Fanfic: Have and Withhold (epilogue)
Sirius felt his presence drawn to the archway. He hadn’t seen the veil since that quick summons from Harry.
“Sirius?” a small child with hair like every-colour spun sugar toddled along to peer in from the room in which Sirius died. “Are you still there?” he called quietly, hopefully.
“DO NOT COME IN!” Sirius was relieved to hear himself yell. He grabbed each side of the arch to bar entry. Small child sat, cross-legged and unafraid, at a safe distance back, familiar hazel irises becoming a more painfully familiar, other, colour. “Little Nymphadora and Moony, yet perhaps also someone else,” said Sirius, squatting to small child’s level.
“Can you come out?” small child asked as his chaotic hair settled to smooth black.
“Not yet, so you must never try to come in.”
“When you do come out, will you be you, or in someone new like me?”
Sirius did not know how to answer that.
“Are my Mummy and Daddy in there too? Gran is mad that they died but I’m sad.”
“I haven’t seen or heard them among the whisperers.” Sirius hadn’t known Nymphadora was dead. He wondered when and how. It hadn’t taken her long to win Moony over. Good girl!
Small child nodded soberly then smiled. “Can I come visit again?”
“Only on that side and never closer than you are now. Why are you here?” Sirius asked.
“To see you.”
“In the Department of Mysteries,” said Sirius.
“No one knows what I am,” was the calm reply. The irregular Moony began drawing on paper with crayons, neither of which he’d carried in.
“You’re a Metamorphmagus like your Mummy.”
“They keep trying to find the werewolf,” Irregular Moony said in an almost sing-song of superiority as he slid the drawing to Sirius. It was a picture of a stick-figure House Elf with crosses for eyes and its tongue out to show it was dead. It wore a novelty Christmas hat with jingly bells around the fringe. “Kreacher died. We didn’t cut of his head. Wall heads are gross. We buried him with the best hat and the yucky necklace.”
Sirius figured the necklace was one of the hideous heirlooms Walburga wore. The picture was innocently hilarious and filled with the child’s love. “You haven’t drawn pictures of me like that, have you?” Irregular Moony looked offended so Sirius kept talking. “You should put that one on the wall where Kreacher’s head would have gone.” Luckily Irregular Moony liked that idea.
“You got old,” he said.
Sirius chuckled. “Hopefully you’ll get old this time.”
“It’s lonely without you. Hurry up and come out.”
“I’ll try.”
Irregular Moony sighed. “I have to go back to my room. Bye bye, Sirius.”
“Bye bye, Irregular Moony.”
Smooth black hair became the confection puff of curls again as the small child waved while trustingly taking the hand of a Ministry House Elf. Sirius was sucked in among the whisperers again and he became a rather vague outline of mist.
Until he received an opportunity to begin again.