She felt a cold close to numbness, like she was being pressed upon by a thousand dementors as she read through the Prophet article again. She was growing aware that she already knew it off by heart, but was also unable to conceive of doing anything else because that would mean accepting what the article said. And she couldn't accept it; wouldn't accept that he was really dead. Hadn't she endured enough pain at his hands? Weren't they ever allowed to just be happy?
Of course now the Ministry were willing to admit they'd been wrong – that, actually, He Who Must Not Be Named was back after all – and, on a more minor note, Sirius Black had been innocent all along and had spent those twelve years wasting away in Azkaban for nothing, and the fact that he'd been forced into hiding for the rest of his life was completely unnecessary. Yes, it was all well and good for the Ministry to be apologising about it now, she thought to herself bitterly, but ultimately what was done was done; he was dead, and he wasn't coming back.
Astra Tallis pushed back her dark hair, tilted her head back in her desk chair and took a sharp breath, her pained eyes tightly shut. He was gone. Without so much as a goodbye; not that she could blame him.
The more she thought about it, in fact, the more typical leaving so unexpectedly seemed of him; he had never been the most conventional person on Earth. It was what had endeared her to him and, she noted with a wry smile playing around her lips as she opened her eyes and stared at the blank ceiling above her, it was why she had loved him. It was probably the reason it hurt so much – when she'd woken up it had felt like a normal day; there was nothing to suggest that anything had changed, that someone was gone forever.
She hated that her love had not been enough to at least let her know something had happened, that despite everything they'd shared she still had to find out about his death from a cold, impersonal newspaper article, with that small photograph of him; the one that had been released on his escape from Azkaban, forcing her to endure his sunken, haunted features.
Sighing, she leaned over to a wooden cupboard and took out an old heirloom - her grandad's pensieve. She was a healer, and she knew full well the stages of grief and loss - had witnessed them amongst countless families, had indeed been subject to them herself on several occasions.
She was vaguely aware of the fact that she may well have some visitors today - those who remained of the old crowd to express and share their sentiments of grief with her; perhaps someone would explain how it had happened, as the Prophet had been scarce on details. She knew she would not be able to cope with those conversations yet though, and although she knew that one couldn't force themselves through the stages of grief superficially, she could certainly get the ball-rolling.
Because then, maybe, hopefully, she'd start to feel a bit better; a bit less like her heart was about to give way, or like her head was going to explode from the sharp stabbing pain behind her eyes, perhaps she would be rid of that sick, empty feeling already pervading her every breath as though she would never feel right again.
And so, knowing full well what she was doing, she brought her wand to her temple again and again, until the pensieve was brimming with that swirling mass of silvery, intangible thought.
It had not been so long ago she had laughingly relived and recounted these memories with Sirius himself.
She dipped the willow and unicorn hair wand into the bowl and waited; what better way to experience the stage of denial, Astra reasoned, than to wallow in her memories? Because there, of course, the man in question was still very much alive.