Denial

The End

Sirius was having a bad day.

Firstly, Kreacher had been in an especially nasty mood that morning, and being shut in the house was hell. Sirius had known something was going to happen, and he'd been restless, pacing about, running upstairs, running back down, almost tripping over his own feet, his wand in his hand and a growl between his teeth. Wherever he went he could hear Kreacher behind him, muttering, and that traitor, making all this noise, running up and down like he has a right to be here. Oh, the things Kreacher's hands would do if they had a real master. They'd be perfect. Kreacher would fit them round his neck…

He'd had to put up with it for hours. Hours. Until finally he heard a noise out in the street, the door pummelled until he thought it would cave in. He ran downstairs, almost tripped again, and let in Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley, and after a two second explanation, "Harry and Voldemort, department of mysteries, NOW!" they all left, pop pop pop pop pop.

And then they'd been frantic, running through corridors, rooms, searching, scrabbling, losing each other, until eventually they found them. The death eaters. The students. Harry. Harry. All Sirius had left in the world, only half-trained, and trying to take on death eaters. Sirius didn't let himself look at the injuries. He just fought.

The battle with Bellatrix was almost the best bit. The least-worst bit, as it were. He was so angry he didn't have time to feel, to worry about Harry, to worry about himself. When Bella hit him with the spell he was thrown back, felt something smack against his head, felt the pain, but a moment later he was on his feet, wand out, looking for her, ready to fight.

He thought the grey mist around him was just some sort of spell.

He peered through it. All he saw was more grey mist.

He yelled out.

BELLA

BELLA YOU BITCH

COWARD, GET BACK HERE

FIGHT ME

And when that didn't work,

HARRY!

Still. No reply.

The air itself seemed dead.

He stood. He panted. He paced, but the air in front of him seemed somehow thick, and it got thicker and thicker, until he was wading, crawling, fighting it, and not getting anywhere. He stepped back.

He turned around. His eyes were getting used to the perpetual grey, and he almost thought he could make out that some parts of the mist were deeper than other parts.

That was when he noticed the tunnel.

It seemed to be a tunnel. It was a slightly darker patch of mist, and seemed slightly further away than the rest.

He stepped towards it. Unlike before the mist wasn't getting thicker. In fact, it was getting thinner, easier and easier to move through, until he was gliding over it like a man on the moon. It went on, and on, easier and easier, and he was enjoying himself so much that thoughts of Harry, Bellatrix, Voldemort drifted away, and he was just Sirius, in this slightly oppressive grey mist, gliding, flying.

He had no idea how long he'd been going for before it became tedious. All he knew was that the boredom crept up on him about the same time that the mist got thicker again, and then more solid. The tunnel was still there, but around it there wasn't mist, but cold stone.

He walked. He saw a light, yellow, unpleasant, and went towards it. Harry's face had come back to him, and it was sitting there, staring grimly at him from behind his eyes.

Then he walked out into a gigantic foyer.

It was empty. Empty but for about twenty people around two long desks, one marked 'Witches and Wizards', the other 'Muggles'. They seemed to be draped over their desk, or chair. One was even crouching down, her head resting on the seat. Sirius crept towards the Wizard's side.

They were all asleep. That was why. And breathing gently. Sirius was, by this time, utterly bewildered.

He went up to one man, who was lying flat over the desk, is arms stretched out in front of him, his face down. 'Hello?' Sirius said. Nothing happened. 'Hello?' a little louder. Again, no reaction. He reached out and shook the man's arm.

The man started up, grunting. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, stared round.

'The Veil malfunctioned. I don't understand,' he said.

'What's going on?' Sirius said. 'If you don't understand, I definitely don't.'

The man looked up at him. Frowned. Then comprehension dawned on his face.

'Black,' he whispered, 'Sirius Black.'

Sirius nodded. It was at this point that he jerked out of the dream he'd been in since the mist had taken hold. He realised he should have run for it. He realised he was going to be caught, thrown back in Azkaban, killed even.

He jerked his head up, stared wildly around, then turned to run.

'No!' the man said, grabbing his wrist. Sirius tried to pull free, but couldn't. 'You need your pages.'

'What?' he stormed, turning round.

The man whimpered and let go.

'Did they sentence you to death Mr Black?' he said.

'They haven't caught me yet!' Sirius yelled.

'No, no, you're dead. Mr Black, you're dead.'

Sirius was so frustrated, desperate, by then that he didn't know what to do. He roared. The man cowered.

'Sirius Black,' he said, 'you're innocent here. Mr Black. You're in the afterlife.'

The man was typing hurriedly as he spoke, and as Sirius was about to turn and run again, the man thrust a pile of paper towards him.

