Glass

He sat in the immense room with a piece of broken glass in his hand.

"Sirius," he whispered, and looked into the shard of mirror that Harry had given him . . . two years ago? Only two?

"Sirius," he tried again. "The war is over. Harry is safe and happy, and he misses you desperately." The slice of his mouth that showed in the mirror curved in a little smile. "I miss you desperately. It has been a long two years, but we won the war--and Bellatrix got everything she deserved. Maybe more than she deserved." The screams as the Dementors had turned on her and sucked out what little remained of her soul were still fresh in his mind.

He looked up at the door, and wondered briefly if anyone would know that he had been here and gone. Anyone but the person who would come after.

"The years have been hard, Sirius. I've done my duty by you . . . I kept Harry safe and I gave him all the love I could." Again, that part-of-a-smile touched his mouth. "All the love I didn't save for you. God, I miss you!"

He gently stroked the piece of mirror, and imagined that it was a fragment of the Mirror of Erised--imagined that it was a piece of Sirius's face that he could almost touch through the glass. And he heard faint whispers behind the black-veiled archway in the center of the room.

"Snape has forgiven you. He wants you to know that." And he took the other mirror from his coat pocket--Sirius's mirror, the partner of Harry's. "He wanted me to ask you for your forgiveness . . . but you can't answer him, can you?" He set the fragment of Harry's mirror on the ground and stood.

"Sirius . . . I know that you'll think it's selfish of me . . . but I've done my part. And every day feels like a year. I'm growing old, Sirius." His hair was almost entirely grey now, although he was not yet forty years old. "I want to be with you--I don't want to miss you anymore. And I can do more good this way," he added, more loudly. "Harry asked me to bring you something when I told him that I was coming here . . .."

He held Sirius's mirror out toward the veil, and as it reflected the room's dim light, the voices seemed nearer and clearer than ever.

"I love you, Sirius. I'll see you on the other side."

And Remus Lupin walked through the archway, and out of the world of the living.

+++

Harry Potter knelt to pick up the fragment of his mirror that Remus had left behind. So, he had done it after all. He had entered the world behind the veil . . . and now he was with Sirius. Even after two years, a pang of sadness still tainted the man's memory.

Harry put the piece in his pocket, brushed off his trousers, and left the room.

+++

"Sirius . . ." Harry breathed. He watched his reflection in the mirror, hoping against all hope that something--anything--would happen.

For a long, long moment, green eyes met unblinking green eyes.

And then they were blue.

"HARRY! It worked! It worked!" shouted Sirius, and he laughed with pure, unadulterated joy. "Oh, Harry, your mother and father send their love, and Remus and I . . . we love you, too! It worked!"

And that great, gaping empty place in his heart that had been made when Sirius had died was suddenly, wonderfully full.