Solitude
Sirius's eyes snapped open as he took a few breaths, trying to calm down his erratic heartbeat. A paralyzing terror filled his chest. As always. He silently reminded himself that he wasn't in Azkaban anymore. There was no need to despair needlessly anymore.
It had been about a year since Sirius had escaped the damned hellhole. But its effects hadn't diminished in the slightest. It didn't look like it would fade away until a proper healer could take a look at him. Which wasn't going to be anytime soon.
Sirius had a rat to hunt, an unseen plot to foil, and a reputation to clean. His nightmares could wait.
In another world, his mind would have been too addled to contemplate properly his course of actions because of a godson he needed to take care of desperately. In this one such situation never presented itself.
The thought of breaking into Hogwarts, somehow managing to get Pettigrew before being captured was a tempting thought. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to trust Dumbledore to hear him out. The old bastard had already failed him once.
So all he did was to slowly but surely keep tabs on the activities of dark wizards that somehow escaped punishment. The animagus had a powerful urge to grind his teeth each time he thought about how unfair it was. Just the fury alone powered him through many of the challenges he had to face the first months.
However, one day everything changed.
Rumors about Harry Potter coming back from the dead started circulating the day the participants of the anticipated tournament were chosen.
Sirius refused to believe it at first, deducing that it had to be a plot formulated to capture him. Then, things got ridiculous. In the span of a single month, each and every Death Eater he was shadowing disappeared from the face of the Earth. Harry James Potter was said to be responsible for this.
Before such development, he planned to lay low for a while and to meet the teenager that claimed to be his dead godson once he stepped foot in Hogsmeade.
Sirius didn't know how to feel in all honesty. All his plans had gone to shit but in a good way.
Even if his rotten luck were to act again and somehow end in Azkaban over again, he could rest easy knowing that at least he was going to be cozy with all those motherfuckers.
For now, he could make do with looking for some mediawizards overseas in the meanwhile. He wasn't going to let his godson's first impression of him be of a crazy sleep-deprived homeless man after all.
