InsaneJournal

Sirius was doing a lot of staring these days. This morning was no different. He’d woken up in the sitting room at some obscene hour, a skinny black dog curled in the exact patch of carpet that the sunlight hit when it rose over the horizon. Padfoot’s eyes blinked open, and for a moment every morning he felt the tight grip of confused panic as he searched the room for iron bars and hooded figures. Then he remembered where he was, what was happening, and padded as a dog into the kitchen, transforming into himself when his paws his the tiles and making himself a cup of weak coffee and one of the pathetic meals they would let him eat. Once finished, he placed the bowl neatly in the sink and moved silently to sit on the windowsill, coffee balanced beside him.

Everything felt... detached. People came by, stopped to see how he was, to bring food and offer kind words. But they all looked at him like a sick person, like a pet who could turn any moment, and he pretended not to see how their eyes widened in horror and concern of how they hesitated before they touched him. As if he’d break. He found that although he wanted their company, he didn’t want the sympathy and fuss that came with it. If he had his way he’d rather have them talk amongst themselves and let him sit alone in the corner. He was a ghost in his own flat - alien, separated from the rest of them. A large part of him wished they’d realize that.

So Sirius sat, as he did most of the day, on the windowsill, pale forehead pressed to the cool glass, coffee rapidly cooling beside him as he watched the outside world move past the building... Although the slightly dead, empty and unfocused look to his eyes suggested that that wasn’t what he was seeing at all.