Disclaimer: Nothing you recognise belongs to me.

A/N The plot of this story started out as "Beyond the Veil" before I literally and figuratively lost the plot. The idea bugged me though, so this is a complete re-write. Thanks to Emily who was kind enough to go through my work before and point out my mistakes. All errors here are mine.

"Sir?"

Harry Potter put down the enchanted cigar box that he had been holding and turned to face Alison, his assistant. She looked so eager that inwardly he sighed and wondered whether the kids that graduated from Hogworts were getting younger, or if he was getting older. After five days of clearing out the cave that Voldemort's supporters had stashed a veritable dragons nest of valuables, he was decidedly fed up. Being an Auror these days sounded a hell of a lot more glamorous than the reality, he thought grumpily. Voldemort was dead, his remaining supporters scattered, and while he loved his job, he hadn't imagined it being quite so tedious for the most part. Five days in this ancient, and frankly imposing place and the only frightening thing they had discovered was that some Death Eaters had terrible taste in reading material and a Hand of Glory doesn't work when rats eat half the fingers off it.

"Yes Alison?" He tried to arrange his face into a suitably interested expression as the blonde girl approached him. Five days into their assignment and she was still calling him "sir," despite his protests. Judging by her flushed cheeks and the way she kept her eyes fixed on the floor, she wasn't going to be making eye contact anytime soon either. Being a legend, even a reluctant one, was not exactly conducive to working relationships.

"I found this." Tentatively she passed him a small silver object. "It's clear for dark magic, but it's definitely magical. I wondered.. You know… Perhaps you might know?"

Harry looked at the object in his palm. It was small, silver, and obviously some sort of tea pot. Repressing the urge to sigh, he smiled at his assistant who promptly blushed and decided that the work bench to her left was now a source of endless fascination. The enchanted cigar box seemed to scent his distraction and took the opportunity to try and scuttle off the table, but Harry caught it before it could make its escape and after muttering a swift stunning spell, passed it over to Alison. She held it gingerly before her.

"Put it with the rest of the magical anomalies," Harry said after a moment's silence. Honestly, the girl was nice enough, but had her father not been the new head of the Wizengamot she'd have been lucky to make it as a tea lady in the ministry of magic. Now he was stuck with her and uncomfortably aware that not only was she completely clueless when it came to identifying dark magic, but apparently had a huge crush on him as well. Watching her hurry off, he let out a frustrated sigh. The day couldn't end quickly enough as far as he was concerned. For a moment he forgot his irritation when he patted his pocket for the two hundred and fiftieth time that day.

Yup, still there.

A little lump tucked deep in the folds of his utilitarian (and not particularly flattering) work robes. A little lump that had cost him two months salary. A little lump that, depending on one word from Ginny, would signal either the start of a new future or a crushing heartbreak and humiliation. Idly he traced the faint circle of the ring through the cloth. Goblin wrought silver with a ruby almost as red as her hair. Not too flashy or ostentatious - best to leave that to the Malfoys of this world - but special, precious; like Ginny herself really.

Leaning back against the table that he had pronounced slightly irritable, but no real threat, Harry resisted the urge to take the ring out of his pocket and polish it again. Instead he looked at the little tea - pot that Alison had given him. On closer inspection it looked a bit strange to be a tea-pot; small, silver and squat, it sat in Harry's palm and the reflection of his green eyes narrowed on its shiny sides as he studied it. He tapped it with his wand and muttered several spells that would reveal dark magic or curses, but nothing happened. Molly Weasley might like it, Harry thought idly; Merlin knew that she was fond of knick-knacks. But that in turn meant thinking about the fact that she may or may not be his prospective mother in law in a few hours, and that in turn meant thinking about the fact that he had no bloody clue about how he was going to word his proposal.

If only he had someone to talk to - someone who could give an objective opinion. For a moment he thought of ringing up Dudley and gave an unwitting snort of laughter. Alison looked around in alarm and Harry did his best to form his face into an I'm-really-not-mad-honestly sort of expression. With a pang of sadness he remembered his godfather. Padfoot would have known what to do, the right words to say. Idly polishing a rough spot on the tea-pot that had warmed in his hand and now seemed strangely comforting, Harry pictured his godfather. Even when he had been scruffy and emaciated he had held himself with a confidence that Harry couldn't begin to emulate, even when he was effectively under house arrest at Grimmauld Place he had been imposing.

"I wish that you were still here, Sirius" he said almost under his breath.

A sudden crash and a sharp cry, meant that he slammed the tea-pot down and hurried over to rescue Alison from an over-turned crate of old Witch Weekly magazines before he felt the "tea-pot" start to shake.

Shuddering and emitting a faint blue glow, the "tea-pot" fell off the table, and somewhere dark, beyond time and space, Sirius Black found himself thrown unceremoniously back into his corporeal body and dumped onto a cold stone floor.