At first he could hear nothing, see nothing, he could just feel the pain in his chest and side, the dull ache of his ankle, the burning sensation on the side of his face.

Slowly he pushed his senses out further, past the ringing in his ears, to the feeling of the bed under his body, the cold metal railing on each side, clothing that was not his own against his skin; he couldn't recognise any voices and behind those voices was the occasional beep, the squeak of a polished floor, the clatter of background noise.

Mason opened his eyes and immediately regretted it as, staring the whitewashed ceiling of St Mungo's above him, everything came flooding back in an instant.

He moaned in pain but the noise didn't even come close to expressing the pit of emotion in his chest as his brain quickly sifted through the memories it'd repressed to allow him to sleep. The physical hurt was momentarily gone but only because he didn't know how anything could ache as much as his heart did. He shut his eyes again, but it was too late to stop the flood of pain.

"Mason?"

She was here, of course she was. He reached out blindly for Lyra's hand and felt her wrap hers around his, squeezing tightly as she scraped her chair closer to the bed.

"I'm so sorry," she choked, stroking his hand and knowing it could do nothing to help him. "Merlin, Mason, I'm so so sorry."

So no one had made it out. It was just him left. The void in his chest seemed to howl in response.

"You shouldn't try to move," she continued, her voice shaking, "Just because I know you – I'm telling you before you try it, you can't move, okay? You were hit with… I don't even know what. But it was a lot. There was a hex, and then you hit the wall, and the glass, there was wood in your leg, so please just stay still, please?"

He wanted to move. But for her, he managed a small nod, squeezing her hand back.

"They can't get hold of Sirius," she whispered, and he could hear her crying now. From her raspy voice, he didn't think she'd stopped much. "Moody's tried, Remus has tried but they can't contact him, and he doesn't even know yet. James and Lily don't know yet. I shouldn't be saying this I should be keeping my mouth shut I shouldn't be dumping all of this on you but I don't know what to do," she sobbed, her nails digging into his skin as she clutched his hand like it was a life raft. "I thought I'd lost you too."

He licked his cracked lips to try and reply but cut himself off as the door opened.

"Lyra."

Mason strained to hear the voice from the end of the bed.

"Moody," she whispered. "He's awake."

"I guessed," Alastor said and Mason heard the older man's stick on the floor as he moved to the other side of the bed and lowered himself into the second chair. "Easy, boy," Moody said as Mason forced his eyes open again, turning his head slightly to look at the Auror. "Easy."

He felt Lyra's gaze burning into the back of his head but Mason couldn't bring himself to look at her yet. He'd seen too much heartbreak in her eyes already. He watched Moody instead.

"I'm glad you're still with us," Alastor said calmly. He knew there was no need for many comforting words. They wouldn't make a difference and he wasn't good at them anyway so he kept it to a minimum. "I'm sorry. They didn't deserve that."

Mason swallowed hard and nodded ever so slightly. He wasn't sure if he was glad he was with them. Moody's eyes moved from him to Lyra behind him.

"You should be in bed too, Black."

"I'm resting, aren't I?" Lyra shot back, her grip on Mason's hand tightening as if Moody would try and drag her out the room.

"I'm not going to try and force you, Merlin knows you'd beat me up if I tried. Just be careful, alright?"

Lyra hesitated and then nodded, watching as Mason closed his eyes again. "If you need me, I'll be here," she said quietly, not taking her eyes off him even as she addressed Alastor.

Moody pulled himself back up out of the chair and nodded, fixing both of his eyes on her and then Mason. "I know you will be."

She nodded and smiled at him gratefully before refocussing on Mason, watching the movement of his chest and counting each complete breath as another small blessing.

The next time Mason was conscious, Lyra was no longer in the chair by his side but had wedged herself into the space between him and the edge of the bed, her arms tucked under herself so she wouldn't knock and hurt him. He knew he had to be on fairly strong potions because he couldn't feel most of his body at all, only the dull, distant ache of his ribs and ankle. Ignoring her previous warning to stay still, he reached his arm across and gently brushed her hair back off her face, lingering on the bruise-like bags under her eyes and the neat row of stitches on her hair line.

