[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Coming To


Bright white. The back of his eyelids were bright, brilliant white from light.

This is it, James thought. This is it. It’s the proverbial white light they talk about going into when you die. I s’pose that dying wasn’t so bad, then. Although, I should probably not hurt anymore. The aches should be gone. The pain should be gone.

But it was still very much real.

There were hands pressing on his back and something on his shoulder and he winced and let out a gasp as the hands on his back pushed his spine and he heard a whispered alignenius - and his spine cracked into place. He let out a sigh and sank into the pillows as the air left his lungs, half on his belly now.

There was a gentle brush of fingers across his forehead, pushing hair away.

“Evans?” he asked, and, wanting to see her again, he opened his eyes.

But it wasn’t Lily Evans’s green eyes that greeted him upon opening. Rather, it was dark grey-blue of Minerva McGonagall’s.

“No,” he choked, seeing her, “No, no… not you, too, Professor, no!” and he struggled to sit up, pain searing through his bone and muscle but he didn’t care because there was no way in Hell itself that he could lie there and allow the gods to take hold of Minnie.

Firm hands pushed him back down, “You can’t be sitting up! You’ve got to lie still, Mr. Potter!” It was Madam Pomfrey.

“Mr. Potter!” exclaimed McGonagall, and she gently put her hand on James’s side and assisted Madam Pomfrey in making him lie back down again as well. “Mr. Potter! Please!” Her voice was lilting heavily and James allowed her to push him onto the pillows again. He stared up at her though, his eyes wide, the bright white light streaming in the window behind her…

But it was just that, he realized. It was just light from a window. And not that tiny rectangle of a window far up in the corner of the cell, and not the light of the sunless days of the cell - but actual beautiful sunlight, streaming in through tall, narrow stone hewn windows that stretched up into the ceiling… the vaulted ceiling of the infirmary.

His eyes searched the ceiling a moment, letting the realization process as he felt Madam Pomfrey’s hands still moving over his back, her wand grazing the skin as she whispered spells to tie together torn muscles in across the span of his shoulders… and then his eyes went back to McGonagall.

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said quietly, “Do you know where you are, me boy?”

Tears filled his eyes.

“Ye’ve been rescued, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall’s accent rolled over her teeth and lips and she brushed his hair away again and he trembled a bit at the human contact, and she continued, “Ye’re in Hogwarts, my boy… ye’re safe now.”

James had flinched again at her touch.

Madam Pomfrey gently reached up and gently guided James onto his back. She leaned over and there was a cotton sling magiced ‘round his arm, pushing his shoulder into place with a loud pop as the bones rejointed and the muscles finished their knitting from behind. “Here you are, Mr. Potter,” Madam Pomfrey’s face was floating over him then, and she held up a smoking glass with a straw, which she guided to his lips, “Drink this, it will help.”

James closed his lips around the straw and drew a long sip. The potion was bittersweet, and a strong almost licoricey flavor filled his mouth and he winced and drew away, shaking his head, “Oh gods,” he gasped, “That tastes so ---” he paused.

He couldn’t be in heaven. Surely the gods had other ways of mending broken bones than realigning spines with alignenius and slings and drafts of horrible tasting potion. Surely the gods could do that stuff without Madam Pomfrey’s help.

But if this wasn’t Heaven… then… then this was really Hogwarts, then this was really the hospital wing...

McGonagall was staring at him.

“I’m alive?” he asked shaking, “I’m alive?” And then another thought crossed his mind and he struggled again, trying to sit up, “Sirius? Evans? Where are --”

Firm hands again pushed him down into the pillows. “No, Mr. Potter,” Madam Pomfrey said, “You must stay laying down.”

“But where are Evans and Sirius?”

McGonagall shifted slightly in her seat to afford James a view of the bed beyond her where Sirius lay, asleep, sprawled over the bed as though he was a liquid, poured out onto the mattress, his hair in a giant swirling mass upon the pillow around his head. James stared at him in disbelief a moment.

Sirius is okay, he told himself, realizing that it was actually really true only as he watched Sirius Black’s chest rise and fall. He had never felt such relief as what he felt in his life.

But then another thought occurred to him.

“And Evans?”

“Miss. Evans is safely tucked away in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory,” McGonagall replied, “Sleeping. Which is what you should be doing.” She looked up at Madam Pomfrey, “Poppy, if you don’t mind --”

James sat up, “And Peter? Where’s Pete?”

A flash of guilt shook McGonagall’s eyes for a moment and she said, “He is in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitories, Mr. Potter,” she replied. “He’s good as new, once Poppy mended him up a bit.”

James looked up at her with deeply concerned eyes.

“All of your friends are okay, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall affirmed. Then her eyes flickered to the vaulted window, at the pale light of the moon that came through, pooling over the blankets that covered James’s legs. “Some are… better than others… but they are all okay, just the same.”

James glanced at Sirius’s wrist, which hung over the side of the bed, to confirm that it was not the full moon, then looked back to McGonagall. “They’re all okay, and resting,” she added, “As should you be!” she repeated.

