Dead.

Gone.

Leaving him alone in this world.

At first he laughs when he hears the news because that is all he can do. The others give worried glances while James drags him aside, trying to bring sense but he can't seem to see through the darkness, so he carries on laughing until he closes his eyes and then he cries, he screams in anguish and everything breaks around him. Remus comes running but he carries on screaming, because all he can see is fire and raw pain, so once again he turns to the bottle but it proves to be no solution apart from turning his insides numb.

The pain still slices through his body and he can't help but ask why him? But the answer is there, so plainly obvious, mocking him.

He had made too many terrible mistakes and now he must pay the price.

His tortured soul thinks of better days, nostalgia fills his mind with wonder and he carries on dreaming because that is all he has left.

He thinks back to the first time he had ever noticed her presence, the first time he actually saw her for what she truly was, a diamond in the rough.

"So where are you off to then Meadowes?" He had corned her just after Transfiguration and needed to know the whereabouts of Marlene McKinnon, his latest pursuit.

"Lunch I suppose," She said with a bored expression as she shifted the heavy books from her right arm to her left. "So what do you need Black?"

"Why do you think I would need something? Maybe I just wanted to talk to you?" He retorts, feeling incredibly exposed for strange reason.

Dorcas Meadowes tires not to snort with laughter at the absurdity of his comment.

"Right of course. Marlene has potions so you might want to go down to the dungeons and bother her there." Says Meadowes in her matter of fact voice, which made her sound awfully like an elderly woman. For a second he wants to comments on it but Dorcas had already left him.

He feels strangely insulted despite Meadowes having spoken to him like she always had. Unable to understand this strange feeling he decides to return to the common room, for the rest of the evening his mind is not on the golden locks of Marlene McKinnon that he had once found so enchanting but of the sharp words of Dorcas Meadowes, plain Dorcas Meadowes who had mud coloured hair and dull brown eyes, short and slightly plump she was hardly worth the second thought but for some reason she wouldn't leave his mind for even a moment.