A Beginning

'This is ridiculous.'

The words repeated themselves in the dark stillness of the littlest bedroom in Number 4, Privet Drive. Or they seemed to, at any rate. In reality, it was only Harry Potter, playing back in his mind what he'd just said.

Annoyed, he threw the Quidditch book he'd been reading at the door of his closet, but then thought better of it while the book was still in the air, and regretted the temperamental move. Not that he expected anything to come of it, save him feeling worse over the small dent which was sure to appear, and the scolding he'd get for it when his Aunt, Uncle and cousin returned the following week.

Only, something did happen. Whether it was because of him or not, Harry wasn't sure.

The book stopped moving. It didn't hit anything, merely stopped. Just like that, in midair. As if being grabbed by an unseen hand.

Harry blinked.

'What?' Harry asked the room. He was staring at the book, trying to figure out what he'd just seen happen.

He'd only just come to the conclusion that he must either be imagining things, or else he was doing wandless magic again -- which was not a good thing -- when he heard the front door open.

This would not have been all that significant, to an almost hermit such as Harry, except that he'd heard the front door open. It was past midnight on a weekday, and his relatives were all away, vacationing with Aunt Marge in far off Majorca.

He was immediately suspicious. And he had a right to be.

He'd heard nothing from any one in the magical world since he'd returned from his fifth year at Hogwarts almost a month ago. Which was exceptionally funny, given that he hadn't even owled the Order -- Hedwig had disappeared on the second day back -- and they'd sworn to come check on him if he didn't owl regularly. It reminded him of the summer after his first year far too much for comfort.

And now there was someone else in the house.

Harry stood up, the cuffs of his over-large pajama pants brushing the floor. Quietly, he made his way out into the hall. He didn't realise it, but his wand had somehow traveled from the top of his trunk all the way across the room into his hand in a matter of milliseconds.

There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary in the upstairs hall, and Harry started for the steps. He moved slowly and cautiously, making as little noise as possible. Skillfully, he even avoided the few stairs that creaked. For some reason, he seemed to be unusually acclimated to the darkness, and at one point even forgot it was actually not broad daylight. But that was only for a brief moment and he didn't notice it anyway.

The front hall was empty, the door standing... closed? Harry hadn't heard it being shut. Grimly, he turned a stony face toward the kitchen and proceeded with his inspection.

A light was on in the kitchen. Harry could see the thin strip of light, shining out through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.

There was a heavy feeling in his chest, almost like fear. Except he knew, instinctively, that no matter what was in there -- if anything was -- he didn't have to be afraid of it.

With his left hand, Harry slowly pushed the kitchen door open and pointed his wand into the only illuminated place in the house, his heart beating in his ears. The room was empty.

Except for the spindly old man sitting at the table and twirling a long piece of polished wood in his fingers.

Harry's own fingers, slippery with sweat, almost dropped his wand at the sight of the old man. 'Who are you?' he demanded.

The old man smiled, his aged and wrinkled face creasing further. His bald head shone under the electric lighting of the Muggle kitchen. 'I? Why, I am nobody... That you would know, anyway.'

'I know more than people think I do,' Harry countered, feeling as if he was lying even as he said it.

'That you do,' agreed the man with a nod. His darkly blue eyes twinkled as he noticed Harry's disbelieving expression. 'I've been watching you, young Harry.'

'What?' said Harry, blinking in surprise.

'Oh yes.' The man set down his wand and leaned back in his chair. 'My eye's been on you for years. You showed extraordinary potential even as a baby.' He laughed softly. 'Albus always did love to make his mistakes in large numbers all at once.'

Completely lost, Harry could do nothing but stare. This man spoke of Dumbledore like a fool.

'No, not a fool.'

Harry frowned. 'What?'

The man laughed again. 'I said, I don't think Albus is a fool. But I know him for what he is, and that's a wizard, not a god or a saint.'

'Oh.' To say that Harry was confused would have been an understatement. He really had absolutely no idea who the man in front of him was or what he was doing there.

