Sirius disappeared through the Veil. For one impossible second Harry saw the surprise still on his godfather's face, as though Sirius himself had not quite understood what had happened. Then the hanging black cloth swallowed him and there was nothing left except the archway, the whispering veil, and Bellatrix Lestrange laughing somewhere behind Harry. Remus caught him. Harry barely felt it.
"Sirius!"
He fought hard enough that Remus nearly lost his grip. Harry could hear someone shouting his name, perhaps Neville, perhaps Hermione, perhaps several people at once, but none of them mattered. Sirius had gone through the arch. Harry could still hear the voices beyond it, those maddening whispers that had drawn at him since entering the chamber. Sirius was on the other side. That was all Harry understood. Remus said something about Sirius being gone. Dead. Harry refused the word before it could settle.
He drove an elbow backward, twisted loose when Remus's grip shifted, and ran. Someone screamed. Harry jumped through the Veil. The world vanished. There was no falling, no floor, no air, and for a moment, no body. Harry existed inside something so enormous that trying to understand it hurt. The whispers became a roar without sound, and the blackness around him was not darkness so much as the complete absence of anything his senses had ever been built to recognize. Then something inside Harry screamed—not Harry, but something attached to him.
Something that had lived behind his scar for longer than Harry could remember suddenly became terrified. Harry felt it tear. Pain ripped through his forehead so violently that he would have screamed if he'd possessed lungs. The foreign thing inside him clung with a desperation that had nothing to do with Harry's survival. For years the connection between Harry and Voldemort had been something distant and hateful, a pressure behind his scar, flashes of emotion, occasional visions. Now Harry felt it clearly: a thread, and the Veil had caught it.
The thing inside Harry was pulled free. The thread remained. Whatever existed beyond the Veil followed it. Harry felt connections spreading outward into distances he could not comprehend. One became several. Several became more. Hidden points of resistance flared briefly against whatever had seized them. Then they broke. Far away, Voldemort realized what was happening.
Harry knew because terror exploded through the connection—not anger or rage, but terror. Voldemort screamed. The sound lasted only an instant.
Then the connection that had haunted Harry for most of his life ceased to exist. Something vast recoiled. Power burst through the emptiness. Harry was struck by it. And the world ended again.
Harry woke facedown in grass. He remained there for several breaths before moving because grass was one of the most reassuring things he had encountered recently. His body hurt, though not badly, and nothing seemed broken. Harry pushed himself onto his elbows and immediately realized that something else was wrong: he could see, and not vaguely.
The blurred collection of color and shape Harry had lived with whenever his glasses were removed was gone. He could see perfectly. Individual blades of grass were sharp beneath him. He could see tiny blue veins inside translucent leaves several feet away and the uneven surface of a stone beyond them. Harry's hand flew to his face. No glasses. He sat up.
"Sirius?"
His voice disappeared into an unfamiliar forest. Harry stood too quickly and nearly fell.
"Sirius!"
No answer. He began walking. Then running.
"Sirius!"
The forest did not resemble anything around the Department of Mysteries. Trees rose in impossible colors, some blue enough to look painted, others white with leaves like dark glass. Small lights moved beneath roots. Harry passed flowers that turned toward him as though listening. He didn't care.
"SIRIUS!"
Minutes became something longer. Harry had no idea how far he went. He shouted until his throat hurt. No Sirius. Eventually Harry stopped beneath a tree with silver bark and understood that he had no idea where he was. The grief hit him then.
He sat heavily against the trunk and covered his face. Harry had followed. That had been the whole point. Sirius had gone through, so Harry had followed, because the alternative was accepting Remus's voice saying dead while Bellatrix laughed. He had been so certain. Harry cried until there was nothing dignified left in it.
No one came. For once, no professor told him what he should have done. No friend tried to comfort him. No enemy appeared to give him something else to focus on. Harry simply hurt. Eventually he noticed the forest hurting with him. The leaves above his head had folded inward. Flowers nearby drooped.
A soft gray mist had gathered around the tree without Harry noticing. Harry stared at it through wet eyes.
"What?"
The mist retreated slightly. Harry wiped his face. The flowers began lifting again. That was unsettling enough to make him pay attention to something besides grief. Harry checked himself. His wand was gone.
So were his glasses, his shoes, his Hogwarts robes, his pockets, and everything else he had carried through the Veil. Yet Harry was not naked. He wore clothes he'd never seen before. Dark trousers and soft boots fit him perfectly. A close-fitting shirt sat beneath a long blue-black coat that looked almost black until light touched it. The lower portion divided into six overlapping panels. Two narrow lengths of fabric fell from behind his shoulders, shifting gently despite the absence of wind. Harry pulled at one sleeve.
"Right."
The sleeve felt real. He removed the coat. The moment he let it fall, it dissolved into faint light. Harry stared. A heartbeat later the coat reformed around him.
"Right."
He was beginning to suspect that word was going to do a great deal of work. Harry reached for his wand again out of habit. Nothing. He extended one hand toward a stone.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
Nothing happened.
"Lumos."
Nothing. Harry tried a Summoning Charm, a Shield Charm, and finally enough increasingly irritated attempts that he had to accept an uncomfortable fact. He could feel magic. More magic than he'd ever felt inside himself before. It sat beneath his skin like a storm looking for somewhere to go. But Harry had spent years learning to direct magic through a wand.
Without one, he seemed to possess an enormous amount of power and no convenient method of telling it what to do.
"Brilliant."