Soon afterwards – ten minutes maybe, half an hour, Sirius couldn't be sure – he was striding down a corridor, the man at his side, three sides of A4 in his hands, listing his life, and at the top, his new address:

Area 1900AD, location: GB, neighbourhood: NewBrum, address: 12 Pie-Cat Crescent, Crowdley

Then the man had pushed him into a gigantic lift, and Sirius had leant his arms against the wall, trying to stop them shaking, trying to understand as the man explained again and again, 'You're in the afterlife, you went through the Veil and died, it's ok now, everyone else is here, your friends, your wife.' Sirius kept reading over the address, trying to guess if 'NewBrum' might be some twisted afterlife version of Birmingham, and if Birmingham meant Ruby, meant Chloe.

The lift down took an age. Or, indeed, many ages; eventually Sirius turned from his papers, and noticed them pass down through the levels, through Area 800AD, 900AD, 1000AD, and so on, slowly, slowly until eventually it hit the bottom. Area 1900AD. Home.

'This is Germany,' the man with him said.

'What?' Sirius replied, stepping out into the bustling crowds.

'Yeah, I never understood why they put it here. Especially when the World Wars happened.'

Sirius hadn't particularly grasped where the man was coming from in that statement, so he decided to ignore it. In the distance he saw a sign point towards 'GB' and the man pulled him by the arm towards it.

They went down an escalator, and came to a dim underground station. Waiting by the platform was a coach. The man pushed Sirius onto it, as the driver called down 'This is the first one I've had in over an hour, and no news. What's going on?'

'Blockage up at the tunnels,' the man replied, and then, Sirius thought he heard whispered, 'that's Sirius Black, and he's just come through the Veil' a cough, and the man continued, 'best just to go, it'll be a while before it's all sorted out, and then there'll be a rush. I'll just go and send the word round.'

The man disappeared, the coach door slid shut, and the engine hummed into life.

Six hours of underground-coach-travel later, Sirius found his way to 12 Pie-cat Crescent. He stood by the gate and looked. He wanted to go in. He didn't want to go in.

The lawn was bright green, the laburnum in full yellow blossom, and a breeze stirred the nasturtiums in the flowerbed. The front door was painted green. It had a heavy iron knocker. The dandelions sprouting between the flagstones were friendly, bright, brilliant.

He sighed, and stepped through the gate. Paced up the path. Pulled up the knocker, and let it fall.

Inside he heard a frantic scuffling, and suddenly the door was yanked open.

Before him stood a hunched old lady, her eyes wide. She saw him and yelped. 'Dad!' she croaked, flinging her arms around him. He gasped, his mind racing, and suddenly grabbed her shoulders, pushed her back, peered at her face.

'Ruby?' he whispered. She nodded vigorously. He felt tears in his eyes. 'You're so old.'

Ruby stared at him solemnly for a moment. Then she frowned. And suddenly she was laughing, 'Oh God, I didn't think! I was five last time I saw you wasn't I? Hang on.'

She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and suddenly she was shrinking, her hair was turning black, and she was a perfect, pink little five year old, grinning up at him.

Sirius was too shocked to speak. When Ruby reached her arms up he could only just concentrate enough to bend down, and hug her as tightly as he could.

He heard someone else come into the room. Then a voice. 'Sirius?'

He looked up.

In the doorway was Chloe. Chloe, just as she'd been at Hogwarts, fifteen, her brown eyes staring up at him as though she was drowning, and he was air. Shaking, she knelt and put the two cups of tea she was holding down on the carpet.

Then she was dashing towards him, and he was disentangling himself from Ruby, and suddenly their arms were round each other, and her face was buried in his shoulder, and they were crying into each other, and smiling with relief. And she reached up to his now long hair, brushed it from his face, felt the age in the skin of his cheek from the years of Azkaban. And then, for the first time in fifteen years, she kissed him.

Sirius wasn't having a bad day anymore. Sirius was having the best day of his life.

No, not quite… Sirius was having the best day of his death.

AN:

Ok, after all these years, it's done. It's over. Finished. Finally. Half of the old gang have left. has changed a lot, JK's written another book, and HP fanfic is no longer my thing. But I actually finished.

(Of course, I still love Sirius, and I will still buy HP7 at midnight and drink so much coffee I'm shaking for the next two days, so I can read it in one sitting, but that's just the crazy after effects of an ex-obsession.)

(Thinking about it, if my theory about the ending of HP7 is right, then there might be another chapter, but that is currently purely hypothetical, so let us not consider its possible existence just yet.)

If you ever want me again, check ellierany. to everyone still reading, hi to anyone who's just read the whole thing. Cheers to my olde reviewers and readers for all the years. And again, to flamers: I now find flames amusing, so if you want to, go ahead, give me a good laugh.

Any mistakes I made; I couldn't find my OotP to check, I'm sorry.

I'd planned this chapter for so long, it's great to get it out of my system, even though I'm sure it could've been far better.

Lastly, thank you so much for reading, I really really do love you and appreciate your time for my writing, much as I hate to consider how poor quality it must have been when I started writing it three and a half years ago (and I'm going to avoid re-reading it and discovering the awful truth).

SIRIUS SERIOUSLY RULES FOREVER

love

Maigon Jesolite

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