'Well?' prompted the stranger patiently. 'Aren't you wondering why I've shown up in your Aunt's kitchen at two-forty-four on the morning of your sixteenth birthday?'

'Er.' Harry frowned -- what could one say to a question like that? 'Yes, I guess I am.'

'Excellent,' said the man, his eyes twinkling even more. 'Let's go.'

'Excuse me?'

The man smiled again, pleased. 'I find that strictly verbal explanations can be somewhat lacking in conviction. I'd like to be able to show you what I'm talking about as I'm talking. But I can't do that right now. So, we have to go.'

Harry wasn't about to just leave the Dursleys' with someone he didn't know, much less trust, but the lack of communication from the Order was weighing heavily on his mind, especially since his desertion by his "family."

In short, Harry Potter was going stir-crazy. And this man seemed safe enough. An excellent excuse to get out a bit. Except...

'If you've been watching me,' Harry, said sharply, 'then you should know I'm not leaving this house with a stranger. Even one who looks a bit like Dumbledore.' This was true; the man did bare a passing resemblance to the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

For some reason, his words drew another smile to the man's face. As Harry watched, he steepled his fingers and nodded. 'Indeed, little man,' - Harry was sure it would be useless to point out that he was bigger than the stranger - 'I have been watching you, and did know this. At this point in time, though, I'm not asking you to leave the house with me. However, I would like the opportunity to prove my good intentions and how, er, safe you'd be were you to come with me.'

After this, the old man didn't move at all, even to blink his eyes, which were staring intently at Harry. The piercing gaze was almost as unnerving as Dumbledore's, and Harry found himself distinctly uncomfortable under it. An unanswered question rose in the unnatural purple depths. The answer, something seemed to assure Harry, lay somewhere within him.

Harry could feel himself being drawn into the stare from the stranger. Could feel the message the man was sending him. Could feel the way the man expertly wrapped the thought around his own, hiding them from him.

Could feel himself being persuaded.

He tried to rationalise it as not actually agreeing to what the man wanted, just giving him a chance to try and convince him to agree. Yes, Harry tried very hard.

Not to his own surprise, but certainly to the man's, he failed after a great deal of mental wrestling.

Having seen that the stranger's wand was on the table several inches from his steepled fingers, Harry judged it safe to make a huge mistake. Operating on the lack of hostility coming from the man, Harry Potter lowered his wand.

That move made him the headlines for the next day, and the rest of the week, and the week after that as well, probably. Front page news was nothing to this. This was the stuff of legends.

All from one little movement.

Harry nodded back at the stranger. 'All right then.'

o.o.o.o

(flashback)

Sirius ducked Bellatrix's jet of red light, laughing at her. 'Come on, you can do better than that!' he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room. He didn't care that the others were there, that she wasn't the only person they were supposed to be fighting; he'd always loved taunting her.

Adrenaline was flooding his veins, he hadn't felt this alive in ages. He paused for the barest fraction of a second, taking a deep breath. It was great to be out of that house, to be doing something, to be fighting, to be --

He felt Bellatrix's next curse hit him squarely in his chest.

His laughter was dying on his lips and his eyes flew wide in surprise -- he'd let his guard down; he'd been hit; he could feel himself starting to fall.

Sirius could see smug triumph on Bellatrix's face. He looked away, toward the people around him. Was that Harry, jumping down those stairs? And Dumbledore over there, and... Why were they looking at him like that? He'd been hit, he wasn't dead, he was just... falling... slowly...

Falling... Wait, where was he? Wasn't he... Oh no. No. He wasn't, he couldn't be -- Merlin, don't let him be -- not the Veil. Fear lanced through his mind, gripping at his heart.

It was taking him an age to fall. Everything he could see was happening in slow motion. Harry was still coming, his face showing something dreadful... desperation, almost. There was Dumbledore, and those others... No! Don't look, not at them. Not them -- Sirius had to find himHe would be in there somewhere, Sirius could trust his facial expression to show whether -- there he was.

