It was Friday night, and they would be shopping tomorrow with Lily and James. The soft waning gibbous moon shone through the window when Sirius broke the silence to say, "We need to tell Dumbledore."
Remus didn't respond, and Sirius could easily guess what Remus was thinking. Surely Remus wanted to keep this information to as few people as possible. After all, if more people knew, then more people could possibly judge him. Remus considered his 'crime' unforgivable, but so far no one else had agreed with him. For Sirius, it was much harder not to blame himself. Dumbledore of course didn't know that Sirius was an animagus, but he still should have made more of an effort to be there with Remus on the full moon. This wouldn't have happened if he had. Accidents did happen, though, and you couldn't turn back time...
Or could you? Sirius knew about Time Turners, of course, though he had never seen one in person. If he could secure one, he could undo this entire mess somehow. For one tempting moment, Sirius considered doing just such a thing. Then he remembered the beautiful little girl he had rocked gently to sleep. Some accidents were perhaps meant to happen.
Breaking the silence once again, Sirius drummed up his courage to ask the question that had been on his mind all week. "Remus, what happened to her parents?"
Remus cleared his throat, and with a cold and tense voice, Remus answered, "I killed them."
Sirius made an 'Oh' with his mouth, glad that Remus couldn't see his face in the moonlit room. Sirius wanted to hear the entire story sometimes, but perhaps now was not the-
Surprisingly, though, Remus kept speaking. Eventually, the tale came out:
Remus awoke in pain as usual, confused as to where he was. He first noticed the dawn sky overhead, then he turned over- and what he saw made his blood run cold. The first part to enter his vision was a woman's foot, severed entirely from its body. Just a couple feet away lay the woman's body. Next to her was a man. His head seemed mostly severed as well, and enormous gash marks tore his shirt and flesh from shoulder to waist. Remus's next realization was that of the taste in his mouth: unmistakeably blood. First, at the realization that he had committed this atrocity, a blinding surge of adrenaline flooded his body. Second, he sat up and vomited into the soft dew-covered grass. The sound must have roused her. Suddenly, the woman's breathing was audible, gasping. "Help, help," she whispered with an unnatural gurgle to her voice. "Is someone there? Help." Remus crawled over to her side. Her eyes were glazed over and unseeing, but her hand reached up to grasp for Remus. He put his own hand out and she wrapped hers around it. "It attacked," she whispered. "Some kind of wolf. I can't feel my legs." Remus looked down at the severed foot from which she had lost quite a lot of blood and thanked anyone who might be listening that she couldn't feel that. "It's ok," Remus said softly. "I'll find you help." He could, of course, but he doubted she would be alive long enough for anyone to help her. Apparently she had come to the same conclusion. "Not me-" she gurgled again, blood rising from her mouth. "Elise. It bit Elise." The woman started crying from her sightless eyes. The answer made his blood run cold. Without waiting for her mother's answer, a crying emanated from under a nearby bush. "She's alive," the mother gasped, relieved. The gasp seemed to use up the last of her precious air supply. She began to cough and sputter blood. Remus had to guess she had a punctured lung as well as the severed foot. How long had she lain here, losing blood, breathing blood, waiting for the baby's cry? Her sightless eyes seemed to stare towards Remus. "She's alive..." the woman whispered. Then, she exhaled her last and the pale head dropped back to the ground. Remus felt for a pulse, but there was none. If he had had his wand, he could have used it to revive the woman, but he had left it- and his clothes, in the small shed he had thought would contain him. How silly it seemed now that the shed had had any hope of preventing this tragedy. Remus's eyes shifted to the bush. He crawled to it, moving aside the greenery. Underneath was a baby. Elise lay in a yellow blanket. He moved it out of the way, ignoring her screaming, to investigate the wounds. Remus had almost been hoping to rock the poor creature as she died, but it was evident now that would not happen. She had a superficial bite mark on her leg- just deep enough to break the skin and cause bleeding, but clearly it was more bruise than bite. Still, a bite was what it was. A werewolf bite. Remus didn't realize he was crying until the tears began to fall onto the baby. He picked her up, re-wrapping her in her blanket. The blood from his own body stained the yellow fabric- the girl's parents' blood. Her parents had doubtless saved her from worse injuries, at the cost of their own lives. Quietly and stiffly, Remus stood and began to walk back to the shed. He hadn't any real idea of where it was in relation to himself, and it was hours before he did find it, but the walking seemed to ease the baby and so he was happy to keep walking.
"You know the rest," Remus added softly. "I got dressed. I came here."
Sirius answered, "I saw the bite when I changed her. It looked so- so mild, Remus."
"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve," Remus whispered.
"Huh?" Sirius asked, confused.
"Never mind. Go to sleep. We've got a long day tomorrow."
Sirius lay back in bed, but he did not go to sleep for a long while. One thought echoed in his head. Remus, for all of his insecurities and faults, was one of the bravest people he knew. If Sirius had woken up realizing he'd killed two people so gruesomely, he was sure he would have lost his sanity. He knew he wouldn't have been able to go on with life as gracefully as Remus had managed.
Sirius wrapped his arms around his boyfriend. "Remus, I love you," he whispered.
Remus answered only, "If you didn't, you wouldn't still be here."
Sirius wanted to claim that it was a lie, that he would never leave Remus over such a thing as this, but he knew it wasn't true. If Remus had been someone else, this 'accident' would have been impossible to forgive. But forgiving Remus was somehow the easiest thing in the world.
