Green and Sprung Again
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter world or its characters. J. K. Rowling does.
Summary: My version of "Bring Back Black". Even beyond the Veil, Sirius finds Dumbledore has a task for him to do. (I thought maybe that was what JKR meant when she said Sirius had to die.) SBRL slash. Sirius's pov.
When shall we meet again, sweetheart? When shall we meet again?
When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees are green and sprung again.
"The Unquiet Grave" (Anon.)
What I felt, first of all, when I found myself falling behind the Veil, was protest.
That's not right, it was a mistake, I have to do it again! And this time do it right, get Bellatrix before she gets me!
Then I realised it wasn't possible. What had happened was irrevocable. I couldn't go back and do the job properly. I couldn't do anything except fall, and fall, and turn, twist, all while staying still in one place. Impossible, yes. But that was how it was. I was falling, spinning, and motionless. I was tiny, like an ant, and I swallowed something as big as the world. A little thing encompassing a huge thing, moving and not-moving.
When I came to my senses I was lying on the ground. I got up, stretching my limbs, testing them for injuries. There were none. In fact I felt remarkably well. Looking around, I saw behind me the Veil, waving in black mockery. All about me the land was flat. Grass and a few small trees and bushes sprouted here and there. Earth and sky were grey, poised between day and night. There was light enough to see clearly, but not enough to gladden the eye.
I turned and ran to the Veil, but I couldn't get near enough to touch it. My fingers felt not soft fluttering fabric, but something solid, hard as rock, invisible. I stepped away a few yards, then ran at the obstacle with all the force I could gather. I bounced back from it with equal force.
"Everyone tries that at first," a voice said. "It can't be done."
I picked myself up from the ground, surprisingly uninjured, and turned to the owner of the voice. It was a short, dark-haired woman with a pale, pretty face. She wore a light grey dress and a belt with a gold buckle, set with bright blue stones. That buckle was the only colourful thing I had seen in this place so far.
She smiled gently. "There's no way back," she said.
"I'll find one," I said grimly.
"Everyone says that, too," she replied. "But you'll get used to it. My name's Ellen, and this is my – er – husband, Leo." She indicated a tall, broad man who had come from the nearest clump of trees. His hair and beard were fair and would probably have been golden in a better light, and he wore wizard's robes of an indeterminate dark colour.
"Sirius Black," I said. If either of them recognised the name, they gave no sign of it.
"Come and meet the others," Ellen said, leading me away from the Veil.
I followed her and Leo walked beside me, silent but not, as far as I could tell, hostile. I noticed for the first time that there were other people in this place; not many, scattered about, singly and in twos and threes, sitting on the ground or aimlessly wandering. Ellen led me to a batch of half a dozen sitting on a patch of grass, and introduced me to them. These were her and Leo's friends, and I was to become part of their little band.
They took an interest in me – there was nothing else in this place to take interest in except when, on rare occasions, a new arrival turned up. They asked me for news of the outside world, and I told them all I could. In return they told me about the land beyond the Veil. It never got any darker, they said, nor any lighter; this grey twilight was permanent. It never rained, and was never hot nor cold. If I wanted something to eat, they said, the leaves of that shrub over there were all right. They wouldn't do me any good, but they wouldn't do any harm either.
"I don't understand," I said. "Am I – are we – dead?"
"Yes," said Ellen. "No," said Leo. Some of the others nodded, some shook their heads.
"We can't be dead," Leo explained, "because we can still die. From time to time one of us – usually an old person – dies, for no reason we know of. I think it's because their time has come, the time when they would have died if they hadn't come here. And no one can die twice, can they?"
"But all living people have to eat and drink," Ellen objected. "We don't. We can if we want to, but after the first few days, nobody does. We can sleep, but it's only to pass the time, we don't need it. So how can we be alive?"
"We can do other things that living people do," Leo observed.
Some of the group laughed. The only other woman said "I think we are neither dead nor truly alive. We've been thrown out of the living world, and we're waiting to join the dead. This place is Nowhere."
A memory came to me, of some religious teaching from when I was a child, about a place called Limbo which was neither heaven nor hell. "They sorrow but they do not suffer". Where did that line come from? But anyway, you had to be dead to go to Limbo, so this couldn't be it.
