By Knowing Angels
Summary: Viviana and Halia thought they would have an uneventful summer
mourning the death of Sirius Black. Until he came out of the closet.
Literally. HP/OC. NOT A SLASH!
Chapter Two: Questions
Pause. During this moment, both Halia and Viviana had made up their minds, that this man, most definitely, was Sirius Black.
"Skeeter?" Halia asked incredulously, for although she believed the man was Sirius Black, it was rather unbelievable. "As in... Rita Skeeter? The witch?!"
"One in the same," Sirius Black replied with a mad glint shining in his eyes.
"What does she have to do with this?" Viviana asked.
Sirius paused, taking in a breath strained through his teeth. "It would appear that this," he stopped, turning to the cover of the book, "J.K. Rowling," he spat haltingly, "Is in fact, one Rita Skeeter."
"What?!" Viviana shouted.
"Right, sure," Derrick said with doubt. "Why would she talk about herself like she's so evil if in fact-"
At that moment, however, Derrick was pulled backward. Halia and Viviana were looking at him intently.
"What?" he asked the two, pulling their hands off of his shoulders. In the background, Sirius could be heard saying, "For a good story, why else?" as if it were obvious.
"Don't you think," Halia began, "that we should give him the benefit of the doubt?"
"After all," Viviana said, "he is Sirius Black. And he's standing in my living room." She looked back at Sirius.
"Is he? I mean, are we sure?" Derrick asked.
"I know Sirius Black. And I know my own living room," Viviana said. "And that-" she pointed to Sirius, "-is most definitely Sirius Black, standing in my living room."
Derrick sighed, rolling the thoughts over in his mind. "I suppose you're right," he said slowly, making sure that everyone knew he was slightly uncertain.
"Speaking of which, how did he get here?" Halia asked. "I mean, he's supposed to be... well... you know..."
The group turned, simultaneously, to look at the man standing in the middle of the semi-clean room. He had begun flipping through book four, periodically muttering things like, "How did she know?" and "All for a Galleon. Exposing our world for a Galleon."
"Well?" Derrick asked, as the circle reformed.
Viviana crept slowly toward Sirius, barely making a sound. "Er... Mr.... um, Sirius? Sir?" she said. Sirius jerked his head up. Viviana thought for a minute, trying to think of a question that wouldn't reveal his fate if he had not died yet.
"Well, er, Sirius, we wanted to know..." Halia began, trying to take over. She looked back to the other two, biting her lip, unsure of herself.
"How old Harry is!" Viviana shouted quickly, eliciting a questioning look from Derrick. "We wanted to know how old Harry is. So?" She said this all too quickly, with all the pride of someone who just figured out a complex math problem.
"What's the date?" Sirius asked, not missing a beat. He eyed the three suspiciously, knowing full well that they were hiding something.
"Erm..." Halia said.
"July..." Viviana began, then stopped, as it was discovered she didn't know the date. Mentally, she was trying to decide if she had been out of school for six weeks or only five. How long ago was June 13?
"Twenty-seventh," Derrick said.
"2003!" Halia shouted, eager to point out she did know the year.
"July 27th 2003?" Sirius asked. He squinted, deep in thought. He furrowed his brow. He bit his tongue. He answered the original question. "Almost 17."
"Then you have died!" Halia blurted out. Her hand immediately flew to her mouth.
"She wrote about that too?!" Sirius roared. "That absolute COW!"
"So it's true? You died?" Viviana asked, her voice a whisper.
"No, well yes, in a way. But not really," Sirius said. "I mean- It's complicated."
The room went silent. A quiet breeze fluttered through the room, brushing the top paper plate out of the garbage can. It rolled across the floor, and landed, pizza-sauce side up, at Sirius' feet.
"So... What happened?" Derrick asked, breaking the quiet.
Sirius laughed, a short 'ha!' "Where do I start?"
"Well, how about around the time you went into the curtain? And then just... Well, continue from there?" Halia said.
"And of course, add why you're not dead," Viviana said, finishing with a smile, which she quickly wiped off of her face once she realized what she was saying. "I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, but it would help to know..."
Sirius shook his head, and answered, "I'll tell you.
"The Department of Mysteries," Sirius began. His eyes began to lose focus, taking him back in time, to Harry Potter's fifth year. "Well, I suppose you know about The Veil." The three nodded.
Sirius took a deep breath, and sat down on the sofa. "I wasn't dead before I fell through. The curse that hit me was a simple repelling charm. It only worked to force me backward, through The Veil."
"So then, why didn't you come back out? If you weren't dead?" Derrick asked.
"The Veil is a one-way object. It's also the entrance to the Land of the Dead. So in a way, when I went through, I did die."
"No, Sirius," the man had said to him. "You cannot go back."
Sirius ignored him. He walked up to the Arch, the single piece of furniture in the – could you call it a room? It seemed like empty space.
He could see through, the curtain seemed transparent. On the other side, Harry was still fighting. Harry. He needed to get back.
Sirius threw himself at the curtain. But his hand hit an invisible wall.
"You cannot go back," the man repeated. "The Veil is a doorway in. It only goes one way.
"You are in the Land of the Dead now, and here you shall stay." The man turned, and began to glide through the grey mist of the space.
"But why am I the only one here?" Sirius shouted back. "Shouldn't there be others? And why can't I go back?"
"There are always others. You shall meet them. And it is not to be questioned, just accepted. You have died. You cannot go back."
