Title: Wave After Wave
Author Naatz
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~400 words.
Pairing: None.
A/N: First posted on LJ in January 2007.
Disc.: Harry Potter belongs to whom it belongs, and that 'whom' is not me.
Summary: Sirius could hardly call life in prison living.
***
Wave After Wave
Sirius used to pretend that the ocean sang lullabies for him. That had been a year, two, three -- maybe five ago, and the passage of time had played tricks on his brain.
Now, the ocean truly sings, filtered by the stifled echo of walls made from solid stone. Now, the air tastes of something stale and unforgiving, and behind his eyelids, he can see merry fireworks.
Life in prison isn't very hard. All you have to do is be there. He wakes up and drinks and takes a piss and eats and takes a dump and drinks and after it is all done he goes to sleep.
Perhaps that's life, but it's hardly living. Living in prison is hard. It means waking up in the same cell day after day and wishing you'd never woken up at all. It's waiting with baited breath until something moved, or changed, and then cursing when time crawled all over again. It's twitching your nose because the water is more colourful than your one outwashed blanket, but drinking it anyway -- swallowing everything in one big gulp.
Sometimes he chokes after he swallows.
The mice and the critters and the biting chill do nothing to improve his life. He used to drape the thin, blanket over his shoulders and sway back and forth, but it did nothing to rid of the cold in his tired bones.
At times somebody visits and tsks at him. Sirius looks up and sees figures, hunched into their tailored robes, trying to preserve warmth. He can't distinguish them from one another. They all have a chin and a mouth that's curled in distaste, and a nose and eyes and eyebrows that are drawn together, and they laugh when they see him seated on the floor, swaying back and forth, no longer draping the blanket over his shoulders because it never, ever helps. . . .
Then even they stop coming, and Sirius's only company are the Dementors. That's when he begins imagining he can hear the ocean sing through the walls of the prison -- wave rolling after wave, soothing and precious and friendly, and no--no, it becomes real and he really does hear the waves.
Somehow, they keep the Dementors a little bit away.
~fin