A branch cracked somewhere behind him. Harry turned. Something moved between the trees. It was large. Harry watched four red eyes appear in the shadows. The creature stepped into view slowly. It had a low, muscular body covered in dark hide and pale bone-like plates. Its mouth opened farther than Harry thought a mouth reasonably should.
Harry's hand went toward the wand that wasn't there. Nothing. The predator advanced. Harry backed away. He had no wand, no weapon, and no idea where he was. Then a completely different thought occurred to him. Harry Potter was not required to remain human. The transformation came easily. His body expanded violently but without pain. Two additional pairs of legs struck the earth. Dark blue-black fur flowed across his body while his skull reshaped into a broad predatory head. A long tail swept behind him, and two powerful tentacles uncurled from his shoulders. The predator stopped.
Harry felt another instinctive reaction move through his Animagus magic. Space distorted. Two additional Displacer Beasts appeared. The predator stared at three enormous six-legged creatures where one human boy had been standing. Harry's true body blurred beneath the displacement effect until even he could feel how difficult it would be for something relying on sight to determine which image contained flesh. The creature reconsidered its life choices.
It backed away. Harry took one step forward. All three apparent beasts moved differently. The predator turned and fled. Harry waited. Then another few seconds.
The displacement faded, leaving only his real body. Harry sat down. If Hermione had been here, she would have said something unbearably smug. The memory came with surprising clarity. Weeks before the Ministry, Hermione had been watching Harry's Animagus research with considerably more enthusiasm than Harry thought was justified for someone not actually performing the transformation. She had expected a stag.
Harry privately suspected a dog. Neither had been correct. Harry's first successful transformation had produced six legs, tentacles, blue-black fur, and enough confused silence that he had transformed back because Hermione's expression frightened him. She had spent days researching. Then she found a Muggle book. Harry still remembered her slamming it onto the table.
"A Displacer Beast."
"A what?"
"A fictional monster."
Harry had looked at the illustration. Then at Hermione.
"Apparently not."
Hermione had stared at him for a very long time before muttering, "I suppose a wizard invented Dungeons & Dragons." Harry had laughed until she threw the book at him. The memory hurt. But it was a better hurt than the Veil. Harry stayed transformed. Wherever he was, a large magical predator had advantages over a wandless human.
His senses improved immediately. Smell became almost overwhelmingly detailed. His hearing stretched farther through the forest. Six legs made movement surprisingly natural once he stopped thinking about them. Harry wandered. Eventually he found a gate standing alone in the forest with no wall attached to it. It also had a face.
Harry stopped. The gate opened its eyes.
"You are not from here."
Harry stared. The gate stared back. Harry had already encountered enough impossibility for one day that this barely registered.
"No."
"Human."
"Usually."
The gate's wooden eyebrows moved. Harry transformed back. That seemed easier than explaining. The gate studied him. Harry studied the gate.
"Where am I?"
"The Spirit World."
Harry waited. The gate waited.
"That explains nothing."
"It explains where you are."
Harry closed his eyes briefly.
"Can I go back?"
"Back where?"
"My world."
The gate's expression changed.
"Far."
Harry's heart sank.
"What about someone else? A man came through before me. Black hair. Gray eyes. Annoying. Probably insulting death personally by now."
The gate remained quiet. Harry hated the answer before it arrived.
"Life touches life poorly across worlds," the gate eventually said. "Death touches death more easily. Spirit touches both and belongs fully to neither."
Harry frowned.
"The Veil."
The gate did not know the word. Harry did. Whatever the Veil was, it had not simply transported him somewhere else. It had carried him through death. Harry looked away.
"Sirius didn't come here."
"Not by the path you used."
The certainty he'd been avoiding finally settled. Harry sat beside the gate. He didn't cry as hard this time. The gate did not comfort him. Harry appreciated that. After a while, something small landed on his knee.
Harry looked down. A fox stared up at him. Except it had owl-like wings. Of course it did. The creature tilted its head.
"You are loud."
Harry blinked.
"You talk."
"So do you."
Harry stared. The fox looked pleased. Harry laughed. It surprised him enough that he laughed again.
"What are you?"
The creature produced a rapid sequence of sounds involving whistles, clicks, chirps, and something Harry's throat was definitely not designed to make. Harry waited.
"Fox."
The spirit's ears flattened.
"My name is Harry."
"Harry," Fox repeated.
"Good."
Fox pointed one paw at itself and repeated the impossible sequence. Harry shook his head.
"Fox."
Fox looked personally offended. That was how they became friends.
The gate did not teach Harry magic. Fox certainly didn't. Most spirits seemed baffled by the problem. Harry tried explaining wands to one and received the deeply unhelpful response, "Then why did you lose yours?" Eventually an old river spirit understood enough to demonstrate the problem differently. Harry kept trying to force magic outward as though a wand still waited in his hand.
The river spirit moved around a stone instead.
"Flow."
Harry frowned.
"I know what flow means."
"Then flow."
Harry hated spirits. He tried again. There was no incantation, no wand movement, and no attempt to recreate a spell exactly as Hogwarts had taught it. Harry simply wanted light.
He felt the magic inside him not as a spell, but simply as his. He let it move. A tiny spark appeared above his palm. Harry stared.
Fox leaned close.
"Small."
Harry looked at him.
"I'd like to see you do better."
Fox bit his sleeve. Harry smiled. The spark disappeared. It wasn't much. Sirius was still gone. Harry was still lost in another universe's Spirit World without a wand, a map, or any idea whether returning home was possible.
But magic had answered him. For the first time since jumping through the Veil, Harry had something that wasn't only loss. He lifted his hand again.
"All right."
The next spark was brighter.