Remus was standing a little way away, between the dais and the stairs Harry was on. His face was frozen, wide-eyed and stark white. He appeared numb with shock.

Sirius sought Remus's eyes. He knew he was falling, had know already. But now he knew where. The Veil. He was falling. God and Merlin, he was falling.

He was sure, then, that the Veil was behind him. He knew that no one came back from the Veil. He knew what was happening.

He was dying.

'No!' Remus seemed to cry out, though he said nothing. Sirius wanted to scream. Sirius needed to scream, had to, because that expression on his friend's beloved face was too horrible, unbearable. But he couldn't scream; there wasn't time even for him to do that much.

He felt the cloth of the Veil brush his back. It was harshly rough, even through his robes, and so icy cold it burnt his skin.

He had to do something. He couldn't leave like this. Couldn't desert Harry. And Remus... hadn't he lost enough already? Merlin, Remus! No! Not like that... he couldn't leave like that... He grasped for something he could do, some sign he could give to Remus, to do... anything, really, so that he wasn't being abandoned by another friend, again.

Sirius curled his lips, and mouthed 'Moony' as the Veil fell around his head. Just before it flapped closed over him, he saw a strangely heartening flash in Remus's eyes answer him.

And then the Veil and the dark and the voices had him.

(/flashback)

The world surrounding Sirius was dark and the air murky, filled with thick, swirling grey fog -- at least, he thought it was fog. He got just a glance around, before he hit the hard, cold, greyish ground with a loud, echoing thud. That's when he realised that there was an eerie singing that had only just stopped. And also that it was coming from two pale, spectral women.

One of them, the closer, looked vaguely familiar to Sirius. Through the dull, ugly greyness that seemed to cover everything, he could just make out a glimmering pinkness -- a pale shadow of her flaming red hair.

'Sirius?' the shade-lady asked despairingly, her voice low, whispery and filled with a dreadful rasp that set the hairs on Sirius's neck standing. Incredulous, Sirius looked up into the dead, washed out eyes of his best mate's wife.

And saw something he didn't expect. It was the same thing he figured Wormtail had seen when faced with him, two years ago. A desire to kill.

The other shade-lady didn't give him a chance to fully realise that the cold crawling in his stomach was fear, before she started cackling. 'Fleshie! We've got a fleshie!' And then she turned away, shooting off much faster than any human, screaming "Fleshie!" like a banshee. Sirius got the unsettling feeling that it was just about the same thing as if she'd set of a warning alarm. Only... worse, for him.

'You can't be here!' the Lily-shade cried, as she moved closer to Sirius. She was still speaking in that croaky excuse for a voice which gave Sirius shivers. Though her words were distraught, she appeared delighted with his presence.

Every little bit of the way she was walking toward him, almost a stalk, and the way her lip was curling, and the way she was looking at him, gave him the distinct impression that she viewed him as the little yellow canary snack for her predatory self. Sirius couldn't remember ever having been so freaked out in his life.

'Um... What's going... Lily?' Sirius managed, trying to sit up. With the look the woman in front of him was giving him, he didn't feel very comfortable sprawled on his back. He doubted he would have felt comfortable with that look under any circumstances. 'You're... Lily...'

He tried to go on, but when he said her name, something flickered in her eyes, and she stopped moving. He didn't dare speak again. Her voice was almost as he remembered it when she said, 'No. Sirius. Go back. You have to go back. Now, Sirius!'

Confused, he glanced over to the spot that he'd come through. To where the Veil was.

Only it wasn't. Instead of the Veil, there was a thin pane of nothing hanging in the air, shimmering slightly.

'I... I can't go back!'

The grey was coming back into Lily's eyes again. Sirius could hear the other shade-woman screaming somewhere in the background, intermingled with a different scream, repeating over and over and seeming to come from the world Sirius had just left. He couldn't make it out.

