As every Harry Potter fan knows, the fifth movie came out on Wednesday, and one of our beloved characters died. Or did he? This was something (lame) that I cooked up in order to stop my crying.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Or Sirius Black, no matter how much I want to.
Sirius awoke suddenly. His eyes snapped open, and he sat up so sharply that the people surrounding him backed away. He blinked a few times, feeling dizzy, and put one of his hands on the ground to steady himself. His vision was slightly blurred.
"Wha– what happened?" he asked, his voice croaky. He impatiently cleared his throat.
"What do you mean, 'what happened?'" The person nearest him asked. Sirius blinked again, and the person came into sharp focus.
This person was a very small and young witch. She was smiling with a complacent look in her face. As Sirius looked around at the other people gathered around him, he noticed that their faces all bore the same smile and the same complacent look. As he looked closer, he noticed that some of them seemed to be fading. In fact, one of the men closest to him was transparent.
Sirius shook his head, and focused again on the witch who had spoken.
"I mean, how did I get here? Why am I here? And what exactly is 'here'?"
"Here is the place of ultimate salvation," The witch said, a dreamy look coming into her eyes. "It is almost like an in-between world. Here is where we find where we will go in the next life."
"The next life?" Sirius was even more confused.
"Yes," The witch said. She clasped her hands over her heart. "It is the joyous path we all take."
"But I don't want to go down another path!" Sirius said loudly, and he stood up. "I'm already on one! A very important one, in fact." He continued sarcastically, "If you could just point me toward the exit, it would be much appreciated."
"There is no exit," The witch said, standing up. She was so small that she didn't even reach his shoulder. "This is where you will spend the rest of your life."
"But I don't want to!" Sirius was shouting now, not caring that all the people were now shaking their heads, some of them frowning rather than smiling. They all still had that annoying look of contentment on their faces. "I'm not supposed to live wherever we are. I need to help fight! I need to help the Order! I need to be there for Harry!"
"I'm sorry," The fading man came closer to Sirius. "If you have joined us, then it was because you are meant to be here. You can never return to your past life."
All the other witches and wizards seemed to think that this sentence just about summed up all Sirius needed to know. They turned away from him and began walking away.
Now that he was not surrounded by people, Sirius could now see where he was. He seemed to be in some sort of classroom. Every witch and wizard had a desk to themselves. There was no parchment on their desks, no quills or ink bottles. They were simply whispering among themselves, their voices creating an almost eerie buzz.
"What is this?" Sirius asked as he followed the small witch as she sat down at one of the desks nearest him. She smiled and put a hand on the desk next to her.
Sirius sat down, turned in his seat to face her, and waited for an explanation.
"This is the waiting room," The witch answered. "This is where we wait for what is destined to happen to us next."
"Don't you get bored?" Sirius asked, remembering how he had felt when he had had Professor Binns as a teacher.
"Oh no," The witch looked surprised at the very mention of the word. "We are never bored."
"Friends!" A voice came from the back of the room. Sirius turned around, to see the transparent man standing.
"It is time for me to depart," He said, his smile widening. "I hope to see you all soon." With a small pop, the man was gone.
The witches and wizards all burst into applause, clapping wildly. A few even whistled. Sirius was taken aback by this behavior. They had seemed like such a peaceful bunch, and now they were acting like teenagers at a rock concert.
'Well, not entirely like teenagers at a rock concert,' Sirius smiled as a memory of him, James, Remus, and Peter as teenagers at Hogwarts came back to him. The four of them had gone to a concert during the summer vacation before their last year at Hogwarts.
"Good times," Sirius murmured.
"They will be good times," The small witch said, pressing her hands to her heart again. "I cannot wait until the next life."
"No, I was talking about something else," Sirius said gruffly. To think, that if this witch was right, he would never be able to join his friends again.
"So how did that guy disappear?" Sirius asked, switching to a different subject.
"He was called," The witch said, a faraway look coming into her eyes. "We all will be."
"But, how? And why was he transparent?"
"The people in the next life find us here, and they call us. Simple enough. We become transparent as the pull on us becomes stronger."
"Blimey," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "Seems pretty unfair to me. I mean, what if you don't want to go to this 'next life'?"
"But you do want to go to the next life!" The witch insisted. "That is why you are here!"
