In this chapter: We meet an old friend.
Harry hadn't been there in ages.
Longer than ages, it seemed. The creaky walls and dirty windows reeked with age and hidden secrets. The musty air nearly choked Harry as he walked over to a broken chair. Did Remus break this? He wondered to himself. He didn't know who was there last at the shrieking shack, but it looked as though someone had fallen recently, and been dragged away. Harry didn't worry himself over it. Harry didn't have enough worry left in him.
He looked over to the bed where Ron had laid with a broken leg, and glanced back over his shoulder to the door, half expecting to see Professor Snape pull off invisibility cloak. Everything from the last three years was pushing down on Harry and smothering him, he could hardly breathe.
Harry sank to the floor and covered his face. He wanted it all to go away. The memories, the hurt, the pain. He wanted to give up his emotions. Somewhere along the way, Harry learned that emotions were the real cause of things. The world would never be at peace if human emotion still existed.
He wished his emotions away, in exchange for true peace, even for a moment. A moment's peace. What a saying. The creator didn't know what real torment was like. For the last two tears Harry felt as if someone was clawing in the back of his mind, trying to tunnel into his thoughts and memories and feelings. It was enough to block them, and Harry couldn't understand why it was all concentrated on him.
Harry felt at home in this little room. This was a place his dad had been. A place his dad spent a lot of time in. Harry thought about his dad a lot. His dad and Sirius, the only father figure he knew.
Harry knew Sirius wasn't dead. He would have felt it. He would have felt the electric shock go through him, the shock that electrocutes the life out of the people he loves. If someone he loved as much as he loved Sirius died, Harry would be the first to know.
Harry felt a gush of wind blow by him, like a misguided spell. "Drafty old house," he thought. But then he heard a footstep. Harry reached for his wand slowly, tensed and ready to face whatever was creeping up on him. Voldemort…no, a deatheater most likely. One…two…
"Petrificus Tot-SIRIUS?"
Sirius Black stood there, grinning down at his very confused godson.
Harry nearly fell to the ground under the flood of emotions that suddenly hit him. Sirius was alive, standing right in front of him, grinning! Grinning as if he had just been on holiday to Majorca, not trapped in the realm of the dead!
Harry was still just staring as Sirius walked over and pulled him into a hug. "It's me, Harry," he said quietly. "I'm here, right here,"
"How can you be here, Sirius?" Harry asked, pulling away. "I saw you go though, Remus told me you were gone, you were dead. I couldn't save you; I couldn't get to you in time."
"I was never one to follow the rules," Sirius replied with a grin. "And I'm here now; you didn't need to save me."
"But I did save you," Harry said, still half to himself in shock. "Not when it counted, of course, but ... after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again ... do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways…" he paused, and then continued quietly. "Every night I save you."
Sirius pulled Harry back into his arms and hugged him tight. "I know Harry, I know everything that's been going on around here, and now I'm going to help you."
Harry pulled away, almost in agony. "Help me?" he asked. "I don't believe in a power great enough to help me now,"
"Obviously you don't have enough faith in your old godfather," Sirius said, still smiling that wolfish grin. "You have power the dark lord knows not, and I'm here to help you find it."
"Dumbledore told you about the prophecy?" Harry asked.
"No, Dumbledore didn't tell me," Sirius replied. "You hear a lot when people think you're dead."
Sirius didn't continue, and Harry didn't press the matter.
"How are Ron ad Hermione?" Sirius asked Harry.
Harry, who was looking at Sirius as though he was Santa Claus, suddenly came out of his stupor.
Ron is fine, Harry said quietly. "But Hermione is at the home of Lucius Malfoy, pretending to be in love with Draco Malfoy, so that she can spy. She says Draco is in on it too, but I don't know. I worry about her, Sirius.
"Hermione is brave and brilliant, and thanks to her mother, very cunning. She wouldn't easily walk into a trap without weighing all the angles." Sirius took a breath. "She's fine, Harry."
Harry knew all this, of course, she had been by his side for the last five years, but he still worried, and he still was scared.
"Come one," Sirius then said. "I'm taking you somewhere, we don't have much time."
Harry didn't question his godfather as he led Harry out the door into the streets of Hogsmead. Everything seemed different to Harry with Sirius at his side, as though the world were going in slow motion or time didn't exist at all.
