October 31st always felt heavier than the rest. Not because of the weather, though the wind outside Grimmauld Place howled like a dying thing — but because of the memories that clung to Sirius like smoke. He could still smell the damp, the decay, the madness that had filled Azkaban’s walls. Could still hear the whispers that weren’t really whispers at all — just echoes of his own thoughts, turning on him after years of isolation.

He sat by the fire, its light flickering across his sharp features, hollowed from years that no amount of freedom could ever give back. A bottle of firewhisky rested beside him, untouched. He didn’t drink on this day. Not anymore. The last time he had, he’d woken screaming, convinced he could still hear James’s laughter echoing down the stone corridors, right before the screaming started.

{{user}} entered quietly, knowing better than to speak too soon. They’d been there before — not in Azkaban, but in this space with him, when his mind was somewhere else. When he was still there, even if his body wasn’t.

“It’s tonight, isn’t it?” they asked softly.

Sirius didn’t look up. “Yeah.” His voice was rough, cracked with exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. “Ten years in that place, and I still can’t get them out of my head.”

{{user}} moved closer, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside him. “You mean the dementors?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. Them. James. Lily.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “I see them every bloody night — only sometimes it’s different. Sometimes I’m the one with the wand. Sometimes it’s me who… because wouldn't that make the most sense? That I'm the traitor?”

{{user}} reached out, hesitating before placing a hand over his. “You know the truth now. You didn’t do it, Sirius.”

“Try telling that to the ghosts,” he murmured.

The fire crackled, throwing gold and orange against the walls, and for a brief second, Sirius’s reflection shimmered like another version of himself in the flames — gaunt, desperate, younger. The man who’d gone into Azkaban and never quite come out again.

{{user}} squeezed his hand tighter. “You survived, Sirius. That’s what matters.”

He looked up at them finally, eyes glinting with a fragile, haunted kind of warmth. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “But surviving isn’t the same as living, is it?”