"I'm only here because I fell through some stupid veil!" Sirius's voice was rising, as was his temper. "I don't want to end everything like this!" The witch just shook her head. Sirius, his rage getting the better of him, took her by the shoulders and put his face right up close to hers.
"Look, I don't know how you got here, or why you got here, but I'm not supposed to be here! I've got to watch over the Order's work, and I have a godson that might need me in years to come. So there had better be a damn good reason for me being here!"
The witch looked startled, and Sirius let go of her.
"Sorry," he said quickly. "I don't know why I did that."
"Nothing to worry about," The witch said, smiling weakly.
"What's your name, anyway?" Sirius asked.
"My name?" The witch's eyes glazed, and she spoke in a rather misty voice. "I don't know. I can't remember."
"You can't remember your own name?" Sirius asked incredulously. "How can you forget your name?"
"I haven't used it since I came here."
"How did you come here, then?"
"I can't remember that either."
"Do you remember anything about your past life?"
"No," The witch looked slightly surprised. "I've never really bothered to think about it. It all just faded away."
Sirius leapt back in horror. As soon as the witch had said the word 'fade,' she herself had begun to fade.
"What's wrong?" The witch looked puzzled, then looked down at her hands. She stood up upon seeing them, her mouth opening both in shock and happiness.
"I'm fading!" She exclaimed. The wizards and witches who had been whispering among themselves abruptly fell silent, then burst into the same enthusiastic applause Sirius has heard before.
"What is up with you guys and this fading business?" Sirius muttered as the applause died away and the witch sat down.
"Isn't this wonderful?" She asked, her eyes shining with emotion.
"Uh, sure," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, if you can't remember your name, then what am I supposed to call you?"
"Just call me the first name that pops into your head," The witch said cheerfully.
"Okay," Sirius began thinking. The first name that came into his head was, no surprise, Harry. He shook his head, but he must have been thinking aloud, for the witch exclaimed, "All right, I'll be Harry!"
Sirius was a rather tough kind of guy, but when he heard the witch now known as Harry say these words, he felt a tear roll slowly down his cheek.
"So what should I call you?" The witch asked.
"My name is S–" Sirius paused.
"OK, I'll call you S," The witch smiled, and abruptly turned so she was facing the front of the classroom.
"No, that's not my name," Sirius said softly. "What is my name?"
As he racked his brain for any sign of remembrance of his former life, he found that everything was just a blur. He could see blurred images of people and heard snatches of conversations, but nothing came in clear.
Sirius put his head in his hands, closed his eyes tightly, and tried as hard as he could to remember something.
'The Order will be meeting…'
'Hiding in Mama's house…'
'I just want out of this hell-hole…'
'Harry, take Neville and run!'
"Harry!" Sirius jerked his head off his arms, and looked around wildly.
How could he have forgotten? He and the Order had come to help Harry in the Department of Mysteries! There had been Death Eaters there too…
"Yes?" The witch known as Harry asked, looking at him and smiling.
"Not you," Sirius said impatiently. "I've just remembered something. I'm Harry Potter's godfather. I need to get back to him."
Sirius stood up and drew his wand. He griped it tightly in his hand and walked to the far end of the classroom.
"S, you're fading!" The witch Harry exclaimed.
"What?" Sirius paused and looked down at his own hand. Sure enough, the hand clutching his wand had faded. He could see the wand clutched between his now blurry fingers.
Sirius felt his eyes roll up into his head and he fainted.
Sirius sat up with a start again. It took him a full minute to remember where he was and why he was there. Having remembered this, he slowly cast his eyes down to his fading hand, which was still clutching his wand.
He had to use every bit of self control he had to not faint again.
"I've got to get out of here," Sirius said determinedly. "I may not remember anything else, but I know I have to get out."
He stood up, only vaguely aware of the witches and wizards sitting at the desks among him. He began walking for the opposite end of the classroom.
Sirius reached the door quickly, and he triumphantly turned the handle and opened it.
"What the–"
On the other side of the door was a mirror image of the room he was in now. There were numerous witches and wizards sitting around desks in this room too. They all were talking in the same low whisper.
"Greetings," a man from this room came over to him and extended his hand, which was fading just like Sirius's.
"Uh, hello," Sirius said uncertainly, shaking the man's hand. As Sirius looked at the two hands clasped together, he thought of how strange it was to have two transparent hands holding each other firmly.
"Welcome to our classroom," the man released Sirius's hand and beamed at him.
