Veilfic--Erotomania: The Beginning of the Story
More of my veilfic, as yet unbeta'd. This is the beginning of the story, and connects to the middle that has already been written.
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
***
Sneaking through Hogwarts, Sirius decided, was every bit as annoying as it had been the last time he'd done it. Perhaps more so. After all, he'd been a half-insane fugitive from Azkaban the last time. He hadn't been focusing on how many beings he'd had to dodge--not just students and teachers, but Filch, Mrs. Norris, house-elves, ghosts, poltergeists and paintings, just for starters. In fact, he'd scarcely noticed those things. The only thing he'd cared about was breaking into Gryffindor Tower to kill Pettigrew. He hadn't paid attention to any potential witnesses.
And he'd got away with it, too. The gods apparently did protect children, fools and madmen.
Now--two years later for him, and Merlin alone knew what year it was in this dimension-- it was different. A thousand alert eyes, living, undead and painted, were searching the corridors. Such alertness made getting to Dumbledore's office to find out if he'd finally reached his home dimension more problematic than he would have liked. The fact that he couldn't transform to Padfoot was just the icing on the cake.
Well, all right, he thought, sidling close to the wall, shrouding himself in shadows. I can change into Padfoot. The problem is that the stairs are enchanted for humans. You have to hop and jump and dance your way up them, and you have to do so on two feet, not four.
Please Merlin, Dumbledore will tell me that yes, this is home. Dumbledore had to tell him that. This world felt right. It looked right. It even smelled right.
Let this be my world, my Remus. Let it only be days or weeks since my fall through that damnable Veil. Let Remus be all right, not crushed or despairing...
He rounded a corner and collided violently with nothing at all.
He fell backwards onto the flagstones, momentarily knocking the breath from his body. A sharp stabbing pain lanced through his left leg as his hip smashed into the granite floor. He struggled to stand up, but a wave of dizziness overwhelmed him.
Someone unseen gasped. The next instant, Harry was standing before him, Invisibility Cloak in one hand and wand in the other, glaring at him grimly. Behind him, Hermione was helping Ron to his feet.
Sirius' heart sank as he gazed at Harry. This Harry was the image of the one he had met in the Shrieking Shack--no more than thirteen, and enraged at the sight of Sirius Black, his parents' betrayer and murderer.
His mouth suddenly went dry. He licked his lips. "Harry, I know what you think, but believe me, I haven't come here to do you any harm--"
"Shut up," said Harry in a deadly monotone.
Sirius started to sit up...and then halted, as Harry pressed the tip of his holly wand against Sirius' chest.
"Harry." He sounded frantic, even to himself. "Please...I have to get to Dumbledore."
Harry inhaled sharply, his breath sounding almost like a hiss. "You're going after him too," he stated flatly.
Sirius lunged forward, grappling for the boy's magic wand, muttering something incoherent that was half imprecation and half plea. In the back of his mind, he wondered what had happened to change Harry from the angry but merciful thirteen-year-old that he recalled into this cold-eyed boy standing in front of him.
Harry's expression did not change. "Petrificus Totalus!"
Sirius' arms stiffened; his legs involuntarily stretched out in front of him, then settled into rigidity. His jaws seized up, making speech impossible. An instant later, he was completely paralysed.
Ron leaned forward to peer at Sirius. "Hard to believe he had the nerve to break into Hogwarts, of all places. Stupid nutter."
"Well, yes," said Hermione tartly. "That's the whole problem right there." She turned to Harry, who was still glaring down at Sirius. "I'll go warn Professor Lupin. He should be the first one to know that Sirius Black is back."
Harry nodded absently in a way that signified both agreement and dismissal. "Ron..."
"I know. I'm on it, Harry." Ron shot a glance of thorough disgust at Sirius' immobile form. "Your godfather should be in his office now, right?"
"Most likely." Harry's voice still had an ironed-out quality to it.
Hermione glanced at him. "Harry...are you sure you're going to be all right? If--if you think it'll be too much for you, I could guard him, and you could go tell Professor Lupin..."
Harry shook his head. "I'll be fine."
Ron and Hermione both looked sceptical.
"What's the matter? Don't trust me?"
Ron sighed. "The man murdered your parents, Harry. I can see as clearly as Hermione can why you might not want to be around him for long."
