The air was so much lighter out here, not weighed by fear and pain. Each breath he inhaled tasted sweet, cool and fresh. He had lived too long on stale air. Lived too long on the taste of damp terror. But under the vast night sky with rolling hills and green landscape as far as the eye could see- he'd never felt more alive. Never felt such complete and absolute freedom. He'd done it. He wanted to scream and cry and laugh all at once. But instead he kept his feet moving forward, one after the other, just as he'd done every day for the past few weeks. He hadn't broken free for a nice little holiday. He was finally going to put everything right. Finally had gotten the chance he'd craved with every fibre of his being since the day they'd clicked his cell door shut in Azkaban twelve years before.

And Merlin, he wouldn't let them down this time. He only hoped James was watching from somewhere. He would do whatever it took to save his little boy. He owed him that much.

It felt surreal, now that it was behind him. The more distance he put between himself and that place, the easier it became to think it had been nothing but a dream. Nothing but a few weeks spent in gloomy isolation, instead of the twelve, long years it had been. Especially as he started to recognise his surroundings. Started to recognise places he'd once visited once upon a time, in dreams that had since faded to nothingness. In another life. When he'd been an entirely different person.

Hogsmeade.

The street was deserted from the dark alleyway he alone occupied. The snow was still and undisturbed, the windows and shop-fronts dark and abandoned. Even the Three Broomsticks appeared deserted. It must be late then, very late. His eyes roamed the dark street hungrily, drinking in every detail. It was unchanged. As beautiful and quiet as it had been that evening he and Marlene had snuck up to the village. He could almost hear her laughter in his ear, almost feel her warm hand in his; almost see her smiling face turning back to him, mouthing silent words that he'd long since forgotten.

He sighed deeply, bracing himself against the cold. She's gone. Just mirages and smoke Padfoot; that's all you're clinging to. He caught his own reflection in the glass window of the building beside him, his sunken eyes wistful and full of longing.

It was something he would never get used to. How could he be this old? It was the most bizarre of contradictions, and yet somehow it reconciled within him. He still felt so young in so many ways. He'd been imprisoned at twenty seven, still a young man with his whole life ahead of him. His life had been frozen at that age, put on hold until the day he could resume his place in the world. The only life he knew was the one he had left behind and in many ways, he had never grown past twenty seven. He was still that man, still valued the same things.

But in so many other ways, he was so much older. Older than the twenty seven years he thought of himself as; older even than the thirty nine years his birth certificate thought him. In so many ways, he'd always been older than his age. He'd been forced to grow up faster than other kids, having been forced out of his home at sixteen. He'd been forced to grow up when he lost Marlene, and was looking at facing the expanse of his life without her. He'd been forced to grow up when Peter betrayed them. When James and Lily had been murdered. When he'd been thrown in Azkaban and the world had forgotten him.

He felt like a sixteen year old in an old man's body. This body had aged beyond recognition, the years of Azkaban weighing heavily on his shoulders. He didn't know this face. This face was a stranger. Even if Marlene was in front of him now, he doubted she would know him. She would probably recoil at his touch. She was frozen forever at twenty two; young and beautiful for all of eternity. Longing after her now felt strange; unnatural. She didn't belong to him. She belonged to a younger version of himself; a Sirius that no longer existed.

He felt consumed with the desire to go back, to be that exuberant, youthful version of himself and this time, to fulfil his potential. Isn't that what everyone used to say to them? Him and James? How far they'd go? How they were destined for big things? It was a mockery, now that he looked back. Their lives had been so full of promise, everything they'd ever wanted within their grasps; only to have it all snatched away. So many things could have been different if only their fates hadn't been twisted and perverted so cruelly. He certainly would not be this wizened old spectre haunting the alleys of Hogsmeade, skulking in the deserted corners; a whisper of a shadow of the man he'd once been.

As he neared the Shrieking Shack, keeping always to the darkness of the alleyways and shadows of the buildings; he felt his heart constrict. So many memories were held within those walls. Back in simpler times. It was nearly impossible to accept that these were the circumstances under which he was revisiting his first proper home. As a convict on the run. What would he have said if he had been told that this was his future? If the boy who had cried on their last full moon together was told that all his fears would come true? That they didn't make it beyond the walls of Hogwarts? That friendship wasn't absolute and life didn't care if they would always be there for each other.

He paused for a moment as he passed the bench in front of the shack, his hand lingering on the gate as he was struck by another memory.

"Do you actually think it's haunted?"

Her voice floated to his ear on the cool night breeze; as clear as if she had actually been sitting on that very bench. He felt his heart hitch as he remembered that one brief second of temptation; that crazy impulse to tell her all he knew.

"Have you guys ever… you know? Snuck in?"

The wind picked up a little, howling in the distance and wakening him to his senses. He blinked rapidly, tearing his eyes away from the deserted bench. There was no one there. The seat was completely empty. Swallowing, he hitched his jacket a little higher to brace himself against the cold as he swung open the gate without another glance back.

"Adventurous are you? Remedial more likely."

Just mirages and smoke.

The house hadn't fared much better than him in the long years they'd both been neglected. The walls were damp and decaying rapidly; falling apart in places and making the damage inflicted by Moony look a lot worse than it had actually been. Claw sized tears in the walls had enlarged over time as bits of debris fell down around them or as gaps enlarged as a result of storms and wind. The house did nothing to keep out the wind that rattled through it's remains. The windows were boarded up to keep out any prying eyes but offered little in the way of insulation. The only thing moving within it's rotting walls were spiders and rats. And he fucking loathed rats.

Nonetheless, the place was ideal. No one would come looking here because it was supposedly haunted. Dumbledore didn't know they were Animagi or that they knew about Remus's little hide-away. And it was ideally situated close to the school. In fact, if he could just wrench away this piece of wood over the window…

He gripped it's wet surface, prising his bony fingers into the gap between the rotting board and the slimy window sill, and heaved upwards with all his strength. The board broke away with a resounding crunch, splintering onto the floor beneath his feet and allowing moonlight to flood into the room. Discarding the board aside roughly, he knelt slightly, peering throw the gap left in it's wake.

Crumbling to his knees in shock, a strangled noise escaped from the back of his throat.

There it was.

The only home he'd ever known. The dark outline of Hogwarts loomed against the surrounding hills, standing as proud and strong as he remembered it. It could have been yesterday that he'd walked through those halls for the first time. Only yesterday that he'd passed through them for the last time. The lights of the castle flickered over the grounds, twinkling and shinning and whispering promises like only Hogwarts could. The walls spoke to him, calling him home. It was so, so close.

He felt tears slip down his cheeks and realised on some level that he was crying.

All lost to him.

It was all lost.