The Doorway
Chapter 1: Experimentation
Summary: Eighteen years to the day after Sirius fell through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, Harry steps in after him. This story was inspired by the beginning of 'A Black Comedy' by nonjon and 'Making Faces' by Thanatos. Complete Cannon excluding the epilogue, AU and OOC … obviously.
Disclaimer: I own nothing; I just wanna play with 'em. I make no monetary gain from this romp through Rowling's World.
*~ {PoE} ~*
It had been eighteen years, as of tomorrow he realized, that Harry had lost his Godfather, almost ten years since the start of his study of the Veil. Ironically enough, he was now the same age Sirius was when he'd die- er, passed through. Harry had refused to call it 'death'. After all he'd lost; Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Colin, Cedric, Albus, Moody, his parents, Dobby, even Hedwig and Snape ranked high on his list and tugged at his heart each time his thoughts strayed to them. As they often did, even after all this time. After he'd lost so many; he refused to count his Godfather among them and was determined to retrieve him from beyond the Veil. The final nail in the proverbial coffin, for Harry, was loosing little Teddy Lupin, at only five years old, to a particularly aggressive bout of dragon pox. It was determined that his werewolf heritage caused the virus to transmute into a sickness that no healer was able to combat.
Hermione said he had 'Survivors Guilt' and, honestly, he agreed with her. What he didn't agree with, was her using that as the excuse for his current 'obsession'. He hated it when she called it that. He wasn't obsessed, he was …passionate, focused, and dedicated. He was … obsessed, but it didn't need to be stated, for Merlin's sake.
Besides, hadn't he made progress? Hadn't he achieved more than anyone else had in all the centuries the Veil had been studied? Five years into his study, he'd managed to 'accidentally' activate a rune cluster on the, at the time, slightly tilted arch. He'd gotten frustrated with the stone passage, more so than was strictly warranted at the time, though he had been working on it for five years, and he'd done something that was considered less than intelligent. He decided to start poking his wand into the myriad of hollows, pockets, and crevices littering the edifice. On his seventh 'poke' the arch shifted, nearly snapping his wand before he could yank it free and back away, and straightened into a perfectly rectangular Doorway. Pure white light, brighter than anything he'd ever witnessed, poured from behind the tattered Veil that was billowing in a fierce wind he could not feel, and the voices that were always whispering to him grew loud enough to hear clearly. The only problem was that 'they' were all taking/yelling at once, and some (he discovered via Pensive later) even seemed to be talking in other languages or gibberish, it was hard to tell. This made it impossible to discern exactly what it was any individual was saying, though Harry was positive he'd recognized one of the voices.
Three years after that 'amazing breakthrough', Harry had his eureka moment and stuck the tip of his wand past the Veil and, concentrating as hard as he could, Accio-ed Sirius Black. He immediately felt the telltale draw on his magic that meant the 'object' he'd summoned was being retrieved, but the draw was much stronger than anything he'd ever tried before. It had felt like he'd tried summoning Hogwarts herself. He quickly lost consciousness as magic exhaustion claimed him.
He'd awoken three days later to a pair of very irate best friends and Hermione demanding that he promise never to attempt something so foolish again. That lasted until he was able to shut her up with three simple words, "It was working."
Unfortunately, that was the last modicum of success they'd gotten. No matter how many people stood, crowded, around the Doorway, and Accio-ed Sirius Black, they all, to a one of them, would succumb to magical exhaustion before anything would appear through the Veil.
Harry had gotten to the point, again, that he was just throwing random things in to see what happened. He'd done this before, when he first started working on it. He'd thrown in everything from conjured items, to spells of all kinds, to any and everything he could get down to and through the Doorway. He'd even thrown in a transfigured cat (a dog being a bit close to Padfoot for his tastes, no matter the breed) with no results. He was reticent to get an actual animal to try, the little voice in his head whispering that it was just wrong. He'd also tried sticking the front half of a camera through (both muggle and wizarding) and taking pictures; all of them came out the same dull gray of overexposed film. At one low point he even wrote a note to Sirius explaining what he was trying to do and chucked it in.
