To Sirius Black
November 2nd 1981
I don't love you anymore.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
November 23th 1981
I'm taking your lack of response to mean that you have nothing to say for yourself. Maybe my letter didn't hurt you as much as I intended it to, because you just don't care. Because you never cared.
You're the Judas, Sirius. You betrayed all of us. I always thought you might betray me some day, but I'd never have guessed that you'd betray James.
Do you remember what happened to Judas? He tried to undo his betrayal, but found out that the world doesn't work that way. You needed to find that out for yourself sometime, I suppose. That some rules weren't there just for you to break them.
Judas hanged himself. Maybe you didn't write back to me because you did that, too.
I think I'd prefer that. I'd rather have a world without you in it than a world with you in it, being a remorseless traitor. And a liar, too.
Couldn't you have said something to me? Couldn't you have woken me some night at three A.M, like you did for countless unimportant things, and explained that you were in trouble? That you were doubting yourself, and us, and James and Lily and Harry? That you were in danger of making the stupidest mistake of your life?
Yes, even more stupid than the other mistake you made.
But maybe your plan was to be a liar all along. When we were firsties, did you come sit with me because I carried the Honeydukes Extra Creamy Chocolate, or was it all just an elaborate prank? Had your family put you up to it, trying to find out how the other half lives? Were you just interested because I took a turn for the furry every month?
I still don't love you. It shouldn't matter because I don't think you ever loved me back.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
November 24th 1981
Maybe they don't allow you to write back. I wanted to ask Lily whether they let you write letters from Azkaban. It's the kind of thing she'd know. But she's not around. Neither is Peter or James. Neither are you.
I always thought you'd break me some day. You were always more interesting than me. I imagined you wouldn't do it on purpose. You'd just get bored and go off on an adventure and disappear and I'd be left here. And I thought that James, or at least Peter and Lily, would be there to pick up the pieces. But you took everyone down with you and you did do it on purpose. Do you see?
There's not a single person left in the real world who knows me for what I really am.
The flat is so terribly empty without the lot of you in it. As you know, I'm not the type to make a lot of noise and I complain about it when others do, but it seems the last ten years have ingrained themselves in my brain: I can now not concentrate without noise.
If you could write to me maybe there'd be some improbable explanation you could give. Armed with a quill and parchment you could make everything okay. Please write back to me.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
November 26th 1981
McGonagall came around for tea today. It was very, very strange.
She doesn't think they let you write in Azkaban, so I've given up on hearing from you. I'll stop writing.
I wrote James a letter too, last night, and it felt only slightly more creepy than sending you one. Writing to you is almost as creepy as writing to the deceased. I'll stop.
Bye,
Lupin
To Sirius Black
December 15th 1981
I said I wouldn't write to you anymore.
The thing is, though, that some nights I don't sleep for even a minute, because I'm afraid you'll come by to pick up the Nimbus 1980 and I'll sleep through it. Some mornings the scratching of your paws at the kitchen door is what wakes me. Some afternoons I want to shout for you to get your lazy arse out of bed, because the Stones are on TV. But you're not there.
Other nights I do sleep. I close my eyes and I see green flashes of light and James and Lily crying and Harry sitting up in his crib. Do you remember the broomstick you got him? He used it the last time I visited. All afternoon he wouldn't let it go. I wonder what happened to it.
I know the human heart has two chambers, but how can it be that I feel fire in one and ice in the other, and the fire does not melt the ice and the ice does not cool the fire?
What if you don't ever come back?
Lupin
To: Judas Black
December 19th 1981
So what, if you don't come back? I hope you don't. I hope there's no way for you to escape, and that it's really terrible there. I hope you're filled with remorse but have no way to ever unburden yourself. I hope you never get to eat chocolate again.
You killed them, Sirius. You didn't actually hold the wand to their heads or utter the spell, but it's just as bad as if you had. It's worse, really. It's as though James said: here's a weapon. You could use it to destroy me and all I love, but I trust you not to. And in return you spat in his face, you killed all of them and you laughed while you were doing it.
