Harry sat in Sirius Black's old bedroom, surrounded by Quidditch posters and scraps of parchment. Only two years ago, Sirius himself had sat in this room, laughing as he showed his godson pictures of the marauders from their time in Hogwarts. But now, Sirius was trapped in a dimension on the other side of a veil that Harry could not enter. Harry picked up a photograph he had never seen before of his godfather, he was with a girl who had tawny brown hair and deep blue eyes. Harry thought she looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen her before. Sirius, of course, was extremely handsome, his black hair tumbling in curls over his sharp face, and his smile was as big as Harry had ever seen it. Sirius had often looked unseeingly into the distance when he thought no one could see him, almost as though he was going to cry. Harry had often wondered what was going on inside his head, but never asked, in case he was recalling memories from his torturous experience in Azkaban. Little did Harry know that Sirius was actually remembering the only girl he ever loved, the reason why he never got married while his friends did.
'They had loved each other,' Remus told Harry after he questioned him later that day about the photograph, 'And they were the happiest couple in the Order. When she died… he was heartbroken. His grief never left him, and he was never the same after it. He told me, that when he was in Azkaban, the one memory that kept coming back to him was Rachael's death… It was what nearly killed him.'