Acts Infernal

Bring me a song like hashish
That will comfort the stale and the sad,
For I would be mending my spirit,
Forgetting these days that are bad.
Vachel Lindsay

"Damn you, Harry."

Sirius' words fell like lead weights on the floor of the great circular hall. Harry, stunned, stared at him.

"Damn you," he repeated, but Harry was already turning back to Hades.

"I thought -- Tom said he was in Nir, and Nir was a place without pain..." he waved a hand at the scars on Sirius' body. "What did you do to him? Here, of all places, we thought he had peace -- "

Hades looked offended. Sirius started forward, a warning on his lips, but the enormous beastlike man had already leaned over, backhanding Harry to the ground with a flick of his wrist.

"Thou wilt not be rude to me in my own house, sable boy," he rumbled. Sirius had reached Harry by the time the last echo had died away, and he pulled him up, gripping his neck and staring into his face.

"That was stupid," he said urgently.

"What did they do to you?" Harry managed, through the pain and the shock.

"Not this. Listen, you don't know...you shouldn't have come, dammit!" Sirius growled. Hades and Persephone looked on with avid interest. "The one time I wish you'd bloody well stayed where you were, and you end up here. Really fucking brilliant, Harry."

Harry fought down anger, and hurt, and a creeping sense of betrayal. "I came to get you back!" he said, his voice high and tense. "You look like you could use a rescue," he added, sharply.

Hades reached out, again, and brushed Harry aside like he would a fly; not violently, just firmly. Two of his fingers cupped Sirius' chin, lifting it up so that he could examine his torso, his face.

"The living who enter my realm without permission are not untouched," he boomed. "They be marked by their soul-scars. Tis plain this one has a great many."

Sirius did not flinch, even when one of the claws on Hades' fingers traced the line of a scar under his ribcage.

"What does he mean, soul-scars?" Harry demanded. Sirius held up a hand.

"Our life troubles. Our burdens," he said, moving slowly. Hades had let his hand fall away, and Sirius obviously didn't want to accidentally be skewered because he startled anyone. "They're all visible here. They're real."

"Like the maze?" Harry asked. Persephone began to laugh, strangely childlike in its lilting tone.

"It understands so well!" she said, pleased. Hades regarded Sirius with dark eyes.

"There is no doubt thou art still alive," he mused. "Troublesome. I must deliberate."

Persephone gave him a sudden, sharp glare. Hades nodded and corrected himself. "We must deliberate. Tom!" he called, suddenly -- so suddenly that Harry, who was still staring at Sirius, flinched.

"It wanders in Dis," Persephone said, in a reminding tone which told anyone who cared to listen that Hades did not bother to check things as thoroughly as his wife.

"No matter. Gaius!" Hades called, and a soldier stepped forward, dressed in what looked like antique imperial Roman armour. The only weapon he carried was a ghost dagger at his hip, like Tom's.

"I serve, Emperor," he said.

"Take them to chambers. Let the muses be brought if they so desire," Hades said, dismissively. He turned to Sirius. "Thou'lt sleep when thou desirist. Upon thy waking, judgment shall be passed."

Harry began to move forward again. "But it's not fa -- "

Sirius caught him by the shirt-collar, jerking him back sharply just before Hades' hand would have knocked him flat again.

"I did not ask thou to speak, cheater of death," Hades said. " Go now. Thou'rt like a wasp in the ear."

"Let's not make trouble, Harry," Sirius said, in his ear, fingers still firm on his shirt. "Any more than you already have."

Gaius led them -- Sirius silent, Harry sullen -- through several hallways and large white-walled rooms, filled with people Harry didn't know -- until they reached an empty one, full of old-fashioned furniture, heavy draperies, thick-paneled windows, a huge stone fireplace. There were strange couches, which looked as though they were the product of real couches who had mated with beds and had unfortunate results.

There was a table in the middle of the room. It had a full, steaming tea service on it.

"Well," Harry said, peering around. "This is anticlimactic."

"Would you like music?" Gaius asked. "Or dancing? I could call the Muses."

"No," Sirius said abruptly. "Thank you. Harry and I need to speak."

Gaius made some sort of ancient salute, and left them. Sirius, ignoring Harry's questioning look, poured two cups of tea, adding sugar to his and a lemon to Harry's. He held it up to his lips, and inhaled, slowly.

"We don't eat here. We don't need to, at any rate. But tea is nice," he said quietly.

Harry stared at him.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again!" he said, slamming the teacup down on the table. Sirius winced. "And the first thing I hear from you is 'Damn you, Harry'? I thought I was going to have to die before -- "

"Don't," Sirius said, his voice pleading. "Don't talk about that. Please, Harry..."

Harry looked down at the teacup. He'd cracked it, and tea was slowly leaking onto the crisp white tablecloth.

"Then what do we talk about?" Harry asked. Sirius' hands tightened on his cup.

"You've gotten taller, haven't you?" he asked. "So rare I actually got to see you..."

Harry was silent.

"I just wish you'd stayed above. You were safe there. Sort of," Sirius added.

"Couple of centimetres," Harry muttered. He sat, and reached for another cup, pouring his tea into it.

"You'll be as tall as James," Sirius said. Harry glanced up at him.

"Have you...seen him?" Harry managed. Sirius turned to face him fully. The scar on his throat stood out white, almost glowing.

"I could have, if I'd wanted to, but..." his fingers tapped the rim of his teacup. "I did want to. But people here...you see it after a while. People change. That's how I knew I was still alive..."

"How's that?" Harry asked.

