Lupin,

You have to be the unluckiest sod I've ever met. You haven't found it yet? It's been two months; I'm considering recommending you come back but Efa won't like that much so unless you want to move back to London probably keep at it, yeah? And on the topic of London, yeah, perhaps Hungary is best after all. I might be joining you out in fair Europe soon. The Saes have been up in arms about this fire in Newhaven — fiend-fire, you called it, or something? Some mad magic crap. It's spread so far people are evacuating. They reckon it'll hit London soon. Isn't your James still there?

Enough about that, though. You seem like you don't need much more bad news. I can't say much as to the question in your last letter; I've found the best technique for dealing with Efa on good days is letting her run her course. If she thinks going out there and finding this bloke will help you, I'd trust her on that. Then again, that's asking a lot. So I get it if you're not up for it.

Either way, I appreciate you writing. Keeps life interesting. Efa reckons we might have to move soon. The dementors have been nesting closer and closer to the warren. They move up the valley further every day. The noose is closing around us, Lupin, and you're bloody lucky not to be here for it. I don't want to leave Merthyr. It's a shithole but it's mine. But I think soon we might not have a choice. You-know-who, wherever he is out there, he wants us out of the way before… whatever it is he's planning. The takeover of London. Taking over the world. I dunno what it is he wants. You wizard people are fucking bonkers.

Write back soon, mush.

- Jones.

Jones,

Sunshine as always, aren't you? I hope you're doing okay. Keep out of the way of the dementors, alright? I know they're looking for me and not you but they wouldn't miss out on an opportunity to snog you and I'd rather not return to that; I don't own any black clothes really. Nothing that would be up to

I'm getting closer. Met two wizards on the road yesterday, nice guys, travelling down from western Russia. On their way to find a new life in northern Africa, they told me, since the maniac dark lord from THEIR home displaced them. I hope they find what they're looking for; it's strange to find magical people so detached from our war. I guess they still exist though. There are wars everywhere, like little fires. Stumbling on them has made me think quite a lot.

I'm not planning on coming back anytime soon, so don't fret about that. You're free of me for a while yet. The wizards I met told me they think they've heard of a place like the hospice before, to the north east. It's the vague direction I've been travelling, so I'm doing pretty good. I keep laying down those runes and I keep finding nothing, but one of these days I'll stumble on their wards and then it's just a matter of… walking through the front door. Reckon there'll be a receptionist to ask about it? It all feels a bit absurd.

I really am sorry things are getting worse. I know that's sort of out of turn to say. But I think about you and Efa and the rest a lot. I feel… sort of like I've left you defenceless. Which is stupid, I know, considering despite being a wizard I can't even use magic. But I guess they drill it into our heads a lot that muggles are mindless and all that. And I know you're not but that's just how the wizarding world makes you think. God, what a mean thing to put in a letter. I'm considering rewriting that but I think you told me once that you value honesty, so there you go, there it is. I think you're a stupid tosser. Not really, but.

Anyway, I'm mostly writing back to check for news from Britain. There was no 'Direct Action' this week, or last week. Why? What's going on? Is there any news from London? I know you're not the best person to ask but my only other option is mailing a friend I've got in Rostock, and I don't think we're quite at that point yet; I don't want to bother her. You, on the other hand, I am fine with bothering.

Write back as soon as you can. I'll attach my next temporary address, but I won't be there for long, so be quick!

Cheers,

Lupin.

Lupin,

If you wanted information you should've asked a wizard! I haven't a clue what's going on over the Sevens, except that it's bad. People think the endtimes are coming. Fire for miles along the coast, central London all closed off because of a 'gas explosion', is what they're saying. Nobody believes that crap, not even us stupid tosser muggles. The papers are quiet about it because the government's told em to be but most people think it's the Russians, or the Germans, if they're less bright. More people are being evacuated out of London everyday, kept in closed-down hotels along the southwest. Cornwall and that. People think they'll start sending them our way soon. What a mess. The last thing we need more of right now is English people.

I don't listen to your radio show, and you're the only magic friend I've got, so no, I don't know what's actually going on out there. I suspect it's getting ugly. Apparently the Americans are getting pissed at the slavs and it's all going to hell overseas. Efa thinks there's more war on the way (real war, not your pansy magic shit), but she's already lived through two, so I think she's a bit biased. She's always scared there'll be a third or fourth or however many more. Not in my lifetime, I always told her, but that's cos most of us don't live long.

Chin up Lupin boy! Guess we're both pretty misog right now. Peas in a pod. Or whatever.

- Jones.

Jones,

Reassure Efa that if anybody's going to end up caught in this war, it won't be her. That's why she's putting all this time into gaining my trust, don't think I don't know that. Once I'm back she'll let me figure out a place to relocate the pack to, she'll let me help. If not for that, what's the point of this shit?

Sorry to be so snappy. It's been a rough few days. I'm fine, before you ask, but I'm about to cut into some desolate territory in the north so I don't know what my next address will be. Don't mail me 'til I write to you again, okay? I don't know when it'll be. Hopefully when I'm at the hospice. The Korhas, or whatever. I don't remember how to spell it anymore; it's been that long. Bet you're laughing right now, you prick. I'll make it one of these days, just you wait.

If things get bad over there, don't wait for me before you move. Doing it the muggle way, without warders and the like, it'll be dangerous; I'd tell you to contact the Order, but I know you wouldn't listen. If one of you ends up dying, I apologise, but in my defence, I'm not the one who chose a trial by fire. You talk about wizards being insane.

Anyway. Stay safe. It feels weird, this being the last time I'll speak to you for a bit. Like I should say something monumentous. Here's something: if they send any of the English over to stay in South Wales, you've my permission to creep down from the moors and the seam and pretend to be a wizard and flail your arms around at them and tell them you're going to hex them. You've got a pass from your wizard friend and if anybody comes to tell you off for it, tell them Remus Lupin said it's okay.

Cheers,

Lupin.

Ózd is cold as balls, fringed by a dark patch of forest, thick with the smells of decaying industry and lavender. It sits right on the southern border of Slovakia, where Hungary tails off into more barren flats, black trees in a strip on the horizon. There's a broken down, abandoned old weapons factory on its edge from the last war. Wind whistles through abandoned houses lining all the roads, a ghostly sound, biting with ice, painful with it. Remus is uncomfortably cold more often than not, with his terrible circulation, so this is, as one can imagine, an unfortunate situation to be in.