Her eyes flew open and she stared at him, eyes wet with tears.

"You're awake again," she breathed.

He nodded, brushing her lips with the tips of his fingers, marvelling at her – so beautiful even now.

"How do you feel?"

"Like I'm floating," he murmured, his arm dropping back to the bed but she shifted free and clasped his hand in hers. "Like I'm in a dream."

"That'll be the potions," she nodded. "They're just trying to give your body time to heal and you needed to be really out of it."

"Did it all really happen?"

She frowned slightly.

"Are… are they really dead?"

Oh. She bit her lip. "Yes."

"I'd hoped I'd just imagined it. That somehow I'd hit my head and it was all a horrible nightmare."

"I'm sorry, Mason," she breathed. "None of them suffered, they were all killed instantly."

She didn't know if it was really any consolation, but they'd both seen how the Death Eaters could play with their victims and it had brought her some peace at least to know that it had all been over quickly.

"You got us out," Mason said, trying to push on before he was lost in his grief again.

"I did."

"Thank you."

To his horror, she started crying.

"Lyra? Ly, no don't cry," he mumbled, clumsily trying to wipe her eyes, "I'm grateful."

She shook her head and moved closer to him despite the Healer's warnings. "I thought I'd lost you. In the field, I couldn't move, I had nothing left, and I couldn't do anything, you were unconscious and bleeding and your chest was all the wrong shape and I had to just sit there and hope and pray and wait, it was torture, I-"

"Shhh," he said quietly, hand brushing through her tangled hair. "Shhh. You've not lost me."

The thought of joining his family had haunted him even in the dreamless sleep he'd been in. As much as it called to him then and still did now, he banished the thought of it for good: as long as she was still here, he could never give up.

"I love you," she said, her voice suddenly fierce.

"I know," he promised, "I love you too."

"I know," she repeated. "Sleep again if you need to. I'll be here."

"Thank you," Mason sighed, closing his eyes again as the potions called him back. He wanted to stay awake to make sure she was alright, but he didn't want to have to sit and think about anything anymore. Sleep was a welcome release.

10th July 1981

They'd wanted him to stay in bed and rest but nothing in the world would've stopped him from being at his own family's funeral. Not the Healers, not Moody, not even Dumbledore himself. Lyra had convinced them that he would be better off going with their permission than sneaking out and potentially hurting himself in the process, so here they were. They had, however, insisted that he stay in a wheelchair to help keep the weight off his ankle.

Lyra had positioned them in the middle, next to where her brother was standing, staring at the ground with the coldest expression she had ever seen him wear.

Mason watched him quietly. He knew that Sirius had only been told about the family's death when he'd arrived back from the mission he'd been on and that he'd proceeded to tear apart his flat to the extent that a neighbour had called the Muggle police on him, convinced that there was a murder happening.

His extended family were here but while his immediate family had been close, he knew that his uncles were far more right-wing, and he was relatively surprised that they'd bothered to come to the funeral of their blood traitor brother. He wasn't sure he wanted them here, but apparently his grandmother had invited them and there was no arguing with her.

Luckily for him, he was still on strong pain potions and while he was grateful to be there, he was also grateful that he could zone out and allow the medicine to carry him through most of the service. As it was a wizarding funeral it wasn't particularly religious – his family weren't non-believers but neither were they church go-ers – and so he focussed instead on the headstones that someone – he didn't even know who and he realised guiltily that it would've been either Remus or Lyra – had organised. The letters seemed to blur together no matter how much he blinked and he felt himself switching between looking at the four names inanely, praying this was over soon.

