For the next few hours, Sirius talked about magic. How it manifested in children. how they learn to control it. Where they went to learn how to use it. About the various different fields. About Purebloods. About muggleborns. About halfbloods. About squibs. About muggles. About the war that had claimed so many lives. About his time in Azkaban. About Harry and Hermione rescuing him. About living in Grimmauld Place. About the frantic summons from Snape about Harry and his friends going to the Ministry. About falling through the Veil.
Darkness came and Bucky watched in awe, his head having dropped to bearable levels, as Sirius transfigured a handkerchief into a tent, summoned pieces of wood and made a cheery little fire, summoned fish from the river and transfigured rocks into pans and bowls. Plants were summoned and force-grown, to add to a pot.
"Magic is amazing." Sirius grinned and handed over a bowl of fish stew.
"I love magic." Bucky grinned back.
The guards at the Howling Commando's base saw Falsworth stare at the two men staggering up the road and, after raising his binoculars to try and identify them, the Howlie quickly sent soldiers to help them.
"It's Barnes!" He called to the squad seated below the watchtower. "He looks injured. Go get him, take him to Phillips' tent. Him and the fella with him." When the squad just looked at him, he yelled. "Now! Move!"
The squad leapt into action and within seconds, both Barnes and his helper were being not-so-gently manhandled into the camp and into the tent that Col. Phillips used as his Command Centre. Currently the tent was empty of all but a couple of intel-weenies, that were writing up charts. The two men were deposited in seats and medics swarmed them, demanding answers to a multitude of questions but failing to give either man a chance to actually answer a single question.
Soon the medics declared that Barnes was suffering the remains of a concussion and exhaustion. The unknown man with him, was in a similarly exhausted state but was also identified as recovering from starvation. It was postulated that he may have been a gulag prisoner that escaped into the mountains but the medics considerately didn't ask. His upper-class British accent identified him as a possible intelligence agent and that put a halt to any questions they wanted to ask, even without him saying anything more.
A tired and saddened Phillips sat in the passenger seat as the jeep was driven into camp by one of the newer members of the Howlies, a young rookie named Juniper. The young man leapt from the open jeep and signalled one of the medics to take Agent Carter to her tent.
"Sir?" A British accent caught his attention and he turned his head to glare at Falsworth.
"Not now." Phillips snapped.
"Yes now, sir." Falsworth snapped back. "Barnes is alive. We got back four hours ago and Barnes wandered in an hour later. A civilian found him and helped him get back here. They're both in the Command Tent."
"What?!" Phillips exclaimed, turning to look at the man standing beside the jeep.
"Barnes is alive." Falsworth repeated. "He and his helper are in the Command Tent, under guard. Jones, Dugan and Morita are watching them, sir."
"Take me there." Phillips ordered.
"Yes, sir." Falsworth saluted, climbed into the jeep's driver's seat and put the jeep into gear. It took a few minutes to cross the compound and reach the Command Tent, with Falsworth bringing the jeep to a halt in front of the tent's opening.
"Let's go." Inside, Barnes and a second man were both leaning against the same post from opposite sides, their heads nearly touching. Both men were clearly asleep. "How long have they been here?" Phillips made no effort to keep his voice down but while Barnes leapt to his feet, the other man merely opened an eye and closed it again.
"Sir!" Barnes saluted his CO.
"At ease, Barnes." Phillips nodded back at him, before turning to the Howlies. "Leave us. I'll send him along once I have his report." The four Howling Commandos nodded and left the tent and Phillips turned back to Barnes. "I'd like a report and now."
"Yes, sir." Barnes answered. "We cleared the train and-"
"Stop." Phillips held up a hand. "I've had many reports of what happened on the train. Start from you being blown out of the hole in the side carriage."
"I managed to grab hold of a handrail but it was damaged. Steve… The Captain tried to get to me but he was still a few feet away when the handrail gave way." Barnes glanced at the unknown man and raised an eyebrow, the man nodded in reply. "I fell. This is Sirius Black, a displaced Brit, he managed to catch me using a…"
"Call it a personal flying device." A very proper British voice cut in, when Barnes hesitated.
"A personal flying device?" Phillips snorted. "What sort of flying device? A plane?"
"A broom." Black answered.
"A broom? Like a witch uses?" Phillips snorted.
"Pretty much." Black shrugged. "Witches' brooms have different cushioning charms to wizards' brooms but other than that, they're the same thing."
"If you're not prepared to take this seriously, sir, I will have you-" Phillips cut himself off as he felt his feet left the ground and he rose into the sir supported by nothing more than Black's angry gaze and the thin stick being pointed at him.
