Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own The Dresden Files.
Mother Superior come catch the rabbit, he runs.
Black
A Wilderness
When he stepped into the phone booth, Harry Potter had already been awake for a day and a night thinking about death and the Veil.
He liked to blame it on the Headmaster.
Harry plucked the phone from the receiver, and rested his fingers on the keys. The outside of the booth was a dirty red, scratched, with paint that was chipping to reveal previous coats. The inside, by comparison, was pristine. It was almost as if deterred by its exterior appearance no one had ever ventured inside.
Six. Two. Four. Four. Two.
"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic." The voice, a cool female tone, came not from the telephone, but from the booth itself. "Please state your name and business."
"Harry Potter," he said. "Closure."
"Visitor, please take…" The phone-booth rattled. There was the screech of metal on concrete and the floor descended, carrying him into the earth. Harry looked out the cracked panes, watching the sun-streaked sky recede, and allowed his mind to wander.
In June—right here at the Ministry—Professor Dumbledore had saved his life. Hours later, the old man seemed to have a change of heart, and condemned Harry to a certain death. He had wanted to scream, to blame the professor for everything, but could not. Somewhere, inside, Harry had known it. He had known it even without Professor Trelawney's prophecy.
Harry Potter had to vanquish the Dark Lord.
Or be vanquished.
Neither can live while the other survives.
That sentence had been screaming in his mind ever since. There wasn't much for him to do during the summer but stew.
Each morning Harry awoke to sweltering heat in the smallest bedroom of Number Four, Privet Drive. He would sit up, wrapped in white sheets that looked like the greasy packaging of delicatessen meat, and wonder if the departed soul could sweat.
Each day, Harry would make his way downstairs to watch his aunt and cousin sit before the television. Their knives and forks clattered and scratched as they ate and chattered, excitedly watching as people were killed on the screen in gouts of blood and under thunderous gunfire. Harry would wonder if they had ever seen a man draw his final, shuddering breath.
He would wonder if Dudley Dursley knew what it felt like to stare the end in its foul, slavering maw and know that the world would continue to turn at the same speed with or without his massive weight crushing the cushions of the couch.
Sometimes.
Sometimes. Harry Potter wanted nothing so much as he wanted to grasp death in his hands and squeeze the life from it, just so it knew what it did to people.
And other times, usually when it was dark and the night breeze blew hot air into his face, and there was nothing to distract him from all that he had lost, and the pain welled up beneath his skin, Harry saw the Veil.
He could picture that ragged black curtain and the emptiness of its echoless stone chamber. But… but beyond that, Harry could hear them. The breathless voices. At times he imagined that the wind of their speech caressed the hairs on his arms. Armless, the voices would embrace him. They provided a tender comfort that he had only ever envied.
And it made him feel something, a foreign warmth in his chest. It radiated from his heart and into his fingertips and crackled into his bedclothes. The pain left him, then. He could sleep.
The Veil was his sanctuary. It was awful of him to think of it as that, but when the weight became unbearable—when he wanted all of the simple things he could never have—it was ready to comfort him.
Even when the sun was out and Harry was in the garden pulling at weeds simply to avoid contact with his relatives, he would think of the Veil's whispers and an echo of that wondrous heat would flow from the dandelions and into his palms as he strangled the plants to death.
But all of his nights were not filled with visions of the Veil.
Sometimes Hedwig, Harry's snowy owl, would bring him presents and messages when the moon was out.
That was the worst.
Then Harry would think of Sirius Black and Cedric Diggory. They had died for him and would never again be able to write a letter, or crease parchment, or tie a knot in string.
And the faces of Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom sprouted from the emptiness, too. They would follow Harry into the Inferno itself if he needed but a handful of hell-roasted peanuts.
Everyone was so bloody willing to die for him. Because he was the hero, right? Homer could write poetry about him. Off to Troy, Harry Potter, so handsome and brave and strong—then very dead because the Dark Lord Voldemort had stolen his Achilles'-like protection.
When Harry's birthday came, the gifts and well-wishes poured through his window in torrents. He found himself snowed under a pile of letters from people that he had never seen or heard from before. It was almost funny. Last summer he would have delighted in so much parchment and ink. This summer he would have settled for a single letter from the Headmaster.
Dear Harry, it would say.
This has all been a great hoax.
See you in September.
Instead, Harry received piles of pleas and praise. The Chosen One they were calling him. As though Boy Who Lived wasn't enough. All day, he sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking about what would happen if he died right then. But the whispers of the Veil would not come to him.
