

Arthur nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Yoouuu," a heavily accented voice came from the cell next to Sirius's. It was a woman with a mass of black hair and a soft, round face. She gripped the bars with a deranged look on her face. One glance told Arthur her name: Amy H. Heather. She was convicted of setting up some sort of trade between wizards and muggles. Arthur knew every person in England. It was his duty.

"Me?" Arthur asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, you, how come you en't brain dead yet?"

Arthur licked his lips casually and gave a low, long sigh. "I'm not alone."

Amy shook her head, her strands of hair shaking. "Neither are we."

Arthur laughed. The sound vibrated against the walls. Inmates staggered to life from their half0dead dozes. No one had laughed in the prison. Fear quaked through each body. Even Sirius felt the cells of his being quivering in apprehension. Arthur pointed his finger at his temple. "I have good old Beethoven in my head. Right now it's his ninth symphony." He began to quietly hum the tune.

If muggle prisons were home to a melancholy harmonica's wail, then, in that solitary moment in time, standing alone like a patch of green in a dead field was Arthur's humming. Amy's mouth dropped open. "Who's Beethoven?" She said. Arthur didn't reply. He shut his eyes, the bags beneath drooping so low, and pictures the violins, the flutes… He could see the music playing in his head so clearly it may as well have been playing right by his ears. He tapped his fingers against the floor.

"He's mad."

Sirius ignored the speaker. He had never heard Beethoven's ninth, though he had once hears something about the composer from Lily. The memories drifted through his mind, faded photographs lost in a breeze.

Some time elapsed and Sirius looked back at Arthur, who was awake and carving something in the walls. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"What does it look like? I'm carving my initials. One day someone else will find me here."

"You're a strange man." Sirius remarked. He was nothing but a skin bag of bones and a measly pumping heart. Somehow, some way, Arthur managed to breathe life into him, if only briefly.

"I've been in prison before." Arthur said as a way of replying. "In muggle prisons I usually carve or write to pass the time. You have a lot of time before you and I don't want to waste it on being bored out of my mind. Instead I'll choose something to do. Who knows, I may even write an entire poem on these walls."

The dark cloaks passed by again, but Sirius barley noticed them. They flitted by like a raven across a window, noticed, but forgotten. If only Arthur could stay forever, but some birds are not meant to be caged. He wondered where he had heard that phrase before him.

"Are muggle prisons…? What are they like?"

Arthur bit his lip in concentration. That man lived in a realm of his own, separate from both the wizards and muggles, as though a wall had been erected between the two, stopping the flow of time and space as easily as stopping sand from passing between two vessels with a simple glass disk.

"They are different. They don't need these buggers to sap the happiness and hope out of you. They do it themselves. They can make friends, they live there, they rely on the bars, and then when they are set free they die of loneliness and fear. You forget what it's like to be free, but at the same time you see what being free means. You see the world for what it is. You see that the role of villain and hero isn't a simple archetype like in stories. Instead the lines are so heavily blurred you can't even see them." Arthur set down the rock. He spun it around with his thumb. "Sometimes I think you wizards can be so devoid of emotion. You think muggles are nothing but empty husks without magic, these vacuums lacking something important. But they feel so strongly I think it's a magic of its own."

Sirius frowned. How could they feel so much? Some were horrible, crude. Even so they weren't so different. "Is that why purebloods seem to hate muggle-borns?"

"I don't know, I've never been one and I don't think I will ever be one."

"Are you a half-blood?"

"Mudbloods!" Someone nearby croaked out. Arthur's affect rippled through the crowd, a single drop shaking an entire pond. Arthur peered through his bars, rusted with age, at the speaker. Several heads, all sullen, some lost, stared back at him. Big men and tiny women alike shared the cells, lacking life and luster.

"I am not a half blood and I was not born of muggles." Arthur said.

Sirius didn't understand. To this Arthur gave a grin.

"Why doesn't it affect you?" A tall, lanky woman asked Arthur. She nodded at the bleak robes that passed by with a quickening pace each time, and more frequently.

"I'm used to it, I suppose." Arthur shook his head. "Isn't it strange how art depicts tears to be so large? When you actually see tears they are tiny, little droplets of water. You look so red and ugly when you cry, but artists think they are the most beautiful thing. Oh, teardrops, as a poet I should know why they enrapture our hearts…" he continued to prattle on.

The prisoners who wanted to throw something at him in an attempt to shut his mouth lost all will to. Arthur's ranting had lifted their spirits. This only indicated that he wouldn't be staying. Arthur talked about sadness, birds, the sea, and his favorite topic above all was an old weeping willow he used to visit as a child. His childhood, from how he framed it, could have been either several years before or centuries past. Each word dictated an aura of age, covered in a film of dust, and well-worn. At the same time they pulsed with life like a newborn.

"So what did you do to get in here?" Sirius asked at last, after hearing Arthur fall silent on recollection.

Arthur turned and stared directly at Sirius, his eyes boring deep. Arthur remained quiet for what felt like an eternity until finally he gave a base grin. "I did what you were accused of. Except I did it with my hands. I killed a man."

Sirius nodded slowly and Arthur returned to his usual dapper mood. His fingers remained curled in his lap, as if holding a flower delicately.

Months passed and Arthur during the day would speak. He never seemed to tire. At times he would direct all conversation to himself and become fitful and angry. Sirius watched him with rising interest and, when Arthur finally vanished—no authorities on the outside seemed to mind—Sirius discovered the image of his face and voice slowly fading from his mind. Each passing wave of time, pulling him closer and closer to his escape, to Harry, washed over Arthur's image, eroding it to nothing but dust.

I do not own Hetalia or Harry Potter.