Remus waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on the morning's copy of the Daily Prophet as he took the elevator down to the courtrooms. He'd been in the Ministry a couple of times before with his father, but after he was bitten, Lyall never let him go. Too many stares and comments. But now he was no longer "the Lupin boy" and simply "R.J. Lupin, Visitor Number 3092".

He found Hazel sitting next to Mad-Eye Moody, spotting them as soon as he walked into the courtroom. They were talking animatedly about something, probably the last case they had witnessed. "Do you mind if I sit here with you?" he smiled down at her, Hazel standing up to hug him hello.

"Remus, why are you here? I haven't seen you in what, six hours, and you pop up at the Ministry?" she beamed as he sat down next to her.

"No one told you? It's Sirius," Remus said, watching the Wizengamot members skeptically. "I thought you knew. I thought that's why you were down here."

"What? No, I was here for -" There was no more time to talk. Barty Crouch, who had taken over all of the Death Eater trials, silenced everyone before directing the dementors outside to bring in their prisoner. Remus took Hazel's hand, both of them staring forward in silence.

Sirius was no longer the jovial seventh-year who threw Dungbombs at Mrs. Norris and took great joy in antagonizing Snape for no good reason. He was gaunt, nearly skin and bones, and seemed to be frozen solid, moving reluctantly as he was placed in front of Crouch. As he was magically bound to the chair, he looked around the crowd, locking eyes with his old friend.

"Sirius Orion Black, you have been brought before the Wizengamot on charges of murder in thirteen counts, of wizards and Muggles alike, with conspiring with Lord Voldemort, and with selling the Potters' secret location to Lord Voldemort, which directly led to their deaths," Crouch began as the dementors floated back into the hall to wait. "How do you plead?"

"I'm innocent," he managed, pleading for anyone to believe him. "It was the rat."

Crouch shook his head. "You were found in the middle of the street, surrounded by the dead, and you were the only one who knew -"

"Please, it was the rat," Sirius insisted, craning his neck to look Hazel and Remus in the eye again. That set off a flurry of whispers among the crowd and the Wizengamot members alike. "You know it was him. He was our friend! Hazel, Remus, you believe me, don't you? Tell them you believe me -"

"Silence!" Crouch demanded, a sharp rap of his gavel bringing everyone's attention back to him. "I will remind you that Miss Ashmore was one of the Aurors who brought you in. She has already written up her report of the events of the first of November, which all of the members of this court received in their file of evidence this morning."

"It was Peter, ask them, they know he -"

"Peter Pettigrew is dead!" Crouch exclaimed, turning bright red under his mustache. "You left us with nothing to send his poor mother with his Order of Merlin! Nothing but a finger!" He took a deep breath to collect himself. In the pause, Hazel clenched Remus' hand tighter. She hadn't expected to become, in a way, part of the trial. She was already drained from the earlier trial - from Sev's trial. But this… "Mr. Black, this is a formality I am done with. Unless there are no opposing votes, I will move to sentence you to a life term in Azkaban." None of the Wizengamot members said anything. With a final bang of the gavel, the dementors floated in to take him away.

Hazel couldn't bring herself to watch another trial. She said her goodbyes to Moody and a couple of the other Aurors, and together with Remus, took off for the elevator. "I have a couple of things to finish up in the office," she told him as they headed for the ground floor. "But I'll be home at a reasonable hour. I don't think I can stay here much longer." He agreed. The trial had sent a chill up his spine, and he was itching to get out in the open air again.

When she got home that night, Remus was pacing the living room. Neither of them felt like eating anything. Instead they settled in on the sofa together, restlessly trying to think of anything but the trial. "Moody made you watch the whole afternoon's worth?" Remus finally asked. "As some sort of lesson? Or what?"

"Yeah. There were a few that he wanted me there for. I don't know… I don't know if he wanted me to see it, or if he wanted them to see me, or what, but… I'm glad we were there."

"Me too." He reached out for her, closing the gap between them as if it would fix the void of confusion and sadness in either of them. Just as he moved to pull her closer, he let go, watching her eyes in the firelight. "You're crying."

"So are you."