'You have to. You cannot stay here,' she said, halfway between a scary rasp and her normal self.

The fog at the edges of Sirius's vision was beginning to swirl rather ominously. It bunched in places, moving as if to form figures, and then hurrying away, leaving those figures behind it. More shades were coming. "Fleshie!" seemed to have become an echoing chant.

But the dull scream from the world of the living could be understood now. It was... Harry's voice? 'SIRIUS!'

When Lily heard it, she turned away from the near-frantic but paralyzed Sirius, to stare with longing, brilliant emerald green eyes at the entrance to Death. She appeared to be... breathing. Heavily. 'That voice,' she demanded, all but restored to her normal, living appearance, except that she still looked like she was made out of air. 'Who is that?'

'I... I think it might be... Harry,' said Sirius, just as the first of the other shadow people reached them. Sirius didn't notice the effect that name had on Lily.

'Fleshie! There has not been a fleshie here for years!' crowed a withered old man in 13th century robes, from the front of the crowd. He was giving Sirius a very, very unnerving stare.

'Fleshie?' Sirius hazarded softly, trying to look at all of the shades at once. The blood in his veins seemed to have been replaced by fear, with how cold it ran.

A little girl, not more than five, slithered her shadow body around to behind Sirius. She cackled and reached out one pale finger to trace the back of his neck softly. 'Yes, fleshie...'

'This is the land of the dead, Sirius,' a new voice, less dead than most of the others said, as a tall, surprisingly solid looking male came forward. He sent Sirius a sad little smile, laced with the hunger and bloodlust shared by the other shades. For some reason, Sirius's fear increased, though he didn't understand why -- he'd never been scared of his brother before. 'You aren't dead. That makes you a fleshie here.'

'Do you know what we do to fleshies, pretty man?' the little girl whispered, leaning in so that her small mouth was almost touching his ear. He shuddered, disturbed by the breath he didn't feel when she spoke. The crowd gave a collective, grotesque, high-pitched laugh.

'Sirius.' The voice was soft, almost-living, and very gentle. He turned his head to look at Lily, from whom it originated. 'Sirius, listen to me. I need your help. You must go back, you must. My son...'

Sirius wished he could cry, but he dreaded doing that in front of these... creepy dead people. 'Harry's fine, Lily. Remus --'

Green flooded into Lily's eyes, and colour to the rest of her face. Kneeling next to him, she brought up her hand to stroke the side of Sirius's face. He recoiled instinctively, but her touch was loving, and not so ice cold as that of the child. Sirius could almost, almost believe that she was alive. 'Say it again, Sirius. You have to go back. I need you to.'

'Get away from him!' shrieked Regulus, glaring furiously at Lily. 'Relations, you know, have --'

'Shut up, Regulus,' ordered someone else, a fat woman in a hideous evening dress. 'You've had more than your share, because of that rule. I think I'd like this one to myself...' Several other, equally sickening statements from different shades echoed this remark.

'Say what?' Sirius asked quietly, wishing above anything to keep Lily the way she was, the one creature who wasn't looking at him like a piece of meat in a butcher's window. He got the feeling that what she was doing was strictly not allowed.

'His name,' she breathed, the colour she'd gained starting to fade almost immediately. 'I can't help you without it.'

Feeling more lost than he had even when he'd been stuck with a Dementor practically in his mind during his stay in Azkaban, Sirius frowned at her, but spoke anyway. 'Remus. Why shou --'

Grey swam in her eyes and over her face. 'No!' she rasped in a shout, 'Wrong name!'

Like a wand being lit inside his head, Sirius realised what was going on, and that realisation gave him a faint glimmer of hope. It wasn't much, but it was enough to wrap around his heart and shield it from the stalking figures of the shadows that were currently looming over him. 'Harry!' he said fervently, smiling as life, almost, rushed back into Lily. 'HARRY!'

The shouts from the other side of the Veil suddenly reached a peak, and just as Sirius screamed Harry's name, Harry was screaming his.

