The open field was already far behind them, and the hills were beginning to reveal their true shape.
Sirius could hear the dogs' rasping snarls behind him, and every sound made his legs feel weaker.
His mind filled with a thousand frantic questions:
What were those black dogs? Why was it that the moment he faced them, he felt an overwhelming instinct not to resist?
Why were they so determined to hunt him down?
And in the end, where exactly was he supposed to run to? Where were James and Lily?
The questions drowned Sirius, and with that endless confusion came the black dogs, always close behind him like shadows.
As Sirius ran across the grassy hillside, a cloud of black mist began spreading behind him. If he had had eyes in the back of his head, he would have seen that those clumps of mist were drifting out of his own body.
"Sirius, what right do you even have?"
The hoarse voice sounded like accusation and grief at once, rising from somewhere behind him.
It made Sirius stumble.
In that instant, his legs felt as heavy as lead.
He couldn't help thinking back to that night.
Harry's father—James, who had been like a brother to him—and James's parents, who had treated him like a son…
All of them had been murdered because of his mistake, because of his cleverness, because of his stupidity.
How could he not try to understand exactly what had happened that night?
Once Wormtail had told Voldemort where James and Lily were hiding, Voldemort had found them in their cottage.
It was not hard to imagine how Harry's parents died.
And how could Sirius not imagine it?
He imagined Voldemort killing Harry's father first.
James fighting desperately, shouting for Lily to run with Harry…
Voldemort advancing on Lily Potter, telling her to step aside because he meant to kill Harry…
Lily begging Voldemort to kill her instead and spare her son, shielding Harry until her dying breath… and then Voldemort killing her too, before turning his wand on Harry…
"Sirius, what right do you have?"
Sirius clutched at his face in agony, tears pouring down.
"You are ruled by what you fear, Mr. Black."
A young voice came from behind him. At once Sirius felt his body loosen, as though he had abruptly returned to reality.
He heard a snarl right next to his ear, smelled foul breath right in front of him, and when he focused, he saw a huge gaping mouth hanging beside his face.
The black dog had opened its jaws wide enough to swallow a person whole, yet it was frozen in place, as if a fishbone had lodged in its throat.
Sirius broke out in a cold sweat, then tremblingly searched for his god.
He found it easily.
It was standing on the black dog's head, staring at him with magnificent emerald-bright eyes.
Sirius swore he had never seen such a regal giant cat. It looked almost like an enlarged cat-leopard, some mysterious magical creature magnified to impossible size.
The giant cat brought one paw down. The black dog let out a strangled whine under the force of it, then dissolved into wisps of black mist, ghostlike, though the rest still lingered all around them.
"Fear never disappears, Mr. Black. It always exists in every heart.
But people do not lose the ability to run simply because they carry fear."
The giant cat deflated like a punctured balloon, shrinking down until it was no bigger than a kneazle.
"What… are they?"
Sirius asked shakily, his throat already dry.
"We can talk about that next time, Mr. Black. We're running out of time."
The black cat looked at the mist rising all around them. It knew it had used the Empty Sigil's power too much and interfered too deeply with the Borderland's rules.
And everything always had a price.
The price of Sirius's fear and hesitation was being expelled from the dream.
If he had not been the black cat's guest, he would probably have vanished by now just like Voldemort's soul fragment had.
As for what would happen in reality if a soul vanished, one could look to the Killing Curse for comparison.
Though that, too, was strange.
The Killing Curse directly killed a wizard's soul, which was why it left no mark on the body.
But if that were true, why could a wizard killed by it still return to the Borderland?
Unless… the Killing Curse did not actually destroy the soul at all. Perhaps it was not that powerful. Perhaps instead it expelled the soul from the wizard's body.
There was at least one piece of evidence for that: Harry's Resurrection Stone could still summon the souls of his parents and Cedric.
"What do you mean?"
Sirius asked anxiously, looking at the black cat with that same mixture of despair and desperate longing.
"Your steps are too heavy, and those who walk in dreams need light feet.
If you cannot let go of certain things, you will never be able to reach the distance."
The black cat sounded almost regretful.
"Until next time, Mr. Black. If one day you are ready to face the future instead of living in yesterday, then come find me again…
At Hogwarts."
The mist came thicker than it ever had before, and with it came a scorching heat.
The Borderland seemed to be punishing the wizard who had broken its rules. It could not punish the cat sitting there licking its paw, so it punished Sirius instead.
Sirius felt only heat—too much heat. His skin was burning, but his heart was ice-cold.
That voice had been right. What right did he have to face James and Lily?
Unless…
He suddenly thought of the baby. In his memory, the image of Harry as an infant had always lingered longer than the later face that looked so much like James.
"If we win, honored god, I'll come back."
Something had returned to Sirius then. His face was full of terrible resolve.
He looked at his god and found it staring blankly at its own paw, whiskers twitching, as though it were surprised to find that its paw had somehow drifted up beside its whiskers on its own.
The sight was so absurd that even Sirius couldn't help narrowing his eyes slightly.
"I've had many guests," the black cat said seriously before leaving, pressing its tail down beneath its paws. "If someday I meet wandering soul-guests instead of living wizards, I would be willing to lead them out of the dream."
With that, and without paying any attention to Sirius's stunned silence turning instantly into fierce joy, the black cat turned and walked deeper into the mist.
When Sirius woke from the fading dream, he found himself staring at the music box still playing its hypnotic tune, and suddenly he spoke aloud:
"Sovereign of Dream and Mist, Bridge Between Life and Death, Symbol of Eternal Good Fortune—"
He murmured it like a devout believer.
And somewhere else, his god was frowning.
"Five and a half hours… too long. Why this time?"
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 120 Chapters Ahead of Others!