Chapter edited as of 4/16/15

The seventh Harry Potter book says that Sirius died and went to the afterlife, but then I wondered, which afterlife? I used to believe that everyone would go to whichever afterlife they believed in, and so I'm taking that as inspiration. However, which afterlife would the Veil lead to, if Sirius didn't die 'properly'? Besides, it never mentioned what spell Bellatrix used. I ran with that idea and all its tangents. I love love love time travel fic; this is me getting in on the action.

Disclaimer: This is a fanfiction. Not an original story. Ideas that aren't mine, aren't mine.


Ouroboros

Harry's shocked expression was all Sirius saw before his vision went black. When he came to with sudden clarity, he jumped up so fast his muscles ached in protest. Wand out and a spell on his lips, Sirius was understandably confused when he found no hexes flying at him. Not that he was complaining, of course.

This meant that either a period of time had passed or he was in a different location. As sense caught up to him he realized it was the latter, as the room the battle took place in had only one door. Indeed; this room was larger than the Great Hall, and had a white dome ceiling. Doors lined every inch of the circle wall, each adorned with a unique nameplate or defining symbol.

Sirius blinked and rubbed his eyes, disbelieving for a second. He resorted to pressing on his eyes when rubbing stung them. When he brushed hair away from his face, his hand came back with dark flakes on them. He felt his hair and found it matted with dirt and dried blood. How odd; he must have been knocked out for quite a while.

In the center of the room was the Veil of Death. With the opportunity to give it more than a passing glance, Sirius reached a hand, and found a pane of glass filling the arch. Not a mirror, but transparent, like a common window. Plexiglas, the muggles called it. His attention turned to the doors. Very few of the names rang as familiar, having heard most of them from overhearing muggle conversations during his, ah, subterfuge in his animagus form. The symbols, could be found flipping through his old history textbooks. The simpler ones he'd copied in a desperate attempt to entertain himself during Binns's classes. A goblin crest here, the symbol for the dark wizards of medieval times there.

Sirius started back to examine the pane of glass, but stumbled back in shock. A bruised, spent copy of himself blinked back at him. Sirius brought a hand to his face; the copy in the mirror did the same. Dark welts and fresh scars covered his face and hand. He winced as he poked one.

"Not a chance I'm dreaming, then," Sirius muttered, managing a hollow laugh that fell flat without echo. Emotion started dawning on him, erasing the blank, blunt feel from his thoughts. Time had passed. A lot of time. Some of bruises looked barely a day old, and the deep lines under his eyes told of weeks. A memory charm, perhaps?

That possibility shook Sirius. What could have possibly happened to require a memory charm? It had to have something to do with the injuries. His blood froze. Did..?

Did the Order fail to prevent Voldemort from getting the prophecy?

Although Sirius had no inkling of what the prophecy contained, Dumbledore must have had a reason for keeping all information pertaining to it hush-hush. The Department of Mysteries was plagued with wards for another reason that may have very well been the same reason. As it was, breaking through those wards meant a heavy sentence in Azkaban, a place he'd already spent so long in. If his current state was any indication, he might have made a return trip.

Looking for a distraction to his grievances, Sirius picked a door at random, with a symbol of a hexagon filled with endless hexagons. He raised his hand to the door knob, but the door swung open for him. A tiny turtle was at the other side, at eye level with the wizard.

Sirius stepped back, more out of shock than anything else. The tiny turtle carried a blue marble on its shell, and was standing on another turtle, which stood on another turtle, which stood on yet another turtle. This turtle tower consisted of innumerable turtles. When Sirius tried to count, he never reached the bottom. When he tried to estimate, his vision shifted, making it impossible. He instead peeked past the turtle.

The room appeared to be a landscape of a large valley with a village in it. Many of the inhabitants wore old-fashioned clothing from colonial times, although he noticed a brightly-dressed modern-day muggle here and there. Sirius was about to walk in when common sense - obviously it was common sense, I mean, everyone had a fear of getting locked up with no escape, right? - told him the door might not open again. He stepped away from the door, jumping when it closed by itself, confirming Sirius's theory.

