AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1. This is a co-story set in the same universe as animalwriter's "The Serpents' Kiss". Right now I think they can each stand on their own as separate stories, but I'd recommend reading both as later on there might be situations mentioned in one story that are fully explained in the other.
2. We have "revived" the majority of the characters who passed away in the Battle of Hogwarts in "The Deathly Hallows." In our attempt to keep as cannon as possible with J.K.R's rule that the dead cannot be brought back to life, we've explained it as certain "old magic" prevented those who had some kind of "unfinished business" from fully dying, and so they were not actually "dead", just sort of "sleeping" until they were able to be revived. My story does attempt to give an explanation of this but if you prefer to look at this as an alternate universe story, go ahead I won't be offended. Thanks and I hope you enjoy one or both stories.
Chapter 1
The battle was over.
The dead were laid out in the great hall. The wounded taken to the hospital wing. Voldemort had been killed. And this time he was not coming back. Still, she was not satisfied. She couldn't even say it was a bittersweet moment.
Tonight she had lost a friend from school days, a friend she had recently met but had become close to, a former teacher, and a cousin. About a year ago Dumbledore had been killed, a man looked up to and beloved by many, including her. No longer would she see Mad-Eye Moody clunking down the halls of the Order's headquarters. Worst of all though, was a death that had happened not long after she had joined the Order.
"Lucy?" a hand touched her shoulder. Lucy turned to see a favorite professor of hers. One who was generally stoic, but who cared very deeply about all her students.
"Professor McGonagall?" It was only the two of them in the great hall. Beds had been found for everyone who was still at the school.
"You should get some rest. I've had them make up a bed for you with the Weasley's in Gryffindor Tower. You're aunt and uncle would be glad for the company I'm sure."
Lucy shook her head, "No. I want to stay here. Stay with them. I'm not tired and they shouldn't be left alone. Please, you go to bed. I'll be fine."
"All right," Professor McGonagall said reluctantly, "but be sure to call someone if you need help."
"Help with what?" Lucy asked with a trace of bitterness in her voice, "It's not as if they're going to go anywhere."
"Just the same," she said, closing the large doors.
Alone. Standing vigil over the dead. Thinking of him. She shouldn't be thinking of him. He'd been gone almost two years now. She shouldn't still be this upset by his death. It wasn't as if they were anything to each other. A few flirtations the handful of times she'd been to 12 Grimmauld Place wasn't something to warrant such heartache. Still…he had said, the last time they saw each other that when this was over he wanted to talk. About them.
Trying to avoid thinking about him Lucy began pacing the room. The hours passed slowly. Above her head the ceiling was no longer enchanted. There was no night sky reflected in the rafters. A pink light was just beginning to shine through the windows when Lucy sat in one of the chairs littered around the room. Her head bobbed as she fought sleep.
"Oy!" Lucy watched in disbelief as one of the dead seemed to sit up. She must be dreaming. "What happened? Last I remember Percy was making a joke. That can't be right. I must have been hit over the head."
Lucy sat up straight in her chair, heart pumping, wide awake. She had to be dreaming. People just didn't come back from the dead! How many times had she heard Dumbledore say no spell could bring back the dead or something similar? Then the figure began to stand. "Wait! No! Don't…! Just stay there!" Lucy yelled, not sure why she was doing so.
"Lu? That you?"
"Yes. I need to…um…you need. I'll be right back," Lucy managed to say. "Don't move Fred." Lucy rushed down the halls to Professor McGonagall's room, trying to find a logical explanation for what she just saw. By the time she had reached the door to McGonagall's rooms she was convinced there was none. She wasn't dreaming, insane, or drunk. Nor did she think her lack of sleep had caused her to begin seeing things, after all no one else was alive again. She was sure Fred had been dead when he was brought in to lie with the others and no spell or incantation she knew could bring back the dead.
Lucy banged on the door as hard as she could, making sure she was heard, "Professor! Professor, I need to see you right now!"
"Miss Ketteridge what are you yelling about?"
"Fred. He's….he's sitting up and talking!"
"That is simply not possible. You must need some sleep."
"Believe me, as a former Ravenclaw I know this isn't at all logical but it's what I saw! Would you at least come look? Please, before he starts wandering around!"
"You're serious aren't you?"
"Yes!" The pair started running back along the route that Lucy had just come. When they entered the great hall Lucy was stunned to see that Fred up and walking around when she had specifically told him not to move.
As Professor McGonagall hurried towards Fred another voice could be heard. "I'm not dead? I should be dead. I'm sure I remember being killed."
Lucy's eyes got bigger as she whispered, "Tonks," to her companions.
"This is not acceptable!" McGonagall told the room.
Lucy threw her hands up into the air, "I don't know what to tell you. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who sees this."