The warmth that he longed for was not there. He rolled over, wrapping the sheets tight about him and shoved his face into a pillow.
He pictured Cedric's unmoving, wide-eyed corpse in the stringy grass of Tom Riddle's graveyard, but all that came was a dark shiver. He thought of Sirius Black and the look of utter bewilderment on his godfather's face when the black curtain swallowed his body. But Harry could not feel the presence of the room or the draw of the Veil.
The next sunrise found him waiting for the bus to London.
•••
The soles of his cross trainers squeaked out against the floorboards of the Ministry of Magic's underground atrium and resounded in his ears. Heavily conscious of the sound, Harry's gaze flitted from wizard to witch, looking out for anyone that had taken notice of the noise.
The sleepy-eyed men and women that appeared in the grates of the fireplaces were unaware. Harry skirted around a few tall witches, just as one of the green fires flared up. An old wizard spilled from the hearth; he brushed soot from his pin-striped robes and gave a vigorous, shaking yawn. Harry froze before him, but the fellow just blinked a greeting and slouched off for the bank of lifts without a second look.
By all rights, Harry should have been just as tired and oblivious. He was not. Emotions pummeled his insides; they threatened to force their way out on a wave of partially digested toast, and t he sudden appearances of Ministry personnel did nothing to settle him. Harry swallowed a sour taste and forced the urge to be sick away.
The closer that he came to the Veil, the more powerful the feelings became. They bubbled and boiled inside: fear, rage, sorrow, hope. Weariness, though, escaped him. The dark planks that squeaked beneath his shoes were scrubbed so clean that Harry's reflection was able to stare back at him as an image of perfect bespectacled resolve.
Professor Dumbledore had said the Veil was not the end. It was merely the start of the next great journey. All summer, Harry thought that it meant death. Now, he was not so sure. Whenever Harry thought of the Veil, whenever the warmth that the whispers brought spread in his gut and raised the hairs on his skin, he felt so alive. Angrily alive.
Harry had to find out, beyond all doubt, if Sirius Black was gone.
His shoes screeched again. Harry came to a halt.
A fountain stood at the center of the Ministry's deep hall. The golden statue of a goblin stood in the water, ugly and droopy nosed. It gazed up, enraptured, at the empty expanse of ceiling above it. A sign hung from the wide-eyed creature's neck. It read: Out of Order. Water dribbled from the goblin's gilded nostrils.
Harry looked away, trying to swallow the boulder that grown in his throat. He fought to pull his eyes from his dirty shoestrings and surveyed the floor around the Fountain of Magical Brethren.
The rest of the statues had been obliterated only a few weeks ago. The floor shone with the effort of repeated polishing, but Harry could see smoky marks, scorched varnish, the pockmarks in the wood. Chunks of marble were missing from the fountain's basin.
Two months was not enough time for most painful memories to lose their sting, and just looking at the fountain made Harry feel like someone had stuffed his thrashing heart into a beehive.
Before him, the ghosts of crackling light and power twisted through the shallow water. The clang of magic on metal rang in his ears. Harry saw the heads of the golden sculptures tumble and scar the ground as Professor Dumbledore saved him, time and again, from a messy decapitation.
He heard the voice of Bellatrix Lestrange in his ears. Harry could see the pink tip of her tongue crawl out to wet her bloodied lips. She writhed before him. Playful and hungry, she called out.
"You need to mean it, Potter."
There was suddenly a sick taste in his mouth. The Ministry could scour the floor every day. They could replace all of the floorboards, build new statues of bowing goblins and scraping centaurs. It wouldn't be enough. Harry spit into the basin.
"You would think that the Minister would have someone by to fix the thing!" called a chipper voice.
Was that Tonks?
Harry's bee stung heart leapt into his throat as he turned. He didn't want anyone to see him here. Harry shoved his fist into his jeans, seeking his wand, but upon seeing who had called out, he let the tension hiss from between his clenched teeth. The wand stayed in his pocket.
A pair of young witches making their way across the atrium had stopped to flip a few bronze coins into the fountain.
"Scrimgeour is here for war, Dolly," one of them said. Her face was gently round and pretty. Curly hair bounced as she shook her head at her friend. "Not to fund St. Mungo's."
"I s'pose," said Dolly, drawing the string of her coin purse. "But they heal people, don't they? St. Mungo's is going to need plenty of gold to heal people, Barb. They can't do it for free."
