A/N: I just read the fifth book again, and for some reason I just had to write this. I've hit a snag with my other stories, which really can't be helped. Look at them. They're awful. Actually, I like them, I just don't know what to do with them at the moment. I can't stray too far from humor, unfortunately, so I don't think the emotions are going to flow well, but I'll see what I can do. Reviewing is very much appreciated. Thanks for reading!
Lessons Learned In Limbo
Chapter One - Time
It had felt really slow falling through. Like an eternity, actually, because he had seen every single face he had ever met in the instant he fell, heard all their names in the air that whipped past his ears.
Of course, only one mattered.
Harry.
He didn't know how long he was there, but he thought he had gone mad. He felt transparent and empty, but not cold as he had in Azkaban. It wasn't really a place, you see. He didn't know what it was, and he thought it best not to ask. In the flash of time before his demise, he had imagined Lily and James, smiling and laughing, greeting him with warm hugs and loving kisses.
Thinking this while waiting in oblivion caused something akin to a pang in Sirius's chest (if he had a chest, he wasn't sure of anything anymore). He longed for James. Lily was all well and good, but he pined for James; his best friend and Harry's father.
And in his time in that place called Nowhere he realized a few of his mistakes. Not all, but a few. The agonizing absence of James Potter ignited a certainty in him that he had foolishly tried to replace his favorite cohort with his favorite's cohort's offspring, and in doing so, had neglected his duty as godfather. Maybe not completely, but a little.
At the time, he had fancied himself Harry's friend. He remembered what it was like, being a child with parents. Parents, he huffed. Always trying to mold you into little versions of themselves. Never ceasing the badgering to be better, to be smarter, and to be more grown up. No, he told himself. He had not done that.
He had tried to make Harry into a little version of James. Encouraged him without apology to take dangerous risks, to be foolish, to do what James would have to done. To act like an idiot until everything magically fell into his lap.
Merlin, he missed James. He loved James.
But he loved Harry, too. Harry, his foolhardy little godson who took risks not for the sake of thrills, but for the fact that he had a heart that was a little too big for his chest.
He thought that it had taken lifetimes for him to figure this out because he wasn't anywhere and time moved very slowly when there wasn't anywhere to be.
But when he hit the ground, landing in the ruin of his best friend's home, next to a plush dog that had been his baby godson's most favored toy, he realized he had no concept of time at all.
Days later and loads of miles away, Harry Potter felt empty and transparent as well. Unlike Sirius, however, he felt cold. He knew with all the conviction of a sixteen-year-old boy that he would never be happy again. It was his birthday. Today. It was his birthday.
My birthday, thought Harry.
"Happy birthday, Harry," chorused Ron and Hermione.
Harry stared at the table. Number 12 Grimmauld Place was the worst possible location for his sweet sixteen and everybody realized it, but there really wasn't anything they could do. It was Order headquarters and the only place they were safe, said Dumbledore, because it was always Dumbledore's say. Nobody else's. Especially not Harry-the sixteen-year-old's.
"Good job, Ickle Harrikins! You made it to sixteen," Fred Weasley beamed, clapping the younger boy on the shoulder. "George and I always knew you could do it, didn't we, George?"
George nodded from across the table. "'Course we did, Fred. Just look at him. Burstin' with vitality, that one."
Mrs. Weasley cuffed him on the head and cleared her throat. "Harry, dear, aren't you going to blow out your candles?"
"Yeah, mate. Go on," Ron urged him. "Make a wish." Ron, finding himself on the receiving end of one of Harry's biting glares, fought the urge to scoot his chair away.
"What should I wish for?" he asked in quiet voice, looking away from Ron. No one replied, afraid that he was going to explode again. Harry was like a walking time bomb these days.
"A better future?" Hermione suggested after a moment's silence.
"That's a cop out," Harry muttered. "It can't get much worse."
He knew it was a lie and they knew it was a lie, but nobody said anything. Everyone heard the telltale little tick tick tick in their ears, saw the way Harry's fingers were trembling, the way his skin suddenly looked too tight. As if something were fighting its way out of the boy's body.
"Why don't you wish for a worse future, then?" Ron asked. "For that toad Umbridge, I mean," he added hastily at everyone's bemused looks. "I mean, if you can't be happy because nothing goes well for you anymore, at least be happy that it's going worse for someone you loathe."
