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Sirius had just gone beyond the curtain—if Harry could only reach through, he could pull him out again—
Harry sprinted for the dais, narrowly escaping as Lupin leapt to catch him. He ignored Lupin’s desperate shout for Harry to stop, felt a spell whiz over his head, scrambled over the stairs—
“Harry— stop! There’s nothing you can do!” roared Lupin.
But Lupin he was wrong—he had to be wrong. Sirius was right there. He’d only just gone through the archway. Harry would show him.
The curtain offered no resistance to Harry’s charge—it pulled him eagerly with invisible hands on his arms and wrists, pushing him with a strong wind at his back, propelling him into darkness as the air turned cold. The left his lungs as the sound of the fight behind him went quiet but the world around him erupted with whispers and murmurs.
“Lumos,” he said. But his wand didn’t work. The world stayed black.
Shivering, he pocketed his wand and knew that whatever this place was, it wasn’t the Ministry of Magic. Something was wrong. The voices around him were whispering his name. He felt wrong. His breath was short and his chest ached. The adrenaline of the fight left him, and exhaustion settled in his bones.
“Sirius!” His voice was feeble.
Harry reached, feeling for something, anything, and grasped only air. The voices grew louder, more desperate as he pressed forward and called for Sirius. But he just went through—he should be close. Why would he keep moving?
Something brushed his arm and then his fingers and there was the breeze of a whisper in his ear. Harry stepped back in surprise as ghostly hands tugged on his sleeve. Gentle pleas and quiet murmurs erupt all around him. Go away, he wanted to say, but he could hardly breathe. His legs wobbled as he stumbled forward, shoving aside the imploring, almost corporeal hands, shivering at the ice that flooded his veins.
I’m dying, Harry mused, feeling oddly apathetic about as if it were merely a fact.
The voices flooded his ears and crawled into his mind. They were ghosts or apparitions, but not ones that Harry had encountered before. It was like they were so close to being alive, like the memory Tom Riddle— just bobbing at the surface of life. And they wanted Harry—they needed his help. They were begging him to guide them back to the archway. How could they know his name? But their desperation was feeble.
Then, he heard someone say his name too clearly. Too close.
“Harry?” The voice was in his ear, and Harry grappled in the darkness to find an arm—an arm that solidified in his hold.
“Dad?”
“What are you doing? You’re-you’re not supposed to be here.”
There was muscle beneath his hand as he squeezed, and he was horrified and delighted because he knew this was his father. It was James Potter. Amongst the dead, his father had come to him. Harry tried to speak, but it was becoming more difficult to pull air into his lungs the tighter he grasped his father’s arm.
“Harry, you’ve got to go back. It’s not your time.”
Harry found his father’s hand. Despite the warning to leave, James squeezed back.
I’m bringing you back with me, Harry thought. He’d started to turn when he realized suddenly—if he found James, then he could find Sirius. He felt his heart beat hard for a second. He could find his mother.
James pleaded with him to turn around, but Harry was filled with a burning purpose. He was the reason his parents were dead, the reason Sirius had been killed—and now he had the chance to bring them back to the world of the living. Where this power came from, he didn’t know, but it was his and he wasn’t going to waste it.
The life was leeching from him as he pressed on. He ignored the way James tugged on his hand to get him to slow down.
“Please, please let go,” said James. “Don’t let it all be for nothing, Harry.”
But Sirius was here. Harry knew it. He couldn’t be far.
“It’s…my fault,” Harry wheezed.
“No, it’s not—it’s not your fault—”
But what could James know? What could James know of the last fourteen years? Could he know that it was Harry’s fault that Sirius had just been killed?
How Harry knew that he had found Sirius, he would never understand, but when he brushed a ghostly body, he took it by the hand and he knew . It grasped his hand tightly in return. But Harry couldn’t speak. His lungs weren’t working right.
“Harry?” came Sirius’s whisper in the darkness. “Is that you?”
The was nothing to say. There was only the shutdown of his lungs, his heart, and the spreading weakness of his muscles. I need to find Mum, Harry thought. She’s here—she has to be here—
He tried to move forward, but he was anchored by the hands in his grasp. His strength was almost gone. Harry pulled at his father and his godfather; why wouldn’t they move? Why weren’t they following his lead? No matter how hard he drew, he couldn’t get them to follow.
