He did not remember much about what happened afterwards.
He knew that someone held him back from running up to the Veil. He remembered screaming, but not why, and not at whom. He scrambled out of their grip - Remus, he realised, it was Remus who held him back from running into the Veil.
Eliza's last spell had knocked everyone off their feet, and the already weary Death Eaters – all too weak from having just escaped Azkaban – had their eyes rolled back into their heads. If that hadn't already been bruised from before, they were now.
Bellatrix was nowhere to be seen. She'd escaped.
"Tie them up, Tonks! Arthur, you talk to the Ministry officials – I presume they will be coming. Shacklebolt, make sure that you're around Black when they arrive."
Moody's peg leg walked around the room. He kicked at the broken prophecy.
"Sirius," Moody gruffed. The rest of the Order were hunched over, catching their breath. He stood there, still looking at the tall archway.
Sirius took a sharp, deep breath, and sobbed. His knees buckled, and the cold, wet stone of the floor left a bruise on his knees. The hot tears fell down his face, and he wailed.
"Dumbledore needs you."
"Fuck what that old man needs," Sirius rubbed his nose.
"Harry needs you," Moody rephrased it and pulled Sirius back up onto his feet. It was rough, and Sirius could have fought him off, but he gave up.
"You can mourn later, Black, but right now you are standing in a place where you will be prosecuted if found. Get to Hogwarts, to the Headmaster's office."
"And what about everyone else?"
"We'll clean up here," Remus' eyes were devoid of emotion, and his hands clenched. Sirius looked at his dear friend, the only one he still had from his childhood days now.
He couldn't lose Remus too, but that was likely to happen if the war kept going.
He didn't want to see that day.
"Go!" Moody barked again.
Sirius hated apparating, and it was the first time he'd done so in a while. He hated the feeling of your insides being turned around, the pull similar to that of having one to many drinks and the world turning upside down. But tonight, that was exactly what he already felt, and he welcomed that feeling.
Sirius reminded himself that Harry needed him and that he should pull it together.
He turned into a dog as soon as possible, sneaking past the school gates and dodging students alike. The place was in shambles, he didn't know why and wouldn't ask why –he would later find out that in the process of escaping Hogwarts, Harry and friends brought Dolores Umbridge to the Forbidden Forest where they left her in a skirmish with the centaurs. Loud crashes and screaming could be heard coming from the Headmaster's office.
"I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT OF THIS! I DON'T WANT TO LIVE —" a ring of clashes sounded.
Sirius rushed in.
Harry had crawled up into a ball, hugging his legs.
And Dumbledore stood there, not knowing what to do.
And Sirius didn't know what to do either because how could he comfort Harry? He'd seen yet another person die in front of him, someone whom he knew, someone who cared for him.
"Sit down, Harry," Dumbledore had the audacity to feel something, at the least, as Sirius saw the one tear that glistened down Dumbledore's pale skin.
"I think we've had enough for tonight," Sirius wrapped his arms around his godson, who only held onto him even more.
"I think you both deserve to learn a lot more tonight," Dumbledore told him. "Please, just sit down."
"What's this then?" Phineas Black looked down from his portrait. "My great great grandson out and about?"
"You shut your mouth," Sirius warned.
Dumbledore looked between the two of them, looking guilty. He then proceeded to tell them everything he knew. He told them that Harry was connected to Voldemort. He talked about why Dumbledore kept himself out of Harry's life, not wanting to inflict more pain on him. Dumbledore did not wish to Voldemort using their friendship as a way to spy on Dumbledore.
And then he told him what he'd been researching all this time and what Eliza had been up to—the contents of which, Dumbledore said, only Harry would find out.
"Bollocks!" Sirius barked. "I just lost the love of my life and you have the audacity not to tell me why she had to be in their clutches? I barely had any time with her, and now I won't get to spend a second more. We don't even have a body."
Dumbledore pressed his lips together.
"Her people believed in the afterlife and the preservation of the body, but we have her memory and… one eye. So she's not gone forever."
