Sirius took a seat at their table, at a table that he still remembered from many, many years ago. As he sat down, he kept looking from Lily to James, back to Lily, back to James as Lily prepared tea for all three. They weren't ghosts - they were fully fleshed, which he knew as he hugged them both, one tighter than the other, as he was welcomed in their kitchen. They weren't some form of spirits, they appeared to be… simply there. In their house.
As if they truly were still living in Godric's Hollow, in a house that was not half-demolished, but was liveable, lived-in, and most importantly comforting.
"Are you hungry? You must be, I swear sometimes I think you come here just to raid our fridge." James laughed, as their cat, Crumpet, jumped on Sirius's lap.
Sirius pressed his nose against the cat's head, and he could barely believe his own nose. Even the cat's smell triggered memories he had thought long-gone, wiped by the fog of memory and his years in Azkaban.
"Not you, mighty orange beast, you've just been fed." Lily joked, and moved to lift Crumpet from Sirius's lap.
"No, it's fine. I don't mind him one bit."
"Are you sure? Your sworn enemy?"
Lily took a step back, surprised, putting one hand on her hip in the usual fashion when someone had said something unbelievable. Now more than ever, Sirius could notice all of their small ticks, their reactions, everything that they used to be. Everything that they were, they were now again, in front of his own eyes, acting as if he had just come in for dinner as usual, as if this was the late '80s again, not a decade and a half after their deaths.
How was this memory of them relevant to what he wanted to get out of it? Part of him wanted to leave before the effects of Agurium would dissipate, but part of him was transfixed on the chair, transfixed on them.
"I've made enough enemies to learn to live with some, Lily, don't worry about me." he chuckled bitterly, petting Crumpet behind his ears with one hand as he took a sip of his tea.
"Harry mentioned." James sighed, taking a sip of tea as well. "It's unbelievable, after all we've done for Peter, that he-"
"How do you know that? About Peter?" Sirius's eyes widened.
This Lily and James were not a mere memory.
They could not be.
Sirius held his breath - this meant it worked. Somewhat, it worked.
"Harry told us, of course. When he came over here." James responded, this time surprised himself.
"He… came over?"
"Oh. Oh, James, I don't think Harry must have told Sirius he visited. This is a bit-..."
Lily bit at the edge of her bottom lip as she sat by the table, moving her head from side to side as she considered whether to break Harry's trust or confide in Sirius. It was uncanny, how well he knew them, enough to realise from every single movement of theirs what they meant.
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" James proposed. "He's just upstairs, think he just went to bed. I don't think he's asleep yet."
"How long has Harry been visiting?"
"A… couple of weeks now?" Lily spoke this time, with James agreeing by nodding his head. "He stayed over quite a bit, but now he comes every night or so. We have tea together. It's nice."
They continued speaking about how wonderful it had been having Harry around, how he turned into such a lovely young man, how happy they were for him to have grown up the way he did without them around, and Sirius swore he saw Lily's eyes starting to water as she spoke about her son. The way the both of them spoke about Harry, how in awe they were of him, and everything that he has done, things that Sirius was not even aware of, things that Harry must have shared with them in those moments Sirius could not be there, physically or mentally.
He opened his mouth, wanting to apologise. Wanting to beg for their forgiveness, wanting to do something, anything.
"I-" he started, yet he was not sure what to say. His throat closed up, and so did his mind, his thoughts coming up with nothing but a fog of emptiness. All this time, that he wanted to talk to them, to any version of them, and here he was not, in a pitiful display, with his jaw and shoulders trembling, with his heart stuck in his throat, with his pulse in his temples, with sweat in his palms as he rubbed them together.
A hand fell on his wrist, and he looked up, only to see James looking at him with a look of serenity, a look of someone who knew exactly what was hiding behind the fog in his head. He always knew. He'd always known.
He knew about his plans to run away from home before he even voiced them. Knew about his crush on Marlene before he really was aware of it himself. Knew his complicated feelings when he found out Regulus died. James had always been there.
And somehow, he was there, again, after fourteen years of absence.
"I hope you're not blaming yourself, Sirius. For any part of this."