I didn't! Sirius yelled mutely. Harry, I didn't murder James and Lily, I swear!
"I'll be fine," Harry repeated with exaggerated patience. "Just go get the professors, will you?" A sardonic expression, too dark to be a smile, contorted his mouth. "I promise not to kill him while you're gone."
Hesitantly, Ron and Hermione nodded. Then both took off down the corridor that Sirius had just exited, Hermione keeping an eye on the staff offices along the hallway while Ron raced pell-mell toward the stairs to the ground floor.
Sirius lay helplessly, staring up at Harry, who returned Sirius' stare with an expression of contempt and cold loathing. The boy continued to point his wand at Sirius' chest, clearly not trusting the Full Body-Bind to remain in effect and just as clearly maintaining a state of constant vigilance of which Mad-Eye Moody himself would have been proud.
Harry, Sirius thought, Harry, it's me. What in the name of Merlin happened to you? If only I could talk to you, explain what happened to your parents...I would never have hurt James and Lily, Harry. Not in a million years. If I could die for them now, and bring them back to life, I'd do it in a second.
He gazed once more at Harry's flinty expression and chill, hate-filled eyes. No chance this boy would listen to him. Not ever.
It felt like hours, even days, before either one came back. Hermione returned first, half trotting, half running. "I found Professor Lupin," she said breathlessly. "He said that he'd meet Black in Dumbledore's office, but nowhere else. And then he said he was going to take the long way around, since he'd have to pass Black if he went the more direct route."
Harry exhaled noisily. "Well. Can't blame him, really."
Hermione nodded soberly, and the conversation withered and died once more.
A few moments later, Ron raced up to Harry, with Severus Snape in tow.
Snape. Merlin's beard, could this day get any worse?
"Frankly, Mr Weasley," Snape was saying in his inimitable verbal sneer, "I fail to see what crisis demands my immediate attention--" His words broke off abruptly, and he stared at Sirius with the expression of a dedicated healer forced to contemplate a particularly lethal plague bacillus.
"Which of you found him?" he asked at last, scrutinising each of the children in turn. Though Snape's tone was neutral, he sounded less as if he were inquiring about minor details and more like a general commanding underlings to speak.
"We--er--sort of ran into him," said Hermione, fidgeting slightly. "We weren't looking for him, honestly we weren't."
"If you were not searching for him, Miss Granger," Snape remarked dryly, "that was the first time in three years that any of you have shown the remotest fragment of common sense."
"It's true," said Harry as he stared murderously at Sirius. "We were headed down to the kitchens--"
"Utilising your father's Invisibility Cloak, I have no doubt--"
Harry nodded. "And Hermione wanted to talk to the house-elves about unionising."
Snape snorted. "A futile pastime, but a harmless one." He studied Sirius once more. "Did he mention, perchance, what he was doing here, rather than in Professor Lupin's office?"
"He said he was going to find Dumbledore," Ron said, shrugging.
"Did he," said Snape in a thoughtful tone, gazing at Sirius with unreadable black eyes. "Where is his wand?"
"He wasn't holding it," said Hermione, puzzled. "Black didn't even go for his wand when Harry pressed his own wand against Black's chest."
"Did any of you search him?"
Harry's mouth fell open. "Search an insane murderer?" He shuddered. "I didn't want to get closer than an arm's length."
"Two sensible decisions in five minutes? You may yet overcome the curse of Gryffindor recklessness, Harry."
Harry. The word rang like a minor chord within Sirius' mind. Not Potter, or Mr Potter. Harry.
But before he could focus on what that meant, he felt Snape's hands briskly and efficiently searching his clothes. For weapons, no doubt. Sirius would have smirked if he could; the only thing he had with him was his wand. Not that a wand couldn't be a weapon of mass destruction in its own right, but he suspected that Snape was searching for more.
Snape confiscated the wand and stood up. He stared at Sirius in perplexity. "Something," he murmured, "is not quite right here. Black never goes anywhere without weapons."
He tapped his chin with Sirius' wand for a few minutes, apparently lost in thought. When he looked up again, he seemed startled to see the children still standing there. "Eh? I thought you had a kitchen to raid."
Harry swallowed. "You won't want us to come to Dumbledore's office and talk about him?"
"Most assuredly not," retorted Snape. "And," he continued in a studiedly casual voice, "I am certain that none of you will say a word of this to any other student."
