Chapter Nine – The Return of the Lost

"How did we get here?"

Harry looked around, confused. The previous second they had been in the in front of the cave, but now they were suddenly standing in the very room of the Department of Mysteries where Sirius had fought his last duel. Harry looked down on the archway and the veil, and his insides squirmed. Fresh pain rose in him and he trembled when he pictured the fighting scene between Sirius and Bellatrix Lestrange. He tried to shake the memory off, but he couldn't. Now that he was back in the place, everything seemed twice as clear as before, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't forget it. And that was not all. The same feeling that had come over him in the cave rose again. That feeling that something ancient was watching him, burning with fury...

Yehudiah turned to him.

"Do not worry," he said. "What you feel is the wrath of Fate. It was here that its plan was disturbed."

"Oh, right..." said Harry nervously. "Er... I already thought so..."

"Do not worry," repeated Yehudiah. "You know it will not hurt you."

"Oh... yeah... sure..." Harry was not convinced - what if it was his fate to be killed by Fate, that was angry about someone else changing someone else's fate... but that was stupid, thought Harry then - if Fate had wanted to kill him, it would have finished him off before, when he had been in the cave... unless it was his fate to be killed in the attempt to set things right with Fate again... Harry lost track of this complicated thought. Maybe he was better off if he stopped thinking about Fate and concentrated on Yehudiah.

The angel stood before the veil and beckoned Harry to come nearer. Harry took a deep breath and went over to the veil. A tear trickled down his cheek as he remembered once more Sirius falling through it, vanishing...

"Do you hear them?" asked Yehudiah.

Harry listened hard. There was a whispering that came from behind the veil... the same he had heard before, and Luna, too... the dead were there, right behind the veil, and suddenly he felt an urge to rush over, pull the veil aside, reach out a hand, feel Sirius clasp his wrist and pull his godfather out of that nothing beyond the veil.

His feet moved without his doing anything. He gained speed... he could not stop, but he did not care... soon he would reach the veil... tear it aside...

"Halt!"

Harry stopped dead, hardly two feet away from the veil. He suddenly realized that he would have gone right through it if Yehudiah had not stopped him. The veil cast an odd spell on anyone who came near it. Harry remembered how Ginny had reacted to it. Gratefully he turned to Yehudiah.

"What is the veil?" He asked.

Yehudiah smiled sadly. "No one really knows," he said. "It was developed by the head of the Department of Mysteries, the Secretary of State for Mysterious Affairs, in 1177. It is a portal into another dimension. When someone goes through it, his body vanishes and his soul gets tossed astray. He might eventually find a way back to where it started - this is why you can hear them behind the veil -, but he can never return into your world. That is why you might as well say that the person who roams beyond the veil is dead - for what is death other than the separation of body and soul with no opportunity to return?"

Harry remained silent for a while. "You mean that Sirius was not dead... not really... all the time?" He asked. "All those people who are there behind the veil... they..."

"They are dead," Yehudiah interrupted him softly. "The only difference is that they can sometimes be heard. But for your world, they are dead. Their bodies are gone. Their souls stay behind the veil, if they ever find their way back there, but they cannot hear you if you try to talk to them. And you cannot see them, even if you could pull the veil aside."

Harry went pale. "But that's... that's hell," he whispered. "That must be hell... or at least purgatory... they're stuck here... all alone... and yet they still know who they are and where they come from, and they remember everyone they loved, and how much they miss them..."

"They do not have to stay there forever," said Yehudiah. "Eventually they find their way and go on."

"And Sirius..."

"Hush," said Yehudiah in a very soft and tender voice. "You will now fall asleep, for what I will do now is not meant for any human eyes to see. And," he added with a surprisingly malicious smile, "you might go mad if you saw what really lies beyond the veil. You'd better sleep."

"I don't wanna..." Harry's protest was overcome by a huge yawn. Suddenly he found it impossible to keep his eyes open. His knees gave way under him, and he sank down where he stood. The last thing he heard was Yehudiah's voice that thundered through the room. He still spoke English, but the words did not make any sense to Harry as he slipped away into sleep.

xxx

Harry was woken up by a hand that gently touched his shoulder.

He made an effort to open his eyes, and for a moment he did not know where he was. He lay on a hard stone floor, and in the corner of the room, a bright light was just starting to fade. For a second, Harry caught a glimpse at the shape of a man with two gigantic wings right inside that light, then he was gone.

Yehudiah! The events of the last hours came back to Harry in a flash. He sat up straight and touched the spot where the hand had touched him. It was warm. It must have been Yehudiah, who had finished whatever he had done...

Sirius!

