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Between Ruin and Salvation by Kihin Ranno
| Prelude: Through the Veil |  |
This story contains adult material. If you are not of legal age, leave this page now.
Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix’s jet of red light: He was laughing at her. “Come on, you can do better than that!” he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.
The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest.
The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.
It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch….
And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather’s wasted, once handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared through the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind and then fell back into place.
Harry heard Bellatrix Lestrange’s triumphant scream, but he knew it meant nothing – Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second….
But Sirius did not reappear.
“SIRIUS!” Harry yelled. “SIRIUS!”
He had reached the floor, his breath coming in searing gasps. Sirius must be just behind the curtain, he, Harry would pull him back out again….
-----
It was only one second.
Momentarily without an opponent to duel, Remus turned to Sirius, as he always seemed to do ere long. He wanted to help of course, but part of him also wanted to know what Sirius was laughing about. What could possibly be so funny in this life or death situation?
He saw Sirius take the spell directly in the chest and quickly registered the flash of fear in his face. At first, it made no sense. Bellatrix hadn’t hit him with anything more than a Stunning Spell.
But then he saw where Sirius was falling, realized what Sirius already knew, and then he had reason to be afraid.
“Sirius!” he shouted, his voice drowned out by the sounds of incantations and curses whizzing through the air. He darted forward, dodging the stray hexes and moving as fast as his legs could carry him. He ran, trying to be as fast as James had been when he was alive. As fast as Harry was now.
He tried, but he didn’t make it. Sirius fell through the veil.
Remus halted instantly, wincing at the sound of Bellatrix’s piercing laughter. He didn’t want to believe what he had seen, but he was unable to ignore what he knew. No one knew everything about the veil, but they knew enough. He knew that before the war, he would not have been able to hear the whispers, but now that he had fought, killed, and watched people die all around him, he heard slippery voices singing to him, beckoning him through. He knew the dead were many things, but chiefly, they were lonely.
And he knew one more thing without any empirical evidence to back it up. He knew that when the dead took possession of something from the living world – something solid and warm and breathing – they would not let go. The dead were greedy too.
So he knew that Sirius wasn’t coming back.
“SIRIUS!”
Remus snapped to attention. He hadn’t realized Harry had seen. He gnashed his teeth in frustration. Hadn’t the boy been through enough? Surviving his parents only to be pursued by a madman and plagued by death just for being born… did he have to watch Sirius die too?
“SIRIUS!”
Then he saw Harry start to run.
Remus’s blood froze. Even as he went after Harry, he calculated the time it would take for him to close the gap between him and his former student. He factored in his old werewolf bones against Harry’s young boy ones. He thought of how much Harry loved Sirius, how Harry would blame himself for bringing the Order to the Ministry, how desperately Harry wanted a family after being so callously denied all these years.
Remus tried to catch him. He tried to wrap his arms around Harry to hold him back. He tried to take comfort in the contact from the only other person in the world who really loved Sirius, the only one willing to forgive him for spending most of his life in Azkaban.
He tried so hard.
He reached for Harry, but his fingertips only brushed against the back of Harry’s sweater. His arms weren’t long enough, he wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t good enough, he was too old, he was too slow, he wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t good enough.
Remus watched Harry run through the veil.
“Harry!” Neville shouted, red blood smeared underneath his nose. “Harry, no!”
Childishly, Remus wanted the world to stop. It seemed only fair that it should. They hadn’t just lost a boy, a child. They’d lost The-Boy-Who-Lived.
But the world didn’t stop, not even for Harry Potter. It kept turning, the battle kept going, and no one except Neville and Remus knew what they had all lost.
Then that cackle of snakes and broken glass tore at his ears, and Remus realized there was one other person who knew. He whirled to see Bellatrix, her once-proud eyes turned manic and depraved. She practically clutched her sides with glee. “He’s gone!” she shrieked, throwing her head back and exposing her pale throat. “Gone!”
For once, Remus was sorry it wasn’t a full moon. He’d never wanted to bite someone more in his life.
“Bellatrix!” he bellowed, brandishing his wand. He turned and ran towards her, sure of what he had to do.