He's running out of forints, too. Remus gets up that morning and posts his letter to Huw at the post office in the middle of town before finding a bakery and haggling with the man behind the counter for some stale bread. In broken Hungarian and English they chop back and forth for a bit before Remus makes it out of there with a hunk of slightly moulded rye bread, which he picks the spots of green off as he wanders down the road, backpack unbearably heavy between his shoulders. Some locals give him strange looks and he figures he probably warrants it. It must be uncommon to see someone so young with scars like his in a town like this.

Hungary is very grey. Ózd is no exception, a blocky row of narrow, industrial houses, terraced and stained like rotten teeth beneath a heavy, low-hanging sky, mottled grey and brown like a bruise. The earth feels lighter than the sky most of the time, washed whitish with drought, which has made all the fields flat and pale. Every day is too dark, like the sun never properly rises, the world a half-twilit haze, never seeming to emerge from twitchy, anxious slumber.

Remus plods down the cracked concrete road leading towards the north edge of town, parallel to the border, the dark spires of the weapons factory piercing the sky ahead. The bread is a merciful fix for the aching pit of hunger in his gut, but it brings thirst with it, itching and pulling in his throat. Remus determines that he should try to find a spring somewhere — out of town, probably, because from what he's seen, the water here is probably too thick with coal dust and iron to look at, let alone drink. That, at least, feels like a small, nostalgic comfort. There's no place like home.

He wonders, not for the first time, whether now is the time to write to James. We left him! We left Peter! Remus remembers shouting into his face the last time he saw him. And you left me! James had responded, shaking with anger, and then they'd been fighting, throwing fists and grabbing at each other with clawed hands until Dorcas got in between them, almost shoving Remus off the roof.

Perhaps not the time yet. He can leave it a bit longer.

The Newhaven fire has been such big news that he's heard muggles talking about it here, all the way out in desolate Eastern Europe, mining towns and a sinking grief and, within it all, whispers of a strange wildfire burning through Britain. Whatever the death eaters' plan for it was, it's smart; it's given them reach, leverage. They have used its great blaze to expand out of themselves, some larger-than-life thing hovering over Europe, the Dark Lord's shadow hanging black as soot over wizards and muggles alike. Remus has been thinking lately that the war will never end (he's been thinking it for months, seven months in specific), but this cements it in his mind that even if it did, nothing will ever be the same again. He feels stupid, honestly, for not having thought it before.

A bit gloomy, Remus reaches the factory, which comes into view around a tight turn in the road heading north. Beyond it lies a high iron fence, barbed wire in tight coils along the top, and then brown grass flats for miles. The block itself is a concrete square, all geometric, with blinking square windows and concave chimneys dark against the sky as they rise from the top. No smoke pours from them. It's cold and silent and conspicuous as a body, curling around the town's edge, stinking of old rust.

Gravel crunching under his feet, Remus approaches. He finishes the bread, chewing down the last grainy mouthful and swallowing not hard enough, a bit of it sticking in a lump in his throat. He coughs it down and thinks again that he needs water, and soon. It's hard to keep track of time but it's been at least a day since he last drank anything substantial, if the pounding headache and swimming nausea are anything to go by.

He makes a point of scanning the sky, just to have something to focus on. Migrating birds, heading south for winter. A flock of them dark atop the chimneys of the factory, almost small steeples, tall like a church and now succumbing to nature.

Movement in one of the windows.

Remus slows down, coming to a stop in the middle of the road. He squints up. The windows are long and wide, covering the front of the factory in blocky rectangles, they themselves bisected into small iron-sectioned squares to keep from cracking with the elements. It's hard to see past the years of grime and soot clustered against them, but then he spots it again. Someone is moving around inside.

Curiosity gets the better of him. Remus glances back at the town one last time and then starts forwards, down the road to where it turns off into an out-of-use dirt track whose gravelly expanse ends before the bolted-shut doors of the factory. Cold wind whips around him, scattering dust at his feet. Dead leaves skitter against the looming stone walls ahead.

This feels like a bad idea. But so has everything he's done recently. And perhaps… just perhaps…

Remus reaches the edge of the factory, the southern wall. He skirts up its flat grey expanse to the front doors and reaches into his backpack, past the tangle of knotted chains inside and into the very bottom, where Efa's smuggled runes sit in a pile, stolen from some wizard in Bristol. Her last gift to him before he left.

He snares one and lays it down on the ground right beside the doors, then watches it. The linen the rune is scrawled across sits still on the ground for a while, the edges blowing up in the wind. Then, it catches fire, bursting into flames, the edges curling.

Bingo.

Strange place for it, Remus thinks, this close to muggle civilization. But he's got it. He's found the hospice. He stands up and stamps out the small blaze.

The front doors don't give when he tugs on them, bolted hard from the inside, so Remus treks around to the back, through tangles of greying nettles, until he finds a torn entrance in the metal plating there, half covered in tarps. He ducks inside.

The factory has been entirely hollowed out, probably by the muggles when they abandoned it after the war. It's draughty like a lung. There's nobody on the bottom level, which is an empty metal husk, dirty windows letting in speckled brown light to lie in rectangular brands on the stone floor. The air is full of hanging dust, thick with it, enough to choke you. Someone has left a mangled curl of wires, hacked from the inside of a machine, on the floor across the space.

Nobody's been here in a while. There must be some enchantment in place to keep it looking that way, Remus thinks, each of his footsteps too loud as he stumbles through the hanging darkness, both hands wrapped tight around the straps of his bag. He starts to wonder whether he should take his gun out. Probably not very good etiquette for a hospital.

Upstairs, there is faint movement. Distant footsteps. Remus hesitates. It occurs to him that this place he has stumbled on might not be entirely friendly to strangers. Maybe that's why Efa sent him here. To get him killed and out of her hair.

On instinct, he reaches into his backpack and pulls out the revolver, spinning the chamber once, fingers itching over the trigger, not pulling back the safety yet. Gun pointed at the ground, hot in both hands, Remus pads around the empty, disquieted space, trying to find a way up. When he eventually finds a set of stairs on the north side, leading along the far wall up to the first floor, he stares at them for a while, considering his options. Every corner is thick with cobwebs, moths flying around the windows, dozens of their small, triangular shapes stuck to the ceiling. It feels like one gunshot could shatter this place.

There is more movement. He decides he hasn't got much left to lose.

