Slowly withering

The air misses him.

He coughs, over and over, until he fears he'll tear his throat out. Then the taste of blood spreads on his tongue. His head is spinning, and his lungs feel like they've been set on fire.

Sirius feels the lack of oxygen taking hold of him, and his mind is panicking because he can't breathe; he's going to die like an idiot in the middle of a corridor. He doesn't want to die here, it's so dumb-

In a final fit of coughing, he finally spits out the reason for his asphyxiation.

He freezes. A beautiful petal of deep purple rests on the stone of the castle. A single petal, yet cold sweat runs down his back. Because it's tinted in a darker shade of red, and this red isn't the colour of the flower. Oh, Merlin. Is somebody there? He thinks he is going to faint, he can feel himself faint. It's his blood. Damn, it's his blood. He's soooo fucked.

•°•°•

Sirius had a simple plan: keep a low profile until summer, bury his heartache, and go with the flow. But somewhere along the line, things went sideways -now he's coughing up flowers? (Hanahaki sucks). This all unfolds after the prank, and Sirius finds himself unwittingly part of a grand chess game, manipulated from the shadows. War looms on the horizon, and the stakes couldn't be higher.