Harry turned his head. He was still in the room at the Ministry. Nothing had changed. The chairs and tables were as empty as always, the archway lay still and deserted, and the veil was slightly moving, as if in a breeze. Harry tried to see through it. But apart from a soft blue light that sometimes shone through at the rims he did not see anything.

He had almost turned away again when it hit him. Breeze? Blue light?

He clearly remembered what the veil had looked like last time. The only time it had moved had been when Sirius had fallen through it, and there had been darkness behind it. Complete darkness. Not the slightest trace of blue.

Slowly, Harry turned to it again. The blue light had become brighter and the veil was moving faster, like the curtains on Petunia's kitchen window in a sudden gust of wind. Where did that come from?

Harry wanted to approach, but his feet would not move, no matter how hard he tried. It was like he was frozen to the ground. Eventually he gave up and merely watched. The light was now so bright that he could see shades moving beyond the veil - or at least something, maybe the shadows of shades... Harry did not know what souls looked like.

One of those shades grew bigger and bigger. It took Harry a while to realize that this was not one of those shades that just grew - it was someone approaching the veil from the other side. When he listened hard, he could hear footsteps on stone. It sounded exactly like there was someone coming down the way leading to the archway, but there was no one. Yet the shape of the man grew bigger and bigger. He turned his head, and Harry could see his silhouette - a silhouette he would have recognized anywhere... Sirius...

The light grew ever brighter as Sirius came closer. Harry desperately wanted to run over to the veil and welcome Sirius there, but his feet still did not obey him. He wanted to wave his arms, but that did not work, either. And the light grew brighter and brighter...

The veil flew outwards as if in a gale. Oddly enough, Harry did not feel any wind on his face, although he would have been right in its way. When the veil fell back, it separated in the middle like the curtain in a theater, and, in a corona of bright blue light and with the archway in his back, out stepped Sirius.

xxx

Harry held his breath. His heart stopped and then started thumping wildly. Harry felt as if it was breaking, bursting and healing at the same time. His knees, weak as they were, were shaking. Tears were streaming down his face, but Harry did not care. He wanted to call Sirius's name, run into his arms, touch him as if to check that he was really there, but he stood frozen to the ground, mute as a fish.

The blue light dimmed and the mysterious breeze stopped. After two or three seconds, nothing reminded of what had just happened - nothing but Sirius, who was standing before the veil and looked at it. Harry watched him back away, his eyes fixed on it. Then Sirius looked at his hands, raised them and touched his own face and his hair. He took a few steps, still backwards, then spinned around a few times and started laughing his bark-like laughter. He rocked back his head and laughed as if he could never stop, and it came deep from the bottom of his heart.

"I'm back!" he roared, addressing the walls and the empty chairs. He still hadn't seen Harry. "I'm BACK!"

Harry watched him and thought that his heart would really burst if Sirius did not finally notice him.

"Sirius," he whispered.

He could not manage more, and although it had been barely audible, Sirius stopped dead.

"Harry?" He said.

Harry wanted to answer, but what came out was a sob that very nearly suffocated him, followed by a shaky laughter and more sobs. He tried to get up, and to his surprise, his legs held his weight. He took a few shaky steps.

Sirius turned around fast. He spotted Harry, and a smile spread over his face, reaching his eyes and making them shine. He opened his arms and Harry started to run. He did not care that his reaction was that of a three-year-old. He ran right into Sirius's open arms, and Sirius swept him into an embrace that pressed the air out of Harry's lungs. He clasped his arms around Sirius's waist and leaned his head against his chest. Then he closed his eyes. The tears that were still flowing were now tears of joy.

They stood like this for about ten minutes, then Harry loosened his grip on his godfather and looked up into his face. Sirius did hardly look changed. He might have become a little thinner and paler, and there was a gray streak in his jet-black hair that had not been there before. But what did that matter? Sirius was back.

"What have you done?" asked Sirius finally. "It must have been you. No one else would do such a thing for me - apart from Remus, of course."

"Well," said Harry and grinned, "I didn't do much, actually. I traveled on a Thestral to the angel Yehudiah, who introduced me to Fate, and then the angel and I came here, and he... well, I actually don't know what he did. I overslept that part."

Sirius stared at him. "Thestral? Angel? Fate? I don't understand a word."

"I'll tell you later," said Harry. "The others'll wanna hear, too." Then he frowned. "That is, if I remember everything. It already starts vanishing..."

"Maybe it's better that way." Sirius looked around. "Say, who did the cleaning here? It looks like we never fought."

"Well, they had three weeks," said Harry, shrugging. "There are charms and spells..."

"Three weeks?" Sirius shook his head. "That can't be... I can't have been there for three weeks..."

"Where have you been?" Inquired Harry tentatively. "Yehudiah said that your soul was there, but your body wasn't."

"Might well be. But listen, let's postpone the story as well, okay? The others..."

