Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
If you see a crocodile,
Don't forget to scream.
Chapter IV: Don't Forget to Scream
“No, no…” James muttered faintly, sinking as low as one could when their wrists and ankles were bound together.
“Yes, yes,” Voldemort countered mockingly, his red eyes glittering with the blood of a recent murder illuminated in them, and the gleam of what murders were to come.
“It’s not true…it can’t be true…” James muttered faintly. He cast a look around the room as if hoping that one of its occupants would assure him that this was all a horrible nightmare, and not true at all. James wriggled away from the burning desk, coughing as he did so.
“You don’t think your little friend here;” Voldemort pointed his wand to where Peter lay, “had it in him, did you?”
Getting redder in the face by the second, James answered, “What sort of question is that? Of course I didn’t! Peter is my friend…was my friend…” he finished sadly. His glasses slipped a bit down his nose as he lowered his head.
“We all did,” Sirius reassured him. “The rat had us all fooled.”
His eyes flickered to the corner of the room that James was close to. He saw a photo on a cabinet of the four of them…Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs on the last day of seventh year. They were standing under a large tree on the Hogwarts school grounds, arms around each other. Peter was in the middle. Let it burn, Sirius thought bitterly. The room was starting to burn more…Sirius wondered if the Muggles would notice.
“It’s all very touching,” Voldemort said patronisingly, his wand now aimed at James. “There are too many Mudbloods and filth still walking this earth for me to stay here for too long.” The corner of Voldemort’s mouth curled, and his spider like fingers tightened around the handle of his wand.
“You stay away from my family!” James yelled, trying to jump up. The binds around his ankles caused him to topple forwards in a most undignified position instead. He fell face first at Snape’s feet, the impact causing a ‘flump’ on the carpet.
“So, Potter, is this how it ends? With you grovelling at my feet?” Snape sneered, his cold black eyes shimmering. “I thought I’d never see the day…not so cocky now, are you?” he asked softly.
Voldemort let out a laugh. It was not a laugh of humour, but one of irony. “I don’t think, Potter, that you are in any position to be making demands.” His wand was still pointed at James’ heart.
“You leave Harry and Lily alone,” Sirius growled. “Isn’t it a little pathetic to be attacking women and children? And you call yourself a great wizard!”
A twisted half-smile played on Voldemort’s face. “Why yes, Black, I do. It is I who will remove all those unworthy from ever walking this earth again.”
“That’s funny,” Sirius replied angrily. “I don’t see you removing yourself.” His hands curled up into fists as well as they could. “Need some help?” he asked nastily.
“I thought you learnt your lesson last time, Black,” Voldemort replied maliciously. “Perhaps you need to be taught again…I do not mind. I like to hear the screams.”
Sirius braced himself for what was sure to come.
“Crucio.”
He was in agony. Being placed under the Torture Curse twice in one night was a horrible thing to even imagine. He withered on the floor, screaming, the binds hurting as his joints strained against them…
“Yes, yes, that shall do.” The curse was lifted. The pain had left Sirius panting slightly.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, as something kicked him on the head. That ‘something’ turned out to be Snape’s boot. Snape expertly hid his foot inside his robes again.
Voldemort’s gaze flickered to the orange clock, the flames were starting to near it. Sirius, James and Snape looked at it too, wondering what had captured the Dark Lord’s interest.
“I think I have overstayed my welcome,” Voldemort said softly. His wand twirled in his fingers again.
Sirius cursed under his breath. He smashed his hands against the wall, in the feeble hope that the enchanted ropes would break, but the ropes were reinforced with magic and would not snap so easily.
“I understand that you and Black have some, ah, what shall we call it…history?” Voldemort had turned to face Snape, his red eyes meeting Snape’s black ones.
“Yes, my Lord,” Snape murmured.
“Then, perhaps, you would like to do the honours.”
“Why, are you too chicken to kill me yourself?” The words yet again jumped out of Sirius’s mouth before he could think.
“Ah, no, Black, it is just that I do not concern myself with lessermortals. In fact, I would consider that I am doing you a favour, as I could leave you here…” he waved one arm around, indicating the burning portions of the room, “…and let you be devoured by the flames.” Voldemort turned to Snape. “Severus.”
A sneer unfurled upon Snape’s pallid face.
Sirius banged his hands against the wall frantically, the binds still refused to break. This was useless. All he had achieved were a pair of sore hands.
“Avada Kedavra!” He desperately tried to jump up, away from the curse, but his feet were still tied together and he fell right into the curse’s path.
There was blinding green light. Then there was darkness.
Everything was dark.
He opened his eyes...or did he? He wasn't sure. He recognised the place. He was back in here, in the Realm of Dreams. The blue slow moving stream down the middle, surrounded by…nothing. Where were the vibrant colours he had seen before he had fallen in the river? He did not know. It was as if someone had planted a stream and its banks in the middle of a deserted galaxy. The binds on his arms and feet fell off as if they had never even existed.
