A/N: There are actually two sides to this story– this version is from Danny's perspective. I plan to post another, parallel story from... well, you'll-see-who's perspective, later on. That way, depending on which fandom you prefer, you get to read this from whichever perspective you like! Naturally there'll be some details in one that won't be in the other and visa-versa, but that's sort of the idea. :D

Enjoy!

Edit July 1, 2007: I fixed the RV– Spector Speeder thing in the last chapter, plus edited this one. Nothing major, though, so don't worry.

Edit November 12, 2007: Fixed up some more stuff.

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Of Ghosts and Wizards

CHAPTER 2

Vlad Plasmius floated angrily in the middle of his lab, suddenly confronted by a disturbingly confident figure that had just blasted through the reinforced metal that housed his secret underground lab. The horrifically pale and almost disfigured being before him screamed of ghost, and yet he could not be– Plasmius did not sense him, and he did not seem to possess any power– at least not the ghostly kind.

"I have a proposssal for you, Plasssmiusssss..." The being spoke, sounding very much like a snake with a hissing voice that dripped with venom.

Vlad narrowed his eyes, enraged at this being that had the audacity to burst into his lab, and thoroughly deliver chaos upon it. "And who, may I ask, are you?"

"My name is Voldemort. Many know me asss The Dark Lord, and it will be asss such that you addresssss me. I believe there is some information that you possesssss that may be useful to me, and I would be thrilled to have your assissstance in an upcoming sssituation..."

The seething halfa sneered and scoffed. "And why would I assist you with anything?" He demanded haughtily.

Red eyes gleamed with a sort of perverted happiness as the robed figure said nothing. He instead produced a strangely polished, white-wooded stick that reflected the ghastly green light from the open ghost zone portal behind him. Vlad tensed with confusion as Voldemort raised the stick and pointed it at him in what may have been considered a threatening gesture.

And suddenly, it became very, very clear why.

"Phasmatis Crucio!"

Within moments the powerful halfa was writhing on the ground in agony, screaming mindlessly through the pain, every nerve being attacked ceaselessly, before he finally fell into the blissful depths of unconsciousness.

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Back in the ghost zone, Danny and company were making their way back home. Since their course had basically been a big circle, it didn't take them long to be back to the ghost portal. And though it had only taken them about ten minutes, all the watches told them otherwise– that it had been an approximate 25 minute trip.

Having arrived home without incident, Danny breathed a small sigh of relief as he un-ghost-ified himself and Sam and Tucker parked and exited the Specter Speeder. The dog, which had hopped out of the Spector Speeder along with Sam and Tucker, tilted its head with puzzlement as it watched Danny transform. Danny just looked back, feeling slightly uneasy by the dog's piercing stare; after a moment, he turned away.

As the three of them (plus dog) walked up the stairs out of the lab, Sam thought out loud, "So... what do we do now?"

"The first thing I'm going to do is fix my watc--" Tucker's eyebrows furled as he paused mid-step and said, "That's really weird... the second hand is back to normal, but the time is still way off."

By now they were at the top of the stairs, and as Danny glanced into the kitchen, he did a double take when he saw the clock on the wall. He blinked, then silently but quickly walked into the living room with Sam and Tucker trailing confusedly behind him.

"Danny?" Sam prompted.

"All the clocks are fast!" He said in a slightly hysterical voice, "About five till six, right Tuck?"

Grabbing Tucker's arm and checking his watch, eyes wide and eyebrows high with disbelieve, Sam replied, "Yeah, you're right, but... how can that be?"

"And I'll bet the clocks at school and anywhere else will say the same thing!" Tucker added. They were in the living room now, and Danny had started to pace in the middle of the room.

"What does this mean?" Sam wondered as she sat down on the couch to watch Danny pace.

"Who knows what it means!" Danny threw his hands up in the air dramatically, and flopped down into an unoccupied chair, obviously nursing a fried brain.

"It means... that time moves slower in the ghost zone that then it does in the normal world," Tucker hesitantly theorized. "I mean, think about it. Our clocks and watches were designed here, in the normal world, so they tell the time of the normal world. It would make sense then that, even in the ghost zone, they would continue telling us the time from here. Which would explain, if what I think is true, why the clocks were running fast while we were in the ghost zone, but are fine now." Tucker was now settled on the couch next to Sam, looking thoughtful.

Danny was still having trouble grasping the situation. "So you're saying that while we were in there for only about three hours, at the most, seven hours passed out here?"

Tucker shrugged, "It would seem that way."

