There are many things that Sirius expects as he falls through the veil.
A vast expanse of nothingness. A white light. Searing flames and the shriek of Satan herself, echoing the calls from her portrait back in Grimmauld Place. Darkness. Regulus's two grey eyes. James and Lily, waiting, hands extended.
What he does not expect is to land with a loud splash and end up soaking bloody wet. He'd heard people say time was like a river, but he hadn't realised it was true. Not until he's sat in it, waist deep, wet with all the memories and could-have-beens. He raises a careful hand, slick with the silvery liquid. It coats his skin, clings to it. He looks down as the river flows. He makes out faces that flicker; some he hasn't seen in a long time. Some he doesn't even really recognise. He hears a sound – far away laughter; someone else calling his name; a high pitched shriek. His head jerks up as he looks around frantically but there is nothing to see.
There is nothing.
There is a silver strong flow of memory, and then there is nothing. Not in a way that unsettles him. Nothing is missing. This feels right, this half-finished place. Built on the bones of nostalgia and something like nostalgia – something that pangs like regret.
Sirius dips a finger into the river and swirls, the soft silky liquid shimmering as he does so. The bustling rush of images seems to settle around him, the cacophony of distant sounds sharpening until the two combine. Until there is just one image, and just one sound, and suddenly he's not waist deep in the river but sat on his Gryffindor bed in a pair of Christmas boxers.
He looks to his left and James is there, his face beaming. He looks so very young. Sirius doesn't remember ever being that young. But he is, here, in this moment. He's young and everything has a shimmer of almost about it. James says, "Mum's sent fudge again!" and the voice is familiar, but almost imperceptibly out of sync. Sirius hears his own voice say, "Oi, Prongs, throw some this way," as his hands raise themselves all on their own. His hands, his skin pale and smooth and untouched. James throws, Sirius lunges, misses, falls in a heap on the floor. He is laughing – this imagined him, but also the real him buried somewhere beneath this layer of fantasy. A long forgotten lightness swells in his chest. James's laughter echoes and they are both crying, their stomachs sore, and everything feels so simple.
The world shimmers. There is no fade to black. It's jarring. He is there and then he is not. He is there and then he is here, back in the river of time. None of it makes sense, but at the same time Sirius feels like nothing has ever made more sense. He knows, somehow, that the world flows through him here. That all of his life is here should he wish to relive it. Something in him whispers that there are almosts and maybes here too, that one swirl and he can see how things might have been in another time, another life.
He makes a splash, a smile still stretched across his face. High on the lingering Christmas joy.
The nothing becomes everything as a world blooms. He's in a flat he recognises but it's different somehow. The wallpaper – had they ever had that wallpaper? And that painting looks new.
"Is that painting new?" he hears himself say out loud, as his body turns itself around. Behind him, leaning carefully against the kitchen counter with a cookbook in his hands, stands an impossibly young and impossibly handsome Remus Lupin.
"Put it up three weeks ago now," Remus says without looking up. "Been waiting for you to notice."
"Oh," Sirius says. He is moving now, except the feeling is off. It feels as if he is standing still and the world is moving around him, shifting by, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because whether by him or the world, Remus is suddenly within reach. Sirius' hand reaches for the cookbook. "Was that a test? Did I fail?"
A throaty laugh as Sirius takes the cookbook from him. Remus pulls him closer – except it feels like he pulls himself closer to Sirius, but what's the difference really when he is this close and this solid and this real. "You continue to fail every good husband test known to man," he whispers. There isn't enough room for all of those words in the tiniest space between them, Sirius thinks, and is glad when he feels his own body move to close the distance. He kisses Remus softly, and ruminates on the word husband.
This is no memory. Fantasy, perhaps, or the memory of another Sirius in another lifetime. Domesticity, he muses, the cookbook still closed over in his hand. A quiet life. Merlin, it's all so normal, and there's something desperately beautiful about it. The Sirius that lies beneath the scene feels his chest tighten.
"Why do you keep me around then?" the echo of him asks.