Then Sirius realised it wasn't deserted. He saw someone in a hunched sitting position on the bank. She was wearing a set of pyjamas, plain white ones which were a size too big for her. Her lank, stringy blonde hair fell all the way down her back. She was barefoot, and she turned her head and he could see her crying. But somehow, and he wasn't sure how, he knew it was Monday.
He started to approach her, but he saw someone move in the corner of his eye. He turned around, and he couldn't help but let out a gasp of surprise. He gasped, but for some reason the sound didn't carry in the air. Hadn't he and Monday conversed, the first time in the Realm? But that was before, in the nothingness, and he thought it was telepathic. Maybe the Realm was in outer space? Sound didn't carry in space, did it? And there was no oxygen, but he didn't need to breathe, did he? But didn't space have stars? The night sky had stars.
He was completely and utterly confused. Maybe he should have listened when Lily had gone into one of her scientific rants. Before discovering magic, Lily Evans had liked science. For the ten years Sirius had known her, she had been trying to prove that magic followed some law of science. When she couldn't find an answer, she claimed the scientific theory hadn't been discovered yet.
He turned to look at the people he had seen, making sure they weren't some hallucination brought on from the fire smoke. To make sure the Realm wasn't a hallucination in itself. But no, Peter Pettigrew and James Potter were standing a few metres away from him. Torn between wanting to help Monday and talking to his friends, he stood still. The funny thing was that he had a physical body on this side, but he was floating in mid air. And how had his friends gotten here in the first place? They hadn’t fallen through the Veil…
"PRONGS!" he yelled,” GET OVER HERE!" He spoke the words aloud. But he didn't hear them himself, so how were James and Peter meant to hear? How come he could telepathically talk to Monday? Maybe the trick was to think the words, like when one used a non-verbal spell.
"Prongs," he thought in his mind, "Come over here."
"Padfoot?" James's voice responded in his mind. "Is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me. Come over here."
James glided to Sirius, and Peter trailed about ten feet behind him. Sirius looked at Peter with slight disgust. James glanced in Monday's direction. Taking in the image of the crying blonde, he asked, "Who is she?"
"Yeah, who is she?" Peter echoed.
"That's Monday," Sirius answered, looking at her quivering back "I met her the first time I was in this place."
"You've been here before?" James asked. He looked around, taking in the darkness encompassing them and the stream. "How did you get here?"
"I died," Sirius stated simply, "That's about as much as I under--" He was interrupted by a bellow in his mind.
"BLACK!" someone yelled within him. "WHAT TRICK HAVE YOU PULLED THIS TIME? WHEN I GET TO YOU--"
Sirius turned. He wasn't sure where the speaker was, though he had a slight inkling he might know who it was. Rotating three hundred and sixty degrees, he found the speaker standing in front of him, wand drawn. His lank, greasy hair framed his long, pallid face complete with hooked nose. James had already found him and was looking at him with utter hatred. It was beyond schoolboy enmity now.
"It's your fault I'm here, Snivellus," Sirius said bitterly. "If you hadn't killed me, I wouldn't be here!" he continued angrily. "Did you die too?"
Snape stared at Sirius for a few seconds, and Sirius felt it would have been better if Snape had refused to answer his question outright. He was making him extremely uncomfortable. After a few excruciating minutes (as that was what it seemed like), Snape graced his question with an answer. "The Dark Lord found he no longer had a need for me," he replied silkily. "And," he continued, nodding at James, "Potter, you'll be glad to know your Mudblood wife is safe. She was no longer there when we attacked your place of residence. Nor was the brat this whole mess surrounds."
James visibly paled. "You wanted to attack my family..." he whispered. “I'LL KILL YOU!" he suddenly shouted, lunging for Snape's neck. Snape stepped aside, and James lost his balance and fell. This looked even more ridiculous then it would in normal circumstances because he looked like he was treading water in mid-air.
"I believe the Dark Lord has already had that pleasure."
James sputtered, and glided into a more dignified position. "It could be possible to die twice..." James muttered, reaching for the place where his wand would be. It hadn’t reappeared. "How'd you like to be the first?"
"Sorry, Prongs, I think that position was taken by me." Sirius put a hand on his friend's shoulder. Turning to face Snape, he added menacingly, “How about second?”
"He would've killed Lily, and Harry too!" James fumed.
"Hexing him will get us nowhere in this situation." The speaker was not Sirius, but Peter. "I don't like it when people fight."
Sirius turned to his former friend. "Yes," he said scathingly. "That's why you became a Death Eater. Because you don't like it when people fight."
