The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition - Season 4, Round 10
Team: Pride of Portree
Position: Chaser 3
Individual Task: Walburga Black (Portrait)
Optional Prompts:
1. (word) sinking
3. (quote) 'Real, or not real?' - Peeta Mellark, Mockingjay
10. (word) tickle
Wordcount: 947
No Escape
Number 12 Grimmauld's Place had never held much warmth or joy for Sirius Black. As a child, the place had held more similarities with a prison than a home. That was something that had not changed much in the nineteen years since he last set foot within its heavy, oaken doors.
Nineteen years he had managed to escape the house's cold clutches, and it was not nearly enough. Granted, he had spent fourteen of those years either locked up in the Wizarding prison, Azkaban, or on the run, but at least none of those other placed held the physical reminders of his late mother as well as the general presence of her hovering figure waiting for him around every corner.
Now he was back, and the house could return to serving its previous purpose once more. The years gone by, especially since the passing of its Mistress, had not been kind on the old building. While before the decay had merely been in the atmosphere of the place, now the appearance reflected what Sirius had always felt hiding beneath the surface of the town house owned by the well-respected Black family.
He felt trapped in his own house. For it was his now, the house, his mother had no legal claim on it anymore, now that she was dead. It did not feel like it belonged to him, though, and it probably never would.
The house both looked and felt just as dank and dreary whether it was day or night, sunshine or rain. Nothing ever changed.
It did not help that no one would allow him to leave the house at any time or for any reason. Not even as far as the front step for a breath of fresh air.
He had even stooped to attempting to sneak out a few times lately. But there was always someone out there keeping watch for enemies trying to approach the house - a house they could not possibly see – even though there was no one but him, his hippogriff and his mother's portrait on the inside.
No matter what he did, there was no way out. The Ministry would lock him up in Azkaban again – or just have their dementors suck his soul out through his mouth and be done with it, once and for all – if he so much as showed his face in any public place, Voldemort's followers were most likely ordered to murder him on sight, and the Order of the Phoenix wanted to keep him confined for his own safety, as well as their own.
There was no escape.
Walburga Black had always been a force to be reckoned with, and that was a fact that had not changed an ounce since her death.
Sirius could feel her cruel eyes following his every movement, judging his every word and action, even when the curtains were obscuring the old painting of her from his view, and consequently him from hers.
It did not appear to matter that her body had left the house many, many years earlier, her soul - blackened as it had always been - seemed to linger behind in the world of the living darkening the spirits of all who dared enter her sanctuary. She was like a deadly disease hanging in the air, infecting anyone who came near.
Her hateful gaze was burning at the back of his neck every waking moment. Though, from time to time he would wake up in the middle of the night for no discernable reason, except for a subconcious awareness of someone's uninterrupted stare, unrelentingly fixed upon his person.
He knew logically that he was out of her line of sight, but he could never shake the feeling of being watched. That eerie tickle at the back of his neck, that sinking feeling in his stomach.
He had been spending an increasing amount of time up in the attic with Buckbeak over the last few months. It seemed to be the only room in the house that could give him any sort of reprieve anymore, however short lived it may be.
It appeared to be out of reach of old Mrs. Black's penetrating gaze, being almost as far away as it was possible to get from her portrait without actually leaving the house altogether. Or perhaps it was simply the presence of an hippogriff within the four walls of her house and her inability to remove it from the premises herself that she objected to.
But other than his moments of peace in the attic, she was haunting his every moment of every day, continually mocking his inability to escape her presence and tormenting him with the knowledge of the empty days of his useless existence.
She always had told him he was useless. ''A useless boy that would never be deserving of the respect he was born into'', to be exact.
''Real, or not real?'', that was the ever-present question. Did his long since deceased mother really haunt him through the painting hanging in the hall of her old house, still keeping a disapproving eye on him after all these years? Or was it simply his mind playing tricks on him?
The curtains covering her portrait would always rustle as if there was a breeze in the hall, even though no such draft could be felt. And she - Sirius suspected – would send Kreacher on missions into whichever room he was spending time in at any given moment. The House Elf would hover around the man, muttering about his Mistress all the while, never letting him forget for one second that she was still there, and always would be.