The door shut gently behind Albus Dumbledore as he strode out of Remus Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, leaving the him alone in the early hours of the morning.
Remus could not stop shaking. He sunk into his chair nearest him, eyes wide and unblinking, as reality tried to talk sense to his numb brain.
Sirius was alive. He had been in the castle- the castle for Merlin's sake.
"So close," Remus whispered brokenly, closing his eyes against the tears he could feel well up from his very soul.
Remus did not know how long he sat there with pain coursing through his veins. Knowing that Sirius, his Sirius, had been mere feet away had irritated an already festering wound. Remus, like the rest of the wizarding community, had believed Sirius to be a murder. Yet, in those brief minutes that Dumbledore was in his office, the truth of Sirius' innocence shone through.
Standing up jerkily, Remus pounded his fists on the desk. He yelled hoarsely into the darkness of the classroom as the anguish that he had to hide came pouring out. It was almost unbearable to not retreat back into black despair as Remus walked the halls they used to walk through, teach in the classrooms where they used to laugh, watch the boy they helped raise from a distance.
After his tears had dried on his sunken cheeks, Remus walked to his window and watched the clouds in the sky shift. A large bird was flying toward the castle. An owl that Remus assumed bore one of many complaints to come about the revealing of his secret.
No, it was not an owl, he decided. It was a hippogriff. Realization coursed through Remus' body in a split second, sending him into frigid anticipation. He flung open the windows, hoping that fate had finally turned in his favor, if for just this moment.
Gripping the window sill until his knuckles turned white, Remus' breath came in short gasps as Sirius—his Sirius approached the castle.
If he did not want it to be true with every fiber of his being, Remus would not have believed the pallid, drained man on the hippogriff that was bobbing gently outside his window was Sirius Black.
But it was. Oh it was.
Sirius was grinning wider that Remus ever remembered with tears leaking from his eyes. All they had was a moment, a single moment in which their bruised and beaten hearts surged with complete and utter love before the clock tolled, jarring the two from their trance.
"Remus," Sirius said with the sweetest voice Remus had ever heard. "Remus." He reached to the window with his hand. Remus grabbed it automatically, never again wanting to let Sirius out of his sight.
Sirius smiled one last time, squeezed their interlaced hands, and let go, urging Buckbeak onwards through the night.
Dizzy with the thought that he could be losing Sirius again, Remus cried out his name.
Sirius looked back as the hippogriff stayed his course and held up a piece of parchment.
"Accio parchment," Remus said hurriedly.
He unfurled the note and read as his heart was bursting with joy, the one word that made his future brighter than he ever could have imagined just minutes before:
"Soon."