The adults in the room opened their mouths to reprimand him, but Harry cut them off.
"Ron, that's a brilliant idea."
"I knew you'd think so."
"Honestly," muttered Hermione, shaking her head.
Harry closed his eyes and blew out the candles. He realized in his next intake of breath, that he didn't want to open them again because opening them would be like admitting that life was really still going on. The flames were gone now, and there would be little wisps of smoke floating up from the candle wicks, a brief afterthought of what had once been there.
"Ah, I see you've made a wish," Albus Dumbledore's wizened voice stated from across the room.
"Yes, Professor," Harry replied dully, forcing his eyes open. Dumbledore stood in the threshold of the kitchen, wearing teal robes with stars and crescent moons, a small package in his hands.
"What did you wish for, my boy?"
"A sour ending for Professor Umbridge," Harry deadpanned.
"If only you hadn't told me," Dumbledore frowned, his eyes twinkling. "It might have come true."
"Headmaster!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, obviously horrified.
"Honestly," Hermione said again. "It's not that I don't want that horrid old toad to have a miserable existence, Harry, but your reasoning for making that wish was just so-"
"It was Ron's reasoning," Harry reminded her. "And it was brilliant."
Ron grinned and for a moment, Harry grinned, too.
That's when Remus Lupin hastened into the room, looking as tattered and ragged as ever, his eyes expressing a tiredness they all knew too well.
"Sorry I'm late," he said apologetically.
"Have a piece of cake, Professor," Harry replied. "It's good."
Remus looked from the still whole cake to the surrounding occupants of the room to Harry.
"It hasn't been touched, Harry."
"Mrs. Weasley made it," Harry insisted. "It doesn't need trying for me to know it's good."
Mrs. Weasley beamed and kissed the top of Harry's head. "Thank you, Harry dear."
"Merlin, Harry. You sure are charming when you're grieving," Ron said, shaking his head in amazement.
"RON!" the majority of the room snapped.
"What?" Harry asked. "He's right, isn't he?"
"Sometimes," Hermione grumbled. "Other times you're a right pain in the-"
"HERMIONE!" came another cacophony of scoldings.
"What?" Hermione asked. "My statement was more true than Ron's. "
"Wasn't!" Ron protested.
"It was so, Ronald. Anyone in their right mind doesn't find Harry's frequent sulking charming."
"I am not-" Harry tried to butt in.
"I think he's ace when he's sulking," Ron shot back. "His wicked sense of humor comes shining right through."
"That's not humor, Ron. That's cynicism."
"I'm right here, you know!" Harry said loudly over their bickering. The sad part was that there had been dim murmurs of agreement at that last statement.
"Well, if that's cynicism, then Harry's jaded negativity is certainly worth a laugh!"
"Did you just quote the dictionary?" Hermione asked, stunned.
"W-what?"
"You just quoted the dictionary!"
"You what?" Fred and George asked, looking tremendously upset by this accusation.
"I didn't!" Ron said, shaking his head vehemently.
"The dictionary uses the phrase 'jaded negativity' under the term cynicism," Hermione told him. "I know this because I have the dictionary memorized up to the letter Q."
"What makes you think that I read the dictionary?" Ron demanded, tucking his hair behind his bright red ears.
"Because you just quoted it!"
"I did not-"
"Children, please!" Mrs. Weasley's voice broke through the argument. "Harry, dear, are you all right?"
For it was quite clear at that moment that the trivial argument had lit Harry's fuse. His fists were clenched, his teeth were gritted. He scooted his chair back and stood, ready to leave the room.
But before he could, he found a package in his hands and Albus Dumbledore's old whisper in his ear.
"Happy Birthday, Harry."
Anger surging through his veins, he savagely tore through the paper and ripped the box apart. He was further angered at the object that fell to the floor: a plush dog with faded black fur.
"What in the bloody hell do I want that for?" he spat, angry tears welling in his eyes. He tried his best to blink them away. "What are you trying to do to me?"
"I'm sorry, Harry," a familiar voice said from the hallway. "I thought you'd like it."
The room fell silent and still at once. Nobody dared to move, to talk, to blink, to breathe for fear that it was all some dream, some nasty joke. But there he was, Sirius Black, emerging into the kitchen from the shadowsof the hallway, fourteen years younger than he had been when he had left them a month ago.
TBC...