6 February 1994

Remus pushed his thinning hair out of his eyes as he stepped behind the gargoyle statue to the headmaster's office. As he reached the door, he heard familiar voices—the heads of houses were still in a private meeting with Dumbledore, it seemed.

He hesitated for a moment, feeling intrusive. Then, shaking his head, he knocked twice on the door.

"Come in," came Dumbledore's voice.

Remus opened the door, sticking his head into the room. "I'm sorry—I don't mean to interrupt—"

"You're not interrupting," said Professor Sprout immediately, from where she and Minerva were standing by the large bay windows in their dressing gowns. "We're almost done."

Remus stepped into the room, clasping his hands together. He looked at Dumbledore, swallowing heavily. "I—I'm sorry, Professor. We haven't been able to find any trace of him at all—he's completely disappeared again. Argus and I checked every secret passageway, and the rest of the staff has finished their rounds as well."

Flitwick let out a heavy sigh. Minerva and Sprout grimaced.

Dumbledore nodded, his expression grave. "Unfortunate, Remus, but not entirely unexpected. Thank you for updating us."

Remus bowed his head. "It's the least I could do, Professor," he said.

There was a scoffing sound from near the back cabinets of the headmaster's office, and Remus turned to see Snape emerge from the shadows, his expression scornful.

"The least you could do?" he snapped. "Are you quite sure about that, Lupin?"

"Severus," Minerva warned sharply.

Remus raised his eyebrows at Snape. "And what does that mean, exactly?"

"Nothing," Snape said smoothly, his black eyes glinting in an eerily familiar way. "Only that it baffles me how a convicted mass-murder continues to strut about this castle, unnoticed and…unassisted."

"Severus, that's quite enough of that," Sprout said hotly, stepping forward.

Remus didn't flinch. He merely gazed at Snape, eyes narrowed.

"I don't know what trust you seem to expect me to prove to you," he said quietly, "but quite frankly, Severus, if you would like to accuse me of something, you're welcome to level it openly. There are plenty of reasons to dislike a man like me—it's true, I will never be respected in this society—but I would like to know exactly what I have done to suggest to you that I would help a murderer break into the bedroom of his thirteen-year-old target."

A ringing silence followed Remus's words. Flitwick closed his eyes, clenching his jaw. Snape glowered at Remus, his expression mutinous.

Finally, it was Dumbledore who broke the silence.

"It is late," he said quietly, rising to his feet. "Please return to your Houses and tell your students that the castle is, for the time being, safe." He looked at Snape, pinning the potions master under a razor-sharp gaze. "And remember that throwing around underhanded comments about the loyalties of our fellow staff members does not align in the slightest with our number one priority at this time—to protect our students."

Snape's expression became flushed and nasty. Without another word, he turned and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

There was a tense silence. Then, one by one, Flitwick, Sprout, and Minerva made their way out of the headmaster's office. Each stopped briefly before Remus, as if wanting to say something but not knowing what to say. In the end, Flitwick and Sprout both gave him earnest smiles, and Minerva squeezed his shoulder on her way out the door. Remus watched them all leave, rooted to the spot, feeling his insides crumbling. He was still staring numbly at the door to the office when he heard Dumbledore's voice, calling him back to the present.

"Remus, are you all right?"

Remus turned and met Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes, his mouth dry. All right. Was he all right? With a jolt, Remus realized he didn't even know what all right meant anymore. For the second time in four months, he'd spent the entire night searching every inch of the Hogwarts castle that he and his friends had discovered together—all their old hiding spots, all the passageways they'd uncovered—but Black had left nothing behind. No knife. No pawprints, no tuft of thick, black fur. Nothing. It was like he'd never been there.

"Remus…"

"Why didn't he kill Ron?" Remus blurted out.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows; he looked surprised. "I beg your pardon?"