The three nodded with the enthusiasm of those who dread that lack of enthusiasm may bring detention.
"Good. Go on about your business. I shall take care of this."
Sirius did not see Harry and his friends don the cloak again, nor did he see them leave. Only the swift rustle of footsteps half-walking and half-trotting in the direction from which he had arrived told him that the three of them were going.
Leaving him paralysed, and alone with a man who clearly hated him.
"How you ever managed to escape the Dementors, Black..." Snape said, staring fixedly at Sirius, his saturnine features carved in an expression of utter loathing. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."
With that, Snape shoved Sirius' wand in the pocket of his robes and removed his own, a long, thin, gnarled wand of dogwood. "Mobilicorpus!"
Sirius' body lifted as if it were on an invisible stretcher and floated down the hall, slightly ahead of Snape.
Inwardly, Sirius groaned. He was hated and feared by Harry and his friends. He'd been captured by his worst enemy. Remus didn't even want to look at him. And Merlin only knew what Dumbledore would be like.
If he could have closed his eyes and wept in frustration, he would have.
What a wonderful world.
***
Remus was already seated across from Dumbledore when Snape entered the headmaster's office. Sirius, still prone and locked in the Full Body-Bind, followed...if a magically paralysed man under the spell of Mobilicorpus could be said to follow anyone.
"So Hermione was right," said Remus, his face tense and bleak. "Black did come here. I'd hoped she was wrong, that she'd just seen a visitor who resembled Black...but that's him."
Snape stared at Sirius, his dark eyes probing. "It certainly seems to be. Yet I cannot imagine Sirius Black failing to hex someone who might thwart his plans. And the Black I know has carried at least one knife or dagger ever since he was sixteen. This one is unarmed."
He frowned and gestured with his wand, causing Sirius to shift to a vertical position and float backward against--almost into--a chair. Snape pursed his lips and muttered a swift though reluctant, "Finite Incantatum." Instantly, Sirius' muscles and nerves all unclenched, and he sank, aching, into the chair, closing his eyes for the first time in what felt like forever.
"Impedi--" Remus began to say.
"No," Sirius whispered. "Please. Between my bruised hip and my stiff muscles, I can barely move as it is."
"'Please?'" echoed Remus incredulously, his fine features contorted into a grimace of revulsion. "That's rich, coming from you."
Sirius, who hadn't thought that his spirits could sink any lower, found that he was incorrect. Moony, hating him. Moony, repulsed by him. This is wrongness on a cosmic level.
He stared at the carpet for a few minutes before he forced himself to speak. "Look. I don't know what the Sirius Black you know has done. Or hasn't done. Or shouldn't have done. I'm not him. Someone get some Veritaserum"--he made a face, as very few potions tasted more revolting than Veritaserum, and he'd drunk more than his fill since his sojourn through the Veil had begun--"and I'll explain."
"If you are who we suspect you are," said Dumbledore gravely as he stroked his beard, "then, Mr...Black, is it...Veritaserum would be of no use whatsoever. Fortunately, there is another way."
As Dumbledore finished speaking, Sirius began to feel a rummaging sensation within his mind, as if cool fingers were searching swiftly and efficiently through mental files and records. He gritted his teeth and struggled not to resist. After some time, he felt the fingers rummaging through his mind fade away.
Sirius forced himself to sit up and look Dumbledore square in the eye. "Well?" he demanded, unable to suppress the bitter challenge in his voice.
"You were speaking the truth, Mr Black," Dumbledore replied. "You are indeed not the Sirius Black that we know. Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to the professors, and to myself, how you came to be here."
You already know everything I know, Sirius thought sullenly. Why don't you tell them?
Judging from Dumbledore's expression, he'd already caught that thought as well. Blasted Legilimens. Sirius sighed, and began to relate what had happened in the Department of Mysteries, and all the worlds into which he'd stumbled since his cousin Bellatrix had hit him with a Stunning Spell, inadvertently knocking him through the Veil.
"And that's it, up till now," he concluded. "I'm still trying to get home. Now, could someone please tell me why everyone hates and fears my counterpart? What in the name of Merlin is wrong with the man?"
Remus and Snape exchanged a unreadable glance, too fleeting for Sirius to read. But it was Snape who answered.
"Have you ever heard of erotomania?"