Did you hear what happened to Alice and Frank? It's possibly the most sickening thing I have ever heard. More sickening than you, even. They were tortured until they went crazy. Your twisted cousin helped do it.
I have nobody left now. I'm done writing. Done. Forever.
I'll never love you again.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
February 3rd 1982
I said I'd never write to you anymore for the second time. It might be best if I kept that promise.
Every day when I see your mug in the cupboard, when I trip over the chew toy you left on the porch, or the one time I looked up the photographs of 1978, I can't help thinking that you might have a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it.
Maybe it wasn't you that betrayed all of us. It's seems like an awful lot of trouble, doesn't it? A decade of friendship and love for us (real, or, if not real, a very convincing sham), in order to prove your loyalty to Voldemort. That's a bit extreme. You could have befriended all of us in 7th year and helped him just as loyally.
Or maybe you turned on us at some point. You were always the grudge holding kind. I'm pretty sure we were friends at first. Real friends, I mean. Then again, I feel like I can't be sure of anything anymore. Was it the Prank you pulled on Snape, when I was angry with you? Have you always stayed angry with me for being angry? It can't be. We got together months after that. You wouldn't have dated me if you'd turned against us. Or maybe you would have, just to make this harder on me still.
Because that's the thing: James and Lily and Harry and Peter are dead, you are in prison, and I end up feeling like I'm the one being punished.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
February 10th 1982
How can it be that Karkaroff is released from Azkaban, and you're still in there?
He's a Death Eater if ever I saw one. That he's willing to betray the other Death Eaters only makes him more of a rat. They should throw him right back in.
If I'd been asked a year ago to make a list of people I suspected, Karkaroff would have been in the top five, and you'd have been at the very, very bottom. The very last. Look how that turned out.
Some days I'm fine.
This morning, though, I spilled the bottle of aftershave you kept in the bathroom cupboard. I was reaching for a new tube of toothpaste and I knocked it over. It nearly threw me into a fit of hysterics. It smells like you so strongly, and you smell so nice. I scourgified the room eight times, and I still daren't go in there.
I wonder if you still smell nice right now. This morning, I swear, I'd rather have been with you in Azkaban than alone, scourgifying the bathroom floor.
The change was horrible without you again, even if Arthur Weasly is brewing me Wolfsbane potion every month now.
I'm so lonely I think I could float away and there'd be no one to wave me off.
Remus
To Sirius Black
February 11th 1982
How pathetic would it be if it turned out that you really are a heartless Deatheater, a liar and a traitor? I can't believe I'm stupid enough to still confide in you after everything. I won't write anymore, I promise.
Lupin
To Sirius Black
February 12th 1982
By the time you get this I will have floated away.
You're the only person I have to say goodbye to, really. I'm sorry to bother you with a suicide note no one wants to read.
Moony
To Sirius Black
March 7th 1982
You probably thought I was dead.
If you are who I always thought you were (Padfoot, mine), I'm truly sorry to have put you through that.
If you are a traitor, know that it gives me perverted pleasure to hurt you, if indeed, I did.
I was really going to do it, I want you to know that no matter who you actually are. But, being a half-blood at heart, I used a razor on my wrists instead of a wand to the head. Maybe because the wand reminded me too much of how Prongs went. After I'd done it, I sat at the kitchen table and watched the blood run down my wrists and pool on the floor. It only hurt while I was cutting, not after that. But it takes time. And Arthur Weasley chose that exact time to drop by to deliver my Wolfsbane potion for next month.
He took me to St. Mungo's and I've been there ever since. I haven't told the Healers I am a werewolf. I'm legally bound to tell them, and they would be within their legal right to refuse to treat me if I did. But I can't bear to see the disgust in their eyes. And since the full is in two days, I've been begging them to let me go home. They say I can, but only if I stay in touch with friends and family. I didn't mention that I don't have any anymore.