"Couldn't get rid of you if I tried," Remus replies fondly, taking the cookbook back. Sirius notices the wedding band on his left hand and feels a jolt of something sharp. Something bittersweet. A longing. "How do you feel about this curry? I know you're not mad on lamb but we could swap it out for chicken maybe. The others look too spicy, and you know I – "
"I love you," he says. Remus looks up and blinks. His face breaks into a smile.
"It's just dinner, Sirius. I haven't even made it yet."
"I love you," Sirius repeats, his hands reaching for Remus again, but the shimmer is back and his hands aren't his own and this never really happened anyway.
He blinks and he is back to nothing. He cannot stay here. He takes a moment, or what feels like one in this place that has no time but is time, and a deep breath, and submerges himself in the river.
The candles flicker high above the tables in the Great Hall. James is twiddling his wand awkwardly, face scrunched in concentration. "What are you doing, you knob?" Sirius calls loudly.
Across the table, Lily Evan's treacle tart explodes. She shrieks and jumps up and away. She looks so angry, Sirius thinks, but she is too young and too sweet to know real rage. Her face flushes red and she knows where to look immediately. She finds James with her eyes and growls in frustration. "You!"
James turns grey as Lily storms out, treacle clumped in her long hair. "Padfoot, you buggering fuck! You distracted me!" James whines. His head falls into his hands.
"What were you trying to do?" Peter pipes up from beside James. Sirius hears his voice, but he's not looking at him. His blood boils.
"I was trying to spell out our initials on the top," James mumbles into his folded arms. Peter's quiet chuckle echoes above the din. Sirius never knew how much one could hate a sound, but it bubbles inside him.
But he's not looking at him. He's not, and he can't turn his head, but he knows he's right there and if this were anything more than memory he could undo all of this with just one quick spell. Instead, the memory Sirius is staring across the Hall, where the ghost of Regulus sits solemnly and eats.
A warm hand finds his beneath the table. Sirius turns and there is Remus, even younger than before. The sight of him, teenaged and scarred and so far away from all that is to come, makes Sirius want to scream, or cry, or both.
"He'll be okay," Remus says with so much care and so much belief. Sirius knows he is wrong.
This is all wrong.
But then it is snowing. It is snowing, and Remus has his scarf tucked into his big brown coat, and the tip of his nose is so red. The hands that aren't quite Sirius' grab Remus by the waist, twirling them together in the falling snow, and they are both grinning and dancing and so in love. Remus turns quickly and presses a kiss to Sirius' cheek. "When this is all over," the boy Remus says, "we should travel the world. There are entire countries that look like this year round."
"I don't know about that," Sirius murmurs. "Snow is nice, but there's something to be said for sunny spots too. Especially when those involve you," he says, tugging at Remus' scarf playfully, "wearing about fifty layers less."
Remus laughs into his kiss.
He can still hear the echo of Remus' laugh when the shimmer comes and turns the world to stone. High, cold walls. Remus' laughter fades to the crashing of waves. A familiar cold seeps into his bones or his mind; it doesn't matter here. Everything is cold. His body trembles, shakes, and he feels everything light and good in him sink to his feet, heavy with the weight of this reality. Azkaban has come to claim him again.
This cell seems smaller somehow, seems darker. His chest is tight, like something is squeezing him from the inside out. He's suffocating here. This place is killing him all over again. It feels like all the air has gone from the room, sucked out by the Dementors along with all of his insides. He feels like he's drowning here, like he's being pulled under –
He breaks the river's surface, gasping desperately for air. His lungs ache, his breath coming in sharp pulls, and he is back to nothing again.
He sits in it. Waits in the nothing. For Merlin knows how long. He sits, and waits, and lets the river flow around him. He wonders what else this place knows. What else it can show him. If it could show –
One finger extended, one semi-swirl. There is a question in his heart he only half wants the answer to.
Suddenly the nothing, tired of being nothing, becomes a garden. The sun beams, but there is no warmth. Sirius tries to move but nothing happens. He realises that he has no body here. He is nowhere and everywhere all at once. He is no one here.