"I…" He paused, telling her what he'd been thinking about since he got home and found an owl waiting there. "I'm going to be gone by morning." Hazel stared at him, trying to figure out what was going on. "I found this." He pulled a letter from his pocket, handing it over. She recognized the handwriting in an instant, and she knew he did too. "You're better off with him. It's saying something, isn't it, that you're better off with a supposedly reformed Death Eater than with a werewolf?" He gave a pained laugh as he extricated herself from her and got up to pace the room again.

They'd had this talk a couple of times before, but as Hazel turned the letter over in her hands, she knew where this was headed. "Sev and I were friends. The first trial today was his. He's just writing to thank me for being there. I didn't know - Dumbledore told Moody to bring me down there. He wanted Sev to have a friendly face in the audience if… if things turned out differently despite everything he said."

"They knew what I was when I walked in," Remus told her. "There's a registry, you know. The witch at the reception desk knew. She looked me up. It's not - if you and I stay together - they're hunting werewolves now, because so many of them worked with Voldemort. I can't let you be bothered with all of that. They'll haul you in for questioning too and - it's not something you should have to deal with."

"We've talked about this before," Hazel said, getting up to stop him. "I don't care -"

"Every full moon I wake up praying I haven't killed you. It's only a matter of time before I actually hurt someone. I nearly did, back at Hogwarts. We both remember it well. But I can't risk that, and I can't risk you having to live the same kind of life I do, with everyone constantly suspicious of you, and transforming every month," Remus insisted. "So I'm leaving in the morning. I'm going to seek out Dumbledore - he always knows what to do. Supposedly Slughorn's had some success with wolfsbane. Perhaps he'll have figured it out by now. And then I'm off to find the Scamanders. I can be safely away from people, studying creatures like myself, where I can't hurt anyone."

"Remus, you're not -"

"I'm not human," he reminded her sharply. "And that means I'm cursed to live my life like this. I'm going. You're better off with a Death Eater like Snape. That's what you want, isn't it? This - all of this - was a placeholder. We're comfortable, but we're not… We know this isn't real. I know this isn't real."

"Remus, we can make this work."

"No. Making something work isn't the same as being happy. Besides, I know you still dream about him. I was okay with it for a while. I… We can't keep living like this. It's not good for either of us. Temporary happiness with… with an undercurrent of longing for something else isn't happiness at all. So I'm going to go."

He left her in the living room, heading upstairs to pack. Hazel decided to give him a few minutes, so she sat down to read the letter.

Hazel,

Thank you for being there today. I had no idea that Dumbledore had invited you, but he told me everything. Thank you for giving me some hope.

I have returned to Hogwarts - Professor Slughorn recently retired, and Dumbledore has offered me his post, so I will be teaching here for the foreseeable future. Perhaps it is better if I just stay here, away from the prying eyes of the public and the Rita Skeeters of the world (I do not plan on reading the paper tomorrow, and I suggest you avoid it as well).

I understand if you burn this letter and never write back. I understand if you still cannot trust me, and I understand if you never will. But I wanted to thank you all the same, for being there and for the flash of hope you gave me, even in the clutches of the dementors.

All the best,

Sev

She stood again, folding the letter and putting it in her back pocket. Slowly she crept up the stairs, coming to stop in the bedroom doorway, watching Remus folding clothes into his suitcase. He'd patched it up over the years, a tattered remnant of his time at , Sirius, and Peter had gifted it to him - complete with the "Professor R.J. Lupin" label - as a joke, but he'd carried it around for ages now. "You don't have to go," she offered, coming over to him.

"I do. You're not happy, are you? Not really, anyway. We're just… surviving. Together, but still. We're incredible friends, but this," he sighed, looking across the room that they had shared for a few months now. "This isn't the way things are supposed to go. We both know it. We've seen it for a while."

"I know." She gave him a final kiss, saying, "Be careful. Write when you get to Hogwarts, and when you get to the Scamanders' farm. You know where I'll be."

"I will," he promised. "I'm sorry. I really am. But you deserve to be safe, and you don't deserve to be burdened by what I am. You always say it's fine, that you don't care, but... I don't want the rest of the world looking at you the way they look at me. And we shouldn't be making something work if we know it never will."

"Rem… It was good while it lasted. I really did love you back then."

"I really did love you too. And I think I still might," he sighed, "which is all the more reason for me to go."