The next thing he remembered was Lyra's warm hand on his back, bringing him back to reality as the wizard leading the service flicked his wand and the piles of earth shifted with a gentle rumbling to recover the graves that had been dug and filled. It was easy to regrow the grass, or even add a blanket of flowers over the bare ground but most witches and wizards kept them uncovered, allowing nature to take its course as a way of allowing themselves time to heal too.

They'd asked him what he wanted and while the idea of the family plot being beautiful felt right, it was still too soon. To see them covered in flowers when his heart was still breaking would only have hurt more and so the four rectangles remained empty as the wizard concluded his speech.

Lyra kept her hand on his back even as the other witches and wizards began to leave, muttering their apologies to him and tripping over their words before backing away hastily as if the grief was contagious.

After five minutes, only four of them remained: Mason, Lyra, Remus, Sirius.

Peter hadn't been able to make it and James and Lily had written to beg forgiveness for not being able to leave their home despite no one blaming them in the slightest. There had been tear stains on the parchment.

The graveyard was silent as Remus moved over to stand on the other side of Mason's wheelchair.

"I don't know what to say," Remus whispered, looking across at Lyra. "What do we do now?"

Lyra shook her head and wiped her eyes, moving away from Mason and slipping her arm through her brother's.

Sirius yanked away, his jaw clenching. She could smell alcohol on him.

"Don't, Sirius," she warned.

"I don't want to be comforted."

"Okay," she mumbled, her shoulders dropping as she followed Sirius' gaze to Marlene's grave.

"I should've been there."

"Then you'd be dead too," Lyra said sharply. "If you'd been in the house with her, you would've died. And you'd have never got there in time if you'd been at home either."

"You were in the house and you didn't die. Mason was in the house and he didn't die!" Sirius snarled.

"He's in a wheelchair, Sirius, don't be a prick. We weren't in the house when the attack started or we would be dead," she snapped back. "I don't know how you're feeling and I don't want to, I'm so so sorry, you know that – but he nearly died too. It's not just your girlfriend that's dead," she hissed. "And you don't get to make a scene here, do you understand? Save it for later."

Sirius turned to look at her with a murderous expression. "Why him? Why did he get out and she didn't, huh? Because you got to save him. You got to pick who you wanted to live and you chose your boyfriend of six months over my Marlene, over a kid, over anyone!"

Lyra sucked in a sharp breath and took a step back. "I'm not even going to deign that with a response, Sirius. Like I had a choice, like I stood there and deliberated over it. Like I had any time to decide who lived or died. Fuck you."

An emotion she couldn't place flickered across her brother's eyes and he turned back to the grave.

Remus stepped forward to take her place, to take his turn at trying to get through to Sirius as Lyra returned to Mason's side, taking a breath to quell her trembling.

"Sirius," Remus said calmly, "Do you want to get out of here? Find a pub, or a sofa to crash on, or something?"

"Not with you."

Lyra saw Remus wince.

"One of these days you'll tell me what it is you think I've done," he said softly, but there was an edge to his voice that hadn't been there before.

"You suspect me of the exact same thing," Sirius spat. "We've all thought it. It was a possibility before, but now? Moody nearly lost his other leg, James and Lily in hiding, Dorcas dead, my Lene dead, the rest of the McKinnons too, Mason nearly dead. I bet they thought Lyra or I would be there too, how did they know, huh? How did they know Dorcas would be there, at the edge, why did they cut her off?"

Lyra's face drained of the little colour it'd had before at the mention of Dorcas. "Stop it, Sirius," she whispered."

"The house was covered in wards, you could barely move without being kicked back onto the grass, how did they get through? How did they know? Someone knows this information. Someone is feeding it to the Death Eaters and we should all be trying to work out who it is!"

"And you think it's me?" Remus said coldly. "You suspect me?"

"Where do you keep going? Can you provide a list of where you were and who you were with that'd make you innocent?" Sirius said, raising his voice.

"Sirius, he doesn't deserve this!"

"He thinks it's me, too!" Sirius said, practically hysterical now. "Go on, Remus, say it out loud. You think it's me."

