Behind the Shroud

Behind the Shroud

Prologue

Sirius landed with a thud.

It seemed like he had been falling for an eternity. Just falling and falling. The ground, upon which he had landed, was firm, extremely firm to the point of being hard, and chilled, as if it were deep inside some underground cavern. His body met it as if it was made of the flat limestone with which the floor of Gringotts was constructed. The impact was sharp and sudden but, in a way, comfortable.

"Funny," he thought, "the ground didn't look so far away when I fell..."

But when had he fallen? Where had he fallen? Such thoughts clouded over in his mind. His head began to ache, whether from the effort of attempted remembrances or as a result of his fall he could not be sure.

Slowly, tentatively, Sirius opened his eyes. The sight was nothing like what he had been expecting. Yet... what had he been expecting? The space above him was filled with infinite, filtering hues of gray. The shreds of nothingness looped, curved, and arched together and into each other in an endless, patternless succession. This analysis brought an abrupt flash of a massive, domed, granite ceiling into his head, but it was gone before he could even realize what it was he had imagined. The ever-shifting shades above him tempted him to simply close his eyes and go to sleep. The sight was soothing yet cold, an eerie kind of cold that chilled Sirius's bones. But the overwhelming weight of the colorless sky seemed to push down upon his mind, willing it to sink into oblivion.

With an effort, Sirius shrugged off the temptation. Some inexplicable instinct commanded that he rouse himself and explore his surroundings. He gradually raised his head. His headache had not subsided and began to pound with renewed vigor with every minuet movement he made. The pain threatened to force his intentions out of his mind, allowing him to sink back onto the hard ground. Defying every fiber in his body, Sirius steeled himself against the pain and prepared to embark upon his explorations.

Gritting his teeth and exerting more willpower than he knew that he possessed, Sirius used his arms to hoist himself into a sitting position. The throbbing within his head and the aching of every muscle within his body dictated that he close his eyes during this procedure. Upon opening them again, Sirius gaped about him in wonderment. The landscape was what some ignorant child might expect of the Department of Mysteries. The transforming tints of gray were not restricted to the sky. They were gathered about him in any and all directions, obscuring his view. They created a veritable veil, concealing whatever existed in the world about him from his consciousness.

"This is like no place I have ever been before, of this I am certain." Sirius muttered to himself, for the sheer purpose of talking to someone. As the ironic humor and strange, cryptic language in that statement hit him, Sirius began to laugh.

"How can this be like to no place I've ever been if I can't recall any place that I have been?" He laughed. He continued to laugh for quite some time.