Author's Note: Well here it is-part four, if anyone still remembers this story. Sorry it took me so long to get started on it again! Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! You guys ROCK!

Disclaimer: These characters all belong to J.K. Rowling. I am not making any money off of this story, so please don't sue me!

Severus was right about me, I thought bitterly as I unlocked the door to my room.

"Ignitium," I said listlessly to the logs in my fireplace, tapping the air with my wand. A crackling blaze sprang to life, and for a moment I was tempted to fling the wand into the flames. But it was not that easy anymore. I could no longer cut myself off from this world, pretend that none of it existed.

Coward.

I had been here a day now, taught my first class, watched my students face their worst fears and overcome them. Something which I could not do.

Dressing Sirius up in a long green gown would not render him harmless. No red handbag or stuffed vulture could dull the pain of betrayal or the-I couldn't deny it-stark fear I felt at the thought of facing him again.

It was not that I feared my own death. I had spent too many years wishing for it, held the knife to my wrist too many times to count, a mere whisper of skin between cold metal and blood. I wished then, for one desperate moment, that I had had the courage once, just once, to finish the job, before whatever angel that had preserved me led me here.

I would gladly have taken my own life then and there, without hesitation, in that lonely bedroom, rather than face what I knew was coming. Rather than face the man who had been one of my closest friends. Who had killed every person who meant anything at all to me. Who had made me feel as if I meant something for the first time in my life. Who had given me everything- and then taken it all away.

I had never really faced Sirius' betrayal, in all the years of my self- imposed exile, I realized then. I had run from it, tried to hide, blocked him out of my thoughts. I had cried for Lily and James and Peter-I had tried to drown the pain in alcohol-I had given in to the fury of my savage half, told myself I would never forgive him.

I think if I could be truly angry, if I could make myself hate him, I might find some peace. And there is a part of me that, even in human form, would tear the man limb from limb if I ever saw him again.

But after all this time, if I allow myself to think of that night, beneath the anger and beneath the hate I clutch like armor round me, the only thing I can feel is a soul-deep anguish and confusion. Somewhere inside me the teenager I was still begs me to tell him it isn't true, that it is just a nightmare that has lasted too long. The truth was that I had long ago stopped trying to reconcile the two images of Sirius-brother and traitor. I mourned James and Lily and Peter, but Sirius I did not think of. I think if I ever managed to equate the two Siriuses, it would destroy me.

For so long, his and James' friendship had been what defined me as a person, as someone worth existing at all, when the rest of the world seemed to say otherwise. Even after all these years, there was still a part of my heart that would not see Sirius my friend as the man who gave us to Voldemort. If it ever did, I am convinced my heart would spontaneously combust.

A mere sliver of moon shone outside my window. I stared at it, wondering that the usual shiver did not come. That boggart had got it wrong, I thought. The moon was no longer my greatest fear.

Not even close.



Today was the day, I told myself. Today I will tell him. I will not put this off, I will not leave Harry Potter in danger any longer.

That was how I started every day since I came to Hogwarts. But Dumbledore remained blissfully ignorant of Sirius full capabilities, and I had been here a week.

There was so much of James in young Harry. Every day I taught the third year class, watching him with his two friends, I saw the ghost of my friend. James was in the way he cocked his head curiously if I failed to explain something correctly, in the way he laughed at some private joke he shared with fellow Gryffindors, in the pride and anger that showed in his confrontations with Draco Malfoy.

It was for him that I had returned to the wizarding world, and to Hogwarts, I reminded myself. It was to protect James' son from James' best friend that I put myself through the torture of memories long buried.

But it was I, not Sirius, who daily put Harry in danger. It was I who had turned my back on my oldest friend's son, for fear of Dumbledore's wrath and my own shame. It was my own cowardice, more than Sirius' treachery, that would kill Harry.

Packing up my things at the end of the day, getting ready to return to my room, I saw the three of them pass by the classroom, followed by another boy. Neville Longbottom, the name came to my mind. The one who had dressed Snape in his grandmother's dress . . . .

