Strangers When We Meet

The ghost spoke, the words so tandalising if he could just let himself believe them, swallow them as truth. He stared at the boy, who had not come to him in his dreams, and barely surfaced free of the lock in his thoughts. He was different from how he remembered. More rugged, less cocky. Surely he had not always looked this way. He pulled his disagreeable body forward, drifting closer to the boy.

He looked so unbelievably real, more here than any image of Zee he had conquered. He stepped closer, until he was just before the boy, and then he reached out a paw, and poked him silently on the shoulder. There was resistance as the claw met flesh. He may even have nicked the skin a little as he put more force into it then needed. He had expected to swipe through, for his paw to travel further then it had. “No, no. You're both dead. I haven’t seen her ghost since… No. No.” He shook his head, and poked his boy again. “No. Azure, truly?” Impossible, impossible.

"Sirius Fatalis"