They sorrow but they do not suffer. I did my share of sorrowing in the next days, weeks, months – we had no way of measuring time. I slept as much as I could, we all did. There was no work to be done, because we needed neither food, drink nor shelter. So we talked, and played word games, danced and sang, ran races and wrestled. From time to time the company became so oppressive that one or other of us walked away, to be by himself or to join some other group that might have different stories to tell. I wandered off myself frequently, but always returned. It wasn't like Azkaban. It was boring, certainly, but less so than the prison, and it was warmer and more comfortable. And there were no Dementors.
I knew that because when I went on my solitary ramblings, I remembered and thought, and my thoughts were my own, unsullied by those mind-ghouls. I thought about Harry and how he must be missing me, perhaps even blaming himself for what he doubtless believed to be my death. I cursed myself for not showing him more affection when I had the chance; I had felt myself to be contaminated by my time in Azkaban, not fit to love and embrace an innocent young person. One memory in particular kept recurring: Harry as a baby, myself holding him, the intense love I felt as I looked at his dear little pink face and his black hair and his eyes just turning from baby-blue to green. No Dementors leapt in to snatch that memory from me, so I summoned more happy recollections: Harry as a toddler – he never crawled, he got up on fat unsteady legs at ten months, staggered a few steps, and never looked back; Harry's first word – "Mumma", unoriginally; Harry's first display of magic – on his first birthday. Remus had been coming from the kitchen carrying six plates of birthday cake in his hands, one plate had tipped enough to cause the slice of cake to slide off towards the floor, and Harry had spontaneously levitated it back up on to the plate. Then he had stared at the plate, his eyes and mouth three wide round Os. Remus had laughed and wandlessly levitated all six plates on to the table, then crouched down beside Harry, looking into his eyes. "You're a wizard, Harry," he had said. "Never doubted it," James had said smugly.
Strange that Harry's first sign of magic had been connected with Remus. Remus, who must now be as utterly devastated as Harry, but who, unlike Harry, couldn't show it. Remus would not shed one tear where anybody could see. He would force himself to eat, to wash his face, comb his hair, carry out his duties for the Order, talk and smile and laugh as though he were not dying inside. My Remus was a hero. I thought about my first memory of him on the Hogwarts Express, when I perceived he was hiding something. At first I thought it was just anxiety at leaving home and going to a new school, then I knew it was more than that. Over the next months he came to seem like a Muggle treasure my mother had, a jewelled egg which opened to show more jewels inside. I set myself the task of prising open Remus's secret, and when I found it I felt triumph, sorrow, fascination, horror and above all awe at this child's strength and courage. There were so many memories: Remus's sly, dry sense of humour that had the whole common room falling about laughing; his sharp eye for detail that sometimes led James and me to alter our planned mischief in such a way that we would be less likely to get caught; his immense gratitude when James, Peter and I became animagi for him; his sad puzzlement when I betrayed his secret to Snape, followed almost at once by understanding and laughing dismissal of the whole episode; the pure magic of our first kiss, and the slow gradual progress of our loving; and riding him, the building excitement, the incredible ecstasy of the climax. All these memories I had intact. No Dementors here.
Often I returned to the Veil to search for a way back, always without success. Then I would turn away and roam far and wide, looking for some other gateway, because I knew that not all my fellow prisoners had come in through the Veil. There are other places where the two worlds meet and where a hapless passer-by can be trapped. But I failed to find them.
Instead, someone found me: perhaps the last person I would have expected to see in this place. He looked much as he had before: the long white hair, the long white beard, the purple robes. His eyes even twinkled.
"Dumbledore!" I exclaimed. "Are you – are you dead too?"
"I am indeed. But you are not. Observe." He extended his hand and passed it through mine. I felt only a coolness.
"So you're a ghost? And I'm alive?" I asked him.
"No, and no. I am not technically a ghost, I am a spirit who has come here, not without considerable difficulty I may add, on a specific mission. And you are neither dead nor alive while you remain here. In this place, life and death are very different from what they are elsewhere. In due course, you will die and join me and others who have gone before you. But for now, I have an important task for you, and I must ask you to listen carefully because I do not know how long I can remain here. Do you know what a Horcrux is?"
