Not much actually happens, but oh well.
Writing school
FLASHBACKS
Round 5 of the International Wizarding Schools Championship
Beauxbatons, year 7
Prompt: [action] waiting
Wordcount: about 771 including AN
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POIGNANCE
Sirius is not sure what he's waiting for anymore. He's not bothered by the cold stone beneath his feet or the taste of the food or the screams from outside. At least it's something. At least he's not living his last days with nothing to occupy himself with.
It's what he's always been afraid of: oblivion. At school he had imagined Azkaban to be empty, soulless, boring. But it's not as if he twiddles his thumbs in this little cell. He dreams and he flinches every time somebody screams and he stares at the storms outside his window. He counts the days, and he cowers in the corners and he remembers. Whatever memories the dementors take from him, he summons another to spend his time mulling over, sometimes sitting in a trance for days, regretting and wishing and imagining.
He remembers a time when waiting was not waiting for death. He sat in class, his hair combed and friends gathered around. They glanced at the clock every few moments, waiting for the lesson to end. What sixteen-year-old cares about theoretical transfiguration? Sirius would do anything for another lesson with McGonagall now … he'd probably kiss even Binns, if History of Magic could replace this.
He keeps reminding himself: at least it's something. At least there is stone beneath his feet and a breeze through the window and all sorts of noises to think about.
He's waiting for death, he supposes. Waiting for death to end this terrible living. But what would death be but boredom? Sirius has never believed in a god or in a hell, and he would rather not sit in a coffin, even if he wouldn't be conscious.
He has to keep moving, to keep feeling, to keep hurting and hearing and seeing. He explains his obsession with feeling to his cold childhood home.
Grimmauld Place as Sirius remembers it was silent. When his mother wasn't shouting at him, all he could hear was the ticking of a clock as he waited for the day he could go to Hogwarts. He looked out of the windows at the lights of London and wished his own house had colour and light and sound like the rest of the city did. He always longed for more.
At Hogwarts he found that. The constant noise of the train and children running up and down through the carriages, and then Hagrid shouting and the lapping water against the side of the boats. The lights of Hogwarts glittered in front of the first years and Sirius's senses had never been on fire like this. James Potter would hug him at every given occasion—physical contact which warmed his heart more than anything else ever had—and the chatter at mealtimes was so loud, the camaraderie so great. He played Quidditch for the first time and felt mud on his palms when he fell and the wind in his hair when he didn't. Hogwarts was so much. Before it, Sirius had not known that much colour and sound and feeling existed.
The holidays had bleached his soul again, and he spent every minute watching the clock and crossing days off on a calendar he had to make himself just so that he could count down to the day he was to return to school. It turned into a cycle of feeling and waiting, feeling and waiting.
He can barely remember how the wait felt, but as a child he had thought those short months were so long, and looking back they seem like ants to a giant. When he first arrived here, he would often think of Hogwarts, but now he knows that it only hurts in the end, so think of something so great and return to something so harsh. He knows better now.
At least this is something, Sirius thinks. And thinking of Hogwarts would only compare then to now, which would send him spiralling down deeper into his depression, which comes in stops and starts, and he dreads the day it will start again.
So for now he sits and thinks and tries to remember only things that won't hurt him, which is hard because the memories don't come so easily anymore, now that the dementors have placed certain blocks in his mind.
He's waiting, he reminds himself, and it's not for death. He's waiting to go to Hogwarts again, and to feel all those things he has been deprived of. However long it takes.