A/N: So back in the beginning of 09, my computer LITERALLY CAUGHT ON FIRE (ok, not literally, but it did cough up an impressive amount of smoke as it died) and I lost everything. All of my stuffs. So naturally I gave the fuck up and moved the fuck on (after sobbing myself to sleep for several weeks). This story was one of the things lost in that crash. I had a total of 13 chapters drafted out but only got to post 7 of them. But I figure, you know, if anyone was wondering, I should give you some sense of closure. Ending. Whatever.

Here is how the rest of the plot for this shit would have gone.

From what I remember, the basic plot of it went that, in the next part, Rasalas runs into a little (ghost) boy who keeps showing up and fucking up his attempts to fix the house. He ends up chasing him deep into the bowels of Grimmauld Place and it's ambiguous whether he's in a physical place or he's in a sort of alternate/dream/dead world. The boy finally shows up and confronts him demanding to know why Rasalas is in his house. Rasalas says no, this is my house, and the boy tells him,"You're not a Black. There is no Rasalas Black on the family tree. I am the heir to the Black family. You're just a fake"

On Scorpius' side of things, turns out the Malfoy banking fortune isn't quite as solid as it seems. Going through his father's records, he finds two books on accounting: the one he was keeping and the other secret one that shows that after his grandparents' public involvement with the Dark Lord, their investments basically stopped generating income, and they've been borrowing and bartering ever since. They're basically insolvent. The estates and properties were all sold off by the end of his father's lifetime, and the only assets they have left are the ancestral house and a collection of dusty heirlooms kept in a vault at Gringotts. He confronts his grandmother demanding to know why their financial situation wasn't made more transparent and why they didn't think that he'd like to know this as the new head of the household. Narcissa makes no real excuses, tells him that they'd felt a need to keep up appearances and that they were resistant to the idea of being brought "down low" by public opinion. She implies it was also a product of a subconscious desire for some form of self-punishment, because after all, they did nearly destroy the wizarding world. She makes a passing reference to the great "Black treasure" that her family had jealously guarded that had been to precious to part with even when their own house was deteriorating. Scorpius gets an idea.

Arcturus keeps on whoring and drinking but is revealed to actually be something of a savant with arithmancy as the basis for spell creation (the parallel here being that arithmancy is computer coding, spells are executable programs, and wands are basically computers). Having been kicked out of Malfoy Manor, he shows up at Grimmauld Place, breaking a window when the front door won't budge and making himself comfortable in one of the upstair bedrooms where he passes out. He wakes up with the feeling someone is watching him, but no one is, so he gets up and goes to find Rasalas to see what he's been up to. He searches through the entire house, finds the bedroom his brother's been using, but doesn't find his actual person. He wanders into a ballroom where a bunch of paintings are hanging, but no portraits. It's weird because none of them look like landscapes or anything, just portrait backgrounds. He sends a "text" to Rasalas telling him that his gallery is super freaky but, in an unprecedented reaction, his spell gets shot back at him like a "was not able to send" text. This is weird because Rasalas' wand would literally have to have stopped existing for this to happen, so Arcturus checks the "error message" and sure enough, the destination isn't shown to exist. He's worried.

Meanwhile, Rasalas is hanging out with the boy who, when Rasalas challenges him on heir rights, claims that he doesn't remember his name "but I'd know it if I saw it". "How do you know you're the heir then?" he asks, and the boy gets pissed off like "I am the blood of kings, how dare you challenge me". Rasalas points at the family tree. "If you were a real Black, your name would be on here, wouldn't it?" The boy concedes, so they start looking for it. "It's not there," the boy says. He gets sad. "I wish I could find my brother. He'd remember it." "What's your brother's name?" "I don't remember. But he had black hair and black eyes, and he was nice to me." As they're talking, a dragging, mumbling sound starts to build from somewhere and the boy is like "Hide," and Rasalas is like, "What?" but when he turns around again, the kid's gone and the sound's getting closer so Rasalas does like a rational person does and fuckin hides.

Anyway, Arcturus keeps looking for his brother, Rasalas helps the kid look for his brother, Scorpius shows up at Grimmauld Place looking for treasure and runs into his brother looking for their brother. Scorpius blows him off ("He's old enough to take care of himself") and Arcturus throws a punch, throws out some nasty accusations ("You've never wanted to be one of us. You've never once looked at us as anything but things to carry")and we get the implication that Arcturus has daddy issues/mommy issues/brother issues and possibly wasn't hugged enough as a child.