I didn't, and I listened fascinated to what he told me. "I believe there is one here," he said finally, "and I need you to find and destroy it. It was found some twenty years ago by Dorcas Meadowes, who knew what it was and thought that throwing it through the Veil would destroy it, but she was wrong."
"What does it look like?"
"It's a belt buckle, round, made of gold and set with seventeen aquamarine stones."
"I know where it is. I've seen it."
"Then you must get it and destroy it."
"But how? There's nothing here to destroy anything with. There's no fire, no tools, not even any heavy boulders."
"You must try. As a last resort, throw it back through the Veil, but not until I return to tell you when there will be someone on the other side to receive it."
"Is there no way I can get out of here?"
"Not until you die, and that will not be for many years yet. Ah, I am being called, I must go."
"Can't I come with you now?"
"No. You will remain, suspended between life and death, until it is your time. I will come again if I can."
"Wait! Please – can you tell me anything about Harry? How is he?"
"Harry has endured a severe trial, and has conducted himself well. You would be proud of him."
"And – and Remus?" I hardly dared to ask. I knew Dumbledore would not lie to me.
Dumbledore looked suddenly older and weary. "He is …. troubled," he said. "He has been long among the werewolves, and he is beset on all sides. I fear for him."
"Can't you…." I began, but Dumbledore was already fading and before I could ask anything further, he had vanished.
I hurried back to where I had last seen Ellen, my mind in turmoil. Harry was all right, so far at least, but Remus was in trouble and I wasn't there to help him. I had let him down. Again.
When I reached our little band, I found them talking excitedly and, it seemed, happily. The oldest of us, a man named Lance, had died. This was a reason for his friends to rejoice; he had been freed from the drear monotony of our existence, freed to go on to whatever adventure awaited him. His body lay on top of his cloak; there was, apparently, a ritual to be performed.
Leo and three of the other men each took a corner of the cloak and lifted it, making a sort of hammock to carry the body. It was an awkward method of transport, but we had no means of making any kind of stretcher. With Ellen, myself, and the other two – Odette and Thomas – following, we made a slow procession towards a clump of trees a mile or so away.
"This is where we leave them," Ellen explained softly to me. "They sink into the ground."
In a clear space amidst the trees, the men lowered Lance's body to the ground and we all stood in a circle around it. Very slowly, grains of earth started to move up around the body. Ellen, Odette and two of the men sang a song. It was in Latin, and I vaguely remembered having heard it before, long ago. By the time they had finished, the earth had completely covered the body. They all bowed their heads in silence, and I did likewise, then we left the place.
"Oh, how I envy him," Ellen murmured, and Leo nodded and took her hand. I didn't think it was quite the time to bring up the matter of the Horcrux-buckle, so I left them alone and went some way off to try to sleep. Eventually I succeeded, and my dreams were images of Harry and Remus fighting off hordes of giants and trolls and vampires.
When I awoke, Ellen and Leo were sitting under a bush apart from the others. I strolled over to them. Leo was picking leaves off the bush, putting them in his mouth and seeing how far he could spit them (this was by no means the most fatuous pastime we had devised). I decided to approach the subject by explaining first what Horcruxes were, and their importance in the war against Voldemort. Then I told them that Ellen's belt buckle was one, and asked her to give it to me.
"I found it near the Veil," she said. "It's the only beautiful thing in this place."
"I know," I replied, "it is, and I wouldn't ask you to give it up except to save the world from an evil wizard."
Ellen and Leo looked at each other, and stood up.
"Wait," she said. "We want to talk about this." They moved away from me, talking quietly, nodding, agreeing. They came back.
"You may have the buckle on one condition," Leo said.
"Anything," I said.
"You must kill us."
"What!"
"I mean it. We are utterly sick of this place. If there were any way of killing ourselves, we would have done it long ago. Now you want something from us, you can give us what we want."
"But I can't – how…."
"You can choke us, with your hands. You're a strong man, you can do it. Ellen first, then me. Then – only then – you can take the buckle."
I hesitated some while. They looked at me anxiously, eagerly. I had to balance the survival of everything good in the world, against two lives. Two lives that wanted to be taken.
"I agree," I said.
"Good," said Leo. "Ellen first."
"Now, please, do it now," she begged.
