Chapter Text
Stepping near the veil was a mistake, turning his back on an enemy so to speak, but Sirius had made a lot of mistakes in his life, dying was hardly the worst of them. He regretted leaving Harry behind, but as Molly loved to remind him, he was hardly a help to the boy these days. Most of the adults he knew only saw him as a hindrance. He didn’t disagree. Even Remus was burdened by him, though he was far too kind to say anything of the sort.
He didn’t regret dying. He accepted the cold clutches of the veil with an ease he’d never experienced before, the icy tendrils wrapping around him like a vice and pulling the breath from his lungs. He let go the moment he felt it, hoping that only silence would meet him. He didn’t believe that even in death he would have the gall to speak to those he’d lost: to Lily, to Regulus, to James. He did not want to know what they would think of him if they could see what a mess he had made of his life.
He welcomed death, but only the dark oblivion, nothing further, nothing less.
Sirius slams onto the chilly stone floor, a puff of air forcing its way out of his lungs. He coughs twice, but the feeling tears at his sore throat, dry as if he’s been without water for a long time. He wants to cough again, but the pain stops him. His body begins to shiver before he can even fully feel it. He feels oddly numb, but only in certain places, as if he’d fallen asleep and was being woken slowly, one blink at a time. He’s tired, very tired, sleep pulls at him insistently, but he can feel that he is missing something, something imperative.
He has to force his eyes open, his eyelids so stiff that he is sure they would creak if they had the capability. He sees only darkness as if his eyes remained closed, but the feeling in his body starts to creep in the moment he has made that one movement. The shivering intensifies, he’s practically vibrating, his teeth beginning to chatter.
All at once, his vision returns to him, flooding him with light he can barely interpret at first. The room he’s in is dark, cloaked in shadows, but he can see that he’s surrounded by shapes. He blinks a few times, frantically trying to clear his vision, even as his body refuses to move beyond the violent shivering. He can’t even turn his head to get a better look around the space, he can only shift his eyes around and even that is a struggle. The room is completely silent, not so much as a whisper, but he can hear the shattered noise of air pulling from his lungs and dragging back in. It’s wretchedly painful, each breath like he’s drinking hot oil, but with each bit of air, his vision gets a little clearer, and his thoughts start to string together into moderately comprehensible ideas, but still, he struggles to understand what is happening to him.
It takes him a long time to move his body and when he finally regains control of his muscles, it takes him even longer to crawl unsteadily to his feet. He’s shaking uncontrollably, but his vision is clearing now that he’s upright, and it only takes a few moments to see what’s around him.
He’s in a dark room, a room he recognizes, because in the center is a large, stone archway, deep whispers emanating from within it. He remembers things in flashes. Grimmauld, the battle, Harry’s face. Remus.
He has to find them. He doesn’t know what happened to him, but he knows he has to get out and ensure they know he’s okay. His feet hurt as he walks like the skin had been scrapped off his soles leaving him delicate as a newborn baby, so walking is a difficult task, but he manages to get up the stairs and to a doorway. He opens it into a circular room filled with doors. He barely remembers this, it seems so long ago. How long has he been out?
He tries a door at random and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the familiar corridor leading out into the rest of the Ministry. By the time he makes it to the elevator—it takes a while with the way his legs are fighting him—he realizes that it must be very, very late or very, very earlier. Or perhaps a holiday. The Ministry is eerily empty, the lights flickering darkly like they’re resting. The elevator is lit dimly as well but it still moves, taking him to the lobby quickly.
He knows that he’s in danger. He’s a wanted man stranded in the one building where everyone is guaranteed to know his face, but he can’t find it in himself to care all that much. It’s not like he could just stay where he was waiting for an Unspeakable to find him. He only considers turning into Padfoot when he’s halfway to the atrium floos, but then something catches his eye. A copy of The Daily Prophet left spread out on the podium security uses to check visitors’ wands piques his interest. It seems familiar.
He picks it up quietly and quickly scans the first page. It’s a story about MACUSA’s potential agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Magic. Sirius remembers this, the deal had eventually fallen through when things had gotten worse in Britain. Other countries had been forced to make choices about whether they would continue their agreements with the Ministry and China and the United States had fallen on opposite sides of that political line. Why would someone have a copy of the Prophet from the first war?
He checks the date on the front page. 27 December, 1975. Two days after Christmas.