I'm a Calvinist. You know I always have been. If a Healer tells me to stay in touch with people, I obey. That's why I picked up a quill and wrote to you again. You are the last friend I have left, even if you're not real. Even if you throw my letters out unopened.
Remus
To Sirius Black
March 15th 1982
Mercifully, they let me go on time for the full, and it was gruesome. Not as gruesome as it'd have been without the potion, but worse than it ever was when you were there.
Molly and Arthur have come to see me every day since I was released. Molly took away all of my Muggle razors, scissors and even the knives. I've never had to do it all with magic before, but now I do. There's little sense to Molly, though. I could still use a slicing charm on myself.
Bill (do you remember him? He's Molly and Arthur's oldest boy) is going to Hogwarts come September. I envy him so much. I miss Hogwarts.
Do you remember our last evening in 7th year? You held me, and you said it was all going to be alright. I didn't believe you. I thought maybe it would be alright (it wasn't), but it would never be as good as it had been again, so why bother?
You promised me it'd be alright, Sirius, but it's horrible.
Remus
To Sirius Black
March 19th 1982
It must be getting tedious for you, listening to all of my doubt. Or maybe you stopped reading these letters months ago. If you are still reading them, don't stop.
I just can't make up my mind. The you I've known for the last ten years is incompatible to the one that emerged this November. How could you do it, Sirius?
You were home the night before it happened.
You betrayed them, you betrayed me, you betrayed all of the Order and Dumbledore, and after you'd done it you came home, put your arm around me and slept in our bed. How could you?
Remus
To Sirius Black
March 25th 1982
I made a complete fool out of myself just now. I had an episode much like the one with the aftershave the other day. I came across The Princess Bride. Our old copy, I mean. The one you stole, and then I was really annoyed because I wanted no one to know I'd read it but then you read it too and you highlighted all the good parts and you made all these little notes in the margins and at first I was really upset because You Just Don't Write In Books, Sirius!, but then I read what the notes said and then we first kissed, do you remember?
Of course you do. I don't mean to bore you with my ramblings, but I needed to tell that story and I can hardly tell Arthur or Molly. That would be a bit much to ask of them.
I re-read all the notes, some of them more than once (I used to read them when you were at James's for Quidditch if I missed you. I never told you that.) and I just can't figure it out. How could you write those things to me then get James and Lily and Harry murdered? I grew very upset.
It wasn't pretty. The wolf came really close to the surface. I broke most of the china. Now I'm eating off plastic plates.
If that'd been all, it wouldn't have been all that extraordinary. It's not all that unusual for me to burst out crying in the middle of the afternoon these days. The other day I opened your sock drawer and I had an episode much like this one.
But that wasn't all. I ended up on the floor of the bathroom again, the battered paperback in one hand, a picture of James and Lily in the other. These two things you did wouldn't fit together. They made my head hurt. I screamed, and I'm pretty sure Giovanni was quite alarmed. He didn't call the police, though.
Then I did the thing that enables me to henceforth be known as Remus Round the Bend. I stuck my head in the fireplace and flooed to Dumbledore's office. Snape was there, and I never thought I truly hated him until that moment.
The Marauders are destroyed and my life with them, and he just stood in Dumbledore's office looking content and teaching goddamned potions and generally being a complete git. I pulled my head back and by the time I'd flooed there completely, Dumbledore had dismissed Snape.
You know I'm usually very polite. Today was not one of my polite days. Half crazed and my eyes probably still red from crying, I demanded to know if there was any way to get around a Fidelius charm.
He looked at me for a very long time, and I asked him over and over. Like a complete madman, I kept muttering: "Is there any way? Is there any way? Is there any way?"
It was horrible. I could feel all the portraits looking at me through their half-closed eyelids and I wanted to scream. I wanted you to be innocent so badly. I want, so badly, for you to be my Sirius again. I want you to answer my letters.
