SERIES: Beyond the Veil

TITLE: 2 – Red Haired Angel

AUTHOR: Scorpio

FANDOM: Harry Potter/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Multi)

RATING: PG (Varies)

SUMMARY: Sirius Black is injured, confused and desperate. Lucky for him that hope; much like himself, isn't easy to kill.

Beyond the Veil 2 – Red Haired Angel

A sense of movement jolted his dormant mind into stirring. Nauseating vertigo as gravity flipped him over, pulling down at his back instead of at his stinging chest. Echoes of movement shimmered along his nerves even after he was sure that his body was stopped. An iron band squeezed his skull tightly, pain crackled along the skin of his chest, the scent of burnt hair and ozone filled his nose and his hands and feet were encased in blocks of ice. Voices in the distance murmured above him, but they were too soft, too far away. He drifted back into unconsciousness with a groan.

He slammed into a surface made of cotton and pain, a gasp of breath escaped his lungs as a cry for mercy. Voices shouted above him, his head throbbing with every syllable.

"Careful! Don't drop him like that! Just… just shift him up higher on the bed. Gently!"

Hands grasped him and began to pull him. Weakly and with desperation, he twitched his arms to try and escape. An image swam up out of the darkness of his battered brain. A tattered and dusty dark gray cloak pulled low over a ghastly white face with deep sunken hollows for eyes and a large insatiable gapping maw. The image frightened him horribly and a name rose up from some half buried memory. Dementor. He began to struggle harder.

"Move it! Let me through!" Some of the hands let go. The sound of shuffling echoed around him and then a sharp pin-prick stabbed in his arm. Warmth flowed from that small pain; moving up his arm and dragging him back down into the darkness. The image of the Dementor faded away, taking his panic with it.

Soft choral voices chanted in unison around him. Magic washed over him in a warm wave smelling of sea air and green growing things bathing in the sun. Suddenly, a weight lifted up off of his chest and out of his mind. A weight he hadn't even noticed until it was missing. Relief and warmth flooded through him and he sighed his appreciation as all his remaining aches and pains also began to fade away.

His eyes fluttered briefly before opening. Bright white light blinded him and made his eyes water. Blinking rapidly, Sirius gazed up blearily to see deep dark red hair falling in a cascade of vanilla scented beauty swirl past his face. Pale creamy skin and green eyes which gazed back into his own blue ones. He smiled at the blurry out of focus face.

"Lils… am I in heaven? Where's James?"

Sirius never heard her answer; however, as he drifted off into the first bit of peaceful sleep he had enjoyed since the night James and Lily were betrayed and murdered.

Frowning in his sleep, Sirius tried to roll over again. His wrist was stuck and he couldn't shift over onto his side without leaving his hand behind. Grunting, he tugged at it, hoping he could free it without actually having to wake up all the way. His wrist stayed stubbornly stuck.

"Shhh. It's all right." A soft feminine voice spoke nearby. "Let me get you some water."

A straw was placed gently at his lips and gratefully, Sirius took a long sip. The cool clean water washed away the dryness in his mouth and woke him up the rest of the way. Blinking open sleep sticky eyes, Sirius watched as the world slowly came into focus. He was in a clean white walled room with a large window letting in plenty of sunlight. He was lying on a soft warm hospital style bed with his wrists tied to the metal railing on either side. He frowned down at his hands a moment before looking up… at Lily Potter.

Jerking his head back with a gasp, Sirius gaped at her for a long moment until his eyes began to catalog several differences between his long dead friend and the woman before him. This woman's hair was the correct color, but it hung in one long straight length. Lily's hair had been a mass of waves and curls. This woman's eyes were green, but it was the green of newly budded leaves on the trees, not the deep emerald green of Lily's. She was also shorter and a lot thinner than Lily Potter.

"You're not Lily."

The woman shook her head, "No, I'm not." She smiled gently at him. "I'm Willow."

Sirius thought about that and concluded, "Does that mean that I'm not dead? And that this isn't heaven?"

The woman, Willow, laughed then. It was a surprisingly cheerful sound. "No. You are most definitely not dead."

End: Red Haired Angel