Remus reaches the stairs and starts up them one at a time, very slowly. He climbs steadily until he's a few steps from the top, which is partitioned from the factory floor by a tall concrete slab. Behind it he crouches for one, two, three seconds, before taking a deep breath and stepping up to the top step, looking right.

The main factory floor is gutted much like the storage at the bottom, her ceiling thick with exposed metal piping, an exoskeleton of scaffolding holding it up. Pillars in red and white paint prop their iron crosshatch up at intersections, scattered across the room in a grid, and those same rectangular metal-gridded windows lie across both walls, letting in faint, spotty light, which streaks across the dusty concrete floor.

There is also a person in here. Crouched against the wall across the room, not looking at Remus, in a pile of heavy canvas sheets. Makeshift blankets.

"Oh, shit," Remus says, unsure whether to drop his gun or raise it. He leaves it where it is like an idiot, pointed at his feet. "Hello?"

The stranger flinches violently, scrambling to their feet and whirling around to look at him. They've got mid-Eurasian features: light brown skin, dark hair, a Russian-looking jaw. They fumble a hand into their pocket and whip out a wand, pointing it at him.

"Who are you?!" they demand, voice lower pitched than Remus had expected. And then, "I won't go back. I can't go back. I'll kill you!"

"Hey!" Remus shouts. "No, I'm— I'm not—" He drops the gun and it clatters against the concrete.

The stranger blinks at him, then the gun. "You're a muggle?"

"No," Remus says. He puts his hands up. "But I can't use magic."

"Oh." They hesitate, lowering their wand. "Squib?"

"No." Remus squints, utterly confused. "What?"

The stranger raises their chin. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" Remus demands in response. "You first."

"You."

"I'm the one with the gun."

"I'm the one with the wand."

They stand staring at each other, both unwilling to concede first.

Eventually, the stranger clears their throat. "I came down across the border yesterday," they say, through their thick accent. "Did you?"

"The Slovakian border?" Remus asks, confused. Then, "No. Uh, I'm… from Britain."

"…Oh."

"I'm not hunting you," he promises, a bit of an afterthought.

The Slovakian clears their throat. "Jana."

"Remus."

"On the run too?"

"Yeah," Remus says, and then coughs. "I'm looking for a hospice. The Kórház. It's supposed to be close to here."

"Well," Jana says, shoving their wand back into their pocket (far too trusting; like Remus, he supposes, looking down at the gun on the ground). "I'm trying to get to Rostock. Apparently there's—"

"A sanctuary," Remus interrupts. "I've got friends there."

"Put in a good word for me?"

He nods. "So this isn't… you put up the wards yourself?"

"Muggle repelling ones," Jana nods. They squint. "And a warded human presence-detector."

"Well." Remus isn't about to tell them.

They watch him for a moment. "Well." And then, "How did you even detect the wards if you can't use magic?"

"Brought these from home." Remus reaches into his backpack and tosses Jana one of the cloth runes. "They detect wards. Catch fire if they're near them. It's how I'm looking for the Kórház."

"Oh." Jana peers at the rune in their hands, turning it over between their fingers. They look back up at Remus. "You look terrible."

"So do you."

They watch each other. It is becoming more awkward than it is cautious, but Remus thinks he might be misjudging the situation.

"Sit down," Jana sighs eventually. "I've got canvas. To keep warm."

"You're sure?"

"If you wanted to kill me, you would've done it already," they reply. "And since you're probably a vampire, I don't think you're on their side."

At least they're only half right. Remus pads across the room cautiously, making the informed decision not to retrieve his gun. He sits beside them against the wall and they pass him a sheet of canvas, which Remus throws over himself, pulling off his backpack and hugging it tightly in his lap. It does a little to keep out the draught, at least.

Jana settles down beside him, wrapping themself in a pile of canvas sheets too. "Was I right? Vampire? I've never met one before. I figured… because of the scars…"

"Sure," Remus says with ease he doesn't feel. "Why are you running?"

"Uh." They give him a strange look over the top of the canvas, shoulders bunched up. "You haven't heard about Slovakia?"

Remus hasn't heard a thing about Slovakia; not through Direct Action, nor through anybody he's met, or Huw. Maybe he's just out of the loop. "Remind me?"

"They killed the magical predsednik last week."

"Oh, fuck."

Jana nods. "My parents," they say stiffly, "have elected to stay. They don't think the Dark Lord will hurt them. They have no idea what's coming."

"It's Voldemort who killed your president?" Remus asks in a rush.

Jana looks at him like he's slow. "Who else? It's his territory now."

They look away then, shuddering. Something foreign slips into their face, like they're remembering something painful.

"They killed my friend," they say. "The death eaters. She was… what's the English?"

"Muggleborn?"

They laugh darkly. "Halfblood."

Remus looks away. "It's good you got out, then."

"They'll come after me," Jana sighs. They reach beside them and pull out a canteen, handing it to Remus.

"No they won't," Remus replies, nodding his thanks. He takes a merciful sip of cold water. "They've got too much to think about. They won't hunt you down. The death eaters, I mean."

Jana doesn't look at him. "You think so?"

Remus thinks of Voldemort in the shack in Little Hangleton. How it was fear that weighed him down, fear that immobilized him. A man like that is not paying attention to small details; a man like that is frantic and crude.

"Yeah," he agrees. "You're home free now."

Jana nods once. "I can point you towards the Kórház, if you'd like," they tell him, after some time has passed. "I've been before. It's the only place of its kind near where I'm from. Close to the border. Not far from here."

"How far is not far?"

"A few days' walk."

Remus is both relieved and horrified at the prospect of walking for a few more days. He nods, knowing it's not his decision to make. "Did you have family there?"

Jana shrugs. Their face goes dark again. "There was a war before this one," they say. "And there'll be a war after it."

Remus hums and looks away, towards the windows across the factory floor. Their hazy glare seems duller by the minute. Clouds are rolling in; a storm.

"What about you?" Jana asks him. "Have you got family there?"

Remus isn't sure how to answer for a while. "I've got a job to do. For… some people back home."

"Am I allowed to ask what it is?"

"You can ask."

"What is it?"

Remus forces out a laugh. "There's something," he says. "That I'm not supposed to find."

Jana cocks their head to the side. "You vampires are crazy," they mutter. Then, "I've got a bit more water, if you've got forints to share."

"'Share'," Remus scoffs. More for the company than the water, he replies, "Okay."

