The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

LXIX: 23 June, 1994

It was like moving underwater.

A dream.

That heady sort of dream where you know you're dreaming because you're hovering more than running and you glide along through space like you're two feet off the ground.

Memory.

'This will be BURNED into your memory.' Achlys promised. 'I won't LET YOU FORGET.'

It was dark, there were kids on the streets, kids in costumes.

Sirius was running through a crowd of them, bumping into kids dressed as Darth Vadar and Luke Skywalker, dressed as Chewbacca and Yoda. Kids dressed as Princesses, Spies, Ghosts, and Pirates.... There were no witches and wizards, though. These kids didn't have to play pretend at that. It wasn't a costume to them. It was everyday life.

Such was Halloween in Godric's Hollow.

Sirius ran, dizzy, bumping off kids like a pinball hitting all the strike zones.

"Hey watch it," a kid dressed as a Quidditch referee snapped.

Sirius laughed at the irony. A referee. Telling him to watch it. It was funny. He laughed as he stumbled away.

"No... no... no stop... stop..."

He broke free of the main quarry of the downtown square, running past the Lion's Den and up the road, past the market, and into the darker areas outside of the village, where there were high trees that lined the streets and tall grasses. Stone walls that broke the fields from the road way and the cobblestones were less closely tended for. He passed the big church on the right and the graveyard with it's wrought iron gate and the low stone wall.

He came to a stop.

He could smell it. He could smell the explosion, the smoke fogged up the streets.

"No... stop it, stop it!"

He shouldn't be able to see the house.

"Pl-pl-please -- I - I said - I -"

'You know what you're going to find in there,' Achlys whispered.

"I know - I know, my fault, I know it, I know it --"

'You know what he did... You know what you did.'

"No," he whispered and the air was cold enough that the word hung in front of his mouth, a silvery puff of cloud.

"I know, I know, I know..."

'What was the last thing James Potter said to you? Do you remember, Sirius?"

"Go away, go away, go away..."

"Sirius."

His heart stopped in his throat when he felt a touch on his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, he was still on the floor in the Shrieking Shack. Remus was holding him from behind, his chest against Sirius's back, his hands on Sirius's shoulders, gripping him tightly.

He could barely breathe. His chest was full of dementor. It was black and heavy and filling him up and he was going to burst. It was going to make him explode all over. He panted desperately. "Pleeeeease," he begged. "Please."

His mind echoed the words James last said to him - words he could only half comprehend, words he couldn't put words to for all the weight they held in his chest and he felt like Achlys was choking him with them.