He sets the paper back down on the podium and starts heading toward the floos again in a daze. It was just a fluke, something odd, it didn't mean anything, but then why is there an entire stack of this version of The Daily Prophet? Why is it placed next to the floo like it is about to be picked up for the day by any rogue Ministry employees that choose to come in on the first Saturday after Christmas?
Sirius feels sick. He feels dizzy. He needs to find Remus. Remus will be able to explain it to him. He’d fallen through the veil in June. Was it Christmas again? Has he missed that much time? He goes through the floo to Grimmauld without thinking, but when he lands in the living room, he knows that he was wrong, that this is not where he will find Remus. He will not find anyone he’s looking for.
On the rug in front of him is a large red stain, a blotch of red wine that shows the aftermath of a nasty argument. It hadn’t been that big of a deal in retrospect, he’d spilled a bit of wine after drinking a bit too much at the family Christmas dinner, but it had been the final breaking point between him and Walburga. It had been the catalyst that made him run away. If it was the 27th now, that meant he was already gone, settling into the Potter’s house and trying very hard not to remember what he’d left behind.
He should leave, he thinks, but he can’t stop himself from moving forward, tiptoeing out of the living room and up the stairs, expertly avoiding the steps he knows creak as he makes his way to the pitch black door that stood across from his own.
Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black.
Those words had annoyed him so much when he was a child. He’d rolled his eyes and bristled at being kept out of Regulus’ room. They just make his throat feel tight now. His thin fingers shake as he reaches for the doorknob, opening the door slowly so that the hinges don’t squeak.
Despite everything, he still expects the room to be empty, a thick layer of dust the only companion to its years of isolation, but there in the center of the bed is Regulus. He’s fast asleep, his black curls strewn across the white pillowcase, his mouth open as soft snores leave him. He’s so young. Not that he’d ever gotten much older than this, but right now, he looks like an infant in Sirius’ weathered eyes.
Sirius has to apparate away before he can scream out in pain. That’s what he wants to do, seeing Regulus like that. He doesn’t care if anyone hears him apparate out of Grimmauld. It doesn’t matter. They wouldn't know to look for him. He lands in a Muggle park a few blocks away. He’d visited the park a few times as a child, against the wishes of his parents of course. He’s not sure why it popped into his head now.
It hardly matters. He crumbles to the ground in a heap, sobs tearing out of him. Something had happened to him. He’d died, but now he was alive again and dragged back to one of the darkest years of his life. He would be a fifth year, halfway done. In only a few months, he would tell Snape how to get under the Whomping Willow and Remus wouldn’t ever trust him again. He’d said that he’d forgiven Sirius, but Sirius never believed that. There had to have been a reason that Remus believed he had betrayed James and Lily.
What was he supposed to do?
There is no adult Remus to go back to, no one to ground him and talk him through what was going on. He is alone in the world. Again.
He feels like he did right after escaping Azkaban when he moved through the world like a ghost, just a shabby, starving dog slinking around corners. He can do that again, he thinks, but what would be the point? Last time he’d been out to kill Peter, but now?
Peter is only a child now. He hasn’t done anything yet. Sirius isn’t sure that he can execute a child. He doesn’t have it in him. Besides, his hatred of Peter had been buried over time, deep below the hatred for someone who actually deserves it.
Himself.
At some point as the night’s cold seeps into his clothes, he transforms into Padfoot. It helps to narrow his thoughts into something less fragmented and something a bit more pointed. This isn’t a bad thing. Not completely. He has an opportunity now. He could go back to Grimmauld and steal Regulus right from under Walburga's and Orion’s noses. But will that solve things? Will that save James? Will that keep Harry from becoming an orphan?
He can’t be sure.
He doesn’t even know if he can properly change things. From what he knew about time travel, nothing could actually be changed. Instead, when wizards travel back using time turners, they find themselves in a past that their future self is already living. It’s all cyclical. So what makes this situation different?
Before he makes any long-term plans, before he throws away this gift, he must figure out if the power even belongs to him. If he can do anything at all or if it’s all just a trick, another way to torment him.
He sinks into himself as the night crosses over him, the stars dull in the London lights, but he can feel them gazing down upon his fur. Sirius Black had died, cold and alone in the icy grasp of the veil. Sirius Black, the child, lives. But Sirius Black, the adult, is dead. He sinks and sinks and sinks. Padfoot’s mind melds with his own.
Sirius Black dies.
The Grim rises.