Now Danny sat thoughtfully in his chair. He didn't know quite what to think or say about the whole thing. Had it always been that way, and they just never noticed? Or was this a recent abnormal development that was the clue they'd been looking for all along? And then there was always that door, with the locks neither Sam and Tucker could see, and what lay inside...

That haunting veil, swaying silently in the stale air, with it's halo of corpses. And then there was always–

Danny was startled from his thoughts by a sharp bark. He groaned. "I almost forgot about you," he told the large black canine. "Should we take him to the pound?" He asked Sam and Tucker.

The dog protested with a wine, as if he knew what they were talking about.

"Aw, but Danny, look at how cute he is," Sam pleaded. "I think we should keep him." She said with finality.

"Where!? None of our parents will allow pets!" Danny countered.

"But we can't take him to the pound! That'd be almost as bad as leaving him in the ghost zone! And besides, my parents aren't home often enough to notice anyway."

"It's expensive to have a pet, and it takes a lot of time that we usually don't have."

"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, I've got money to spare and it's summer– we'll have plenty of time to train him!"

Danny gave a growl of frustration, but relented nonetheless. "Fine, whatever. It's not like I have any right to tell what to do," he grumbled the second sentence, "But I just know that it's going to be more trouble than it's worth." he added as a last testament to what he thought of her keeping the dog. And, even though at this point he was just being stubborn, the statement rang with a strange sense of truth that left Danny feeling uneasy as he said it.

The dog, whose head had swivelled back and forth between them during their small argument, gave a bark of approval and proceeded to pant and wag its tail happily.

Sam squealed and hugged the dog as she said, "See, he's happy! What should we name him?" Sam asked, looking thoughtful and content.

"You can name him whatever you want." Danny said. But suddenly, he felt a whispering in his mind.

Sirius.

He stiffened. What was that? Where did that name come from? Why did it feel so... familiar somehow, as if he had met the person?

Sirius.

His eyes drifted back toward the dog, and as their eyes met, he heard the name again, louder, echoing throughout his mind with startling clarity, in a voice he did not know. His mind felt cloudy as if there was someone else's thoughts overlapped with his own, and all he could see where the icy blue eyes of the mysterious dog.

Sirius!

"Sirius!" Danny blurted out loud.

"What?" Sam asked, turning towards Danny, slightly startled by his sudden enthusiasm.

"Uh..." Suddenly Danny was back to normal, the return making a rushing sound in his ears, and the cobwebs on his mind quickly receded. He mentally flailed for a moment before regaining his bearings. "His... name! His name should be Sirius." he said, hoping Sam wouldn't notice him going crazy. For there was no other explanation, really, was there? He was hearing voices for goodness's sake!

If Sam noticed his inner turmoil, she made no move to mention it as she faced the dog once again and said, "As in the constellation? Hmmm... I like it. What do you think, boy? You like the name Sirius?"

The dog had continued staring intensely at Danny, sitting stock still, but at the mention of his new name, it gave an indulging-ly happy bark and started wagging its tail once more.

Tucker, who had resulted to playing a game on his PDA during the whole exchange, suddenly said, "Hey... isn't Jazz supposed to be home soon?"

As if summoned by the sounding of her name, the front door swung open, revealing Jazz, book bag and all.

When she saw the fury new addition to the group, she simply quirked an eyebrow and said, "I hadn't realized we'd gotten a dog."

Danny pointed an accusing finger at Sam as he said, "She's the one that wanted to keep it. And it'll be staying at her house."

Sam glared at Danny but stayed quiet. Jazz just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Just make sure it doesn't make a mess in the house, and if it does, clean up after it. Other than that, I don't care what you guys do with it."

With that, she headed up the stairs and disappeared, presumably into her room to do more studying.

In an attempt to steer the impending argument between his two friends in a calmer direction, Tucker observed, "Jazz seems to have mellowed out a bit, hasn't she?"

Danny and Sam, who had been about to start another yelling match, paused, looked at Tucker, and then up the stairs where Jazz had just gone. Danny shrugged and Sam wondered out loud, "I wonder why that is?"

Tucker shrugged and went back to his game, his mission accomplished.

Danny, who had stood up when Jazz had gotten home, plopped back down into his chair. Now that he thought about it, she had been a lot nicer the past few months. Maybe she had just gotten tired of nagging him all the time. But it was more than that, too. She somehow seemed more understanding when his grades faltered, or he got home at odd hours of the night after taking care of a couple stray ghosts. Not that she knew that. Or if she did, she was very good at keeping a secret. Danny almost laughed at that. If Jazz really knew what he'd been doing, Danny felt sure she wouldn't be so understanding.

