Hermione awoke to a timid tapping on the door. She noticed that the clock read 1:30 AM and hurried to the door in fear of an emergency. But when she opened the door, she saw Kreature standing there with fear in his eyes.
"Mistress Hermione, Kreature is terribly sorry for waking you at this ridiculous hour, Kreature hardly knows what to do or who to speak to," the elf rambled. "About a half an hour ago, Kreature was woken from his own slumber but he felt different. Kreature knew that he was to no longer refer to Harry Potter as his master, for Kreature's former master lives once more." Kreature was clearly holding back tears, and Hermione was so momentarily confused that she mistook the elf's tears for happiness until she realised why Kreature was upset. She considered that Kreature simply had a night terror before remembering the sight of the young thestral galloping through the veil. She scrambled for her wand and summoned some parchment and a quill, hastily scribbling a message to Lenora and tying it to the leg of her owl, Athena. Then she stopped and considered the elf before her and the old treatment he endured.
"Kreature, I promise you that if by some stroke of miracle Sirius Black has been recovered, he will not treat you the way he did before. I promise you that." The elf nodded tearfully and left mumbling to himself in a hushed panic.
Hermione shuffled to the fireplace that connected to the floo network and with a green cloud of smoke, she was off to the ministry….in her pajamas.
Mere moments after Hermione stepped out of the fireplace grate into the ministry, Lenora Crady stepped out to her left, also donning her sleeping wear. The two witches ran down to the Death chamber and unlocked the door to find Perseus Felonius unconscious in his recliner, and Sirius Black tending to a thestral inside the corral. The wizard jumped at the sound of the large metal door creaking open and stared with wide eyes at the intruders.
"Sirius…" Hermione whispered, looking just as dumbstruck as the man before her.
Sirius approached her and put his hands on her shoulders to study her face before remarking,
"I seem to have missed quite a bit of time," he pulled her into a long, tight hug.
"I tried to ennervate the young man, but after he fainted twice more, I stopped trying." Sirius pulled back and tentatively whispered the name 'Voldemort' as a question.
"Gone," Hermione replied. "Sirius... there were losses…" he nodded solemnly for her to continue. "Fred Weasley, Tonks and her father, Snape, Dumbledore, and...Sirius, I'm so sorry... Re-Remus Lupin." Sirius nodded once more with heavy and deep sadness.
"I'm so sorry to break up the reunion, dears, but you-" she nodded at Sirius, "and Mr. Felonius here, must be seen by healers and give your statements to the Department."
"Of course Madame, if I may request to be accompanied by Miss Granger here…?"
"Ask her, lad. I report to her." Lenora responded with a smile and levitated Perseus out of the death chamber toward the Atrium and the floo connections.
"An unspeakable, hmmm? Makes sense for the brightest witch of her age." he offered her a small smile, but she could still detect the sadness he carried behind his eyes from the news he just heard.
"Let's get you to St. Mungo's."
After several hours of talking, Sirius had been thoroughly checked over by the Healers and was deemed to be in perfect health, and while physically, he'd aged a couple of years, he explained how time moved differently within the veil. By his estimations, he'd only been inside for about six months, being kept company by the veil's creator himself, one Cadmus Peverell, who created the magical object to return to his widowed bride. Upon his failure, Cadmus found himself fascinated with the thing he'd created. With every intention of coming back out, he let himself be absorbed to study it and was all too happy to send Sirius through and wait for the next thestral. Lenora left after hearing this information to 'conduct a small experiment,' and returned an hour later with a very bewildered old wizard who gawked at every sight as if he'd never seen anything like it, which Hermione supposed he hadn't, the Peverells had lived centuries ago, after all. Hermione explained the past years as Sirius sat quietly and listened.
"You're free to go home." Healer Pye stuck his head in the door before heading to tend to the old wizard who'd just arrived.
"Home," said Sirius pensively. "That'd be a nice idea, Merlin only knows how filthy that nasty elf has let that decrepit old house become."
"Sirius, Harry, Ginny, and I... we all live there now, and we've done a fair bit of work on the place, I hope that's alright." Sirius beamed at her.
"Fantastic! How'd you get old Kreature out?"
"Yeah, about that, I think we'd better take the Underground, so I have some time to explain a few things."
The pair walked out into the street and got on the metro toward Islington, garnering a few strange looks from passersby's as she still wore her nightclothes, and he wore a robe over muggle clothes. The Kreature conversation was uncomfortable and even though Sirius felt slightly attacked by Hermione's description of his treatment of the elf, he did listen and eventually thank her for giving him all of the information.
"The way that you feel about how he treated you as a child is valid, Sirius. And I will never tell you how you must act towards him, but I will ask you that you either try to have some understanding about his situation or else, give him some assignment out of the house so that the two of you aren't forced to interact."
After walking through the threshold of Number 12, Sirius and Hermione were met with an elf at the end of the hallway staring at his feet and shaking in fear.
"Kreature," Sirius began awkwardly, "I am truly sorry for my treatment of you in the past, and you are more than welcome to stay here. It is your home as well as mine.
"Kreature is very sorry too, for his behavior towards master, Kreature lacked understanding of the type of family he truly served." The two gave a last awkward nod to each other and with that, Kreature apparated with a crack.