Arch of Death

Dark shadows flickered around him, laughing and whispering, harsh sounds of the most secretive, of the most vulgar of his thoughts. There was no peace, no redemption, just blackness, inky velvet suffocating him and eating away at his very soul. He had hoped—

Somewhere deep inside of him, he had hoped to see the others. They were in a different place—they must have been. This wasn’t supposed to be right. There had to be a way out, something other than the blackness—

Harry. He had to get to Harry.

A part of him was still hanging on; a piece of the musty fabric had caught, and even though he knew it simply couldn’t be possible, he had to try anyway—if not for himself, then for Harry.


Far away from the Death Chamber hidden deep within the Department of Mysteries, Harry Potter awoke with a start, his pajamas clinging to his skin as he body produced more sweat that he knew to be healthy. The darkness surrounding him wasn’t nearly as oppressive as the darkness in the arch had been; it was the third night in a row he’d had that dream, and each time he awoke convinced Sirius truly was coming back, that somehow he had managed to escape from Death.

And each time, it took only a moment for him to come crashing back down to reality. Sirius was dead. He wasn’t going to return no matter how hard Harry wished it. His godfather, whom he loved dearly and to whom had never said goodbye, was on the other side, where his parents and Cedric dwelled.

Cedric. His death, while tragic, now seemed so small and insignificant. Harry was alone in the world now, surrounded by people yet without anyone to love. He was coping, learning to deal with it, but secretly that was the last thing he wanted to do; what he wanted was to scream, to tear his hair out, to find the woman who had killed Sirius and rip her apart, piece by piece, until all that was left of Bellatrix Lestrange was her eyes, her dark eyes that would forever be filled with fear.

He lay in bed, eyes glued to the blank ceiling above him, wondering what had happened to Sirius. They had never recovered a body; Harry spoke to Lupin almost daily, through either the post or by Floo Powder, and the werewolf had informed Harry the best they could do was to bury an empty coffin some miles from central London. They had informed the Ministry both of Sirius’ death and innocence, and Harry wanted nothing more than to see the look on Cornelius Fudge’s face when he heard from Dumbledore himself that Sirius was innocent.

He was receiving the Daily Prophet each morning, and it seemed that nearly every edition mentioned him. Ever since Dumbledore had revealed the vague prophecy to him so many weeks ago, he had somehow felt disjointed from reality, as if his only purpose was to defeat the Dark Lord. In a way, he mused, it was; there was no one else who could do it, and the thought both pleased and terrified him. After all Voldemort had done to him, he wanted to be the one to take him down.

For the first time in days, his thoughts drifted toward Neville. He could scarcely believe the plump, clumsy boy could have ever possibly been considered Voldemort’s equal. With a stab of sympathy, he remembered seeing Neville visit his parents at Christmas the year before, and wondered briefly if somehow the prophecy was wrong, if both he and Neville were to take down the Dark Lord—or perhaps Neville too bore a scar similar to the one Harry carried, a great slash shaped like a bolt of lightning. Maybe together they would defeat all that was evil and avenge the lives of those they had lost.

He sighed and closed his eyes once more, too awake to dream and too tired to sleep, fighting hard against the dull blackness that surrounded him. It had been far too long since he had rested, far too long since he had felt alive, and Harry had a sinking feeling that until Voldemort was defeated, he would, as the prophecy said, never be able to live while the other survived.


Back in the unlit stone Death Chamber, inside the Department of Mysteries, a single pale hand thrust through the veil of death and gripped the side of the arch. With a sound that could only be described as thousand and thousands of screams joining together to form one solid wall of absolutely sound, Sirius Black pulled his pale and trembling body from the archway. After a moment of eyes darting to and fro, he promptly fainted at the edge of the dais into a pile of skin and rags.