A/N: And like that, the rewrite is finished! I plan on getting up another chapter of part three before I head to NYC for the summer (supper psyched!) as well as beginning the part two rewrite. I'm not sure how much I'll be posting once I get there, however. I will be extremely busy with conservatory, as well as simply trying to soak up as much of the city as possible. Thanks for sticking with me on this crazy ride!
Sirius blinked in the impossibly bright white expanse. His chest stung and ached horribly and smelled of smoke, but he suspected that it somehow wasn't as bad as it ought to have been. Besides, that was not the issue at hand; he needed to figure where, exactly, he had ended up. It was certainly no longer the Department of Mysteries.
"The... Shrieking Shack?" He wondered aloud.
"Not quite, Padfoot," a voice from the past spoke, seemingly trying to keep in laughter. He'd not heard that voice in nearly fifteen years. "For once, Siri, you're early to the party."
Sirius turned around slowly, and, sure enough, there was James Harold Potter, looking just as Sirius remembered him having been like in life, mussed up hair and all. A slow grin overtook Sirius' face before he leapt on his oldest friend—the brother he had wished for—like an overgrown puppy starved for affection. James clapped him on the back, laughing and smiling just as much as Sirius, and within a few minutes Sirius had him in a headlock and the pair were tussling on the ground like they were eleven years old and carefree again.
"Uncle!" Sirius cried out when he could no longer catch his breath, wheezing uncomfortably. Strange, wasn't one supposed to be in peak physical condition after dying? "Uncle… Uncle."
"You've gotten old, Paddy," James laughed, yanking a long gray hair from Sirius' head ("Ow! Idiot!").
"I don't understand this at all," Sirius said, frowning as he spun in circle to take the place in. It was looking more and more like the Shrieking Shack the longer he was there. "If I'm seeing you, then I ought to be dead. But, if I'm dead, then shouldn't I be feeling better than I am? I feel worse, with Bella's curse and everything…"
James shifted nervously and ruffled his hair with his hand. A wave of nostalgia hit Sirius like a ton of bricks.
"Well," James began awkwardly, "it goes like this: You're not really dead, Padfoot—or, at least, not yet."
"You're making less sense than in seventh year when you said you didn't want to prank Snivelly anymore."
James chuckled a little at that, still shifting from foot to foot awkwardly.
"You fell through the Veil only injured, not dead, and entered the world of the dead alive," James said slowly. "Most people have to be dead when they come through the Veil, but you, somehow, managed to get by with just a few bruises and burns. And gray hairs—wow, you've got a lot of gray hairs."
Sirius punched him. He snickered before continuing.
"Very few living have been able to come through the Veil throughout history. Orpheus. Gligamesh. Psyche."
"I'm a Black; I know my mythology, Prongs," Sirius said, rolling his eyes at his friend's history lecture.
"Right, well," James said, clearing his throat uneasily. "You're now like them, one of the elite few. And you have two not-so-great options—one, to come with me and die fully and painlessly—at least until Reggie and Lily get ahold of you—or two, try to find your way out. And very possibly still die. Painfully."
"Gee, Jamsie, how comforting," Sirius grumbled sarcastically.
"I'm not trying to be comforting!" his friend replied, nearly shouting. If he did not stop running his hands through his hair, his dead head would soon be bald. "It will be hard, Sirius. And dangerous—very, very dangerous. You'll have to fight all the demons of your past—your mother, your brother, the Slytherins, the Death Eaters, the Dementors, even—and when you reemerge to the living, there is no guarantee that you'll still have whatever is left of your admittedly little sanity, if you even get that far. More likely than not, this bloody war will still be going on when you get to the other side. You'll still have to fight, and you will very certainly lose more people to the war."
Sirius gave a jerky nod, a lump having gathered in his throat. "Will I be able to save anyone?"
James gave Sirius the most sympathetic look he had ever seen. James hadn't ever looked at him with that much pity. His best friend had always known better. Not even when Sirius had been kicked out of his home at age sixteen…
"I'm not sure," James said slowly. "She may already be too far down the dark path when you get there to be saved—but you are her only hope—if you are able to get there in time."
Sirius had the worrisome feeling that he didn't want any clarification on who his old friend was talking about. He would find out soon enough.
"I'm going back," Sirius said determined.
"I knew you would," James said, clapping the other man on the back. It could have been Sirius' imagination, but he thought that he saw tears in his friend's eyes. "Be safe. Be quick. And don't—"
James was gone, leaving Sirius on his own once again. But, this time, Sirius had a much worthier cause than setting out to kill Wormtail. And, with that in mind, he set out on his way through the beyond.