I put my hands around her neck. I had been prepared to kill Bellatrix, in battle, with my wand. But killing with my bare hands was proving much harder than I could ever have thought it would be. Once, years ago, I had Harry in a similar grip, but I never meant to kill him. This time it was real, this time I had to do it. I could feel the warmth of her throat, the pulse beating there, and I knew that when I tightened my grip, she would struggle. In her mind she wanted to die, but her body would struggle without her willing it. I can do it, I thought. I must. For Dumbledore. For Harry. I tried; I pressed my thumbs into her throat harder, harder – then I let go.
Like any Auror, I had been trained to use all force necessary in self-defence. I had been taught that I might have to kill an enemy, and I was prepared for it. But I had never been taught how to kill in cold blood a person who had done me no wrong, had done no wrong to anyone that I knew of.
So, Snape was wrong about me. I am not a murderer. Apparently.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled.
Leo looked at me with utter contempt, and turned away. Ellen sat up, rubbing her neck and coughing. Her eyes filled with tears.
"Wait," I said, suddenly remembering. "There might be another way."
I took from my pocket the metal box Remus had given me two years before. The purple capsule was still inside. "You don't even have to swallow it," he had said. "Just crushing the capsule in your fingers will do it."
"So there may be enough for two," I told Leo and Ellen. This was different, this was me giving them the means to kill themselves. Morally it might be the same, but it felt different.
Leo took the capsule from me, and squeezed it with his nails. The purple fluid spilled out on to his fingertips. He gasped, stiffened, and keeled over. Ellen gave a little exclamation and leaned over to take the capsule from him, and as she touched it she too fell dead, the capsule dropping to the ground.
I examined the bodies. There was no pulse, no breath. I took the belt and removed the buckle. I had no idea how I would go about destroying it, but at least I had it in my possession. It felt weird, putting a part of Lord Voldemort in my pocket.
I should do something about Ellen and Leo. Take them to the burying place. Ellen would be easy enough; I could carry her there. But Leo was bigger and heavier than me. I would have to drag him by his feet. It would be better to get some of the others to help me. Anyway, they should be told. It was right that they know what had happened to their friends. I started off in the direction I had last seen them.
After I had gone a few yards, I stopped to think. In this place, death was welcome, a means of escape. But it did not necessarily follow that no questions would be asked as to how Leo and Ellen had died. Someone would be sure to notice that Ellen's belt had gone, and it would be obvious to blame the newcomer, the outsider, for robbery and murder. I had had some experience of being wrongly suspected and condemned on strong circumstantial evidence, and I did not relish the prospect of it happening again. Besides, there were more than enough of them to overpower me and take the Horcrux from me, and I would be back where I started. At the very least, I must remove the capsule, the only piece of material evidence.
When I returned to the spot where I had left the bodies, they were gone. I couldn't mistake the place; there was the shrub from which Leo had a few minutes before been picking the leaves for his spitting game. And there on the ground was the broken purple capsule, still oozing the last of its poison. But of the bodies there was no trace.
I stood up and scanned the horizon; in the distance I saw two figures, running. One tall and fair-haired, the other short and dark. They ran hand in hand towards the Veil. Dumbledore's words came back to me: In this place, life and death are very different from what they are elsewhere. Could it be that that which killed, in the outside world, gave life here? To die before one's allotted time reanimated the not-fully-dead?
I have always been one who trusts to intuition, first impressions, snap judgements. There have been a few times when these have led me disastrously astray, but more often they have been proved right. My instinct told me Ellen and Leo had been restored to life, and urged me to follow them. So that is what I did. I picked up the broken capsule, rubbing the almost-dried remnant of the potion on my fingers.
My body stiffened and I fell to the ground, motionless but not unconscious. I felt a sensation of being hurled from side to side, like the clapper in a huge bell. That motion ended in a thump as if I had been thrown to the ground from a great height, and I was back in control of my body.
I stood up, moved my arms, walked, then I ran. Ran towards the Veil, where my two friends had gone. Ran straight through it, the force which had previously barred my way now mysteriously absent.
I was back in that cursed room in the Department of Mysteries. While looking around, trying to figure out how to make my way out, I heard voices. I crouched down beside the dais as a door opened high above, and two wizards appeared.