"My name is Sirius Orion Black and I was being serious." Black's glare slowly softened as Barnes placed his hand over Black's and pushed it and the stick, towards the ground.
"How's about you explain it to him, like ya did to me?" Barnes suggested.
Black looked from Phillips to Barnes and back before sighing. "Fine." He shrugged and Phillips was lowered to the ground.
"What was that?!" He snapped out.
"Magic." Black answered.
"Like what Schmidt does?" There was clear distaste on Phillips' face.
"No, he could only dream of what I can do." Black snorted. "Think Merlin and Arthur and you'd have a better idea." Black flicked his stick and the canvas chairs blurred and became elegant armchairs. "Let's get comfortable and I'll walk you through a short-ish explanation. Yes?"
"Yes." Phillips nodded, gingerly sitting in a chair, running his hands along the chair's leather-clad armrests.
The next four hours were filled with Black's explanation and questions asked by Phillips and Barnes. But at Black's request, nothing was written down.
Nearing dark, Phillips told Black that he would like to bring another person into the discussion and after Black agreed, Carter was recalled from her tent. While waiting for her, Barnes asked after his friend.
"Captain Rogers…" Phillips hesitated and sighed but continued. "We've just come from the mission that ended Schmidt. Captain Rogers was able to board Schmidt's aircraft as he was attempting to escape. There was a fight and Schmidt died, but he'd put the aircraft into some type of automatic control and it was headed straight for New York. Rogers couldn't remove the auto-control, he could override it but only manually. Every time he let go of the controls the craft would correct course for New York, again. He was forced to put the craft into the water." Barnes gasped and slumped, Black catching him and easing him to a chair. "There was no time for any other options."
Carter wasn't all that pleased to be called out of her grief but listened carefully and asked a multitude of questions.
One of which was, 'would he be able to locate the remains of Captain rogers?'
Black was extremely apologetic as he explained that unless the craft that Rogers was in had settled to the seabed, he wouldn't be able to use magic to locate him, both the caster and the being/item being located, had to be in contact with the earth's surface, even if only via a building's foundations, or the spells just wouldn't work.
Carter nodded sipped at her tea.
Phillips asked Black how he'd come to be in the air above the alps and while Black grimaced, he gave a brief explanation.
"An archway?" Carter asked. "About thirty foot tall? Fifteen across? The surface ripples like water or really fine silk in a breeze?"
"Yes." Black nodded. "The stonework is blackened, rough edged, almost broken."
"Like the wall it was part of had collapsed but it hadn't." Carter added. "I know it, or of one like it."
"Where?" Black asked. "If possible, I'd like to see if I can get it to send me back. My godson is fifteen, alone and there's a war coming."
Carter and Phillips shared a long, silent look before Phillips nodded.
"New York." Phillips said. "You'll have to wait until we head back. I've been notified that we've been recalled. Germany surrendered. The war's over. Carter will see that you are among the first to head to the US and she'll get you in to see the arch. If you can get it working, we might be able to help you. Maybe send some troops."
"No, don't." Black said. "Your people… It's supposed to be a one-way trip. Up until now, we believed the Veil killed those that went into it."
"But you lived." Barnes argued.
"I did, but you also have to take into consideration time travel." Black said. "I entered the Veil sometime between one and two in the morning on the 18th of June... 1996..." Both Phillips and Carter caught their breaths. "Exactly. Me re-entering the Veil? Well, there's a chance that I'll just be returned to where and when I came from. But your people? Going forward in time is… bad… the variables are… enormous. For your people, there's no way back."
"I have nothing to come back for." Barnes said. "My family is gone. My father's an abusive asshole. Steve's dead. There's nothing for me here. If I can help you keep your godson alive, I'm coming with you."
"I-" Carter opened her mouth and was cut off.
"No." Black frowned at them both. "You're not making a choice now. You've had a bad shock and any decision you make right now, will be a bad one."
"Exactly right." Phillips nodded sharply. "It'll be weeks before we can get Black and Barnes to New York and then Black still has to study the arch-Veil thing, before he can work out whether he can get it to do what he wants. No hasty decisions, Missy, Barnes. Get your heads back on your shoulders before you make too many plans. Understood?" Barnes reluctantly nodded.
Carter glared at the commander before nodding sharply. "Yes, sir. Shall I see to accommodation and clothing for Mr Black?"
"Put him in with Barnes." Phillips said. "Pack up Rogers' stuff, we're not leaving his personal stuff for the Army's Press ghouls to dig through. I suggest you conveniently misplace anything you want to keep."