Sirius looked up, and put on a strained smile.
"No… no."
"Don't be fibbing now-" Lily stated firmly, furrowing her brows. "You don't seem sure. You need to be sure, if you say it. Promise."
His pained smile slowly turned into a genuine one at Lily's admonishing - you would have been a wonderful mother to a teenager, and you won't even know it - he briefly thought.
"No, of course not." he chuckled, shaking his head with amusement. He caught onto Lily's wrist himself, and looked into her eyes. This time, his lie was masked under such an assurance that Sirius figured he could fool himself as well. "Promise."
"That's a relief, isn't it?" Lily let out a breath, turning to James with a wide smile on her face, before addressing Sirius. "You have no idea how long that's been playing on our minds, that has. Come on now, go check on Harry before he really falls asleep. Sometimes he doesn't come back until the next evening."
Sirius nodded, putting Crumpet down on the chair and chuckling to himself as he noticed the cat seemed content to be sitting in the warm space he had left behind, purring as it made itself more comfortable. He knew exactly where Harry's room was - he was sure he could walk to it blindfolded, and would not miss a single step going up the stairs, even after all this time, even with all of Lily's plant pots laying about haphazardly.
He took about two steps, before turning around, looking at his old, dead friends enjoying a cup of tea together, accompanied by their cat's purring. Is this what life would have held out for them, if it weren't for their idiotic plan to make Peter the Secret Keeper?
"Why are you here, of all places?"
James turned to face him first. He seemed a bit taken aback by the question, before looking around himself, and shrugging.
"Where else would we be? It's where we last were."
Sirius nodded, and continued up the stairs, mulling over his words.
It's where we last were.
Sirius approached the bedroom that had been Harry's - that had been Harry's not only as an infant, before it was all ripped from him, but had apparently been his for the past few weeks - and knocked on the door.
"Come in."
There was no mistake, that was Harry's voice. And as Sirius entered, that was Harry indeed lifting himself up in his bed, in pyjamas that had the same prints they had thirteen years ago, but were somehow his size. He closed the door behind himself, and looked around - save for the bed, which was not adjusted to fit a teenager, the room was almost identical to how it had been when Harry was a toddler. Brooms and cartoonish Quidditch players flying around the wallpaper, a small astronomy model courtesy of the Longbottoms from when Harry was born, and photographs of James's parents, of James and Lily's wedding, of family members and Sirius included strewn along the walls.
"So, this is where you've been all along."
"How did you find me?"
It's where you last were.
Sirius pondered Harry's question, and looked at him fretting as he grabbed his socks and shoes, as if he had done something wrong. He approached the bed and took a seat, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder to calm him down. He didn't do anything bad. He didn't do anything wrong. He simply wanted to have something every child should have, something his friends had. Something Sirius had, when he was Harry's age and ran away from home, and was welcome by Fleamont and Euphemia.
A place to call home. A family to call his own.
"I have my ways." he stated amused, patting his shoulder. "How did you find this place?"
"I didn't. The… spirit from the ritual brought me here and said I should stay here while you deal with Greyback. At first, I wanted to go back and help you, but you were dealing with it, and the spirit convinced me. And then-..."
"You found yourself coming back. How do you do it?"
"I can just do it." Harry shrugged. "After I woke up in Hogsmeade, I've been doing it when I sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I can visualise the door handle to the house, and all I have to do is open it."
Sirius frowned as he thought about this strange connection now made between Harry and this contained realm he was allowed to roam in each time he wanted to. That certainly wasn't part of the deal… unless something went wrong. Unless the ritual deal went into a completely different direction.
"What did the creature from the ritual tell you?" he asked in a whisper, sighing deeply as he rubbed at his chin. "What's our next move?"
"I don't know, Sirius. I know some things, but I can't tell you."
"Did you tell your parents?"
Harry shook his head, which gave Sirius an idea.
"I know someone you can tell. Trust me."
