In Sirius Denial - Padfoot Lives!

Harry thoroughly regretted breaking Sirius's mirror about two weeks into summer. It consumed his thoughts thereafter, and no amount of distractions (such as taunting Dudley, or Big D) could take his mind off of it. He couldn't believe that he had destroyed that mirror. How could he be so thick?

Because, the truth was, he was in fact really dim not to notice that he could have just as easily repaired it with magic. But perhaps he was too upset, or too hungry, or too tired. The Dursleys were really being particularly cruel this summer, making him get up at all hours of the night to "check up on Dudley", since Aunt Petunia was terrified that another dementor would show up in Little Whinging and decide to come and finish off her poor, "pleasantly plump" Dudders. They also refused to give him any more to eat than leftovers, which were sparse in the Dursley home owing to the fact that Dudley's fat thrived on Aunt Petunia's mediocre cooking. So when Harry got to eat, it wasn't much and it certainly wasn't appetizing.

But after an all-too-brief respite at The Burrow (in the company of best friends Ron and Hermione), it was back to Hogwarts again.

The death that Harry was trying desperately to pretend hadn't happened loomed in the foreground of his mind, just as the great stone castle came into view on the train. However, Harry forgot all about Sirius at the sight of the wonderful beginning of term feast, having been starved practically all summer, but that night Sirius haunted Harry's dreams, the scene playing over and over again of when he fell behind that veil in the Department of Mysteries.

~~

About one week before Halloween, Harry, Ron and Hermione were assigned a huge essay from Professor Flitwick on Halloween-related charms. Professor Flitwick was under the very, very wrong impression that people actually loved to research such things, and considered the assignment a gift to his N.E.W.T.-level class, saying that it was "great fun" and "extremely educational". Dubious though these claims were, Hermione was convinced that it would help them further along their D.A. meetings.

"You know, many of these so-called 'charms' are in fact mislabeled," Hermione was telling Harry in an undertone, since they were in the library. "They're actually earlier, nastier forms of many of the jinxes and hexes that we use commonly today."

"You talk as if we asked," mumbled Ron from somewhere behind Hermione's large stack of musty tomes. Harry smiled inwardly, since Hermione was glaring rather intensly at Ron, who reddened under her gaze.

"Well, I find it fascinating," whispered Hermione. "The history of Halloween is really remarkable, you know, because - "

"Quiet back there!" said Madam Pince severely from the front of the check-out line. Hermione put her finger to her lips as if Ron and Harry had been the ones talking. Ron feigned indignance behind Hermione's back.

Back in the Gryffindor common room, Harry pulled out his essay, which read so far: "Halloween is a time of year," and left it at that. He had meant to write a lengthy introduction, starting out with some colorful history of Halloween and Muggle-style Halloween to take up some room on his desperately blank paper, but he hadn't really gotten that far. Ron wasn't that far along either, but somehow Hermione had already managed three pages on the subject.

"So," said Hermione slowly, glancing over her paper, "I was thinking we'd start off with taking some notes, you know, to gather our ideas, since this is quite a substantial portion of our grade. So, Harry- you take these books- Ron, these- and that leaves me with all of these," she said enthusiastically, gesturing at her stack, which was easily three times the size of both Harry and Ron's.

"Don't you think we could take some of those off your hands, Hermione?" asked Harry.

Hermione went red. "Oh, no, I- well, these are the historical ones, and I figured, well, you don't like history anyway, so I'd just take them."

"Oh, what, like we're not capable of actually learning something historical?" said Ron sarcastically. "Or- God forbid, something that you find fascinating is to beyond the reaches of our tiny brains?"

"You don't have to take it personally, Ron!" said Hermione angrily. "If you want to do the note taking- fine, I just hope you are thorough." She shoved over her stack of books, leaving only one for herself. "Have at it."

"I was being sarcastic, Hermione," said Ron in a tiny voice, as if he were mortified at the prospect of reading so many books.

Hermione opened her solitary book and scanned the index, completely ignoring Ron.

"I'll take half of yours, Ron," said Harry, who was sick of Ron and Hermione's constant bickering. Why couldn't they act normal for two seconds so that he could concentrate?

After that, conversation was replaced with frantic quill scratching and the rustling of parchment at their table. All around the room, in fact, several sixth-years could be seen reading up on the subject of Halloween, or, in Seamus and Dean's case, bewitching jack-o-lanterns to say rude things like "Greasy Snape wears a woman's cape" and other such childish things that Ron and Harry found extremely funny and distracting, but Hermione found them stupid and annoying.

Every once in a while, Hermione would unbury her nose from her book to tell Harry and Ron uninteresting facts, such as "Did you know that the Body-Binding Curse was once used on a Muggle on Halloween in 1646?" or something like that. Harry really couldn't give two flying flobberworms about such utter rubbish, to him, this essay was about the most uninteresting thing on Earth, and all he could think of was flying on his Firebolt, and about that spectacular dive he made yesterday at Quidditch practice.

