Still writing this way until I come up with a plot. Idea's? Let me know!
From the Classroom:
Through the haze of the cauldron steam, her eyes stall, cast onto the slender, vampiric form of her professor who sits behind his large deep brown wooden desk. She watches him as he works because she had finished her notes long ago and her mind once studious had slipped into dreams. Though he does not look up, she wonders if he can feel her. The heaviness of her eyes, the blind irritation. She wonders if she is important enough to call upon his ability to locate her lingering gaze.
An ability built after trauma. An ability she wanted, an ability she failed at, and ability that would keep her safe, and an ability that -
"Fifteen points from Gryffindor, Mrs. Granger."
His eyes had remained on the papers, his quill scribing on, but his words... His cold, iced words that came with such a lacking of human experience, for a moment she believed she imagined it. But she hadn't. Hermione would go on to hear the creaking of chairs as weight is shifted and suddenly, she feels the class of eyes drop on her like a blanket of bricks.
Even now, he still did not look up and Hermione found a gnawing inside herself as a sense of violation seeped under her skin. Because of him, she turns her eyes downcast, glazed in embarrassment.
He's a git, she thinks to herself under burning cheeks as the Slytherin side of the room breaks out in a small wave of chuckles and passive but hurtful comments...
He's nothing but a sallow murderer - A sudden dark thought pangs through her mind and into her gut.
Hermione, nor the rest of the class would see the breaking of the Professors expression. The grotesque twist of his lip that curled at the murmur of life in front of him as the girls cheeks shaded as red as Ginny's hair.
I Hear and See It All.
"Back to work!" his voice would bite angrily across the babbling room, hushing the chuckles and snide comments as the glares of those who protected the foolish girl would hold on him from a few moments longer.
Work was everything. Work was all it was. Work would keep him sane. Work would keep them safe.
He had been listening to the mind of Ms. Granger since the first year and the reason behind that he placed out of … safety…? It was a sentence he could never end with a definite thought or reason. He watched her mind because she constantly thought of, Potter. The thought of their plans, thought of their next moves, her mind was open and analytical, but lately, since the start of the new year, her mind had been very dark.
Oh, if the students could comprehend how easy it was for him to read everything. How easily he could feel the emotions of each pinpointed person. He could hear everything. Always.
To invade the minds of those around him, especially minors was something he rarely did, but he had held a connection through the request of the Headmaster. A request that churned his stomach and pulled up shadowed thoughts of his darkness. He couldn't help what he heard when his own attention was low and they stared at him first and connected to him without walls. They didn't know what they thought floated in the air for anyone of the most basic skill to intercept. They couldn't hear him of course, he had walls which was why when it came to children, allowing them in only disgusted him further.
But sometimes he couldn't choose. He needed to know where everyone was at every time. To not know whose eyes were on you was dangerous, and to be vulnerable like that was to be weak…. To be a coward…
"I bet," He hears her again over the settling crowd, his eyes dropping again to Mis Granger whose thoughts were hateful and loud, "He isn't even loyal to the Order."
His fist slams on the desk and he is to his feet at once, all thought, all noise of the room dying at once. He glares at Potter for no other reason than to not stare at Granger directly, though his peripherals target the girls now shocked face and silent mind.
He looks around once before he slowly lowers himself back into his chair, down into the silence of nothingness. The room slips back to work, the ominous sound of scratching and breathing is again coupled with the sound of bubbling, cutting and the low conversation that would lull him into a sort of relaxation that would keep him down and quiet for the rest of the lesson.
To The Sun, As I Sit Inside.
"The sunlight is good for you." They tell him. "You should go outside."
But, there is never rarely any real sun in England, and there aren't many places for him to go without people recognizing him.
"It's about going outside."
"It's about breathing fresh air."
"It's about absorbing nature."
Unable to stand the four walls of the confinement of his space, he will tread outside but only when it's dark and his face can not be seen. Until then, until he musters the strength to step outside the dusty threshold of his modern cell, he dives to drink it all away as his surroundings falter into something beautiful..
What happened to his lovely cousin, Narcissa? Sirius Black thinks. All those years they used to play. All the time they spent together.
What about Harry?
What about, Harry.
He is drunk now and watches the dust as it holds suspended in the air, illuminated by the haze of light that comes through the heavy curtains.
Harry.
Lily.
James.
….Snape.
His broken, wolfish teeth grit as he thinks of the man who ruined his entire life.
Snivellus.
His fingers tighten around the bottle and he thinks back to Azkaban as his eyelids flutter in drunken exhaustion.
How did he end up so good? How did he end up in the cell next door to him with nothing but a half rusty metal grate and half stone wall between them? How was he released so quickly..? A mockery it was, the man's stay. Snivellus entered with what was a promised life sentence and he quickly fell into the standard depression. It took days until their voices faded from their arguing screams and the many weeks to follow would be spent in silence, sitting on their separate beds that had been pushed against the furthest walls across from each other, their attention set, eyes glaring, either not moving for hours. There was nothing more they could do after the fire of their anger faded and together they would disappear into the walls to live out their lives like this.
It would only be a few months later when the guard would come with his keys in hand, a gleam in his eyes.
Snivellus would be released for crimes admitted that day while he, the innocent and the wrongly convicted would wither away in a silence for all the years to follow. He still couldn't believe Snivellus had been released, and it had taken him days to realize the truth that the Slytherin git would not be returning.
As the memory of the emotion hit him again, he shivers, an anger sets in that would break the haze of any drunken spur. A confirmed admitted murderer and Dumbledore hires HIM as a teacher. Confirmed fatal poisonings, but he's teaching Potions. An active Deatheater life and he gets out only a few months after sentencing for a crime worse than his.
What seemed to only be a life of cell to cell now, Sirius slips away from his current, imagining where the world had broken; somewhere in that final year of Hogwarts when everything still made sense.
His stomach churns and threatens to reject the bile and booze that sits inside, his toxic haze breaking for the understanding that Severus... Snivellus, had ended up with more friends, more family, more support, and more of a future than he could ever have now.
That lucky, motherfucker…