Disclaimer: I still don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: So here's chapter 8, early this week as promised. I know I left it on a cliffhanger and I'm sorry - but not really :p But thank you all so much for being wonderful reviewers and I hope that you enjoy this next installment!
Incidentally, if you're looking for a wicked HG/SB fic then give The Lover by rileypotter17 a go, don't let the setting put you off - it's got all your favourite characters in it and plenty of HermionexSirius goodness :P
Chapter 8: Back to Black
"What do you mean she's gone?" Exclaimed Harry as he exploded into the minister's office.
"Calm down Harry," Remus said placing a comforting hand on the younger wizard's shoulder. Harry shrugged his hand away and turned on him.
"Calm down!" His bottle green eyes widened. "Hermione disappears under the ministry's nose, she could be kidnapped or dead, and you are telling me to calm down?" He roared. Remus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Harry," Kingsley said, drawing their attention. "We don't believe that Hermione was kidnapped," He said as he splayed his hands on the table and pushed some paper towards Harry and Remus. Harry's eyes scanned the paper littered with Hermione's spidery writing.
"What are these?" He asked in confusion.
"Why don't you both take a seat?" Kingsley asked as he conjured two chairs behind the men. They both sat quietly, Harry fidgeting and becoming increasingly red in the face. Remus folded his hands on the table and glanced at Harry worriedly, "I suppose you should fill us in, Kingsley."
The minister sighed and ran a hand over his bald head. "When Hermione didn't clock out of the Department on Tuesday I sent someone down to check on her – you know how she sometimes forgets what time it is when she's working. When they went to the room where she was working they found it empty except from her research notes –"
"Wait!" Harry interrupted waving his hands. "You're telling me that Hermione has been missing for four days and neither of you saw fit to tell me?" He ran a hand through his unruly black hair.
"I had to give sufficient time for any possible kidnappers to contact us," Kingsley replied as he fiddled with his earring. "As it is, we've no reason to suspect she was kidnapped."
"It sounds like a bloody kidnapping to me," Harry muttered darkly.
"Harry has a point Kingsley, it sounds as if Hermione was intending to return either immediately or never intended to leave. There's no way she'd just leave her notes lying there," Remus said with a shake of his head.
Kingsley gave a sigh. "How much do you know about Hermione's current research project?" He asked.
"I know it was related to that cache of documents she found, but she's always pretty tight-lipped about her work," Remus said.
"She told me it was something to do with Arithmancy," Harry added.
"Right," Kingsley said. "Well this may come as a bit of a shock to you both but Hermione was actually investigating the Veil; the document she discovered seems to unravel its secrets."
"The Veil?" Harry croaked out.
"You don't think she'd have...?" Remus couldn't complete his question. "Surely she wouldn't be so stupid," He muttered to himself.
"The inscriptions around the Veil seem to have been activated in some way. We believe that Hermione has passed through it," Kingsley said.
A terrible silence permeated the room as Harry and Remus let the information sink in.
"So she's...dead?" Harry asked quietly, his eyes shining with grief.
"We're not sure Harry," Kingsley replied. "It seems as though Hermione thought she could return from the Veil as a result of her findings."
"Well someone should go in after her then – she could be in trouble!" Harry exclaimed, half rising from his chair.
"Harry, we can't risk sending anyone in. If Hermione has gone through the Veil then it is fair to assume that she knew what she was doing. You know her, she wouldn't risk it if she wasn't certain," Remus said.
"I think it's my fault," Harry said.
"You can't blame yourself," Remus soothed.
"On Monday we were in the Death Chamber and I was talking about how much I missed Sirius... how guilty I still felt. Oh Merlin, I think she's gone to try and find him for me..." tears coursed down Harry's pale face.
"Harry, you can't blame yourself, I think the lure of the academic discovery alone would have drawn her to explore it. She could be fine," Remus said with a solemn voice.
"She's been gone for days!" Harry wept.
