Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter. This is written for ONC 2023. The prompt is number 18, "You step through a magic portal thinking it's the way back home, but what you find isn't what you expected."

Whispers of the Veil
Beyond the Veil

A black smoke whirled around his ankles, almost as if it were alive, driven by who knew what kind of madness, but then—

The place Sirius found himself was filled with madness, a madness comprised of varying colors of gray with a definite absence of light, and yet despite the absence of light, he could clearly see the details around him, including the hulking figure which seemed plucked straight from The Tale of Three Brothers.

He was startled at seeing that thing when he first arrived at the place, having fallen through the huge veil; the first thought crossing his mind was that Death had finally come for him, just as it had for the brothers in the children's tale. Still, the dread that came from knowing Death was real and that life was no longer an option—it didn't sit well, not when there were things left to do that he wanted to do.

Harry, after all, would now be left with no one. As such, his mind shifted after who knew how long—there was no way of measuring time in that place—his mind turned to thoughts of Harry, his godson, and what the young teen must be going through, particularly when Sirius' last memory before falling through the veil because of a spell sent his way because of that horrid cousin of his was Harry watching him fall through, and of the anguish on the young man's face.

"I promised," he said to Death, even though he didn't know for sure that what he saw in front of him was Death. "I promised him, and I intended to keep that promise. So you will not be keeping me here, wherever here is."

Death's head, a giant skull, simply tilted to the side at his words, indicating Death was, in fact alive, or something along those lines given the fact—

In truth, Sirius couldn't be sure what was in front of him, something alive or instead something dead that was somehow living now, let alone what kind of threat the thing reminding him of Death from the children's tale posed to him or even his soul.

And yet, there remained little response from the skeletal figure, and time felt as if it didn't exist at all in that place with Death. Death because Sirius had nothing else to call his only companion. Nor was that companion one for conversation, leaving Sirius to his thoughts as he looked around the place beyond the veil for a way to get back to Harry.

The thoughts that crossed his mind varied, yet there was plenty of time, even though time didn't seem to exist in that place, to think about the memories leading up to him falling through the veil. He thought of Molly Weasley lecturing him that Harry wasn't a replacement for Harry's father and Sirius' best friend, James. He thought of talking to Harry about family in front of the Black family tapestry, of the complexity of it all. And he remembered promising himself he would be there, to be Harry's family, because he recognized the painful feelings involved with his own family situation.

He would stand there, turning, hands in his curly black hair at times, wondering what the Death figure wanted while also not wanting to aggravate the monstrosity.

And then—

There was only so long Sirius could be patient, and in a place where time didn't seem to exist, he felt he'd been patient enough. He pointed the finger at Death and said, "I am going home to him, and I'm going to keep my promise! Nobody is going to stop me from doing so, not even Death himself!"

Death then straightened his head to the position it was in when Sirius first arrived before slowly lifting its finger and pointing.

Sirius turned and saw a door. He turned to look at Death, sweeping his hands towards the door. "The way home to him so that I can keep my promise?"

Death's head fell forward as if to indicate, yes, that was the way home.

Sirius let out a sigh, turning as the black smoke kept billowing about his feet, still seeming ever so alive before stepping through the door Death had indicated.

And he found himself where he didn't want to be.

There was no mistaking his room at number twelve Grimmauld Place, what with the posters of Muggle women in bikinis plastered among pictures of motorcycles. His bed was made, meaning Kreacher had been in at some point during the day when he'd not noticed, something Sirius considered an invasion of privacy, mainly since Kreacher, should he find a secret that he'd not been forbidden to tell Sirius' mother would always blab.

"Not that I've got to worry about that now," Sirius mused to himself, taking in the small window, the fireplace, and even the desk where he avoided doing schoolwork as much as possible with the pictures of his friends plastered on the wall. The door was propped open, for even Fred and George didn't wander up to that landing, having figured out that Sirius and his brother's rooms were to remain untouched, but the thought of his younger brother—

He tilted his head away, not wanting to look across the way at his younger brother's room, a place he'd left untouched. He remembered telling Kreacher at the start of things when he returned to Grimmauld not to touch any of Regulus' things, to which Kreacher asked if he really wanted him to keep Regulus' room no longer clean, to which Sirius had clarified what he wanted was for him not to abscond with Regulus things, that they were to stay where they were which in turn was one of the few things both of them seemed to agree on.

"But then, he always liked Regulus," Sirius thought to himself, frowning as he noticed something that was off when he turned his head.

For there, on the bed, was an open suitcase, with him tossing things into it. His mouth pressed together as he looked at the suitcase. " I thought I returned to a time just before what happened at the ministry, so I could make sure things happen differently, so why is there a suitcase on the bed? "

And he had thought that the moment he saw himself in his room because going from falling through the veil at the Ministry of Magic to being back at Grimmauld Place didn't make sense unless a manipulation of time was involved, which amused him slightly as there were wizards always trying to mess with time to the point it had become forbidden given the risks involved.

He had not, though, ever packed a suitcase while he was there at Grimmauld place as he had nowhere to go while the ministry thought him a wanted criminal, that he had been the one to betray Harry's parents rather than Peter Pettigrew.

And as he looked at the suitcase, he saw the window. At that moment, he realized his room was cleaner than it should be rather than the level of cleaning he'd managed on his own, as Kreacher had honestly given up on cleaning the rest of the place, only focusing on Regulus' room. When he had first arrived at Grimmauld the summer prior, he discovered his room covered in dust, the window clouded from years of disuse, and yet there was the window, bright sunlight shining through with ease, making his room yet again one of the few genuinely bright places in that house.

"What the" Sirius started to say, only for his voice to crack, something that shouldn't be happening to someone in their thirties. His hands rose to grasp his throat in surprise after he heard his voice crack, his mind trying to figure out what exactly was going on, but then moments later, he moved those same hands to in front of his face so he could turn them back and forth and observe them.

And observe them he did, the state of his hands. They were certainly not the hands of a thirty-year-old but more the size of—

"Sirius, what are you doing?"

Sirius turned, startled by the sound of a voice he'd not expected to hear, yet what he saw was also unexpected.

Standing there just outside his door in the hallway was a person he'd not seen in a long time, their black hair and gray eyes a familiar sight, yet seeing that person sent chills down his spine as he swallowed back the negative feelings starting to well at seeing them after all of those years.

It was a nightmare, what he'd landed in, for he had definitely not ended up going back home to Harry, being that person wouldn't be there, shouldn't be there in front of him had he actually gone back home. The person they were supposed to be dead, and he could simply stare at them as one black eyebrow shot up as if to criticize how he acted right before looking him up and down.

Or perhaps, Sirius, it was he who looked them up and down, taking in the way every piece of clothing was prim and proper with not a thread out of place or the way that person clutched a book protectively in their arms. There was the smallness of the figure, the rigid posture, the—

Sirius' eyes blinked, focusing in on the shoes while his mind contemplated seeing that person alive, a person he'd thought he would never see again, nor did he know at that moment how he felt about seeing them standing there. The person standing in front of him was, in fact, his younger brother, the one who was supposed to have died in 1979, which was seventeen years ago.

"Bloody Merlin. That's how old he was when he died, as he'd not had the chance to actually turn eighteen that year," Sirius thought to himself. "He didn't get to graduate or take his NEWTS that year, all because our parents wanted him to become a Death Eater—one of his."

The person across from him, Regulus, cleared his throat and without missing a beat said, "Sirius, you're acting like you've seen a ghost."