"I… I have had my suspicions," Remus admitted, ashamed of himself.

"Fucking hell, fuck this," Lyra snapped, and her excessive swearing made all three men do a double take. "You're ridiculous. This is what they want! It could be anyone in the Order, someone could be spying from outside, it could be anyone at all, and you want to point fingers at your best friend? Pathetic. Get over yourselves."

"I didn't take you to be so naïve, Lyra," Sirius laughed, "Do you really think we're all innocent? Someone betrayed us, mark my words. Someone is feeding our information to Voldemort and picking us off one by one so I'd try to be a little less friendly with old Lupin here. Turns out he's not so friendly at certain times of-"

"Stop it," Remus snarled, stepping forwards and jabbing his finger towards Sirius.

Lyra pushed between them quickly, stopping Sirius from retaliating and holding her hands out, pressing against their chests. "No you both stop it! Look at you," she hissed, "You should be ashamed of yourselves! Fighting after a fucking funeral, accusing each other, shouting, this is ridiculous! Even if there is a mole, you're hardly going to get a confession like this are you? Quit it!"

Sirius practically growled over her head at Remus but he did take a step backwards.

Mason pushed himself over to them, having remained silent until now, and rested his hand on the small of Lyra's back. "Can we all just leave?" he muttered, "I don't want to be here any longer."

Lyra let her arms drop immediately and she turned to him, bending down to kiss him and cupping his cheek gently, feeling the tension in his jaw.

Sirius looked away, unable to watch the tender affection without a surge of bitterness.

"We can go home," she promised, cupping his cheek and smiling. Turning back to her brother and her friend, she gave them both a warning look. "Sirius, you should go home, or come back with us and crash there. Remus, you should go home too."

"Yeah, I think I will," Remus muttered, running a hand through his hair and taking a deep breath. "There's… a lot to process."

Sirius just shot another, softer look at Mason and then apparated away.

Remus kissed Lyra's forehead softly and patted Mason's back before he too left.

Then it was just the two of them.

"I don't want to go to the flat," Mason said hoarsely, "I want to go home."

Lyra flinched slightly as she watched him. "Why?"

"I don't know," he mumbled, lifting his gaze from the floor to meet her eye. "I just… I just want to say goodbye on my own terms. To see the house now, even if we don't do anything with it for a while yet."

Lyra knew that Moody had had the Aurors clean up the worst of the mess, and make sure nothing would rot or ruin the house when they'd gone back the day after the attack. But she understood the need to go back now: it was goodbye in a way that the funeral wasn't, it was closure on his terms.

"Of course, we can go back. I can apparate us?"

"No, I want to walk."

The family had been buried in the closest graveyard to their home, as Mason had known they would've wanted, but even so it was still a way to walk, especially with his injuries.

"I… I don't know, Mason, your ankle… It's over a mile."

"Please?" he whispered, holding his hand out to her. "I… I have to do this."

She hesitated and then took it, helping him out of the chair and vanishing it for now, knowing she could bring it back if he needed.

"Thank you," he said sincerely, gripping her hand and turning towards the road. His weight on the injury burned and he suspected he was going to set back his recovery but he didn't care. "Let's go."

They fell quiet as they made their way slowly onto the path and down the gentle hill towards where the McKinnon house lay, invisible to the Muggles but far too visible to them. If you didn't know better, the house looked normal; not a leaf was out of place in the garden, not a single pane of glass on the front of the house shattered and the old oak door was sturdy on its hinges, opening quietly as Mason reached for the brass handle.

He stopped on the threshold and closed his eyes, savouring the last moment he'd have before seeing what was left of his family home.

"You don't have to do this," Lyra reminded him gently, one arm around his waist, close enough that he could lean on her if he needed to.

"Maybe not," he said, and she could already hear the tears in his voice. "But I think I should."