"Albus," Sirius warned. He was ready to attack the old man right there and then, but he kept it calm. That didn't mean his fists weren't clenched in a ball.
"Your name will be cleared," Dumbledore said. "I'll have a talk with Cornelius Fudge now that he has seen the Dark Lord before his very own eyes."
"That's the bare minimum you can do, but thank you."
"Can… can she come back as a ghost?" Harry sniffed.
Sirius' heart broke.
"No, Harry," Sirius said gently. "She was never afraid of Death. She can't come back as a ghost."
The sun rose over Hogwarts, the rays shining into the headmaster's office.
Dumbledore sighed.
"Sirius, I told you how we need to treat Kreacher."
Kreacher. He had returned home right after Eliza had been kidnapped and confessed what he'd done. Sirius could strangle the elf, really, but therein lay the problem. Sirius did not treat Kreacher right. And that led to Kreacher going to Narcissa, and then… and then other people paid for the consequences of his actions.
Again.
First, it had been Remus when they were children. Sirius hadn't thought about the consequences for Remus if Snape had died after his prank. Then Remus, Eliza, and Harry paid for it again, following his incarceration, and now he was indirectly the cause of someone's death.
"Don't –" Harry started, but Sirius gave in.
He agreed.
"Don't blame yourselves for it," Dumbledore said. "One way or another, they would have lured you there. The prophecy can only be read by those it affects.
"But, we don't know what it says!"
"You'd be wrong about that. The very person who spewed that prophecy is in this building. Professor Trawlany – it's also why we insist that she stays here at Hogwarts, besides needing teaching staff, of course."
Dumbledore pulled something out from his drawer.
"Now, there will be a lot to come, and both of you will need a lot of time together to grieve, but I can tell you that Eliza had a will – the last time it was updated was 1982, and it dictates that her money be distributed between her father and you, Harry. And her property in Little Whinging –"
"You can sell it," Harry said emptily. "And give that money to Remus."
Dumbledore nodded. He looked at Sirius.
"She… this is from after –"
"Yeah, I know," Sirius clenched his jaw. It had been changed. Sirius didn't know if he would have gotten anything before that. He was certain that at least one Black member would have been in that will, and he felt jealousy.
Sirius gently led Harry to the Hospital Wing. He could feel the eyes of all the portraits following him, whispering. They said he was a freeman, they'd heard it from the portraits of the Ministry. He hadn't been the one to kill the Potters.
"Sirius?"
"Yes, Harry?"
"What now?"
That was a loaded question. Sirius couldn't answer.
"I don't know, Harry. We got what we wanted, I suppose… we move forward."
He remembered what Harry had been screaming.
"Harry, you didn't mean it, did you? When you said you wanted out?"
Harry looked away, and Sirius squeezed his godson's shoulder.
"It will stop, one day. That feeling."
"She was the only one who knew what I felt after Cedric died, you know that, right? She asked how I was."
"We were just doing as –"
"So was she," Harry sniffed. "I don't want to fight about it. I don't want to be heroic about it, either. I just want to be sad, I don't want to toughen up. Just let me be sad, for once. Please."
"Alright."
Madame Pomfrey was not surprised to see him there. Word travelled fast, it seemed.
Back at Grimmauld, Remus poured a glass with the strongest alcohol he could find, and the two friends raised their glasses.
Remus kept losing his friends, and each time it happened, he got more numb. Though he'd wallowed in it, Sirius was never around to fully feel its aftermath. Remus didn't shed a tear, but Sirius could see it on his face, and in the crackling fire, he could see time had taken a toll on his friend.
"How did you do it?" Sirius asked. "When James and Lily died?"
"I got far away from all of this."
Sirius scoffed. "The second war has started, there's no getting out of this."
"We have reasons to keep going," Remus reminded. "And we just need to embrace this new reality."
Sirius stared at the fire. It wasn't an easy feat.
But she had done it when he left, and if Remus could do it too. As painful as his heart felt.
"I just wished we hadn't wasted it dancing around each other," Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "Blimey, the amount of times I got mad, and she got mad – they were useless."