He got off the bed, and grasped Harry by the elbow, pulling him towards the door. He was expecting some form of resistance, but Harry seemed resolute in following him to nowhere, in having himself be led by his godfather inside his own dream. Sirius held tightly onto his arm, not wanting to lose him in this fickle realm, and shut his eyes tightly, thinking of the one person that may have some form of answers. He instructed Harry to close his eyes as well, and opened the door to his bedroom, stepping out.
The first step he took had his foot sink lightly into dry land. When he opened his eyes, not expecting a white, cold beach, or what looked to be like a dazzling, blue torrent of water lifting itself up the sky, covering the sun and rendering it a cool blue colour.
Sirius turned around, and looked at Harry, who was still there. Still with him.
"Who's that?" he asked loudly, trying to cover the torrent of waves crashing vertically into each other, covering them in a teal-coloured fog.
Harry pointed to a person ahead of them, a tall, lanky figure with short hair. As it heard itself being called by Harry's voice in the end, the figure turned around, and Sirius recognised a young Hedda Ablai.
"Is this where you go, when you're not in your portrait?" he asked her, only to be faced with silence.
Hedda Ablai extended a hand, but not towards him, towards Harry, who without a word, accepted it. Sirius's grip tightened on Harry, yet his arm escaped his reach, as if he had turned immaterial for a brief moment, and Sirius watched as Harry slowly walked towards her, grasping her hand. As their hands interconnected, they both started slowly walking towards the rotating vertical waves, without a single word spoken between them.
"Hey." he called out to them, their backs turned against him as they continued their slow walk. "Hey. Hey!" He wasn't sure which one he was addressing - perhaps both, for different reasons?- at least to get the attention of either, but neither turned to face him as they calmly continued walking. "Hey!"
Sirius's voice raised to a shout as he took his wand out, yet his spell to bring Harry back to him did not work. A body bind curse did not work either, and neither did the stunning spell. Was this how useless Muggles felt? Breathing heavily, he took a step towards them, only to have that action briefly catch the attention of Hedda Ablai. Both her and Harry turned to face him, unfazed, as if he was a stranger intruding on a normal beach walk.
He wasn't sure what language she spoke, yet to his ears, it somehow sounded familiar, as if he had spoken that tongue all of his life.
"Be careful. If you sail too far, you might drown."
A wave of icy fog flew towards him with such ferocity that he closed his eyes, briefly losing them from this eyesight. And that was all that was needed for them to fully disappear from his view, leaving him alone with the thundering waves making their way towards the sky, as if to swallow it whole.
Perhaps they should swallow me whole as well. He briefly thought, before turning on his heels, away from the torrent of waves. No. He had to survive. But most importantly, he had to prove to himself that he indeed could survive. He turned back, and now facing once again the torrent of waves, he opened his mouth wide, so wide that he could hear the crack in his jaws as he unclenched his mouth, and he screamed. He screamed to assert himself, that from the bottom of his being, he would not be defeated, that he could not be defeated.
This time, when he woke up, he did not wake up in a sweat. He woke up as if from a peaceful slumber, raising himself slowly from the couch he had been slumped in for what looked to be hours, according to the time. He turned his head, and saw Magdalena from the corner of his eyes. She appeared to be reading something at the foot of the couch. A journal, bound in dark purple leather - a journal of a witch he had just seen in his dream.
"What are you reading?" His voice was rough, and his throat hurt with every sound he made, as if he had screamed not only in his sleep, but in reality as well.
"Hedda Ablai's notes on dreams."
"What does she say?"
Magdalena shrugged.
"Nothing groundbreaking. This research is over a hundred years old, we have evolved quite a lot since then. Dreams are fantasy and cure, that's what Smithes-Wickett, the lead voice has to say in the matter these days."
"No. Dreams are fantasy alone." Sirius took the vial that contained the deep blue powder of Agurium between his fingers, and shook it lightly. "This is a cure. An answer."
"This is no cure." she stated amused, before turning back to the journal. "This is quite a nice read, regardless of content. It's written quite poetically even when translated in English, listen. Dreams are where we last found ourselves. Our true selves. Where we last where, so to speak."
"Where we last were." Sirius repeated, slowly raising himself fully from the couch as he remembered what James told him. "Read me more of that non-groundbreaking research, Leni, will you?"