These sorts of liminal encounters on the road, wizard-and-wizard, are rare. Remus has had only three in all the time he's been travelling, all of them friendly but none of them trusting. Most magical folks look at him and see only the scars on his face, and whether they recognise them for what they are, they often assume he's bad news. And they're right to assume it. Remus is more than just bad news: he is a whole bad media pulpit at this point. A British Broadcasting Corporation for the stranded ghosts out here who want to hear only the sad stuff. Every conversation he's had for weeks has been in the languages of war or grief, more similar each day. He emanates pessimism like it's a toxin, like one of those colourful rainforest frogs who can kill you if you touch them.

Which is perhaps what causes him and Jana to separate so quickly. They sit together in the factory until midday, Remus telling them stories about how Voldemort began, about the Old War, when his new companion decides they have to move on, unable to afford to stay at the border for long. Remus gets up and thanks them for the warmth of the canvas and the generosity of shared water. He doesn't thank them for the gift of conversation. He thinks that would be strange and out of turn. Stepping too close to something resembling trust.

"Good luck," Jana tells him as the two of them reach the road again, the factory at their backs. They're heading west, and Remus is striking further north.

Remus nods to them. "You too."

"And thanks for the money."

"Yeah. I… I promise we'll kill him. If that helps anything."

Jana peers at him. "Do you think I'm stupid?" they ask. "Bye, Remus. It was good to meet you."

"Yeah. You too."

They nod. "Don't go to Slovakia," they tell him. "No matter what you do. It's bad out there."

"Yeah."

"Bye."

"Bye," Remus says, but Jana has already turned away, setting off down the road back through Ózd towards what might be a brighter future or, alternatively, a gruesome death three days further out there.

He watches their back until they're out of sight. Then, he continues onwards. Not much further now.

James,

I met a stranger out near the border this morning. She

You know, I keep trying to come up with an excuse to write to you. And I don't know why. I wasn't doing this while I was in Wales but since after the train, and since I've been out here looking for this place, some part of me always wants to write to you. I think it's because while I was in Wales, there wasn't a homesickness. Home was a bad place, lonely and cold most of the time, but I was there. Now that I'm not (and it's still lonely and cold), a bit of me wants to assign you the same meaning. Home, even if it's bad and wrong.

Are you okay out there? London's really coming under fire (sorry; bad joke), or so I've heard. Thinking of you out there is… quite upsetting. I try not to imagine it much. You've got Dorcas, and she's tough as nails even if I'm sure she hates me a bit now (what did you tell her about me? I suppose the truth would have been enough). She'll keep you safe but I don't know that she can keep you safe from the largest danger in your life, that being yourself.

I've stopped writing to Lily. Stopped hearing from her, too. I think both of us feel guilty over having kept in contact after Little Hangleton. It felt… sort of moral at the time. Like we were speaking over your head. Like you were a child. But now I feel terrible about it. And she feels the same. Worse, I think, after everything with Peter.

I dream about him a lot. Hanging out of that window. Disappearing around the corner, out of sight. I know you don't blame Lily, and I don't either, but it's hard not to try to find SOMEONE to blame. Lately that's been myself; I'm sure I'll shift it again sometime, once it gets too heavy for me.

It's the moon again soon. Do you think of me on the fulls? Do you keep track of them? I wouldn't ask you to. The last one nearly killed me. I'm scared this one will do the same. I don't know what I'm dreading more, really: finding the hospice or the full. There's a lot of stuff to dread right now. I couldn't list it all; I think trying would be a very bad idea.

God, I've been pessimistic lately. Not lately. For a long time. But it's been strangling me.

Stay safe out there. I'm not going to send this, so I don't know why I'm writing that. Stay safe. Fuck you. I'm sorry. Et cetera. All the shit I'd like, I can say it right here.

Sorry.

- Remus.

He stumbles on the Kórház two days before the moon.

It's shit timing, in retrospect. Remus is dead on his feet, stumbling through the empty brown fields, stopping every five minutes to catch his breath. He's twice as slow as he'd normally be. He considers leaving the heavy chains behind multiple times and each time he convinces himself out of it. It would do more harm than good in the long run. He's going to ache tomorrow though, one big torn muscle of a person.

When he feels his ears pop, he freezes up and then drops (mostly without intent) to his knees.

"Fuck," Remus murmurs. He yanks the backpack into his lap, fumbling the cold zip open. The grass ripples with wind around his knees; he pries his fingers past the chains inside, yanking them apart with an almost mad fervour, their cold hard bite pressing around his arm, until his fingers brush the canvas bottom of the bag, where he tugs out one of the last rune cloths he's got left and throws it to the ground, staring at it intently.

Come on. Come on.

It sits on the dry grass, fluttering a little. An ant crawls up the side of it, along the dark slashes of ink, almost in the shape of an anatomical heart.

Then, it catches fire. Smoke curdles into the darkening sky.

"Oh fuck," Remus says, standing up. He crushes the blaze with his foot and looks around desperately. Behind him, the dry grass slopes down the way he came, fields stretching for miles into the distance. Ahead it peaks upwards in a low null.

Throwing his bag back across his bruised shoulders, Remus sets off uphill, hobbling a strange half-jog to the very top. He staggers over the grassy ridge, and below, lavender trails in a purpling river through uneven brown-green fields, shoved together like puzzle pieces that don't fit.

There is a tall, stately red-brick building in the distance, where the hills slope down to meet a rippling creek, greyish silver through the grass as it reflects the dull sky. Reeds rise high around it, wafting gently. It's got to be four or five storeys tall, converted from an old muggle house, ten or so windows wide, with a dark roof and white tailoring. Stolen, like most magical things out here, from muggles.

Remus knows it in his gut then that this is what he's looking for.

He takes off running down the steep slope, skidding his heels forwards into the grass and mud, frantic and filling up quick with what is probably mild hysteria. Remus throws his arms out to either side to steady him, so he doesn't go toppling head over heels, and runs in stuttering and lengthening and then bounding strides, the green earth flying out from under him, scattering chunks of mud, dirt and dust beneath his feet that go rolling down the hill in front of him.

The ground levels out; Remus sprints across a long, grassy plane and leaps over a winding trail of lavender and foxgloves, the smell of them thick and alkaline as he darts through it. His bag pounds a steady, painful rhythm into the small of his back, chafing around his shoulders, and the hum of ensuing adrenaline roars to a frenzied pitch in his ears.