"Well, that's not necessarily an issue," Kingsley said.
"What?" Harry and Remus said together.
"From her research there is evidence that time runs differently within the Veil. She might not even realise that she's been gone that long," He replied.
"Sod it," Harry swore to himself.
"Look, I think that you should both go home and get some rest. I'll keep you informed," Kingsley said. Harry and Remus replied with nods and said their farewells to the minister before leaving the room.
o0o
Hermione struggled desperately against the foul corpse-like arms that constricted her throat and muted her screams. She tried to pry the cold limbs away from her face with no avail. She was dying. She'd never get to see Harry, or Remus, or Teddy again, she'd never get to grow old, and she wouldn't even pass over to the afterlife.
Her legs kicked wildly but never seemed to connect with her assailant. It had all gone horribly wrong. How could she have considered wandering into the Veil without telling anyone? Terror fuelled her attempts to escape and oddly she found herself reliving her first year at Hogwarts, when she, Harry and Ron had been trapped in Devil's Snare.
Of course!
Letting her hands drop she fumbled in her pocket for her wand and sent a non-verbal 'Incendio!' at the thing behind her. With an inhuman shriek her assailant flung itself away from her as it burst into bright orange flames. "Fuck you," Hermione rasped at the flailing creature.
She staggered away from it and found her legs couldn't quite support her weight; she slumped to the floor. She'd almost forgotten her wand in the panic. The thing that had grabbed her lay writhing in agony, as she studied it Hermione realised that the lower half of its decaying body had faded away into a smoke-like shadow of legs. It had no discernible face, just a gaping maw where its head should have been. Shuddering to herself Hermione watched as it twitched its way into ashes.
Logic pounded in her mind and screamed that she should turn back, exit through the archway and go through the proper procedures to investigate. The world around her seemed to shudder, as though rocked by some small earthquake. Panting against the adrenaline coursing through her veins Hermione glanced wildly around. She wasn't sure if the structure would still be standing if she travelled back again. Now she was in the Beyond, this was her only chance to try and find Sirius.
Shakily, Hermione clambered to her feet and held her wand out before her. "Lumos," She whispered and the tip of her wand lit up, illuminating her way forwards. She left a thin silver trail of magic behind her, like a mental safety cord, so that she could find her way back and then stepped into the mist to begin her search.
Hermione walked for an unknowable amount of time, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and blink through the mist. Occasionally she would see a dark figure huddled in the mist but wary investigation revealed none to be Sirius and all to be too far gone in their assimilation with the very substance of the Veil.
Doubt and despair crept in around Hermione's heart as the likelihood of finding Sirius whole dwindled. She feared that she would stumble upon him and find that his body and soul had already become too intertwined with the mist that plagued the place.
Another dark shape loomed out of the fog and Hermione cautiously paused and stepped towards it. The shape was moving slightly and she could hear shallow, laboured breath. This body was not as advanced in its decline as those she had previously encountered but as a result it posed more of a threat to her. Casting a couple of precautionary wards around herself, Hermione inched closer and closer to the dark shape that she could now make out to be a person curled into a foetal position.
The body didn't seem to be moving anywhere fast and so with her heart pounding against her ribcage, Hermione knelt beside it and rolled it over. She gasped.
"Sirius!" She whispered urgently. The fevered face of Sirius Black looked up at her with an unseeing gaze. He hadn't aged; in fact he looked exactly as he had as he'd fallen through the Veil. A small mocking smile graced his lips but his eyes were unseeing. If she hadn't seen the occasional blinks or the shallow rise and fall of his chest, she would have presumed him dead.
"Oh, Sirius," She said again, smoothing the lines over his brow and pushing a lustrous lock of black hair from his face. "I hope you're still in there... I'm here to bring you back to us, to Harry," She whispered as she cast a nonverbal mobilicorpus spell and began to guide herself and Sirius back to the archway.