The turtle tower gave him a withering glance before making its way to another door, wobbling as it went.

A door on the other side of the room opened with a crack as it slammed into the door beside it. Moans, groans and screams floated out of it, reminding Sirius all too much of his previous dark residences. He started to walk toward it, morbid curiosity fueling this endeavor, but halted when the inscription on the door read Azkaban.

"Frisky little one, isn't he?"

The words came from a small ankle-biter of an animal. The one that replied to it reached Sirius's chest, the voice a deep rasp. "I do believe we broke him," commented the black wolf.

"There's plenty of time for that later," the black kitten dismissed, "should he be ours. For now we have to pick up a playmate for little Fluffy."

"And which Fluffy would that be? You name everything Fluffy."

"The one that begs us daily to join his playmate."

"Ah." They scratched at a door with a symbol of a goat on it, like common house pets asking for entrance. A goat covered in tattoos answered the door. Like neighbors bartering for a cup of milk, the animals chatted in neutral tones, finally resulting with a quivering scrawny boy being dragged back to Azkaban.

Shivering, Sirius turned his attention to other doors, peeking in several. They all contained some form of environment with people of a certain sort, except one had dancing gerbils. That one made him rethink his theory on dreaming.

He circled the room, looking at each door with interest. Finally, he stopped at a white door labeled "Reincarnation." It had no doorknob, doorjamb, or anything to pry it open; only a knocker. So he threw caution to the wind, and knocked.

There was a muffled ping from inside and the door colored an eye-burning hot pink. Something tapped Sirius on the shoulder.

He turned to find a Death Eater behind him. His wand had raised and almost completed a spell before realizing no minion of Voldemort would ever decorate their mask as garishly as that. Sirius ignored the mock Death Eater for a moment to bang his head on the door. Garish? He spent too much time at Grimmauld Place with Molly if he was paying that much attention to decoration that he could say more than an objective good or bad. The cloaked figure tilted its head and Sirius finally realized it was floating. If it hadn't been hunched over, Sirius had little doubt it would be taller than he.

"What are you?" he asked, before he could stop himself and wonder how to best go about avoiding antagonizing it.

"What am I?" the figure echoed, with a guttural voice. "Who am I? Those questions are one and the same when asking. To you, my dear elf, I-"

"Elf?" Sirius parroted with an internal squawk at himself for interrupting something that might very well decide how he died. He jumped in the hole he no doubt dug himself. "I'm not an elf. Do I look like an elf to you?"

The figure lost its guttural tone, taking the voice of a gentlemanly old man. "Ah. My apologies. I am nothing. You never saw me. Death shall find you soon."

Sirius ignored the ominous warning coupled with a casual tone. It was odd and out of place with those words. The figure flew to another door and disappeared. At another tap on his shoulder, Sirius whirled around. Curses poured from his mouth out of shock and cruel surprise. He sunk to his knees.

"That's it. I'm dead." His voice cracked, choked with emotion. "I'll never see Harry again. Take me to the afterlife, Death."

The figure before him was unmistakable. Twice as tall as the average man, cloak pooling in all directions, an elongated skeleton with more power than any inferius, Death loomed. The story of the Deathly Hollows had attempted to reach the heights of this deity, but had failed like any other literature would fail the same description. Words could not match the godly presence. Kneeling as he was, Sirius had himself at the mercy of his undoer.

With a monotone that would make Snape flinch, Death drawled, "That's hardly possible, seeing as we're in the Room of Afterlives and you requested to be reincarnated."

Room of Afterlives? As in, more than one? That aside, Sirius scrabbled for the hope even with this figure that commanded so much respect. "Reincarnated? I have another chance to get to know Harry?"

Death flourished a skeletal hand, delicately handing Sirius a familiar black stick. "Perhaps."

Sirius took it with reverence, hand wrapping around the runes as a hole in his magical core filled in. The tip of the wand glowed an ethereal light blue, as it had so many years ago in Olivander's. Simple, but the color of Patroni, a hue thought impossible to recreate.

