The fortress is protected by a thick mist of infinity and darkness and threatens to take away his sense of time, almost as if it were a possession on him and he was to give up anything that belonged across the sea. He shrugs out of his jacket he'd received as a Christmas gift and feeds it to the bin, watching it disappear without a trace in the blackness. A chill filters through the bars, hits him everywhere like a dozen Stunning spells. Trembling, he stares at the clothes with their grey strips laid out for him. He hears footsteps, but whoever it is retreats without saying anything. They are holding the wand, but his silence is more dangerous. Sirius resists the laughter that builds painfully in his chest.

He sits listening to the blood pounding in his ears and it's like a song to him that drowns out the pitiful whimpers several cells down. Someone begins pleading down the row and a wandlight inches closer and closer and then stops outside his cell. Sirius walks to the bars and stares back at the expressionless Auror. The wand taps on the iron and opens a space narrow enough to deliver a plate. The Auror directs the plate hovering near his shoulder to the opening, his eyes never leaving Sirius's face. Sirius grabs the plate and the sight of the food makes the hunger leave him. "You can have it," he says with a nod and throws it at the Auror. That's the first day.

There must be a second day, too, but no food is brought to his cell. He touches a stone on the wall that is level with his head, feels its texture. He measures a finger space from the edge and marks the stone twice with a pebble.

He pulls another stunt then wakes up in the darkness, always the same darkness, with his hand in a cuff that follows a chain attached to the wall. You're a dog, Sirius . The voice that says it penetrates the grogginess in his head and sets shivers through his body. Bowed, he presses his temple against the frozen, painful floor. The grey porridge and the gleam of the bronze plate is the only thing he can see in the pitch blackness. He crawls towards the bars and the chain clangs behind him. The metal cuts into his skin when he pulls, but the plate stays too far out of his reach.

Sirius can't tell when they stop bringing prisoners; he knows there haven't been any since the cuff came off. He continues to mark the tally but struggles to put the numbers together in his head. For a lifetime it's been too dark to see in his cell.

When they come to feed, he hears the sobbing first before he feels the chill. He's in the last cell of the corridor, the cell in the corner, they couldn't make its feeling chillier, more painful, any worse than it already was. An alarm sounds far away, a bronze plate beating against the iron bars. Sirius puts his head between his knees and ties his arms around himself.

But it gets colder still, to the point that he's no longer aware of sitting on the stone. He's racing through the skies faster than the heart beating in his chest. He's losing control then, suddenly afraid of flying. He's falling through the cold, biting wind, something immeasurably powerful pulling him down. He hears, Wake up, dammit! Wake up, please. He knows his heart is going to stop from the fear in that voice. You don't care about him so much as you do about yourself. What would your life even be if he weren't around anymore? Someone is sobbing in his head. Wake up, dammit - You never use your head, Padfoot. Her voice, he breaks when he hears her voice. She says, You're his brother. Keep him safe.


***

He fights them the only way that occurs to him, masking his loss with memories of the time that he'd had with his friends. It's a parchment-thin defence, but feverishly he seeks out their faces in the darkness, talks to them in his head, begs them to see him through this.

He's sitting in his corner one day, eyes closed, whispering words of a song to himself. He lifts his head when he hears footsteps. His chest tightens and his mind gets carried away with imagination. A small part of him hoped desperately that one of them would come to see him, would want to ask him, and he'd - he’d...

Sirius doesn't turn to see who it is, because their long silence says only how much they loathe him. But suddenly the flickering light they hold illuminates his cell and his heart stops as he stares at the sight of the tallies that covers every inch of the wall in his cell. He fingers his stone and tries to read his own marking, but too soon the light trembles and disappears.

That day Sirius stops counting.