Pause
He's always rather hated the quiet. It's too still, too meek, too uneventful—pause is the word for it, and he grows bored of that which isn't now in motion in the world far too easily. He was painted at Hogwarts many years ago, but time hasn't stopped; and it's moments like this, when all the castle slumbers and not a movement is in sight, that he suffers.
He lives for excitement: a challenge here, a duel there, a bit of activity all around. He can't remember a time when he wasn't inordinately fond of commotion, action, rage. Consequences matter less than the thrill of the moment, that rush of exhilaration, the split second between life and death. If he perhaps were to ponder it, he'd know himself to be immortal, but he always acts, never thinks, and so it is.
The castle is asleep. He knows the portraits are alert and conscious—they never did get the hang of sleeping, to be truthful—but his frame is alone, completely secluded from company, and few harbor any desire to acquaint with Sir Cadagon. He likes to imagine that they're afraid of his courage, his terrible power, and he won't have it any other way. Regardless, he is alone—alone—the word seems as foreign on his tongue as pause, and he finds it rather fitting, for neither at all describes him.
Even when awake it gets rather lonely. The students rarely take his password changes in good heart, and never has a challenge been taken up; he'd assumed that the move had been a good idea, but it seemed his judgment had betrayed him. So it is with a spark of life in his heart (does he have a heart?) that he spots the filthy man so silently, so swiftly, yet so ruthlessly scuttling down the corridor for him.
But the man looks up at him with a sinister grin, and the illusion ends all too soon: the spark is suddenly one of fear, all-consuming fear the likes of which he's never before known, and he doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to react, doesn't know if he can hold the challenge. For the man's eyes are dark, cold, lifeless, but he's certainly alive and breathing, and that's surely a look, an aura, of murder about him.
He can't back down. He can't back down. "Password?" he asks smugly; and if the Fat Lady's fate is his own, so be it.
The man's smile widens, yellow teeth bared in a manic grimace, and he extracts a slip of parchment from his tattered robes and reads off the week's.
He swings open to allow entrance, feeling utterly foolish for only a brief moment, and then the spark dies. He closes his eyes and breathes.
A/N: Thanks to Alice Brune for a few helpful edits.