The creek grows nearer, wider on closer inspection than Remus had anticipated. He staggers to a stop before it and then says to hell with it and goes crashing through the tumbling waters, sending it splashing across the dried-out banks. Butterflies rise from a shadowed blossoming hideaway beneath an overhanging hunk of dirt, around Remus, up and up into the grey sky.

By the time Remus reaches the front doors, he feels less like a person than a wild, feral entity. An underfed cat appearing at a stranger's house, scratching at the letterbox. He tries to brush a bit of grass and dirt off his boots and then steps from the flats up onto the heavy stone entryway to the hospice. There's a warm feeling to the magic here. Calm, mournful, settled. Like something that's been here far longer than it has been.

He reaches the doors, two heavy oak things, and pushes at one tentatively. They both react to his touch, sliding with a ghostly heaviness open, pushed by unseen forces. Then, Remus is staring in at the strange, rugged inside of the Kórház.

It's jumbled, a frantic sort of calmness. There is no desk, let alone a receptionist; the front room has a high ceiling and broad, off-white walls, the dull pastel of late eighteenth century decor left to go pale and washed-out with time. The room is scattered with gatherings of summoning-soft chairs and tables, sofas around small fires, beds. Huddles of families sit and lie clustered together in small groups as far as the eye can see, sallow-faced and with hungry, tired looks to them. It looks far more like a hospital than a hospice. Everybody here looks like they're clinging to life with both teeth lodged deep inside of it.

A witch bustles to Remus from nearby, abandoning a cart she had been pushing stuffed with potions bottles, most of them empty. She has a kind but stern face, hijab tucked into the shoulders of her blue-checkered apron.

"We thought we heard the wards go off," she tells Remus cheerily. "Always happy to see a new face. Now, should we find you a bed? I think you're in need of a pepper-up potion—"

"Excuse me?" Remus asks weakly.

The witch blinks at him. "I didn't mean to presume— you're here to see family, then? I'd thought you were Slovakian. We've taken in quite a few refugees, as you can see." She gestures around the room with one hand, tucking her shirt into her trousers with the other. "And others, of course. It's become quite crowded."

"Taken in…?" Remus clears his throat. "I didn't know you were anything other than a hospice."

"Usually we're not," the woman agrees, with a heavy sigh. She's got a very conversational air, like a nurse or a teacher. Calm and cheery. "But things have been changing out there, and if there's a time to start extending a hand to our wizarding siblings — those not dying — I suppose it's now."

Remus blinks at her. "You sound British."

She stares back at him. "Oh. You, too?"

"Hogwarts. Uh." Remus looks at his feet, then back up. "Wales, originally."

"Right. Hogwarts too," she assents. "But of course, it's not safe for the likes of us anymore." She gestures to Remus, up and down. Probably assuming he's a muggleborn or something.

Remus lowers his voice and leans in a bit. "I'm, uh," he says, feeling duplicitous. "I'm with the Order of the Phoenix. I'm here to meet with somebody."

The woman stares at him. For a moment, Remus thinks she's going to laugh at him. Or worse, pity him for thinking it. But instead, she watches him with wide eyes and then draws herself up tall, looking very somber.

"Of course," she says. "What can I do to help?"

"I'm here to find a man." Remus unzips his jacket and fumbles around in the inside pocket. The padlock he uses for the chains on moons, a stick of gum, a switchblade, a few coins, unsent letters. His fingers close around the slip of paper Efa gave him that September evening and he pulls it out. "Franc Kovaèiè." And he shows her.

The witch squints at the paper, and then looks up at Remus, chewing her lip quite forlornly. "Quite a lot of people come by looking for him," she says quietly.

"I understand that it's against your policy, but—"

"It's not that," she cuts in.

Remus blinks. "Then what?"

"He's dead. He's been dead for two years now."

The penny drops and it all makes a lot of sense then. A test indeed, Remus thinks. And he's passed it. His ears fill with faint, distant buzzing. A swarm of insects. He thinks he'd like to sit down.

"Oh," he murmurs, more to himself than her.

"I'm sorry."

Remus shakes himself. "I'd expect you do get a lot of people looking for him." He hesitates. "How did he die?"

The witch cocks her head to the side. "Cancer," she tells him. "Rare for our kind."

And rarer for werewolves. "Yeah," Remus mutters. "Yeah. Sorry. Can I… sit down?"

"Of course," the woman says gently. She takes Remus' shoulder and leads him to a sofa nearby, ten feet or so from a family by a window. Remus sits down heavily, pulling his backpack into his lap and hugging it, feeling rather like a child.

"Thanks," he mutters.

"Don't worry at all." She rubs the top of his shoulder, then retracts her hand. "If you need any help, ask for Aafreen, alright?"

Remus forces a smile, not looking up at her. "Thanks," he says again.

Aafreen steps away, her light footsteps padding back to the cart. Remus hears it rattle as she pushes it across the room. Then it's just him alone, staring down at the brown patterned sofa underneath him, pockmarked with age and small embroideries. Little gem colours. He breathes in the thick, half-medicinal smell in here. It's magical, like a potions dungeon, but only a bit. Mostly it's badly-covered blood smell, and the quiet stench of death. It feels less welcoming now, knowing the thing Remus came for was dead from the very beginning.

"Fuck," he murmurs. Then he puts his face in his hands. "Oh, fuck."

There's a small cough from nearby, the sofa perpendicular to his. Remus hadn't looked at it before. "Uh... Remus?"

He glances up. There's a stranger sitting across from him, folded into the mismatched sofa cushions with her arms around her stomach. Her dark skin is thick with spots and worry-lines and she's got the tiredest, most bloodshot eyes Remus has ever seen on anyone. She looks on the verge of death, wizened and weak.

"Uh," Remus says. "Sorry, do I know you?"

She stares at him hard for a moment, as if willing him to understand. "Guess not," she murmurs, and then turns her face a bit towards him, though it seems to hurt her neck to do so.

And then it hits Remus. "Mary?"

"Hi." She smiles faintly.

Remus stares, unable to comprehend it. "You died." And you look dead. Are you a zombie?

She shrugs very slightly, wincing with it. Each of her movements is stiff and slow, like they all hurt to move through. "Yeah," she agrees. "Almost. It's... sort of a long story."

"What happened?!"

Mary glances left and right, as if to check whether anybody's looking at them. "Sit... sit beside me?" she asks, raspy.