James was still telling him to flee, and Sirius was murmuring his confusion. It didn’t seem like Sirius understood that he was dead nor that James was there beside them. Harry tried to drown out their voices, to focus on how he was going to get them back through the archway. Come on, come on, he urged. Please, please come with me.
Their hands were turning warm as Harry felt the heat drain from his body.
“Let go, Harry, let go,” James begged. “You can’t do this—please, you’re killing yourself…”
“No,” Harry rasped. I can do it.
Yet no amount of strength would make James or Sirius budge more than a small step his way. It didn’t matter how hard he pulled or how much he wanted it. Harry’s eyes stung. Neither James nor Sirius could help him, and he knew by the time he dragged them both to the archway, his body would lose the last of its strength and he would bring no one back through the curtain. He would never find his mother now.
Please, try to follow, he begged them silently, squeezing their hands.
James rubbed his knuckle with his thumb.
“I love you, Harry. Please, let me go.”
“No,” Harry croaked. “I…”
“Harry? Harry, where are we? I can’t see anything,” Sirius was whispering fearfully and clutching painfully hard on his hand. Harry had never heard his voice like that.
“Dad, help me—”
It was too much. Harry coughed violently, but he didn’t let go. He couldn’t let them go. I need you, I need you both.
James was trying to tug his hand free. And Harry knew that the moment he lost his grip, James would vanish. Harry would lose his father forever. Please, don’t let go. Please stay with me.
If only Harry could use both of his hands to hold onto him—
But that would mean letting go of Sirius.
Sirius—who had escaped Azkaban to protect him, who had risked his soul and lived in a cave and starved himself to be close to Harry, who willingly imprisoned himself in his childhood home to stay safe for Harry’s sake, who listened to Harry and understood him, who loved him more than anything, who was the closest thing to a father he ever had, who had just died for Harry—
Agonizing clarity was piercing through the fog of his failing brain. The truth struck him: if he was going to make it back, he could only save one of them.
A sob worked its way through his throat.
No, he thought furiously. No, I can’t choose. I won’t.
But the miserable truth persisted. If he waited any longer, he would die before he could reach the archway, and this would all be for naught. Despite the darkness, Harry shut his eyes and counted down from five, hoping the answer would come to him. Dad or Sirius? Dad or Sirius? I should pick Dad… but I want Sirius too, but I should pick Dad…
“Three…two…” Harry whispered. “One.”
He let go. He felt the warmth vanish from his right hand. He tried to ignore the breeze that fluttered his hair and instead used both hands to pull on the other body beside him.
Come on, I picked you! Now please—please come with me!
They were moving—slowly, slower than his body could take, but he could feel the hard wind pushing at his face, and he knew that this place—Death—was trying to keep him. It meant he was going in the right direction. A howling sound whistled in his ears as the wind strengthened and his body weakened.
His lungs were bursting now, and his chest burned, and he knew he was dying.
Then, he fell forward as warm air engulfed him. They collapsed on the dais, and Harry gasped a lungful of air, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden burst of light. The body beside him was heaving too. Harry didn’t let go of his hand.
“Harry!” someone cried.
“He’s alive! Harry’s alive!”
“Is that—?”
Someone was sobbing in the distance, but Harry didn’t care. He turned the body beside him on its back and tapped hard on a pale face.
“Come on, come on,” Harry urged. “Wake up. Wake up, Sirius!”
It seemed to take years for him to open his eyes, but when he did, Sirius looked confused. He stared up at Harry, searching his face, blinking in the light, and for a moment, Harry had the horrible thought that perhaps Sirius had left his soul beyond the curtain.
But then, Sirius’s face softened.
“Harry?”
“Sirius,” Harry breathed. His eyes burned.
Before Sirius could say more, Harry buried his face against his chest and breathed deeply, realizing he had never really known what Sirius smelled like, realizing that he had never shared more than half an embrace with his godfather, realizing that the first time he had ever held an adult’s hand was when he curled his fingers around his father’s hand and then Sirius’s before he had to choose between them.
The others were coming up the dais; Harry wanted them to leave.
Because he was relieved that Sirius had come back with him; Sirius was breathing and he was holding Harry to him and murmuring that he was all right, but Harry couldn’t get out of his head the feeling of his father’s hand in his and the deliberate loosening of his fingers as he let his father go.