***
For those who want links to the rest of the story, here they are:
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 2
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 3
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 4
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 5
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 6
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
***
Sneaking through Hogwarts, Sirius decided, was every bit as annoying as it had been the last time he'd done it. Perhaps more so. After all, he'd been a half-insane fugitive from Azkaban the last time. He hadn't been focusing on how many beings he'd had to dodge--not just students and teachers, but Filch, Mrs. Norris, house-elves, ghosts, poltergeists and paintings, just for starters. In fact, he'd scarcely noticed those things. The only thing he'd cared about was breaking into Gryffindor Tower to kill Pettigrew. He hadn't paid attention to any potential witnesses.
And he'd got away with it, too. The gods apparently did protect children, fools and madmen.
Now--two years later for him, and Merlin alone knew what year it was in this dimension-- it was different. A thousand alert eyes, living, undead and painted, were searching the corridors. Such alertness made getting to Dumbledore's office to find out if he'd finally reached his home dimension more problematic than he would have liked. The fact that he couldn't transform to Padfoot was just the icing on the cake.
Well, all right, he thought, sidling close to the wall, shrouding himself in shadows. I can change into Padfoot. The problem is that the stairs are enchanted for humans. You have to hop and jump and dance your way up them, and you have to do so on two feet, not four.
Please Merlin, Dumbledore will tell me that yes, this is home. Dumbledore had to tell him that. This world felt right. It looked right. It even smelled right.
Let this be my world, my Remus. Let it only be days or weeks since my fall through that damnable Veil. Let Remus be all right, not crushed or despairing...
He rounded a corner and collided violently with nothing at all.
He fell backwards onto the flagstones, momentarily knocking the breath from his body. A sharp stabbing pain lanced through his left leg as his hip smashed into the granite floor. He struggled to stand up, but a wave of dizziness overwhelmed him.
Someone unseen gasped. The next instant, Harry was standing before him, Invisibility Cloak in one hand and wand in the other, glaring at him grimly. Behind him, Hermione was helping Ron to his feet.
Sirius' heart sank as he gazed at Harry. This Harry was the image of the one he had met in the Shrieking Shack--no more than thirteen, and enraged at the sight of Sirius Black, his parents' betrayer and murderer.
His mouth suddenly went dry. He licked his lips. "Harry, I know what you think, but believe me, I haven't come here to do you any harm--"
"Shut up," said Harry in a deadly monotone.
Sirius started to sit up...and then halted, as Harry pressed the tip of his holly wand against Sirius' chest.
"Harry." He sounded frantic, even to himself. "Please...I have to get to Dumbledore."
Harry inhaled sharply, his breath sounding almost like a hiss. "You're going after him too," he stated flatly.
Sirius lunged forward, grappling for the boy's magic wand, muttering something incoherent that was half imprecation and half plea. In the back of his mind, he wondered what had happened to change Harry from the angry but merciful thirteen-year-old that he recalled into this cold-eyed boy standing in front of him.
Harry's expression did not change. "Petrificus Totalus!"
Sirius' arms stiffened; his legs involuntarily stretched out in front of him, then settled into rigidity. His jaws seized up, making speech impossible. An instant later, he was completely paralysed.
Ron leaned forward to peer at Sirius. "Hard to believe he had the nerve to break into Hogwarts, of all places. Stupid nutter."
"Well, yes," said Hermione tartly. "That's the whole problem right there." She turned to Harry, who was still glaring down at Sirius. "I'll go warn Professor Lupin. He should be the first one to know that Sirius Black is back."
Harry nodded absently in a way that signified both agreement and dismissal. "Ron..."
"I know. I'm on it, Harry." Ron shot a glance of thorough disgust at Sirius' immobile form. "Your godfather should be in his office now, right?"
"Most likely." Harry's voice still had an ironed-out quality to it.
Hermione glanced at him. "Harry...are you sure you're going to be all right? If--if you think it'll be too much for you, I could guard him, and you could go tell Professor Lupin..."
Harry shook his head. "I'll be fine."
Ron and Hermione both looked sceptical.
"What's the matter? Don't trust me?"
Ron sighed. "The man murdered your parents, Harry. I can see as clearly as Hermione can why you might not want to be around him for long."
I didn't! Sirius yelled mutely. Harry, I didn't murder James and Lily, I swear!