Remus stands up, letting his bag drop to the floor. The chains clink once they hit it. He stumbles to Mary's side and sits close to her. Not close enough that their knees touch, because he's scared he might break her.

"Lift up the bottom of my shirt," she instructs, letting her arms fall to her sides, face screwing up with the motion.

Remus blinks. "Are you—"

"Yes, I'm sure," she snaps.

Remus winces. He reaches to the bottom of Mary's shirt, dark enough a shade of brown that he can't tell whether she's bled on it, and lifts it.

There's a flat expanse of bandages underneath, wrapping in a half-foot wide trench around her midriff. And a dark fuzzed-out stain sits right in the centre, bled outwards from an unseen wound. Blood but... wrong. Too watery, too black.

"What is this...?" Remus murmurs.

Mary coughs. "The kettering curse," she hacks, throat convulsing. Remus sees now that against her brown skin, black veins like blood poisoning snake up her neck, strangler vines. "That night in London."

Remus has heard of it. The kettering curse was all over Direct Action when it came about after Little Hangleton, and he's heard horror stories. People talk about it like it's a plague more than a piece of dark magic.

"How did you end up—" He gestures around. "Here?"

Mary stares at him like she's trying to figure out the best way to respond. "I..."

"What is it?"

She hesitates still. "I don't know if I should... it's..."

Remus lets her shirt go, dropping it back over her split-open stomach. "Please?" he asks. He doesn't think he can put up with any more secrets or any more lies. He might just explode, too many of them living inside of him to cope with.

Mary stares at him, eyes sunken into her face. Every time she stops moving Remus is scared she's just died on the spot; she looks close enough to it, skin hanging, hair missing from her scalp in clumps. Her dark pupils are pale in the centres, like they've gone blind. She feels not fully here, like an old person with a failing memory; the sort of person you sit with for hours feeling completely alone.

"I was rescued," she says eventually. "By an ally of the Order. He took me to Iceland… I would've died in a couple of days if I didn't have his help."

Remus stares, trying to figure out what she's thinking. "So you're staying in Iceland?"

"For the most part."

"Then why are you here? You're not—" Remus hesitates. "You're not dying, are you?"

Mary peers at him like he's crazy. She shakes her head. "I…" And her eyes fill up with tears. She tries to raise a weak hand to wipe at them but can't get it all the way up.

"Oh no," Remus murmurs. "Hey… listen, I'm sorry…" He leans forward to wipe her face gently with his sleeve, worried it'll tear like tissue paper.

"It's okay," she sobs. "Well. It's not okay."

"You're here as a patient then?"

Mary shakes her head. "No," she says, sort of angrily. She's frustrated, Remus can tell, with her own body. Half-mummified and unable to choose how to move. "No," she repeats. "No. They said I would be admitted, but I don't want to die here."

"Then you're here for treatment?"

"There's no saving me."

"But surely they can help—"

"Remus," Mary murmurs. "Remus, please don't."

Remus swallows harshly, around a very big lump in his throat. "Dorcas thinks you're dead," he whispers. "James, too."

"I…" Mary's face changes a bit. "I wrote to them. A couple of times. They never wrote back, but… I'd assumed…"

"No." Remus shakes his head. "No, they still think…" He cuts himself off. No need to say it, to make it real.

"Maybe it's for the best." Mary slumps back further into the pillows. They loom around her, an early grave. "I'll be dead soon anyway. That's what—" She stops herself.

"What?" Remus asks.

She considers him for a moment. Her pale eyes, as dead and unfocused as they are, still take in every inch of his face, as if scanning for a fault line. Remus can tell she's thinking very hard.

"Do you trust me?" Mary asks eventually.

"Yes," Remus replies, not knowing that he's telling the truth.

"Okay." She clears her throat. "You're going to have to help me get upstairs."

Getting Mary to the third floor proves challenging. There are magical lifts to keep patients from having to walk up and down stairs if they're unable, but even getting her out of the sofa cushions and to her feet, mostly carrying her, is difficult. Every movement seems to make her jostle and stiffen with pain, each breath making her groan. She's more fragile slung over Remus' shoulders than any human he's ever held before, a broken bird.

"I don't want you to feel sorry for me," she murmurs to him as they hobble together off the lift, a few floors up. It's airy up here, a light, ambient temperature. The coridors are very wide. "Okay?"

Remus tightens his grip on her a bit, feeling her ribs shudder beneath his hand. "Of course."

"I mean it."

"I do too."

She huffs, then grunts as she lists particularly heavily against Remus. "Oh, god, I should have just told you the room number," she mumbles into his shoulder.

Remus forces a laugh that he cannot truly feel. It vibrates around inside of him. "Sorry. We're close now. Right ahead. 311."

"Yeah." One of Mary's ankles jerks the wrong way and then the other, and both of her knees give; Remus catches her under the arms and she lets out a short scream of pain.

"Sorry!" he shouts. "Sorry, oh Merlin. Come on. I've got you."

How they make it the rest of the way to the room three-hundred and eleven is a mystery. Remus kicks open the door and hauls Mary inside, dropping her in a chair beside the bed and then turning to look at who's in it.

Another stranger. This time he squints at it, just to make sure it isn't secretly a dead friend. But he's sure he doesn't know this woman. Fifty or sixty, with short, iron-grey hair and a broad face. Dead to the world, mouth slightly open. A magical heart monitor beeps beside her, strange and discordant; Remus hates its sound.

And he turns fully and the world sort of dies. It all goes away.

Sirius is sitting on the other side of the bed, looking up at him. His hair is longer still than it was the last time Remus saw him, and he looks about as undead as Mary. He doesn't even look surprised. Just resigned. Like he's looking into the face of inevitability.

"Hey, Moons," he says. "Uh."

Remus stares at him. Then, he turns and walks out of the room.

He makes it three steps down the hallway before stopping, turning around and walking back in.

"Sirius," he says. "What. Why."

None of those words are questions. They feel more like weapons. Remus hopes they hurt.

Sirius just watches him, eyes very large. One of his hands is holding the old woman by the wrist. Remus watches his grip tighten there.

"Sirius," Remus repeats. He takes a few steps back and then a few more forwards, until he's standing right at the foot of the bed. He wraps a hand around the bottom railing very tightly.

"Moons," Sirius says. He coughs. "Moony. Remus."