A sea of redheads. Harry, hunched over. Remus. Tonks, watching him carefully. McGonagall, dabbing at her eyes with a folded tartan handkerchief. Sirius tunes into the sounds around him. Quiet sobs echo around the garden, a symphony of sadness framed around inaudible chatter.
There are three long tables set up. He recognises the garden as that of the Burrow. He hears Molly call with a scratchy voice, "Can someone set the table please?"
Wands wave. Knives and forks float through the air and settle themselves on the table. As if following some unknown cue, everyone takes their place. Sirius watches Harry closely. He has not said a word, has not looked up at all this whole time. He seats himself between Ron and Hermione. She whispers something, and Harry shrugs. She looks worried, as she always does. Ron looks uneasy, as if he doesn't know what to say.
The table has filled itself: mashed potatoes, roast chicken, an assortment of vegetables and boats of gravy. Nobody reaches for the food though. Nobody moves at all, until Molly breaks the silence.
"Remus?" she says. "Would you like to – er – say something?"
He nods solemnly and rises to his feet. Everyone's eyes are on his face, except Harry's.
"In just a few short years," Remus begins, "so much has changed."
Sirius notices the tremble of his hand, but his voice stays steady.
"Sirius was… Well. You all knew him. He was petty. And bad-tempered. He was a cantankerous git. He was miserable in that house and he hated every moment we made him stay there." Harry's hands clench into fists. Molly's face is stone. "I know we did what was best. Safest. But sometimes I wonder if there was more we could have done.
"A million years ago now, I remember him as a man – a boy really – made of adrenaline. He duelled like it was dance, moving in time with something bigger than us. We fought battles but Sirius danced with the whole war at once. It came so naturally to him. We did our best to make it through each day but he was…" Remus takes a breath. "He was always so certain of his tomorrows."
A memorial, Sirius realises. A funeral. A funeral with no body and no him. Not a memory, not a fantasy – he has no idea if this is real, if it has happened or is happening or will happen, if Remus ever stood before the Order, before their friends, and said these words. If he ever will. He feels strangely hollow.
Sirius doesn't want to hear, but he cannot pull himself away.
"I won't talk about – we've lost enough time to the darkness. The Sirius I knew was not the Sirius trapped in Grimmauld Place, but I saw glimpses of him. The Sirius I knew was – was loyal to a fault. Was kind, most of the time. Had good intentions anyway. He was funny, and ridiculous, and full of life.
He deserved so much more than what he got," Remus says. His voice is quiet. "We deserved more."
A few moments pass uninterrupted. "Remus?" Tonks says softly.
Remus clears his throat awkwardly. "Right, sorry," he stammers. "Well. To Sirius," he says loudly, raising his goblet. Sirius watches everyone else raise their goblets in response, his name on their lips. He is watching Harry, who looks drained and broken, when the shimmer threatens nothingness once more. He hears Remus' voice, sees the still raised goblets and hears, "Wherever you are, I hope it's better than this life."
He takes a shaky breath as he finds himself soaked once more. It is better, Remus, he thinks, his heart thudding dully in his chest. It is better because he can relive all of their best moments, over and over and over – and worse, too, perhaps for the same reason. The water ripples around him, liquid moonlight, and he wonders how much of this place is light and how much is dark. How much of this is reality, and how much is escape. Something in him knows he has forever to navigate these waters. He knows he will fall willingly into every promising current, dive into the darkest depths. In time, he will explore all of this nothing.
But for now, he's back in a flat he recognises – except for that striped wallpaper. And that painting, the one of the boy sat alone on the rocks, waves crashing around him – that's new.
"Is that painting new?" he says again, and turns on queue to see Remus once more. Impossibly young and impossibly handsome and, just for now, just here, just for a moment – impossibly his.
A/N: Written for Hogwarts Assignment Mythology 1 - a funeral from the dead's POV, Bex's Bazaar - fun fact 2: write about someone reminiscing, Em's Emporium 12. Wolfstar, Amber's Attic - 1. set on/in water, Showtime - 8. Joy, Fortnightly's Chocolate Truffle Craze - a bittersweet ending.