Here we are again. Sorry about the delay. After this one, we have two more chapters left. Thank you for reading!

Chapter five – Comprehend

It is when they are descending the stairs that lead to the Headmaster's office that it catches up with him: part of the step has been blasted off and he slips on the jagged end of the sooty stone. Ron's hand that shoots out to steady his elbow is what keeps him from falling.

"Oi! Mate, you all right?"

Hermione is two steps behind them. "Harry?"

Harry's stone step is tilting sideways and for a moment everything blurs together. He blinks the castle back into sharpness. "Yeah. Fine."

The grip he has on the two wands, phoenix and Elder, has made his knuckles go white. With a conscious effort he eases his hold on them and the band of pain across his knuckles disappears. He meets Ron's inquiring blue gaze and for a few heartbeats all they do is stare at each other. Then it catches up with Ron, too.

All of it. Half of Hogwarts lies in ruins around them. Voldemort might be dead but so are others. So many others.

A shadow draws in over Ron's face and Harry can feel the same happening to himself. It is over and they have no reason any longer to stall. It is time to face the aftermath.

The last battle consumed him. It forced every other thought from his mind until all he could think of was how – how – to gain the upper hand. If there was one more loophole, just one more twist to the path he had been walking. He had thought not, for a while, and had been ready to die. And maybe he had died, too. Harry's overworked brain does not seem to know, at the moment, if he is dead or alive.

He tastes copper on his tongue and he has no idea how it is that his legs and feet are still functioning. He has not eaten or slept in hours and his wounds and scrapes and bruises are beginning to hurt in unison. Sound comes drifting to them from the Great Hall as they approach and even though it is really quite muted it seems to thunder through his head like centaur hooves.

They step across the threshold, all of them fully visible as Harry has stowed away the Cloak in his robes, but it turns out that he is quite free now to walk among the others without being clapped on the back or getting his shoulder thumped. The explosion of joy, of utter elation, that engulfed his fellow students and teachers and all the others at the final death of Voldemort has dwindled into relief, has melted away. And it tows grief in its wake.

The Great Hall is cracked and dusty, maybe even partly wounded beyond repair, but it serves. People sit at the tables, holding each other. Crying into each other. Talking in hushed voices. Harry, Ron and Hermione dully weave between the tables until they spot the Weasleys and Ron drifts off, his exchange with Harry on the matter completed in silence and perfect understanding. Hermione stops by Luna where she and Dean are sitting with Seamus and Ernie.

Harry walks on. He has no desire to ever again see a dead body and still his feet carry him across the Hall and into the room that leads off it, where they have laid out the dead. Everyone except for Voldemort, it turns out. They lie in neat rows, blank faces towards a high ceiling. The windows in here are smaller but they show the dazzling morning outside just as well as any others. The sky is still rosy and gold is glittering on the horizon. Harry turns his back to it.

He is alone with the fallen. His sacrifice.

He swallows against the rising bile in his throat and the floor under his feet seem to dip once again and waver. For a brief second the world turns black but then he sees them again – all of them, laid out for his conscience to battle with.

Then, a movement in the corner of his eye makes him start. He sees her first: Tonks, pale and just as dead as everyone else. There is the faintest shimmer of a soft, pearly pink in her streaked-back hair. They have placed her next to Lupin.

There is a man crying over Lupin's dead body.

He had not seen him first but now Harry averts his eyes and makes to turn away. He does not want to intrude, but, finally, his feet stop working and he looks again.

As if the man senses his presence, he lifts his shaggy black head and makes something sharp fall from Harry's throat to the empty pit of his stomach.

Grey, haunted eyes fix on him.

Harry's legs turn to water as the floor rushes up to meet his knees.

-xxx-

He lies against something almost warm. Something hard-soft, swathed in fabric.

He shoots up with a stab of pain through his heart and head. Bright light is falling in through high windows and specks of dust are still floating in the air. It is too bright.

It rushes over him. Somebody is breathing beside him.

It is not real. Only it is. Simply because it must be. Harry stares down at him and tries to comprehend. Sirius' face is pale and the sheen of stubble over his chin and sunken cheeks is a layer of shadow that looks hard, somehow. There are dark pools under his eyes.

"Sirius?" His voice comes out in a choked whisper. If this is another dream, another King's Cross type of vision or – worse yet – a Polyjuice experiment, Harry will not be able to handle it. "Sirius, please..."

He stirs. His fingers – those long, beautiful fingers that once worked Harry open until he thought he might dissolve – twitch against the lumpy mattress they apparently have been resting on. Sirius is on his back.

"Harry..." It is no more than a disturbance of the air. His lips barely move.

"Sirius..."

He is suddenly afraid to touch. It feels like ages and ages and ages ago that they shared the same bed at Grimmauld Place. That was another life, another reality. Now, with the agonising waves of loss and grief rolling through the Great Hall, death is so much more present still than life.

Harry is cold all over; his fingers are ice. Sirius looks like himself and yet does not. He is something else and yet perfectly identical to the man that Harry has longed for so hard that at times he has barely been able to breathe.

It is impossible to understand.

Staring down at his godfather, the plea tumbles out of him before he knows he has opened his mouth. It is barely audible: "Don't go."

Then comes the darkness, and Harry rips off his glasses and buries his face in Sirius' shoulder. Sirius, who lies still as if dead.

