"Gai Avery, you've finally been dragged to hell!"
A voice like grinding stones echoed through the corridor. Dana Avery watched as a shadow flickered past the rusted iron bars of the opposite cell. The man peering through the gloom was a ghost of his former self, eyes sunken and wild—Sirius Black.
Dana knew that face. A man broken by the weight of a betrayal he hadn't committed, rotting in a cage as a form of self-flagellation. Dana didn't answer. He turned his back on the prisoner and retreated into the dampest corner of his cell, pressing his spine against the cold stone. He forced his mind toward a void, trying to bury every spark of warmth or memory deep within.
He knew what was coming. The Dementors would soon begin their rounds, scouring the halls for any trace of light. If he could just hide a small piece of himself, perhaps there would be something left to reclaim when—or if—he ever walked out.
"What's the matter, Gai?" Sirius spat, his voice trembling with a manic edge. "You weren't this quiet when you were hunting down James and Lily!"
Dana's only response was a slight, rhythmic shudder. He kept his head bowed. The air here didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, as if the oxygen itself was being leached from the room. He needed to conserve every ounce of strength.
"Wait..." Sirius's voice shifted, the aggression replaced by a sharp, confused clarity. "You're not Gai Avery. Who the hell are you?"
Dana felt the familiar, sickening ripple of his skin. The Polyjuice Potion was failing. The transport boat had been delayed by the North Sea swells, and the borrowed form was melting away. His limbs retracted, his bones clicked and shifted with agonizing speed, and his clothes—heavy, adult-sized wizard robes—slumped around him like a leaden shroud.
In seconds, the man was gone. In his place sat a small, trembling seven-year-old boy.
Sirius froze. The year was 1987. He had been in this tomb for six years, and today had been a rare moment of dark satisfaction—the news of another Death Eater's capture. But the face staring back at him wasn't a murderer's. It was the face of a child.
Gai Avery, the head of the family, had indeed been arrested. But Ollivander Avery had spent a fortune in Galleons to grease the palms of the Ministry's elite. A deal had been struck in a candlelit office: a life for a life, a scapegoat for a lord.
Dana was that scapegoat. He was the son of a branch family with no name and no protectors—only a sickly mother whose life depended on the very Galleons the Averys offered as blood money.
Sirius opened his mouth to shout, but his expression suddenly twisted in terror. His breath hitched, and with a sudden, fluid blur of motion, he collapsed into the shape of a massive, shaggy black dog. The Animagus transformation was his only shield; as a beast, his emotions were muffled, blurred, and harder for the guards to track.
A Dementor was coming.
The temperature plummeted. Dana's teeth began to chatter with a violent, metallic rhythm. He pulled the oversized robes over his head, wrapping himself in the scratchy fabric, but it offered no protection against the creeping dread.
The figure glided past the bars—a tattered, hooded nightmare that seemed to swallow the light around it. A foul, swamp-like rot filled the air. Dana squeezed himself so tightly against the wall he felt the rough stone biting into his skin. He had read about this. He had prepared for the cold. But he hadn't prepared for the emptiness. It was a hollow ache that whispered that his mother was already dead, that he would never leave, that the world was nothing but ash.
He wanted to die just to make the feeling stop. He finally understood why Hagrid had nearly lost his mind after only a few months.
The Dementor lingered, sensing the fading echo of Sirius's earlier joy, but found only the dull, animalistic pulse of a dog and the shivering terror of a child. It drifted on, its tattered hem clicking against the floor.
Dana let out a jagged, sobbing breath.
"Kid," Sirius's voice returned as he shifted back into human form, his face pale as bone. "Who are you? Why are you in his place?"
Dana glanced at the man across the hall. He knew the truth about Sirius—the hero hiding in a villain's reputation. "Because they promised to save her," Dana whispered. "As long as I took his place, they said they'd cure my mother."
Sirius let out a harsh, bitter bark of a laugh. "Foolish boy. You trust the word of those Pure-blood snakes? They have what they want. They won't waste a single knut on her now."
Dana's eyes flashed with a sudden, weary fire. "You think I don't know that? But they didn't give me a choice. A wand was at her throat. It was her or me. What would you have done?"
Sirius went silent. He had lived in the shadow of the Black family long enough to know the cruelty of their "persuasion."
"And your mother let you?"
"I knocked her out," Dana said, his voice small but firm. "She's kind. She's... she's naive. She would have died in a day here. I'm the son. It's my job to take the blow."
Sirius looked at the boy huddled in the oversized rags. A strange, forgotten pang of pity stirred in his chest. "Kid... have you had your first bout of accidental magic yet?"
"Yes."
"Listen to me. I'll teach you a Warming Charm. You don't have a wand, but if you focus—if you try until your mind bleeds—you might manage a wandless spark. It's the only way you'll survive the winter."
It was a desperate hope, nearly impossible for a child, but it was better than the silence. Dana nodded. He began to point a small, trembling finger at his chest, mimicking Sirius's instructions.
"Caliens corporis," he whispered.
Nothing happened.
"Caliens corporis!"
He repeated it until his throat was raw. From the surrounding cells, the muffled voices of other prisoners rose like the hissing of snakes.
"Look at the little Squib..." "Is he a Muggle? Did they throw a Muggle in here?" "Doesn't even look like a wizard. Look at him struggle!"
"Shut your mouths!" Sirius roared, his voice shaking the bars. "None of you bastards can cast a wandless spark to save your lives! Leave the boy be!"
The darkness settled back in. When the "meal" arrived—a slab of moldy black bread and a cup of water so cold it had ice skinning the top—it simply appeared inside the cell with a soft pop.
Dana stared at the pathetic ration. He had hoped a human guard might see him, might realize a mistake had been made. But Azkaban was a machine of misery, and the machine didn't care about the age of its fuel.
"Merlin's beard," Dana muttered, the weight of his reality finally breaking through. "I forgot this was a magic prison."
It was a common wizarding idiom, one he'd heard a thousand times but never used. But as the words left his lips, something changed.
A sudden, sharp warmth blossomed in the center of his palm.
Dana gasped and opened his hand. Resting in his dirt-smudged palm was a long, silvery-white strand of hair—a thick, curled beard hair that pulsed with a soft, ethereal luminescence. It wasn't just hair; it hummed with a concentrated, ancient magical frequency, the kind usually reserved for legendary artifacts.
Dana stared at the glowing filament, his heart racing. He had spent seven years believing he was a "transmigrator" without a gift.
It seemed his "Golden Finger" had finally arrived. And it was, quite literally, Merlin's beard.