"But somehow, I knew that if there was a way in, there must be a way out. And I hadn't really died. So I believed I could come back. That I had to come back," Sirius said.
"So I continued, I couldn't just give up. And I met others. The dead were everywhere. Everyone. They were all there." And somehow, though she would not come to realize it until much later, Viviana knew what he meant. "I knew," Sirius continued, "that if there was a way out, that I was the only one who could go through it, since I had not died like the others. So I continued.
"I nearly gave up, but-" he shook his head. "I got a second wind. And eventually, I stumbled into, and out of, your linen closet."
"Sirius, please," Lily pleaded. "None of us can go. Do you not think we have tried?"
"Lily, I've nowhere to look. This place has nothing else. I've done all I can do," Sirius had replied.
"There are... other... places you have not gone to. None of us have gone to," the man by Lily's side said. "We have only heard tell of them, but they are real. Sirius, you must."
"James, I can't," Sirius said.
"For us, Sirius."
"James..."
"For Harry."
Sirius paused at this. Lily had said it. The two words defined what Sirius' search had started as. And now, he remembered. Why he was there. What he needed to do.
As he began to turn away, after asking of these places, James turned to him. "Sirius. When you get to Harry- there are things we know here- tell him-"
"I have to get to Harry."
Two hours later
The group of four walked down the cement pathway toward the setting sun. Viviana and Halia each carried two bags, filled with clothing and other essentials. The plans had been made. The three teenagers (Viviana had at one point asked why Derrick had to come, to which Halia replied, "Have you looked at him lately? Hotness!") would accompany Sirius to England, via North Carolina, and return him safely to Grimmauld Place.
Sirius turned behind him to look at dimming sky over the ocean. Thousands of miles away, Harry was there, waiting for him. Sirius had to be there for his seventeenth birthday, when Harry became of age.
"Oh no, Derrick, you are not driving!" Viviana shouted, breaking Sirius from his reverie.
The girl had grabbed the keys out of his hands, and stuffed them in her pocket. Derrick looked at her, cocking his head to the side, silently questioning whether or not Vivi believed that he would do it.
"Don't. You. Dare." Viviana glared out at Derrick.
"I was only saying that it would be entirely possible for me to get the keys if I really wanted to."
"Derrick, shut up," Halia said, pushing him out of the way as she jammed her bags into Viviana's trunk.
Ten minutes later, and they were on their way to Derrick's apartment. The girls refused to go up, knowing full well that they didn't want to see (or smell, as was more often the case) what was up there.
Sirius was sitting in the passenger seat, next to Viviana. He was still coming to grips with being alive again. And even after talking to the three, he wasn't quite sure if he trusted them. He got the chance to ask as many questions as he wanted on the trip to the Raleigh Durham airport in North Carolina.
"So how do you three know each other?"
"Well, Viviana and I have been friends since we were five, and went to school together until two years ago," Halia said.
"Yeah, my parents decided a nice boarding school was the place for me," Halia added sullenly.
"Hi," the girl had said to Halia. "I'm Vivi."
"I'm Halia Grey," Halia had answered. "Do you like coloring? I color all the time. Here, share my crayons."
Viviana sat down, in the short blue chair, her legs swinging down, as she picked up the green crayon and started to fill in the grass on her coloring sheet.
"And Derrick Olin here," Viviana said. "Well, you tell him, Halia."
Halia took the lead. "We met him in seventh grade. Like second year," she added at Sirius' blank look. "He cheated off of Viviana's paper once, and blamed her for it. And somehow, we've been... Well, friends isn't really the word. We've tried to get rid of him for a while now. Accomplices is the term."
"I did not copy off of her! Viviana copied off of me," Derrick replied indignantly.
"Right," Viviana replied. "Sure. So then Derrick had to go and graduate, leaving me at school alone."
"You're still in school?" Sirius asked.
"Seniors- Seventh years- this fall," Halia replied.
"So, where were your parents?"
"Well, I don't live there normally, my parents are on a 'second honeymoon' so I'm staying with Vivi, whose mother went out of town for a two month on business," Halia replied.
"And your father?" Sirius asked Viviana.
Viviana sighed. "Do you want me to tell him?" Halia asked.
"No, I'll do it," Viviana replied. "I've never met my father. He and my mother were never married, so I don't even know what he was like."
"Was?" Sirius asked.
"He died five years ago, so I guess I never will meet him. It's not like he ever tried to contact me. All I got was some money from his will. I don't even share his last name."
"I- I'm sorry," Sirius said. "I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't. How could you know?" Viviana replied. "So don't worry about it, alright?"
In the next twenty seconds, the car jerked to the side of the road, a loud pop was heard, and the engine spluttered. The lights in the car faded, leaving the four in the dark.
"Oh this is so 'Destinos,'" Halia said.
-- A/N: Never Knowing: Well, here ends this. Next chapter: See the friends encounter the airport. Or will they get there? Will Vivana get her car fixed? Will we see Derrick topless? All these questions answered and more, in the next chapter.
And for all of you who don't know, Destinos is a Spanish soap opera, and the whole theme is a woman who travels everywhere around the world, searching for the son of her employer. Her car breaks down at least three times while she drives.
A/N: Angel Black: Derrick without a shirt, I think that can be arranged. I also loved the gorgeous plot hole you left me (NK points out that it's now filled... kinda). That was so sweet. (Note the heavy hint of sarcasm.) So I think the more pertinent question is: "Will Annah be able to fix Callie's massive plot hole?" I shall or die trying. (Oh come on, get over it.)