Mary, looking much like she wants to disappear, speaks up. "If you two want some privacy, I can stay with Galina—"

Galina. Remus recognises her then. The woman from Little Hangleton.

"We're not going anywhere," he snaps. Then, directly to Sirius. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

Sirius raises his hand, letting go of Galina's wrist for a moment. As if to protect himself, maybe. "I'm sorry," he says.

"What for?"

"I don't know." Sirius hesitates. "A lot of things. You know that."

"Tell me them," Remus demands. And before Sirius can speak, "No. Don't tell me."

"Remus—"

"Don't call me Remus!" Remus snaps.

Sirius' face rumples up. For a moment Remus thinks he's going to cry. Then, he seems to try very hard to compose himself. "What… what would you like to be called?" he asks gently.

Remus stares. "What?"

"I can call you whatever."

"You don't get to do this. This—" Remus waves a hand around for emphasis. "This. You don't get to do that."

"I know."

"You don't know!"

Sirius stands up abruptly. "Remus— Moony—"

Remus staggers backwards, around the side of the bed to Mary, so he and Sirius are standing on either side of it. "You— look at you. Look at you! Standing there like it's nothing, hiding away in some fucking hospice— you're not even dying! Hiding away here, and do you know how many nights I dreamed you were dead? Do you know?! Can you even hope to know that—"

"Please don't yell at me," Sirius says in a very strangled voice. "Not you."

"Why not?!" Remus demands. He's throwing his arms around and spitting and he wishes he had his wand, wishes he could use it. He could hex Sirius right out of the window, right out of the country to Slovakia or Iceland or Britain. Wherever. It doesn't matter anymore.

"Not you," Sirius pleads again. He reaches one hand, the left one, out to touch Remus, fingers faltering halfway between them and then falling back to his side. "I can't handle it if it's you."

"Great," Remus snorts, nastily, angrily, toxicity and poison in it. He feels full up with coal dust, lungs thick with smoke. He feels dangerous. "So James could do it, but I can't get angry with you. You're always like this. I could never get angry with you then, either, even if you were dying— I told you so many times, I told you— and you didn't listen, and I was right. I was right. And you didn't listen to me."

"Please don't—"

"What else am I supposed to do?!" Remus demands. He grabs Sirius by the front of his shirt and shakes him. "Look at you, look at us! It's been a year and a half Rosier, and you didn't come back. And I saw you and then you left again. James is a wreck, he's going to get himself killed and it's all because of you, and Lily left because she couldn't put up with the ghost of you living in that apartment, and look at me!" He shakes Sirius again. "Look at me!"

Sirius stares at him. One of his hands comes up to hold Remus' wrist. Not trying to pull it off. Just holding it. Remus realises that he's shaking and lets him go, pulling his hand away.

"Why are you here?" Sirius asks after a moment.

"You want me to leave again?"

"No!" Sirius startles. "No. That's not… no. I just…"

Remus swallows hard. That lump in his throat won't stop coming back. "I was here for a job. I'm with a pack in Wales now."

Sirius watches him. "Without James."

"You cannot lecture me about—"

"I wasn't going to!"

"You left first!" Remus spits. "You left first, you can't— you can't—" He rubs his face with both hands. "He never even saw you cry. Didn't know anything was wrong. Do you know what it was like?! All of fifth year, running around keeping him sane, stopping him skipping every class and decaying in his bed?! Do you have any idea what it was like to watch him kill himself over you?! You don't know, you can't know—"

White in the face, Sirius gawps at him. He looks like he's going to be sick.

But Remus isn't done. "Not one letter to us, not a fucking word, even after Rosier, even after the war started. Nothing. Lying next to him, knowing he only wanted me there because he missed you— I'm not stupid, Sirius, I can see when history is repeating itself. And it's you, it's all you. It was always you. It always comes back to you. And this whole time, you've been— fucking— fucking— fucking, eating skyr in Iceland?!"

"It's more complicated than that," Sirius murmurs. "Remus, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't shout."

"I CAN'T HELP IT!" Remus cries. "I can't help shouting, I can't not be angry anymore— I can't stop—" He picks up the heart monitor by its iron rail and hurls it into the wall. The top shatters, coming apart into intricate metal pieces. It beeps once, a long flatline as the wire comes loose. Then, disembodied, it starts up again. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Remus," Sirius is saying, voice cracking. "Remus. Remus." As if he just wants to feel Remus' name on his tongue.

Remus rounds on him. He needs something else; he throws his backpack off his shoulders and it crunches and clatters to the floor, a heavy metallic noise. He crosses the room to the window and picks up a vase of half-dead flowers, hurtling it past Sirius and into the wall, where it shatters. He finds an empty chair and kicks it three times, four times. Five times.

"Fuck!" he shouts. And he turns back to Sirius. "Two years! More than two years! And you saw me once and you— you—" He points, feeling like a mad person, points and points and jabs his finger at Sirius across the woman's body until he's stabbing at the middle of his chest over and over. "You went again. I would have stayed if you stayed. I would've gone anywhere. Anywhere. I would've come with you if you asked me to, I would have done anything, I still would." And he sobs. "I still would."

Sirius grabs one of his hands, holding Remus' wrist. "What happened?" he murmurs, running a thumb over the bruising there, which sticks out thick and swollen even after weeks.

Remus wants desperately to pull his hand away, to reel it back and punch Sirius, hurt him, hurt something. Anything. But he can't take his hand away, he can't, not with Sirius rubbing the gentle pad of his thumb over the cold skin.

"The moon," he says quietly, the steam out of him. "The last moon."

Sirius glances from Remus' wrist to his face, and then spies his bag. "Chains? Remus—"

"Don't."

"You shouldn't have— what mission could be that important—"

"Apparently not this one," Remus replies, with no small amount of bitterness. "It was a dead end. Deliberately. The wolves, they wanted to know they could trust me. See if I'd come this far for them."

"And it was for nothing?" Sirius asks.

Remus shrugs. "I think," he says stallingly. "I think they wanted me to learn."

Sirius' face changes, something indescribable in it; Remus can't figure out what he's thinking, what he's feeling. He looks from Remus to the dying woman. Galina.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "I guess. Watch and learn."

Remus squints at him. He pulls his hand away and turns and walks out of the room.

He makes it five steps this time before coming to a stop, standing still. Grey daylight casts dull shadows across the wall. Remus watches them for a few seconds before turning and striding right back into the room.