When they reached the other side of Hogsmead, past the joke shop and honey dukes, Harry finally began to become aware of his surroundings. He had never been this far out, nor did he have any idea where Sirius was taking him.
"Sirius?" Harry ventured a question.
Sirius looked to Harry and gave him a grin, he nodded his head to an upcoming street sign.
Godric's Hollow.
Harry kept silent as Sirius walked purposefully past the sign and down another street. The houses were spread quaintly apart, and each home enjoyed a specious yard, until they came upon a patch of land and what looked like the remains of a long gone house.
It looked as though an unconventional fire has taken it away. The skeleton of the structure laid there, charred and burned, but the flooring was there in relatively one piece, Harry could still see the wooden floorboards.
"My parents lived here," Harry said. It was a statement, not a question.
"They did." Sirius confirmed. "The neighbors wanted to build a monument, or at least a small statue in honor of them, but Dumbledore wouldn't hear of it. He said it was against Lily and James nature, and it would tarnish their memory, and so this spot has been kept just as it was left…that night."
Harry kept silent for a moment or two, but then: "Sirius, why are we here?"
Sirius was looking out onto the land. "Some of us need closure, Harry, it's what keeps us going," He took a few steps forward, as if contemplating if he should go on, and then broke free, walking to where Harry supposed the front door had once been. Not wanting to be left behind, Harry cautiously followed him.
Now it appeared that Sirius was looking for something on the ground. What could possibly be here?
They walked though the skeletal house, Harry felt his chest welling up with emotion. His mother and father had walked here, carried him here, sang and played with him here.
Sirius gave a short cry and fell to his knees, still looking toward the ground.
"Sirius!" Harry cried, and rushed to his side. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"
"Fine, fine," Sirius was now staring at the floor and running his hand over a panel of somewhat charred floorboard. To Harry's surprise, Sirius took out a pocket knife and began to saw at the panel.
Over the course of a few minutes Harry began to wonder if his godfather was in the right mind. What was he doing? Why was he using a knife? Harry supposed Sirius's wand was long gone, but he would have gladly given Sirius a hand in whatever he needed.
"It's still here," Sirius said after time, and he pulled out the most fascinating red stone Harry had ever seen.
It was a fire ruby, just like Hermione's, but much smaller, and on a delicate looking golden chain.
"Hermione has one of those!" Harry said. "She called it a fire ruby."
"Hermione would have one," Sirius nodded approvingly, turning the ruby over in his hands. "Only the oldest wizarding families have them nowadays, they are very rare."
"What was it doing here?" Harry said, curiosity ready to spill out of him. "Why didn't you use magic?"
"Lily hid it here," Sirius said with a fond smile. "The muggle way, she said she used to keep her diary away from her sister under a floorboard in her room, and any magical locking or hiding spells would be revealed with a simple spell, this needed to be kept safe."
"What does it do?" Harry asked uncertainly. He knew Hermione's told of a sort of prophecy, but he didn't know if they could do anything else, and he had his share of prophecies.
"I don't rightly know," Sirius admitted. "But I wouldn't, would I? I'm not a Potter. That's something you'll have to figure out. It's important, Harry, that you keep this safe, secret if you need to. Your mother and father knew to hide it, and they had good reasons for it. It will help you, I'm sure of it.
Harry took the stone from Sirius, and after a moment of thought, put it around his neck and hid it under his shirt. Sirius nodded in approval.
"I think one more stop for today will be enough," He said, he looked very tired. "We'll need a portkey this time."
Sirius pulled a paperclip from his pocket and touched his wand to it. He beckoned Harry to touch the small metal object, and in doing so, Harry felt the familiar tug behind his navel as he was propelled to a new and unknown location.
A graveyard. Harry hated graveyards. Where was Sirius going with this?
"Do you know where you are, Harry?" Sirius asked.
"A graveyard," Harry replied. "I've seen them before, why are we here?"
"Your parents are here, Harry."
Harry's green eyes opened wide. His parents. His aunt and uncle never took him to see his parents. Never in his sixteen years. Harry never actually thought about it. He never thought about a physical connection to the people he knew for only a year, and here it was, somewhere in this patch of land laid his parents.
Harry began to cry.
