Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition: Semifinals
Team: Chudley Cannons
Position: Chaser 3
Prompt: [Social Science Fiction] The social sciences are the overriding theme in this type of fiction; however, science and technology will usually play a central role in the structure of the extrapolated society. (Also known as Speculative Fiction)
Optional Prompts: 1. [word] Collapse; 11. [word] Universe; 12. [character] Sirius Black
AN: This is slightly inspired by the movie Interstellar (specifically the last scene). Thank you Hannah for betaing!
It begins with him and ends with him.
Sirius wonders when he realized he himself would be the only constant in his life. No, that isn't right. He had realized it a long time ago—perhaps in those first few hours on the Phoenix, when he had been strapped into his seat and prayed that they would survive. Or perhaps it was when he had felt the spaceship lurch as it entered a new universe, the years slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.
The better question, Sirius thinks, is when he accepted it.
He had signed up to be a voyager. He had known the consequences. When Dumbledore had approached him a year ago—a hundred years ago here, Sirius corrects himself—he had known what was coming. The conversation still lurks in his mind.
"You're asking me to travel through… space?" Sirius furrowed his brows. He respected Dumbledore, sure, but he suspected that the wizard was going a slight bit barmy in his old age.
Dumbledore clasped his hands behind his back. "To another universe, actually."
"Right, thanks for clarifying," Sirius muttered under his breath.
"I believe that there is somewhere out there where wizards can live, should we need to," Dumbledore said.
"You don't think we'll defeat Voldemort?"
"I do. I believe in the Order, but…" Suddenly Dumbledore looked even older, if that were possible. Shadows painted the sagging skin below his eyes. "We must be prepared. We must do this. For the wizarding world."
Sirius perched on the edge of the old sofa and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Wasn't this what he had wanted? To be of use to the Order?
But he would be leaving.
And he didn't know when he would get back. For that matter, he didn't know how he would get back.
He lifted his head, black curls draping over his face, as he heard something—something that made him pause.
It was Harry's laugh.
"Oh, come off it, Ron! I didn't make her cry!"Harry laughed again, and Sirius thought that it may have been the best thing he'd ever hear. That he'd give anything to make sure that Harry was always able to laugh.
He knew, then, what he had to do.
He wonders whether Harry did laugh as he sits beside him. Sits beside a sleeping man over a hundred years old with foggy green eyes, a man that Sirius only knew as a teenager. He still marvels at it, how nine months of his life became ninety-nine years for Harry. His godson's face is lined with wrinkles, the skin on his hands paper-thin. Once a shock of black, his hair has faded into grey.
For a moment, Sirius thinks that is what James would have looked like.
He wants to collapse.
Looking down at his hands, he pushes the thought away just as fast as it arrived. But the sight of his own body brings another shock.
Sirius is now younger than Harry.
A lump forming in his throat, he moves to rise from his chair, but soft fingers wrap around his wrist, pulling him down. Sirius jolts and meets Harry's blinking eyes.
"You came back."
"I never stopped trying," Sirius whispers. And he means it. He can't even begin to count the hours he spent poring over the spacecraft's daily reports, trying to figure out a way to get back. He can't begin to count the hours he spent tossing in bed, wondering if he would go insane all alone on the Phoenix. When he had lost his crewmates, he hadn't stopped trying—no, he would remember Harry's laugh and continue.
Harry closes his eyes, inhaling through the tubes that wind in and out of his nostrils. "I never stopped waiting."
Sirius watches him carefully, gaze flitting between his frail figure and the beeping monitor on the other side of the bed. A hologram floats over Harry, mapping his body in glowing blue lines. Sirius can see where time has chipped away at his godson's health—it's evident in the thin cracks of his weakened bones, the weakly pulsing heart in his chest.
What did he miss?
Ninety-nine birthdays. Harry's marriage, based on the faintly glimmering silver ring on Harry's hand.
As if Harry can sense Sirius's gaze, he says, "Gin and I have been married for ninety-three years and counting." He snorts. "Though I don't suppose there will be much more to count."
"I missed—"
"You missed a lot," Harry says bluntly, his eyes trained on Sirius's face, as if trying to burn it into his memory. "But you're here now."
So he tells Sirius how he defeated Voldemort at the age of seventeen. He tells Sirius how he proposed to Ginny Weasley half-drunk during a Quidditch match, how they got married in a whirlwind ceremony less than four months later. He tells Sirius how he went on to become Head Auror, although he quit three years later and started teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. He tells Sirius how he and Ginny have three children—"one's named after you and Dad," he says, and Sirius starts to cry. Harry continues as if nothing happened, although his voice starts to shake slightly. "He was a cheeky little blighter."
Sirius freezes. "Was?"
Harry looks away, twisting his ring around his finger. "James Sirius Potter, my son—" Harry's voice breaks, but he presses on. "My son died at the age of twenty five when the Phoenix II exploded."
Sirius starts to shake his head—
"It was a mission to recover the Phoenix."
A grandson that he'll never know. A boy named after him, a boy that fought for him, born and dead before Sirius could ever lay his eyes on him. A boy born and killed while his namesake floated somewhere in the middle of another universe.
He wants to collapse.
Outside the sun rises, its crimson and orange rays spreading over a new world—a world that Sirius doesn't know, a world that Sirius doesn't want to know.
And he feels like he is back on the Phoenix, alone and caged by the metal walls, the memories of a time passed playing through his mind.