"You will be left behind."
The old auror's words echoed in Sirius's head as he ran through the streets of London. If only he could flail out, throw something, even feel his feet slamming against the pavement… But he just glided along in silence, hearing not the car motors and the bustle of the city, but just the tortured dialog of his own mind. He knew the script far too well.
Left behind…
Sirius felt like his heart would burst, if it existed in the physical realm at that moment. What was the truth? James had said it was cowardice to stay dead, but Moody thought it cowardly to cling to life. Nearly Headless Nick was the only one who had actually done it, but he certainly didn't seem happy. Maybe that's because Nick is lonely, because he had returned for himself, unable to cope with being alone until his contemporaries joined him in death. But Sirius hadn't returned to earth for himself; he'd returned for Harry! Hadn't he?
The dirt and noise of the city gave way to the beginnings of suburbia as the sky shifted into twilight. Untouched by hunger or exhaustion, Sirius ran through the night.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon as Sirius reached Privet Drive. He felt certain that there would be some way, any way, for him to communicate with his godson, and so he paused to collect himself before passing through the door.
The house was still quite asleep. The automatic coffee maker would not start brewing for another few hours, timed to coincide with the arrival of the morning paper. Vernon Dursley's snoring was barely audible over the roar of his air-conditioning unit. Nevertheless, Sirius idiotically tip-toed up the stairs.
He was surprised to find Harry looking straight at him as he entered the room. The boy had clearly not slept, not that night or any other recently. He sat fully dressed on the edge of his bed, pajamas neatly folded at his side, as though he had just paused before resolving to get ready for bed. His face was expressionless.
Sirius hesitated a moment before sitting down beside him. Harry continued staring straight ahead. His eyes were clear, and he seemed to be focusing intently on something, some internal monologue. He wasn't praying, was he? They stayed frozen that way, ghost and godson, for some time, Sirius just watching the boy think. And for the first time, when he gazed at the boy with the unruly black hair, there was no thought in his mind of James—he thought only of Harry.
Harry jumped up with a start. He half-ran to his desk, where a journal lay opened to a clean page. Sirius watched as his godson grabbed a quill in his fist and scrawled, in violent block letters: I CAN'T. The tip of the quill snapped. Harry grabbed the journal by its binding and tore out the first page. He watched it flutter to the ground, then did the same to the second page, and the third, then grabbing the leaves a dozen at a time and painfully wrenching them from their base. When the binding was bare, the boy held the pages at arm's length and slowly, carefully dipped the corner of each into the flame of his bedside candle. From over the boy's shoulder, the dead man watched the torn journal entries curl up and die. Each entry was addressed as a letter… "Dear Sirius," they began, and Sirius turned away from reading more, for though the letters were addressed to him, they nevertheless were private and painful. The boy's face was horribly bare in the flickering firelight.
At last, the pages were nothing but a pile of dirty black ashes on the desktop, ashes from which no phoenix would arise. And Harry took a step backward, and another step, and fell on to the bed and wept.
"Harry," Sirius said quietly, pointlessly. "Harry, no, don't cry. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here. No, Harry, please, look at me. Just look at me. You can't see me now, but when you get to school, I'll be there. And we'll be together then, no more hiding, no more disguises. And even after you leave, I'll always be here, I'll always watch over you…" His voice hitched in his throat. "Don't cry, Harry, just look at me. Look at me, and see that I'm not going anywhere."
And Harry opened his eyes, and for one fleeting moment Sirius thought he saw him… but he was looking through the ghost, to the clock on the wall behind him, telling him that it was tomorrow. Harry stood. The tears on his cheek were long dried. Sirius watched from behind as his godson walked to the door.
"I'm sorry, Sirius," he whispered. "I have to forget." And as the young man squared his shoulders and walked out the door into the new day, Sirius knew that the day had dawned on his last night on Earth.