Instead of saying any of this aloud, Danny simply shrugged and said, "Well, for whatever reason, let's just consider ourselves lucky." Then he sighed and continued, "I just wish we had had more luck today in the ghost zone.

"Maybe you just need to let it go and relax, Danny." Sam said soothingly. With a warm hand on his shoulder, she continued, "Maybe you're just being given a break."

Danny couldn't help the feeling that Sam was terribly, horribly wrong.

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After an couple hours of half-heartedly watching TV, the three of them went up to Danny's room to call it a night. Since the three of them spent so much time together, they had extra clothes and sleeping bags at all of their houses, and they knew that their parents would assume they were together at one of them if they didn't come home. Before long, both Sam and Tucker were completely asleep.

Danny, however, felt restless and unsettled, no matter how much he tried to put it out of his mind. Something was going to happen. Maybe not anytime soon, but it would, and he hated the fact that no matter what he did, he wouldn't be ready for it.

He found himself staring at Sirius, who had curled up between Sam and Tucker on the floor and wasn't asleep either. It was, in fact, staring intently back at Danny. As soon as Danny had started looking at it, the dog had opened his mouth in a canine grin and panted contentedly. But the happy facade could not hide the distinctly human look in those cool blue eyes. The dog was waiting for something. For him to fall asleep, maybe? Was the dog planning on doing something that it didn't want them to know about?

Danny rolled his eyes and gave a disgusted sigh at himself as he rolled over, his back now to Sirius. "You're being ridiculous," he mumbled to himself, "Get it together, Fenton, Sirius is just a dog."

But why on Earth had it been in the ghost zone of all places? And why was it so friendly? Surely it must have gone through something traumatic to have gotten in there, so why was it so keen on people? It seemed almost too dog-like, as if it were not really a dog, but just acting like one...

Danny closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forcefully cleared his mind. It took a while, but he finally fell into a light, restless sleep.

Unbeknownst to him, Sirius, seeing that Danny was, indeed, asleep, took his leave of the room and trotted lightly downstairs without a sound. It made its way to the basement stairs and to the lab door, which it managed to open with a very un-dog-like skill. It found a sort of cubby hole made by a bookcase and some boxes furthest from the door, which would hide him easily from sight if someone were to stand in the doorway. It glanced almost nervously around a few more times before heaving a great sight and... transforming.

Swiftly and soundlessly, the body stretched and grew, limbs lengthening, and spine straightening. There now stood a thin figure, dressed in strange robe-like garments, face gaunt and framed by wild, black, curly hair. The eyes were the same though, ice blue and full of dark memories.

Sirius stretched and flexed his now human body, and began searching through his robes, looking for two specific items. A grin of success lit up his face as he found that which he sought; an interestingly crafted piece of wood, slender and polished, and a curiously small, square mirror. He gave the mirror a light tap with the wooden stick, and it suddenly grew to a more acceptable size, so that he could comfortably see his whole face when he held it slightly out before him.

Stuffing his magical stick back into his robes, he sat down with a huff, mirror in hand. He squared his shoulders and gave one last glance in the direction of the door as he took a small breath and quietly but firmly intoned, "Harry."

The mirror reacted immediately. The once smooth surface flexed and rippled, and light poured out from it and swirled from within it's depths. It reflected off of Sirius's face which was peering intently into the mirror. Eventually the light died slightly, glowing only enough for Sirius to clearly see the image on the other side.

Or at least it would have, if there was anything to look at. Sirius huffed impatiently and tried to interpret what he was seeing. A blank, off-white space of nothingness stared back at him, gray with darkness. A wall, perhaps? Or more likely, a ceiling; the other mirror was probably sitting on a dresser or desk. The mirror on the other side would be glowing, so if Harry was awake wherever it was, he should see it...

But if he thought about it, it would probably still be dark in England, some time in the inhumanly early morning, but that all depended on what time zone he himself was in.

Sirius shook his head at his own silliness. Did it really matter what time zone he was in? No, it didn't.

"Harry," Sirius said quietly, hoping to get his godson's attention without waking up his adoptive "owners" upstairs.

"Harry," He said a bit louder, as he tentatively tapped on the glass of the mirror, "Harry, wake up, it's me, Sirius."