"St. Mungo's handles its own business," said Barb. She tugged at her friend's sleeve. "They'll have gold enough when they get the serious patients again. Come along or we'll be late!"
The witches didn't notice the black-haired teenager that stood, planted like an extra statue, beside them. In a wave of colorful robes and clicking heels, they swept past him. Harry watched them go; his heart thumped a staccato against his ribs. The tone that the woman, Barb, had taken made his guts clench like a fist.
The reality of it was painful—everyone was certain of war.
Fifteen years of peace had turned from tangible to vapor faster than a drop of sweat on hot asphalt. War. The sound of the word in his head felt foul. It meant so much. There would be casualties again.
Casualties and, and... Harry's hands balled up. The blank faces of Frank and Alice Longbottom flashed in his mind's eye. If there was something worse than death then Neville's parents had found it. Even the healers at wizard hospital, St. Mungo's, could not heal them.
And Barb had been so plain. There would be more like them soon.
The Ministry was not ready. Law enforcement and the Aurors couldn't switch from peacetime to wartime with enough speed to counter the twisted delights of people like the Death Eaters.
Bridges had been ripped down. Dementors had made the night theirs. Rumors of a Inferi army were stirring in the newspapers. The rising number of disappearances did nothing to quell that fear. Madam Bones was murdered. Sturgis Podmore, member of the Order of the Phoenix, was gone, disappeared along with his entire family. Already good people were being hurt.
Good people died.
Harry's arms shook; his stomach spasmed. He shouldn't think like this now. The Veil was too close. He pressed a palm against his shirt, stretched the fabric, rolled it down his abdomen. New air rushed into him. Harry would deal with his war and his fate, but he had to do this for him.
Lord Voldemort would wait until he found his godfather.
Harry rode the lift to Level Nine alone. The rumble, the clanking, built up a thunderous drumroll in his rushing blood. The golden gate spread open and that pleasant voice announced, "The Department of Mysteries."
Harry stepped into an empty stone corridor.
The air was close and damp. It clung to him like a living thing that was happy for company. The torches guttered, scribbling gauzy shadows on the walls. At the far end of the hall was one black door.
The fear and sorrow that had raged in him since departing Privet Drive was overtaken by a surge of ravenous hope. Harry scrambled for the door; he twisted the knob, stepped through into the circular vestibule. This room was lit only by the eerie blue flame of stretched out candles. They were mounted on either side of doors that might have been clones of the one Harry had entered through.
Click.
The first black door shut behind him and without warning the circular room whirled into motion. The dark doors were dark blurs that aimed to fool unsuspecting visitors. Tiny sparks of blue light popped and winked as the room spun. Harry couldn't be fooled. This room was intimate to him. The spinning room was forever a part of his memory.
He set his feet and waited at the center of the drum. The room slowed, stopped. A long, deep, fissure split the wood of the door he faced.
"The Veil," Harry called.
It opened.
The chamber was quiet.
Grey steps that doubled as benches, clean and square-edged, dropped down into the room. The room that was dim and cold and very, very quiet. In his periphery, Harry saw the breeze shut. It did not make a sound.
The air didn't move in this chamber. There wasn't even the slow draft of Level Nine's corridor. It was still, like a dead thing.
Harry breathed and even as the air swished through his teeth it became still. The chamber seemed to be miles within the earth, but Whitehall, Harry knew, could not have been more than a few hundred feet above him.
"Lumos." Light, white, flashed forth in a cone from the end of his wand. Harry raised his trembling arm to spread the glow before him. He descended.
The pat, pat, of his footfalls nearly dissipated before he could hear them, but it didn't matter. Harry shoved his fringe aside with a sweaty palm. His light flashed up against a platform. In his chest, his heart was ready to burst. There it was.
He paused for one of his heart's hummingbird beats as raw awe filled him. Nothing seemed more beautiful than this chamber, at this moment. It was space perfected. Rectangular, wider than it was deep. The form of the everything was stone and pure. The steps were an edged ring, each drop was the same, each was a rectangle inside another rectangle—and juxtaposed at the center was a circular dais.
Three shallow steps led to the top, and at their terminus was the archway, the Veil. Its black cloth flapped in the windless chamber.
Harry rushed for it. In his haste, he stumbled up the last step. The toe of his shoe caught on the edge and he pitched forward. Harry threw a hand out to arrest his fall, and met the stone of the arch.