"The dead can not come back to life!" she said as if trying to reassure herself of this fact.
"Are you sure I was dead? I don't think I was. Seems like something I'd remember," Fred threw into the conversation.
"Quite sure," Lucy said as calm as she could. "George saw you crushed by a wall and Madam Pomfrey checked you when you were brought down. Besides Tonks remembers being killed."
"Lu?" Tonks called from the place she had woken up. "What's wrong with Remus?"
"He's dead," McGonagall told her flatly.
"Dead!"
"I wouldn't worry too much Tonks," Lucy told her, "The way this night's been going he'll be up and about in less than an hour."
As it turned out she was only partially right. It was a couple more hours before Remus Lupin was up and walking around with his wife and Fred. By this time the Weasleys and Andromeda Tonks had been informed of what had happened and word was quickly spreading throughout those staying at the school.
After seeing three people come back from the dead with her own eyes, Lucy thought there wasn't much else that could shock her. She wasn't the only one whose jaw hit the floor when one of the most feared professors at Hogwarts walked through the doors. She shook her head, knowing that the vision wouldn't disappear. Professor Severus Snape had returned to Hogwarts. "What is going on here?" he addressed McGonagall.
"We're not entirely sure Severus."
Lucy edged away from the pair, and the heated argument that was beginning, as she saw Harry Potter rushing up to them. Her situation did not improve though. Mrs. Weasley soon broke away from fussing over Fred and tried pushing Lucy into a chair.
"Please, dear. You should get some rest...been awake all this time."
Lucy sat, because she was tired of standing, not because she wanted to sleep. "No, Aunt Molly, really I'm okay. I can't sleep. This isn't over yet. I can feel it…" she trailed off.
"You don't think you're bringing them back do you?"
"No, no I'd be foolish to believe that. I just need to see this thing to its conclusion." She knew Molly had been worried about her for longer than just the last couple days. After she had left Hogwarts and her Father hadn't made any attempts to communicate with her, the Burrow had become almost a second home. Aunt Molly and Uncle Arthur a second set of parents, though in truth Molly had been acting like her mother ever since Lucy's mother and Molly's sister, Jennifer had been killed during Voldemort's first reign.
Lucy knew Molly had seen what had been happening between her and Sirius. She wasn't sure Mrs. Weasley had been too happy about it, but she hadn't said anything about it until after he had gone. She'd changed, or so Aunt Molly told her. All the joy of life she'd had had gone. She wasn't really living anymore; she was just sort of …there. Now Lucy feared Molly knew what she was waiting for and urging her not to hope for the impossible. But the impossible had already happened four times in less than a day. Who said it couldn't happen one more time?
By late afternoon Lucy was beginning to think her instincts had been wrong. No one else had come back and it was getting harder to keep her eyes open. Much longer and she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep Mrs. Weasley from actually carrying her to bed.
The main doors opened again, but they had been doing that all day. The action didn't attract Lucy's attention until all the conversations in the room had stopped and everyone's head turned toward the front of the room. When she turned to look at what everyone was seeing, she found herself looking at an old man with a long white beard and hair. His eyes crinkled as he smiled at the people gathered. It was almost as if he considered them all his children. "Dumbledore!" someone shouted.
He nodded and the crowed started cheering; some were clapping, some crying. Dumbledore waded through the crowd, stopping to talk to people as he passed by, but Lucy thought he looked distracted, as if he were searching for someone in particular. When he stopped to talk to Harry, Ron, and Hermione she thought he'd found the people he'd been looking for. It wasn't long though, before the trio led Dumbledore to where Lucy was sitting.
"Ah, Miss Ketteridge. I understand you were the one who first noticed what was happening."
"Yes, Professor Dumbledore." Lucy whispered.
"I think we should discuss this in my office."
"Yes, sir," she continued to whisper, fearing she was somehow in trouble for what had happened. She rose to follow him to the headmaster's office. Lucy stumbled half way to the doors and was held up by her old headmaster.
"Alright, Miss Ketteridge?"
"Yes, sir."
They reached the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmaster's office. Lucy briefly wondered what was going to happen as Dumbledore hadn't been the last headmaster of Hogwarts. Now, both Dumbledore and Snape were back…
She needn't have worried though, at Dumbledore's quietly spoken word the gargoyle leapt aside and they stepped onto the spiral staircase to ride it up to the doors of the office. When they entered the office the paintings of the old headmasters and headmistress' made nearly as much commotion about Dumbledore's return as the people in the Great Hall. Dumbledore quieted the paintings while drawing up a chair in front of his desk. Lucy looked up and noticed both the portraits of Dumbledore and Snape were there, but still, like a Muggle portrait.
"Please, Miss Ketteridge, have a seat."