She pushed the door open the rest of the way and they stepped inside together. The bodies, including the Death Eaters, had all been removed, and any blood cleaned, but the ruined staircase, the splinters of glass and wood and the photo frames thrown off the shelves and broken on the ground were still there, mapping the fight that had taken place. Lyra shivered and moved closer to Mason and he rested his arm across her shoulders, gripping her tightly.

She wanted to say something but she didn't know what to say, the words tumbling around in her mouth without order or direction. Instead, she slid her wand out and waved it, watching as the books picked themselves up, their pages flattening, their spines repaired as they slotted themselves back onto the tall bookshelves; the broad planks of the staircase pulled themselves up from the corners of the entrance hall, splinters fitting back together neatly as she continued to work, the old staircase knitting itself back together silently. Once that was fixed, she turned on her heels and pointed her wand at the photo frames still left on the floor. Before she could cast the spell, Mason lifted his arm and pushed her wand away so she let her hand drop, the spell fading from her lips. Glancing back at him, she watched the hot tears slide freely down his cheeks as he knelt carefully, pushing through the tinkling shards of glass to pick up the frame.

There was a long moment of silence again, the only movement the uneven rise and fall of his chest as he battled with himself.

Mason turned the photo over and a long low moan of pain slipped from his lips at the portrait of his family. His grip on the frame tightened, the slivers of glass stuck there cutting into his skin but he barely felt it as the grief that he'd pushed away at the funeral came surging back.

He sank to the floor, not caring that the glass there sliced him too, and he let out a scream of rage, of loss, of defeat that had Lyra rooted to the spot, her own tears raining down onto the floorboards that should never ever have seen such violence.

Mason kept screaming, and there was no other sound in the empty house.

11th July 1981

Get up, eat, drink, ignore Moody's owl. Sleep.

30th July 1981

Get up, eat, drink, ignore Moody's owl. Sleep.

31st July 1981

Get up, eat, drink, sign Harry's birthday card. Sleep.

15th August 1981

Mason heard Lyra getting back in from visiting Ruth and the twins so he slowly, minding his tender ribs and the weakened ankle, forced himself out of bed, dragging an old quidditch jumper over his head and trudging into the living room. Getting up: complete.

She slipped over as quiet as a ghost and kissed him, her dark eyes soft, watching him. "You should shave," she smiled, brushing his stubble. "Do you want some lunch?"

"Please," he mumbled, wrapping his arms around her and breathing in her scent for a moment to ground himself. She moulded into his chest automatically, taking a deep breath of her own.

"You know you shouldn't go to see them if it just upsets you," Mason mumbled, feeling his jumper grow wet with her tears as he rocked her slightly.

"They look forward to it so much, I couldn't stop," Lyra said, her words muffled through the fabric.

"I hate that you have to tear yourself apart and put yourself back together every time," he countered quietly. "I understand it, I understand, I do," he croaked, "But it isn't healthy."

Not that he was one to talk. He hadn't left the house in about a month, he'd lost weight, he needed a hair cut as well as a shave and he hadn't been back home or to the graveyard since that day.

She pulled away and stared up at him pleadingly, the bags under her dark eyes nearly drowning her whole face. It made him want to hold her and never let go, fuck the rest of the world – let it go to shit, as long as he could keep her safe.

"I know it isn't," she sobbed, "But they're the last piece of her that I have. I can't let them go, I can't."

Manoeuvring her onto the sofa, he dragged a blanket around her shoulders and kissed her again firmly, wiping away her tears even as she kept crying.

Eventually, however, her shoulders lowered, and her tears dried up. She leaned her head on his shoulder and took a shaky breath, forcing herself to focus only on the in and out of her lungs, in time with his.

"I can make lunch," Mason promised, stroking her hair. "I'll do it. You do enough."

"Thank you," she whispered, kissing him gratefully, her shoulders dropping with exhaustion.

Eat, drink, help Lyra shower, change the sheets together with the ghosts of real laughter dancing around them as he tangled her in the bedding. Sleep.