Like the ocean sliding up to the shore, a chorus of garbled whispers washed into his ears.
Harry smiled.
A warmth stirred in the pit of him. Not in his stomach, or chest, or heart, but the very inside of him. Two months. Two months he had waited to hear them again.
Their speech was indiscernible. All a jumble of words in languages that he did not know, but Harry was captivated all the same. He trailed his fingers up and down the crumbling stone as the voices slid around inside his head.
Harry shut his eyes and ran his palm over the archway. The material was so worn. Little threads of the stone grazed over his skin. He felt out the marks. They must have been runes.
Harry opened his eyes; his mouth bent. Hermione had taught them a little of Ancient Runes—old letters from the north. These looked nothing like them. They were minute, and writ deep into the block, as though inscribed with the point of a searing needle. The voices grew loud as Harry outlined the words with his fingernail.
"Oh, hush," said Harry, his tone gentle. He brought his face close, as though proximity would translate the text. The veil fluttered and the voices trilled, drawing his attention. His stomach vibrated. A sound of hunger.
No one really knew where it led.
Professor Dumbledore insisted that it was death. If so, then where was Sirius's body? Where was his wand? His clothes? Harry gritted his teeth at the lance of anger that tore through his pleasant haze. Everybody was so sorry, but there hadn't been so much as a funeral for his godfather. Even Uncle Vernon had taken Harry to funerals when people died.
The voices were feverish now. Harry grasped the Veil and his heart grew hot in his chest. The dark fabric was silken and slid through his fingers like a wind through a leafless branch. He grabbed another handful.
"Where do you go?" Harry asked it. The voices wavered and grew very soft, as if they were preparing to answer.
Pat, pat. Footsteps behind him.
"G'morning, Croaker."
Harry froze. The cloth fell from his fingers. He clenched his wand and turned about.
"It boggles my mind that you can work in such dark at your age," said Barb from the Atrium. "But I will not."
There was a loud snap. It was alien, wrong, in the silent expanse of the chamber. Harry heard the whoosh of a hundred torches being synchronously lit; the light, although gentle, made him squint. Barb let out a startled curse.
"You're not Croaker," she said. Her hand shot into her robes.
"Obliviate!" said Harry.
But Barb retrieved her wand in time. There was a sound like shattering glass. The woman batted his memory charm away.
"Who are you?" said Barb, her chest swelling in fury. A golden badge gleamed at her bosom. It had not been pinned there in the atrium. The little button was in the shape of a single capital 'U'.
Barb's wand had not dipped or wavered. "How did you get in here?"
Harry was silent. He stood beside the archway; his fingers squeezed it for reassurance. Barb started towards him. Harry noticed the tension in her neck, the hard set of her jaw.
He didn't know much about this place, but he knew even less about the people that worked here. They were called Unspeakables and that explained the shape on Barb's badge. Harry also knew that they weren't allowed to speak of the Department of Mysteries or the work that took place in its chambers.
He'd gleaned this little bit of information one year ago, when Mr Weasley had escorted him to the Ministry for his hearing. On the lift, they met a pair of men, Mr Bode and Mr Croaker. Immediately, Harry had noticed the change in Mr Weasley's demeanor. Something about them had unsettled him and made the usually amiable man distant and uncomfortable. Mr Weasley might have wet himself if faced by Barb.
"Step away," she said, eyes flashing. "That's a dangerous thing."
"Where does it go?" asked Harry.
"Are you daft?" said Barb. "I told you to move."
Perhaps Harry was crazy. He was hearing voices that only Luna Lovegood could and, up until a few weeks ago, every witch and wizard in Great Britain had passed him off as an unstable, attention-seeking prat.
Harry took a step back. And then squared himself directly before of the trembling Veil. Only Sirius had been unconditional in his support. He was so close. Last year he might have been intimidated by Barb, but now her presence here seemed a gift. She was an Unspeakable that worked with the Veil.
"You have to know," he said.
Barb was close enough now that Harry could see the smattering of freckles on her cheeks and nose and the dark roots of her blonde ringlets.
"You're Harry Potter," she accused. Her eyes wrinkled in fury.
"Yeah." He kept his hand steady. If her tone was any indication, Barb wasn't pleased that a group of teenagers broke into the most secretive department of the magical government and played with all of their things.
Harry suspected that she really didn't like that that he had done it twice.
"So, Mr. Potter," called Barb, "move."
"No."
