Chapter Text
Sirius sat on the edge of the shrine’s grounds, the remnants of daylight fading into a soft twilight. The Deathly Hallows lay closed beside him, but the story didn’t leave his mind. He read the book again, mapping every word as if they could give him more answers. He found himself thinking less about the events themselves and more about how he had come to be here — in this world that wasn’t his, yet somehow felt like a second chance.
He didn’t mention it but Kagome’s question lingered on his mind. Would he change anything? Was there a single event that could reshape a future that was set in ink and paper?
He let out a low breath. I couldn’t just appear at the end of the book, he thought. Nineteen years had passed since Voldemort’s final defeat… even longer since everything had gone wrong. If he could appear somewhere earlier, all the mistakes, all the pain, could be undone in an instant. But reality was far more complicated. Somehow, he had been ripped from the world he knew, dropped here, and now… he wanted to find a way back.But wanting and doing were two very different things.
Sirius dragged a hand down his face, exhaling shakily.
There was only so much he understood — only so far the pages of the book could guide him. And beyond that narrow boundary, the future went dark. Blank. A cliff edge he couldn’t see past.
Every change he imagined tempted him with a sweetness so sharp it almost hurt: James alive; Lily alive; no Azkaban; no twelve years stolen; no boy forced into heroism before he could even grow.
But beneath those beautiful possibilities lurked consequences he couldn’t predict.
A future he couldn’t read.
What if saving James and Lily meant Harry never grew into the person he became? What if he erased the child he’d sworn his life to protect?
His stomach twisted painfully.
Harry deserved peace. He deserved a family. He deserved the childhood the war ripped away. But Sirius didn’t know what kind of boy Harry would be without hardship. He didn’t know if Voldemort would fall… or rise stronger. He didn’t know if love would shield Harry again — or if fate would simply reshape itself around a different horror.
He didn’t know.
Then his thoughts shifted — inevitably — to Remus. Sirius clenched his jaw, a tightness coiling in his chest. He didn’t know enough about Remus’s life between the night he was arrested and the night they reunited at Hogwarts. Twelve years. Twelve entire years of Remus living alone, grieving, surviving, suffering, scraping by in a world that had turned its back on him. What had he endured? What had he become?
A single shift in time could ripple outward like cracks in glass. A butterfly effect born from hope — or from desperation. And if he misjudged even one thing, he could break more than he healed.
He only had scraps from the book: battles, losses, fragments. No details. No certainty.
What if he failed Remus again? What if he made things worse?
The thought knifed straight through him.
There was also the Weasley boy, so young, full of plans and mischief, another war casualty.
He wanted to fix everything. He wanted to save everyone. But he feared, deeply, horribly, that he would only break what little remained.
That his presence alone — in the wrong moment — could tilt fate into something even crueler.
He looked toward the well house, toward the Goshinboku rising tall and unmovable behind it. Kagome had once looked at that tree as though seeing two lifetimes at once.
Now he understood why.
Time was fragile. Stories were fragile. Second chances… were dangerous things.
He wanted to reach backward and pull the people he loved into safety. But he was terrified of what else he might drag with them.
A soft rustle came from inside the shrine — Kagome tidying up after evening prayers. Her presence was steady even when she wasn’t beside him. He could almost feel her warmth from here, like a small fire keeping the night from creeping too close.
Something shifted in his chest.
He wanted to return. He wanted to change history. But for the first time, he questioned whether he had the right.
Whether grief made him short-sighted. Whether longing made him reckless.
And whether fate — or the universe, or whatever mysterious force pulled him here — had placed him in Kagome’s world not to rewrite his past…
…but to rethink it.
He bowed his head, breath trembling, and pressed a hand to his sternum as if steadying something fragile inside him.
“Merlin,” he whispered, voice barely there, “what am I supposed to do?”
Twilight deepened around him, the shrine quiet, the well house still.
And yet Sirius felt it — subtle as a shift in the wind:
Fate wasn’t finished with him. And the fear coiling in his chest told him he could no longer pretend he didn’t know it.
If he ever did go back, he thought, he would start at the beginning. James and Lily. Peter. Azkaban. Harry. He would change everything—tear history apart and rebuild it with his own hands if he had the chance.
He wanted that. Gods, how he wanted that.
But as the thought sharpened, another rose with it—unwelcome and undeniable.
A longing just as fierce.
A longing for her.
Somewhere between the stories they shared and the grief they laid bare, he had grown attached in a way he hadn’t let himself be in years. Kagome wasn’t just kind. She wasn’t just steady. She wasn’t just the person who held him together when he thought he’d shatter.
She had become something he wanted.
And Sirius Black wanted to be selfish for once. He wanted a future—his future—where she existed beside him. He wanted change. And he wanted her.
The realization hit him like a punch to the ribs, stealing his breath.
Sirius pressed a hand over his face, exhaling shakily.
If he went back… if he somehow stepped into his own world again… Kagome wouldn’t hate him for leaving. She wasn’t built for hatred. She would understand. She would forgive him.
But he wouldn’t forgive himself.
He would loathe himself for walking away from her— from the quiet steadiness she offered him, from the warmth she breathed back into him without even trying, from the first fragile peace he had felt in years.
A part of him twisted painfully at the thought.
And then another truth—sharper, cutting in a different way—slid into place.
His world… his broken, war-stained, magic-scarred world…
It had what she longed for.
The magic she tended like a secret flame — tucked behind old shrines and brittle charms, folded into prayers she no longer believed would be answered. The creatures she dreamed of with that soft, wistful ache. The spells she watched him cast with quiet wonder, eyes brightening as if remembering something she thought she’d lost forever. The myths she spoke of in half-whispers, like lullabies she wasn’t sure she was allowed to keep.
She would fit there — in his world — so much more than in this one.
Not in this quiet life she endured out of loyalty to memories. Not in a shrine that felt more like a waiting room for ghosts than a home. But in a place where magic was not a relic of the past, but something alive. Where compassion like hers wasn’t dismissed or overlooked, but needed. Where fox-demons and spirits weren’t bedtime stories, but neighbors. Where someone like her didn’t have to shrink herself to fit a mundane world.
She belonged in a world that breathed wonder.
And his world… could give her that.
He could give her that.
The thought settled in him with startling clarity.
He was the last living Black — heir to vaults overflowing with old gold and older expectations. A fortune wasted, gathering dust in Gringotts, tied to a family whose legacy he had spent his life running from. He had never cared for any of it.
But for her?
If it took every galleon in those cursed safes to make her smile — to give her a home where she belonged, a life filled with the magic she missed so fiercely it hurt to look at her — he would spend it all without hesitation. Every last coin.
And suddenly, the choice before him felt cruel.
He wanted to fix the past. He wanted to be selfish. He wanted her. He wanted all of it.
Sirius realized—the thing he feared most now wasn’t losing his future.
It was losing her.