Chapter 509

The world behind the veil, or the boundary between life and death, was always shrouded in mist that never dispersed.

Sirius watched the black cat curl its tail around strands of silver memory—just extracted from his skull.

Sirius didn’t know what his god intended, so he stood still, tense, unsure where to put his hands.

As he watched, he saw the cat’s tail stiffen, its whiskers tremble, as if restraining some impulse.

Sirius wondered if it was holding back from swallowing his memories—or merely suppressing the cat’s instinct to play with a ball of yarn.

As he thought this, Sirius couldn’t help laughing.

The black cat turned to him at once.

“This place is… full of mist everywhere…”

He froze instantly, pretending to be busy, glancing left and right.

His words sounded stiff too—talking about mist in the boundary was as pointless as commenting on good air in the countryside.

The black cat ignored him, struggling hard to suppress its feline nature:

“Please come with me, Mr. Black.”

Sirius stiffened as if shocked, then stepped quickly closer to the black cat, sinking with his god into the memory.

Falling, falling, still falling…

After a brief but prolonged sensation of weightlessness, the man and the cat landed in a familiar place.

—Hogwarts Great Hall.

The black cat stood atop Sirius in the center of the hall, but this version of Hogwarts differed from the one it knew.

The four house tables were gone. In their place stood over a hundred small tables, all facing the same direction, each with a student hunched over a scroll of parchment, scribbling furiously.

The atmosphere was utterly silent—only the scratch of quills, and occasionally the rustle of parchment being adjusted.

Clearly, an exam was in progress.

Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, illuminating the lowered heads, casting hues of gray-brown, reddish-brown, and gold in the bright light.

The black cat scanned the room carefully.

Young Sirius and James and the others must be somewhere here… this was his memory…

“Five minutes left!”

A voice suddenly rang out.

The black cat turned and saw Professor Flitwick’s head moving between the nearby desks.

Professor Flitwick passed by a boy with messy black hair… extremely disheveled black hair…

The young Sirius beneath the cat’s paws froze, then began to move.

He moved swiftly—if he had a physical form, he would have knocked over several tables.

Yet he seemed to glide, like in a dream, crossing two aisles and sliding down the third.

The back of the black-haired boy’s head drew nearer—and now he straightened, set down his quill, pulled his parchment closer, and began rereading his answers…

Sirius stopped before the desk, gazing down at James.

Then he lowered his eyes, turned his head away, trembling slightly.

The black cat looked at the boy as if seeing a slightly distorted Harry.

James’s eyes were light brown, his nose slightly longer than Harry’s, no scar on his forehead—but they shared the same thin face, the same mouth, the same eyebrows;

James’s hair was identical to Harry’s, sticking up at the back; his hands were Harry’s hands.

James let out a huge yawn, rubbed his hair, making it even messier.

Then he glanced at Professor Flitwick, turned in his seat, and grinned at the boy in the fourth seat behind him.

The boy in the fourth seat—young Sirius—gave James a thumbs-up.

Young Sirius leaned back lazily in his chair, relaxed, tilting backward on only two legs.

He was strikingly handsome, black hair falling over his eyes, lending him an air of effortless elegance.

A girl seated behind him watched him with hopeful eyes—but he seemed unaware.

In that same row, two seats away—black cat recognized—it was young Remus Lupin.

He looked pale and worn.

The black cat guessed it was nearly full moon.

He was now fully absorbed in the exam:

He reread his answers, tapped his chin with the quill’s tip, and frowned slightly.

Finally, a small boy with mouse-gray hair and a pointed nose.

That was Wormtail—he looked anxious, gnawing his fingernails, staring intently at his parchment, scuffing his toes on the floor.

He kept glancing hopefully at the parchment of the student beside him.

The black cat placed its paw beside Sirius’s ear and gently twisted it; the red-eyed Sirius finally abandoned his urge to lunge at Wormtail in the memory.

Sirius had struggled in prison for so long—he wanted to kill this man more than anything.

Yet under the god’s gaze, Sirius only stared at Wormtail for a moment longer, then turned his eyes back to James, who was now idly doodling on a small scrap of parchment.

He had drawn a Golden Snitch; now he was tracing the letters “L.E.”

What did they mean?

It was simple enough.

Lily Evans.

“Stop writing!”

Professor Flitwick called sharply,

“Including you, Stubbs! Stay seated while I collect the parchments! Accio!”

Over a hundred scrolls shot into the air, hurtling into Flitwick’s outstretched arms and knocking him to the ground.

Some laughed. A few students near the front rose, grasped Flitwick’s arms, and helped him up.

“Thank you… thank you,”

Flitwick panted,

“Very good, everyone—you’re dismissed!”

The black cat looked down at James, who hastily smudged out the two letters “L.E.” he’d been refining, leapt up, shoved quill and parchment into his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and stood waiting for young Sirius to join him.

“Did you like question ten, Moony?”

As they entered the entrance hall, young Sirius asked.

“Loved it,”

Lupin said cheerfully,

“List five signs of a werewolf. Brilliant question.”

“Do you think you can name them all?”

James feigned concern.

“I think so,”

Lupin said seriously, as the crowd surged toward the front doors, eager to step into the sunlight—they joined the throng,

“First: he’s sitting in my seat. Second: he’s wearing my clothes. Third: his name is Remus Lupin.”

Only Wormtail didn’t laugh.