"Ron," Remus said again in a rough voice, turning away from the headmaster and running a hand through his hair. "Black was in their dormitory—after four whole months of planning, he managed to get inside that room—why—why didn't he just kill Ron? Kill Ron, and move onto Harry."

Dumbledore gazed at Remus, his expression unreadable. "Black only had a knife. There are three other boys in that dormitory—they all awoke when Ron screamed—"

"So then, kill them all!" Remus exclaimed, his voice cracking. "Black blasted thirteen people to death in broad daylight! He sold his best friends to Voldemort! What's four more teenagers to him? He could have used any one of their wands—there were five! Why didn't he kill Ron?"

Remus was shouting now, his voice echoing off the walls of the small, circular office. The headmasters in their portraits were rousing each other to watch the interaction.

Dumbledore didn't respond for a long while, though his eyes didn't waver from Remus's.

Finally— "I don't know," Dumbledore said.

"I don't know either!" Remus flung his hands in the air, his voice desperate. "I don't know—it doesn't make sense—none of this—it doesn't fit—"

"Remus," Dumbledore interjected evenly. "If you have something to say, I must ask that you say it now."

Remus closed his eyes, pressing his lips together. He had kept these words in for too long—he had pushed them deep inside him, had almost convinced himself that they were just a fading dream. But he had already said too much—he couldn't keep these words in any longer.

"I knew him," Remus said in a hoarse whisper.

Dumbledore frowned. "We all thought we did, but—"

"No!" Remus said loudly. He heard the portraits on the walls gasp in shock, but he didn't care. He needed Dumbledore to understand. "No, Professor—I knew him. He was my best friend—he was my brother. We helped each other through everything—his family, my family, my condition—he was the only one who really understood. And James! James was everything to him—James took him in when he ran away from home, James protected him, he supported him—James—and Lily, and Harry—they were his entire life—"

"Time is the ultimate truth-teller," Dumbledore interrupted quietly. "Stronger than Veritaserum—it can make people unrecognizable to us—"

"Not like this!" Remus cried. They had reached the heart of it; the words were spilling out—Remus was barely conscious of what he was saying. "Not like this! Sirius Black betray James Potter? Never! Not even in a different universe! I can count on my hands the number of things I was sure about during the war, Professor—but Sirius was the constant. I never doubted him. He was knee-deep in fighting, in protecting James and Lily—nothing else in the world mattered to him!"

Dumbledore didn't say anything. Perhaps he had at last understood that Remus needed to speak, needed to say these words—that he was desperate for this release. Remus's throat felt raw from the emotions that were tearing through him, unbridled at last.

"When did we lose him?" Remus asked, his voice anguished and spent. "When did it happen, Professor? Because I've spent months—years—racking my brains, tearing through memories—but I can't pinpoint it! For eleven years, he talked about hating his family—about wanting nothing to do with their ways—wanting to be nothing like them. He made that choice—he chose the right path, and we took every step with him because we knew how difficult that choice was! When did it all become a lie? When?"

Remus clutched his hair. His throat was burning now; his eyes stung.

"I miss them," he said brokenly. "I miss them all—so much. James, Lily, Peter—and Sirius. Sirius. We were a family, they were my family. And I know that Severus thinks I've allowed these emotions to cloud my judgment—that I've been helping Sirius break into the castle, that I know something I haven't let on about—but I don't! I don't, Professor, and that makes everything worse. I knew him—I knew him—but I don't know him at all!"

The anguish and the pain—raw and turbulent—were swallowing him up. His view of the headmaster's office was swimming—he didn't even notice that Dumbledore had risen from his chair and crossed the office to join him by the window until he felt his hand on his shoulder. Remus looked up and met the headmaster's eyes, and he saw a tear trickle down Dumbledore's face into his long silver beard.

And then, Remus was undone. The tears streamed freely down his face, and he could do nothing to stop them. The sun rose over the headmaster's office, pouring into the bay windows, as, for the first time in twelve years, Remus allowed himself to mourn.