@axconitum
There’s no telling how long he’s been where he is, or where it is that he is, exactly. It gets more and more difficult to grasp the last tendrils of memory as time goes by (a nebulous thing, too; he’s been in this half-aware state of existence for no time at all and as long as he can reasonably remember) but he knows that he’s chasing something.
What, he doesn’t know. He remembers the sharp, high spike of laughter, faltering steps, and a prickling, cool sensation washing over his body.
Then he remembers nothing at all except wisps. Things pull at him, jog his memory through the haze: voices, blurred shapes, echoes of people he is sure are important to him somehow, but he can never quite reach them. When he tries, they filter through his fingers like smoke, or maybe it’s his fingers that are smoke; he can’t tell.
He isn’t fully aware of anything until he’s pulled through to the other side, and the sense of who he is crashes into him all at once as he stares into the terrified, brave face of his godson and he says, “Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
But that feels wrong, itching at the back of his mind in a way that he can’t ignore. He struggles to reach it, pushing his way through heavy waters, and walks beside Harry - beside him to his death - and he thinks, must this be it?
He wonders, grasping at the frayed edges of recent memory, if this is really how it must end. If James and Lily died for this, if he rotted away for over a decade in prison for this, if all the pain and suffering and torment of Harry’s short life was really meant to end in this moment -
He decides no, and a moment later he feels a hook behind his navel and a pull.
The curtains of the veil flutter wildly behind him as he stumbles out, feet skittering against cold marble. He stumbles, clumsy and gasping for breath as though he’s run a marathon, and the slap of his palms hitting the floor echoes into the silence. Chest heaving, he scrambles forward, his knee catching on his robes and tripping him again, and he swears when his shoulder slams into the ground.
He presses himself up against the wall, every breath tearing through his chest like a misery, and watches wide-eyed as the curtain flutters softly and then goes still.
It takes him only a moment to decide that he has no time to spare; wherever Harry had been, whatever he’d been doing - it had looked like a forest, perhaps the Forbidden Forest - he was in grave danger. So too was Sirius, if anyone found him in the Ministry of Magic after hours, but most importantly: he needed to get to Harry.
By the time he escaped the Ministry, he could be grateful enough that it was dead of night and there was only a skeleton crew of staffing to contend with, but that was all he could be grateful for. Grimmauld Place, disturbing and inhospitable as ever, offered no one from the Order for him to question. With no time to waste, he grabbed a spare bit of parchment and scribbled out a note, tying it to an owl’s leg impressing and upon it the urgency of the message.
Moony -
Where the bloody buggering fuck are you? Harry’s in trouble. I’m going to our old stomping grounds.
Padfoot
As soon as the owl took flight, so did he.