Dumbledore shook his head and I fell apart in the middle of his office.
I do love you.
Moony
To Sirius Black
March 26th 1982
Yesterday wasn't a good day, as you might have gathered. Dumbledore got Madame Pomfrey to give me something to calm down. I was very glad to see her again. She's doing okay, I think.
Then Dumbledore spoke to me for a long time. He has the kind of voice that's wonderful to listen to. He said that sometimes we can love people but that the world can change the people we love without changing our love for them. And that it can be very hard to adapt your heart accordingly. He said I loved you like we were still Moony and Padfoot (well he didn't say that, but that's what he meant), while we were Remus Lupin and Sirius Black now. He's probably right, but all I could think about then was The Princess Bride.
He asked me to go to Godric's Hollow sometime soon to sort through their stuff. I think I might have agreed to do it but I'm not going to. I can't go in there.
When I got back to the flat it was quiet. Giovanni had left a note asking me if everything was alright. I didn't reply, but it's not as though he actually cares.
I couldn't get warm when I got into bed. I read a bit of The Princess Bride. We always agreed that the first chapter (of the real story I mean, not all that frame story you used to call crap) was the best. Well, I read that. Then I put the book aside because hysterics can make one pretty tired, and my eyes were still itchy.
I lay awake for a very long time. Here's the thing, Sirius: I feel guilty towards James and Lily and Harry for loving you. They were my friends too, you know. How can I love their murderer? How can I miss you so much it hurts more than my transformation and still call myself their friend too?
I just don't know anymore.
Moony.
To Sirius Black
March 30th 1982
I still have the muggle job at the pub, and so far it's been enough to pay the rent, but it's been getting harder to make ends meet. I thinks I've used so many duplication charms on most of my muggle money that it's starting to look fake. Not that Giovanni'll notice. Or mind, for that matter. I always thought the pizza place was a cover-up of something shady. I know you thought so, too.
Dumbledore offered me a job at Hogwarts as a librarian when I was there. I said no, but that I'd think about it some more when I was feeling better. It's the kind of thing I'd want to ask Lily about. On the one hand, it would be great. If you'd asked me at school, I would have named librarian as my ideal job, probably. But if I took it I'd have to move out of the flat. I won't miss Giovanni, but I'll miss the hallway where you slept the time you were too drunk to come any closer to the bed. I'll miss the couch that was just large enough to seat all of the Marauders and a redhead, provided I sat on your lap and Lily sat on James's. I'll miss the shower. I'll miss the bed, and the chair you used to sit in whenever you read to me. I don't think I can do it.
But what if you never come back? I could, maybe, live in this flat till the end of my days and no one would think less of me for it. I can hardly work in the pub forever, though. My current best friend is probably Ginny, the Weasley's youngest. She's adorable and she likes stuffed animals. One day I will need to have a social life again. It won't be long until Molly will start encouraging me to go to clubs and shag men I don't know. I don't want to do that. I don't want her to tell me to do that. So maybe I should take the job.
These are my options: trade in my life for the life of a Hogwarts librarian, leaving all memories of you behind, although I don't delude myself into thinking I'll be able to stop writing to you, or cling to what I have left of you and the others, watching helplessly as it all grows more and more vague and distant in my memories.
Or you could just write back to me, tell me you're innocent and beg me to wait for you. I would, you know.
Moony
To Sirius Black
April 1st
Today is April's fools day. I feel the need to emphasize this because it used to be one of your favourite days and somehow I don't think Dementors are the type to celebrate it.
Happy April's Fools day!
Moony
To Sirius Black
April 9th
Last night was the full and it was bad again. I wish you were here. I wish you were innocent.
This morning I saw in the Prophet that they are strengthening security measures after someone made a Dementor very nervous (or whatever happens to Dementors when they're not happy), and the irritated Dementor almost administered the kiss to one of the inmates.