James winced as Pomfrey shook the cup of potion at him, insisting that he finish the rest of the terrible stuff, and reluctantly he allowed her to pour the potion over his lips and he drank it down, feeling it curl and twist its way through his veins as though made of smoke and he felt his muscles relax and his mind began to wander away from the school… away from Hogwarts…




The Dark Lord’s magic had shattered the stones of the walls of Karkaroff’s office. It had broken glass, which had flown, sparkling in the artificial sunlight. His magic had darkened the sky. Two Death Eaters had died that night - jets of green light had criss-crossed the room like fireworks, striking anything that got in their path, regardless to whom or if they had earned it.

Regulus Black had ducked behind the desk, crouched below where the chair would push in, covering his ears, taking deep breaths and waiting for the Dark Lord’s anger to subside. His heart had seized up when he’d heard the Death Eaters returning from the docks far below, terrified of who might have been killed in their folley, afraid to hear a report that any one of his brother’s friends had died, afraid to hear about Maryrose or one of the members of the Resistance… but none had been killed.

None had been killed, he thrilled at the thought. He repeated it over and over as the Dark Lord’s tantrum had raged, and he pressed his face to his knees as the sparks hissed and things exploded and exclamations of panic echoed from the Death Eaters in the room.

And finally, the Dark Lord’s rash judgment came to and end and he collected himself and he walked across the room. “Regulus Black,” he hissed, standing before the desk, his voice now level and deadly cold.

The remaining Death Eaters stood, breathing heavily from the fear that still shook them because of the Dark Lord’s fit, and they stared as Regulus crawled out from beneath the desk, shaking a bit in the knee, as the Dark Lord waited. Regulus swallowed back his anxiety and, his guards up around his mind, he turned to face Voldemort.

The Dark Lord reached out and took a hold of Regulus’s arm.

He dragged him across the room, out the door, down the hallway. Regulus’s legs failing him as they went, stumbling and the Dark Lord still pulled him onward. None followed - not even Walburga. None dared to. Regulus begged, “Where are we going?” as they went down the stairs and through corridor after corridor…

The Dark Lord did not answer.

By the docks, the skeletal ship was gone and Regulus imagined Sirius at the helms as the Death Eaters had described, and the image very nearly made him smile -- it would have, had he not been minding very hard not to allow the Dark Lord to see his emotions. Voldemort released his grasp on Regulus’s arm rather violently and reached into the air to draw invisible chains to pull forth a boat from the dark water that licked the shore of the cave. The little boat bobbled to the surface and hovered there by the edge of the dock. Voldemort turned to stare at Regulus, then, “Get in.”

Regulus got in.

The Dark Lord made Regulus use magic to move the boat from the cave, into the burning of the setting artificial sunlight to the portal. The water spun and caught up the little boat and the boat spun and Regulus held onto the sides as the Dark Lord muttered invocations for the magic that resided there in the whirlpool as they were pulled beneath the water… disappearing from Durmstrang…

And the boat popped into the moonlit night in a sea far, far away. Waves were crashing, roaring, white capped and rough, the sea dark blueish-green below, tinged by thick forests of seaweed that fluttered beneath the surface. Rocks and crags stood off against the fearsome sea and the little boat was easily caught up on the rest of one and brought closer to the sheer rock face before them.

“Steer the ship, Regulus!” shouted the Dark Lord, his voice still cold and rasping, even with volume, and he waved his wand, casting a large ball of brilliantly glowing light that flew across the water, gleaming, reflecting off the green-blue, and illuminating the rock… The ball of light landed somewhere, like a signal flare, and Regulus steered toward it, fighting the violence of the storm that raged around them, tossing the little boat effortlessly.

And it was into a dark little crevice of a cave that little boat slid, following the light of the flare.

The moonlight did not reach this place, the only light was that of the glowing ball of light, and Voldemort stood as the little boat reached the edge of a narrow lip and he stepped onto the shore. Regulus stopped the boat and climbed out himself, wrapping the chains around a stone so they would not be lost as the boat sank back beneath the water as it was charmed to do and the chains disappeared from sight.

Voldemort waved his wand and a stone slid aside to reveal an arched doorway… a narrow path into darkness… and he looked at Regulus, his dark eyes untellable… “In,” he commanded.

Regulus stared at the darkness, then looked back up at Voldemort, fearful.

The Dark Lord motioned for Regulus to go.

Regulus drew a deep breath and turned to the darkness of the doorway, slowly picking his steps over damp moss-covered stones into the pitch-black beyond. A terrible sense of foreboding swept through Regulus Black, and he felt his innards tremble. It was as though he knew this place, as though he had been here before, but he could not tell when, for he could not recall having ever been… but perhaps he had dreamed it or something, for everything was so familiar to him… even unable to see, his feet simply knew where to step.

For a moment, he feared the Dark Lord would simply close the stone door and leave him there. For a moment, Regulus thought this would be his prison, his own private Azkaban, locked away in a stone cell far off in the sea… but then he heard the Dark Lord following, heard the stone sliding closed behind him…