After he'd shifted the arch into the Doorway he'd tried tossing in things again, to no avail. After the Accio breakthrough, he'd have a group of Unspeakables attempt the spell while he banished the ends of all manner of rope, chain, cord, string, line, and cable through beside them, hoping that Sirius might be able to catch hold of the end as he was brought closer to the Veil, no luck.
He had debated trying sending a person through, however the history of the Veil as a means of execution was well documented and each case of a human going through (aside from Sirius) was meticulously detailed, though it hadn't been used like that for centuries. Surprisingly, to Harry at least, the Veil had only been used on five men and seven women previously, which would make Sirius the thirteenth person through, a powerful number. It didn't escape Harry's notice that if one more male went through it would be seven of each, another powerful number. Harry was intrigued and planned to try experiments on groups of seven next, before he broached the idea of sending another person through.
*~ {PoE} ~*
So it was that on the day before the eighteenth anniversary of the 'disappearance' of his Godfather, Harry was sitting at the base of the stone bench directly in front of the Doorway, a steadily decreasing plethora of items (seven of each) arrayed around him. He picked up and threw in seven rubber balls he'd gotten from a local muggle toy store. In memory of Albus Dumbledore he'd gotten the most luridly colored spheres he could find. Aside from the ever present fluttering of the Veil, there was no reaction to the balls passage.
He tried seven stones next, amethysts for no other reason than he liked the colour purple, chucking them through one by one; again, with no reaction. He looked down at his few remaining items, the seven cut flowers; lilies of course, went next; nothing. The seven potted ferns (still living, unlike the lilies) were sent through and, for the first time, there was a reaction. As soon as the seventh fern was past the Doorway, the cloth of the Veil billowed outward and there was a brief flash of that same pure white light.
Harry scrambled up, stumbling over his own feet in his haste to reach the Doorway. His eyes roamed over every inch of the stone itself as well as the floor immediately in front of and behind it. There was nothing there, not a single trace of soil, ceramic, or leaf. He looked back over to the small number of items he had remaining, including the seven tiny goldfish in individual glass orbs. He'd brought them as a last ditch effort, to cover all bases. They were actually what the muggle pet shop employee had called 'feeder fish' and bred to die. But he'd still debated with himself long and hard over the need for a truly living test subject. He quickly sent six of them through and, standing as close as he could to the Doorway, gently floated the seventh quaffel sized glass ball and fish past the Veil.
The curtain of the Veil billowed out again, plastering itself to Harry's chest and face. Through the cloth, Harry could see the flash of white again and distinctly heard the painfully familiar voice of his Godfather saying, "Fish?"
Harry ripped the cloth off himself and held it to the side has he stared into the void beyond the Doorway. This was the first time he'd been able to move the Veil itself out of the way, much less touch it, and look behind the cloth, and what he saw was … nothing. That same dull gray that all the photographs had reveled and he realized that they hadn't been overexposed, they captured the only image available; unending gray. He swallowed hard and released the Veil letting it fall back into place as he paced the floor in front of the Doorway. Finally he stopped, looked to the Doorway, nodded resolutely, and left the room.
*~ {PoE} ~*
He spent the rest of that day and most of the next in Diagon Alley. He bought an everlight shrinkable trunk similar to Moody's seven compartments one, with three 'normal' compartments (with the standard expansion charms making it twice the capacity within as without) and four large 'cavern' compartments like the one Moody had been found in, roughly four meters square with wooden ladders leading into them. The trunk could be shrunk down to the size of a shoebox and nothing within would be jostled or disturbed. He also paid a small fortune to put a blood lock on it, so that only he (and Sirius if/when he found him) could open it. The real cost of the feature was the knowledge of how to do it, which he needed so he could eventually enable Sirius to use it. He'd had to use his fame a bit (something he still hated doing) and still had to pay through the nose for it.