Lucy sat and looked up at her old headmaster, "Professor, what is going on?"
Dumbledore sat in his old chair and steepled his fingers before replying, "It seems that you have managed to do something that is only heard of in legends."
"I did this?"
"In a way. Yes."
"How?" she asked, confused.
"I shall explain as best I can. You see, what I think has happened here occurred because of a very old type of magic. According to legend there is a sort of protective magic that surrounds those killed by evil means and prevents them from being completely dead. They may appear dead and can even be buried without any decay occurring, but they are not actually dead."
"But how did everyone become…revived?" Lucy asked.
"That takes a number of different occurrences. Possibly the most important among those is a momentous event, in this case Voldemort being well and truly killed. Another would be that those the magic surrounds must have what legend terms a 'higher calling'. The last part is where you come in. In all the stories I have read where this happens, it always happens when a truly grieving person stands a night's vigil over some of the more recently dead."
"How do you know who has a higher calling and who doesn't?"
"You don't, or at least it's not always obvious. After all it's not hard to think of a reason Remus and Tonks might have a higher calling, but can you think of one for Professor Snape?"
Lucy shook her head.
"I trust Severus completely, but as I said it's not clear what his higher calling may be. We can only assume that he has one. Perhaps, in time it will reveal itself. Perhaps not. Those of us who do not put much stock in divinations may never know."
"How much longer do you think this will go on?"
"I'm afraid I have no idea. But I think it would be interesting to note the order in which everyone has been coming back."
Lucy thought for a moment. She hadn't been witness to all of the 'deaths' but maybe… "In reverse order of when they were killed?"
"So it would seem. I would not give up hope yet. This magic has not quite finished with us and after all, it is a long way from London." There was a sparkle in the old wizard's eyes, as if he had read Lucy's mind. Perhaps he had.
When the time came for everyone to go to bed, Lucy, once again refused. She knew McGonagall didn't like it and it made Mrs. Weasley worry, but there had to be just one more miracle left and she was determined not to miss it.
She wandered the halls and avoided Peeves before sitting down on the landing in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady. She didn't think it would be wise to continue walking up the stairs when her legs simply refused to work right. If she just closed her eyes for a minute or two she'd be fine to start wandering the halls again. After all she couldn't miss much in just a minute. A short nap was all she needed…
"No, I am not letting you in there! That child needs her sleep!"
"She's hardly a child. I just want to see her Molly, see for myself she's okay."
"No! She is not okay and she hasn't been okay and it's all your fault!"
"How is it my fault? I didn't do it on purpose!"
"You got emotionally involved with her! She is too young for that!"
"She's the same age as Tonks. I promise I won't wake her up. I just want to see her."
"Molly," said a different, more authoritative voice, "let him through."
A door scraped open and the edge of the bed where Lucy lay dipped low as extra weight was added to it. A gentle hand pushed some hair out of her face and she heard a sigh. She had thought she was dreaming up until the hand touched her face. She had to be dreaming. She had just closed her eyes a minute ago, but she had never had tactile dreams before.
"Ah, Lucy. You are alive and well after all." The hand stroked her face again.
Lucy realized she wasn't asleep when she registered just how tired she was and how badly she needed to use the restroom. She didn't want to open her eyes, afraid that when she did the owner of the hand would no longer be in the room. She'd had dreams before where he'd disappear when she woke up and she wasn't sure how well she would deal with it this time.
She rolled onto her back and lifted her eyelids. Her brain couldn't quite register what her eyes were seeing in front of her. She didn't think she was dreaming anymore. After all, if she were dreaming about him, she probably wouldn't be seeing Aunt Molly peering through the crack of the partially open door. "Sirius?" she whispered.
He smiled and nodded.
"Sirius!" Lucy bolted upright. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. "You have no idea…"she whispered, tears threatening.
One of his hands tangled in her hair, the other stroked her back. "Oh, I think I have some idea. I've been talking with Harry, the Weasleys, Hermione, Dumbledore, Remus, Tonks. The whole Order, or what's left of it anyway." He pulled back a little and looked into her light brown eyes, "Perhaps I should leave. I did promise not to wake you." His head tilted towards the door where Mrs. Weasley's face zipped out of sight.
Lucy held on tighter, "No, I'm not ready to let you go just yet. I'll lay down again if you stay. You probably need your rest too."
His eyes crinkled with laughter, "I've been more or less dead for the last two years. I think I'm all caught up on sleep."
"Too bad. Stay anyway."
Sirius loosened her grip on him and climbed over her to lie next to her on the bed. "Okay, you've convinced me."
Lucy lay back down, curled up next to Sirius, her need to use the restroom forgotten. As her eyes were closing she asked, "You'll be here when I wake up?"
"I'll be right here. Don't worry."