Sirius is still standing beside the bed. Remus moves to stand over the other side and the great wall of it sits between them, as safe as it is painful. The woman still hasn't woken. Remus glances down into her grey face and wonders whether to ask if she's even still alive.

"If it means anything to you," Sirius starts. "I wrote you letters."

Remus looks up at him. "You did?"

Sirius nods. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a wad of them, all stuffed into a single envelope.

Remus stares. Then he turns around and kneels beside his backpack, unzipping it. He uncoils feet of metal chains onto the floor, the conspicuous clanking of them the only sound in the world besides the rasp of Mary's slow breathing. Pieces of cloth runes scatter out across the tiles. Then, he pulls out the wine box, flat and splintery.

"Me too," he tells Sirius as he stands up and pulls the lid off it. Hundreds — maybe thousands — of letters inside, and Remus dumps them all out onto the floor in their masses, too many to count, some of them enveloped but most of them loose. Pages and pages and pages of his narrow, slanting scrawl. Two years of them.

Sirius watches, saying nothing. Remus drops the wine box and it clatters against the floor. He returns to the bedside, studying Sirius' face.

"I wrote too," he repeats, softer and angrier. "Every day."

"Remus—"

"I wrote to you every day. I never stopped. And I couldn't stop if I tried. I don't think I ever will. No matter how many times you leave. It makes me hate you— I hate you—"

Sirius sniffs hard. His eyes aren't wet but he looks close to it. "Remus..."

"I told you not to call me that."

"I have to call you something!" Sirius snaps. He shoves the letters — his letters — at Remus. "I couldn't write for long. A few months and I—" He holds up his limp right arm, dead and blackened. "It's a long story."

"And I don't want to hear it," Remus snaps, even though he does, he does, he knows he would sit and listen to Sirius tell stories for years if he could.

"I know," Sirius agrees. He ducks his head.

They stand like that for an ugly stretch of quiet. Outside, the grey sky has darkened still, black clouds rolling in across the horizon in crowded clumps. Mary says nothing. Remus can feel her staring.

"I'm sorry," Sirius says again.

"Don't say that."

He nods. "I won't."

Remus chews his lip, trying to figure out what to say. He bites at it until it hurts and then wraps his teeth around his thumbnail and pulls until it goes ragged and rough at the tip, half shorn.

"I can't stop wishing," Remus says eventually. "Trying to find places it could've been better. Bits where we could've done it different."

Sirius looks at him, saying nothing. God, he looks tired. Tired like he's been holding up the world.

"Bits we could've done differently," Remus repeats. "And I always come back to one day."

"Last day of term. '75."

"Yeah."

Sirius looks away out of the window, like he would very much like to jump from it.

"I'm right," Remus says into the quiet. "It would have to be that day. Any other time and I don't think you could've been saved. But if you'd said yes and come back with me I'd've taken you anywhere. Gone with you anywhere. We could have gone on the run. I don't care how far. And James would've come too."

"But we wouldn't have done that to him."

"Loneliness would kill him faster than we ever could," Remus rebukes.

Sirius looks back at him. "Then we've both fucked up."

It's Remus' turn to stare out of the window. "You should've come back with me," he whispers. "Come home with me. Some bit of me knew it'd be the last time I saw you for a while then. You know? I think a bit of me knew."

"I'm sorry you had to live with that."

"I've lived with worse," Remus lies. And he wants to cry again. He is almost crying again. He can feel it in the back of his mouth. "Your shoulder. What's on your shoulder?"

Sirius glances down. He tugs aside the neckline of his shirt.

"That one's for you," he murmurs, pointing to the sharp hunk of broken glass. "And that one's Jamie."

Sirius still calls him Jamie. Remus' heart hurts, a sort of pain he's never been able to make sense of. Something he knows will never properly leave again; a permanent something.

"Yeah," Remus says into the mourning quiet. "It would've had to be that day."

They were standing on either side of a bed then, too. The deja vu is killer.

"I'm so sorry," Sirius murmurs again. Like he's stuck on loop.

"Stop it."

"Sorry."

"Stop!" Remus shouts. He grabs Sirius by the front of the shirt again, pulls it back. All the knives across his shoulders and arms glare up at him, dark and sharp; he sees them all. "Look at you! Making knives out of your friends, putting me on your shoulder like I asked to be there—"

"Remus—"

"I didn't ask you because I've never been able to ask you for anything!" Remus shakes him and pulls him closer and closer until they're breathing the same air, both bashing their knees against the bedside. "I've never asked you to want me or to mourn me, or to kill me, and you're doing all of them. I hate you, from the bottom of my heart I hate you. I hate you."

Sirius' eyes are finally wet, going bloody-edged. Good. Let him fucking cry. "Remus," he says again. His hand finds Remus' wrist again, wrapping around it. "Remus, please—"

Remus doesn't know what Sirius is pleading for and he doesn't care, he doesn't care, he doesn't care. He presses them closer until their foreheads are knocking together between them.

"I hate you," he says again, and chokes out the last bit, "but I can't leave. You're ruining me but I can't leave—" He gestures up and down himself, at his body. His chest and his legs and his throat. "This is my house and you live here, and I didn't invite you, but you live here. And you won't leave. And you never will."

Sirius' working hand grapples its way around to the back of Remus' neck. "I'm so sorry," he gasps out, like he's drowning. "I wish I'd gone with you. And if I could do it again I would."

Remus breathes in and then out, Sirius' clavicle a cold hard press against his knuckles. "Kiss me please," he murmurs.

Sirius pushes him in and kisses him with hunger, sort of sobbing now. Remus expects it to taste like something new, something different from James, but it feels like a process he knows intimately, like a well-loved recipe, like a Monday morning; it feels like the apartment in Lambeth, like lying in the sun with James back in Wales. It tastes like London smells. There is nothing unfamiliar about it; the way Sirius' lips feel, the warmth of his breath as he exhales through his nose, breath ghosting across Remus' upper lip.

It doesn't feel like kissing Sirius. It doesn't feel like kissing James. It feels like coming home.

Sirius pulls away. He looks down at Galina, and then up at Remus, and he says, "I'm not running anymore. I promise."

Remus pushes his forehead against Sirius', butting their heads together, desperate to stay in the same space. To breathe in the same air.

"I know," he murmurs. "I won't let you." And he looks up into Sirius' startling grey eyes. "We are not going to let Mary die."