I closed my eyes briefly as Sirius' laughter rang in my head. How he would have loved that sight! How James would have loved it . . . . Watching as Neville disappeared down the hall, I was reminded of Peter, and how Severus had always tormented him. Peter had been terrified of Severus-but it had been Peter, not me, who had tracked down Sirius in the days following Lily and James' deaths, Peter who had challenged him, knowing as we all knew, as we all had always known, that Sirius would kill him easily in a duel. Sirius had always been smarter, more powerful. Peter had always had the least courage, the least talent. But it was Peter who died a hero's death twelve years ago. It was Peter who showed no fear when he was finally called upon to act.

And it was I who lived, hating myself for every day that I was alive while they were dead. It was I who refused to risk losing Dumbledore's respect and trust, and chose to risk James' son's life instead.

There was a book lying on my dresser when I entered the bedroom. It must have been Dumbledore who put it there, since no one else besides the house- elves had the passwords to get into a teacher's private rooms. There was no note, no explanation.

The sparkling gold words winked at me in the candlelight, surrounded by cracked leather.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Class of 1985.

I almost left it lying there.

I reached out a hand to touch the peeling letters. Hesitant at first, I picked it up. It was my old yearbook. I don't know where Dumbledore found it. I hadn't laid eyes on the thing since I left school. I lifted it like you would an unexploded bomb, carrying it gently to my bed, sitting down and resting it on my knees. It fell open to the first page and the seventh- year class picture waved at me, all our younger selves, captured at the instant of graduation.

James and Lily, head boy and girl, smiled at me from the next page. Her loopy script filled the white space beneath the picture, and I let my fingers brush over the ink, unable to read her words through the sudden tears that filled my eyes.

James and Lily were on the next page, too, designated as "cutest couple." I flipped through the pages, yellow-edged parchment crackling at my touch.

Hogwarts Yearbooks were organized by House, with the graduates on the first pages, and the first-years last. On the first page of this year's Gryffindor section, however, were the pictures of Annabelle and Laura Bones, a third year and a fourth year. Smiling at me beneath these two were pictures of their parents, a tall Auror and his wife, a smiling witch who barely came up to his waist. The entire family had been killed by Lord Voldemort in the year we all graduated.

On the next page, the Gryffindor seventh-years were lined up, portraits all waving at me. James . . . Lily . . . Peter . . . Sirius. I flipped quickly to the next page.

Many of the sixth years were also familiar. Eliza Prewett had been a Chaser for the Quidditch team for two years. Her family was killed the year after we graduated, I remembered. Sirius . . . that had been Sirius' first mission as part of the League Against Voldemort, to find out who You-Know- Who's next target was, and protect them. Had he already been working for Voldemort at the time?

Turning to the Ravenclaw section, I recognized Leah and Anne McKinnon. Both reserve Chasers for the Ravenclaw team. Two years apart, but nearly inseparable. Members of an old, though not particularly rich, wizarding family. The McKinnons had valued education, and it was no surprise that the two had been in Ravenclaw. It had come as quite a surprise to them when their older sister Mary had been sorted into Hufflepuff.

It wasn't that Mary wasn't as bright as her sisters. Even Sirius, who Mary insisted never gave a damn about her, would have agreed. In her first years at Hogwarts her marks were as good as or better than her sisters'. But Mary could be stubborn about some things, and loyal to a fault. And in her sixth and seventh years, she was much more interested in the Marauders than in the classes she was taking.

Our combat medic, Sirius had called her. In addition to her studies she was Madam Pomfrey's unofficial apprentice, and regardless of her parents' disapproval she decided in her sixth year that she wanted to become a healer. She had been the one who patched us up when we feared Madam Pomfrey would ask questions. We knew we could trust her to keep a secret.

In the end, that was what killed her. The McKinnons were all killed, one by one, until she was the only one left. She refused to tell the Death Eaters where James and Sirius were hiding, or where their next sting would take place.

Was it Sirius himself who gave the order to have her killed?

I slammed the book shut, filled with a sudden unreasoning anger at whoever had left it there for me to find.

It was a long time before I fell asleep that night.



The first full moon of the school year came on Halloween night, and Snape was as good as his word. On finding myself in wolf form but able to retain my human mind, I took the opportunity to prowl the Forbidden Forest for much of the night, searching in vain for the telltale scent that would tell me Sirius had passed.