He then went to Gringotts, where the proprietors were still rather overly brusque with him; even sixteen years later, and filled three of the chamber compartments with as many Galleons as would fit. This still left just over eight-thousand Galleons (a minute fraction of the total) that he had transferred into Ron and Hermione's account before closing down all of his accounts.
From there he went to nearly every shop in the Alley, stocking up on anything and everything he thought they might need; multi-weather muggle and wizard clothing and shoes/boots for himself and Sirius (shrunken). A deluxe two room wizarding tent. Quills, ink bottles, and reams of parchment. The entirety of the black library, all of his old school books, and some select choices from Flourish and Blotts (also shrunken). Two Lightningbolt 5000's (the newest broom on the market, made by the Firebolt company, his own Firebolt had been lost that fateful night Hedwig had died and he'd previously never had the heart to replace his first gift from his Godfather). Several spare wands (after calling in his favor from Ollivander). A number of cauldrons and tons of supplies for potions, various ready made potions, and a multitude of ingredients under stasis (shrunk). A Pensive of his own (which was bloody expensive). A great mass of items from Gorge's shop, and scads more random items that two men might ever have a need of.
All this went into the three 'normal' compartments along with the Marauders Map. He also placed his Invisibility Cloak, the Elder Wand, and the Resurrection Stone therein. He'd kept all three Hallows (never mind that the cloak was his anyway, though it was debatable about the other two) so no one else would be tempted by them, he figured the best way to hide them was to tell everyone where they were and not put them there.
Into the last chamber compartment went four refrigerators/freezers/stasis containers, powered by magic, and filled with as much shrunken, perishable muggle food as he could cram into them. The rest of the room was filled with boxes of as much shrunken, non-perishable, muggle food as he could cram into the space, he figured he had enough to last two men about five years, considering a can of soup shrunk down to the size of his pinky nail and a whole turkey shrunk down to smaller than a robins egg. He also got some wizarding foodstuffs that he, and Sirius he was sure, couldn't do without. Several crates of Odgen's Finest Firewhiskey, even more crates of butterbeer, hundreds of each item on the supply list of the little old witch on the Hogwarts express (Cauldron cakes, pumpkin pasties, Bertie Botts, Chocolate frogs, Licorice wands, etc.).
Finally, he bought a durable hiking pack, which had secure closures around his waist and across his chest, from a muggle outfitter and put the shrunken trunk, two shrunken jackets, and his wand inside it. Sealing the zips and fasteners closed with a bit of wandless magic, so that it was stuck on him.
He penned and destroyed more than a few letters to Ron and Hermione, offering all kinds of excuses and platitudes. In the end, standing in the Doorway Chamber he set his simple note on the bench, checked his pack was secure, and stepped through the Veil. Had Harry been there to see it the blast of light released would have blinded him and he would have been awed at the Veil billowing as if in a hurricane, just like the time he'd activated the rune cluster. Anyone else in the room would have been shocked silly at the voice, clear as a bell, shouting "Harry!" from behind the Veil.
But, for all of the Veil's bluster and flapping not a wisp of wind disturbed the room, or the single object remaining therein. A small scrap of parchment that bore nine simple words:
I've gone to find him. Do NOT follow me.
-Harry
*~ {PoE} ~*
A.N.: Hooray, New Story! Boo, not the second of the Spirits Within series! Sorry everyone Spirits has left me with a conundrum as to what to do in second year. I have to get my head on straight with everything I want to accomplish in that story/year, never fear though, dear readers, I have started it. However, this little plot ferret took hold and would not let go, to the point that it was disturbing my sleep. So, I dutifully wrote it out and am presenting it to you. Enjoy and Review! Let me know if I should continue! … That rhymed! In triplicate!