Stuff happens, stuff happens, turns out the "monsters" stalking Rasalas and the kid are the demented ghosts of Black family members ("Why are they like this? Ghosts aren't like this" "We can't leave. None of us can leave. Not unless we find the treasure" "Do you want to find the treasure?" "I want to find my brother. He said he'd wait for me by the door, only I don't know where that is"). Meanwhile, Scorpius is starting to get (supernatural) whispers of madness in his ear, Arcturus is going through some withdrawal symptoms, and Albus Potter (now an auror) hears through the goodguygrapevine that Grimmauld Place has been opened again and is mildly alarmed by the idea since, by this time, it's not just a historical site, it's got a reputation for "evil". He tries to get in and can't because he's not a member of the Black family and no one invited him, goes do some spellbreaking research at the Ministry of Records, finds out that the "family treasure" of the Blacks is actually the other half of the pair that is the veil Sirius Black fell through. The veil at the Ministry of Magic works by trapping you in the world of the dead; the veil that the Blacks kept allows the dead to come back through.

Turns out the Blacks were named so because of the "black" magic (necromancy) they used to practice before the moral outrage set in and it went out of style. Their artefacts were seized and their books were buried but they managed to squirrel away their greatest accomplishment: one of the veils. It used to work that they'd walk through the dead!veil, grab a few souls, then come back through the life!veil. Then they'd do their black magic and put souls back into bodies, stuff stuff stuff. Only problem is, the veils got separated and their use was forgotten, so now, Grimmauld Place is home to ghosts who came through but can't find a way back. They're all looking for the other veil, but the other veil isn't in this location.

More stuff happens, blah blah. Scorpius goes full on crazy (turns out living with lost souls has a tendency to drive you mad; the madness of the Blacks wasn't a genetic condition, it was from living in the house) and has figured out how to dead sacrifice his way into the "other world" (this is where Kreacher dies btw). Albus shows up with a warrant to come and seize the other veil, gets caught up in Scorpius' spell and goes through with him. Arcturus has finally figured out how to locate Rasalas through complicated arithmancy and magical geolocating. Rasalas and the boy have found the secret room where the veil was being kept and all the ghosts are swirling about, angry and wailing.

"We are the dead, we want to live," they cry and Rasalas keeps trying to bat the m the fuck off as they tear at his clothes and hair. The veil begins to billow as if a wind is coming through. The cloth touches Rasalas' sleeve and all at once he remembers. Turns out someone did know how to use the veils after all: Narcissa, who was the last Black, who missed her family so badly that she asked her son to go through the veil and bring back the last member who died: Sirius. Lacking a body to put his soul in, they put him in a baby whose soul was still soft and which would still accept sharing a vessel. That was Rasalas. Rasalas has been amnesiac Sirius all along (oh noez)

Scorpius and Albus show up (Scorpius with some half-baked idea about becoming king of the dead or some shit) there is drama and yelling and Scopius runs through the veil. Everyone is horrified. Rasalas, who now knows that he's actually two souls, goes in after him, tries to pull him out, but can't. The veil wants payment. If it's going to let two out, it wants two coming in.

"You go, I'll stay," says a voice and OH SHIT IT'S SIRIUS, standing behind Scorpius' stupid body, hands in his pockets and an ironic look on his face. "It's ok. I remember now. Regulus," he calls, and Rasalas can see the boy on the other side of the veil turn his head in recognition. "Regulus, come on, you're late. I've been waiting for you," and Regulus stands up and comes rushing through.

Rasalas blinks and suddenly finds himself on the other side of the veil again, looking through, and it's like looking in at steadily fogging glass.

"Sirius, where were you? I waited but you never came back, so I went looking for you so long I forgot my name, and then I couldn't come back either."

"I've been around. Hey, that reminds me, I've got stories for you, you wanna hear them?"

"Are they good? Are they funny?"

"They're hilarious. And they're new."

"Oh. Ok then."

And then Arcturus blinks all of them back.

Epilogue bullshit from Albus' POV: All is well again. Albus is filing a report. The veils have been seized and quarantined, all the souls gathered up and sent back where they came from. Grimmauld Place has been boarded up – it's empty now, no curses, no relics, no angry ghosts. Arcturus came in for questioning on his own and managed to impress the Minister of Arithmatic Services so much that he's being brought in to square up the Ministry's systems. Rasalas is taking a well-earnt rest at St. Mungos but is reported to be healing up well. The Malfoy estates have been dissolved to pay for their debts. Everything broke out even in the end.

There's a knock on his cubical wall. Albus looks up. It's Scorpius, his cloak over one arm and his hat in his hands. "I'm sorry, are you still working? Only the cleaner said your light was still on, but it's nearly 10, so I figured…"

"You don't have to wait up for me."

"I just thought you'd forgotten the time."

Albus' grin is mildly sheepish. "I did, actually."

"Well, it's nearly 10."

"All right, just let me grab my stuff." They walk out together.

"You sure you're all right letting me stay? Only, I can go elsewhere. My mother's family—"

"I have the room, you don't have that much stuff, it's fine. Scorpius—" Albus stops him, makes sure he knows he's serious. "It's ok. You're fine. It's going to be all right."

And the funny part is, Scorpius looks like he believes him.