I can't face the dark without you

Sirius

Stumbling out of the Veil and into the empty room of the Ministry of Magic felt like coming up for air after being submerged in water for a long time. Suddenly everything was too bright, even in the gloomy ambience of the room any kind of stimulus felt like too much.

He expected to immediately have to rejoin the fight, but it seemed that the time he’d spent inside that strange in-between had been enough for them to move into another room. He made his way quickly but silently towards the door and into the corridor that was surprisingly empty.

Sirius rolled his shoulders, only now realizing that he was still holding his wand and checking that everything seemed to be still in place. More out of habit than anything else, he checked the tattoo in his right forearm, the one that changed along the phases of the moon, and was surprised to discover that it had changed.

The new moon had been only a couple days before the battle, but his tattoo showed an almost full moon, which should’ve been impossible. Maybe the Veil had done something to change the magic of it. Still, Sirius felt uneasy.

The sight of the long empty corridor, not a sound to be heard, didn’t exactly help, and he turned into Padfoot almost instinctively. The dog’s thoughts weren’t as complex as the man’s, but his instincts were definitely better. He still couldn’t hear a single thing.

Restless, Padfoot sniffed around for a while searching the trail of magic the others must have left, but he quickly gave up. Everything stinked so much like magic in the Ministry that picking up a single trail was practically impossible.

He made his way carefully back to the atrium and that’s when he knew for certain that something was very wrong.

Everything was full of functionaries walking around in a chaos of voices, paper airplanes and robes. Everything seemed perfectly normal, which only served to worry Sirius even more. Where was the Order? They had been fighting for their lives not even ten minutes ago. It was impossible that everything had gone back to normal already, even if they had won.

Dogs walking around were definitely not a normal sight in the Ministry, but if Padfoot knew how to do something was avoid being spotted. He walked near the wall, taking the long but safer route rather than risking being stepped on by one of the hundreds of feet stomping around the atrium.

He managed to make his way out of the building without any incident, not before making sure to take a copy of the Daily Prophet that had been dumped into a nearby bin.

He roamed around muggle London for a bit. The late afternoon was surprisingly warm even for summer but the fresh air did nothing to calm his frazzled nerves. When he considered himself a safe distance away, Padfoot made his way into a small alley before turning back into Sirius, Daily prophet still clutched tightly. The alley smelled like piss and rotten food, but the only thing Sirius was capable of processing was the date mocking him from the front page of the newspaper.

2^nd of August.

He’d gone into the Department of Mysteries on June 18^th.

He suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe. Assuming the newspaper was from that very same day, he’d spent around six weeks in that strange in-between. The magic tattoo wasn’t broken, it still accurately showed the phase of the moon. Sirius just appeared to have skipped six weeks of his life, which also explained the normalcy of everything around him in the Ministry, they’d had weeks to deal with whatever the consequences of the battle had been. He frantically skimmed over the whole thing, looking for any useful information, and he let out a sigh of relief when Harry’s face greeted him from the third page.

It wasn’t more than a bullshit article by that sorry excuse for a reporter, Rita Skeeter, pretending to analyze the implications of Voldemort’s return in Harry’s life, now that apparently everyone knew about it, but at least it was proof enough that the boy was alright “enjoying the summer before returning to Hogwarts” if Skeeter was to be fully believed, which she probably wasn’t. It also gave a brief report on the fight in the Ministry but even though it didn’t mention any deaths on their side, Sirius highly doubted they would have included a werewolf in the list of fallen heroes.

He closed the newspaper after making sure that there wasn’t anything more of interest and burnt it before any muggle could find it. The last thing he needed was more problems with the Ministry. Mind racing with half formed plans and what-ifs. He briefly thought about going straight to Dumbledore, but it wasn’t more than a fleeting idea. He needed to find Remus first, so Dumbledore would have to wait. 

He didn’t let himself think about everything that could have gone wrong during the battle after he crossed the Veil. Instead, he took a calming breath and disapparated to the only place where he thought he might find Remus.