SHE'S ALL THAT ➭ SIRIUS BLACK ❨2❩ ✔︎

ACT SIX, SCENE FOUR

THE FORBIDDEN FOREST

While he knew what he had to do to save the lives of those he loved, Harry Potter wasn't sure he had the strength to do it.

Everything Sage Fontaine-Black went through to secure his safety and well-being was about to go down the drain. For the sake of humanity, sure. But he could only imagine how she'd cuss him out and make him regret even being born, the latter without even a single word said to him. She had a glare that had terrified him for the earliest years of his life, and while she did it only out of love, Harry and Madeleine dreaded the look.

For a moment, he smiled as he walked, almost relieved to be seeing her so soon. It had been less than two years, but Godric, he missed his aunt Sage more than he could express.

It was this feeling of missing her that spurred him forward. She might be mad at his decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good, but he knew that she'd get over that eventually.

In the middle of a clearing, where there was no one around him for at least a half mile in all directions, he pulled the first Golden Snitch he'd ever caught out of his pocket. He held it up to his lips and held it there, against his mouth, until it opened up and revealed a secret treasure.

"What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing?"

There it was—the English accent that barely held on to any hint of her years in France. Sage was there, a product of the Ressurection Stone but there nonetheless.

Harry's heart swelled in his chest, and when he turned around to face her voice, he found that it was not just her—Sirius, Remus, and his parents.

Lily swatted at Sage, their bodies almost translucent. It was so strange, to see the mother who gave birth to him and the mother who raised him interacting.

"I have to do it." He said, mostly to convince himself. "I know you'll be angry, because you weren't expecting to see me again anytime soon. But if I don't do this, you'll have died for nothing. All of you."

He turned to Remus then. "I'm sorry. Maia—and Jessie, and your son. I don't even know what to say." He said, voice breaking.

Remus just smiled sadly. "Maia will tell them what their father died for, when the time is right. And Rowan will help, of course." His scars weren't visible in this ghostly, pale version of himself, and he looked at peace, despite everything he'd lost.

Sage reached out to Harry then, her hand going right through his shoulder. "Tell me what you're thinking." She said quietly, eyebrows furrowed. She didn't look angry, or sad. If anything, she looked proud, with the slightest hint of longing behind her eyes. It was clear that while she had some of her favorite people around her, she missed her past lives—her life as a parent, and far before that, her life as an almost carefree teenager at Hogwarts, when war was just a rumor.

"I'm thinking that I need to stop this. All the senseless dying, all the pain. If I'm able to, I'll end this here and now." Harry said hoarsely. He wanted nothing more than to have Sage hold him the way she did when he'd have nightmares as a child. But she was dead, and he was far too old. "I just want it all to stop."

Sirius laced his fingers through Sage's. "I know. And we'll be waiting when you're done."

"You'll stay with me?" Harry asked.

Sage smiled, eyes swimming with phantom tears. "Until the very end, mon amour."

Harry realized, only as he walked away, that he didn't look to his birth mother for solace and comfort. No—he looked at Sage. The thought to look at Lily Evans-Potter, a woman he didn't even remember, never crossed his mind. It caused a sinking, painful, and betraying feeling in his chest that he couldn't shake.