-xxx-

The next time he wakes it is because somebody is shaking his shoulder gently. He shoots up nonetheless, with muddled dreams still twisting darkly in the corners of his mind.

"Potter." Professor McGonagall is pressing his glasses into his hands.

She has twisted up her hair again and washed her face but she cannot wash away the weariness in her eyes. "Potter," she says again, a little firmer now that Harry is attempting to focus. "I'm sorry to wake you but you have been sleeping for quite a while and we thought it best to check on you."

He frowns. There is a dull pounding at his temples.

Sirius.

He turns his head so quickly to look that stars spark around the edges of his vision. His godfather has not moved an inch.

"Professor," he croaks out. It hurts, speaking, like a piece of his voice has been chipped off and left with a splintery edge that now drags against his throat. "What's wrong with him?"

She has been bending over them but now she straightens. A deep furrow has settled between her brows. "I could not tell you," she admits, honestly but not unkindly.

With what feels like an incredible effort, Harry manages to stand. Every muscle in his body protests and the pounding in his head intensifies. "Did you know he was back?"

She gives a curt little nod. "I had heard."

They are in another room, adjacent to the Great Hall and rather small. He can hear voices drifting over the threshold and warm golden light spills in across the worn tiles to pool upon them. Outside, the sun has risen higher and it, too, casts light into the room in broad strokes. It does nothing for Sirius, however, who somehow looks like he is swathed in darkness. It makes something cold and sinister twist around Harry's lungs, threatening to crush the air out of him.

"Professor…?"

He has no words for it, none that he is willing to utter, that is. For he could never stand hearing himself voicing the most dreadful prospect of all: is he dying?

"Potter, I need you to eat something."

"But–"

"I will ask Poppy to take a look at him."

Harry stares at her. It seems his brain cannot work out exactly what it is she is saying – it could just as well be a year before he understands that she is talking about Madam Pomfrey. Still, his face must have spoken for him for suddenly she grips him by the shoulders and behind her square spectacles her eyes turn hard.

"Potter. We are quite done with the dying, do you hear me?"

He nods, not only because he so desperately wants to believe her but also because it proves tricky to do much else before that gaze.

"Good." She, too, nods, as if they have come to a mutually satisfactory understanding. "Now, there are sandwiches and pumpkin juice in the Hall. And hot chocolate. I order you to have at least one mug."

It turns out to be a bit of a relief to be given something else to do besides dealing with Sirius' reappearance. Harry finds his way to a seat beside Luna and a minor mound of sandwiches and several pitchers of pumpkin juice. They do not speak much but she smiles at him and that helps. She does not remark on the memories of tears on his cheeks either. It helps a lot, actually, and Harry silently vows that one day when he can find his voice he will tell her that.

When he returns to the little room where Sirius is sleeping there is no sign of Madam Pomfrey or McGonagall. The sunlight is still streaming in through the windows and it plays in the chandelier above and in the few gilded frames on the walls; there is some shuffling and indignant huffing in one of the portraits upon his arrival, but Harry has no time to spare any curious oil-on-canvas onlookers. He feels a fraction braver now, courtesy of the sandwiches and the chocolate he has had perhaps, and somewhat warmer.

There is still room beside Sirius.

Gingerly he lowers himself down until they are lying side by side. Flooded as the room is by the brightness of the sun it would be easy to admit to delusion: it is difficult to pretend that his godfather does not look like his skin is spun from dreary dreams and every shade of night. Still, Harry must try and look past this and find something hopeful to hold on to. If he cannot do this – he is quite certain – they could just as well lay him out in the other room, and forget him.

Forcing his fear firmly aside, Harry stares into Sirius' face. There is a smile there somewhere (never mind if it is cynical), he makes himself sure of it, and any minute now Sirius will say something… Something sarcastic maybe. And then he will open his eyes and wink at Harry and tell him that he looks like something Padfoot could have dug up from Hagrid's vegetable patch.

But there is no movement.

So it is easier not seeing.

Harry takes off his glasses and rubs his stinging eyes with the back of his hand. He is rather filthy and that does not help with the stinging but he does not care. His throat is too tight anyway and…

Then come the tears. So many tears – white-hot tears – burn in Harry's eyes as he squeezes them shut. Not able any longer to keep his distance, he buries his face in his godfather's shoulder and winds his arm around his waist. He is so thin under his worn robes.

He can barely breathe with his face pressed against Sirius but it does not matter. All that matters is that Sirius lets go of a small moan.

"My..."

Harry is crying in earnest now. He is wetting Sirius' robes and shuddering against his arm and shoulder. It pours out of him: all the fear and all the darkness that has collected in his heart over the past two years. He clutches at his godfather as he finally allows himself to shatter.

Sirius is still there when he is done. Harry tries to catch his breath. He moves back a little, half-pushes himself up enough to be able to stare into the other man's blurred face. "You're here." It sounds silly when it drops from his lips but for the longest time Sirius has not been around.

There is a small, easy-to-miss twitch in the corner of his godfather's mouth. "'Cause you." His dry lips stay slightly parted. "Couldn' keep m'away."

A tightness that is not entirely awful gathers around Harry's heart. He lies down again, back against Sirius and closes his eyes. Beside him, his godfather's exhale blends with the play of golden light:

"My Harry."

TBC