"This isn't a place for—"
"For what?" Harry cut in heatedly; his wand shook in his hand. The whispers roared in his ears. "Isn't a place for children? Where can children go, then? Because I saw my godfather disappear right here. I saw his own cousin laugh when she shoved him through this thing. I saw your mate, Rookwood, lead a whole party of Death Eaters in here to murder schoolchildren. I saw… " Harry's voice cracked. His throat went dry. The Veil's whispers were all of a sudden very comforting, and a cool breeze ruffled his hair when they spoke.
"I wasn't going to say children," Barb snapped, one fist settling at her hip. She jerked her wand at him. "This isn't a place for anyone but authorized staff of the Department of Mysteries."
"Where," said Harry, "does it go?"
"And I'll say it again, Potter," Barb said. "Step down."
"Just tell me," Harry pleaded, all of his defiance leaving in a sudden rush. "I-I need to know where the Veil goes. Please."
Barb regarded him with steely eyes. After a heavy breath, she lowered her wand and beckoned for him to come to her.
"Perhaps," she began, "when you've graduated Hogwarts, you can come and study it for yourself. We always need curious and able wizards here." Barb motioned for him again, but Harry did not budge.
"Does it kill you?" he asked. "Where do the bodies go? Do they keep them somewhere down here?"
"Bloody hell!" cried Barb; her wand was pointed at him again. "Incarcerous."
"Protego!" replied Harry. Braided black ropes cracked up against a wall of solid air. Where they made the strongest contact, blue-white sparks fizzled and fell to the dais.
"Should I take that as resistance to arrest, Mr. Potter?" asked the Unspeakable, striding to the base of the platform. Harry leveled his wand and planted his feet.
"If you tell me where the Veil leads," he said. "And I'll come down."
"If I what? Just how thick is your skull, Potter," said Barb, stopping her advance. "Look at where you are. It's a mystery."
At her words utter joy consumed him, because all he heard was, "It doesn't kill you?"
Barb's mouth turned down at the corners. She raised her wand. Lowered it. Too quiet for him to hear, she muttered something and lifted her eyes to his.
The voices behind the veil crooned into Harry's ear. That warmth blossomed in him. There was something like a tug behind his own eyes. Harry felt himself focus intently on Barb's face.
Her eyes were blue ringed with grey bands. The breath left him at their simple beauty. The emotion was foreign, Harry had never been this captivated by a girl's eyes before—not even Fleur's.
And beneath her irises, the little wrinkles of skin were daubed pale purple. Harry noticed the way her eyelashes trembled when she blinked. The web of faint blood vessels across her eyes made the whites seem very bright. Her pupils were blacker than the Veil. The heat rose in him. Harry felt as though he was being dragged forward into her gaze. All he saw was blue… and Barb dropped her eyes.
"Listen," she said. "We don't know if it kills you. But no one ever comes back."
"So it doesn't kill you." Harry was a little shaken at the intensity of their shared gaze, but it still took everything he had not to face the Veil, then. Barb wouldn't miss the opportunity to bind him. Of course, he would go with her. In spite of her reluctance, the witch had given him food for his hungry hope.
Sirius Black was not dead.
He was just somewhere else, beyond the Veil, and no one could get there and come back. But he couldn't be dead. The whispers were driving into his skull, and Harry knew it was the truth.
"We. Don't. Know," said Barb. "Now, come on."
"But you're finding out how to bring people back," Harry said, ignoring the woman. "Are you close?"
"No closer now than they were six centuries ago," said Barb through her teeth. "Just—will you come on?"
"Och, it's bright in here!" came a new voice. "Barbie, I got yer coffee."
Barb spun, her robes swishing.
"Croaker!"
Harry hadn't heard the door open or shut behind the newcomer. He was a thin man, older, with a grizzled beard and a short cane. Harry took a reflexive step back. The man's mouth fell open; he dropped the ceramic mug of coffee. It fell to the stone steps and exploded, but Harry didn't hear it make a noise.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood ramrod straight. There was an electric heat in him. His skin groaned. Then the breeze. The same comfortable breeze that he had sought all summer. The black veil brushed over his shoulders, settled over his face.
Harry felt as though someone had pulled all of his organs up into his throat. His shoes scraped on the dais. He fell back. In perfect clarity, he heard what the voices had been whispering, but now it was a thunderous scream that bore down on him from every direction at once.
"We open the Way."
Thank you for reading.
Questions, comments, improvements, suggestions, etc. are all welcome.
Encouraged even.