I was not successful, and returning to the castle I almost wished I had stayed in my office, curled up by the fire. While thanks to the Wolfsbane potion I did not have any scratches, cuts, gashes, or broken bones to worry about, the potion did nothing about the aftereffects of the transformation. If anything, I was even more tired than usual.

Madam Pomfrey was waiting for me at the door to my quarters. She did not say a word at first, or give any sign of alarm at my face, which my mirror told me was gray from exhaustion. But before anything else she grabbed me and hugged me hard.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that, so I didn't say anything as she pushed me toward the bed. Sitting, I leaned against the headboard, where I could see the yearbook, still, on my dresser. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to think about that now. Not about Hogwarts, or James, or Harry, or Madam Pomfrey hovering over me like a short black mother hen. I just wanted them all to go away so I could sleep.

Something warm touched my hands, and I opened my eyes as Madam Pomfrey handed me a steaming mug full of hot chocolate. I stared at it blankly for a moment, wrapping my hands around it, letting the sides of the mug warm my cold hands and breathing in the sweet steam rising from it.

As I raised the mug to my lips, the unmistakable figure of Albus Dumbledore appeared in the doorway.

"Headmaster," I managed in a croaky whisper.

"Remus," he said, his voice serious. "How are you feeling?"

I sighed and took a long sip of chocolate. "Lovely, Headmaster," I whispered. "Just lovely."

My eyes were half closed as Madam Pomfrey got up and crossed to the door.

"Should we tell him?" I heard him ask her softly.

"No!" Madam Pomfrey's voice, though also soft, was vehement. "He needs to sleep. You don't have to lay this on him, too."

"Tell me what?"

The Headmaster looked up, startled, and his blue eyes, normally twinkling, were grave.

"It's not important, Remus," Madam Pomfrey said, coming swiftly to my side and pressing her hand to my forehead. "You should sleep."

"No." I sat up, setting the mug on the nightstand and looking Dumbledore in the eye. "What happened?"

Dumbledore crossed the room and looked down at me, and his gaze softened. He looked at me sadly for a moment. "It can wait, Remus."

I shook my head, wincing as pain throbbed behind my left ear. Dumbledore sat down on the bed beside me.

"Sirius was in the castle last night," he said at last. I sat bolt upright, prompting Madam Pomfrey to shoot Dumbledore a dark look. The Headmaster ignored it.

"Did you catch him?" I knew as soon as I asked the question that they had not-knew it the instant Dumbledore had spoken. The gravity of his face made that only too clear. But for one moment I had hoped-desperately, foolishly- that it was all over, that Sirius was gone far away where he was no threat to Harry's life or my sanity, and I could shove my memories of him as far down into that dark, painful hole in my subconscious as they would go. That he would be taken back to Azkaban without my having to confront him-or the still raw emotions the sight of him provoked. That I could maybe, just maybe, start to attempt to rebuild what might be left of my life.

"No." Dumbledore looked at me for a long time, and for not the first time I began to wonder if the old wizard could read minds. Could he sense that I was hiding something?

I had to tell him. That was no longer up for debate. Sirius had gotten into the castle, and whether or not his transformation had helped, it was something everyone charged with protecting the school had a right to know.

But how? And how to explain why it was I had never told him until now?

"He attacked the Fat Lady with a knife when she couldn't let him into Gryffindor Tower."

He had gotten all the way to the Tower portrait hole? With a knife? My head was spinning, horrified. So close . . . so close . . . way too close . . .

"Yes," Dumbledore murmured, and I looked up at him, seeing his lined face as if from very far away. I hadn't realized I had spoken the last words aloud. "It's all right, Remus. We can talk about this later."

Madam Pomfrey was suddenly at my side, pushing me to lie down and feeling my forehead again. "No," I said, making a feeble effort to sit up again. Madam Pomfrey restrained me quite easily, looking even more worried as she waved at the Headmaster to leave the room. "Headmaster, there's something I need to tell you-"

"Not now, Remus," Dumbledore said firmly. "We can talk tomorrow."

"Headmaster . . ."

