Chapter 633: Veiled in Mist
"They used the Cruciatus Curse on him. An hour-long Cruciatus Curse."
Sirius finally looked up. His eyes were red, but his eye sockets were dry.
"You can't fathom what it means for the Cruciatus Curse to last an hour. A curse that vicious can break a person in thirty seconds. Ten minutes is enough to make a man try to bite off his own tongue... An hour—"
He didn't continue.
"Frank and Alice held out for an hour. No begging for mercy, no confessions—in fact, they didn't have any information to give up anyway. And they held out for an hour, simply because Neville was in the next room."
Sirius turned his head to look at Frank Longbottom.
The man was still lying motionless on the bed, his eyes rolling slowly, his mouth opening and closing slightly, making no sound.
Then he looked at Alice—she had already folded her seventh flower, arranging them neatly, as if forming a pattern only she could see.
"Later, the Ministry people arrived. They captured some of the Death Eaters, including Bellatrix. But Frank and Alice were already—"
He paused for a long time.
"Already gone. They didn't die, but they could never come back. When Neville was carried out, he didn't even cry. He was protected perfectly, completely oblivious. But he started crying later; perhaps he realized those low sounds were the agonized growls of someone in pain.
"As Frank was being lifted onto the stretcher, he called out Neville's name. That was the last meaningful word he ever spoke. Since then, there's been nothing."
Sirius released the hand pressing against his wound, opened his slightly trembling left hand, and stared at his palm, lost in a daze.
"Bellatrix Lestrange."
When he spoke this name, his voice suddenly became calm and suppressed.
"I know her all too well. She's my cousin. We grew up together in the Black household, walked the same corridors, sat at the same dining table. On the same family tree, our names sit right next to each other."
He looked up at Sean.
"You might know... know why I didn't go mad after escaping Azkaban. The Dementors sucked away everything that made me feel human every single day. Happiness, hope, courage. I held on for twelve years, and I didn't go mad. Even though I didn't know Peter was still alive back then, I still didn't lose my mind. Do you know why?"
Sean said nothing.
"Because I am guilty."
The sentence dropped like a stone tossed into a still pond.
Lupin, standing by Frank's bed, closed his eyes.
"I deserved to be in Azkaban, I deserved to be tortured," Sirius said, his voice growing lower and slower. "I made every wrong choice long before James and Lily died. I was the one who suggested James switch the Secret-Keeper to Peter at the last minute. It was me. Voldemort didn't kill them—I killed them."
He stared at his palm, five crescent nail marks indented deeply and shallowly into his skin.
"But what about Frank and Alice? They never made any wrong choices. The only thing they did was stand in front of his door before Neville came home from school."
Sirius's voice suddenly broke.
He stood up.
Barefoot on the stone floor, Sirius walked over to Frank Longbottom's bed. He stood there, looking down at the motionless man lying in the bed, then slowly squatted down until his face was level with Frank's.
"Frank," he said, his voice hoarse, but every word distinct. "It's Sirius Black. I don't know if you can hear me, and you probably don't remember me. But back when you were in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, on the day I was hauled off to Azkaban, you stopped the Aurors escorting me in the corridor. You said to him—"
He stopped, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"You said to him: 'Give him a thicker prison robe. Even as a prisoner, he's still human, and Azkaban will freeze him to death.'"
Frank Longbottom's eyes slowly shifted.
No focus, no sign of any true response. But they did shift.
"He doesn't remember."
Lupin's voice came from the doorway. "But he was a good man; you remember that much."
Sirius didn't stand up. He remained crouching by Frank's bed, looking at that blank face for a long time.
The sound of the rain outside masked all the silence, and the rustling of Alice's sweet wrappers could still be heard. She had already started folding her ninth flower.
Then, Sirius stood up and turned to Sean. His eyes were finally wet.
He stood between the Longbottoms' beds, bandages wrapped from his waist all the way to his back, the sharp angles of his gaunt face, scarred by claw marks, looking exceptionally severe in the grey light of the overcast day.
"You see," he said to Sean, his voice finally shedding its hoarseness, replaced by a quiet calm where all edges had been smoothed out, "This is what I had to tell you—if you need us to do anything, absolutely anything, we will do it. There is only one person in this world who can stop this kind of catastrophe, sir. With you here, we won't have to see anyone else turn into them."
He looked at Alice, then at Frank.
The woman's fingers were still mechanically folding sweet wrappers; the man was still searching the ceiling for something he would never find.
"They are waiting for Neville to finish school and come home," Sirius said.
Lupin had remained silent for a moment. He stood at the foot of Frank's bed, his bandaged left hand hanging by his side, his right hand gripping the bed rail.
Frank's head was lowered, his lips trembling slightly as if silently mouthing something.
In a slightly trancelike state, Sean listened carefully—and realized he was repeating the same word.
That word was "Neville".
The rain outside the window never ceased.
Perhaps I can do something.
This thought popped into Sean's mind and, like a runaway horse, could no longer be reined in.
The Cruciatus Curse—what are its underlying mechanics?
Sean pondered.
Crucio. One of the three Unforgivable Curses. Alongside the Killing Curse and the Imperius Curse, it was universally recognized as one of the most vicious curses in the magical world.
This spell inflicted extreme, unbearable physical agony upon the victim. Prolonged exposure would cause extreme, irreversible brain damage, even driving a person to insanity or madness.
If its pain acted upon the physical body, then where did the soul—which commanded the wizard's body—go?
Did this also mean that the wizard's soul remained undamaged?
A certain possibility suddenly dawned on Sean. He walked slowly to the foot of the Longbottoms' beds.
He looked at the two Aurors, at their emaciated bodies withered by years of inactivity.
White mist began to slowly billow forth from the fractured stone tablet at his chest.
Tonight, St Mungo's Hospital was veiled in mist.