"Right," Sirius looked around the classroom, desperate for a way out. To his relief, he spotted a door at the far end of the classroom. He strode briskly towards it, turned the handle, and pushed it open.
"This can't be happening," Sirius breathed as he stepped into yet another classroom.
For what seemed like forever but was really only a few minutes, Sirius opened doors, only to find himself staring at more classrooms. After at least a hundred doors, Sirius was back in the first classroom, though how he had gotten there, he could not say. There had been no curve in the classrooms, each had been perfectly square, so how was he back where he had started?
"Now what?" Sirius slapped his hand to his forehead, shaking his head.
"Hello," the small witch Sirius had spoken to before waved from her desk. "Welcome to our classroom."
"Wait, don't you remember me?" Sirius asked, confused. As he stepped closer to this woman, he noticed that she had grown more transparent as time had gone on.
"No," the woman smiled lazily. "Should I?"
"I guess not," Sirius sighed as he sat down in the desk next to the woman's. There was obviously nothing he could do to get out of here.
As he sat down, he felt something long and thin in his pocket. He slipped his hand into the pocket, clasped the thing in his hand, and drew it out to look at it.
He was holding a long, thin piece of polished wood. It had a handle at the base and thinned at the top, so it was almost pointed.
"Why do I have this thing?" he wondered aloud. "What is it?" He twirled it in his fingers, trying to think. As he twirled it, blue sparks shot out of the tapered end.
Sirius dropped it in shock.
"Whoa, that was pretty cool," Sirius turned in his seat to see a very young boy looking at him. "Can you do it again?"
"I guess," Sirius picked up the piece of wood and twirled it between his fingers again. More blue sparks shot out, making the boy smile.
"Can it do anything else?"
"I don't know," Sirius looked at the wood thoughtfully. Then he pointed it at the far wall and muttered, "Color-ify!"
More sparks flew out of the piece of wood, and the wall at the back turned from a light tan to a deep, chocolate brown. Since Sirius had not used a proper spell, the effect was not what he had been hoping for.
"I wanted to turn it red," he shrugged.
"Maybe if you tried a different language," the boy prompted, biting his lip hopefully.
"I don't know any other language," Sirius explained.
"I know two words in Latin," the boy said proudly. "Avis and culina. They mean 'bird' and 'kitchen.'"
"Okay," Sirius lifted the piece of wood higher and muttered, "Avis!"
Immediately, four birds flew out of the tip of the wood, and, shrieking madly, flew to the ceiling. Sirius lost his balance from his shock, and fell off his chair.
"It's a magic wand," he held the wand carefully in both hands, afraid to break it. Although he had figured out this much, he could not remember why he had this wand or what it had to do with him.
Sirius closed his eyes, thinking. He had obviously been some kind of magical man, be it a magician with a rabbit in his hat or a wizard like Merlin. He had no recollection of ever using a wand in his life, though.
In fact, he couldn't remember anything about his life. It was like an eraser had been rubbed across his brain erasing everything from any past he might have had. It was as if he had been in this room forever.
But no, that wasn't right either. He had only just arrived in this room, hadn't he? He remembered walking into the room and being greeted by that small witch, but nothing before that.
Still on the floor, Sirius curled up into a ball, racking his brain for any thought that might give him a clue as to who he had been, but his brain was still empty. Everything seemed strange and foreign to him, from this wand he was holding to the semi-transparent clothes he was wearing.
"What's your name?" he found himself asking the young boy as he stood up from the ground.
"Harvey," the boy answered promptly. He then added, proudly, "I'm the only one in here who still knows his name. Cool, isn't it?"
"Sure, kid," Sirius shook his head. Harvey. Why did that name ring a bell?
"Harry Potter!" he suddenly exclaimed. He had found a faint memory, of someone named Harry Potter, but he knew nothing but the name. Who was this Harry Potter, and had there been a connection between the two of them?
Then, suddenly, he saw inside his head a skinny teenage boy with glasses. This boy was hugging someone, and judging by the fact that he was seeing all this from the perspective of the person being hugged, he had been very close to this boy. In this memory, the boy looked up at him. He had green eyes, jet-black hair, and a lightning bolt scar on his head.
"Was that Harry Potter?" Sirius clasped his head in his hands, trying to remember.
"Sirius!" someone yelled.