"I'll be fine," Harry repeated with exaggerated patience. "Just go get the professors, will you?" A sardonic expression, too dark to be a smile, contorted his mouth. "I promise not to kill him while you're gone."
Hesitantly, Ron and Hermione nodded. Then both took off down the corridor that Sirius had just exited, Hermione keeping an eye on the staff offices along the hallway while Ron raced pell-mell toward the stairs to the ground floor.
Sirius lay helplessly, staring up at Harry, who returned Sirius' stare with an expression of contempt and cold loathing. The boy continued to point his wand at Sirius' chest, clearly not trusting the Full Body-Bind to remain in effect and just as clearly maintaining a state of constant vigilance of which Mad-Eye Moody himself would have been proud.
Harry, Sirius thought, Harry, it's me. What in the name of Merlin happened to you? If only I could talk to you, explain what happened to your parents...I would never have hurt James and Lily, Harry. Not in a million years. If I could die for them now, and bring them back to life, I'd do it in a second.
He gazed once more at Harry's flinty expression and chill, hate-filled eyes. No chance this boy would listen to him. Not ever.
It felt like hours, even days, before either one came back. Hermione returned first, half trotting, half running. "I found Professor Lupin," she said breathlessly. "He said that he'd meet Black in Dumbledore's office, but nowhere else. And then he said he was going to take the long way around, since he'd have to pass Black if he went the more direct route."
Harry exhaled noisily. "Well. Can't blame him, really."
Hermione nodded soberly, and the conversation withered and died once more.
A few moments later, Ron raced up to Harry, with Severus Snape in tow.
Snape. Merlin's beard, could this day get any worse?
"Frankly, Mr Weasley," Snape was saying in his inimitable verbal sneer, "I fail to see what crisis demands my immediate attention--" His words broke off abruptly, and he stared at Sirius with the expression of a dedicated healer forced to contemplate a particularly lethal plague bacillus.
"Which of you found him?" he asked at last, scrutinising each of the children in turn. Though Snape's tone was neutral, he sounded less as if he were inquiring about minor details and more like a general commanding underlings to speak.
"We--er--sort of ran into him," said Hermione, fidgeting slightly. "We weren't looking for him, honestly we weren't."
"If you were not searching for him, Miss Granger," Snape remarked dryly, "that was the first time in three years that any of you have shown the remotest fragment of common sense."
"It's true," said Harry as he stared murderously at Sirius. "We were headed down to the kitchens--"
"Utilising your father's Invisibility Cloak, I have no doubt--"
Harry nodded. "And Hermione wanted to talk to the house-elves about unionising."
Snape snorted. "A futile pastime, but a harmless one." He studied Sirius once more. "Did he mention, perchance, what he was doing here, rather than in Professor Lupin's office?"
"He said he was going to find Dumbledore," Ron said, shrugging.
"Did he," said Snape in a thoughtful tone, gazing at Sirius with unreadable black eyes. "Where is his wand?"
"He wasn't holding it," said Hermione, puzzled. "Black didn't even go for his wand when Harry pressed his own wand against Black's chest."
"Did any of you search him?"
Harry's mouth fell open. "Search an insane murderer?" He shuddered. "I didn't want to get closer than an arm's length."
"Two sensible decisions in five minutes? You may yet overcome the curse of Gryffindor recklessness, Harry."
Harry. The word rang like a minor chord within Sirius' mind. Not Potter, or Mr Potter. Harry.
But before he could focus on what that meant, he felt Snape's hands briskly and efficiently searching his clothes. For weapons, no doubt. Sirius would have smirked if he could; the only thing he had with him was his wand. Not that a wand couldn't be a weapon of mass destruction in its own right, but he suspected that Snape was searching for more.
Snape confiscated the wand and stood up. He stared at Sirius in perplexity. "Something," he murmured, "is not quite right here. Black never goes anywhere without weapons."
He tapped his chin with Sirius' wand for a few minutes, apparently lost in thought. When he looked up again, he seemed startled to see the children still standing there. "Eh? I thought you had a kitchen to raid."
Harry swallowed. "You won't want us to come to Dumbledore's office and talk about him?"
"Most assuredly not," retorted Snape. "And," he continued in a studiedly casual voice, "I am certain that none of you will say a word of this to any other student."
The three nodded with the enthusiasm of those who dread that lack of enthusiasm may bring detention.
