Chapter Text
Sirius
I want to live my life
The choice is mine, I've made up my mind
Now, I'm free to start again
The way I want to live and breathe
The way I want that's right for me
I may not know nothing else
But I know this, I want to live
The fight had been confusing and fast. Trying to keep up with Bellatrix while keeping an eye on Harry proved to be more difficult than it should’ve been, and Sirius wanted nothing more than curse his deranged cousin to seventh hell and be done with this shitshow. How she could have any blood relation with Andromeda, or even with himself, he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
He was getting tired, his leather jacket restricted his movement more than he felt comfortable with, but he also felt alive. Truly alive for the first time in forever. He felt free in a way that Grimmauld Place never allowed him to feel, no matter how much time he spent sitting on the roof outside his room, pretending it was another place, another roof, another life. Now, with the adrenaline of the fight pumping though his veins, he almost felt like smiling.
Sirius was checking on Harry from the corner of his eye when he saw the killing curse sent in his direction. An unmistakable streak of green lightning. With no time to duck out of the way or even move his wand, he cast a defensive barrier in front of him using wandless magic in the instinctive way it could only be used after years of training. He might actually have to thank his wicked mother for that. It was a close call, a last-millisecond effort, but the barrier managed to absorb the curse right before it reached his chest. However, the force of the curse against it sent him tumbling backwards and, without anything to hold onto, he felt himself falling down.
When Sirius stepped through the Veil, time itself seemed to slow down to a halt. He felt weird, weightless somehow, no thoughts in his mind except for a vague sense of peace, and he found himself wondering why he had felt so… agitated before. Anything before the present moment felt like a vague memory. He didn’t quite like the feeling. He tried hard to force the thoughts in his mind to surface. Then he remembered Bellatrix, the fight, the well-aimed curse in his direction and the Veil at his back when he fell down, and suddenly the certainty of his own death felt heavy in his heart.
This wasn’t how he expected it to be though. He had expected darkness and a biting cold not dissimilar to the one he had experienced in Azkaban. The kind of cold that settles in your bones and refuses to leave no matter how many blankets you pile on top of yourself, how close you sit to the fireplace. The kind of cold that makes you forget there was ever anything else. The kind of cold that he had fought so hard to keep at bay his whole childhood, trapped in a house that was never a home. But this? This place? It was warm. Warm like the Potters’ home after his own family beat him to a pulp and threw him out. Warm like James himself, who he suddenly knew with strong certainty, somehow, was waiting for him someplace ahead of him. Death had turned to be warm and welcoming in a way Sirius had never expected it to be.
He moved forward, distancing himself from the Veil, still at his back, but he stopped in his tracks when a sudden thought appeared seemingly out of nowhere, as if his brain had had to fight tooth and nail to bring it afloat in his muddled mind.
Harry.
Harry, who had been in the Department of Mysteries with him. Who he’d sworn to protect with his own life if need be. Who he’d already failed so much in his life. Sirius would be damned if he let the kid down a second time. Maybe James could wait for him a bit longer, no matter how much that broke again a heart that had probably never healed to begin with.
As if recovering one memory brought more the surface, with Harry’s image came Remus’. Soft but strong Remus, who didn’t need Sirius. Not like Harry did. Not like Sirius needed him, more than the air he breathed. Remus, who would take good care of Harry if he had to, even if he had to do it all alone. Sirius didn’t want him to have to, he didn’t want any of them to have to be alone ever again.
Sirius wanted to be there, every step of the way. In any way Remus and Harry would allow him to. He wanted to talk to Harry about James, laugh with Remus like they used to when they were both younger and happier. He wanted to find Peter and make him pay for the hurt he had caused them. He wanted to clear his own name to be able to walk down the streets and accompany Harry to King’s Cross every time he had to go back to Hogwarts.
Sirius wanted to live. To finally start enjoying the life that had been taken from him the night James died. The life he had just started to get back.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The past two years, even being out of Azkaban, Sirius wasn’t living. He had pulled himself into some semblance of a man for Harry’s sake, but that image had crumpled like an old piece of paper every time his godson was away from him. Sirius had been nothing but an empty shell, haunting his house like the dementors haunted his dreams.
And maybe he was being selfish, asking the universe for a time he hadn’t been granted, for a third chance when he had already gotten and wasted a second one, but he had to go back to them. He had a life to live. To actually live this time.
Everything in Sirius was telling him to keep walking, if moving through this strange realm could be called that. He had the strange certainty that he was supposed to keep going, away from the darkness and the cold emanating from the Veil and into the enticing warmth that seemed to stretch in front of him.
But when had Sirius been good at doing what he was supposed to?
Standing there, in the middle of nothing and everything, Sirius made his choice.