Not actually amazing, but alright. Just sadness about Sirius and all that. Read and REVIEW DAMMIT! Enjoy! :)

A Grave With no Body

How do you pay respects for a man who vanished into thin air? He was there one moment, and then, after the longest moment of eternity, he was just not. He, of course, being the falsely accused and convicted murderer, Sirius Black. He had died suddenly, leaving those who had cared for him in life, utterly, and horribly alone.

There was nothing to remember him by, except a small newspaper clip that had been what the Ministry considered a decent apology for 12 years of imprisonment without trial. It informed the public that, on June 17, Sirius Orion Black was murdered by cousin and known Death Eater, Bellatrix Lestrange; That they were sorry to say that he had, in fact, been wrongly accused of crimes committed by another, but that he would have been glad that his name, though posthumously, had been cleared. Peter Pettigrew had been stripped of his Order of Merlin, First Class, and was now a wanted, and living, criminal. To call it an article would be a vast overstatement. Most of the page was dedicated to pictures of the hiding Death Eaters, as if any of those scum were worth half as much as the man who had given his life trying to protect the world from them. And no one would remember Sirius. No one would care about him. No one would know that he had been kind, or beautiful, or brilliant.

They, the people who had read the article carefully enough to catch his name, would remember him as that criminal who had been killed by Lestrange, who had apparently not killed that Pettigrew boy, or the Potters. For a few weeks, he would be the talk of gossip, though overshadowed by the rise of Voldemort, and would have people speculating over his innocence, saying that the government had it all wrong, that they had a friend who knew someone in that explosion's brother and that he would swear on his life that Sirius Black had been guilty.

Sirius Black had been a well-loved man for the earlier years of his life, and with good reason. He had been popular, charming and a good person. But, when it all came down to it, he died a better man than any of the so-called friends who had scoffed at the idea that Voldemort could have risen, and he died virtually alone. He died in the midst of loyal members of the Order of the Phoenix, but when he was gone, only four people really cared. Everyone should have cared. The world should have stood still, the breath caught in it's inhabitants' throats, with tears appearing in their eyes and on their cheeks, and it should have happened to everyone.

It happened to Nymphadora Tonks, second cousin of Sirius Black, who had admired him and looked up to him. It happened to Remus Lupin, the devoted lover and friend of the fallen hero. It happened to Albus Dumbledore, who had cared for the man as a son or a brother. And it happened to Harry Potter, the only real family the man had had, and vice versa. These four all saw him die, and felt a part of themselves go with him. And they were forced to wake up from their trance in an instant, or be killed by their enemies. As their eyes blurred with tears and their breath came out in sobs, they faught for their lives and for revenge. Everything just kept going. And when it was all over, the only thing left from Sirius Black's life was an old motorbike and a house that had been his first prison cell. There was no body to bury and there was no family to inform. Everyone and everything important to him that remained had been in that room when he died.

When the day was done, it all seemed to have been a dream. Too much had happened that night. Voldemort was back and Sirius Black was gone from the universe so completely that the only proof of his existence in the first place was their very-real sorrow.

The next time all four people would be in the same room was the following August. Dumbledore appeared at the door of the Burrow one morning, just past dawn, and requested to see Harry. Upon his exit into the early-morning mist, he was met by not only Dumbledore, but Tonks and Remus as well. They gave him sad smiles, and he just looked at them confusedly.

"We just wanted to do something for Sirius. He would've wanted you to come. No funeral, we haven't got a… a body," said Remus shakily, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder. Harry nodded. Without a word, Remus' grip on his shoulder tightened, and he was being pulled through a tube, squeezed in where only one person should fit, for a third time that summer. They had appeared, along with the other three, to a secluded space on a hill, surrounded by a few trees. In the light cast by the sun rising sun, Harry could see a small, stone marker of some sort. It was a tomb stone.

Sirius Orion Black

1959-1996

An innocent man

That was all it said. It just stated the facts. The four of them stood around it and just looked at it, as though expecting something to happen. This wasn't a funeral. They had no body, no priest, and nothing to say. Eventually, Remus was the first to speak. He spoke of how he had loved Sirius. It wasn't a speech, it was just him remembering Sirius. None of the others commented on this new information. They just took turns speaking. Harry didn't say much. He talked about how he had thought he was saving Sirius, not killing him when he went to the Ministry that night. He said how sorry he was. He and Tonks expressed their grief that they hadn't known this man their whole lives, as they should have. Tonks addressed the stone directly, saying that he was the sort of person she hoped to be, and how grateful she was that she had become so close to him in their brief time working together. Dumbledore spoke in an even tone, something the others had failed to accomplish. He recounted Sirius' adolescence to them. He reminded them all of the circumstances under which this hero had been brought up; that he had gone against thing he had been told were right as an infant; that he saw through the lies of his family and bettered himself, which was not something most people could do. He was born to be evil, but, by his own choice, decided not to be.

When all was said and done, they stopped their tears and just stood there and looked at Sirius' name, printed in such small letters on a stone in the middle of nowhere, where it would never be seen again. When Tonks moved over to Harry and gripped his hand tightly, all of them caught the signal and found themselves back at the Burrow in a split second.

While Remus was alive, he was a frequent visitor to that clearing. He returned constantly for a year, coming to cry, ask questions, or to sit in silence and imagine Sirius was still beside him. He stopped coming when he married Tonks. So did Tonks.

Dumbledore went back only once before his death. Knowing what was to come, he returned to pay his respects once more. He wordlessly left a picture at the base of the tombstone and then aperated back to Hogsmede to prepare himself for death.

The picture that lay on the ground at Sirius' clearing was a photograph found in Grimmauld Place of the Marauders as children, no older than 12 or 13, smiling and waving at the camera, blissfully unaware of the future and how it would tear them apart. It was how they should be remembered.

Harry didn't return to that spot, or tell his friends that he had been gone that morning, until the war ended. It was one of the first things he did. He took Ron, Hermione and Ginny there. He had Remus and Tonks buried there, beside their dear friend, and he came back to visit them all regularly for the rest of his life.

Okay, so I had no idea how to end it so I just sort of left it there. I really just want to post it now, but I might edit it later. Maybe add ad decent ending. Idk. PLEASE REVIE! I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER! AND I LOOK AT THE PROFILE OF PEOPLE WHO REVIEW! SO I MIGHT READ YOUR STUFF AND I LEAVE REVIEWS! REVIEWS FOR EVERYONE! :D