Sirius gave a groan as Hermione clumsily caught him after releasing him from the spell. "Sorry," she said quietly, "but I can't sustain a spell while we go through the Veil." Sirius seemed to rally slightly and bore some of his weight himself. Still, he was heavy and Hermione staggered towards the curtain of mist desperately hoping that they would both return intact.
Gripping Sirius tightly, Hermione plunged headfirst into the mist.
o0o
Kingsley Shacklebolt looked up from his paperwork with a frown. It had been six days since Hermione's disappearance and he had only just begun the mountain of paperwork the incident had caused. The office shook as though a large train had just gone hurtling past the window. Waving his wand he spoke clearly into the empty room. "Undersecretary Clutterbuck?"
"Minister?" Grizel Clutterbuck's voice replied via the wand-communications-system.
"Can you pinpoint the seismic disturbance that we are currently experiencing?" At one point Kingsley would have been baffled at having to ask such a ridiculous question, but after spending a few hours as Minster he quickly found that he had to be prepared for the most unpredictable situations; the incident involving a batch of cursed eccles cakes in the Ministry canteen on his first day had been most unpleasant.
"The Department of Mysteries, sir," replied Clutterbuck.
Kingsley leapt to his feet and tore towards the lift down to the Department of Mysteries; he would stake his job on the disturbance being Hermione returning.
o0o
Hermione opened her eyes and panicked as she struggled to breathe. An irrational part of her brain declared that she was still being throttled by the Veil-creature and she flailed involuntarily. Her knee connected with something.
"Arrrgh!" Exclaimed the thing constricting her breathing. It rolled off her and she took a gasp of air. "Those were my balls," Gasped a familiar voice.
"Sirius?" She asked as her eyes flew open. Hermione rolled over to look at the man curled on the stone dais.
"The one and only," he choked out. "You sure know how to make a guy feel loved," Sirius said as he rolled over.
Hermione could barely stop grinning, the implications of what had just happened spinning endlessly in her head.
"Merlin, I feel like I've been asleep for a week," Sirius groaned as he sat up and ran a hand through long, dark hair. "Hey, where is everyone? When did you change out of your school robes? Why do I really want a steak? Did I do my evil-bitch-queen cousin in? I have to admit I am impressed with my duelling," Sirius babbled happily.
"Uh..." Hermione sat staring at the man before her, taking in the way his eyes lit up with life.
"Hermione!" Kingsley called from behind her. "You're back!"
"How did you know I was gone?" Hermione asked after a minute, as she sat up and rubbed her face.
"You've been gone for a week!" Kingsley exclaimed. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. A week? Oh God, Harry and Remus must be out of their minds with worry!" Hermione replied as she stood up shakily.
"Is that...?" Kingsley trailed off as his eyes fixed on Sirius who was preening himself.
"Hey Kingsley!" Sirius said cheerfully.
"Minister, I am so, so sorry for just disappearing – I had no idea the time difference would be so big... I figured a couple of hours..." Hermione said.
"Why are you calling him Minister?" Sirius asked as he stood up.
"I'm the Minister of Magic now," Kingsley explained.
"Sir, I don't think that we should overload him with information, he could be disorientated," Hermione interjected.
"What the fuck is going on?" Sirius demanded.
"Do you remember the duel with Bellatrix?" Hermione asked him.
"Of course," Sirius scoffed.
"You remember the Veil?" She continued.
"If you mean getting caught up in that curtain thing, then yes," He replied, looking at Hermione as though she was mad.
"Well, it was a bit more complex than that," She said trying not to blurt everything out into Sirius' face.
"How?" Sirius asked, putting all his aristocratic air behind his words.
"You've been missing, presumed dead, for some time," Hermione sighed.
"What for a few weeks?" He asked as though unsure of himself.
"No," Kingsley replied after Hermione failed to find words. "Sirius, you've been missing for over five years."
"Merlin's balls on a barbeque," Sirius said weakly as he swayed on the spot and fainted.
A/N: Go on, review, you know you want to ;)