Was it you? Did you annoy the Dementor the way you used to annoy McGonagall? Did you goad it into attacking Bellatrix, is that what happened? God, I hope so. If you pulled a prank like that at least you've still got some life in you.
I've taken to skipping the obituaries in the Prophet, because I'm scared I'll come across yours. People die in Azkaban every day. Please stay alive. I'll wait for you.
Moony
To Sirius Black
April 14th
I am a psychopath. I'm writing love letters to the murderer of my best friends and their child. You aren't wrongfully imprisoned. You are in Azkaban because you betrayed your best friends and ended up killing them. You did a despicable thing and there is something seriously wrong with me.
I will truly never write to you again. The Sirius I knew is gone. You are a Death Eater. You are loyal to Voldemort and you can't be loyal to me at the same time.
Farewell, Sirius.
Remus
To Sirius Black
June 1st
I don't think I have to tell you this, but James, Lily and Harry died half a year ago today. Every time I try to pat myself on the back for not thinking of them or Peter or you for a few moments, something like this comes along to remind me, taking me completely by surprise, and I'm back on the bathroom floor.
It was Molly that convinced me to stop writing to you six weeks ago. I never dared to tell her I still wrote to you. It's too pathetic. But I go to dinner at the Burrow at least once a week ever since I had my incident with the razor and one night her badmouthing turned contagious. You did a truly horrid thing. I hope you know that.
I hope you also know me a little, and if you do you know that I can never let an anniversary pass without mentioning it, no matter how terrible the thing it commemorates.
So I'm writing to you to say that you did something horrible exactly six months ago today.
Remus
PS: I didn't use to be spiteful. It's your fault.
To Sirius Black
June 10th 1982
Are you even gay, Sirius? It always seemed too good to be true, that you would be.
I feel like Neo. You don't know who that is, probably. I was never a big fan of The Matrix and you never knew anything muggle unless it was something I couldn't shut up about.
Neo is the main character in a series of movies (You remember what those are, don't you? I remember how surprised you were when I told you muggles had acted out The Princess Bride.) Well, these movies with Neo in them are called The Matrix and their basic premise is that everything we perceive as reality is actually a very detailed computer simulation. A computer is a machine muggles use for stuff they can't otherwise do because they have no magic. And in The Matrix there's a computer that has created the whole world. So none of what we experience is real, and if you know that you can manipulate reality, too. But you can never trust your senses.
Do you see? There is nothing left for me to be sure of. Just like Neo, I have to question everything that's ever happened to me. Every smile and word and touch and note you ever gave me could be fake.
Exactly how much of what you told me was a lie?
Remus
To Sirius Black
June 20th 1982
I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm sorry.
Moony
To Sirius Black
July 6th 1982
I don't miss you. You betrayed Lily and James and you made sure there was no one left for me when you were through. I miss Padfoot.
Padfoot made the full moons (tonight, by the way) easier for me. He lit Marlene McKinnon's hair on fire when we were in second year, because her mark in Charms was higher than mine. He wrote all of those notes in my copy of The Princess Bride and was embarrassed when I found out. In 7th year, he told me everything would be alright and he lay next to me every night even when it wasn't. He usually left his chew toys lying around for me to trip over them. He was loyal to the Order. He was loyal to Dumbledore, Dumbledore trusted him and he had every reason to. He loved me.
Padfoot doesn't exist anymore. There's no one that loves me now.
Remus
To Sirius Black
July 12th 1982
When I sent you that last letter, the one I sent on the full moon, my owl came back within the hour. I'm taking that to mean that he dropped it. It wouldn't surprise me, Westley is very old. Or maybe Azkaban moved. Does it do that? I would have noticed if it moved near, wouldn't I? It would be an excellent way to keep the prisoners disoriented, I suppose.
There's a package in the post for me, so I'll keep this short.
I hope you love me,
Remus