Return from the Veil

DISCLAIMER: No person or place in this story belongs to me or my imagination. I do take pride in the plot, though the idea was given to me by a true Mourner...

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Return from the Veil

It is a dark night. The moon is new and clouds hide the stars. The only light on the street is a dim streetlight on my left and one flickering up ahead.

The streetlight is not the only thing dying on this street tonight, exposed to the darkness of the night.

I, too, am slowly dying. I am flickering just like the streetlight.

As I turn onto a completely dark street I hear the streetlight's last breath. I turn around as its last light illuminates the sign to Privet Drive. A wave of depression hits me with the force of a tsunami.

I am still on Privet Drive.

Today I turned sixteen years old, but I am still living in the hell known as Number 4 Privet Drive. I cannot escape the day-to-day criticisms and hateful comments. Everyday I wake up knowing that I will go to sleep that night with more of my soul viciously torn from me. I can feel myself dying.

As I grew up I didn't know what love really was, but I didn't yearn for it. The heart does not yearn for what it does not know.

But I have since experienced the love I should have had these past sixteen years. Now that it has been taken from me, I feel emptier than I ever could have imagined.

At only a year old my parents were ripped from my life. Fourteen years later, the man I had come to love as the closest thing I ever had to a father was shoved into a veil that stole his life. Had my fury been harsher and my desire for vengeance deeper, I would have succeeded in avenging his death. But my weakness led to the escape of his murderess, the devil's own wife: Bellatrix Lestrange.

I feel my heart rip open, bleeding into my soul, as I remember the last moments of Sirius' life. It took days for the reality of what happened to truly set in, for the pain to truly hurt. By that time my tears had dried and I sat in seclusion as I felt every piece of myself tear to bloody shreds. I blamed myself for his death: for not being able to save him, for not being able to avenge him, for not going back to liberate him from the veil. They had told me he was gone and I accepted their words. I didn't want to believe them, but I did. Had I not, had I followed my heart's call, I would have gone back to the veil. I could have found him. I could have saved him.

I find myself, lost in thoughts, turning down a dark alley. No streetlight led me to the entrance and no light stands at the end of it. For all I know, this could be the eternal road leading to my death.

But would that be so bad? To finally be released from this pain, this torture, this suffering?

I walk with my hands in my pockets, listening to the sound of my footsteps resonating through the alleyway. Little by little the clouds in the sky begin to let loose their rain. The droplets fall intermittently at first, but soon there is a steady shower of rain. As I walk, I can see steam rising from the manhole ahead of me.

I walk for a long time. I do not know how long or how far, but I have no desire to stop. The hair on my head is damp from the light rain still falling from the sky.

I keep walking, but to what?

An answer?

A resolution?

A second chance?

Though time has healed my immediate grief over the loss of the man I yearned to call "father" and "friend", it has only increased my guilt. As I remind myself of his departure I am reminded of my role in his death. It is because of my weakness and stupidity that he disobeyed orders to save me. It is because of me that he duelled with Bellatrix Lestrange.

It is because of me that he remains behind the veil.

Is he dead? For weeks I told myself he was still alive. If it was so easy to fall into the veil, why couldn't he just as easily come back out? What was that thing really? What was holding him prisoner inside that filmy, unknown material? Now I have to tell myself that he is gone. I let him get away, and he will never come back.

I am alone.

I will always be alone.

Filled with a depression deeper than anything I have felt since that fateful day, I walk on. I have no destination in mind. I just walk. I may walk until I fall to the ground dead.

Slowly I walk, listening to the steady beat of my footsteps. This is the sound that will fill my ears until my death.

Then a new feeling overtakes me... the feeling that I am being watched. I slow my step, peering cautiously into the darkness surrounding me. I feel frozen butterflies beat their ice wings against the walls of my stomach.

I pass a trashcan on my left, a heap of rags on my right. I step over a manhole and walk beside a dumpster.

My instincts rise up too late.

Someone grabs me from behind, clasping my mouth shut with a frozen hand. In a whirl of motion I am spun around and slammed hard into the stone wall of the alley. I cannot see my attacker. I squint my eyes, begging the darkness to lighten, even for just a moment. A hand still on my mouth, my attacker leans forward.

A strange feeling erupts inside me. The frozen butterflies are beginning to thaw. My racing heart begins to slow.

The hand lets go of my mouth and I inhale with disbelief.

"How can this be?" I whisper as tears spring to my eyes. "How did you return from the veil?"