"Rest," Madam Pomfrey said, smoothing my hair back from my forehead in a gesture of uncharacteristic tenderness. "There will be time tomorrow."



It was not until Monday that I was allowed to return to work. Madam Pomfrey saw to that. After classes were over that day, I set out across the grounds to speak to someone I had been avoiding for too long.

Hagrid was outside watering his pumpkin patch when I approached, and the giant black dog beside him gave me a start before I remembered the boarhound pup he had found when I was a student here. He looked up just in time to see me recoil.

"Down, Fang!" he commanded, although the dog was already crouched at his feet, sniffing at a fox's hole. "Remus! Yeh remember Fang, don' yeh, lad? Hasn' 'e grown?"

One would think the creature in question was a child and not a huge boarhound. But Hagrid had no idea why I shied away from giant black dogs. Neither did Dumbledore, I thought savagely. And why not?

I would tell him later, I reminded myself, as soon as I was done talking to Hagrid. But I knew I would not. A sick feeling of self-disgust settled in the pit of my stomach as Hagrid dusted his hands on his apron.

He stood there looking at me for a long time. Finally he said, "It's good to see ye, Lupin, lad." He nodded his great shaggy head, and his black eyes were bright. "It's good to see ye, right 'nough."

He turned, called to Fang, opened the door to the cottage. I followed mutely. I didn't know what to say. Images of our last meeting flashed in my mind, and I shook my head, looking around the cottage and taking in the new oddments on the shelves, the familiar décor that had existed when the four of us had come here to visit in our own school years.

I accepted a chair at the old, scratched wooden table gratefully, sipping at the hot butterbeer he placed in front of me and wondering what to say. He didn't seem to mind the lack of immediate conversation, only sat across from me with his chin in one giant hand, watching me with a sort of veiled understanding. It was always the same, walking into a familiar place, a place I had been so many times over twelve years ago-but seeing it for the first time alone, without the faces that should have been beside me. I don't care what they say. It doesn't ever get any easier.

But I was not going to break down in front of Hagrid a second time. I looked up. "I don't think I ever got a chance to congratulate you," I said.

He smiled, and his face reddened as he looked down, but I could see the anxiety he tried to hide. Malfoy, I remembered.

"I'm sorry about the hippogriff," I said quickly, wondering if I had raised a sensitive subject. "If there's anything I can do-"

He shook his head. "Nah, it'll all be all righ', don' worry 'bout me. It's you I've been worried about." He fixed me with a piercing glance. "Yeh might've owled ter let us all know where yeh were-if yeh were alive-"

I ducked my head, somewhat embarrassed at the sincere concern in his face, and trying not to think of the last time he had looked at me thus. Thankfully my memory of that time was still hazed with alcohol . . .

"I'm sorry," I said softly. I didn't know what else to say, didn't really want to talk about that night or what had happened in the long gulf between then and now.

"I was worried abou' yeh," he said again, gently. "Didn' know if-if yeh-"

I was shaking my head slowly, without looking at him, gripping the edge of the table to stop the memories. I wanted to say something, reassure the old gamekeeper, tell him he didn't have to worry, that I wasn't the desperate young man he'd nearly had to fish out of the river that long ago Christmas Eve. The problem was that I wasn't entirely sure it was true.

"I didn't-I just-wanted to get away," I whispered finally. I looked up, silently begging him to let it go . . . to leave it at that. I didn't want to talk about it any more.

"Yeh all righ', lad?" he asked.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I would not break down again! I wasn't even drunk this time . . .

"Come 'ere," he said suddenly. He had stood up, and was moving toward the door. "I got somethin' ter show yeh." Curious, I took a long gulp of butterbeer and followed him outside.

He was walking toward the Forbidden Forest, I realized with a pang. He had no idea how well I already knew that forest, every beaten track and faun trail, every centaur's lair and phoenix's nest. Or did he? Neither of us said anything as he led the way into the wood. I sniffed the air, but the scents were much fainter than they had been to a wolf's senses that Halloween. Still, even my human nose could detect a faint-metallic? smell.