"Good. Go on about your business. I shall take care of this."
Sirius did not see Harry and his friends don the cloak again, nor did he see them leave. Only the swift rustle of footsteps half-walking and half-trotting in the direction from which he had arrived told him that the three of them were going.
Leaving him paralysed, and alone with a man who clearly hated him.
"How you ever managed to escape the Dementors, Black..." Snape said, staring fixedly at Sirius, his saturnine features carved in an expression of utter loathing. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."
With that, Snape shoved Sirius' wand in the pocket of his robes and removed his own, a long, thin, gnarled wand of dogwood. "Mobilicorpus!"
Sirius' body lifted as if it were on an invisible stretcher and floated down the hall, slightly ahead of Snape.
Inwardly, Sirius groaned. He was hated and feared by Harry and his friends. He'd been captured by his worst enemy. Remus didn't even want to look at him. And Merlin only knew what Dumbledore would be like.
If he could have closed his eyes and wept in frustration, he would have.
What a wonderful world.
***
Remus was already seated across from Dumbledore when Snape entered the headmaster's office. Sirius, still prone and locked in the Full Body-Bind, followed...if a magically paralysed man under the spell of Mobilicorpus could be said to follow anyone.
"So Hermione was right," said Remus, his face tense and bleak. "Black did come here. I'd hoped she was wrong, that she'd just seen a visitor who resembled Black...but that's him."
Snape stared at Sirius, his dark eyes probing. "It certainly seems to be. Yet I cannot imagine Sirius Black failing to hex someone who might thwart his plans. And the Black I know has carried at least one knife or dagger ever since he was sixteen. This one is unarmed."
He frowned and gestured with his wand, causing Sirius to shift to a vertical position and float backward against--almost into--a chair. Snape pursed his lips and muttered a swift though reluctant, "Finite Incantatum." Instantly, Sirius' muscles and nerves all unclenched, and he sank, aching, into the chair, closing his eyes for the first time in what felt like forever.
"Impedi--" Remus began to say.
"No," Sirius whispered. "Please. Between my bruised hip and my stiff muscles, I can barely move as it is."
"'Please?'" echoed Remus incredulously, his fine features contorted into a grimace of revulsion. "That's rich, coming from you."
Sirius, who hadn't thought that his spirits could sink any lower, found that he was incorrect. Moony, hating him. Moony, repulsed by him. This is wrongness on a cosmic level.
He stared at the carpet for a few minutes before he forced himself to speak. "Look. I don't know what the Sirius Black you know has done. Or hasn't done. Or shouldn't have done. I'm not him. Someone get some Veritaserum"--he made a face, as very few potions tasted more revolting than Veritaserum, and he'd drunk more than his fill since his sojourn through the Veil had begun--"and I'll explain."
"If you are who we suspect you are," said Dumbledore gravely as he stroked his beard, "then, Mr...Black, is it...Veritaserum would be of no use whatsoever. Fortunately, there is another way."
As Dumbledore finished speaking, Sirius began to feel a rummaging sensation within his mind, as if cool fingers were searching swiftly and efficiently through mental files and records. He gritted his teeth and struggled not to resist. After some time, he felt the fingers rummaging through his mind fade away.
Sirius forced himself to sit up and look Dumbledore square in the eye. "Well?" he demanded, unable to suppress the bitter challenge in his voice.
"You were speaking the truth, Mr Black," Dumbledore replied. "You are indeed not the Sirius Black that we know. Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to the professors, and to myself, how you came to be here."
You already know everything I know, Sirius thought sullenly. Why don't you tell them?
Judging from Dumbledore's expression, he'd already caught that thought as well. Blasted Legilimens. Sirius sighed, and began to relate what had happened in the Department of Mysteries, and all the worlds into which he'd stumbled since his cousin Bellatrix had hit him with a Stunning Spell, inadvertently knocking him through the Veil.
"And that's it, up till now," he concluded. "I'm still trying to get home. Now, could someone please tell me why everyone hates and fears my counterpart? What in the name of Merlin is wrong with the man?"
Remus and Snape exchanged a unreadable glance, too fleeting for Sirius to read. But it was Snape who answered.
"Have you ever heard of erotomania?"
***
For those who want links to the rest of the story, here they are:
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 2
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 3
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 4
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 5
Veilfic--Erotomania, Part 6