The only thing missing was the rain. Usually in heart-wrenching scenes like this the rain begins to timidly fall, and then the whole world is blurred except for what you're supposed to be focusing on. But this wasn't a movie, this was real, and reality hurt.
Sirius didn't hug Harry this time, but he gently put a hand on his back and led him in the north direction, where two medium-sized sycamore trees grew.
"Remus planted them," Sirius answered the unspoken question. "He didn't know what to do, so he planted tiny little sycamore trees. No one really knows how tall a sycamore can grow to be, but Remus was convinced the Sycamore was the best tree for your parents."
For some reason, Harry found this remarkably funny, and smiled through his tears. He walked up to the single tombstone, on one side read his mothers name, and on the other, his fathers. The names seemed so cold and distant, just little letters engraved on a piece of stone, with a short saying under.
Fate Envies Us
Harry didn't understand what it meant, but he knew some significance had to have been involved. The gravestone was imprinted with two wands at opposite ends of the stone and a row of five stars shooting out of them and connecting them together. Harry figured it must have been put there to signify that they were married.
"Why did you bring me here, Sirius?" Harry asked, his tears drying away. "What does this have to do with anything now?"
"It has everything to do with everything," Sirius said seriously, not taking his eyes from Lily and James' resting place. "Death isn't about dying, Harry, it's about living. What resulted from Lily's death? You did. Lily was a brilliant woman, and in this world, she knew that you don't get anything Harry, anything for free. One turn for another, isn't that so? And the wheel keeps turning, it never ends. No one ever really thinks about what happened before they were born. Sure, there's the ancient history you are forced to learn, but what of the past that you only just missed? Your parents childhood, the days they spent in the very halls you yourself now spend time in, it's all connected, it's all intertwined, it's all small parts of a big design, and I'm afraid that you are a bigger part than your average school corridor."
Harry stood there in stunned silence. He never had heard his godfather talk like that. In all honesty, he wondered whether Dumbledore had possessed his once-fallen godfather, but no, there was no mischievous twinkle in Sirius's eyes, only a look of fatherly protection, and maybe a little fear.
"I wish everyone would stop talking in riddles," Harry said grumpily. "No one can come out and just tell me what to do, or where to go, or what the answer is."
"Life is a riddle," Sirius said. "I don't know the answers, I only know what life has taught me."
"What has life taught you, Sirius?" Harry asked, turning his green eyes to the other man.
Sirius looked into the distance for a long moment, before finally saying: "Life has taught me that I'm not as invincible as I thought when I was younger. Everything comes to an end, Harry, but that doesn't mean the world ends with it."
Harry looked at him in slight alarm. "What are you saying, Sirius?"
Sirius looked at Harry and sighed quietly. "You know I can't stay."
Now Harry was fully alarmed. "What do you mean? Of course you can stay! You're here now, aren't you?"
Sirius smiled sadly. "Of course I'm here now, but I'm not real. I'm here because someone owed me a favor. I decided now was the time to take them up on it."
"Who owed you a favor?" Harry asked. "What did you do to receive such a massive one?"
"Dead men tell no tales, Harry," Sirius replied. "And that is what I am, more or less."
"YOU AREN'T DEAD SIRIUS!" Harry shouted at his godfather. The wind picked up and the rain came down.
Sirius continued smiling. "But I'm not alive either. Harry, one of the things you have learned, above anyone else, is how to let go. I'm just someone you have to let go of, but I'm never going to leave you."
"Of course you're leaving me!" Harry said in an angry voice. "This is rubbish! How can you feed me that 'I'll always be with you' crap? That's the stupidest line that has come out of muggle movies!" Harry turned away from Sirius and stared the opposite way.
"But muggles didn't have moving, talking, living portraits that reside in a headmasters quarters, now did they?"
Harry looked up for a moment, his back still turned and his eyes clouded in confusion before they cleared and lit up. "You mean?"
"I'll be seeing you, Harry."
When Harry turned around, all he saw were the dark graves under the sycamore tree.
(A/N)
Uh huh, I know, I know. Not only am I completely evil, but I ripped off Angel too. Heh, sorry, but when I saw the episode, I knew I had to use it. I was going to bring Sirius back completely, but I think Harry needed to deal with closure more than a back from the dead godfather. Also, when Harry tells Sirius that he had saved him, those words belong to Spike talking to Buffy in the Episode "afterlife" I thought it fit J