“I wrote down the shape of the snout, the pupil of the eye, and the furry tail,”

Wormtail said nervously,

“But I can’t remember the others—”

“How can you be so stupid, Wormtail?”

James snapped impatiently,

“You run around with a werewolf every month—”

“Keep your voice down.”

Lupin pleaded.

The conversation was interesting, but the black cat stopped listening.

Enough. More than enough.

He had seen James. He had found him. Now that the memory had imprinted itself in the black cat’s mind, the boundary would obey the cat’s rules.

The real Sirius still stood in the corner, watching his own memories—their laughter, their banter.

The scene was beautiful, unreal. His face felt cold—he guessed the boundary was raining.

Before leaving, the black cat suddenly paused—it had spotted a wizard who made it halt.

In the shadow of the beech tree beside the Hogwarts Black Lake.

Beneath the thick shade of the bushes, a black-haired wizard sat on the grass, deeply absorbed in his O.W.L. exam paper.

He looked about thirteen, lean and strong, but pale as a plant grown always in darkness.

The black cat leapt over and arrived beside him—now it could see clearly: it was young Professor Snape.

Sirius’s shoulders relaxed—he saw his god had left him.

It stepped across the grass and stopped before the wizard he unwillingly recognized.

Clearly visible: the black cat cared deeply for this wizard—after all, it had shown no such interest in any other wizard here.

“That’s Snape.”

Sirius said.

The black cat nodded, signaling they could go.

“You’re quite interested in him?”

As Sirius stepped again into the white mist of the Borderland, he asked tentatively.

The black cat answered with silence.

“We should go, Mr. Black.”

The black cat’s voice revealed no emotion, as if it had always been this unshakable.

The dream was a captivating place; Sirius saw many curious things along the way.

For instance, clusters of mist drifted through the air, revealing bizarre and surreal scenes.

Notably, they seemed eager to approach Sirius, but the black cat brushed them away with its tail.

Then, after walking longer, houses appeared amid the mist—each unique, yet all sharing one astonishing trait: they all had a small door, and some even bore a plaque shaped like a black cat beside it.

Some even erected a full statue of a black cat.

Sirius watched as he walked, guessing all the while.

He had underestimated the black cat beside him.

The Borderland—the world beyond the Veil of Death, where souls wandered eternally—was filled with pervasive worship, a cult of wizards venerating a deity.

For the first time, he questioned such magic.

What manner of being could inspire such young wizards to place it upon a divine throne?

What power could it wield to reveal the future and traverse life and death?

What kind of wizards did it seek, granting them miraculous abilities?

Sirius had always thought it a legend—one of Merlin’s many tales—but now it was clear: it was not only real, but enduring.

Soon, Sirius’s thoughts drifted: he wondered whether, when he met James and Lily, they would still look as they had in life?

Or would their faces be twisted in agony?

After all, they died with eyes wide open.

He wondered whether they hated him, whether even seeing his face filled them with revulsion.

His brow tightened; fear, as it had in countless nights before, clamped down on his throat.

He thought this time would be no different—that the fear would pass quickly—but this time, he was wrong.

As Sirius’s mind wandered, the black cat’s swaying tail suddenly froze.

Far off, in a patch of pitch-black mist, the black cat heard a dog’s howl.

It had never encountered this before, yet it seemed to have anticipated it.

“Mr. Black,”

it said, jolting the dazed wizard awake,

“run toward what lies before you—if you wish to see them again.”

“What…?”

Before Sirius could react, a massive black dog burst from the blur.

At the sight of the black dog, Sirius’s legs went weak.

“What is this?!”

He was stunned and furious.

“Your fear, sir.”

The black cat paid no further attention to Sirius.

It was the first time it had seen a wizard’s shadow soul.

It had welcomed many guests; apart from a few young wizards who stayed briefly, only Mr. Newt Scamander had lingered long in the Borderland.

But Mr. Newt Scamander’s heart was pure, leading the black cat to believe the Borderland was not so dangerous—for wizards who entered it.

Yet now it was clear: if even Professor Dumbledore could not remain here, how could it ever be peaceful?

“Run.”

The black cat said.

Sirius’s legs were trembling; he hurried forward as the cat instructed.

At that moment, more than one black dog emerged.

“Fear, resentment, guilt…”

The black cat sighed. Mr. Black was truly a troublesome wizard.

Three black dogs leapt from the mist, each towering over a meter tall; beside them, the black cat looked tiny.

Far ahead, Sirius ran without pause, feeling the wind rush past him as he heard his deity whisper:

“Run, sir—run past fear, run past resentment, run past guilt.

Let go of your past; your past is already dead. Let go of your resentment; no man can keep a venomous snake in his heart. Let go of your fear; bury your guilt…

If you can stand firm in the wind, you will know: the wind is only wind—whether it howls from a high tower, or whips beneath a rope, or sweeps across flat ground—it is still wind.

Those who falter high above do so because storms rage in their minds.”

Sirius steadied himself, seeing his deity now revealed in full majesty.

It was not only compassionate—it bore the wrath of a god.

It had grown eight times larger, becoming a magnificent giant cat—bigger even than the black dogs—and when its vertical pupils fixed upon the beasts, even the creatures forged from shadow souls paused long, as if trembling before divine fury.

“What manner of place is this… and what manner of being is this deity…?”

Sirius murmured, having already crossed the plain.