Chapter Chapter 69: Seeing Stars
"YOU LAZY PRAT!"
His body quaked with the shout, legs falling out from under him as his knees buckled. That voice, familiar and impossible, had dogged his every dream since June – angry or angelic, suggestive or surly, he would know that voice until his dying day. It was a voice he should never have heard again. It wasn't possible for that voice to be shouting up from the depths of his trunk.
Open-mouthed and bewildered, Harry watched the figure emerge from the trunk. Hair long and black, face painfully handsome with sparkling grey eyes, straight nose, a smirking mouth begging to be kissed and a jaw overdo for a shave; his robes were rumpled and shirt partially unbuttoned; long arms and even longer legs followed until he was standing on the solid and very real floor of the dormitory.
Sirius Black.
The smirk pulled into something decidedly smug as he studied Harry hyperventilating on the floor. Then he spoke again:
"Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars,
Orion's Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity…
"Or suffering Harry in this particular case." He grinned that sexy, confident grin, which he seemed born to wear. "Are you just going to sit there staring at me and gaping like a mullet? I know I'm handsome, but some kind of welcome would be nice after waiting five bloody days for you to finally unpack that thing."
"Impossible," Harry breathed.
"Not quite the welcome I was hoping for, but I'll take it."
He stared in horrified wonder at the vision of the boy he'd left behind. His heart ached for this to be real, but he knew there was no way for it to be him. This Sirius had remained in the past to grow old. The Sirius he had expected to find in this time was his Godfather, the family he had never known, loving and troubled but determined to see him free of the Dursleys. It was cruel to offer him this Sirius instead.
"No, this isn't possible. I'm imaging this." He leapt to his feet, scrambling away from the mockery. "You aren't real. You are dead."
"I'm quite talented, you know," the impossible boy replied as he moved closer. "Know all kinds of clever spells, including one I made up all by myself. Well, I had a little help getting it started." His smile only grew more confident as he pulled a folded bit of parchment from his pocket, holding it for Harry to take. "Care to have a look?"
Certain he had lost his mind from grief, Harry reached for the parchment, amazed when he was able to touch it, to feel the irregularities of it, the softness of it as if it were really there in his hand. Tearing his eyes off the boy, he studied the parchment, old and yellowed, hand-written in heavy black letters that spelled out words in an ancient form of English he had become rather adept at deciphering. The block print at the top was unmistakable. "The Riven Heart," he read aloud.
"Sound familiar?" Sirius whispered from behind him, making Harry jump at the feeling of the boy's breath against his neck, the heat of his body through his clothes.
"No," Harry said, as much to his flirtation as to the spell in his hands. "This wasn't in the book."
"You honestly think I would risk that twisted bastard getting his hands on something like that?" the boy replied, his voice as harsh as it ever was when talking about Alfie. "That spell was far too important to let Alfie fucking Quintain get his sadistic hands on it. I tore it out before I put the book in my bag."
"Why would you have kept it secret?" he demanded. He knew the spell had not been in the book. He had been with Sirius in the Restricted Section when the boy discovered it. If the spell had been in there, wouldn't Sirius have shown it to him instead of ripping the page out and hiding it, never telling him about it?
"It was too important," the hallucination repeated, his voice dropping to almost a whisper as he continued. "That spell brought you to me."
"No, it was a fluke of magic that did that."
"That spell sent you back for a reason. I talked to Morven. No one ever travelled as far back as you did. Two hours. That was all. But you went back twenty years. Why?"
Harry scowled that his subconscious mind was demanding so much of him. "There isn't a reason. It's just magic."
"Bullocks. I grew up with magic. It's not as arbitrary as that. There's always a reason."
"Yeah? And what reason could it possibly have to send me back that far?"
"Me." He said it simply without the slightest hint of arrogance or pride. "I'm the reason. I'm your soulmate. Split-Aparts—"
"Are romantic nonsense," Harry spoke over him, not wanting to hear whatever else his mind might have to say on the subject.
Sirius stepped closer. "Before you went back, what did you dream of every night? It was Sirius. You said so yourself."
"That was guilt."
"Why would you feel so guilty? He was a grown man, who made his own choices. No one made him do it. Certainly not you. Why feel so guilty for something you didn't do?"
"Sirius was my family. I loved him," he shouted.
"Yes, you did," the boy replied, smile in his voice as if Harry had just admitted defeat. "That spell could have sent you to any point in his life. It could have sent you back to the very night, the very moment he died so you could save him. Instead it sent you to me."
