SERIES: Beyond the Veil
TITLE: 1 – A Warm Welcome
AUTHOR: Scorpio
FANDOM: Harry Potter/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Multi)
RATING: PG (Varies)
SUMMARY: Sirius Black falls through the Veil at the DOM. Contrary to popular misconception; it does not lead to the Realm of Death.
Beyond the Veil 1 – A Warm Welcome
A jet of burning red light leapt from Bellatrix's wand and headed straight for him. Cackling with mad laughter and feeling more alive than he had since the night James and Lily were murdered, Sirius ducked under the curse as it sizzled the air above his head on its way past. His still slowly healing mind dredged up a thousand different memories from his childhood and in each one, Bellatrix was teasing him with her innate cruelty and with his mother's full approval. It felt good to finally be able to turn the tables.
"Come on, you can do better than that!"
Laughter bubbled up out of him as he watched her once beautiful face twist up into a macabre mask of hatred and frustration. Her wand flicked again and sent another sizzling blaze of burning red light. This time, however, it was faster and stronger. Sirius' mind screamed at him to duck, but his Azkaban withered body simply couldn't respond the way it did when he was still in his prime. The curse hit him squarely in the chest. Acidic pain burrowed in under his skin and ate away at his raw and screaming nerves.
He was shocked, not so much at the pain, but at the fact that his cousin actually managed to hit him with her curse. Somewhere in the back of his mind Sirius had maintained a core of arrogance that he, along with his best friend James, were somehow better, smarter and more worthy than the hateful Slytherins they had faced in school.
The pain and shock coupled to steal his balance and he began to fall. Harry appeared in his field of vision, horror and loss stamped across his face, making him seem an old man trapped inside a child's body. And that was all it took for Sirius to have a much needed epiphany. Harry wasn't James and this wasn't some game, nor was it another in a long line of pranks targeting the petty bullies and demons of a child's nightmare. It wasn't about who was right or wrong, it wasn't even about who was good or bad. It was about bloody and deadly war. It was about both Voldemort and Dumbledore doing everything in their individual power to drag his godson directly into the middle of that war.
He, Sirius Black, had been a fool.
Sirius' expected impact with the ground never happened, instead he saw a flash of a strange stone arch with a fluttering gauzy material slide past him and then he was enveloped in pitch black icy nothingness. There was no light, no heat, no up or down, left or right. The only thing that pierced that blackness was the tingling and burning aftereffects of the curse Bellatrix had hit him with. He could feel the nerve-endings in his chest and arms twitch and jump with lingering pain, but that was all. There was no air to breathe, no gravity to pull him to the earth. Just endless spinning black twisting and turning about him for eternity in all directions.
A sudden and brief flash of light blinded him followed by the soft fluttering of gauze brushing past his face. Heat and air rushed in to sting his numb body and gravity asserted itself wildly, making him feel heavier than he should be. Without warning, Sirius slammed into the ground, knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending him tumbling. His wand fell from his deadened hand and skittered across a smooth cement floor even as he grunted and moaned through his injuries.
Somewhere overhead an alarm began whining its shrill whistle and he heard a feminine voice mutter a startlingly dirty word followed by footsteps running his way. Confused, angry, frightened and wondering where in the name of Merlin he'd ended at, Sirius tried to push himself up off of the ground. He made it all the way to his unsteady knees when a young woman with long light brown hair and wearing muggle clothes darted around a free-standing shelving unit that held all manner of bric-a-brac.
"BUUFFFF-FFFEEEE!"
Sirius had half a second to wonder what a 'buffy' was and why the young woman was screaming for it at the top of her lungs and then she deftly planted one foot solidly on the floor and lifted the other in a round-house kick aimed directly for his head. Pain exploded behind his eyes to match the blaring white light exploding in front of them. Then the world faded away into a soft warm darkness, so different from the one before and Sirius Black knew no more.
End: A Warm Welcome