Peter's face changed. It looked more like he did on that fateful day that had given Sirius a life sentence in Azkaban. "I only wanted to be happy," he whispered. "All I ever wanted was to be secure."
"And taking on a spy position makes you secure, does it?" James asked enquiringly. "Does it make you feel big, does it make you feel secure, that you helped cause the deaths of people...even some of your closest friends?"
"Stop it..." Peter squealed. The three of them surrounded him. "You're just like him!" he accused.
"Just like who?" James asked, shocked. "Like Voldemort? How dare you say a thing like that?" His hands scrunched into fists.
"Don’t say the name!" Snape and Peter shouted at the same time.
After Peter regained his breath, he continued, "When you were at school, you used to bully people…people like me…then you became my friend…”
Snape turned his back for a few seconds as if a contemplating something. Without turning back around, he said evenly, "The Dark Lord has no friends. Nor as do I."
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He wheeled around. Monday was standing behind their group. Her tears seem to have subsided, but her eyes were still red and swollen. "Is this not a conversation I should get involved in?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.
"What's wrong, Monday?" Sirius asked the blonde woman, a little bit cautious of her. How had she known so much about this place, the Realm...how long had she been here exactly?
Her voice sounded a little uneven. "I-I t-tried to cross the stream, but couldn't bring myself into the boat! I dream…of drowning. I… saw someone who nearly drowned once, but he was saved. And do you know what I did? I just stood…and watched.”
Sirius frowned. He had nearly drowned the year before he had started Hogwarts. He didn’t know how to swim. He couldn’t have saved anyone who was drowning, either. Even now, he barely knew how to keep afloat as a human. As a dog, swimming seemed as natural as breathing.
Abruptly, Sirius changed the subject. Monday seemed to know a lot about the veil. She would be able to answer his question. “How did they,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of Snape, Peter and James, “get here?”
Monday did not look Sirius in the eyes. “There is some sort of enchantment, where if one who passes through the veil dies again, then ones who they have a very strong relationship with, negative or positive, will pass into the Realm if they die in a close time frame with the one who originally passed through the veil.” She was now looking Sirius straight in the eyes.
Frustrated, James ran a hand through his messy hair. “But how do you know so much?”
A curious smile played across Monday’s lips when James asked this question. “I was an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries,” she replied, her face still twisted into the odd smile. However, Sirius got the feeling that she was not telling the whole story.
James closed his eyes. "Merlin’s beard! What a predicament we've gotten ourselves in. We have to get out of here...we have to change things back...I have to see Lily and Harry!" He turned to Monday. "How do we get out of here?"
"That way." Monday pointed to the direction that Sirius had come from the first time round.
"Are you crazy?" Sirius exclaimed. "That leads back to the inner Realm!"
"Look in the other direction." They followed her instruction. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was a mountain range. "It leads back to the mountains, the beginning of Time."
"So what is this? The river of Time? Are you crazy, woman?" Snape asked violently.
"The river of Time? No, no..." She laughed loudly. "This is the river of Hate. River Styx. Stream Styx? No, that doesn’t sound right. Sirius's eyes widened. "Isn't that a myth? Isn't that in the underworld or something...separating the side of the living from the side of the dead?"
Monday sighed. "If you don't believe what's in front of your eyes, how could you believe in things that you can't see?"
"I thought River Styx was a river of hate or something," Peter added.
"Time spawns and feeds all hate." Monday glided to the riverbank. The four followed her. She untied the rope from its post. Holding onto the semi-burnt rope she looked in the direction she had first pointed in. "Every river must lead to sea. The sea must be that way. We're trying to get into the future. We can't go past the time about a week Sirius left though, because you can't enter a time that doesn't exist. The river lengthens over time," she explained at the confused glances the men were giving her. “The Realm is expanding.”
"But why go into the future?" James asked. "Why not go into the past for a second chance to make everything right again?"
“Do not mess with Time,” Monday hissed. “Don’t you think you’ve messed things up enough already? Poor stream, having to change the way it flows just because you felt like you would just jump in!” She glared at Sirius.
Sirius held up his hands. “Sorry,” he said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Monday stopped glaring and fiddled with a strand of hair. “Sorry,” she said apologetically. “I did not mean to lose my temper like that.” Squinting around at the men surrounding her, she added, “So what do you say? To the future?”
The four of them nodded. Travelling down a stream floating in the middle of what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. None of them wanted to be left behind. "We'll come." Sirius said, speaking for all of them. "We'll find our way back and we'll make everything right again...but for some reason it feels strange leaving here. It'll be like going into another dream. Nothing will be real..." he clambered into the rickety wooden boat. Snape, Peter and James followed him.
"Oh, but did you know what?" Monday asked as she climbed into rickety wooden boat, that was rocking slightly in the water. "Life is but a dream."