Remus Lupin collapsed into the large armchair Dumbledore had conjured up for him. He was in shock, a part of his mind insisted, and he wanted nothing more than to wake up and find it had all been a terrible dream.
It's real. James and Peter and Lily are dead. Sirius is a murderer. Sirius is in Azkaban. Sirius was a Death Eater.
A strangled sob barely manages to escape through his lips, and he chokes on the emotion. He wants to tell himself that he's being weak, that he needs to calm down and carry on, that he needs to just move on. But he can't. Of course he can't. Not when he's the only Marauder left, not when the love of his life is in jail and his world is lying in pieces.
Dumbledore is speaking, saying words of consolation that bounce off his ears and shatter on the floor.
His anger bursts forth. "Don't fucking console me!" he shouts. "Don't try to sympathize, don't pretend you have any idea what my life is like." His anger bubbles over in the form of tears that prick his eyes and drip down his face. "You have no idea what it's like to be betrayed by the man you love. You have no idea how fucking awful it feels to know you were so foolish to utterly trust someone who went and fucking killed your closest friends. He blew up a street, Professor. He killed innocent people." The words stopped, overcome by anguished sobs filled with betrayal.
Albus Dumbledore sits in silence through the tirade, allowing the words, spoken in anger, to fill his mind, unlocking memories so carefully wrapped and hidden. He says nothing to contradict the accusations, and hopes that maybe, this story unfolding before him will have something resembling a happy ending.