"I can help with that." Black said. "Find me a box and I'll enchant it with an undetectable extension charm, it makes the inside larger than the outside."
"Good, do that." Phillips said. "Just leave some or the brass will be complaining that someone's taken it all and launch an investigation. Let's avoid that."
Later that evening, an unlabelled army trunk was subject to a number of different types of magic. Mostly runes and charms. The result was a trunk that was extended inside, that would shrink to the size of a deck of cards. As Barnes, Black and Carter sorted through Rogers' things, stories were told, tears fell and the trunk was packed with memories of a man that was larger-than-life.
One year and seven months later, Sirius stepped into the small set of rooms that he shared with Barnes, in the nondescript building, in Brooklyn, New York, that housed the Veil. He shed his coat and crossed the room to the kitchenette and hugged the other man from behind.
"I found it." He said, resting his head on the taller man's shoulder-blade.
"You found it? The cypher?" Bucky wriggled until he was able to turn around within Sirius' arms and raised one hand to rest on Sirius' face. "You found it? Good or bad?"
"Depends."
"On?"
"I can get it to send me back." Sirius said. "I can even get it to send you there, but…"
"But…?"
"The Veil's designed to be accessed using magic and you have none, if you go through it, it will change you." Sirius avoided looking at Bucky's eyes.
"Changed? How?" Bucky asked.
"I don't know." Sirius sighed. "That's the problem, it just says, 'changed'. Not how. I mean, the how is magically, of course, but I kind of meant I don't know what the changes will be."
"Yeah, I figured that." Bucky pressed a kiss to the top of Sirius' head and looped his arms around the older man. "I'm still coming with you." He clasped Sirius' upper arms and pushed him back far enough to look him in the face. "You said, your friends won't judge me for being a muggle, right?"
"Right. They won't care, other than it makes you vulnerable to someone casting magic on you."
"They have to know I'm there, first, Siri, I'm a snipper, I'm used to being up high and out of sight. But what about Harry?"
"He won't care, neither will Hermione, his best friend. She's a muggleborn, her family are muggles. And Harry grew up with muggles, not nice ones admittingly, but still muggles. If you aren't aggressive or abusive towards him, he'll be fine." Sirius said soothingly. "Moony won't give a damn, his ma was a muggle. A number of the Order have muggle family or were muggle-raised, they won't care. It's only the purebloods and the DeathEaters that will object."
"And neither of us gives a damn about them." Bucky nodded. "When are we doing this? And what are we taking?"
"I need to send word to Carter and Phillips." Sirius said. "That was part of our agreement. I keep them up to date on my research and they give me unlimited access to the Veil. Giving us accommodation, an income and providing you with employment while I'm here, was a bonus."
"Yeah." Bucky nodded. "I expected to be dishonourably discharged, the minute the brass found out we were sleeping together."
"Thank Phillips for that." Sirius chuckled. "He blasted someone's eardrums out. Told them that what we did behind our doors was our business, but if they were really demanding more information, he was of half a mind to ask us to tell them. But that personally, he didn't want to know. And he also reminded them that James Buchannan Barnes was no longer in the army, he was employed by the SSR, so an army discharge wasn't going to happen."
"Whoa…" Bucky whispered.
"Yeah. He really laid in the beater's bat."
"Phillips doesn't suffer fools."
"Oh, no, definitely not." Sirius laughed. "He reminds me of my Auror mentor, Moody."
"The guy with one leg?"
"That's him. Constant vigilance. That's his motto. Likes to yell it, when we least expect it."
"Great." Bucky sighed.
"The fact that you're a sniper and see just about everything? He's going to love having you around." Sirius frowned. "Once you explain what a sniper is and what they do, that is."
Phillips and Carter sat opposite Sirius and Bucky and listened carefully as Sirius laid out his research finding and explained what he and Bucky planned to do.
"So, the solstice?" Carter asked.
"Almost, that's December 21st." Sirius nodded. "We're going to go in, a couple of days earlier. The 18th."
"Why the solstice?" Phillips asked.
"The solstices are the turning points in the natural world." Sirius explained. "Summer to Autumn, Autumn to Winter, etc. I went into the Veil three days before the June solstice and was spat out here, three days before the March solstice. My arithmancy says that for the best possible result, I should enter the Veil three days before the December solstice and I'll be spat out there three days before the September solstice." He shrugged. "Either that or it'll be three minutes after I entered the Veil. That's a little vague. Both possibilities come up equally viable."
"Then we've got a lot to do in the next few weeks." Bucky said.
"Write up your wish lists and I'll see what we've got in stock and what I can requisition." Phillips ordered.