Sirius? Now why did that name ring a bell? Suddenly, a hand roughly pulled his head out of his hands, and Sirius found himself looking into the eyes of a very old man. This man had very long silver hair and a silver beard.
"Do I know you?" he asked, confused.
"Sirius, you have to listen to me," the old man said urgently. "My name is Albus Dumbledore, and your name is Sirius Black. Exactly one year ago, you were pushed through a veil by Bellatrix Lestrange. This veil is the reason you are here, in Limbo."
Sirius felt his concentration waning. This man was telling him a story that could not possibly be true, yet it all sounded so familiar.
"Your godson, Harry Potter, needs you, Sirius," the man, Albus Dumbledore, continued. "I may be too late, but I believe that you can go back to Harry. You remember Harry, don't you Sirius?"
"Harry?" Sirius said slowly, trying to remember. "Skinny boy with glasses and a lightning scar?"
"Yes, Sirius!" Albus Dumbledore looked encouraged. "Remember him, Sirius. Think of him, and never forget him."
Sirius blinked, and the old man was gone.
"Harry Potter is my godson," Sirius said dully. Then he continued, "Harry Potter is my godson. Harry Potter is my godson." He said this over and over, at least a thousand times, increasing in volume each time.
"HARRY POTTER IS MY GODSON!!" he shouted to the people in the room. As he shouted, the image of Harry came back into his mind, smiling up at him, encouraging him to keep fighting.
"HARRY POTTER IS MY GODSON!!" Sirius climbed up onto his desk, raised his arms, and shouted again. "HARRY POTTER IS MY GODSON!!"
"You're going!" the small witch yelled, so Sirius could hear. Sirius paused in his shouting to look at his hand, which was indeed almost gone.
"HARRY POTTER IS MY GODSON!!!"
And he was gone.
"Strange affair, very strange."
"So he just appeared one day, by the veil?"
"I came into work, and he was there on the floor, moaning."
"Could you tell what he was saying?"
"Yeah, 'Harry Potter is my godson.'"
Sirius heard voices above him, but his head could not process them. His head was swimming with thoughts, so many thoughts that he could not concentrate on one. Then, he saw the face of a teenage boy wearing glasses.
"Harry!" he exclaimed, opening his eyes.
Then everything came rushing back. He had been fighting Bellatrix, his cousin, in the Department of Mysteries. Harry had been there, with his friends Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, and another girl whose name escaped him. Remus had also been there, with Tonks and Moody and other members of the…now what was that organization called?...Order of the Phoenix!
He sat up abruptly, feeling dizzy. When his head stopped spinning, Sirius looked around, trying to see where he was.
Light was streaming in through the window to his left. He was sitting in a small bed, and curtains were drawn around him. He must be in some sort of hospital. He heard people outside his curtains talking, but did not listen until he heard a voice he recognized.
"I don't care if I'm not blood-related, I am his family!"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Potter, but only relatives will be allowed in to see Mr. Black."
"Well, that's real convenient for the Death Eaters, since his cousin is the one who did him in. I'm his godson! Let me see him!"
As if in a dream, Sirius stood up and pulled back the curtains. At the far end of the room, about three beds away, stood his godson, Harry Potter, wrestling with someone who had to be a Healer, who was trying to restrain him.
"Harry!" Sirius exclaimed, and both Healer and Harry let each other go to look at him. Sirius and Harry stood frozen for a few seconds, before Harry launched himself towards his godfather.
"Sirius!" Sirius threw his arms wide open, and Harry leapt into his embrace. Both were crying, hardly daring to believe that this was actually real.
"What happened, Sirius?" Harry asked as they drew apart. "The last time I saw you, you had fallen through the veil in the Department of Mysteries." The two sat down on Sirius's bed, and Sirius tried to answer Harry's question.
"I can't tell you Harry," he shook his head. "I don't remember anything. I remember Bellatrix hitting me with her spell, then falling, and then nothing. Then next thing I knew, I was here."
"But Sirius, you were in there, wherever there is, for more than a year," Harry insisted. "I've finished my sixth year at Hogwarts."
"Like I said, I can't remember anything," Sirius shrugged. "But hey, I'm back. That's what matters, right? Now tell me, what happened after I fell through?"
"Well, we all got out okay. Dumbledore showed up and fought them all off single handed." Harry's face told Sirius that the memory was painful.
"I bet he did," Sirius smiled. "I wish I could have seen the old man in action. How is he, anyway?"
"He's dead."