"Recreation is an unpredictable thing. The chances of your new body coming near Harry Potter, or even a wizard, is extremely small."

"What if I go back in time?" He scrabbled for his rapidly disappearing smattering of hope. "It's possible, right? To be reborn and grow up with Harry?"

"Impossible. You and who you once were cannot exist at the same time. That would create a paradox."

Sirius tried his hardest not to look crestfallen. He must have failed, for Death hesitated.

"However, the Masters of Plot-Ripping might be willing to grant you your wish."

"'Masters of Plot-Ripping'?" Sirius didn't bother to hide the incredulity in his voice.

"They have other titles of course, but many prefer to call them that. They push the boundaries of what they can do as far as they can, often tearing holes in fate. Fate so often follows something of a plot in a story, and thus, Masters of Plot-Ripping. You want to be close to an object of fate, which I'm sure will be the bait needed to request their service."

"Then where are they?" Sirius looked around, half expecting to see someone with a broken hourglass appear. Owners of Time-Turners often had to be warned about creating paradoxes. It just made a giant mess for everyone, but maybe this time a paradox wouldn't be so bad.

Death glided over to a door whose title his body obscured, and rapped it twice. Two knocks responded. Death sighed, as if dealing with a snarky teenager.

"I have a request."

The door whipped open, two figures bounding out to circle Death. Sirius felt his eyes widen.

"You summoned?"

"What is your desire?"

"Not mine." Death lifted a long wooden finger in the direction of Sirius. "His."

The animals' ears twitched and their heads snapped to him like a clockwork toy. "You desire?" The cat and wolf chanted in unison.

Death answered for him, making it pointless to point out the wizard in the first place. "He wishes to be the same age as Harry James Potter and able to watch him."

"Impossible," the cat said in a clipped tone. "He has not died properly in his dimension and as such, cannot return anytime after."

The wolf stared at the ceiling. It suggested, "What about another dimension?"

The cat looked at the ceiling, her eyes moving as though searching for something. Sirius joined them, but found nothing but the white dome. Mad, they were. Mad as his dead family.

"That is possible. Yet, we do not meddle with time, so we have to find one where Sirius Orion Black is already dead."

It sent shivers through Sirius to think about himself being dead, but shook it off. This was a chance to see Harry and everyone else again. He could withstand the occasional cognitive dissonance if it meant being with his godson for even a snippet longer.

"We can't start a life too young or it will affect Harry's creation and marking."

"No openings in wizard children. Too risky. They're all either currently influential to fate or will be. Why don't we drop him in a field as Harry's age?"

"We can't create anything more than a pregnancy and you know it!" the wolf snapped. "The most we can hope for is a soul transfer."

"I know...wait! I spot an opening. A reincarnation. He's had his life and a half. Telltale sign: he only appears in that dimension."

"Everything seems to match the requirements, including a perfect excuse for a new soul's sudden appearance."

They turned to Sirius, now speaking in unison. "Your new fate has been decided. We are your Death. After you die properly, our home will become yours."

Sirius cheered himself with assurances of seeing Harry again. The screams so familiar to the soundtrack of his prison cell clawed at the edges of his mind.


Author's Notes

This chapter is vaguely horror-ish, but future chapters will be more adventure and humour. The original idea was for Sirius to travel to all sorts of afterlives and getting fed up with all of them. I changed it right at the beginning, which was for Sirius to be reincarnated as an owl, and thus start his annoying journey.

*If you're wondering, the turtle was from something I read in a book on physics. (Not exact words, but close): Scientist: *finishes presentation on general Earth information* Old lady: That's a lie. The world is flat. Scientist: *smiles* What is under the world? Old lady: A turtle, of course. Scientist: The what is the turtle standing on? Old lady: Very clever. But I'll have you know it's turtles all the way down!

**The hunched-over Death that assumed he was an elf was the House-Elf Death.

The wolf and cat are leftovers from another fic. They're a representation of the writer, in essence. It's a vapid attempt to make fun of these "break the fourth wall" tropes. The entire thing is Sirius lampshading everything that everyone else takes in stride. He's the Only Sane Man here.