"Didn' know what ter do with it," Hagrid confessed, as he clambered over a tree that had fallen across the path. "Couldn' give it ter Harry, o' course, bein' as how it migh' be considered a mite dangerous . . . o' course Dumbledore did give him the Invisibility Cloak . . ." he didn't notice how I started violently at the mention of the cloak. "but that was James' and this . . ."

I still had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't seem to notice as he went on, leading me deeper into the Forbidden Forest. "Supposed I should've turned it over ter th' Ministry twelve years ago. Didn', though. Don' know why." He stopped for a moment, listening, then turned and left the path, wading through thick undergrowth as I followed. "Don' know why he left it with me," he went on, as if to himself. "'I won' be needin' it anymore,' he said. Should've known then . . ." he broke off. "But never mind that. He left it with me, an' I figure you're the one as ought ter have it if anyone should."

Confused, and more than a little apprehensive now, I watched as he raised a wand and pointed it at a pile of old wood chips covered in moss and twigs.

"Revelatium!"

The image of moss shifted, rippling as though through smoke, and suddenly vanished. What lay underneath made my breath stop.

Lying there on the dead leaves, glossy black paint chipped and scratched, shining chrome dulled by the elements and starting to rust, was Sirius' motorcycle.

It was a long time before I remembered to breathe. Lying there battered and weary, it looked almost as it had when Sirius first dragged it home with him, after finding it crashed by the side of the road. He had been so proud of this bike. Madam Pomfrey had said it was his girlfriend, his wife, his soul mate. She hadn't been far wrong. He had taken the wrecked motorcycle in and tended to it with the patience and tenderness one would lavish on a wounded unicorn.

She looked so different now from how she had when we had finally finished with her. (Oh God, I was starting to sound like him-it, not she, IT.) Polished leather for the seat, glossy black paint and silver chrome shining when the sun hit the body. She had hovered in the air, a few inches above the ground, waiting for him to mount. Dignified, spirited, humming with power held in check like a fine thoroughbred race horse.

I knelt down on the dry leaves, feeling rather than seeing Hagrid take a step closer. I hesitated before reaching out a hand to stroke the scratched paint of the handlebars. Lightly, reverently, as if it was something infinitely fragile and likely to break at any second. Trying hard to see only the bike, only this creature of metal and leather, not the man who had tamed her and made her fly.

Come on, Moony, she'll carry two of us! It's a thousand times better than a broomstick-you can't even imagine! What're you, scared?

I swear I could hear him. Clear as if he'd been right next to me. I looked up, cocked my head, but no one was there. Only Hagrid, who stood waiting patiently, letting me deal with this in my own way.

What to say? What to do? If there ever was one thing, one concrete symbol or object that was all Sirius was, all that I would have bet my life was him, it was this motorcycle. Reckless, daring, touched with fire . . .

"I won' be needin' it anymore . . ."

I wondered under what circumstances Sirius had come to give the bike to Hagrid. I never would have believed he would give it up to anyone. But then I never would have believed many of the things he'd done . . .

I had never actually ridden the bike. Back in those days I had valued my own skin far more than I did now, and Sirius had never succeeded in persuading me to risk it in the air on a Muggle machine enchanted by an underage wizard to do something no such machine was supposed to do. The only person who had ever ridden it with him was Mary McKinnon, and she had been wildly in love with him. Even James had never gone-although I think Lily might have had something to do with that.

I shut my eyes against the flow of memories, still lightly stroking the handlebars, running gentle fingers along the rusted body. How long I crouched there, feeling flakes of paint crumble and crack under my fingers, I do not know, but when I looked up my eyes were filled with tears.

Hagrid made a motion with his wand, and when I looked back the bike was gone. I couldn't see it, but I could still feel cold metal against my hand. I let go, and stood up.

A heavy hand clamped on my shoulder. "Come, lad," he said. In silence, we turned away. When we reached the edge of the forest he seized me in a bone- crushing hug. After releasing me, he didn't say anything at first. Then he pointed toward the cottage. "Yeh ever need me," he said gruffly, "yeh know where ter find me."

I nodded, and I watched him as he turned away, back toward the cottage. I watched him for a long time, before I turned toward the castle, and my own warm fire.

To be continued . . .