She hissed, flashing her teeth like a feral cat. She threw a curse at him before running off. Remus banked left, narrowly avoiding the hit and wincing when some debris from the resulting explosion pierced his shoulder. Still, he kept running, past Neville and his twitching legs, past the other children of the war, through the Department of Mysteries, and finally emerging in the main hall.
Bellatrix was waiting for him, leaning against the fountain as if this was a casual meeting between friends.
He snarled, holding up his wand, trying to decide between an Unforgivable or a foreign curse the British Ministry hadn’t made illegal only because they didn’t know about it yet.
She laughed at him, and he tried not to remember the girl who’d been unpleasant to say the least and apallingly racist, but sane and not evil. He thought of James and Lily and Sirius and Harry and found this was easier than he thought.
“It serves you right, filthy beast,” Bellatrix spat. “You took Sirius away from us. You and The-Potter-Who-Died. Turned him against his family – into a blood traitor who threw us away like used parchment!”
“It was his choice,” Remus hissed, clinging to the old argument because he knew it was right. “He chose to leave you.”
“You coerced him,” Bellatrix accused, her voice rising an octave. “You lured him to your side with your false friendships and empty promises. And where did that get him?”
“You killed him!” Remus raged, squeezing his wand so tightly he feared it would break. “You killed him when you sent him through the veil. You don’t get to blame me for Azkaban after that! You had no right to before, and you have less right now!”
Bellatrix just smiled. Her teeth glittered like the ice that followed in a Dementor’s wake.
“I always kill the ones I love, Wolfie.”
And then the battle began. Bellatrix struck with a Killing Curse, and Remus threw one in kind. Her Cruciatus hit, but pain meant nothing to a werewolf. He gave her a taste of his own agony with a Czech curse that broke bones and healed them again. A cutting hex left blood blooming on his chest. A Reductor blew up the House Elf in the fountain, and the rocks pummeled her face. Curse after curse, hex after hex they fought and grappled and neither made any headway. Bellatrix always won because her opponents pulled their punches. Remus would do her no such favors.
Then he took a page from Harry.
“Expelliarmus!”
Bellatrix’s wand went flying out of her hand, over her head, and into the waters of the fountain behind them. She stared at her empty fingers in shock, as if ignorant of the loss. Then she shrieked and ran at him, her nails like a basilisk’s teeth.
Remus dropped his wand. He stood perfectly still as she rushed at him, howling madly into the dark hall. When she reached him, he pushed her hands away.
He took her head in his hands and twisted it around until it snapped.
That night, Bellatrix Lestrange died.
The Death Eaters did not hear the prophecy.
Voldemort appeared and fought with Dumbledore.
Everyone finally realized that the Dark Lord was back.
Lucius Malfoy and several other Death Eaters went to Azkaban, exposed for what they really were.
And absolutely none of it mattered.
Harry was gone.
-----
The room beyond the veil was not like Harry expected. It was windowless and without light, but despite this, he could see perfectly. He looked around and saw nothing but wall-to-wall grey, in different gradients and variations, but alwaysalwaysalways grey. And for that matter, it wasn’t so much wall-to-wall as curtain-to-curtain. This room (which he sensed was far larger than it appeared) was swathed in fabric similar to that which hung in the doorway in the Department of Mysteries. The edges all frayed in the same way and seemed to fade at the ends.
Finally, he saw something that was not grey. He saw something that was black.
“Sirius!” he shouted.
The figure turned. Harry didn’t register the look on his face or the rage that flowed from the figure's lips like spilt wine - an anger Harry probably deserved. He didn’t register anything save that Sirius was moving and that meant that somehow, Bellatrix’s stunning spell had worn off.
He hoped that meant the veil did not kill.
He ran forward just as he had done in the Department of Mysteries, shouting his godfather’s name as he had done before. Then, heedless of any unseen witnesses or any mutual embarrassment between them, Harry threw his arms around Sirius’s too-thin waist and held on.
Sirius was solid. Sirius was warm. Sirius’s chest rose and fell against Harry as he breathed.
“You’re alive.”
And that meant he was too.
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