"I wasn't thinking of that when the spell hit." Harry's snarl died as he spoke. "I wasn't thinking about that at all."
"What were you thinking of?"
His brows knit together as the memory of Malfoy and his goons came back to him. He remembered the boy's taunts. "He said 'that dog was first' and I knew he was talking about Sirius. I stepped up and was ready to hex him, but in the back of my mind I just kept wondering how he knew that Sirius was an Animagus. Sirius had learned it when he was fifteen, and I was thinking about him at school when that curse hit." He frowned and stared up at the illusion standing opposite. "Sirius learned it the year before we arrived. We ought to have been sent there."
"Magic has a logic all its own," Sirius replied with a knowing smile.
"Or is has no sense of time. So it was off by a year, so what?" He tried to shrug off the minor error, but he couldn't. Not when there was a Sirius standing far too close, making it difficult to think and to breathe. Not when there was a Sirius forcing him to rethink his entire journey.
"I think," he said softly, stepping closer still, "that the spell sent you where you needed to be. If you had come the previous year, we never would have spent all that time together. That's what you needed. You were broken when you came to me, and I was incomplete. We fixed each other."
"Last I checked, I'm still broken," Harry insisted, stepping away and colliding with the wall.
Sirius closed in, blocking his escape and deflecting his poor argument. "Which is exactly why I'm here now. I have to keep my promise and finish what I started."
Harry tore his eyes from the boy to frown down at the parchment still locked in his fingers. It all sounded so logical and right. He hated his mind for playing such a trick on him. "No, you died same as before. Please go away."
"And after all I did to get here," he sighed, turning and falling onto the nearest bed with a slight wince as he landed on a book. "I don't even get to look around before I go?"
"No, because you aren't real."
"I am so."
"Are not."
"Nice retort," the boy snorted.
"Fine, you want a retort," Harry growled. "Sirius moved on. I broke it off, and not two days later he was hanging on some girl in the common room. Why would you be in my trunk if he moved on?"
The impossible boy scowled in annoyance; Harry was certain he had made an irrefutable point and that this mirage would vanish, but the boy cursed under his breath. "I told that idiot to wait until you'd left,"
"Who?"
The illusion blinked as if surprised Harry had heard him, but after a moment he answered, "The other me."
"What are you on about? There's only one you, and he's dead."
"I made another one," the boy said matter-of-factly.
Harry was beginning to understand just how mad he might have gone. Even his hallucinations were talking nonsense. "You can't invent a whole person."
"Never said I'd invented an entire person, just sort of split a bit of me off. Hurt like hell and left very manly and impressive scars, too, in case you cared." He took hold of the open collar of his shirt, pulling the fabric aside to show three angry red scars running down his chest. "Took me three tries before I managed a Split-Apart that wasn't completely useless."
Harry's hand reached out without his permission, drawn by the livid lines marring that glorious white skin. They felt hot under his fingers, as if the skin were still healing a fresh wound.
"Kiss it and make it better?"
He tore his hand away, turned and clamped his eyes shut, willing the painful hallucination away. This was not some memory dredged up by his lonely subconscious; this was new and unfamiliar. Surely, James had not created this illusion; his pranks had never seemed so intentionally cutting and malicious.
"No, because you aren't real."
Even with his eyes closed, he knew the damn thing was still there. He could hear the fabric of its robes rustling and the clatter of metal against the wood of a bedside table as it inspected the nearest object at hand. His ears told him it was real. His skin was still a tingling mess of gooseflesh from where the boy had breathed his words on him. His hand still felt the warmth of the scars. This had to be what madness felt like.
"Sorry, Harry," a quiet voice called as the door opened with a sigh of the ancient hinges. "I know you want to be left alone, but I need my Herbology books."
"Go on, Neville," Harry muttered, face determinately pointed at the wall. No need to go advertising his lunacy just yet.
"Thanks, Harry. You're missing a great game of Exploding Snaps down there. Ron's nearly burnt off his fingers trying to beat Dean. You should come have a look," the boy encouraged as he shuffled about the room. "Oh, 'scuse me, could I just..."
"Yeah, no worries," the impossible Sirius replied.
Harry spun around in time to watch the exchange. He saw Neville eyeing the boy with curiosity, nodding his appreciation when the seemingly imagined boy sat up and allowed him to collect the book he had been lying on. "Neville," Harry cried hastily, "You can— Do you see—Do you know him?"
The boy looked at Sirius and shook his head. "Should I?"
"No," he said an octave too high. "No, you shouldn't."
"Harry, are feeling all right?"