The door creaked.
Sirius did not have the heart to scream at Kreacher, nor did he want to hear an apology. So he just sat in his chair, drank in his hand, and watched the movement of the house elf.
He wouldn't yell at him.
The next weeks went by in a blur – he was called to the Ministry, confessed under veritaserum, and was spoken free of all accounts of murder, and got a hearty compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned. The escaped Death Eaters were imprisoned again, but Bellatrix was still on the run.
At least Lucius Malfoy was in prison, too. That brought him a little joy.
He was a free man, and there was a lot he could do now, but he stayed in Grimmauld, expecting to hear the sound of Eliza apparating or her humming.
One night, he thought he'd heard her voice coming from Regulus' room. It was close to midnight, and he wanted to go to sleep, but a thud came from the room. The house was old, yes, but he swore he could hear her, he could smell her perfume. He yanked the door open, but as it was, the room was untouched. He must have drunk too much because he could have sworn he heard his brother as well.
Ghosts, this house could have been haunted.
He finally visited Mr. Luna.
It took a portkey for him to do so, and he followed a map to the apartment.
Eliza's father had the same scowl that she did.
"Sirius," he greeted. "I see you're free."
"She told you?"
"Oh yeah, all of it. Tell me, should I punch you?"
Sirius cringed, waiting for the blow to come, but the man broke out into a laugh and engulfed him in a hug.
"Come in, come in."
He'd never been to the apartment before, only heard of it. Walking in, he saw photos of her when she was young and older – there was a photo of the both of them in a graduation robe, grinning from ear to ear.
"I can only imagine why you are here," her father said, bringing out two mugs of coffee. Sirius sat down awkwardly and took a sip. It was the same sweet way she would have done it, and a tear threatened to fall.
"I know my daughter might be dead," Mr. Luna said.
"Sir?"
He pulled out a necklace, and Sirius' eyes widened. It was the necklace he'd given Eliza all those years ago during the first war.
"I got this re-done, she left it here when she went back. I know some American wizards willing to make a buck or two," Mr. Luna raised his eyebrow. "And it's been stuck half-way to 'dead' for the past three weeks."
"Stuck?" Sirius frowned. "She's dead."
"I don't think so," he leaned back and shrugged. Sirius clenched his fist.
"That might be because she fell through the Veil. That's, uh, a gateway thing. We don't know much about it, but there's no doubt she's gone."
Dr. Luna didn't seem convinced, and Sirius didn't have the heart to tell him that his necklace might be broken.
"Doesn't it concern you?" Sirius asked. He thought it would help to talk to him, but he seemed a little too lax about the death of his child. Where was the father who wrote to his daughter constantly?
"Of course it does," he gruffed. "I am gosh darned heartbroken, but it won't take me anymore, will it? I believe she is still around, even if she is dead. The only dead person I see in this room is you, Mr. Black."
"Pardon?"
"Don't you have a kid to raise? A war to fight?" Mr. Luna took out a newspaper and slammed it on the table. It was the American Daily Prophet, and in a small corner, they'd announced Voldemort's return.
"The Americans don't care what is happening across the Pond, but let me tell you some of them agree with that asshole's ideas. What are you doing about that?"
"Nothing –"
"There you go, you're doing nothing," he crossed his arms. "Do me a favour and do something with your new life, fight for something, because she certainly wouldn't want people to wallow in their sadness, so I don't and neither should you."
"I understand, sir."
While her father did not kick him out afterwards, he was forced to fix all the broken things in the apartment, which was a sort of punishment in itself. That's when Mr. Luna asked Sirius the questions he didn't want to face just yet: Where would he live now? Where will Harry live? When will he start working? What will he do now?
It was the closest to parental love he felt in years and the slap in the face he needed to ready Grimmauld Place for Harry in the summer. Dumbledore was not ready to give him a task just yet, only because, and Sirius quoted, Dumbledore wanted Sirius to be mentally prepared for the task that Eliza was in charge of.
Then life changed once more.