"I hate this place," one grumbled. "Don't see why we have to stand guard here anyway."
"Oh, didn't they tell you? There've been spies in here. Two of them, a man and a woman. Nobody seems to know their names, so we have to suppose the worst and think they're spying for You Know Who. They broke out of here and had it on their toes all the way through the Ministry and out, took us all by surprise, they did. Nobody else will do that while we're here."
Want to bet? I charged up the steps and bowled the wizards over and sped past them.
"What the hell was that?" exclaimed one.
"How did a bloody dog get in here?" asked the other.
I didn't stop to enlighten them.
It wasn't too difficult getting out; none of the Ministry pen-pushers I encountered knew what to think of a dog on the premises, and by the time they'd worked out an appropriate reaction I was gone. It appeared Leo and Ellen had made it too. I was glad of that.
12 Grimmauld Place was silent and empty. Not even Kreacher was there. I was somewhat disappointed about that; I'd been looking forward to seeing his evil little mug when I returned from the dead. Never mind, we'd meet again sometime. Meanwhile, it appeared that Grimmauld Place was no longer headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. If, indeed, the Order still existed; perhaps Dumbledore's death had dealt it a mortal blow. The next most obvious place to try was The Burrow.
The kitchen door was open – typical Weasley carelessness; whatever happened to Constant Vigilance? I lurked just outside in my dog form, watching Molly and – oh my heart leapt at the sight – my Remus doing some kind of food preparation at the kitchen table.
"I can't, Molly," Remus was saying. "You keep saying I won't, but truly I can't. I've tried to be nice, I've given her friendship, I've even offered to marry her just for companionship, but……"
"But of course that isn't what she wants. She's a young woman with needs. She doesn't want friendship and companionship, she can get that from me and Ginny. She wants you."
"And does it always have to be about what Tonks wants? What about what I want?"
Tonks? What was going on here?
I transformed to my own shape. "What do you want, Moony?" I asked, pushing through the door.
Molly gave a little scream, but her wand was in her hand and pointing at me almost as fast as Remus's. The two of them stood facing me, wands ready. "Who are you?" Remus asked, his voice steady and calm.
I transformed quickly, and back again.
"So, you're a dog animagus," Remus said. "But you'll have to do better than that."
"It's really me, Moony," I said. "I'm back. I'll prove it. I'm going to take something out of my pocket. It's not a wand or any sort of weapon, so don't hex me."
"Do it slowly, then."
"That's not the first time you've said that to me," I said with a grin. But I did as I was told and avoided any sudden movements when taking the metal box from my pocket.
"You remember this?" I asked. "You gave it to me with a purple capsule inside. It should have killed me. Instead, it brought me back to life. Life and death are different behind the Veil. Dumbledore told me."
There was a flare of hope in Remus's face now, though his wand hand was as steady as ever. "You've seen Dumbledore?" he asked.
"Yes. He's dead, isn't he? I met him beyond the Veil. He told me about Horcruxes. Do you know what Horcruxes are?"
Neither of them answered.
"Well, anyway, I've got one." I took the buckle from my pocket – slowly, carefully - and showed it to them. "Pretty, isn't it? Who would think it held something as ugly as a bit of Voldemort?"
"I'd rather you didn't speak that name in my house," Molly said.
"Ah, but you see, I wouldn't, if I were one of his followers," I said. "I'd call him The Dark Lord, out of reverence for his Dark Lordship, wouldn't I?"
"That's true, Molly," Remus said, and his wand arm wavered just a little, but doubt still predominated over hope in his expression.
"Damn it, Moony," I almost yelled. "I'm me, I'm Padfoot. You want ID? All right. Your pubic hair is a different colour from your head hair. I told you it looks like gold wire. And when we have sex, I'm very loud, but you're silent. Even when you come, you don't make a sound. And if there's anyone else in the universe who knows that, I want to have words with him."
At some point during that speech, Molly gave a gasp of shock and bustled out of the kitchen. She at least was convinced. And Remus was too, because his wand arm dropped, and he was crossing the room to me, and his arms were round me and he was pressing himself against me and kissing me and I kissed him back and everything was all right.
A/N – written in haste, so please make allowances. I felt I had to get it done and posted before DH is published and everything goes belly up.