The moonlight streamed in through tall dark windows. A hint of rain, a dash of clouds brooded in the deep dark sky. She stayed motionless, eyes flickering in the moonlight, hands clasped quietly under the blanket. Not a motion, not a sound.
He moved like the breath of the wind, silently moving through the forgotten library, the barren wasteland of the wretched house. His cold white fingers danced along the edge of the seat back.
"What are you doing, alone in the dark." he asked, without it being a question.
"Thinking." she responded, her steady gaze never leaving the darkness outside.
"Are you ill?" he asked, remembering her sniffles at dinner, the eyes that were so focused on her plate.
"No."
"Why, then?"
Instead of answering, she gave a small sigh, watching the thunderous clouds roll past on their way to a high perch.
"I would stay here forever, caught in this." she said, his breathing steady behind her, "Not jumping for fear of falling, not staying for fear of dying. Caught in these twilight branches, the leaves whispering my name. Suspended in midair, watching my own breath fall before me."
"Come away with me." his spider-like fingers grasped her arm, but she never flinched.
"And go where? There isn't anywhere."
"Home. You know where we could go." Speaking in riddles had always come easily to him, his greatest partner sitting before him.
"Would you be willing to back, after all that happened. All he left you."
"Dumbledore promised I'd have a place. I still do. We could go, be forgotten in the morning."
She shook her head, long eyelashes slipping open and closed, "He'll never forget me."
"We'll make him," he said, fingers still attached to her arm, "He'll live without you, as I have lived without Black."
"Ahh," she murmured, tongue vaguely hissing in the dark, "But you miss him everyday."
"Not with you. You make me forget." He stepped in front of her, cutting her gaze from the window and kneeling, tenderly pushing a piece of hair from her eyes. "I'll untangle you from these twilight branches or suspend myself in them."
She finally looked at him, dark eyes searching his face for a hint of the untrue. "Do you promise?"
"Always," he whispered, the word bittersweet in his mouth, gently taking her hand, "Come away with me."
The following morning found grey light pooled in the chair, the blanket left empty and forgotten, the two occupants of the dusty library long gone in the twilight clouds.
In Remus Lupin's room a picture of Sirius Black sat on his nightstand, forever caught smiling at the camera with one eye open. Ron Weasley awoke grasping at the phantom hair of his fiancée, a diamond ring placed gently on his right ring finger.
In Hogsmeade a man and a women departed from the train, both wearing grey to fade into the morning.
Bittersweet stories have bittersweet endings, and among the grass and trees of the forest she buried her love, and he stared out at the endless lake and remembered the words he had spoken in its waves.
Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. He tried the names in his mouth, almost forgetting the warmth they had once brought to him.
"How do you feel, my love." she said quietly from her kneeling place at the foot of a tree, watching the only picture she had fade into dust.
"Bitter," he responded, "Bittersweet and sad."
Above them, a single owl hooted in the spare light of morning, and the tears were dry before dusk ever touched them.