A/N: I decided to put part two up right quick, since the first part doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own. Now we're getting to the real point of the story, i.e. Sirius chasing Harry around this guilt spiral in hopes of becoming his psychoanalyst. ::grin:: Thank you to everyone who reviewed.
Disclaimer: All of the following characters, names, places and concepts are property of JK Rowling, much as that irks me.
Part Two: Unto the Breach
The next few hours passed in a haze for Sirius. He sat slumped in the chair next to Harry's bed, vaguely aware of masses of students tramping through the halls, presumably to stay together in the Great Hall during the attack. The silent, blank pair of Fred and George Weasley had appeared about an hour after the initial attack had occurred to take a silent, blank Hermione with the rest of the Gryffindors to safety. Outside of the tiny window he could see the woven purple stars that were Hogwarts' only defenses against invasion glowing in the sky, vibrating as they took hit after hit. The air was filled with crashes and rumblings, but Sirius stayed where he was. Madam Pomfrey had long since given up on Harry, reporting to him in a low voice that she could find nothing wrong with him, and all Sirius could really focus on was the endless depth in the translucent green eyes before him.
Then Dumbledore was back, somehow; Sirius hadn't heard him enter the ward, and it was some time before he realized that Dumbledore was calling his name. His eyes traveled up the purple robes of the Headmaster, taking in his grayish skin and flat, tired eyes. He was positively haggard, and for the first time in a while Sirius noticed how truly old Dumbledore was—could he be slipping? How could he have missed an attack on one of his own students . . . again?
"If I could have a word with you," Dumbledore said, nodding to an empty corner of the ward. His mind clearing, Sirius stood up and followed him.
In a low voice, the Headmaster said, "The Death Eaters are attacking the wards that protect the school from Apparition. They've surrounded the castle."
"What is the Ministry doing, sir?"
"Nothing, as of right now."
Sirius was taken aback. "Why not?"
"The Apparition wards prevent them from getting within a kilometer of the school. Any work they do against the Death Eaters must be from outside the wards. It will take them several hours to amass the resources to make an attack on the number of Death Eaters currently outside the grounds."
"How long will the wards hold?"
Dumbledore's face clouded, expression becoming indistinct. Instead of answering, he turned away from Sirius, his eyes falling on Harry. "He hasn't regained consciousness?"
"No," replied Sirius, suspicious of the change in topic. He barked a strange, high-pitched laugh that sounded strange to his own ears. "At least he'll have to sit this adventure out."
Dumbledore said nothing, but turned to fix his incisive blue gaze on Sirius gravely. There was a silence between them that stretched his heart even as it stretched in time, and Sirius knew from the look on Dumbledore's face that Harry wouldn't be sitting this one out after all.
As seconds became minutes, Sirius searched for his voice. Finding it, he rasped, "What's the matter with him?"
"Nothing," the Headmaster replied.
"There's something wrong with him, he won't talk to anyone!" Sirius could hear his voice rising higher and higher but did not care. "He won't talk to me!"
"Sirius," Dumbledore said urgently, and there was no indistinctness in his eyes now. They were burning, focused. Gone were all the strange inconsistencies of Dumbledore's earlier days, gone were the idle tones, the irrelevant statements. He was the general. "It is my believe that Harry has entered a torture of his own devising. He's done this to himself, out of guilt over Mr. Weasley's death. But we cannot afford to lose him at a time like this!"
"Why?" It was the question that woke him up at night. Why Harry? What did he have to do with all this?
"In a few short hours the wards will be destroyed. If Harry is not awake then—if he has not come back to his senses—" Dumbledore paused, and then pressed on. "He is inextricably linked with the downfall of Voldemort. Without him, Hogwarts will fall."
Sirius stared at him, his world jolting violently out of control. Hogwarts—fall? Impossible. And yet . . . he looked again at the desperate weariness, the sheer age, present on the Headmaster's face and knew it was true. He cleared his throat.
"Dumbledore . . . things like this take time to heal. There's no chance he'll have sorted it out by then. It might even take months!"
For a minute, Sirius thought he detected a dim reflection of the old twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes.
"That, Mr. Black, is where you come in."
***
The spell was simple enough; there were no actual incantations involved, just concentration. Dumbledore had cast a circle around Harry's bed with his wand, and Sirius settled himself within it, assuming a comfortable position, and beginning the process of relaxing himself. It took awhile; he was sorry but not surprised to feel his veins pulsing with anxiety, blood pounding in his ears, back muscles straining needlessly against the hard wooden backing of the chair. He felt the mouthful of potion that Dumbledore had instructed him to swallow roiling around in the pit of his stomach, but felt no direct effects from it. He kept himself utterly still, hands resting squarely on the chair's arms, feet planted firmly on the floor. And he thought of Harry. Harry as he had first seen him, sitting on top of his trunk in Little Whinging, looking sweaty and scared but determined. Harry angry, standing over him in the Shrieking Shack and radiating power as he accused Sirius of killing his parents. Harry concerned, vexed that Sirius was in Hogsmeade risking himself for Harry's safety. Harry, proud and happy in a letter, detailing his victory over the dragon.
Slowly, the spell's trance took over his body. For a solid twenty minutes he lingered somewhere in between reality and the dream state, and then he felt his consciousness slipping. All awareness of his body in the hospital wing left him, and for a small eternity he floated peacefully in a colorless, thoughtless place without dimension.
And then it changed.
It happened so fast that Sirius barely had time to register the shift between nothingness and the feeling of a real, three dimensional world fully formed around him. All at once his body came back to him, but it wasn't the body he had left sitting carefully upright beside Harry's bed. The complete lack of color had faded to complete black, but it wasn't just a dark room. It felt close—he could feel the low ceiling and near walls pressing in on him from all sides. His knees were curled up to his chest in the tiny space. He felt rough wood cutting into him from below, and a strange, musty scent filled his nose. The attic? He thought wildly, dog senses panicking as he sensed that he was trapped. The cellar? Dumbledore mustn't have done the spell right. This isn't Harry's mind.
But the concept of Dumbledore having made a mistake was laughable, and he knew that by all accounts he must be exactly where he ought to be. Think, Sirius. He forced himself to listen beyond the rushing wind inside his mind, to be silent. From beside him, within an arm's length, he heard a small noise. There's someone in here with me. He strained with his ears, and tried to place the sound.
At first he thought it was a rat, or another small creature fond of dark spaces. A sort of squeaking, followed by snuffling. No, it wasn't a rat, the sound was coming from too high up, level with his shoulder at least. The more he listened, the more he felt it was a human noise, that his first instincts had been correct. It reminded him of something, but what made such a—
His heart stopped.
He remembered the scene now, the one that had eluded him. It was one of his earliest memories, of himself at age five, one that Azkaban had been unable to steal away. He had stayed up late, crept out of his bedroom and nicked his father's wand. He had been a terror in the night, tapping everything he could with it, proud that he could do magic just like his parents. The next morning, he had swaggered into the breakfast room, eagerly awaiting praise for his talents, to find his mother sniffling and his father quietly enraged: with a tap from the careless wand he had destroyed their wedding pictures, every last one, with the one water charm that had pleased him the most that night. One look from his father had been enough to send him right back up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he had crouched in the low space between his bed and the wall, his lip trembling and his chest racked with spasms. He had fought so desperately to keep himself from crying, clamping his teeth shut on the sob that ached to release itself into the near silence of the room. A silence that was only broken by the tiny noises that escaped . . .
Heartbeat returning, Sirius reached out a hand in the darkness.
"Harry?"