Lily smiled in relief and bent her head to rest it against Sirius's chest. Her arms went around him in the embrace of an old friend. From somewhere behind him came a vicious hiss. Something, something large and strong and furious, wrenched Lily away and tossed her toward the pane of nothing. Regulus loomed over Sirius, his eyes filled with rage.

'No!' screamed the little old wizard, frowning at Lily. 'Keep her away!'

'Fleshie!' the little girl screamed, apparently in agreement.

Sirius's hope was starting to fade like the colour from Lily's face. It was being replaced by horror and resignation. 'Harry...' he whispered sadly, looking down at the grey ground. He didn't hear when Lily whispered it feebly back at him.

'You've all waited too long!' a tall, stately female shade declared, breaking away from the crowd and marching purposefully toward Sirius. 'I don't intend to waste this one!'

'Nooo!'

A dark grey blur burst through the fat shade in the evening dress, tumbling to a skidding halt directly between Sirius and the other shade. Sirius looked up at it quickly, shocked to find what he did.

It was James Potter -- or, at least, used to be James Potter. Now it was only a fragile, wispy shadow of him. But either way, it was another familiar face to Sirius. And Sirius got the impression that this one wasn't all that in to fleshies, either.

'What do you think you're doing?' snapped the woman, her grey face contorted in anger. 'Move aside!'

'No,' repeated James, standing as firmly as almost-fog could. 'I won't let you, not to him.'

Sirius didn't try to hide it when the tear leaked out. Somehow, having James in front of him, knowing that he didn't need any spoken names to bring him back, made Sirius feel a lot safer.

'You... won't let us?' sputtered Regulus, trying to push past James and get at Sirius. 'That's the most ridiculous --'

Silently, James put a hand on his chest and pushed him backwards. For a moment, Regulus and the woman behind him meshed together in a mass of shadow, then they reformed, and toppled to the ground.

James's voice was firm, and warm. 'Yes. Won't let you. You're not getting him.'

The hairs on the back of Sirius's neck rose, and he whipped his head around to see the little girl, grinning toothily at him. Her hands were up, prepared to snake around his neck. Then Lily's hand appeared, and tried to slap the girl's away. She received a hiss and a snarl for her trouble.

'Sirius.' It was James again, speaking very quietly but clearly. 'You have to fight back. Not even having a shadow on your side can help you unless you're willing to do something for yourself.'

'But...' Sirius felt helpless, with the gazes of so many things upon him. 'There's nothing I can do!' The little girl laughed in his ear.

'Pretty man... but so silly.'

His disgust -- at having let himself get hit by Bellatrix's curse, at being stupid enough to fall through the Veil, at the proceedings since, at everything -- suddenly seemed more than he could take, and he had to get it out. 'Get away from me!' He threw up his hands and batted at the girl.

She didn't fall away, as he'd expected her to. His hand passed through her.

Everything seemed to stop.

'I hate that,' cursed the spindly old man, shaking his head. Little bits of it were falling away, dissolving into vapor. That was when Sirius noticed that everyone but Lily and James were disappearing.

'What's going on?' Sirius asked of James, bemused. James only beamed at him, starting to fade as well.

He couldn't have that.

'No! What are you doing? You can't go! Stop!' he cried, frantic again. He dove toward James, trying grab hold of him and keep him from leaving. But you can't hold mist and you can't cling to fog, it just doesn't work. James passed through his fingers like the little girl had. 'James! Prongs! Don't leave me!'

'We have to, Sirius,' Lily whispered. 'You've vanished us when you vanished the others. You've won, don't you see. We can't all stay together, not yet...'

'But... but... I want to!' he protested, realising after he said it that he meant it.

'No,' James snapped. 'I gave you a responsibility in my son, Padfoot. Get your arse out there and fulfill it.'

Lily smiled. 'All you have to do is find your way out.'

And then they were both gone.

And Sirius was alone.

In the mist and the fog.

And he had no clue what he was supposed to do.