He sat for a moment, continuing to stare at the assumed ceiling. After a moment, he heard a soft rustling sound, like bed sheets maybe, or a blanket. He then heard a quiet hitching of breath.

"Harry! Pick up the mirror already, would you?" Sirius prompted, still staring at nothing.

After a few more long and drawn out moments, the view in the mirror changed. The ceiling view fell back slowly and hesitantly, as though held by shaking hands. He caught the top of a messy, black haired covered head, and then a familiar lightning bolt-shaped scar. Then the top rim of glasses, and finally shockingly green eyes that were haunted in a way that he never hoped top see them. Eventually he could see Harry's entire face, and he gave a warm grin.

"S...S-Sirius...?" Harry managed to choke out. His face was twisted with so many emotions, Sirius was sure it would break with the amount of strain it was under. Eventually it settled on a sort of hopeful panic, and Harry broke out into a hysterical string of questioning, "Where are you? Are you hurt? What happened? Why haven't you called sooner? I thought you– but I've been having these– Where are you?!"

"Whoa, hold on there for a second, I'm okay," Sirius gave a small chuckle, and was about to continue when Harry interrupted him.

"How can you laugh! Where have you been for the last month and a half... everyone thought you were dead, I... I thought..." Tears shone in the moonlight in Harry's eyes, illuminating the pain and hope within them, but the tears did not fall

Sirius's grin left his face, and he sobered quickly, although feeling puzzled. "I'm sorry that I worried you Harry, but I'm fine. And did you say a month and a half?"

"Y-yeah. Why do you ask." Harry said thickly, obviously trying to stay collected.

"Well, to me it feels like it's only been a few days since I fell through the veil," Harry flinched when he said this, but he continued, "Although those muggle kids did say something about time flowing differently..."

Harry suddenly seemed slightly more alert. "Muggle kids?"

"Yeah, the ones that found me in the place behind the veil," Sirius replied, "Three of them, probably about fourteen or fifteen. Two boys and a girl. There's some really strange things about the one named Danny, though. The kid transformed from a ghost to a human. Never heard anything like it in my entire life... and somehow, he knew my name."

"Sirius, this Danny, he wouldn't happen to have messy black hair, blue eyes, and have white hair and green eyes when he was transformed, would he?" Harry said anxiously, with a concentrated look on his face.

"Well, yeah, but--"

"And the girl, Sam, in gothic clothing and the dark skinned boy, Tucker, all with American accents–"

"Harry, how do you know these things?" Sirius asked, starting to get worried.

Harry's face set into an expression of pure determination as he said, "I know where you are. I'm coming to get you."

"Harry, wait–" Sirius said, completely flabbergasted, both because of what Harry had said, but also because the connection had gone still and dark. He sighed softly, cursing himself for being so thick-headed. He had just called to make sure Harry was okay, and now Harry was on his way to... well Sirius didn't even know where! Somewhere in the States, apparently. Sirius just prayed to Merlin that Harry contacted someone from the Order or even Dumbledore himself instead of just charging into the situation like a... well, like a Gryffindor.

And how in all of the wizarding world did Harry know the things he did? And know where he was when he didn't even know where he was?!

Sirius mentally thwacked himself once again before stowing the mirror and turning back into a dog and heading back upstairs. It wouldn't do him any good to be gone when the kids woke up. He knew that Danny was already suspicious of him.

Tomorrow, he would somehow get away from the teens, find a wizard's house with a working floo, and contact Dumbledore all without anyone noticing and simultaneously keeping himself from being detected as a wizard or an animagus.

Oh yeah. Tomorrow was going to be fun.

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The foreboding, dark robed figure was back on his throne, hissing orders and glaring through crimson eyes. His minions slunk to and fro, carrying out his commands and whims. He gave a feral grin, knowledge and power making him sadistically giddy. Everything was falling into place. It was ironic, really, that he should have spent his entire, suffering existence fighting the one being that only he could kill, but that he seemed not able to. And now he knew why– soon, he would know the one thing, the one and only person that truly stood in way– and once he did, there would be nothing left of them. A simple murder, and the world would be his.

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A/N: Ha ha, has it been forever since I've posted, or what? gets pelted with rotten fruit Ok, so I'm lousy at updating. Unfortunately, most fanfic writers are. I've suffered the same pain you've been feeling, so don't think I don't understand. You just have to know that I can't write properly unless I'm in the mood, and that doesn't happen very often.

Any way, reviews are sorely appreciated, because I love to hear what people think!

Till next time!

;-;Adrian Winter;-;