"Poor lad hit his head, I'm afraid," Sirius cooed and gave the wild black strands a gentle pat. "Matron said he just needed a good night's rest." The boy's large hands took hold of his arms and steered him toward his bed, where a blanket was thrown at him.
"You'll be wanting an infusion of Feverfew. Madam Sprout said that works best for head pains," Neville offered helpfully. "I can see about getting you some."
"Cheers," the improbable boy replied with a grin that sent Neville scurrying off on the errand.
"Nice lad," Sirius commented and threw himself down beside him. "So, Harry James Potter, you look..." He paused, taking a moment to let his eyes trail down his frame and draw slowly back up again. As his eyes made the return journey, Harry could tell what he saw did not meet his approval. He wasn't surprised given his lack of sleep and general malaise. "Bloody awful is how you look. I think I should have forced the locks three days ago. No grand entrance is worth having you look like this. Honestly, Harry, you look nearly as bad as when you turned up at my Hogwarts."
Understanding dawned on him. "Fucking hell, Harry. Is it because you'd lost me again?"
Harry barely got the chance to nod before Sirius wrapped himself around him, solid and warm and, more than anything else, real. He closed his eyes and delighted in the feel of the boy's arms squeezing him tight as if Sirius feared he might fall apart at any moment, which he probably would have if he hadn't sprung from his trunk. All the pain and ache and blackness that had been consuming him from within came surging from his mouth in the form of a contented sigh.
"This is real, isn't it?" he whispered, fearful of the answer. "This isn't just happening in my head?"
Lips brushed against his. "What do you think?"
"I think my mind has played tricks on me before, especially where you're concerned. Tell me this is real."
"Why tell you when I can show you?" The boy took in a slow breath before deliberating aloud. "How best to start? A kiss, do you think?"
"You're asking me?" Harry said or had been attempting to when Sirius shut him up with a searing kiss unlike any they had shared in their brief and confusing relationship. It was hard and deep and had him seeing stars, had him groaning into the boy's mouth, had him grasping at hair, robes, arse, anything he could to pull him closer.
Sirius was more than happy to oblige, pressing himself down on top of him, chest to heaving chest, stomach to tightening stomach, groin to hardening groin. The last item drew his particular attention, made him smiled against Harry's mouth.
"Is that in your head, too, you think, Messer Potter?"
"Oh, sod o-oh, Merlin, do that again," he bit out as Sirius snapped his hips against him.
"If this really were only in your head, then would that just make you terribly randy?"
Harry couldn't respond, not with Sirius rolling his hips like that, not with his hands roaming under his jumper, not with his eyes so dark and lips swollen. When he looked like that – looked at him like that – all he could do was moan and try very hard not to come in his pants. As if he knew just how close he was to coming undone, Sirius slid down his legs to straddle his knees. His hands set to work unbuttoning his trousers, shoving the cloth out of the way until there was nothing between him and Harry.
They had done this before, but only once. It had been the dead of night, black as pitch, and Harry, admittedly, had thought that was a dream, too. Now, the sun had just finished setting; it was still bright enough for him to see Sirius eying him.
"You really ought to be naked," the impossible boy commented. "We weren't naked last time. So if we're aiming to prove this isn't in your head, we ought to be doing something completely different. Kit off, Potter!"
Harry had no time to offer a rebuttal before Sirius had his hands on the hem of his jumper, tearing it up and over his head, dislodging his glasses in the process. "Buggering hell, Sirius."
"Sorry," he said, cursing as he untangled the boy from his clothes and hunted in the fabric for the lost spectacles. When he returned them, the lenses were a mess with fingerprints and smudges.
Looking up at the blur of a red-faced Sirius Black, Harry laughed. He laughed like he hadn't in weeks.
"What? What is so damned funny?"
"This," he hiccupped. "There is no way I'd dream anything this awkward and embarrassing. This is real. You're really here."
"Yeah, really here. Really staying," he promised.
"That means we've got plenty of time for this later," Harry said, falling back onto the bed, yanking his trousers back into place and sliding under the blanket. "Right now, I just want to sleep. Haven't slept in days."
Silence met his declaration. Silence that stretched and grew until Sirius cleared his throat uncertainly. "Can I sleep with you? I mean, actually sleep, not fondle and grope. Although I might cop a feel or two. I mean, you can't really blame me fo—"
"Sirius, shut up and get in." He threw the duvet open, and Sirius crawled into bed beside him, tangling their legs together and pulling him close again.
"Thanks."
"Shut up and sleep."