Premature Exit

AU. What if Lupin hadn't been able to stop Harry from following Sirius through the veil? What if Harry had drawn back the veil and… My take on the mysterious veil and what lies behind it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If I did…let's just say I wouldn't be here right now.

Author's note: Hello, I thought I'd mark my return to with a fic. So here I am. This is the first chapter, this is meant to be short. The other chapters will be much longer, I assure you. I'd also like to say that this is my way of making things right, and Harry will get to meet his parents in another chapter.

Chapter 1

Harry heard Bellatrix Lestrange's triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing - Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second…

But Sirius did not reappear.

"SIRIUS!" Harry yelled, "SIRIUS!" He had reached the floor, his breath coming in searing gasps. Sirius must be just behind the curtain, he, Harry, would pull him back out…

But as he reached the ground and sprinted towards the dais, Lupin grabbed Harry around the chest, holding him back.

"There's nothing you can do, Harry-"

"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"

"-It's too late, Harry."

"We can still reach him!"

Harry wondered why Lupin was being so difficult and refraining him. Furiously, Harry tore himself away and hurried towards the veil. He was almost there now. Lupin was shouting something from behind him but he wasn't listening.

Harry reached for the curtain and drew it back with no hesitation.

He was surprised by what he saw next, it certainly wasn't what he expected. Harry was too shocked to utter a scream as a sudden black tidal wave swallowed him whole… (A/N: and this was where I thought I'd end the chapter as a cliffie...but then it was less than three hundred words long so I continued.)

Harry was overcome by a strange tingling sensation as the world went black. Everything had lasted for less than a second but if had felt like more. Harry hurtled into someone and landed firmly on the ground. He opened his eyes, he hadn't been aware he had closed them, and realised immediately he was missing his glasses. Harry could dimly make out a tall man picking himself up off the floor; he handed Harry back his glasses as he stood up straight.

Harry waited for his eyes to adjust to the lighting after he put his glasses on. He fully intended to thank the man and ask where they were. He blinked stupidly and looked up.

"Harry?" asked Sirius, his voice was mingled with fear. Harry felt a certain element of satisfaction, he had found his Godfather, now if the two of them would be able to get back through the veil and into the department of mysteries they would be able to fight. Harry looked around but could not see any trace of a veil. He realised grimly that they had fallen through a trap and would not be able to get back. Then it hit him! The veil must have been some sort of portkey transporting them somewhere else, somewhere safe? Harry wasn't sure.

"Sirius, where- I mean, how…what happened?" Harry spoke speedily, he didn't want any of his friends to suffer while he wasn't there because he had been talking instead of helping.

Sirius' expression was one of horror; his eyes were wide as though he was looking at Harry from another dimension. Harry did not find this particularly soothing, and he intended to voice this, until Sirius caught him off guard.

"Harry," he repeated, "you didn't…you didn't fall through the veil by any chance did you?"

Harry thought this was a stupid question and was not what he wanted to hear.

"What do you mean? I had to follow you after you fell," Harry replied, "Sirius, we've got to get back quickly, I'm not sure what's happening back there."

Sirius shook his head with a somewhat defeated look to it, Harry instantly felt worried, he had never seen Sirius look like this before.

"We can't," Sirius said softly. Harry did not understand.

"What do you mean, 'we can't'?" Harry asked, he was getting angrier now, he didn't want Sirius telling him riddles. He just wanted to be back with everyone else, and to make sure that none of his friends met their fates from his foolishness.

"That veil…" Sirius' voice was cracking now, "Dumbledore has mentioned it before at the order. It's…a teleporter, it transfers people to different planes."

If Harry had not been confused before, he certainly was now. He could not remember ever reading about or hearing about anything like this in class. He didn't know anything about the planes. It would have been much easier just to say that Sirius was telling him lies, but Harry could see he wasn't. Harry looked into his Godfather's stricken face and followed every single word. He did not need to ask what planes were, because Sirius answered him before he could speak. "Planes are… other dimensions, I think this is the metaphysical plane, but I don't know much about them. I knew wizards study them at the department of mysteries, and that the veil is some kind of link between them, but apart from that I am as much in the dark as you are, Harry."

This was a lot of information for Harry to take in.

"So, what you're saying is…we've transported into a different dimension?" Harry asked, he felt strange in the new environment. He was not aware of his breathing, and his senses seemed oddly out of tune. He vaguely knew there was a breeze around them but could not feel it. Sirius bowed his head.

"Yes," he responded, Harry opened his mouth to say something else but Sirius cut him off, "I'm not pretending to be an expert, Harry."

"Where's the veil? Surely we can get back the way we came…" but Sirius' lack of response told Harry all he needed to know.

"The veil isn't in this plane, it cannot transport us back otherwise Wizards would be able to understand it by now," he replied. He was looking at the floor rather than Harry's eyes. Harry noticed that they were not standing on a floor, more a swirly greyish cloudy substance, but it felt solid. This was the kind of thing that would only be published in the Quibbler.

"I don't understand it," Harry said, he felt a little lost. Moments ago, he had been in a battle trying to save his own neck and his friends. Only a few hours before he had believed Sirius was being held hostage, now, he was standing in a dark passageway trying to make sense of the supernatural.

"I don't understand it either," muttered Sirius so that Harry could hear, "I must admit I wasn't paying much attention when Dumbledore mentioned it before…"

They stood there in silence for a moment whilst Harry tried to deal with everything that had been thrown at him. He would dearly love to be able to go to bed and wake up to find that the whole ministry expedition had been nothing more than a very bad dream. Harry doubted he would even be able to sleep in this plane, every second he could feel as though something was not quite right.

Harry remembered something distinctly from before.

"Sirius," he began, wondering how to phrase what he was going to say, "before, before any of this happened I heard voices. Voices coming from behind the veil."

Sirius nodded again and raised his head so that his grey eyes were looking directly at Harry.

"Yes, well, I can't imagine we are alone back here."

Harry suddenly felt physically sick; he was not sure what they were going to do now. How would he be able to get back and save his friends? Or how would he even be able to tell them that he was sorry? Where were they really? What was this mysterious plane that Sirius knew so little about?

"We can get back…can't we?" Harry asked quietly. He felt dread fill the whole of his body. He did not want an answer. The words had only just left his mouth and he'd wished he'd never asked.

A look into Sirius' eyes, that still hung on to that tortured expression he had picked up in Azkaban, gave Harry a definite answer.

Review? Oh, please, it would really make my day. Especially since we had a powercut earlier today and I lost a bit of this fanfiction. Tell me what you think, I'll be delighted to hear. The chapters will be longer than this, but there is really not a lot I could do with this chapter. As I mentioned above, it was going to be a prologue that was too short and metamorphosed into a miniature chapter.