"James…" Sirius whispered. He gazed at his fully awakened best friend, whose incoherent muttering earlier on hadn't really convinced Sirius that this was truly James.
"This is not your only option, Padfoot," James said, glaring quickly at the stage manager. "Don't let him tell you you've got no choice."
But Sirius hardly heard what he said. Despair was closing in on him. The unreality of it all had been shattered by James's presence, and Sirius's joy at seeing his best friend was quickly giving way to misery as he realized the truth of the situation.
"Oh Prongs," Sirius moaned as he fell to his knees. "Is it true? Is this it? Is this really all there is?"
"Well, I don't really know any better than you, Sirius. We haven't been here all that long either, y'know. But I can tell you that the weather forecast doesn't change much around here," James chuckled. "But really now, it's not so bad. Most of the time you're asleep, anyway. Come to think of it, I can't remember when I was last awake. Stage manager?"
"Last year," said the stage manager wearily. "I woke up you and Lily to see Harry. When Voldemort's wand did the backfiring thing."
"Right-o. Yes, so really the only bad thing is the maddening lack of news. How is my son, Sirius?"
"He's you, James. Right down to the way your hair sticks up in the back. He… Sometimes it hurts too much to look at him." There was a silence, and Sirius coughed. "Well, he's fifteen now."
"Sixteen."
The pair of Marauders looked at the stage manager.
"He's sixteen now. Look." He held out a gilded pocket watch. "Has been for three days."
Sirius was horrorstruck. He might as well have been told his godson had turned into a toad. The stage manager shrugged.
"I really can't make heads or tails out of how time passes here. I'm always trying to set a proportion to figure out the rate, then suddenly it's last week again."
"You're telling me… that I've been here for over a month?!"
"Yep. Time flies, eh?"
"So Harry escaped from the death eaters, then? Is he alright? Ron and Hermione? Remus?"
"I wouldn't know. All they tell me is the time. And, of course, who's dead yet."
"What did I tell you?" James said cheerfully. "Maddening lack of news."
Maddening did describe it well. Sirius nearly tore out large chunks of scalp as he pulled his hair in frustration.
"You don't have to just settle for this, though," James said gently, placing a hand on his friend's back. The stage manager shot him a warning look. "There is another way to go."
Sirius looked up at James with wide, watery eyes, more dog-like than usual for his human form.
"This isn't going to help him, Potter," spat the stage manager.
"I just want him to know his options," James retorted, before turning back to his broken friend. "There is a way to go back."
"I want to! I'll go back as a bloody portrait, I don't care, just tell me how to go back."
"It's not easy, Sirius. I was afraid, I chose to stay here. But Lily… Lily was inconsolable. Her baby needed her. So she tried to go back."
"Then why is she still here?"
"I said it wasn't easy. She wasn't able to stand it, and because hers was a magical death, she was allowed to return here, to change her mind."
Sirius was nonplussed. The Potters were the bravest people he knew, yet they were afraid to return from death. How bad could it be?
"How bad can it be?
"There are all these rules and restrictions, on where you can go, who you can talk to, what you can say. Break a rule, and poof you lose your soul. It's really not all it's cracked up to be, being a ghost.
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I'm sorry about the brevity and lack of action, but I'm going out today so I couldn't put more time into it. But y'all are Harry Potter fans, so y'all are used to a lot of exposition. ;-) It'll pick up tomorrow, I promise.