Hermione predictably interrupted his daydreams with another factlet: "Did you know that the veil between the sprit world and ours is thinnest on Halloween?"

This completely random fact did not grasp Harry's attention at all, it was something that seemed commonplace to him until Ron piped up, "You know, Dad mentioned something about that once on Halloween when I was ten. He said that the Department of Mysteries was having a lot of trouble with spirits leaking out of somewhere down there, and they had to round up all sorts of ghosts to herd the spirits back down wherever they come from. Or something."

Hermione stopped ignoring Ron and said, "I expect the ghosts would have had to do that because they were they only entities that could freely enter the spirit world, am I right? Since they're between life and death and all."

Ron looked bewildered and said, "I guess so."

Hermione continued, "But I wonder how they did it? There must be some sort of gateway to the spirit world in the Ministry..."

Suddenly it all clicked into place for Harry. "Of course!" he said abruptly.

Hermione shifted her gaze to him. "What is it, Harry?"

"The thing you said about the gateway... well, you know how... er..." Harry took a deep breath and said Sirius's name. "How, er, Sirius, er, fell behind that curtain thing on that archway in the Department of Mysteries? And everyone said that he was gone, and he couldn't come back... and no one living could round up the spirits, they couldn't go down there wherever Sirius fell..."

"How do you mean?" asked Ron.

"Well, I heard Dumbledore refer to that room with the archway as the 'Death Chamber'. And we all heard whispering behind that curtain, like there were people there, and Luna said..."

"Luna!" said Hermione. "You can't take anything she says seriously, Harry! I know you miss Sirius but, you know, don't get your hopes up of his coming back to life just because of something Luna said."

"But what she said made sense, Hermione, it wasn't just some rubbish about some nargles or Crumple-Horned thingies or whatever," protested Harry adamantly. "She said that her mum was behind there, or something... The gist of it was that everyone goes there when they die, and that we'd see them again."

"Well, I expect she just made that up to comfort you, or something," said Hermione. "Sweet and unusually sensible of her. But just because - "

"Death Chamber?" said Ron, a bit randomly. "Dumbledore called it the Death Chamber?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Hermione.

"What?" said Harry and Ron in unison.

"Don't you see- it's how wizards kill people who they sentence to death!" said Hermione, rather excitedly. "You know, because Azkaban, however horrible it is, can't be the end of the line for some people- like they wouldn't just shove V-Voldemort in there and forget about him would they? Oh, Ron, for heaven's sake- Anyway, they'd want to make sure that Voldemort was dead, so they'd definitely take him to the death chamber - this explains the stadium seating - because people would want to come in and witness his death, right? Or whomever they were sentencing to death. But it probably hasn't been used in a while - we'd have heard about it before now if it had been used."

This made perfect sense to Harry, but completely baffled Ron.

"Well, okay- but would you really want to kill people in that way? Because what my Dad was saying was that the spirits had gotten out somehow on Halloween, and would you really want You-Know-Who to leak out of the spirit world like that?"

Hermione sighed. "Look, I don't know, it's just a theory. Maybe you have a point." She looked over at Harry for confirmation, but Harry seemed lost in his thoughts, and was wearing a vaguely perceptible grin on his face. There was also a twinkle in his eyes that Hermione immediately recognized.

"Oh, don't tell me," she said when Harry finally looked up. "I know what you're thinking, and I want no part of it. It would be really dangerous, not to mention impossible to pull off - "

Harry ignored her. "Ron," he said, "Do you think somehow we could get to the Ministry on Halloween?"

"I don't think so - but it is a Hogsmeade day, I think, it's a Sunday."

Harry grinned. "Excellent."

"Where does he want us to go on Halloween, Hermione?" asked Ron slowly, who had a very good hunch of where.

Hermione sighed, and said, "Isn't it obvious, Ron- he wants to try to rescue Sirius from the Death Chamber or whatever it is on the day when the veil's thinnest - Halloween." She turned to Harry, an urgent look on her face. "But we can't, Harry, we could let out a lot of other spirits along with Sirius - assuming we can find Sirius. And we don't have any clue of how to get there, or how to fish one spirit out of millions upon millions of spirits, or -"

She stopped because Harry had suddenly pulled a shattered mirror wrapped in cloth out of his bag.

"What is it?" Hermione asked shakily.

"Sirius's ticket to freedom," said Harry bravely, in spite of everything that could go wrong with his plan. "But I'm gonna need your help, Hermione."

"And me?" inquired Ron eagerly.

"Of course, you prat, and don't look at me like that," said Harry as Ron continued to stared at his eagerly and goggly-eyed.

"Alright, so, here's the plan," said Harry, unwrapping the mirror and taking out his wand.