"...are gonna want to hear it, too," finished Harry. "You're right."

"So, we should go home then, shall we?" Sirius looked around. "How did you get here?"

"Well..." Harry squirmed. "That's a bit of a problem. The Thestral is still on the island... I came with Yehudiah..."

Sirius grinned. "Very well then, either we take the Knight Bus or we travel by the muggle underground train."

"Let's take the underground," said Harry. He did not want to answer a million questions by Stan Shunpike, the conductor of the Knight Bus, nor did he want to have ten wizards and witches stare at Sirius. He did not know what the Daily Prophet had written about Sirius's death, but he reckoned that most of the wizarding world knew that he had died. No, he preferred the underground. Moreover, it took longer, and although Harry couldn't hardly wait to return with Sirius to The Burrow, he was also glad that he would have him to himself for another few hours.

Sirius agreed and put one hand on Harry's shoulder. Together they left the room, and after a few attempts, they also found the way out of the Department of Mysteries. They went up the stairs, and when they reached the Atrium, it held another surprise for Harry: There was no one there. The lifts, stairs, desks and tables were deserted, although it was just about noon on an ordinary Friday.

"Where are they all?" asked Harry.

Sirius shrugged.

Harry just wanted to start hypothesizing when a little statue on a desk caught his eye. It was the golden figurine of an angel with two great wings, long hair and a handsome face that seemed very familiar to Harry.

"Yehudiah?" He whispered.

The statue remained motionless at first, and Harry just wanted to go on when it did move: The serious expression on the angel's face shortly changed into a smile and he winked twice.

"Thank you," said Harry, reconsidered his words and then said, "Er, uhm, I thank thee, Yehudiah, Angel of Grief."

He bowed and then caught up with Sirius again, who had watched him with a mild expression of confusion on his face.

"That was Yehudiah," said Harry and pointed back at the desk. But when he turned to look at it for one last time, the statue had gone.

Sirius laughed and laid an arm around Harry's shoulders. "Whoever it was, I thank him, too," he said. "And now we should get out of here. Who knows how long this... whatever it is... lasts. I don't want to bump into Fudge."

"Me neither."

They left the Ministry, and Harry led the way to the next underground station.

xxx

"There it is," said Harry exitedly. "The Burrow!"

"I know," said Sirius and smiled. "I've been there before."

"You'll stay with us for some time, won't you?" asked Harry for the umpteenth time.

"I can't decide that," said Sirius and grinned. "It's not my house. You should ask Molly, not me."

The Burrow drew closer and closer, and when they were just still out of sight, Harry stopped.

"Before the chaos starts," he said, "I want to tell you something."

Sirius stopped, looked at him and said nothing.

Harry cleared his throat. He was struggling for words. "I just noticed... I mean, it occurred to me... you see, the weeks after... afterwards, I didn't let anybody come near me. I was grieving so hard, and naturally, I was thinking a lot. What made your... your death worst was that I hadn't had the chance to say goodbye. I was thinking of all the things I never told you. There were a few minor things, of course, but some major things as well that I still wanted you to know. Since we never know what happens, I decided that I would from now on tell everyone right away what I want to tell them. If I always hesitate, it may be too late one day. People have a right to know what I want to tell them."

"That's good, Harry," said Sirius. "That's very good."

"So the first thing is something I want to tell you," continued Harry, as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Do you remember offering me to live with you - when we met for the first time and I learned that you were my godfather?"

Sirius nodded. "Of course I do," he said.

"And then I saw your house, and you were very reluctant to talk about the matter any more," said Harry. "Although I said I'd love to live with you."

"Well," said Sirius, "I just thought this house wouldn't be what you imagined, and you just said that because you didn't want to disappoint me..."

"Let me finish talking, please," said Harry. "You know I hate my aunt and uncle, but I have to stay with them because the fact that I can still call their house home protects me from Voldemort. That's why I really can't move in with you. But what I want you to know is that I would prefer your house to Buckingham Palace, if I had a choice. I'd live in a cave if it was with you. See, Sirius, you are the only father I've ever known, and you're not only a father to me, but a brother and a friend as well. You are one of the most important persons in my life, and I want you to know that I love you. I love you so much."

Harry stopped and looked at Sirius.

Sirius's voice sounded hoarse as he spoke. "That means the world to me, Harry," he said, deeply moved. "I've tried my best to be you a father, or at least a godfather."

"That's what you are," said Harry quietly. "Don't change. Please."

"I won't," said Sirius. "And I promise you another thing, Harry. I will never ever leave you alone again."

He hugged Harry, and for a few minutes they stood on the path, saying nothing.

Then Sirius loosened his grip, and they continued the way, side by side, Sirius with his hand on Harry's shoulder, just like father and son who returned from a short walk.