"They get glassy-eyed. Euphoric, I think," Sirius said. "I didn't want to see James and Lily like that. Not unless I was...with them, not when I was so...goddamned conscious." He paused. "Didn't you want to see them?"

Harry shrugged. Sirius smiled and shook his head.

"You can try that on other people, Harry, but I know that move."

"More than anything," Harry said.

"But...?"

"I knew I couldn't bring them back." Harry tapped his fingers on the rim of his cup. "And now I can't even save you."

Sirius looked at him, suddenly grave once more.

"If you've come here, Harry, and seen me, and I'm not allowed to come back with you -- is that better or worse, than me being dead?"

Harry rubbed his cheeks, trying to hide the tears that were squeezing out despite his best efforts.

"How could I not try?" he asked, plaintively. He heard Sirius start up, and stood, letting the older man pull him into his arms. "I had to try," he said, into Sirius' chest.

"Of course you did, Harry," he murmured. He stroked his shoulders, leaned back, ruffled Harry's hair affectionately. "Of course you did," he said. Harry nodded, silently, and Sirius let him go.

"And now we wait," he said, seating himself again. Harry strayed to one of the wide, heavy windows, looking out on the city of Dis. Smoke was rising over the city, into a sky that was fast darkening towards full night.

"I can hear the shouts from here," Sirius said. "Dis again, isn't it?"

"What's going on?" Harry asked.

"Riots."

"There's fire in the city." Harry, unwilling to re-tread the path they'd just followed, crossed his arms. "Do they riot often?"

"Sometimes. More than usual, lately, I think," Sirius replied. Harry heard a spoon clicking against the insides of the teacup.

"And I bet nobody in Nir does anything, do they?"

"We're living souls, Harry, we don't understand how it is. The riots are part of the punishment, I think."

"Draco's probably over there somewhere."

"You couldn't do him any good even if you knew where."

"I didn't say I wanted to do anything about it."

"But you do," Sirius said, maddeningly calm, now. "You can't help it."

"Why couldn't I help Draco?"

"The inhabitants of Nir aren't allowed past the city gates. Even the living ones," Sirius added. "The first riots after I came here...I tried to go..."

"What happened?"

"They threatened to cut my soul, send me to some other place." Sirius shrugged as Harry turned back to face him. "The people of Nir don't think on it. I don't believe they think on much, really."

"It sounds awful," Harry murmured.

"It's eternal bliss," Sirius said flatly. "There are other ways -- other than Nir Dis, I mean -- but I understand not many people choose them. People are tired when they end life, Harry. They want to rest. Maybe they don't realise it's a...a permanent rest."

There was a surprised exclamation -- it sounded like Gaius, standing on guard outside the door -- and then a grunt. Harry and Sirius both turned toward the door, curiously.

Tom, Draco's slim figure slumped over one shoulder, stumbled into the room. Draco's hair hung down, and there was blood in it; Tom's glove was coming unstrapped, his shirtsleeve torn and bound with a scrap of cloth. The ghostly wings above his shoulderblades looked tattered, as if they'd been torn by claws, and one seemed crooked.

Tom was grinning, however, as he lowered Draco to the ground. Harry and Sirius merely stared.

"I think I found your silver boy," he said.

***

In another part of the Museum, empty but for a giant, stone-carved bedstead, Hades stood looking down on the river Styx, which was turning black in the darkness.

"Tis truly a wonder they never tire of it," he said.

"The riots?" Persephone asked, from the bed. She was toying with one of her braids, fingers scratching away the green outer skin to reveal the white plant underneath.

"I bethought myself of Nir," Hades replied.

Persephone smiled, and shrugged. "Who can fathom mortal souls?"

One of Hades' clawed hands tapped on the windowsill, the other holding back thick, elegant, and tattered drapes.

"I cannot allow that two living creatures should remain in my cities. They will have to die," he said, finally.

"A bit hard on the poor things."

"The man will be happy. Happier than he has," Hades remarked. "His boy came by my leave, he may be sent home. The silver boy may escape Dis, after a penance."

"He carries a strong mark against him."

Hades smiled. "He be like the sable boy. They understand very little of the meaning of things."

Outside the door, Tom Riddle stood and listened, as he had when Harry had asked Hades what was to happen to Draco. Tom was good at listening. Especially things he shouldn't be hearing. He'd left Draco to Harry and Sirius, and now he fingered the loose, torn straps on his glove as he tried to make sense of his master's decision.

Foolishness, he decided. He had never known Hades to be so foolish. But then his master was enraged by the presence of a man who had come not through Anubis, nor through Hades himself, but through a gateway into the mortal world.

"Perhaps I will give the sable boy a choice," Hades said. "Two souls must remain. He may leave, or send a comrade Aboveway again."

"If he stays, he will certainly go to Nir," said Persephone. "That's not so bad."

"No indeed." Hades sounded smug. "A fair judgment I tell them in the morning."

Tom, peering through a crack, saw that Persephone looked troubled.

"Is it not odd, think you, that a realm without time has day and night? Was it always thus? Sometimes I recall it was not."

"I do not dwell on the dark beginnings of my world," Hades said, with a finality that Tom understood -- he'd often been subject to it.

Tom turned, and walked quietly away; not until he was in the great receiving room again did he begin to run. Through the galleries, now empty, past Gaius without even a salute. He skidded to a stop in front of one of the strange bed-couches that Harry and Sirius had moved Draco onto; the silver boy was sitting up, hunched over a cup of tea.

"He's going to kill us, isn't he?" Sirius said, when he saw Tom's face.

"No," Tom said, eyes wide with worry. "He's going to make me do it."

***