"...T-There's no pulse,"
The words repeatedly echoed inside Harry's mind but he refused to accept them. He could not accept them. Ron has got to be wrong. He must have made a mistake... he must have...
"Harry?" Neville slid down to kneel beside Ron and asked gingerly with a confused look on his face, "Harry... Was dat man — was Sirius Black a — a friend of yours?"
Harry just woodenly nodded his head, while Ron quietly said, "H-He was Harry's Godfather..."
"Oh...I'b really sorry—" Neville started to offer his condolence but halfway through, the words died in his throat when he noticed something shocking, "D-Dumbledore!!"
All three of them looked up to realise that at some point in time, Dumbledore had entered the room, stopping almost all the fights just with his presence.
The startled Death Eaters screamed and immediately scrambled up the stairs to flee the room, knowing that the fight was done for with his arrival.
But Harry felt no relief while looking at the Headmaster's familiar visage... instead, the only thing he felt was emptiness and anger... anger that he was too late... if only he had arrived a little earlier...just a little earlier... then maybe...
"Move! Let me see!" Remus abruptly intervened amidst them while roughly shoving Neville aside to get to Sirius, and then frantically began waving his wand over Sirius.
Hope once again began to rise inside Harry's chest at that, 'Surely, Remus will tell Ron that he's wrong, that Sirius is just unconscious, that he's not...'
The spell Remus was casting was somewhat familiar to Harry as he had seen Madam Pomfrey cast the same one many times in the Hospital wing.
It was a spell meant to show the main vitals of a patient, to show how much blood they had and if they needed any blood replenishers and things like that... But Remus was casting it all wrong... it was supposed to show green numbers... N-Not Red...
"W-What is it, Remus? What is wrong with Sirius?" Harry asked anxiously when Remus suddenly stopped casting with a devastated look on his face.
Remus quietly shook his head instead of answering and then his eyes wavered before he began casting the spell again... and again... but the result remained the same.
"H-He's gone..." he let out with a pained expression on his face as his wand hand fell down powerlessly beside him.
'No, No, NO!! It can't be true...' Harry screamed internally in anguish with a look of despair on his face. 'It can't happen again... I can't have lost my only family in this world... I can't be all alone once again...'
Harry couldn't even bear to look at Sirius's face when it was so empty... so he tightly closed his eyes but it didn't help as he could still vividly see the last expression on Sirius's face as if it had been stamped inside his mind, he could remember the mangled look of fear and surprise on his Godfather's wasted once handsome face when the spell had hit him...
Dumbledore was rounding up the rest of the Death Eaters in the background and had most of them grouped together in the middle as if immobilized by invisible ropes.
But it didn't matter to Harry... to him, it was all pointless... because Sirius was gone...
There was a loud bang and a yell from behind the dais, and all of them looked back to see Kingsley, yelling in pain, hit the ground.
Bellatrix turned tail and ran as Dumbledore whipped around. He aimed a spell at her but she deflected it. She was halfway up when Harry abruptly jumped up and ran after, "Harry—No!"
"SHE KILLED SIRIUS!" bellowed Harry. "SHE KILLED HIM— I'LL KILL HER!" And he was off, scrambling up the stone benches.
"Harry! Stop—" Ron shouted along with the others but while Remus had taken off after Harry, Ron didn't as he was suddenly distracted by a blinking red exclamation in the corner of his vision.
He looked up to see that it was the quest alert notification from before and when he focused on it, it expanded to become the earlier window.
[Quest: Save Sirius]
[Status: Ongoing]
'Why... Why is it still here?' Ron thought with a perplexed look on his face. He was unable to understand why the quest was still showing an Ongoing status when Sirius clearly had no pulse in him, which even Remus's spell verified.
Neville was confused by Ron's sudden vacant gaze wondering if the brain was still having an effect on him, when he suddenly noticed that Remus had come back into the room... but he was alone...
"P-Probbessor?! Whad aboud Harry?"
"D-Dumbledore went after him. He should be fine." Remus said quietly before coming to stand behind Ron silently.
There were a few moments of silence before Kingsley appeared behind Remus while holding onto a wound on his arm, courtesy of Bellatrix.
"Dumbledore gave me some Portkeys before he left so I've already sent Mad-Eye and Tonks to St. Mungos," Kinsley supplied quietly to Remus who just nodded in reply, "Is there... is there any chance for Sirius..."
Remus just shook his head and whispered, "I-It was Bellatrix's Heart Stopping spell, so..." his voice sounded as though every word was causing him pain.
"Oh..." Kingsley said before lowering his head sadly, he knew about that infamous Dark Spell that kills you the moment it hits you, "T-Then we should move his body before—"
"W-Wait! What did you say?" Ron abruptly turned around and interrupted them while looking at Remus with a shocked look on his face, "D-Did you just say the Heart-Stopping spell? A spell that just stops the heart?!"
Remus was confused by Ron's sudden outburst but was just too exhausted to question him so he just nodded his head.
'So that's why...' Ron's face lit up with an enlightened expression as his eyes went back towards Sirius's prone form. 'If it's just his heart that has stopped then... then maybe there's still hope...'
Maybe in the wizarding world, they consider it over once your heart stops... but in the muggle world, it's not over... until you're broke.
There was no time to muse about it, so Ron immediately went to work and turned his thoughts into action.
While he knew that it would be better for Sirius if there was a defibrillator here, but there wasn't and neither was there any time to get it, so Ron did the only thing he could...
He placed his hands, one atop the other, on Sirius's chest and started pumping up and down in a rhythm while singing a song.
"Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh... Staying Alive... Staying Alive..."
Sam had never taken any proper training on how to perform CPR, and the only place he had even seen it being performed was on TV series online.
The scene which immediately came to his mind was the one belonging to a comedy series he had watched many many times, in which the office manager calls a professional to teach them CPR, and the professional shares this trick of pumping the chest with the rhythm of this song.
Ron just hoped for Sirius's sake that the show in Sam's memories wasn't joking about this particular trick...
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